“Oh?” She saw a lot of turmoil in his darkening green eyes. Always sensitive and aware of Ram, she could feel anxiety and worry around him. His dark brows drawing together, as if he were holding on to some deep secret he wanted to share with her, reinforced this sense. His expression was serious and somber. Something was clearly bothering him, so she sat up, crossing her legs, resting her arms on her knees, facing him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he managed. “I’ve just been waiting for quiet, uninterrupted time with you.” He gazed around the yellow ochre canyon, the walls about a hundred feet high on each side of it. “Personal time with you, I guess you’d call it.”
Concerned, she said, “Okay . . . what do you want to talk about?”
“Well, I’ve been to this canyon before,” he offered, gesturing toward where the horses stood grazing.
“You told me once you lived in Nogales, Mexico, and that’s only twenty miles south of here. Did your parents bring you up here when you were a kid?” She saw him wince.
“A friend of mine, Mazzie, brought me up here for my ninth birthday,” he began. “She was like a mother to me and she got a day off from work, drove across the border and brought me up here. In fact,” he said, his voice growing hoarse, “it was near here that she brought a picnic basket and laid out a blanket, just like we’re doing.”
“So is this bringing back a lot of happy memories for you, Ram?” His frown disappeared as he reflected on her question.
“Yes, it was a good memory. Mazzie had made me a birthday cake and I didn’t know it until she opened up the basket and set it on its platter on the blanket. She put nine yellow candles on top of it. Lucky for her, there was no breeze that day in this canyon and she used a lighter and lit the candles. I made a wish and blew them out.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet! Did she sing you ‘Happy Birthday’?” Ram smiled, reliving the moment.
“Yes, she did.”
Frowning, Ali said, “But I thought you had parents. You said Mazzie was like a mother to you. What did I miss, Ram?” Instantly, she sensed that he wanted to run away. Although he was sitting still, his hands tightened around his drawn up knee for a moment. Then, he forced himself to relax them.
“They weren’t available,” he admitted. “So Mazzie made sure I had a birthday. It was a nice afternoon being here with her. We talked and ate cake, and then she gave me a present that I wasn’t expecting.”
“She sounds like a wonderful person!” Ali said, although she couldn’t understand why his parents weren’t available. That made no sense unless they were out of the country or on a business trip.
“Mazzie was the kind of woman who truly cared for others. In fact, when I was six and having trouble in the first grade understanding English, she started teaching me to read, write and speak that language. Catholic nuns had taught her English starting at six years old. Until then, I only knew Spanish.”
“Oh, no, that must have been awful for you,” she murmured. “Your parents were Hispanic?”
“My father was,” he admitted. “My mother was blonde, green eyed, and white. She was an American.”
Frowning, she said, “Then, wasn’t English spoken around you?” She tilted her head, studying him. “Were you dyslexic? Did you have trouble spelling and speaking?”
“No, my brain was fine. I was around only Spanish-speaking people growing up, Ali. Not much English was spoken.”
“Oh. Your mother must have learned the language, then.”
“Yes . . . she did.”
Ali picked at a cotton strand sticking up from the old blanket that Ram had taken out of their garage. “But why would Mazzie be helping you? Why didn’t your mother?”
“She was too busy, Ali. Mazzie really liked me, was available, and took a shine to me, I guess.”
That didn’t make sense to Ali, but she saw how uncomfortable Ram was getting with all her questions. She also sensed he was trying his best not to be evasive with her. So he was giving her a part of the story, but not the full story. Curiosity was eating her alive, but something warned her not to pursue this too intently. This was the first time he’d willingly engaged her about his childhood and she sensed she had to walk gently with him about it.
“You speak English now like it’s your first language,” she said, wanting to smooth away the tension. They were on a picnic and it was a day to relax and be in each other’s presence. Ali had looked forward to this, so she didn’t want to spoil it with her hundred-questions routine.
“Mazzie gave me a good, strong foundation in English, and once I caught on, it got easier. My grades started coming up and she pushed me to read a hundred English-language books a year. She worked with the librarian at my grade school in Nogales, who also helped. Mazzie was a smart woman and knew how to handle me and get me on track.”
“You talk about her in past tense,” Ali said.
“She was murdered two months after my birthday she had here in the canyon for me,” he said, dropping the bombshell.
Ali looked shocked. What could she say to help him through this? Then, watching him closely, she replied softly, “I’m so sorry, Ram. She sounds like a kind of guardian angel.”
“She was definitely one of the angels in my life when I was little,” he admitted, his voice heavy with grief and memories.
“So? That little puppy you rescued in J-bad? The one with the broken paw caught under a crate? You named her Mazzie.”
“Yes. You asked me to name her and Mazzie’s name came to me. I couldn’t tell you who she was at that time. But she was a light in my life and always will be.”
“I’m glad you had her care and support, Ram. She obviously made a real difference in your life.”
He studied her. “You’re making a difference in my life now, Ali.” Releasing his hands around his knee, he crossed his legs, his hands resting on his thighs. “That’s something I wanted to talk to you about. As far as I’m concerned, whatever is happening to us is good. I like discovering different aspects of each other that we never knew existed before.”
She grinned. “I like it too, Ram. You’re a different person here at our home.”
“Part of it is your family,” he admitted. “I’m understanding how a real family operates and presents itself to the world.”
Digesting his statement, Ali knew better than to keep prodding Ram about his childhood. She’d seen him struggle to share something of that time in his life and she was grateful. It wasn’t easy for him to open up, that she knew. “Well, I like how we’re like two flower buds, each of us opening up, one petal at a time to one another,” she teased him gently.
Nodding, he gave her an intense look. “I’m on completely new ground with you, Ali. I’ve often asked myself what I should do, or what I should say to you.”
“I’m gathering you’ve never really had a serious relationship with a woman before, or lived with anyone?”
“Never. I had plenty of bed partners, but that’s as far as it went. When we were in teams, I didn’t have time to devote to a serious relationship. I didn’t want to string women along, either.”
“Most single SEALs are like roaming tom cats,” Ali said, laughing a little. “It just comes with the territory.”
He became serious again. “I don’t know what to call what we have going on with us, Ali. Do you?”
A little startled by his question, she wondered at the innocence of it. Ram had had plenty of sexual partners when he was on her team. He never talked about them, unlike some of the other unmarried SEALs. Remembering her talk earlier with Cara, she offered, “We’re learning to be friends, I thought?”
“Yes, we are. I haven’t ever had a friend who was a woman before, though.”
“Maybe that’s why you asked your question?”
“I guess so.” He rubbed his chest, frowning, and watching a red-tailed hawk fly overhead. “I don’t see how you can be friends with a woman, though.”
Laughing, Ali said wryly, “It’s an
interesting place to be with you, Ram. I’ve seen a few men and women who were genuine friends with one another, but in my experience, the friendship can often turn into something else down the road.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, his gaze penetrating.
Ali wanted to tread lightly. Could Ram be that innocent about man-woman relationships? She was trying to cobble together the pieces he’d given her about his childhood. It sounded as if his real mother was indisposed, too busy, or maybe a corporate executive, not having much time for him. That would explain Mazzie being a pseudo-mother to him. Maybe she was his hired nanny? What she couldn’t reconcile was that Ram didn’t know English and it wasn’t his real mother who’d helped him up and over that impediment. It had been Mazzie who helped him learn English. She wasn’t getting a very clear picture of his American mother and Mexican father.
“I mean that I’ve seen a lot of men and women who started out as friends, and later on developed a deeper, more meaningful, intimate relationship with one another,” Ali said. “My parents were friends for over a year until one day, my father admitted to my mother that he had fallen helplessly in love with her. He told her he wanted to change what they had so he could pursue her on a different basis. Of course, my mother had to agree to that or it wouldn’t have worked. She later told my sister and me that she’d secretly fallen in love with my father about six months into their ‘friendship.’” Smiling a little, she held Ram’s intense gaze, feeling his full attention on what she was sharing with him. “Friendship is a great place to explore what you might or might not have with a person, Ram.”
She decided that he was not very worldly when it came to a serious relationship. “Does that answer your original question?”
“Yes, it’s helpful, but there’s something more between us, Ali. I feel it here,” and he touched his heart. “I know you feel something, too. But I can’t speak for you. You have to tell me.”
She became silent for a moment, running over several ways to answer that sticky question. Ali wasn’t about to admit her torrid dreams of making love with Ram. No way. At least, not yet. “Well,” she began hesitantly, “yes, I feel something good between us, Ram. I think it’s too soon to call it anything but an extension of our growing friendship with one another.”
“I’ve never felt what I feel for you, Aliyana.”
Impacted, she heard the sudden thickening in his voice, knowing his emotions had risen to the surface. For a split second, she saw Ram as a little boy, alone, with no one around him. Had he been socially stunted within his family while growing up? Did his parents not have time for him? Had he been neglected? Did his parents ever hug, kiss, or show they loved one another in front of him?
Ali believed the answer to all those questions was “no” from the way he was casting about asking such teenager type of questions. He was like a fish that had been tossed out of the water, flopping awkwardly on land, helpless. As confident, bold, and brazen as Ram was as a military leader, he was equally unsure of himself socially, especially with her. She could feel him grasping to understand, appearing to be on unstable ground with her because his questions were something a younger person, without experience, might ask.
“I feel our personal connection with one another is changing, Ram.” She tried to think clearly about this because she knew he was hanging on every word she said. “I like what’s happening between us. I enjoy our time together now, our private talks. I like laughing with you. I like seeing you smile because it makes me feel good inside when you do.”
Ram sat there, digesting her words, taking them to heart. “I have plenty of friendships with guys, Ali. And while I enjoy being with them, when you walk into the garage where I’m working, my heart skips a beat. It’s the oddest damned sensation. And when you laugh, this warm feeling flows through me, and I feel alive. So, I understand friendship, but what we have goes beyond that. Is there a word for where we are?”
Ali managed a wry grin. “I feel the same way about you, Ram. You affect me the same way when you come into a room. What to call it? How about ‘growing closer together in an emotional sense’? Because that’s what is happening to us. We’re learning to trust one another, we’re opening up. We are seeing more of the other one.”
“It’s nice,” he rumbled.
“Very nice,” Ali agreed.
“Does it bother you that Mazzie taught me English when I was young?”
Ali heard fear and hesitation behind in his question. “Why . . . er . . . no. Why should it?”
“You seemed, well, puzzled by it. As if it was an odd thing that happened to me.”
Shrugging, she said, “I just wondered where your mother was, and why she didn’t take you aside to help you learn English instead of Mazzie? That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Maybe some other time, I can shed a little more light on the situation for you, okay?”
“I’d like that, Ram. I mean, you are who you are today because of the way you were raised. We all are. You speak English like it’s your first language, not a second one. So I know Mazzie was helpful to you in many ways, not just teaching you a language. Am I right?”
“Yes, you are.” He slowly unwound and stood up. “I’m glad we came here today. It’s brought good memories of Mazzie back to me. And I like our talks, Ali. Do you?”
She got up, brushing off the seat of her jeans. “I look forward to these private times with you, Ram. But that’s coming to an end in about four days. Tyler arrives and then you take off two days later for Artemis.” She came over, placing her hand on his upper arm. “I’m really going to miss you.”
“But as friends? Can’t we Skype? Talk on the phone? Stay in touch via email?” he asked.
Allowing her fingers to slide away from his warm, hard skin that glowed golden beneath the sunlight, she replied, “Absolutely.”
“You’re planning on staying three weeks with your family after I leave, right?”
“Yes. I want to make sure that Tyler and Cara get along. I want to gently break my leaving her so it doesn’t impact her so much. I’m hoping that Tyler will make himself so indispensable to Cara that she won’t even know I’m gone and miss me.” and she laughed.
Ram smiled, picking up the blanket. He shook it out. “And then you’ll head back to the East Coast and be with me.”
She took the folded blanket and placed it behind the cantle of her saddle, using leather strings to tie it into place. “I’m excited about the opportunity.”
“I like that we’ll be working together in the same section.”
She heard wistfulness in his voice and turned, meeting his eyes as he lifted the reins over Yoda’s head. Her heart tugged with so many feelings for Ram. “Well,” she whispered, picking up Luke’s reins, “I would love to work with you.”
He stood there, settling the baseball cap on his head. “Maybe we could keep developing whatever it is that we have after that happens?”
“I never knew you to be such an optimist, Ram.” Ali swung up into the saddle, turning Luke toward Yoda, seeing Ram give her a boyish grin as he mounted.
“If there’s one thing I need you to know more than anything, Aliyana, it’s that you’ve helped me to learn to hope again. That’s a major gift you’ve given me, mi princesa . . . ”
Ali felt as if Ram had reached out and invisibly caressed her cheek as he whispered that endearment. Heat crawled up into her cheeks. She saw his grin turn very male with yearning. Ram knew his roughened Spanish words had affected her and she liked it.
“I like being thought of as a princess,” she said, moving up alongside him as they turned around to leave the canyon. Their feet brushed against one another from time to time and Ali absorbed Ram as a feast for her senses and heart. He seemed at peace with himself now and she wondered if it had been because he’d shared a little more about himself with her.
“Actually,” he drawled, slanting an amused glance in her direction, “I always silently called you ‘queen’ when we were in
teams but I never told you or anyone else.”
“What? Was that supposed to be an insult, Torres? We were hardly on good terms with one another then.”
“No,” he said, becoming philosophical as their horses plodded side-by-side, “I did recognize you as queen of all that you surveyed. You came to us with a lot of hands-on sniper experience. You owned your turf, Ali. It wasn’t arrogance. It was a bold confidence and we recognized you for who you were even if you were a woman.” He flashed her a smile, baiting her.
Making a rude sound, Ali gave him a mock glare. “I’m sure you had all kinds of nicknames for me behind my back.”
“No, we really didn’t. It was tough adjusting to a female among us. We’d never had one before. But we never questioned your skills or abilities.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” she said, relieved. “I always had nightmares about you guys gossiping behind my back, calling me a ‘bitch’ and other such nice words.”
“We didn’t do that either,” he said seriously. “First of all, Wyatt wouldn’t stand for it. And second, we needed a sniper with us and there you were. It was the right place and time.”
“I’m glad those days are over,” she muttered, scowling. Glancing around the sandy floor of the canyon, she said, “I’m ready for a desk job, Ram. I really am. When you arrived at Artemis, were you ready to hang up your spurs, too?”
“Pretty much.” He touched his left knee. “Arthritis is setting in and I want to keep my knees as long as I can so I won’t need knee replacements. I’m trying to take better care of myself than I did in my younger years.”
“So are you happy being in mission planning?”
“Very much so. Wyatt does send me out once every three or four months on a low-level mission, but that’s about it. I asked for that just to keep my hand in things. Do you want to continue going out on missions once you get the job?”
“No. I’m done. Cara getting kidnapped, me having to sit in that tree hide and watch her and those women suffer, tore me up. I’m still emotionally gut shot over it, Ram.” She saw concern come to his eyes, felt that invisible heat surrounding her like a warm, comforting blanket. She knew it was coming from him.
Taking A Chance_Delos Series_Book 7B1 Page 9
