by S. M. Butler
The hand on his chest applied pressure, holding him down.
Irish’s gaze shifted from her lips to soft, gray-blue eyes.
“You’re awake,” she whispered.
“I have to get out of here.” Again, he started to rise.
Her hand remained on his bare chest, and she shook her head. “It’ll be daylight soon. I snuck you in last night. If you run out of here now, someone will see you.”
“I’ll take my chances,” he said, sitting up.
“You might be willing to risk your life, but it’s the others who will also bear the brunt of your discovery.”
“What others?”
“We’re on the edge of the refugee camp containing the women and children of Samada lucky enough to escape before the al-Shabaab rebels took over. So far, they haven’t attacked us, but that could only be a matter of time. If they discover you among us, they’ll kill everyone here.”
“I have to leave. My team needs me.”
“Your team is gone.”
Irish tensed. He seemed to remember her saying something like that before, but hadn’t quite grasped her meaning through his haze of pain. “I don’t understand.”
She slid off the cot and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him and, keeping her voice down, she filled him in. “You fell out of the helicopter. It crashed. The rebels converged on it, but I didn’t see them dragging any bodies back to Samada for the usual torture and dismemberment.”
Some of his tension eased. If the rebels hadn’t dragged them back to Samada, dead or alive, his team had gotten away. For a long time, he stared into her eyes. The woman had saved his life. She had no reason to lie to him.
“For today, you have to stay inside my tent, be quiet and not let anyone else know you’re here.” Her brows rose. “Understood?”
His lips twitched. He wasn’t used to taking orders from a civilian, but he didn’t really mind when it was his guardian angel. “On one condition.”
She frowned. “You’re not in a position to make conditions.”
The way her nose wrinkled made his insides feel all tingly. Bossy and sassy. He liked this woman. Irish winked, the effort costing him another twinge of pain. “I only want to know the name of the lass who rescued me.” He laid on the Irish accent he’d learned from his mother.
Her face brightened and the crease in her forehead lifted as she held out her hand. “Claire Boyette.”
“And why in the hell are you in Somalia?”
She smiled. “I’m here as part of Medecins sans Frontieres.” She grimaced. “Doctors Without Borders.”
“A doctor, are ya?” He pinched the bridge of his nose before staring across at her. “Isn’t it too dangerous for you to be here? Couldn’t you go to Kenya or South Africa?”
“Samada was fairly safe until two weeks ago when Umar decided the village suited his army’s needs and forced the people out.”
“Why, my angel, didn’t you leave then?”
Her lips twisted. “While I was herding women and children into the woods, Umar and his men confiscated my transportation. Unless I walk out, I’m kind of stuck. Besides, I have patients to tend in the hospital tent we were able to move. I couldn’t leave them.”
Irish started to shake his head, regretting it as soon as he did. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose again. “You’re in grave danger.”
“So far, I’ve stayed out of sight of the rebels. They’re more interested in staging raids to other cities and villages than to fool with a bunch of women and children living in the woods.”
“Still, you’re in danger, here.”
“Yes, but I’m a doctor. They are less likely to kill me than kidnap me. Trust me when I say that you are a bigger threat to me and the people in this camp. Umar has leveled entire villages for harboring his enemies.” She pulled a penlight from beneath her pillow. “Stare straight ahead.”
He did as she said, while she shined the light in both of his eyes.
Claire’s gray-blue gaze stared into his intently. Her nearness made him more aware of the way she smelled of the outdoors and sunshine, and the way she bit on her lip when she concentrated. Yes, this doctor was having an effect on him, and he was in no shape to do anything about it. Even if he were, she probably would slap the stupid off his face for even trying.
“So, Doctor Claire.” He paused, waiting for her to finish.
“Yes?” She switched off the light and stared at him with a clear direct look.
“Are you married?”
Her eyes widened and then narrowed. “What?”
“I meant to ask, will I live?” Irish glanced at her hand. No ring. No white band from where a ring might have been.
“Your pupils are responding, which is a good sign.” She put the penlight in her pocket, pushed to her feet and stretched. “And no.”
“No, I’m not going to live?” He grinned.
“No. I’m not married.” She stepped out of the little room made of boxes and the tent wall. “Close your eyes. I need to change and get ready for rounds and clinic duties.”
“I can help.”
She appeared at the end of the pallet and dropped down beside him on her knees. Claire gripped his arms and said in a stern whisper, “No matter what, you are not to step foot outside this tent. And not a peep out of your mouth. Don’t move anything or knock anything over.” She let go of his arms and sat back on her heels. “Understood?”
He nodded, loving the way her eyes sparkled when she got all wound up. But stay still all day? “What am I supposed to do?”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll sleep away the day. If you’re feeling better and the leg wound isn’t infected, you have to get out of here, tonight.” Again, she pushed to her feet. “Now, be nice and close your eyes.” She turned away, grabbed the hem of her dirty T-shirt and tugged it over her head. Standing in nothing but her shorts and a bra, she wet a washcloth and performed a quick ritual of washing her face, neck, arms and torso, pushing the cloth beneath her bra. Claire glanced over her shoulder and glared. “Your eyes are supposed to be closed.”
“Sorry, got something in one.” What he’d gotten was a glimpse of a beautiful woman with a long lithe form and curves in all the right places. “Got it.” He closed his eyes long enough for her to turn back around, and then he opened them again.
Claire reached into a suitcase, pulled out a clean shirt and slipped it over her head.
Irish sighed. “A shame to cover such a lovely body.”
She turned and threw the cloth at his head. “You are no gentleman.”
Shaking his head, he raised his hands. “Never said I was. But you’re all lady.”
Her cheeks reddened as she dragged a brush through her long, straight hair until all the tangles were smoothed. Then she bent at the waist and gathered her hair into a single ponytail and cinched it in place at the crown of her head with an elastic band. She stood, and the ponytail made her look much younger than her years, but no less beautiful. Her hair pulled tightly back from her face emphasized her high cheekbones and full lush lips.
Lips Irish would like to kiss again.
“Was it my imagination or was I kissed by an angel last night?” he asked.
The color in her cheeks deepened. “I’m sure you were dreaming.”
“Kiss me so I can compare with my dream.”
“I will not.” She pulled a white smock over her T-shirt, stuffed her stethoscope in the pocket and headed for the front tent flap. “Remember, no one must see or hear you.”
Irish moved to sit on the cot as Claire left the tent, pulling the flaps tightly closed behind her. His head still hurt like hell. He raised his hand to the back of his neck and felt the goose-egg-sized lump at the base of his skull. Much as he hurt all over, he was lucky to be alive. Being so close to the town he and his team had been sent to annihilate, he wondered if he’d live long enough to get out.
Though danger lurked, he couldn’t help but think about the prett
y doctor out here in the middle of hostile territory. When he left, he’d have to convince her to go with him. He couldn’t leave her knowing Umar might find out she’d harbored one of the American SEALs sent to kill him.
Chapter Three
‡
After hurrying through her rounds in the makeshift hospital tent, Claire prepared a breakfast of military MREs and headed back to her tent. Butterflies fluttered in her belly and she found herself a little short of breath at the thought of seeing Irish, with his sexy accent and exceptional body.
She pushed through the flap and closed it behind her. Turning, she glanced at the wall of boxes. Nothing stirred, no sounds, no sign of Irish.
Her heart thumped in her chest, and she hurried around the boxes to find Irish lying on his back, his hands behind his head. “I thought you would never come back,” he said, his voice hushed. “I’m bored out of my mind.”
“Sorry, but it’s necessary. My contacts tell me Umar survived the attack, and his men are on the hunt to find the occupants of the helicopter.”
A frown pushed Irish’s brows together. “I really need to be out there. If my team needs help…”
“You’ll be no good to them dead.” Claire handed him the packet of food. “I thought you could do with something to eat to keep up your strength.”
Irish grimaced. “Thanks. I think.” He took the offering and a plastic fork, patting the ground beside him. “Sit with me.”
His smile made her want to sit right beside him and forget there was a world out there. “I should go.”
“Please.”
“Okay, but only for a minute. I’ll be missed by my partner, Dr. Jamo.”
“Is he American, like you?”
“No, he’s Somali.”
Irish tore into the green packet of food. “Where did you get these?”
“They were a donation from the base at Djibouti. Beats eating what the locals have. I’m here to help, not take the meager amounts of food they are able to grow themselves. Not only did Umar take over their village and kill the elders, he allows his men to consume what food the people had managed to store, as well as their livestock and what they were in the process of raising in their gardens. These people are destitute.”
“That’s probably why we were sent in to take him out.”
“We being?”
“Navy SEALs.”
Her heart stuttered. No wonder his muscles were rock-solid and well-toned. The man could probably chew nails and spit them out without breaking a tooth.
Her eyes widened. “Nothing but the best to take out the rebels? It’s too bad you didn’t get here sooner. Before these people lost everything they owned.” She pushed a strand of hair out of her face.
“What about you? Why Somalia?”
She smiled. “Africa is part of me. I actually grew up in Africa. My father is American, my mother French. They met here.”
“Are they doctors or missionaries?”
Her smile slipped. “Doctors. They met when they worked together on a cholera outbreak in Ethiopia thirty years ago. My parents fell in love with the people and the beauty of Africa, and with each other. They chose to remain in Africa to raise me and help people who had little access to medical care.”
“Very altruistic.”
Her back stiffened. “They cared deeply about the people.”
He touched her arm. “Apparently they passed that down to their daughter. Where are your parents now?”
“They died in a bush plane accident.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s been a while.” Claire glanced at her hands, a lump forming in her throat as it usually did when she thought of her parents.
When Claire had turned fifteen, she was shipped back to the States to live with her paternal grandmother and attend a public high school in Iowa. There she’d been bored, barely socialized with the other students she had nothing in common with, and poured herself into her studies. Graduating Valedictorian, she’d been accepted into Harvard where she completed her undergraduate degree in pre-med Biology.
Her grades and MCAT scores got her into Johns Hopkins. Determined to finish her education and get back to her parents and the land she loved, she’d pushed hard, studied harder and didn’t have much of a life outside of her textbooks and labs. Near the end of her first year at Johns Hopkins, Claire received a call from her grandmother, breaking the news her parents had been killed in a plane crash.
“How old were you when they passed?”
“I was in medical school.” The shock of that call reverberated through her as if it was only yesterday.
The news hit right before a huge exam. For the first time in her life, she’d been too stymied by grief to study effectively. She blew the exam and nearly dropped out of medical school. After a talk with her advisor, she’d pulled herself together, finished her studies and interned at a hospital in New York City. “As soon as I had my license to practice medicine, I joined Doctors Without Borders and returned to the African continent.”
Irish lifted her hand. “I’m glad you did,” he said softly. “If you hadn’t, I’d be a dead man today.”
She squeezed his fingers. “Then it’s a good thing I happened to see you fall out of a helicopter.”
“Dr. Boyette,” a deep male voice called out from the other side of the tent flap.
Claire gasped and spun toward the entrance. “I’ll be right out, Dr. Jamo.”
“Do you have someone in your tent? I hear voices.”
“No, no. I was just talking to myself,” she called out, hating lying to her friend and colleague, but he was better off not knowing about her guest. If she could make it through the day without revealing he was there, she’d get him out that night before the refugees and the rebels were any wiser.
Where he’d go, she wasn’t sure. The man was a SEAL, he was bound to have resources who could get him out of the area.
Part of her wanted to go with him, to leave the danger behind. The other part of her knew he was heading into danger and might not make it out alive. And she wanted him to live.
Claire pressed a finger to her lips and nodded toward the pallet.
Irish slipped into the sleeping area and ducked beneath the cot, completely out of sight before Claire opened the tent flap.
Dr. Jamo stepped inside and closed the flap behind him. “You have someone in here,” her colleague said.
Claire stepped backward. “Why do you say that?” she asked.
“I heard you talking to him. Is it one of the men from the helicopter crash last night?”
Claire shook her head, her face heating. Then she nodded, unable to lie to someone she respected as much as Dr. Jamo. “Yes.”
Dr. Jamo’s eyes widened as he stared toward the stack of boxes. “Where is he?”
Claire tilted her head toward the sleeping area.
“He cannot stay,” Dr. Jamo said. “You put our people at risk by bringing this man among them.”
Claire nodded.
Irish stood, rising above the boxes. “I’ll leave as soon as it gets dark outside.”
Dr. Jamo’s gaze swept over the tall man. “What happened to him?”
“He fell from a helicopter.” Claire gave him a breakdown of Irish’s injuries and concussion. “I’d rather he stayed longer, but I realize it’s not safe. No one else knows he’s here but you and me.”
Dr. Jamo frowned. “American?”
Irish nodded. “Born and raised in Texas. My mother was Irish, my father was Texan.”
Dr. Jamo paced away from Claire and her charge. “If Umar finds him among us, he will take him and use this American as an example to all other Americans who venture onto Somali soil. Then he’ll kill every one of the people of Samada as a warning not to harbor foreign infidels.”
“I know.”
“And yet, you still brought him among us?” Dr. Jamo waved his hand toward the tent’s exit, behind which the women and children of Samada lived in tents, slept o
n the ground and starved for food. Thin from malnutrition, they were tired and dispirited already from being displaced from their homes into a makeshift refugee camp. Now they were frightened from sounds of gunfire and last night’s crash.
Guilt washed over Claire when she considered their lives and what it meant to introduce more danger to them with the American’s presence. Still, she couldn’t have left Irish to die in the rubble, or to be discovered and tortured by al-Shabaab.
“I promise to get him out of here tonight. In the meantime, we’ll keep quiet and ensure no one else finds out he’s here.”
“It is a small camp,” Dr. Jamo reminded her. “Everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
She stiffened her back. “Then I’ll just have to be doubly careful. As it is, we can’t move him now without everyone seeing him, including whatever rebels might be lurking nearby.”
Dr. Jamo gave Irish a narrow-eyed glare. “It isn’t safe.”
“Agreed.̎” Irish nodded. “I’ll be gone tonight.”
The native doctor stared long and hard at Irish and then turned to Claire. “Nahabo needs our assistance. Her baby is coming.”
Claire shot a glance at Irish. “You’ll be okay today?”
He nodded. “Go. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
“This might take a while. No birth is every quite the same.” She gave him a weak smile then pushed through the tent flap and out into the open, followed by her colleague.
Dr. Jamo gripped her elbow. “Tonight.”
The intensity of that one word hit Claire square in the gut. “I promise.”
The rest of the day was spent delivering Nahabo’s baby, treating children for infections and checking on those too sick to leave the hospital tent.
Near the end of the day, a dozen black men with rifles stormed into camp.
The women grabbed their children. Those on the edge of camp slipped into the trees and brush. Those caught in the middle gathered their children close.
Rebel fighters split in two groups, each taking a different side of the camp. Using the barrel of their rifles, they jerked aside the tent flaps to reveal the occupants inside. So far they hadn’t made it to hers. But it wouldn’t be long.
