Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3)

by M. L. Buchman

  Wouldn’t Mama just shit a hissy brick if she knew who he was sleeping with.

  Except he wasn’t sleeping with her.

  Except he wanted to.

  Badly.

  “Sofia?” He asked her softly while she was shutting down the helo.

  She didn’t respond.

  The intercom sounded flat, dead in the headset’s earmuffs. She’d already shut off the power. He peeled his off.

  Then waited for her to finish shutting down and do the same before he tried again.

  “Sofia?”

  “Yes?” She placed her headset on the console before turning to him.

  He tried to find the right thing to say.

  It eluded him.

  Rather than hunting it down, he kissed her. For the first time in days, he kissed her.

  And, thank god, she kissed him back. No hesitation. Faster than a bullet to a fifty-meter target they went from first contact to full ignition. The lower radios on the console and the collective control lever between their seats was all that stopped them from crawling into each other’s laps.

  Sofia wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into the kiss as if she was trying to drive him out the far side of the helicopter.

  To hang on, he got one hand around her back. Because they could only turn toward each other but not manage a full-body clench, he managed to slide the other hand up and over her breast. Its shape had hinted at wonderful in her full field gear. It had looked incredible across the table masked by civilian attire and felt plenty amazing when pressed against his own chest during a full-body kiss. But in his hand, full and shapely without tipping over into either generous or lush, it was goddamn perfect.

  The outline of her bra through her light blouse gave him lines to tease as she groaned against him.

  “Now!” She broke the kiss just enough to gasp out the word.

  “Here?” If she was willing, so was he. He’d never done it in a helicopter before, didn’t know if it was possible. But taking the time to get her out into the grass was too damn long. She leaned in to press her breast more fully into his palm.

  “Yes. Sure. Whatever. Just…now!”

  Buttons. She had buttons. Take too much time. He’d buy her another damned blouse. He slipped his fingers inside the collar of it to tear it out of his way. He had to see if she looked as good as she felt.

  His fist clenched as one of her hands slid up the inside of his leg and grabbed him through his jeans. Grabbed him hard enough that he had to gasp for an instant before he could rend.

  Had him opening his eyes in surprise, just enough…to see the two horses looking in at them through the front windshield. A windshield that exposed them from their knees to above their heads.

  Then he managed to focus on the faces of their two riders. One was a handsome young man who looked amused. The other could have been Sofia’s twin—an older, very well-tended, furious twin.

  Chapter 14

  After they’d ridden off, Sofia couldn’t seem to stop laughing about it.

  She’d just get it under control, but it burst out each time she looked at him. It was a nervous, girly giggle that she’d only ever defeated by teaching herself not to laugh at anything. But it kept slipping out.

  “If it tickles you so goddamn much, maybe we should try the same thing when I meet your grandmother.” She wasn’t sure if he was more upset by how he’d met her mother and eldest brother or by their interrupted intentions.

  Personally, she was leaning toward the latter. Sofia had long ago given up caring about what her mother thought.

  Camila Forteza had ridden off before Sofia could get her shirt back under control and clamber out of the helicopter. Her brother had at least stayed long enough for introductions and a knowing smirk.

  “I can see how close you aren’t.” Duane helped her tie down the rotor so that it wouldn’t windmill breezes that wrapped around the tops of the Dundee Hills.

  “We’ve been that way ever since…well, not birth. But not long after.”

  “Why?”

  “Mucho ruido y pocas nueces.”

  “Lots of noise, very few nuts? What are they, squirrels?” But his smile said he knew the idiom.

  Sofia sighed. “My family, other than Nana, are about the most useless lot you can imagine but, as Shakespeare says, they love making much ado about nothing. Abuelito, my grandfather, Nana says was a good man. The rest of my family. Feh!”

  She leaned back against the helicopter. Off to the left were the big vintner’s sheds. It was the harvest season and the trucks where rushing great mounds of grapes from the fields, so lush and darkly purple that they seemed ready to burst forth and fill the air with their dark flavors. Straight ahead and up the hill was the Corazón de las Vides—the Heart of the Vines tasting room, restaurant, and an elite, members-only lounge that filled the entire upper floor. To the right was La Casa—the family home. A grand villa. All were done in deep yellow faux adobe with red Spanish tile roofs so that they were the colors of the Spanish flag.

  “I haven’t been here in a year, but it smells like home.” She breathed in again. She could taste the richness of the soil at the back of her throat. The dry hills of early fall before the rains came in to reshape the scents.

  Duane fetched their overnight bags, dropped them at her feet and leaned beside her.

  “Why?” He wasn’t going to let her get out of this one.

  “Mother will never forgive us, all four children, for the travesties we caused upon her body.”

  She could hear Duane thinking about Camila Forteza’s looks, even if he was decent enough not to say it. Ever since she’d turned thirty, her mother had done her best to remain frozen in time—and had done a very good job of it. At sixty-one there wasn’t a sag or bulge out of place.

  “The best surgeons money can buy and a ruthless commitment to her personal trainer,” Sofia answered his thought anyway. “I should say trainers, as she grows bored with their other, more personal services fairly quickly.”

  “Uh-huh.” Somehow he knew it was only a half truth.

  “Also, Nana made me the heir, not her. Mama has an allowance and that’s all. She has no business sense and a great desire to acquire things. She is always broke by harvest time but must wait out the rest of the year before Nana will release her next year’s quarter million of pocket money.”

  “Tough life,” he sounded disgusted.

  Oddly his tone said he wasn’t disgusted at the amount of money but rather the attitude with which it was handled.

  “I have a cousin like that. Collects sportscars and very expensive ex-wives. Where’s your father?”

  Sofia shrugged. “Mother grew bored of him, too, when I was seven or eight. She waited until he had a fresh affair—not as if it was news even then—and used it to drum him out of the family. A payoff of a few million and he was gone. We never hear from him. He never even came back to see his last child’s birth, assuming Consuela is even his.”

  “How did you turn out so normal?”

  “Normal?” She pushed off from the helo. To pick up her bag, she bent at the waist with her behind facing him just to torture him.

  A casual glance over her shoulder showed that it worked perfectly. Duane was looking right where she wanted him to. At her— She straightened, hating herself. That was her mother’s game, not hers.

  “I work for The Activity where I am appreciated for my skills and sharp brain.” Not for waving my butt at beautiful men. “I have just been on multiple missions with a Delta Force team in exotic countries—all for truth, justice, and the American way. And you call me normal?”

  “Not how a little girl pictured herself growing up, huh?” Duane Jenkins backed it up with that good smile of his.

  She laughed and didn’t care that it was her happy giggle sound. “Truthfully, almost exactly what I pictured.”

  Duane offered one of his surprised grunts. Sofia enjoyed doing that to him, keeping him on his toes. She kissed him lightly, but di
dn’t lose herself in him this time though it would be so easy to do.

  “Grandma filled my head with such ideas from the time I still thought Peek-a-boo was a wonderful game. I have told you she is una pistola.”

  Maria Alicia Forteza y Borga de Olivella was a wizened woman who didn’t even come up to Sofia’s shoulder despite standing ramrod straight. Duane didn’t expect a “pistol” to look like she’d be blown away by the next breeze if not for her cane.

  Apparently Sofia didn’t either by her hard stumble. If he hadn’t caught her arm, she might have gone down to the marble floor. They had found her grandmother—“you may call me Ms. Forteza”—in the estate office. It was a grand, wood-paneled room designed to impress visitors. He was certainly impressed. His family’s home was modern, pretentious, and custom-built—with a complete lack of personality.

  Even though Sofia had said this estate was younger than the woman standing before them, it felt as if it went back forever—rooted as deeply into the soil as the vast vineyards that had lined the hillsides, curving like contour lines of a topo map. This place belonged in Architectural Digest.

  And this room, with the tiny woman standing in the center of it, felt like the anchor to it all. White marble floor. An aged, oaken desk faced with a handful of wine-colored leather chairs. A small circle of couches and armchairs around a quietly crackling fireplace lit against the cool October morning. And portraits that began with what could only be a young Maria Alicia Forteza standing above the first plantings of her vineyard. No question where Sofia and her mother got their fine looks—straight down the matrilineal line.

  Though the warmth had skipped a generation. No matter what Camila Forteza did to maintain her body, nothing was going to hide that her eyes had all the warmth of a Venezuelan pit viper.

  But the room didn’t overpower Maria Alicia Forteza—not even standing in front of her own portrait. Instead it was the other way around despite her frailty.

  Sofia hugged her very gently.

  “I’m not dead yet,” the woman snapped, but returned the embrace kindly.

  Sofia nodded quickly, but it was easy to see the shock in her eyes. Maria patted Sofia’s arm consolingly.

  “I was thrown from Diablo, my horse,” she explained for his benefit. “I broke my hip. At eighty-seven I do not heal as quickly as I once did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you would have worried. I was just a sick old woman who hated giving up her morning ride. I wasn’t fit company for anyone.”

  Then the woman’s black eyes, emphasized by the pure whiteness of her hair, turned to inspect him.

  “So, this is your gigoló. Camila seemed quite bothered by you, young man.”

  “She may not have liked that I was in the midst of manhandling your granddaughter at that moment.”

  A ghost of a smile touched the woman’s lips. “Was she enjoying it?”

  Sofia opened her mouth, whether to answer or protest, he wasn’t sure. Maria Alicia Forteza cut her off with little more than a raised finger. And Duane could see that smile grow ever so slightly at her granddaughter’s discomfiture.

  “We both were, ma’am. Quite a bit as I recall.”

  This time Sofia blushed, her golden skin deepening toward a ruddy sunset.

  “Camila always was the jealous sort.”

  That made Duane blink in surprise. And now Maria’s knowing smile had his own cheeks heating up.

  “You, my good boy, are very handsome, yes. But you are also very real. Any fool, even my daughter, could see that at a glance. Far more interesting than the pretty young men Camila uses. Come, sit with me,” she waved toward the chairs. “Or would you rather go finish what Camila and Emilio so rudely interrupted?”

  While it was tempting, Duane didn’t need to see Sofia’s near-panicked expression to know the latter wasn’t an option at the moment. She was truly thrown by the change in her grandmother.

  They followed her to the seating area. Maria did not protest when he held her arm as she settled into a chair. She felt no bigger around than a toothpick. Before Sofia could start fussing, Duane took her hand and pulled her down on a couch beside him. Her clasp was strong, fiercely so, and she didn’t ease up.

  Maria glanced down at their joined hands and then back at him. “I think you are an interesting man, Mr. Jenkins.”

  “For what reason, Ms. Forteza?”

  “You two have not slept together, but already she depends on you greatly,” she hummed to herself for a moment as she studied the painting over his head. “That is not something I can ever recall my granddaughter doing.”

  “What are you talking about, Nana?”

  Maria clasped both hands atop her cane. “Your mother and father taught you quite young that men were not reliable. Your grandfather died in Vietnam, long before you were born which was a great loss to me and my baby daughter, but I could have wished that he lived to meet you. You both would have benefited by it.”

  “Yet you never remarried?” Duane couldn’t help asking.

  “No. Some lovers…”

  He could feel Sofia’s hand jolt in his. Her grandmother didn’t miss it.

  “I remind you, Sofia, I am not dead. Far more discreet than your mother, which is saying very little, but still a woman.”

  Duane could see where Sofia had inherited all of her spine.

  Then Maria shook her head and inspected the low mahogany coffee table set with yellow roses. “You and Camila were both raised without male role models. Perhaps, by not remarrying, I also did not give you an example of what a good man could be. Perhaps,” she looked up at Duane. “Perhaps you will.”

  Sofia opened the door to her bedroom, and hesitated. She had brought boys here before, even some young men. Neither of those described the man waiting close beside her no matter what Nana called him.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d have survived seeing the vast change in her grandmother without his support. Once again she was reminded of Duane’s impossible solidness; rooted where he stood, with roots deeper than the oldest vine.

  Giving in, she let the door swing open the rest of the way. After Duane had stepped through, she closed the door and leaned her back against it. He didn’t glance back at her for permission before prowling the room. She could feel the Unit operator assessing everything about the situation. She could feel him learning things about her so rapidly that it was spinning out of her control. She—

  Remembered her training.

  Managed a breath.

  Another.

  And then she watched him. Her first impression was wrong. He wasn’t a soldier assessing a new environment as she’d first thought. Instead, he was a man curious about a woman’s private room.

  She had always liked to think it was an accurate reflection of her. Rich with warm golden colors, a dusky carpet the shade of the Colina Soleada rosé. Though she’d never noticed before quite how much the Moroccan blue duvet made the large bed stand out out, as if she’d wanted to draw special attention to it.

  At the dresser, Duane paused to study the photos of her on Esperanza—her first pony. And later, Bandido with various show ribbons and trophies. The posters that now made her blush. Thankfully, the shirtless David Beckham had come down a long time ago, but the shirted one still hung next to Adam Levine—Maroon 5 had been her first concert and it was signed to her.

  But was this room still her? The more she learned about Special Operations’ targets—not just since liaising with this team, but through her work at The Activity as well—the more it had changed her. There was a softness to the woman who lived in this room that she no longer recognized. She couldn’t reconcile her younger self with the one who knew as much as she now did about terrorists’ and various governments’ motivations.

  Duane whispered a soft, “Damn!” He was looking out the window. It was one of those crystalline fall days. The flats of the Willamette Valley were commanded by the lone tower of Mt. Hood in the distance. The view from the fam
ily bedrooms had always been the best.

  He finished his inspection then came to a stop in the middle of the bedroom, looking right at her.

  “You’re not feeling self-conscious, are you?”

  His amused smile had her shaking her head no just to keep him from being too smug. Besides, she’d stopped breathing again and couldn’t speak.

  “I can think of a way to cure that?” Duane made it a question. No, an offer. Leaving the choice up to her. Which was decent but she already knew the answer.

  She nodded yes.

  He strolled up to her as casually as he walked when on a mission. Silently. No wasted motion. Not looking away from her face for an instant.

  Pinned. Trapped. She couldn’t move. All she could do was lie back against her own door and wait.

  He stopped inches away, reached up…and past her. He brought his hand back, and it was filled with pink silk. Her bathrobe hung on the back of the door. He let it run through his fingers.

  “I can’t imagine how incredible you would look in this. Just this,” he held it out until she reached for it. He reached past her other side and locked the door with a soft click. He barely brushed his lips on hers, then he stepped back to the middle of the room and faced the view once more. Offering her privacy to change right there. As if. Yet she planned to be naked beside Duane very soon.

  Sofia looked at the robe, then at Duane’s back, then back at the robe in her hands.

  Well, he was welcome to his fantasies, but this was her bedroom.

  She hung the robe up once more, kicked off her sneakers, then walked silently across the carpet to stand behind him. When he started to turn, she placed her hands on his shoulders to hold him in place, then ran them down his back, appreciating his muscle definition.

  Skimming her hands around his waist, she slipped his black t-shirt up and over his head.