“Get up,” Garrett said. “I want to talk to you face to face.”
Carmen scowled at him. She wasn’t ready to forgive him. Even if the morning hadn’t been pointless, he had still singled her out for the brunt of his “lesson.”
Garrett didn’t give her the option. He leaned over and gripped her arm, then hauled her to her feet, lifting her as if she weighed nothing.
Stiff muscles creaked in protest as she straightened up. She forced her arms to move, so she could put her hands on her hips. “You’re still an asshole,” she told him.
“Good. That’s exactly where I want your focus.”
He kissed her.
Carmen’s breath rushed out of her, so surprised was she. Blank nothing enveloped her mind.
She heard cat calls and whistles and cheers from everyone who was watching. Confusion swamped her.
Garrett’s hands were on her face, in her hair, holding her steady so he could kiss her properly. And damn it, she was responding. The tingling at the base of her belly started up. Her heart leapt.
When he let her go, his expression was neutral. There was a warmth in his eyes, though, that made her heart thud even harder.
He picked up her hand. His fingers curled over hers. “Come with me.”
Garrett walked over the stone floor, skirting the fire and all the men sprawled around it. They all grinned, except Angelo, who watched the flames.
When Carmen realized Garrett headed for the interior door to his office, she dragged on his hand, alarmed. He kept pulling her toward the door. He opened it and stepped aside and let go of her hand. “After you.”
Carmen moistened her lips, doubt tearing at her.
Garrett’s gaze was unflinching, with none of the cynicism she had grown used to shadowing his expression. He simply waited.
She stepped through and he shut the door behind her.
She whirled to face him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “In front of everyone, like that?”
He pressed his hand against her back, shepherding her gently along the corridor. “I would have had a bigger morale problem if I hadn’t.”
Carmen glanced at him sharply. “Why do you say that?”
“You’re the only woman under forty in the camp. You stopped sleeping with Angelo once we…after we had sex,” he said. “Yes, I noticed,” he added impatiently. “You weren’t subtle about Angelo. I know you flaunted him so the rest of them would leave you alone. Once you severed your connection with Angelo, though, it wouldn’t have taken long for one of them to try their luck. Or more than one. That’s a problem I didn’t want to have to deal with.”
“So you kissed me in front of them to keep up morale?”
He opened the door to his office and let her go through first. The lantern was turned down low and it was warm. Garrett shut the door and moved so he was facing her. “I kissed you in front of them because I don’t like sneaking around any more than you do. Putting a stop on any carnal intentions they might have been forming was a small bonus, as far as I’m concerned.” He brushed stray hair from her face.
Carmen shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said flatly. “You were an absolute bastard this morning. You were way tougher on me than you were on any of the others. Efraín sat on his ass for most of it and you didn’t make him run an extra two miles.”
“Everyone saw how tough I was on you. Now they know that just because you’re in my bed, I’m not going to give you any breaks at all. I won’t play favorites.” He stepped away from her, a small pace, and crossed his arms. “That wasn’t the only reason I did it.”
Carmen frowned. She didn’t like it that she agreed with him—to a point. “That doesn’t make sense. Okay, sure, don’t play favorites. You were vicious, though.”
“I had to be to snap you out of it,” Garrett said.
“Snap me out of what?”
“You stopped hating me,” he said. “You started to think about me during the day the way you do when we’re in bed. You were getting soft. You were getting distracted.”
“You want me to hate you?” she breathed.
“I want you to not think about me at all when you’re working. Not in any way other than as your superior who gives the orders. If that means hating me, then fine, hate me. Which is the other reason I did everything I’ve done today.”
Carmen wiped the back of her hand against her brow. “Why?” she asked, honestly bewildered.
“I want you to survive.” Then his expression softened, to the warm one she liked the most. That warmth was part of the Garrett that hid most of the time, that she only got to see in bed. He cupped her jaw, his hand warm against her flesh. “You’re fighting for Vistaria and you’re full of passion for your country and for the Loyalists and all the old ways you’ve lost and want back. You want peace, not just for you, but also for all the Vistarians who want their country back. It has been driving you since you fled Acapulco. Only, you’re new to warfare and while your passion makes up for a lot of your ignorance, I want to make sure you have more than blazing hot determination to get you through what the Insurrectos will throw at you.”
Garrett had a way of leaving her speechless, even when he was being nice. Carmen put her hand on her hip. “Damn, you’ve ruined it,” she told him.
“Ruined what?”
“I’d just got back to hating you, as per orders.”
“That’s what I like about you, Escobedo. That pure Vistarian blood of yours. You blow hot then cold from one moment to the next. Life is not dull with you in it.”
“And now you have me here, what are you going to do with me?” she asked primly.
Garrett stepped closer once more. “I’ll think of something,” he growled, his voice low, the way it turned when he was aroused.
Carmen shivered.
Chapter Nine
It wasn’t just sex this time. Carmen couldn’t define why it was different. It simply was.
She still felt the same aching need and Garrett’s hands and mouth still felt as heavenly as the first time he had used them on her. She could see he was smiling as he worked. He liked to make her squirm even though she denied she did anything so inelegant. Truthfully, he made her wriggle and arch, moan and scream, more than any other man.
She always wanted more, no matter how satiated he left her. Even when she was falling asleep, drained from multiple orgasms, she wished she had the energy to reach for him one more time.
“Look at me,” Garrett said.
Carmen opened her eyes. He was holding still above her and as she looked he leaned down and kissed her. He moved, not hurrying, but not driving her crazy with super slow torture, either. It was nice. Very nice.
After the pleasure had dissipated, Garrett lay back on the mattress and drew her to him, so her arm and leg draped over him and her head was on his shoulder. “You’re exhausted. You just don’t know it yet. You used up a lot of energy today.”
“I slept all afternoon,” she reminded him, then yawned hugely, her eyes widening. The yawn had come from nowhere.
“Uh-huh.”
“Hate you,” she murmured, running her fingers idly over his shoulder. The tips bumped over one of the white circle scars and she drew them back again, feeling the slight depression it had left in his flesh.
“That one was a cigar.” His voice was soft. His tone casual.
Horror spilled through her. Carmen fought not to react or show her feelings. Hiding her reaction was instinctive. If she responded strongly, he would clam up again. She swallowed. She was wide awake now. She slid her finger around the circular edge of the scar. “They used a lit cigar on you?”
“The smaller ones were cigarettes.” His voice was neutral, without emotion, yet she knew he was holding all the emotion back, just as she was.
She let her fingers drift up to his face, to the white scar under his beard. “And this one? Cigar, too?”
“A big, fat corona.” He paused. “It hurt like crazy. It al
l hurt. Yet the only thing I could think of when they used that one was that the stench was driving me mad.”
Carmen gritted her teeth, to hold back her moan of horror. She pushed herself up on to one elbow and looked down at him. His eyes narrowed as he stared back into the past.
“And this one?” she asked, touching the scar below his throat, the one visible inside his shirt collars.
“That was a scrape, when they dragged me across the floor. There was a piece of timber on the floor they pulled me over. They had been beating me with it. It got caught under my chin and took off the top layer of skin.”
They had been dragging him face down.
Carmen bit her lip. She made herself slide her fingers over to the jagged scar on his hip. “This was a knife, wasn’t it?”
He nodded, his chin moving a fraction of an inch.
“And your back?” she asked, although she already knew. She wasn’t sure why she was making him catalog every wound, except that he had started it and her gut said she should keep it going. She didn’t want to. She felt a desperate anger mixing with her horror and sadness. It was helping Garrett in some cathartic way, though.
“The thicker ones are from a raw leather strap, as stiff as a board. The thin ones…” He sighed. “One of them had a riding crop.”
Before she could blink them away, tears rose and spilled. They were hot and made her eyes ache.
Garrett said, “It was all over and done with, a long time ago.”
“Not for you, it wasn’t.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She thought of the night she had found him drinking alone in the dark. If ever there was a man still struggling with demons, it had been Garrett that night. “You still live through it. Over and over.”
“Not since you came.” His voice was soft.
That made her cry harder. “Don’t say that,” she said brokenly.
“Why not?”
“I’m nothing, Garrett. I’m the spoiled only daughter of the former President. You’ve seen the press. I’m a walking cliché. Everything they say about rich and famous peoples’ kids, that’s me.”
“It wasn’t a precocious brat who stole her uncle’s yacht and came back to Vistaria.”
“I didn’t know what else to do!” Carmen cried. She sat up. “There was nothing for me to do in Acapulco. It wasn’t home. No one could find me something to do to help. Minnie was going off on her grand adventure to find her beloved Duardo, so I tagged along. I was ballast.” She wiped her eyes again.
Garrett sat up, too. “You haven’t been ballast since you walked into my camp. You haven’t once asked yourself what the point of this is.”
Carmen hesitated, thinking back over the last two months. He was right.
“Tell me what you think about when we’re on missions,” he pressed.
She looked down at the sheet gathered around her knees, thinking. “I don’t think,” she confessed. “If anything, I get angry, when I see how desperate everyone’s lives are. No food except what they can gather and grow for themselves, barely any medicine, schools shut down on Insurrecto orders and the sad, sad faces everywhere…I get pissed. Really pissed. My father never let anyone bottom out like that.”
“Exactly,” Garrett said. “You’re working to change that. There’s no doubt in your mind.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Carmen said. “I’m following your orders and most of the time what we do seems useless.”
“It all helps,” Garrett told her. “A raid here and there distracts them and pulls resources away from where they want them. Besides, you have made the biggest difference, in the last two weeks.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“The radio,” he said. “We wouldn’t be hooked into the Loyalist network if you hadn’t nagged me into buying Hernandez’s computer. Now, with their direction, we have a chance of doing something that could make a real difference.”
Carmen plucked at the sheet. “I suppose…”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Garrett told her. “Wars mess up people’s lives. You’re doing far more than anyone has a right to expect of you, given the circumstances you’ve found yourself in. You’re good at it, too.”
“I think that has more to do with the training than anything else,” she muttered.
Garrett rolled his eyes. He dipped his head and kissed her. It was a gentle touch of his lips. “Just wait,” he told her. “Wait and trust that things will work out.”
“That’s not what you do,” she accused him.
“I do, now,” he assured her.
He lay down again and pulled her back into his arms, insisting she get some sleep. Carmen let him insist. She didn’t think she could sleep, though. She was too wide awake now and too wired. Her brain was working overtime.
Garrett had hope now. That was what his last comment meant. No one could wait and trust that things will work out without hope.
Yet, when she had first met him, she would have said Garrett was filled with ice cold anger and not much else.
Why had he gained hope? The radio? Communicating with Acapulco meant that whatever they did now would directly influence the Loyalist’s war efforts, yet that seemed too flimsy a thing to spawn hope. They still didn’t know what the Loyalists were planning. They were cogs in a much larger machine.
What had given Garrett hope?
* * * * *
It was the middle of the afternoon and the old house was still and almost silent. It was a hot day, when the air was thick and oppressive and there wasn’t even a whiff of a breeze. Everyone who didn’t have critical responsibilities was sleeping…or trying to.
Minnie didn’t want to sleep, though. Duardo had appeared unexpectedly two hours ago and looked at his watch. “I have twelve hours leave, mi amor,” he told her and kissed her, right in front of Rubén and Téra. Minnie had closed her computer, taken his hand and led him to their cramped bedroom. Twelve hours was more spare time than Duardo had been granted in a month or more. She didn’t demand details, because Duardo couldn’t give them. Duardo was assisting General Flores these days, taking more of his responsibilities into his own hands.
She let out her breath, feeling a bone-deep contentment. They were both naked and pleasantly sweaty. Her heart was slowing. Duardo had his hand on her belly, which protruded, even when she was lying on her back as she was now.
“That’s two sighs in five minutes,” he said. “What is on your mind?”
“It’s…um, nothing.”
He smiled, his teeth flashing white in the dim room. They had the drapes drawn against the harsh afternoon sun and the bamboo fan circled lazily overhead, moving the air to cool their moist skin. “Are you deliberately lying badly?”
She shook her head and sat up. She curled her feet underneath her. “Sort of. I’m not sure how to handle this.”
Duardo’s eyes narrowed.
Minnie looked down at her hand, resting on her knee. “I know what a twelve hour furlough means,” she said. “I also know you can’t talk about it.” She looked up at him. “I want to talk about it, though.”
He picked up her hand and brought it to his lips. “Who told you?”
“I’m living on top of the army, here. I picked it up. Talk and gossip. You know.”
Duardo shook his head. “If you found out from idle chatter, anyone could. I may have to change that practice. Or change security around the issue of furloughs. It wouldn’t help us to have half of Acapulco guess our military movements from the scheduling of leave.”
“Schedule it after the mission,” she told him. “Or make it a high security order. They get five hours they can spend with family and loved ones only. Or stay in the camp. No exceptions.”
“Hmmm…” Duardo looked thoughtful.
“I am right, then?” Minnie asked. “You’re going somewhere to do something. Vistaria, I presume.”
It was Duardo’s turn to sigh. “I can’t tell you, mi amor. Yes, there’s something coming up. That’s all I
can say.” He turned his head, his gaze cutting away from her. “I didn’t want to tell you until my leave ended.”
Minnie smiled. “Hey, I’m an army wife now. I have to deal with these things. Your mom probably has it down pat, but she’s had practice.” She kept her tone light and as unconcerned as she could. “When are you leaving?”
“In a few days,” he said. “Only, I will be gone from you once my leave is over. The preparations…” He trailed off.
“I get it,” Minnie assured him softly. “You get a break before you dive in to get the whole operation up and running. So, three or four days of prep, then you’re gone.”
Duardo gave her a small smile. “You understand.” She could hear the gratitude in his voice. He paused. “This is my first time, too.”
“First time?”
“Leaving my wife behind…and my son.” His glance dropped to her belly.
Minnie hid her smile. Duardo would not even consider that she carried a girl. It had to be a Vistarian male ego thing. She leaned over and kissed his chin. “It had better be your first time, buster. Although you’ve sneaked into Vistaria lots of times since you got back. Don’t think I don’t know.”
He looked startled. Then he smiled reluctantly. “It’s not the same as this…operation.”
“A bullet is a bullet,” Minnie said. “The Insurrectos would love to shoot you, particularly Serrano. You step onto Vistaria with a target on your forehead every time.” She picked up his hand. “Promise me you’ll come back.”
He hesitated. “I can’t promise that,” he said flatly. “Things happen in war, Minnie. I promise I will do my best to come back to you.”
It would have to do. Duardo was good at being a soldier. She had picked up hints and more gossip about his skills from other soldiers. Rubén had been particularly admiring. He reported directly to Duardo.
If Duardo promised he would do his best to ensure he came back, she would do her best not to load him down with worry or concerns. “You’d better kiss me again,” she said lightly. “I have to store them up for a while.”
Duardo kissed her and it was no light peck.
A knock on the door sounded. She groaned her frustration.
Freedom Fighters Page 12
