She couldn’t live that way. She didn’t want to live that way, nor did she want to live for the past anymore. Something had to change. It was time to let go of the fears she’d held almost as friends for too long—the false friends who’d robbed her of her chance with Mitch. Who’d helped her settle for Tim. Who’d allowed local kids to rob her four times before she fought back. Who whispered in her heart that Mitch would desert her again if she let him into her world. That if she trusted him again, he’d only let her down.
Give me two days, Lissa.
“Lis-sa?”
She smiled into the anxious soft eyes of her hostess. “Thank you, Lily.” She took her cup of tea and gave Lily a swift, impulsive kiss. “Thank you.”
With the empathy born of her turbulent life, Lily didn’t need to speak. The understanding hovered in the air between the women. A defining moment passing in gentle silence…and Lissa knew she’d never be the same.
She was making him nervous.
It was afternoon by the time they made it to the island. Mitch requested permission to land at the only civilian airstrip left in Tumah-ra not taken over by the rebels yet. He wondered what was going on with her. She must have a hundred questions about what would happen next, where they’d be going, what to do if they got caught. But beyond halting attempts to talk to Hana she’d said nothing beyond, “Look at the ocean. Isn’t it a perfect shade of turquoise?” or “The forest looks so cool and lush.”
Perfect. Cool. Boy, was she about to learn. It was hotter than Hades down in that jungle, and perfection was an illusion, a conjurer’s trick of smoke and mirrors, gone with one pull of a trigger. Or a thousand. Death in steaming heat, fighting for a deceptive treasure beneath corals that would destroy the island.
For the thousandth time he wished he’d sent her with Tim and the kids to safety, even if it meant losing her trust. At least she’d be alive and safe.
What had he been thinking to bring her here? Trouble was, he hadn’t been thinking straight. He’d gone with his damn fool heart and bloody gonads, the need eating him alive—the need to have her near him, obsessed with the need to make love to her.
Damn his insecurity and unfounded jealousy of Tim, his need to prove God knew what to her. And damn her need to prove she could live in his world, a world she’d never needed to know about.
The unreality of the whole situation hit him. Sweet, gentle Lissa Miller was going into a war zone. She had no idea what she was in for, and he’d promised not to protect her.
Heaven help them both.
He landed, steered Bertha into the high-security hangar built especially for the Air Force but used by the Nighthawks, and pulled out the motorbike before he locked the massive doors.
Lissa, with Hana perched on her hip, frowned. “Mitch, there’s three of us. How do we fit on one bike?”
He shrugged. “We make do. This is Tumah-ra, Lissa. There’s no road rules, the taxis have all been confiscated by the rebels or blown up, and buying a car—if there’s any to buy—will only yell to all the organized gangs and looters that we have money.” He pulled the license plates off the bike, tore a jagged line across the seat with a long-bladed knife from his backpack, and smeared dirt and tire black all over it. “That’ll do.”
He looked up to find Lissa shoving the money Anson had given her into her running shoes in two flat piles. Then she pulled out a mirror and made herself up, putting a dark foundation all over her exposed skin, and liner on her eyes and brows to give herself an Asian look. She pulled her hair under a ratty baseball cap and rubbed dirt over her face, hands, neck and upper chest not covered by the long-sleeved dark-green shirt. Then she looked at him with a quiet, defeated glance of defiance and despair.
Man, she’d missed her calling in not becoming an actress! In deep, reluctant admiration, he nodded. Apart from her eye color, she barely looked different from the women here—dirty, neglected, defeated. Most of the militia wouldn’t give her a second glance with all that lovely hair hidden. “Good idea.”
She just grinned at him and held out the makeup. He rubbed some dark stuff on his face, grateful for whatever ancestry gave him bronzed s dark hair and eyes.
He turned to find Lissa on the bike, Hana on her lap. Mitch used a long strip of twine to tie the child to her, handed Hana a Snickers to keep her quiet. He handed Lissa an assault rifle. “Keep it visible to scare the looters. If they come at us, point but don’t shoot. I’ll give you lessons on how to shoot before we head out of town. This town’s safe enough for the next few days. The rebels are still about twenty-five miles to the west.”
Wide-eyed but obedient, she nodded.
He hitched his weapon over his shoulder, got on the bike in front of Hana, and they looked just like any family: any family escaping the horror of a guerrilla war zone.
As he started the bike, he told her, “If we get stopped, let me talk. I’ve been learning Tagalog the past few weeks. Enough to get by, anyway.”
She clicked her tongue. “I should have thought of that.”
He yelled over the engine’s roar, “I’ve had months to think of it, and I only started a few weeks ago. You’ve had twenty-four hours. You’re doing well.”
She held on to him as he roared out of the hangar.
Apart from what she’d seen in news reports, Lissa had few preconceived ideas of what a town on the edge of a war zone would look like. Keeping her telltale eyes beneath the shade of the old cap, she watched a whole new world flash past her.
Though the scent of drenched mud and decaying leaves and steaming jungle proclaimed this as a tropical area in the throes of wet season, somehow it reminded her of one of Clint Eastwood’s old Westerns. Something didn’t seem quite right—didn’t seem quite real. It felt like it was a set: it had the dirt roads, rough wooden houses and newspapers drifting in the wind. She half waited for the stroke of noon and the gunfire to begin.
Men lounged against walls, watching them pass. Checking them out for…what? To rob them, kidnap them, kill them? There was the strangest sense of normality as women crossed the roads with their children to visit smiling friends, kids played with rocks or balls in the street and Gaelic music drifted from the pub at the end of the road.
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
That was it: the tense, brooding expectation; the sense of…waiting. It’s coming. We just don’t know when. Marking time. Apprehension filled the air, air superheated and drenched in humidity, adding a pulsing underscore to a jarring symphony that remained unspoken, unwanted, inescapable. A desperate people grasping at a precious last few hours of normality before the rebel militia came to destroy their world.
Men ready to protect their families with what few weapons they had. Children having fun out of school. Hedonists in the bars, in the brothels, in the street. Old and young, praying in the church. Opportunists waiting for their chance to smash and grab. All living a strange, unquiet coexistence, waiting for the end…or the beginning.
Why didn’t they cut and run?
Mitch turned the bike in at the pub, a half-brick wooden building not unlike a man with messy hair and a three-day growth, seeming sexy in its unfinished, unpolished state. Shouting silently, come here and try me, baby.
“We’ll stay here tonight. We’re best off heading out to Hana’s grandparents’ village in the morning.” He twisted around, untied Hana and gestured to them to dismount. Then he held out a simple gold band to her. “From here on in, you’re Sarah Sinclair, my wife, and I’m Alan, your husband.”
She looked down at the ring, then at him, in his face paint and cap. A sense of inevitability—of undone déjà vu—overwhelmed her, and instead of taking the ring, she held out her left hand.
His eyes never leaving hers, he slipped the ring over her third finger. This is the rehearsal, Lissa, his gaze seemed to say. Next time it will be real. And forever.
“I’m your husband,” he said quietly. Then like lightning, before she knew his intention, he’d slipped another ri
ng on top of it. A pretty star sapphire twinkled serenely at her from its bed of tiny diamonds. “I bought this for you thirteen years ago, with my first month’s pay after I joined the Air Force. I think it’s past time I gave it to you.”
Too choked up to speak, she just stared. Somehow the ring, in all its gentle, just-out-of-date loveliness, made everything so real. Made his proposal real. Made his wanting her real. “Thir-thirteen years?”
He nodded with a twisted, self-mocking smile. “I’d finally worked up the guts to speak. I knew if I didn’t I’d lose you for good. I was going to ask you to marry me. I was going to beg if I had to, beg you to leave Tim and come with me.” He shrugged. “The day after I bought it, I heard about your engagement.”
She closed her eyes. “I wish you’d spoken, Mitch. I wish…”
He shrugged. “I lost hope. What did I have to offer you against what Tim had? I looked honestly at myself, and I had to stay away. If you went with me, you lost it all. With him, you had it all—stability, a life in Breckerville. A name. A family.”
A family. She dipped her head in despair. Oh, the fool she’d been not to see it sooner, not to know the heart of all his reasons for silence! He couldn’t see what he had, the courage and generous, giving heart; he only saw what he didn’t have—a name and a family. If only she’d overcome her own fears all those years ago, to see what he needed so much—her own words of love.
To belong somewhere.
Was it too late now? Was she too damaged to trust, as she’d always thought? Had he been alone too long? Was his love truly based in the past, for the girl she’d been?
Two days, Lissa.
All she knew was she wanted that same chance—a chance to make up for the past. She could give him what she had to give, here in this place where life could be snuffed out in an instant’s deadly hail of gunfire. “It’s beautiful, Mitch. Can I keep it?”
His deep, dark eyes came to life. “Always. It’s yours, Lissa. No matter what.”
She tilted her head, as the unmistakable strains of lilting viin and mandolin floated out to them in wild harmony. “Why are they playing Irish music?”
Obviously willing to be diverted, he grinned. “The owner’s an expat Irish-Australian with a stubborn streak a mile wide and a thirst for trouble. Paul O’Donnell built this place after the oil explorations started last year. He said he’d make a mint with the war sure to follow. Wait till you meet him—probably at dinner, since he sleeps all day. He’s the craziest guy I ever met.” He used a small towel from his backpack to wipe the makeup off his face, then handed it to her, waiting until she’d finished before opening the doors. “We have to be respectable now.”
She blinked when he pulled the bike up the steps and inside. Mitch raised his brows and tilted his head.
At least four people were following them, their eyes fixed with unabashed greed on the bike; but they stopped outside the pub, then slunk off when two enormous, rifle-toting men guarding the doors stepped forward, with menacing looks on their faces.
“Most of these people don’t have any form of motorized transport to get ’em out when the crap hits the fan,” Mitch murmured as they walked with Hana toward the makeshift reception area. “Push bikes are the traditional form of getting around in Tumah-ra. This bike, rough as it looks, is worth gold to families on the run…and those looters outside will do what they have to, to get this bike, to sell to someone or to escape on. Keep your rifle in sight at all times outside this pub. Those security guards could be militia sympathizers, and no matter who or what they are, they’ll grab the bike when it all starts, for an easy escape if nothing else.”
She felt sad, sick wanting to help but not knowing how. “Why don’t the people here get out while they can?”
“Where do you suggest they go?”
She looked at him, helpless and half pleading. “Surely there’s somewhere—”
“This is the last bastion. If the rebels grab it before the UN troops arrive—and that’s still not guaranteed until the next sitting—they’ll offer a deal for control of the oil that would make the West think twice about interfering in the war.”
It made appalling sense. She shuddered but remained quiet as Mitch signed them into the pub and lifted the bike up to their second-floor set of rooms.
Hana, worn out with the day’s excitement, fell asleep as soon as she’d eaten, had a bath and lain down on her bed. Freshly showered from her makeup and mud, Lissa watched her, aching.
She’d seen all this as a wonderful adventure only yesterday, a way to prove her courage to Mitch. Now she just wanted to see Jenny, Matt and Luke. To hold her little girl, to hug her boys. To be safe at home, where, if she didn’t want to know the realities of life for people living only a few hundred miles from Australian borders, she just switched off the TV. Where newscasts of war and destruction and rape still had the sense of Hollywood unreality and she could give comfortable donations to appeals and feel better about her own cozy existence.
Dear God, what did that make her?
“It’s okay, Lissa. We all go through this first time out.”
he turned to Mitch, just out of his own shower, not bothering to ask the obvious question.
He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “The grief. The self-hate for having in abundance what these people don’t—what so many people in the world will never have, simple peace and security. Hating yourself for all your petty fears and doubts, while these people struggle just to survive, to save their kids from rape, torture and gunfire. Hating that you’ve ever whined over not being able to afford a big-screen TV, while others dream of clean water and a bowl of rice, or for their families to come out of that shallow grave. It’s all too real here. You want to save the world—or at least this part of it—and suddenly you know you can’t. And you feel so damn inadequate.”
A single tear streaked down her face. “Does it go away?”
“It’s unpredictable. For some it gets less. They become angry or anesthetized—either works to help them do what they have to do to stop the war or get people out. It’s not much, but for that one person you’ve saved, that one family you’ve reunited, it means the world. And that’s the only world we can save.”
Hana stirred in her sleep, sighing softly. “Did it work for you?” Lissa whispered.
His eyes met hers. “Would you like a nice lie here? If I give you a catalog of my dreams and nightmares, will you accuse me of trying to push you out of the Nighthawks so you’ll live a nice, safe life in Breckerville with me?”
She sighed. “I don’t think I need a word picture.”
“No. Trust me, you don’t.” He drew her out of the bedroom into the sitting area. “Hana’s safe enough here. Let’s go down and eat—Sarah.”
“Are you sure Hana’s safe?”
“The maid on this floor’s coming to sit with her. She’ll get more food if she asks for it or bring her down to us if she gets distressed.” He held out a hand to her, his gaze questioning.
You’re on your honeymoon. You can’t keep your hands off each other. After a moment she put her hand in his. “Okay, Alan.”
The back of the pub looked like an ordinary Australian beer garden, a small wilderness with a long open deck and wooden trestles set up in rough table-and-chair mock-ups. The place was all but full, with people of almost all nations laughing, smoking, eating and drinking, clapping along with the sweet wildness of the violins, piano and percussion being played just off center of the deck on a ministage. A few children danced with each other, or were swung by their smiling fathers. Wildflowers grew all around, adding a gentle scent to the steamy jungle town.
Just like any ordinary Sunday afternoon at the pub—except for the dull booming sounds and guns clattering. Far enough to be safe for now…but not for long.
The hidden desperation reflected beneath the laughter in everyone’s eyes.
Mitch sat at a spare table as if nothing was abnormal—but then, war zones were almost an everyday occurrenc
e for him. “I can recommend the steak and Guinness pie. It’s an Irish specialty I can never resist. You want a beer, Sarah?”
She thought quickly, then clucked at him. “You know I don’t like beer, Alan.”
“When in Rome, sweetheart. Come on, you wanted an adventurous honeymoon—and trust me, there’s no wine here you’d care to drink. It’s beer or cola, basically.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “Let the adventure begin. Beer it is.”
With a smile he chucked her under the chin. “Good girl.” Gently, oh, so soft, he claimed her lips.
Mindful of their mission, “Sarah” snuggled into his lap and kissed him back…but Lissa was the one who gloried in the feel of his swift, hard reaction to her touch, Lissa who wriggled against him to take in more.
“Baby, we’re in public. There’s kids watching us,” he whispered into her mouth.
Panting a little she nodded. “Tonight?”
“What’ll you folks have—besides each other, that is?”
Mitch grinned up at the laughing publican, a tall, lanky man who reminded her of a big, red-haired, brown-eyed, cheerful dog. “G’day, Paul. Besides my wife, I’ll have a heavy-duty beer and the Guinness pie special.”
Lissa smiled up at the cheerful man in his early forties. “Light beer and the pie, please.”
“Righty-ho, Missus Sinclair.”
The pie was as delicious as Mitch claimed, and the strange combination of dark-beer gravy and melt-in-the-mouth steak with chips seemed to fit the pub, the people, the life they were living, holed up in a little town awaiting devastation.
Paul returned after a waiter took their plates away, handing Mitch a beer and a cola to replace Lissa’s almost untouched drink. “So, you up for a game of pool anytime soon, Al?”
Who Do You Trust? Page 16