Barefoot With A Stranger

by Roxanne St Claire

“Go easy,” Gabe warned. “You crack that feeble chest, where the hell would I be without you?” He scooped up his plate, more for something to do than a favor for the cook. “And tell that woman to stick her nose in the business I pay her to stick her nose in, which isn’t mine.”

  “You don’t think you’re depressed?”

  He couldn’t even conjure the words to deny that moronic question hotly enough. “I don’t know what that shit is, Nino. I’m…I’m impotent.”

  “Oh dear, that’s—”

  “Not literally.” Though he couldn’t remember the last time being with a chick was anything but a physical release. Maybe…five years. Since he’d last seen Isadora.

  He yanked the dishwasher door open with so much force it was a wonder the thing didn’t go flying. “I mean I can’t do anything. Do you know what it’s like to have to send my pal and my little sister to do the job I should be doing? It sucks balls, I tell you. But if I get killed, then that kid won’t have a mother or a father. I can’t do that to him.” He turned to Nino, knowing his own expression was probably as pained as his grandfather’s. “So, excuse the fuck out of me if I don’t want to look at pink flowers when I drag my sorry ass out of bed to face another day in this shithole that I moved to so I could be closer to her before I knew she was…” Dead. Dead. Dead. “Gone.”

  Nino blinked. And, damn it, a tear almost fell out of his watery eyes. “This child could give you a new life.”

  “Christ knows I could use one.” He stuck his fingers in his hair and dragged hard, but that didn’t pull the misery out. “I’m going out.”

  “Like, for the night? Maybe that’s a good idea, grandson. Stop into that Toasted Pelican and meet a lady. You need—”

  “I don’t need a lady.”

  “Somebody to just get your mind off things.”

  “A substitute,” he muttered. “Which is what every woman will be from now until the day I close up shop and head to hell.”

  He marched out the back door, ignoring the call of his makeshift gym, his shirtless body, and bare feet. He ran.

  He ran through the stupid gardens with too many pink flowers—especially those things that looked like lilies and smelled like hot nights in Cuba. Hibiscus. Isadora used to put them in her hair.

  Crushing the memory, he headed to the resort road and down to the beach with too many bright umbrellas and, of course, a picture-perfect sunset that could make the most miserable person happy.

  But not him. He didn’t know what the hell situational depression was or meant or how it felt or how long it would last. But he sure as hell didn’t like the darkness of his soul and didn’t need to give it a name other than loss. Frustration. Agony.

  Love.

  God, he’d loved her so hard. He turned away from the umbrellas and the happy resort people, heading to where the sand was far less populated. He jogged in the soft stuff because it was a challenge, ignoring the stabs of stones and broken shells on the bottoms of his feet. He heard his own breath and felt his blood pump and waited for some chemical release in his brain that would numb the pain.

  He passed a couple walking hand in hand, throwing some mental shade at them for being so lucky. A father and daughter picking seashells. He turned away so he didn’t stare at them.

  There was no one else for another hundred feet, except a woman in a long black beach cover-up, walking slowly, bending to pick up shells. She stood and looked out at the sunset, brushing some blond hair off her face and…

  Gabe slowed his momentum ever so slightly. That gesture. That move.

  Damn it, would he go through life seeing her in every woman…but not seeing her at all?

  She walked to the water’s edge, her shoulders squared, but her gait was long and even and…familiar. Come on, Rossi! You gotta stop.

  She glanced to her side as he approached on a run, doing the slightest double take, then looking away. His spy training kicked in as he summed her up and figured out her life in one half-second glance.

  Thirties, a little too skinny, probably one of the bridesmaids for the weddings they were always having at this place. Pretty enough, too proud to accept the nose job her father offered when she was fifteen.

  He ran closer, and she stole the slightest look, one so sly a less-well-trained spy wouldn’t have noticed it, but she was checking him out. Comparing him to the best man her sister was trying to set her up with, no doubt.

  She did that thing with her hair again, but this time it wasn’t so much like Isa, who used to finger her thick brown curls endlessly. She continued toward the water, and he could see now that he was wrong about her walk, too. She had a nearly invisible hitch in her step.

  Just as he reached her, she slowed, as if to avoid getting any closer to him. But he smelled it…just the barest, slightest, spiciest hint of Chanel No. 5.

  He almost howled. It took everything in him not to scream in her face. Only Isadora can wear that! It was her perfume, her scent, her siren call to Gabe.

  He closed his eyes and ran harder, sucking in the salt air to get rid of the scent of a woman he would never, ever forget. This wasn’t fucking depression. This was grief, and it had him by the balls and the heart and the soul, and it wouldn’t let go.

  * * *

  Chessie was on the T, desperate to get off at the next stop. She was stuck on the last car on the train as it rolled under Boston, the ancient tracks jostling her and sending her tumbling three steps back for every one she made forward. It felt like she was clawing her way uphill, bumping into people, trying to swim through the crowd and get to the exit. But every few seconds, the train would clatter and bounce to a near stop…except out the window, the Green Line stops were whizzing by like they were going a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  Copley. The Pru. Brigham Circle. Stop! “I have to…get off.”

  “I might be able to help.”

  “Gabe needs—” Her head slammed against a window. “Owww.”

  “Sorry. Potholes. This is why we call it slow and treacherous.”

  On the train tracks? Wait. Chessie fought to open her eyes, but nothing in her vision made sense. “I was…” Dreaming. “Why is it so dark?” So, so dark.

  “It’s night. Has been for a long time.”

  She squinted into the near blackness, able to make out the hood, and the man next to her, lit by the dim, yellow dash lights.

  “You talk in your sleep, did you know that? Said you need to get off.”

  She frowned at him, a memory pulling. “Did you actually make a sex joke to a person talking in her sleep?”

  His grin was sly and slow. “I didn’t really think you heard.”

  She tried to look around, but, damn, it was dark. “Where are we?”

  “Here.” He held out her glasses. “We’re miles from any civilization that would have working electricity. Just some farms out here and whoa”—he jerked the car to the left into the other lane—“and the occasional discarded oven door. We narrowly missed a refrigerator a few miles back, so someone mustn’t have tied down their traveling kitchen too well.”

  She shook her head and squinted again, frustration rising. “Why don’t you have the headlights on?” she demanded. “And do not tell me it’s some spook safety thing and you don’t want to risk getting attention.”

  They clunked into a pothole so deep she could hear the road practically crack the axle. Somehow he managed to drive them out of it. The old beast didn’t have too many of those left in her.

  “I have nothing against headlights,” he said. “It’s just that…” He clicked a switch on the dash. Twice. And one more time to make his point. “They must be optional on this model.”

  “They don’t work.” She dropped her head back, expecting to hit the headrest…but there was no headrest.

  “Moon’s strong enough for me.”

  She peered up at the half-moon, neatly sliced as if Nino’s chef knife had cut it in two. It shed just enough light to show gathering clouds. And definitely not enough t
o—

  “Hang on,” he said, reaching over to hold her arm with his right hand while he whipped around a turn she had never seen.

  As they made it around the corner, the moon cast light over a wide body of water. It was too dark to make out what it was, but they were able to see waves caused by the wind. “I don’t remember seeing a river on the map,” Chessie said.

  “I took a little detour because I actually know this road, and, believe me, very few others do.”

  “And you’re driving from memory in the dark with no headlights?”

  He shot her a smile. “Found that farm stand before you crashed, didn’t I?”

  “Reminds me I’m starving.” She twisted to grab the bag they put on the backseat, her empty stomach screaming for attention. She pulled out a peach and dropped it back, hungry for something more substantial. But the bananas were hard and, she guessed, green, and the sweet bell peppers were not the least bit appealing. “Was kind of hoping for a medianoche.”

  He gave a dry laugh at the fantasy of a Cuban sandwich. “We’ll find one in Caibarién. Tomorrow. Eat a pepper.”

  She made a face at the suggestion, which turned into a big smile when her fingers hit something hard at the bottom of the bag, then closed around a bottle. “Hot damn, Mal Harris. You bought booze from that guy?”

  “While you were in the bathroom.”

  Bathroom? “And we use that term generously when referring to the horse stall with a hole.”

  “Welcome to rural Cuba.”

  She pulled the bottle out, immediately recognizing the snap cork that Nino had used for the homemade wine she grew up drinking. “Mama’s milk,” she cooed, holding the bottle up to the dim dash lights, but it was tinted brown, hiding the color of the wine. “I like it dark, thick, sweet, and tasting like the earth and sweet plump grapes.”

  “Really.” He slid her a look she couldn’t quite read. “And here I took you for an Amstel Light girl.”

  “When the situation calls for beer, I am.” She pushed the bar of the swing-top cork, which opened with a satisfying pop. “I don’t suppose that farmer had plastic cups.”

  “Put on your big-girl panties, Francesca, and take a swig. See how you like the…what did you call it?”

  “Mama’s milk. I was raised on homemade wine.” She lifted the bottle to her mouth, the fragrance far sweeter and a little stronger than what she expected, but she tipped the bottle and took a good, long—

  “Pffff!” She managed not to spit it out, but swallowing the bitter, disgusting stuff wasn’t easy.

  “This isn’t”—she choked as her throat burned like someone had stuck a sparkler in her mouth—“wine.”

  He was laughing, damn him. “They don’t grow grapes in Cuba, at least not out here. There are some imported plants that service the few wineries on the island, but that, my friend, is—”

  “Rum.” She smacked her lips noisily as the burn wore off and left her numb. “God, I hate that shit.”

  “Sorry. It was this or nothing. I thought we might need a drink.” He held out his right hand. “In fact, I do.”

  “While you’re driving with no headlights inches from rushing water?” She turned to hold the bottle far away. “Not on your life. Not on mine.”

  “Give it to me, Francesca.”

  She puffed a breath. “I love when you go all alpha on me.”

  He didn’t move his hand, waiting, driving around the next turn—that she hadn’t even seen, thank you very much—with one hand.

  “Oh, what the hell. Apparently I’ve proven I can’t say no to you.” She handed him the bottle.

  After drinking a decent gulp, he gave it back. “You can say no any time, by the way.”

  “Oh, I won’t.”

  That made him smile. “Good. Can I have a pepper now?”

  She complied, handing him a whole red pepper that she brushed on her shirt to clean. He ate it like an apple and drove like a boss. And Chessie took another sip of the rum, letting the tiniest little buzz hum through her as her eyes finally adjusted and she was able to see the road. Sort of.

  “Thought you hated rum,” he remarked.

  “It’s growing on me.” But she corked the bottle after the next sip.

  “Don’t let it grow too much, that stuff can knock you on your ass.”

  It hadn’t, but she could feel the first sensations of heavy arms and a lovely relaxation in her neck. “Are we almost there yet?” she asked with the pretend whine of a child.

  “Maybe…five more hours.”

  “All this to avoid people we don’t even know were following us.”

  He didn’t reply, but a distant rumble of thunder echoed, making Chessie lean forward to check out the sky. Thick with clouds now, there were no stars, and the half-moon was just about obliterated.

  “Are you going to stop if it rains?”

  “Depends how hard it pours.”

  “Do the windshield wipers work?”

  He reached to the dash and felt around, but she already spotted the dial. “It’s here.” She twisted it and…nothing. Tried again, nothing. “How many pesos did you part with for this beauty, again?”

  “You can’t put a price on freedom, honey. Ask any Cuban you meet on this trip.” He took a slow curve up a slight rise in the road, then down again. The car still bumped and rolled over potholes, and every once in a while they slid through mud and the tires shmooshed in the slush.

  And then the heavens opened up and mocked them completely.

  “Son of a bitch,” Mal muttered as he slowed when visibility dropped to zero.

  “We should just stop until it clears. Maybe until morning.”

  He considered that, inching along and leaning forward with a frown. “Not out in the open.”

  They hadn’t seen another car since she woke up, and she seriously doubted they would, but she knew better than to argue with a spy. “Maybe we can find a secluded place in the trees.”

  “I don’t want to get stuck in mud. Hang on.” Fully concentrating, he eased them through a small lake. “If we can get to higher ground, we can see lights coming in either direction.”

  “And then what will we do? Drive in the opposite direction so they don’t see us?”

  “No, we’ll get out and hide, and anyone who finds this will think it’s an abandoned car.”

  “That they will steal.”

  “We’ll take our bags,” he said with the confidence of a man who clearly thrived on these kinds of situations. “They’re right there in the backseat, easy to grab if we have to run. And there is no higher ground, I’m afraid, so here we are.”

  “The fun never stops.”

  He threw her a heart-stopping smile and pulled off the road. “Baby, it hasn’t even started yet.”

  And her stomach dropped down and fell right through the creaky floorboards.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mal didn’t think anyone had followed them after leaving Havana, but he would have bet good money there’d been a tail in the airport.

  So as much as he started to relax, eating green bananas and listening to the rain on the roof, he paced himself carefully on the Cuban firewater, barely taking the occasional sip.

  But Chessie was enjoying the booze, and he was enjoying watching her drink it. She held the bottle high, which, with adjusted night vision, he could see was respectfully, but not shockingly, dented.

  “This could make a rum drinker out of me,” she said. Looking past the bottle, he could make out her features in the dark car. She’d abandoned her glasses, and he could see her eyes were brighter than they’d been, her smile looser, her hair tousled from the long day.

  Goddamn beautiful is what she was.

  “Why do you have that look on your face?” she asked.

  “What look?” Longing? Lust? Or just garden-variety admiration? He was too tired to hide any of it.

  Plus, they had that deal…though he’d prefer a proper bed and a totally sober lover.

  “That look,
” she said. “Like you really don’t want to tell me what you’re thinking, but you’re going to have to tell me, and I’m not going to like it.” She took a quick breath and leaned forward to see through the rain-washed windows. “Did you see someone? A light? Do we have to run?” She nodded, as though trying to psych herself up. “It’s okay. I’m ready. I’ve been planning this. First, I’ll take my stuff from the back. One bag because I already put my purse into the suitcase. I’ll swing that over my back—so glad Gabe told me not to bring a roller—and then I’ll—”

  “Stop.” He put his fingers over her lips. “Stop planning.”

  “That’s like asking me to stop breathing.”

  “Then stop doing it out loud.” He brushed her lower lip with his finger, lingering there a second longer than necessary. “I think we’re safe enough to try and get some sleep. You can, anyway.” He finally let his hand fall in the large open space between them on the ancient Ford’s bench seat.

  “You sleep,” she said. “I had a nap, so I’ll be on guard.”

  “I think you’ve had too much rum to be on guard.”

  “I have not!” she denied hotly, holding the bottle up to eyeball the contents. “We’re splitting this. You’ve had just as much.”

  “I outweigh you by sixty pounds at least.” He took the rum from her hand and tipped his head toward the backseat. “Go get some rest. You’ll need it tomorrow.”

  She didn’t move. “You want me back there, don’t you?”

  “There’s space to stretch a little, and you can use your bag for a pillow.” He thumbed in the direction of the back. “Go.”

  With a sigh that held a mix of frustration and resignation, and proof she really couldn’t say no to him, Chessie knelt on the bench seat. She lifted her leg over the seat back and hoisted herself the rest of the way. Automatically, he reached to give her a boost, his hand closing over her buttocks. He almost sucked in a breath at how firm and sweet her curves felt to grip.

  He could have sworn she lingered just a moment too long before pushing herself to the backseat. She landed softly and stretched out, resting her head on their two soft-sided bags behind the passenger seat. She’d had plenty of rum. She’d sleep and that was good.