He hung back, watching Mary take her younger daughter down a red-tiled hall to her bedroom on the right. Ali had followed and Diego had gone into the kitchen to make everyone coffee. Ram thought about his own upbringing—his father was a pimp who owned a broken-down, old hotel in Nogales, Mexico, and his mother was a white prostitute with a drug addiction. They had come together and produced Ram, then settled into the hotel his father used as a brothel. Ram had grown up there, and when he was old enough to realize his shameful family roots, he was so humiliated he never spoke of his so-called family to anyone. As Ram grew older, he discovered that his father had never married his mother. He was just a “mistake” that had happened one night.
Ali’s family, however, was like a storybook version he’d always dreamed of having. Here, both daughters were wanted from the time they were born. The warmth between Diego and Mary was genuine—Ram had rarely seen genuine affection between men and women at the hotel where he’d grown up. Several of the prostitutes, however, took him under their wing when they saw his mother had no interest in Ram. Starved for affection themselves, they would hug, kiss, and make a fuss over him.
When he wasn’t with his substitute moms, Ram was assigned a room to live in alone. He ate in the kitchen with Joshua and Sophia, their cooks, who spoiled him with little pieces of dessert they weren’t supposed to give anyone but his father.
Ram pulled himself out of the past when he saw Ali come out of Cara’s room, her face dark with worry. He remained in the living room, holding her gaze as she walked over to him. Reaching out, he touched her slumped shoulders.
“How are you doing?” he asked, observing that she was close to tears. Ali wasn’t one to cry. In fact, he’d never seen her cry in the years he’d worked with her. Despite his instinct to hug her, Ram forced himself to remove his hand from her shoulders. They had both agreed to try and start over with one another, to establish a new relationship—one that was aware of their old habit of sniping at one another, and replace it with more patience and understanding.
Wiping her eyes, she gave him an apologetic look. “She’s not good. She’s a mess, Ram, just like you said she’d be. I have this awful gut feeling that more happened to her than she’s telling us. Mama’s with her right now, holding her, because she’s sobbing her heart out.”
“Mary is the right person to be with her right now, Ali.” Ram said. “Look, this is going to be really hard on all of you, every day, for a while. There’ll be no let-up, no relief for any of you, and no safe place you can get away from it, either.”
Ali lifted her chin, staring up at him. “You sound like you’ve seen this before, Ram.”
He wasn’t going there. Ram had never spoken of his past, his childhood, to anyone—ever. “Let’s just say I’ve seen it happen before.” He cupped his hand around her elbow, drawing her over to the lavender, velour couch, urging her to sit down with him. He left a foot of space between them as he sat next to her.
“My poor parents,” she murmured, keeping her voice low. “I know they aren’t equipped to handle something like this.”
“Home is the best place for her, though.” Ram said reassuringly. “It represents safety to Cara. It’s where she’ll heal best.” Just as the closet where he had made his bed and slept at night was his safe place in that hotel. It was small, dark, and enclosed and Ram felt protected in there. It was the only place where he felt that way while growing up. “Cara probably feels safer in her bedroom, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, she does,” Ali said, wiping her eyes again. “She’s got a ton of stuffed animals in there. As a kid, at night, she’d love it when Mama tucked her in with her big, fuzzy bear. Cara loves that bear, even to this day. The poor thing is just about hairless, it’s been held and loved so much over the years.”
“She’ll probably hole up in there for the next few weeks because it represents safety to her, so don’t be surprised.”
“God, Ram, I know I wouldn’t react this way. I’d want to establish a fixed routine that I liked to anchor me. I wouldn’t hide myself away.”
He heard the pain and confusion in her voice. Again, he fought against reaching out and holding her close. Ram knew it would probably shock the hell out of her if he did that. Theirs had not been a warm, intimate relationship—just the opposite: it had been contentious, challenging, even angry and confrontational at times. He hoped that the kiss they had shared on the op to rescue Cara and the German women, was creating more trusting opportunities for them to heal their past—and get on with a future he wanted with her. It seemed like a far off vision and something he was sure probably would not ever come true—but he had to try. And he had to try and pace himself with Ali because of all the stress on her right now. He could see how she was scrambling to deal with her sister’s psychological state and support her bewildered, anxious parents—ignoring her own suffering in the meantime.
Ram silently promised her that he’d be there for her. Ali had no one. Now, they had a fragile, tentative relationship budding between them. Until then, they had been out of touch for three years.
“Ali, you have a lot of inner strength. Sure, you’ve seen the underside of life in your job, but you’ve got survivor genes in your blood. When you went through something challenging you rose to the occasion and became stronger. Cara is different. She’s just the opposite of you.” He tried to give her a look he hoped was sympathetic. Ram wasn’t good at revealing his true emotions, but he knew Ali needed some gentleness right now.
“You’re right about that, Ram. Every time something challenged me, I took it head on and I got stronger because of it.”
She sat there, resting her elbows on her knees, hands clasped between them, frowning. “Mama and Papa are not helicopter parents, Ram. They never were. It’s just . . . ” her voice fell to a helpless tone, “Cara never had a shell, never showed any strength, and I have no explanation for it.”
“Not everyone is born strong when they enter this world of ours, Ali. She’s one of those who didn’t. I think your parents did the best they could to strengthen her and help her stand on her own two feet. She did go to college here in Tucson, she got a degree, and she’s out working in the world. That shows she’s got the basic skills to survive. Before this, she didn’t hide in her home, avoid getting a job, and just live off your parents. In her own way, she did the best she could.”
Morosely, Ali whispered, “Yes. I guess I want her to have my internal strength to deal with this trauma, and I just don’t feel it in her.”
“She’ll gather it at her own speed and time,” Ram counseled. “I know when you get knocked down like this it takes time to get back up.”
Ali gave him a quizzical look. “How do YOU know all of this?”
Ram could see how much anguish she carried in her for her sister. “Because I was raised in a hell no one wants to be dropped into,” he admitted heavily. “In a sense, I know what Cara is going through. I know what it takes to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when no one is there for you. At least Cara has the three of you, and you have no idea how much support that is giving her right now. You’re feeding her strength and continuity to grab at the hands you’re holding out to her. Just give her time, Ali. Give her space. Be there when she wants you, let her cry in your arms, and let her talk it out. But it’s going to be on her timetable, not yours. That’s what your challenge is.” He held her tear-filled gaze. “You want her to get better faster because that way she won’t have to suffer so much pain for such a long time. You all want to shorten her time, the duration of the pain she has to flail through and come out the other side of.”
Sniffing, Ali studied him in the filling silence between them. “I know so little about you, Ram.”
He heard the tremble in her voice, saw sympathy come to her eyes for him. Before the truce they’d had a few days ago, he’d have walled himself up to not feel anything close to sympathy for his personal struggle. Now, he tried to change it because he desperately wanted to be emotionally availab
le for Ali in order to help her. If he walled up like he usually did, she’d feel rebuffed and he couldn’t help her at all. Knowing that humans felt nurtured and safe when another human opened themselves up to them, he tried his best to do it for Ali, right now. She deserved help in this and Ram knew he could give it to her if he had the strength and the guts to do it.
He’d never done this for anyone—not even himself—he’d been a harsh taskmaster with himself in order to survive. Looking into her luminous golden eyes with a sheen of tears across them, watching her struggle not to cry for her sister, it became a little easier to remain vulnerable with her at this moment. “In time I hope to share more with you, Ali. But our focus has to be on Cara, being guides of a sort to her, to help her negotiate her trauma. We can’t do it for her, but we can understand it and more important, feel where she’s at, discover her pace on her healing journey she has to undertake.”
He saw Ali lick her lower lip. It was something she did when she was grappling with something important. There was no question she fiercely loved her sister. His job, as he saw it, was to get Ali to understand the speed of how Cara was going to heal. And it wasn’t going to be on Ali’s timetable and that’s what she had to grapple with first. He could see her thinking about his words, see her responding to him remaining open to her for the first time. There was confusion in her expression, trying to reset herself to him because this was a new path for them both.
She scrubbed her face with her hands. Lifting her chin, she met his placid gaze. “Thanks for sharing that with me. It helps me see Cara in a new light, a different one. You’re right, Ram. We all heal at our own pace.”
His mouth crooked more in a grimace. “Yeah, and it’s not a smooth, straight road, either. It’s full of twists, turns, and sometimes falling back on itself, and you feel like despite whatever steps forward that you made one day, you’re back at square one again.”
“I get that. I’ve seen it in myself.” She rubbed her hands down the thighs of her jeans. “I need to reset myself to Cara’s speed.”
He gave her what he hoped was a tender look. “Yes. You’re the right person to do this and I know you can. Your mother and father play different roles with Cara and they’re going to struggle just as much as you are to understand their daughter’s trauma.”
She tilted her head, her voice low with so many feelings. “I never knew until just now how wise and good you are at assessing others, Ram. I wish . . . I wish I knew this side of you so long ago when we worked together.”
He shook his head. “Wrong time and place, Ali. You can’t do missions like ours and be touchy-feely about it. There’s no place for emotions out on the battlefield.”
She gave him an impatient look. “I’m talking about the times back at base. With the team—with me.”
Surprised, Ram stared at her. “And how would that have changed anything?”
“I would have realized you had a soft, compassionate side, Ram. That you do understand human beings, that you are self-aware in ways I would never have guessed before today.”
“I’m not like this often,” he warned, giving her a wry look.
“But you are doing it for me. So now I’m seeing another side to you, Ram. And I like it—a lot. From now on, don’t stop being like this with me. That’s the side of you I really need right now. Could you do that for me?” she pleaded, searching his eyes.
Ram felt as if he’d been knocked sideways by an invisible sledgehammer. Ali had never pleaded or asked him for help on anything before. Her sincerity staggered him emotionally. He felt his heart opening up even more to her than before. Ali had a gentle side to her and she’d shown it often to the Afghan children in the villages. How he’d fantasized that she could someday offer that side of herself to him—and she was doing it right now. Bathed in the simple honesty of her feelings, Ram found himself absorbing them like a greedy, starving thief who had just found a pile of gold. Allowing her voice to whisper through the halls of his guarded heart, his mouth softened out of its normal, hard line.
“This is all new for me, Ali. I’m not good at it. I’m trying, but it’s harder than anything I’ve ever tackled in my life. You need to know that. I’m not perfect. You know that better than most. And I make mistakes, a lot of them.” His voice grew weary. “And I’ll make them with you as I try to be there to support you through this. Don’t expect me to always have the right words, okay? I’ve just never allowed myself to do this—to open up to someone else before—I feel pretty raw and unsure about myself. I question if I’m doing it right or if I’m saying the right things to help you, not harm you.”
Ali closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she whispered unsteadily. “Because you care for me, Ram, you’ll be imperfectly perfect for me. When you care for another person and you have their heart in your hands, you’ll always try to help them. And no, it won’t always be perfect, but you have to trust that I know that. I won’t take the mistakes you make the wrong way. I’ll know you’re trying. That’s what’s really important here: you are trying. And Ram, for me that’s enough. That’s more than enough.”
CHAPTER 2
Mid-October
Tucson, AZ
Ram could feel the tension in the Montero household, even at 0500 in the morning when he’d awakened. It had been two days since Cara had returned home, to her place of safety. He saw the stress on Diego’s face, a gentle father who was trying to understand his daughter’s sudden change in behavior. This was all new, these storms of weeping, screaming, and sudden fits of anger when Cara would lash out at those who loved her.
Ram sat in his bedroom across the hall from Ali’s. He’d awakened and pulled on a black t-shirt, Levi’s, and sneakers. Then, he’d thumbed through the debrief file regarding Cara. It had just arrived from Wyatt Lockwood at Artemis. His gut churned, knowing that Ali was going to read it, too, since Wyatt had also sent her a copy. He knew it was going to tear her apart. A lot more had happened to Cara than they’d first thought. Dammit!
He closed the document on his laptop, and glanced around at the room. Everything about it was cheery and bright, from the ornate, brightly painted red and yellow wooden chair from Mexico to the dawn light filling the window. The curtains were feminine, a white gauzy material with rainbow ribbons sewn together in a slender border. He wished with all his heart the beauty and warmth of this home could diminish the impact of the report awaiting the Montero family, but it couldn’t.
He smelled bacon frying and figured Mary was probably up making breakfast for everyone. When he stood, he heard his stomach growl—it was part hunger, part stress. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and quietly walked down the hall to the kitchen.
To his surprise, Ali was at the stove cooking, not Mary. Halting for a brief moment, absorbing her beauty, he saw that she had just washed her black hair. It fell halfway down her back, glinting with blue highlights. Her jeans enclosed her long, firm legs, and she wore a bright red t-shirt with capped sleeves that brought out the gold tones of her skin. He’d always found her beautiful, and a new ache settled in his chest, filled with longing and loneliness.
In the past two days, he’d seen the love that Mary held for Diego. It was inspiring for him to see a man and woman who truly loved one another. He watched how they comforted each other in so many small, yet important ways as they worked through Cara’s trauma and her unpredictable moods. Ali had been raised with love, pure and simple—unlike him—and it was eye-opening for Ram to observe fondness between a married couple up close.
Mary and Diego were openly affectionate, always touching each other lovingly. A few times, Ram had entered the kitchen and saw Diego kiss Mary’s cheek, his hand on her back, comforting her. Another time, Mary was outside weeding their large garden, and Diego came by, knelt down, and helped her. There they sat, on their hands and knees, laughing and smiling, love mirrored on their faces.
Ram had entered a new world, and he wanted this world for himself and Ali. Last night, he’d ha
d a dream that he and Ali were on their hands and knees in the black, fertile soil of a new garden that was just sprouting. His heart sang every time she looked over the row of plants straight at him, her eyes filled with love for him and him alone. And her smile . . . mi Dios, her smile melted him until he was an emotional puddle. How he had felt in that dream remained strongly with him, embedded in his heart. He knew Ali’s love was deep and strong; she had always been openly affectionate with their teammates, like a little sister with her big brothers. She would laugh and mercilessly tease and play jokes on the guys, but she was careful never to embarrass or humiliate them.
Except for Ram. He had put himself off limits to her in every possible way.
Now, he wanted just the opposite. He liked the feelings that wrapped around him every time he thought about his dream, with Ali’s golden eyes shining with adoration for him. Her lips were so damned sexy and alluring, curved, and playful. The look in her eyes was wicked with burning heat and her need of him as her man.
Her man. Every aspect of the dream had been filled with hope and joy. But based on his life experience so far, dreams didn’t come true. Look at how often he’d dreamed of getting out of that hell hole of a hotel and escaping the tawdry scum who fed upon one another inside it. As a child he couldn’t put what he felt into words, probably because all he saw was ugly, selfish, cold, and heartless. To this day, he couldn’t understand why any woman would become a prostitute. There was nothing good about it for the woman. And the johns? They were needy, selfish, abusive, narcissistic men who used and abused the women they had paid for. It sickened him as a child and later, as an adult.
Pulling out of his reverie, his gaze moved appreciatively down Ali’s long spine, to those sweetly flared hips of hers, and those long, firm, curved thighs. She was perfect, he decided. But it had taken him twenty-nine years to appreciate Ali on this new, alluring level.
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