by Lucy Monroe
“You called the home office on the sat-phone? I thought your weekly check-in wasn’t until tomorrow.”
Fleur gave her a quizzical look as if not understanding Tanya’s surprise. “We often speak between our scheduled calls.”
“I didn’t realize that.” Of course, Tanya was busy with her own responsibilities, and usually spent a minimum of two weeks out of every month on the road with the traveling clinic.
“Their willingness to cover the cost of the calls shows how important our work here is to Sympa-Med.”
Personally, Tanya thought it showed a need to control. That money could be used more effectively elsewhere. However, it wasn’t her call to make. Literally. “So, the traveling clinic is on hiatus for the next few days.” She couldn’t make herself sound anything but grumpy about that fact.
“It will give us a chance to run an extra wellness clinic for the area children,” Fleur said. “Mabu can send his nephews as runners to the area villages letting them know about it.”
“Do we have enough vaccines to do the wellness clinic now instead of in the spring?”
“We should have enough for the number of children that will show up.” Fleur turned to Ben. “How did your meeting at the mine go today?”
The older woman’s intention to change the subject was clear and Tanya had no desire to make her angrier by trying to pursue discussion of what was just as clearly a done deal.
“I didn’t make any friends.” Ben sounded self-deprecating, but unworried by his claim.
“What happened?” Tanya asked.
Ben’s eyes glinted with amusement. “I informed them that I would be interviewing the workers as well as going over all the books, comparing the compensation they claim to give their employees against their actual expenses.”
His gaze shifted to Fleur, asking a question that her own seemed to answer for him because he looked satisfied. When the African woman asked the next question, Ben actually glowed.
Oh, wow…her boss and the bureaucrat? Tanya would never have guessed it. She wasn’t about to warn him off, even if she’d never seen Fleur respond positively to a man’s interest.
There was a first time for everything and there was something special about Ben Vincent—she only hoped Fleur saw it too.
Tanya was relieved when the rest of the dinner talk centered around Ben’s audit of the mine. She wasn’t keen on rehashing the clipping of her wings by the head office, or thinking about the roadblock, or the aborted plans to strip-search her.
She’d never been so scared. And she didn’t like the feeling. Not one bit.
Roman’s hand on her back was incredibly comforting, but safe wasn’t the only way he made her feel. If she’d wanted him before, it was nothing compared the positive craving she felt now. She wanted to share with him the deepest moment of connection two people could make. When he asked her if she wanted to take a walk after dinner, she didn’t hesitate.
Not even when Kadin gave them a look that could have singed rock. If he didn’t think she was right for his friend, the man was going to have to get over it. Because Tanya had every intention of drowning the emotions that had been trying to choke her all day.
The only thing she could imagine being strong enough to obliterate them, or at least her awareness of them, was the tsunami of desire the earthquake that was Roman Chernichenko caused inside her.
“I think your friend is falling hard for the leader of my security team,” Ben said to Fleur as they played an after-dinner game of mancala with Johari before she had to go to bed.
“She is not one for casual encounters,” Fleur said dismissively.
Johari took her turn, laughing in glee when she got one over both the adults. Fleur gave her daughter an indulgent smile. To see the girl enjoy life in such an innocent manner after all she had been through gave Fleur all the joy she would ever ask of life.
“Are you sure it would be casual?” Ben asked, apparently unwilling to drop the topic of a possible connection between the American soldier and Tanna.
Fleur felt a flutter of fear at the words. “You think she’s really falling for him?”
“It looks that way to me.” Ben shrugged, as if his answer was of little import.
He was wrong. It was very important. “He will leave with you. He will not look back. It is the way of men like that. I will not see Tanya hurt.”
“Even men like him meet their personal Armageddons at some point.”
True, but more likely, he would use Tanna for his sexual pleasure and leave her behind. Fleur knew Tanna had already had her heart shattered by one selfish man, she did not want to see it happen again. “You think he wants her?” Just to be sure.
“That goes without saying. I think he wants her more than he is aware and that what he wants will surprise him.”
“You are a serious observer of human nature?” she asked, not at all convinced of the accuracy of this particular observation.
Ben’s expression closed off. “It’s part of my job.”
“What is your job?” Johari asked, her intelligent gaze trained on the American.
“I am here doing an audit of the local mine.”
“An audit, like to see if they are cheating on their taxes?” her daughter asked in confusion.
“No, an audit on human rights violations. The U.S. prefers not to do business with mines who use slave labor and other heinous practices.”
“Really?” Johari sounded highly skeptical.
Ben gave her a wry smile, acknowledging her attitude without denying or agreeing with what it implied. “That’s the party line, anyway.”
“But you do not believe the government is sincere?” Johari once again showed more wisdom than typical of a girl her age.
“I think expediency often gets in the way of humanity when a lot of money is at stake,” Ben said, with what sounded like genuine regret.
“But you are going to try to protect the workers?” Johari demanded demonstrating a surprising idealism for a girl who had lived through the ravages of war.
Fleur loved hearing that innocence in her daughter’s voice.
Ben met and held Johari’s gaze. “Yes.”
“He will try.” Fleur did not believe in making, or implying promises one could not be sure of keeping.
But Ben shook his head. “‘There is no try’.”
“‘There is only do,’” Johari said with a laugh.
“What?” Fleur asked, looking between the identical smiles on the man and the child’s faces.
Ben reached out and tugged one of Johari’s many small braids. “It’s a quote from Star Wars.”
“An American movie. We watched it at school,” Johari explained for her mother’s benefit. “I want to be Princess Leia.”
“She’s a fighter all right,” Ben agreed with obvious approval in his tone.
Fleur assured her daughter, “Then you have much in common with her already.”
Johari dropped her eyes in embarrassment at the praise, but she was smiling. A half hour later, she went to bed, leaving Fleur alone with Ben.
He looked at her in a way no man ever had before. She had had eyes of lust on her. She had been looked at with possession. Anger. Contempt. Respect. The whole gamut, but never with this combination of tenderness and desire.
It scared her to death.
“I was raped,” she blurted out. “By many men, soldiers of the Rwandan government who murdered my friends and family all because we were born Tutsi. I cannot…do physical things.”
Then she sat there, breathing as if she’d been running from the sadistic men who had hurt her when she was still a teen. How could she have told Ben her secret shame?
And how could he sit there looking at her as if nothing had changed? As if he did not think any less of her. As if he felt nothing but compassion. Not even pity.
Her throat went tight as emotion choked and threatened to overwhelm her, a woman who prided herself on control.
“Can you put your hand
in mine?” he asked in a voice so gentle he almost shattered her.
She was no weakling. She did not need to be babied. “I…yes, of course.”
“Then do it.” This time his voice carried a command, even as it was overlaid with that same consuming gentleness. He put his hand out.
She looked at it, the fingers square and masculine, marked with small scars that said he had experienced more violence than others would expect from his mild-mannered appearance. But she already knew that. His hand looked strong. It looked safe, and yet reaching out to connect with him was hard. Harder than she thought it would be, but after several long seconds, she laid her hand in his.
He closed his fingers around hers, not tightly, but softly as if she was fragile. “Come.”
She allowed him to tug her out of her chair at the table where they’d played mancala. He led her to the small benchlike sofa in the communal area of her and Tanya’s chalet. Sitting down, he pulled her to the spot beside him. Their bodies were touching from shoulder to knee. It was closer to a man than she had been in a social setting since the horrors of her youth. Yet, she felt no fear, or even discomfort at Ben’s nearness.
“May I?” he asked as the hand not holding hers hovered above her shoulder.
She nodded.
He smiled, dropped the arm around her and said, “Now, tell me about your parents. I bet your mother was beautiful.”
And for the first time since escaping Rwanda with her life, if not her innocence, she talked about her life before the Tutsi massacre. She told Ben about her mother, who had been beautiful, and her older sister, who had been pregnant when she bled her life out on the floor of their family home.
But she didn’t think about that. She thought about the future her sister had hoped for. “They would have loved Johari.”
“I’m sure they would. Johari’s a wonderful child any mother would be proud of.”
Fleur nodded, her rigid emotional suppression nowhere in evidence. His kindness infiltrated her heart as no other man had even tried to do in almost fifteen years.
She hadn’t known her father as well as she wanted to, and she shared that with Ben too. “He was an important man, with little free time for his family. They killed him first.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I believe you.” How could she not when sincerity shone from his pale blue eyes. Eyes that continued to look at her with that tender desire she found so disconcerting.
“Did you have any other siblings?” he asked.
Pain she had never been able to let go sent its jagged edges through her heart. “A brother. I never knew what happened to him.”
“Was he older? Younger?” More than curiosity laced his voice. As difficult as she found it to understand, he genuinely cared.
“Younger. He was an unexpected baby, almost ten years younger than me.”
Horror reflected in his compassionate gaze. “He was just a little boy when you fled Rwanda.”
“Yes. I searched for him, but could not find him.” It was a failure she could never forgive herself for. “Then after the soldiers hurt me, I was in a delirium. When I woke, hidden in the storage room of a family my father had helped, my brother was gone. They sent me to family in Nigeria, but I live in hope my brother still lives somewhere.”
“That is a good hope to have.”
She heard his words through a tunnel as she gave into the tears she hadn’t shed since man’s evil had destroyed her life and those she loved.
After a quick stop at her hut and another at the medical building, Tanya led Roman out of the compound. She didn’t normally leave the compound after dark, but she felt safe with her super-soldier. Wild animals and wild men had no chance against the danger that lurked inside this man.
She wasn’t sure she did either, but she was taking the chance.
The guard nodded at them as they exited through the gate he’d opened for them.
“He didn’t even ask why we are leaving,” Roman commented with an irritated scowl.
The sun had not set, though the sky was heading toward twilight. It was one of her favorite times of day in the African savannah. “I imagine he was showing discretion,” she said mildly.
“Screw discretion. That’s sloppy security.”
“It’s a medical compound, not a prison, or a military base either. We don’t have to account for every minute of our day”—she paused—“or night.”
No matter how Sympa-Med might prefer it otherwise. She’d often wondered if the board of directors had served in the French Foreign Legion or something, with their military-like need for control.
Of course, they had a significant capital investment to protect, not to mention the fact they saw her and the other medical professionals as assets needing their own protection as well. Their attitude was understandable, if annoying.
“Do you go walking like this a lot?” he asked.
She shrugged. “When I need to clear my head. Sometimes, when I get homesick.”
“You get homesick?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I love my family, even if I get along with my parents better with thousands of miles between us. I miss them. I miss Beau.” Despite Roman’s presence at her side, or maybe because of it and the reminder of home, melancholy swept over her for a second. “Sometimes, it just hurts that I’m not there to get to know Elle better.”
“It’s only going to get worse when they have kids,” he said with a clear tinge of regret, sounding like he knew exactly what she went through.
Considering his career and how it kept him away from his family, he probably did.
“I know.” The thought of not being there to get to know her nieces and/or nephews hurt on a level she’d never once considered when making her life choices.
“It’s hard.” For that flash of moment in time, super-soldier Roman Chernichenko sounded borderline vulnerable.
“It is.” She reached out and took his hand, surprised by both her daring and the fact that he curled his strong fingers around hers. “You miss your family.”
“I do. My baba, I mean grandmother, she’s not getting any younger.”
“She and your mom are good at playing the age card, from what I’ve seen.” Those two knew exactly what to say for maximum emotional impact from the Chernichenko siblings.
“You’ve got that right. Whoever thinks Jewish mothers have a corner on the guilt market has never met a Ukrainian baba.”
She laughed softly. “I’ll concede that point. My own parents are good at lecturing, but if they had your mother or grandmother’s knack for zeroing in on emotional weakness, I doubt I’d have made it back to Africa the second time.”
He snorted. “Hell, if you had my baba, you wouldn’t have made it the first time.”
“She’s a scary lady.”
“You won’t get any arguments from me.”
“Is she why your family doesn’t know what you really do?”
“No one knows what I really do.”
“I do.”
“Do you?”
“I know enough.”
“And?” he asked.
“What?”
“Does it bother you?”
“That you’re some kind of mysterious super-soldier? No, I don’t think it does. Especially after today. I keep thinking about what would have happened if you hadn’t been there.” Images she desperately wanted out of her head played like a disgusting video set on repeat. And she couldn’t find the off button.
“Don’t.”
“I can’t help it.”
He stopped and pulled her to face him. “I’ll help you forget.”
“I’m counting on it.” Her certainty that sex with Roman would be enough to dominate her thoughts, to keep them away from the ugliness of what had almost happened at that roadblock, fed her determination to act on her desire for him.
In case he needed more invitation than the meaning behind her words to start something, she tilted her head in blatant provocation.
His stillness demanded acknowledgment of the warning.
“I know.”
“I won’t be back.”
“I had that figured out.”
“Good.”
“Your lips against mine would be better.” And then, because she was done talking, even if he wasn’t, she moved the minute distance necessary to bring their mouths together.
His lips were firm and soft at the same time, responding instantly to the pressure of hers. He wasn’t a passive man and he didn’t simply accept her kiss, but immediately pulled her body into his, crushing the blanket she had grabbed from her room between them. His mouth molded to hers, and then shaped the caress of their lips into something hot and carnal. Something unlike any kiss she’d ever before experienced. She’d never felt a kiss as if the connection of lips was the epicenter for a Richter-ten quake that shook her whole body.
Every single one of her nerve endings buzzed with sexual tremors that rolled through her body, only to crash against each other in the heated flesh between her thighs. Never had she been so ready for intercourse with so little provocation. She didn’t know what was making her respond this way to him and she did not care.
She craved him with a hunger so intense, she felt the cramp of need deep in her womb. It was so primal, it scared her, but the fear only fed the need instead of checking it.
Sounds came out of her, whimpers and moans that she’d never before made. Roman liked them too. Every time she made one, he did something to intensify the kiss. Thrusting his tongue between her lips and taking possession of her mouth’s interior, then tightening his hold on her until there wasn’t even air between their bodies, he growled against her lips with his own sexual gratification. Rubbing his hand over her bottom, he kneaded curves firmed by all the walking her life with the traveling clinic required. Finally, burying his other hand in her hair, he held her head in place for an increasingly ardent lip-lock.