Blue Knight (2 page)

“You have the most stunning legs,” he declared, his voice mellow and smooth. “You could win beauty pageants with those legs. They go on for miles and miles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen legs quite so amazing as yours before.”

It took a breath and several heartbeats for Olivia’s mind to catch up with what he had said. Her legs. He was admiring her legs. It wasn’t just the last thing she had expected him to say, it hadn’t even been on the list. Winded and completely at a loss for a response, she turned and walked into the bathroom. She hated that she had lost all sense of grace and dignity. She was horribly aware of her legs, her hips and her ass as she moved. She shut the door with deep relief and sank down onto the closed toilet lid, her head in her hands.

“Good grief, get a grip, Olivia!” she murmured to herself, squeezing her temples. “You’re supposed to be a diplomat! You’re supposed to be able to handle any situation!”

She rested her hand against the beautiful tiles that covered the counter. They were cold under her fingers, telling her just how flushed she was. She drew a breath. Another one, controlling each inhale and drawing them deep down into her stomach and exhaling carefully. It calmed her a little, enough to let her feel her heart thundering along inside her ribs.

Now she was calmer, she realized ruefully exactly why she had flounced into the bathroom like a high school princess with her mad on.

This Daniel, this prime specimen of a naked male, hadn’t been even a tiny bit disturbed by her presence. She hadn’t even registered on his radar. Theresa, next door, Theresa, the twenty-something with the large breasts and giggle and flawless skin of the very young…Theresa, he noticed. But not Olivia.

Even when Olivia had slid out of the bed, what he had focused on was her legs.

Olivia looked down at her bare knees, glowing ghostly pale in the light filtering through the small window high above her. She should be grateful, she supposed, that he had noticed that much. But gratitude seemed too much to ask for. In the last few weeks she’d had guns pointed at her, she’d been dragged out of her bed and questioned through the night. She had been a prisoner of the pseudo-government of Vistaria—the
insurrectos
—who she would right now take delight in making sure were never formally acknowledged as the rightful leaders of what used to be one of the most delightful countries in North America.

Enough was enough. She was Olivia Davenport, a force to be reckoned with in diplomatic circles. On her good days, anyway.

Olivia stood up, straightened her shoulders and marched back out into the bedroom.

Daniel was still sitting on the bed where she had left him. She was surprised at that. He struck her as the sort of man who would have just climbed into the bed she’d left empty, helping himself to the pillows and leaving her to find a space next to him when she emerged. That he had not made her stride falter. She approached the bed, slowing.

“I suppose, under the circumstances, I cannot kick you out,” she conceded.

“I’ll sleep on the floor if it makes you that uncomfortable.”

“No,” she replied. “It’s a big enough bed. That would just make me feel guilty.”

His teeth showed white for a moment as he smiled. “Conscience before morals. How interesting.” He lifted a hand toward the pillows. “After you.”

“It’s nothing to do with either,” she said as she slid under the covers. “I simply don’t want to have to deal with fallout over your presence in the morning.” She propped her head onto one hand to watch him.

He circled the bed and reached for the untouched covers on the other side and hesitated.

“What?” she said.

His face was fully illuminated by the lights now and she could see his eyes. They really were blue. The blue of a summer day. He was looking at her with a touch of dry amusement. “I don’t know your name.” He sounded apologetic.

She reached over and held out her hand. “Olivia Da—” She bit off the end of it. “Olivia,” she repeated, with a grimace.

His amusement evolved into an ironic smile as he shook her hand. “You’re a diplomat,” he confirmed.

“You’re not,” she said stiffly, taking back her hand.

“Hell, no,” he said fervently and slid under the covers. “I don’t have the patience. I got invited on this junket because I have business interests in the area. I have contacts out here and know Spanish.”

“In other words, you have money and influence.”

He paused from flattening a pillow to look at her. “That’s pretty cynical for a diplomat.”

“I’m only a junior diplomat and I’m entitled to call a spade a spade when you’re sitting in my bed naked and we’re both hostages at the disposal of the interim government of Vistaria.”

He lifted a brow. “You said ‘hostage’ out loud. You’ve done it now.”

She lifted her shoulder. “Oops.”

He settled back on the pillows. Already, she could feel the heat emanating from his side of the bed.

“May I ask a question or two before you start to snore, Daniel?”

“I never sleep soundly enough with another person in the bed to get to the point of snoring.” He rolled his head to look at her and his brow lifted. “Ask.”

“You break the curfew a lot, don’t you?”

His answer was a long time coming. “I usually manage to keep my clothes on me while I’m doing it. But yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He rolled over on his side and propped himself up like she was, his head on his hand. “Why do you want to know? Feeling prurient, Olivia? Because the TV is over there, if you are.”

The one cable station the
insurrectos
had allowed the hotel to pipe in to them was a twenty-four hour porn station. All other stations had been cut off. No news had reached them in weeks.

Olivia shook her head. “No, that’s not why I’m asking.” She mentally groped for the reason herself. “I watched you sliding through the window a while ago. You’re practiced at it. I know you’ve done it a lot yet you haven’t been caught. It’s like…defiance.”

“You watched me?”

“Yes.”

“Defiance, hmm?”

She could feel herself blushing and was glad of the peculiar lighting in the room that hid her skin tones. “Look, we’re in strange circumstances—”

He touched her lips, silencing her. His touch acted like an electric jolt to her, running through her entire body and sensitizing it from toe to tip. Her lips tingled. She drew a breath and that fizzed as she drew it into her lungs. She remained perfectly still as he pulled his hand away, knowing that he was aware of none of this maelstrom he had set off in her at his simple touch and that she could signal nothing of it to him. She fought to give nothing away and battled to control her breathing. His proximity was a problem. He could hear every little shift and waver of her breath. For fifteen seconds she concentrated on just breathing, slow and easy, as her lips throbbed and her body with them.

Daniel dropped his hand to the sheet between them, where it lay like a dark shadow on the pale cotton. “Defiance. Good word, that. I like it. That’s one of the reasons I do it. Just because I can and just because they’re telling me I can’t.”

“What are the other reasons?”

He smiled. “I’m not a monk.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve noticed you not being a monk. All of us have.”

His smile widened. “It passes the time.”

“You limit your activities to a rather small subset of the pool of available women.”

“More straight talk.” His brow lifted again. “Is that a formal protest at being passed over?”

Her heart thudded hard. “Truth, Daniel? I wouldn’t touch a man like you if he were served up on a silver platter…or lying in my bed naked. You’re wired the wrong way for me. I’d sooner bed a walrus.”

Daniel sat bolt upright and turned to face her. “Excuse me?”

She pulled the cover up around her shoulders, as his movements had disturbed it. “You heard me. I don’t stutter.”

“Pretend you do.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Fine then. Pretend I’m the village idiot and need it explained in very small words. Pictures are optional.”

“Village idiot, huh? I could go with that.” She sat up.

“Thought you might.” He seemed grimly pleased.

She waved toward his crotch. “There, that’s a perfect example of what I mean. It doesn’t even occur to you to cover up, does it?”

He looked down, reached for the sheets and pulled them over his thighs. “Why should I? You’ve already seen everything there is to see.”

She dropped her hands with an exasperated sigh. “We’ve been locked inside the White Sands for…just over four weeks. You’ve bedded every woman under the age of thirty who’s a guest or one of the staff, or not wearing army green and who is within reach of the hotel. After tonight, I’m not sure how far you roam. Your conquests could spread outside the compound, too, for all I know.”

“You resent the fact that I have sex, or that you don’t?”

“Neither.” She clasped her hands together. “I’m going to be generous to myself and guess that we’re the same age. I’m young, you even admit I have great legs. Despite that, for the last four weeks, when you have been looking around the hotel for your next bed partner, you haven’t seen me. Your gaze has slipped right over me. I’m invisible to you.”

He was silent for a long minute. “Then you do resent being passed over.”

“No, I’m grateful. I told you. You’re the last person on earth I want to take to bed.”

He pushed his hand through his hair. “And that’s because…?”

“Because I’m part of the wallpaper to you. That’s why you feel free to walk around naked without so much as twitching a muscle when I’m in the same room, even the same bed with you. You’re one of those men who can’t see women once they reach a certain age. It’s hardwired into your genes. I’ve learned the hard way that trying to change a man like you is like trying to change a leopard’s spots. You can’t fight genetics, either.”

She rearranged her pillows and her side of the covers once more and settled her head on the pillows again. “Good night,” she said firmly.

He lay down again. “No offense, Olivia, but as a diplomat, you’re about as much on the nose as yesterday’s bloody kippers.”

Olivia rolled over so that her back was to him. It let her hide the shaky breath she drew in. Good. Let him be hurt. At least it would guarantee he would stay on his side of the bed.

She thought she wouldn’t get any sleep, not with a man in her bed for the first time in more years than she cared to tote up. She thought she would lay awake mulling over their exchange.

But she found herself thinking, instead, of defiance. Of Daniel’s nightly breaking of the curfew, just because he could and just because the
insurrectos
told him he couldn’t. The way he had expertly disabled the sound bug and told her how to avoid tipping off the
insurrectos
of the transgression.

Defiance.

She liked it.

* * * * *

Nick rested his hand on Duardo’s shoulder as he squeezed past the big old-fashioned kitchen chair to get to his own at the top of the table. Calli was already sitting next to Josh at the rickety, scarred table. God knows where she had scrounged it from, but for now it served as the boardroom and meeting table for half a dozen committees and working groups.

The little room was tucked away in the back of the house on the south side and the south wall of the room was covered in small, dirty windows. Nick thought the room had once been used as a potting shed. It was almost unbearably hot in the room in the afternoons, but it was still only seven in the morning and the windows had all been thrown open to catch the sea breeze. There was no chance anyone might be lurking outside beneath the windows to listen to their meetings, for the cliffs dropped away right beneath the house on this side, straight down two hundred feet to the sea.

The car bomb that had killed General Blanco had also destroyed the northwest corner of the house where the big formal dining room they had been using as a boardroom had been. The repair work was underway, with Calli coaxing and bribing where she could to hurry it up, but it was still a week or two from being completed. In the meantime, they were forced to squeeze into this tiny leftover of a room.

It had been nearly four weeks, yet Nick still had moments of disorientation when he saw Duardo at these meetings, or noticed the short hair—although it was already starting to grow out again.

Duardo nodded at Nick as he sat down. He already had a thick, cheap notebook full of handwriting open in front of him. There had been no disorientation for Duardo. He had slid back into full productivity like an otter into water, with barely a disturbed ripple to show his reentry.

General Flores hurried in, carrying a briefcase exploding with paperwork and another armful of notes. He was panting from having climbed the long flights of stairs from the beach, where the army mostly trained and quartered, up to the big house where Nick and others in the household lived and where this meeting was being held. Flores was a very lean man, with an abundant moustache. He nodded at Nick and sat at the other end of the table.

Josh cleared his throat. “I repeat my protest, Nick. I really shouldn’t be here.”

Nick shook his head. “You know as much about Vistaria’s affairs as we do. Let’s not get into this again. These are extraordinary times. I need the knowledge you have between your ears. Duardo, let’s begin.”

“
¿Ahora debemos tener la reunión en inglés?
” General Flores asked.

“Yes, we’re having the meeting in English now,” Nick confirmed. “There’s a reason for the inconvenience, General, so you will need to bear with us.”

Flores grimaced. “If you bear my English, I bear it.” He shrugged and looked at Duardo. “Colonel?”

Duardo blinked, hesitating. Nick knew why. Duardo didn’t think he deserved the double-promotion, but in wartime, promotions were often rapid and extemporaneous and the fact was, they needed Duardo in a senior position. Nick himself had pushed for the double-tap. He mentally shrugged. Duardo was a soldier first. He was used to obeying orders. He’d get used to this one.

Duardo looked down at his notes, marshaling his thoughts. “When I was inside the
insurrectos
’ headquarters posing as Zalaya, I was in charge of the intelligence machine Zalaya had set up. There were a number of interesting channels of information coming back into Zalaya from around the world. The most interesting one, however, didn’t report to Zalaya at all. It was under Serrano’s control and it came from inside this house.”