Blue Knight (6 page)

Calli smiled. She could hear the steel of a lifetime promise in Nick’s voice.
El leopardo
had spoken.

Minnie let her hands drop. Her face was pink. “I just came here to ask if it was okay to steal Calli for a day or two.”

Calli cleared her throat. “Actually, now that Nick is President pro tem, I think you have to ask for formal permission to marry one of his officers, too.”

Minnie’s mouth opened. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding! That’s archaic!”

Calli laughed. “It’s actually supposed to be the other way around. The officer is supposed to ask for permission, but you said you were speaking for Duardo. It is a very old law and it’s really just a formality for the senior officers. But it’s still in effect.”

Minnie rose to her full height of five feet and one inch. “I’m not asking anyone’s permission,” she said. “Duardo can do the damn asking.”

Calli saw laughter ripple through Nick’s shoulders. “Very well then,” he said, his voice even. “You may borrow Calli to arrange your wedding, but Calli will borrow you for whatever responsibilities she feels appropriate for you to handle in return. I warn you, Minerva, your honeymoon will be screamingly short and probably a working one.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Minnie said, her shoulders slumping.

Nick smiled. “Have Colonel Peña arrange a time with my new Chief of Staff to report formally to me as soon as possible.” He looked at his watch. “
Jesus Marie
, Flores is waiting for me.” He kissed Calli quickly and squeezed Minnie’s shoulder as he walked past her and was gone.

Calli reached for her laptop, sitting on the table in the back corner of the balcony. “I’ve got Nick’s calendar right here. Let’s set up a time for Duardo right now.”

“He wasn’t kidding, was he?” Minnie said, looking at the door into the house. “He’s really going to make Duardo ask for permission to marry me?”

Calli looked up from tapping through layers of menus to the calendar. “Minnie, you’ve been involved with Vistarian men for nearly a year now. You really have to ask if they mean it when they get all formal and stiff about some sort of point of honor or tradition?”

* * * * *

As they were being shepherded to the lounge area after breakfast, Olivia noticed the change immediately. Everyone was talking among themselves.

Normally they were sheep being herded along almost single file through the arches, across the silent foyer with its beautiful Spanish tiles and the same soaring stone arches that helped keep the ambient temperature cool. They would be marched past the wide elegant doors of the hotel, closed now and guarded by armed soldiers. Cowed into submission, they would be hurried into the interconnected lounges and the velvet ropes put up across the arches into the foyer and more armed guards would take up positions against the ropes. There, they would spend their mornings in almost silent, subdued misery.

But not this morning. This morning, they walked in twos and threes, chatting in small groups. There was even the occasional laugh. No one seemed to notice the guards walking along beside them. Olivia listened to the low conversations filtering back to her in her position about two-thirds of the way along the line. She could hear no English at all.

As she stepped under the archway that led into the foyer, a deep voice whispered close by her ear, in French. “You are playing a dangerous game, Olivia.”

She knew who it was without having to look. His French was flawless.

“I play no games,” she breathed back.

“Ibarra is Vistarian. They have a thing about honor. If you make him feel foolish, he will come after you personally.”

“I told you—”

His hand curled around her elbow. “Do not lie to a liar. It would only take one of these weaker ones to speak your name and Ibarra will have you in his sights.”

He stepped past her and kept walking. The business shirt and trousers, like her own suit, hid the better qualities of his physique, but they could do nothing to hide the breadth of his shoulders or his height. The short sleeves displayed the strong forearms and thick wrists. She swallowed as her gaze travelled to his fingers—the fingers that had touched her lips and set off such unexpected fireworks in her last night.

Her elbow tingled where he had touched it. Olivia licked her lips and realized that just thinking about him and watching him was bringing her to a heated level of arousal she had not experienced in years. Her pussy was throbbing with aching unfulfillment and she was simply looking at his back.

Looking for too long
. She quickly dropped her gaze. Had any of the soldiers noticed? Her heart thundered. Had she given them a hint? An opening? She couldn’t afford to look at them to check.

She shuffled forward in the line, too afraid to look up. Instead she listened to the polyglot gabble of voices. The shine in the day had evaporated.

Defiance came at a price: Fear.

* * * * *

Calli came into the kitchen after the breakfast rush, looking for coffee. She knew Momma Rosetta would be there, but was surprised to find Minnie there, too. Minnie was parked at one of the long benches, working on notebooks spread around the table in front of her, with a calculator, pencil, eraser and dozens of the local newspapers folded up next to her hip.

Momma Rosetta poured Calli western coffee and silently handed it to her. Calli thanked her with a smile and sat on the bench opposite Minnie. “Whatever are you doing?” she asked.

Minnie looked up, blinking. “Oh, hi. I’m helping Momma Rosetta a bit.” She was frowning. Her gaze dropped back to the notebook in front of her.

“No, really. What are you doing?”

Minnie looked self-conscious. “Well, you said to make myself useful and Momma Rosetta couldn’t keep raiding the garden for supplies for all of us. Besides, Nick’s money doesn’t stretch that far but if you know how to shop properly, it can stretch quite a ways, so I was explaining it to Momma Rosetta but she doesn’t have time, so I just did it myself, instead.”

Calli sipped the coffee. Startled, she looked down at the cup. It was good coffee. Great, in fact. She sipped again, almost moaning at the excellent taste of fine Columbian brew. She tilted her head to look properly at Minnie’s notebooks. “You’re shopping?” she asked.

“It’s a system,” Minnie said defensively. “There’s a dozen ways to skin a cat.”

Calli gave a small chuckle. “Well, if anyone knows about shopping, you do.” She tapped the notebooks. “Explain it to me.”

“Really?” Minnie asked.

“Economics professor, remember?” Calli reminded her.

“Almost professor,” Minnie shot back.

“Okay. Then think of me as the Chief of Staff and your boss. Give.”

Minnie stuck her tongue out. She swiveled the notebooks around, picked up the pencil and explained the system she had devised. It took a few moments for Calli to grasp the basics, but when she did, she was floored. It was simple genius and could be applied to not just food, but to a whole range of supplies that the loyalists badly needed. Everything from handguns to toenail clippers, medical supplies to magazines.

Calli tamped down her excitement and glanced at her watch. “You and I are supposed to meet at five today to plan your wedding. I’ll keep that meeting. But in the meantime, do you want to let Duardo know that Nick expects to see him at noon today?”

“You mean for the…?” Minnie asked, her nose wrinkling.

Calli grinned. “Yes.”

Minnie ruffled her hair with her fingers. “Okay.”

“Meantime, can you meet me in Nick’s office in…ninety minutes?”

Minnie turned the notebooks around to face her once more. “Sure, if you want.”

Calli got to her feet. “Bring your notebooks.”

* * * * *

Olivia sat in one of the big leather club chairs off in a corner by herself, sipping her virgin Bloody Mary. No one drank alcohol even though the
insurrectos
offered an open bar at all hours of the day. Everyone instinctively understood that drinking would lead to loose tongues and lost inhibitions.

The chatter had not abated. Already the soldiers guarding them were starting to stir uneasily. They did not like being excluded in this way. They did not like being dismissed. They did not like the absence of fear.

Daniel was sitting at the end of the bar and had not looked at her once. Despite that, she knew he was watching the guards’ growing restlessness and mentally blaming her.

Fear was building in her like a swelling balloon. She focused on Daniel. His contempt was even worse than when she was invisible to him.

With a convulsive jerk, she tossed back the remainder of her drink, got to her feet and walked to the bar, taking a path that delivered her right next to Daniel. She ordered another virgin Bloody Mary in Spanish, requesting that the drink be made with actual tomato juice, not tap mix, plus Worcestershire sauce, which sent the barman to the other end of the bar to fulfill her request.

“You bumped into me two days ago in the lobby,” she said to Daniel in French. “You apologized at the time. I am betting you cannot tell me what I was wearing that day.” She didn’t look at him. It would alert the guards that they were talking.

“I’m betting it was trousers and a shirt, just like today.”

“You’re extrapolating,” she hissed. “You have no idea what I was wearing. You didn’t process me at all. I was a body you had to walk around.”

Silence. Then, “I can tell you that you had two pockets in the front of your trousers. You carried your hotel key in the left one. I’m betting it’s there now.”

Her heart jumped. She stilled the impulse to reach for her room key, which was right where he said it was.

“You really should carry it somewhere else. It’s far too easy pick from the front pocket. Or the back one, come to that.”

Her breath grew faster. “Are you some sort of gentleman thief?”

“Nothing of the sort.” She could hear the laughter in his voice.

“Yet all you focused on was the raid-ability of my attire.”

“You asked what I saw. I told you.”

“In other words, I was quite invisible to you.”

Ten seconds passed. “Yes.” His voice was low.

Her heart thudded. “Thank you,” she told him.

“Damn you.” There was a note in his voice that she couldn’t identify. Fury?

The barman put her drink in front of her.

“
Gracias
,” she murmured. She picked it up and sipped. Pretty good, under the circumstances, but it had far too many vegetables to suit her. She made a display of reaching for a paper napkin and pulling out all the celery and limes, wiping them off and laying them on the napkin. As she worked, she spoke.

“If you’d bothered actually looking, Daniel, you might have noticed that underneath these trousers and shirt, I wear a stretch lace thong and no bra. My shirt is silk. You should try picking my pocket sometime. You might be in for a surprise.”

She turned to go and looked directly at him. He was staring at her openly.

It was the first time she had stood this close to him in good light, when she had his full attention. The effect was breathtaking. She was abruptly aware of the fact that his knee was a bare inch or so from her hip and she had to fight the impulse to sway closer to him so that her belly would rest up against his thigh as he sat on the stool.

His eyes were drilling into her and she knew then that she was baiting the wrong man. But it was too late. She had already thrown the line out there. This wasn’t someone she could fool around with. He wouldn’t let her make mistakes. He wouldn’t forgive errors. He would leap on them.

Now she understood why his contempt had buried so deep and had hurt so much. It abruptly became clear why she wanted him to look at her with something other than disgust in his eyes. He was strong—far stronger than her. That was an astonishing novelty. She could read his strength in his eyes, the unyielding steel core.

She coupled this strength of character to the very male center of him and Olivia knew she was lost. Even sitting on a stool while she stood next to him, he seemed to tower over her, although she was five foot ten. His shoulders were wide, his thighs heavy with muscle and the forearm leaning casually against the bar was corded with muscles and tendons, looking capable and strong.

His jaw rippled. In the single moment that had passed as her perception had shifted, his gaze did not release her. “Are you trying to seduce me?” he asked. His voice was low and seemed to caress her whole body.

She was suddenly glad of the trousers she wore. They hid her trembling legs. She drew in a breath that scalded on the way down. Daniel’s eyes would not let her go and while she wanted nothing more than to lean against him—it was a matter of inches only and every cell in her body seemed to be reaching for him, throbbing for his touch—she forced herself to step away. The guards would notice in a moment if she did not.

“I can’t seduce you,” she said, forcing her voice to emerge even and low. “I’m invisible to you, remember?”

His eyes—blue the same color as the sky on a hot summer’s day—widened just a little, enough to let her know that she had struck home. She turned and walked away, fighting for even steps and dignity. Her legs felt rubbery, though. She was lightheaded. By the time she lowered herself into her club chair once more, her hand was shaking badly with the effort to look normal. She put the glass down and didn’t dare pick it up again for fifteen minutes—not until the ice had melted and the cubes wouldn’t rattle against the sides and draw attention to her.

* * * * *

Once Olivia had walked away, Daniel kept the same posture and attitude, and maintained the same expression. He didn’t let anything about his external appearance change an inch. Inside, though, he slipped the leash on the chaos and let it race through his system for a few blessed moments. He let his eyes drift closed, shuttering them over the maelstrom that must surely be visible there.

Olivia Davenport. He knew who she was now. Just the first name alone was enough to let him reach into his memory for the rest. A junior diplomat for the United States, part of the team overseeing the democratic handover of power after the revolution in Vistaria, but one with a building reputation. He now understood in part why her reputation was growing.