Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart of Stone (18 page)

Maya gave Inca a strange, unsettled look. “What are you trying to do? Just because you’re pregnant and going to be a mommy, do you think you can be a matchmaker, too?”

Inca raised her brows. “The words you use, I do not know them all.” She opened her hands guilelessly. “What is ‘matchmaker’?”

“Humph.”

Laughing, Inca moved to Maya’s shoulder. She reached out and smoothed her dark hair into place around her neck and shoulder.

“If I didn’t know better, Inca, I’d think you’re trying to tell me that Dane York likes me or some such hooey.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. And don’t give me that completely innocent look. We’re twins, remember? We can read each other like an open book.”

Chuckling, Inca folded her hands together and kept on smiling. “I know how stubborn you are. I am the same. I am asking you to see Dane differently than you have been seeing him.”

“Dammit,” Maya exclaimed softly, giving Inca an uncomfortable look, “he’s prejudiced against women!”

“And you are equally prejudiced against men.”

Stunned, Maya stared at Inca, the silence swirling between them. Her sister was grim faced now, her willow-green eyes narrowed. Inca was not teasing. She meant it. Averting her gaze, Maya looked down at the covers, the floor, the doors at the other end of the facility. Working her mouth, she finally turned back and met Inca’s eyes.

“You’re right.”

Reaching over, Inca patted her tightly clasped hands. “If you have the wisdom and humility to acknowledge your own weakness, as he does, then there is hope.”

“Dammit, Inca, I didn’t need to hear that from you.”

“What? The hope or the prejudice?” Inca tilted her head and studied Maya’s scowling features. “You are like two jaguars. You both have the same spots, the same color of coat. Sometimes—” she lifted her hands expressively “—when one meets someone who is just like them, they fight it—fight the other person, because what they see in them they see in themselves. But they will never admit it, of course.”

“That’s called projection,” Maya growled. “A psychological term.”

“Oh. Well, am I not correct?”

“Yes, dammit, you are.”

“I would think you would be happy, realizing this weakness you both share.”

“It’s complicated, Inca. I know you see the world very simply. I don’t. I can’t. You don’t live out in the real world like I do. It’s a helluva lot more complex a situation, believe me. Dane York is like a Gordian knot
to me and my world…my life. Recently, it’s gotten even murkier, so I’m feeling damned vulnerable toward him right now. I don’t know whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy. He used to be nothing but bad in my book.”

Sighing, Inca whispered, “My sister, none of us are either all bad or good. You know that from your training. Why do you not apply what you know to him? I could feel the wounding in you that he created. And when I touched him, felt him, I felt his desire to heal this wound between you.” She tapped Maya’s hands. “You must forgive and move on now. He is trying very hard to please you. To get you to forgive him. He
is
trying, Maya.”

“Okay, okay.” Maya made an irritated gesture with her hand. “I hear you.”

“Part of the Black Jaguar Clan schooling is to learn to forgive. Those born into the clan are learning through their wounding. You have an opportunity here, my loving sister. Why do you think the Great Mother Goddess set up what happened to you? I feel that if you had not resisted Dane’s offer to find peace and forgiveness between you in the first place, it would not have come to this—this injury to yourself.” Inca shrugged. “Sometimes, when we become too stubborn, too set in our ways, something traumatic must happen in order to allow a door to swing open. When it does, you can choose to walk through it or not with the other person involved.” She smiled unevenly, tears glimmering in her eyes. “I do not think it an accident that his blood now moves through your body. He is a part of you, yes? And you cannot war against someone whose blood is part of you, can you?”

“I hear you, Inca,” Maya whispered unhappily. “I
don’t like it, but I hear you. And I know you’re right. I also understand why I’m in the Black Jaguar Clan. I’m not so evolved, spiritually, as you are. I’m still learning some of the basics, like not taking revenge, feeling hatred and stuff like that.” Maya lifted her head and met Inca’s softened gaze, now filled with tender compassion for her. “And I’m not so stupid as to realize, symbolically, what happened between me and him. It’s just…a shock, that’s all. I feel…right now…like the world’s closing in on me. I’ve got three Kamov’s to worry about. I have this training for the D model to get underway. I have Dane’s old prejudice to fight in myself every time I lay eyes on him. There’s just so much going on right now. I feel so damned raw and vulnerable….”

“My sister,” Inca whispered gently, “we all undergo such tests, and you are in a test right now. You have gone through them many times before. All I am saying is do not make Dane your enemy while he is here. If you can forgive him, you forgive yourself. Your prejudice toward men is no less wounding as his is against women. Somehow, you must let all that go. Somehow, you must drop your armor and allow who you are, your vulnerable, good side, to show itself to him.”

“Yeah, right, and he’ll gut me right where I stand.”

Inca shook her head. “You are wrong. You must trust me on this, Maya.”

Giving her a dark look, Maya rasped, “Dammit, this is
hard,
Inca!” Looking around, she muttered, “There are days when I want to say to hell with this whole thing. There are days when I don’t want to know what I know, metaphysically speaking. I just wish I was like every other blind, deaf and dumb human being down
here.” Maya clenched her fist, her voice turning raw with anger. “I just want to walk away from the mission at times. Away from being in the Black Jaguar Clan. I get sick of it! I get sick of the responsibility, and knowing I’m damn well going to pay for whatever choices I make, right or wrong, because of my knowing.” Her voice cracked. “Right now, it’s just too much. Don’t spew metaphysical pabulum at me, Inca. I can’t handle one more stone on the load I’m carrying on these shoulders, all right?”

Nodding, Inca slid her arm around Maya’s tense shoulders and hugged her for a long, long time. When she finally released her, she whispered, “Sometimes our greatest enemy can become our greatest ally.”

Dane was sitting at his office desk the next morning, working on the fine points of the training schedule that would be initiated shortly. Again and again he resisted calling in at the dispensary to ask Dr. Cornell how Maya was doing. Earlier this morning, Inca had left. He’d been pleasantly surprised when she’d dropped by his office to tell him goodbye. She had shared the news with him that she was pregnant with twins. The look in her eyes made him smile self-consciously. Inca was so open, so available emotionally compared to Maya, that he’d reeled when she’d shared the good news with him. She didn’t treat him coldly, or as if he were an unwelcome stranger. Just the opposite. She had gifted him with several sprays of orchids, yellow with red lips, and told him to give some of them to Maya when she got back to her office duties.

Inca’s eyes had been sparkling, and Dane could almost feel as if there was some underlying reason for
her giving him the orchids, but he didn’t know what it was.

Inca had suggested that he visit Maya at the dispensary that morning. He muttered that he might, if he could get the schedule completed, but he made no specific promise. The way Inca regarded him, with those thoughtful, compassionate eyes of hers, made his heart contract with pain and need—for Maya.

Trying to shake off thoughts of the early morning meeting, Dane rested his hand against his brow and studied the complex schedule before him. This was a helluva undertaking, and it wasn’t easy trying to fit training time for the pilots in between the missions they flew daily against Faro Valentino’s aircraft.

There was a soft knock at his opened door. Dane lifted his head. It was Maya. She was standing there hesitantly, her hand on the doorjamb, looking at him with an unsure expression. Instantly, he was on his feet, his chair nearly tipping over. He caught it, straightening self-consciously beneath her gaze.

“I thought you were supposed to be in the hospital,” he blurted, rubbing his hands down the sides of his thighs. Her eyes were soft looking and so was her mouth. She was dressed in her usual black flight uniform, which surprised him. Dane knew that the doctor had grounded Maya for a week, and she couldn’t fly. The shadowy smudges beneath her glorious emerald eyes told him that her recovery was by no means a hundred percent.

“I was,” she said wryly.

“Does Dr. Cornell know you’ve escaped the dispensary?”

Maya grinned a little. “No, but she’ll find out soon
enough when she goes to check on me during her rounds.”

“I see….”

“I’m like a horse in harness. You can’t put me out to pasture too long or I get bored and antsy.”

“Yeah, I know that one, too.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Maya asked. Dane looked almost normal, but not quite. His flesh was still not back to its usual color, and there were hints of shadows beneath his eyes.

“I’m fine…fine. And you?”

“I’m okay…. Feeling a little tired, is all.” Motioning toward his desk, Maya asked, “Do you mind if I drop by for a visit…for just a moment?”

“Why, er, no…no, not at all. Let me get you a chair.” He quickly moved from behind his desk and brought the only other chair to the center of his small office for her.

Maya’s heart opened automatically. She saw a red flush staining Dane’s cheeks. He was obviously rattled by her unexpected appearance. She had never come to his office since he’d arrived. Swallowing hard, she made her way to the chair and sat down.

“Thank you…”

Stunned by her friendly behavior, Dane didn’t know what to think. His head swam with questions. Had Inca’s healing done this to her? Or had the trauma of Maya’s injury? Maybe she was just unguarded for the moment, but would return to her normal armored state shortly. He thought the latter, and yet he didn’t try to erect his own armor to protect himself from whatever she might say to him.

“Coffee? I have coffee.” He pointed to the machine behind his desk. Nervousness thrummed through him.
Dane saw the uneasiness in Maya’s eyes now. She was nervous, too. He could tell by the way she kept shifting around on the chair. Yet she was hurting and he knew it. Oh, it was nothing obvious, but he could sense it—by intuition, he guessed. Moving toward the coffeemaker, he raised a second cup toward her.

“Yes, I’d like some.”

“It’s strong,” he warned.

“I need a strong cup of coffee,” Maya said. “Put a little cream and sugar in it, will you?”

His hand shook as he poured coffee into the white, chipped ceramic cup. Laughing a little to ease the tension over her sudden, unexpected appearance, he said, “Now that you’re being funded by Perseus, maybe the supply officer can get you in some decent coffee mugs. These have seen better days.”

Maya laughed weakly. “Yeah, you’re right.” She watched as he carefully spooned sugar and creamer into the coffee. She saw his hand tremble. Maya had never seen Dane like this before. And then she realized that Inca’s healing had probably opened him up, just as it had her. In her eyes, Dane was like a little boy trying hard to please her, to get her approval, even over such a small thing as a cup of coffee. Her heart opened more.

As he brought the cup to her and their fingers touched, she felt warmth flow up into her hand and wrist from their contact. She saw his eyes grow a smoky blue. She’d seen that look once before, when he’d visited her shortly after she became conscious. It made her feel safe. And cared for. This time, she didn’t try and fight that energy sensation flowing from him. No, this time, she allowed it and, if she were honest with herself, welcomed it.

“Thanks,” she whispered, taking the cup. Pressing it to her lips, she took a sip. He was standing there expectantly. “It’s fine, Dane. Go sit down.”

He grinned a little and nodded. “Okay.”

Maya watched him take his seat. “You working on the schedule?”

Nodding again, he said, “Yeah, and I’m afraid you aren’t going to like what I’ve come up with. But I’m damned if I can fine-tune it any more than I have because of the heavy-duty circumstances your squadron operates under.” Dane gave her a worried look.

Maya sat with her legs crossed, the cup balanced on her lap between her hands. Did she know how beautiful she looked with her long, black hair curling around her shoulders, showing off that slender neck of hers? He thought not. Maya wore no makeup. She didn’t need to. When he saw her fine, thin brows knit, his mouth quirked.

“I know you’ve been working nonstop on it when you weren’t flying missions,” Maya said, trying to defuse the worry and anxiety she saw in his blue eyes. “What’s the problem?”

With a shrug, Dane dropped the pencil on the schedule and leaned back in his creaking chair. “You aren’t going to be happy about this, but based upon how many flights your pilots are making daily, I have no choice.”

Hearing the grim tone in his voice, Maya said, “Give me the bad news, then.”

His heart shrank. Trying to steel himself against the reaction he knew was coming, Dane eased the chair down and set his elbows on the desk, staring directly across it at her. “We have a six-week training program. I know when we came here I said we’d stay for that
amount of time. But given the number of flights, the demands on your people and the fact you’re shorthanded, I don’t have any choice.”

“Choice? In what?”

Grimly, Dane looked down at the schedule. “According to my best estimates, Captain, it’s going to take three times as long as anticipated to train all your people.”

Maya sat there digesting his quietly spoken comment. She saw the worry in Dane’s narrowed eyes. She felt his anxiety over her possible response to his statement. Compressing her lips, she said, “Okay…instead of you being here six weeks, we’re looking at an extended training-in period of…eighteen weeks. Is that right?”

Dane marveled at the continued softness in her tone. Maya’s eyes held no anger, only interest. Shocked that she hadn’t come out of the chair or started to make angry comments, he sat there dumbfounded for a moment. “Er, yes…eighteen weeks.”