Men of Intrgue A Trilogy (13 page)

“I have nothing to offer you, Helen.”

“I’m not asking for anything,” she replied heatedly, trying to read his expression in the gloom.

“That’s the whole problem,” he countered, throwing up his hands. “You should. You deserve better than this tacky room and a one night stand with a guy who might be dead next week.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” she said, closing her eyes.

He sat down again and took her hand, holding on when she tried to draw it back. Finally she stopped resisting him and he held it to his lips.

“Helen, your crazy family has been abusing you for twenty-five years. I’m not going to get in line.”

“You’re not abusing me,” she said confusedly. “What are you talking about?”

His shoulders slumped with resignation and he said, “Listen to me. I know I’ve been a louse, dragging you into all of this, but I’m not that big a louse. There are some things even I won’t do, and this—” he pointed at the bed “—is one of them.”

Helen withdrew her fingers from his grasp and curled them on the sheet. “I see,” she said dully.

“When you get back home,” he said firmly, “you’ll have a different perspective on everything, and you’ll be glad I prevented you from making a mistake.”

“Stop lecturing me,” she said, turning her head away. “You sound like my father.”

His mouth curved in a smile. “I don’t feel like your father.” He touched her cheek gently. “Save yourself for one of those nice boys back in America, Helen.”

“I don’t know any nice boys,” she replied despondently. “I don’t want any nice boys.” She rose up quickly and flung herself on his chest, the sheet falling to the bed. “I want you.”

He embraced her reflexively, and the instant he felt her, nude and supple in his arms, his resolution began to fade. He stiffened and said, “Don’t make this any harder than it already is, Helen.”

“I want to make it hard,” she whispered, kissing his shoulder, trailing her lips inside the collar of his open shirt until she found the newly healed scar of the wound she had tended. “This is my mark on you,” she added, tracing it with her tongue. “Every time you see it you’ll think of me.”

Matteo sucked in his breath and pulled her back by the hair, looking into her eyes. She was learning very fast.

“No, Helen,” he said flatly. “I’m going to take care of you while you have to stay in Puerta Linda, and then I’m going to make sure you get back to the States safely. And that’s it.” He released her and stood up. “I’m going back downstairs for a while. I suggest you get to sleep. If you need me later, I’ll be in the room across the hall.”

She watched him button his shirt and head for the door, then slumped down on the bed when he went through it.

He wants me, she thought. Maybe he doesn’t love me yet, the way I love him, but he wants me, and that’s a step in the right direction.

Helen turned on her side and snapped off the small lamp, which hadn’t given much illumination in the first place, and now she was in total darkness.

There was hope yet. She would work on it tomorrow.

* * * *

Matteo ran down the rickety wooden steps and stopped at the bottom, wiping his face with the tail of shirt. It was cooler now, at night, but the humidity was high, and Puerta Linda’s trademark rains still threatened, lending a further touch of heaviness to the air.

He walked through the reception area and out the back to the kitchen, where he opened the rear door, lifting his face to the breeze. That had been a close one. If she hadn’t made that remark, it would all be over by now, plunging him deeper into the abyss of guilt he already inhabited.

He left the door open and went back inside, looking in the ancient refrigerator for a can of the brew Helen had earlier refused. He found one and popped the top, swigging it down in huge, grateful gulps.

She was a kid, he had to remind himself, in more ways than one. The years separating them were not so many, but the gulf of experience between them was a chasm. He felt uncomfortably close to using her, and he was not going to compound that by robbing her of her innocence.

But God, she was sweet. It had taken every ounce of willpower he possessed to walk away from her. He didn’t consider himself particularly noble, and the effort of denying himself what he desperately wanted had left him parched and drained.

He shook his head, taking another drink. He had really done it this time. All right, maybe she had agreed to come with him of her own free will, but he didn’t take much comfort from that. He had done his best to talk her into it, after all. And maybe his plans had gone awry. If things had worked out the way they were supposed to she’d be on her way home right now. But the fact remained that she was stuck in Puerta Linda because of him, in danger because of him, and he was not going to leave her seduced and discarded because of him too.

He looked up as Esteban, Elena’s husband, entered the kitchen and greeted him. The two men sat at the table and began to plan Matteo’s route for the next day. He had to avoid the roads and travel through the bush to dodge the police, who, according to Esteban’s latest information, were beefing up their efforts to find him.

Matteo gave brief consideration to leaving Helen with Elena and Esteban, then realized she would never stay. She would probably just come after him on her own, which would be far more dangerous for her than if he took her with him.

He put down his drink and leaned over the table to listen to Esteban, concentrating on the older man’s directions.

One thing at a time.

He would deal with Helen in the morning.

* * * *

When Helen awoke she was naked, and she was startled until she remembered the events of the previous evening with a clarity that made her blush.

She got up and washed quickly with the tepid water left over from the bath Matteo had interrupted. She recalled the feel of his mouth and his hands on her body, and when she noticed a small pink mark on the inside of one breast she felt a thrill, as if it were confirmation that she had not imagined the passionate interlude in his arms.

She dressed in the clothes Matteo had procured for her, a loose cotton blouse and capri pants of the type teenagers in the States were currently wearing. The garments were a little big, but a definite improvement over the bedraggled items she had worn in the rain. She bundled those up and resolved to wash them when she got the chance, which might not be soon.

She was brushing out her hair when Elena knocked at her door.

“Comida, senorita de Matteo,”
she called.

Helen assumed that was breakfast and opened the door. Elena bustled in with a tray, grinning when she saw Helen dressed in her daughter’s clothes.

“I’m glad you find me amusing,” Helen said, glancing at the tray. It held a cup of something dark, which Helen fervently hoped was coffee, a flat corn cake and a piece of coral melon.

“¿Cafe?”
Helen said, pointing to the cup, using up another item in her less than immense vocabulary.

“Si, si, cafe con chicore,”
Elena replied, nodding vigorously.

Helen picked it up and took a sip, wondering, with ominous foreboding, what
chicore
was. But it tasted all right, a little bitter, but recognizable as coffee.

“¿Leche?”
she asked, encouraged.

Elena pointed to the little pitcher on the tray, which indeed turned out to contain milk. Helen added it to the coffee as Elena, evidently convinced by this conversational success that they were now going to get along famously, set the tray on the bed and sat next to it, folding her arms.

Helen understood that they were about to have a talk. That should prove to be interesting, since she knew about ten words of Spanish and Elena knew no English at all.

Helen bit into the piece of melon, waiting. She refused to launch into another
“donde esta Matteo
” routine, although she was beginning to wonder where he’d gone.

“Matteo es muy hermoso,”
Elena offered, smiling knowingly.

All Helen understood of that was “Matteo is.” She put on a blank expression and turned her hands palm upward to indicate ignorance.

“Hermoso,
” Elena repeated, stroking her face with both hands lovingly.

Matteo needs a shave? Helen wondered. No, that couldn’t be it. Matteo is...something. He is shaving? She mimed the activity to Elena, who shook her head disgustedly, standing and posing, turning from side to side as if admired by a crowd.

I don’t believe this, Helen thought. I’ve come fifteen hundred miles and been shot at by the Puerta Lindan police so I can play charades.

She shrugged to indicate bafflement.

“Hermoso,”
Elena said again, louder, frustrated by Helen’s stupidity.
“¿Lindo, si?”

At this point Matteo strode into the room, since Elena had left the door open and he could see the two women inside. Helen was glad of Elena’s presence; she felt awkward seeing him in the light of day after their last encounter and jumped in to ask, “Matteo, can you tell me what Elena is trying to say? She keeps repeating that you’re
hermoso
, or something like that, and she obviously expects me to react to it.”

Matteo fixed Elena with a baleful stare, and the older woman burst out laughing. Helen knew immediately that she had made a mistake.

“What does it mean?” she asked in a small voice, her curiosity outweighing her judgment.

“Good looking,” Matteo said, sighing. “Handsome. I think our landlady was preparing to enumerate my virtues for you, lining you up for the hard sell. She thinks if I got married and started producing babies my life would be complete.”

“Maybe she has a point,” Helen said softly. “And you are
hermoso.
Very
hermoso.”

Elena had been following the conversation from the tone of their voices, and she slapped Helen on the back approvingly, which almost sent her flying across the room.

Matteo decided it was time to intervene. He cleaned off the tray Elena had brought and handed her the empty, saying, “Thank you, Elena, it’s been real. Goodbye, good luck and God bless.”

Helen was laughing when the older woman left, and she said to Matteo, “I can’t believe the way you talk. If I didn’t know better and I didn’t hear that little accent every now and then, I’d swear you were an American.”

His reaction was not what she expected. He studied her soberly for a few seconds and then answered, “There are others who would agree with you. And it hasn’t made me very popular in some quarters.”

She could tell that she had touched on a sore subject and asked quietly, “How do you mean?”

Matteo sat on the cane chair and took a sip of Helen’s coffee, grimacing at its bitterness. “Elena’s been cutting this with too much chicory,” he commented, before answering Helen’s question. He drew his finger around the rim of the cup and said thoughtfully, “There’s a faction among the rebels that would like to see me replaced.”

“Replaced?”

He nodded. “They know that I was educated in the U.S. and had spent more time there than in Puerta Linda by the time I reached adulthood. They want someone who never ‘deserted’ his country to be their leader.”

“Who is
they?”

Matteo bent his head, staring into the cup. The bright morning sunlight filtering through the window turned his hair into a burnished ebony helmet, dark and gleaming.

“Well, actually, it’s only one man, but he has others who would follow him if it came to that. He’s one of my best, too, Vicente Olmos. I can tell that he’s biding his time, waiting for the right moment to turn on me and seize command for himself.”

“But if he wants what you want, a new government for Puerta Linda, why does he waste his energy on divisive action that will only weaken your group internally?”

Matteo rose, putting the cup down and jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You don’t understand about the egos involved here, Helen. Olmos has lost sight of the larger issue; he sees only that he’s more suitable for my position than I am. Or so he thinks. He’s strong too, a tireless fighter, and he’s lived in Puerta Linda all his life. He knows there’s anti-American feeling in the camp, and he plays on it, calling me
‘
nuestro jefe americano
—’ our A
merican leader.’ He says I talk like an American, act like an American and think like an American.”

“Lucky for him that you do,” Helen responded fiercely. “Lucky for all of them. They’ll be free one day because you think like an American.”

He stared at her, smiling gradually, and then put his hands on her shoulders, putting his cheek against her hair. “You’re good for me; do you know that?”

“Am I?” she whispered.

“Yes, you are. Anyway, don’t worry about Olmos. He’s too afraid of me to do anything, and unless his greed for power outweighs his fear he won’t be a threat.”

Helen could well understand that the other man might fear Matteo. As gentle as he was with her, she remembered his reaction when the mailman had arrived, and at the airport, and knew that he could be deadly. She shivered slightly and he stepped back, looking down at her.