“Oh, Dante…” Her eyes closed as she reached for him, her hands itching to experience his regal symmetry and strength in unhindered touching.
He aborted her eager grope, pushed her hands away. She almost stumbled off his lap. Her heart did, plummeted all the way down to her gut.
He was withdrawing, all intimacy leaving his expression, distress, disappointment flooding in its wake.
She sat still, sick electricity arcing in her flesh, waiting for him to spell it out. He did, and life dimmed back to its dreary monotone.
“Hell, I’m sorry Gulnar…” His strident breath wheezing out of him, he slumped back, closed his eyes. Then he opened them, turbid and disturbed and averted from her still-exposed breasts. “You’re suffering from post-traumatic stress and I took advantage of it…”
His agitation hurt her even more than his withdrawal. She had to relieve it. Had to cover herself first, get off him. Had to find her co-ordination and control. She finally did, stumbled up and to her bed, sank on it, aftershocks of release still rocking her, loss and confusion suffocating her.
He continued, his black-velvet voice hushed. “I can only plead that I must be suffering the same survival backlash…”
“You said you felt this way from the moment you saw me…” Please, let this at least be real.
His next words told her it wasn’t. “I guess, being in this region, in our line of work, we’re never not in post-traumatic stress. What we think, and what we think we feel, how we react—it’s all extreme reactions, unreal, just escape mechanisms.”
She was intimate with all that. The last fifteen years had been a string of coping maneuvers, sanity preservers. She’d mastered them all. And none of them applied here. With Dante, it was all new and real at last.
And it was one-sided.
Fine. She understood. It gutted her, but she did. And she accepted it. She would still have something else of him. He was part of GAO now. They were bound to give him an important post, keep him here. She’d join his team. It would be enough to see him, work with him. Anything at all with him was better than everything she’d ever had…
He finally moved, rose, came over to stand above her, every move an effort now. “Gulnar, please, say you forgive me. I feel like I’ve dishonored what we’ve shared, what we’ve been through. And after all you’ve done for me. I can’t let us part with this hanging between us.”
Part? Did he think he needed to put distance between them now? Would he ask for an assignment that would take him out of her reach? Refuse her access to his team?
No. No! She had to make him understand it wouldn’t change a thing, that she wouldn’t pursue or embarrass him. Their enforced intimacy was over and she’d keep to her place, be his assistant, or whatever he wanted her to be, and nothing more. She had to make him believe her.
“Dante—stop it, please. You’re making too much out of this. It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last that two survivors seek physical comfort in each other’s arms.” A bitter giggle escaped her. She surely hadn’t given him comfort! “I can’t begin to see how you can think you’ve dishonored anything.”
The distress in his eyes faded, something even blacker, bleaker seeping into its place. Then his lids went down, obscuring a succession of expressions that stopped her heart. Cynicism. Disillusion. Disgust.
He walked back to the couch, sat down again. His head fell back on the headrest, his lips twisting. Her insides followed suit. Had she made things worse by making light of it? Was he, now that his blood had cooled, analyzing her actions, condemning her for her shamelessness, seeing her as Lorenzo—and Emilio—had once accused her of being, a promiscuous hazard to any team effort? No!
She tried again, an uncontrolled thread of desperate laughter weaving into her tones. “Dante—let it go. It was nothing important, really. A month from now we’ll look back on this and laugh.” Stop, stop. She was making it worse and worse. Distract him. Change the subject. “And do you realize you didn’t tell me what you wanted me to do for you? Do you need your back scratched?”
The eyes that opened, leveled on her, were a stranger’s.
So this was how it felt to lose something irreplaceable.
“Actually, I was going to ask you to shave me, especially my head. I don’t mind the beard as much, but a few millimeters’ growth on top makes me crazy.” Even his voice was unrecognizable.
Swallowing the jagged desperation, she jumped at the opportunity, and to her feet.
His alien voice froze her. “Never mind. I don’t think you’re in any condition to handle a razor now. What you really need is to get back to sleep. I’ll take one of the other nurses up on her offer.”
Other nurses? Oh.
That put her in her place. Ended their artificial intimacy and her importance to him.
But this was what she’d said she’d settle for! Keep it light. Impersonal. He wanted it that way.
Her heart wept but she tried on her most nonchalant smile. “Just to put your mind at ease, I’ll let someone else do it. But for future reference, I’ll have you know that I am an expert barber!”
His blank eyes rested on her, his smile even emptier. “I’m sure you are. But since I’m going back to the US just as soon as I can breathe without keeling over, I don’t think I’ll have the chance to take you up on your offer.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“YOU just can’t leave!”
Dante sighed. GAO’s Azernian operation co-ordinator was a good man. One of the best. He just had the most aggravating nasal twang ever. As for his powers of repetition!
Dante inhaled deeper this time, the air rushing into his lungs a reminder of how lucky he’d been. Only two weeks after a bullet had penetrated his chest back to front, he was beyond lucky to be breathing at all, let alone with such ease.
No, it wasn’t luck. It was Gulnar…
“Dr. Guerriero, you have to let us persuade you to stay longer!”
Impatience chafed in Dante’s chest, the currents stronger along the fast-healing bullet tract. “Mr. Kauffman, you have to stop talking as if I’m going back on my word, as if I’m deserting! You knew the moment I stepped into your office two weeks ago that I was here for the hostage situation, not to join GAO. I am sure you also know that I am a freelancer, if the term can apply to voluntary work. I roam around offering my services where I can make a difference, then move on. I couldn’t have been clearer when I asked you to grant me temporary GAO credentials. As it turned out, it has been the only thing that has gotten me through the quarantine zone. Now it’s over, and so is our liaison, and I’m moving on, as has always been my intention.”
Kauffman’s lanky, relaxed posture eased even more, making his persistence even more droning, more effective. “That’s all well and good, as far as previous plans go, Dr. Guerriero. But things change. Things have changed.”
Dante stared at the fair, frail man who’d had him trapped in this office for the last hour. Who had him trapped, period. Dammit. What a disguise! Ivan Kauffman was anything but fragile. He’d never come up against fiercer relentlessness. He’d dragged him into a logic loop, and every time they bounced the same argument off each other, Dante felt his grip on his slipping. Ivan made him feel like trash for doing what he’d been doing for the last four years, something he’d thought effective and worthwhile.
He shook his head. The man was a juggernaut. He should have known he would be one. People who picked humanitarian work in the most dangerous places on earth were a special breed. They had to have steel running through them, had to be totally unpredictable. Like Gulnar…
“We don’t only need any and every capable medical person around here.” Kauffman made his main argument again, tireless, tiring to his listener. “But after what you’ve done, you’re not just an extra pair of sorely needed hands. Like it or not, you are a role model, a symbol of hope that good does triumph over evil and that humanitarian operatives are not just more vulnerable chips for terrorists to play with.”
Counter-arguments crowded into Dante’s mind. None of them seemed enough any more. He exhaled, irritated, cornered and hating it. “Really, Mr. Kauffman! This legend everyone is weaving around my role in the hostage situation is getting out of hand.”
“Modesty is very becoming, Dr. Guerriero, and also the mark of a true hero.” Oh, no. He didn’t get him that way. Dante had no ego to tickle in this direction. Kauffman continued, exchanging flattery for debate, “How many doctors breach impending disaster situations and not only manage to save almost everyone, but come out alive, too? Even we who live and work in areas of conflict do so only where there is relative safety. We take precautions and withdraw from openly dangerous situations. Not many risk throwing themselves into the line of fire, and almost none who actually do make it out get their charges out, too. This has been epic, and you’d better get used to it.”
Dante’s teeth screeched against each other. What he’d give for an episode of mass amnesia to counteract the sweeping mass hysteria! When would it pass? He just wanted to fade into the background, wipe this from the record, get on with his roaming—get away from Gulnar…