Chapter 2
2
After the fight to save the girl, something changed between her and Alex. But she had no idea what, exactly, it was. He watched her more than before. Studied her, even. He still didn’t talk much, but his interest was tangible. Had he finally figured out she was a reasonably attractive woman, or was he merely observing her like bacteria growing in a petri dish?
The next few days settled into a pattern. Haul water to a large tent made of skins that the locals had put up for them just outside Karshan. Haul in supplies from the Land Rover. Sleep. Eat. Sponge bathe herself, her hair, and her clothes. At night, help deliver babies. A half-dozen women came to have them. Most times, they brought someone with them—a mother or sister or cousin.
Alex taught the companions all he could about the basics of childbirth and safe after-care while Katie translated for him. She got good enough at the speech that she could do it without prompting from him.
She slept mornings and evenings, and he slept through the day as much as possible. She handled the minor medical problems that came in the door and only woke him for the big ones beyond her expertise.
Never in her life had she been anywhere this completely disconnected from…everything. No television, no Internet, no phones, no electricity, no friends. It was just her and Alex. No wonder Adam and Eve had been tempted. Sheer boredom would have driven them to it if the serpent hadn’t tricked them.
That flash of fire she’d seen in Alex the night he’d fought off death and saved that girl and her baby riveted Katie. She made excuses to brush past him or touch him now and then, but he remained frustratingly nonresponsive to her broad hints that she found him attractive.
Frankly, it drove her a little crazy. Just once, she’d love to see him let go and show that passion again.
Sometimes, she watched Alex sleep. His face looked completely different then. Relaxed and open, his features were handsome. Striking, even. His hair was coffee-colored, hovering between brown and black, and his skin retained a hint of a tan.
Must be nice. She had two skin colors: porcelain white and lobster red. The latter was achievable either by excess sun exposure or the ever popular, ‘See who can make Katie blush the worst’ game.
She guessed he was around thirty. Although his eyes sometimes looked like he’d lived a lot longer. What was his story? What had he done between medical school and his recent residency in obstetrics? What were his likes and dislikes? Did he have any hobbies?
During a lull between patients, she stared idly at him, speculating about his life when his eyes opened without warning His gray gaze drilled into her like a laser.
“Is there a problem?” he rasped. His voice was husky with sleep and so sexy her toes curled in her hiking boots.
“Nope,” she answered cheerfully to hide her embarrassment at being caught staring at him. She hastily opened her tablet reader and turned it on.
“You were looking at me.”
She had no chance of lying her way out it, so she took the direct route. “I wasn’t aware that’s a crime.”
He lifted his arms out of his sleeping bag and linked his fingers behind his head. His naked arms. The upper reaches of his bare chest peeked out of the nylon shell. A sprinkling of dark hair was visible on it. And muscles. Lots more than she’d expected. She revised her opinion of him from lean to deceptively muscular. He must wear a tuxedo like a god.
“You’re staring again,” he announced.
“And it’s rude of you to point it out,” she retorted. “Ladies are allowed to look.”
“Are gentlemen allowed, also?”
If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was flirting. Would wonders never cease?
She fanned the tiny flame carefully. “It’s expected that guys will check us out. Why else would we girls go to so much trouble to look so good?”
“I haven’t gotten the impression you’re a big primper.”
“That’s because there’s no power outlet for my blow dryer and lighted make-up mirror and the wind makes my eyes water too much to keep on even a little mascara.”
“You packed a blow dryer?” He had the bad grace to burst into laughter.
She scowled at his amusement. “Hey, I brought power converters. When I was told primitive camping, I thought they meant a Holiday Inn instead of a Marriott. Nobody told me electricity doesn’t exist out here. I was under the impression there would be, oh, I don’t know, walls and roofs.”
“You don’t need to primp. You’re fine the way you are,” he replied.
A compliment out of the good doctor? Wow. “Apology accepted,” she replied magnanimously.
He blinked, startled, as if he hadn’t meant it that way. The man might be god-level hot, and he might be a genius, but he had a lot to learn about women.
She walked over to the door to look outside, “So, does your Spidey sense say we’re going to get a lot of business tonight?”
“No. We’ll get the night off.”
She turned in surprise—whoops. He was just pulling jeans over sports trunks. Okay, then. The deceptively muscular thing extended to his legs and tush, too. She silently dubbed him Gluteus Aleximus.
He glanced up, caught her staring, and broke into a grin so hot her eyelashes singed. “Like what you see?”
“Umm…uhh…sure,” she managed to get out.
His grin widened.
He’d embarrassed her on purpose. Oh, two could play that game. She hadn’t grown up with a houseful of brothers for nothing. She could give as well as she got when it came to practical jokes.
While she pondered revenge, she busied scrambling eggs someone had brought them over the propane stove. She and Alex were frequently paid in bread, jugs of yak milk, and these over-sized eggs she hadn’t had the courage to ask the source of. Geese, maybe? Or something weirder?
In her world, every egg came from a chicken, and she was sticking with that mental image. She’d tried to explain to the local women that Doctors Unlimited was paying the two of them, but that didn’t stop their patients from showing gratitude with small gifts.
“So, Doc. Why do you think there won’t be any babies, tonight?” she asked.
He glanced up from the bucket where he was washing his hands. “I listened to the radio while you were sleeping. A rebel force is moving into the area.”
“Again?” she complained. “I swear, it’s like they’re following us!”
“Noticed that, did you?” he asked dryly.
She did a double-take. Seriously? They were being tracked? A mental image of that oversized syringe that injected the tracker in her back flashed through her mind. Surely not. Why send her to help people and then send a militia after her?
He shrugged. “With a danger of fighting breaking out, any women in labor tonight will stay home.”
“I dunno,” she responded. “Women are already braving pretty dangerous conditions to get to you. I doubt a little gunfire will slow them down.”
“The rebels are well armed and violent. When they come, they’ll crush everything in their path.”
She shook her head, unconvinced, and declared, “I’ll bet you five bucks we deliver a baby, tonight.”
The effect of her challenge on Alex was shocking. He went utterly still, and she thought she saw a shudder pass through him. The tension abruptly emanating from him was terrible in its intensity.
She was on the verge of asking him if he was okay when he turned abruptly. His gaze was hooded. Dark. And his entire being was suddenly sharply, dangerously alive. It was as if she’d woken a sleeping tiger. And now the beast was not only awake, but on the hunt.
“Shall we make the wager a little more interesting?” he purred. The sexual energy in his voice raked across her skin like claws.
Whoa . She asked cautiously, “What did you have in mind?”
“What do you like best in all the world?” he asked.
“Ice cream,” she answered promptly. It was the first thing that came to mind.
“Better than sex?” He sounded skeptical.
She shrugged. “I stand by my answer.”
He replied huskily, “Then you haven’t had good sex.”
She didn’t dare let her gaze stray south to see if he was as turned on as she was, all of a sudden.
“I think we have the terms of our bet, then.” Her gaze snapped to him as he prowled across the tiny space to less than arm’s length from her. “If you win, we have a date to eat ice cream together. If I win…” his mouth curved up in a smile that was pure sin.
Her jaw dropped. “No way!”
“A woman daring enough to travel halfway across the world, brave a war zone and death threats, living alone in the wilds with a stranger…” he shrugged. “I thought you were…more.”
More than what? More than average? More than a nice, boring nurse? More than a desperate wannabe in a family of adventurers and warriors? More than a fraud?
Stung, her gaze narrowed and she glared at him. She thrust her hand out truculently. He stared down at it uncomprehendingly.
“Are we shaking on the bet or not?” she demanded.
His dark gaze lifted to hers, and if it had been hot before, it was an inferno, now. Never breaking eye contact with her, he reached out slowly and grasped her hand. The instant heat between their palms scalded her all the way to her core.
His fingers were strong. Capable. He claimed her hand possessively, promising heretofore unimagined sensual delights.
He dropped her hand and broke the stare, turning away sharply. His ribcage lifted and dropped short and hard. At least he wasn’t entirely unaffected. As for her, she was panting like a dog in a sauna.
Holy crap, had she just agreed to have sex with him ? What on earth had she been thinking? She’d known since she was about seven years old not to let boys goad her into accepting dares. He’d just manipulated her like a master, damn him.
Of course, if she was lucky, she would win the bet and get an ice cream sundae out of the deal. That was the lucky outcome…right?
* * *
Alex stretched out on the cot in the corner, wreathed in dark shadows. It was easier to watch Katie this way. She was pretending to read—she hadn’t advanced the screen on her e-reader for several minutes.
She’d been as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs and squirt guns ever since they’d made their bet. It was highly entertaining watching her alternate between wishing to win the bet and wishing to lose. Her face was a constantly changing mosaic of emotions ranging from chagrin to suspicion that he’d set her up—which he had, blatantly—to reluctant interest, and back to chagrin.
If he were going to lie to himself, he would say he’d made the bet with her to relieve her boredom and distract her from the danger building around them. Frankly, it add a little spice for him, as well, to an otherwise tedious and miserable assignment.
If he were to be honest with himself, he would admit he found her fascinating. She was such a girly girl. Moreover, she reminded him of a shiny new penny that had never been nicked or tarnished. What must it be like to never have had anything bad happen in one’s life? The concept was beyond his comprehension. What was it like to be good ?
A compulsion to end all that innocence rolled over him. Most men would call it simple lust. But he knew it to be more complicated than that.
The girls at his various universities had all been many years older than him, deeply intellectual, and far too cool to pay any attention to a kid who spoke with a funny accent blowing out all the grade curves in their classes.
At the opposite end of the spectrum had been the groupies in the casinos. To pay his mounting medical school debts, when he’d turned eighteen, he’d parlayed his childhood talent for doing complex math computations in his head to a short but successful career as a gambler.
Hookers, show girls, and hangers-on looking to trade their bodies for access to his bank account had offered themselves to him. Not that he particularly held it against them. They were using the tools they had to climb out of life’s cesspool, while he used them to climb in.
A few women had tried to step into the role of his missing mother—social workers, counselors, even a professor or two who mentored him along the way. Their hearts had been in the right place. Hell, they might even have given him decent advice. But he hadn’t been ready to hear it. Not back then. Not before his life imploded and he sent himself to Hell.
Some would say he’d always been in Hell and had just managed to find a stairway down to a deeper circle of it. They were also the ones who tended to declare him a lost cause, doomed to wallow in his own black pit of despair. He was inclined to agree with that crowd.
A faint rumble rolled down the valley outside, and Katie looked up sharply, startled.
“It’s just thunder,” he murmured drowsily, pretending to be half-asleep.
“No, it’s not. That was a mortar explosion,” she retorted tersely.
“And you know this how?” he asked with more alert interest.
“My dad was a Green Beret. We lived on army bases when I was a kid.” Another explosion sounded, closer this time, and she announced with certainty, “And that was a rocket-propelled grenade.”
Fuck . Supposedly harmless little Katie McCloud kept throwing him monkey wrenches. He needed her to be no factor in this mission, a know-nothing civilian who’d never been overseas and had no field experience. She was supposed to be na?ve. A bit of a dingbat. Manageable, dammit.
But instead she was turning out to be a dangerous wildcard. She was so damned quick on the uptake. Worse, she could sense a lie from a mile away and read his moods like very few people he’d ever known. She could even accurately tell how he was feeling.
And she could fricking tell mortars from RPG’s?
He swore silently and with great fervor. Why hadn’t anyone told him that about her?
“Someone will come to us, tonight,” she declared.
“Still holding out hope for that ice cream?” he asked lightly. Her gaze snapped to his and then slid away. Mmm hmm. She was thinking hard about what would happen if he won the bet instead of her. Hell, so was he.
So far on this mission, he’d exercised iron will not to let his mind stray to the possibilities between them, together in the wilderness, bored, attracted to each other. His control had slipped—badly—when he’d suggested the bet. She’d broken through his self-discipline somehow, and he didn’t have a clue how she’d done it. And that worried him.
He’d carefully locked away the darker side of his soul long ago and kept it under tight wraps. But damned if he wasn’t dying of curiosity to see how she would react to that other side of him. The dangerous side.
He’d never dreamed she would actually accept the bet. No woman like her—sweet, pure, and kind—would make a wager with the Devil. And yet, she had, revealing a risk-taking streak he’d totally missed in his initial assessment of her.
Unpredictable, she was. An outlier in his experience with women. Worst of all, it made her damn near irresistible.
She seemed so straightforward on the surface. An all-American girl. Her insistence on washing her hair every other day, even if the water from the river was barely above freezing, spoke of care for her physical appearance. And the way she accessorized her mannish mountain jacket with frilly, fringed scarves and fuzzy earmuffs shouted of her need to demonstrate her femininity. Growing up in the house full of brothers explained that, he supposed.
Ten-to-one she polished her toenails?—
He swore violently at himself. No more odds. No more bets. He was done with all of that. Down that path lay damnation and ruin.
As darkness fell, she moved to stand in the tent’s doorway, gazing down the valley, her arms wrapped around her middle. She became a willowy silhouette against the twilight and then a mysterious shadow blending with the night. A need to consume her, body, mind, and soul, burned in his gut like brimstone.
A gentleman would let her out of their bet since it seemed to disturb her so much. But then, gentlemen didn’t often make it down to his end of Hell. And a deal was a deal, even if it was with the Devil.
He announced grimly, “I’m going to get as much sleep as I can while we have a break. You should do the same. We won’t get many chances to catch up on rest while we’re out here.”
She untied the hide door and let it drop over the opening. Out of the darkness, she asked, “Are you always so sure of yourself?”
“If you’re asking if I’m always right, most of the time, yes.”
“Some people would call that arrogance.” A match flared as she lit the propane stove and turned it down to a low glow. This tent made of yak hides held heat remarkably well.
“Just stating the facts.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Odds are you won’t get much sleep tomorrow night. Therefore, you should sleep now.”
Her mouth sagged open. Amused at the burgeoning outrage snapping in her eyes and disinterested in enduring a lecture from a ruffled female, he laid down on his cot, presenting his back to her.
“Someday, Alex Peters, something or someone is going to come along and knock you off that perfect pedestal of yours. I sincerely hope I’m there to see it.”
He snorted. That had been taken care of a very long time ago. But she had no reason to know it and he had no reason to tell her. The past was over and done with.
They’d told him to start a new life. To move forward in this new identity.
Too bad no one had told him how.
* * *
Katie listened to quiet sound of Alex’s breathing. Every minute or so, it was punctuated by an explosion of one kind or another from outside. She identified ground fire and artillery. Even if it was still several miles away, bit by bit, it was moving closer to their position.
What if Alex was right? What if this area was about to be overrun by the low-intensity brush war raging across this barren region? She’d heard war stories around her family’s kitchen table for long enough to know that no war was low-intensity to a person caught in the middle of it.
A new sound outside sent her to the door of the tent. It was a high-pitched engine, like a fighter jet, but too quiet for an airplane. Still, it sounded close. Perplexed, she scanned the sky. Whoa. That was a drone. It was big—the size of a small airplane with a bulbous protrusion on its belly that looked like a radar dome.
She ducked back into the tent. Alex had thrown their gray tarp over the top of the tent when they’d arrived, and when she’d asked him about it, he’d explained the tarp had metal fibers woven into it that prevented various surveillance systems from seeing through it. Apparently, the tarps were standard gear for D.U. staff and helped them avoid detection when they were treating patients in a hostile area.
As the noise of the drone retreated, she poked her head back out to watch it. At the head of the valley, it made a big one-eighty turn and commenced flying back down toward Karshan village. That looked like some sort of search pattern.
What was it looking for? And more to the point, who was flying it? Who had an expensive military-grade resource out here, and what were they doing with it in this remote corner of the world?
She was tempted to wake Alex, ask him to pull out the satellite radio, and have him get an intelligence update from D.U. headquarters. Her in-briefer had mentioned the organization worked with a private intelligence firm and had excellent contacts at various major governmental intelligence agencies around the world.
But Alex struck her as the type who wouldn’t be asleep right now if he thought any imminent threats were nearby.
She’d sent her brother, Ian, an email from Karachi when she’d first met Alex, asking Ian to do a quick background check on him. After all, she was going to be alone with him in the middle of nowhere for a long time. If he was a creepy stalker or something, she wanted to know.
Ian’s reply had taken two days, which was glacially slow for him. He’d said there was very little background on Peters and the guy kept an extremely low profile, but he’d found no red flags in his history.
But then her brother had gone on to give her oddly specific instructions regarding her new partner. She should earn Alex Peters’ trust. Find out if he was up to anything besides delivering babies out here and let Ian know what she learned.
She’d responded to Ian, asking him what he suspected Alex of, but her brother’d fed her a bullshit line about not wanting to taint her impressions of the doctor. He’d added a line to the end of his email telling her to stay in touch, but she’d gotten the impression it was less about brotherly concern and more about wanting to keep tabs on Alex.
The sounds of battle waned after an hour or so. Whether the fighting had moved away from them or wound down, she couldn’t tell. Alex continued to sleep, but he’d been working nearly around the clock since they got to this village several days ago. His prediction that people would flock in from all around to get medical care had turned out to be correct.
She hoped tonight’s lack of patients meant they’d gotten through the locals’ most pressing medical problems and not that urgent patients were simply unable to travel because of the fighting.
Although not tired, she stretched out on her cot and closed her eyes. Sleep refused to come. Instead images of her and Alex naked and in each other’s’ arms danced through her mind, unbidden and unwelcome.
Sex with Alex Peters? The notion had her tied in so many knots she could hardly see straight. Surely, he wouldn’t make her go through with it if he won the bet. Thing was, she’d been raised to keep promises and honor her word. And he struck her as the kind of man who would demand no less of her.
What had she been thinking to agree to such a crazy wager? Of course, the answer was she hadn’t been thinking. Her impulsive nature had gotten her into a pickle like it always did. Would she never learn?
Although how bad could sex be with the good doctor? He’d been genuinely shocked when she’d chosen ice cream over sex. Did he know something about it that she didn’t? Did they talk about sex in his medical school? Hers certainly hadn’t.
Had someone else taught him the secrets of fantastic sex? Knowing him, he’d studied the subject and had applied his formidable intellect to mastering the art of lovemaking.
Or maybe he’d just slept with a lot of women and had a lot of practice. Lord knew he was attractive. Strike that. He was a hunk. Smexy —smart and sexy.
She didn’t usually go for the dangerous, brooding types. But she had to admit he wasn’t so bad to be around. Exuberant guys had a tendency to exhaust her with their noisy drama.
Sure, she was the exuberant type, herself, but at the end of the day, drama wasn’t her thing. At least Alex was predictable… when he wasn’t making shockingly inappropriate bets with his co-worker, that was. He was predictably brilliant. Predictably clueless about women. And predictably, sometimes infuriatingly, enigmatic.
She gave up on sleep and decided to get a little exercise. She did a modified yoga routine in the tiny open floorspace between their cots and the medical gear, then paced between the door of the tent and her cot for close to an hour.
Eventually, Alex muttered, “Lie down, Katie. You’re keeping me awake with all your fretting. Get some sleep.
She did lie back down, but the shelling resumed soon and kept her wide awake for much of the night.
Around four a.m., the shelling finally wound down. No women had come to the tent asking for the baby doctor. With the bet’s end looming, she seriously considered heading for the next village and going door-to-door looking for women in labor. Okay, she wasn’t serious about canvassing the neighborhood for business. But she wanted to do it.
As the first hint of dawn touched the peaks at the opposite rim of the valley, she reluctantly admitted defeat and burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag.
What had she done?
Why did she have a feeling deep down in her gut that she’d jumped off a cliff and just didn’t know it, yet?
* * *
Katie woke with a jolt and was startled to see sunlight streaming in the open tent door. “What time is it?” she mumbled, disoriented.
No one answered, and she came fully awake, alarmed. The tent was empty. Where’s Alex?
“It’s after noon,” he answered from outside.
She leaped out of the sleeping bag, shocked. Her feet hit the icy cold oiled canvas floor and she hopped uncomfortably from foot to foot until she could slip on her hiking boots. She gathered her hair up in a high ponytail. Today was hair washing day, and she already dreaded dousing her head in ice water. But it was better than having greasy hair.
Alex ducked inside the tent and handed her a steaming mug of coffee. She inhaled the bitter, roasted aroma with relish. She wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of coffee, but it was the smell of home. Of the civilized world beyond this isolated valley. Of life’s little indulgences.
“Thank you,” she murmured. Alex didn’t reply as he moved past her to the back of the tent.
She took an appreciative sip of the strong coffee and asked him, “Why don’t you ever say, ‘you’re welcome’ or something to that effect?”
“It’s redundant. I’ve already done something polite or thoughtful and the recipient has acknowledged it. There’s no need for further exchange.”
“Are you always so…cold-blooded in your approach to human interactions?” she followed up curiously.
He moved shockingly fast to stand right behind her. Her pulse leaped at his proximity. Was he going to collect on the bet right now? She started to feel light-headed, and her legs trembled so badly with an urge to bolt that they barely supported her weight.
“No, Katie.” His whisper slid across her skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “I’m not cold-blooded about everything.”
Her breath hitched.
A single finger touched the nape of her neck right and drew a path down her spine to the top of her t-shirt. “For the record, I’m not going to fall on you and ravish you like some clumsy American college co-ed.”
She turned sharply to escape that disturbingly sensual touch “You’re American, aren’t you?”
“I’m a citizen, yes.”
“But?”
“But my father didn’t raise me to act American.”
“How do you feel about that?”
He shrugged. “I would never have fit in anyway. I was too smart ever to be normal.”
“Do you always intellectualize painful things?” she asked curiously.
That seemed to stop him in his tracks. At length he said, “Why not? It works.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Because it’s a good thing to feel your feelings from time to time? To acknowledge them and deal with them?”
“Why would I want to do that?” he said in distaste.
“Because it’s good for your mental and emotional health!” she exclaimed.
He snorted in patent disagreement and shot back, “Has anything truly terrible every happened to you?”
“Depends on how you define terrible,” she answered.
“Something devastating that knocks your world off its axis.”
She had to think about that. “I was really close with my grandmother. She was a nurse and was the reason I went into it. She didn’t live to see me graduate from nursing school.”
“Let me guess. She was a hundred years old, everyone who knew her loved her, and she lived a rich and productive life.”
“She was only ninety-four,” Katie answered a little defensively.
He stepped close, and she was abruptly aware of how much taller he was. He asked harshly, “You’ve never had everything you believed in ripped away from you? Never experienced regret so bad it burns a hole through your heart that won’t heal? Never made a mistake that costs you everything?”
She shook her head, her throat tight. He sounded as if all those things had happened to him. She opened her mouth to ask him when and how, but he cut her off.
“If you had any sense, you’d run away from me as fast as you could, little girl.”
She bristled at being called a little girl. “I’m not a child. I can handle anything you can throw at me.”
“We’ll see about that,” he muttered.
His eyes burned for a moment with a hot, unholy fire. But upon second look, it was just a trick of the late afternoon sunlight reflecting off his light gray eyes. Still, the fire inside him tempted her, arousing something restless and dangerous deep in her belly.
He swore under his breath in a language she didn’t recognize. But it was definitely cursing. He spun and headed outside, grabbing the water bucket as stormed out. She listened to his angry footsteps retreat down the path to the river and, very slowly, let out the breath she’d been holding.
Alex was completely uncommunicative when he returned from the river, his hair wet, and he retreated immediately into the tent to take a nap. She washed her hair with the bucket of water and perched on a flat boulder beside the tent to brush it out. While it dried, she watched the sun slide behind the mountains and tried to guess at what had happened to Alex to leave such darkness in his soul.
His question disturbed her. So what if nothing tragic had ever happened in her life? That wasn’t her fault. She and her family had been lucky. She got the feeling he hadn’t been so lucky, though. A desire to know him rattled around in her gut...along with trepidation at what she might learn. People didn’t get that cynical without some serious crap in their past.
It was windy today, and the dust in the atmosphere made for a spectacular sunset that stretched into the heavens overhead. As beautiful as it was, it also marked the passage of time. Would Alex insist on collecting his winnings when he woke up? He’d said he doubted she would get much sleep, tonight. Was he referring the bet, or patients, or something else altogether?
How had he been so certain he would win, anyway? Suspicion took root in her mind that he’d heard something on the radios or gotten inside knowledge of some kind and thrown the bet. He struck her as the kind of person to whom winning would be more important than splitting ethical hairs over how he won.
“Time to come in,” Alex said quietly behind her.
She nodded and slipped into the dark tent. Alex closed the hide flap and tied it closed before lighting the stove for the evening. Any light source in this non-electrified region would stand out like a sore thumb after dark, and they dared not announce their presence like that.
She figured local men had to be getting suspicious by now. Women sneaking out at night to have their babies, and all of them coming back alive? Something was up with that. The ones who gave half a crap about their wives and daughters might tacitly approve of a western doctor to the extent that they didn’t rat out her and Alex. But eventually, someone would say something to the seriously hardcore anti-western types in the area.
Desperate to keep Alex’s mind off sex as she pulled out two freeze dried meal packs and put water on the stove to boil, she asked, “How much longer do you think we’ll be able to stay here before we have to move?”
“I give it two more days. I give it a twelve percent probability of our being confronted and forced to leave, tonight. Double that tomorrow, and double it again the day after.”
Crud. Mental math required . Twelve times two was twenty-four, times two was forty-eight. “That’s almost even odds in three days,” she blurted.
“Like I said. Two days from now, we’re out of here.”
“Should we leave tonight?” she asked in alarm.
“We should certainly start packing.”
She nodded and dived into the task while the water heated. As long as she was busy doing her job, he couldn’t have his wicked way with her. As she filled the marked boxes with medical gear, he hauled them one-by-one down to the Land Rover.
He’d just gotten back from carrying down a bag of miscellaneous camping gear they could do without for the next day when an explosion ruptured the night.
“Uhh, Alex?” she said nervously, “that was pretty close.”
He looked up from pouring hot water into the food pouches and sealing them shut. “No more than a half-mile away.”
And how, exactly, did a physician know how to judge distance of artillery fire? She headed for the door to look outside, but another explosion, much closer, made her flinch violently. Alex lunged across the tiny space, slapping the lid down on the propane stove, extinguishing its flame. Then his arm went around her waist and, all but lifting her off her feet, he dragged her back from the door.
She tried to ask him what the heck that was for, but his other hand went over her mouth as he yanked her back against his hard body. Heat seeped through her clothing, and had she not been straining to hear what had freaked him out, she might have enjoyed it. But as it was, she went as still and tense as him.
There it was. The sound of people moving down by the river. Maybe a half-dozen by the sounds of their scuffling. A male voice floated up the hill saying something in the local dialect about engaging rebels in the lower pass.
Alex backed up, taking her with him, and sat down on the cot in the back of the tent, which had the effect of landing her in his lap. She lurched as his hot breath touched her right ear. And then, oh, God, his lips moved against it.
He breathed, “We’re going to have to wait out the battle until it moves on, and then we’ll bug out. We’ll take whatever supplies we can carry in one trip down the mountain, so figure out what you’re taking. But until then, no lights and no sound. Understood?”
She nodded and felt her hair slide across his cheek. His hand fell away from her mouth, and he lifted her off his lap.
He moved into the corner and quietly opened one of the medical boxes. When he came back, he pressed something cold and heavy into her hand. She recognized the rough grip and heft of a pistol.
“Do you know how to use this?” he whispered.
“Green beret dad and five brothers in the military.” She ran her fingers over the weapon in the dark. “Luger .22 with an extended clip. Standard model.” She clicked off the safety and rested her index finger beside the trigger guard as she laid the weapon in her lap.
“You can tell that just by feel?” He added grimly, “If we get out of here alive, you and I need to talk.”
He sank down onto the cot beside her.
Her eyes were adapting to the dark, and she saw his right hand resting by his hip, presumably holding a weapon, as well. She shivered a little, belatedly registering that the night was growing cold around them fast without their propane heater to ward off the chill. He held out his left arm, barely visible in the dark, and she accepted the invitation gratefully.
He tucked her close against his side. His body was solid and warm, and it was reassuring to huddle against him. A shell whistled overhead and a tremendous explosion nearby sent dust raining down on them.
How long they sat there listening to the artillery barrage blasting the valley around them, she didn’t know. An hour, maybe. The explosions ebbed and waned, sometimes close, sometimes farther away. Small arms fire announced that the rebels and local ground forces were engaging in direct combat down by the river, perhaps a quarter mile away.
She heard the high-pitched jet sound again. Another drone. But this time, the whine of its engine was followed immediately by the sound of ordinance exploding in an airburst nearby. Was someone shooting at the drone, or was it an attack drone? But who in the world would have access to that kind of weaponry out here?
Yet another whistling artillery scream pierced the night. A big explosion deafened Katie as a flash illuminated the tent. She looked up and a little scream escaped her as a black figure loomed in the doorway of their tent. She yanked up her pistol to shoot the intruder, but Alex was faster. He slammed his hand over her pistol, shoving it down to the cot before she could pull the trigger.
What the?—
He was on his feet, moving as fast as a cat to the shadow in the door. He took the person by the arm and guided him or her inside.
It dawned on Katie that the shadow was much shorter than Alex. And clothed in voluminous robes. Crap. She’d almost shot a local woman.
“Talk to her,” Alex ordered low. “But keep it quiet. I’m going out to have a look around.”
Katie nodded and waited out a momentary lull in the shooting. As a spray of small arms fire started up again, she used the noise to murmur, “Do you need medical help?”
“My baby. It comes,” a young voice moaned.
“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Katie replied. “Lie down here, and Doctor Alex will take care of you. How far apart are your contractions?”
The girl told her they were irregular, sometimes four or five minutes apart, sometimes closer. Katie quizzed her on where she felt the contractions—mostly in her back—and if she’d ever had a baby before—this was her first.
She’d covered the girl in a blanket and was just turning back its hem to undress the girl when Alex announcing himself with a quiet murmur outside before he stepped in. Good call. She would hate to shoot him without knowing where the car keys were.
“Keep her dressed,” Alex ordered when Katie reached for the hem of the girl’s burka.
“Why?”
“We may need to move her.” He sat down at the foot of the cot to examine the patient, shielding a flashlight with his hand.
“But she’s having a baby,” Katie replied blankly.
“Haven’t you ever watched Gone With the Wind?” he retorted under his breath. “Babies don’t care if a city’s burning down around mom. They come when they come.”
“This isn’t Atlanta, nor is it the nineteenth century,” Katie whispered back. She’d watched enough women push with all their might to deliver babies to know that during childbirth was no time to move a patient.
“Tell that to the soldiers out there,” Alex retorted from between the girl’s knees. “She’s dilated eight centimeters. Time her contractions for me.”
Ten centimeters was the magic number when Alex allowed women to start pushing. Some women went from eight to ten in a half-hour. Some took hours to get there. Katie waited in tense silence for the girl’s next contraction to start and end.
“Three minutes apart, one minute in duration,” she reported in the rumbling aftermath of some sort of shell exploding.
“We’ve probably got a little time, then,” Alex remarked. “Stay with her. I’ll be back.”
Shocked, Katie watched him glide outside of the tent and disappear into the night.
“Where—“ the girl blurted in alarm.
Katie shushed her hastily. “He’ll be back. He’s just checking the battle. Stay as quiet as you can.”
“Cursed, greedy Tatars,” the girl muttered. “They think to destroy us. They are demons who take our land. Steal the food from our mouths. Poison the wells, salt the fields. I curse them unto the end of time--” She devolved into a low moan as a contraction hit.
Katie frowned, not understanding the Tatar reference. Weren’t they nomadic raiders from southern Russia from the time of, oh, Genghis Khan? The girl’s language sounded old. Religious in nature. But clan rivalries and tribal feuding had been going on out here as long as humans had lived in these barren mountains. It was a revealing glimpse into mankind’s violent and harsh past. Frankly, she found it miraculous that humans had survived their own homicidal tendencies to populate the planet.
In the flashes of artillery explosions, the girl looked to be in her late teens. And pretty. Really pretty. Her eyes were big and dark and doe-shaped, her black hair lush around a heart-shaped face high-fashion models would envy. It seemed strange, though, that a girl this young would have made her way to their tent by herself.
“Does anyone know you’re here?” Katie whispered to the girl.
Fear made the girl’s eyes even bigger as she shook her head vigorously. “My family does not know I am pregnant.”
Katie stared. “How is that possible?”
“I am not married. I wear loose robes. I pretend to eat a lot and tell them I am gaining weight. But I really don’t eat much and try to stay thin.”
In this culture, of all cultures, Katie supposed it might be possible to hide a pregnancy if a woman was really careful. Then the rest of this girl’s dilemma hit her. An unmarried girl, pregnant. In a society where sex outside of marriage was punishable by death. No wonder she’d hidden the pregnancy.
“What will you do with your baby when it comes?”
Anger flared in the girl’s eyes. “Kill it.”