Barefoot in Pearls (Barefoot Bay Brides Book 3) (30 page)

“You like that type?”

“I found her to be attractive in a California-girl way, yes.”

“I have California in my blood,” she said with a slightly teasing tone. “Miwok are from Sacramento.”

He looked through the bubbles and steam, took in her wet hair, some strands sticking to her face, which was flushed from the heat. She looked like a witch, all right, a beautiful, sexy, fiery witch bubbling in her own cauldron. And it took every ounce of strength not to leap up, strip down, and climb in.

“Let’s just say my type has recently changed.”

He saw her close her eyes and fight a smile.

“But, yes, she was quite beautiful and a bit impetuous.” He wasn’t sure why he included that character trait, except that maybe it let him off the hook a little.

“And you said you loved her.”

“I…thought I did. Yes,” he corrected. “I did.” So, so much. Crazy, hard, achy, mood-altering love. But after she died, that just felt stupid and foolish, so over the years, he’d convinced himself he couldn’t have loved her. Because that would just make him a blind idiot.

“What happened?”

“Her father was on the take in a big, bad way,” he said simply. “He had everyone in his pocket. The
garimpeiros
, mostly.”

“The whatempeiros?”

“The Brazilians who came illegally over the border to steal gold from the mines. There were others from Suriname, too. And, of course, the Wayampi.”

She sat up a little. “Natives?”

“Native to that region of French Guiana, but they are actually French citizens. Not a huge tribe, just a few thousand villagers, but they have a lucrative business supporting the Brazilians and Surinamers in the mines, paid in gold.”

“How did they support the miners?”

He gave a dry snort. “All kinds of ways, but one of them was to let the smallest children into the tiny crevices to dig for gold.”

She made a face, and his heart dropped. She didn’t know the half of it.

“Anyway, the prefect was paid to keep his mouth shut and let them do their thing.”

“And why is the Foreign Legion there?” she asked.

“To stop the gold mining, to tear down the little villages that popped up around new mines, to confiscate tools, and arrest anyone caught mining. That’s what my regiment was doing while I pulled the prefect guard duty.”

“And fell hard for the prefect’s daughter,” she surmised. Correctly. “How old was she?”

“Twenty-four,” he said.

“Did the prefect know about your relationship?”

“Most certainly. And used it to his advantage.” Tried to use it to save his own life, in fact. Luke pushed up, repositioning himself as if he could get away from the uncomfortable memories. But he couldn’t.

“How so?”

“He needed me to do a job for him,” he said, a low grade of heat rising as he thought about how heinous that job was. “You see, he was a double-, triple-, even a quadruple-dipper, and those kind of people generally meet their untimely demises. Essentially, he’d been caught taking far more than his share of gold profits, and one group of the more aggressive
garimpeiros
had a plan to do something about it.”

“How?”

“Kill him.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, whoa.” He puffed out a breath. “He knew what was going on and got Cerisse to convince me that he needed help. He knew where they were mining that day and decided he’d kill them before they killed him.” He closed his eyes, remembering the hole in the ground and how they’d lowered kids—the smallest but strongest—to do the dirtiest of work. “He sent me to do the job.”

“To kill the gold miners?” Her voice rose in disbelief. “Why?”

“Because I was his bodyguard, Arielle. My job was to stop any threats to the prefect or his family.”

“By killing them?”

“Well, if someone lunged at him while he was making a speech or raised a gun to assassinate him, I sure as hell would have shot to kill.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

No, it wasn’t. “The man I was protecting demanded that I drop a grenade into a hundred-foot-deep mining cave, where about eighteen illegal miners—including at least six very small Wayampi children—were working.”

She sucked in a breath loud enough to hear over the bubbling of the Jacuzzi.

“And his daughter, terrified for her father’s life, agreed that I should.” No, she demanded, screaming that if he loved her, he would do this.

“Really? I mean, wasn’t there an answer other than killing innocent children?”

“You’d think.” He shifted again, then stood to stretch his legs. “I’ll tell you, Arielle, gold makes people lose their shit.” He turned from her, walking toward the wrought-iron railing to look out at the water. “Did you know that the nucleus of the gold atom is larger than most elements? There’s something about the chemistry of gold, I once read, that when light hits it and then bounces back to the human eye to strike the retinal wall, there is a pleasure message sent to the brain.”

“And here I thought it was because gold powers our economy.”

“Other way around,” he corrected. “Gold has no intrinsic value except what we place on it, and ancient alchemists believed that it was part of heaven. Did you know that?”

“Careful, Mr. Rational. You’re starting to sound like me.”

He gripped the railing with one hand and balled up the silky thong he still held with the other.

“Finish your story,” she prodded.

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Of course you couldn’t. So what did you do?”

“I sneaked out and warned the miners. I drove out to the mine at night, when I knew they were working. I knew it could cost me my bodyguard position if I got caught, maybe even get me kicked out of the regiment and off to a shittier assignment.”

“Would that have been so horrible?”

“I didn’t want to leave Cerisse,” he confessed. “And, I really liked the job, best I’d ever had in the Legion…until this turn of events.”

He grew quiet, thinking of the night not unlike this one. Cool, moonlit, the jungle floor reeking of earth and trouble. He’d found the mine and sat in his Jeep, waiting for one of the miners to climb out and approach him.

He’d heard the engine of another vehicle and turned, catching Cerisse’s shiny blond hair reflected above the headlights.

“They came after me, Prefect Pacquet at the wheel and Cerisse next to him, eyes blazing and…and…a grenade in her hand.”

Behind him, he heard another soft intake of breath and a splash. “What?”

He didn’t turn, not wanting to see her disgust and disbelief that he could love a woman like that. Because he had loved her. He really had.

“She jumped out of the Jeep and ran to me, holding out that weapon like Eve offering the apple.”

“Did you take it?”

“Of course.” He fisted the silk thong again, remembering the feel of that deadly device against the palm of his hand. “I didn’t want her to throw it in the mine.”

Would she have? He’d never know.

Another splash. “And?”

“And her father came at us with a .357 Magnum in his hand, demanding I throw the grenade.”

And then the sound of a small voice, Taka’s voice, calling out in the chopped sounds of the native language, his little hand appearing at the top of the mine. He could hear Cerisse’s French demands, shrill and relentless.

Tu veux que mon père te tue?

Yes, at that instant, he
did
want her father to kill him. Death would have been better than making that decision. Much better. But, then, she might have thrown the fucking grenade in the hole after he was dead.

He closed his eyes, the whole scene playing over and over in his head. Cerisse rushing back to get closer to her father. The flash of light. The explosion. The shot. Taka’s scream and…

“And there was a little boy coming out of the mine.”

He heard Arielle’s soft gasp, and nodded as if to echo the sentiment.

“I knew someone was going to die. Me. The kid. The old man. Cerisse. Someone.” He grunted softly when two hands landed on his back.

“What happened, Luke?”

“I threw the grenade in the opposite direction, hoping it would divert everyone and stop the madness. But the prefect raised his gun at me, and I moved on instinct, going for my weapon. As I pulled it out, he fired and I fired back, but…” He couldn’t finish.

“But what?”

“But the old man grabbed his daughter to use her as a human shield, so fast I didn’t have time to stop my trigger finger, and the bullet went through her and into his chest. They both died almost instantly.”

He let his head drop, the shame and anguish and self-loathing that eroded his soul on a daily basis burning in his gut right now.

“Luke.” She tried to turn him around, but he stayed stiff, refusing to meet her gaze. “Luke, you saved those children and those natives.”

He squeezed his eyes, not surprised they stung. “But the prefect’s bullet hit the boy just as he emerged from the mine, a five-year-old boy. A boy who will never walk again,” he ground out, hating the tears that stung his eyes. “So I killed the two people I was supposed to be protecting and ruined a child’s life.”

“Luke!” She tried again to force him around, but he couldn’t stand to look at her right then. “That man wanted to kill children, and she was going to help! And the boy lived.”

“Fortunately, that’s how the Legion saw it, too,” he said. “France wanted to keep it very quiet. So there was no recrimination for me, but I quit the Legion the very day I could.” He sighed. “And I haven’t stopped working one minute since then.”

“Working?” Her voice rose with confusion. “To take your mind off it?”

“To make money. I have to have a steady, constant income, Arielle, because I support Takalawe and his family. I moved them out of the gold mines and set them up on a small farm just outside the village. Taka has a wheelchair and…” Behind him, he felt her shudder.

Turning, he saw her face wet with tears, her lip quivering as she fought a sob. “You’re doing that?”

“Of course,” he said. “He would have died without help, and the family—”

“And that’s why you have to have a job.”

“Always. I will never let that family want anything, regardless of where I live. I didn’t know any other trade or business but building because it’s pretty much half of what Legionnaires do. Anything else would take too much training or education, and I don’t have time or enough savings because…”

“Because you take care of…Taka?”

He nodded, fighting a smile. “He’s a great kid, too.”

A little whimper escaped her throat as she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her tear-soaked cheek against his shoulder and her dripping wet body against his clothes. “Grandma Good Bear would love you.”

He smiled against her hair, the compliment like balm on his wretched conscience. “I don’t see it that way.”

She looked up at him. “Which is the most awesome part.” She gave him a squeeze. “I’m really sorry you had to make that decision and those people died, and sorry that soured you on trust and love, and sad that little boy is in a wheelchair.”

He was glad there was no but. “Thanks, I am, too.”

“And I’m really glad you haven’t been with a woman since then.”

“I’m not,” he admitted. “But I didn’t trust myself or my judgment after that. I don’t have your intuition for what’s right and wrong, what’s good and bad, who’s meant for me and who’s not.”

“I have enough intuition for both of us.” She smiled up at him. “You are a hero.” She lifted on her toes and put her mouth over his, the kiss tender and full of promise and healing. “And you know why you saw that woman’s true colors and you had to stop her from killing children and wait and wait and wait to be with another woman? Do you know why?”

“Because I was meant to find you?”

She sighed and smiled and closed her eyes. “I wish that hadn’t been a question but a statement.”

So did he. “How can we know for sure?”

“I already do.”

He felt his heart skip around, wanting so much for her to be right. “You know.”

She nodded. “I’ve never been more sure. Luke, I am The One for you, and you are The One for me, and right now we are going to make love, and it will be absolutely laden with significance and wonder, and the universe will sing for happiness because we found each other or…”

“Or what?”

“Or we’ll just have the best damn sex of our lives.”

He felt his mouth kick up in a smile. “Let’s find out.”

Chapter Twenty-four

They kissed with purpose, and that purpose was connection. Not sex, not pleasure, not the desire that sliced through them. They needed each other in a way that…well, that Ari had never felt before.

That need had her shaking as she balled up his T-shirt to get it over his head, but his hands were sure and steady, already exploring her naked body. When his chest was bare, she splayed her hands over his pecs and rubbed each cut and angle, loving the heat, the hair, the slamming heart under her fingertips.