Camouflaged (Hiding From Love #0.5) (2 page)

She shook her head at me and bit down on her lip. “No. No. This is what has to be. I cannot take the risk of being with you for a
fuck.
” She spat out the word as if it were a bitter piece of food. “As enjoyable as it is, it’s not worth my life.
You
. Are not worth my life, Gabe Thompson” She moved past me to the door of the room and walked through it.

I followed her in silence, knowing she was absolutely right.

When we reached the other room, she faced away from me, intent on filling a tea kettle from the lone faucet in the house. I walked up behind her and reached around to place the chocolate bar I’d brought with me on the table next to her. She loved chocolate, and whenever I could get hold of a bar, I made sure to bring it to her. She didn’t touch it; just continued making her tea.

I stood looking at her tiny frame and thinking how, if I could, I would take all her pain away, all her suffering, all her past. If I could, I would bring her husband back so she didn’t have to live like a whore on the outskirts of town at the mercy of the local Taliban. If I could, I would erase me from her mind so she’d never have had visions of love and happiness. Visions I could never make real for her.

“Natalya,” I said quietly. She didn’t reply. I gently laid my hand on her shoulder and felt her tense at the touch. “I’m not that guy. I never will be. I’m like my old man and his old man before him. We don’t rescue people. We aren’t nice guys. We don’t fall in love.”

“Just go,” she whispered and I did.

T
wo
days later, the guilt about Natalya still gnawed at me, but I was a twenty-two year-old guy who thought about sex—a lot—and I couldn’t help wondering where I was going to get some action now that she’d kicked me to the curb. Afghanistan wasn’t exactly teeming with ready and able women, and I’d just blown one of the only decent options for a few dozen miles.

When I’d first heard about the young half-Russian, half-Afghani widow living outside of town, I hadn’t thought much of it. The guys in camp were always going on about one woman or another, whether it was one of the other soldiers in our unit or some local chick they’d seen in the village. But after Nick had figuratively blown the entire town up, no one touched any of the local girls, and most of them didn’t even
look
at locals longer than a few seconds. The result was that we were a bunch of really horny dudes most of the time. I was only interested in interactions I could get in and out of easily. There wasn’t much opportunity for that in Afghanistan.

However, everyone was stoked over the widow. The base had hired her to do some basic translations for them when they met with village officials, but it wasn’t enough to alter her circumstances. She was a different species in the eyes of the local men—a leftover from the Russian occupation, damaged goods because she wasn’t a virgin, and she had no male relatives to protect her. It was sad, but a fact of life in this country—the women were at the mercy of the men, and often the men were anything but merciful.

When I met her, I was patrolling the village market. Once I’d pieced together who she was, I realized quickly that she wasn’t getting enough money doing translations. She was half starved and living in a shack with no heat. There weren’t exactly a lot of jobs she could get paid for as a woman. She and I never discussed her situation, but she seemed to enjoy being with me, and I did what I could to make her little shack more comfortable. You could hardly call chocolate bars, a blanket, some kitchen utensils, and a little manual labor big help, but my options were nearly as limited as hers.

Sometime into the third or fourth month after we’d started sleeping together, it became apparent Natalya was confused about the nature of our interactions. When she told me she loved me as she came one night, I tried to blow it off as the heat of the moment, but then the questions and the hints started. What was I going to do after my tour? Did I have a girlfriend at home? What was my family like? I had to put an end to that shit fast.

She handled it well and acted like it was all good, so I kept visiting every Thursday night. But having sex with her got more and more difficult when I knew there were emotions involved—her love, and my guilt. When she finally told me to get lost, it was mostly a relief. Except to my dick, which was sorely disappointed.

“Hey, Thompson!” Benji’s voice woke me out of my haze. I gave him a chin lift in greeting. “Did you hear about the UN group coming through?”

I stayed on the ground next to the truck I was checking out. There was nothing worse than the thought of being off-base, where we were always vulnerable, with a vehicle that was broken down. Consequently, before we drove anywhere, we checked them thoroughly.

“Nah, I wasn’t paying attention when Davis started into all that crap. Melanie was telling me about how she beat Corbin in poker last night. That was a lot more interesting.”

“Well, homeboy,” he said, a giant grin spreading across his face. “We’re getting a contingent of UN Human Rights inspectors in to see the conditions in the area, and included in the group are a couple of dozen college interns, homey. As in college girls!
Yjola
, bro. I used to watch those college girls from USC in South Central. Man. Those were some fine women, and they looove to take a walk on the wild side, my friend.”

I snorted at his enthusiasm and his barrio slang that only came out when he was really amped about something. Standing up and wiping my hands on the grease rag I had, I said, “Dude, take a chill, will you? Number one, you don’t know if there are any women in that group. I mean, how many rich American parents would let their little princesses go to Afghanistan in the middle of all this? Number two, why do you think they’d be interested in your hairy ass?”

“Fuck you, Thompson. I try to bring you a little good news to brighten up your pathetic day and you can’t even be grateful. $50 says there’s women in the group, and another $10 says I can bang one of them.”

I laughed. “You’re a lot more confident in the odds of there being women than you are in your chances of bagging one.”

At that point, he degenerated into a litany of insults in Spanish and stomped off to the DFAC. I went back to checking the truck and filled out the requisite paperwork, detailing my inspection. I was about to head to lunch before going on my scheduled patrol when I heard a big commotion from the main courtyard. I made a sharp left and headed between two of the bunk tents, walking into the middle of chaos.

In the dirt plaza were six trucks flying United Nations’ flags. There were people pouring out of the transport trucks, and many of them had already begun unloading cargo. Someone bumped my shoulder on the way by and said, “Get working, Thompson. These trucks won’t unload themselves.”

I looked around and headed to the last cargo truck being opened. As I stood waiting for them to get the tarp rolled up, I heard a girl’s voice shriek, “No damn way!” right before someone slammed into my back, making me stumble forward a step. I turned around, ready to take the asshole out, and found myself face to face with big, dark eyes, a cute nose sprinkled with freckles, and mess of long, brown hair tossed haphazardly into a knot on the top of a perfect head.

I slowly looked down, meeting up with a tight t-shirt stretched across full breasts and a tiny waist that was followed by low-riding cargo pants which fell from narrow hips down long legs. The top of her head barely reached my chin, so I put her at about five foot four. Her crazy mess of hair was half hanging alongside her face in loose waves and I thought it would feel really good if I dug my hands into it while I yanked her in for a hard, hot kiss on those lips slick with some kind of girly lip crap.

“Sorry,” she said, looking at me like I was the enemy. Her voice was low and rough, like a great torch singer. I wondered if she was musical, because looking at her made my head spin like there was a song ricocheting around in it.

I grinned at her a little to see what her reaction would be. “No problem,
babe
. Can I do something for you . . . or even
to
you, if you’d prefer?”

She scowled more and her eyes narrowed. “My name’s Alexis, not ‘babe,’ and I really doubt there’s anything you could do that I’d be interested in,” she snapped.

“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t know me too well. Ask around. You’ll find there’s a whole lot of things I can do that would interest you. Things that would help you relax.” I stepped closer and smiled down at her suggestively. “You seem a little tense.”

“Oh, God,” she choked out somewhere between laughing and screaming. “Are you for real? What, did you walk out of an episode of
Mad Men
or something?” She shook her head. “Um, take my word for it. There is nothing, absolutely not one single thing, that a guy who calls me ‘babe’ could do to interest me.”

I held my hands up in surrender. “Whatever you say, sweetheart. I’m only doing my duty. I am a soldier after all.”

She huffed out a breath that clearly communicated she found me disgusting and went back to haranguing the guy behind her.

I turned to face the truck, thinking I hadn’t felt that much animosity from a woman I hadn’t screwed in a long time. It was fucking hot. Nothing like some serious hatred to spice up the sex.

Corbin sauntered over right about then and leaned in as he whispered, “Strike out already?”

“You want to give it a go?” I muttered under my breath.

“Hell no,” he answered, looking over his shoulder to where Alexis was arguing with some scrawny dude in khaki pants and a button-up safari shirt. “I’d be too scared. I might get hurt.” He shivered.

“No doubt. She’s none too friendly.” We high-fived on it and went to work.

We spent the next hour unloading the trucks and stacking everything in storage, all scheduled patrols and other duties suspended for the afternoon. Then the C.O. told everyone to head to the DFAC for a briefing.

Corbin and I found Benji inside and grabbed a couple of the folding chairs next to him. When the C.O. started speaking, I leaned back, ready to be bored to tears.

“All right. Everyone settle down,” he said. “We need to get procedure straight for this UN crew visit, which will last for four weeks. The UN staff will depart on December twenty-third.”

Benji elbowed me and whispered, “Thirty days, bro. Thirty days to get down and dirty.”

I shrugged, not wanting to encourage him during a briefing, but my eyes shifted to the left where Alexis stood along the wall of the tent with the other UN workers. That floppy hairdo of hers was still hanging around her face, and from the angle I was at, I could spy beneath those tendrils. She had the most perfect little ear I’d ever seen, a soft pink scoop, with a tiny gold earring sparkling on the lobe. I thought about how that metal would feel cold beneath my tongue while her ear would feel warm and silky. I shifted in my seat, everything south of the equator growing uncomfortable.

The C.O. droned on until, from the depths of my lust-induced fog, I heard him say my name. My head snapped forward. He’d already continued past me, so I tried to look like I knew what the hell was going on. Meanwhile, Benji was persistently jabbing me in the side, saying, “You lucky fucker.”

“What the hell?” I whispered, irritated at my own ignorance.

“You got one of the
women
to escort, you dick,” Corbin answered.

“A
woman
? How? That’s against policy.”

“Melanie’s on emergency leave and Traci’s confined to camp until her security training’s done. All the other female personnel are assigned to escort duty with other UN chicks. There aren’t enough women to go around, dude,” Benji whisper-screamed before the Captain in front of us turned around and gave us the “you’re one second from KP duty” stare. We all shut up for the remaining five minutes until the C.O. dismissed us.

I turned to Corbin, keeping my voice low, “Who the hell did I get assigned to? I wasn’t listening.”

Corbin stroked his chin, eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “Hmmm, who was that? Let’s see, was it Anna? No, not Anna. Maybe Adrienne? No, not that either…”

I stepped closer to him and leaned my head next to ear. “Quit fucking around right now or I’ll make your life a living hell for the next three days. Now. Who. The fuck. Is. My. Assignment?”

He squared his shoulders and glared at me. “Relax, man, I’m just screwing with you. It’s Alexis somebody or other.”

“What?!” I sputtered loudly, causing several staff milling around us to turn and look at me. I managed to grit out a smile at them and then looked back at Corbin, lowering my voice. “So what does that mean?”

He shrugged, and as I was about to explode in frustration, the C.O. came up, Alexis trailing behind him. “Thompson, there you are. I wanted to introduce you to your escortee, Alexis Garcia. Alexis, this is Sergeant Thompson, who hails from California, isn’t that right, Sergeant?”

I cleared my throat and looked at Alexis, raising one eyebrow at her. Her face was pink and her lips were pressed tightly together. “Yes, sir, I’m from Sacramento.”

“Wonderful. Ms. Garcia is from Austin, Texas, so you’re both westerners. Now, Sergeant, your job for the next thirty days consists of escorting Ms. Garcia to her daily assignments. She’ll be doing some work here in the camp but also visiting the nearby villages with the UN convoys. You’ll need to make sure she follows all the safety and etiquette protocols when she deals with the villagers. She’ll be delivering supplies to various entities, including individual families.”

I looked at the little fireball, who practically had steam coming out of her ears.

“Sir,” she gritted out. “I really don’t think all of that’s necessary. I can go with the other staff for my visits to the village.”

The C.O. just patted her on the arm and then said, “Nope, it’s not optional. We’ve got very strict rules about civilians in the area, especially temporary volunteers like you. The Sergeant might look mean, but I promise he won’t bite. And Thompson . . . ” He crooked his finger at me and stepped a few feet away from Alexis.