Page 11 of Hot Soldier's Rescue

“No. You will not. You will die, and those children won’t get rescued at all.”

“You’re so infuriating!” she exclaimed.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. But her revelation did complicate matters. She wasn’t going to be as easy to chase away as he’d thought. He spared a glance over at the stubborn set of her chin and truculent glint in her eyes. Make that impossible to chase away.

“I don’t see why you’re interfering with this,” she persisted. “It’s men exactly like you who make most of the orphans in this country parentless.”

No, it wasn’t. He was one of the good guys, dammit. He stopped the people she was talking about. But it wasn’t as if he could tell her that without blowing his cover.

She wasn’t his problem. And another pair of orphaned kids in this war-torn land weren’t his problem, either. But that didn’t stop his gut from twisting unpleasantly at the way she was looking at him—as though he’d already betrayed her trust.

He had a job of his own to do. He had to stay focused on that. He had to make sure Enrique passed him up the chain of command to the top brass in the Army of Freedom. And that meant he had to go back to Enrique’s camp. But there was no way in hell—or heaven—that he was letting this nun go with him.

“What if I find the contact for you?” he asked heavily. “Would you stay here and wait for me?”

“Why would you help me?”

He shrugged. Yet another line of questioning he’d rather not pursue. “Yes or no?”

“Should I trust you?” she asked reflectively.

He couldn’t tell if she expected him to answer the question or not, so he chose to ignore it. Besides, he had no idea how to answer it.

“All right. Fine. I’ll give you a day before I come back out there.”

“A week.”

“No way!” she exclaimed. “Two days.”

“Four.”

“Three.”

He nodded briskly. “Deal.”

She scowled suspiciously. Smart woman not to trust him.

“Have you got a room in town?” he asked.

“No, I’d just arrived when I met you in that park.”

“What possessed you to follow me, anyway?” He started the Jeep and pointed it at the only half-decent hotel in town.

“You knew more about the Army of Freedom than you were telling me.”

“And you knew that how?”

She shrugged. “I just knew. You’re easy to read.”

Holy Mother of God— He checked the thought sharply. Probably not an appropriate phrase in the current company.

In short order he rented a room for her in Santa Lucia’s lone hotel and installed her in the sparse, if neat, little room. Suddenly, he was frantic to get far, far away from her all-too-perceptive eyes.

“Don’t leave here until I get back, or else,” he ordered her, more than half-convinced she would disobey him and end up in some new and terrible pickle before he got back to town.

“Or else what?”

Was that a note of playful flirtation in her voice? His gaze snapped to hers, but her eyes were wide and innocent. What was wrong with him? She was a nun!

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