Page 42 of Prisoner of War
Chapter Ten
Calli awoke to daylight and the unmusical call of seagulls outside the windows. She lay on her side, wrapped in Nick’s big arms, his leg resting on hers. A sense of peace and contentment settled over her and she sighed.
“Good morning,” Nick said softly.
“This is my country, Nick,” she said just as softly. “Your arms about me, your voice for me alone...that is all the home Iwill ever need.”
He kissed her cheek. “Mi esposa,” he said and she heard the happiness in his voice.
A rapid, heavy thudding sounded from the first floor and he groaned. “That’s the front door.”
“They’re back so soon?” Calli asked, dismayed. She had hoped for more time.
“I told them after noon or I’d have their balls.” He climbed from the bed and displayed taut buttocks, a wide back and stifflyheld shoulders as he thrust his legs into jeans and pulled them up. The thudding continued. “It has to be something serious,” he told her, sounding apologetic.
“Of course, it must and of course you must go,” Calli said, also easing down from the high bed. She saw her new negligee and gown on the stool at the foot of the bed and blinked. There didn’t seem to be a single detail Nick had overlookedin the frantic two days of preparation. She slipped them on.
“You don’t have to rouse yourself,” Nick assured her.
“For something so urgent they would risk your anger? I’m coming to hear it too.”
They both hurried down the stairs but at the foot of them, Nick waved her back behind the sliding doors of the formal lounge. “Wait until we know who it is.” He reached into the drawer of the antiquesecretary next to his hip and pulled out the loaded pistol always kept there. He moved to the door and stood not in front of it but to one side. “Who is it?” he called.
“Nick, it’s Josh Benning. For Christ’s sake, let me in, will you?”
“Talk to me, Josh,” Nick called.
Silence came from the other side of the door and Calli could almost hear the surprise in it. “For heaven’s...” came the mutter.“Is Calli still wearing your Saint Christopher medallion?”
Nick smiled, opened the door and Joshua stepped in. He looked around, blinking in the cool dim light of the foyer. Calli moved out into the foyer so he could see her and he pushed his hand through his hair.
Minnie, she thought.
“Minnie’s gone,” Joshua said without preamble. “So’s Carmen.”
“Gone?” Nick asked sharply, pausing in themiddle of putting the gun back on safety.
“As in disappeared. You know Carmen left the wedding early. Well, Minnie slipped off not long after you two got away. Their rooms haven’t been slept in.”
“Carmen’s a big girl,” Nick said, a resigned note in his voice.
“So is Minnie,” Josh agreed. He pushed his hand through his hair. “I would have left it at that. But...” He glanced at Nick, measuringhim. “Your boat is gone too.”
Calli sank onto the bottom step, watching Nick. He slowly put the gun back in the drawer, thinking hard. “Which one?” he asked. “Which of them took the boat? And where is the other one?”
“Minnie had every reason to take it,” Joshua said, almost apologetically. “She was desperate to find that man of hers.”
Nick shook his head. “She’s not a sailor. Carmen is. Butwhy? There was no reason for her to go back to Vistaria.”
“Except that for Carmen, it’s home,” Calli interjected.
Both men turned to look at her.
“She’s been away at college for...how long, Nick? Seven years or more? That day on the balcony, she blasted you for shuffling her off to college so quickly. Off to college and away from her father. It was a sore point with her. And you went and losther country for her.”
Josh winced.
“I’m phrasing as she would phrase it,” Calli explained.
