Page 42 of V-Day
Parris jerked her head after him. “Help him go fast,” she told Chloe.
Chloe stepped through the door and looked around. Cristián was already sorting through a big cupboard which stood open in the far corner of the room, opposite a huge window letting in the eastern daylight. The view of Pascuallita through that window was stunning. Cristián had spent weeks looking through the window, noting guard rotations, the movement of Insurrectos through the town, locations of officers, including which houses they were lodged in.
Opposite the window was a weight training bench, a barbell stand with a barbell and two big plates on it. Beside it was a rack of free weights. The smallest on the rack was thirty pounds.
An old kitchen table crouched beneath the window. On it was Cristián’s computer and monitors—the big monitor in the middle and the smaller one to the left, turned side on so his music list would display more titles at once. He used that monitor for lists of all kinds. The monitor on the right was the second screen—the one used to park reference material as he was working.
Chloe was familiar with the setup because she had taught Cristián this process. Most of the Group had adopted her three-screen system once she had explained it. The feedback she received said it worked as well for them as it did her.
The most jarring aspect of seeing the table with its scratched wooden top was that she had seen this view before, only on the reverse angle. She had seen the room behind Cristián a hundred times since they had started using video to talk to each other.
In the two weeks since she had arrived in Acapulco and everyone critical to the Loyalist side of the war had receivedHarry’s Cloak, Chloe had seen this room from the perspective of the middle monitor, sometimes a dozen times a day.
She had seen Cristián sitting in the kitchen chair in front of it.
The chair was set back from the table, now. It looked as though Cristián had shoved it back when he got to his feet and had not put the chair back under the table after.
Only, the position of the chair was highly suggestive.
As Cristián pulled a nylon zippered bag down from the top of the cupboard he was standing in front of, and shoved items from the cupboard into it, Chloe let her gaze moved over his long body. She glanced at his arms. They were olive and tanned, and rounded with muscle, which flexed as he worked. He didn’t have huge body-builder arms, because he hated spending time working out when he could be doing more interesting things. His life beyond his computer and his clientswasphysical, though. Hell, just walking around Pascuallita was a high intensity interval training workout because of the hills and stairs everywhere.
This house was old enough to use a wood-burning stove for extra warmth in winter. Wood was easy to get if one was prepared to walk into the forest and haul the wood back out afterwards. The stove was needed, for central heating was not a feature of life on Vistaria, and at this altitude, the winters could be bitter. Even summer nights could bite.
The responsibility for keeping the woodpile stocked had fallen to Cristián when Duardo had joined the army at eighteen, for Duardo could not reliably say when he would be home. Cristián had been chopping and hauling wood since he was fourteen.
She glanced at the weights once more. She imagined him doing bicep curls with one hand, while using the mouse to surf with the other. Brain and body at once.
Chloe couldn’t pull her gaze away from his arms. Cristián’s proximity to the desk, the backed-off chair, and his arms… She recalled another occasion when she had watched his arms working. She had been on the other side of the screen, of course, only her view had been unobstructed, for he had pushed the chair back so shecouldsee.
Chloe’s heart leapt and hurried and her body throbbed in remembrance.
Cristián closed the cupboard and turned back to the table. He paused, studying her, the bag hanging from one hand. His eyes narrowed. “Your face…”
It wasn’t just her face which gave her away. Her entire body was inflamed. She rubbed at her neck. The need to tear off her jacket andbreathewas powerful. Her breasts ached.
“I’m looking at the table, at your computers, and remembering that night when it was too hot,” she said.
Cristián glanced at the table. His grip on the bag grew firmer, his knuckles turning white.
“You know the night I mean,” Chloe said.
It had been a sweltering night, not long after the hurricane had gone through. Every window and shutter in the big house stood open. Despite the house being built almost upon the beach itself, the air in the house didn’t move. It wasalwayswindy by the beach, just not that night.
It had been warm upon Vistaria, too, for Chloe saw Cristián’s tee shirt was sticking to him, agreeably outlining his upper chest, which wasn’t weak at all. His throat gleamed in the light from the monitor and she watched his Adam’s apple shift as he spoke.
“Are you even listening to me?” he had demanded, making her jump.
Chloe shifted her gaze to his face on the screen. “Um…no.”
He tilted his head. “What has the power to distractyou? You’re usually hyper focused.”
“You, Shadow. You’re distracting me.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.
Chloe plucked her tank top away from her chest and flapped it. “I can see it is hot there, too.”
Cristián’s gaze was on her hand. He swallowed.
