Maddy controlled her flinch. “Is that what you meant by Jake leaving us?”
Helen hesitated. “No, he’d be leaving us either way. I don’t like the effect he has on you. I don’t know what was going on when I walked in on you—”
“Absolutely nothing!”
“—but I’ll have you remember that he’s an adult and you’re still a child. There’s a word for men who like to prey on infants, and it’s not a very nice one.”
“You’re disgusting,” Maddy spat the words. “Jake and I are friends.”
Helen smiled like a lizard. “Tell me, darling, do you honestly think Jake Murphy crawling into your bed is disgusting? I find that hard to believe, after watching you panting around him all summer.”
Maddy held herself very still. “Why are you doing this to me?” she said finally.
Helen drew herself upright. “You’re my daughter,” she said. “I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to keep you from making as big a fool of yourself as your father seems about to do.”
“So if you can’t attack Father you come up here and attack me?” Maddy said with surprising shrewdness. “No, thank you, Mother. I haven’t got anything more to say to you. I’m sure Father will make the right decision tonight. I only hope it’s not the one you want.”
There was a long silence in the room. “Madelyn,” Helen said, and the smoothness in her voice warned Maddy to beware. “We’ve never been close. I’m not the sort to seek out the company of other women, and I’m not cut out for motherhood. But it’s my responsibility to warn you, however unpleasant that might be.”
“I don’t need any warnings. …”
“Oh, yes, my dear, you most certainly do. I can’t promise that Jake Murphy will be out of this house as quickly as I want him to be, but I can at least guarantee that you keep out of his way. I think in his own way he’s just as fascinated with you as you are with him.”
“He thinks of me as a younger sister.”
“Like hell he does. I have eyes in my head, Madelyn, even if you’re too busy mooning around to notice. He wants you, and I don’t trust him not to do anything about it.”
“And you think by telling me that it will keep me away from him?” Maddy scoffed. “Mother, I’m seventeen. That’s more likely to entice me than frighten me.” That was a lie, but her mother wouldn’t know it.
But Helen wasn’t disturbed by Maddy’s bravado. “No, dear one, that’s not what I’m going to warn you about. I’m going to tell you what happened to John Thomas Murphy in Vietnam, and what he did there. And then I have no doubt at all you’ll keep away from him. No doubt at all.”
A lazy mosquito landed on her bare arm, stalked around at a leisurely pace, and then bit. With equal abstraction Maddy swatted him, and the sound was jarring in the still room.
Ramon looked up from his position by the door and flashed her a tentative smile. “The mosquito season is almost over, gracias a Dios. You should be glad El Patrón decided to stay up here in the mountains, rather than along the Mosquito Coast.”
“Mosquito Coast?” Maddy echoed, staring at the itching red spot where the bug had recently feasted.
“La Mosquitia. Not at all pleasant, any time of year. The bugs have almost died out up here. You can even sleep with the windows open.”
“That’s a relief. I would probably suffocate otherwise. Puente del Norte doesn’t seem to come equipped with air conditioning,” she said with a vague attempt at humor.
Luis snorted, the noise giving his opinion of elitist gringa pigs who have to have air conditioning to survive. Maddy surveyed him from her seat against the wall, wondering for a moment whether there was any way she could get past that angry militancy. The throbbing rib warned her that it was highly unlikely. Luis was no friendlier than Enrique, the guardian at the gate. It would take more charm than she possessed to calm their distrust.
“How long have you been here?” she questioned idly.
Ramon hesitated, then obviously decided that telling her wouldn’t compromise his orders. After all, Murphy hadn’t said to do anything other than watch her. If he wanted her kept in the dark he would have said so—Murphy was always direct.
“In this house, nine months. In the area, two years. It has been a long time, a long war.” He sighed.
“And how long have El Patrón and … and La Patrona been married?”
It was Ramon’s turn to snort, and even the dour Luis looked amused. “Not La Patróna,” the latter said decisively. “Señora Lambert, Soledad is, but never La Patróna.”
“They have been married one year,” Ramon explained. “Though they have been together for longer than that.”
“And why isn’t she ‘La Patróna?’” Maddy persisted.
Ramon grinned. “It’s a title of respect, to be earned. Let us say Soledad has done nothing to earn it.”
Luis seemed in the mood to talk. “She was Morosa’s mistress when she was fourteen years old. He tired of her, passed her down to Ortega, but Soledad is not the kind of woman to settle for second in command. She changed sides, and El Patrón is an honorable man. Not the kind of man to leave a woman helpless.” The message was clear. If the Saint of San Pablo had a daughter he never would have repudiated her.
Maddy considered arguing the point, then dismissed the notion, changing the subject. “And the others? Do they have titles of respect?”
“Or otherwise. Carlos, the man you met on the road, is called the Jackal, but that is more his idea than anyone else’s. Feldman is El Nabo.”
“The turnip,” Luis volunteered with a sour smile. “The man is useless in a fight. Don’t look to him for help, gringa.”
Maddy gave him her best smile. “I won’t. Thanks for the advice.”
Luis snarled.
“The ladies are los Madres, the mothers. I don’t think you would wish to hear what we call Soledad. I doubt you would even know the word, and I would not care to translate. The doctor also is called something not kind but unfortunately descriptive. And we have El Patrón, of course.”
“And what about Murphy? What is he called?”
Ramon shook his head. “Murphy is called nothing but Murphy. In his case it is a title with enough respect. He needs no other.”
“Do I have a name?” she questioned idly.
Ramon shook his head. “Not yet. Time will tell.”
“What about La Curiosa?” Jake’s gravelly voice broke through the lazy conversation. “The snoop?”
Ramon laughed his appreciation, but Maddy was suddenly stilled, that overwhelming tension filling her at his return. She had already become accustomed to the long hair, to the savage look of his worn khakis and his distant face. What she couldn’t come to terms with was his reappearance in her life, when she thought he’d been gone for good.
“I am not allowed to ask questions?” she said with dignity.
Jake shrugged, his hazel eyes curiously light. “You may ask all you wish, Allison. Whether anyone chooses to answer is another matter. Come along.”
Maddy sat without moving. “Are you taking me to see my father?”
“I’m taking you for a walk in the garden.”
“And if I don’t care to go?”
Jake’s smile was scarcely reassuring. “You have no choice in the matter.”
Maddy looked up at him, up into the hazel eyes that had once burned into hers, hazel eyes that had, according to her mother, watched an entire village of women and children slaughtered by his fellow soldiers in Vietnam and he hadn’t been able to stop them. Had he even tried? And if he hadn’t tried, would anything stop him from being equally brutal to her? He’d spent the last fourteen years on the outposts of civilization, doing penance as he protected Samuel Lambert. But just how far had he come?
He waited, seemingly patient, but the tension was thick in the room. Luis had a look of delicious anticipation on his face, obviously hoping she would refuse. Ramon looked deeply troubled, adding to Maddy’s suspicion that Jake’s request was onl
y a thin excuse. But excuse for what?
Slowly she rose, throwing back her shoulders. “A walk in the garden would be very pleasant,” she said slowly.
Jake’s smile was less than reassuring.
CHAPTER SIX
He didn’t touch her this time. He didn’t need to. The sheer force of his presence was enough to cow her into obedience, at least temporarily. She followed him docilely enough, past the smirking Luis and the concerned Ramon, through the deserted, darkened hallways, back up the stairs. She half expected him to take her back to the front courtyard with its profusion of flowers, but instead he veered sharply to the left, past a series of empty, desolate-looking rooms, stopping outside a heavy door.
It was bolted, and it took him more than a moment to deal with the solid-looking locks. Maddy watched with silent interest, taking the moment to relive the feel and the memory of him. The hands she remembered, large and strong and tanned. The long legs, encased in khaki rather than those dark suits, also brought back lascivious teenage fantasies. The way he tilted his head, that distant, mocking glance that he cast down at her before he opened the door. How many times had he looked at Helen Currier Lambert in just that way? He’d hated her mother, and now it looked as if he might hate her.
She could only try again. “Jake, you can’t have forgotten,” she said in her most reasonable tone of voice as she halted by the doorway. “What about the first time we met, in my father’s kitchen? You made coffee, and I’d gone swimming. It was the summer of the presidential election and you—”
“I don’t remember,” he said flatly.
“But you must. What about when you taught me to play poker? Or the night we stayed up late in the pool house, talking? And you remember Stephen, and how worried I was about him. You can’t have forgotten all that.” Her voice sounded desperate, pleading in the fragrant stillness, but Jake was clearly unmoved.
He looked down at her, and his eyes were opaque in the afternoon silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said wearily. He gestured to the tiny courtyard ahead of them. “After you, Allison.”
Maddy could see the familiar profusion of flowers, hear the faint buzz of bees, and she was uncertain whether to believe him or not. She held her ground, glaring up at him mutinously. She had made him call her by her name once before; she could do it again. She had to reserve that small triumph in the face of a total rout.
He cocked his head to one side, and his eyes were enigmatic. “You’re waiting for me to call you Maddy?”
She nodded, controlling the urge to meet his gaze. She wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of keeping that beseeching look from her own expressive eyes, and she was through with pleading.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell,” Jake said, clamping his large hand around her elbow. A moment later she was shoved out into the garden, half dragged, half pulled, as he slammed the door behind them.
Did he know his own strength? Probably. Did he know those long, steely fingers were digging into the tender flesh of her arm, making her forget about the throbbing of her rib, giving her nothing but sheer rage to focus on? Probably. She tried to pull away, and the fingers only tightened. A tiny gasp of pain escaped her before she clamped her jaw down on it.
He pulled to a stop a few feet into the garden, and to her surprise he released her. “You don’t have to make this harder on yourself,” he said, but his face was remorseless.
“Why won’t you believe me?” It didn’t come out as she had planned. She’d hoped it would be a strong demand, instead it was wistful, showing more vulnerability than she ever wanted to show to the man in front of her. “If you’d just listen to me I can give you all the proof you need. I don’t understand why you won’t trust me.”
She didn’t really expect an answer, and when it came it surprised her. “Because I can’t afford to,” he said finally. “And neither can you.”
“Neither can I what?” she demanded. “Trust you? Or afford to have you trust me?”
Jake shrugged. “However you choose to look at it.”
“But—”
The hand clamped around her wrist this time, albeit a great deal more gently, and he began pulling her into the garden. “I didn’t bring you out here to argue, Allison-Madelyn,” he rasped, and Maddy allowed herself to accept the tiny sop to her defenses.
“Then why did you bring me out here?” she demanded, stumbling to keep up with him, her thin leather sandals tripping over the weed-choked path.
He grinned down at her then, the smile a lightning slash of white teeth in his dark, dangerous face. “For your peaceful company,” he replied. “Oblige me by being more peaceful, or we’ll continue this walk with you wearing my bandanna as a gag.”
The protest that was forming on Maddy’s lips was quickly swallowed. She contented herself with a glare that spoke volumes, a glare that left Jake completely unmoved.
She had no choice but to follow him, like a dutiful dog, she thought resentfully. His hand on her wrist was not ungentle, and the pace around the weed-choked garden was leisurely. Surprisingly so—through the few square of inches that their bodies touched she could feel the tension in him like a palpable thing.
She should have fought him, she berated herself. She should have thrown his words back in his face, yanked her wrist away from him, maybe even slapped him in that cool, distant, unemotional face. At least she should have told him no.
Girls say yes to boys who say no. The line came back to haunt her with sudden force, and she flinched with the memory. It was one of those smug little catch-alls of the sixties and early seventies, along with If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. Maddy had used the phrases often, along with her favorite paean to draft resisters, the ultimate bribe for an unsure eighteen-year-old boy: Girls say yes to boys who say no.
She had gotten very drunk at her party. Well, perhaps not very drunk. But the champagne had flowed freely, and no one had appeared to mind that half the guests at the private birthday party held at the exclusive country club were under eighteen.
Eric Thompson had been fairly dazzled by the new Maddy, with the thick straight hair hanging down to her waist, the new figure, the slight edge of desperate gaiety that clung to her. Her mother’s words still ran through her head, the cold, cruel pleasure she took in recounting the court-martial that Jake Murphy had endured along with his entire unit. The court-martial that he had instigated, in the teeth of the army’s attempt to cover it up, where he testified against his friends and comrades. All the champagne in the world hadn’t been able to drive it from her head. Dancing barefoot, her slender body pressed up against Eric’s sturdy one had only just begun to dim the edges of the awful revelations her mother had made, and the dark corner of the poolside cabana with Eric’s clumsy hands on the front of her dress and his wet, hungry mouth on hers almost made it all go away. But not completely. Particularly not when it was Jake who found them there.
“Party’s over,” he’d said, looking down at her with unreadable hazel eyes as she sat curled up on the chaise longue, her skirt up high around her long tanned legs, her head on Eric’s shoulder.
Eric had turned bright red when Jake’s tall figure had appeared from out of the shadows, and he had yanked his hand away from Maddy’s breast with unflattering haste. She was sitting in his lap, making no move to get up, and he could hardly dump her on the cement walkway, so he tried a little sophisticated, man-to-man banter.
“Give us just another half hour, would you, old man?” he requested, not noticing Maddy’s stillness as she sat in his lap. “You understand these things.”
Jake had only looked at him, his face forbidding in the moonlight. “I understand only too well. Come along, Maddy.”
And she had gone, docilely enough then as now, without even a backward glance at Eric Thompson’s crushed expression.
Jake had driven her new car over to the country club, and the sight of his long limbs folding into the driver’s seat of the shiny white V
W bug had struck Maddy with inappropriate amusement. He stared up at her with great patience, waiting for her to get in the car.
When she finally did so he made no move to start it, just sat there watching her. “Where are your shoes?”
She giggled. It had been awhile since her last glass of Moet, but the giddy delight still lingered. “I have no idea.”
“And your comb?”
She reached up a vague hand to push the mane of dark-brown hair away from her face. “I don’t know. It’s probably in the bottom of the punch bowl.”
“Is that what you were drinking?” He started the car, pulling out of the crowded parking lot with practiced ease.
Maddy shook her head, the gesture making her feel slightly dizzy, and she slid lower in her seat. “Champagne,” she said succinctly.
“I think we’d better go home by way of some coffee,” Jake had said after a moment. “Your father doesn’t need to deal with you in your current state on top of everything else.”
“What’s everything else?” she asked idly. Before he could answer she began humming, a little off-key, and the conversation lapsed into silence.
“Was that Eric Thompson?” he said after a long moment.
“Who?” She interrupted her humming for a moment to peer at him owlishly.
“The young man you were kissing so enthusiastically?” Jake’s voice was wry.
“I don’t know if I was enthusiastic. But yes, it was Eric. He might have to go to Canada,” she confided.
“The war’s over, Maddy.”
“Well, you never know what might happen. Particularly if my father doesn’t get elected.”
“That’s no longer even a vague possibility,” Jake said under his breath as he swung into an all-night diner. “You stay here while I get you some coffee.”
“He might get drafted.” Maddy’s mind was still clinging to Eric’s dilemma.
“What were you doing, trying to comfort him?” he snapped, the first sign of emotion he’d shown since he’d found them.