Desire Disguised (13 page)

“What if instead of asking about your past, I just asked you about your sister? Would you tell me anything?”

Mat grinned and smacked a punch right into the sparring glove. “I suppose. She didn’t say I couldn’t.”

Ben moved his mitts higher and nodded for Mat to hit away. The boy didn’t have much power, but he was pretty accurate for a first-timer. “What does she enjoy? Does she have hobbies?”

“She reads all the time. It’s research. She always wants to know everything about anywhere we are. And she likes to force me to learn about anything she’s interested in.”

What would a forceful Cara be like? So far he’d seen upset, determined, and shyly amused. “What’s she interested in now?”

“Gamaliel’s plants and animals and cooking them mostly.” Mat’s deadpan answer amused Ben, and he laughed. The boy lowered his gloves and watched cautiously, but then joined in with an answering grin.

“That’s very efficient of her. Anything else?”

“Music, she’s always singing something or making me listen to something.” Mat whapped in a quick flurry of hits, and Ben contemplated this. He never would have guessed she was interested in such things, but how would such a topic have ever come up between them? And why was he so impressed and interested in it?

“Oh, and she hates lessons from the companions. Just Soren now, but before when we still had Los and Ruton, we had etiquette and deportment. How to walk and how to talk, how government works. So boring. Cara always made fun of them whenever she could.”

“What did she do?”

“She’d practice proper greetings in funny voices, and we’d make hats and sashes from paper and march in formation around the room. She’d salute the chairs and call them General Whats-is or Chancellor Whatever. She’s really funny.”

Mat had grown rather red in the face with his boxing efforts, and Ben decided to call it an afternoon. He shook off his mitts, helped the boy free his hands from the gloves, and then handed him a towel. What sort of fugitives would be spending free time learning protocol?

“Your sister is probably on her way. Why don’t you go over the climbing wall and give it a try? You did well.” Ben dismissed the boy with a firm handshake, and Mat took off to the apparatus, dodging pieces of equipment and the few officers using the facility that afternoon. Soloman Erdem strained over some weights in one corner, and Tyla Warn used a counterpoint ball in the other. Ben stood in the middle of the room and stretched, able to keep an eye on the boy and both his officers as well as the door Cara would probably enter in minutes. His shoulder was tight and a few pulls eased the tension.

As if on cue, the door opened and Cara entered, glancing around after thanking the officer who’d escorted her there. She wore her usual serviceable trousers, but instead of a long sleeved shirt, she had on a thin tank that revealed slim arms and draped over full curves. Well.

She nodded at him and then watched her brother clinging to the wall, stuck between holds as one foot scrabbled to find a perch. Soloman Erdem had noticed her enter and left behind his weights with a clang as he sped to her side. The young officer wore the department’s standard brief workout gear, and Ben made a note to review the dress code as soon as possible. Something more concealing was necessary. Cara responded to his effort at conversation with a few nods, but she looked between Mat and Ben at every opportunity. With a smile and a dip of her head, Cara broke off contact with Soloman.

She approached and raised an eyebrow. Ben reminded himself not to look lower than her nose. He didn’t want to notice her mouth or catch a close-up glimpse of the tops of her breasts.

“What’s Mat doing?”

“Experimenting with Gamaliel’s gravity.”

She nodded as she turned her head to check on her brother. He found himself glancing along the elegant curve of her neck and then venturing lower to take in the bit of shoulder her tank revealed. Stars, he never should have kissed her. He was obsessing about it. Last night he’d wasted nearly an hour trying to recall how she’d tasted.

With a smile, she stopped monitoring Mat who’d fallen on his rear after an unsuccessful reach for a hold, and returned her serious gaze to him, her mouth a tight line. She’d retreated back to her cool demeanor, so he guessed she might be regretting that kiss as much as he was. “How did he do?”

“He was very enthusiastic.” Ben tried to reconcile the woman who had played silly games with her brother to the self-contained person standing next to him. He’d already gotten to know the latter as well as was possible but the former intrigued him. Not in a sexual way of course; that sort of thing was completely out of bounds.

With a groan and a rattle of discarded weights, Soloman rose from the bench and flexed his arms and shoulders extravagantly. Cara turned her back on the younger man and peered at Ben from under lowered brows.

“And exactly how enthusiastically did he answer your questions?”

“He became talkative when I let him punch me.”

Her lips quirked, and she stared at him. “And what did you discover?”

“That you like to make paper hats and march around saluting the furniture.”

Her mouth fell open and pink blushed up her cheeks. “He told you that? I can’t believe it. What else?” She sounded agonized at the idea, and Ben remembered how many embarrassing things his own brother knew about him.

“That’s classified.” He tried to joke with her but she shook her head, crossed her arms over her chest, and turned away from him again. The unhappy tension in her body made him anxious. The longer they went without talking about it, the more uncomfortable he felt. “Cara, I wanted to tell you what happened in my place was—”

She hitched in a breath, and Ben kept trying to meet her gaze, but she obstinately refused to look at him. “It’s nothing I want to talk about. We need to go. Mat!”

His peripheral vision caught Mat flinch when she shouted and miss a foothold. He fell again and twisted on the ground to seek out his sister, his grey-blue eyes wide.

“Let’s go. Collect your things,” she called out to her brother and then glanced at him briefly. “Thank you for spending time with him. Good evening.”

Cara turned away.

“Cara, wait, I…” Ben trailed off as he watched her leave with Mat. What was he planning on saying to her anyway? She’d made it clear there was nothing between them and she was right.

* * * *

With only an hour to spare before Mat returned from school, Cara decided to wash some of their clothing. Most of what they’d recovered from the crash reeked of acrid smoke, and she didn’t want their rooms to take on any of the odor. Chita had shown her the laundry room on their initial tour of the barracks so she made her way to the clean and spacious facility where she’d wasted at least ten minutes deciphering the instructions to the machine. Once she was sure how to proceed, she loaded their soiled garments into a hopper, selected the cycle she wanted, and hit the power key after allowing it to subtract a few marks from her personal account.

She supposed she could leave the machine during the cleaning cycle, but she and Mat had so few clothes, she didn’t want to take the risk of anything happening to them. Dragging a stool from near the door over to the machine, Cara settled herself on it after she checked the clothing again, and opened her datpad to continue her reading. She’d been bouncing back and forth between an epic fictional fantasy novel and a dry instructional guide to the flora and fauna of Gamaliel. At this point in her day, she was spending more time with the novel; the strange symbiotic relationships of the Gamaliel organisms that produced the cortiglow hormone no longer interested her as much as the exploits of a loyal knight desperate to rescue an endangered princess.

The knight had just barely escaped evisceration by an armored dragon with phaseflame breath, when the noise of some people entering the facility broke her away from the fantasy. She recognized Ben’s friend Lia, who was accompanied by a dark-haired and animated woman carrying a tiny baby wrapped in a bright green blanket. Lia lugged two baskets of jumbled clothing, and Cara took an anxious breath when they started her way wearing big smiles.

“Hello Cara! Isn’t it fun to do laundry? I refuse to pack dirty clothes in with clean, which is why I’m here.” Lia dropped the baskets on the floor and held out her hand in greeting. As Cara shook it, she introduced her companion as Moca Blakelock, the magistrate for the entire planet, and her new son, Typho. Cara used the appropriate honorifics, and Magistrate Blakelock pursed her lips.

“Sakes, I haven’t been treated so elegantly since I landed here a year ago. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Citizen Belasco.” With a sigh she adjusted her hold on her son, and the baby blinked his black eyes at the ceiling. He moved his hands against his blanket swaddling, and Cara was fascinated by how tiny his fingers were.

Cara wondered why the magistrate of an entire planet was doing her own laundry when there had to be some butlebot available. Soren had done theirs most of the time and had shaken his head with distaste whenever she’d undertaken the work. Cara liked the process of transforming rumpled and stained clothing into something fresh and wearable, and today she’d get to do that with no judgments. Maybe Moca Blakelock felt the same.

“So, Cara, Ben tells me you aren’t long for Gamaliel. Where are you headed next?” Lia placed her soiled clothing in neat rows in her chosen hopper.

“I’m not sure, it depends on when our companion might be well enough and when there’s an available ship.” Cara glanced away from Lia’s friendly gaze and peered at the machine. The steam cycle had just begun, so she was in for a few more questions. Typho gurgled, and she looked over at the baby, remembering all of Mat’s little baby sounds with a touch of melancholy.

The magistrate nodded her head as she used one hand to toss clothing at random into an available hopper. “Considering the fact that you weren’t planning on ever stepping foot on our planet, I hope your time here has been a pleasant as we can make it.”

“Your citizens have been very welcoming.”

“And your brother is attending our school? What does he think?” The magistrate’s sharp brown eyes held her gaze as she propped her baby up on her shoulder. Cara knew the question was a polite one but suspected the woman also wanted an outside opinion on her organization, which according to the congressional colonization bylaws, included overseeing all aspects of public education. This was in addition to sanitation, criminal justice, land grants, and all the other miscellany of turning an unregulated world into a safe and well-functioning part of the galaxy.

“He’s enjoying it very much. He even likes to do his home assignments.” Cara wanted to make a little joke. She understood homework was something students complained about, but Mat was so thrilled with his experience he’d taken on everything with unrestrained enthusiasm. He was aware their time of living a nearly normal life was fleeting, and he seemed determined to do everything with verve.

As she’d hoped, the other women laughed and managed their laundry for a few minutes. Once they had everything in their hoppers, they each headed for the door, and Cara wondered if they were leaving and she could get back to her reading. It was not to be; they returned with their own stools and set up on either side of Cara to face the blinking and warm machines.

“So, Moca, have you talked with Lynde today?” Lia leaned toward Cara as she smiled at the magistrate. “Lynde is Moca’s partner. She’s an extractor working a distant claim. I’m quizzing all my friends on their personal lives since that’s so hard to do by message. You lose all nuances in a recording.”

Magistrate Blakelock shook her head and shifted on her stool as Typho’s dark-haired head bobbled. “Not yet. She’s been having trouble with her com links, so I’m not worried.”

“I’m sure she misses you and Typho terribly. When will she be back in the settlement?”

“Not for another month, she’s nowhere near her quota.” The magistrate adjusted her hold on the baby, and Cara had to force herself not to reach out for him. She missed holding Mat so much and longed to touch a warm little baby again.

“It’s too bad it will be that long before you can have a big homecoming celebration. I’d have been happy to watch Typho for a couple of hours so the two of you can have some privacy. Since it’s going to be so long for her to come here, isn’t it within your mandate to conduct a tour of some outlying claims? Spend a few evenings roughing it in the company of a certain tough prospector?” Lia’s suggestion made the other woman laugh out loud.

“Lynde isn’t rough and tough, she’s very sweet. I couldn’t bring Typho along anyway. Besides, I don’t think the chief would be too keen on me putting myself in danger like that.”

Cara’s ears tingled at the mention of Ben. Perhaps some other parts tingled as well. She decided to stay quiet and let the two more experienced females have a conversation. If she eavesdropped, she might learn something useful about what normal women talked about. Not that she was going to get a chance to use any of it in her own barren life.

“Aw, Zash needs a challenge now and then. He’s probably getting soft just keeping the peace by throwing drunks in jail and putting out the occasional small fire.” Lia turned from her friend to peer at Cara. “What do you think, Cara?”

“About what?”

“How soft Zash is getting?” Lia’s eyes gleamed, and her mouth quirked as if she’d said something clever. Cara wasn’t sure what the other woman was implying, but the last thing she wanted to do was to appear unsophisticated or immature.

“He doesn’t seem soft,” she ventured a reply. He was very focused and alert, and every part of his body she’d accidentally encountered had been healthy and firm.

Both Lia and the magistrate giggled. Cara wondered what she’d said that was so humorous. Lia reined in her laughter and tapped on Cara’s leg.

“We aren’t laughing at you, Cara. We’re amused by the idea of Zash’s relative hardness.”

Cara caught on to what had been inferred and knew she blushed horribly. Her temperature must have gone up at least twenty degrees when she contemplated that image. Which was a mere mental picture since she’d never seen any sort of real-life example. Ben would almost certainly be different than the rather clinical illustrations she’d examined. Or perhaps all men were fairly uniform in that dimension, not that she’d have the opportunity to do much first-hand comparison.