Desire Disguised (6 page)

“Is it dangerous?”

Zashi shook his head. “Nothing carnivorous large enough to pose a threat to a human, even one as skinny as Mat. The path is clear and stops at the water’s edge.”

“We’ll follow you, Mat. Go ahead and run.” Her brother grinned at her acquiescence and jogged away. Cara longed to dash after him, the tug of responsibility for his welfare growing stronger the farther he was from her sight. She walked down the side path, not paying attention to Zashi’s presence as she caught glimpses of Mat’s blue shirt through the thick tree trunk legs. A shimmering glint of water reflected sunlight ahead.

“Slow down. He’s fine.”

Cara turned back to see Zashi shaking his head as he walked to her side. “Nothing is going to happen to him out here.”

She wanted to argue, she wanted to go grab Mat’s arm and haul him back to their rooms and lock the door behind them. Instead, she stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. He was right. This forest was quiet and unthreatening, but it was so difficult to relax her guard.

“Wait a minute here. Give him some time alone and we can talk.”

“So you did want to question me.”

Zashi shook his head and tightened his mouth as he stared at her. “No. I said talk. Like I did at the cemetery. You assume the worst.”

“I don’t have much of a choice.”

He didn’t reply, just watched her with an intensity that made her want to hide behind a tree. Her throat felt tight and nervous tremors clenched in her belly.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you here.”

Cara just nodded. She knew she was safer in this jungle on this half-forgotten planet than she ever had been anywhere else. How could she ease her vigilance after so many years?

“How is Soren?”

“Still unconscious but more responsive. The doctor told me everything is healing, but slowly.” No medical person was predicting how long it would take someone Soren’s age to recover from a crushed spine, snapped hip, detached retinas, and extensive pulmonary embolisms. “So you’ll be here longer,” the chief said.

Cara agreed and edged further down the path. If she craned her head, she could see the edge of the pond and Mat crouched down, poking at something with a stick.

“Maybe a month or more.” Just saying it out loud stressed her.

“What are your plans while you’re here?” Zashi wasn’t looking at her now, and she breathed a sigh of relief. All the people watching her at the funeral had made her nervous as a prisoner in a cell; suspected and observed. She concentrated on Mat as she decided what she was willing to say.

“I don’t know. It’s not fair to Mat to keep him confined in our suite. It’s lovely, but he needs something to do.”

“We have a school here.”

Cara glanced at him, surprised. He nodded and hooked his hands on his hips. “They’d be happy to have him for however long you stay. Lots of kids move in and out when their parents first arrive before they head off for their claims. Some split their time between the jungle and town pretty even just so their kids can attend.”

Mat going to school? He’d never even been inside one, and she hadn’t either, certainly not since they’d been hiding, and most of her childhood before that was a blur of memories too painful to visit.

“It’s not big, but they have a nice building and good teachers.” Zashi peered at her with a quirked eyebrow.

“He’d like that,” Cara admitted. In fact, he’d love it, even if he was only able to be there for a day.

“What about you?”

“You think I need to go to school too?”

The quiet man next to her paused a beat and suddenly laughed. Big chuckles of laughter so infectious she couldn’t help but grin in response. She looked over at Mat, and he stared back at them, a confused expression crossing his face. She waved, and he smiled as he returned to pulling long yellowish strands of something from the water. At least he was using the stick and not his hands.

“No. I don’t think you need to go to school. You seem very well informed. I meant, what would you like to do while you wait?”

Cara grew still. No one ever asked her what she wanted. She did what was necessary, not what she desired. Zashi just waited for her answer, his eyes still twinkling. She certainly didn’t want to sit in her room all day while Mat went off to school.

“I could help with something around here.”

“What can you do?”

The list of skills she possessed weren’t especially useful around an outpost like Pearl. Pretending to be someone else, knowing the correct order in which to greet a collection of status-conscious dignitaries, and packing and being ready to leave a room in minutes didn’t seem to be anything one of the local businesspeople would need. She didn’t know how to survive in a jungle or extract cortiglow, so those jobs were out.

“I can cook.”

“That’s a good talent. If you’d like, I can introduce you to our head chef, Claude Bezo, and see if he could use some help in the barrack’s kitchen.”

Cara considered this as she looked at Zashi. He was being nice. Helpful, in fact. She’d always enjoyed cooking for Mat and the companions whenever they’d had access to a kitchen, Soren sniffed that it wasn’t a suitable occupation for her, but they inevitably needed to eat. The opportunity to learn something from an actual chef burned bright in her mind. She’d never realized it was something she wanted until it was placed right in her hands. “I would like that. Thank you, Chief Zashi.”

“It’s Ben.”

“It’s been what?”

“My name is Ben. Call me that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t call me that.”

She almost asked him why not, but Mat called out for her to come and see something swimming in the water, and she welcomed the interruption. That small moment of accord between her and Ben was unsettling. It was time for her to put those protective shields up and get back to her primary responsibility of protecting her brother.

Ben was tense. It had been a busy morning at the station, where every minor incident had gone even more haywire than it should; whether it was adjusting the work schedule when three people requested the same night off or the urgent summons from District Headquarters for the return of a patrol officer who hadn’t even reported for duty yet. He felt as if he was abandoning his admin staff by taking the afternoon off to escort Cara and Mat to collect their things from the crashed ship. He didn’t care to examine too closely how many times he’d anticipated the appointment as the morning had dragged on.

Pressing the main kitchen doors open, Ben tried to calm himself into a more amenable frame of mind as he entered the noisy, fragrant room in search of Cara. She’d apparently made a good impression with Claude, and he’d drafted her on the spot when she’d reported for duty after escorting Mat to his first day at the settlement school.

Ben knew all this because he’d set his datpad to screen for the Belascos whenever they passed through a security scan at the public buildings. Some might consider it invasive to monitor their movements, but if she considered herself and her brother at risk, he needed to know where they were. So, when Mat had registered at school that morning, he’d gotten a ping, and when Cara had entered the kitchen, he’d gotten another. It was reassuring.

Several of the workers glanced up at him and gave him smiles, ranging from nearly non-existent to tentative. Pretty typical greetings for the chief of safety and security. He spotted Claude at a tall counter, inspecting plates of food, and the other man pointed at a far corner. Nodding his thanks, Ben made his way past a man cutting up something yellow with a thin, flashing knife and then spotted Cara. He assumed it was Cara, this woman had the same build, but her gleaming hair was confined under a white cap, and when she turned at his approach, he hesitated. She wore goggles, her blue green eyes blinking behind wavy lenses.

“Is it time?”

“What are those? What are you doing?” Ben asked as she carefully set her knife on the cutting board and turned to him. There was a messy pile of some sort of outer membrane oozing green fluid all over the counter and a tidy stack of purplish flesh sliced into tiny cubes on the board in front of her. Cara swept the neat cubes into a gleaming steel container and placed a lid over it quickly. She slid the skin fragments into a waste receptacle and placed the knife in a shallow pan.

“I’m breaking down orphilians.” Cara wiped down the board with a cloth and gave him some sort of look from behind the lenses of the goggles.

“What’s an orphillian?”

“Native animal and apparently delicious. Here, let me show you.” Cara reached into a chiller under her work area and retrieved a repulsive looking worm-like creature covered in lavender fur and sporting a multitude of pink, tube-shaped legs. She pulled out her knife, and with a few confident strokes of the blade, she’d disemboweled it and neatly peeled the skin back with a nauseating tearing noise. With some quick chops the creature was reduced to small cubes of glistening meat and the waste joined the rest in the trash. Her mouth quirked as she added her product to the container, wiped the board again, and pulled off her thin gloves to toss both them and the cloth in a hamper against the wall.

“Is it dangerous?” He gestured at the goggles as she twisted them off; they’d been on so tight there were red dents in the soft skin of her forehead and cheeks.

“Turns out I’m allergic, so I had to wear some extra gear.”

“Then you shouldn’t be doing this. Claude?” Ben turned to find the chef, determined to get the man to assign her to something less perilous. He was startled to feel her hand on his arm, and he glanced back at her.

“I’m fine. It’s fine. Please. I like this work.” She studied him with a frown as her fingers tightened against him.

Ben took in a breath and regrouped. Aside from the pink marks from the goggles on her skin, she appeared healthy. In fact, she was much improved from her state after the crash. Cara’s eyes were bright and her lips were pink, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she looked as if she’d added a much needed kilo or two. Working here in the kitchens might add a few more which was all for the better. Maybe she could work with pastries tomorrow.

“I need to show my work to the chef, and then I’ll be ready.” With a squeeze of his arm she let go and collected her container. With quick and efficient movements she made her way to Claude, and Ben watched as the man inspected the contents, gave a quick nod, and spoke to her for a few seconds. His arm tingled where she’d touched him. Cara stared at the chef, hanging on his words and then gave him a brief smile before turning away and unbuttoning her smock to toss into a hamper. Ben followed her to the swinging doors and held one open as they exited the kitchen and left behind all the activity. She trotted down the service hallway that ran behind the dining hall, dodging tray carts and stacks of clean dishes.

“Cara, you don’t have to rush.”

She slowed. “I’m just anxious to see Mat. This is a first for us.”

“Being separated?”

She nodded, her eyes trained on the door at the end of the hall. “He was eager to go to school, but I was so nervous after I left him that I ruined the first batch of lettuce I had to wash.”

“How do you ruin lettuce when you wash it?” Ben was perplexed. Even though he wasn’t much of a home cook, it seemed a pretty simple task. He’d managed it a time or two. Her candor pleased him. After their walk in the woods, she seemed to like him a bit more.

She nodded her thanks as he opened the door to the commons area. The school was directly across the small plaza in front of them, and she walked that way as she replied, “It’s easy to do when you turn the spigot to hot instead of cold.”

Lettuce soup. Ben was amused at the thought.

“Don’t laugh, I thought I was going to be tossed out, and I’d only been there for a half an hour. They were such pretty lettuces too.”

Her openness was refreshing, and Ben felt the cares of his morning start to dissipate. She quirked a smile at him as if to gauge his mood, and he decided to go for broke and smile right back at her. With a startled blink, she nearly stepped into the edge of the school door as he opened it for her. He reached out to steady her. “Careful there.”

“Sorry, I’m not paying attention. Still nervous.” Her cheeks colored faintly. Nervous about Mat, or nervous about his smile? Or maybe his touch? She led them to a particular door in the hallway, and he watched her as she peered inside, careful to keep her head out of sight of the occupants. Her mouth curved in pleasure when she must have spotted her brother, and she slid back to take a position by the door.

“He’s still in there?”

“Yes. He was concentrating so hard he didn’t even notice me.”

Ben edged into a position next to her, automatically surveying both ends of the hallway for exits and hiding places. He glanced over at her and noticed she was close to his own height; her shoulder was only a few centimeters lower than his own. She’d always stood so far away. Other than the time she’d been collapsed in his arms, he hadn’t really paid attention to the similarity. He also noticed she still wore the white cap from the kitchen. He tapped her arm and gestured at her head. She rolled her eyes up to look and then quickly reached to unpin it from her hair. After a couple of seconds of struggle, he reached in and tried to help her, their fingertips brushing against each other’s as they pulled pins from her soft hair.

“I guess I put in a lot more pins than I needed. Never wore one of these before,” Cara explained in a whisper. The cap was finally loose, and she whipped it from her head with an impatient movement, shoving the pins inside and folding it into a tube to slide into a pocket on her blouse. Ben tried not to smile when he saw little curls of reddish hair, dislodged by the now-absent pins, curling around her face.

“Your hair, it’s, ah…”

“It’s what? Oh
bother
.” With an aggrieved moan, she pulled at the tie holding it together on top of her head and it all tumbled free. The clean skin scent of it filled his nostrils, and he instinctively breathed in while repressing a powerful urge to slide his fingers into the gleaming mass and pull her face to his. Clenching his hands into fists, Ben chastised himself. Not appropriate thinking, not at all. Cara saved him from temptation and quickly confined her hair into another topknot with a few twists of her wrists. “Better?”