Montega's Mistress (14 page)

“Hmm?” he replied, not looking up, absorbed by his task.

“Do you think we’re going to get out of this?”

He raised his head, saw the expression in her eyes. “You are,
majita.
I’m going to make sure of it.”

“And what about you?” she asked, searching his face.

“I’m in it for the duration, Helen. You know that.”

She dropped her eyes, following the motion of his hands. Why did she keep asking him the same question? Did she think that just once the answer would change?

“Just the front is left,” he said, handing her the bottle. “You can do that.”

“You do it,” she replied, giving it back to him.

He stared at her, saw the seductive challenge in her eyes. Sparks kindled in his, and he spread another pool of lotion onto his fingers, slipping them across her collarbone and the tops of her shoulders. The front of the blouse had a deep round neck, and he stroked lower and lower, teasing her. When he finally reached into the cup of her bra, his big hand engulfing her breast, she moaned and her head fell forward, her hair draping over his arm.

The bottle dropped from his hand and he lifted her into his lap. Helen lay back in his arms, reaching to pull him down to her as he kissed her. The noonday sun filtered through the trees, making patterns on the two figures sprawled upon the ground. In seconds they were as lost as they had been the night before, and Matteo was reaching behind Helen to undo the buttons at the back of her blouse.

She arched her back to accommodate him, and in moving she scraped the burned skin of her arm across the rocky soil beneath her. She cried out, and Matteo sat up, looking around them.

“What is it?” he said, scanning the trees. “Did you hear something?”

“No, I just hurt my arm.”

He looked down at her, lying across his thighs, and suddenly seemed to realize what they were doing. He picked her up bodily and set her against the trunk of a tree, standing himself and walking a short distance away from her.

“Now,” he said in a slightly unsteady voice. “You stay there and I’ll stay over here, or else we won’t get to the camp today, and we might not get there at all. Understood?”

“Si, mi jefe,”
she replied, saluting smartly.

“That isn’t funny,” he said, removing two sandwiches from the backpack and tossing her one. “Now eat your lunch like a good girl and try not to taste Elena’s trademark meatloaf. She thinks it’s an American dish, and I’ve never had the heart to tell her it’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted on this planet, much less in the States.”

Helen took a bite, and had to agree that the filling in the sandwich bore little resemblance to meatloaf. It did, however, have a disturbing likeness to the Wednesday night special at her secondary boarding school. The students had referred to it as mystery meat. They had it on good authority that it had been responsible for the deaths of several students over the years. Helen wondered briefly how Elena had managed to get the recipe from the Parsons School for Girls in Concord, New Hampshire, and then dismissed the coincidence as one of life’s little ironies.

“What are you smiling at?” Matteo asked.

“I was just thinking that this tastes like a dish I used to have at my old boarding school,” she said.

He nodded. “Yeah, institutional food is pretty bad. In college we sent out for pizza every night. It’s a wonder we didn’t all have rickets.”

“What’s an engineering major like?” she asked curiously. “What kind of courses did you take?”

Matteo shrugged. “Physics, mostly.”

Helen shuddered. “I had one physics course, and that was enough. All those problems with people riding bicycles up an incline, into a head wind, with this kind of pull and that kind of drag. How fast were they going? What was the thrust and the slope and the resistance? I never knew.”

He grinned. “That was my favorite type of problem.”

“You could actually solve those things? I would memorize the formulas for the tests, and I thought I was applying them right, but I would always wind up with an answer that had somebody riding a bicycle at the speed of light.”

Matteo laughed. “And then, after having spent forty-five minutes figuring it out, you would hand it in anyway, right?”

She nodded vigorously. “You bet. I was heavily into partial credit. The professor would give you points if you picked the right law of thermodynamics, or whatever, even if you got the wrong answer. I think that’s how I passed.”

“Why were you taking a physics course? That seems an odd choice for an English major.”

Helen made a face. “I had a counselor who told me I had to be well rounded. I was a freshman; what did I know? After that year I decided I would be narrow minded and insular, and my grades improved dramatically.”

He smiled, regarding her with amusement, and Helen thought it was an unusual conversation to be having, with this man, in this place. She could see where his rival would resent the education and the polish that made Matteo seem much more a product of the American culture than his native one. Sometimes, as now, when she talked to him she could forget what he had chosen to do with his life. Then she would be brutally reminded by hearing the harsh tone of his voice when he issued orders or seeing the glint of the sunlight on his gun. At one moment he would seem like a young Manhattan professional at a cocktail party or a gallery opening, and at another like a guerrilla, grimy and armed, looking out at her from the pages of the Sunday supplement. He sat astride his two worlds uneasily, inhabiting both, but completely at home in neither.

“What are you thinking?” he asked suddenly, his tone wary, almost unfriendly.

She blinked. “Why do you ask?”

“You were looking at me so strangely, as if you could see right through me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I was thinking that your life must be difficult,” she said honestly.

“And yours hasn’t exactly been a party since you met me,” he replied. “I carry so much trouble with me that it clings to those I touch, like pollen.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it, Matteo,” she said softly. “This is an adventure. I’ve never had one before, and probably never will again.”

“Did you think that yesterday when the bullets were flying?”

“Once I realized I was still alive, I did. It’s a tremendous rush, isn’t it, to be in such peril, and then to escape, knowing that you got out of it through your own resources, that you won and ‘they’ lost. I felt exhilarated, totally alive, like I was flying.”

“You felt that, too?” he said softly.

“Oh, yes. There’s nothing else like it, is there?”

“Nothing,” he answered, half smiling, his eyes meeting hers in perfect communication.

Helen felt the heat come up under her skin; the sensation of shared understanding was almost sexual. Then he broke the spell by striding toward her and offering his hands to pull her up. When she was on her feet he led her to the bike.

“We have to get going. The last leg of the trip will be on foot, and I don’t want to be walking through the jungle after dark.”

“Jungle?” Helen said apprehensively.

He leaned over her shoulder and pointed into the distance, where the slope of a mountain could be seen rising into a mist so thick that it was still untouched by the tropical sun.

“La Jungla Azul,”
he said softly. “The Blue Jungle.”

“Why blue?”

“The vegetation is so dense that it looks blue from the air. Pilots flying over it named it.”

“Is your camp on that mountain?”

“Part way up the slope. The plants produce about half the oxygen used in the whole country.”

“Are you sure you can find the camp? The trees all look... the same.”

He chuckled. “Spoken like a city girl. I can find it,
majita,
never fear.” He handed her Elena’s thermos and said, “Have another drink. And I’ve got candy bars. If you feel weak or faint, tell me. Eating one should take care of it.”

“Okay.”

Matteo replaced their supplies in the pack, and Helen climbed on the bike behind him once he was seated. His shirt was damp and clung to him, outlining his taut muscles, and when she slipped her arms around his waist she had a flash of his bare skin pressed to hers, slick and musk scented, in that oven of a bedroom at the
taberna.
She felt a falling sensation in the pit of her stomach, and she took a deep breath, steeling herself for the ordeal of the journey ahead.

“Ready?” he said, turning his head.

“Ready,” she replied, and he kicked the bike into life, sending up a spray of gravel and roaring off through the trees.

They traveled at a slower pace now, picking their way through increasingly dense undergrowth, until Matteo was forced to abandon the bike and they walked. Helen followed in his wake as he cleared a path for them, breaking off low-hanging branches and occasionally pulling his knife from his belt and cutting away the leaves and vines so they could pass. Helen was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe; her lungs could not adjust to the changing oxygen content of the air` and every step was labored. As night was falling Matteo stopped and turned to look at her. Then he slipped the straps of his pack from his arms.

“That’s it,” he said. “You’re done in. We’ll have to stay the night here and reach camp in the morning.”

“How far is it?” she asked, slapping away the bugs that were feasting on her hide like pork fanatics at a luau.

“A mile or so,” he said, “but you can’t make it.”

“I can make it,” she gasped.

“I’ll carry you.”

Helen drew herself up to her full height, not very impressive next to his six feet plus, but the best she could do. “You will not carry me. I won’t make my entrance like a dead Spartan borne home on his shield.”

He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the gathering darkness.

“Your entrance? Helen, we’re not going to a debutante ball.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “Matt, I’m burned a lovely shade of coral, my bites and scrapes and cuts look like a Bactine advertisement and my hair has become the home of every insect in Central America. At least allow me the dignity of arriving on my own two feet.”

“All right,” he conceded. “I never argue with a woman whose skin is the color of a Hawaiian sunset.”

“Do I look that bad?” she asked worriedly, feeling the vestiges of her vanity resurfacing at the prospect of being seen by other people.

“You look gorgeous,” he said firmly, leaning forward to kiss the tip of her pink nose. “You look like a gorgeous blonde with a few scratches and a medium-to-well-done sunburn.”

“Liar,” she said. “In this light you can’t even see me.”

“I can see well enough. Your skin has its own glow, sort of like a radioactive isotope.”

It was not the moment to tease her. Her lower lip began to tremble, and he detected the glimmer of tears in her eyes.

“Oh, no, baby, no,” Matteo said, realizing that she had been pushed near her limit. He pulled her close, smoothing her tangled hair back from her forehead. “Don’t cry now, it’s almost over. Soon we’ll arrive, and you’ll have food, and a hot bath, and sleep. Doesn’t that sound good?”

Helen nodded, sniffling like a five year old promised a lollipop after the penicillin shot.

He pressed his lips to the shell of her ear, closing his eyes. “That’s my brave girl,” he whispered. “Now look. Look up at that moon. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes,” she agreed. It was enhanced by a halo, surrounded by stars just emerging from the blue void of dusk.

“By the time it’s in full view we’ll be there,” he said. “All right?”

“Okay.”

Matteo set off again, and Helen followed him, bolstered by his touch, his words. Let’s face it, she thought dryly, squashing a mosquito with the flat of her hand, the man can get me to do anything.

They ascended for a length of time Helen was no longer able to measure, and then Matteo stopped, taking her hand and pointing to a large clearing directly ahead of them.
 

Helen could see a mass of tents and cooking fires—a sprawling encampment where people walked to and fro, appearing miniaturized by the distance.

“There it is,” he said.

His step became brisker with his eagerness to get there, and Helen kept up with him, anxious for the rest he had promised. As they got closer she could pick out features she had missed before: a modern looking motor home parked at the edge of the trees, prefab buildings that could be assembled hastily and dismantled the same way, stacked boxes of canned goods and other supplies.

She glanced at Matteo. His face was alight; he was happy to be coming home, once more joining those who shared his purpose.

They were within shouting distance now, and a guard posted nearest the path they were traveling turned at a footstep, rifle at the ready. When he saw who it was he shouldered the weapon, setting up a cry that brought the others running from tents and huts all over the camp, dropping whatever they were doing to greet their leader.

“Matteo!” he shouted, and his cry was echoed by other voices until the whole clearing seemed to ring with the sound of the name. Matteo had to halt as they crowded around him, slapping his back, embracing him joyously, some even ruffling his hair. Helen stood behind him, not wanting to intrude on his reunion, and she noticed that there were two who stayed apart from the others, lingering on the fringes of the crowd. They were a man about Matteo’s age and height, but huskier, with curling sandy hair and an expressionless face, and young woman with long straight black hair and a voluptuous figure encased in a set of pea green fatigues. This couple merely watched the scene, saying nothing to their comrades or to each other, but after the excitement died down Matteo’s eyes sought the man’s and he said quietly,
“Vicente. ¿Que tal?”