More Than Paradise (12 page)

“Are you saying you’re FTM?”

“No, just a regular card-carrying butch.”

Charlotte let go of Ash’s hand and ß opped back into her pillows once more. Fuzzily, she stared up at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry.” Ash perched on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t set out to deceive you. It just seemed like a good idea not to say anything at the bar because I thought you’d be upset about the kiss.”

Charlotte touched her lips.
The kiss.
HorriÞ ed, she blurted, “I’d never have done that if I knew.”

“I Þ gured.”

“How can you be so casual about it!” She elbowed her way up the bed so she could prop her back against the headboard. “You should have told me.”

“Yes, I should have said something in the taxi afterward. I apologize.”

Charlotte snorted, lost for words and bewildered by her own blindness. How could she not have seen that Ash was a woman? Now that she knew, it was so obvious she had no idea how she could have missed every sign. No facial hair. A neck and throat that belonged to a woman. Shoulders and wrists slightly too narrow. Strong smooth hands, somewhat Þ nely boned for a man’s. Not much of a waist or butt,

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but still enough shape that Charlotte should have Þ gured it out, even though the cut of her pants wasn’t feminine.

A woman could be quietly spoken, physically powerful, and carry weapons. A woman could be a pilot. Ash had never said she was a man.

Charlotte had assumed it, and even if she had failed to notice all the clues that had stared her in the face, the kiss was a neon sign. She’d never had a sexual feeling for a man in her life. Why start now? That, if nothing else, should have made her stop and think.

“I am so stupid,” she concluded, stunned by what now seemed like willful self-deception. Apparently she had believed what she wanted to believe. And she called herself a scientist!

“It’s really no big deal.” Ash seemed serenely unß ustered. “People mistake me for a man all the time. And I have to tell you, it makes my life easier.”

Charlotte could see how that would be true for someone living in a crime-torn city on the fringes of civilization. She could also see why Ash might not have told her in the bar. They’d walked out of there unscathed, which meant the het-couple conduct had been a good plan.

Only they both knew that phony kiss had turned out to be a whole lot more.

“You kissed me like…” Charlotte got stuck on the semantics.

“Like you’re a desirable woman?” Ash supplied. “Yes, and you didn’t seem to mind.”

“Because I thought you were a man!”

“Exactly. And you reacted like any normal heterosexual woman would.”

Heterosexual!
Charlotte knew she was blushing, but she couldn’t do a thing to arrest the pounding ß ow of blood to her cheeks. If she got up now to splash water on her face, she would only fall over.

Summoning all the dignity she could muster, she said, “I think you should leave.”

“I think so, too.” Emotion smoldered beneath the level blue gaze.

Charlotte wasn’t sure how to read what she was seeing. If Ash was angry, it didn’t show in her tone or her face. In fact, she seemed infuriatingly calm. Charlotte did exactly the same thing herself when she was in danger of losing her temper. She wished she could pull off her usual arrogant disdain now, but she’d blown her chances with that last champagne cocktail.

Normally she drank very little, at risk of losing control and because

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drunkenness disgusted her. Tonight she’d made an exception because she was feeling at ease. Ash Evans had fooled her into lowering her guard. Angrily she searched her muddled mind for something to throw at the Þ rst woman who’d gotten under her skin since Britt.

“Guess what,” she said, wishing she could stop the wavering of her voice. “I’m not as heterosexual as you think. I happen to be a lesbian and I kiss women all the time. For the record, you’re nothing special in that department.”

Ash’s mouth moved a fraction, its taut line quirking like she found something comical in Charlotte’s jibe. “You know something? I’m truly happy you feel that way.”

Charlotte waited for the punch line, but Ash got to her feet and slid a hand into the pocket of her elegant pants. She was so effortlessly hot, Charlotte could only return her dispassionate regard with helpless fascination, reliving the kiss through a whole different frame of reference. Desire wrenched at her belly. Her mouth dried and her senses quivered.

“Why?” she croaked. “Why are you happy I said that?”

For a ß eeting instant, raw emotion wiped all sign of detachment from Ash’s face and she almost seemed to be talking to herself. “Because if you felt any other way, I would not be able to walk out of here.”

Before Charlotte could convert her surprise to intelligible speech, Ash swung her jacket from the chair and hooked it over her shoulder.

She paused as she opened the door, casting a long look back.

“Good-bye, Charlotte,” she said with disquieting tenderness. “I’ll think of you.”

v

Ash’s most important customer had once lived the Spartan life of a British SAS ofÞ cer. He was making up for it now in an opulent fortress perched above the hillside mansions of Pom’s elite. A couple of gilt lions guarded the massive security gates, along with a security detachment Colonel Tobias Nagle, as he was known on the company Web site, claimed made a good advertisement for his services.

Like the rest of his private army, the detail had their own special sand-colored uniforms with the Nagle Global Diligence emblem on the epaulettes, belt buckles, and berets. Tubby paid a starting salary of $120K for his full-timers, recruiting former military from all over

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the world. He’d been in the business for thirty years, starting out as a mercenary in Africa and gradually working his way up to the pinnacle of his profession—legitimate government contracts.

Rebel wars and covert ops were always a lucrative source of revenue for soldiers of fortune, but they lacked the respectability Tubby seemed to crave. If he couldn’t have genuine military credentials, he wanted at least to sit at the same table as those who did, to dine with generals and have regular troops call him “sir” like they used to. He wanted his own men to wear the NGD uniform with pride and to see themselves as elite forces, just like any other.

Consequently, he was still reeling that his archrival Tim Spicer had nailed the $300 million Pentagon contract for Iraq. This was the same loser responsible for the Sandline disaster and the Arms-to-Africa scandal, debacles apparently seen by the White House as compelling evidence of his competence for the job at hand. And if you wanted to believe Tubby’s jaundiced opinion, Spicer was a trigger-happy opportunist without a strategic-planning bone in his body.

Ash only knew the guy by reputation and it seemed like things had panned out pretty well for him. She got regular offers from his company, Aegis. Every boss in the private military services sector was desperate for chopper pilots with special ops experience. And with the Bush Administration ignoring overbilling and bleeding a river of money into the coffers of war proÞ teers, Spicer and competitors like Blackwater were all cashed up and willing to pay top dollar.

Ash knew this was why Tubby watched her every move and tried to keep her on a short leash by piling on the work. He needed to beat out potential rivals if he wanted to keep her on the payroll. She supposed this could be the motivation for his latest fat offer. Fifty large for hand-holding a few scientists. She’d be laughing all the way to the bank if that was as demanding as it got.

To make her happy, Tubby had his slavering guard dogs penned up when she arrived and he waved a bottle of the Þ nest Kentucky sipping whiskey money could buy. He was a single malt drinker himself and tried to convert her every time they shot the breeze. This week, as an additional temptation to visitors, he had procured the services of a couple of Australian escorts, ß own in from Brisbane. They were predictably named Bambi and Misty and their job involved lounging around the pool and providing any other services guests required. Tubby thought

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this type of hospitality made the right impression when he entertained mining executives.

He had a wife stashed somewhere spending his money, and a couple of sons attending a fancy school in England. He liked to show Ash videos of them playing cricket and rowing boats, footage taken by their bodyguards. Tonight he had a snapshot of them standing in the grounds of a castle with a group of their schoolmates, all wearing top hats and tails.

“They met Her Majesty,” he said, and in case Ash didn’t know who he was talking about, “I mean Queen Elizabeth of England. A garden party at Windsor Castle, this was.”

Ash said, “You must be very proud.”

Tubby directed her attention to the ß oodlit terraces beyond a wall of bulletproof glass. Bambi and Misty were frolicking topless in the pool. That had to get old, Ash thought, spending a week at a time in and out of chlorinated water, pretending all you wanted to do was sip cocktails and toss a beach ball around while listening to Bryan Ferry turned up loud on the outdoor speakers. And in between times fucking a corpulent sixty-year-old who kept a doctor on call in case the Viagra gave him a heart attack.

Tubby caught her looking at the women and mistook her quizzical disinterest for something else. With a pointed wink, he said, “Just say the word. Anything you want, my love. You name it.”

“This isn’t a social call,” Ash responded coolly. “But thanks for the mammaries.”

Tubby chuckled and sipped his scotch with the gravity of a man about to dazzle those around him. “Okay, here’s the deal.” In the most formal version of his British accent, he conÞ ded, “NGD is breaking into a whole new arena. Take a look at this.”

He hit a remote and the ß at screen on the opposite wall came alive. The scene was a laboratory, everything white and glassy. People in white coats and masks hung over microscopes and glided robotically around, holding test tubes. Ash wondered if Charlotte was working in a facility like that. No wonder she was germ-phobic.

She asked Tubby, “We’re going to be providing chemical hazard zone security?”

“Fuck, no.” He dismissed that idea like the small potatoes it was.

“That’s only part of it. We’re moving into multilevel diligence for the

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drug companies. Not as big as oil and commodities, but it’s a low-risk niche. Something for the career mobile leatherneck who doesn’t want his head cut off by heathen. See those glass tubes? That could be the cure for cancer.”

“Well,” Ash conceded, “they Þ xed impotence.”

Tubby nodded cheerfully. “I can go at it all night now.”

Ash took a pass on congratulating him and watched the video. A professor droned on about nature’s bounty and the quest for the holy grail of cancer research, the pill that’s going to persuade the body to kill the bad cells, not the good ones. Finally, emerging from a glossy pool of computer-generated ocean, a range of misty mountains Þ lled the screen and a dove swooped down into a lush jungle teeming with exotic animals and plants.

As this visual feast unfolded, a melliß uous voice intoned, “The Sealy-Weiss Institute. Bringing the knowledge of yesterday to the frontiers of tomorrow. Are you ready for the unexpected? Will you accept the challenge?”

“Is this their recruitment video?” Ash asked.

“Yeah, that’s all they could give me.”

Tubby sounded chagrined. He liked to receive glossy promotional DVDs from his clients. Since these were mostly oil and mining companies, the footage always showed pristine environments, mother animals romping with their babies, and caring executives talking about all the money they spent on protecting the planet for generations to come. Tubby would show a couple of these whenever he was conducting orientation sessions for new recruits so the guys understood they could hold their heads up. Nagle Global Diligence provided vital services to quality clients who were doing their bit to help the world. They were not mercenaries. They were military professionals providing advice and assistance to private business.

“And this Sealy-Weiss Institute is the client?” Ash asked.

“In partnership with Belton Pharmaceuticals. You’ve heard of them, right?”

“Sure. Big players. Up there with PÞ zer and Merck.”

“Ka-ching, ka-ching.” Tubby rubbed his fat Þ ngers together.

“I’m thinking ahead, my darling. The Iraq war is today’s big game but morale is getting to be an issue. The smart talent out there is looking to make a move into something safer and cleaner. I’m about providing an alternative.”

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Ash read between the lines. “You’re getting too much heat from the mining crowd, so it’s time to diversify the client base?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Now that Ash had established the source of her paycheck, she asked, “When? Where? And who?”

“Next week. Irian Jaya. Sixteen scientists looking for who the bloody hell knows what in the Foja Mountains. They’ll be up there for a couple of months, so we need supply drops, ß yovers, communications support. The usual.”

“You want me to chopper these bozos into Kwerba, then Þ nd the lake bed up west.” She paused before musing aloud, “How many birds have gone down there? Double digits, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but none of those pilots could ß y like you.” Tubby looked pleased with this silver-tongued accolade.

“Kiss my ass,” Ash said. “So, let’s say we make it, and Þ ght our way up the mountains for Christ knows how many miles in the pouring rain to build whatever observation platforms and crap these crazies want.

Then what? My copilot heads back to the one-star luxury of Kwerba and gets shitfaced for the duration while my ride is disassembled by the
kotekas
and sold in parts to the fucking Indonesians?”

“That about sums it up.” Tubby snickered.