The Captive's Return

Lean-to completed, Lucas scooped up Lucia to carry her inside. Sara soaked in the sight. How often she'd imagined her lover's stark face softening as he looked at the miracle of their child.



Except she saw no such softening. In fact, he seemed to be shutting out the world. Lucas had always been a stoic man, but she'd sensed the deep waters beneath his stark exterior and had burned to tap them.



Now, she found nothing but darkness behind his blue eyes.



Time couldn't have changed him that much, could it? Still she didn't understand this man at all and he gave no peeks into his soul for guidance.



Didn't he want to know what had happened to her? Or was he waiting for her to talk? Thoughtful, certainly, and the answer she hoped for because indifference hurt. She'd grieved for him for five years and he hadn't even shown the least emotion at finding her alive.



But what emotion had she shown him? Could he be as frozen inside as she felt sometimes?



Perhaps she needed to make the first move, a touch that had nothing to do with tending a wound or helping someone over a rotten log. To rest her hand on his and absorb the familiar texture of him again...



Just when she'd thought herself completely numb, emotions frothed to life, choking her throat, burning her eyes. Lucas was alive, a stranger or not, he lived.



She reached for him, suddenly needing so much more than a touch, instead starving for him to put his arms around her and hold her. "Lucas—"



He flinched back.



Such a small movement, likely imperceptible to most, but so very telling to her. The rejection slapped over her all the more coming from him. Dreams dissolved into the fading sunlight.



She kept her hand extended, refusing to let him see her vulnerability. "I should look at your arm while there's still a little light left."



He glanced down at his blood-soaked T-shirt strips as if he'd forgotten the injury. "I have antiseptic and a couple of bandages in my survival vest."



"I brought a first aid kit." She fished the small white box from her backpack, nudging aside her black insulin case. Thank heavens she'd had the cover of a quick trip to the bushes to check her glucose level and give herself an injection. She needed to be all the more careful with the exertion, sweating and weird diet of bananas and passion fruit.



Passion?



Great. Now even food was turning her on. She unlatched the first aid case and spread it out beside her to best catch the fading rays. "I'll try to be gentle."



"Do you always bring a first aid kit with you for a walk?"



What? A walk? He couldn't have really thought she'd climbed through a wall into the wilds with a child for a simple stroll with crocodiles and jaguars?



She'd told him about Padilla and Ramon's turf war. Surely he'd realized why she left. She thought back over their conversation...she'd never said she intended to leave. Just that she knew the battle was imminent.



"I was leaving the compound for good. Or trying to anyway." Would he believe her about escaping? Or about being stuck there all these years?



He seemed so in control of his destiny. Would he even understand how someone could have all choices taken away?



Sara peeled the cotton strips from his arm. The bleeding had stopped, at least. She tugged a bit at a time, blood oozing, but not gushing. Still the gaping gash... She swallowed down nausea.



Flesh puckered, swollen and angry, the cut deep into muscle most likely since he seemed all muscle. "You need stitches."



His face paled under his tan. "Don't you have some butterfly bandages in there or something?"



That rare hint of vulnerability in him made it easier for her to spill her story. "Of course I do. I just said you need stitches, not that I would start poking holes in your skin like in some wagon train survival story."



"Oh. Right. Go ahead." He set his jaw and looked away from the wound.



She unscrewed the cap from a water bottle and dampened a clean cotton strip—there went Lucia's spare shirt this time—and dabbed, gently. "When I woke from surgery after the shooting, Ramon was standing over me with the doctor. As I said before, he told me you were dead, Tomas, as well."



When Lucas stayed quiet, she took that as a sign to continue and poured a half bottle more of their precious water supply straight into the wound. "I wanted to die, too. Because of my injuries, I almost did die." The grief gushed over her again like the water down his arm. "My recovery took a long time in hospitals and convalescing at Ramon's compound. I don't remember much about those months."



Except for holding her stomach at night and praying her child would be all right. She'd refused pain medications, but still feared what the shooting and surgeries could have done to a developing baby: She'd fought hard, though, to keep that remaining part of Lucas alive.



To think she had almost killed him today.



She shuddered. "I'm sorry but this next part will hurt."



Sara tore open an alcohol wipe with her teeth and dabbed as gently as possible, blowing air over his arm and trying not to think of times she had done the same over other sweaty parts of him during an afternoon siesta.



His fists clenched. From pain or awareness? The last sent a shiver over her that made her forget about monkeys cackling overhead and the sweaty grime caking her skin.



"Lucia was born prematurely, and she needed so much care, respirators and doctors, all of which Ramon provided with private clinics."



She skipped over the time when she'd learned for certain she was pregnant, then that she had diabetes. She'd hoped it was merely the gestational variety. But when the condition persisted after Lucia was born, the surgeons determined that damage to her pancreas during the shooting was the real cause. One blessing emerged from the whole mess. Babies born to diabetic mothers were larger. Those extra few ounces on a premature infant helped save Lucia.



Shoving aside thoughts of those terrifying times, she moved ahead, a good plan for her life overall. "Of course the doctors and nurses were completely loyal to their generous benefactor. Now I feel like an idiot. It took me until Lucia's first birthday to realize I wasn't allowed to leave."



Muscles bunched in his arm, pulling at the wound and sending a fresh ooze trickling down his arm.



She ripped open a corner on a packet of antibiotic ointment and squirted a stream down the center of the split flesh. "Ramon is twisted inside."



Lucas went still under her touch. She'd thought he wasn't moving before, but this lethal steel of his tensed body couldn't be missed.



"It's all right." She rested a hand on his shoulder. "He didn't abuse me, but he's what you people in the States would call a, uh, total control freak."



Oh my. Her fingers flexed into him. She'd forgotten how broad Lucas's shoulder felt, her fingers nearly flat, not long enough even to curve around. Her thumb inched up to his neck, the bristly rasp of his five o'clock shadow so deliciously different from her skin.



And he had such a sensitive neck, his one vulnerability. A simple caress or kiss or nip and she could stir a growl of pleasure from him, had done so often after making the discovery. How easy it would be to avoid talking and enjoy...



Not now. Even if Lucia weren't snoozing inches away, they couldn't pick up where they left off. Sleeping with him would be like sleeping with a stranger, something she'd never done. It had taken her five months with Lucas before she'd slept with him at all— her first lover.



"Hold these." She passed him the butterfly bandages. "Because of his connection to my father, he assumed it was his duty—his right—to make sure I stayed in the family circle."



She pinched together the corners of flesh, wincing because he didn't—or wouldn't let himself. One at a time she lined up five of the white strips. "The women in Ramon's world have no rights or freedom. They landed in one of two categories—family or whore. At least I fell into the first category."



She sealed a large pad to his arm with only a second to spare as the sun dropped below the horizon. Dark blanketed them, all the heavier with his silence. Would he believe she'd left as soon as she could manage?



Just as he'd changed, so had she. She'd been a selfish brat when he'd known her before, justifying her wants in the name of a quest for adventure once she'd broken free of her father's home. She'd been a twenty-four-year-old adult with a glamorous job in the embassy, a job that was actually far more mundane than she'd expected.



Then into a boring old press brief walked the sexiest man ever.



Lucas had been wearing a blue uniform on his first day as the assistant air attache, the starched shirt sporting silver wings that told her he usually wore a flight suit. Even more exciting, he'd been from another country.



They'd been introduced. She would translate questions from local reporters. He spoke Spanish, but using a translator smoothed nuances, as well as giving him more time to prepare diplomatic answers.



She'd seen the reciprocated interest in Lucas Quade's eyes. Anticipation had spiked through her blood like one of the rich wines served at official embassy functions.



Except he hadn't even asked her out for a cup of coffee.



Oh, he'd been polite, right up to the second he'd walked away. So she'd asked him to lunch instead— half-certain he would laugh at her. Instead, he'd given her one of those slow, sexy stares as if peering deep inside her soul. He'd said thank you, but he had plans.



Her pride stung, but not enough to give up. She'd opted for a more subtle approach and let their paths continue to cross until finally, he bit.



Theirs hadn't been an easy romance, but it certainly had been exciting and frequently heartbreaking with passionate reconciliations.



They'd both soon realized they were abysmally ill matched, but couldn't keep their hands off each other. The familiar zing crackled between them even now.



Dios, he was sinfully attractive. Even in the middle of the jungle, five years and a lifetime of grief later, she still had to sit on her hands to keep from reaching for him.



Argh! She was such a loser. And he still hadn't said anything.



"I realize this is all a shock to you." And she'd put off long enough discussing the most important thing of all. She smoothed her daughter's damp curls from her forehead. "Lucia is your daughter."



His daughter.



Sara's revelation ricocheted inside Lucas's head like a bullet in a bunker. He'd known this was coming.



Still he knew better than to question her. On the off chance the little one actually was his, Sara would always remember he'd doubted. Which would make him a first-class ass. Best to bide his time.



Besides, he couldn't blame her for doing whatever it took to keep her child safe in such extreme conditions, and he was glad for Lucia that she had such a fierce protector. There hadn't been anyone around to look after him as a kid. He knew how that messed with a person's head, staying on guard 24-7 instead of playing kick ball in the park without worrying about bullets popping the ball.



Time to dig deep for some sensitivity. He covered Sara's hand with his, cupping Lucia's head in the dark. "I've been thinking about it most of today. Can't avoid the obvious conclusion."



There, that sounded good without lying.



Her sigh swirled in the lean-to, followed by a shuffle as she settled back against the tree. "So many times I've wanted to tell you, show her to you, and finally, here we all are and it seems so unreal."



He accepted that the odds of the kid being his were slim. He hated that Sara might feel she had to lie, but what did he know about things she may have endured?



"I wish I had pictures to show you, but I didn't dare take any and alert Ramon that I planned to leave. But there are so many memories to share, like the time she poured all my shampoo in the garden fountain to make more bubbles than we could blow in a whole afternoon...."