“You gave everyone else instructions, except me.”
“Your job is to protect Daleyza.”
“While I appreciate you recognizing that, I really didn’t need you to instruct me to do it.” He sounded offended.
“Focusing on your job once we get into San Carlos di Bariloche and protecting her while we’re there is more than enough for you to focus on.”
Her heart rate spiked, and her stomach dropped. “I’m going to Argentina?”
“Belleza, if one of his trackers is in Bariloche, I’m betting that means it’s on your family’s property. It’s a warning to us as well as a distraction.”
“A warning of what?”
“That there’s no help to be found from your brother.”
“Like you’d actually go to him for help?” she asked incredulously.
“Make no mistake, if it meant protecting you, I would go to the devil himself. But if your brother is taking orders from my father, and Waters’ tracker being present there suggests this to be true, then it means any hope of family loyalty to you is completely lost.” He looked to his boss. “It also means that she’s a target. I’d rather leave her in lockdown at Tribe.”
“Fanso! How dare you?—”
The next thing she knew, his mouth was on hers. Hard. The hand he had on the back of her neck, which apparently he’d used to drag her into his space, held her in a punishing grip so she couldn’tmove her head at all. When she tried to move her body instead, she discovered he’d used his other hand to haul her from her seat and into his lap, his arm a brutal band around her waist, holding her tight as she straddled him, her knees between his thighs and the arms of the seat.
Heart pounding. Blood racing. Strong arms embracing her, a sensation of warmth and protectiveness, despite the fact that she couldn’t move. Soft lips that contrasted with the hard press against hers. His scruff abrading her smooth skin, likely leaving behind a whisker burn.
It had been so long since she’d kissed him. She felt like she was falling into an abyss, so she clutched at him in return, as if that would keep her from falling.
The kiss was over almost as soon as she realized what was happening. While it lasted only seconds, that didn’t mean she would forget it any time soon.
Embarrassed by how quickly she’d succumbed and angry with herself for responding, she whisper-yelled, “What the hell was that for?”
She looked over to where his boss had been sitting only to see that the man was no longer there. Either the man was very fast, or the kiss had lasted longer than she thought.
“It was the fastest way to keep you from saying something you wouldn’t be able to take back.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he merely raised that one eyebrow—the one she always wanted to rip off his face like a bandage… or duct tape—and make him eat it because it was so infuriating.
It was also a look she knew well from him. The one he made when he knew she was going to regret doing or saying whatever he was stopping her from doing or saying. Unfortunately, her back was up, and even though she knew she should stop and breathe, she began hissing at him in rapid Spanish.
“If you leave me behind, I swear to God, Fanso, you will regret it. Ihate it when you treat me like a feeble woman. You, of all people, know better than that. I shoot as well as you do. I’m sneakier than you, and I’m faster than you too. I can help you. If they’ve got your friend hidden on the family property, I know every inch of that space, including where all the bodies are buried. I can help you, especially if my idiot brother is involved.”
“I know that,pequeño tigre.”
She ran out of fire and brimstone to rain down on him. He did? “Then why are you planning to leave me behind?”
“You need to work on your listening skills. I said I’dratherleave you behind on lockdown. I didn’t say that I would.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, because you raced to the finish line, like always, rather than stopping to think first. It’s actually a little reassuring to know you haven’t changed all that much. Every time you got mad at me, you’d scream at me in Spanish.”
“And you’d yell right back,” she reminded him, testily.
“It was the only way to get a word in edgewise,” he protested. He huffed, then his eyes swung to the ceiling of the cabin, and he mouthed words in Spanish to himself, but she couldn’t catch them. He continued. “If you’re locked down at Tribe, you’re safe. No one, and I mean no one, can get to you inside our walls. While you’d be safer at Tribe with the other women and the children, and therefore I’d be happier, I know we need you if we have to go onto your family’s lands.”
“You’d be happier if I was safe.” She understood the words, but for whatever reason, they weren’t processing through her head.
He brushed a stray strand of hair back that had escaped her ponytail. “Of course I would be. Why do you think I came to Wisconsin?”
