Something he deserved. He would have needs, too, during this transition.
She knelt on the floor, sweeping her hand over the scattered petals as if to rebuild the evening and handle things better this time. She sifted the scented bits between her fingers, such tiny scraps to give off such a potent scent.
The whimsical notion tugged at her. She almost discarded it as a frivolous bit of tripe the old Sara would have considered. Instead the thought flowered inside her mind—even her heart—all those little red satiny bits coming together.
She'd been so clueless. She'd accused Lucas of expecting perfection from himself, when she had been expecting the same from him. He was such a capable man of huge accomplishments, she had been looking for the same from him on the emotional front.
Except he wasn't invulnerable after all. Reaching out was difficult for him, something he rarely did and therefore she should have paid far more attention to the smaller details when he did. Spreading rose petals on the bed for her in a tender romantic gesture would have been tougher for him than whacking through a hazardous jungle or leading a squadron.
She plopped onto her bottom, cradled the petals in her cupped hands and knew she wasn't being whimsical or silly in the least to think she held Lucas's heart.
Wasn't that an earthshaking, amazing realization? The reality of it rocked her until she could have sworn the floorboards moved beneath her.
Again?
She inched to the side to stare at the pine slats in the dim moonlight, her brain refusing to process what she saw. Boards slid aside, a man emerging, large, lethal.
Machine gun aimed.
Ramon had come for her, with a hardened glint in his eyes that shone through even the dark.
"You seem very comfortable here, Sarafina, not at all an unwilling prisoner." He jacked the weapon up higher. "Make a sound and I will shoot your brains all over Lucia."
Chapter 15
Lucas strode down the hall away from his room, away from Sara and the guards posted at her door and window. For the first time in his life, he had no idea where to go next. He'd always had a goal along with a plan for how to achieve it.
Well, he had the goal—plant a ring on Sara's hand. But he had no idea how to go about making that happen. So he'd made tracks for the door when her questions grew more pointed.
He could probably persuade her to stay at his house for Lucia's sake. Except, damn it all, he wanted her to move in for him.
Given his rotten mood, he should level out before attempting to make his case. Better to review tomorrow night's flight plan again.
The dingy hall echoed with his boot steps, all the doors closed except for one open slightly, a slice of light knifing across the floor. He paused outside, finding Carson Hunt alone with a cup of coffee and his laptop on the desk. Lucas rapped his knuckles on the molding frame, not totally sure why, but unwilling to keep walking.
Hunt glanced up. "Oh, hello, sir. Is something wrong?"
"Does something have to be wrong for me to speak with you?" An odd notion he'd never noticed before, but come to think of it, he rarely shot the breeze. Lucas leaned a shoulder against the frame. "Where's everyone?"
"Enjoying a taste of tequila." He closed his computer and spun his chair away from the desk.
"Tequila?" Lucas straightened. What the hell? "We have a flight tomorrow night—"
"They know when crew rest starts. It's one bottle that both crews are sharing with a couple of Cartinian crews, which doesn't come out to more than a shot each. They're celebrating Seabrook's safe return. They're due that."
Hunt stroked his blond mustache while he studied Lucas as if waiting for something...like his reason for stopping since Lucas wasn't known for making polite chitchat.
Lucia was right. He was a hard—sometimes grouchy—commander. "Good job taking care of things while I was away."
Hunt quirked a brow. "Thank you, sir. You've trained us all well."
"Have I?"
Both brows shot up this time. "Excuse me?"
Sara and Lucia both had him thinking, looking deeper and reevaluating. "Part of leadership is mentoring. Quite frankly, I suck at all that warm-fuzzy teacher stuff. I'm more the hard-ass instructor type."
"Maybe so," Hunt conceded slowly, as if waiting for the explosion, and when it didn't come, he continued, "but when it came time to pick folks for positions like mine, you chose mentor types to round out the picture. Together, we get the job done."