Free Against the Wind by Anne Stuart

translate. The doctor also is called something not kind but unfortunately descriptive. And we have El Patrón, of course.”
    “And what about Murphy? What is he called?”
    Ramon shook his head. “Murphy is called nothing but Murphy. In his case it is a title with enough respect. He needs no other.”
    “Do I have a name?” she questioned idly.
    Ramon shook his head. “Not yet. Time will tell.”
    “What about La Curiosa?” Jake’s gravelly voice broke through the lazy conversation. “The snoop?”
    Ramon laughed his appreciation, but Maddy was suddenly stilled, that overwhelming tension filling her at his return. She had already become accustomed to the longhair, to the savage look of his worn khakis and his distant face. What she couldn’t come to terms with was his reappearance in her life, when she thought he’d been gone for good.
    “I am not allowed to ask questions?” she said with dignity.
    Jake shrugged, his hazel eyes curiously light. “You may ask all you wish, Allison. Whether anyone chooses to answer is another matter. Come along.”
    Maddy sat without moving. “Are you taking me to see my father?”
    “I’m taking you for a walk in the garden.”
    “And if I don’t care to go?”
    Jake’s smile was scarcely reassuring. “You have no choice in the matter.”
    Maddy looked up at him, up into the hazel eyes that had once burned into hers, hazel eyes that had, according to her mother, watched an entire village of women and children slaughtered by his fellow soldiers in Vietnam and he hadn’t been able to stop them. Had he even tried? And if he hadn’t tried, would anything stop him from being equally brutal to her? He’d spent the last fourteen years on the outposts of civilization, doing penance as he protected Samuel Lambert. But just how far had he come?
    He waited, seemingly patient, but the tension was thick in the room. Luis had a look of delicious anticipation on his face, obviously hoping she would refuse. Ramon looked deeply troubled, adding to Maddy’s suspicion that Jake’s request was only a thin excuse. But excuse for what?
    Slowly she rose, throwing back her shoulders. “A walk in the garden would be very pleasant,” she said slowly.
    Jake’s smile was less than reassuring.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    He didn’t touch her this time. He didn’t need to. The sheer force of his presence was enough to cow her into obedience, at least temporarily. She followed him docilely enough, past the smirking Luis and the concerned Ramon, through the deserted, darkened hallways, back up the stairs. She half expected him to take her back to the front courtyard with its profusion of flowers, but instead he veered sharply to the left, past a series of empty, desolate-looking rooms, stopping outside a heavy door.
    It was bolted, and it took him more than a moment to deal with the solid-looking locks. Maddy watched with silent interest, taking the moment to relive the feel and the memory of him. The hands she remembered, large and strong and tanned. The long legs, encased in khaki rather than those dark suits, also brought back lascivious teenage fantasies. The way he tilted his head, that distant, mocking glance that he cast down at her before he opened the door. How many times had he looked at Helen Currier Lambert in just that way? He’d hated her mother, and now it looked as if he might hate her.
    She could only try again. “Jake, you can’t have forgotten,” she said in her most reasonable tone of voice as shehalted by the doorway. “What about the first time we met, in my father’s kitchen? You made coffee, and I’d gone swimming. It was the summer of the presidential election and you—”
    “I don’t remember,” he said flatly.
    “But you must. What about when you taught me to play poker? Or the night we stayed up late in the pool house, talking? And you remember Stephen, and how worried I was about him. You can’t have forgotten all that.” Her voice sounded desperate, pleading in