Girl In The Water Part 34

"d.a.m.n right."

She lowered her head. "You don't want to sleep with me either."

Christ. He gently took her chin, brought her face back up again, and then he kissed her.

And kissed her, and kissed her, until they had their legs wrapped around each other, and he had his hand under her T-shirt, on her perfect breast, and he was so hard, he thought the top of his head would blow off from all the pressure building inside him.

He pulled back, catching his breath. "We can't do this tonight."

Immediately, the hurt of rejection was back in her eyes.

"Don't get me wrong, I want to." He caressed her cheek. "More than anything."

"Then why?"

"You're drunk."

"Not that drunk." The beginnings of a smile knocked the hurt off her face. "As long as we do it lying down."

She was killing him.

"If we are to take this step, I'd prefer both of us completely sober."

"When?"

"In the morning."

Her smile grew, leaving room for nothing else in his field of vision or in his heart.

He watched her, hopelessly sunk. "If you still feel the same in the morning."

"I will." She kept the goofy grin for another moment, then her gaze grew more serious, more curious. "Why now? What made you change your mind?"

"I don't have the energy to keep denying that I'm hopelessly in love with you. Worrying about you all these years wore me down. I didn't realize how much you took out of me."

She poked him with her elbow, but she was grinning.

"I came to a realization tonight," he said, turning serious.

"I'm the best, and you don't want the rest?"

She was a cute drunk, he had to give her that. "I've known that for years."

She looked indescribably pleased.

"I used to think," he said, "that because I saved you, if you gave yourself to me, it'd be like a payment, which wouldn't be right. You don't owe me anything."

She opened her mouth, but he put a finger over her soft lips.

"But tonight," he told her, "I realized that it's the other way around. You saved me. If you hadn't come into my life, I'd be dead by now. I would have picked the wrong fight, or I would have dissolved my liver in whiskey. I'm here today because of you. No doubt about it."

She looked thoughtful, in a tipsy, hazy kind of way, but when she moved his finger and spoke, the words came out sure and clear. "If I saved your life, and, as you say, you owe me...I'm taking it. I'm taking everything."

"I'm yours to take. In the morning."

She looked grumbly.

"Morning will come faster than you'll be ready for, believe me. Hangovers are my area of expertise."

"Hmpf."

"Okay." He turned the light off. Then he tucked her against him. "Now go to sleep."

For about half a minute, she was still. Then she said, "I feel like an anaconda is squirming inside my stomach."

"And that's why you're never going to get drunk like this again."

"Merda," she said with feeling.

"Monte de merda," he agreed.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Daniela Daniela was so happy and excited, if she hadn't had all that alcohol in her system, she never would have been able to fall asleep.

Something, maybe a car horn outside, woke her hours later. Sunlight fell in a golden swath across the bed, across Ian. He had a rugged face. A soldier's face. To her, it was the most handsome face in the world.

She put a hand over his chest, over his steadily beating heart, and watched him, feeling completely contented and happy.

His hand came up and covered hers. He opened his eyes and looked at her. "How are you feeling?"

She burrowed into his embrace. "Like I am exactly where I am supposed to be."

He brushed his lips over her forehead and tightened his arms around her.

But before she could float off into the bliss of waking up with him like this, her gaze fell on the bedside clock and she shot out of bed-pain slicing into her head from the sudden movement. Oh, not now.

She could not have a hangover!

"I have a presentation at the convention center in an hour." She ran for the bathroom to brush her teeth.

"I thought you said they let you go."

"I'm not doing this for the firm," she said around her toothbrush before pulling it out of her mouth so she could say the rest more clearly. "I'm doing this for See-Love-Aid. The firm won't send a replacement. They'll just blow it off. No lawyer is going to take a billable hour and give it away for free."

"You got clothes?" Ian stuck his head in the door.

"I left a couple of dresses here when I moved. One of those will work."

"Take an aspirin. Here. I'll drive you." He padded away, called back, "I'll make coffee."

They made it to the convention center in the nick of time, and she showed up at the back entrance of the stage just when the conference organizer was about to have a nervous meltdown, judging by her wide-eyed, frazzled expression.

The sixty-something woman in an impeccable red suit stepped forward, grabbed Daniela's hand, and squeezed a little too hard. "I thought you weren't going to make it."

"Sorry to worry you. Presentation cued up?"

"Yes. Here is the remote for the slide projector." The woman dropped the small plastic controller into Daniela's hand, then gently shoved her out onto the stage.

And then the spotlight hit her.

Wow. Okay.

The walk to the microphone at the podium at the front of the stage wasn't bad. But then her eyes adjusted to the bright light, and she could make out the audience.

The enormous room seated at least a thousand people. More people than lived in her village on the Icana. Most were on their cell phones, tapping away.

As she looked around, she understood that many of them had come only because their bosses sent them. Like the law firm had sent Daniela. Their job was to show up and maybe bring back some flyers. Or they'd come for the continuing education credit they would receive for attending the conference.

How was she going to reach them?

She gripped the remote, knowing her slideshow wasn't going to cut it. She had planned on talking statistics and showing pictures of exploited children. But everyone there had seen pictures of scruffy children before.

Her knees trembled, and she grabbed the podium for support. Then Ian's tall form appeared at the edge of the first row, and ducking down-Excuse me. Excuse me.-he went all the way to the middle and sat down right in front of her, a smile on his face.

Daniela filled her lungs and locked her knees.

"Hi," she began. "I'm Daniela Wintermann."

People looked up but then went back to quickly finish the texts they'd been typing.

"Until very recently, I worked for Hooper, Hinze & Quarles, one of the sponsors of this conference. I'm a law school student."

People nodded absently. She spoke in unaccented English, she was dressed in a sharp black dress, she was a professional-she was just like them. They'd seen presenters like her before. They'd been to conferences like this before. They'd heard hundreds of interchangeable speeches.

"I was trafficked at age fifteen. I am a former child prost.i.tute." She announced her deepest, darkest secret, on stage, to a thousand strangers.

The phones went down, and the heads came up. The audience stared.

She told her story-the logger, her mother, Pedro, Rosa-and the phones stayed in laps.

She did click on the slide projector then. A group of young women huddled in the corner of a cornfield was the first image, the aftermath of a rescue op on the Mexican border.

"We are not just formerly trafficked persons." She showed a handful of similar pictures of abused bodies with hopeful faces. "We are women with endless potential. We have endured. And now we are going to thrive. The past does not define us. We define our future."

She received a standing ovation. Ian was the first on his feet, applauding madly. And as the conference organizer waiting at the back of the stage hugged her, the woman said, with a sheen in her blue eyes, "That speech just paid our budget for a year. What would it take to have you come and work for us permanently? You are the most amazing teacher I've ever met. There are things I've been trying to explain for a decade, and I think this is the first time an audience finally understands."

"Thank you. Can I call you about that?" Daniela said, because Ian was hurrying down the back hallway.

He hugged her and lifted her off her feet. "I'm so proud of you."

She was proud of herself.

When they were in the car on the way home, he asked, "How do you feel?"

"I feel as free as fish in water." She grinned. "I know who I am, and I'm okay with my past. I don't need to hide anymore. I'm fine the way I am."

He reached over for her hand and held it all the way home, then all the way up to their apartment. Then they were inside-no more words for a while. He picked her up and carried her to his bedroom, laid her on the bed.

He kissed her.

Her whole body felt tingly everywhere they touched, something she'd never felt with any man. She loved his solid bulk, the strength of his arms that made her feel safe and as if she belonged in them.

She kissed him back, letting him explore her mouth, then exploring his. She could have gone for hours just kissing him. And she knew he would let her. He was letting her call the shots. She was in charge.

She liked that thought, but it also made her nervous.

"What is it?" he whispered against the curve of her jaw, his hands soothing her back.

She pulled up and braced herself on her hands so she could look at him. "I want this to work. I want to be able to enjoy this. With you. And I want it to be good for you so you'll agree to do it again."

He smiled. "You can pretty much take worrying about me wanting this again off the table. I haven't even had it yet and I want it again already." His eyes turned serious. "Why do you think you won't enjoy it?"

"I didn't. Before." She looked at his shoulder. She couldn't look at him.

Oh G.o.d. How stupid could she be? Never, never, bring up before, especially when they were in bed and they'd almost... Now he'd start to think about her with other men and change his mind and- "Hey. This is not going to be like before. This time, you're making love with a man who loves you to pieces. Totally crazy about you. I mean, major nut cakes."

A smile took over her face. No ghosts of the past here, n.o.body and nothing but Ian and her, and they loved each other.

She kissed him again.

His hands slipped to the bottom of her dress. "I'd like to take this off."

She sat up to straddle him and lifted her arms. The material caught on her elbow. "Merda."

"Don't swear."

"You swear."

"I'm an ex-alcoholic ex-soldier with anger management issues. You are a brilliant woman, a lady with cla.s.s."

Her heart swelled. He'd been saying things like that to her since they'd met, treating her as if she was someone good and precious.