I paused, trying to scrub away the desolate feelings that thinking about those events always wrought in me.
“But Sebastian waited for me: when he was 21 we tried to find each other, but it never happened. I won’t go into the details, but he realized eventually that I wasn’t coming for him… and that’s when all the drinking and womanizing started. I hadn’t seen him for 10 years when we met in Geneva again. He still loves me, Liz. He says he’s always loved me – and I love him: desperately. We’re engaged and we’re going to be married. But no one can know while I’m still out here. No one.”
She looked at me steadily and shook her head slowly, a worried expression etched on her face, her eyes kind and concerned.
“Bloody hell! That’s quite a story.” She shook her head. “You and the beautiful Chief Hunter. I hope you know what you’re doing, Lee, I really do.”
She stood up and paced to the window, then turned to look at me.
“I’ll say one thing: if Shakespeare had known you, he wouldn’t have had to steal all his plot lines, because that’s one hell of a yarn. I hope you’re right about him, because the man you’re describing is not the one I’ve seen in action. Take tonight, for example, that French tart was all over him.”
“I know,” I said, with a small smile. “One of his Parisian conquests. I asked him to tell her to dress more appropriately; indirectly, it was his fault she was dressed like that. Of course, that was after Sebastian and I had sex in one of the hotel’s offices. Over a desk.”
She stared at me, then laughed out loud.
“You are extraordinary, Lee, you really are! I thought I knew you: I mean I knew you were tough, on the quiet, but you must have balls of iron – or tits like Exocet missiles. Fine, if that’s what you want: far be it for me to tell you you’re making a giant, Hoover dam-size mistake.”
She paused.
“Is he as good as they say?”
My jaw dropped and I gaped at her, far, far beyond embarrassed that she’d asked me that question.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” she said with a wry smile.
I winked, but didn’t reply.
Chapter 14
The journey to Leatherneck was hell.
What would have been a six-or seven-hour journey back home, turned into 15 hours of baking sun, choking dust and gut-churning fear.
The fear was sporadic, triggered every time I saw turbaned men with AK-47 rifles. I was traveling in a heavily armored car that looked more like a tank than anything else, and I was told it had been designed to withstand roadside bombs, but every time I saw the Afghan forces at checkpoints, a chill went through me. Green-on-blue attacks were escalating to the point where each International Security Assistance Force unit had appointed at least one solder as a ‘guardian angel’ to keep an eye on our Afghan allies.
It had been both unnerving and arousing to see Sebastian armed with his M16 for the first time. He looked so damn hard and kick-ass. I wanted to go and run my teeth down his exposed neck, and then expose a lot more of his body. What the hell was happening to me? I couldn’t stop thinking about sex.
I blamed Sebastian.
The convoy I traveled in was well-armed, but I would be relieved to get off this exposed stretch of road, pockmarked with bomb craters, and with blackened carcasses of burnt-out cars strewn at the side.
It was comforting to know that somewhere in the back of the line of trucks and armored vehicles, Liz was traveling with British forces on their way to Bastion. We’d agreed to try and meet up but, as ever, nothing was guaranteed.