Off to the left, a handful of women gave her a friendly wave, and huddled on the porch of the next hut, two elderly men gave her nearly toothless smiles. No one could tell by the looks on these people’s faces that their lives were forever altered by Diego Fuentes.
Penny smiled back with a small wave and let her self-appointed mother hen, Carmencita, gently tug her toward a gaggle of giggling children. With a tiny finger, the three-year-old instructed her to sit beneath the shade of a Yucca tree before she toddled off to join the activity. Back and forth, up and down, the children chased after their tallest playmate with a flourish of laughing squeals.
The sight of a tattooed ex-Delta operative playing forward in a miniature-person’s soccer game was more entertaining than watching the World Cup. The children shouted eagerly, all calling for Rafe’s attention with a cry and wave. Little Carmencita howled in innocent laughter when the ball bumped her bare feet. But Rafe was right there, sweeping the doe-eyed beauty into his arms and tunneling them both toward the goal line.
Easy laughter and slick, loose smiles replaced the hard lines of his whisker-stubbled face as he carefully aimed the ball toward some of the youngest players. At that moment, he wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t a seasoned Alpha operator. He was a two-hundred-pound child…and Penny couldn’t take her eyes off him.
He claimed to be the type of man to never settle down, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that he would excel at it—all of it—protector, husband, and father. Images of dark-haired children with vivid blue eyes and warm, tan skin chiseled their way into her mind, taking her breath away.
Her heart heavy with what-ifs, the weight of Carmencita climbing into her lap brought her back to reality. She wrapped her arms around the little one and savored the sound of her sweet giggle.
Even from thirty yards, Rafe’s eyes missed nothing. Their gazes collided, his scanning her from head to toe, no doubt calculating if she was well enough to be out of bed. She squirmed on the spot, her body growing warm. If her libido could be revved by a cross-country stare and in the presence of screaming children, she was most definitely on the mend.
Emotion flickered across his face, and with each flash, a new one was painted into place. Desire. Need. Concern. And something else that made her heart skip a beat the moment he took his first step in her direction. He only made it three when the pack of children literally brought him to his knees. Carmencita leaped up to join the fray just as he turned on them with a mighty roar that had the kids shouting in glee.
There was no sense in denying it anymore.
Tattooed ex-Delta operators were exactly her type. It didn’t jibe with what she wanted from life, but it was true. From beneath a mountain of children, the smile and wink Rafe sent her blasted its way through her walls of resistance.
She loved him, was in love with him. And now she needed to figure out what to do about it.
Eight hours later, standing in front of the buffed tin mirror in her newly acquired quarters, she still hadn’t figured it out. She stared at her reflection and looked for the change she’d felt happen. A round of nervous nibbling left her bottom lip swollen, and a week’s lack of appetite had made her face a bit thinner, but her eyes were still green and her hair shone the same dark shade of red. On the outside, she was the same military brat with a penchant for getting into tough scrapes.
The change was internal, embedded so deeply that extraction was impossible. She was in love with Rafael Ortega.
Thoughts of maintaining a physical distance from him made it difficult to breathe. She didn’t know if it was worse to love and lose, or to never experience the thrill of love at all.
A heavy knock interrupted her internal debate. There was only one person she was expecting.
“Come in,” Penny called.
The door squeaked on its hinges as it opened. Rafe stepped into the hut, eyes scanning the modest interior. “You’ve been granted your own suite.”
She squeezed her eyes closed at the sound of his voice. His presence filled the small room, diffusing his warmth straight into her lower abdomen. She pulled herself together with a few deep breaths and nearly fell apart again when their gazes clashed in the mirror.
His stare raised her heart rate to an unhealthy triple time. They were alone. Finally. And she was scared out of her ever-lovin’ mind. Her body warred with her head, and her heart was flying off in an entirely different direction.
She shifted on her feet. “I think it was less about giving me my own space and more for preserving Rosita’s sanity. I’m pretty sure I heard her muttering about overbearing, oversized American men. Know anything about that?”