Be Careful What You Wish For(31)

She clutched his neck, steadying herself, and before long they were both in the sand, laughing and giggling like children.
Sean’s face stilled, and he leaned over and kissed her suddenly. It was a quick kiss, hard and full of intent. Humor faded, and he looked down into her eyes, pinning her beneath him with his body.
“I love you,” he said suddenly. “I don’t know how I was lucky enough to find you, but I love you.”
“Thank you,” she said softly, not quite ready to say the words back to him. “I wish I’d found you earlier.”
“Me too,” he said. “Although you’d have had a hard time visiting me. They didn’t let anyone in to see me most of the time, let alone women.”
She stilled, and a shadow crossed her face. She didn’t like being reminded of his past, of who he was.
She didn’t like thinking of him in Edgar’s office and the pool of blood flowing across the floor.
“Will you tell me why you did it?”
“Did what?” he asked.
“Why you had Edgar killed,” she said softly.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
She thought of saying no for a moment. It was easier to pretend he hadn’t planned a man’s death, easier to imagine this was just some wonderful dream free of context and consequences. But it wasn’t. If she wanted to be with this man and to truly love him, she needed to understand what he had done.
“I want to know,” she said softly. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t ever understand and maybe there’s a part of me that won’t trust you.”
“What if my explanation makes you trust me less?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly, trying to be as honest as possible. “I guess we’ll take that as it comes.
What I do know is that if we aren’t honest with each other, we don’t have a chance.”
He nodded his head slowly, and then rolled off her to lie in the sand next to her. She snuggled into his side as he cradled her with his arm.
“Well, I started out in the Special Forces,” he said slowly. “I did that for several years, and then some friends of mine and I decided to go freelance.”
“Freelance?” she asked, unsure what he meant.
“We started hiring ourselves out to the highest bidder,” he said. “At first we thought we’d be fighting.
You know, fearless mercenaries and all that. And we did do some fighting. But what we mostly ended up doing was training other people how to fight.”
“I see,” she said.
“No, I doubt that you do,” he said with a bitter laugh. “But I’ll keep telling you anyway. I met Valzar around this time, by the way. He and his family go way back, descended from Conquistadores. They’ve owned and sold people for generations, controlling entire countries. They’re always working on some new deal, some new angle. Half the things that happen down here they have a finger in, legitimate and illegitimate.”
“He’s not a very nice man,” she said softly.
“No, he isn’t,” Sean replied with a harsh laugh. “Although he’s a damn good man to have at your back. I hooked up with Valzar because I wanted to get into a new field, hostage rescue, and he had the money. I was tired of teaching peasants how to fight. I knew that whatever I taught them probably wouldn’t save their lives, not as long as the guerrillas and the government refused to even consider peace. It’s always the peasants who get caught in the middle of these wars. With Valzar’s backing, I started contracting with several large insurance companies who offer kidnapping insurance to foreign businessmen.”
“I’ve never heard of insurance like that,” she said. “It sounds like a different world.”
“That world is all around us,” he said softly. “It’s just that most people don’t have the background to notice it. That’s the difference between people like me and people like you. I notice things.”
She didn’t say anything, knowing he was probably right. She hadn’t had a clue something was wrong at Edgar’s until she’d walked out of the bathroom. She’d be willing to bet Sean wouldn’t have been fooled like that.
“So, Valzar and I started our little business, contracting with these companies and bringing in a nice revenue stream. Most of the time we’d just pocket the profits, and even the occasional hostage situation wasn’t too bad. Ninety percent of the time we’d manage to negotiate a ransom for our hostages and get them out safe.”
“What about the rest of the time?” she asked.
“We’d go in after them,” he said, his voice going lower. “Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It’s a messy business.”