Commando

“Now, Shah, I told you the truth. It’s obvious to me you need me to stay. Fine. I’ll just hang around like a big guard dog and protect you from the likes of Hernandez and his goons.” Jake grinned, but inwardly he felt sorry for Shah. She appeared unsettled and exhausted. And why shouldn’t she feel that way? Hernandez had been ready to have her beaten up if Jake hadn’t arrived in the nick of time. She knew it, too, he suspected. Shah was nobody’s fool.

“You can’t stay because I don’t want you to stay.”

“I can be of help to you.”

“I suppose you have a degree in biology?”

“No, but I have a degree in philosophy.”

“That doesn’t get these plants identified and cataloged.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“You’re impossible!”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment, Randolph, so don’t sit there preening about it.”

He tilted his head. “Are you mad at all men, or just your father?”

The question, spoken so softly, caught Shah off guard. The adrenaline from the confrontation with Hernandez was wearing off, and she felt shaky, mushy-kneed. She pulled over a four-legged wooden stool and sat down. What was it about Jake Randolph that threw her off-balance? Maybe it was his grave features, which looked carved out of granite, or his powerful physical presence. One look into those light gray eyes and Shah had realized she was dealing with a highly perceptive man. She had no experience with his type, so she didn’t know how to react to him. Instinctively, she felt him trying to get her to relent and trust him.

Rubbing her brow, Shah muttered, “My track record with men isn’t great. I don’t trust any of them farther than I can throw them.”

“Beginning with your father?” Jake needed to know the truth about Shah’s background. It would give him understanding of her distrust toward him.

“I don’t owe you my life story.”

“That’s true.” The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “I was born and raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but it’s one of the most beautiful places on the face of Mother Earth.”

Shah’s eyes narrowed. He’d used the term Mother Earth. What was Randolph up to? No one used that term unless they were Native American or some of the ecologically responsible people who believed in the Gaia theory, which held that the planet was indeed, a living being.

Ah, success! Jake mentally patted himself on the back for using the term Mother Earth. Shah had sat up. He had her full, undivided attention. Perhaps the more he revealed of himself the more she’d learn to trust him. Inwardly Jake laughed at the thought. He had been a typical male bastion of silence before marrying Bess. He’d been unable to communicate, unable to share what he was feeling with her. However, Bess wouldn’t stand for the one-way communication system, and she’d insisted he open up. He was glad, because their marriage had deepened with joy and sharing as a result. Still, he wasn’t used to baring his soul to just anyone, and on one level Shah was a stranger to him. On another level, however, Jake sensed, with a knowing that frightened him, that they were very much alike.

“I grew up on a small farm in a valley where my dad made a living for us by growing pears. We had a huge orchard, and my two sisters and I worked with him when we didn’t have school. Dad was a real philosopher. He saw everything in terms of seasonal changes, the earth being alive, and respecting the environment. We never dumped oil on the ground, threw away a battery in the woods or put fertilizer on the soil. Instead, we had a couple of cows for milk, three horses because we kids liked to ride, and plenty of rabbits and chickens for food. He used to compost all the garbage from our household and spread it through the orchard twice a year as fertilizer. Dad had the finest pears in Oregon.”

“You said ‘Mother Earth,’” Shah growled, uncomfortable.

Jake nodded, placing his hands on his knees. He saw the curiosity burning in her eyes and realized he’d struck a responsive chord in Shah. Jake hadn’t felt so excited in years. Shah was a challenge, yet he sensed a fierce, caring passion lurking just beneath her prickly exterior. She had a passion for living life, Jake realized, and that excited him as little had since Bess’s and the children’s deaths.

“Yes, I did.”

“Are you Native American?”

“No, just a combination of Irish, Dutch and English.”

“Then why did you use that term?”

“Because my parents always spoke about the planet that way.”

Shah sat back, trying to gauge whether Randolph was giving her a line or was really telling her the truth. “Oh…” she murmured.

Pleased that Shah was softening toward him, Jake continued in his rumbling voice. “I think Mom might have had a little Native American in her. Cherokee, maybe, somewhere a long ways back.”

“Then that would give you some Native American blood.”

Chuckling, Jake held up his hand. “Darlin’, I’m about as white as a man can get. No, if I’ve got a drop of Cherokee in me, it’s so washed out that it wouldn’t matter.”

Shah pointedly ignored the endearment that rolled off his tongue. It had felt like a cat licking her hand. “But it does,” she said fervently. “It’s a gene type. Even if you have just a drop of Cherokee blood, it would be enough. Genes have memory, and it’s possible that your Cherokee gene is a dominant gene, which would give you an understanding that our planet is more than just a planet. She’s alive. She communicates, and she breathes, just like us.”

There was such burning hope in her eyes that Jake couldn’t bring himself to argue with her. Then again, she was a biologist, and she knew all about genes and such, so she could be right. If that meant something important and vital to Shah, then Jake was willing to go along with her logic. “Well, I feel what matters is what we do on a daily basis,” he demurred.

“Your walk is your talk. That’s a Lakota saying.” Thrilled that she was actually communicating with him, Jake heaved an inner sigh of relief. The gold in Shah’s eyes danced with sunlight now, as if she’d met a brother of like mind. However, Jake didn’t want to be her brother. Far from it.

“Lakota?” he asked, fighting back his less-than-professional thoughts.

“Yes.”

“What’s that?”

“Whites call us Sioux, but that’s an Iroquois word that means ‘enemy.’ We call ourselves Lakota, Nakota and Dakota. There are three separate tribes, depending upon where you were born and the heritage passed down through your family. My mother is Santee, and that’s Lakota.”

“I see.” Jake smiled. “I like learning these things.”

“In Brazil,” Shah went on enthusiastically, “the people are a combination of Portuguese, African and native. Brazil is a melting pot, and they certainly don’t worry what color you are. And on top of that, the largest concentration of Japanese outside of Japan live in SÃo Paulo. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“I like Brazil because of that. You aren’t judged on your skin color down here.” Shah held out her hand. “My skin looks tan in comparison to yours. But a Brazilian wouldn’t care.”

“You have golden skin,” Jake told her. Her skin was a dusky color, and he wondered what it would be like to lightly explore its texture—to slide his fingertips along her arm. The thought was so powerful that Jake was stunned into silence. There was such innocence to Shah, to her simplified outlook on life in general.

Heat fled into Shah’s face, and she looked away from his kind gray eyes, momentarily embarrassed by her reaction to his statement. “Well,” she muttered, more defensively, “you know what I’m saying. Lakota people judge others by their walk being their talk.”

“It’s a good philosophy,” Jake said, meaning it. “So why don’t you let me prove myself to you the same way?”

Shah frowned. “What do you mean?” Why did she have the feeling that behind this man’s dangerous looks there was a steel-trap mind?

With a lazy shrug of his shoulders, Jake said, “I’ve already told you the truth about why I’m here. I accept that you don’t want to go home. So why don’t you let me be your bodyguard? It’s obvious you need one, with Hernandez around.”

Getting up, Shah began to pace nervously back and forth. “No!”

“I can’t go home,” Jake told her reasonably, opening his hands. “Your father has paid me for a month’s worth of work down here. I’m not the type to gyp someone out of work they’ve already paid me to do.”

“You should have been a lawyer,” Shah charged heatedly.

“Thanks. Was that a compliment?”