Mercer kissed her again. “You can use it for anything you want.”
She drew him down to the bed so that he was next to her where she sat. Even without support, her breasts were perfectly formed and strained her shirt. “By the way,” Mercer said, “I’m inviting Roddy and his family to Washington for Christmas. Miguel wanted to know if you’d be there.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Just Miguel, or do you want me there too?”
“Well.” He drew out the word. “I was also thinking of inviting Foch and his boys. If you didn’t come the reunion wouldn’t be complete.”
She gave his shoulder a playful slap. “Is that the only reason you’d want me there?”
“I can’t imagine another,” Mercer deadpanned, and she struck him again. “Seriously, would you like to come?”
Lauren’s eyes clouded. “As much as I’d love to say yes, I can’t.”
Mercer blinked, stunned that she’d say no. “I thought you’d ...”
“You forget I’m not like you,” she said softly, knowing she’d hurt him and wishing she hadn’t. “The army takes a dim view of soldiers who take off whenever they like. They even have a word for it: AWOL.”
“Yeah, but you do get vacations, and besides I think they’ll cut you some slack after what we’ve been through.”
She looked away. “Just the opposite is true. Army intelligence is already swarming this country helping the locals look for others involved in Liu’s operation. Felix Silvera-Arias is cooperating but it’s going to take a lot more than just him to take down President Quintero. I doubt I’ll be getting away for a long time.”
“Come on, Lauren, Christmas is months away.” Mercer couldn’t understand why she was being so obstinate.
“I managed to get away this weekend so we could spend some time together. We’ve both earned it, but after this I can’t make any promises.”
Mercer thought he understood. As strange as it was, and as much as it hurt, he was grateful for her honesty. This wasn’t about her job. It was about them needing time to put the past weeks into perspective. The roller-coaster ride was coming to an end, and both were too shaky to commit to ride another one together. He’d been in this situation before. However, he was usually the one making the excuses to get away. He understood a little better the pain he’d caused other women, but that didn’t make him think he’d made the wrong call then or that Lauren was wrong now.
“Then if a weekend is the best I can get from you,” he said more brightly than he felt, “I have no choice but to take it.”
She touched his cheek. “Are you hurt?”
“A little,” he admitted. “But I’ll get over it.”
Her hand drifted down to his bare chest, and lower still. “I know just what to do to speed your recovery.”
“Why, Miss Lauren,” he said in an atrocious parody of her Georgia accent. “I thought fine antebellum women such as yourself don’t do such things.”
Throwing one leg over his waist, Lauren stripped off her shirt and purred, “Now, Mr. Philip, hasn’t anyone ever shown you what they really mean by Southern hospitality?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
River of Ruin wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of assistance. Most important is my wife, Debbie, who let me go on a two-week cruise without her only a month after our wedding. How I pulled that off will remain a professional secret. I need to thank Captain Attilio Guerrini and his crew aboard the Dawn Princess. And in Panama, Jose Luis Fernandez and canal pilot George Allen for answering innumerable questions. What licenses I took in this novel are the result of my imagination, not their information.
I want to thank my nephew, Miguel Saunders, for letting me use his name, and my uncle Peter for teaching me how to turn a napkin into a rabbit, a trick he showed me when I was seven years old and have never forgotten. I also need to thank Doug Grad, my editor at New American Library. Not only did he know about the sewers of Paris, he’d taken his wife there. Talk about your true romantic.
The reader might be interested to know that the VGAS cannon is currently under development. If anything, I’ve toned down its capabilities because what it can really do is almost too much to believe.