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“You want to come, baby?” he growled against her skin.
She nodded. Desperate.
“Then tell me you’ll give me a chance.”
“Joe!” Was he insane?
He nuzzled the side of her throat. “Tell me you’ll stop breaking up with me and give us a chance. Tell me and I’ll let you come.” He moved his hips, too slow to push Julia over the edge.
She couldn’t think. She wanted it so badly, and he was using it against her.
“Tell me,” he ordered with a nip of his teeth to her neck.
“Fine! I’ll give us a chance. Now, please make me come!”
He pinched her clit and she exploded, milking him for everything he had, feeding off the groans he made as he found his own release. In that moment, there was no Joe and Julia. There was only them. The kernel of hope that Joe had planted deep inside of her months earlier began to bloom, and she felt her fears fade.
She wanted a future with this man. She wanted it so badly that the need overwhelmed the fear.
And in that moment, a burst of absolute clarity flowed through her. She’d never had a choice when it came to a future with Joe. She just hadn’t realised it until then. It was never about what her mind decided. It was always about her heart. And her heart had made its decision months earlier.
Her heart belonged to Joe. Without him, she would break in two. He was it for her. There had never been another option. There was only ever Joe.
Her Joe.
Chapter 30
Joe found it hard to relax on their uneventful trip to the airport. After days of being on high alert, it was difficult to switch off. Although, when it came to Julia’s safety, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to stop being vigilant. If anything happened to her, he’d lose his mind. He’d known months ago that she would be special to him. What he hadn’t realised at the time was that she would become everything to him.
He ran his hand along Julia’s thigh as she chatted with Elle, who was in the back seat. Joe kept his eyes on the road, aware he was the navigator for both their vehicle and the one behind him, which held Patricia and Alice.
They made their way out of the city, past the grand old Spanish buildings towards the beige shanties with their unfinished brick box homes. The grey tarmac roads turned to hard dirt, and everything in sight became a different shade of red and beige sand. Dirty-faced children played at the side of the roads. Chickens ran around between the houses. Crisp white laundry hung on lines strung outside houses with dirt floors. Rebar poked into the sky from the brick homes, waiting for another level to be added when the owners could afford the bricks. Most windows were without glass. Some buildings were painted bright pastel colours, making them stand out like gems in the desert.
In the distance, further up the hills around Lima, were houses made out of straw matting. Hundreds of them that blended seamlessly with their sand-coloured environment. Dented cars sat outside houses that acted as grocery shops, bottles of soda being sold through the bars on the glassless windows. Every now and then they’d pass a massive, steaming pile of garbage. Each one had children scrambling over it, looking for items they could reuse or sell on.
“I never knew it was like this,” Julia said. “I thought Peru was full of rainforest and Incan temples.”
“Some of it is, but these huge shantytowns sprang up in the nineties when the Shining Path terrorists were at war with the government,” Joe said. “People ran from the rural areas, where they could grow their own food, to the safety of the city.” He had run missions in Peru long after the guerrilla war ended, but still remembered the fear in the shantytowns. People who’d lived through terrorist attacks and police raids. People caught in the middle of a conflict they didn’t fully understand and would gain nothing from.
“They keep it so tidy.” Julia watched a woman sweeping the ever-encroaching sand out of her house.
“Proud people. Hardworking. They’re good people to know.”
“I wish I’d had a chance to get to know some of them. This whole trip has been one short hit-and-run experience.”
They passed a tiny church crowded with people. They were laughing, music playing, food being cooked over open fires, ready to share.
“Had one of the best meals of my life in a church like that,” Joe said. “Aji de gallina. It was a creamy chicken stew thing served with rice. Although it might not have been chicken. It could have been guinea pig. I didn’t care. It tasted like heaven.”
Julia smiled at him. “What temperature was it cooked at?”
There was a twinkle in her eye that made it clear she was making fun of herself, and Joe laughed. After their lovemaking, and the fact she’d come to his bed, Joe felt hopeful. They had a future together. He knew it. And he was beginning to think Julia might come to know it too.
They rode out past the shanties, into the flat desert, the mountains a distant blur through the heat haze that constantly shrouded the city. They passed a small house further from the rest. A tiny child was sitting in the dirt, playing with a stick. Joe glanced over to see Julia’s face soften and then a look of pure determination replace it. He would bet his life that the shanty dwellers of Lima had just gained a powerful advocate in Julia Collins. With her soft heart, her contacts and her organisational skill, she could change the world. Joe grinned with pride, as he planned to be by her side while she did it.
He turned into the long road leading to the old military airport. They could see the hazy white building in the distance, their plane easy to spot on the paved runway, as it was about ten times the size of any of the others. Although, to be fair, there were only two other planes sitting beside the hangar. The ex-military airport was used for the odd chartered flight and for some cargo runs. Joe suspected that most of those cargo runs were less than legal, because the airfield was perfect for smuggling. It was isolated enough to be private and open enough to see cars coming for miles.
The last mile of the road was suddenly tarmac again, and ended in a turning loop outside the airport office building. A building that had definitely seen better days. Someone had thought painting it pink would brighten it up. It didn’t. There was one man, sitting in the shade of the office doorway, watching them as they approached. Joe lifted his hand in greeting, but there was no response.
