Rafe waited for Helen to recognize him as she approached, but she just cast him an assessing glance as she passed by, clearly finding him of no importance.
That irritated the hell out of him.
He’d spent his entire life fighting condescension and outright bias toward Mexican-American “greasers.” He should be used to it by now. Not that there had been anything smacking of prejudice in Helen’s dismissing glance. Actually, she’d treated him as if he didn’t even exist. Somehow that was even worse.
Well, he’d show her.
She was already climbing the ramp to the aircraft by the time he caught up with her. With perfect timing, he waited until her hips were smack dab in front of his forehead, then asked in a silky smooth voice, low enough so the soldiers standing around couldn’t overhear, “So, Major Prescott, do you still have your tattoo?”
Tattoo? Helen stopped halfway up the plane’s ramp and cringed, clutching the rail tensely. No one had mentioned her tattoo in twelve years, ever since she graduated from Stonewall Military College. And that voice — oh, Lord — only one man in the world spoke with that sexy, Mexican-American twang.
Slowly, reluctantly, Helen turned and peered back over her shoulder. All she saw was a head of thick black hair and a pair of aviator sunglasses staring boldly, eye level, at her butt.
Aaaarrrgh! she groaned silently and fought for her usual calm composure. Then she pivoted and backtracked down the ramp. At thirty-four, Helen was rather sensitive about her hips and rear end, and the aerobics war to keep them from blossoming into Rubenesque proportions. No way was she going to wave them in the face of the lascivious, arrogant, bad-mouthed man who had been the torment of her life for four long undergraduate years at Stonewall.
“Captain Santiago,” she snapped, noting the two black bars on his collar, “your remarks are ill-timed and inappropriate under any circumstances, but very, very foolish when addressed to a superior.” She put a check mark after his name on the clipboard. “A warning,” she explained sternly, raising her eyes.
Even though she was five-foot-eight, Helen had to look up at the lean, well-muscled soldier who grinned lazily back at her, not a bit intimidated by the threat in her voice or the note she had made on her clipboard. She couldn’t make out the expression in his eyes behind the dark shades, but she could see the path they made as they appraised her from head to toe. And probably found her wanting, as he always had in the past.
Then, as if reading her mind, Rafe removed the glasses, and Helen almost staggered under the burning gaze of his pale, luminous blue eyes. Rafael Santiago threw off heat like a sexual inferno. If anything, his well-toned, dark-skinned body had improved with age. Darn it!
“So, Prissy, you didn’t answer me. Do you still have the tattoo?”
Without thinking, Helen’s palm shot to her right buttock in horror. She could have kicked herself for the betraying action and the blush she could feel creeping up from her neck. She never blushed, or, at least, she hadn’t in twelve long years. Time melted away suddenly, and Helen felt as if she were a gangly young girl again, flustered by the attention of a too-handsome, too-brash Mexican-American cadet.
She’d had a fierce crush on him all through college, although she’d made sure he never suspected. He’d dated flamboyant, easy women, and she’d been neither of those. The worst part was that, at eighteen, he’d turned her brain to mush. Now, two minutes in his company, and he was doing it again.
Helen knew by Rafe’s raised right eyebrow that her embarrassment amused him, that needling her had been his goal. Prissy! He has the nerve to call me Prissy! The man has not changed at all. “My name is Major Prescott,” she reminded him, “not that ridiculous… nickname.”
The rat just smiled, displaying a disgusting set of white teeth, dazzling against the contrast of his dark Hispanic skin.
“So, Major Prescott, don’t you want to know if I still have my matching tattoo?” he drawled with feigned innocence and planted a long-fingered, deeply tanned hand on his back pocket, and left it there, in challenge.