Mitch gave him a withering look. “I’m on my honeymoon. What do you reckon?”
Paul laughed. “Ah, but I have a few tricks you don’t know—new tricks for the game of the century.”
“Right-oh,” Mitch grumbled. “Later. Now can I get back to kissing my wife?”
“Not yet, matey. You’ve got to sing for that supper. Hey, everyone, look who’s back for a song!”
Mitch groaned as the raucous clapping chant for a song began. “You love to do this to me, don’t you?”
Paul grinned, unrepentant, just like a big, loping dog with a Frisbee imploring its master for a game. “Bet your lovely wife doesn’t even know your talents, does she?”
“I’d like her to know some of my talents, if you get my meaning. And trust me, we don’t need an audience.”
Paul spluttered with laughter, then turned to Lissa. “Did you know your husband has the voice of an angel?”
Lissa turned to Mitch. “And you hid this from me for seventeen years, for what reason?” Correctly interpreting his red-faced, she joined the clapping. “Song. Song. Song!”
“No way. Not in front of you. I can’t!”
Sensing he was about to bolt, she kissed him, gentle and sweet. “Sing for me?” she whispered. “For me. Don’t sing in front of me. Sing to me.”
He groaned. “Baby, don’t do this to me!”
She held his face in her hands. “My restless warrior and wandering prince, who flies into war zones and risks his life to save people, is afraid to sing a little song?”
“Song! Song! Song!” The chant went on, as a hundred wretched souls sought entertainment before they became living targets. Distant gunfire accompanied the lilting violins, adding a touch of wild despair every person wanted to hide. “Song, song, song!”
His eyes glittered. “I’ll get you for this, Mrs. Sinclair.” Aloud he yelled, “What about a dance first? My wife does a mean Irish jig and riverdance.”
It was her turn to panic as the enthusiastic chant changed to “Dance, dance, dance!”
“No! Mi—Alan, how could you? We’re in a war zone, and you want me to do a jig? I can’t do it. I can’t!”
He laughed and nuzzled her lips. “Hmmm. Courage deserts when you’re the one under fire, huh? So my brave Countrygirl who could kick my arse black-and-blue can’t do one little dance? I haven’t seen you dance since your parents took me to that Eisteddfod in Bathurst when you were fifteen.”
“I can’t! I haven’t danced in fifteen years. I’ll fall on my face.”
“Dance! Dance! Dance!”
The band struck up a classic jig.
Mitch pushed her toward the empty dance area. “Forget your fears, darlin’. Remember, these people could die tomorrow,” he murmured, pushing her along. “Dance for them. Let them enjoy it. Help them live what time they have left.”
Again he made terrible, appalling sense. She looked around, to the bright, laughing masks covering the hopeless despair, and found a courage she’d thought long dead. She pulled off her sandals and, barefoot and wearing a simple sundress, she walked to the makeshift stage.
Crazy. Surreal. Pitifully inadequate. But she did it. Fifteen years out of practice, she performed an awkward, half-forgotten jig for the audience as they stamped and cheered and laughed, and kids ran around her, trying to imitate her steps. Mitch watched her, his eyes warm and soft with affection and approval and faith. The faith that told her he’d known all along she’d overcome her insecurity over making a fool of herself and help these people forget the storm inching closer by the hour.
Like lightning in the distance, gunfire crackled.
So she danced again, a riverdance-style line dance. And one by one, kids came up to learn from her. Then the women. Even a few men.
Then Mitch got up to join her, still smiling—and his feet followed the steps she’d taught him long ago on a golden summer afternoon, in a foolish, half-embarrassed attempt to make him dance with her, if only once. Even if they didn’t touch. Making a memory to hold inside her when he was gone, long after he’d forgotten the steps.
But he hadn’t forgotten.
Sweetness shattered inside her, telling her lonely, stubborn heart how stupid it had been, holding on to the hurt of what had gone before. The past was there. It would always be there between them…and the beauty easily bore the pain on its shoulders. Their past held so much more of joy than rejection. Oh, how could she have forgotten the cherished memories of childhood love—the love that would always belong only to Mitch?
Dancing yet not touching, amid a crowd of desperate strangers in the last oasis inside a war zone, surely was the strangest time she would ever know for a personal revelation. But life was like that, strange and unexpected and horrific and lovely, comedy amid tragedy, laughter and tears intermingling.
And love.
She belonged to Mitch. It was as simple, as beautiful and as scary as that. That was why she clung to the idea of becoming a Nighthawk. She wanted to share every part of his life, his pain and sorrow and the memories he couldn’t outrun as much as his passion and joy. She wanted to be his woman, in every sense of the word. To be not just his haven or the mother of his children, or even his lover. Mitch and Lissa, Skydancer and Countrygirl. A partnership based in reality, in sharing all of their life—not the kind she’d had last time or the kind her parents had, even now.
If only in the next two days she could convince him of that—to make him want her to be a Nighthawk. Beside him at all times. Trusting her to be a true partner.
The music came to an end. “More! More!”
Needing to think, she laughingly rejected the attempt and sat at their table, sipping her cola.
“Try a sailor’s hornpipe,” Paul yelled, carrying out another round of drinks.
“That’s Highland, not Irish,” she called back, laughing.
“Okay, then, Al’s turn. Get back up there, mate, and sing to your lady.”
Mitch smiled down at her where she sat and, with a silent nod, took the stage.
Chapter 11
“For my lady.”
He had the voice of a dark angel, and he sang just for her. Looking to her alone. And the words, oh, the words of haunting beauty moved her soul, John Denver’s song of timeless love that he still remembered had been precious to her romantic girl’s heart. Annie’s Song—
but his voice of purest dark crystal made it hers alone, wanting to drown only in Lissa’s laughter, to die in her arms…
Lissa shivered and trembled on her rough bench seat, couldn’t tear her gaze away and didn’t want to. Glory had always come to her life in snatched moments, and this time she wouldn’t hide in fear. Oh, God, please let an it.
Take the risk, Lissa, he seemed to whisper to her heart.
He tipped up her face and kissed her when he finished. Then the calls for an encore came and the band started the funky, funny tune of the Proclaimers’ famous song. He grinned, mock-growled at Paul and stepped back and declared how far he’d walk just to fall down at her door in the most pathetic Scottish accent she’d ever heard.
She choked on the bubbling joy, the sweetest laughter she’d felt in too many years to count. Oh, that was Mitch! He could haunt her, rip her heart from her chest and make her laugh as he did it. He knew how to live his life, and he’d taught her to step outside her old restrictive, crippling shyness and just be.
She clapped as hard as everyone else when he finished with a big, goofy grin on her face, but Mitch hadn’t finished just yet.
“I’m sure Sarah will understand, and not be in the least jealous, if I dedicate this last song to another very special lady in my life, since she knows how much I love her.” He looked deep in her eyes and said softly, “This is for Lissa.”
And he sang a sweet, wistful song of a man so much in love he’d do anything, give anything, be anything for the woman he loved—anything. If I Could.
She gulped again as the tears rushed back to her eyes. How did he know? How could he k
now, to see straight into her innermost heart, with all its fears and hopes, and give them to her? And to do so in a room of strangers somehow made it so real—like a public declaration of love. He was seducing her with song, the words flying like tiny darts with unerring accuracy to her heart.
The final lovely strains of the ballad ended, and without conscious decision, she got to her feet and walked to him. She took his face in her hands and kissed him, long, slow and oh, so tender, while the little crowd roared raucous appreciation.
The sudden boom of a shell dropping quieted everyone for a moment. Heavy silence filled the air. Tense fear, expectation—
“Free beers for everyone!”
With a distinct feeling of “The Band Played On,” everyone cheered Paul’s offer and crowded at the open-air bar, laughing and joking.
Lissa stared deep into Mitch’s eyes, with the sudden and haunting knowledge that they could both be dead tomorrow. “Let’s go to bed.”
He buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply, as if he’d find hidden strength there. “I promised myself you’d have these two days—that I’d prove you can trust me.”
She crowded in closer. “And I promised myself just now, when you sang to me—for me—that I’d give you what we both need. That I’d throw out my stupid fears and insecurity over the past and have the man I want—the only man I’ve always wanted. You.”
He whispered raggedly, “My self-control’s almost gone. If you change your mind—”
“I’m aching, Mitch,” she whispered back. “For you. I’ve been ach seventeen years, wanting you, thinking I could never have you. Please don’t make me wait anymore.”
His gaze searched hers, looking deep inside her, but she had no doubts, no fears worth holding on to—not tonight. “I’ve heard life’s said to be held cheap in these places. But I know now that’s not true. I know, like everyone here knows, that living this moment in time, right here and now, is the most precious gift of all—to truly live what time we have left.”
One click of the lock and her ghosts were gone, her shadows fled. And whether they disappeared forever or were just gone for now didn’t matter. She smiled at him. “I’ve wasted half my life in fears and doubts, gathering regrets like flowers, treasuring them instead of throwing them away. But I know that, whatever comes after this, I won’t regret making love with you. I could die tonight or tomorrow. If that happens I want to be with you, Mitch. Let me be your woman tonight.”
His eyes on fire, he held out a hand to her, and without a second’s hesitation she put hers in it. They walked through the pub and up the creaking stairs to their room. The remains of a child’s meal and a curled-up Hana snoring softly on the sofa told them they were free to be together.
In the bedroom Mitch turned to her one final time. “Are you sure? It’s your final chance, Lissa. This is about the last second of nobility I’ll ever rake up.”
With utter certainty she smiled at him and had her reward in a slow, sexy return smile—the unique, just-for-her Mitch look that turned her legs to rubber and her belly into a mass of hot yearning. She wanted him, oh, how she wanted him to touch her, put his hands on her sweetest, most feminine places, kiss her all over…lay her down, move inside her, make her his. The need was a blistering fire scorching her from within. He had to be able to read the look in her eyes….
He had—he must—for his whole face came alive with need. “Me, too, baby,” he whispered, drawing her close. “Oh, me, too. When you look at me like that—like I always dreamed you would—I feel as if I could conquer the world. I’d do anything for you, Lissa. Anything.”
“Mitch…” Her voice cracked. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Her eyes drifted shut as his mouth touched hers.
Touching, tasting, drinking each other in. Pulling clothes off in sudden, frantic need. Feeling hearts pounding, bodies swelling and heating with arousal. Lissa threaded her fingers through his hair, loving its soft curl, loving that he’d given her the right to touch him, hold him against her. Oh, fantasies come to life were beautiful, oh, so beautiful…with Mitch. Only with Mitch.
Suddenly, she had to tell him. “Mitch— Aah, yes, that’s…oh, so good…. Mitch, Mitch—”
“I want you so bad…so bad,” he mumbled, nuzzling her breast.
She shivered as his tongue touched her nipple. “Mitch…”
Mitch stilled, hearing the sexual tone change. She was trying to say something. “No?” he asked hoarsely.
She smiled at him, shakily, yet blinding in its beauty. “Yes. Anywhere. Anytime. Don’t you know that yet? I don’t have strength to fight it anymore. I don’t want to.” She buried her face in his shoulder. “Only you, Mitch,” she whispered. “I never felt this alive until you touched me. I…I never…” She looked up. The heat of her face flowed down her throat, but her gaze held his, so enchantingly shy and earnest. “Not until that day with you. I had no idea what it was. I never felt anything much, thought sex was all right at best, overrated. Then you came home, and with one touch, you brought me to life. You kissed me—held me, touched me…there…and it was like my body couldn’t do anything else but feel. I had no control, and oh, it was the most beautiful thing to ever happen to me. Until that night in Canberra,” she confessed, the fiery heat all the way down to her breasts now. “Making you lose control in the spa— Oh, Mitch, I can’t even describe how it made me feel. Like I could fly…”
Humbled, amazed, stunned—he was way beyond awed. He’d always wanted to be her first lover, her only lover, resenting life and the world because it wasn’t to be. Now he knew there was something far, far better. To be her last lover. To be the first, the only man who brought her to life and feeling and loss of control. To be the one she loved to give pleasure to in return. To know no other man had done that to her and hopefully never would. Just him. Only him. Always him.
It was almost worth losing all those years together, just to know that. Almost.
He caressed the skin of her waist and hip, so gently rounded, soft and golden and silky, feeling her tremble as he moved, oh, so slowly toward her aching hot center. “As amazing as that was—for me as well as you—there is something better.” His voice came out in a half-strangled croak. “Flying together, Lissa-My-Lissa. Being inside you, moving inside of you. Finishing inside you, and lying together after, still a part of you.”
She bit her lip, her eyes uncertain instead of thrilled. “I guess you’d know more about that than me.”
Tenderness welled up in his heart, for her pain had a depth beyond simple jealousy. “No, baby,” he said quietly, caressing her heated cheek, trying hard to ignore her nakedness—for she needed to know this, and what Lissa needed he had to give her. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m working on 99 percent fantasy here? What if I said there’s only been one woman since Kerin, and that was before she gave me the boys?”
Her luscious mouth fell open; her soft dove’s eyes were sweet and stunned and anxious, too frightened to hope. “Were…did you get together again with Kerin after she gave you the boys?”
He shook his head. “No.” He chuckled at the glazed look on her sweet face. “That’s right. It’s been nine years since I was with a woman in any way. Now you know why I’ve been a bit, um, out of control with you.”
She frowned. “But…but you’re so beautiful. Why?”
His heart flipped over with the power of her words, like a kid in the throes of first love. But then, he was. He was in the throes of first, last and only love. At thirty-two he was listening to the girl of his dreams say the words he’d thought would be confined to those damn dreams, forever unfulfilled. “I hurt Kerin…bad,” he admitted, caressing her shoulders and back, because he had to touch her somehow.
“She hated that it was only a casual thing for me, until she got pregnant. When she came back with Matt and Luke, I was with Shea, a woman in the Air Force. She couldn’t handle me wanting to take on four-month-old twins full-time, taking a desk job so I’d be home for the boys. She
walked, and I didn’t care enough to stop her.” He shrugged again.
“It didn’t seem worth it to try after that, not with the kids to bring up. Then when they were gone, I joined the Nighthawks and had more than enough to do. I never met a woman who interested me enough to start a relationship. After Kerin, I never liked or wanted casual sex. It leads to hurt feelings, foster kids like me or unhappy families. So I didn’t bother until I came back to you and couldn’t keep my hands off you for more than thirty seconds. Then I blurted out my stupid proposal within five minutes of knowing you were free.” He grinned self-mockingly. “You might have noticed my self-control’s a bit limited when it comes to you.”
That was when he saw it, the subtle, radiant, feminine glow no man could mistake. “Kiss me, Mitch,” she breathed, standing on tiptoe to reach his mouth. “Make love to me. Now.”
Her bare breasts brushed against his chest.
He groaned, crushed her to him and gave the kiss all he had.
In all his wildest dreams—and they’d been pretty untamed—he’d never hoped for such sweet fire, such luminous bliss in simple human touch. Like a miracle long prayed for and suddenly given, Lissa couldn’t keep her hands off him. His body gave her so much joy, such wonder. She kept mumbling, through kisses to his skin, “You’re so beautiful, Mitch, so beautiful!”
“No. You are,” he groaned. “You take my breath away.”
“Shh.” She touched a finger to his mouth, smiling up at him, with a little cheeky twinkle. “Much as I love some of the things you say to me—especially lately—sometimes the foot goes in. I have better uses for your mouth right now.”
He chuckled and touched his lips to the place where her neck and shoulder met, a sensitive, erotic spot for him. “Like this?”
“Mmmm. Aaaah…” She writhed against him.
Taking that as affirmative, he nibbled and sucked on her soft skin and tender muscle beneath, the pad of his thumbs brushing over her breasts, her nipples.
Who Do You Trust? Page 17