He looks so normal, she thought. Right then he seemed almost himself, even flirting with the plump middle-aged waitress until she blushed like a rose. And was it wishful thinking, or had he even gained a little weight? Were the hollows in his cheeks a little less deep? Were his eyes a little less haunted? Dared she hope it might be so easy?
Like an alarm going off somewhere in a distant room, she heard the faraway voice of Lieutenant Commander Rees. I'm not gonna lie to you…he's got a rough road ahead of him and so do you. It's not gonna be easy. The last of the afternoon's winey glow faded away, and though she tried hard to suppress it, a shiver ran through her.
Traffic was light on the autobahn, and although Jessie's heart did a little skip when Tristan moved into the fast lane first thing, she told herself it was only what she'd have expected him to do, especially after the cracks he'd made about her speed-or lack of it. She tried not to look at the speedometer, but she couldn't help it. And her heart began to beat faster as the needle crept relentlessly around the dial.
"Tris…" she breathed when it reached 130…then 140.
"Relax," he drawled, "no speed limit here, remember?"
"I know, but-" Her body tensed involuntarily as the speedometer needle edged up to 150. "Tris-" This time it came out sharp and scared as another car loomed ahead, growing larger at an alarming rate. She held her breath while he calmly tipped the blinker and moved into the next lane, and went around the other car as if it were standing still. "Tristan," she ground out on the exhalation, "Dammit, slow down."
His only answer was a confident chuckle, and she threw him a furious glare. And then the anger left her like the air from a popped balloon, and she knew all at once that what she really was, was afraid. And that it wasn't the car's speed that was scaring her…not anymore. It was something she saw in Tris's face, in the profile that had been so familiar to her but was now subtly changed by a nose that had been broken at least once. The profile that used to make her heart skip a beat and her pulse quicken, as she rode beside him in the sweet, sultry darkness of a Georgia summer night, country music thumping on the stereo… The profile that was still strong and arrogant, even aristocratic in spite of the nose, teeth bared in a smile, a comma bracketing his mouth and an irresistible fan of wrinkles at the corner of his eye. But now there was something dark about the smile, and the eyes held a glitter of excitement…and danger.
The speedometer needle wobbled unsteadily-she couldn't see the number through the mist of her fear. But she could feel the vibrating of the car's engine in her bones. "Tris-" she cried out, trembling. She didn't know what was happening to him. To her shame, she had begun to cry.
When she thought she wouldn't be able to stand the terrible tension another second, she saw speed limit warning signs flash past through the shimmering haze of her tears. Tristan muttered something under his breath and the car's engine vibrations eased. The speedometer needle swiveled slowly back to 120. And as it fell, Jessie's fury returned.
Helpless to stop it, unable to express it, she ranted silently to herself: What was that? What did he just do? What am I supposed to do with that?
Because at the same time she felt so angry, she also felt guilty for it. How could she be angry at somebody who was back from the dead, for God's sake? This was a man who'd spent the past eight years in an Iraqi prison, Lord only knew what they'd done to him there, and she was supposed to be patient with him, wasn't she? Give him time, they'd told her.
But, a tiny voice whispered in the back of her mind, what if Tris isn't going to give himself time?
I don't think I can do this. It played over and over inside her head as she sat in furious, trembling silence and Tristan drove the rest of the way back to the guest house sedately within posted speed limits. I don't think I can do this.
It was a lone voice at first, but gradually she came to realize that what was going on in her head wasn't a monologue or a mantra any longer, but rather an argument. And what the dissenting voice-was it Momma's? Tristan's? Her own? Who knows?-anyway, what it was saying was, Sure you can. Suck it up, girl. If he could survive eight years in prison, you sure as hell can handle his return.
Okay, but we have to talk about this, she argued back desperately. I have to get him to talk to me about what happened to him. I just have to. And soon. This can't wait much longer. Tonight. We'll talk tonight.
But when they turned into the guest house parking lot, she realized that any confrontation with Tristan was going to have to wait a little while longer. The previously almost empty lot was suddenly full of vehicles, many of them vans and panel trucks bearing satellite dishes and multiple antennae on their rooftops. The world news media had caught up with them.
"Oh no," she murmured.
"Looks like the honeymoon's over." Tristan's smile barely stretched the hollows in his cheeks as he maneuvered the car into a vacant spot on the edge of the lot, well outside the huddled circle of media vehicles and equipment. "They were bound to find us sooner or later. The military's done a helluva job to hold 'em off this long." He turned off the motor and looked over at Jessie. "Ready to face the music?"
The skin under his eyes looked bruised. Seeing that, she felt something swell inside her and a shivering sensation crawl under the skin along her back, neck and chest. She knew what it was, she'd felt it before: maternal outrage. If she'd been a momma wolf her hackles would have been rising. Or, in her case, maybe a more apt comparison would be one of Granny Calhoun's hens fluffing up her feathers so as to look twice her actual size, ready to defend her nest against all comers.
"Tris, you're exhausted," she said as he opened his door, "maybe we can sneak in the back way."
He shook his head, already easing his bad knee over the sill. "I'm not gonna go skulking around like a coward."
Outside the car he paused to steady himself with a hand on the door frame, then leaned over to pick up his cane from the back seat. When he straightened again his skin looked gray, but Jessie saw him, with a visible effort, pull himself up to a military stance, and a muscle tighten in his jaw. "Gonna have to face them sometime. Might as well do it and get it over with."
Duty calls, she thought, rekindling an old resentment. And at the same time a familiar sense of pride. Taking his arm as they crossed the parking lot, she could feel tremors of exhaustion and weakness racking his body, and yet she knew he'd die before he'd ever admit it. And looking at his rock-hard features, nobody would ever guess he was holding himself together by sheer strength of will. But that's how he did it, she thought. That's how he's been surviving. Sheer willpower.
Not even willpower, though, could keep him from faltering when the mass of reporters spotted them and descended like a human tidal wave. She felt his body flinch as if from a physical blow. Glancing up at him, she saw that his face had turned a sickly bluish white-a familiar phenomenon from her experience as a nurse and one she knew was usually a prelude to somebody hitting the floor.
And with that thought, there it was again, that swelling, feather-fluffing, hackles-raising momma-bear fury, and without even thinking about it, she had taken an iron grip on Tristan's arm, and with her free arm thrown out like an icebreaker, was ploughing him through the river of pushing, shoving reporters, thrusting microphones and whirring, clicking cameras.
Having achieved the guest house steps, she turned to face the crowd, and as she did she was shoving Tristan behind her, shielding him from them with her own body. Somehow, he'd gathered the strength to lift his hand to ask for quiet. The din subsided, but before Tristan could begin to speak, Jessie heard her own voice-firm, forceful and calm-the one she used to reassure frightened parents in the NICU.
"I know how anxious y'all are to hear from my husband. I just want to ask you to please be patient and respect our privacy a little while longer. Lieutenant Bauer has had a long day. I know he'll be a lot better able to answer your questions after he's had some rest. Now, if you would…please…" Her voice faltered, and she felt Tris's hands on her shoulders-len
ding her his strength, she wondered, or drawing from hers?
She heard his deep, quiet voice, and a thrill rushed through her. "I just want to thank you all, and let you know I'll try to answer your questions in due time. I believe the base's public affairs officer is planning a press conference before I leave for the states, if you-"
"Lieutenant Bauer, just one question," someone shouted. "How does it feel to be back from the dead?"
Again she felt his hands tighten on her shoulders. "It feels…great." She knew from his voice that he had to be grinning, and that it could only be one of those great big honest-to-God old-fashioned Tristan grins she loved so much. Her eyes filled with tears.
A reporter shouted, "Mrs. Bauer, would you mind if we asked you a few questions?"
She hadn't expected that. Not sure what she should do, she tilted her head back and glanced up at Tristan. He gave her a nod and his skewed half smile, but the tiredness in his eyes seemed bottomless. She put her hand over his where it rested on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "Why don't you go on?" she murmured for his ears only. "I don't mind stayin' a minute."
He hesitated, then murmured back, "If you're sure…"
"I'll be fine. Go on-go." She turned back to the crowd of reporters with a determined smile. A moment later she felt him leave her, and there was a tingling coldness on her shoulders where his hands had been.
"Mrs. Bauer-when did you find out your husband was alive?"
"Mrs. Bauer, Mrs. Bauer-what's it been like to have your husband come back from the dead?"
"How is he feeling, Mrs. Bauer?"
"When do you plan to-"
"First of all," Jessie began in a loud voice, holding up her hands, "y'all have to understand, this has been happenin' awfully fast. I don't think it's really hit me yet." There was a ripple of sympathetic laughter. Somewhere behind her she heard the guest house door open and close. She paused, and the crowd grew hushed, listening as she went quietly on. "All I know is, my husband is alive, he's here with me, and very soon now he's gonna be back home where he belongs. It might have taken a while longer than I'd have liked for it to, but the good Lord has answered an awful lot of prayers."
In the genteel stillness of the guest house lobby, Tristan paused to listen to the rise and fall of Jessie's voice…the occasional rustle of reporters' laughter. Jess's voice. It was hers, yes…the one he remembered but different, somehow. Quietly confident, matter-of-fact. It came to him suddenly, what it reminded him of: the voices he heard every day at the hospital, voices of strength and comfort and encouragement. The cheerful, no-nonsense, reassuring voices of the nurses.
Instead of heading for the elevator, he turned as if drawn by a magnet to one of the multipaned windows that overlooked the front walk. From there, hidden from view by the curtains, he watched his wife face the crowd of reporters alone. And maybe it was seeing her from a distance like that, and hearing her voice that was so much the same and yet so different, but something in his perception suddenly shifted-like one of those optical illusions where one moment you're looking at a face right side up, and the next second it's upside down. She has changed. She's not the same Jessie I left behind.
He hadn't really thought she would be…had he? He'd prepared himself, or thought he had, for her to have gotten older…even to have found someone else. Then he'd found her looking just the way he'd pictured her in his mind, still slim, sunshine blond and beautiful, still a little bit awkward and eager to please him. Just the way he remembered her. Now he knew he'd been kidding himself. Of course she'd changed-in eight years, how could she not? But she hadn't gotten older; what she'd done was matured. And she hadn't found someone else. She'd found herself.
Watching the tall, self-assured woman-a stranger to him-out there on the guest house steps, he felt a stabbing sense of loss. His chest filled with the pressure of grief-for the young, accommodating girl he'd left behind and remembered so well…grief, too, for the impossible dream he'd clung to like a life preserver and that had kept him alive for so long.
Then, as he watched the beautiful, confident woman on the steps, her hair haloed by the television crews' spotlights, he felt something new come and take root in the empty place those losses had left inside him, and slowly begin to grow. Respect. Admiration. And the pressure in his chest was no longer grief. It was pride.
* * *
When Jessie slipped quietly into her room sometime later, she was hoping Tris might have gone to sleep. Instead she found him sitting in a straight-backed chair beside the table. A tissue spread on the tabletop near his elbow held a neat pile of orange and banana peels. The TV was tuned to a soccer game.
"Everybody gone?" he asked as he turned off the television set, stifling a yawn.
She dropped her pocketbook beside the dresser and nodded. "I think so. For now, anyway. I imagine they'll be back in the mornin'." Still flushed and, if she wanted to be entirely truthful, just a wee bit exhilarated, she took a deep breath and lifted her fingers to rake them through her hair. "Whoo-hope I don't have to do that again. That was somethin' else."
"I think you'd better get used to it," Tristan said dryly. "I wouldn't worry about it, though-you handled it beautifully." There was something in the way he looked at her…something soft and golden in his eyes…that made her pulse quicken.
She went toward him, wishing she could just walk right up to him and put her arms around him, and that he would put his arms around her and pull her into the vee of his legs and nestle his face against her breasts. Once, long ago, it would have been a natural, easy thing.
"You don't look very comfortable," she said, reaching out a hand to touch his hair, lightly nudging it off his forehead with a finger while her throat ached with longing. "Don't you want to lie down? Put your feet up, rest your knee awhile?"
"Naw…if I do that I'm afraid I'll fall asleep. I need to call Al…have him come get me. Just wanted to make sure the crowd was gone." His voice sounded gravelly. His eyes searched her face as if she were someone he'd just met and he was trying to commit her face to memory.
Her mouth went dry and her tongue thickened. The words slurred as she said, "Tris, you're so tired. Why don't you stay here tonight?"
"You know I can't do that."
"No, I do not know that." Primed with new confidence and resolve, she grabbed the second chair, turned it around and sat in it, facing him with her knees almost but not quite touching his. "I know you tell me you can't, because of some fear you have in your mind that you might do something that's gonna shock me or hurt me or…I don't know, drive me screamin' from the room. Which, if you want to know the truth, I think is just plain ridiculous."
"Jess-"
"No. You listen to me. In the first place, in case you've forgotten, I am a nurse, and while I might work in a NICU now, I've done rotations in psych wards. I've handled episodes of PTSD before. Believe me, there's nothin' you could do that's gonna shock me. But Tris-" she reached for his hands and enfolded them, stiff and resisting, in hers "-what's more important is, I'm your wife. You understand me? I am your wife. That is for better or worse and sickness and health, in case you don't remember the vows we said to one another. You don't get to protect me from this. This has happened to both of us, dammit. You are not allowed to shut me out."
Something dripped from her nose. She dashed it furiously away, then stared down at the moisture on the back of her hand. She couldn't imagine how it had come to be there. She hadn't known she was crying.
"Jessie…" Now it was his hand lifted to her face, his fingers wiping away tears.
She caught his hand and held it pressed against her cheek. Eyes closed, she said in a fierce, choking voice, "Look, all I'm asking you to do is sleep here, in this bed. I'm not planning on ravishing your bones, if that's what's worryin' you."
"Bones would be the operative word." His voice was bumpy with amusement.
She opened her eyes and glared at him through tears. "Really? I'd hoped it was ravish."
Hunger flared in h
is eyes and was quickly extinguished, as if someone had slammed a lid over a fire.
If she only knew, he thought, how close to the truth that might be. Since this afternoon he no longer had any doubts that his normal masculine urges, dormant for so long, were alive and stirring again. It was his ability to control those urges he wasn't sure he could trust, and until he was sure, he didn't intend to put himself-or her-to the test.
"If I stay," he said, closing his eyes, "you have to promise me…"
"Yes-what? Anything." Her hands clutched his eagerly, and his lips twitched into a patient smile.
"You have to promise you won't touch me if I, uh, seem to be-if I'm, you know…having a nightmare. Don't try to wake me up, okay? Whatever you do." He was thinking of the nurse he'd given a fat lip to just the night before, striking out blindly at an imagined attacker. He lifted her hands to his lips and looked at her gravely over them. "If I start yelling or thrashing around, I want you to go in the bathroom and lock the door. You hear me? I know you're my wife and I know you're a nurse, and you're just naturally gonna want to help me, but I'm telling you you can't. Okay? I have to know you'll get out of my way and stay there. Promise me." His voice, harsh to begin with, became a croak when he repeated it, gripping her hands too hard. "Promise me."
Her eyes swam as she whispered brokenly, "I promise."
He let go of her hands and leaned back in the chair, exhaling like a steam valve letting go. He felt inexpressibly weary. And he hoped he wasn't going to regret giving in to the temptation…to the lure of incredible luxury of a night in a private room, in a soft bed next to his wife's warm body. The hospital staff had gone to great lengths to make his room there comfortable and homey, but it was still a hospital. He hated hospitals-always had.
The Top Gun's Return Page 9