Midway Between You and Me (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Rogenna Brewer

  “I’m not looking,” Tam said in a harsh whisper.

  “Don’t say I didn’t offer.” Katie raised the binoculars. “Oh, yeah, that’s a real nice tattoo.”

  “Give me those.” Tam practically ripped them off the girl’s neck.

  “You can’t go around spying on them while they get dressed,” she lectured, glancing toward the window. The lieutenant appeared, a softly muted blur behind the sheers.

  “Better make up your mind to do it before he puts his pants on,” Katie said.

  “All right, all right,” Tam caved. He’d turned his back to her and bent to step into his underwear. Boxers, she noted. There. The tattoo, just as she remembered. Then gone.

  “What are you two doing?” Will asked. “You know peeping is a crime.”

  “We weren’t peeping!” Tam’s voice rose to a squeak.

  “We were just checking out his tattoo,” Katie said.

  “Can I see?” he asked, reaching for the binoculars.

  “No!” Tam slapped his hand away. “He would not want you spying on him like that.”

  “But it’s all right for you two?” Will was having a good time teasing them.

  “Go away, both of you. The show’s over.”

  She glared at them until they turned to leave, then she glared at their backs until they were out of sight. She was going to do what she came here to do. And that was ask the lieutenant about his tattoo. She took a deep breath, turned around, and walked smack-dab into his chest.

  “Nice night,” he said, hands behind his back, looking up at the stars.

  She felt her cheeks heat. Good thing it was dark. “Yes, it is,” she agreed.

  “Binoculars? You out here bird watching?” He said it a bit too casually.

  She sensed a trap, but plunged full steam ahead, anyway. “Yes, yes, I am…out here bird watching.”

  “What can you see with those things after dark? I’ve always found these more appropriate,” he said, bringing a pair up to his face.

  She stifled a scream. Two piercing red eyes stared back at her.

  “Infrared,” he said, lowering them. “With night vision you can see anything. Even a woman checking you out from behind the bushes. Especially when she’s not very quiet about it.”

  “It just so happens—” she raised her voice “—I was bird watching whether you want to believe it or not.”

  “So show me the birds.” She didn’t need night vision to see that sexy smile of his.

  “Follow me.” She took off with her head held high. She couldn’t believe he’d caught her peeping. She’d be mocked for the rest of her life.

  She took him across the island where there wasn’t much of anything except gooney birds.

  “Mating season is in the fall. Every spring night, the proud parents preen their babies and tuck them in,” she explained. “But young males try all season long to engage a partner by dancing around the single females. There are certain movements the young couple has to follow in order to complete the mating dance.”

  “And what happens if they miss a beat?”

  “They move on to someone else. But the first time they get it right, they mate for life.”

  “What’s happening over here?” he asked.

  Tam moved to stand beside him. “She’s a hybrid between a black-footed albatross and a Laysan albatross. The males aren’t interested in her. She looks like a Laysan, but bigger, so she scares off the Laysan male. And if the bigger black-footed male tries to approach her, he doesn’t have a chance. The Laysan and black-footed albatross have different dance steps. She’s imprinted with the Laysan dance. It’s likely the bigger black-footed male mounted a smaller Laysan female.”

  “So where are her parents?”

  “They don’t stay together. She’s an accident caused by an overeager male and nature. Young males try to mount females, with or without the dance.”

  And she had brought the lieutenant to this world where everything was about the propagation of the species. What was she thinking? Nature had never embarrassed or aroused her before. But here she was standing in the middle of fornicating birds and all she could think about was the act.

  Bowie approached a lone male black-footed albatross and sprinkled on the ground some crumbs he took from his pocket. Soon he’d coaxed the male to follow the trail to the hybrid female.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Giving them a chance. I had crackers in my pocket for Crackers.”

  “You can’t feed the birds. I’m ordering you to stop this instant!”

  “They steal the crumbs from our lunches all the time.”

  The couple had started to dance. And he kept rewarding them with crumbs. If either turned to leave he’d stop feeding them.

  “He’s not going to get the moves right just because you’re feeding him.”

  “Maybe it won’t matter to her if he misses a few beats.”

  He’d run out of crumbs, and she had the satisfaction of seeing the male turn away. But a few minutes later he came back on his own and started his mating dance. Apparently the way to that gooney’s heart was through his stomach.

  “What did I tell you,” Bowie boasted.

  “The young gooney couple has to get the dance down before they can pair off,” she explained, faltering, suddenly unable to act like the prim and proper professor. “When they do, they’ll set up practice housekeeping. Next year they’ll come back to that same spot to mate. That’s just not likely to happen.”

  “But it could. She happened, and that wasn’t likely.”

  She supposed it was possible. Anything seemed possible with Bowie.

  “As you see, I was bird watching. They’re only this active at night.”

  “Interesting hobby you have, Professor. So how come watching makes you so uptight?”

  “I’m not uptight.” She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck.

  “We could sit down on the beach and I could work the tension out of those shoulders for you.”

  “I’m not tense,” she said through tight lips.

  He leaned back against a tree trunk, crossing his legs at the ankles. He was neither uptight nor tense. He could relax because he knew he had her backed into a corner.

  “I was spying on you, okay? Is that what you want me to admit?”

  “All you had to do was ask.”

  “I wanted to know more about your tattoo.”

  “With or without my pants on?”

  She heaved a sigh and stalked off, ending up at a lone picnic table, weathered by the years it had been sitting there.

  “I know I’m just a gooney missing a few beats, but it would help if I knew whether or not you were dancing with me.” He joined her at the table, and she boosted herself on top. “We all have our defenses, mine just happens to be that I’m a wiseass. When you’re the youngest in a family of overachievers, you get your attention any way you can.” He sat down and began to rub her shoulders. “I’ve tried to back off, but you’re sending me mixed signals.”

  She relaxed beneath his touch but remained silent.

  “Like now,” he said, leaning forward.

  “I think I’m drawn to things that are bad for me.”

  “One minute I’m a nice guy, the next I’m bad for you.”

  “One isn’t mutually exclusive of the other. You are a nice guy. You do nice things for people. You’re friendly, funny. I could go on. But then there’s me. The last thing I need is for a guy in a uniform to walk into my life and turn it upside down. The military is the antithesis of everything I am. Or ever want to be. I have tried hard to put my past behind me. I actually thought I’d succeeded until you came along.”

  “What if fate stepped in to prove you can’t run away from your past?”

  “You may be right. Even though I don’t want you to be,” she agreed. “You’re like the missing pieces of a puzzle I’ve been trying hard not to solve.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to put the pieces together? Then yo
u’d have the whole picture.”

  “I might not like what I see.”

  “But that’s better than not knowing, isn’t it?”

  “Your tattoo. Does it have any significance?”

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He backed away from the picnic table, unbuttoning his shirt. “Get naked with me. We’ll go for a swim.” He tossed his shirt aside.

  “I’m not—”

  “I won’t be able to see anything. If you want answers, Tam, you’re going to have to come get them. Because I want answers, too.” He kicked off his sandals.

  “You lied to me about a lot of things, didn’t you. Like the fact that your help doesn’t come with a price tag! Like the fact that you know my father!”

  “I know your father, but you’re the one I want to know better.” He unzipped his shorts, stepped out of them, then peeled off his underwear and stood naked before her.

  “This isn’t about sex, Tam. I have no condoms.” He held his arms out to his sides and kept backing up toward the ocean. “This is about you and me getting down to the naked truth.”

  When the water reached his waist, he turned and dove in.

  She sat there shaking, her heart pounding. Her flight instinct told her to run, but she couldn’t move. She’d started this crazy dance. And she wanted answers bad enough to finish it.

  She peeled off her clothes, knowing she couldn’t trust him. Then she got up from the bench. She couldn’t see him. But he was out there.

  She started walking toward the water in her underwear. He treaded water not too far from where she stood. She met his eyes and removed her bra and panties just before she stepped in.

  The warm water surrounded her. She swam toward him but stopped a safe distance away to tread water.

  “Come here,” he urged. “You know I could be there in just two strokes.”

  “You do your stroking from over there,” she warned, even though she didn’t think she was much of a threat to him naked.

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Now, wouldn’t you be embarrassed if I did.”

  “Would you?”

  “No, not at all,” he said seriously, taking that first stroke toward her. He was close, but not close enough to touch her. “The red eyes of the skull represent night vision. The tattoo was adopted by a group of sixty special ops who managed to hold off forty thousand North Vietnamese Army regulars staging at Parrot’s Beak, Laos, thwarting their mission, which was to capture Saigon. Of course, Saigon did fall to an Army attacking from Parrot’s Beak, just not that time.” He paused. “We call ourselves the Sons of the Sixty. That’s why McCain and I have this tattoo. There are others. And there are the originals, my father, your father… You want to know more, you have to tell me something about your tattoo.”

  She turned her head toward her left shoulder, then back to him. “Tit for tat,” she said.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of give-and-take. I’ll stay out here all night if I have to, just give me something. That’s all I’m asking for.”

  He swam in a circle around her. She turned with him, always keeping him in sight.

  He stopped, then disappeared underwater. She knew a moment of panic, kept turning, trying to catch a glimpse of him or some movement, expecting to feel him brush against her body.

  But she didn’t feel anything. The panic subsided for a moment, until she realized it had been a while since he’d come up for air.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” she called out to the dark. “Bowie!” But moments turned to minutes. How many? Three, four, five? She swam toward the shoreline, trying to catch a glimpse of him on the beach. She stood to her navel in water, not knowing which way to turn. To the water? To the shore?

  Her heart stood still.

  The hairs on the back of her neck tingled.

  He sliced the water behind her and pulled her to him. “Did you find your answers?” he whispered in her ear. “Which frightened you more, my leaving or my return?”

  Her heart had started to beat again. She sagged against him, felt his heat, his hardness, his strength.

  “Stay or go, Tam? What do you want from me?”

  “You don’t play fair.”

  “I have a hidden agenda,” he said, trailing kisses from her neck to the tattoo on her shoulder. “Tell me about the butterfly.”

  “You don’t want to know. You won’t—”

  “You’re wrong. Every night I see you in my dreams exactly this way, rising up from the ocean. Naked to the waist. Your hair wet and draping your shoulders and back. Your body glistening with droplets of water. But always, always your secrets are hidden. I would die to know those secrets.” One of his hands had cupped a small breast. “Open up to me, Tam. Tell me everything.”

  He stole her breath. He stole her sanity. “I can’t! I can’t!”

  He let go abruptly. “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Where are you going?” she demanded as he headed toward shore.

  But he didn’t answer. He walked with his head bowed and his shoulders slumped. “Don’t you dare walk away after that!”

  “At least I’m just walking, Tam,” he called over his shoulder. “You’re the one running.”

  She stood stock still. “You were always going to leave me, anyway.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you were going to leave me. But we’ll never know. Because one of us is too much of a coward to risk it.”

  2200 Tuesday

  FISHERMAN’S WHARF

  San Francisco, California

  LAN HAD AGREED TO MEET Shane O’Connor for dinner. She’d been avoiding him because she thought it best not to lead him on. And until she knew for sure what had happened to Skully she would never be free to love another.

  Her apartment had become too intimate a meeting place. But Fisherman’s Wharf seemed harmless enough. That is until they were seated at a table overlooking the docks with twinkling bulbs lighting up the terrace like fireflies.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Shane said, leaning over his dessert.

  “Hmm? I’m sorry. My mind is still on work,” she lied.

  “Tough day?”

  “Not at all,” she answered honestly, thinking over all the tough days she’d had in her life. “It’s a good day. A very good day.” She smiled.

  “Well, I have information that is going to make a good day even better.” He slid an envelope across the table to her.

  She picked it up with trembling hands.

  “I haven’t found him yet,” he warned. “But it’s a solid lead.”

  She’d wait to read it until she was alone. As she knew he would, Shane went on to tell her what he’d discovered.

  “It seems there’s a story behind that tattoo that traces back to only sixty men. We’ve narrowed the field considerably, Lan. From here on out, it’s only a matter of time.”

  Spring 1975

  Saigon, Vietnam

  XANG HAD KEPT HIS PROMISE. Lan had named the daughter of her heart Tam. She’d lived as the man’s concubine for more than two years now, not seeing her parents or her brothers in all that time.

  And she hadn’t stopped thinking of Skully.

  Xang had become frustrated with her because she hadn’t conceived. He’d taken a first and then a second wife. Neither union had produced any offspring. He would soon be looking for a third wife.

  The American War was only a memory, but the South Vietnamese had held on to Saigon. That was why she’d chosen to run away from Xang. If she could get to the U.S. Embassy she might still have a chance to be free of him forever.

  She’d walked for days along Highway 1, carrying her daughter and looking over her shoulder. She hadn’t dared to take more than the clothes on her back and what food she could carry. But he never came after them.

  The baby started to cry, and Lan sang her a lullaby until she quieted. There was no turning back now. She had no choice but to keep going. So she put one foot in front of the other.

  The foot traffic
moved with her at a hurried pace as if sensing her urgency, or maybe it was their own. Many simply died beside the road for one reason or another, their bodies left to rot. The closer she got to Saigon the more desperate she became.

  There were rumors passing from person to person that the embassy had closed. The last American civilians and military were being shuttled by helicopter to ships. Refugee South Vietnamese were being evacuated as well, but papers and connections helped. There was simply not enough room on the helicopters. And not enough time.

  Lan reached the locked gates of the embassy.

  People were begging to be allowed in. She pushed her way to the front. A tree had been cut down from the middle of the parking lot so that the helicopter could land, the lucky ones inside the gate were lining up, being prioritized and airlifted out.

  Until only the Marines remained to face the desperate crowds pressing against the gate.

  When they started to retreat, Lan knew it was too late to save herself, but she still hoped to give her daughter a new life. “G.I.-san!” she cried out. She caught the eye of a young Marine. “My baby. Take my baby, lam on, please,” she begged, holding up a screaming Tam so he could see her daughter. “My baby has round eyes!”

  He hesitated, ready to follow his fellow Marines up the fire escape to the roof. Then he turned back to her and came toward the fence.

  “Cam on, thank you,” she choked out, squeezing her daughter between the bars.

  He reached out to take her and a shot rang out. Lan pulled Tam to her body and watched in horror as the corporal who’d been close enough for her to read his name tag fell backward. Marines fired back above the heads of the crowd to the building across the street. Two other Marines rushed over to drag Corporal O’Connor’s limp body away. But at that point there was still hope for O’Connor.

  There was no hope for her.

  “My baby has round eyes!” Lan shouted over and over again. But it was no use. The last helicopter came at dawn to pick up the waiting Marines, then left.

  “My baby has round eyes,” she whispered. Sinking to the ground, she rocked her baby back and forth. She didn’t know what the future held. She knew only one thing. There was no tomorrow in Vietnam.