by Skye Taylor
From: Philip Cameron
To: Elena Castillo
7 September 2001
Last night I dreamed about you. I dreamed we were at the beach. You were wearing your favorite shirt. The one that ties under your boobs. You dared me to untie it with my teeth. And I’m sure you can guess what happened next. God, but it felt so good. Then I woke up with an aching woody and no girl in my bed. What a letdown.
The good news is, I get to go ashore after all. We’ll be in Darwin in a couple more days. I’ll call you if I can find a phone.
———
From: Elena Castillo
To: Philip Cameron
September 7, 2001
Darwin isn’t the end of the world. I’m sure you’ll find a phone. I can’t wait to hear your voice. A bunch of us are going out tonight and I’ll probably have fun, but it would be a lot more fun if you were here. I dream of you every night, and all my dreams are X-rated. Miss you so much. I’m counting the days until you call.
Chapter 23
April 2015
Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
“OVER THERE, MOM.” Julie pointed to a vacant parking spot between a Jeep with more rust than paint and a shiny, well-kept Buick with a surfboard jutting out from under its half-closed trunk lid.
Elena pulled into the space and turned the engine off before she noticed Philip Cameron standing beside the Buick talking with another man. Julie and her new friend Chris hopped out and began untying the surfboards they’d lashed to her roof. Elena remained rooted to her seat her eyes on Philip and the other man.
Maybe she should have guessed he would be here, considering he was the one who’d mentioned this beach and the fact that it would be a good weekend for surfing. But parked right next to her? What were the chances?
Their history was so entwined with days spent at the shore and nights spent making love in the sand, it was hard to quell the sudden pounding of her pulse or the heat rising in her cheeks. Retreat looked pretty good right about now, but it was too late for that. She gulped in a steadying breath and climbed out of the car.
Philip glanced over, then did a classic double take. The other man, apparently realizing he’d lost Philip’s attention, turned her way as well. He was shorter than Philip, but with the same honed physique and close-cropped hair. His wetsuit hung half off and he’d obviously been in the water. He turned back to Philip, gestured toward the beach with one hand, and a moment later, he angled off across the parking lot with his surfboard under one arm.
“Imagine meeting you here!” Philip said as he approached. He glanced at Julie and Chris who now had their boards off the roof and were ready to head to the beach. “Who’s the kid with Julie?”
“Hi, Sergeant Cameron,” Julie interrupted with a broad smile on her face. “The kid is Chris Parker. Chris, this is my mom’s friend, Gunnery Sergeant Cameron.”
“Nice to meet you, sir.” Chris leaned forward to offer his hand.
Philip shook Chris’s hand and grimaced. Elena winced inwardly, knowing Philip’s hand wouldn’t have recovered completely from the workout on the P-bars. Chris was on the tennis team, and his grip was probably even more exuberant than Julie’s.
Philip pointed at the surfboards. “My buddy says the waves are pretty good. Just be careful of the rip at the north end of the beach.”
“Got it,” Julie said as she headed toward the beach with Chris close behind.
Elena started to issue more warnings about being careful, but then held her tongue. No point in puncturing Julie’s good mood with cautions she’d ignore anyway. She turned back to Philip who was hauling his board out of the Buick’s trunk.
“Somehow this car doesn’t seem like you.” A far cry from the Harley he used to ride and that she’d loved.
“It’s my mother’s.”
“Why are you driving your mother’s car?” she asked as she reached for her tote and the cooler with their lunch.
“So Mom can zip around Tide’s Way in my red-hot Camaro convertible and feel young again.” Philip reached to take the tote. “Seriously? You have to ask? We swapped for a few weeks when it became obvious I wasn’t going to be able to handle a manual transmission right off.”
“I should have guessed.” Elena ignored Philip’s offer and hiked her tote over her shoulder. But I’d have thought by now . . . ” By now, he should have been able to shift his sporty Camaro. Unless he’d done more damage than she’d thought.
“Next trip to Tide’s Way,” Philip said as he picked up his board and grabbed her cooler before she could. “You don’t surf?”
“Of course I do,” Elena replied, suddenly feeling a little breathless. Out here in this neutral setting, the undeniable attraction she could no longer pretend she didn’t feel was even more dangerous. The mantra of Philip being her patient wasn’t working, and every feminine part of her anatomy that had been dormant for too long was taking notice. She hurried ahead so his arm would stop brushing against her shoulder, triggering alarming waves of temptation. “Our boards are still packed away down at my brother’s place. Chris loaned Julie one of his.”
She stopped walking again and scanned the beach for Julie and Chris.
“Over there.” Philip jerked his head to the right where Julie was shucking her shorts while Chris let her balance herself with one hand on his shoulder. “I guess things must be going a little better for Julie. She’s found a boyfriend already.”
“He’s a tennis buddy. Not a boyfriend.”
Philip raised his eyebrows as if he was challenging her.
“She’s not old enough for boyfriends yet.”
Philip’s expression didn’t change. “How old were you when you had your first crush?”
“I wasn’t twelve,” Elena stated flatly. In truth, she hadn’t been all that much older than Julie was now. Heat began to creep up her neck. She’d met Brad the summer her father died. And Brad had very quickly filled the aching void in her life.
“Bet Chris isn’t twelve either.” Philip smirked. Then his face sobered and his gaze grew serious. “Maybe you should talk to Julie about the things teenage boys’ minds tend to dwell on at that age.”
Elena wanted to deny Philip’s suggestion, but then she glanced back toward her daughter. Just in time to see Chris pull Julie up against his lean body and kiss her. On the mouth. She gaped at the spectacle.
Brad hadn’t been the first boy Elena ever kissed, but he had taken her virginity. The summer she’d been missing her dad and had been desperate to be someone special again, even if the new man in her life was still a boy himself.
Was Julie filling a similar void?
“She won’t like it if you embarrass her,” Philip warned, grabbing Elena’s arm as she started in her daughter’s direction.
“When did you get to be such an expert on teenage girls?” She shook off the restraining hand.
“I’m not,” Philip admitted with a shrug and a grin. “I’m guessing.”
Elena sank down onto her knees. Philip was right. Damn it. Julie would be furious if Elena said anything about her behavior in front of Chris. But she was only twelve.
Wasn’t there enough to deal with right now? Julie’s sullen anger about the move. Her open criticism of the divorce. All the while Elena was trying to establish her reputation in a new place, at a new job she’d been exceedingly lucky to land. And trying to keep her feelings for Philip in check. And now her daughter was growing up way too fast. And flaunting it.
Admittedly, Julie didn’t look twelve. She had long legs and a slender waist that contrasted far too well with the pert young breasts so nicely displayed in a bikini Elena had never seen before. She looked, Elena felt a little sick, fifteen going on twenty.
Without ever looking Elena’s way, Julie picked up her borrowed board and headed toward the water. Chris hesitated a moment, then followed her.
Philip tugged the old blanket out of the top of Elena’s tote and spread it out. He set the cooler on one corner and her tote on another. Then he stretched out on the other side without asking her permission. He patted the empty space next to him.
“Cool your jets, Mom. They can’t get into any trouble surfing. At least, not the kind of trouble you’re brooding about.”
“I’m not brooding.”
“Worrying, then?”
Elena moved onto the blanket and sat hugging her knees. Brooding . . . worrying . . . whatever he wanted to call it, she was doing it.
“She’s just a kid.”
“But she’s a smart kid. Like her mom.”
Except Elena hadn’t been all that smart back then. Otherwise, she’d never have hooked up with Brad before either of them were mature enough for that kind of intimacy. She hadn’t been smart at eighteen either. Having dated no one but Brad for all of high school, she’d promised herself she would play the field in college. Yet she’d hopped into Eli’s bed a month after starting her first semester.
Then she’d completely thrown herself at Philip when he’d been trying to behave himself. Was there something wrong with her? Was Julie just like her? Or would Julie be smarter, and more sensible?
“You want me to have a word with Chris?”
Elena shook her head. Julie might accept such interference from Eli, but—
Elena swallowed a sudden obstruction in her throat. But not from Philip. Or her mother.
“You want a sandwich?” Elena forced herself to look away from the two young people paddling their way out into the surf.
“I ate before I came,” Philip answered, pulling his T-shirt off and flopping back onto the blanket. “I’m just waiting for it to digest.”
His broad shoulders and solid chest with that sprinkling of crisp golden curls drew her gaze like a magnet. The cross she’d given him glittered on the end of the chain where it hung down toward his armpit, and a flood of memories she’d been trying to keep buried surged into sharp relief.
That long-hidden piece of herself wanted to reach out and touch him. To feel, even briefly, the fiery connection they’d once shared. She didn’t like to admit how naïve she’d been back then. How totally she’d fallen for him. She especially didn’t like to recall how brazen she’d been about inviting intimacy. But in spite of all the denials, her thirty-four-year-old self was just as eager, and almost as willing, to rush in blindly.
“Have you been to the range yet?” she asked, trying to divert the direction her thoughts had taken. It might be easier to banish the ache and need growing in her belly if she kept her mind on his desire to be gone as soon as possible and her role in that plan.
He sat up, his shoulder touching hers as he wrapped his arms about his own knees. “You doubt it?”
She shivered and something fluttered in her chest. “How did it go?” Stay focused. He’s your patient and he’s eager to be gone again.
“Are you cold?” He sounded surprised.
She shook her head, trying to ignore the quickening of her pulse.
Philip reached for his towel and draped it about her shoulders. The warmth of it just added to the fact of his nearness. Even worse, the scent of his aftershave seemed to envelope her. Scent was a powerful thing in the world of memories, and right now, it was triggering a response she hadn’t felt in years. A response so strong her heart ached.
“It went better than I expected,” Philip answered, seemingly unaware of the synapses firing in her brain. He reached out to fill his hand with sand, and then watched it drain through his parted fingers. “I qualified with both the Beretta and the M40. I didn’t want to push my luck, so I decided to wait a bit on the big guns.” He wiggled the now-empty fingers.
Philip turned his head and peered into her eyes. “Your magic made it possible.”
“I think it was more about your stubbornness.” She forced lightness into her reply.
He laughed. “Maybe. But I think it was more than just me being impatient.”
“It was you being good at what you do.” She didn’t want to think about the things he did well. Either in combat or in bed.
“What was Eli like?”
Philip’s question came out of the blue and made her catch her breath. Her brain scrambled to shift gears.
“He was. . . . He was a good friend, but—” He wasn’t you.
“But?” Philip fingered the hem of his swim shorts. The fact that he suddenly seemed as nervous as she was helped her to gather her thoughts and tamp down the emotions that threatened to swamp her.
She forced herself to look away from the fidgeting fingers and hunted instead for Julie in the cluster of heads waiting for a wave.
“He’s a good man,” she answered finally. “He’s honest and caring. He’s smart. He’s a professor and he’s published a whole series of espionage novels. He’s working on a new project now, but—” She glanced back at Philip. “But that’s not what you wanted to know, is it?
Philip shook his head slightly. He looked off toward the water, then back at her. “Was he good to you?”
“Better than I deserved.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” His smile was fleeting and strained.
“Not counting Meg, Eli was probably the best friend I ever had. But I—I didn’t love him. Not like a wife should love her husband.”
“I’m sorry,” Philip said softly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered back. It wasn’t Philip’s fault that she’d still been so in love with him that she hadn’t been able to give herself to Eli with an undivided heart.
Philip’s incredibly blue eyes clouded with an emotion she couldn’t decipher, but neither could she look away. Even as he closed the distance between them, and it became obvious he was going to kiss her.
Eli and what hadn’t been faded. The sounds of waves breaking and rolling up the beach dimmed. Philip’s eyelids drifted shut.
His lips brushed lightly over hers. Once. Then again. His breath fanned over her face, and his sigh was audible.
Drawn like a blossom toward the sun, she leaned into him. His hand cupped the back of her head and this time, his kiss was not fleeting or light. His mouth opened over hers, and sensation rocketed through her.
When he lifted his head a moment or an eon later, her senses swam and her heart pounded. She pressed trembling fingers against his bare chest and tears surged into her eyes.
“What happened to us, Elena?” He brushed at her tears, and his voice broke. “What happened?”
Chapter 24
September 2001
Darwin, Australia
PHILIP SAT ON A stool at the bar nursing a beer. He glanced back at the line of Marines and sailors leaning against the wall waiting for their turn at the pay phone. He checked his watch. Plenty of time. It might be nighttime here in Darwin, but Elena would still be curled up under the covers in her bed in California.
He had a pocketful of coins even though he knew his turn would be brief. Every man on that ship with shore leave was eager to call home. It didn’t matter how short the call was. He just wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to tell her he loved her.
He should have told her while he was wiping away her tears and making promises about Christmas. He should have told her when they were making love that last time on the beach. He could have told her in an email, but he wanted to say the words aloud so she knew he meant them, and they weren’t just a casual sign-off on an email.
The barkeep approached and set plates with fat juicy steaks before Philip and the officer sitting next to him.
Captain Geddes sliced into his steak and sighed with
pleasure. “God, it’s been an age since I had a steak like this. So tender I didn’t even need this knife.” He popped the juicy nugget into his mouth and moaned theatrically.
Philip glanced again at the men waiting by the phone, and then cut into his own steak.
The sound of shouting voices reached Philip first. A moment later two harried MPs burst into the bar.
“Back to the ship!” the taller of the two shore patrol men barked above the cacophony of the crowded bar. “On the double.”
Marines and sailors glanced at each other with puzzled looks on their faces. A few of them got to their feet. The line by the phone stood their ground.
“Like hell!” Captain Geddes muttered. “I just got my meal, and I intend to eat it.” He sliced off another chunk of meat and forked it into his mouth.
“Officer of the deck’s orders, sir,” the MP insisted in spite of being outranked. He turned on his heel and exited the bar. A few sailors began to drift toward the door, but others remained sat and questioned the orders. The line by the phone didn’t budge.
More shouting in the street could be heard, then the sound of boots running on pavement grew louder. A lot of men. The words attack and New York echoed in from the street.
The barkeep frowned and reached up to turn on a small television set that occupied a shelf above a bank of liquor bottles. The set flickered to life and gasps of shock filled the room.
Philip watched in horrified disbelief as what appeared to be a commercial airliner flew into the side of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, New York. The camera panned to men and women running down the street. Men in business suits, firemen, police, a woman with a child on her hip. Behind them, a cloud of smoke and debris billowed out as if it was determined to swallow them and all the buildings around them.
“Jesus H. Christ!” a Marine standing directly below the television blurted out as another camera angle showed the tower telescoping into the earth.
“Mother of God,” the sailor on Philip’s left muttered, crossing himself.