by Rachel Hanna
Reservist. For the first time it didn't sound so bad.
Her hands were sliding lower, following his smooth, hairless chest and the muscles along the side of his waist that dipped down into his jeans, like brackets moving closer together, guiding her hands.
Lower, sliding on the tops of his jeans. Now her hands seemed to be on fire. He slid his hands down the front of her sweater, along the soft rise of her breasts, thumbing her nipples which were rock hard and probably not from the cool night air because the rest of her body was burning. Taylor made a soft sound and pressed into him, her hands sliding into his jeans.
Stopping just short.
Overhead, thunder exploded with a crash that set the dishes in the kitchen rumbling. Monster unleashed a howl that clearly anticipated Armageddon had just happened and buried his head under Tanner's shoulders, cold, wet nose sending violent shivers along his spine. Tanner sat up fast, yelping. Taylor clung to him, and slid onto the floor.
Laughing.
Tanner pulled her back up into his lap, his mouth finding hers, but the moment was gone and it was their first date.
There had been a lot of first dates that ended in bed. There'd been a lot of first dates that had ended still in bed the next morning.
He wasn't looking for that with Taylor, a thought that confused him enough to kiss her once, lingeringly, before moving her gently so he could stand.
He took a long breath. So did she.
"I had a lovely time tonight," she said, her arms around his waist as she looked up into his eyes.
He framed her face with both hands and kissed her softly. "So did I."
She walked him to the door and he was already regretting the loss of her warmth pressed against him. He pulled his clammy t-shirt over his head. "I'll text or call tomorrow?" Last second he made it into a question when he hadn't initially thought to.
"I'd like that." She stood on tiptoe and kissed the side of his mouth, as if afraid to initiate anything more.
Then the front door was closing behind him and she was on one side and he was on the other.
He took a second to get his bearings. He'd been through all sorts of training for trauma. This felt like something that maybe should have been covered.
He'd call her tomorrow.
Tanner made himself go down the front steps and out to his Jeep and home.
He didn't call her on Tuesday. On Tuesday he studied for a massive anatomy exam he was probably going to ace but a little more time with the books would be well spent. On Tuesday afternoon Angel and Jake sat down in his office uninvited and talked at him for a long time about the Las Vegas job until he agreed they could lower the bid if that's what it took to get the job and get them out of his office.
"Anything. Blow up buildings no one's asking you to blow up. Then bill them. But let me study?"
Angel's dark face wreathed in a smile. "You're not studying, boss. You're staring into space."
Tanner glowered. "That's how I think. Go away."
Angel and Jake exchanged glances, looked back at him, exchanged glances again, this time love sick ones with fluttering lashes. Dark, compact Angel and blond bodybuilder Jake made a weird couple.
Tanner threatened to fire them. Not that he could fire his partners. But it made them leave. Sometimes being the oldest and the most unattached of the group sucked. At twenty-eight, he had a year on Knox and six years on Jake.
He shut his office door behind them. Sat back down at his desk. Opened the book up to a random page. Stared at a spot about three inches over the top of the book.
Thought about Taylor.
Chapter Eleven
Tuesday late afternoon the call came in. Capsized fishing boat on the still roiling ocean. The storm the night before had moved out into the Pacific and was causing havoc.
"Coast Guard?" Tanner asked.
"Strung out thin," Mike said, suiting up. "Storm off the coast was stronger than by the coastline. There's a lot of rescues going on."
"What've we got?" Angel demanded. He'd be monitoring everything from the land side. Mike was taking the lead. Mike was part seal more than SEAL. He moved in the water like other people moved on land, only better.
"One of the whale watching boats," Mike said, his voice muffled as he rolled the top of his wetsuit down over his head to his waist. "Thirty passengers, crew of two, doesn't sound like anybody did anything wrong, sea's just too much for them. It's belly-up, people in the water."
"Life rafts?" Jake asked.
"Enough. Everyone's on something. But there are high waves and not enough tour people to take care of the tourist people in the rafts." That was Angel, finishing up the report they'd gotten. "I told them we'd be in the air in five. You've got one minute."
But Mike, Jake and Tanner were already running for the door. Knox came through it, nodded, slid to a stop at the communications array and waved them off.
The Chinook whirled to life, blades slicing the air, and Tanner took them up, angling them instantly over the coast, less than five minutes from call to flight time, heading out over the dark blue power of the Pacific.
Sometimes everybody does everything right and something still goes wrong. Sometimes fear gets the better of people and all bets are off.
Mike was in the water when it happened. Heading to one of the rafts when a wave caught it and flipped it neat as a pancake. Some fifteen people suddenly found themselves bobbing in the Pacific too far from shore to swim back, no bottom to plant their feet on. The tourists in the other rafts, the one without the trained whale watching crew, began trying to get to them, convinced the lifejackets everyone wore weren't enough. Panic spread. Over the communications system Jake firmly but calmly gave instructions for those who could swim well to help those that couldn't, to hold to the side of the raft until they could be reached, to remain calm because they were all wearing lifejackets and would float.
But, understandably in the still rough ocean, they panicked. And suddenly a savage businesswoman who might in everyday life be halfway pleasant, decided she was more important than the children in the group, more important than anyone else in the group and even if Tanner had wanted to put it down to terror, she'd still been angry and loud and screaming and at any rate, she climbed Mike like he was a flagpole and dragged him under.
Not that they weren't trained in how to rescue. Or trained in how to handle the hysterical. But in the thrashing and keeping himself above water and keeping her more above water if she'd just paid attention, she managed to drive him into the side of the overturned boat and break his leg.
So they rescued their own. Mike stayed there, seeing every one of them into the helicopter as the day wore on and the sea became rougher. Another storm was blowing in. Mike stayed in the water until the last of the whale watchers were taken aboard, bedraggled and still panicky, then motioned the basket down one more time.
Tanner swore. "He's injured."
Beside him Jake said, "That's our boy," and got ready to haul him onboard.
Things happen.
Shit happens.
But it made him think. Emergencies happened a lot more often for some people. Like Search and Rescue. And SEALs.
Mike's leg was broken in three places. He'd had a couple tense moments he admitted when the substantial businesswoman had been pushing herself as far out of the water as she could get using Mike as her life raft.
"It happens," he said, waiting for the ER doc to send him for casting or wrapping or whatever they were going to do. "My leg broke the instant she pole danced me. Controlling her after that was a bitch."
Jake muttered something about just who the bitch in the situation had been.
"She was scared," Mike said, not quite exonerating the woman but back to his usual stoic self. "I know better."
"Than what?" Jake exploded. "Than to rescue the bi – woman? What were you supposed to do?" They called Jake "The Wall." When he paced, his muscled bodybuilder physique blocked out what they could see of the ER past the curtains
. They didn't see the doctor coming back.
Mike shrugged. "Dial it down. Maybe I need a refresher on water rescue."
Which was like saying any of them needed a class on how to breathe, but Tanner just said, "Hell, that's play time for you, bro. We're supposed to pay for your vacation?"
"Hell yeah. Me in the water, I'm gold to you landlubbers." He grinned, despite the fact his face was still slick with sweat from the pain. He ran a hand through his sandy hair even while the others heaped on the abuse, because seriously, landlubbers?
But when he repeated he wanted to get back in the water and a refresher course never hurt, despite the rest of them telling him he should teach classes, not take them, the doctor stepped through the curtains.
"Not either of those options for the next several weeks," he said, his singsong cadence making the medical advice sound like a taunt. "Mr. Hancock has broken his leg in several places. Let me show you, then outline the therapy, and then I'll tell you – " he paused, took in the huge men around him, and grinned, a five-foot-four Pakistani man about to tell the giant military dudes – "About your new cane."
The teasing didn't stop for hours.
Tanner didn't stop thinking for hours after that.
"He didn't call," Taylor said, her voice a pitched whisper that still suggested a wail. "He didn't call, he didn't text, he didn't email, he didn't do anything!" She was aware of her heart beating a mile a minute under her plain white t-shirt and the margarita sliding too fast and too cold into her stomach, the tequila detonating there and making girlfriend solidarity that much more important. "He said he would! He said it as he was going! And I know he didn't want to go!"
"He'll call," Jessie said, her dark hair pulled back and her freckled face intent on offering all the girlfriend sympathy she could manage. She reached across the table and caught Taylor's wildly gesturing hands before Taylor could further endanger her alcohol. "He'll text. He'll send smoke signals. Sweetie, the man is search and rescue. Things happen. There could be a perfectly good reason why … what?"
Taylor's stomach went stone cold. Everything stilled into one horrible circle of scared. She grabbed Jessie's comforting hand and held it in a death grip. "Jess – what if?"
She didn't sleep. She didn't eat. She went to work because not working would be worse.
Tuesday became Wednesday. He didn't call or text or email or come by her work or leave a message at her house.
"What's wrong with you, girlfriend?" Jason asked, not even via text in the Boring World approved way of looking like one wasn't shirking.
"He didn't call or text or write or come over," Taylor said in a flat voice. All her plans to volunteer and get in better shape and change her life and have a boyfriend – everything just vanished.
"He might still," Jason said. "People sometimes work during the week." He stroked her hair, having ventured all the way into her cubicle.
"He's search and rescue," she said dully. "I don't think they plan out searches or rescues like that."
Jason leaned in close, fey and concerned. "You could call him," he said. "Twenty-first century and all."
Taylor just nodded. "I did."
There wasn't any breaking up to do. As long as he did it now. They'd had one date, one wonderful date, and he wanted to see her again, wanted to fulfill all the promises unstated but evident from that date. He wanted to take it slow and burn, on fire every anticipatory minute until they ended up in bed. He wanted –
To cut her loose. Because what had happened to Mike could happen to any of them. That, or something much worse.
He couldn't do that to her and he didn't know how to handle a girlfriend in those circumstances.
Even then his thumb hovered over his phone, wanting to text.
Tanner called on self-discipline, put his phone away, went back to work.
Chapter Twelve
One week after her only date with Tanner, Taylor got up, went for a run, washed her hair, ate a high protein breakfast, gave Monster his breakfast, homemade and expensive but not as bad as the cow or two a day she'd told Tanner, shook herself to get Tanner out of her head, and called the volunteer organization. Could they use an IT person to game with their rehab kids? They could, and there were morning and evening hours as well as weekend. Just to make certain she really felt guilty if she got this far, balked, and told herself she was too busy. Taylor didn't promise the person on the phone anything but she promised herself and went to work.
"You look better, girlfriend," Jason told her, gliding past her in the halls.
"So do you, girlfriend," she quipped and he smirked, flipped her off, turned it into a friendly wave as one of the supervisors passed them.
And I feel better, too, Taylor told herself firmly.
Lied to herself firmly.
"I could get myself here," Mike said as they left the bright sunlight and stepped into the decrepit medical center building.
"But you don't," Tanner said, following him in onto the ultra slick linoleum floor. The building seemed set up to cause more injuries than cure them. "Besides, it's the only time I get to see you use the cane, Grandpa." Most of the time Mike used it to try and fetch things that were too far away in the office. When he walked, he chose to hop or cling to things, anything no matter how much more likely to re-injure his leg, than to use the cane.
"Ha, ha. What about you?"
"I don't have a cane," Tanner emphasized.
"No, you have a shoulder. When's the last time you PT'd it?"
The day he'd run into Taylor in the elevator. Or rather, she'd run into him. The memory made him uncomfortable. He missed her, and that made no sense. They'd had one date. How could he miss her?
"Shoulder's fine, bro. It's your leg we have to worry about." He made a sweeping gesture for Mike to go ahead, like a host showing dinner guests to a restaurant table, but Mike stopped in Tanner's path and turned to face him, a grimace of pain as his bad leg took his weight for a second.
"Your shoulder probably is good. I know you're healing." He held up both hands when Tanner tried to interrupt, the lowered the cane back to the floor in a hurry. "Sucks. I've heard of all sorts of kinky things people do with canes. Hobbling on one isn't what I want. But hell, I'm getting better. One week and there's improvement. Probably going to be six weeks total. Get my drift?" He waggled his eyebrows at Tanner.
"No, I don't, apparently even such subtle messages can miss me by a mile." He indicated the PT office again. "I just came – "
"With me. I know. Boss, you're scared."
"When did you start calling me boss?"
"When did you start deflecting everything that sounds like somebody caring about you?"
Tanner stared at him. "What is this, a declaration of romance?"
Mike shook his head angrily. "If I didn't need this thing to stay upright, I'd show you one of the other uses for a cane. And not," he interrupted the next barb coming his way, "in a kinky way. Tanner, we all have to be ready for everything at a moment's notice and there's nobody on the team that's expendable. You're scared they're going to say you're not up to snuff, that your shoulder's not going to be the same and you'll be washed up at twenty-nine."
"Twenty-eight," Tanner said automatically.
Mike shrugged in a proves my point kind of way Tanner didn't care to follow up on.
"Look, I think you're recovering. Far as I know you've got full range of motion and you're building back strength. What I don't want is to find out you're not one-hundred percent when you're fishing a victim out of a fire or flood. They deserve better. So does the team. So do you. If you're missing any percentage of ability, it's low, bro. We all know that, given how you've performed. But if you're missing ability and you hurt that shoulder again? That might be all she wrote."
Tanner didn't let the wince show. All she wrote was what he was worried about. Which meant maybe Mike had a point. Tanner prided himself on facing adversity head on – until it came to adverse conditions he might not be able to fix.
> Mike was still watching him.
"Fine. If they've got a therapist free, I'll do a torture session. If they don't – "
"Oh, they don't," Mike said with a big, evil grin.
Tanner narrowed his eyes. "And you know this because?"
"Because I scheduled you when I scheduled me."
Smug bastard.
"But now that I know it's the pain you're afraid of, calling a little PT girl a torturer – "
Tanner screwed up his face and shook his head. "Get in there before I show you some alternate uses for that cane."
The first session of volunteering had gone spectacularly poorly. The medical office had given her two kids to work with who had the personalities of badgers and were as distractible as a politician on a filibuster. Neither had cared about gaming, and one of them had never stopped complaining about the prosthetic arm. Plus Taylor was rapidly coming to the conclusion she had no skill at working with kids.
"It'll be better next time," the doctor's wife said, walking her out. Taylor wondered if senior staff members walked out every volunteer or if she was the first to make it ninety minutes with these kids and they were afraid she would now flee.
"Next time? Those two don't need a next time. They'll have taken over the planet by then." She almost looked behind her and thought the better of it.
The doctor's wife gave a bright, fake laugh. "They've been through a lot. That's all. But if you persevere they will too. Losing a limb is like a sort of death. They're processing the stages of mourning and they're required to get on with the business of living at the same time. It's perfectly all right to tell them you get what they're going through and then bowl right over them and keep going and force them to catch up."