“I can take care of myself.”
“So can I.” But she didn’t sound so sure of it, even to her own ears. “Admiral Phillip Ashworth Solomon, United States Navy,” she said as he climbed out of the Huey. “I’d call him my father, but what he really is is the uniform.”
“I’ve met his kind a time or two,” Dex said.
“You’ve never met his kind,” Maggie murmured as Admiral Solomon strode up and stopped a few paces away. His bearing was military, his jaw was locked, his attitude was slow burn.
He gave Dex a long, fulminating stare before he turned it on his daughter.
“Dex Keegan,” Dex said, shifting a little to put himself in front of Maggie.
“What’s your story, son,” Solomon snapped out like an order. “You strike me as a man who’s done his duty by his country.”
“Army, Special Forces.”
Solomon smiled for the first time, the smile going smug and satisfied when he shifted his eyes to his daughter and back again. “Well, now,” he said. “That’s fine.”
“Whatever you’re thinking, you can forget it,” Maggie said, swiping Dex out of the way with the back of her hand. “I don’t need a man to back me up, and I don’t need one to stand in front of me.”
“You don’t need a man at all,” her father scoffed. “Not even a father.”
Maggie wanted to put her hands over her ears, to shut her eyes, to walk away. But she knew he wouldn’t leave her alone until he’d had his say, and by God, she’d hold her head up while he did. Phillip Solomon only respected strength, and strength was what he’d see in her.
“I can’t imagine you came all this way,” she said coolly, “and took time out of your busy schedule, just so you could tell me what I already know.”
“I wouldn’t have to take the time, travel to this armpit of an island, if you’d bothered to take my calls.”
“You could have taken the hint.”
“How can you give me a hint when you won’t talk to me?”
“Always so literal, Phillip.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Fine. Admiral, then.”
“You used to call me Daddy.”
“I was five. I didn’t know what a disappointment I was yet.”
Solomon sighed, braced his hands on his hips and looked around, clearly searching for patience.
“You haven’t bothered to deny it.”
“I didn’t come here to argue with you, Maggie. You know what I want.”
Maggie gave up any hope that this time he would hear her. “Joint Chiefs.”
Solomon smiled. It was the first genuine pleasure she’d seen on his face since he’d arrived.
She’d never let him see how deeply it cut her. “If you came looking for a family to show off,” she pointed up, “the exit is that way.”
“I need my daughter.”
“No. What you need, what you always wanted, was a son. That’s the one thing I can’t give you, even if I wanted to, and I’m done with atoning for an accident of birth I couldn’t control and wouldn’t change if I could.”
“You should be flying for the navy,” Solomon shot back. “You should have been one of a special few female naval pilots—you would be if you weren’t punishing me for,” he spread his hands, “for whatever the hell it is you think I’ve done to you.”
Maggie just threw her hands up. What could you say when someone refused to listen?
“Just come down to Washington for a week—”
“Mom’s there, and I’m sure you’ll just spend all your time apologizing for me. Here’s my daughter Maggie,” she parroted. “Didn’t go to college, didn’t join the military. I couldn’t even manage to land one of the uniforms you paraded in front of me and pop out a half dozen navy brats for you to add to your résumé.”
Phillip Solomon stared at his daughter, looking sincerely puzzled. “Do you really think that’s my opinion of you?”
“Not just think, I know.”
“I’ve never said any of that, Maggie.”
No, she thought, of course not. But the disappointment had been there in the way he spoke down to her, the grooves that dug into his distinguished features when she didn’t toe the line. It was in every gesture and every word, even in the way her mother made excuses for him, blame by elimination because if it wasn’t Phillip’s fault then it must be hers. Until one day, Maggie recalled, she’d had enough.
One day she’d looked him in the face and told him he couldn’t treat her like she was wrong, just for being. And because she’d had the temerity to challenge him in his own home, he’d kicked her out. She’d expected that reaction, but it still hurt to remember the way her mother had stood by, wringing her hands, and let her go without a word of farewell.
“I got the message loud and clear the morning I woke up and you and Mom were gone from the island.”
“You were already half out the door.”
But he could have stopped her. All he would have had to do was stand aside. Her mother would have… what? Stood up for her? That was an empty hope, even if she’d never quite gotten past it.
“I won’t be a prop in your quest to run the navy,” she said to her father. “I won’t sabotage you, either, but if you wanted to have the perfect family to parade in front of your cronies, you should have thought about that when it might have made a difference for all of us.”
Phillip scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m tired of this game you insist on playing.”
“It’s no game for me.” It was her life, and she’d live it so she could look herself in the mirror every morning and not see her father’s low opinion of her reflected back.
“Margaret,” he began, abandoning attack to wheedle instead. “I need you to come to Washington. It’s important.”
“No.”
“Whatever I did or didn’t do—”
“It’s not about you anymore, Phillip. I know that’s hard for you to understand, but I’ve been an adult for a long time now. Since I was sixteen, to be exact.”
“So you’re still on that,” he said, sounding dejected, another weapon in his arsenal, this one designed to arouse her sympathy.
And he did, God help her. It took every ounce of strength she possessed to stop herself from caving in. “You closed the door on me, remember? You can’t just open it again because it’s convenient for you.”
“We could be a hell of a team, Margaret. It’s a shame you hate me so much.”
“Hate?” She shoved her hands back through her hair, clamping down viciously on the anger that wanted to erupt, the tears that wanted to flow. “I love you.” Despite everything.
“Love is a weak emotion.”
“No, it isn’t. And not admitting it makes you a coward—worse than a coward if you can’t even feel it.”
“You’re just being contrary.”
“Contrary?” This time she laughed, though there was no joy in it. “Contrary would have been living my life to spite you, denying myself what I’ve always wanted just because it was part of the future you mapped out for me. I got the sky, but I got it my way.
“Contrary would be allowing the way I grew up to color everything in my life. I don’t.” She looked over at Dex for the first time. She’d already let her walls down, might as well get it all said. “I may be slow to trust, that doesn’t mean I can’t, and I’m careful where I love, because I won’t give it with conditions or strings. Love isn’t a tool to be used to get what I want. Love is something to give, and if you’re very, very lucky, love comes back to you.”
“So, you won’t help me,” was all Phillip said.
She smiled sadly, shook her head. “But I hope you’ll come back when it’s just about you and me.”
“I won’t ask again, Maggie, and your mother won’t go against me.”
“I know.” She lifted her chin, met his eyes.
This time, Phillip Solomon was the one who looked away. “We’re the only family you have.”
/> “No, you’re not. I have a family, not because they’re blood, but because they love me.” She gave him a beat, and called herself a fool for still hoping he’d bend enough for there to be a middle ground for her to meet him in.
He only turned on his heel and marched himself back to the Huey. He never looked back.
It struck her like a knife in the chest, though she understood that was exactly what he wanted. Even after all the years and all the effort she’d put into growing, becoming strong and making herself into a woman she could respect, it took so little to turn her into that small, wounded child again.
But only for a moment.
She’d convinced herself she didn’t need anyone. Any man. She still believed that, but it would have been nice not to feel like it was her against the world. Even if she was the one who’d started the fight.
She turned, and there was Dex Keegan, standing at her side like the fulfillment of all her wants and needs.
But he was only another fantasy.
“Maggie,” Dex began.
“Don’t. Not one word.”
“No, words aren’t what’s called for here.” He moved in, put his arms around her. “Let it go,” he said, and left her no choice. The warmth of his body against hers, the intimacy of his breath feathering at her temple, the emotion rushing through her was so overwhelming that she couldn’t deny what she felt for him. Love. There, she thought as she allowed herself to relax into his embrace, she’d said it, if only in the silence of her own mind.
She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, letting go for once, borrowing his strength as the storm raged through her. She could have stayed there like that forever, letting him take care of her. If only it had been an option.
Dex Keegan, with his mystery and his hot looks and irritating and unwelcome interest, wasn’t her salvation. The way he’d moved on her when she didn’t want him to, the way he’d kept poking at her until she couldn’t ignore how much she wanted him. And now, when she was feeling raw he stood there like a rock, one she couldn’t hold onto just because she was raw and lonely.
She’d thought flying was her talent, but apparently she was a genius at impossible relationships. Her father would never love her for who she was.
And Dex, she thought as she eased out of his arms, might never love her at all. But even if he did, his life wasn’t on Windfall Island.
Thank God, Maggie thought after her father was gone, that she didn’t have to fly. With her nerves stretched to the breaking point, she didn’t belong in a cockpit, ten thousand feet in the air. She belonged alone.
Dex still wasn’t getting the hint.
He followed her home, but when she went to the big table piled with papers, he took himself into the kitchen, muttering something about being hungry. Lunchtime had come and gone; she ought to be starving, too. Her stomach wasn’t getting with the program. In fact, her stomach was as far from hungry as a stomach could possibly get.
In the world Dex came from, food would be one of the ways they dealt with sorrow, and besides, he was a fixer. If only what was wrong with her could be cured by opening a can of soup.
She sighed as she placed the papers back on top of the stack they’d come from, and laid her hand on top of it. “I’m sorry about before. My father.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” he said from where he stood beyond the wide arched doorway that led to the kitchen.
“It must be hard for you to understand, coming from a normal family.”
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as normal when it comes to family.”
“Very diplomatic. At least yours cared about each other.”
He looked over at her for the first time, but only, she could see, because she’d surprised him. “How do you know?”
Because it all but shimmered around him. His confidence told her he’d never had to wonder if he was loved, if he belonged. “Tell me about them.”
He shrugged. “Mom, Dad, me, a sister, like I said, and a brother.” His mouth widened into the kind of smile, she imagined, that graced her face when she thought about her island family: fond, indulgent, a little long-suffering and a lot grateful. “Sometimes they’re batshit crazy, but yeah, we care about each other. In spite of.”
“You said your father was in the military?”
“Gulf War. When he got back he went into law enforcement, just like his father, and his father before. Boston Irish, three generations back it was either cops or mafia.” He gave a soft snort. “Still is for a lot of the families in my neighborhood.
“When I mustered out, I went into the family business, but I didn’t have… I won’t say the heart for it. Being a cop takes a lot more than heart. I guess I didn’t have the patience.”
“There are rules,” she said with a smile to take the sting out of her observation.
“Maybe that’s a part of it. More like I wanted to help, and I didn’t feel like I was doing any good riding around in a squad car handling petty crime and domestic disputes.” He laughed softly, derisively. “I wound up handling nothing but domestic disputes, as it turns out.”
“But they were your cases,” Maggie said, beginning to understand. “You don’t arrest somebody and then turn it over to the courts, or discover a dead body and hand the case off to a detective. You get to fix something that’s not right.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. What I got was wives who wanted to take their cheating husbands to the cleaners, one party trying to catch the other with their pants down, usually so they could beat a prenup.”
“You said you did some insurance work.”
“Yeah,” he exhaled heavily. “People on disability trying to cheat the system.”
“So, basically you dealt with liars.”
He kept layering cheese between slices of buttered bread, then, after a minute, he said, “You’re thinking I learned a thing or two about the truth from them.”
“I’m thinking this case must be the answer to your prayers, and you did what you had to do in the interest of finding the truth.”
He did a double take, held her gaze, and made her feel ashamed for making him think she didn’t respect him. “That sounded suspiciously like approval.”
“It’s understanding,” she said simply.
He walked over, set a bowl of chicken soup in a spot free of papers. She’d thought she wasn’t hungry, but when she took a spoonful of soup for his sake, it hit her stomach so warmly. Food, she guessed, did fill an emotional void, as well as a physical one.
Dex came back with his own soup and a plate filled with enough grilled cheese sandwiches for half the town, which he proceeded to plow through as if the hollow leg were a real thing and he had two of them.
Maggie had to admit she felt better after a half bowl of soup and a half sandwich, enough that she was able to slog her way through a couple of the journals.
Dex worked across the table from her in companionable silence until, when her eyes were too bleary to focus anymore, she rose and walked around the table, holding out her hand to him.
“Are you sure?” he said quietly. “You’ve had a pretty emotional day.”
“You could take my mind off it.”
He reached out and curled his fingers around hers, kept their hands linked as they walked to the stairs, turning lights off as they went.
Maggie turned into Dex as soon as the bedroom door shut behind them. She wanted the dark, wanted the fire Dex brought her, needed both to sweep away the dregs of the day. It was oblivion she sought, a span of time, however long, when she might forget the pain of walking away from a father she loved, the heartache of babies lost to a disease that was all but wiped out now, the worry over what finding Eugenia might do to the place and people she loved.
She wanted heat, sensation; she wanted to be taken over so she couldn’t think, only feel.
Dex, however, wasn’t cooperating. Oh, he kissed her back, but while there was heat in the mating of his mouth with hers, there was also gentlen
ess. He framed her face with his hands, and when she tried to push for more, his mouth left hers, nibbled its way down her throat. And stopped.
“If you’re trying to drive me crazy—”
“Shhhh,” he kissed her again, soft and chaste, but his hands slipped down, caught the hem of her sweater, and whisked it and the tank beneath over her head.
She reached for his jeans, and again he stopped her.
“I assume at some point you’re going to let me participate,” she said, the slight hitch in her breathing ruining her attempt at dry sarcasm.
“In good time,” he said, and even in the dark she could tell he was smiling.
“Okay, you want to drive the train, strap on your engineer’s hat and let’s go.”
Dex chuckled, a low sound that only notched up her frustration. She groaned, spun away, but he caught her up, bore her to the bed.
“Finally,” she breathed, losing herself to his kiss, to the feel of his hands running over her.
He left her for a second or two, and she took the opportunity to shove her pants off, lose her bra and panties. When Dex came back she felt the warm slide of his skin against hers, but he didn’t bring urgency with him.
His mouth took hers, shooting her into a whirlwind of heat and need. Reality fell away, replaced by the feel of his mouth trailing down her throat, his fingers feathering across her aching nipples, his body covering hers.
She ran her hands down his back to his butt, pressed him against her, moaning at the feel of him, hot and hard. “Now,” she panted, “I need you now.”
Dex caught her wrists, staking them to the pillow above her head. And set to work driving her mad. His free hand ran over her in long, soft strokes. He feasted on her, mouth nipping, tongue soothing after, leaving little shivery patches of cold against the fire building inside her.
She heard a voice begging, realized it was her own, but couldn’t seem to stop herself as he took one rigid nipple into his mouth, as his hand dipped between their bodies and shot her to a climax that left her shattered, gasping for breath then moaning as he joined his body to hers in one long, lovely stroke that pushed her halfway up that mountain again. And held her there, balanced on the almost painful point between the glow of what was and the magic of what he brought her. What they brought one another.
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