“What? Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”
“My former boss,” Jamie replied smoothly. “And I didn’t come here to talk to you.” His gaze tangled with hers, causing the fine hairs on her arms to stand on end and an unwelcome bittersweet pang of joy to rattle her aching heart. “I came here to see you.”
“Get out,” the Colonel ordered.
“Hear me out, Audrey,” Jamie said. “That’s all I ask.”
“You either get out or I’ll put you out,” her grandfather ordered, advancing on him.
“I love her, dammit,” Jamie snapped, rounding on him. “Either shut the hell up or I’ll shut you up.”
Audrey witnessed a phenomenon she’d never imagined she’d ever see—her grandfather speechless.
“Give us a minute, would you, Gramps?”
Though he looked like he wanted to argue, he didn’t. “All right,” he grumbled. He stalked to the back of the house, mumbling something under his breath about “mouthy upstarts” and “in my day…”
Had she really heard him correctly? Audrey wondered, shooting Jamie a questioning glance. Had he really just said he loved her? A hopeful sprout of happiness grew in her chest.
For the first time since he’d charged back into her living room, Jamie looked unsure of himself. It was curiously endearing.
“Audrey, I’m sorry,” he said simply, the sincerest form of an apology. Regret painted his face with worry. “I’m not proud of going along with this. I just—” He paused. “I just wanted out of the military and your grandfather helped make that process easier than it should have been. I owed him. I agreed to a favor.” He shook his head and his intense gaze tangled with hers. “But I never counted on anything like this. And I damned sure didn’t count on coming up here and falling in love with you.” He took a step toward her and grasped her shoulders. “I love you.” A helpless laugh escaped him. “You are— You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I know I was wrong, but— But don’t cut me out over it. This evening you offered me an open invitation. Don’t take it back. Please.”
Audrey considered him a moment. “Why did you make love to me when you’d already gotten the answer you were sent here to get?”
Another helpless laugh rolled out his mouth. “Because I couldn’t not make love to you. I need you.”
A tremulous smile shook her mouth. That had been the answer she’d been hoping for. And she completely understood it, because she needed him, too. She needed that crooked grin and those sexy twinkling eyes. She needed his warmth and his strength and his loyalty and integrity. All of the qualities which had made him a good soldier also made him a good partner. He’d charged up the hill and taken on her grandfather for her, Audrey thought shaking her head. Now, that took courage.
Jamie caressed her cheek, sending a wave of warmth and longing washing through her. Her lids fluttered shut, absorbing the feel of him.
“What do you say, Audrey? Can you forgive me?”
Audrey moved into the safe circle of his embrace, wrapped her arms around his waist, then looked up and pressed a kiss to his jaw. She smiled up at him. “Haven’t you heard? I’m nothing if not forgiving.”
Jamie chuckled, then lowered his mouth to hers.
“No, you’re nothing if not mine.”
Epilogue
Washington, DC
Three months later…
“I WISH YOU COULD HAVE met him,” Jamie said with a somber sigh. He and Audrey stood in Arlington National Cemetery, next to a plain white marble cross which marked the spot where Danny had been buried. More than a year later and Jamie was still grieving, but thanks to his wife—God, he was proud to call her that, Jamie thought, still in awe—he was allowing himself to mourn instead of blaming himself.
He glanced over his shoulder at Guy and Payne, who were standing a few markers down with the Colonel. The Colonel seemed to be in deep conversation with Payne and, judging from the unhappy look on his friend’s face, he wasn’t enjoying what he was hearing. Welcome to my world, Jamie thought, smiling. He didn’t always enjoy his conversations with the Colonel either.
Garrett had received a commendation this morning and they’d all flown in to be there for him. Despite the interfering way he’d handled things, Jamie still owed him. The man had inadvertently introduced him to the love of his life, after all.
“I wish I could have met him, too.” Audrey sighed. She squeezed his hand. “Daniel Garrett Flanagan,” she announced matter-of-factly.
“What?”
“If we have a boy,” she said. “We should name him after your friend and my grandfather.”
It was a nice thought, but… Jamie grinned down at her. “I like it, but shouldn’t we worry about that when you actually get pregnant?”
Audrey chewed the inside of her cheek, but didn’t say anything.
Jamie stilled as hope leaped inside him. His heart began to race. “Audrey,” he said slowly. “Are you?” he asked.
A huge grin spread across her lips and she nodded.
Jamie whooped with joy, snatched her up and whirled her around. My God, he thought. He was going to be a father. It was… It was… He shook his head. There were no words.
Except for these. “She’s pregnant!” he bellowed to his baffled friends.
The Colonel beamed at them. “Audrey?” he asked for confirmation.
She nodded again. “Behave yourself and we’ll name a boy after you.”
Guy and Payne sidled over and slapped Jamie on the back. “Congratulations, man,” Guy said, smiling. “We’re honorary uncles, right?”
Jamie grinned. “Definitely.”
Payne looked happy for him, but oddly distracted. And The Specialist rarely became distracted. “Is something wrong?” Jamie asked him, concerned.
“It’ll keep.”
“No,” Jamie insisted. “You can tell me now. What’s wrong?”
He glanced at Audrey, seemed to hesitate. “He just called my favor in.”
So that’s what they’d been talking about. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. He’s going to brief me on the return flight.” He cast Audrey an uneasy look. “There aren’t any more unattached women in your family I need to know about, are there?”
Audrey smiled. “Not that I know of.”
Jamie laughed and wrapped an arm around Payne’s shoulders. “Man, all I can say is, I hope you’re as lucky with your mission as I was with mine.”
Payne grimaced. From the look on his face, he hoped differently.
* * * * *
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1
“SICK LEAVE?” Rob Klassen yelled, unable to believe what he was hearing from the editor of World Week, the international current affairs magazine he’d worked for as a photojournalist for twelve years. “I’m not sick!”
Gary Wallanger pulled off his glasses and tossed them onto his desktop cluttered with Rob’s proof sheets documenting a skirmish in a small town near the Ras Ajdir border between Tunisia and Libya. “What do you suggest I call it? Shot-in-the-ass leave? You damned near got yourself killed. Again.”
Gary didn’t like his people getting too close to the action they were reporting on and his glare was fierce.
Rob put all his weight on his good leg, but even so, the throbb
ing in his left thigh was hard to ignore. “I was running away as fast as I could.”
“I saw the hospital report. You were running toward the shooter. Bad luck for you. They can tell those things from the entry and exit wounds.” In the uncomfortable silence that followed Rob heard the roar of traffic, honking cabs and sirens on the Manhattan streets far below. He hadn’t counted on Gary finding out the details he’d have rather kept to himself.
“You want to be a war hero,” his editor snapped, “join the forces. We report news. We don’t make it.”
Another beat ticked by.
“There were bullets flying everywhere. I got disoriented.”
“Bull. You were playing hero again, weren’t you?”
Rob could still picture the toddler cowering behind an oil drum. Yeah, his boss would have been happier if he’d left her scared and crying in the line of gunfire. But he was the one who had to wake up every morning and look himself in the mirror. Truth was he hadn’t thought at all. He’d merely dashed over to the girl and hauled her to safety. Getting shot hadn’t been in his plan.
Would he have acted any differently if he’d known what the outcome would be? He sure as hell hoped not.
He knew better than to tell Gary any of that. “You don’t win Pulitzers with a telephoto lens. I needed to get close enough to capture the real story.”
“Close enough to take a bullet in the leg.”
“That was unfortunate,” Rob admitted. “I can still handle a camera though. I can still walk.” He made a big show of stalking across the carpeted office, scooting around the obstacle course of stacked back issues, piled newspapers and a leaning tower of reference books. If he concentrated he could manage to stride without a limp or a wince though he could feel sweat begin to break out from the effort.
“No.” The single word stopped him in his tracks.
He turned. “I’m the best you’ve got. You have to send me back out on assignment.”
“I will. As soon as you can run a mile in six.”
“A mile in six minutes? Why so fast?”
Gary’s voice was as dry as the North African desert. “So the next time you have to run for your life you can make it.”
Rob paused for breath and grabbed a chair back for support. He and Gary had been friends for a long time and he knew the guy was making the right decision even if it did piss him off. “It was pure bad luck. If I’d dodged right instead of left...”
“You know most people would be pretty happy to be alive if they were you. And they’d be thrilled to get a paid vacation.” Gary picked up his glasses and settled himself behind his desk.
“They patched me up at the closest military hospital. It was nothing but a flesh wound.”
“The bullet nicked your femur. I do know how to read a hospital report.”
Damn.
“Go home. Rest up. The world will continue to be full of trouble when you get back.” Rob knew Gary was still aggravated by the fact that he didn’t compliment him on his photos, which they both knew to be superb. Instead of getting the praise he deserved, he was being sent home like a kid who’d screwed up.
He scowled.
Home.
He’d been on the road so much in the past few years that home was usually wherever he stashed his backpack.
If he’d ever had a home, it was in Fremont, Washington, a suburb of Seattle that prided itself on celebrating counterculture, considering itself the center of the universe and officially endorsing the right to be peculiar. Fremont seemed a fitting destination for him right now that he was feeling both self-centered and peculiar. Besides, it was the only place he could think of to go even though everything that had made the place home was now gone.
“All right. But I heal fast. I’ll be running six-minute miles in a couple weeks. Tops.”
“You’ll be under a doctor’s care and I’ll be needing the physician’s report before I can reinstate you for any assignments in the field.”
“Oh, come on, Gary. Give me a freakin’ break.”
Once more the glasses came off and he was regarded by tired hazel eyes. “I am giving you a break. I could assign you to a desk right here in New York. That’s your other option.”
He shook his head. No way he was being trapped in a small space. He didn’t like feeling trapped. Not ever. “See you in a couple of weeks.”
Once he was out of Gary’s office and in the hallway Rob gave up the manly act and tried to put as little weight on his injured leg as possible.
“Rob, you should be on crutches,” a female voice called out.
He turned, recognizing the voice and mustering a happy-to-see-you smile. “Romona, hi.”
A print business reporter making the transition to television, Romona had the looks of a South American runway model and the brains of Hillary Clinton. They got together whenever they were both in New York. Neither had any interest in commitment but enjoyed each other’s company and bodies. “I heard you were hurt. How are you doing?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Okay.”
Even though they’d never do anything as obvious as hug in public, the glance she sent him from tilted green eyes steamed around the edges. She dropped her voice. “Why don’t you come over later and I’ll kiss you all better?”
“I’m filthy. Haven’t shaved in days, had a haircut in weeks, my—”
“I like you scruffy. You look like a sunburned pirate.”
He knew he’d hit rock bottom when he realized he had no desire to spend the night with a passionate woman. His leg was burning, he had a vicious case of jet lag and he’d been pulled out of the field. He felt too worn-out tired even to get laid. All he wanted to do was hide out for a while and heal.
He shook his head attempting to appear more disappointed than he was. “Sorry. I have a plane to catch.”
She knew as well as he did that plane tickets could be changed and it was a measure of his exhaustion that this was the best excuse he could come up with.
She didn’t call him on it though, merely patted his arm and said, “Maybe next time.”
That was the great thing about Romona. She was a lot like him. He’d enjoyed any number of women over the years, loved sex, but had no interest in settling down. Career came first. Maybe it was shallow, and maybe there was a part of him that longed for a woman to comfort him, to listen to his stories, share his pain. The only woman who’d ever been like that, though, had been his grandmother. Ruefully, he suspected she’d been the love of his life.
And now she was gone.
He had so many frequent flyer miles that upgrading was no problem when he got to LaGuardia. He even scored an aisle seat so he could stretch his bad leg out a little.
Once airborne, he recalled that the family attorney had tried to talk to him about the Fremont house. What with getting shot and all, he hadn’t got around to calling back. He’d call him as soon as he got into Seattle.
It was something to do with Bellamy House, the old family place where he’d spent so much time with his grandmother.
He couldn’t imagine the place without her. As a stab of pain hit, he took out the paperback he’d brought and forced himself to read.
* * *
HAILEY FLEMING WAS a woman with an agenda. Two in fact. The electronic one that she relied on so heavily that she’d recently started keeping a backup paper day planner because the thought of somehow losing her electronic schedule made her feel too close to losing her mind for comfort.
She was nothing if not organized.
And both agendas told her that she was exactly on time for the best appointment of the day. An after-work glass of wine with a colleague who’d become a close friend, Julia Atkinson.
As she made her way into the bistro off North Phinney Avenue, a former record store turned trendy bar, she scanned the tables and was not surprised to find she was the first to arrive. She was always early.
And Julia was always late.
She settled at a table and ordered a glass of whi
te wine then spent ten minutes going through tomorrow’s appointments and writing some notes on improvements she wanted to make on her website.
“Am I late?” a breezy, breathless voice said as Julia swished into her chair, a loose black garment that resembled a combination sweater, poncho and cloak settling in around her.
“Of course you are. You’re always late.”
Julia’s red hair was newly cut into a curly bob and her full lips curved in a smile. “I was at the opening of a new furniture gallery which has brought in several fantastic new lines from Milan. I got chatting, and there were these delicious cookies. I left after three. It was the only way I could stop myself. I don’t feel guilty. I bet you did a day’s work while you waited.”
“Half a day’s anyway.”
A waiter arrived and Julia ordered a vodka tonic. Which meant she was on another of her diets. Which meant...
“I think I’ve met someone.” She sounded so excited that Hailey leaned forward.
“Tell me everything.”
Julia unbuttoned the cloak thing and draped it over the back of her chair, revealing a black-and-red dress enlivened by one of the hundreds of chunky, glitzy vintage necklaces she owned.
“He’s an engineer who lives downtown. He was married, but his wife left him and broke his heart.”
“Wow. That was fast. I just saw you last week. Where did you meet him?”
Julia’s drink came and she took a quick sip. “I haven’t actually met him yet.”
“Huh?”
She shrugged, and the slight movement made all the rhinestones in her jewelry glitter under the bar’s chandeliers. “I met him on LoveMatch.com.”
“Oh. Online dating.”
“I’d never tried it before, but lots of women meet great guys online. So I figured, why not? It’s not like you meet men if you’re a home stager.” She thought for a second. “At least not straight men.”
“How do you already know so much about him?”
“We’ve been talking on the phone. He’s away on business in the Philippines, but I’ll be meeting him next Tuesday.” Her eyes were bright with excitement. “Do you want to see a picture?”
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