MacEwan raised his pint. “To the lads who get us in trouble and the lasses who get us out.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Lucas said, and they did.
Later, as Gwen and Lucas walked back to the hotel, hand in hand, he said, “They’re totally sleeping together.”
“Who? MacEwan and Heath? They never are.” Gwen had drunk enough to feel warm and fuzzy around the edges. That, combined with an evening of laughter, had her feeling that everything might be all right with the world after all.
“They are,” Lucas insisted. “More than that, I’ll bet they’ve been a couple for a while now. You can tell by how they work together.”
“But … I was deployed with them for months. I would know. I mean, they didn’t have to keep it secret,” Gwen said.
Lucas laughed and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in to his side. “Uh-oh, was somebody working on a crush?”
“Well, no,” Gwen said, still trying to work it out. “I mean, I thought he had a crush on me.”
Lucas pushed open the door to the hotel lobby and grinned down at her. “You sound disappointed.” He waited until they were in the elevator, then pulled her to him, leaning down to murmur in her ear, “Maybe he’s bi. I hear they’re everywhere.”
Gwen giggled breathily as his hands skimmed down over her arse and pulled her close. “Well, their hands are certainly everywhere.”
“My hands.” He nipped at her neck as the floors dinged by. “Only ever mine.”
***
Gwen fretted about how to dress the next day. Everything she pulled out of her suitcase looked either too formal or too informal. She finally threw a blouse across the hotel room in frustration.
“Hey.” Lucas, freshly showered, came up behind her and ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.” She blinked against frustrated tears. “It’s the very least I can do.”
She couldn’t bring herself to contact Mark. She still had the letter he’d sent her months ago, never opened. She should read it, and at least call him. She should really offer to meet with him. Janet had been her commanding officer. It was the right thing for her to do, surely, to offer her condolences, but the thought of looking that man in the eye was too much for her to bear. Today’s plan was only second-best, and not even a very close second.
Finally she settled on a blouse and a pair of slacks that weren’t too wrinkled from transatlantic travel. Lucas had followed her lead and was wearing a sports jacket, his hair pulled back at the nape of his neck. “It’s eerie,” she said, “how much that makes you look like your brother.” Before she could say another word, he reached up and pulled out the band holding it back, letting it spill over his shoulders again. She smiled. “Much better.”
“You said that on purpose,” he said.
“I did. It was true though.” Something loosened in her chest, making it easier to breathe. She grabbed the letter from her suitcase. “Come on, let’s go.”
She refused to let Lucas drive the hired car, partly because she didn’t trust him not to drive on the wrong side of the road, but partly because it kept her from having too much time to think on the nearly three-hour drive outside of London. As they traveled up the M1, the weak winter sun came out. Lucas had taken her hand as soon as they’d left London, and only let it go when she had to shift gears. As they got closer to Birmingham, her chest tightened up again.
“What can I do?” Lucas asked. It was the first time he’d spoken during the whole drive.
“Just stay with me,” she said, and squeezed his hand.
They were quiet again as she pulled into the car park, and quiet still as they walked toward the Visitor Centre of the National Memorial Arboretum. She had been here before, but it had been years, back before she’d joined the RAMC. Still, the Armed Forces Memorial wasn’t difficult to find at all. The curved white walls gleamed in the late-morning winter sun. Gwen let go of Lucas’s hand as they climbed the steps, her heart thudding in her chest.
As they crested the small hill, the breeze picked up, blowing damp and cold through Gwen’s light coat. She shivered and kept walking. Lucas caught up to her as she reached the first wall. The list of names was overwhelming. Name after name, men and women, all dead. When Lucas took her hand again, she let him. In a few moments of walking, they got to the current year’s listing, the carving less weathered than the earlier ones. Gwen scanned the list, but it was Lucas who said, “Gwen, here.”
She stopped in front of it and looked.
TURNER, JANET L. CAPT.
She stared at it until her eyes burned. There were other names there that she recognized, men and women that she’d worked with, that she’d treated. A few that she’d failed to save. Gwen didn’t realize she was crying until Lucas put a handkerchief in her hand.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to them all, letting her vision blur and waver. She reached for Lucas, and he was there, putting a warm hand at the small of her back. She leaned against his shoulder as she stared at the names, letting the sobs shake her as they would, no longer trying to hold them in. Lucas put his arm around her, but didn’t try to say anything, and she loved him for that, for letting her cry in silence.
Janet had been her boss, but also her friend and her colleague, and, most important, a girlfriend, in a place where girlfriends were hard to come by. Oh, the nights they’d spent in her tent, talking about what they missed from home. Gwen had heard all about Mark and the girls, sometimes to the point where she’d throw a pillow at Turner to get her to shut up already. They’d endured the usual privations of war: lack of privacy, lack of supplies—both personal and professional—the whole mad, rotten business of putting deliberately wounded bodies back together and of keeping their friends alive.
It felt like there was a bottomless well of tears in her, and if she let go for too long she would never stop crying over it all. When Lucas put his other arm around her and pulled her into a hug, she let him, resting her head on his shoulder, still looking at the wall, at Janet’s name. She was aware of him murmuring to her, stroking her back.
Finally, the worst was over and her tears slowed, then stopped. She took a deep breath and straightened up. Lucas caught her face between his palms and carefully wiped away the tears on her cheeks with his thumbs. Gwen turned her head to kiss his palm, then drew away, finishing the job with his handkerchief. She should have known better than to wear makeup coming here. She put her shoulders back and lifted her head, taking another deep breath.
“Better?” asked Lucas.
She nodded, and even managed a small smile. “Better.” She pressed a finger to her lips, then touched Janet’s name on the memorial wall. “Okay, I’m ready.” She pulled the envelope from her pocket and looked at it for several minutes before opening it.
Inside there was a photo of her and Janet, taken sometime early in Gwen’s deployment, of the two of them with their arms around each other’s shoulders, squinting into the sun and smiling. The handwritten note was short:
Gwen,
I wanted to send you this photo—it was one of Janet’s favorites. I heard what you did, risking your life to try and save her. Thank you. I want our girls to know about the amazing friend their mother had, the brave woman she worked with. I wish you the best in your recovery. God bless you for what you did.
Mark
Tears stung Gwen’s eyes a second time, but didn’t fall. She looked at the photo in her hand and smiled reflexively at Janet’s smile. There were photos and flowers around in other places on the wall, and Gwen thought about leaving the photo, letting other people know who had been behind the name. Gwen had to leave Janet behind once, though, and couldn’t bring herself to do it again.
She tucked the note and the photo back into the envelope. Lucas took her hand, and they walked away.
***
Gwen sat outside her CO’s office trying to pull herself together. She was in uniform for the last time, and with the combat f
atigues came the uniform face, hiding everything. Lucas was waiting for her back at the hotel, and she needed to go back. But first she needed to breathe.
The medical officer has recommended you for a full discharge. You’ve done great work, Tennison, but you’re not fit for duty anymore. I’m sorry.
She knew it was coming. Even without the bloody shoulder, she knew. The dislocation had been the final straw. She’d barely listened to her now-former CO after that initial opening, but had made all the correct “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs” and “Thank you, sirs” despite that. He’d thanked her for her service, and then dismissed her with the paperwork she needed to fill out, the paperwork she still had clutched in her hand. He reminded her that there was still the TA, still students she could teach, but the thought left her empty.
Everything she’d worked for for nearly ten years was gone. For all that she thought it might happen, now that it had, it didn’t feel real.
She couldn’t sit here any longer, or she’d go mad. Gwen stood up and stiffened her spine, and walked out of the building for the last time.
***
“So, essentially, I’m on the dole,” Gwen said to Lucas. He was sitting on the edge of their bed and she was pacing the room while pulling off her uniform. It felt wrong to be wearing it. It wasn’t hers anymore.
“Gwen, I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Are you? Because you had to have thought of it. With me out of the RAMC, there’s no danger of me shipping off to somewhere else, is there?” The words came out before she could think about it.
“That’s not fair,” he said. It wasn’t. She felt too prickly to care about fair. “Yes, I worried about not having you around, and I worried about you being somewhere dangerous, but I want you to be happy, more than anything else.”
“Well, now you’ve got me,” she said. She was down to her underwear and a tank top, and she couldn’t stop pacing. “Wherever you decide to go, Lucas, you can bet I’ll be following right after you, because really, what else am I going to do?” The bitterness of her own voice surprised her. “Who wouldn’t want their own groupie following wherever they go, like … like some bloody camp follower? Maybe Sam will pay me to do your laundry or something. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“Gwen, stop.” Lucas stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. “I want you with me,” he said. “Of course I do. But I don’t expect you to drop everything and follow me around.” He tilted her chin to force her to meet his eyes. “Do I seem like that type of man?” Reluctantly, she shook her head. “If you need to start over again here in England, I understand. There’s nothing that says I have to stay in LA. I could”—he paused, one hand moving to fidget at the back of his head—“I could relocate here, if you wanted me to.” He gave her a quick glance and went on, “I mean, I’ll still have to tour, obviously, but we could work around that—couldn’t we?”
To see Lucas, her Lucas, confident, cocky-verging-on-arrogant Lucas, giving her that hopeful, uncertain look made Gwen’s bitterness start to melt away. “You’re an idiot,” she said, but she smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m taking this out on you.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him close, burying her face against his chest. “Of course we’ll work something out.”
“You know,” he said, “you could talk to Sam about staying on as my tour manager.” She opened her mouth to protest. “I know, you’re going to say it’s a shitty job, and it is, I won’t argue.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “I can’t see Sam agreeing to keep me on. She gave me the job to get me out of her hair for a few months, and look how that turned out.”
Lucas smiled and stooped to pick her up, cradling her in his arms as she yelped. “Yes, absolutely terrible. Slept with the star, got framed for embezzlement, oh, and let’s not forget: staged an armed rescue when the star got kidnapped.” He kissed her. “You know what you could do that would be even worse?” He laid her down on the bed and leaned over her, fingers finding ticklish spots on her sides until she couldn’t stop giggling.
“What’s that?”
He leaned down and kissed her ear, and the giggles stopped. “You could marry him.”
Gwen caught her breath. “You’re mad. Bloody raving mad.”
“And you’re still with me.” He grinned. “That must mean something.”
She squeaked and pulled him down and kissed him hard. The kiss changed into something deeper, with more intent. It was too soon, much too soon to think about something like marriage, but they’d get there. And they had plenty of time to talk about it.
Later.
***
Sam had managed to wrangle a few new dates into the schedule, to take advantage of some of the publicity around Lucas’s kidnapping. They started in Memphis, the first show they’d canceled, the one when Maggie got hurt. Gwen had already planned to go over the entire rigging system with Cathy before the show, even though logic said that with no stalker to sabotage things, everything should be fine. Sally was still in jail in San Jose, and was likely to remain there until her trial date. There was no decision yet if either Gwen or Lucas would have to testify—that was a problem to worry about later. For now, there were a dozen things that needed doing.
“Gwen? I need some help out here,” called the new merch manager from the lobby. She jogged up the aisle, passing one of the techs, who was carting equipment toward the stage.
“Why didn’t you use the stage door?” Gwen said as she passed.
“There’s a truck out there blocking it,” he said, hoisting the amp with both hands. “Can you do something about that, please?”
Gwen grinned. “Sure, mate. Let me see what Karen needs first.”
Karen, it turned out, needed more space—again. As Gwen was going to take care of that, she got a text from Lucas: The food in the green room is worse than usual. Anything you can do?
It was mad, absolutely mad, and Gwen was having the time of her life. She knocked on the manager’s door before poking her head in. “Hi, it’s Gwen. Listen, I’m afraid we’ve got a couple of small problems, but I bet you’re just the man who can sort it out for me …”
Hours later, she was sitting perched in her usual spot in the booth, waiting for the show to start. The openers had been barely mediocre, and the crowd was restless. Craig glanced over at her. “Still have that gun on you?”
Gwen grinned. “Lee didn’t approve it this time, so no. Lucas is going to have to win them over the old-fashioned way.”
“God help us,” he said, and Cathy laughed.
“I have faith in him,” Gwen said. It hadn’t taken much to get Lucas to confess to some anxiety about going back onstage, but he’d seemed fine all afternoon; better than fine during soundcheck. Gwen had pulled him aside when they’d arrived at the theater. “Listen,” she’d said. “Nothing is going to happen to you, not while I’m here. I won’t let it. Not again.”
He’d kissed her and smiled. “I know.”
Now, waiting in the dark, she wasn’t nervous, exactly. Not really. If she was fidgeting more than usual with the diamond ring on her left hand, it was just because it was a new thing, not for any other reason.
As the clapping grew louder, the announcer finally came over the PA and introduced Lucas. Cathy threw the lights up with a blinding flash and there he was, center stage with his arms outstretched and head thrown back, drinking in the sudden screams in the audience.
He crossed to his instruments with his usual onstage strut, and Gwen smiled and sat back to listen. Lucas was back onstage and Gwen had helped get him there, and there was nowhere else in the world she would rather be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A debut novelist who’s been writing for a long time has an awful lot of gratitude stored up when they finally hit print, so bear with me.
First, I want to thank you, yes you, not only for reading this book, but for sticking with me through the acknowledgments. I’ve gotten so much encouragement from my readers, whether I was flailing a
round trying to write science fiction and fantasy or publishing fanfiction to the web. Everyone who has ever read my stories and given me feedback, thank you. You help keep me going and help me get it right. I’d be remiss (and a terrible best friend) if I didn’t thank Dawn Honhera especially. We’ve been friends since the moment we met nearly thirty years ago (oh god we’re old now), and she’s the one I count on to be my first reader. She’s always honest and enthusiastic and is one of the reasons this story got finished in the first place.
I’ve been fortunate to work with and befriend some amazing writers, and I have to mention just a few who were especially supportive as I worked on this book: Jo Leigh, one of my favorite romance writers and an endless source of information and encouragement as I worked toward publication; Jack, who in particular has been my rock and my whip-cracker, whichever was needed most; Karen, who listened to me flail about getting everything wrong; and finally to all the writers of #Antidiogenes, who put up with me through every draft of this story, and always cheered me on.
The old chestnut says to write what you know, but I never do. Lucky for me, I have friends who know things I don’t. This story would have large gaping holes in it if it weren’t for the British military background provided by Elizabeth and Sophia, and the music business dirt provided by an anonymous friend—she knows who she is, and I’m grateful she shared her secrets with me.
Lastly, there are the folks who took a chance on me. Jennifer Udden of Donald Maass is the best agent I could have hoped for, and finding her still feels like an unbelievable stroke of luck. Thanks also to Kristine Swartz and everyone at InterMix—here’s to more books!
If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review at Goodreads or any reader site or blog you frequent.
Keep reading for a preview of the next book from Lisa Nicholas
AS LOST AS I GET
Coming Summer 2015 from InterMix
“So I’m a friend of the Ambassador’s, then?” Lee Wheeler looked at the folder in front of him, memorizing the details. Will Freeman, account manager for International Frontier Industries—the folder contained all the information and ID he’d need to take on this new life.
The Farther I Fall Page 24