by Joanne Rock
Danny studied her. Assessed for all of five seconds before he turned his full attention to what she’d unveiled. He closed his mouth over one taut nipple, swirling his tongue around the ache until she arched into the kiss. She lifted herself up enough to yank at the fabric of his T-shirt, wanting to feel his naked chest against hers. Heck, she just wanted to see him. Feast her eyes on all that maleness.
“Stephanie.” He broke away, his eyes passion-fogged and his hair tousled. “If any more clothes come off, I’m not going to be able to think. That’s why you’re up on the couch and I’m on the floor. That position promotes blood flow to the gray matter instead of...yeah.” He tipped his head forward in defeat, not finishing his sentence.
“But I’ve been imagining what it would be like to find you again for almost a whole year. I didn’t just decide to show up and see you last week. I’ve wanted this for a long time. It’ll be okay if we don’t think for a little while.” She dipped a hand beneath his shirt, smoothing her fingers up the side of his chest and running them down his back.
His muscles danced beneath the caress, responding to her touch in a way that made her want to feel more of him.
“But I haven’t had that much time.” He reached beneath her and tugged out the white T-shirts she’d been wearing, untwining them from her hair. When he freed the cotton, he laid the fabric over her sensitive breasts.
“I thought you were on board with this idea?” She let go of him to clutch the material to her chest.
“I am.” He rested his elbows on the couch beside her. “You have no idea how much I’m on board. But I don’t want to mess things up.”
“It seemed to me like things were going really well.” Her skin still burned where he’d touched her, her lips swollen from his kiss.
He stroked her hair where it lay tangled on one shoulder.
“But you’re in a better position to judge than me. You came here talking about healing and lost mojo, so I know some things have gone wrong for you. But it’s been a long time since we’ve been together, so I’m not sure what that means.”
The fire inside her cooled in a hurry. She edged back on the sofa, scrambling to sit up straighter, one arm still clinging to that shirt in front of her.
“The whole world knows things have gone wrong for me, Danny. I didn’t think I needed to spell it out.” The abduction and the aftermath were the last things she wanted to talk about now. Hadn’t she just got done thinking her past wasn’t going to rob her of another minute? “If you want the full story, I poured my heart into an account of my experiences in Iraq. Too bad the media decided I was ‘selling out,’ using my captivity experience to make a buck, and panned it before half of them even read it.”
“I’ve always wondered if you held anything back in the book. If they hurt you—if you were sexually assaulted—I need to know.” His voice hitched when he asked, the small slice of emotion touching her more deeply than anything they’d done together so far.
He tugged a blanket off the back of the couch and covered her with it, gently tucking the edges around her.
“No.” She shook her head. “I was honest in my written account of the experience. The people who held me were too emotionally devastated to abuse me like that. Actually, they weren’t bad people in the first place. They were just...grieving. As helpless as me in a lot of ways. They didn’t even know they’d have to keep Christina and I in their home all that time. The family thought that after they kidnapped us, the rebel forces would come and take us away, but they never did. Later, some military officials told us they guessed the rebels’ numbers were just too thin to come back for us, which I thank God for.”
Finally, the family had released them six weeks later, once they’d made plans to relocate their sons to relatives in the south of the country, where they would be safe from retaliation.
“Me, too.” Danny shook his head. “Sorry to bring that up now, Steph. But thank you for telling me.”
“That’s okay.” She folded her legs under her, retreating from him. “As long as we’re talking about that, is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“Honestly? Yeah. What happened after you came home?” He rose up off the floor to sit beside her on the couch. Close, but not touching. He stared out at the bay, the sun fully set and the sky streaked with red in its wake. “I wrote to you. Called you.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t been expecting that. At all. “If you did, I don’t remember. I changed phone numbers frequently to avoid...everyone. After the book came out, I hired an agency to deal with the letters because there were a lot of irrational accusations about not being supportive of the war, or using the war to further a media agenda.” She waved away the still-painful memories, half wondering if her former boyfriend, Josh, had ever seen a communication from Danny. It was his job to go through the letters, after all.
Would it have made him jealous? Or had the agency merely discarded the communication, deeming it too personal? “I still receive hateful letters, in fact. But I’m sorry if I missed a note from you. It was a dark, miserable time.”
Danny’s chest tightened to think she’d been harassed.
He’d waited a whole year after she’d been released to try contacting her, knowing she’d need time to recover. Besides, he’d been in training for his first assignment and then he’d been on board the USS Brady, working long hours thousands of miles from home. It hadn’t occurred to him the fallout from the book she’d written would bring her so much grief.
“I understand. I just wondered.” Danny had read her book, but he didn’t think he could talk about her abduction experience now without giving away how much he’d fallen for her five years ago, or that he’d kind of gone off the deep end when she’d been held hostage. “That was part of the reason I was surprised to see you today. Not just that it’s been a long time. I figured you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
She wove her fingers through the fringe on the blanket he’d draped over her. “I’m sure the kisses just now told you nothing could be further from the truth.”
Glancing his way, she gave him that mischievous smile he was crazy about.
“You did seem awfully agreeable.” He dropped a hand on her knee. She was wrapped in the woven fabric as if in a cocoon, but he could see the outline of her leg. “I just want to be sure I don’t cross a line and send you running again.”
“You should trust me to know what I can handle.” She toyed with the fringe. He could see the tops of her breasts through the gap in the weave since she’d let go of the T-shirt.
“It’s me I don’t trust.” He was seriously pushing his boundaries to look right now. He wanted her in his bed and he wanted her all night long. But no matter what she said about being ready for this, she didn’t have a clue what he wanted from her.
Sexual healing was only the beginning. He was going to show Stephanie that she belonged in his life, safe in his arms, forever.
5
RELUCTANTLY, STEPHANIE retreated to the guest bedroom alone.
She didn’t know why she’d expected her new affair with Danny to follow the same course as their wild encounter five years ago. But that was kind of what she’d hoped for. They’d fall into each other’s arms and have sex until they couldn’t see straight. Spend every waking moment together—and every sleeping moment, for that matter. And she’d be a new woman when it came time for him to leave Norfolk again.
Brushing her teeth with one of the spare toothbrushes Danny had pointed out, Stephanie stared into the cedar-framed mirror over the pedestal sink and knew she’d been naive to think an affair could unfold like that now. For one thing, they were both older. She’d known going into this that she was more world-weary, more cautious. That was half the reason she’d had a tough time with relationships.
But she hadn’t really considered that he would be more wary, too. As she pinned up her hair and washed her face, she reminded herself that he wasn’t the same fun-loving rocker who could take a week off from hi
s father’s business because it was a family company. Danny was a navy lieutenant, a surface warfare officer with people who depended on him. He’d walked away from the lucrative Murphy holdings to join the military, no doubt taking one hell of a pay cut. For that matter, he’d walked away from his rock band, as well.
They’d gone on to make it big without him. He’d signed away the name and his rights to the group, and his bandmates had taken a song he’d written to the top 100 four years ago. Stephanie felt sad hearing that song on the radio, knowing it should have been his guitar on the studio track instead of some fill-in imposter.
Why hadn’t she asked him about that? Or about what had made him Mr. Serious since they’d been together?
Tugging a flannel bathrobe off the hook inside an armoire Danny had shown her, Stephanie slid it on and padded across the hardwood floor to find him. It was only eleven o’clock.
And it wasn’t as if she was planning to seduce him. She just wanted to know.
Too bad he wasn’t in his bedroom. The door across the hall was open wide, the room dark. A light still glowed downstairs, so she followed it, listening for any sounds in the still house. The only thing she heard was a creaking sound from the flooring as she made her way into the kitchen. A bottle of whiskey stood open on the counter—that hadn’t been there earlier. Curious, she picked it up as if it could provide a clue to his whereabouts.
That’s when she heard the strains of a guitar floating through a crack in the French doors. Following the music, she stepped out onto the patio to find Danny on the edge of the planked deck, his feet in the sand. A shaft of light spilled out into the dark, the only illumination on the moonless night.
She didn’t say anything since he was in the middle of a blues riff, the chords sad and sweet at the same time. Sitting beside him on the patio, she wrapped the robe tighter around her legs and stared out at the ocean while he finished his song.
“It’s great to hear you play.” She’d forgotten how much she liked hearing his fingers working the instrument strings. “I remember you had a guitar at my house. It was fun to hear snippets of music while I was folding laundry or taking a shower.”
There’d been something intimate about that. Not just the romance of feeling as if she was being serenaded. More like a small pleasure in knowing his habits. She’d enjoyed that glimpse into his world and discovering he would strum a guitar while he watched the news on TV or while he waited for his coffee to cool down in the morning.
“Playing relaxes me.” He danced his fingers silently over the strings, as if he practiced some chord progression.
The water swooshed against the shore nearby, the sound calming after an emotional day. In the distance she heard a dog barking, but the houses nearby were silent.
“It’s odd that I found you playing the guitar since the reason I came looking for you was to ask you about your music.”
“Yeah?” He reached toward her and at first she thought he meant to touch her, but then he gently tugged the bottle of whiskey from her hand.
She’d forgotten she still held it. He uncapped it and poured a short measure into the empty glass beside him. Then, instead of sipping it himself, he passed the drink to her.
“I always wondered why you gave up your band.” She tipped her face into a light breeze that blew off the water and wrapped her fingers around the glass. “You seemed to enjoy music so much.”
“Playing is an outlet for me. I never wanted it to feel like work.” His fingers tripped through a simple melody that she realized was a nursery school staple—“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
She smiled. “It’s definitely good to have a part of your life that feels like playtime. But wouldn’t it be even better if your work felt like play?”
“Maybe someday.” He strummed idly for a minute before swapping into a bass line. “But I wanted to make a more tangible contribution to society first.”
For a moment, she simply sipped the fiery whiskey and watched his lower fingers keep the rhythm line while the others picked out a harmony on the strings.
“I’m just surprised you joined the military so soon after we met. I thought you were going to encourage the band to take their music to the next level.”
He continued the song for a moment before his fingers quit moving all together. The silence felt discordant.
“They did take it to the next level,” he reminded her. “I signed over my stake in the band so they could do just that when I joined the navy.”
Somehow, she knew better than to pin him down on this, even though his answers only gave rise to more questions. Like—why did he join the navy right after she left the U.S.? Instead, she handed him the glass and waited while he took a slow drink.
“I signed my contract a few weeks after you were taken.” He set the glass down, but he kept the guitar perched on one thigh. He didn’t play it now, his elbows resting on the polished body of the instrument.
Her heart ached at the admission. She’d wondered about the timing before, but she’d written it off as a coincidence. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
“I knew I wasn’t going to personally locate you or anything like that,” he said with a quiet seriousness she’d never heard from him before, like a note out of synch with the rest of the song. She suddenly sensed she didn’t know this man half as well as she thought she did.
“But you didn’t join the navy because of...that, did you?” She’d been about to say “because of me,” but she could hardly dare to formulate the idea in her head much less ask out loud if it was true. She couldn’t bear to think her ordeal had had such a profound effect on him. It was bad enough she and Christina’d had to endure it. That their families had worried themselves sick—literally. Stephanie’s mother had suffered a nervous breakdown that had led to hospitalization, leaving Stephanie to come home to a much-changed family.
And, oddly, more than a little guilt for her mother’s illness.
“It wasn’t like I came up with the idea on the spot.” Danny eased off the guitar and lifted it into an open case on the deck behind him. “Coming from a family with so much has always made me feel guilty somehow. Like I’d won a cosmic lottery and hadn’t really done anything to deserve it. Plus, I never enjoyed the time I spent behind a desk, even though I went to school for architecture.”
She’d vaguely recalled that he held some kind of technical degree. Perhaps that had been another sign of the navy lieutenant lurking within the easygoing rocker, but she’d been so busy enjoying his fun and spontaneous side that she hadn’t really taken the time to understand the whole man.
“So you’d been thinking about going into the military before then.” Relief flowed through her. She took another tiny sip of the whiskey to keep her warm as the night air turned cooler.
“Yes.” He slid closer to her, draping an arm around her shoulders. “But when I heard you and Christina were being held prisoner...”
He tensed and she wished she hadn’t asked about this. Not tonight when he’d just come home and it should be a happy occasion.
“I didn’t mean to bring this up,” she blurted, even knowing she couldn’t undo words already spoken. “That is, we don’t have to talk about that time if you don’t want to.”
“If you’re going home to Cape Cod with me, it’s better you know about this now anyhow.” His hand rubbed along her shoulder and down one arm, warming her. “My family all remembers that you were a big part of the reason I went into the navy. I wouldn’t want you to be caught off guard by anything they might say. Not that anyone would have a reason for bringing it up.”
* * *
DANNY WATCHED Stephanie’s face as she processed the news. Her profile was shadowed, the glow spilling out onto the deck from the house not providing much light. But he could tell she was surprised. Upset.
A furrow creased her forehead, her lips pursing into a frown.
“I never meant to put anyone in danger for my sake.” Her voice was thready. She rubbed at the goose bumps
on her arm.
He knew she wasn’t just thinking about him and his service. He’d read her book. Remembered her mother had had a breakdown that led to severe pneumonia while Stephanie had been held captive. She’d come home to find her mom hospitalized and near death. While her mom had lived, he wasn’t sure what their relationship was now. When he’d known Stephanie, they hadn’t been close.
“You didn’t do anything,” he reminded her gently as he pressed her nearer to warm her up. “I was pissed off that a foreign situation was so hazardous that members of the media could be snatched off the street. That warranted getting involved and made me sorry as hell I hadn’t signed the paperwork sooner.”
Those few weeks after she’d been taken—before he’d entered the navy—had been a nightmare. His family had convinced him to try diplomatic channels. Financial channels. They’d used their international business leverage to try to get answers. They’d offered money to shadowy figures who might have leads. And all the while, Danny had seethed. He’d broken most of his knuckles during those three weeks, punching doors, walls and even—he sorely regretted—his younger brother’s nose. Poor Kyle had barely commented on the situation.
Even now, Danny had to unclench his fists as he remembered the paralyzing inability to help her.
That helplessness was a feeling that he refused to ever experience again. Because any help she needed now, he planned to provide. In spades. And yet, instead of taking her to bed with him earlier, he’d shown her the guest room and turned to the guitar, scared spitless of screwing things up with her.
“Then thank you, Danny.” She turned toward him suddenly, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for fighting for me. For other foreign travelers overseas. I’m so grateful for the job you do after seeing what it’s like over there.”
His grip tightened on her shoulder, keeping her pressed to his chest.
“You’re welcome.” He closed his eyes, inhaling the clean scent of her mingled with the night air. “It was the best thing for me.” He would have gone off the deep end otherwise, but he didn’t tell her that. Not after what she’d gone through with her mom.