“I remember.” His voice resonated with a depth of emotion that surprised her. “I’ll remember everything that happened between us there.”
She hoped so. She didn’t like to think that he might easily consign to oblivion all memory of the wonderful hours they’d spent by the pool.
He took the pin from its box and set the little container on the table. “Here. I’d like to see how this looks on you.”
She laughed softly. “Diamonds and emeralds. Just the thing to dress up wrinkled, slept-in, ocean-washed shirt and jeans.”
“You don’t need any dressing up. On you, a potato sack would look good.”
He fastened the brooch on her blouse below her left shoulder. His knuckles whisked down over the rise of her breast. A prickle of heat spread through her.
“Thank you, David.”
She lifted herself on her toes to drop a quick kiss of appreciation on his cheek.
As if she’d sprung some delicately set trap, his arms closed around her. His mouth captured hers. Before her mind ever issued the command, her lips had parted to take him in.
In a matter of seconds she was drunk on the taste of him, dizzy with the scent of him, excited with the feel of her softness molding the hard planes of the body she so loved.
With no awareness of how they’d got there, she found herself lying across the bed, the arousing weight of David’s body pressing down between her thighs.
His hips flexed, thrusting his rigid center against her.
The barriers of their clothing held him frustratingly separate from her.
Unbearable.
Frantic to hold him naked in her arms, she began to tear off her clothes. He started to shuck off his uniform. His shirt went flying after hers. He stretched an arm to the lamp beyond her head and plunged the room into darkness.
She couldn’t see where shoes, pants and underwear landed.
She didn’t care.
The only thing that mattered in the whole world was that she was lying within the sweet sensual cage of David Reid’s body, his arms, his legs, holding her imprisoned, his arousal burning a demanding ache into the joining of her thighs.
Neither could spare the time for gentleness or tenderness in this embrace. Desperate need flared like a tongue of flame between them.
His drugging kisses swamped her in a powerful undertow of pleasure. Hurled her into a whirlpool of sensation that drowned her senses. Wrenched away her mind. Her hands, her mouth, her whole body strained to experience more and more of him, to soak up everything he could possibly give her.
His wondrous lovemaking in the pool had taught her how to turn back on him every lightning flash of delight he speared through her. She’d learned how to draw from him that throaty groan she so loved hearing. How to make him thrash as wildly as she in frenzied craving for more and more intimate touches of fingers, lips, tongue.
Their hearts pounded to the same riotous beat as together they raced toward the crest, their breath mingling in their gasps of completion.
Only when both were too wrung out to so much as lift a hand to the other’s body did they fall away from each other.
“Heaven help me, woman—you take everything a man has to give. And then some.”
Not everything a man had to give, she thought. Not yet. And she so yearned to possess the most important part of David Reid. His heart.
He gave her little time to piece her mind back together.
“We have to get going, Cara. The plane won’t wait.”
The passion she’d just shared with him filled her heart and soul to overflowing with feelings that went an eternity beyond mere sexual desire.
A square of half-light dribbling in from the outside world showed in the open window. She could just make out the chiseled profile of David’s face as he lay next to her. An aching longing to bring her love to life for both of them pushed through her.
The blanket of semidarkness wrapping around them, the awesome power of his response to her gave her the courage to take what felt like the greatest risk of her life.
“David,” she murmured into the shadows. “I’m in love with you.”
“No, you aren’t.” His answer, quick and devastating, punched into her ears. “You can’t be. Not really. You only think you are because of all we’ve gone through together. Facing death can muddle up the emotions. I’ve seen it happen.”
An avalanche of icy unbelief swallowed her up. She lay there stunned, her breath hooked in her throat, and stared blindly into the gloom. She felt David roll from the bed, heard him fumble for the pants he’d dropped on the floor.
No pill, no medical treatment could take away the pain lancing through her. Worse by far than what she remembered of her childhood’s fractured leg. Worse than the attack of acute appendicitis that almost killed her ten years ago.
Under cover of the darkness she darted to the safety of the bathroom and locked the door behind her before snapping on the light. The sudden sharp glare hurt her eyes. She had to squeeze them shut for a few seconds. She twisted on the shower faucet. Fighting against tears, she stood shivering under weak spurts of cold water.
She still couldn’t believe it. Complete denial. She hadn’t known what David’s reaction would be when she offered him her love. But the possibility that he would coolly and calmly deny the validity of her feelings hadn’t crossed her mind.
She stepped out of the grungy shower stall and toweled dry, planning to shut herself in here until she was sure he’d left. After the unwelcome surprise she’d just handed him, he probably couldn’t wait to get out of the room.
The knock on the bathroom door made her jump. “Here are your things, Cara.”
Shielding herself behind the door, she pulled it open only a few inches. He pushed the wadded-up ball of her clothes in to her.
When she came out he was waiting for her near the bathroom door. He was fully dressed and the bedroom light was on.
The realization that he hadn’t the courage to so much as reveal his injured body to her, when she’d laid bare the depths of her soul deepened her hurt.
“Ready?” he said. “Then let’s go.”
That he could maintain that damnable remote calmness that was so much a part of him, when her own nerves were scraped raw, unleashed her anger. She shoved him away. Hard.
“Damn you, David Reid,” she yelled, lashing out in a murk of pain and panic at losing him. “What happened to that promise to protect me that you made? You didn’t protect me at all. You went ahead and let me fall in love with you.” Whether or not the muddled accusation made any sense to him, it did to her. “I can’t forgive you for that.”
“I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t give me didn’t mean to. You don’t do anything you don’t mean to do. How dare you brush aside my feelings the way you did?”
She wanted to hit him. She wanted to hold him. More than anything, against all logic, she still wanted him to tell her he loved her.
None of her heartbroken tirade made the slightest impression on him.
He picked his hat up off the floor beside the bed and set it firmly on his head. “We don’t have time for this. Your driver is waiting to take you to the airport.”
What did he say?
“Take me to the airport? Aren’t you coming, too?”
“No. I’ll be staying for a couple of days. I have things to do here, people to talk to.”
Anger gave way to sheer fatigue. She dropped to the edge of the bed.
“What is it, David? Are you so damn deep into control that you can’t bear the thought of spending a few hours shut up in a plane with a woman who loves you?”
She raked her wet stringy hair out of her eyes, but didn’t look up to meet his gaze. She couldn’t bear to see any more of his aloof composure.
“You’re supposed to be so damn brave, but I know the truth about you. When it comes to leaving yourself open to your feelings, you’re not brave at all. I think you’re terrified of letting g
o and allowing yourself to fall in love—not necessarily with me, with any woman. I believe that to you, love equates with the idea of losing control of your emotions. Assuming, of course, that you have any.”
Her final dart had no more effect on him than had anything else she said. He glanced at his watch that, unlike her, had come through their adventures unscathed.
“Time to go home.”
David was her home. Unfortunately he couldn’t see it that way. Though he was standing only a couple of feet away, there was no way she could bridge the kind of distance he put between them.
On your feet, woman, she told herself. Don’t let the man leave, with you looking like a whipped puppy. She squared her shoulders and briskly shoved herself upright. “I’m ready.”
David handed her into the military automobile waiting in front of the hotel. She turned to the open window, needing to say goodbye, needing to tell him—she didn’t know what.
David’s rap on the car roof signaled the driver to take off.
His empty gray gaze betrayed no emotion whatever before he turned and walked back into the hotel.
Inside the hotel entrance, David had to stop and dig out a handkerchief to wipe away the heavy beads of sweat trickling down his forehead. He’d come within seconds of losing his fight to hold his face impassive as Cara left him for good.
He’d never forget the look on her face as he turned his back to her. But he’d had no choice. If he hadn’t cut her loose right then, he was afraid he never would. Everything in him was driving him to hold on to Cara Merrill and never let her go.
Her miraculous disclosure of love had nearly broken him.
She’d never know how close he came to confessing that despite all his efforts against it he’d fallen desperately in love with her.
She’d been so right about its effect on him. His love did terrify him. Love was too insignificant a word for what he felt for her. He was consumed with desire, with need for the woman who’d invaded his walled-in life and taken him prisoner, heart, mind and soul. Only it didn’t feel like an invasion. It felt like a melding of her life with his. As if they’d joined forces against the world.
Her charge that he had no trouble in holding himself in complete control twisted an ironic smile to his lips. Self-control didn’t exist where she was concerned. He’d come tonight only to tell her that he’d booked her on the flight, give her the brooch to remember him by and return to the base.
That plan failed the moment she opened the door.
Cara Merrill had done so much for him that he couldn’t tell her about. In her arms he’d found a sense of contentment he hadn’t known for a long time—maybe never. She’d kindled a fire in him that would never burn itself out. A fire that laid bare the depths of his loneliness. A void she alone could fill.
A silent wail reverberated through him. How could he keep on going without her?
It was for her sake that he’d never act on his love. Bad enough that if he gave in to his feelings for her, he’d burden a woman who deserved the finest man in the world with only half a man.
There was something he feared even more.
After seeing the lengths she’d gone to out of loyalty for a man she pitied, for whom she felt responsible, he was deathly afraid that once she got a good look at the ugly reality of his body, she’d slip back into the Florence Nightingale role she’d played with Tommy.
He couldn’t stand that.
Taking care of people was a vital part of her nature. She’d want to take care of him. The thought of having her act as his nurse, or offer him the mother-burden duty she’d shown Tommy, turned his stomach. As the old song said, he had to have all of Cara Merrill, all her passion and loyalty and commitment, or he wanted nothing at all.
That was precisely what he was going to get. Nothing at all.
Bone-deep ache settled inside him.
He’d made love to her for the last time. Okay, so he’d made that promise to himself before, and broken it. But tonight that vow was carved in stone into his brain.
If he managed to live through what he planned to do in the next forty-eight hours, he’d make sure that he’d never lay eyes on her again.
“Mrs. Delaney was the last patient, Doctor.”
“Thanks, Patricia,” Cara said to the nurse. “You can go now.”
“I don’t mind staying to help you with those Medicare forms.”
“No need. I can manage.” She saw the stack of paperwork as her salvation. At least for a while. It would keep her busy for another couple of hours. “Go on home to that good-looking husband of yours and your darling little boy.”
“All right, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. Now scat.” She waved the nurse out the door.
Thank heaven for the rigors of her job. If she didn’t have her work to fill twelve- and fourteen-hour days, she’d be a candidate for psychiatric treatment by now.
Over a month, and not a word from David. She’d given up listening for the receptionist’s response after every ring of the office telephone. Never had it been David calling for her. And none of the calls that came to her apartment were from him.
She’d left a single message on his machine at the mountain house, another at Chandler Hall. Sometimes the urge to call him again was so strong she had to leave the condo to counter it. One really dismal day the longing to see him was so powerful she’d driven across the Potomac before gathering enough good sense to turn back.
She refused to run to him. She had her pride. Too disgustingly pitiful for a woman to chase after a man who didn’t want her.
Weekdays were almost manageable. Sundays, like today, were the worst. All she could do was veg out in T-shirt and shorts in front of the TV and hope for an emergency call. One of these days she’d have to accept one of her family’s continuous invitations to come visit. Even though she loved them all, she wasn’t ready yet to watch the joyful success of other people’s relationships, when hers had foundered on the immovable rock called David Chandler Reid.
David had brought to life within her a passion even stronger than her emotional commitment to medicine. Then he’d left that passion with nowhere to go.
The condo’s front door buzzer sounded. She clicked off the movie she wasn’t really watching and went to collect the mushroom and green pepper pizza she’d ordered.
The man filling the doorway wasn’t holding a pizza box.
It took her a second to believe what she was seeing. When she did her hand flew to her mouth. She went weak in the knees.
“D-David. I—I—come in.”
“No. I can’t stay. I just came by to make a delivery. I signed on to help you find Grant and bring him back. I’ve done that.”
He stepped aside and pulled another person into view.
“Tommy,” she gasped. “How—?”
His handsome face looked drawn and gaunt, and he’d dropped at least ten pounds.
“He’s clean,” David said. “At least for now. I detoxed him the hard way at my mountain house.” His jaw tightened. “I put the guy through hell, and frankly I enjoyed every minute of it. But it’ll take more than a month off the stuff to get him to kick the habit completely.”
“Your commander is a hard man, Cara. It took me a while to appreciate all he did for me.” Tommy closed her in a loose hug. “Thanks for sending him back. I’m sure he’s right that sooner or later Kane would have gotten rid of me.”
“B-but I didn’t—” She was having difficulty taking all this in.
She was only faintly aware of the brotherly kiss Tommy laid on her cheek. She was more concerned with trying to gauge David’s thoughts from his flat, blank expression.
“Hey, hon,” Tommy said. “What I said back there on the island, I didn’t mean it. My head wasn’t on straight at the time. I’m sorry I caused you so much troubte.”
Right now, she didn’t really care about hearing Tommy’s story. David was beating a quick retreat down the hall toward the elevator.
�
�Wait, David,” she called, pushing out of Tommy’s embrace.
After one quick look in her direction, David stepped into the elevator. By the time she reached him the doors were almost closed. Through the last few open inches of the closing door, she saw that he made no effort to hold it open.
Chapter 16
Cara steered her car down the long, winding country road that led to David’s place.
Pride didn’t cut it. It hadn’t taken her long to find that out. What did holding on to useless pride get her, anyway? Not a blasted thing.
Besides, technically David had come to her first, hadn’t he?
Still, she kept telling herself, it wasn’t because she simply couldn’t stay away from him that she was on her way to his darn mountain. She’d come only to thank him for what he’d done for Tommy.
The dryness of high summer had converted the driveway’s mud to easily negotiable hard-packed dirt. She was able to drive up to the house and park next to David’s pickup. The truck, she saw, held a couple of large suitcases and several boxes.
The unlikely and nameless cat was curled up in the sun at the bottom of the steps. It found the energy to open one eye when she stooped to pet it, and flicked the tip of its tail in lazy acknowledgment.
She found David doing his thing in the lake. Where else? She smiled to herself at the predictability of it and walked out to the end of the jetty. He was already looking in her direction, but she cupped her hands around her mouth and called to him.
“Hey, David. Come on out.”
She could imagine his irritation at the intrusion as he turned and swam toward her. Tough. She’d had to put up with a lot more than mere irritation over him.
“One of these days,” she shouted, “you’re going to get so waterlogged you won’t be able to squoosh yourself back onto dry land.”
She was knocking herself out trying to keep things light and not let any of the desperation she felt into her voice. From what she could see of his face half-hidden in the water, he didn’t crack a grin. She wasn’t surprised when he halted at the end of the wharf and made no effort to climb up on it.
Unbroken Vows Page 23