Secret Agent Sam

by Kathleen Creighton

  She sat for a long time without speaking, just looking at him with her wounded eyes, and that dauntless and defensive lift to her chin. Then her gaze shifted past him to the IV bag hanging above his bed, and he saw her throat working.

  “You know,” she said in a flat voice with a huskiness in it she didn’t bother to clear, “during my training for…this job, they covered PTSD pretty well…the causes and effects, symptoms, prevention…treatment. All of it. I guess they do that, now. Anyway, one of the things they told us is that PTSD can take lots of different forms. Violent flashbacks like your father had, or nightmares and depression, flirting with suicide-the things my dad had to deal with after Iraq-those aren’t the only symptoms. When you can’t-or won’t-let yourself remember, when you shut yourself off from people emotionally…that’s PTSD, too. And you’re not going to get over it, Cory. Not unless you talk about it.”

  Her eyes came back to his, and he was shocked to see them brimming with tears. One sat shimmering suspensefully on her lower lash, then tumbled over. Devastated, he lifted his hand and brushed it with his thumb…cradled her head with his palm, fingers sliding through her hair to touch the tender spot behind her ear. The moisture from the tear felt warm and soft, and he watched in awe as his thumb smoothed it like oil across her cheek.

  Maybe, he thought. Maybe…

  He held his breath…the door in his mind he’d kept barricaded for most of his life creaked open…just a hair. And he heard the noises…the pounding. Boom…boom…boom… A voice…thundering. “Open up this door, Cory! I’m gonna break it down!” Terrible sounds…cracking, splintering, screaming…the little ones crying. “Mama!”

  Terror overwhelmed him. The door slammed shut.

  “Don’t ask me to do this,” he whispered brokenly. “I can’t. Not now.”

  For a long minute more she looked into his eyes. Then she jerked her gaze away and swiped recklessly at her tears. She caught his hand in both of hers to pull it away from her face as she rose. “I have to go,” she said, breathless and rushed.

  And then, impulsively, she bent down and kissed him, one quick hard brush of her lips, and to him that was worse than nothing at all. Pain knifed through him. It felt as though his heart was being ripped out of his chest.

  She crossed the room in her long, tomboy’s stride, then paused at the door and said without turning, “I’ll be going home to Georgia to see Mama and Daddy after I’m done in Washington. When you’re ready to talk, that’s where I’ll be.”

  She opened the door, and was gone.

  Sam sat in one of the old creaky white-painted rocking chairs on Grandma Betty’s wide front porch. Her eyes were closed and the sleeping baby on her chest made a small puddle of warmth as she rocked them both gently in the hazy heat of a Georgia July morning. The humid air was heavy on her shoulders, and scented with the roses that sprawled across the porch roof and the lighter, softer fragrance of the baby’s down-covered scalp just below her chin. Birds and insects sang them a lazy lullaby, and Sam’s mind drifted on meandering rivers of memory.

  The scent of roses, and Cory’s finger stroking a velvety petal in the garden at the White House…and I tell him I’m worried about my dad, because he won’t talk about what happened to him in Iraq. “You talk about it,” I tell him, and he replies, “I’d much rather write about it. Writing is what helps me. Everybody’s different. Your dad has to find what works for him…”

  Then…I talk about Vietnam, about how some who went there never did find their way home…and he looks at me with his gentle eyes and smiles his gentle smile, so full of compassion and understanding, and because I’m young and selfish and wrapped up in my own trials at the moment, I don’t see the pain that’s in them, too.

  He sees inside my soul, and all I see is myself reflected back in his eyes. I don’t see him at all.

  Oh, God, Pearse…I’m so sorry.

  Tears made warm puddles under her lashes, and for once she let them stay. The grief and regret lay lightly on her, now, a poignant ache that, like the sleeping infant, the humid air, the scent of roses, seemed only a natural part of this particular morning. Tomorrow, she would leave all this again. The day after the July fourth holiday, she’d be back in Washington, and after that, off to only God knew where. It had been over a month since she’d left Cory in that Mindanao hospital…nearly three weeks that she’d been here in Grandma Betty’s house, waiting for him. Three weeks and he hadn’t come.

  When you’re ready to talk, Pearse…

  She had to accept that maybe he never would be.

  The crunch of tires on gravel wasn’t loud, but it destroyed the mood of the morning nonetheless, the way even a twig dropped onto the smooth surface of a pond shivers the mirror image.

  Sam hastily dashed the tears from her eyes and brought the rocker upright, careful not to disturb the sleeping baby as she looked across to where an unfamiliar car was just pulling to a stop under the huge oak trees on the edge of the yard. She stopped breathing and her heart thumped beneath the baby’s warmth as she waited for the driver to emerge.

  The car door opened, and there was a long suspenseful pause before someone appeared, unfolding awkwardly to stand with a hand braced on the roof of the car while he tugged at something still inside. Then the tall figure was moving toward her across the lawn, limping, leaning heavily on a cane.

  She watched him come, rippling inside, and waited until he’d reached the steps before she said, “Hey, Pearse.” And dipped her head to hide her trembling smile against the baby’s downy head.

  He paused with one foot on the step, one hand on the newel post, and his smile grew wry. “I must say, in my wildest dreams, this isn’t how I expected to find you.”

  “What? Oh.” Of course everything she was feeling must surely show, and he would know it already, but to protect herself a little while longer, she kept her eyes on the baby’s open mouth and fat velvety cheeks, impossibly delicate lashes. “I’m babysitting. This is Lizzy-Beth-well, actually, it’s Elizabeth Ashley Starr-she’s my cousin J.J.’s-Jimmy Joe and Mirabella’s first grandbaby. Isn’t she sweet?”

  “How old is she?”

  Her breath caught as she heard the top step creak, and then his uneven footsteps cross the wooden porch floor. She lifted her head and shook back her hair, and began to rock gently as she watched him. “Five weeks yesterday. She was born while I-while we were in the Philippines.” There. No sense in avoiding it, pretending it all hadn’t happened.

  A few feet away from her he stopped and leaned his backside and the cane against the porch railing. His face seemed even more angular than she remembered…the interesting lines and hollows hinting at even deeper secrets. And he was wearing new glasses, she noticed. Very stylish, with narrow, trendy lenses. She decided they looked good on him. Behind them his eyes rested on her with compassion, as all-seeing as ever, but with something different, now, too. Something she’d never seen before. Something she couldn’t quite name.

  After a moment he shook his head, and once again she saw his smile slip. “Don’t take this the wrong way-I have to say it, Sam. She looks good on you.”

  She snorted. “Hey-I never said I didn’t want one of these, eventually. Just not right now, okay? Actually, you might not believe this, but I used to be crazy about little babies when I was a kid. I don’t know, maybe it was because I always wanted brothers and sisters…”

  “Sam-”

  Ignoring the interruption, she dipped her lips once again to the baby’s head, ignoring, too, the tear-glaze that had come to fog up her vision. She drew a quivering breath. “God…I’d forgotten how good they smell…I remember the first time Jimmy Joe brought Mirabella here. And her baby, Amy Jo-he’d delivered her himself, you know, in the sleeper of his truck, on Christmas Eve. He fell in love with her then, but Mirabella was too stubborn to believe it. So one day, Jimmy Joe just went and got her. He drove up to the house with her and the baby in his big blue truck. Mama and J.J. and I all ran out to see what the fuss was,
and there was Amy Jo sitting in the middle of the front walk in her car seat. We all just fell in love with her, right then and there. J.J. and I fought, I remember, over who’d get to hold her first.” She twitched her gaze up to Cory, and her smile felt brittle and false. “Amy Jo’s in college, now. Scary…”

  “What is?” His voice was gentle.

  “How fast the time goes.” She lifted her head and suddenly tears were streaming down her face and for once she didn’t care. “You think I don’t know how much you want this-all of this? The thing is, you know, I want it, too. I do. Eventually. But I’m only twenty-eight. Can’t I have a couple more years?”

  “I think I’d give you the moon, if you asked me,” he said softly. “If it meant we’d be together.” But he wasn’t looking at her. His head was turned away from her and his haunted eyes were fixed on one swaying tendril of the climbing rose, thick with red-pink blossoms.

  Sam closed her eyes. She could feel her heart tearing in two. “Oh, God, Pearse…”

  He jerked as if he’d struck her, and she could see he’d misunderstood her tears. “Sam-what we talked about in Mindanao…”

  “Wait-” she rushed to interrupt him, to get it said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I was unfair. I did ask too much. I had no right. If you’re not ready-”

  He was shaking his head. “No-you didn’t ask too much. It was time. Past time.” He dragged a hand over his face, then said grimly, “I don’t know if I’m ready or not, but I’ve been trying to remember what happened. Letting myself, I guess would be a better way to put it.”

  She waited, heart thumping, slowly wiping away her tears. She knew, now, what it was she’d seen in his eyes. The horrors of his memories, lurking like monsters in the dark.

  “I don’t think I can do it by myself, Sam. And…if I’m going to talk to anybody, I…the truth is, the only person I trust to see me through this is you.”

  She could only stare at him…and go on holding the baby, rocking gently, heart pounding…She felt both humble and proud at the same time, overwhelmed and exhilarated, as if she was standing on the edge of a volcano, something awesome and beautiful beyond imagining, but terrifying, too.

  Cory shifted with the new restlessness that seemed to have become a part of him now. Hell, she’s in shock, he thought as he watched her face drain of color. I shouldn’t have dropped it on her like this. “Is there someplace we can go? Where is everybody?”

  “Um…” She cleared her throat and said unsteadily, “They’ve all gone to the lake house for the holiday-fireworks are legal in South Carolina. I volunteered to babysit.”

  “You didn’t want to go?”

  She shook her head and a smile flickered briefly. “That place has too many memories.”

  He snorted. “You can say that again. I almost drowned there.”

  “And,” she said softly, “you kissed me for the first time there.”

  He gazed at her until his eyes burned, and the silence filled up with the rocking chair’s slow creaking…bees humming in the rose bush…a cardinal calling…a squirrel scolding…

  “I know she’s beautiful and sweet and all that,” he finally said, nodding at the baby in Sam’s arms and trying his best to smile, “but is there someplace you can put her down for a bit? I’d really like to kiss you now. That peck you planted on me in Davao City-”

  “Hold that thought.” She stopped rocking suddenly and rose, supporting the baby’s head as naturally as if she’d spent a lifetime doing that rather than flying World War Two airplanes and hunting down terrorists and rescuing journalists and hostages from Philippine jungles. Looking at once distracted and purposeful, she swept past him and into the house.

  By the time he’d collected his wits and his cane and followed her, she was already halfway up the stairs. He paused at the bottom to wait for her, thinking she meant to come back down so they could talk, but she threw him a look over one shoulder and said, “Coming?” in a breathless and impatient way, like a child with a secret to share.

  So he made his way up the stairs as rapidly as his healing thigh muscle would allow, feeling thoroughly bemused, and his heart pounding with more than just physical exertion.

  He found her in a spare bedroom, bending over a portable crib. She straightened and turned when she heard him, then crossed to him in a flurry of motion, her arms already lifting around his neck, and her body came against him in a rush that knocked the breath from his lungs and every lucid thought from his mind.

  The cane toppled onto the braided rug and lay there, unneeded and forgotten. His arms tightened around her as she kissed him, but only for a moment; there was too much urgency, too much hunger in him. His hands wandered, shaking, over her back and shoulders, her nape and the silky dampness of her hair…followed the taut ribbons of muscle along her spine to the firm and modest swell of her behind…relearning the shape and feel and texture of her. He felt dazed all over again at the miracle of her, astonished and humble and exalted at the same time.

  Oh, but the kiss…he didn’t think she’d ever kissed him quite that way before. With exuberance and fierceness and fire and passion, yes-that was only Sam, the only way she could be. But not with this wildness. And something else, something deeper…something he didn’t dare hope for or give a name to. Something that felt…irreversible.

  She kissed him hard and deep, holding nothing back, and he tasted blood and hoped it wasn’t hers. By the time she came up for air his lips were swollen and hot already, pulses thumped in his belly and loins, and his breaths were ragged gasps. With his focus narrowing, his goal and purpose suddenly urgent and clear and the word bed uppermost in his mind, he dragged his mouth from hers and croaked, “Don’t you want to-”

  Misunderstanding his intent, she growled, “Shut up, Pearse,” and reclaimed his mouth like a hungry lioness. Her hands tugged at his shirt, his belt buckle.

  Caught off guard and off balance, he staggered back against the door frame. She gasped and clutched at him, then burst into helpless laughter, which she instantly tried to smother against his shoulder. “Oh, God, Pearse, I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat, lifted her head, shook back her hair and gazed at him, eyes glowing with a fierce, wild light. “I didn’t even ask. How is your leg?”

  “Healing,” he told her absently, as his hands worked their way along her shoulders to the sides of her neck. Cradling her head between them like a precious treasure, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs, he tilted her head back, lowered his mouth to her throat. She smelled poignantly of baby powder. When she moaned softly he moved his mouth to hers and kissed her, slowly and with infinite tenderness, in direct and deliberate contrast with the way they’d kissed before. And when at last he lifted his head and gazed down at her, her eyes were still closed.

  “I wanna see it,” she mumbled drunkenly.

  “What, my leg? Sam…it isn’t pretty.”

  “Like I care.” She swayed forward, and her mouth was hot and humid on his throat…her tongue measured his hammering pulse.

  He closed his eyes and said weakly, “Right here? Right now?”

  “Nuh-uh…” Working her way up to his mouth in determined nibbles, she backed him across the hall and through another doorway. “This is better. It’s my room…”

  She drew back from him, then, and placed her palms on his chest. She lifted her eyes to his and there was no trace of laughter or wildness in them. Instead they looked bruised and wounded. “Please, Pearse,” she whispered. “Let me see.”

  Slowly, he began to unbutton his shirt. Slowly, he pulled it free, and his hands moved on to his belt buckle…then the zipper of his slacks.

  She didn’t help him, didn’t hurry him, simply clung to his eyes as if they were the only thing in the universe, and he felt suddenly that this was the most intimate thing they’d ever done together, even more intimate than all the times they’d made love. It frightened him a little…more than a little…because he knew this wasn’t about sex, it was much more important than sex, mo
re binding than sex…more permanent.

  Her hands slipped lightly down his hips and thighs, following his slacks as they slid to the floor, and she sank onto the edge of the bed without a sound…heavily, as though her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer.

  He held himself relaxed, trusting her completely, and she looked a long, silent time, her hands almost absently stroking the outsides of his legs. Then she leaned forward and carefully touched her lips to the ragged half-healed scar on the inner part of his thigh. His breath hissed between his teeth, but he didn’t move, and let his hands lie easily on her shoulders as she moved her mouth over him, lightly as breath, and the ends of her hair grazed his fevered skin, soft and cool as tears.

  Then suddenly he couldn’t be still any longer. His hands slid upward along her neck…gathered her hair in greedy handfuls as he tipped her head back and bent down to kiss her. But instead of claiming her mouth as he’d meant to do, he paused and looked down into her fierce bright eyes, and his heart seemed to stop and the earth beneath him quake at what he saw there.

  “Sam,” he whispered. “My Samantha…”

  A radiant smile broke over her face, at the same moment tears seemed to burst from her eyes. Tears and laughter…like rain and sunshine. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  He kissed her then, reverently…adoringly, bearing her slowly backward onto the tulip quilt that haphazardly covered the bed, and when he would have followed her down, she put her hands on his chest and held him away, still laughing through tears while she squirmed and tugged at her clothes. Then he was helping her skin off her shorts and T-shirt, and shoes and various articles of clothing were sailing into unknown corners of the room, until at last he brought his body and hers together with a profound and grateful sense of homecoming.

  He held her close…so close he felt the shape of her ribs and the heart beating madly beneath them. Her woman’s scent and quivering warmth overwhelmed him, and yet he felt famished, as though he’d never be able to get enough of it. He felt her strong, capable hands on his back, and the tiny flaws and imperfections her occupation had given them, and it seemed the most erotic, the most exquisite pleasure he’d ever known.