Kids...day care... Bobby was shocked. "Wes, whoa, I'm not going to marry her."
Wes stopped short, turning to stare with his mouth open, as if Bobby'd just announced his plan to detonate a nuclear warhead over New York City. "Then what the hell were you doing with her, dirt wad?"
Bobby shook his head, laughing slightly in disbelief. "Come on. She's twenty-three. She's just experimenting. She doesn't want to marry me."
In hindsight, it was probably the laughter that did it.
Wes exploded. "You son of a bitch. You went into this with completely dishonorable intentions!" He put his shoulder into a solid right jab, right in Bobby's face.
Bobby saw it coming. He didn't dodge it or block it. He just stood there, turning his head only slightly to deflect the force of the blow. It rocked him back on his heels, but he quickly regained his balance.
"Wes, don't do this." There were people around. Getting into and out of cars. It wouldn't be long until someone called a security team, who would call the police, who would haul their butts to jail.
Wes hit him again, harder this time, an ear-ringing blow, and again Bobby didn't defend himself.
"Fight back, you bastard," Wes snarled.
"No."
"Damn it!" Wes launched himself at Bobby, hitting him in the exact place that would knock him over, take him down onto his back on the concrete. After years of training together, Wes knew his weak spots well.
"Hey!" The shout echoed against the concrete ceilings and walls as Wes hit him with a flurry of punches. "Hey, Skelly, back off!"
The voice belonged to Lucky O'Donlon. An SUV pulled up with a screech of tires, and O'Donlon and Crash Haw-ken were suddenly there, in the airport parking garage, pulling Wes off him.
And the three newest members of Alpha Squad, Rio Ro-setti, Mike Lee and Thomas King climbed out of the back, helping Bobby to his feet.
"You okay, Chief?" Rio asked, his Italian street-punk attitude completely overridden by wide-eyed concern. The kid had some kind of hero worship thing going for both Bobby and Wes. If this little altercation didn't cure him of it forever, Bobby didn't know what would.
He nodded at Rio. "Yeah." His nose was bleeding. By some miracle it wasn't broken. It should have been. Wes had hit him hard enough.
"Here, Chief." Mike handed him a handkerchief.
"Thanks."
Crash and Lucky were both holding on tightly to Wes, who was sputtering—and ready to go another round if they released him.
"You want to explain what this is all about?" Crash was the senior officer present. He rarely used his officer voice-he rarely spoke at all—but when he did, he was obeyed instantly. To put it mildly.
But Wes wouldn't have listened to the president of the United States at this moment, and Bobby didn't want to explain any of this to anyone. "No, sir," he said stiffly, politely. "With all due respect, sir..."
"We got a call from your sister, Skelly," Lucky O'Donlon said. "She was adamant we follow you down here to the airport. She said she had good reason to believe you were going to try to kick the hell out of Taylor, here, and she didn't want either of you guys to get arrested."
"Did she say why I was going to kick the hell out of Taylor?" Wes asked. "Did she tell you what that good reason was?"
It was obvious she hadn't.
Bobby took a step toward Wes. "What we were discussing is not public information. Show some respect to your sister."
Wes laughed in his face, looked up at Crash and Lucky. "You guys know what this friend of mine did?"
Bobby got large. "This is between you and me, Skelly. So help me God, if you breathe a single word of—"
Wes breathed four words. He told them all, quite loudly, in the foulest possible language what Bobby had done with his sister. "Apparently, she's doing some experimenting these days. All you have to do is go to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and look her up. Colleen Skelly. She's probably in the phone book. Anyone else want to give her a go?"
Wes Skelly was a dead man.
Bobby jumped on top of him with a roar. The hell with the fact that Wes was being held in place by Lucky and Crash. The hell with everything. No one had the right to talk about Colleen that way. No one.
He hit Wes in the face, harder than he'd ever hit him before, then he tackled him. It was enough to take them down to the concrete—Lucky and Crash with them.
He hit Wes again, wanting to make him bleed.
The other SEALs were on top of him then, grabbing his back and his arms, trying to pull him away, but they couldn't stop him. No one could stop him. Bobby yanked Wes up by the front of his shirt as he got to his feet, hauling him away from Lucky and Crash, with Rio, Mike and Thomas clinging to him like monkeys.
He pulled back his arm, ready to throw another brain-shaking punch when another voice, a new voice, rang out.
"Stop this. Right. Now"
It was the senior chief.
Another truck had pulled up.
Bobby froze, and that was all the other SEALs needed. Lucky and Crash pulled Wes out of his grip and safely out of range, and then, God, Senior Chief Harvard Becker was there, standing in between him and Wes.
"Thank you for coming, Senior," Crash said quietly. He looked at Bobby. "I answered the phone when Colleen called. She didn't say as much, but I correctly guessed the cause of the, uh, tension between you and Skelly. I anticipated that the senior's presence would be helpful."
Wes's nose was broken, and as Bobby watched—not without some grim satisfaction—he leaned forward slightly, his face averted as he bled onto the concrete floor.
Lucky stepped closer to Harvard. He was speaking to him quietly, no doubt filling him in. Telling him that Bobby slept with Wes's sister.
God, this was so unfair to Colleen. She was going to Tulgeria with this very group of men. Who would all look at her differently, knowing that she and Bobby had...
Damn it, why couldn't Wes have agreed to talk this problem out...privately? Why had he turned this into a fist fight and, as a result, made Bobby's intimate relationship with Colleen public knowledge?
"So what do you want to do?" Harvard asked, hands on his hips as he looked from Bobby to Wes, his shaved head gleaming in the dim garage light. "You children want to move this somewhere so you can continue to beat the hell out of each other? Or you want to pretend to be grown-ups for a change and try working this out with a conversation?"
"Colleen doesn't sleep around," Bobby said, looking at Wes, willing him to meet his gaze. But Wes didn't look up, so he turned back to Harvard. "If he implies that again, Senior—or anything else even remotely disrespectful—I'll rip his head off." He used Wes's favorite adjective for emphasis.
Harvard nodded, his dark eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at Bobby. "Okay." He turned to Wes. "You hear that, Chief Skelly? Do you understand what this man is saying to you?"
"Yeah," Wes answered sullenly. "He'll rip my head off." He added his favorite adjective, too. "Let him try."
"No," Harvard said. "Those are the words he used, but the actual semantics—what he really means by saying those words—is that he cares a great deal for your sister. You fools are on the same side here. So what's it going to be? Talk or fight?"
"Talk," Bobby said.
"There's nothing to say," Wes countered. "Except from now on he better stay the hell away from her. If he so much as talks to her again, I'll rip his head off."
"Even if I wanted to do that," Bobby said quietly, "which I don't, I couldn't. I've got to talk to her again. There's more that you need to know, Skelly, but I'm not going to talk about it here in front of everyone."
Wes looked up, finally meeting Bobby's gaze, horror in his eyes. "Oh, my God," he said. "You got her pregnant."
"All right," Harvard commanded. "Let's take this someplace private. Taylor, in my truck. Rosetti, take Chief Skelly's keys, drive him to the base and escort him to my office. On the double."
"You're going to have to marry her."
Bobby
sat back in his chair, his breath all but knocked out of him. "What? Wes, that's insane."
Wes Skelly sat across the table from him in the conference room on base that Harvard had appropriated and made
into a temporary office. He was still furious. Bobby had never seen him stay so angry for such a long time.
It was possible Wes was going to be angry at Bobby forever.
He leaned forward now, glaring. "What's insane is for you to go all the way to Cambridge to help me and end up messing around with my sister. What's insane is that we're even having this conversation in the first place—that you couldn't keep your pants zipped. You got yourself into this situation. You play the game—you pay when you lose. And you lost big-time, buddy, when that condom broke."
"And I'm willing to take responsibility if necessary—"
"If necessary?" Wes laughed. "Now who's insane? You really think Colleen's going to marry you if she has to? No way. Not Colleen. She's too stubborn, too much of an idealist. No, you have to go back to Boston tomorrow morning. First thing. And make her think you want to marry her, Get her to say yes now—before she does one of those home tests. Otherwise, she's going to be knocked up and refusing to take your phone calls. And boy, won't that be fun."
Bobby shook his head. It was aching, and his face was throbbing where Wes's fists had connected with it—which was just about everywhere. He suspected Wes's nose hurt far worse; yet, both of their physical pain combined was nothing compared to the apprehension that was starting to churn in his stomach. Ask Colleen to marry him. God.
"She's not going to agree to marry me. She wanted a fling, not a lifetime commitment."
"Well, too bad for her," Wes countered.
“Wes, she deserves—'' Bobby rubbed his forehead and just said it "—she deserves better than me."
"Damn straight she does," Wes agreed. "I wanted her to marry a lawyer or a doctor. I didn't want this for her— to be a Navy wife, like my mother." He swore. "I wanted her to hook up with someone rich, not some poor, dumb Navy chief who'll have to work double shifts to buy her a washer and dryer. Damn, if she's going to marry Navy, she should at least have been smart enough to pick an officer."
This wasn't a surprise. Wes had voiced his wishes for Colleen often enough in the past. The surprise came from how bad Bobby felt hearing this. "I wanted that for her, too," he told Wes quietly.
"Here's what you do," Wes told him. "You go to Colleen's and you tell her we had a fight. You tell her that I wanted you to stay the hell away from her. You tell her that you told me that you wouldn't—that you want to marry her. And you tell her that I flat-out forbid it." He laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. "She'll agree to marry you then."
"She's not going to ruin her life just to tick you off," Bobby argued.
"Wanna bet?" Wes stood up. "After the meeting I'll get you a seat on the next flight back to Boston."
"Are you ever going to forgive me?" Bobby asked.
"No." Wes didn't turn around as he went out the door.
15
Colleen came home from the Tulgerian children's memorial service at St. Margaret's to find Ashley home and no new messages on the answering machine. Bobby had called last night, while she was at a Relief Aid meeting, so at least she knew he'd survived his altercation with her brother. Still, she was dying to speak to him.
Dying to be with him again.
"Any calls?" she called to Ashley, who was in her room.
"No."
"When did you get back?" Colleen asked, going to her roommate's bedroom door and finding her...packing?
"I'm not back," Ashley said, wiping her eyes and her nose with her sleeve. She had been crying but she forced an overly bright smile. "I'm only here temporarily and I'm not telling you where I'm going because you might tell someone."
Colleen sighed. "I guess Brad found you."
"I guess you would be the person who told him where I was...?"
"I'm sorry, but he seemed sincerely broken up over your disappearing act."
"You mean broken up over losing his chances to inherit my share of DeWitt and Klein," Ashley countered, savagely throwing clothes into the open suitcase on her bed. "How could you even think I'd consider getting back together with him? My father hired him to be my husband, and he went along with it! Some things are unforgivable."
"People change when they fall in love."
"Not that much." She emptied her entire drawer of underwear into the suitcase. "I figured out how to get my father off my back. I'm dropping out of law school."
What? Colleen took another step into the room. "Ashley-"
"I'm going to go to bartending school and get a job dancing in some exotic bar like the women in that video we rented before I left for New York."
Colleen laughed in surprise. She quickly stopped when Ashley shot her a dark look.
"You don't think I'd be any good at it?"
"No," Colleen protested. "No, I think you'd be great. It's just... Isn't it a little late in your childhood to start sporting the career equivalent of—" she thought of Clark, "—of blue hair?"
"It's never too late," Ashley said. "And my father deserves all the blue hair—symbolic or other—that he gets." She closed her suitcase, locked it. "Look, I'm going to send for the rest of my things. And I'll pay my share of the rent until you find a new roommate."
"I don't want a new roommate!" Colleen followed her into the living room. "You're my best friend. I can't believe you're so mad at me that you're leaving!"
Ashley set her suitcase down. "I'm not leaving because I'm mad at you," she said. "I'm not really mad at you at all. I just...I did a lot of thinking, and... Colleen, I have to get out of here. Boston's too close to my father in New York. And you know, maybe Clark's right. Maybe I should go to one of those survival training schools. Learn to swim with sharks. See if I can grow a backbone—although I suspect it's a little late for that."
"You have a great backbone."
"No, you have a great backbone. I'm really good at borrowing yours when I need it," Ashley countered. She pushed her hair back from her face, attempting to put several escaped tendrils neatly back into place. "I have to do this, Colleen. I've got a cab waiting...."
Colleen hugged her friend. "Call me," she said, pulling back to look into Ashley's face. Her friend's normally perfect complexion was sallow, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes. This Brad thing had truly damaged her. "Whenever you get where you're going, when you've had a little more time to think about this—call me, Ash. You can always change your mind and come back. But if you don't—well, I'll come out to visit and cheer while you dance on the bar."
Ashley smiled even though her eyes filled with tears. "See, everything's okay with you. Why couldn't you be my father?"
Colleen had teared up, too, but she still had to laugh. "Aside from the obvious biological problems, I'm not ready to be anyone's parent. I'm having a tough enough time right now keeping my own life straightened out."
And yet, she could well be pregnant. Right now. Right this moment, a baby could be sparking to life inside her. In nine months she could be someone's mother. Someone very small who looked an awful lot like Bobby Taylor.
And somehow that thought wasn't quite so terrifying as she'd expected it to be.
She heard an echo of Bobby's deep voice, soft and rum bly, close to her ear. There are some things you just have to do, you know? So you do it, and it all works out.
If she were pregnant, despite what she'd just told Ashley, she would make it work out. Somehow.
She gave her friend one more hug. "You liked law school," she told Ashley. "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face."
"Maybe I'll go back some day—anonymously."
"That'll look good on your diploma—Anonymous DeWitt."
"The lawyer with blue hair." Ashley smiled back at Colleen, wiping her eyes again before dragging her suitcase to the door.
The door buzzer rang.
&nbs
p; "That's probably the cab driver," Ashley said, "wondering if I sneaked out the back door."
Colleen pushed the button for the intercom. "She'll be right down."
"Actually, I was hoping to come up." The voice over the ancient speaker was crackly but unmistakable, and Colleen's heart leaped.
Bobby.
"I thought you were the cab driver," she told him, leaning close to the microphone.
"You're not going anywhere, are you?" Did he sound worried? She hoped so.
"No," she said. "The cab's Ashley's."
She buzzed him into the lobby as Ashley opened the apartment door. From the sound of his footsteps, he took the stairs two at a time, and then there he was. Carrying flowers?
He was. He had what looked like a garden in his arms— an outrageous mix of lilies and daisies and big, bold, crazy-looking flowers for which she didn't know the names. He
thrust them toward her as he quickly took the suitcase from Ashley's hands. "Let me get that for you."
"No, you don't need to—" But he was already down the stairs. Ashley looked helplessly at Colleen. "See? No backbone."
"Call me," Colleen said, and then Ashley was gone.
Leaving Colleen face-to-face with the flowers that Bobby had brought. For her.
She had to smile. It was silly and sweet and a complete surprise. She left the door ajar and went into the kitchen to find a vase. She was filling it with water when Bobby returned.
He looked nice, as if he'd taken special care with his appearance. He was wearing Dockers instead of his usual jeans, a polo shirt with a collar in a muted shade of green. His hair was neatly braided. Someone had helped him with that.
"Sorry I didn't call you last night. The meeting didn't end until well after midnight. And then I was up early, catching a flight back here."
He was nervous. She could see it in his eyes, in the tension in his shoulders—but only because she knew him so very well. Anyone else would see a completely relaxed, easygoing man, standing in her kitchen, dwarfing the refrigerator.
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