The Gauntlet

by Lindsay McKenna

  “I’d turned on the television because I couldn’t stand the quiet in the house. It was human voices, something to break the silence. I was out in the kitchen fixing myself a can of soup for dinner when the national news came on. I heard them announce that the plane Jeanne had been on had crashed at Dallas during a thunderstorm. They said there were no survivors.”

  Cam hung his head, tears driving into his tightly shut eyes. His hands gripped the brandy snifter almost painfully. A sob worked its way up his throat. He clamped his lips shut and tried to fight it back.

  Molly set her glass on the black lacquer coffee table in front of them. Gently she pried Cam’s snifter from between his clenched fingers. Sliding her arm around his shoulders, she whispered, “Come here,” and drew Cam against her, letting his head rest against her shoulder and neck.

  Just the softness of Molly’s voice, her excruciatingly gentle touch, ended the battle between Cam’s emotions and his iron-clad control. As he leaned into her opened arms the first sob tore from him, shaking his entire body. He felt Molly’s arms enclose him, holding him tightly with her woman’s strength, her woman’s compassion.

  Molly lay back against the couch as Cam’s arms reached around her, gripping her so hard that they squeezed the breath from her. It didn’t matter as first one sob and then another ripped out of him. She’d never seen a man cry, and it tore savagely at her heart and soul. Cam’s weeping was that of a storm having broken, wild and relentless in its fury. Her blouse was soaked with his tears. His hands opened and closed against her back as her body absorbed the painful sobs she thought would tear him physically apart.

  All Molly could do was hold Cam and shakily stroke his hair, whispering words meant to comfort and heal. Molly had no idea how long they stayed locked in each other’s embrace, for time had ceased to exist. She cried for Cam, for his pain, his terrible loss. Understanding what it was like to lose someone she desperately loved, it was easy to capitulate to Cam’s grief and share it unselfishly with him.

  Her eyes were wet with tears as she finally opened them. The storm had passed. Cam held her tightly, but his grasp had loosened somewhat. Except for the gossamer light from the kitchen, darkness surrounded them. Molly didn’t move, absorbing the feel of his strong body pressed against her.

  Gradually, Cam released his hold on Molly. Her once silky hair beneath his jaw and cheek was damp with his tears. Inhaling deeply, he wanted to remember her wonderfully feminine fragrance, a sweetness subtle and yet unforgettable. She wore no perfume. It was her natural scent that dizzied him, reminding him of life, not death. Opening his eyes, Cam took in Molly as a woman—soft with curves, flexible and giving. God, was she giving—in a way he’d never felt before.

  Though he wanted to keep her in his arms forever, Cam knew it couldn’t be. He was still healing; the past must continue to be put to rest. He lifted his head and gently broke their embrace. Looking down on her silhouetted features, he saw the paths of tears tracing down her cheeks. The fact that she’d cried for him shook him anew.

  With his thumbs he wiped the remnants of tears from her pale cheeks. Her skin was velvety firm, and the newly awakened part of him, the man, wanted her. Dizzied by Molly’s closeness, Cam found it impossible to sort through all the emotions he was feeling. Sitting up, he placed his elbows on his thighs and rubbed his face.

  “That was a long time in coming,” Molly said quietly, sliding her hand along his strong back. It felt good to caress him, to continue to give him comfort.

  Her slender hand outlining the curve of his shoulders felt unbelievably healing to Cam. He was in awe of Molly’s intuitive knowledge of what he needed, and he sat like a starving man, absorbing what she offered him in the form of touching. He felt shaky and raw inside, still craving physical contact to stabilize him after the harsh release of his grief.

  “When my mom died,” Molly went on in a low voice, “I didn’t know what to do. When you’re ten, the word cancer doesn’t mean much. She had liver cancer. It hit her fast and hard. She wasn’t sick for very long. I remember her coming into my bedroom one day when she didn’t look very well. Pooky jumped up and lay on my bed while she talked to me. Mom picked up my favorite doll, Amanda, and held us both in her lap. She tried to explain about the disease and where it was in her. She used Amanda to show me.

  “I guess I didn’t have a very good grasp of heaven at that time. Mom said she’d be leaving soon for heaven. She said it would be as if someone took Miss Amanda from me and I never saw her again.” Molly sniffed back the tears. “That got my attention. I could understand if Miss Amanda suddenly disappeared from my room and never came back. She was my best friend next to my mom. I started to cry when it all sank in—that someday soon, my mom wouldn’t be coming back to me. We sat there all afternoon. She held me in her lap and just rocked me. I remember everything she told me even to this day. At the time, some of it didn’t make sense. But it does now. I loved her so much, Cam. She was such a warm, wonderful person.”

  Cam roused himself, his heart feeling every nuance of emotion, both for himself and for Molly and her desperately unhappy childhood. Turning, he captured one of her hands and squeezed it between his. “You must be exactly like your mother,” he told her in a raspy voice. “A very special person.”

  Molly avoided his burning stare, her hair acting as a curtain when she lowered her head to hide her feelings. “I’m glad I was here for you, Cam. You needed someone…anyone…to help you release your grief at losing your wonderful family.”

  Cam fought the urge to raise her hand to his lips and kiss it. Instead, he released it and placed his fingers beneath her chin, forcing her to look at him. There was such beauty in her green-gold eyes, such depth of understanding. “I think you missed your calling, angel. You should have been a counselor of some kind. I’ve been walking around with this time bomb inside me since the funeral, and no one—not the chaplain, not my best friends, not even my mother—could dig it out of me. But you did.”

  Shakily Molly tried to smile, but it hurt to do so. Cam’s ravaged features looked hauntingly vulnerable. She ached to lean those few inches forward and kiss him, kiss him and breathe life back into him. On some deep level, Molly knew she could eventually do that. The magic that sprang effortlessly between them when they were together could make that happen.

  “It was time, Cam, that’s all. If you were home right now and started talking to your mother about it, I’m sure you’d have cried with her instead.”

  He grazed her chin with his thumb. The ache to kiss those delicate, parted lips was almost too much for Cam. Forcing himself to take his hand away, he shook his head and held Molly’s luminous gaze.

  “Dodging and running again?” he taunted her gently.

  Molly gave him a startled look.

  Cam managed a slight smile. “Your father’s control over you has made you so unsure of yourself, Molly, that you don’t even realize your own strengths. You can’t even take an honest compliment.” To hell with it. Cam reached out and gripped her hand hard in his. “You just helped me through one of the worst times in my life. And I’m not about to let you continue to throw yourself to the wolves, Molly. I’m going to be here for you, the way you were for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Grimly he said, “You will.” With my help. Somehow, Cam knew he could show Molly what her father and brother were doing to her. He had her unequivocal trust. “Look, we’ve shared something rare, something good. Whatever’s between us works. You’ve helped me. Now I’m going to help you.”

  Molly shrugged. “Friends always help each other.” Cam was grateful, that was all. The newness of her love for him flowed through her. He didn’t love her. No. He saw what she’d done as an act of mercy on his behalf. His love was still tied up with the past. It hurt to admit it, but Molly refused to lie to herself.

  Friend wasn’t exactly the word Cam wanted to use with Molly. Even so recently after releasing the painful grief he’d carried so long, Cam was
beginning to understand what Molly really meant to him—to his newly awakened heart. “Yes,” he whispered hoarsely. “Friends help each other.“

  Chapter Nine

  “Bad news, Molly.” Lee Bard handed her the weekly flight assignment as he entered the computer room. Although no one else was in the room, he kept his voice low. “You’ve got Martin.”

  With a groan, Molly took the paper and looked at it. For two months, she’d been lucky and had every pilot but Martin. She wasn’t sure if it was because Cam had influence over those sorts of things or not. She’d asked him once, and he’d said only that the commandant made out the schedules.

  “Looks like my luck ran out,” she muttered unhappily.

  “Sorry. Martin’s hard on everyone.”

  “Yes, and at our expense, not his.” Molly knew her grades were slowly climbing. Right now, she was rated sixth out of eight engineering students. In order to graduate, she had to make third or fourth. She had three more months to prove her mettle.

  “Well, you’ve got the weekend to come up with a great flight test and the rest of the week to perfect it so Martin can’t blow holes in it and blame you,” Lee said, sitting down at another terminal. Friday afternoons were always quiet around the facility, as many instructors left early.

  Glumly, Molly sat at her computer, feeling her stomach begin to knot in anticipation. If only she could talk to Cam about this. In the two months since Cam had wept in her arms, there had been an incredible change in him. Everyone around TPS had noticed it. He smiled occasionally, and even joked from time to time in the classes he taught.

  She picked up her calculator, her enthusiasm dampened considerably by the news of being assigned to Martin. Well, Cam had been counseling her on how to become a better defender of her own turf—on her terms. At one time or another, all the pilots, with the exception of Dalton, had tried to blame their faults on her flight test instead of their own flying ability. And each time, Molly had been better able to defend herself and the test. Gradually she was getting respect from everyone.

  “Jeez, what bad timing,” she whispered, staring at herself in the monitor screen. But her confidence was steadily materializing. Part of it, she knew, was Cam’s quiet, shadowy presence in the background. He’d never openly defend her in a debrief. Instead, he gave her the courage to try the tools he’d taught her to use. Sometimes he’d smile at her afterward as they were filing out of the debrief room. At times like that, Molly felt as if she were walking ten feet off the floor.

  Rising, she packed her computer printouts, calculator and extra notebook paper into her briefcase. “I’m going home, Lee. I’ll see you Monday.”

  He raised his head from his work. “Yeah. Get some sleep, you hear?”

  With a shrug, Molly waved goodbye and left. Sleep was a privilege that got shunted aside for work. As she made her way to the parking lot, she met Cam, whose car was parked next to hers.

  “You look upset,” he noted.

  “I am. Martin’s assigned to me for next Friday’s flight.”

  Cam sauntered over to where she stood by the open door of her station wagon. The past couple of months had been hard on Molly, he thought. She’d lost some weight, and her face was usually drawn and pale. The only time he saw color in her cheeks was when she was either embarrassed or angry. Cam wanted to reach out and touch her.

  “I saw the list,” he said, instead. “Sorry, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “Why not much later?”

  He smiled, trying to give her hope. “Chin up, Molly. Better now than earlier. You’ve been working hard on developing some excellent assertiveness tactics with these pilots. They don’t run over you anymore.”

  “None of them have Martin’s barracuda personality, either.”

  With a sigh, Cam barely touched her cheek. “Hey,” he told her softly, “it’s not the end of the world. Go home, get a good night’s sleep and start work tomorrow morning. Use your weekend to good advantage.”

  “Always the tactical genius. I’m sorry, Cam, you didn’t deserve that shot. I’m just upset.”

  “No harm done,” he assured her. “I wish I could do more for you, but this is your battle to fight.”

  “I know,” she murmured tiredly. “It’s just that I’m exhausted by the past two months. I thought I knew what studying and working hard was all about, but TPS is hell.”

  “No argument from me.” Cam controlled his screaming need to help her—to hold her. Giving her a pat on the shoulder, he said, “I’ll see you Monday.”

  Molly nodded. Right now, the way she felt, she simply wanted to walk into Cam’s embrace and be held.

  “I’ll see you then,” she responded wearily, climbing into her car. As she drove off, Molly looked ahead to Friday. The next seven days would be focused on one half-hour flight. And Martin would be gunning for her. He wasn’t doing very well in class, and was marginal for making it to the top four slots by the end of the course. Chewing on her lower lip, Molly knew it was going to take everything she had to get even a halfway decent grade. Martin was going to be more than ready to blame her for any flight-plan infractions so he could lift his grade. If she got lower than an eighty percent, she’d slip back to seventh place in the ratings.

  “It can’t happen,” she whispered tautly. “It just can’t happen!” Her father was furious about her poor standings, anyway. And no matter what she did to try and explain how hard TPS was, he refused to accept it or her efforts.

  * * *

  Cam made the rounds in the facility Thursday night, since he had the duty and the key to lock up the building. Everyone had to be out of the building by 2100. It wasn’t a surprise to find Molly in the computer room, working hard on the program she would fly tomorrow afternoon with Martin.

  “Hey, time to quit,” he called, entering the air-conditioned room.

  Molly lifted her head. Her heart beat once to underscore the fact that it was Cam. He looked confident and alert—two things she presently was not. “Okay…”

  Frowning, Cam walked over to her terminal. “Look up,” he ordered.

  She lifted her chin.

  Cam’s frown deepened. “When did you sleep last?” There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked exhausted.

  “I don’t know. I think I got a couple of hours last night.” Molly shut the computer off and slowly leaned down and picked up the briefcase at her feet. “I’ve gone over this program two complete times this week. I’ve run it and rerun it on the computer,” she muttered. “I just want to make sure it’s right.”

  Cam’s heart twinged with concern. He compressed his lips. “You shouldn’t be spending that kind of time on such a simple flight program, Molly.”

  “I’m flying with Martin, remember? I want this program to be perfect. Last time I flew with him he accused me of having bad math computations. He got Vic Norton to check my printout and there were errors in it. I can’t understand it. I’d swear there weren’t any math errors. I’m not going to let it happen again.”

  Cam came around the terminal, his hands on his hips as he watched her dully gather all her materials. There was such vulnerability in Molly when she was tired. “You’re driving yourself into the ground,” he muttered.

  Molly rose, almost dizzy with exhaustion. “Cam, don’t get angry. I can’t handle it right now.”

  There was no one else in the building, so Cam gripped her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Angel, I wasn’t angry, just concerned.” He hadn’t mean to call her by his endearment for her, but Molly was so tired that she didn’t seem to realize he’d said it. “Look, go home and get a good night’s sleep. Will you do that for yourself?”

  “Cam,” she protested, “I can’t!” Molly pulled from his grip. If she didn’t, she thought, she would collapse into his arms and make a complete fool of herself. Learning to stand on her own two feet had been a painful lesson. She couldn’t afford to give up now.

  “You’re going home to check thi
s program again?” Cam asked in disbelief. She stood before him, a dazed look in her eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “Then give it to me, Molly.”

  “What?”

  “Dammit, you’re ready to keel over. You don’t know when to stop and rest.”

  Tears jammed into her eyes, but she fought them back. “You’re not taking my program away from me so I’ll rest! I’m not some little girl to be treated like—”

  “Whoa. I want the program, and I’ll check it for you.”

  “You’ll what?” Her voice cracked and went off-key.

  Cam smiled gently and brushed her cheek. “I admire you for making it this far without any help, Molly. You’re learning to apply a lot of new things under some rough circumstances. As a friend, I’d like to help you. Let me check your test. I’ll have it waiting for you on my desk tomorrow morning. Okay?”

  “Why are you doing this for me?”

  Taking her program from her briefcase, Cam muttered, “Because your heart’s bigger than your need to survive, Molly Rutledge. Now get out of here. I don’t want to see you stepping through that door until 0800 tomorrow morning. Understand?”

  Molly didn’t know whether to cry or to throw her arms around Cam in thanks. His voice was gruff with warmth, and she took a step back, rubbing her brow. “Yes…I understand.”

  Cam walked Molly to her car. The August evening was coming to a close and the humidity was high. It was a sultry summer night over the Chesapeake Bay area. Over the past week, Cam had watched in agony as Molly’s newfound spunk had deteriorated, then deserted her on learning that she had to fly with Martin. There was such defeat in her face. He leaned down, resting his hands on the sill of the open car window on the driver’s side.