They gathered themselves, found the kapok giant, bent down, opened the vine curtain. Two shining eyes looked out of the darkness. Jack opened his arms and Christmas lurched into them.
Cass saw tears on her soldier’s face.
They carried the small boy through the savannah grasses growing high in a strip cleared for border patrol, a no-man’s-land between Ivory Coast and Kigali.
Spotlights suddenly swung onto them, and an order was barked for them to stand still. Soldiers approached with weapons pointed at them.
Cass and Jack put their hands in the air and Jack called out in the native language. “We come in peace!” he yelled. “We need help for a small boy!”
More spots flared to them. A jeep engine started, and there was yelling as more troops emerged and men encircled them.
“Must’ve heard your shooting,” he whispered to Cass. “They were waiting for us.”
“United States Army?” A huge man in a maroon beret demanded, scanning Jack’s military gear.
“I got separated from my team while evacuating the embassy of the United States,” he said, knowing the Ivory Coast government was sympathetic and had organized a staging area near the ocean.
“Who is the child?”
“The child is an orphan from a small village. He needs medical attention. We need to get him to the U.S. staging camp.”
“And the woman?”
He turned, looked at Cass. “This woman,” Jack said, “is my wife.”
Chapter 14
December 25, 0555 Zulu
After the Cote d’Ivoire army medic had taken a look at Christmas, treated his dehydration and tended to Jack’s wounds and Cass’s cuts, they’d put Christmas to bed in a cot in one of the military tents at the border camp. With the help of a sedative, he’d gone down like a little log.
They’d all be flown to the U.S. staging base later in the morning.
Meanwhile, Cass and Jack sat next to a fire in the camp, sipping brandy one of the soldiers had poured for them. In silence they watched the African dawn arriving along the horizon in a violent streak of orange. The sounds of the jungle rose in a raucous crescendo as the daylight crept over the land. Far below on the plain, three giraffes ran along a curving, coffee-brown river.
Jack reached for Cass’s hand. “Remember how different it looked for us Christmas Day nine years ago?”
She felt his warmth, the ring. Nine years ago, Christmas Day, they’d been on their honeymoon in the Colorado Rockies, snowbound in a small lodge, a fire crackling in the room.
Lights had twinkled on a real fir.
They’d made love in front of the fire.
The scent, she remembered it well—real log fire, pine needles. Jack. The fresh cotton sheets. The croissants, coffee.
She remembered how Jack had stroked the small swell of her pregnant tummy.
Cass closed her eyes, allowing it all to wash over her. Her eyes filled with moisture and her heart hurt, but it was a beautiful hurt. Jack had shown her that she needn’t have been so afraid of this kind of hurt.
She tightened her fingers around Jack’s. “Yes,” she whispered, “I remember. Every little detail.”
He squeezed her hand back. Thinking how warm and naked she’d been in his arms. And how ironic that even with all those trappings of Christmas back home, he’d never quite understood the true meaning of it all, and of life, until now, here under this African dawn, on this particular Christmas Day.
How incredible that something so beautiful, something so pure, so right, could grow out of the darkness they’d fled.
“I’ve missed you, Cass. God, I’ve missed you.”
Jack saw the tears glistening on her cheeks, and his chest ached with love, poignant happiness. Somehow they’d both redeemed themselves. Somehow this trip through the jungle had helped them both accept their losses and their mistakes. And it had brought them back together. In a stronger bond than ever, a more adult one.
“Do you think we could try again, Cass, one day, one small step at a time?”
She was silent for a long moment, watching a flock of pelicans fly over the trees. “Why are you really here, Jack,” she answered with a question of her own. “In Africa?”
He knew what she was asking. She was thinking it had to be more than mere coincidence that he’d been posted to Kigali. He turned away, sat silent for a long time, watching the sky change. “Because I knew you were here,” he said quietly. “And I could never quite let you go. I put in for this tour.” He paused. “Hell knows, Cass, maybe I just wanted to be near. Maybe…I thought I could save you. From yourself. For myself. Mostly I wanted a second chance.”
Emotion thickened Cass’s throat as she felt that warm gold wedding band of promise, a reminder of her hope, on his finger, and she thought about that crumpled photo in his breast pocket. He’d never given up when she had.
That was Jack, stubborn to a fault. And she loved him for it, faults and all.
“I’d like that,” she whispered. “More than anything.” She hesitated. “And Jack…I’m sorry. For everythi—” He placed two fingers on her lips.
“Shh,” he said. “We take with us only the good memories from now, and we move forward.”
She nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks.
He tilted her chin up, the gold sunlight catching her skin, painting her hair flax, and they kissed as Christmas Day dawned bright in the African jungle, amidst a rising cacophony of sounds as raw and magical and more beautiful right now than any Christmas carol Jack had ever heard.
He stood, taking her hand, lifting her to her feet, and he led her back to the tent, where they made love.
Somehow in saving Christmas, the little boy had in turn brought hope, a second chance, and he'd saved them.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6911-2
COVERT CHRISTMAS
Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
OPEN SEASON
Copyright © 2010 by Marilyn Pappano
SECOND-CHANCE SHERIFF
Copyright © 2010 by Linda Lucas Sankpill
SAVING CHRISTMAS
Copyright © 2010 by Loreth Beswetherick
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