Navy Rules

by Geri Krotow

  “Nothing to be sorry about.” He was still on his haunches, his hands on her thighs. His eyes were unreadable as he blocked the remaining light from the fire.

  “I can’t see your face at all. Did you mind doing—?”

  “No, Win,” he interrupted. “I love taking care of the girls.” He paused. “I’d love to take care of you, too, Winnie.”

  “I thought you finally got it, Max. You’ve been a complete gentleman all weekend.” She heard the teasing note in her voice. And the huskiness that had nothing to do with the wisps of smoke from the smoldering fire.

  “I do get it. That’s what’s got you so messed up.” He lifted one hand from her thigh and stroked her cheek. It was like striking a match to a kerosene lamp. “You want this—” he moved his hand from her cheek to cup her breast “—as much as I do.”

  “I do.” She leaned in and placed her hands on either side of his face and pulled him down until his lips were touching hers. “Max, I need you to make love to me.”

  “I think I can manage that.” His whispered reply ended abruptly when his tongue traced her lips, then entered her mouth with an excruciating slowness that sent a tremor of need through Winnie. She was up and out of her camp chair.

  Her momentum forced Max onto his back on the soft dirt.

  She straddled him and kissed him as if he were the last man on earth. Max was the last man, the only man, for her, and this was where she wanted to be.

  In his arms.

  Max grabbed her hips and pushed, positioning her pelvis directly on his erection. Even through their jeans, the contact shot flashes of delight behind Winnie’s closed eyes.

  He reached up and held her head to keep her lips on his, then rolled them both over. His hands still cradled her head, his chest crushed her breasts and the weight of his hips prompted her to wrap her legs around him.

  When Max stopped kissing her, Winnie opened her eyes. He stared at her, his eyes reflecting the dancing flames from the campfire, his face alight.

  “I love you, Winnie.”

  She couldn’t deny his declaration or fight her response. She pulled him back to her, and this time she teased his lips with her tongue, kissed him on his eyelids, his nose, his strong jaw.

  Max groaned. “Let’s get in the sleeping bag, Win.”

  “We can’t go in the cabin, Max.”

  Max smiled in the dim light. “We don’t have to. I’ve got a sleeping bag in the truck.” He rolled off her, and she felt an immediate chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. She needed Max to feel complete, alive.

  You haven’t been fully alive until now.

  She blinked, sat up, looked around. Night had fallen while she and Max kissed. There were countless stars that blinked down from the deep plum sky, framed by the tips of fir trees that surrounded them. The log cabin’s windows, with a small light inside, looked inviting. She saw Sam’s silhouette where he lay at the front screen door, guarding the girls.

  All this beauty, her girls, a man who wanted to make love to her. Not just have sex, but make love. Stay with her and the girls. Provide for them.

  He was her anchor.

  She sought him out in the dark. She heard the car door close, and then his tall figure was back in view. How had she resisted all of this for so long? How had she convinced herself that she couldn’t have Max as her lover and certainly not as her life partner?

  He smiled, a smile that was genuine but short-lived. Max was a man on a mission.

  He rolled out the sleeping bag. He turned and looked at her as she sat on the ground.

  “Are you going to watch me or make love to me?”

  “Both.” She stood, but didn’t go right to him. Instead, she raised her shirt over her head and tossed it on a camp chair.

  Max was silent, but she heard him take a breath.

  Winnie maintained eye contact with him as she pulled her bra straps down, releasing the cups. When her breasts were free she unhooked the bra and it joined her shirt.

  She kicked off her sneakers, then unbuttoned her jeans and shimmied out of them. Her panties were a practical bikini cut but from Max’s reaction they could have been a diamond-studded thong. He drew her to him and bent his head to suckle her breasts.

  “Oh, Max.” She bit her lip to keep from screaming out her need. The girls and Sam were quiet, asleep. She didn’t want to change that.

  Max made short work of her panties and with no warning put his hand, his fingers, inside her. Her wetness clamped onto him and the resulting orgasm made Winnie cling to his shoulders. Her knees sagged against his legs as she whimpered into his neck.

  She couldn’t catch her breath before Max urged her down on the quilted bag and tore off his clothes. Winnie would have enjoyed undressing him but they were beyond seduction.

  He put on a condom and joined her on the ground, enveloping her with his musk, her own scent still on his fingers.

  “Win…” He filled her with one thrust and she felt the start of another climax. But he wouldn’t let her come again that easily—he made her work for it. He shifted over her and took his time, alternating deep thrusts with shorter, less satisfying ones that brought a scream to her throat, a scream she knew would erupt if he didn’t finish, he didn’t stop torturing her.

  “Max, please, please.”

  “Please what, Winnie?”

  “Please…make…me…”

  “Come?” He thrust hard and so deep that she thought she felt their hipbones touch. He swallowed her scream with his mouth, his tongue and lips taking in her passion as he let go of his own. Never before had Winnie actually lost all sense of time and space in a man’s arms.

  With Max, she did.

  * * *

  “I WAS AFRAID YOU’D get bruised but I couldn’t hold back, Win. Are you okay?” He felt stones and sticks through the sleeping bag as he lay with Winnie close beside him, her head against his shoulder.

  “I’m more than okay, Max. I’m in complete bliss. Shh, don’t talk. This is perfect.”

  He laughed and pressed her closer to his side. “Your skin is the softest thing I’ve ever felt.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Win?”

  “Shh.”

  “No, Win, we need to talk about this, once and for all. Work things out.”

  She grew still. Fear sliced a tremor into his chest.

  “Work what out? We seem to be doing just fine.”

  “I’m serious. I want us to be more.”

  Quiet.

  Then a long, martyred sigh. “I suppose we can figure it out. I have been rather unyielding on the idea of making this ‘more,’ haven’t I?”

  She rose up on her elbow and looked at him. Her eyes caught the last glimmer of light from the embers of the waning fire. “This is hard for me, Max. I’m not good at change or compromise.”

  “Let me help you.”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her.

  Hours later he woke her in the predawn and made love to her as if both their lives depended on it. Slow, purposeful. He wanted her to know he’d be true to his word and be not only a father to the girls but also the man she needed.

  * * *

  WINNIE WOKE TO THE SMELL of coffee and to aching muscles. She snuggled deeper into the sleeping back, wanting just a few more minutes of warmth, of Max.

  He was gone. She opened one eye and saw him with the tin coffeepot, boiling water on the portable propane stove. He was completely dressed so she quickly got her own clothes on.

  After she’d used the campsite restroom, she walked back to the cabin, smiling at him. It was still early for the girls, thank God. The fresh air and constant activity of the past two days had caught up with them last night.

  “Hey.” She stepped up behind him and slid her arms around his waist, pressing her body against him.

  He grabbed her hands and turned around. She anticipated his kiss but instead he simply stood there, watching her.

  “What?”

  “I have to tell yo
u something, Win.”

  “What, Max? You have another child? Another woman? What?”

  His lips twitched. “No, nothing like that.” He sighed. “I’m in love with you, Winnie. You have to trust that I know what I’m doing and that I’d never do anything to hurt you or the girls.”

  Her stomach squeezed and she took a step back. “But you’re still determined to start your airline,” she muttered. “Still determined to put yourself in danger.”

  “Flying is what I do—it’s in my blood.” His words were spoken quietly, but they severed the newfound bond of trust and love between them.

  “I can’t deal with this right now, Max.”

  “Don’t. Give it some thought. There’s too much at stake here.”

  She stared at him. What he said made sense. She ought to think carefully about it, not panic.

  “Mom!”

  Maeve’s cry ended the conversation. With a last glance at Max, Winnie took a deep breath.

  “I’m right here, sweetheart.” She went to Maeve.

  * * *

  SHE COULDN’T DO IT.

  She waited a week before she forced herself to call Max and ask to meet him. At a neutral place—not at either of their homes.

  They met at the Coffee Klatch again.

  “I can’t, Max,” she said with virtually no preamble. “I can’t put myself through it again. You can tell me a thousand times that you’re a safe pilot, that you’d never risk your life in bad weather, whatever. But like you said, it’s in your blood to be a risk-taker. It’s who you are. And it’s in my blood never to go through that kind of anxiety again. I can’t function under those circumstances. Krista and Maeve deserve more from me. You deserve more, Max.”

  “They deserve a father. You deserve a husband.”

  She couldn’t respond, couldn’t bring herself to look into his eyes. Until he said, “Ultimately, it’s your call, Winnie. It always has been. I’ll continue to be part of the girls’ lives, but we can’t do as much with them together. It’s just…too hard.”

  At last, she glanced up from the Formica table that stood between them and was arrested by the expression on his face. His eyes were red-rimmed with proof of a sleepless night and the gray tinge to his skin reminded her of how he’d looked when Sam first started spending time with him.

  “Has this triggered your PTSD?”

  “PTSD?” He grunted. “Honey, PTSD has nothing on my broken heart.” He let it sit there a minute before he visibly gathered himself and sat up straight. His face revealed no emotion.

  “Thanks for at least giving us a chance, however brief it might have been.” He stood and pulled his khaki cover out of his belt.

  “I’ll pick up the girls for soccer practice later today. You don’t have to come out. Just have them ready to go at five-thirty.”

  He turned and strode out of the coffee shop. Winnie waited for the wash of relief, a lessening of the knot in her stomach. It didn’t happen.

  “I’ve come clean, and I’m doing what’s right for me and the girls. No more pleasing everyone else.” She whispered the words to herself. No one else was in the café at this hour; it was the lull before school let out and teenagers and elementary kids’ moms stopped in for a shot of energy.

  She steeled herself to look out the picture window and saw Max’s retreating back as he walked through the parking lot toward his Jeep. She watched a petite woman get out of a small dark car she’d parked next to Max’s. They started talking to each other.

  She recognized Sandy, a woman Max had been involved with on and off for years, before he went away to war.

  The bile that rose in her gut wasn’t from jealousy. It was from knowing how Sandy felt as Max talked to her.

  Like she was the only woman in the world.

  * * *

  “SO YOU’RE OKAY WITH all of this? Even when he comes to the house to get the girls?” Robyn popped another Gerbera daisy from its seed pot and placed it in the terra-cotta-style planter she’d bought as a surprise for Winnie.

  “Of course I am. I love daisies.”

  Robyn cast her an exasperated look. “Funny, sis. You know what I’m talking about. Max. And not being with him. Heck, you two act like perfectly civilized divorced parents. He picks the kids up, brings them home. You drop them off with him for a weekend here and there. Doesn’t it kill you to see him and not jump him?”

  Winnie handed Robyn an English ivy plant. “I think this will look nice next to the orange daisy.”

  “Mmm. Answer the question, Winnie.”

  “What do you want me to say? Am I lonely? Sure, sometimes. Do I wish I could spend time with Max? Of course. Am I going to? No. I’m not setting myself up for another crisis in my life.”

  Robyn put down her trowel and rested her hands, still in gardening gloves, on her knees as she squatted on the deck.

  “Your life is a crisis, Winnie. You have your destiny staring you in the face and you’re turning it down.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that my destiny is to be alone?”

  “No, it hasn’t. Do you want to know why? Because you attract friends. You are a loving, beautiful woman. And you’ve been blessed with two men in your lifetime who are willing to love you for you.” Robyn took off the muddied canvas gloves and wiped her forehead. “For such an intelligent woman, you sure are stupid at times.”

  “Thanks a lot.” She felt a wave of exhaustion—and sadness. “I’m all for the girls having a father figure. I’m not even against having male companionship from time to time. I just don’t have it in me to lay it all on the line again. I know Max is going to do whatever he needs to stay in the girls’ lives, and I’m grateful for that. But let’s face it, Robyn. If it weren’t for Maeve—and okay, Krista, too, at this point—Max would’ve been out of here. I’d never see him. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to be only my friend. I’ve said no to being—”

  “You say that like it’s a crime!” Robyn burst out. “Of course he wants to be more than a friend. He is more than a friend.”

  “No, he isn’t. He can’t be, Robyn.” Her headache was going to blossom into a full migraine, she knew it.

  “Newsflash, sis. ‘Friends’ don’t help you raise your kids practically 24/7. A friend listens to you, does you favors, but a friend doesn’t get you pregnant and then still want to make love to you and—oh, yeah, want to spend the rest of his life with you. Max is the answer to what you’ve been missing. He challenges your control-freak habits, he lets the girls go wild and have fun and he wants to do whatever it takes so you’ll see him as more than a friend or fill-in parent.”

  “Are you done yet?”

  “No. I want to know what the hell you’re waiting for, Winnie. What will it take for you to realize that the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow is Max?”

  “I’m not waiting for anything, Robyn. I’m living a solid, responsible life.”

  “You’re not living, Win. You’re surviving.” Her words hit Winnie in the stomach.

  “Stop now, Robyn. Put down your shovel and step away from the hole.”

  Robyn didn’t even offer a ghost of her usual grin.

  “Winnie, you’re my sister and I love you. But you’re the biggest coward ever. Surviving can look really nice. But it doesn’t keep you warm at night, it doesn’t nourish your dreams. And it doesn’t teach your kids to have dreams of their own.”

  “I’m going to remind you of this when you’re having your next mommy crisis.”

  “I’m not going to let up on this until you see that you deserve more than what you’re allowing yourself to settle for.”

  Winnie squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples. She felt Robyn’s kiss on the crown of her head.

  “I love you, sis. I’m here for you. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I just played along with your disastrous life-planning.”

  “Thanks, sis.” Winnie’s head and stomach hurt too much to argue.

  “Take a couple of ibuprofen and get some re
st.”

  “Thanks.”

  After Robyn left, Winnie sat in the deck lounger for a long while, eyes closed, breathing in the cleansing aroma of the fir trees. She was relieved to be alone. She needed the time to think.

  But thinking only took her back to what Robyn had said, and she was so done thinking about her relationship with Max. Let Robyn claim she was a coward. At least her heart would remain intact. Her daughters’, too, as much as Max’s situation would allow. And the girls had a stability they’d never have if Tom had lived and the Navy moved him every couple of years.

  Her stifled laugh ended in a sob. If Tom were still here, she’d never have fallen in love with Max, and she wouldn’t have Maeve.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TWO WEEKS AFTER HER conversation with Robyn, three weeks after the fateful camping trip, Winnie walked into the N.A.S. Whidbey Navy Relief office. She was going to meet with a caseworker to see how many clients Sam could take on in the next couple of months. Max’s official work with Sam had been over weeks ago and she needed the distraction of new clients.

  The air outside was still, a bit unusual for Whidbey Island at this time of year. Since the island was poised at the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, there was always some sort of breeze coming in from the Pacific.

  “Hi, Kat.” She smiled at the receptionist, who gave her a little wave from her perch behind the curved counter. Kat was busy, on the phone, but Winnie knew where to go.

  As she walked toward the caseworker’s office, a tall man strode toward her.

  “Winnie! Nice to see you again. You remember me, don’t you? I’m boss’s friend, Miles.”

  “Boss? Oh, you mean Max.”

  “Yes, I meant Max.” He grinned like a schoolboy caught doing something with fireworks. “I can’t call him Max, you know. He’ll always be ‘boss’ to me.”

  She leaned her weight on one foot. “Why is that, Miles? Why is Max your boss?”

  He laughed. “Oh, no, he’s not my boss. I mean, I’ve never worked for him. We didn’t get to know each other until we were both back from downrange.” He didn’t have to fill in the rest—Winnie knew. They’d met in rehab, after they’d both survived horrific ordeals.