by Geri Krotow
“Give me a hand, will you?” Gwen reached up for him and he stared at the innocent gesture.
Gwen’s gaze caught his when he hesitated.
The question in her eyes extinguished when she saw the heat in his. Her pupils dilated.
“Aw, hell, Gwen.”
He clasped her hand and in one movement had her up and against him. Still holding her hand, he wrapped his arm around her and tugged her hips closer to his. His free hand did what it’d wanted to do since she’d walked back into the house—he grasped the back of her head and pulled her to him.
“Oh...”
Drew pressed his lips to hers. He didn’t, couldn’t, let her say anything. He didn’t want to think.
He slowed down enough to relish the feel of her soft, full lips under his, to savor the pressure she gave back.
She slipped her tongue in his mouth, seeking his, and he was gone.
Lust had never died between them, only the trust to enjoy it without reservations. It’d been so long since she’d allowed him to touch her, since he’d allowed himself to reach for her, to enjoy all that was Gwen.
To make love to her.
She pulled her hand from his and slid both arms around him, holding tight. Giving him permission to feel her, touch her.
Her neck and collarbone were so delicate, so feminine. Her waist, tiny compared to her height, her skin smooth. He thrust his fingers under her T-shirt, pushed it up. He groaned when he finally had a breast in his hand, firm and soft and full...Her hands weren’t satisfied to stay at his shoulders and she explored him, as well. Heat rose between them. Drew felt as though he were on a sprint to finish the one-hundred-meter dash. He couldn’t stop. His erection, his need to be inside her, was exquisite torture.
Gwen expertly unfastened his pants and only when she held his arousal in her hand did he drag his mouth from hers.
Her flushed cheeks, closed eyes and her hand around his erection sent an unmistakable message.
“Gwen? Open your eyes, baby.”
Slowly, as if with reluctance, she did. He’d never forget her eyes as long as he lived. If today was his last day on the planet he’d choose to be with her.
“Is this what you want, Gwen? Are you sure you want this?”
Her eyes, hazy with lust, cleared. He saw the flash of mistrust before her body stiffened, before her fingers withdrew from his pants, before she placed her hands on his chest.
“We’re both under a lot of stress, aren’t we?”
“This isn’t about stress, Gwen.”
She shuddered, and he knew she was fortifying herself. “Sure it is, Drew. We’re two healthy, fairly young adults. We have a shared history that’s powerful. I survived hell for six months, and I miss my baby. You lost a patient, and you’re afraid you’ll lose your life’s dream. It’s only natural that we’d reach for each other.”
Gwen was making sense. He hated it.
* * *
GWEN TURNED AWAY and walked back out to the living room. She had to put some space between them. Not because she didn’t wanted to jump Drew’s bones and finish what they’d started. But because she did, so badly.
Their relationship wasn’t going anywhere; they’d both agreed on it. Sexual compatibility was never enough—not with two driven people like them. Even if they chose to enjoy each other in the moment, it would still end.
The sadness of it all blew her fragile control apart. She couldn’t let him see her tears. It wasn’t fair to him, not when he was faced with losing the clinic.
And it wasn’t fair to her. They weren’t going to be together any longer than it took for the case to be resolved, for the adoption to go through and for her to find a place to live while she finished out her squadron tour.
Two months, tops.
She’d already decided she’d take shore orders anywhere but here, to give her a decent amount of time to find a civilian job if she decided to resign her commission. Because if she couldn’t get shore orders for the rest of her time until retirement, next tour she was going to resign and give Pax the stability she and Drew had never had in their marriage. She couldn’t stay on Whidbey any longer, not after what she and Drew had shared since her return. Her heart couldn’t handle it.
No more deployments. No uncertainty.
Pax had had enough moving around and being dislocated in his short life. He deserved stability and security.
He couldn’t get to know Drew. Because Drew would become another loss for Pax.
For me, too.
She’d thought she’d finished grieving her marriage, thought she’d moved on, knew what was best for herself.
She’d been mistaken. She needed to move on, yes, but she owed it to herself to mourn her failed marriage and let it go.
And to let Drew go so he could find the love he deserved in his life. Being friends hadn’t helped either of them in the long run. Until now, when they needed each other.
Their timing had always been crappy.
“Here.” He handed her a glass of chilled pinot grigio, a favorite of hers since they were stationed in Italy for a shore tour all those years ago, when they’d both been active duty. She’d worked at the base outside Naples and he’d been on the NATO staff. On a quick overnight getaway from their responsibilities, they’d gone to Capri’s sister island, Ischia. It’d been mid-July and hotter than hell. The pinot grigio had quenched their thirst and cooled their libidos long enough to get them back to their hotel room.
“Thanks.”
She sipped the chilled wine and let the taste linger on her tongue. Concentrating on the complexity of the wine was better than thinking about that trip, when she’d lain topless by their hotel pool and then later on the pebble-strewn Mediterranean beach. It was commonplace for Europeans but not for her, not for an Academy grad who wanted to keep her spotless career pristine.
It had been heaven.
“Do you remember Ischia?”
He had to bring that up.
“I remember climbing the side of the rock mountain, going from waterfall to waterfall.”
“Mmm.” He sat on the sofa across from her and sipped his wine.
“You weren’t so enamored with all the springs and thermals.” She smiled. “Do you remember the looks you got?”
The locals had pointed and laughed at Drew’s Bermuda shorts swim trunks, since he was the most covered-up man on the resort island. The Italian men and international tourists tended to wear G-strings, the women often in topless bikinis.
“Your bikini was memorable.”
She dared a glance at him, knowing his eyes smoldered with frustration. He kept his lids downcast.
The drop in her stomach wasn’t disappointment. It was certainty—that they shared an unquenchable attraction, no matter what their marital or emotional status.
She wanted to throw her glass of wine against the woodstove and watch it shatter on the cast-iron furnace.
“I’m afraid my bikini days are over. I wouldn’t fit into that swimsuit again.” Well, she would once she gained her weight back.
“Stop it, Gwen. You’re more beautiful than ever.”
She caught her breath. After all the horrible fights they’d had in this room... All those nights of giving each other the cold shoulder.
If he hadn’t stopped them in the kitchen she’d have allowed him to make love to her.
As if none of the bad memories existed.
She cleared her throat, determined to change the subject. “Any news from the clinic?”
“Nothing. No clients, and I told Serena to stay home until things settle out.”
“What about Terri?”
“No need for her to come in with no clients.” He swirled the wine in his glass. “It’s for the best. This will make it easier on both of
them when the clinic closes.”
“Now it’s your turn to stop it, Drew. You’ll have even more clients once it’s proven Dottie died of natural causes.”
“I hope you’re right, Gwen. But I can’t depend on that.”
“What did your insurance company say?”
“They keep telling me the same thing—that clients and families of clients rarely sue physical therapists.”
“That makes sense, since you get to know each of your clients so well. You improved her quality of life so much.”
“Even so, the client doesn’t usually die.”
“What family does Dottie have here?”
“I know she has one son who teaches PE and coaches at the high school. Her daughter is an attorney who lives closer to Seattle. She has grandkids, too, some of whom live here. There’s a stepson in the mix, as well, her husband’s son that Dottie raised.” He kicked off his shoes and put his feet on the coffee table.
“The past month hasn’t been easy for either of us, I’d say. Maybe it’s supposed to make us more grateful or something.”
“No God of my understanding would be this spiteful, Gwen, even to me.”
Even to him?
“Don’t tell me you’re still carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, Drew. Are you still taking on all the guilt about our divorce?” He’d always accepted the blame for everything that went wrong between them, to the point that she’d accused him of being a martyr.
He shrugged but wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Not at all. It was the right decision for us. It doesn’t mean we can’t be kind to each other, like you said last night. But this situation is going to take a lot more than kindness to fix. It might even be unfixable.”
“Wait for the autopsy before you assume anything.”
“I’m hanging on by a thread, Gwen.” He muttered another earthier phrase under his breath.
She laughed. “I haven’t heard such navy raunch in months.”
“You used to hate it.”
“I would’ve given anything to hear one of the sailors swear a blue streak while I was out there.” Then maybe she would’ve been rescued a lot earlier. As it was, she’d survived the constant threat of rape while in the camp, saved Pax from that village laid to waste by the insurgents. Somehow she’d kept her sanity in order to save her baby.
It was memories of Drew that saved me.
“There’s no way of knowing how fast life can turn sour,” Drew said philosophically, apparently still talking about their marriage.
“No, but we didn’t appreciate what we had back then, either.”
Drew stared at her. “You think you’d appreciate it more now?”
“I’d like to think so. After my jaunt in the jungle, and now your tragedy, some things just aren’t as important to me as they once were.”
She prayed he didn’t ask her for more. Talking about how they’d matured was one thing, but she couldn’t handle the what-ifs. Today was all they had.
Today, she and Drew were friends. That was all she could count on.
“Tell me about your time in the PI, Gwen.”
She stood up. “Not now. Maybe once the autopsy results are in, and your life’s on an even keel again. But not tonight.”
She turned back to him on her way to the kitchen. “Oh, I forgot to mention something, but I ran into Opal at the garden center today, and it reminded me that I never told you she came by a couple of days after I got back.”
As she related the story, she realized it had been the same day Dottie died, and told him that.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you this sooner.”
“There was a lot more to worry about that day than Opal making one of her typical drop-ins. She doesn’t have a key to the house, Gwen. The back door must’ve been unlocked. You know how I am.”
“I do.” She smiled, and it was enough to shatter his determination to keep his distance from her.
They’d had so many fights about his refusal to lock doors. He’d claimed they lived in the “country,” so why bother? He should’ve been more worried about making sure Gwen felt safe.
“I’ve been gone a long time, Drew. I don’t expect you to have been a monk.”
He didn’t respond to that. “I’ll lock up when I leave for work tomorrow.”
“I’d appreciate it. I won’t be here too much longer. As soon as the adoption—”
He held up a hand. “I know, Gwen. As soon as the adoption clears, you’re out of here. I get it.”
He looked so defeated she didn’t argue with him.
Gwen walked into the kitchen and prepared the dinner she’d planned for them. Drew didn’t say much throughout the meal and excused himself to go to bed early.
She knew he wasn’t going to be sleeping any more than she was.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Gwen sipped her tea and wondered why she hadn’t corrected Drew. She’d meant to tell him that he didn’t need to worry about her request to help out with the adoption. She couldn’t possibly burden him now. A counselor could sign off on her health.
“Here.” Drew walked into the kitchen and slapped a shiny key on the counter next to Gwen’s mug of tea.
“What’s this?”
“A new house key. I changed the locks this morning.”
“You must have been up at the crack of dawn!”
“Maybe.”
“Any reason?”
“Just a hunch.”
“Does the hunch rhyme with ‘Opal’?”
“Yes. It doesn’t strike me as odd that Opal walked in uninvited that first day. She lets herself in a lot, leaves me leftovers from her coffee shop—pastries, cookies.”
“Your relationship with Opal, with anyone else, is just that, Drew. Yours. It’s none of my business.”
“Fine, but listen. Opal’s just a neighbor who once happened to work for me, Gwen. That’s it.”
“She has major hots for you, Drew.”
“She has the hots for any man who drives through her coffee shop.”
“She’s been after you since I can remember.” Gwen thought about the way Opal had walked into the house as if she’d owned it. It still didn’t sit well with her.
“She’s not important to me, Gwen. Your safety and my privacy are.” He nodded at the key. “Make sure you lock up, okay?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE HAD TO give Drew credit. He waited almost three weeks after she’d returned before he pounced.
“You’ve got to get back in the saddle, Gwen.”
“I’m not ready.”
He looked at her over his bowl of rice crisps. Sometime between when she’d left and now, Drew had switched from sugary cereals to rice crisps.
“Gwen, stop avoiding the inevitable. You’ve been holed up in this house for most of a month.”
“The doctors—”
“I don’t care what the doctors say. Sure, take six months off, whatever. But you thrive on being a leader, on being in the cockpit. You can’t expect to get better without having it in your life.”
She swallowed a gulp of coffee and winced when it hit her stomach, its acidity not mixing well with her nerves.
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever gone through before, Drew. I’ve already missed six months of my command tour. They’re doing fine without me. I see no point in going back for the remainder of the squadron’s shore time.”
“That’s the whole point. You have to go back. If you don’t, you’re letting the circumstances that put you in that godforsaken place run the show. You’re telling your team you’ve given up.”
“I failed them. I should never have ditched.”
“What?”
“I could have made it to Manila, Drew.
If I’d listened to the intel reports more closely, if I’d been more conservative in our flight profile, that bird might still be flying.”
“You’re playing God now, Gwen, and it’s not very becoming.” Drew stood up and rinsed out his bowl at the sink. “I may just have served out my minimum commitment but I was in the cockpit often enough to know that the P-3 is an old bird that turns into a witch at times. You should’ve had the P-8, but you were stuck with that old frame.”
“Doesn’t matter. It was flying fine for the entire workup to deployment.”
“Are you kidding? Is it worth the energy you’re spending to spit out this BS? Because it’s clear to me and any experienced naval aviator that you had no control over when that plane was going to get hit by a missile, much less fall apart. It happened to be on your watch, on your flight, on your mission. That’s the way the dice rolled.”
She knew Drew wasn’t just blowing smoke up her butt, as the junior officers were fond of saying. He was a man of deliberation and didn’t shy away from the truth as he saw it.
She also knew he’d always been her strongest supporter; their divorce hadn’t changed his professional esteem for her nor hers for him.
“They’re champing at the bit to see you, Gwen. Go back where you belong.”
The phone calls and meal drop-offs at their front door had started in earnest last week. After the initial few weeks of privacy she’d requested, the squadron didn’t hold back their love and support for her. There were no fewer than two dozen casseroles in the freezer and refrigerator, and the kitchen counter was covered with plates of cookies, banana bread, fruit trays and smoked salmon.
“We’re never going to eat all the food they’ve brought.”
“It’s not about the food, Gwen.”
Drew leaned over the breakfast counter toward her.
“Get back out there.”
* * *
GWEN KNEW DREW was right; she needed to get back to the squadron, back to work. But she couldn’t make herself drive farther than the main shopping area downtown.
Guilt over her reluctance to rejoin her teammates only served to depress her more. She found solace in the backyard while Drew was out at the clinic. He’d returned to his place of work in the face of an apparent unsolved murder. So what was her problem?