by Geri Krotow
Ro laughed. “Hopefully not as difficult.” She frowned and bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Gwen. You’ve been through a thousand plebe summers.”
“Worse.” It came out as a whisper. She hadn’t meant it to.
“How so?” Ro was genuinely curious, yet Gwen knew her friend the intelligence officer wasn’t asking about the actual rigors of the jungle, about the insurgents Gwen had run from or about Gwen’s specific survival tactics. Ro had been trained for the same rigors, and since she was still on active duty and the wing’s intelligence officer, she had full access to the message traffic that had described Gwen’s ordeal.
Ro wanted to know about Gwen’s heart.
“I had a lot of time to think,” she began. “Every night I walked as far as I could. I tried to get to Manila when I wasn’t holed up with Pax in that one-room hut. During the day it was too hot to move, too bright to risk being seen by the enemy.” She looked at Ro. “I know enemy might sound a bit extreme, but when I was out there, those insurgents were the enemy.” She shuddered as she remembered how frightened she’d been when she’d arrived at the village with Pax in her arms. The woman she’d eventually stayed with, who’d saved her and Pax, had seen her and ran up to her. In that instant Gwen thought she and the baby were goners. Even the most innocent-looking person could be a deadly informant.
Thank God her fears proved false.
“What I thought about the most was my life, of course, and how much I still wanted to accomplish. And my blessings. I’ve served my country, I married the love of my life. We ended up divorced, yes, but I did have him for a while. That’s more than a lot of people ever get.”
“Have you told Drew this?”
“I can’t, Ro. That would be like pulling an unfair trump card. If he and I are meant to get back together—” she shot Ro a warning glance “—it has to be on fair terms. Saying I thought of him like that while I was running for my life isn’t fair. It wasn’t his fault I was stranded in the jungle.”
“It wasn’t yours, either. It’s not about blame, hon. Listen to your heart.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“CONGRATULATIONS, GWEN. PAX’S adoption is official.”
Gwen sank into the easy chair, her cell phone at her ear. “That’s it?”
Councillor Tatem chuckled.
“Until you get to hold him in your arms, yes. He’s going to fly out with one of our FSOs, Foreign Service Officers, tomorrow. Is that soon enough?”
“No, I mean, yes! Oh, this is wonderful news. Thank you!” She’d hoped and prayed, but hadn’t expected it to go through so quickly.
“I thought I’d have to fly back to Manila to get him. I still can if you need me to.”
“No, no, it’s all legal the way it is. Let’s get him on U.S. soil with the least amount of fanfare, okay?” Darlene Tatem sounded as relieved as Gwen.
“Of course.”
She wrote down the details of the flight with shaky hands.
“Do you need any more signatures from me?”
“No.”
“What made it happen so fast?”
“Once we assured the Philippine officials that Pax is going to the person who rescued him—the person he’s already bonded with—they relented. There may have been some other negotiations going on, as well, but I’m not permitted to discuss them. No matter, Pax is your son.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I can’t thank you enough, Darlene.”
“It’s me, and the entire State Department, who need to thank you, Gwen. Your ability to survive what you did while saving a Filipino baby’s life has done more to strengthen U.S.-Philippine relations than anything else in a long while. The fact that you’re active-duty military says so much—ever since we pulled our military presence out of here, there’s been a PR hole that needed filling.”
“I’m only one person, but I appreciate it.”
“I’ll have my secretary email you the flight details. All you need to do is go directly to customs at SeaTac. Congratulations!”
“Thank you!”
Gwen hung up and started yelling and dancing around the kitchen. Pax was hers! She was going to have her baby back in her arms in fewer than two days.
“Woooooo,” Rosie chimed in, her wings outstretched as she strutted about the top of her cage.
Pain shot up Gwen’s foot as she stubbed her bare toe on the corner of the kitchen cabinets.
“Oof.” She hopped to the center of the room and sank down on the floor.
Nappie came up and licked her face.
As she massaged her toe, her pounding heartbeat slowed to normal, as did her thoughts.
She needed to make a trip to the Base Exchange to pick up baby things, a car seat being the most important.
You need to call Drew.
He’d expect her to move out sooner rather than later.
Tell him you’ve changed. You know you belong with him.
If only she’d recognized her feelings for Drew earlier, before Dottie’s death...
What about their night together? Had it really been goodbye?
“It’s never easy, is it?”
Rosie replied with a wolf whistle.
* * *
“I’M NOT GOING to SeaTac with you, Gwen.”
Her tears of joy threatened to turn bitter at his words.
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” He ran his fingers through his hair, his stance wide and defensive. Chirping birds flitted by them as they stood on their deck overlooking the backyard twelve feet below.
“You’ve known Pax longer than anyone. If I show up at the airport with you, I might scare him. My presence would only add to the chaos of his welcome home.”
She gazed out at the grass and the trees several hundred feet beyond. They’d been so lucky to find this piece of land when they’d decided to have a house built. A mountain and water view in front of the house and a forested backyard. It all seemed like a hundred years ago.
“You’re okay with this?” He saw her smile.
“Remember when we found this land, Drew? We had no idea what lay ahead of us.”
“No one ever does, Gwen. It’s called life. You haven’t answered me. Do you get what I’m saying?” She got it, all right. He didn’t want Pax to have even the slightest chance to think of Drew as a father.
He hadn’t changed his mind.
“Sure. You’ve got enough on your plate, Drew, without adding a baby boy to the mix.”
A dandelion puff of seeds floated up and over their heads, caught on the Whidbey breeze.
“He won’t get in your way,” she promised. “I’ll start looking for a new place as soon as I can.” She turned to fully face him as she leaned on the redwood deck railing.
“You don’t have to do that, Gwen. That’s not what I was getting at. Take your time. I’m hardly home as it is.” Drew shook his head and looked out at the trees, avoiding her gaze.
“If I could just find out who killed Dottie, I could put it behind me. Have a chance at keeping the clinic. Otherwise...”
“There isn’t an otherwise. You’ll find Dottie’s killer, I know it.” As she said that, she realized she did believe they’d discover who’d instigated Dottie’s death, if not outright murdered her.
“Even if we do, I’ve probably lost most of my clients, and it’ll take a long time to build back up after this. I’d have to attract all new clients, people who don’t know about Dottie.”
“So what? You might be limited to the newly arriving navy folks, but we’re coming up on the big turnover.” During the summer months, PCS— Permanent Change of Station—meant that navy families arrived on Whidbey as outgoing sailors left.
“Exactly. Do you really think this will work itself ou
t, Gwen? In any case, I think I’ll have to wait until next summer, and a year’s too long for any business to be in the red.”
“How many times since we’ve known each other have we thought we were done, whether it was at the Academy when we were trying to pass EE...” She smiled as she referred to the electrical engineering exams. “Or later on, in flight school, when you were sure you failed a sortie? What about when we didn’t think we’d get stationed together, but then we did?”
“What about when we decided to live apart—and it all fell apart?”
His sharp retort cut deep. “That’s different. We had control over that and we made the wrong decision.”
“Was it really the wrong decision? Or did we both know at some level that we weren’t going to make it?”
She let out a breath. “I’ve wondered that, too. What I keep coming up against is that I didn’t expect us to ever end. No matter how bad it got—it’d always been Gwen and Drew. But once we were away from the squadron and had time to figure out who we were as a couple, as opposed to what everyone expected, it got...hard. We didn’t know how to do things together without the navy telling us our next move.”
His eyes were bright as he met hers.
“You have done a lot of thinking about this.”
“Of course I have. And it wasn’t all in the jungle, either, or because I had nothing else to do. I wanted to figure it out, Drew. I had to know if I could’ve done anything differently.”
“And?”
“Yeah, I could have, we both could have. I could’ve taken orders here instead of downrange between my department head and command tours. That would’ve kept us together while you finished your Ph.D. Closer, at least.”
He shook his head.
“I was living in Seattle. It still would have been a commute on the weekend, for one of us, anyway, if you’d stayed here.” After Drew was admitted to the University of Washington’s doctorate program in Seattle, they’d promised they’d commute to see each other on weekends whenever possible. It proved impossible most weekends as Gwen had been in Afghanistan, assigned to the command staff.
After that she took ten-month orders to the National Military Defense College in D.C.
“The orders to D.C. were kind of forced on me, you know that.” She bit her lip. “But I didn’t have to accept them, did I?”
“No more than I had to finish my courses. Look, Gwen, we were hell-bent on our professional goals. And I was putting a lot of pressure on you to have kids, to boot. Especially once you were done with your time in the war.”
“You know I couldn’t risk having a baby when I was hoping for command?” She refused to be the mom leaving her kid to go to war.
And now she was about to be one—Pax was her son.
“I know. Not everyone gets the chance to command, even fewer women. I never wanted to take that from you. But—”
“You wanted a family and you didn’t think I’d ever be ready.”
“Yes.”
“That’s fair, Drew. Not mean or selfish, it’s just the way it is.”
The breeze waved across the tips of the fir trees and rustled the rhododendrons. They’d lost the last of their blooms since she’d returned. Summer was upon them.
As was her change of command.
“I feel guilty because I’m glad my command tour’s almost over. I don’t ever want to worry about leaving Pax.”
* * *
DREW BREATHED IN and relished his surroundings—the redwood deck, the unique Whidbey aroma of pine needles and salt air, the roses that had opened up yesterday in their ceramic pots on the deck. And Gwen.
Gwen’s scent was seared in his brain, since the first time he’d kissed her. They’d been so young, so greedy.
He didn’t feel any less greedy as he stood next to her now, listening to her plans for her new family that didn’t, couldn’t, include him. But he felt ancient, wise beyond anything he’d ever imagined.
He’d faced losing her twice already. He had to make this work.
“Why would you feel guilty, Gwen? You’ve earned every minute of your life—in spades. The navy should be paying you for even staying on active duty. You could opt out, you know.”
“I know. It’s a definite possibility if I don’t get a three-year shore tour, with an option to extend.”
“With all the budget cuts, they’re more than happy to keep people in one place, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve done well until now, but the truth is, I haven’t really commanded my squadron on deployment. I was just two months into it, and now there’s only a month and a half left. The majority of my time’s been spent saving my own ass from young rebels.”
“Young rebels who wouldn’t have thought twice about putting a bullet through your head, after they’d raped and tortured you.” He walked to the railing and gripped it. He didn’t want her to see how badly he was shaking. The sheer force of his rage at the idea of anyone hurting her was bigger than he was.
“They didn’t, and I’m here.” She put a hand on his forearm.
The warmth of her touch broke through his anger, his deepest fears that she’d been killed.
He let out a harsh laugh. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation, and it looks like everything I worked for, used up our savings on, is going to go down the drain. And yet I don’t give a damn about any of it, as long as you made it out alive.” He stopped before he could spit out more. She didn’t need to hear how he’d never stopped loving her. Not now, when her dream of getting Pax back was so close.
He heard her take a deep breath. “Drew, how do you think I got through my time in the jungle?”
“Please, Gwen, don’t patronize either of us.”
“No, listen—it’s true. I thought of you each and every moment. I heard your voice in my head, telling me what I needed to do, to remember my SERE school training. I even had dreams of us back at the academy, going through plebe summer. Remember when we had to do the shoring drill? Where we had to stand in that awful tank and stop up the leaks as they poured water into it? You were right behind me, and just when I was going to pack it in, you gave me a shove and told me to keep going. You held my arms on that damned piece of wood so our squad would win.”
Her eyes swam with tears that ran down her cheeks, tears he wasn’t sure she was even aware of. He wiped her face, then pulled her close.
“Shh. It’s okay, you’re safe.”
She pulled back and pounded a fist on his chest.
“I know I’m safe, Drew, dammit! Will you ever let someone, let me, give you a compliment? Let me thank you for getting me through my months in the jungle, the darkest time of my life. It was almost as dark as, as dark as...” She started to hiccup, trademark Gwen when she was overwrought.
“As what?” He braced himself to hear her cry about her fears over losing Pax.
“As when we decided we were done.”
He stood still, not wanting to believe she’d said the words.
“I thought you wanted the divorce, Gwen.”
“I did—I felt it was best for you at the time, and for me. We’d tortured each other long enough with all the accusations. We both carried too much guilt and self-blame for letting it all go to hell, didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
He wanted to hug her, to hold her, but it had to be Gwen’s move. Just as it’d been her move to get out. He’d made the first move the other night, when he took her to their lodge and made love to her. He’d let her think it was goodbye, and the most fearful part of him had believed it was.
If they reunited now, it had to be with hope.
“I don’t want you to think I’m looking for a father for Pax. He’d do fine with me.”
“Of course he would.”
“But that’s not
the point, Drew. I won’t do fine without you. I need you.”
It wasn’t love, it wasn’t a promise. He didn’t have hope to give her yet. But this had to be enough for now.
* * *
WHEN DREW LEANED IN and kissed her, Gwen closed her eyes and opened her mouth to his without hesitation. It would’ve been better if they’d had this conversation either before or way after she got the word on Pax, but their timing had never been perfect.
“Gwen, I need you, too, but I don’t have anything to give you except this...” He clasped her shoulders and drew her against him. Her breasts were crushed against his chest and she felt her nipples go taut at the friction. She clutched his arms, off balance with the ferocity of his kiss.
“Maybe we should go inside,” she whispered as he kissed her neck.
“No one can see us here on the back deck.” His voice was low and his naked need for her put Gwen’s focus entirely on him.
The deck was covered with a canvas awning and they’d furnished it with rustic wood furniture, except for the long, rattan-framed outdoor sofa they’d purchased when they moved in. They’d bought it with thoughts of future social occasions at their house, but they’d found out the night it was delivered just how comfortable the cushions were.
Gwen shimmied out of her jeans and let them drop to the deck as she lay back on the red cushions. The weather-proof canvas scratched her bare skin but that only served to heighten her awareness of Drew as he, too, removed his pants and joined her. They lay belly to belly, chest to chest on the wide sofa as they kissed.
“Finally.” Gwen exhaled a breath of relief as Drew freed her breast from her bra and bent his head toward it. When he sucked on her nipple, she rolled her hips against him and his erection burned into her belly. She squirmed up higher, so that her pelvis was against his, against his hardness.
“Do you like that, sweetheart?” His fingers, his hands, were everywhere as he lovingly attacked her with passion and deliberate strokes of his tongue.
“Kiss me, Drew.” She pulled his head up to hers, and looked at him.
His eyes were glazed with desire for her but alert with—