With his arms around her and her nose buried against his uniform blouse, Donna gave in briefly to the urge to be held. For most of her life her father had been there when she needed him. Ready to do battles on her behalf and right all the wrongs done to her.
She just wished he could fix this, too.
But he couldn’t.
No one could.
“Daddy,” she whispered, “you don’t understand.”
“I understand you’re both being stubborn. And stupid.”
She sniffed and confessed her secret. She had to tell someone. “I’m pregnant.”
Taking her by the shoulders, he held her at arm’s length, surprise etched on his features. “Are you sure?”
She nodded and silently cursed the solitary tear that had defied her to roll down her cheek.
“Does Jack know?”
“No,” she said sharply and moved away from her father’s gentle touch. “And he’s not going to. Not for a while, anyway.”
“You can’t keep this from him, Donna,” he said hotly. “A man has a right to know when he’s going to be a father.”
She knew all that. And she planned to tell him. In a few months maybe. Or after the baby was born. Just not now. At the moment they both needed time and distance to recover from the charade of their marriage before they tried to work together as single parents.
“I plan to tell him,” she countered. “Sometime soon. A month or two maybe. Not now.”
“Why the hell not?” Tom Candello’s voice lifted in outrage. He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’re walking out on the bargain you two made and keeping the fact of his child from him? What’s come over you, Donna?”
She snapped. “What’s come over me?” she repeated, staring her father square in the eye. “Pride.”
He snorted as if to brush away an insignificant factor.
“And it’s about damn time, too,” she went on, warming to her theme. “After Kyle made a fool of me, I didn’t have much pride left.”
He tried to interrupt, but she sailed on.
“Then, after I scared your assistant all the way to Greenland, I sank even lower. Heck, I couldn’t even face you for four years and I knew you loved me.”
“Donna—”
“Then I make a mess of things again, and Jack rides to the rescue.” She threw her hands up in the air and shook her head. “He doesn’t want to be married, Dad. He was protecting your reputation. He was trying to be a good guy. Hell, all he was missing was the white charger and shining armor.”
“Donna, Jack knew what he was doing. No one forced him to marry you.”
“No, you’re right.” She nodded and turned her back on him, walking to a window where she could stare out at Camp Pendleton as the heavens dumped at least an inch of rain on it. Outside, marines in foul-weather gear marched in formation and went about their daily duties despite the steady downpour. Because it was their duty. Honor demanded it. Pride.
Still looking at the rain, she continued, her tone softer, less strident now.
“The only thing that prodded Jack into marrying me was his own sense of honor.”
“And that’s bad?” her father asked, dumbfounded.
He didn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure she could explain it as clearly as she felt it. But, blast it, she knew she was right.
“Of course not,” she said, and laid one hand on the cold, damp, rain-flecked windowpane. “His honor is part of who he is. It’s so deeply ingrained in him, he never questions it and wouldn’t be able to function without it.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at here,” her father complained on a sigh.
She half turned to look at him. “Don’t you get it, Dad? If Jack knew I was pregnant, he’d insist that we stay married. That we continue this charade that’s only bringing both of us pain.”
Tom Candello’s features tightened.
“It’s better this way,” she assured him, trying not to sound as miserable as she felt. “I don’t want a husband whose honor is the only thing keeping him with me.”
She waited what seemed like a lifetime but was probably no more than a few eternity-filled seconds.
At last, her father nodded in resignation. “Where will you go?”
Donna wasn’t sure if she was pleased or saddened that he had accepted the fact that her leaving was the right thing to do. Forcing a smile, she said, “For the moment, back to Maryland. I can stay with my old roommate for a while. And I’m pretty sure I can get my old job back if I grovel appropriately.”
He gave her a wan smile, but nodded. “When are you leaving?”
“Now.”
“Now?”
“I have a cab waiting outside,” she told him. “My flight out of San Diego is in two hours. I’ll just wait at the airport.” The truth of the matter was, that she hadn’t been able to stay another minute in the tiny house where she’d known such intense joy and misery. She much preferred the sterile, impersonal lounge of a busy airport.
“So soon,” he said, then held his arms out toward her. “It feels like you’ve only been here a few minutes.”
She went to him, allowing herself to luxuriate in the comfort of his bear hug for several long minutes. “I’m sorry I’ll miss Thanksgiving dinner with you, but this way is better for me.”
He smoothed one hand over the back of her head. “I know, kiddo. I just wish you weren’t leaving.”
Donna pulled back from his embrace and lifted her chin. “I’ll be okay, Daddy. Don’t worry.”
He laughed dryly. “Trust me. I’ll worry. And not just about you. But about my grandchild, too.” Then he shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “A grandfather. Amazing.”
Donna reached out and patted his arm. “I have faith in you. You’ll be a great grandpa.”
“Long distance,” he complained.
“Dad…”
He held up both hands in mock surrender.
She picked up her purse from the edge of his desk and started for the door. As she grabbed the doorknob, she turned to say, “I’ll call you when I get in.”
“Okay.”
“And, Dad…” she said, her voice steely. “Don’t say a word about the baby to Jack.”
He looked offended. “May I remind you, young lady,” he said, “that I am a full colonel in the United States Marine Corps? We are trained to keep secrets.”
She wasn’t convinced. “I mean it.”
“Donna, it’s up to you to tell him about the baby. But speaking as a man—and a father—don’t wait too long.”
Donna nodded stiffly and opened the door. An instant later she was gone.
Colonel Tom Candello waited an extra minute, to make sure she was out of sight. Then he left his office to talk some sense into his son-in-law before it was too late.
The gray, rainy day perfectly complemented his mood, Jack thought grimly as he stared, unseeing, out the window. Even Tom had given up trying to talk to him and had run from the office, preferring Mother Nature’s rainstorm to Jack’s black frame of mind.
When his office door opened and closed again quickly, he didn’t even turn to look at the interloper. “Whoever you are, turn around and get out.”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” the colonel said flatly.
Startled, Jack jumped to his feet, shooting his desk chair backward where it crashed into the wall and bounced off a gray steel file cabinet. “Colonel, Sir,” he said. “My apologies. I didn’t know it was you, Sir.”
“At ease, Jack,” the colonel told him. “I’m here as Donna’s father, not your commanding officer.”
Jack’s stance relaxed, but he turned a wary eye on the man crossing the room to stand opposite his desk. “No offense, Colonel, but I don’t have anything to say to my father-in-law.”
“Good,” the other man snapped, leaning both hands on the edges of the desk and pinning him with a sharp, dark brown gaze amazingly like his daughter’s. “Then I’ll tal
k. You listen.”
“Sir—”
“Donna just left my office,” the colonel went on.
Donna? Here? Just a few steps away?
“She had a cab waiting,” the other man was saying.
“A cab?” Jack asked. “Why didn’t she use the truck?” He’d been riding to work with one of the other sergeants so that Donna would have use of their only vehicle.
“Because she’s on her way to the airport.”
He felt as though someone had just delivered a solid blow to his midsection. Air left his lungs like a balloon had been popped.
“The airport, Sir?” he repeated, surprised he was able to speak at all past the sudden dryness in his throat.
“She’s leaving, Jack. For good.”
Stunned, he said only, “Maybe that’s for the best, Sir.” But inside, emotions tumbled through him, leaving him shaken. He stiffened his legs in response, to steady his stance. She hadn’t even stayed the three months they’d agreed on in the beginning.
How could he feel so empty and still be breathing? he wondered. And how could his heart keep beating when it was laying shattered in his chest?
“Not this time, Jack.”
His gaze snapped to the older man’s furious eyes. “With all due respect, Sir,” he said tightly, “this is none of your business.”
“Don’t be a fool, Jack. Fight for your wife. Your marriage.”
“There’s nothing to fight for,” he muttered bleakly. “It’s over.”
“It’s only over if you surrender or retreat,” the colonel told him. “I’ve known you a long time, Jack, and I don’t think I’ve seen you happier than you were with Donna. For a while, I thought it was going to work out.”
So had he, Jack thought. In his dreams. His fantasies. It was only in reality that he lost her.
“If you do care for my daughter, fight for her,” the colonel said, pushing up and away from the desk. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
“Sir?”
“If I had been smarter,” the colonel said, “I would have fought like hell to keep Donna’s mother. If you love somebody enough, problems can be worked out.”
“This isn’t the same thing, Colonel,” Jack said softly. “If Donna loved me or wanted to stay married, she wouldn’t have left.”
The colonel shook his head, clearly disgusted, then turned abruptly and stalked toward the door. He stopped and glanced back at Jack. “You tell yourself that, if it helps. And if I’m wrong and you don’t love her, then stay here, First Sergeant, and let her go.”
When he was alone again, Jack stared blankly at the closed door. Let her go? he thought, and felt a yawning emptiness open inside him. In his imagination, the years stretched out ahead of him. Long, lonely years that he would spend alone, wondering where Donna was and what she was doing. His nights would be filled with torturous images of Donna, lying in another man’s arms, having another man’s children.
His hands fisted tightly as that emptiness inside him blossomed, swelling into proportions large enough to swallow him whole. He stared into the blackness that was his life and realized the one fact that he’d been trying to deny for weeks. He loved her. Really loved her. So much so, that without her, his life would be an endless succession of barren days and desolate nights.
But she was gone. Left without a word.
Still, he asked himself, if he had admitted his love for her sooner, if he had risked rejection and confessed his feelings, would she have left?
He didn’t know. But, damn it, he was through retreating. He was going to make a grab at the chance offered him. The chance for what so many lucky people took for granted every day. Love. Acceptance. Belonging to a family.
Moving quickly, he raced across the floor and out the door, then marched double-time to the colonel’s office just down the hall. He knocked perfunctorily and pushed the door open wide enough to poke his head inside.
“Permission to take a personal day, Sir?” he asked.
“Granted,” the colonel shouted to be heard over the already closing door. Then Tom Candello leaned back in his chair and grinned at the ceiling.
After checking in at the ticket window, Donna gripped the strap of her carry-on bag tighter and started walking across the terminal toward her gate. Other travelers, most of them in a much better frame of mind than she, pushed past her with muttered apologies, eager to be on their way. The weekday, afternoon crowd of people surprised her, but other than that, she paid little attention to any of them.
Weaving her way in and out of the mob of people and luggage, she hardly noticed when someone else bumped into her from behind. But when that someone made a grab for her tote bag, she turned around quickly and stopped dead.
“Jack?”
God, he looked wonderful. Soaking wet, his short hair plastered to his skull, rivulets of rain water coursing down his body to puddle on the shiny linoleum floor. He wiped one hand across his face irritably, then took her elbow in a firm, insistent grip.
“What are you doing?” she demanded as he started dragging her toward the exit.
“Taking you home,” he said shortly, his voice carrying over the noise of the crowd and the squish-squeak of his combat boots on the floor.
Donna tossed a wild look around her, but no one was paying the slightest attention to her and the determined marine carrying her off. She could scream, she told herself, then immediately pictured the sensation that would cause.
Instead she planted her tennis shoes firmly in place and jerked herself free of him.
Grumbling quietly to himself, Jack only snatched her carry-on bag and started walking off again.
“Hey!” she shouted, and sprinted after him, finally getting a good grip on the strap of the bag and dragging him to a halt. “Give me my bag,” she demanded.
He tugged at the strap, hauling her closer. “I’m not letting you go, Donna.”
One brief, brilliant flash of hope rose up in her chest before fizzling out. For a moment she’d actually allowed herself to believe that he’d come for her because he loved her and couldn’t lose her.
But there was a much bigger chance that her father had shot off his mouth, telling Jack about the baby.
She yanked on the cloth strap. “Go back to the base, Jack,” she said, and was proud of herself for keeping her voice free of the emotion strangling her. “It’s better this way. In a couple of months you can file for divorce and we can both go on with our lives.”
Jack looked at her long and hard. How had he ever imagined that he would be able to live without her? All through that nightmare drive on a rain-slicked highway in a stolen—borrowed—Jeep, he’d rehearsed what he would say. Thought about how he should approach her.
Now that he was here, though, and faced with the most risky mission of his life, there was only one thing to do.
He let go of the bag and grabbed her in one smooth movement. Holding her tightly to his rain-soaked body, he coiled his arms around her. Her mouth opened in surprise and he lowered his head to take advantage of the possibilities.
The clamoring noise of the busy airport faded away. The bustling crowds of travelers dissolved into nothingness. His icy-cold, wet uniform held no discomfort anymore. There was only one reality in his universe and he was holding her.
Cupping the back of her head, he lay siege to her mouth, showing her without words that she was his breath, his heart…his life.
When at last he felt her go limp in his arms, he lifted his head, oblivious to the smiling faces of half the population of San Diego surrounding them.
Holding her face between his palms, his thumbs smoothed gently over her cheekbones and his gaze moved over her features hungrily. Then he said the words he’d thought he would never have the opportunity to say. “I love you.”
She blinked and a solitary tear trickled from the corner of her eye. His right thumb caught it and wiped it away. He would spend the rest of his life seeing to it that she never had a reason to cry again.
As resolve filled him, he said the words again. “I love you, Donna.” When she still didn’t speak, he fought a frisson of panic and continued in his best, no-nonsense voice. “And you’d damn well better love me back. That’s an order.”
A long moment ticked by before she grinned. “Yes, First Sergeant,” she snapped before throwing herself into his arms.
His heart started beating again as he buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweetness of her perfume and reveling in the warmth of her love.
Then he reached down, grabbed up her bag and tossed the strap over his shoulder. When that was done, he swept her up into his arms and smiled like a idiot when she wrapped her arms around his neck.
And to the sounds of applause and hoots of approval from the crowd, he carried her back to the Jeep—and home.
As the rain pelted against the windows and the quiet gray light of a stormy afternoon filled their tiny bedroom, they lay exhausted in each other’s arms.
“I love you,” Jack whispered, and bent to trail a line of kisses down her throat.
“I love you.” Donna sighed and tipped her head to one side, allowing him easier access. Her fingertips smoothed across his shoulders and she smiled, more happy than any one woman had a right to be.
Propping himself up on one elbow, Jack looked down at her, suddenly serious. As his right hand skimmed along her body, creating a ribbon of gooseflesh in its wake, he said, “I never thought that I would be saying those words to anyone.”
She smiled up at him. “Get used to them, I’ll want to hear them often.”
“I love you,” he whispered, and bent his head to kiss her. “You are everything I always wanted and never counted on having.”
“Oh, Jack…” Tears stung the backs of her eyes, but she refused to cry. Not on the happiest day of her life.
He leaned over and planted a quick, hard kiss on her tummy. “I hope we just made a baby, Donna. I want to have children with you.”
Her breath caught in her throat and those darn tears filled her eyes again.
The Littlest Marine & The Oldest Living Married Virgin Page 26