Willing

by Lucy Monroe

  “Everyone else thinks I’m thirty-four.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone but Master Sergeant Cordell.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what I told them.”

  “Oh.” Was she losing her mind, or was it him? Most people lied about being younger than they were, not older.

  “I joined the army when I was sixteen, and I had to lie about my age to do it. I’m much better at prevaricating than you are. I’ve got a lot of practice.”

  She wasn’t sure how she felt knowing that. “But your birth certificate…”

  “Faked.”

  “I feel like you’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is.”

  Subtle tension seeped into his features. “I ran away from home when I was sixteen because when my dad lost his temper, he hit. Drinking made him more susceptible to anger, and he’d begun drinking more and more.”

  Daniel had said his mother was dead. Maybe his dad drank to forget her. Some men did. “Was your mom gone then?”

  “No. She was the reason I left.”

  Josie felt her stomach twisting in a tight knot of apprehension. “How so?”

  “They fought about me most of the time. She wanted me to go to school, to make something of myself. It made him furious. He accused her of thinking he was less of a man because he wasn’t educated.” Daniel pushed away from the door and came into the room, his tension more pronounced. “Thunder was raised on the reservation. He was an artist, following the old ways, but in order to live, he sold his work in a gallery that catered to tourists.”

  “Your mom had a problem with this?”

  Daniel’s face contorted for a second before all expression smoothed from it. “Not really, but she grew up off the reservation until she was sixteen. Her parents died in a sailing accident that year, and she went to live with my great-grandfather.”

  “Is that how she and your father met?”

  “Yes. She never complained about her life with my father, but she wanted me to experience life beyond the reservation. She believed that a person’s life should not be limited by their birth.”

  That was something Josie was trying to prove. Being born a soldier didn’t make her a soldier. “Smart lady.”

  “Not smart enough to leave my father. He said she wanted me to deny my heritage and leave the reservation because our way of life wasn’t good enough for her. When he drank, he did more than accuse.”

  “He beat her?”

  “Sometimes he only yelled; sometimes he would yell until he totally lost his cool, and then he’d hit her. He had a violent temper, but I knew it was mostly my fault, that without me to fight about, he wouldn’t get so mad at her.”

  Josie made a sound of distress, her heart constricting at Daniel’s belief he was responsible for his dad’s lack of self-control, or his mother’s choice to tolerate it.

  His eyes reflected pain she wished she could assuage. “The worst of it was that I never wanted my mom’s dream for me. I wanted to be a soldier, had wanted it since I was a little kid. I wanted to know how to fight and how to win, how to stop my dad from hurting me and my mom.”

  “What happened?”

  “After my first tour of duty, my mom begged me to get out of the army, to come home to the reservation and take care of my father. He was drinking more then and was finding it hard to keep a job.”

  “But you refused.”

  “I was a Ranger, and for the first time in my life, I was proud of what and who I was. I told my mom to leave him, that I would take care of her, but she refused. She loved him.” He said the words with such scorn, and finally Josie understood where it came from.

  His mother had used love as an excuse to stay in an abusive relationship that had destroyed her family and caused a separation with her son.

  “A year after I signed on for my second tour, my dad lost his temper again and threw my mom against a wall. Her head hit at the wrong angle, and she was knocked out. She went into a coma. I flew home and sat beside her hospital bed for three days, but she died without ever coming out of it.”

  And he had been denied the opportunity to say goodbye, or tell his mom that he loved her. Josie’s eyes stung with tears. “It wasn’t your fault. Your mother chose to stay in a destructive relationship. She knew the risks, and she stayed.”

  “If I’d gone home, I could have been there to stop him. I should have gotten out of the army and stayed with her. I should have taken care of her, but I’m no good at taking care of other people.”

  “Your mother didn’t ask you to come home to protect her; she asked you to come home and take care of your drunk of a father,” she said, taking a stab in the dark, “didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “She wanted you to protect him, not her, and you couldn’t have done that. You would have hurt him physically the next time he lost his temper and hit your mother. She would have kicked you out of the house and blamed you for not being patient enough.” Josie didn’t have a lot of experience with abuse victims, but Claire had taken her to a women’s shelter once so she could teach a class in self-defense.

  Most of the women there wanted new lives, but they had shared with her the kind of twisted thinking that had kept them in their victim roles.

  Daniel moved toward her, his expression grim. “You’re wrong. I was an adult then. I could have convinced her to leave him if I’d taken the time to go home, if I’d cared more about her safety than my pride.”

  “No. You’re a good man, Daniel. You had to make a life for yourself away from your parents, or you would have ended up in the same ugly cycle they lived in.”

  “I’m not getting married, so that can’t happen. I’ll never hurt a woman like he hurt her.”

  So many things became clear to Josie. Daniel hadn’t been rejecting her earlier. He’d been rejecting himself as someone who could make her feel safe. His mother hadn’t been safe, and he thought that was his fault. He’d spent his adult life fighting other people’s battles, saving people as part of a mercenary team that specialized in extractions, but he still believed he wasn’t a protector.

  It would be laughable if he didn’t believe it.

  Running his latest words through her mind again, she realized something else. He wasn’t against a long-term commitment with her; he really did have an aversion to marriage.

  “Are you seriously afraid you’d end up like your father?” The same man who had practically given himself a heart attack assuring her first time making love was special and as painless as possible.

  “Everyone who’s ever met the both of us says we’re carbon copies, that we could be twins.”

  “On the outside maybe. Even if you got your to-die-for good looks from him, you’ve got something he didn’t have where it counts.” She stood up and reached for him, pressing her hand over his heart. “You aren’t alike inside. You’d die for me before you would hurt me, no matter how angry you were. I know it.”

  Something sparked in his almost black eyes. It looked like hope, but then it was gone. “I don’t believe in love and commitment, Josie.”

  “I know.” And she understood, but that didn’t change the way she felt. “It doesn’t matter because I do believe in you. I still feel safe with you, Daniel.”

  “You shouldn’t, damn it. Didn’t you hear what I said? When the important moment comes, I could make the wrong choice. I could put myself first.”

  Both his parents had a lot to answer for in her mind, but Josie wasn’t buying any of Daniel’s fears. “I’m betting you won’t.” She didn’t say wouldn’t as if there was a possibility the occasion would not arise because she knew the time would come.

  And either he was going to rip her heart out by its moorings and walk away, or overcome his fears to make a future with her. With this new insight, she believed that given enough time together, he’d do the latter. It would just take time for him to realize that fact.

  In the meantime she wasn’t go
ing to dwell on her own unhappy truth: that in order to have a future with Daniel, she had to give up her dreams of leaving the soldiering life behind. She never had to be a mercenary again, but if she wanted to be with him, she would have to move back to the mountain and spend her time surrounded by soldiers in training.

  Any children they had would be raised the way she’d been raised, maybe not as stringently, but soldiering would be the life they knew. They would be misfits in a world that had an uneasy alliance with its military. Perhaps she would have to give up her dream of being a mother at all.

  She understood Daniel’s mother’s frustrations. She’d fought against her son being limited by his surroundings and paid a huge price for refusing to back down. According to Josie’s dad’s diaries, the only thing her father and mother had fought about was his need to raise her with the ability to protect herself from any foe.

  “What happened to your dad?”

  “He went to prison for manslaughter. I was a witness for the prosecution. I wanted a murder charge.” She could feel Daniel’s pain reaching out to wrap itself around her and squeeze at her sore heart.

  “They didn’t take his pattern of abuse into consideration?” she asked.

  “It was unsubstantiated. I’d been gone too long for my testimony in that regard to be taken into consideration, but there was no doubt that he was responsible for her death.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “We all have regrets to live with. I can’t dismiss mine.”

  “Fine.” She grabbed his shirt in both of her fists, needing him to hear what she was saying. “Regret not being able to help your mother, but don’t blame yourself for her choices or your father’s. They were both adults. She could have walked out any time, and you would have taken care of her. She didn’t, and she paid a price for staying with a man who couldn’t or wouldn’t control his temper. None of that was your fault.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know how,” he said, ignoring her exonerating words. “It took me a long time to learn to control mine, and that was with a really good teacher.”

  “Does he get in a lot of fights in prison?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t keep in touch.”

  She understood it, but wondered if that choice had taken another toll on Daniel. “Have you ever considered going to see him?”

  “No.”

  “Has he ever tried to contact you?”

  “No.”

  She couldn’t tell if that bothered him or not. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have one parent responsible for the death of the other. Love and family loyalty got irretrievably twisted and distorted in that scenario.

  “Why did you tell me all this?”

  “I hurt you.”

  “When you told me that I didn’t count for anything but sex?”

  His eyes flared, and his jaw locked, but she didn’t give him a chance to say anything.

  “Yes, you did hurt me. Are you trying to tell me that maybe I mean something to you and that despite your belief you aren’t capable of watching over me and being trusted with my safety, you’re doing it anyway because you care too much to turn away from me?”

  She wasn’t making guesses about anything with him anymore. She wanted his feelings spelled out. If he said no, it would hurt, but at least she wouldn’t be deluding herself.

  His hands locked on to her waist, and his body vibrated with tension. “I don’t want you hurt.”

  She just looked at him, willing him to answer her question.

  Something seemed to snap inside of him, and he gritted out, “Yes, damn it, yes. Are you satisfied?”

  She reached up on tiptoes and pressed her lips oh so softly to his. “Thank you, Daniel. That means so much to me.”

  His arms locked around her, and the kiss they shared was both passionate and full of commitment. It was a confirmation of their value to each other, of feelings that went beyond sexual gratification, of a connection that reached into the spiritual. If only he would let himself see it.

  “Uh, should we come back later?”

  The sound of Hotwire’s voice broke through the intimacy of the kiss, and Josie reluctantly allowed Daniel to pull away.

  He turned with one arm still locked around her, effectively turning her, too. “If I say yes, will you go away?”

  “Actually, I was going to suggest we all go away.”

  “What do you mean?” Claire asked, standing on the other side of Hotwire.

  He smiled at her and then at Josie and Daniel. “Josie’s a fantastic cook, no doubt about it, but maybe if we leave, go get some dinner, the straggler reporters will take off, too.”

  She liked Daniel’s idea better, that everyone else leave and she and Daniel get some time alone, but didn’t think they’d get away with it. “What if someone tries to break in again?”

  “Already taken care of.” Hotwire held up an independent motion detector device. “If it detects motion, it releases an odorless sleeping agent while alerting the remote unit of the compromised perimeter.”

  “That could be dangerous around pets.” Claire was looking at the small device in Hotwire’s hand with distinct wariness.

  “You and Josie don’t have any pets.”

  “True, but how sensitive is it? I mean, if I stay in my room, will it go off? What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

  Hotwire looked bemused, and it was such an interesting, not to mention uncommon, expression on his face that Josie had to stifle a laugh.

  “We’re not going to have the units armed when you’re home, Claire,” he said.

  “Oh.” She didn’t look appreciably relieved. “Okay.” She turned to leave the room.

  “Where are you going?” Hotwire’s Georgian charm was obvious by its absence, but he didn’t sound angry, just confused.

  Claire looked back over her shoulder, her eyes saying she couldn’t quite figure out why he was asking that. “To get a snack and then I’m going to study. Did you need something?”

  “You’re going to dinner with us.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Why do you think you aren’t going?”

  “I wasn’t invited, and even if I had been, I’ve got studying to do.”

  “Your studying can wait until you’ve eaten. You admitted in the car you’d had nothing since your almost nonexistent breakfast this morning.”

  Hotwire had quizzed Claire on what she’d eaten that day?

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m used to skipping a meal or two when I need to.”

  “Your brain can’t function at optimum potential when you don’t feed your body the fuel it needs.”

  Claire was still looking as though she didn’t understand why Hotwire was asking her about something that had nothing to do with him. Josie was almost as bemused as Claire. Hotwire was all southern charm with women. Only he always kept a certain distance, but he was ignoring his self-imposed boundaries with Claire. From the look on Claire’s face, he was ignoring hers, too.

  “If you stay, the reporters will think there’s still a chance of getting something worth printing and stick around,” Daniel said.

  The look of gratitude Hotwire sent him shocked Josie so much she didn’t think to add her voice to Daniel’s in convincing Claire to come to dinner.

  But the other woman’s face creased in a worried frown. “I hadn’t thought about the reporters.”

  “But you did think about the bad guys coming back, didn’t you?” Hotwire asked, almost as an accusation.

  “Well, yes…”

  Hotwire sighed. “Claire, I wouldn’t leave you to face people who have already tried to kill once.”

  “You wouldn’t?” she asked, her emphasis on you echoed in Josie’s mind.

  “None of us would,” Daniel inserted before Hotwire had a chance to answer.

  “Right,” Josie finally had the wherewithal to say. “You need to come with us, honey.”

  Claire didn’t need much convincing after that, but she did polite
ly decline Hotwire’s offer to help her with her studies. Josie wondered if Claire wasn’t going to wind up with Hotwire in her room going over program code, all the while not sure how he’d gotten there.

  Josie told the others over dinner about the leads she’d uncovered on her dad’s possible whereabouts. Both Hotwire and Daniel thought she was on to something, and Claire made a couple of suggestions on avenues Josie hadn’t thought to research.

  The motion sensor units did not go off during dinner, and the discussion progressed from Josie’s dad’s possible whereabouts to what to do if he really was in Nevada.

  When they got back to the house, the front lawn was empty, as was the sidewalk, and no suspect cars or vans were parked along the street. Josie’s relief was short-lived when a sedan pulled up just as they were getting out of Daniel’s SUV.

  A man jumped out of the passenger door, and a second later a powerful camera flash went off.

  “Miss McCall, would you care to comment on the rumor that ELF was behind the explosion at your father’s compound two nights ago?”

  She spun around at the sound of the reporter’s strident voice. He was standing on the sidewalk, but that didn’t keep his photographer from snapping more pictures of her and the others.

  She marched up to the two men. “Just where exactly did you hear this rumor?” she demanded.

  “Are you saying it’s not true?” the reporter asked while the photographer took yet another picture.

  She grabbed his wrist with a snakelike movement her father had taught her when she was fifteen. Pressing with two fingers on a vulnerable spot, she watched in satisfaction as the man lost his hold on the camera and it fell with a clunk to the pavement. She released him, and he scrambled backward, kicking his camera as he did so and causing further damage to the expensive piece of equipment.

  “You should be more careful with your things,” she said sweetly.

  “You did that. You broke my wrist, you bitch.” He was holding it cradled limply against his chest, but she knew feeling would return in less than a minute.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “But if you call her another name, I will,” Daniel said from beside her. “Pick up your camera and get back in the car.”