Men of Courage II

by Lori Foster

  They’d gone to dinner, and had been in the middle of dessert when a tornado warning had come through, and for two hours they’d huddled with twenty others in the diner’s cellar. It’d been cold and dark and she’d cuddled up to him, shaking and scared.

  He’d been in heaven.

  “We were stuck in that horrible, damp cellar for so long, no electricity. You started talking to me to keep me sane.”

  “I remember.” Damn it.

  “You told me how your father was recovering from his terrible trucking accident, how you’d walked away without a scratch. You felt bad,” she whispered.

  “I said I remember.”

  “I told you my mother had left my father and me, and you said your mother had died when you were a baby. I felt like we were kindred spirits, Wyatt.”

  “Leah.” Her hair was poking him in the eyes and he stroked the silky strand away. “We don’t need to relive it. We had something good but then something else, something better came along for you and you were gone.”

  “There was nothing better than you.” She let out a breath. “I’m sorry if I ever let you think otherwise.”

  “Then why did you walk away so completely that we haven’t even run into each other, not once in all this time?”

  She dropped her gaze, staring at his throat. “Because I told myself that my past didn’t matter. That I was making something of my here and now, and that was all I needed.”

  “So what changed?”

  Dark, haunting emotions flickered across her face and she swallowed hard. “A lot.”

  He wasn’t going to go down this road. Wasn’t going to let whatever had gotten to her affect him now. “Maybe. But as you once decided, what we had no longer matters.”

  “But I was wrong. It does matter, especially if you’re still angry.”

  Well she had him there. “Leah. I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this.”

  The admission made him want to cut out his tongue but she put her hand on his chest, looked right into his eyes and said, “I knew the day I left that I’d hurt you. I’d hurt myself. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I went on hurting for a long time. As for the job, I loved it, and because I did, it soothed the ache that I got when I thought of Denton, my father, you. My job as a reporter, traveling to every corner of the earth, was everything to me.” Her lips twisted wryly. “For a long time, anyway.” Her eyes clouded now. “It satisfied my curiosity, my hunger, my drive. Everything.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Until the end.”

  He didn’t want to see the fear and hurt in her eyes. He wanted to hold on to his righteous anger.

  “I’d gone to Somalia for a story on orphans,” she said very quietly, “and fell in love there.”

  He tried, unsuccessfully, not to feel the gut ache at that.

  “Eli was three years old.”

  Wyatt blinked, hating himself for the relief that she’d meant a child. Until her next words.

  “He died of AIDS in my arms.”

  The pain made her voice soft yet serrated, and he had to lean close to hear her as she continued.

  “I’d seen death before, of course. Too much of it. This was far more personal than all that. It put a chink in my armor, but I didn’t have time to think too much because I had to go directly to Tel Aviv, to some international press event. I was preparing to load a bus filled with members of the press, my colleagues and friends.”

  He had a very bad feeling about this and opened his mouth to say something, though he had no idea what he could possibly put out there to ease the pain in her voice.

  “I’d been held back by a cell call that had irritated me,” she continued before he could speak. “A New York friend wanting to say happy birthday, and to hear her I’d stepped back into the hotel.” She let out a harsh laugh. “I’d practically forgotten it was my birthday, and I wanted to blow her off because the bus driver was waving at me to hurry. I could see the bus was filled to the limit, and I was worried about where I’d sit. As I disconnected, the bus exploded from a planted bomb. Parts blew into the hotel, shattered windows. I was cut up, but the brick wall of the building protected me.” She closed her eyes. “Everybody died.” Her breathing was the only sound in the room. “Except for me, of course. I didn’t die. I only wanted to.”

  “God, Leah.” His arms tightened around her. He remembered reading about the tragedy, seeing it on TV, but they’d never released the name of the one reporter who’d lived, and he’d had no idea. If he’d thought he hadn’t known what to say to her before, now he felt flummoxed. “I want to say I’m sorry but—”

  “But the word is woefully inadequate, I know.” She shook her head. “The thing is, I didn’t have more than a few scratches on me, and I couldn’t get that to make sense. It screwed me up. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t work.”

  “So you left New York.”

  “And so I left New York.”

  He found it interesting that she’d come here, a place she’d once run from as fast as she could. He might have even said so but a gust of wind hit the boat hard, whistling through the windows with so much velocity, he was surprised they didn’t shatter. Instinctively he tucked Leah closer to him, palming her head in his hand, covering her with his body.

  When the wind lessened slightly, he took a breath and let go of her.

  Leah’s smile was a bit tremulous. “Even now, you protect me.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “It’s more.”

  His heart squeezed because he didn’t want it to be true. He didn’t want to think about what had happened to her, or dwell on what could have happened, but he was. The thought of how close she’d come to death scared him in a way he hadn’t known he could be. But that didn’t mean there could be something between them again. “Maybe some things never truly die in your heart,” he conceded. “But my brain knows better. I moved on. Completely. I’m sorry for what you went through. I’m so damned sorry, but—”

  “But you moved on. Yeah, I hear you.” Eyes dark and unreadable, her thigh nudged against the unmistakable bulge behind his clinging knit boxers.

  “I did move on,” he repeated harshly, the part of him in question twitching. “Look, we’re stuck in an unusual circumstance that I wish to hell we weren’t, but there’s nothing I can do about it. We’re fighting hypothermia, we’re exhausted, and frankly, we’re having normal bodily reactions to the situation.”

  “We?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, we. I’m hard as a steel beam, and so are your nipples, sweetheart.”

  “I’m cold,” she reminded him.

  “So that kiss did nothing for you?”

  “It was just a short little one….”

  Short and little, huh? He skimmed his fingers along her back, to her ass, squeezing before he could stop himself. Then he slid his fingers down a little, until they met in the middle over purple satin. Purple wet satin that had nothing to do with the violent spring storm still raging outside.

  She didn’t kick him, as he half anticipated. She didn’t rail at him, or pull his hair, or do anything else he deserved.

  Instead she planted her palms on his chest, arched into him and let out the sexiest little sigh he’d ever heard. It used to be when he kissed and touched her she’d make that sound and he’d have to physically pull back and recite the alphabet in order not to lose it in his pants. But that had been when he was nothing more than a horny teenager—which didn’t explain his current situation.

  Sleep. Though he couldn’t sleep in this situation, she could, and should. He opened his mouth to tell her so and instead said, “Purple satin and white lace. Lethal combination.”

  In answer, she opened her legs, giving him better access, making him realize how intimately he was still touching her, that his fingers were even now slowly stroking up and down, outlining her every dip and curve, spreading the hot wetness—

  He jerked back as if he’d been licked by fire.


  Her chest rose and fell too quickly, her eyes clouded with desire. She wet her lips as if parched, maybe for him. His body reacted to that, and when she made a little sound of appreciation in her throat, he knew she’d noticed. “Maybe when we wake up it will all be just a bad dream,” he said, sounding a little desperate to his own ears.

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Yes,” he lied and closed his eyes.

  “Wyatt.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Wyatt.”

  He was feigning sleep, Leah knew it. Or maybe he could really sleep through this—she had no idea. She waited for her sensible inner voice to tell her what to do, but it had deserted her.

  Outside the storm still raged on and on, while inside this small bunk room, buffered only by wool blankets and their own private thoughts, a storm of entirely another kind raged. Wyatt was breathing deeply, his hard chest against her hand, his hot mouth closed now, but when she thought about how it felt on hers, she got warm all over again. “Wyatt, do you really believe we’ll be able to forget tonight?”

  Nothing.

  His lashes were inky black smudges on his tanned skin, and even though she knew he couldn’t possibly be asleep, she didn’t say another word.

  She couldn’t, because just being this close to him took her breath. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and probably not yesterday either, but the light, rough growth didn’t detract from the strong jaw. She noted fondly his slightly crooked nose, which he’d broken playing all-state point guard in his senior year. Fine laughter lines bracketed the mouth she’d just kissed as if she needed him more than air.

  And she had needed him. She’d had no idea how much or how thoroughly she’d closed herself off, but lying here like this, so close to the only man she’d ever come close to letting in her heart, was both unexpectedly painful and joyous at the same time. It was as if everything within her had opened at the sight of him, and she couldn’t stop the floodgates of emotion. Not even his abruptness or frustration could change that. And when he’d tried to scare her off by touching her, he’d only accomplished the opposite, because now they both remembered exactly how explosive their physical relationship had been.

  Could still be. That deep, soulful kiss they’d just shared hadn’t been any simple release of adrenaline, or even a way to escape from fear. Yes, she was frightened, and yes, she felt safe in his arms, trusting even, that he would do everything in his power to get them through this, but the kiss had been about much, much more than that.

  The boat continued to rock and shift, and when another gust hit them hard, the boat protested the abuse with a loud groan, making her gasp.

  Wyatt tightened his arms on her. “I’m right here,” he murmured.

  Not “it’s all right,” she noticed, because he wouldn’t lie to her. They weren’t all right. But he was here for her.

  He opened his eyes. They were as hot and deep as always, and she nearly fell into them as he stroked a strand of hair from her cheek. He looked halfway tortured to be holding her like he was. Halfway tortured and halfway accepting, with a dash of arousal to go with it.

  A devastatingly sexy combination. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and cupped his face, running her thumbs over the rough stubble on his jaw. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Being here isn’t your fault.”

  “But our past was.” She held his face when he would have turned away. “Wyatt…I don’t want anything bad between us anymore.”

  “It isn’t. It’s over.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It’s been over since the day you left,” he said quietly. “So don’t apologize now.”

  “I’m not apologizing for leaving town as I did, that would be a lie. We both know I wanted to go—I had to go. What I’m sorry about, really sorry about, is that I hurt you.”

  “I guess I just never understood why it had to be over. It seemed like a careless destruction of something that was…” He closed his eyes. “You know what? Forget it.”

  “No, I can’t. I won’t.” She waited until he opened his eyes again, which now so carefully shielded his thoughts from her that it broke her heart. “Oh, Wyatt. I ran out of Denton like a bat out of hell. You have to understand—for so long, it was all I ever dreamed of.”

  “I know.”

  “New York was…”

  “Leah, I know. You always said you were going. I got that, I got why. You needed to make something of yourself, see the world. Believe me, I never intended to hold you back.”

  “I never told you all of it.” It’d been wrong not to, but back then she hadn’t had the words. “You know that my mother left when I was ten.”

  He made a sound of regret. “I didn’t know how young you were.”

  “Fourth grade. She took me to school that morning, as usual. But instead of going to work, she let the movers into our house. She took everything: her clothes, the art on the walls, the furniture, everything. Except the photos.” She stared at his jaw. “She didn’t want those.”

  He stroked a hand down her back and the gesture warmed her in a way nothing else could have.

  “You’ve never heard from her?”

  “Not once in all these years.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it does. She took something from you.”

  “No, she took something from my dad. She left him a broken man.”

  “It was wrong what she did, Leah. To both of you. You didn’t deserve that, and neither did your dad. He was a good guy.”

  “She left him with nothing.” Her voice hardened at that, her eyes burned at the memory. “And because of me, he had to quit his sales position.”

  “He didn’t want to travel so much and be away from you.”

  “He had to work at the hardware store in town.”

  “There’s no shame in that, Leah.”

  “Of course there’s not. But damn it, he deserved more. He gave me everything, Wyatt. He was at every softball game, every silly little ballet concert, wherever I needed him. All my life I knew what he sacrificed for me, and I wanted to live up to that.”

  “You did. You were an amazing student. You got straight As with honors.”

  “So that I could get into the right college, to get the right job, to earn money so that I could give him something back.”

  “Is that what you thought you had to do?”

  “It’s what I wanted to do.”

  “I’d bet every last penny I have that he didn’t want to be paid back.”

  “I know that now.” She looked deep into his eyes, saw compassion, and felt her throat close up. “But back then, in the moment, I thought I had to sacrifice everything to do the right thing.”

  “I think it was more than that though.”

  His gaze was steady on hers, and because of it, she could admit the truth. “Okay, yes, it was more than that. I didn’t believe in love. And because I didn’t, I truly thought I could walk away from you. I didn’t expect it to cost me, though it did.”

  “You don’t expect sympathy for that.” It was an observation.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I just really wish I hadn’t left the way I did.” She looked deep into his eyes. “I wish I’d kept seeing you…because I was wrong. Cutting us off like that was wrong.”

  He closed his eyes. “Get some rest, Leah.”

  “Wyatt—”

  Reaching out, he softly glided his hand down over her eyes until she closed them. “Rest.”

  “You said not to sleep.”

  “That was then.” He shifted slightly, trying to get comfortable, and she realized he was still aroused. “Hypothermia is no longer a problem,” he muttered, then went still. His breathing evened out.

  She didn’t buy that he’d fallen asleep. She knew he wouldn’t allow himself to relax in their situation. But she lay there for a long, long time, listening to the wind and hail beat at the walls and windows. Hypothermia might not be a problem, but dying still was. She had no
idea how long she managed to stay still before she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Wyatt?”

  He didn’t move but he’d stopped breathing. She could feel the tension in his body. His muscles were so rigid that when she ran her fingers up his sleek back, it was like stroking steel. “You’re not asleep.”

  “No.” He opened his eyes. “I can feel you staring at me, poking at me with your thoughts.”

  “Because I can’t sleep.”

  “Why did you come back here, Leah?”

  “I told you.”

  “No, you told me why you left New York. Not why you came here.”

  She looked away, just a little ashamed to admit she’d had nowhere else to go. No family, no real friends and no one to keep her warm at night.

  Wyatt put a finger beneath her chin and brought her back, waiting. “I used to catch you on satellite sometimes.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “And I’d marvel at all you saw and did. I also know you took care of your dad before he died. Whenever I’d go into the hardware store, he’d show me pictures from the vacations you sent him on. The house you bought him was beautiful.” He smiled a bit grimly. “I wouldn’t have said so then, but I was proud of your success.”

  Looking into his eyes, seeing the compassion, the affection, she found some of the courage to say it out loud. “I came here because running home seemed like my only option.”

  “A pretty common feeling, I’m sure, given what you went through.”

  “I didn’t feel common, I felt alone. Desperately, frightfully alone. I needed a connection, something personal, something…real. Denton was the last real thing I remembered.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a rescue,” he finally said, his voice low and burning with compassion, “hanging off a rope into an endless chasm while being beat up by the elements, or swimming through raging waters after some kid stupid enough to go for a dip the day after a twister, certain I was going to die, and in that moment, wanted nothing more than to be home.”

  He was telling her it was okay, that he understood, and her throat closed. “But you never quit.” She closed her eyes. “Hard to be proud of that.”