by Rachel Lee
“Well, the twin bed is really too short for me. I was just putting off getting the king-size until later. It didn’t strike me as especially useful to buy another twin bed I’ll never want, at least not in the near future.”
“Oh.”
Was she relieved? He couldn’t tell. The damn eggshells again. Looking at his purchase of a bed as...what? An intent to jump her bones? Hell, he wouldn’t mind that at all, but he sure wasn’t going to do it unless she invited it in some way.
But dang, if he’d wanted her that night in Afghanistan, he wanted her even more now. Continued exposure to her wasn’t inoculating him. Far from it. With each passing hour she looked increasingly pretty and increasingly sexy. He’d blown it for them out there, making an assumption he should never have made about her experience, and he didn’t want to blow it again.
“You don’t talk much,” she remarked. “What are you thinking about?”
Damn, he was getting tired of eggshells, so he just told her flat out, “I’m thinking how sexy you are, and wishing we’d met under different circumstances.”
He heard her gasp, but didn’t look at her.
“You wouldn’t have even noticed me under other circumstances,” she said finally.
“I don’t know where you get an idea like that. I’d have noticed you under any circumstances. You may not have guys buzzing around you like bees, but that’s because you have some pretty good off-limits signs on your perimeter. You even tried to get rid of me when I came over to talk to you. Unfortunately for you, I don’t heed those signs. I take them as a challenge.”
They walked another half block in silence.
“You saw me as a challenge?”
He didn’t know if he liked her tone of voice, but he took it on anyway. “To a point, yeah. But I’ll tell you something, on my honor it would never have gone as far as it did except I saw the signs come down that morning when we woke. I never intended to take advantage of you.”
He looked at her, saw her cheeks color faintly, but from the side he couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment.
“Am I still a challenge?”
“You’re carrying my son inside of you. How could you not be a challenge? But you’re still sexy as hell.”
She swore quietly.
“Sorry,” he said. “If you don’t like peeks inside my head, don’t ask.”
She faced him then. “You know, Seth Hardin, you’re driving me nuts. We can’t have a discussion like this on a public street.”
He pointed. “Half a block that way.”
She started marching quick time, looking for all the world as if she were on parade, back stiff, strides even and firm. He kept up without difficulty.
“Don’t get breathless,” he said.
“Oh, shut up.”
He almost grinned. No more eggshells, at least for now. The gloves were off.
She could barely stand still while he unlocked the front door. As soon as it closed behind him, she faced him, her hands clenched. “How dare you make this about us? This is supposed to be about the baby. That’s it.”
“Oh, no, lady, it’s about us, too.” He pointed at her belly, which still hardly showed. “That kid we made makes it about us.”
“Only if you insist.”
“Oh, I insist.”
She glared at him. “You freaking SEALs have the world’s biggest egos! Everything is about you.”
“I didn’t say this was about me, I said it was about us.”
Her fists clenched even tighter. “You said it was about you when you said I was sexy. That’s off the table.”
“Sure, if you want.”
“Big talk about a marriage of convenience,” she spat. “Just friends. Hah! You just want to get into my pants again.”
“Yes,” he said frankly, “I do. But I won’t as long as those signs are up. Believe it or not, I’ve always understood that no means no. But you’re just going to have to live with the fact that I want you. Once will never be enough for me. Now I can put it on ice, if that’s the way you want it, but you might as well know. I’m going to have evil, wicked, salacious thoughts about you at times. Damn it, I’m a man. What is it? Six times a minute?”
“Oh, hell.” She threw up a hand. “Here I thought we were working toward some kind of agreement, so of course you throw a wrench in the works.”
“I hate to tell you, but the wrench is already there. Two of them, actually. And you get to set the limits because there’s a baby hostage here.”
“Hostage?” She almost shouted the word. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“Aren’t you, in a way? First you insist you want nothing from me. Then you keep threatening to leave when you don’t like something. Okay, you haven’t threatened that yet today, but I suspect you’ll be doing it in a minute or two after this round. So I told you you’re sexy. Most women would be flattered. They wouldn’t be yelling at me about some rule I haven’t broken yet.”
“We haven’t even established any rules yet. What are you talking about?”
“We might not have made any, but I keep running into them when I talk to you. You’ve got all kinds of rules in your mind. How much Seth can do. How much Seth can be a father. You expect things of me and I don’t even know what they are. And hanging over all this is a baby I intend to be a father to no matter what it takes. Now we can make this all-out war, or we can start talking about some of the important stuff, like how you and I are going to build a life together that will work for this child.”
“Sex isn’t part of that!”
He stepped closer. “Really?” he asked softly. “Really? Because I’ve seen how you look at me sometimes. You feel it, too.”
“You can’t build a relationship on that.”
“But you can start one.”
He fully expected her to stomp away, go pack her duffel and try to leave. That seemed to be the pattern. And he’d be here right by the door to stand in her way. Argue with her. Because he was getting to the point where something had to be settled, even if it was only that he’d be a weekend father, visiting once a month. Something. A starting point, instead of all this edging around.
But she didn’t run. Instead her face twisted a bit and her hand flew to her belly. “Seth?” she gasped.
He didn’t ask any questions. He shoved his hand in his pocket to verify that he had his keys, picked her up and swept her to his car to head to the hospital. He didn’t even lock up behind them.
* * *
The next couple of hours proved to be among the longest in his life. Edie had her wallet on her, so he was able to fill out all the paperwork, but they wouldn’t let him near her. Not family.
No, but one of the patients was family. He argued that and got nowhere, of course. He didn’t call anyone, but word seeped out anyway. Soon there was a gathering of the Tate clan, those still in town, except for Mary, who was on duty elsewhere in the hospital. That didn’t prevent her husband, a doctor, from coming down, though, and it was from him that Seth finally got a modicum of information.
“There’s nothing wrong. Nothing,” David told him. “They’re checking her thoroughly, but the baby is fine, the pregnancy is stable. You’ll have to wait until they get the lab work back, though.”
“I want to see her.”
David shook his head. “Not right now. Soon. I’ll make sure you get in there soon.”
He ignored his parents and Wendy, pacing tight circles around the waiting room, mentally kicking himself in the butt repeatedly. He shouldn’t have argued with her. The fight must have caused some kind of problem. What would he know?
“Seth, sit down,” Marge implored finally. “I’m getting dizzy watching you, and it’s not helping anything.”
He dropped into a chair beside his mother. “We
were having a fight. A disagreement. Suddenly she grabbed her stomach. Could a fight cause a problem?”
Marge took his hand. “No. When I was pregnant I tended to get irritable sometimes. Your dad and I had some real toe-to-toes. A pregnant woman isn’t fragile unless there’s a problem, and they’d have most likely noticed that by now.”
He took what comfort he could from that, and the fact that David had said nothing appeared to be wrong with the pregnancy. But something was wrong, and it gnawed at him.
He shouldn’t have fought with her. His own need to start clearing the air between them should not have driven him to that. But damn it, he did feel as if there were a hostage in this situation. Maybe she wasn’t using the baby that way, but maybe it was him being held hostage.
God, he should have just shut his yap. He’d promised her time and space and then had come on like gangbusters. He needed a good knock in the head to drive sense into him.
This was a foreign situation. His usual methods of dealing with challenges were clearly the wrong ones. Bulling into a fight because you felt you needed to make some things clearer might work with one of his team members, but Edie wasn’t one of them. He knew she was a capable, fearless pilot, a career woman, strong and determined, but he knew absolutely nothing about whether getting into an argument was something she avoided or something she was willing to do. Not really. Not yet.
And that was the whole damn problem.
“Seth?”
He looked up. David stood there. “Edie wants you.”
Well, thank God for that. Maybe she didn’t hate him yet. Or maybe she just wanted to tell him she never wanted to lay eyes on him again. God, he needed to learn to pussyfoot better.
But he still didn’t pussyfoot. He walked into the cubicle. Her eyes opened and found him standing just inside the curtain. “So,” he said, “am I about to be banished forever?”
“What?” Her eyes widened.
“I was an ass. A bull. An idiot.”
To his amazement, she sighed, then smiled faintly. “Everything’s fine. It was probably a gas bubble, or the baby kicking the wrong place. I’m fine.”
“You still didn’t answer me.”
She stared at him. “Well, unless you have a problem with the idea, would you please take me home?”
His heart skittered uncomfortably. “Home. Which home?”
“Your place.”
He kicked into high gear as the weight lifted. “Absolutely. Do you want some help dressing?”
Her smile broadened a shade. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably,” he admitted. “I’d sure like to help somehow.”
“You’re taking me home. The dressing part I can do myself as soon as they take this IV out of my hand.”
He stepped closer and took her hand, the one that didn’t have a needle in it. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. While I’ve been lying here scared to death, I thought about some of the things you said. So here’s my new rule.”
“What’s that?”
“No hostage taking.”
“I shouldn’t have...”
She interrupted. “I had time to think about this from a perspective other than my own. I haven’t been fair or just about this. It’s time to start. We’ll talk more once they let me go.”
Before he could say another word, a nurse shooed him out and he was standing in the hallway outside, waiting.
He felt sappy happy for the first time in years. He was getting another chance.
* * *
Edie was astonished to find Nate, Marge and Wendy all there. As they accompanied her and Seth out to the car, she couldn’t help but think it would be nice to have a family like this, one that was there immediately in times of difficulty. She’d never had that, not like this. Inevitably, the notion wormed into her mind that this would be good for her son, very good. Far better than what she could provide alone.
Marge announced she was bringing over a casserole for them later. Wendy said they’d postpone their dinner plans for a few days but made Seth promise to give Edie her cell number just in case.
In short, she felt wrapped in love and concern, something she had never dreamed might happen. She was a stranger, but she’d been pulled into their tight circle so quickly it amazed her.
On the way back to the house, a random thought occurred to her. “You missed the bed delivery.”
“Like hell. There’s one thing about having family. Yuma’s over there to take care of it. I hope he hasn’t already left. I think you’d like him a whole lot.”
“I suspect I will. I still can’t believe your brother-in-law David came racing down to the E.R. to manage things.”
“That’s the way this family works. Hell, most of the time it’s the way this county works, from what I’ve seen. I’m not completely clued in yet, because I’ve only been here when I had leave, but folks around here are pretty good about not ignoring a neighbor in trouble. Mom’s casserole won’t be the last one,” he warned her.
“But I’m not sick.”
“They won’t care. You had a scare. Hell, so did I.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? You had a sharp pain, and seeing as how neither of us are pros at pregnancy, we did the smart thing. I was going crazy, though, not being allowed to see you. Not family. I’m sure David violated a whole bunch of rules when he finally told me you were okay.”
“Oh.” She fell silent, thinking about that. Another thing she hadn’t considered. The thought of him being kept away if something happened with their baby, now or later, seriously troubled her.
When they got back to the house, Yuma was still there. A good-looking man, Edie thought, even though he appeared to be nearly twenty years older than Wendy.
“Bed’s in place, like you wanted,” he told Seth after introductions were made. Then he focused his attention on Edie. “Wendy says you’d like to take the stick on one of our Hueys.”
“I’d love it.”
He gave her a slow smile. “Then count on it. I’ll ride in the right-hand seat, but you’ve flown one before, haven’t you?”
“In training.”
“Great. Then you’re going to have a blast, especially around the mountains. But given where you’ve been flying, I guess you know that. Okay, I’m off.” He patted the pager on his belt. “Believe it or not, I’m on call.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe it?” Seth asked humorously. “You and Wendy are almost always on call.”
“Few hands, much work. Nice meeting you, Edie. I’m looking forward to flying with you.”
Then he was gone.
Seth guided Edie back to the recliner. “Okay, now to business.”
“What business?”
“What were your discharge orders?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “No big deal.”
Seth scanned them. “Take it very easy for twenty-four hours. That’s not so bad.”
“Except that I’m not built to be a couch potato.”
He chuckled quietly. “You can tolerate one day.”
But she could see tension around his eyes and once again wondered what was going on inside him. Was she ready to risk asking? Look what had happened earlier. His thoughts seemed to run in very different directions than hers.
Or maybe she was just deluding herself. Maybe they weren’t as far apart as she wanted to pretend. She settled onto the recliner with a sigh and elevated her feet. At once Seth started unlacing her boots.
“We’ve got to get you something more reasonable to wear around the house. Desert boots are overdoing it, don’t you think?”
She cocked a brow at him. “Have you ever found anything more comfortable?”
�
�Well, no, but certainly lighter.”
He didn’t stop with removing her boots, but sat at the foot of the chair and began to massage her ankles and feet. He didn’t ask if she minded, and she certainly didn’t. With each gentle knead, relaxation seemed to pour through her.
“Boy, that feels good,” she said finally and looked into his smiling eyes.
“That was my hope. A foot massage is at the top of my list for causing relaxation. It’s amazing how rubbing the feet can ease knots everywhere. I had a high school coach once who recommended walking barefoot on grass to achieve the same thing.”
“It’s been a long time since I thought of doing anything barefoot.”
His smile faded a shade. “I know. You get so that if you pull those boots off, they’d better be in arm’s reach.”
“You’d know better than anyone.” She waited, wondering what he might share, understanding that he’d never be able to really talk about the things he’d done as a SEAL. That would forever be a silent chapter. When he didn’t immediately answer, she let her eyes close and gave herself up to the wonder of having her feet rubbed for the first time in her life. Heaven!
All of a sudden, a ridiculous thought popped out of her mouth. “Do they redact your memories, too?”
His hands stilled, then he said, “I wish.” He laughed quietly, though. “I don’t have to tell you. We learn to live with it all, don’t we?”
“I suppose. I can occasionally wake up with a nightmare about having a close call, but I’m glad it doesn’t happen often. A sound that reminds me of rotors can flash me back in an instant. I hear the bird, I smell it, taste the metal and fuel and exhaust in the air. But just for an instant.”
“I don’t flash back much. I don’t know why I’m so damn lucky. Maybe because it got to be so routine after so many years. Danged if I know. Or maybe something in me just quit. We did what we had to do. Unfortunately, too many of us struggle with it for years.”
“I know,” she answered quietly. “So we’re lucky.”
“I guess so.” He smiled, an expression that caused her insides to melt and a tingle to begin between her thighs. She wanted to tamp down on it then wondered why. He’d already expressed that he found her sexy, and despite her initial reaction, she liked knowing that. Anyway, there were her discharge orders protecting her. Take it easy for a whole day. She doubted wild lovemaking, such as they’d shared that one night, qualified as taking it easy.