The Seahawk's rear wheel lifted off first and then the front two. As it swept higher into the dark sky, Tristan felt his eyes sting. He told himself it was the wind from the helo drying them out, but the weight in his chest let him know that it was more than that.
Hell! He missed her already.
Juliet Rhodes wasn't like any woman he had ever known. And that was a crying shame as she was probably the only woman in the world capable of resisting him. But he'd be damned if he was going to let her slip away from him just like that. For a SEAL, quitting wasn't an option. At the cost of humbling himself, he was going to make her his girlfriend. Shoot, he might even marry her one day—if she would have him.
But then he remembered her ultimatum: Don't date anyone for six months. Prove to me that you have no unsavory addictions or deep-seated issues. Then I might date you.
He could do that. Sure he could. Couldn't he?
For her, it might be worth it.
Chapter 20
Jeremiah rapped tentatively on the hospital door three rooms down from the one he'd been assigned. Over the sounds of the seven-story hospital—the bustling of feet, the squeaky wheel on a gurney, a doctor being summoned over the intercom—he strained his ears for Emma's reply. The colorful murals on the corridor's walls made the memory of the stark factory building seem like a distant nightmare.
Gaining no reply to his knock, he glanced at his watch. Surely Emma, Juliet, and Sammy, who'd been allowed to stay together, were awake by 1 p.m. Granted, they hadn't landed on the helicopter pad on the roof of Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston until three in the morning. And then they'd been delivered into separate examination rooms.
By the time Jeremiah had been looked over by a doctor and showered the grime from his aching body, all he'd been good for was sleeping. But he hadn't been so tired that he hadn't craved Emma and Sammy's proximity. Knowing they were safe had helped him to relax and drift off to sleep.
Eight hours later, he couldn't stand another minute apart. He lifted his hand and knocked more loudly. To his relief, a voice called, "Come in."
Anticipation put a smile on his face as he pushed into the room and found Emma standing by the window. Dressed in a peach sweater and cream-colored slacks, no one could have known by looking at her rested face and brushed hair what she'd just gone through. He himself had been supplied with military attire, a set of worn BDU's with no name over the pocket and pair of boots that didn't quite fit.
Their eyes met briefly as she glanced over her shoulder at him, sending him a faint smile. But then she returned her gaze to the scene outside, and the concern Jeremiah had entertained the night before reared its head again.
Crossing the room to her side, he took note of her body language. She stood before the sunlit window with one arm across her midriff, elbows tucked close to her body, fingers curled toward her palms. The dazed expression she'd worn since he'd escorted her from El Cuchillo's body still lingered on her face. Only a hint of color had returned to her pale cheeks.
As she met his gaze again, he could tell by the haunted look in her eyes that she was still processing what had happened.
"Where's Sammy?" he asked, glancing toward the other two beds in the room. They'd all been allowed to sleep together, he realized, feeling left out. One of the beds overflowed with stuffed animals, presumably donated by the same charity that had provided the clothing.
"With Juliet," Emma said, nodding toward the bright green maple trees lining the lawn below them.
Peering through the branches, he spied Juliet walking hand-in-hand with Sammy, who appeared to be smiling and looking none the worse for her ordeal.
If only the same were true for Emma. "I had trouble sleeping without you near me," he admitted.
Her gaze flickered briefly toward him then slid back out the window, and still, she had nothing to say.
"It's okay to be shaken up by what happened," he persisted. "You should never have had to experience violence at that level."
A hint of moisture put a sheen in her soft blue eyes, yet she kept quiet.
A terrible thought occurred to him. "Do you blame me for not coming back sooner?"
"What?" She swung a startled look at him. "No, of course, not! You risked your life for us. If not for you and your teammates, God knows where Sammy and I would be right now."
Relief tempered the despair starting to close around his heart. "You'll be okay, English," he repeated. "It takes time to shake off the negative energy. When you're home again and everything goes back to normal, it'll seem like a bad dream."
She shook her head. "Nothing will be the same," she whispered.
Suddenly, he knew she was talking about them and the love they'd resurrected.
"Explain that to me," he demanded, anger flaring in him.
His gruff tone drew her gaze to his. She rubbed her forehead with a hand that trembled. "I can't be with you, Jeremiah," she told him faintly.
His heart sank at the resolution in her voice.
"I keep picturing Sammy in the capo's arms, completely vulnerable. If someone had taken a shot at him, the bullet could've killed her. Even Juliet could have shot her by mistake. Just like that, she would have been gone. And then I would have lost—" Her voice broke suddenly and she dropped her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking.
"Hey." He put his arms around her and pulled her gently to his chest. At least she submitted to his comfort, dropping her cheek against his shoulder. That was something. Maybe all she needed was comfort and time.
"Sammy's fine," he reminded her. His gaze went out the window. "Even Noah pulled through, and he was shot," he added, wanting to encourage her further.
With a sharp sniff, she lifted her head to look back out the window. Sammy was leaning against the trunk of a tree, smiling at something Juliet was saying.
"That's not the point," Emma said, stepping back and causing his arms to fall.
"What is the point, then?" he pressed.
"The point is I'm not strong enough to live this way. It feels like I only just got over losing my parents. Or maybe I haven't." She turned back toward him, her gaze entreating him to understand. "It was like my entire reality was ripped out from under me, and I had to start all over. When I met Eddie my sophomore year, I thought I could put my faith and trust in him, and for a while everything was okay. It was safe—until you came along."
He shifted his stance, suddenly self-conscious.
"You opened my mind," she said, "to new ways of looking at the world—to beauty and to a soul connection that was deeper than anything I'd ever experienced. But I could only have that connection if I gave up the security I already had. And that's why I sent you away. I was afraid of losing everything again."
Jeremiah blinked. Suddenly, it was painfully clear that fear ruled Emma's heart—not him, not truth, not faith, not love, or even hope.
"But then Eddie left me," she continued, "and I got knocked to my knees again. It's taken me three years to come back from that."
She reached for him, closing her fingers around his and squeezing. "I'm not strong like you are, Jeremiah." Her blue eyes searched his, begging for his understanding. "When you left us to get help, I had to believe I'd see you again because anything else was unthinkable. But I wavered in that belief more than once. Each time I succumbed to doubt, I felt overwhelmed and devastated." She offered a wry smile. "You're standing in front of me, yet I can still feel the fear that I won't see you again."
She shook her head. "I sound insane to someone like you, so strong and resilient. But I don't have the kind of faith to let you go, again and again, believing you'll come back. One day, you could go off to fight your giants, and they could overcome you."
She visibly swallowed. "And then you wouldn't make it back." Her eyes filled with tears, but they did not spill over. "I don't want to live through that. I can't live through that."
Ah, well. So much for the growth he'd witnessed in her during their captivity. Now that they were
out of danger, she'd gone back to protecting her heart, the same way she'd done with the limerence argument.
Dismay dragged his gaze to the unfamiliar shoes she was wearing.
"I see," he said, wondering why he'd been assailed with visions of them spending a life together if this was her final decision.
She squeezed his hands harder. "Please don't take this wrong. Please—" Her vocal cords vibrated with emotion. "I want to remain... friends, the best of friends. I want to email you every day and... and know that you're okay."
He lifted disbelieving eyes to her pained expression. Seriously? After the passion they'd shared, she wanted to content herself with email?
"Sorry, Emma," he grated, feeling a surge of frustrated resentment, "but I'm an all-or-nothing kind of guy, and being pen pals doesn't cut it for me."
She let go of him, snatching her hands back as if he'd slapped her.
With a twinge of remorse, he crossed toward the pen and clipboard hanging on the end of the bed and picked it up to scribbled down his number. "If you change your mind, give me a call," he offered on a gentler note.
She had to change her mind—it was the only acceptable outcome. But she needed to do it on her own, without pressure from him.
Replacing the clipboard, he gained momentary satisfaction in seeing the torn expression on her face. Perhaps she'd been hoping he'd spend the next hour talking her into changing her mind. His resentment suddenly vanished, leaving only sorrow that she was so trapped by fear she was cheating them both out of a lifetime of love.
Stepping closer, he hugged her one more time. Pressing a kiss onto her forehead, he breathed her scent, still hopeful that he wouldn't have to hold it only in his memory for long. Then he let her go.
"Tell Sammy I said good-bye," he called, crossing toward the door.
"Jeremiah, don't do this..."
He paused with his hand on the door latch. "Take care, English. I love you."
Then he turned and left, feeling as if every step away from her was like walking through thick mud.
What had he expected? That Emma would have fully evolved into the woman she was meant to be in only a week? Her heart was still afraid, fragile, her sensibilities still too delicate. Rather than hang on to the thorns she'd grown to protect herself, she was letting them fall off. And the newfound vulnerability was terrifying her.
He had to believe that the happily-ever-after he'd intuited so clearly would come to pass eventually. The question was simply—how long would it take before she fought for what she really wanted?
* * *
With a growing sense of isolation, Emma searched the crowded hospital lobby for Jeremiah. She still could not believe how he'd just walked out of her room earlier that afternoon. He had comforted her, yes. But she'd expected him to talk her out of her decision, the way he'd tried doing on the cruise ship. She'd wanted him to do that, hadn't she? Maybe she'd counted on it.
Or at least to agree to keep in touch.
Where was he?
The other hostages were all here—except for Noah and Joe, of course. Everyone had been called down from their rooms to sit along a table facing a wall of news reporters. Journalists from nationally renowned stations such as CNN and ABC, as well as local Texas stations, jockeyed for floor space under the skylights of the open, airy gathering place.
Family members of some of the rescued hostages had shown up to welcome back their loved ones. Juliet stood in their midst, assuring Emma with her steady regard that it would all be over soon.
A current of energy flowed beneath the slanted glass ceiling, but it was tempered by the somber reminder in the form of empty seats at the table that two of the twelve who were abducted had perished. Framed photos of Bert and Joan, who remained missing, had been placed on the table before those empty seats in their honor. And there remained three other empty seats without photos—one each for Joe, who was recovering well, and Noah, who was still in ICU, and the other for Jeremiah.
Except he wasn't there. The reporter from CNN had taken note of that fact.
"Excuse me," Emma heard him call to the Army public affairs officer who'd coordinated their treatment in San Antonio and had set up the interview. "Where is the Navy SEAL who helped to rescue the hostages?"
Apparently, the press had all received a statement summarizing the abduction and subsequent rescue.
The officer mouthed an "Ah," and held up a finger. Moving to the center of the room, he raised his voice to address the news crews as a group. "May I have your attention, everyone?"
The lobby grew immediately hushed.
"I'm sorry to tell you that the Navy SEAL mentioned in my statement will not be present during this interview."
A collective protest rippled through the media people. Emma's heart sank like a stone.
"I'm sure all of you can appreciate that, as an active duty member of the Special Forces, his identity needs to be protected. You may identify him as a special petty officer named Jeremiah, but the Navy requests that you avoid identifying him in any way that could help terrorists to mark him. As you are all patriots of this great country, I am confident of your cooperation."
With a spurt of panic, Emma realized that Jeremiah hadn't just skipped the interview—he'd left the hospital altogether, the same way he'd dropped out of college when she'd requested that he drop her class. Why would he stay?
I'm an all-or-nothing kind of guy, he'd said. Nor was he the type to stick around and grovel.
With the sense that her heart was unraveling, she closed her eyes and willed the interview to end. She didn't want to recollect the horrors of their captivity or, more tragic still, the unexpectedly beautiful moments like when she'd realized her love for Jeremiah was eternal.
Had she done the right thing in sending him away? Of course, she had. Where would she get the strength to send him blithely into danger, day in and day out, believing that his training and his comrades would bring him safely home again? Life wasn't that kind to anyone—especially not to her. Believing in good things didn't make them happen, regardless of Jeremiah's assertion to the contrary.
Rousing from her private struggles, she realized with surprise that the interview had already begun. The public affairs officer had just summarized the events of the past week. A reporter from ABC news had kicked off the questioning by asking the survivors to recount the moment that their tour bus was stormed.
"We thought the soldiers were maybe part of the Mexican National Guard or something because they just asked for our IDs," Mike's wife explained. "But then they demanded our jewelry and our credit cards."
"So you were ordered off the bus, but thirteen non-U.S. citizens were shot where they sat?"
The memory of that awful massacre cast a pall over those sitting at the table. When no one answered, the reporter tried again. "Do you know why your kidnappers targeted only U.S. citizens?"
Mike, the accountant, explained that wire transfers from U.S. banks to Mexican banks required no special permissions, but those from other countries such as Australia and Japan would have posed their captors too much difficulty.
Glancing over at Sammy, Emma wondered if discussing the kidnapping would cause her daughter to suffer nightmares. I should probably get her counseling when we get home, she thought.
"Ted Swisher from TXCN." The booming voice of a journalist from a Texas station broke into her thoughts.
"According to the statement read at the start of this interview, you all owe your rescue to the Navy SEAL who was kidnapped along with the rest of you. We understand that, for the sake of national security, he could not attend this interview, but how would you describe him and when did you realize he was your ace in the hole, so to speak?"
Pride rose up so powerfully in Emma that it strangled her vocal cords. It was Cheryl who raised a hand to answer the question.
"I noticed him about ten minutes before our bus was taken over—he was trying to get the driver to go a different way. It was like he knew that we were headed int
o trouble. The first night that we were locked up, he told us he had military training. My boyfriend, Joe Gardner—" Her voice broke a little, and Kathryn put her arm around her. "I'm okay," she continued. "He's okay too, it was just so scary. But he's a cop. He and Jeremiah kept us calm and thinking smart."
"Can you tell us how Mr. Gardner was injured?" the reporter asked.
Kathryn took over, recounting the night that Joe was shot and two of their captors died. "Joe and Jeremiah could've just stood by and let those men rape me, but they fought them off instead," she said, casting a tear-filled gaze at Emma. She gave a blow by blow of what happened.
Emma surprised herself by speaking up. "Joe helped the SEAL hide his combat skills by taking responsibility for the man's death." Referring to Jeremiah as "the SEAL" helped her maintain some emotional distance. "Joe is a hero, too," she added.
Dozens of pairs of eyes swiveled in her direction, followed by several microphones affixed to long poles.
"Ma'am, could you tell us how the Navy SEAL managed to leave the building in order to contact his colleagues?"
Speaking over the lump in her throat, Emma recounted how Jeremiah had pretended to be a doctor, how he'd gained their captor's trust by operating on an injured narco. "The man was allergic to penicillin, and the head captor didn't trust his men to get their hands on a suitable alternative. So he sent the SEAL out with two of his men to rob a pharmacy. The SEAL planned to use the opportunity to break free. He'd figured his colleagues were already in the area. They would have narrowed down our location with the GPS built into the watch that was stolen from him."
"I'd like to talk about the actual rescue." The representative from CNBC News broke into the conversation. "When did you know that a rescue operation was underway, and what was your response to that?"
Emma deferred the question to Noah's mother, who described what had happened immediately prior to the SEALs storming the second story chamber, and how Noah had surprised everyone by producing a gun and shooting the two guerillas. But the worst of the bad guys had then shot Noah. He'd seized three of the hostages for himself—Emma, Kathryn, and Sammy, and dragged them to the lower level.
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