"Where exactly are they moving?" P.J. asked.
"Phoenix, Arizona."
"No ocean view there."
He turned to face her, propping his head on one hand. "That shouldn't matter. I'm the one who liked the ocean view, and I don't live with them anymore."
"Where do you live?" she asked.
Harvard couldn't answer that without consideration. "I have a furnished apartment here in Virginia."
"That's just temporary housing. Where do you keep your stuff?"
"What stuff?"
"Your bed. Your kitchen table. Your stamp collection. I don't know, your stuff."
He lay down, shaking his head. "I don't have a bed or a kitchen table. And I used the last stamp I bought to send a letter to my little sister at Boston University."
"How about your books?" P.J. ventured. "Where do you keep your books?"
"In a climate-controlled self-storage unit in Coronado, California." He laughed and closed his eyes. "Damn, I'm pathetic, aren't I? Maybe I should get a sign for the door saying Home Sweet Home."
"Are you sure you ever really moved out of your parents' house?" she asked.
"Maybe not," he admitted, his eyes still closed. "But if that's the case, I guess I'm moving out today, huh?"
P.J. hugged her legs to her chest as she sat on the beach next to the Alpha Squad's Senior Chief.
"Maybe that's why I feel so bad," he mused. "It's a symbolic end to my childhood." He glanced at her, amusement lighting his eyes. "Which I suppose had to happen sooner or later, considering that in four years I'll be forty."
Harvard Becker was an incredibly beautiful-looking man. His body couldn't have been more perfect if some artisan had taken a chisel to stone and sculpted it. But it was his eyes that continued to keep P.J. up at night. So much was hidden in their liquid brown depths.
It had been a bold move on her part to suggest they go off alone to walk. With anyone else, she wouldn't have thought twice about it. But with everyone else, the boundaries of friendship weren't so hard to define.
When it came to this man, P.J. was tempted to break her own rules. And that was a brand new feeling for her. A dangerous feeling. She hugged her knees a little tighter.
"There was a lot wrong with that house in Hingham," Harvard told her. "The roof leaked in the kitchen. No matter how many times we tried to fix it, as soon as it stormed, we'd need to get out that old bucket and put it under that drip. The pipes rattled, and the windows were draughty, and my sisters were always tying up the telephone. My mother's solution to any problem was to serve up a hearty meal, and my old man was so immersed in Shakespeare most of the time he didn't know which century it was."
He was trying to make jokes, trying to bring himself out of the funk he'd been in, trying to pretend it didn't matter.
"I couldn't wait to move out, you know, to go away to school," he said.
He was trying to make it hurt less by belittling his memories. And there was no way she was going to sit by and listen quietly while he did that.
"You know that dream you've been having?" she asked. "The one where you get home from school and your parents are gone?"
He nodded.
"Well, it didn't happen to me exactly like that," she told him. "But one day I came home from school and I found all our furniture out on the sidewalk. We'd been evicted, and my mother was gone. She'd vanished. She'd dealt with the bad news not by trying to hustle down a new apartment, but by going out on a binge."
He pushed himself into a sitting position. "My God..."
"I was twelve years old," P.J. said. "My grandmother had died about three months before that, and it was just me and Cheri—my mom. I don't know what Cheri did with the rent money, but I can certainly guess. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I had to beg our neighbours to hold onto some of that furniture for us—the stuff that wasn't already broken or stolen. I had to pick and choose which of the clothing we could take and which we'd have to leave behind. I couldn't carry any of my books or toys or stuffed animals, and no one had any room to store a box of my old junk, so I put 'em in an alley, hoping they'd still be there by the time I found us another place to live." She shot him a look. "It rained that night, and I never even bothered to go back. I knew the things in that box were ruined. I guess I figured I didn't have much use for toys anymore, anyway."
She took a deep breath. "But that afternoon, I loaded up all that I could carry of our clothes in shopping bags and I went looking for my mother. You see, I needed to find her in order to get a bed in the shelter that night. If I tried to go on my own, I'd be taken in and made a ward of the state. And as bad as things were with Cheri, I was afraid that would be even worse."
Harvard swore softly.
"I'm not giving you the 411 to make you feel worse." She held his gaze, hoping he would understand. "I'm just trying to show you how really lucky you were, Daryl. How lucky you are. Your past is solid. You should celebrate it and let it make you stronger."
"Your mother..."
"Was an addict since before I can remember," P.J. told him flatly. "And don't even ask about my father. I'm not sure my mother knew who he was. Cheri was fourteen when she had me. And her mother was sixteen when she had her. I did the math and figured out if I followed in my family's hallowed tradition, I'd be nursing a baby of my own by the time I was twelve. That's the childhood I climbed out of. I escaped, but just barely." She raised her chin. "But if there's one thing I got from Cheri, it's a solid grounding in reality. I am where I am today because I looked around and I said no way. So in a sense, I celebrate my past, too. But the party in my head's not quite as joyful as the one you should be having."
"Damn," Harvard said. "Compared to you, I grew up in paradise." He swore. "Now I really feel like some kind of pouting child."
P.J. looked at the ocean stretching all the way to the horizon. She loved knowing that it kept going and going and going, way past the point where the earth curved and she couldn't see it anymore.
"I've begun to think of you as a friend," she told Harvard. She turned to look at him, gazing directly into his eyes. "So I have to warn you—I only have guilt-free friendships. You can't take anything I've told you and use it to invalidate your own bad stuff. I mean, everyone's got their own luggage, right? And friends shouldn't set their personal suitcase down next to someone else's, size them both up and say, hey, mine's not as big as yours, or hey, mine's bigger and fancier so yours doesn't count." She smiled. "I'll tell you right now, Senior Chief, I travel with an old refrigerator box, and it's packed solid. Just don't knock it over, and I'll be all right. Yours, on the other hand, is very classy Masonite. But your parents' move made the lock break, and now you've got to tidy everything up before you can get it fixed and sealed up tight again."
Harvard nodded, smiling at her. "That's a very poetic way of telling me don't bother to stage a pissing contest, 'cause you'd win, hands down."
"That's right. But I'm also telling you don't jam yourself up because you feel sad about your parents leaving your hometown," P.J. said. "It makes perfect sense that you'll miss that house you grew up in—that house you've gone home to for the past thirty years. There's nothing wrong with feeling sad about that. But I'm also saying that even though you feel sad, you should also feel happy. Just think—you've had that place to call home and those people to make it a good, happy home for all these years. You've got memories, good memories you'll always be able to look back on and take comfort from. You know what having a home means, while most of the rest of the people in the world are just floating around, upside down, not even knowing what they're missing but missing it just the same."
He was silent, so she kept going. She couldn't remember the last time she'd talked so much. But this man, this new friend with the whiskey-coloured eyes, who made her feel like cheating the rules—he was worth the effort.
"You can choose to have a house and a family someday, kids, the whole nine yards, like your parents did," she told him. "Or you can hang on
to those memories you carry in your heart. That way, you can go back to that home you had, wherever you are, whenever you want."
There. She'd said everything she wanted to say to him. But he was so quiet, she began to wonder if she'd gone too far. She was the queen of dysfunctional families. What did she know about normal? What right did she have to tell him her view of the world with such authority in her voice?
He cleared his throat. "So where do you live now, P.J.?"
She liked it when Harvard called her P.J. instead of Richards. It shouldn't have mattered, but it did. She liked the chill she got up her spine from the heat she could sometimes see simmering in his eyes. And she especially liked knowing he respected her enough to hold back. He wanted her. His attraction was powerful, but he respected her enough to not keep hammering her with come-on lines and thinly veiled innuendos. Yeah, she liked that a lot.
"I have an apartment in D.C., but I'm hardly ever there."
She picked up a handful of sand and let it sift through her fingers. "See, I'm one of the floaters. I still haven't unpacked most of my boxes from college. I haven't even bought furniture for the place, although I do have a bed and a kitchen table." She shot him a rueful smile. "I don't need extensive therapy to know that my nesting instincts are busted, big-time. I figure it's a holdover from when I was a kid. I learned not to get attached to any one place because sooner or later the landlord would be kicking us out and we'd be living somewhere else."
"If you could live anywhere in the world," he asked, "where would you live?"
"Doesn't matter where, as long as it's not in the middle of a city," P.J. answered without hesitation. "Some cute little house with a little yard—doesn't have to be big. It just has to have some land. Enough for a flower garden. I've never lived anywhere long enough to let a garden grow," she added wistfully.
Harvard was struck by the picture she made sitting there. She'd just run eight miles at a speed that had his men cursing, then walked three miles more. She was sandy, she was sticky from salt and sweat, her hair was less than perfect, her makeup long since gone. She was tough, she was driven, she was used to not just getting by but getting ahead in a man's world, and despite all that, she was sweetly sentimental as all get out.
She turned to meet his gaze, and as if she could somehow read his mind, she laughed. "God, I sound like a sap." Her eyes narrowed. "If you tell anyone what I said, you're a dead man."
"What, that you like flowers? Since when is that late-breaking piece of news something you need to keep hidden from the world?"
Something shifted in her eyes. "You can like flowers," she told him. "You can read Jane Austen in the mess hall at lunch. You can drink iced tea instead of whiskey shots with beer chasers. You can do what you want. But if I'm caught acting like a woman, if I wear soft, lacy underwear instead of the kind made from fifty percent cotton and fifty percent sandpaper, I get looked at funny. People start to wonder if I'm capable of doing my job."
Harvard tried to make her smile. "Personally, I stay away from the lacy underwear myself."
"Yeah, but you could wear silk boxers, and your men would think, 'Gee, the Senior Chief is really cool.' I wear silk, and those same men start thinking with a nonbrain part of their anatomy."
"That's human nature," he argued. "That's because you're a beautiful woman and—"
"You know, it always comes down to sex," P.J. told him crossly. "Always. You can't put men and women in a room together without something happening. And I'm not saying it's entirely the men's fault, although men can be total dogs. Do you know that I had to start fighting off my mother's boyfriends back when I was ten? Ten. They'd come over, get high with her, and then when she passed out, they'd start sniffing around my bedroom door. My grandmother was alive then, and she'd give 'em a piece of her mind, chase 'em out of the house. But after she died, when I was twelve, I was on my own. I grew up fast, I'll tell you that much."
When Harvard was twelve, he'd had a paper route. The toughest thing he'd had to deal with was getting up early every morning to deliver those papers. And the Doberman on the corner of Parker and Reingold. That mean old dog had been a problem for about a week or two. But in time, Harvard had gotten used to the early mornings, and he'd made friends with the Doberman.
Somehow he doubted P.J. had had equally easy solutions to her problems.
She gazed at the ocean, the wind moving a stray curl across her face. She didn't seem to feel it, or if she did, she didn't care enough to push it away.
He tried to picture her at twelve years old. She must've been tiny. Hell, she was tiny now. It wouldn't have taken much of a man to overpower her and—
The thought made him sick. But he had to know. He had to ask. "Did you ever... Did they ever..."
She turned to look at him, and he couldn't find any immediate answers in the bottomless darkness of her eyes.
"There was one," she said softly, staring at the ocean. "He didn't back off when I threatened to call my uncle. Of course, I didn't really have any uncle. It's possible he knew that. Or maybe he was just too stoned to care. I had to go out the window to get away from him—only in my panic, I went out the wrong window. I went out the one without the fire escape. Once I was out there, I couldn't go back. I went onto the ledge and I just stood there, sixteen stories up, scared out of my mind, staring at those little toy cars on the street, knowing if I slipped, I'd be dead, but certain if I went back inside I'd be as good as dead." She looked at Harvard. "I honestly think I would've jumped before I would've let him touch me."
Harvard believed her. This man, whoever he'd been, may not have hurt P.J. physically, but he'd done one hell of a job on her emotionally and psychologically.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. "I don't suppose you remember this son of a bitch's name?" he asked.
"Ron something. I don't think I ever knew his last name."
He nodded. "Too bad."
"Why?"
Harvard shrugged. "Nothing important. I was just thinking it might make me feel a little better to hunt him down and kick the hell out of him."
P.J. laughed—a shaky burst of air that was part humour and part surprise. "But he didn't hurt me, Daryl. I took care of myself and... I was okay."
"Were you?" Harvard reached out for her. He knew he shouldn't. He knew that just touching her lightly under the chin to turn her to face him would be too much. He knew her skin would be sinfully soft beneath his fingers, and he knew that once he touched her, he wouldn't want to let go. But he wanted to look into her eyes, so he did. "Tell me this—are you still afraid of heights?"
She didn't need to answer. He saw the shock of the truth in her eyes before she pulled away. She stood up, moved toward the water, stopping on the edge of the beach, letting the waves wash over her feet.
Harvard followed, waiting for her to look at him again.
P.J.'s head was spinning. Afraid of heights? Terrified was more like it.
She couldn't believe he'd figured that out. She couldn't believe she'd told him enough to give herself away. Steeling herself, she looked at him. "I can handle heights, Senior Chief. It's not a problem."
She could tell from the look on his face he didn't believe her.
"It's not a problem," she said again.
Damn. She'd told him too much.
It was one thing to joke around about her dream house. But telling him about her problem with heights was going way too far.
It would do her absolutely no good to let this man know her weaknesses. She had to have absolutely no vulnerabilities to coexist in his macho world. She could not be afraid of heights. She would not be. She could handle it—but not if he made it into an issue.
P.J. rinsed her hands in the ocean. "We better get back if we want to have any lunch."
But Harvard blocked the way to where her sneakers and T-shirt were lying on the sand. "Thanks for taking the time to talk to me," he said.
She nodded, still afraid to meet his eyes. "Yeah, I'm glad we're frien
ds."
"It's nice to be able to talk to someone in confidence—and know you don't have to worry about other people finding out all your deep, dark secrets," Harvard told her.
P.J. did look at him then, but he'd already turned away.
Chapter 8
"Man, it's quiet around here today," Harvard said as he came into the decaying Quonset hut that housed Alpha Squad's office.
Lucky was the only one around, and he looked up from one of the computers. "Hey, H.," he said with a cheerful smile. "Where've you been?"
"There was a meeting with the base commander that I absolutely couldn't miss." Harvard rolled his eyes. "It was vital that I go with the captain to listen to more complaints about having the squad temporarily stationed here. This base is regular Navy, and SEALs don't follow rules. We don't salute enough. We drive too fast. We make too much noise at the firing range. We don't cut our hair." He slid his hand over his cleanly shaved head. "Or we cut our hair too short I tell you, there's no pleasing some folks. Every week it's the same, and every week we sit there, and I take notes, and the captain nods seriously and explains that the noise at the firing range occurs when we discharge our weapons and he's sorry for the inconvenience, but one of the reasons Alpha Squad has the success record it does is that each and every one of us takes target practice each day, every day, and that's not going to change. And then the supply officer steps forward and informs us that the next time we want another box of pencils, we've got to get 'em from Office Max. We appear to have used up our allotted supply." He shook his head. "We got lectured on that for ten minutes."
"Ten minutes? On pencils?"
Harvard grinned. "That's right." He turned toward his office. "Joe's right behind me. He should be back soon—unless he gets cornered into sticking around for lunch."
Lucky made a face. "Poor Cat."
"This is what you have to look forward to, O'Donlon," Harvard said with another grin. "It's only a matter of time before you make an oh-six pay grade and get your own command. And then you'll be rationing pencils, too." He laughed "It's not just a job—it's an adventure."
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