by Cindy Dees
“That must be how all the people you’ve rescued felt when they heard you coming,” she murmured.
“I suppose so.” He’d never thought of it in those terms.
“Go on,” she urged gently.
“A pair of choppers came in first and made a strafing run. Softened up the rebels so a rescue bird could come in and land.”
“By softened up, I gather you mean it shot up the rebels?” she asked soberly.
He nodded. “Lit them up like the Fourth of July. The second rescue bird landed practically on top of us. We loaded up the injured and piled aboard in about ten seconds flat.”
He could see and feel it all again. The tracers and explosions too damned close to them. The smell of blood, the moans of the wounded and the shouts of the others to Go! Go! Go! He felt the rescue helicopter shaking beneath him as gunfire raked its light armor.
“We flew like a bat out of hell and cleared the ridge. Our helicopter took some hits but held on. We limped home, but two more guys died in the back before we could get to a field hospital. There was blood all over the place. And there was nothing we could do to help them. They both had internal bleeding that would have taken a damned fine trauma surgeon to stop.”
“So there was nothing you could’ve done for them,” Marley stated.
Archer winced. And there it was—the inconvenient truth he and all his fellow pilots tried so hard to avoid. Sometimes, bad things happened to good people. There was no fancy explanation, and it sucked rocks. Sometimes a combination of uncontrollable circumstances just lined up wrong and killed people.
“There was nothing you could have done, right?” she pressed.
“I could’ve been the one to take a bullet,” he replied.
“Thank God you didn’t,” Marley retorted with a world of empathy in her eyes.
He smiled a little in spite of himself.
“Seriously, Archer. What could you have done differently?”
“Nothing. The call would have come in and I would still have gone even if I knew I was going to get shot down. It was my job. Those guys on the ground were depending on me to come get them. I had to at least try to pull them out.”
“There you have it. You’d have done the same thing again. And the same thing would have happened. It wasn’t your fault, and you couldn’t have changed the outcome.”
There was something therapeutic in hearing someone else say the words, in someone else absolving him from responsibility.
“As crappy luck would have it,” she continued, “some guys you were trying to help took unlucky bullets.”
“About as crappy as luck can get.”
“Nonetheless,” she pressed, “we’re talking about bad luck, not any specific mistake you made. Right?”
“Look. I know that in my head. But it’s going to take a little time to convince my gut.”
“Fair enough,” she said calmly. “Have you grieved for the guys who died yet?”
He stared at Marley. “Come again? I didn’t know any of them.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t feel bad over their deaths.”
Right. Like he and the other guys sat around singing “Kumbaya” and boo-hooing every time some poor sod got shot and bled out in combat.
It was the pits. But it was war.
“I’ve had no time to even think about the mission, let alone grieve for anyone. As soon as I filed my written report on the incident, the flight surgeon put me on mandatory leave for a month. I packed my bags, got on a plane, and here I am.”
“I’m no expert, but even I know you need some time to absorb what happened and deal with it. Anyone would feel guilty surviving under those circumstances. No wonder they made you come home for some leave. The flight surgeon must have known you would need time to work through this.”
He stared at her. Was she right? Was survivor’s guilt the source of his problems? Was the cure as simple as making peace with those guys’ deaths?
“You should talk with Steve Prescott.”
He started. “Why him?”
“I heard he was a Marine. Some kind of combat commander. I’ll bet he knows exactly what it feels like to lose troops he felt responsible for. Maybe he’d have some suggestions for getting past it.”
He’d never thought of his brother in those terms before. As a kid, he’d looked up to Steve. Seen him as his invincible big brother. He’d never considered that Steve might have scars and emotional baggage of his own from his military career.
Archer turned over the idea thoughtfully, and abruptly he felt restless. Caged in. “I need to take a walk. Stretch my legs.”
“Last time you went out for a walk you came back sopping wet and hypothermic.”
“I know where the creek is now,” he retorted drily. “And it’s not like you could stop me. I outweigh you by a good eighty pounds, and I’m a lot bigger and stronger than you, pip-squeak.”
She tensed indignantly. “Who’re you calling pip-squeak?” Her gaze narrowed menacingly, and she held up the cutest, most ineffective fists he’d seen in a long time. “Call me that again. I dare you.”
He grinned broadly at her. God, she was good for his soul. “How about you help me bundle up? You can check to make sure all of my clothes are dry and that I’ll be sufficiently warm for you not to worry about me.”
He had to admit, his heart felt lighter after their talk as he put on his coats, hats, gloves and boots—all vetted and declared dry by Marley. Maybe talking about the mission hadn’t been such a bad idea.
What would he do without her? One thing he knew for sure: he didn’t want to find out. His return to active duty in a few weeks loomed large in his mind as he stepped outside into the waning afternoon light to run a quick patrol around the cabin and check just how impassible the driveway was.
First things first. He had to figure out who was stalking Marley before he could even think about leaving her side.
* * *
Marley waited impatiently for Archer’s return. The cabin felt empty and hollow without his huge presence filling it. She was relieved that he trusted her enough to talk about that awful mission with her. What must it be like to carry around terrible memories and pain and have no one to share it with? She shuddered to imagine it. It certainly put her stupid jinx into perspective. It wasn’t worth obsessing over any more.
Meanwhile, no more silent suffering for him. She vowed to herself to be there for him whenever he needed someone to talk to. Although how she was going to pull that off when he went back to his unit, she had no idea. She supposed soldiers kept in touch with their families over the internet these days. It wouldn’t be ideal, but she supposed it was better than having no contact with him at all.
Now, how to figure out if he was willing to give a long-distance relationship a try? Did she dare ask him outright? That seemed pretty bold, even for her.
She paced the interior of the cabin nervously while she waited for his return. Was this to be the shape of her future life, waiting and worrying about him for weeks or months on end? Was she strong enough to do it? For him? Would he wait for her, too? Could what they had between them grow into something strong enough to withstand the distance and separation? She desperately hoped so.
* * *
Archer stared down at the snow in horror. There was no doubt about it. Those were footprints. Human footprints. Right underneath the bedroom window of the cabin. And neither he nor Marley had been outside recently enough to have made the prints. The wind was still blowing fiercely, filling in the prints even as he stood there. Which meant whoever’d been peeking in the windows had done it very recently. Maybe recently enough that he could track and catch the bastard.
Quickly, he followed the line of tracks. It led around the back of the house and up onto the small back porch. Had the bastard tried the l
ock on the door? Attempted to get into the cabin? Or had he just stood there on the porch, peering in the door and spying on them?
Archer’s skin crawled at the idea of being watched like that. Had the stalker seen them having sex in front of the fireplace? Fury on Marley’s behalf ripped through him. It was the worst possible invasion of privacy to have their lovemaking spied upon.
No way could he tell Marley about it. She would flip out. He knew from his survival-school training that women took sexual invasions of their privacy much more personally than men.
He was going to kill this asshole when he caught up with him. Slowly and painfully. He followed the tracks around the far side of the cabin, past Marley’s snow-covered car, in a circle around his truck and back into the woods.
He’d traveled no more than a quarter mile into the heavy stand of timber around the cabin before he lost the trail. A combination of rapidly shifting drifts of snow and pine needles carpeting the forest floor where there was no snow made the trail impossible to follow.
If it had been bright daylight out and powdery gusts of crystalline snow not been blowing in his face and obscuring his vision, he might have been able to track the trail. But as it was, he had a pretty good idea where the stalker had headed, anyway. The trail had gone more or less in a straight line back toward the main road.
He was fairly sure the intruder must have had a vehicle, maybe a snowmobile, parked on the road and driven away. It was too cold out here for anyone to make camp and hang out in the woods for any period of time. At least not without extensive cold weather gear that would’ve been difficult to carry in through the deep snow and miserable to camp in for long.
Who in the hell would sneak up to the cabin and peer inside the windows like that? He supposed it was technically possible that the stalker was after him. But frankly, he didn’t think he had been back in the United States long enough for any enemies he might have to have caught up with him so quickly. Which left Marley as the target of this craziness.
He frowned. What if the accidents around the movie set had something to do with her? Steve had been clear that Marley had been close to all of the places where things had gone wrong either just before or at the time of the incidents. Had she been the target of all the near-catastrophes? He needed to get back to town. To talk it over with Steve. Look at the security footage of the incidents and see if Marley could possibly have been the target instead of the movie set itself. For that matter, he needed to check the footage and see if he could spot someone who might be stalking her.
They had to get away from this cabin as soon as possible. They were completely isolated out here in the woods and severely limited in options for self-defense.
He took a hike down the driveway, and it was a disaster zone. Drifts of snow nearly as tall as he piled across the drive, lined up one after another. He might be able to shovel through it all, but with the wind blowing like it was, any path he made would fill right back in, probably in a matter of minutes. They were stuck here until the wind died down.
He turned around and headed back to the cabin and Marley. He was not leaving her side again until they were safely back on the movie set and surrounded by Steve’s stunt crew, most of whom Steve had recruited from the ranks of recently retired Special Forces soldiers.
He slipped inside the cabin, stripped off his coat and stomped the snow off his boots. He had suggested to Marley that she take a nap while he checked out the snow. Hopefully, she’d listened to him and was safely tucked under the down comforter. He stuck his head in the bedroom door and spied a riot of blond curls peeking above the covers. Relief coursed through him. She was safe. And, by God, he planned to keep her that way.
He piled more wood on the fire and laid out his snowy clothes to dry on the hearth, then headed for the bedroom and climbed into bed. Marley promptly rolled over in her sleep and draped herself over him. She came half-awake as her limbs wrapped around his. Hugging an ice cube probably would wake him up, too.
He murmured, “Go back to sleep, baby. I’ll warm up in a second. And then I promise I’ll hold you all night long.”
She breathed on a sigh of total contentment and mumbled, “Best. Fling. Ever.”
His hands stilled on her skin. A fling? He was really starting to hate that word.
Still, he was the last one who should be throwing stones. It had been his own MO for so long, he didn’t know what the hell to do now that his perspective was changing. And he sure as hell didn’t like that she was turning the tables on him.
He was spinning out of control, and there didn’t seem to be a damned thing he could do about it. He was having all sorts of strange feelings piled one on top of another, and he couldn’t stop any of them. This must be what it felt like to go crazy. It was by turns giddy and truly terrifying.
It was almost as if he’d become obsessed with Marley. Either that, or she’d invaded his mind somehow.
He was actually considering asking her if she would be willing to give a long-term relationship with him a try. He knew better than most just how hard those were for military members and their significant others to sustain. He’d watched dozen of men and women in his unit over the years try to hold together long-distance romance with their spouses, girlfriends and boyfriends. Some had succeeded...and some hadn’t.
Poor Marley. He had no business inflicting all his crap on her. She had just wanted to gain some sexual experience. Not that he minded being the provider of that. But she’d never bargained on him turning out to be the one who wanted to turn their fling into something more. Something long-term. Hell, maybe even permanent.
As much as he might want more from her, a fling was probably the best thing for them. No deep emotional attachments, no obligation for her to wrestle through his deep-seated relationship demons with him. Yup. A fling was the thing.
On cue, the whole stew of weirdness in his gut flared up again. He couldn’t even begin to name all the ingredients. Need. Longing. Anger. Abandonment. Grief. It was as if all the emotional crap in his life had picked this moment to come surging out of wherever he usually stowed it, and all of it was messing with his head. Nobody had ever warned him that falling for someone opened the floodgates to all the relationship issues amassed over one’s entire life.
What the hell was wrong with him? He hadn’t felt remotely this emotionally unbalanced even right after that last mission from hell.
Maybe it was the incredible, emotional sex with Marley throwing him off his game. God knew, it had blown his mind. The weird thing was he’d had hot sex with lots of women in his life, and none of it had ever had this kind of an effect on him. But Marley was different.
Warming to the mental topic, he postulated that maybe it was something about her inexperience making him unable to shake her from his thoughts. She’d made him feel unusually protective. Yeah. That was probably it.
Although it wasn’t as if he was going to get to stick around to find out. He would go back overseas, and she would move on with her life. She would find a guy who was permanently stateside, who could offer her a stable life and the promise of a long-term relationship.
A hot knife of jealousy stabbed him at the thought of a lout like Gordon Trapowski getting to be with her, getting his mind blown on a nightly basis by Marley. God, what he wouldn’t give to be that guy. It was almost enough to make him think about resigning his commission and staying stateside for good.
The random thought shocked his mind into stillness. He had never been the type who would give up his career for love. He’d always scorned those men and women, in fact.
But damned if Marley wasn’t rapidly turning him into one of those love-struck idiots. This was nuts. He’d clearly lost his marbles. The hell of it was that it felt so damned good. He didn’t want to wake up from this mad dream. At all.
Marley moved restlessly against him, and he gathered her closer, wrappin
g his arms and his heart around her protectively. She settled, cuddled even closer to him and drifted back into a deep sleep.
His last conscious thought was to register in vague shock that he felt a smile on his face. What kind of fool fell asleep grinning?
A fool just like him apparently.
* * *
Marley woke slowly, warm and lazy and in no hurry to go anywhere. A warm, muscular, entirely male chest rose and fell gently under her ear. Yup. This was just about perfect.
A chill in the air announced that she and Archer had slept through the night and that the fire in the main room had burned down while they slumbered. She ought to get up and feed it more wood, but she was too comfortable and cozy right here to summon the energy to crawl out of bed, put on cold clothes and go out into the icy main room to stoke the fire. In a few minutes...
The next time she woke up, Archer was gone and she heard a firing crackling and popping loudly in the living room. The bedroom was still cold, so he must have gotten up recently. She sat up reluctantly, keeping the comforter tucked up around her chin.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Archer said cheerfully from the doorway.
“Hey. What time is it?”
“Sadly, it’s time to go. The wind has died down, which means I can shovel the snowdrifts and they won’t build up again. I’m heading out soon to try to open up the driveway.”
“That thing’s a quarter mile long. No way can you shovel the entire thing!”
He threw her a mock scowl. “Hey. I’m a specimen of supreme physical ability, thank you very much.”
She laughed gaily. “Well, then. Please forgive me for impugning your superpowers. You’re not seriously going to shovel the whole driveway, are you?”
“Nah. I’m gonna use my truck to blast through the drifts. I’ll only dig whenever it gets stuck. Hopefully, it’ll knock out all but the worst of the drifts blocking our escape.”
“Our escape?” That was a strange word choice. “You don’t feel trapped by me, do you? I mean, I don’t expect you to make any promises or to hold you to any long-term commitments because we, well, you know.”