Abby dare not move or breathe. Nick was too honorable a man to say such things and not mean every word. He was so tender, so kind. In her arms, he was no warrior but a man who cared for her. A man in love.
She felt the power of it as he shifted between her legs and his cock found her entrance. The way he filled her, dropped his head into the hollow of her throat, and sighed his happiness proved to her the depth of the emotion they both fought with logic.
She craved him, valued him, welcomed him inside her as she had never wanted any other man. Could she be reckless, could she meet him passion for passion and hope that, when tomorrow came, it might offer substance to complement their desire for each other?
And how much more proof did she need that she loved him?
Chapter Eight
“We’ll go through it quickly,” Abby said, looping her arm through Nick’s, cajoling him to cross the street and enter the old fortification of The Alamo. He had been preoccupied for the last hour or more. So unlike him to be quiet with her, and she tried not to put much stock in his behavior. He was a man with heavy responsibilities, now including an affair that was too speedy, too intimate, too incredibly wonderful to be believable. “Come on. Then we’ll catch a cab to the hospital.”
He snorted. “Are you trying to find an excuse to stay away from bed?”
She tried to pinch him, but the man had no fat on those toned ribs of his. “Tonight is another night.”
He stopped and pulled her around to face him. “Did I frighten you?”
She met his gaze with a frankness of her own. His tender loving had given her the most honest assurance of the rightness of their affair. “Never. I feel—I know—how you care for me.”
“I want more than today or tonight, Abby. I want—”
She kissed him, a quick affirmation. “You made love to me as if I were the most glorious thing that ever happened to you. That’s not frightening. But it is…astonishing. The force of it. I need a while to get used to all that wonder. I’d say you do, too.”
“Okay,” he said, sounding to her ears not totally convinced.
“Come on.” She led him through the outer garden where two-hundred-year-old cypress trees bowed low to the live oaks and swayed in the breeze against the fronds of sago palm leaves. “It’s quite lovely, isn’t it?”
He patted her arm. “A treasure.”
“Do you know much about it?” she asked, noting how many tourists wandered the gardens in their shorts, wiping their brows in the heat of July. She remembered Nick had told her he had an eerie feeling about the fort, but she didn’t detect he felt odd about visiting it today.
“Originally an old Spanish mission, it was an outpost built by Catholic priests to bring Christianity to the local tribes. Later, when the settlers wanted to be independent of Spain in the eighteen forties and fifties, they took it over.”
“But then they lost their battle against the Spanish Santa Anna and that was the massacre we all know about,” she continued the story, looking at the outer stone walls.
He opened the door for her, and she walked inside.
Dark, with only one high window, the huge room was a cool contrast to the heat outside. Dust motes floated in the rays that permeated here and there. A few flickering gas lamps offered additional light. The two of them stood at the entrance, the flags of each of the states and of other nations standing against the walls. The stones were covered in other memorabilia, including ploughs, muskets, flags of the Texan patriots. Around her and Nick, people walked and talked.
One spoke with an Irish accent. Another with a Southern. Someone else was dressed in a loose linen shirt and baggy brown trousers with suspenders. The women wore long gowns with hoops that held the skirts out in balloon-like shapes. The boys wore short-cropped pants and ragged suspenders. The girls wore tidy little dresses of calico print and laced up boots.
A man stopped to bend over in front of Nick and Abby, and when he stood, he looked at Nick—or rather, he looked through him—and she and Nick frowned at each other and squeezed each other’s hands.
“Did he really look at you?” she asked Nick.
“I doubt it.”
“And he’s got on—” Lord, could she even believe it?
“Right. His shirt is a worn Confederate jacket.”
She pressed closer to Nick. “What’s happening here?”
Nick curled his arm around her waist and hugged her to his side. “Re-enactors.”
She wanted to believe that. “Do you think?”
“What else could it be?”
“You don’t sound convinced,” she said, concern eating into her good mood.
“Let’s finish here,” Nick said and led her toward the exhibit at the back of the hall.
The two of them examined the miniature version of the fort and listened to the description of the battle of the Alamo by the docent. When the woman finished, Nick and Abby hurried to catch up with her.
“Ma’am,” he called to her. “Could you answer a question for me?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Abby noticed that the lady also wore a cotton print gown with a hoop skirt, a little lace collar at her neck and a black net in her hair caught up in a bun.
“Do you give tours of the Alamo to visitors?” he asked.
“Tours?” She blinked, as if she were confused. “I tell the story of the battle, sir.”
“And a good job of it you do, too.” He smiled.
“Thank you. We must never forget what happened here.”
“You’re right.”
“And since the end of the recent troubles, many people here need to remember our glorious past.”
Nick nodded slightly, glancing at Abby at the odd wording of the docent. “We do. Can you tell me what group this is that’s here?”
The woman followed his gaze. “Group? None. Just visitors.”
“But they’re dressed like they’re doing a reenactment and we thought perhaps—”
The woman drew herself up as if insulted. “Sir, I don’t know what this reenactment business is, but these people are just as finely dressed as any.” She sniffed. “I daresay, sir, you and your missus are the ones who need to see a good tailor. Good day.”
Nick watched her go. Slowly, he turned to Abby and the two of them gaped at each other. “Is she rude or are we nuts?”
“What if she isn’t hallucinating?” Abby asked on a whisper.
“No. Honestly?” He gave a laugh. “What if we are?”
“Can’t be.” She turned to a young woman standing next to her. “Pardon me, ma’am.”
The woman looked her up and down as if she were an escaped convict. “Yes?”
“What month is it?”
The woman frowned. “July.”
“And the year?”
“What?”
“The year?” Abby repeated.
The woman scowled. “Eighteen-sixty-six.”
Abby stepped backward into the shelter of Nick’s embrace. “Thank you very much.”
“Welcome,” the woman said and scurried away to catch up with a man her age, attired as oddly as the others.
“We’re leaving,” Nick said. “This way.” He led Abby out into the brilliant noon sun and found a bench where they both sat down with a jolt.
“I can’t believe it,” Abby said, a hand to her mouth.
Nick’s eyes twitched. His brow was furrowed. But his arm was around her shoulders and he leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“Look at them.” Abby nodded toward the tourists around them. “They have on shorts and jeans.”
“T-shirts with goofy sayings,” he added.
“What was that in there?” she asked, bewildered.
“A group of Civil War enthusiasts playing a bad trick on the tourists.”
She snorted. “You said before that you got a funny feeling when you went in there.”
“I did. But I never saw anyone dressed like that. Not all of them.”
“But w
hy would they claim to be from another century?”
“We could go back in and ask someone else the year and why they’re dressed like that,” he said.
And why we both see them. Why we both saw Mabry. Abby shivered, and Nick rubbed her arms.
His phone buzzed.
“Hang on a minute,” he said and walked away to talk with his caller.
She watched him, his mouth thinning as he listened, nodding and turning toward her as he commented on something. She heard him say, “Yes, of course. I’ll see what’s available. If nothing, you’ll get me a hop out of Lackland?”
As he said his goodbyes, he trained his gaze on hers. Whatever he’d heard, it was not good news. His taut facial expression told her that.
“I have to go back to Dam Neck. Now. Today. Called in for a mission.” He sank in front of her, his hands wringing hers. “I hate like hell to leave you, sweetheart. Not after this business in the Alamo. And not now. Not so soon.”
“What about your class?”
“I’ll take it again. Finish it if I can later. Right now, we have good intel on a tier one target, and I have to go.”
She raised his hands and kissed each one in turn. Only one hope lived in her heart. “You’ll come back.”
“I will.”
“To me?”
“I promise.” His blue-green eyes were misting. “I want you with me. Forever.”
She gulped. Logic could trump passion. Did she want it to? “This was so fast.”
“Fast. Good and right. Even when I return to Virginia, I’m not there long. Days, weeks max.”
Her heart dropped to her feet. She’d found a man she could love, and he could be sent away far, far from her, even wounded or killed. She wanted to rage at fate.
“But I don’t care, Abby.” He smoothed her hair. “I want you. Regardless of time or logic or rules someone else makes. Have you ever been to San Diego?”
She shook her head, her vision foggy.
“It’s beautiful. Shangri-la, some call it.” He rose and cradled her to him, his hands sunk in her hair. “You need to see it.”
She nodded, choking with sorrow that he was leaving and their idyll was ending.
He pushed back and flicked a tear from her cheek. “You’ll come to California and see it with me.”
She wanted to seize the moment but caution made her silent.
He kissed her softly, his warm passion a tender promise. “Give us a chance. Think about it. Because…you belong to me. Belong with me. You always have. Always will.”
She wanted to be brave, rash, wild. She yearned to throw her arms around him and give in to lust and love and the promise of tomorrows filled with bliss, but all her yesterdays said she needed more time to get to know him, appreciate him.
If he saw her conflict in her eyes or understood it in the lack of any words of commitment to him, he gave her a consoling smile, a bear hug, and turned to walk away.
She stood there for a few minutes until he disappeared in the crowd. Confused and sad, she spun and headed for the building in front of her. The bookstore connected to the Alamo was a bright, cheerful place filled with all kinds of tourist trinkets, hats, T-shirts, flags, and in one corner, books.
Abby was wandering around, admiring the souvenirs, when a small girl ran up to her, stood still as a statue, and peered up into her face.
“Hi,” Abby said with a smile. “Did you lose your parents?”
“No, ma’am.” The little girl shook her head, her pigtails in pink bows flying back and forth over her shoulders as she moved. “You do look just like her.”
Abby stiffened. Too many coincidences, too many odd occurrences put her on guard to yet another. “Who do I look like?”
“The lady on the front of Mama’s book.”
Abby shook her head, confused. “Your mother wrote a book?”
“No, you—”
“Madison,” a young blonde woman called to the girl and came to stand in back of her. “Don’t bother the lady, sweetie.”
“Oh, she didn’t. Really.” Abby smiled at the girl’s mother, and the man who strode up behind them.
“See,” Madison said, gazing up at her mom, “I told you. She does, doesn’t she?”
“Yes. Yes, honey, she does.” The mother blushed, hands to her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I bought a book over there, and my daughter saw you just as I was giving it to the clerk and, wow. Pardon me, Miss, but you do look like this lady.”
Abby stood stark still as the woman fished the book out of her paper bag. But when she placed it in her hands, Abby swallowed hard. Her knees turned to water. Her eyes burned as she gazed at the front cover, a reproduction of the sketch of the woman that hung in the showcases in the lobby of the Menger. “My Journey to Texas by Antoinette McCormick.”
“Do you know her?” the woman asked her.
“You sure do resemble her,” the girl’s father added. “She could be your sister.”
Abby glanced at the book again. The self-portrait of her long-lost relative stared back at her. “I only learned about her yesterday. She was a cousin, third or fourth removed. I’m sorry. I don’t know much about her.” Except she had a brother who searched for her. And he haunts the Menger, perhaps still trying to find her.
“That’s wonderful,” the woman said. “I teach history and finding a long-lost relative is the greatest thing. Gives you insight into where you came from and who you are.”
“That’s for certain,” Abby said, brightening. “I need to buy a copy of this book, and I have you to thank for letting me know it’s here.” She grinned at Madison and held out her hand.
The little girl shook Abby’s hand. “Do you think she was brave?”
“I think she must have been very brave.”
“The back summary says she traveled alone after the Civil War to find a Yankee officer she loved.”
Abby blinked. It took her a moment to process what Madison’s mom told her. “Did she really?”
The mother held up a book, as if it were a trophy. “Says she traveled alone because her Yankee officer thought she would never love him.”
“Yes,” Abby added, sharing what she knew. “And Antoinette was a Confederate.”
“Right. And even though he’d been a doctor tending the wounded in her barn, none of her family wanted her to marry him. Said it was against all that was right to marry the enemy. Even though by eighteen-sixty-six, he wasn’t her enemy any longer.”
Abby nodded. “Terrible what we humans do to each other in the name of propriety.”
“But she wrote a book about it,” the mother said. “That’s courage, too. To tell other women how to be strong.”
How true. Abby beamed at the woman, her husband, and their little girl. “Madison, thank you. You have done me a great favor to come and talk to me and tell me about Antoinette’s book. I’ll go buy my own copy and read about just how brave she was to travel so far for someone she loved.”
“You’re welcome. Nice to meet you. Bye.” The little girl smiled and waved at her as the trio walked away. But then she broke away and scampered back to Abby. “I want to be brave.”
Abby bent over and whispered, “I do, too.”
Madison leaned closer, a tiny conspirator with gleaming blue eyes. “Do you think it’s hard?”
Abby cocked her head, considering. “I think it’s easier these days than it was for Antoinette.”
Madison nodded. “Me, too.”
Abby winked.
“Bye.”
****
An hour later, Abby marched into the hospital, Antoinette’s book tucked under her arm. After skimming bits and pieces of it in the cab on the way over, she felt armed and ready for anything she’d learn here.
Terry looked marginally happier to see her today. “Hey, you’re right on the dot for visitors’ hours.”
“Can’t waste precious time.” She noted he had just finished his lunch. “How is it to eat solid food these days?”
“Well, I still do a lot of applesauce and soup, but mashed potatoes work. I keep saying I’m ready for a steak but what they give me is a beaten up slab that any toddler should go for.”
She sat in the chair near the window and widened her eyes at him. “Better than by tube.”
Sighing, he lifted an arm. “Meds. For pain. I’ll take it. It’s better than it was. That’s about the best I can say.”
“Slow and easy does it,” she told him but laughed at herself for saying something she no longer believed applied to every situation.
Terry shifted, taking stock of her. “So. Nick called me. Told me he’s been called back.”
She brushed the seam of her linen trousers, ready for the inquisition she had predicted was coming. “He has.”
“Want to tell me what went on there with him?”
She threw him a half grin. “No.”
A twinkle brightened his eyes. “What am I? Under-age?”
“Undeserving.”
“Ouch. Not kind to your only bro.” He chuckled, the move jiggling his tubes and causing him to stop.
She dropped the mask of humor. “We really enjoyed each other’s company.”
“Oh, yeah. Not what I saw when he stood here and looked at you like you were a goddess. You were gonna tell me that you two were at a cotillion, I guess, and just conversed and, um, what? Waltzed?”
She cast him a sideways glance, frankness her intention. “We connected.”
He winced. “I hope you mean—”
“Emotionally. I care for him.”
“Abby. God’s sake. He’s a frogman. He’s in danger every minute he’s out there. What kind of life will you have if you get hooked up with a guy who’s never there?”
“What kind of life will I have if I get hooked up with a guy who’s never totally mine?”
“Hell with that. He could come home in a box.”
She shot back in her chair.
“Sorry.”
“You cope with that reality. Nick does, too. Why can’t I? You think I can’t because I’m a woman?”
You Were Always Mine (7 Brides for 7 SEALs Book 1) Page 10