To Love and Protect

by Lindsay McKenna

"Are you okay, Niall?"

  Shrugging, he said, "I think I am. I wrenched my shoulder opening that damned door."

  "I'm sorry I couldn't get it open."

  "I didn't think I would, either. It was really stuck. The crash jammed it." His lips came to rest against the cool firmness of her cheek. He wanted to touch her, wanted to kiss her, but fought the wild, spontaneous urge. Using their dire situation as an excuse, because they had to be close in order to hear one another, he said, "We're going to be okay."

  "Liar."

  He smiled a little. Then the raft bobbled, climbing another unseen wall of water. Niall held his breath. His arms automatically tightened around Brie. When the raft bobbled, and sea spray whipped across them, pummeling them like boxers, he knew they'd crested it. Breathing out in relief, he felt Brie sag in reaction, too. "I'm sorry I got you into this mess," he told her.

  "This isn't your fault. I pulled the duty. You had nothing to do with the flight pilot roster."

  "If I could, I'd have flown with someone else." He realized what he'd said. Before he could correct his mistake, he felt Brie stiffen in his arms.

  "I'm sure you would have," she said, her voice sad.

  Hearing the tears in her voice, Niall castigated himself. He was rattled by the crash. Adrenaline was still pumping strongly through his veins and he wasn't monitoring what he said. Knowing his words had hurt Brie, he scrambled to try and patch up the mistake.

  "No...I didn't mean it that way, Brie. I really didn't."

  "Considering that I haven't heard from you for two years, I think you did. No letters. No phone calls to see how I was doing..."

  Anger seared him. "Well, you didn't exactly communicate, either."

  "I did more than you did, Niall." Her voice quavered with anguish. "I sent you cards the first year. Six of them. They were all returned by you, unopened. At least I tried. And yeah, when you didn't respond, I did stop trying to talk with you. Blame me if you want."

  Closing his eyes, Niall felt anger and sadness wind through him. "I—just couldn't, Brie. I was too hurt...."

  "You ran, Niall," she charged, her voice brimming with escaping emotions. "You always run when life gets tough. That's how you survive. You run!"

  Her voice was angry. Filled with grief. Niall felt Brie's words slice through his pounding heart. Another deluge of icy salt spray hit them, and they were soaked once again. Even now, they were arguing. "Look," he rasped, "you were the one who told me to leave after...well, after..."

  "After I lost our baby," Brie sobbed. She couldn't help herself. The trauma of the crash had stripped her of her normally cool composure. Now, with Niall holding her, one leg wrapped tightly about hers so she wouldn't fly out of the life raft, his closeness had divested her of all the armor she had built around herself after the loss of their baby. Choking, Brie tried to recapture her escaping grief over the loss. Oh, how long had it been since she'd cried for her loss of the baby? Too long.

  "You were the one who ran out on me. You abandoned me in my worst hour of need, Niall!" Her voice cracked. Brie opened her eyes. She could see nothing in the blackness, but she felt his cheek against hers. His chest heaved against her breasts, and she could feel the tension gather in him. "I had just lost the baby. I was in the hospital crying, and you volunteered for a black ops with Morgan Trayhern. You just up and left! You ran out on me just like your father ran out on your mother!"

  Helplessly, Niall worked his mouth, but no sound came out. He couldn't protect himself from her torn words, the hoarseness of her voice. He felt Brie's hands opening and closing frantically against him. "I didn't run out on you," he said at last. "The assignment came up."

  "So? Why did you take it, Niall? Why?" Her voice grew even hoarser. The raft wobbled dangerously as the sea swelled around them. Another wall of spray deluged them. Brie could feel the water slopping back and forth around their bodies in the bottom of the raft. There was no way to bail it out, and it didn't matter; the raft would continue to float anyway. Right now, all Brie wanted to do was escape Niall. Her rage strangled her, and she wanted to hurt him as badly as he'd hurt her by walking out on her that way.

  "Because you didn't need me, that's why, Brie," he growled.

  "I didn't need you?" Her voice rose, incredulous. Stunned at this revelation, Brie lay there against him, her spongy mind working over his admittance.

  "Look," Niall said in a raspy voice, "we need to stop arguing. We're at risk right now. We could die any moment. Let's just conserve our energy for now, okay? We can talk more after we get rescued." He slid his hand upward, against the back of her helmet, and forced her head down on his chest. "Just lie here against me," he ordered thickly. "I'm not running now."

  "You would if you could walk on water and get the hell out of this life raft right now, Niall. But you can't."

  He laughed unsurely. "No, I can't walk on water. I'm too damned bad and dark."

  Brie surrendered. She was too tired, too stressed and terrified of dying to continue righting with him. Death wasn't an option to her. Niall was right: they had to conserve themselves in every way. Rescue might come.. .or it might not. Or rescue might come too late, depending upon the hurricane's antics. They had enough food and water in their life vests to sustain them for forty-eight hours, and that was it.

  Closing her eyes, Brie tried to stop feeling, tried to stop thinking of Niall's words and charges. He didn't think she cared about him? Of course, since he had run out while she was in the hospital recovering from the miscarriage, Brie had never had a chance to speak with him. When Niall had come back three months later, he was a walled-up warrior who refused to talk about their loss. Their marriage, at that point, had rapidly disintegrated into two strangers living under the same roof. The loss of the baby was too painful for either of them to bring up. Brie admitted now that it was probably due to the depth of their grief and loss that they hadn't been able to talk honestly and at length with one another.

  She felt herself spiraling downward. Within minutes, she lapsed into a broken sleep in Niall's sheltering arms, feeling safe even though her world was being twisted apart.

  Gray dawn light greeted Niall's sore, scratchy eyes as he slowly raised his head from his light sleep and looked around. Disoriented at first, he sat up from his prone position in the raft, sending the few inches of water in the bottom swilling around his legs. The growing light revealed many things. First he noticed that the ocean was calm, the swell of waves less than one or two feet in height. Secondly, though clouds were scudding by, he could see stars fading above him. They'd had the luck to enter the eye of the hurricane. He knew the hurricane was huge and they could not have drifted out of its grasp yet. Only in the eye could the weather have cleared and the waters calmed. He looked down at Brie. She was stirring, her eyes puffy, with dark smudges beneath them. Still, she was incredibly beautiful to him.

  Leaning over, he helped her sit up. The three-foot nylon line still held them together and he unsnapped it from his vest. Her waterlogged green Nomex gloves were still on her hands and he watched as she shed them. With fingers white and wrinkled-looking from being in the water so long, she slowly rubbed her swollen eyes. She'd been crying. A lot. His conscience ate at him. How badly he wanted to reach out and touch her, to somehow atone for all the pain he'd caused her over the years.

  Taking off his helmet, he let it roll aside on the bottom of the raft. The wind was warm, humid and soft. Breathing easier, Niall saw nothing but gray-green ocean surrounding them no matter what direction he looked in. Turning back to Brie, he saw her ease the helmet off her head. Her copper-colored hair was flattened against her skull, with fine, thin wisps plastered across her forehead. Brows dipping downward, he watched her do something that he'd loved to see her do before, when they were married: slide her long, slender fingers through her thick hair to fluff it up and into place. How much he missed that small gesture, Niall realized. Choking back a sudden lump in his throat, he absorbed Brie's every graceful motion like a man too long
starved for touch himself. In that eloquent moment, Niall realized fully just how much he'd missed having Brie in his life.

  Trying to balance his predatory hunger for her against what she'd done to him, he found it impossible to reconcile the two very different and divergent feelings within himself. Helplessly, Niall sat there and watched her drag those soft, long bangs across her broad forehead and gently nudge them into place. Despite the bulky flight suit she wore, Brie was feminine in every way. The softness of her lips, now parted, beckoned powerfully to him. Hours ago, after the crash, his lips and hers had been fractions of an inch apart....

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, Niall tore his gaze from her. To watch Brie was to open up a wound in his heart that had never fully healed or recovered. Trying to think beyond the personal with her, Niall checked the water bottle in his vest. It was full and had survived the crash intact.

  "Are you thirsty?" he asked her.

  Brie looked up. In the gray dawn light Niall's narrow face was shadowed and strong looking. His gray eyes were keen and assessing. Feeling his warmth and care—something she'd craved so badly and had rarely found in the last months of their marriage—Brie absorbed his sincere concern now. Ruffling her hair, she lowered her hand and checked the bottle in her vest. "I am, but I want to save it."

  Nodding, Niall said, "Yeah...no telling when they'll locate us." Or if they would, but he didn't voice his worry. He wasn't out to hurt Brie. Right now, Niall was trying to protect her the best he could.

  "They'll be out looking for us." Brie stared at his clean profile, his strong nose and chin. There was so much good in Niall, if only he'd stop running.

  Like father, like son. Hurting, Brie absorbed his features, the dark growth of beard making him look even more dangerous and appealing than before. His black hair was plastered to his skull, one rebellious short lock hanging over his furrowed brow. When he turned and their gazes locked, her heart flew open.

  "Yes," he answered hesitantly.

  "They will," she said stubbornly. "They got our last fix."

  "We've been drifting for hours from that location." Niall looked around the raft as the light improved. It was awash with about six inches of water, with strands of seaweed floating on top. He threw it out and began bailing with his cupped hands. There was no sense sitting in water. The weather suits were supposedly waterproof, but some seawater had leaked beneath his collar, and he was chilled.

  "Always the optimist," Brie muttered sarcastically. "You haven't changed much." She got on her hands and knees and began to bail with him. There was no room to turn or they would bump into one another. Brie wanted to move away from Niall, but it was impossible.

  Stinging from her muttered rebuke, he continued bailing. "Neither have you." Liar. Brie looked thinner. And there was a sadness in her eyes. Could he blame her? She was probably still grieving over the loss of their baby. He knew he was. Trying to avoid another argument, he changed tactics.

  "You got someone in your life who needs to be contacted?" He hoped not. It was a purely selfish thing to hope, he knew. Niall couldn't stand the thought that Brie might fall in love with someone other than him. Not that he'd been perfect; far from it. But they'd been so close, so wonderfully in love, and had suited one another so well. Holding his breath, he stopped cupping the water to see what effect his question had on her.

  Brie froze momentarily. The water she'd scooped up in her palms dribbled back into the raft. The question, so very personal, and so unlike Niall, caught her off guard. Twisting her head in his direction, she raked him with a disgruntled glare. "No. Not that it's any of your business. Do you?" Her tone was scathing. Argumentative.

  Shaking his head, he muttered, "No...no one."

  "Your mother will be notified by the Coast Guard."

  "She died a year ago...." Niall's voice faltered. The soft look that replaced Brie's anger felled him. Her lips parted in shock at the news. In his heart, Niall knew he should have contacted Brie and told her about his adopted mother's death, but he'd still been so angry at her that he hadn't. He saw pain reflected in Brie's features in that moment. How easily she absorbed his anguish. She always had been sensitive and empathetic toward others. That was one of the many qualities Niall had come to love fiercely about her— Brie's care for others.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry, Niall.... I—didn't know." She sat back on her heels, a confused look on her face. "Why didn't you tell me? I wish I'd known...."

  Releasing a breath of air, Niall shook his head. He rested his hands on his thighs, the humid breeze caressing him. "Because I was still pissed off as hell at you."

  "I was close to your adoptive mother." Brie sat there, feeling once again gutted by his coldness.

  "I know... and I'm sorry. Looking back on it now," he muttered, "I should have told you. It would have been the right thing to do." He continued to scoop water because he couldn't stand the anguish in her blue eyes.

  "Damn you, Niall." The words came out soft. Broken. Brie sat there, lulled by the slight waves that rocked the raft as gently as a mother would rock her baby. "I just didn't want to believe you were so heartless and immature. I tried to tell myself when I was in that hospital, alone, and in danger of losing our baby, that you'd come to be with me...hold me...help me...."

  His mouth contorting, Niall felt every word like drops of fire scorching his naked flesh. Holding her accusing gaze, he snarled, "I'm many things, Brie. Immature at times? Yeah, no question. But I'm not heartless. I never have been. I was at the hangar when it happened. The petty officer who took the call from the hospital got sidetracked by an incoming SAR, and she forgot to give me the message. It was two hours later before she recalled it and gave it to me. That wasn't my fault." His nostrils quivered.

  "I often wonder whether, if you had known, you would have come." There, it was out, once and for all. The worst problem in their marriage had been their lack of ability to talk to one another. Niall would stalk off anytime her questions got to be too personal, too intimate and searching. He didn't know how to handle intimacy with a woman. How could he? His mother had never been home to teach him that interaction, and he had really no father around to impress him with it, either. Consequently, Brie had known that there was a lot of work to do in this area of their marriage.

  Hands balling into fists on his long, powerful thighs, Niall stared at her, stunned by the brazen question. "Of course I would have! And I did, the instant I got the message. The petty officer found me and told me. She was in tears over the mistake. I told you that, once I got to the hospital, but you were in no mood to hear it. All you could do was cry and accuse me of running away and not being there for you—as usual."

  Brie searched the quiet ocean in desperation. The gentle lapping sounds soothed some of her anger, as well as the soaring pain in her chest as she turned and held his glare. Niall's cheeks were a ruddy color, indicating he was angry. "You were never there for me, Niall, when I needed you. And that's the truth. You were a latchkey child. You grew up alone. You never learned how to be a real partner in our marriage."

  "I tried," he growled. "Put yourself in my place. Imagine never being wanted by your parents. How would you feel?"

  "Your adoptive mother loved you, Niall! With all her heart and soul, bless her. She was a single parent, trying her best to make ends meet. You know women get paid a helluva lot less than men. She was working two jobs, scrambling to feed you, clothe you and then pay for your college education. Irene loved you the best she could under the circumstances, so don't throw that old saw at me that you weren't ever loved. That's crap."

  Brie sat there, breathing hard. Oh, why was she doing this? Why couldn't she be civil to Niall, as she'd been in their marriage? They'd never come to blows like this. No, it had been a silent union headed for disaster. Neither one had had the courage to speak out. In a way, Brie was glad that she'd had two years without Niall around. She'd grown, become more confident and more outspoken about her needs and setting strong, healthy bounda
ries for herself. Judging from the stunned look on his face, her changes weren't welcomed by him. Brie didn't care. It was time to come clean, once and for all. Maybe by getting all this anger and poison out of her system, she could finally get on with her life. Maybe.

  "And I suppose you're Ms. Perfect? A full set of parents. A mother who spoiled you rotten because you were an only child? A father who loved you even though he wanted you to be a son, not a daughter?" Niall instantly regretted his angry words. Shadows flickered across her narrowing blue eyes. And then he saw anger explode within them.

  "I might be Ms. Perfect in your eyes," Brie whispered, "but you're Mr. Abandonment. You say everyone keeps running out on you. I know your father left as soon as he heard your birth mother was pregnant with you, but he was an alcoholic and had serious responsibility problems. From where I'm sitting, you're probably lucky he didn't interfere that much in your life Growing up with an alcoholic parent is about as dysfunctional as it gets You don't even know how to count your blessings, Niall. You can't love your adoptive mother for what she's done right for you. You couldn't love me because you were afraid of getting intimate and personal with another human being. You were too scared and you ran. You ran just like your father runs every time things get dicey."

  Sucking in a ragged breath of air, he held her challenging glare. "Two years has made you real vocal, hasn't it?"

  "Our marriage was doomed from the start, Niall," Brie said, tiredness replacing her earlier emotional outburst. "You never trusted me enough to open up to me. You could never talk to me about day to day things, not to mention anything intimate. You held up that wall between us real well. You were consistent— I'll give you that." Her voice dropped. "And when I miscarried...well, you couldn't handle that, either."

  "How could I?" His voice rose. "I got to the hospital and it was all over. You were in a room by yourself, crying." He opened his hands, his voice cracking. "What could I do? How could I fix it? Fix you? Fix the situation?"

  "Dammit, Niall, I didn't need you to fix anything!" Fighting back sudden, unwanted tears, Brie held his glare. She saw the anguish in his eyes and heard the pain in his tone. "All I wanted...needed...was to be held. That was all. I was hurting so much. And yes, I was crying...crying for the loss of our baby. We had so many hopes and dreams for him. I can remember the nights we'd lay awake talking about if he'd like baseball, or hockey...or what school he'd go to for college...."