To Love and Protect

by Lindsay McKenna

  Brie's eyes were drowsy looking, and he had the urge to reach out, cup her cheek, and kiss that soft mouth of hers. Niall knew he couldn't do any of those things, so he settled for watching her as she pushed her fingers through her red hair and tried to tame it into place.

  "I feel so much better," Brie told him. Looking up, she drowned in Niall's dark, stormy-looking gray eyes. He was watching her with an intentness that sent her heart skittering with need. Brie realized the raw hunger in his eyes was for her. Even after all this time and tragedy, he wanted her. That made her heart sing with a special joy. Yet as Brie looked up and studied the approaching wall of dark, massive-looking clouds her fear returned—fear of being at the mercy of the storm once more.

  "Better tank up on protein," Niall told her in warning, hooking a thumb toward the darkening sky. "We're going back into hell shortly, and we're going to need our strength to survive it."

  Brie nodded. Her stomach felt tight. She knew she must be hungry, but she couldn't feel it. Maybe because Niall was here. Just his presence made her feel safe. That was silly, of course, Brie admitted as she pulled out two protein bars from her vest. Niall couldn't do anything to protect her from the storm that was stalking them.

  Fear made the bars tasteless to Brie. She saw the worry banked in Niall's eyes as he looked at the sky. The water was becoming choppy now, the waves two to three feet in height. Finishing off the food, Brie took a long drink of water. Above them, thin filaments of clouds were drifting across the hole of blue, like pale shrouds. Darkness was closing in on them again.

  "You slept, too, didn't you?" she asked, tucking the bar wrappers into her vest.

  "Yeah. I got about six hours. You've slept about ten. That's good." Scanning her from head to toe, Niall said, "Your teeth aren't chattering, either. Are you warmer?"

  She smiled a little. "Yes, thanks to you." Following her heart, Brie reached out and slid her hand into his, which lay along his long, powerful thigh. "I've always loved your touch, Niall. You make me feel safe. Like nothing in the world could ever harm me again." Seeing surprise flare in his eyes, and then hunger, Brie squeezed his large-knuckled fingers. When they curved around hers in return, her heart leaped. "Thanks..." she whispered shakily.

  Though he never wanted to let her go, Niall finally released her hand. The unexpected intimacy Brie had shown him sent his heart reeling with giddy hope. Yet his head warned him that she'd abandoned him once before. She'd demanded the divorce shortly after he'd returned from the black ops. Why? Swallowing hard, a frown on his face, Niall studied the approaching storm, then he turned back to Brie.

  "You know our chances, don't you?" he said in a low, strained tone. "We could die out here tonight. We'll be strapped to one another with the life line, of course, and I'll hook the raft to my vest in case we get overturned by a wave. But that doesn't mean we'll survive. The dingy could fall on top of us, and we'd get dragged under and drown."

  Wincing, Brie tucked her lower lip between her teeth. She clasped her hands in her lap. "Yes, I know that."

  "This hurricane's upped the ante," he said, his brows dipping. "It's deepened—probably reaching a five by now. If that's so, no Coast Guard C-130 is going to risk flying through it to try and pick up our radio signals."

  "I know...."

  "That means our only hope—our only chance of surviving—is hanging on and hoping like hell we don't get overturned." After glaring at the clouds, he glanced back at Brie. "And judging from how dog ugly this wall is coming up, I don't know that we will survive it, Brie."

  "I agree."

  Niall stared at her in the dusky light. He saw the terror deep in her eyes, but he also saw her stubbornness and desire to survive, too. "I'm scared," he confessed.

  "So am I, Niall."

  "More scared than I've ever been, if you want the truth." He opened his hands in a frustrated gesture. "And there isn't one damn thing more I can do to fix this situation, either. I feel almost as helpless as I did when we lost our baby, Brie. There was nothing I could do then, either."

  Her heart contracted with sadness. They could die. In fact, they probably would. That knowledge drove Brie to speak her mind. "Right now, Niall, I'd rather be with you in this situation than with anyone else." She saw hope burn momentarily in his eyes, saw his mouth soften as he stared at her in surprise. Brie could hear the roar of the approaching wall now, could feel the raft continue to rock and bounce. The waves were more choppy, with froth on them—a warning of what they'd face in a couple of hours.

  "You're sure about that?" His voice was deep. Filled with question. With hope.

  Nodding, Brie whispered, "Very sure. I want you holding me when we go through that wall. I want to be holding you. If I have to die, Niall, I want it to be in your arms. I'm scared. More scared than I've ever been in my whole life. I—I have an awful feeling we aren't going to make it. I don't want to die...." Brie choked up, pressing her hand against her throat as she stared at him.

  Reaching out, Niall took her other hand and simply held it. Her fingers were cold again. "I feel the same, Brie. About everything you've said. I don't think we're going to survive this. The odds are stacked against us. This hurricane is too powerful..." Turning her hand over gently, he lifted it and pressed a soft kiss to her palm. He heard Brie's intake of breath. Lifting his lips from her cool flesh, he gazed deeply into her wide blue eyes.

  "We're going to go through hell again in a few hours, sweetheart. I feel like we've been given a second chance to say all the things that we never said when we divorced—the good, the bad of it. I need to say a lot to you, Brie, because if I don't survive this and you do, then I want you to know the truth...."

  Choking back a sob, Brie tightened her fingers around his hand. "Yes, let's use this time wisely. Let's not waste a precious minute of it, Niall. I've got a lot to say, too. I've been so afraid, too. At the hospital and after the funeral, you were so detached from what had happened, so far away from me, and I was hurting so much at the time that I wasn't thinking clearly. I needed you, darling. I needed you so much." Brie closed her eyes and gripped his hand hard. "What I'd have given if you had just taken me in your arms and held me. That's what I needed, Niall—just to be held. Held and told it was okay, that it wasn't my fault I'd lost our baby...."

  Sadness avalanched through him. Holding her hand gently between his, Niall stroked the back of it. "And you looked so brave and self-assured at that time. I thought you were blaming me for the miscarriage. I didn't think you wanted me around. I hadn't been there for the loss...and I thought you were pissed off about that. You acted like you didn't need anyone, Brie. I guess..." his mouth flattened "...I guess I really misread all your signals, didn't I?"

  "Yes," she breathed softly, the pain scalding her heart, "you did. How easy it would have been if you'd just opened up enough to trust me and talk to me about all this, Niall." Brie shook her head. "I've tried to figure out why you're so closed, why you won't communicate. It goes back to you being a latchkey kid, I'm sure. You had no one to go to and ask for help. From the time you were eight years old, you'd come home from school and fix dinner for your mother, do your homework, and be the responsible one, the man of the house. You didn't have anyone to talk with, to tell if you were scared, worried, anxious or happy. I know your mother didn't get home until around 9:00 p.m. on weeknights. And she was tired. That didn't leave much time for her to talk with you or vice versa."

  "Yeah, my mother was exhausted when she came home," he admitted quietly. Smoothing his thumb across Brie's cool flesh, Niall added, "I felt bad for her. It was all she could do to sit down at ten o'clock and go over my homework with me. I could see how tired she was. It made me feel bad. I didn't want her to have to work so damned hard. I was angry at my father, who rarely came over. I never saw my stepfather, either. He left her and moved to another state. So I became a clam. I did what I could, but talking wasn't a big thing in my family."

  "And I'm just the opposite of you," Brie said quietly as she looke
d up and studied the approaching wall of the storm. It looked ever more menacing the closer they got. The urgency to talk before they drifted into it made Brie come clean in a way she had never before. This was going to be the confession of her life to Niall. She realized she had never stopped loving him. And now then: lives, more than likely, would be taken on this approaching night. A bittersweet feeling filled her. It was now or never. Niall needed to know how she felt about him, no matter what the consequences to herself or her misplaced pride.

  Chapter 5

  Niall shifted so he sat in the center of the small raft. He hooked his lifeline to Bile's bright red-orange vest. Automatically, as the wind started to sweep chaotically around them, the froth lifting from the peaks of greenish-gray waves, he checked their radio beacons. Both were working, but he held out no hope that a C-130 was flying through that storm to try and track them down. A hurricane could tear a large plane apart. More than one hurricane-hunter aircraft had disintegrated in just such circumstances. The Coast Guard had patterns of search for each rescue mission. Niall knew that to fly this one would be hellish, the chance of failure high. It wasn't worth risking the lives on board to save their two necks. Such was the cold logic of the military. They had talked about the mere and if he was all right. Niall was sure Morgan was worried about all of them. No one had expected their bird to go down.

  Brie came and sat next to him, her hip against his as they faced the looming wall of wind and rain, the lightning and thunder that were already beginning to rumble warningly. The first bluish-gray squall was approaching, a curtain of rain so heavy they could barely see through it.

  Easing his arm around her, Niall smiled down at her. "Ready for our walk into hell together?"

  She smiled bravely and tucked her arm around his waist. "We've already been to hell, Niall. This is nothing in comparison. I felt like I died the day our baby was lost." She searched his dark, hard face as he stared down at her. "I was afraid to see you again. Now my fears seem silly. But the night I learned we'd be flying this mission together, I felt scared. I wasn't sure how you'd react to me."

  "I felt shaky, too," he admitted, trying his best to keep communicating with her. Niall was finding that opening up his feelings to Brie wasn't so hard, after all. But then, with hell bearing down on them, he had an added impetus to talk.

  The wind slammed against them, strong and powerful. The raft spun drunkenly around. Froth filled the air momentarily, leaving white, foamy splotches all over their weather suits. The squall was approaching. They'd be pummeled with a deluge of rain within the next few minutes.

  "When I got assigned to this station a month ago, I didn't know you were here," Brie admitted, resting her cheek against his shoulder. How good it was to be held by him once again! She felt his strong arm squeeze her gently and continue to hold her close. Sighing, she slid her other arm around his torso and closed her eyes.

  "And when you did," he asked, humor in his husky voice, "what did you do? Ask for a transfer?"

  She laughed shortly, the sound strained. The wind began tearing at them, riffling her short hair. The first drops splattered across them. In a few minutes, they'd have to put their helmets on once again. "I thought about it. I know the higher-ups in the Coast Guard didn't realize what they'd done. It was no one's fault."

  "But you stayed," Niall said, moving his mouth very near her ear. He inhaled Brie's scent. It was always so clean and feminine to him, like a mysterious flower fragrance so evocative it never failed to arouse Mm. Strands of her copper hair pressed against his lower lip. They were just as silken as he recalled.

  "Yes..." His warm breath trailed over her ear and cheek. Brie absorbed the sensation like a starving animal. The intimacy Niall established with her was natural and good. Her heart soared with unexpected joy. They were riding toward their death, and he was holding her.

  The rain began in earnest, along with the whipping, pummeling wind. They put on their helmets. Niall drew Brie fully into his arms and snuggled closer. With their heads pressed together, they lay on the bottom of the raft, feeling the jerky up and down movements as they were sucked into the fearsome wall of the storm.

  The wind rose. It howled and then ebbed away. And then it struck again, bringing horizontal chilling rain. Niall lifted his hand and placed it behind Brie's head. He wanted somehow to protect her from the icy, nee-dlelike droplets deluging them. The raft was rising and falling more quickly, bobbing like a cork. Waves were now four to six feet in height, rough and bullying.

  "Why did you stay?" Niall placed his lips near her ear. "You could have asked for a transfer. They'd have given it to you under the circumstances, Brie?" His heart pounded as he anticipated her answer. He felt her arms momentarily tighten around his torso. He knew she was scared. So was he.

  Shutting her eyes, Brie felt the cold water begin to leak under the collar of her weather suit even though Niall was trying to protect her from the onslaught. Inwardly, she was shaking in fear. Fear of what would come to both of them: a wall of water and maybe then-death warrant.

  "I...I stayed, Niall, because I hoped...oh, God, I hoped that somehow I could find the courage to come to you and talk. Just talk." There, it was out. Finally. It felt as if a huge weight had just lifted off her quaking shoulders. The wind was howling like a banshee now, the rain so thick she couldn't see anything beyond the bobbing raft.

  "When I heard you were at the station, I got scared, too, Brie," Niall confided. Moving his hand, he cupped the collar of her weather suit to try and prevent more water from running down the opening. He didn't want Brie chilled because she couldn't take much more hypothermia. This time, if she got wet and damp inside the suit, he might not be able to warm her up. Ever.

  "And then," he admitted, giving a short laugh filled with derision, "as the days went by, and there was no word from you, I figured you were going to ignore me. At first, I felt okay...relieved about that. But then..." His mouth flattened and he bowed his head as the rain slammed into him. Water dripped down his face, off his nose and chin. "I wanted to see you, Brie. You have no idea of the hell I went through daily after rinding out you were assigned here. Every morning I woke up thinking about you. My dreams at night...well, they were about the good times, the laughter, the joy we shared before our marriage soured. I'd wake up in the morning aching for you to be at my side. I wanted to roll over and find you sleeping on your left side, like you always did. I wanted to slide my arms around you and pull you near me...and love you. Show you how damn much I still loved you and needed you...."

  Brie clung to Niall after hearing his low, emotional words. "Oh, Niall..."

  "It's the truth, Brie. I swear to God it is. I was just trying to get up enough courage to go over to your bungalow in Princeville, knock on your door and ask if we could start over. If there was a chance for us again. But I was a coward. I blew it. And now..." He lifted his eyes and saw the squall moving in. Right behind it were black and grey bands of clouds moving quickly in a counterclockwise motion. The clouds resembled skeletal fingers—the hand of death? "Now it's too late.... Damn, I'm sorry, Brie. I ran from you...after losing our baby, because I didn't know what else to do. When that black ops mission from Perseus came up, I volunteered for it. Frankly, I was relieved to get the assignment." He squeezed her hard and pressed a kiss to her damp cheek. "I had to bury myself in something dangerous—something that would take my mind off you, off our loss...."

  Choking, Brie looked up. Darkness was falling. She could barely see Niall's glistening, rain-soaked features. His eyes were burning with a fierce love as he looked down at her, however. The taut line of his mouth spoke of his suffering over the loss of her and their baby. Lifting her cold, wet hand, she slid her shaking fingers across his bearded cheek.

  "Oh, Niall.. .I never stopped loving you, either, darling. Not ever. That's why I could never have a relationship with another man. Those two years I felt like a ghost wandering the land... alone and so terribly gutted with grief. I not only lost our baby, but I
lost you, too. I wondered what I'd done to deserve all of this. I thought I'd loved you with all my heart, my soul, but it wasn't enough...."

  Catching her hand, he pressed a hot, hungry kiss against her palm. The raft bobbed violently and spun around as the first really turbulent waves struck them. The rain was lessening again, but still stinging and cold against his flesh. Wind shrieked, then ebbed, then howled at them again, as if warning of what was to come.

  But at that instant, Niall's heart was centered on the woman in his arms. As he lifted his lips from her wet palm, he clasped her fingers gently. Turning, he gazed deeply into her wide, tear-filled eyes. Brie's lips were parted, pulled down in torment and guilt. He leaned down, his mouth near her cheek.

  "Listen to me, Brie. No matter what happens now, you need to know that my leaving had nothing to do with you. It was me. I ran. No matter how I tried to avoid it, I guess I was like my father, after all. He ran when my mother became pregnant with me. He ran from responsibility. He couldn't stay in the heat of the kitchen, the crisis, and take it like a mature, responsible human being." His voice became hoarse. "And I pulled the same thing on you. Only I did it because we lost a baby. I had so many hopes pinned on that child, Brie. I wanted to be the father my dad had never been to me. I had all these dreams about how I'd be a great father to our son. I dreamed about it almost every night. I was so happy. But I never shared any of that with you, Brie. None of it, and I'm sorry I didn't. I've learned a huge lesson out of this, but it's too late."

  Niall closed his eyes and held her tighter as the raft began to heave and buck down. The waves were growing steadily worse. Froth slammed into them as the wind whipped it off the top of each crest. Already the bottom of the raft contalned inches of water. Niall took in a ragged, painful breath. "I realized too late that I should have come clean with you, Brie. I should have talked about my hopes, dreams and wishes for us, for our baby and his future. But I didn't. And after we lost him, through no fault of yours, I just fell apart. I was crazy with grief. I couldn't talk. I was afraid to say anything because I was so grief-stricken that I feared I'd burst into tears and start sobbing in front of you. I knew you didn't need your man crying like a wimp at that time."