“So,” Frank’s big voice silenced the circle. “What’s this about you squealing like a little girl, Major Henderson?”
Mark just groaned.
Chapter 7
Emily waited alone in the ranch’s foreyard. Well, just her and Frank. She knew other agents were spread throughout the ranch, but they were keeping a low profile.
Mark was still out, which didn’t surprise her after how they’d spent most of the night. It might not have been a sunny meadow by a burbling stream, but he had made her last night as a single woman very memorable. How different married sex would feel, she supposed that she’d find out tonight.
What was surprising was that she was awake—had barely slept.
“It’s not nerves.” But Emily still didn’t know what it had been.
“You sure?” She’d forgotten Frank beside her, part of his Secret Service stealth mode.
“Shut up, Frank.”
“Then don’t talk to yourself aloud, Major Beale.”
“What about you, Frank? Were you nervous?”
That earned her a grunt that said it wasn’t that simple.
“Well, it’s not nerves.”
“Whatever you say, Major.”
She spotted three dark dots against the blue sky.
“Personal relationships are one of the President’s very few blind spots,” Frank sounded defensive as he nodded toward that dots that were rapidly expanding into the green-and-white Marine Corps helicopters assigned to HMX-1. “I wouldn’t look for any real useful counseling there if something’s bothering you.”
“Shit. Am I that transparent?”
“Not a chance, Emily,” he said her name softly for one of the few times in their acquaintance. “But I’ve been married a long time and… Well, I’m…”
“I’ve met Beatrice. You’re the thoughtful and sensitive one in the relationship.”
Frank shrugged uncomfortably.
“Makes you all the better, Frank.”
“Thank you, Major.” And that brief crack in the door was closed again.
In shared silence, they watched as the helicopters resolved into White Hawks—Black Hawk helicopters re-engineered and armored to carry the President. They were called “White Tops” for the white upper section of their paint job.
After seven years flying the Black Hawk airframe, the heavy thrum of the rotors sounded like home to her. Just as the lead helo touched down in the main yard, Mark came stumbling out of the house half dressed: his pants buckled, but his shirt in his hand, and his hair still a mess. He blinked hard against the bright morning light, found his mirrored shades and eased them on, still shirtless. A phalanx of flying Black Hawks would ring a full mission alert alarm right through a Night Stalker’s deepest sleep. Mark was so beautiful it was ridiculous, not that she was complaining.
The door on the helo opened. Her oldest friend stepped down, closely followed by her father and mother. All three of them were looking at Mark.
President Peter Matthews laughed.
Her father offered his amused, enigmatic FBI Director smile that could mean anything.
Her mother’s sigh of dismay was almost audible despite the helo’s engines still winding down.
Chapter 8
Emily was unsure if she was happy, or frustrated at how quickly the morning had passed.
Mark’s parents had led the way through the ranch buildings to an idyllic spot. There was a big swimming hole, or perhaps it was a small lake, in a low spot beyond the guest cabins. The still water reflected the blue sky, all protected by a soft-sloped, grassy berm. A dock with a low diving board reached out from one side. To the other was the platform for a gazebo that presently made a natural stage, extending partly over the water. The structure of the gazebo itself wouldn’t be built until spring, but the platform was perfect beneath the sunny sky, appearing to float on the water.
With the entire 5D available, except Tim who was presently driving his stewardess back to the airport, seats were set up and arranged in moments. Ama, Mark’s mother, sent them out onto the prairie with buckets of water to collect more flowers.
“Daniel apologizes for not coming,” Peter showed up close beside her as she watched the activity helplessly from the top of the berm. “But he wants to know if you made the wedding cake. If you did, I promised to bring him back a piece.”
“Wedding cake?” She blinked in confusion. Looking around the grassy slope, she didn’t see any food. Hadn’t thought of any wedding cake.
“Well, whoever makes it, he’ll still be sorry he missed this.”
“I—” she tried to make sense of what was going on. Seventy-two hours ago, she’d been flying her last patrol along the Arandu arms-smuggling route out of Pakistan. And now she was being asked about wedding cakes. She had her dress blues in her duffle, but that was as far as her thinking had gone.
“You okay, Squirt? Something bothering you?”
“I thought something was off last night, too,” Frank said softly from close by her shoulder.
“You are looking kinda peaked,” Big John rumbled out. He was even bigger than Frank. His hands so big that the bucket of flowers he was carrying looked like a child’s toy.
“Nerves,” Dusty declared, then blew his macho by sniffing at the flowers he’d collected. “Gotta remember for the future that ladies like these kinds of things.”
“Who’s your maid of honor?” Tim was back.
“You!” Emily turned and shouted in his face. “I’m putting you in a goddamn flower print dress and making you hold my bouquet when it happens! Do you see any other women here?”
And there it was.
She didn’t know if she wanted to scream or cry or shoot someone—anyone.
This whole circle of men were looking at her in abashed silence, not understanding a thing.
Emily stormed away. For lack of anywhere better to go, she went down to the horse barn and found Chesapeake. She didn’t have a carrot, but the horse seemed content with a nose rub.
“How about you? You want to be this girl’s only girl friend?”
Her whole life had been navigating the role of being a lone female among men. Her father’s friends had been other male FBI agents. Her mother’s friends had been the social vortex of D.C. and couldn’t be more foreign, or less appealing, to Emily than if they were all from Neptune—a Martian she could deal with. At West Point, women had been few and far between. There were only three other women who flew the 101st Airborne when she had been there. And she was the first, and still the only, woman in the Night Stalkers.
This afternoon she was going through the ultimate right of passage for a woman, her own wedding for crap’s sake. And she didn’t have a clue what to do or what she was supposed to be feeling. Was there any kind of normal any more? Would there ever be again?
“Emily?”
She sighed and rested her cheek against Chesapeake’s coarse hide. She smelled good, like the fresh hay she’d almost been made love to in yesterday. “What Mom?”
“We’ve never understood each other.”
No point in agreeing with simple fact.
“You were always your father’s daughter far more than you were mine.”
Emily looked up at her mother. Helen Cartwright Magnuson Beale had bequeathed her slender frame and height to her daughter. Her father had given her the blue eyes that both attracted and scared men. Mom was so out of place in the shadowed barn, wearing a Donna Karan summer dress and her Ferragamo sandals with a Stuart Weitzman clutch. And how did she know all that? Some part of her mother’s training had stuck despite Emily’s best efforts to block it out.
“You know I hoped—”
Emily buried her face once more against Chesapeake’s neck. She didn’t need a lecture on the wonderful matches her mother had tried to make for her over the years with this and that social climber. She’d been very careful to never mention the President’s crazy proposal, that she still didn’t understand, because she knew it would break her
mother’s heart that Emily had turned him down.
“But Mark—”
“Mom…” Emily ground it out as a warning.
“But Mark,” she put on her full-on D.C. hostess tone commanding Emily’s silence, “clearly loves you so much that I couldn’t wish anyone else for you.”
That had Emily jerking around to face her. Chesapeake did the same.
“Oh honey. You can see it plain as day on both of you. You must know that about the man.”
She nodded. She did. She nodded harder.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Emily waved a helpless hand. “You said it. I’m my father’s daughter. I might as well be his son for how feminine I am. I don’t have a single female friend. I don’t know how to be female. Or even what that means!”
Her throat choked closed and she swallowed hard, but knew her voice wasn’t steady.
“I have no one to stand with me. No one to help me.” She never needed anyone’s help—yet suddenly she did.
“The friends will come later. You’re too amazing a woman for them not to come. And you will guide them and help them. That part of you is from being my daughter.”
Then her mother took a step closer and tentatively reached a perfectly manicured hand across the gap between them to brush her fingertips along Emily’s arm.
“As for today, I will stand with you, if you’ll have me.”
Emily could only blink in surprise. She’d always been merely a “marriageable commodity” to her mother, or so she’d thought. And now the quintessential woman of D.C. was telling her that she was an amazing woman herself.
She rested her rough and callused hand over her mother’s for a long time before she could answer.
“I’d like that.”
Chapter 9
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Mark stood atop the berm in his dress blues.
His father stood beside him, gray-haired, but still fitting neatly into his SEAL commander’s whites. Mom wore her best dress, a simple, straight blue one that made her look wonderful beside her husband. The President and Frank stood to his other side, surveying the waiting crowd.
His father had close-mown a green aisle that led down the gentle slope. An impossible bounty of flowers lined the path to either side down to the clustered chairs and the gazebo platform that appeared to hover over the blue-sky reflection of the lake.
The pilots and crew chiefs of the 5D were all in their uniforms as well.
“This can’t be happening!” No one argued with him.
Tim and Big John were acting as ushers.
And they’d seated every single person on the right-hand side of the aisle. The chairs for the groom’s side of the open-air wedding were empty. Not even Doug or any of the other ranch hands were sitting on his side.
“Don’t worry, son,” his father thumped him on the back. “Your mother and I don’t mind sitting alone.” They both were clearly enjoying the joke.
He really didn’t need this but, out of options, the five of them walked down the mown aisle to take their places at the very front of the ceremony. Every single person grinned at him from the bride’s side of the aisle.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. Of course they’d all be on Emily’s side—in every sense of the word.
At the platform, he kissed his mom and shook his dad’s hand before stepping up. That’s what he’d focus on: the two of them. They had made it through so much. Dad’s twenty years of service, innumerable deployments, and finally taking over the failing ranch and getting it back on its feet. With a woman like Emily beside him, he knew he could do anything too.
Now it was just he, Frank, and the President standing and waiting quietly over the shimmering lake. Whether it was the presence of the Commander-in-Chief or anticipation of the upcoming event, the crowd was speaking only in whispers.
“I guess you’re the best man, Frank.”
“Wondered when you’d figure that out, Major,” Frank grinned at him. “I figure my main job is to kick your ass if you mess this up, which I promise you that I will do if necessary.”
“Even my best man is on Emily’s side,” he tried to sound upset.
“Duh!” Frank wasn’t helping matters. “You’ve got the ring?”
Mark handed over the small box carefully so that he didn’t do something stupid like drop it in the lake.
Frank flipped it open and he and the President looked at it. Mark had spent a lot of thought, and every spare minute of a trip Stateside, to come up with it. Nothing fancy for a woman like Emily Beale, but it had to be special. A band of black gold to symbolize the Night Stalkers, with a blue diamond the color of the Night Stalkers service patch. It was also the color of her eyes, but he figured that part of it was for him.
“Nice,” the President whispered softly. “Really, Mark. That’s perfect.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Frank closed the box and offered him a single solemn nod. Maybe there was a reason Frank was his best man. Mark now felt as if maybe, just maybe, he could do this.
“Music!” Mark felt like an idiot.
“What about it?” Frank frowned at him.
“Some best man you are. There isn’t any! Shit! Emily deserves music. We’ve got to—”
“Too late,” Frank nodded up toward the top of the green-grass aisle.
Standing at the very crest of the berm was a man in dress blues holding a rifle across his chest at Port Arms. His beret shone the bright red of Army Airborne beneath the brilliant afternoon sun.
Great, now Emily had someone who was going to shoot him if he messed up. Would that be before or after Frank kicked his ass?
Chapter 10
Emily couldn’t believe that Colonel Michael Gibson, Delta Force’s top field soldier, had flown in from some unnamed location just for her. She’d sent him an invitation, of course, but never expected him to come.
He had arrived as quietly as he always did—one moment no idea he was coming and the next there he was, standing at attention outside her bedroom door. He wore a full dress uniform—unheard of for a Delta operator—with his long hair tucked up in a red beret. Michael even had an HK416 combat rifle resting butt on the hardwood floor in the Order Arms position of full attention. No ceremonial M1 Garand of an honor guard. He bore a weapon of war, clearly declaring what he was willing to do in her defense.
“Privileged to be your honor guard, Major Beale,” he greeted her formally when her mother opened the bedroom door to head to the wedding.
The tears—she hated crying—that had been hovering as she spent “girl time” with her mother (perhaps their first ever), almost spilled over, but she kept them back. Though she hugged Michael hard. He was living proof that she wasn’t somehow dreaming her life; she really was a serving officer for the Night Stalkers.
He in turn had held her close as long as she’d needed him to, another unexpected gift.
Then he led the way through the house, out the door, and up to the lake, because of course a Delta Force colonel had already scouted the lay of the land with no one the wiser.
His wholly uncharacteristic short bark of laughter was all the warning she had before cresting the berm.
Emily didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she saw that every flier of the 5th Battalion D Company stood at full attention—all in their dress uniforms.
And all on the bride’s side of the setting.
“Now those are some fine looking men,” her mother whispered from her elbow as her father approached them. “And here’s the handsomest of them all.”
Emily had never thought of her father as handsome or not, but she was touched to see the happy misting in her mother’s eyes after more than thirty years of marriage.
With Michael and her mother leading the way, and her father’s arm for support, Emily finally found her balance.
She’d been second guessing her mother’s advice all afternoon. She should be in uniform, like all of her teammates, but her mother had insisted
this was a woman’s day. And because her mother anticipated everything, and the two of them were the same dress size, Emily had finally caved in.
Taking a deep breath, she focused on Mark who looked impossibly strong and solid as he waited for her, and she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
Chapter 11
Mark didn’t even bother wondering where Michael had come from, it was just another tally for Emily in this lopsided wedding.
When Michael was about halfway down the slope to where he, Frank, and the President waited on the platform, Mark could finally see past him and Emily’s mother.
The President’s quiet, “Oh my goodness!” was far more than he could manage. His response might have been a gasp of amazement, if he’d still had the ability to breathe.
Emily wasn’t wearing dress blues as he’d expected. Her mother had worn a soft green dress that practically blended her into the background of the outdoors and all the military uniforms. But not her daughter.
His Emily shimmered in a pale blue satin, off-the-shoulder, sheath dress. It revealed that the woman wearing it was both powerful and beautiful. Her blonde hair was braided on top of her head emphasizing her fantastic neck.
No adornment. No necklace. The only strong color was a flash of dark blue and silver on the upper left sleeve. Too bad everyone was standing at attention on the right side, they wouldn’t get the joke as she passed by.
What kind of woman wore a Night Stalkers unit insignia on a high fashion wedding dress?
She beamed at him all the way down the aisle.
His kind of woman. Emily Beale.
Chapter 12
Emily hoped that someone was taping this, because she wasn’t going to remember a single thing except for the way Mark looked at her.
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