by Louise Dawn
Lizzy shrugged. “I’m used to living in high-risk areas. It can’t be all that different from Jo’burg.”
“It’s a lot different. Now let’s talk about the asshat cowboys that run these private diplomatic airlines. They have little consideration for your safety and will not hesitate to fly into danger zones. One of those private airlines was recently exposed for smuggling weapons into war-torn areas, most of those weapons landing in the wrong hands.”
“I heard about that, but JetHaven is different. It’s run by one of my father’s good friends, Ethan Matthews. He’s ex-military and wants to make a difference.”
“All these egghead executives who run these clandestine military transport gigs are ex-military. Let me guess, he’s a billionaire with nothing better to do than to pretend he’s in the high-stakes protection game.”
“I don’t like your tone, and nothing you say to me will change my mind. It’s done and I’m going.”
Johnny squeezed the bridge of his nose, not liking the surge of possessiveness that washed over him. It served no purpose. “Are they sending you on a training course?”
“For five weeks. They have a facility in Nairobi.”
“You’ll be transporting VIPs and diplomats into hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“I’m aware of that. Our routes include over twenty destinations.”
“I cannot believe that your father referred you to Matthews.”
Lizzy looked uncomfortable. “He didn’t. He’s pretty mad that I’m going. I ran into Ethan two weeks ago at a charity event.”
The rat dog began to yap. Lizzy bent down to untie him. “I need to go.”
“Let me drive you home.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Fine. I’ll just follow you real slow in my car.”
The look on her face had his stomach sinking. Johnny knew what came next. He’d expected this; still it made him ill.
“Whatever you came for, I can’t give it to you. I’m trying to keep my head above water while swimming down a giant shit creek that is my life.”
“Lizzy, I’m so goddamn sorry that I lied. That I didn’t tell you sooner. If I could take it all back—”
“This isn’t about us. I was in trouble long before you came along. I need space, maybe I’m running away, but it’s what I need to do.”
Johnny dug out his wallet before handing her a card. “That’s my international number. If you ever need anything…” He couldn’t finish the sentence; walking away from her would break his heart. Her sudden tears didn’t help, and he ached at the hidden turmoil briefly exposed to his searching gaze.
Lizzy nodded before pocketing his details and wiping her eyes. Johnny led her to the car. The drive was a silent one, the only sound being the small panting beast perched on Lizzy’s lap. Too soon they were at her gate. Johnny’s grip on the steering wheel could bend steel.
Lizzy turned to him. “You’re a good guy. You deserve someone great in your life. I hope you find peace.”
Jesus Christ. She was giving him the friend-zone speech.
He didn’t say anything, instead choosing to look straight ahead. What was there to say? He felt her gaze on his profile. One car drove past, then two. Still, she stared.
Finally, Lizzy kissed him on the cheek. “For what it’s worth, I loved you too.”
The door slammed shut, the finality of the action searing a hole in his chest.
Loved. She’d said loved not love. Past tense meant that she’d moved on and Johnny was no longer part of the equation. He swore, punching the steering wheel before reaching for his phone. He’d be heading back to the airport, to fly out to the team in Ethiopia, but first he needed to make a call.
“It’s Johnny Cane, I need a favor. I need a background check on an Ethan Matthews, he’s the CEO of JetHaven. I want everything you have on him. Everything. From what brand of cereal the ass-crack buys, to how long he takes to fucking piss in the morning.” Johnny paused. “Hell, yes, it’s personal. If this prick is dirty, I want to know about it.”
He might not be a part of Lizzy’s world, but Johnny could damn sure keep her safe.
Epilogue
Utah.
Four months later.
Max pulled into the drive. It was good to be home. He’d sold a generous acreage of his land in Colorado and decided to purchase the luxury log cabin in the mountains near the Snowbasin Ski Resort in Salt Lake City. Utah was a safe place to raise kids where they could comfortably live off the grid. Close enough to the city yet tucked away in their own slice of paradise. Abby loved the snow, trying out snowboarding and then skiing. As spring weather set in, she’d taken Gabriel on a couple of hikes in the Wasatch Mountains. Max couldn’t wait to join in.
The recent three-month deployment he’d just flown in from, meant that he’d spent little time with them since settling down to family life. Max thought back on their journey after leaving the clinic in Namibia all those months ago. After arriving in Djibouti, a bunch of suits met them on the tarmac. Max refused to be separated, stating that the mother and child were under his protection during her de-briefing. His relationship with Abby almost got him kicked off the unit and Max would’ve accepted that fate. Thankfully, the removal of Khalid Al Juhani and Roman Petrovich, superseded his involvement with an asset. After she’d been cleared, Max set up Abby and Gabe in Utah – before re-deployment with his unit in Nigeria. He’d just returned from Lagos where they had assisted MIT1 and the Nigerian military in their campaign against Boko Haram to rescue sixteen school girls from the nest of nine Islamic militants hiding in the jungle.
MIT still searched for Kris Muller. Max had definitely shot Muller at the lodge—he recalled the blood spray as the bullet slammed through Muller’s shoulder—yet there was no sign of a body or medical treatment. Either he’d bled out in a ditch somewhere, or Muller’s powerful connections came through for him, and he was recovering in some extremist rat hole. The bastard was nowhere to be found.
Sitting on his doorstep had him smiling. Max needed a break and the team needed time out. He worried about Slater, who showed signs of a PTSD burnout. Johnny wasn’t faring much better. The now somber warrior stayed behind in Africa. Max bet that the distraction came in the form of a feisty blonde firecracker. Max had returned from Nigeria six days ago, and Abby had no idea that he was back in the States. His passenger was the reason for his evasiveness. Locating him had been a challenge.
“Are you ready for this?” Max asked.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” his companion replied.
A burly older man walked briskly down the drive towards them. Bill Taylor. A former marine who was now a security specialist Max had on retainer whenever he was deployed. Abby and Gabe were still vulnerable to an attack from Khalid’s splintered cell. The chances were slim, but Max wasn’t taking any chances, especially with Muller going AWOL.
Max climbed out and shook Bill’s hand, pulling him in for a hardy back thump before leaning in the truck window. “This is Bill Taylor, he’ll show you the way. Give me time to break the news. Are you sure you want to do this?”
The man nodded resolutely.
The open-plan living area was quiet and the kitchen empty. The only evidence of occupants were two cereal bowls drying on the dish rack and a tower of vanilla cupcakes stacked on a plate. Max nabbed one and headed up the stairs towards the distant voices.
They were in the far room he’d converted into a sunny art studio before he’d left. His two angels squatted in the middle of the room on a floor covering, slapping paint on a square canvas partially masked with lines of tape. He paused in the doorway, watching the project unfold. Both rascals were decorated with paint smudges and he couldn’t love them more.
Gabe squealed in delight as he squished a tube of paint. Abby promptly lunged. “Easy on the paint blobs, little man.”
Max grinned. “He’s following in his mommy’s footsteps.”
Abby jumped at the gruff voice befo
re rushing into his arms. His arms tightened as Max breathed in a familiar coconut scent. “You feel so good,” he said as she looked up, her heart in her eyes. This was home.
“What in blazes are you doing here, baby? I thought you weren’t due back till next week!”
“I thought I’d surprise you.” Max pressed his mouth to hers, reveling in her taste. God, he’d missed her. He plundered her soft mouth, reluctant to pull away.
“You taste like vanilla,” she said wiping his lip with her thumb.
“That’s what you get for displaying freshly baked goods on the counter.” Max bent down to sweep little Gabe up in his arms. “Hey, baby boy. Have you had fun with your mama?”
That innocence hugging him so tightly cleansed his soul, and Max choked down emotion. He’d bonded with Gabriel in the six weeks they’d had before leaving for Nigeria. Max bounced him up and down; the kid had grown in the last three months.
Gabe touched the operator’s facial fuzz he’d grown in the field. “Wolfman!”
Max laughed. At least it was better than “Fwogman,” a name bestowed on him whenever he’d made Gabe a paper frog. Gabe had blurted out the damn nickname in front of his team, who found it amusing that he’d been pretty much called a SEAL. He wasn’t living that down anytime soon.
Ten paper frogs sat on the windowsill next to Gabe’s crib. When Max gave the youngster his first origami frog—the one he’d made at La Coraggio—Gabe handled it with gentle awe. Every morning the tyke insisted on saying hello to the row of frogs, bestowing a kiss on each one of them with a squidgy finger. The gentle ritual got to Max every time, a behavior completely out of character for a rowdy toddler. The kid was still obsessed with amphibians, and a trip to the frog exhibit at the local aquarium seemed imminent.
“I have something for you.” Max produced a gift from behind his back, helping Gabe to open it.
It was a color-changing frog night-light. Gabe’s eyes lit up. After the traumatic events in Cape Town and adjusting to his new life, he had trouble sleeping. Max hoped the night-light would help…
“Say thank you,” Abby prompted.
“Love you!” Gabriel shouted. “Fank you.”
Abby gathered the paintbrushes and headed to the basin.
“You’re welcome. Love you too, little man.” A tiny hand grasped at his beard as Max paused, choosing the right words to say to his woman.
She chatted away; he barely heard what she was saying. “Give me a second to clean up. Do you want some lunch? Did you eat on the plane?”
“I went to Pensacola before I came here,” Max said.
Abby turned. “You had a meeting?”
“No. This was personal. I brought something back with me and I’m not sure how you’ll feel about seeing it. About seeing him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve probably stepped way over the line and I’m pretty sure you’ll be pissed. If you feel uncomfortable in any way, I’ll press the reset button and he can stay in a fancy hotel in Salt Lake City, and you’ll never have to see him again.”
Abby put down a paintbrush. “You’re scaring me.”
Max tucked a curl behind Gabe’s little ear before swinging him around.
“Don’t get all drawn into our son’s cuteness factor. Look at me and tell me what’s happening.”
“Our son? Did you just say ‘our son’?”
“Isn’t that what he is?”
His eyes burned as he tried to get the words out. “That’s what I want him to be, both legally and in spirit.”
“He’s always been yours, even before you ever met him.”
Max stepped up to his beautiful Abigail as she leaned against the basin, laying a kiss on her temple. “How is it that you always say the sweetest things, and how is it that I’m always cornering you against some kind of sink.”
Juggling Gabe, he brushed his thumb over a smudge of paint on her cheek. “I want to be doing this for the rest of our lives. I was going to wait till tonight, but this feels too right.” Max suddenly knelt, balancing Gabe on his knee.
“Be my wife and I swear, I’ll be the best husband and father to this incredible kid. The luckiest day of my life was when your dossier landed on my desk, and when I saw our little boy—calm just like his mommy in the face of danger—I knew I’d die a thousand times over to keep you both safe. I love you both so much.” He kissed the top of Gabriel’s head before wrestling a ring out of his back pocket. It was his late grandmother’s engagement ring. Slightly old-fashioned but a classic beauty, just like Abby.
After leaving Africa, he’d taken Abby to Colorado to meet his family. They all fell in love with the serene woman and her lively two-year-old. When Max pulled his mother aside, telling her that he wanted to marry Abigail Evans, she’d entrusted the one-carat white-gold ring to him.
Abby stood frozen.
“Abs, I know you’re a quiet one, but your silence is seriously killing me.”
“Yes. Heck yes!” Abby sank down; happy tears and sweet kisses filled the room as Max slipped on the ring. Gabriel’s oohs and aahs over the shiny thing on mommy’s finger had them all giggling.
“It’s so beautiful.” Abby clutched her hand to her chest.
“It was my grandmother’s. She was fierce and gracious and down to earth, just like you.”
Abby stroked his face. “I hope to do her proud, Erik “Max” Andersen.”
“My sweet Nike, I think you’ll be just fine.”
He pulled his new family onto his lap, giving Gabe noisy raspberries in his neck, making the kid giggle before tickling his soon-to-be wife. The floor covering crinkled as Abby rolled away, laughing while threatening to empty their dirty paint water over Max’s head.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Abby Wabs.”
Those two words uttered from the doorway broke into the sacred moment, shattering her world. The man standing in the door had to be a mirage. An awful yet divine hallucination that had her falling back against the wall. Her head buzzed as Max’s supporting arms pulled her against him.
Abby shoved away, needing space, and clambered up, dusting off her jeans. Only one man had ever called her by her middle name when she was a kid, and the familiar nickname made her heart thump. “Grandpa Noah!”
“My baby girl. God. You look so much like my Lucy, back when we first met.” He stepped forward and Abby raised a hand. He looked just as solid as he did all those years ago. Far less hair and additional wrinkles didn’t change that face she knew too well. A face she’d seen in her dreams for too many nights as a child. Visions of Noah sweeping in and rescuing her from the hell that was her young life. But he never came, not once.
Anger rose through misty tears. “You’re alive.”
“Yes, honey.”
“You never came for me.”
“I did.”
“Liar!”
“After I left, I stayed with friends in Florida for a few months. I felt tormented, knowing that I’d left you with them.”
“You should have felt that way.”
“If I’d known how bad it had gotten, how dogmatic Jimmy had become… I went back four months later but you were already gone.”
“You came back?”
“Yes. But you’d disappeared, and it took me months to track you down to Northern Idaho. By the time I got there, I found out that Jimmy took you on a trip to Africa.”
Abby remembered that trip. Their first visit to the sunny continent when Jimmy scouted for possible church locations.
“I waited for days—weeks—but I was out of money and needed a job. Construction work paid the bills. I fell in love with the site manager’s sister; we got married in Idaho. Her name is Sylvia. We moved to Pensacola for work, but I never ever stopped looking for you.” Noah’s lips trembled as he tried to formulate his next words. “Years later, I found an online article about Jimmy and his church and flew to his new location and confronted him. They told me that you were dead, that my grandchild ran away and was kill
ed in a car accident. I was shattered and didn’t want to believe it, but Jimmy even had a tombstone erected in your honor.”
Abby sat down heavily on a nearby stool. “The lying SOB.”
Max knelt to stroke her back. “I’m sorry, Abs. If it’s any consolation, that sick monster lost out on the best thing he’d ever had, an amazing daughter with an incredible heart. If I ever lay my eyes on him…”
Noah stepped forward. “Max found me in Florida and gave me the third degree for abandoning my granddaughter. I deserved his harsh words.” He wiped a shaking hand over his brow.
Max cut in, “When I heard Noah’s side of the story, I knew you needed to know the truth, his truth. You can’t go back to a new beginning, but at this moment, you can start with a new middle. It’s your decision and regardless of what you decide, I’ll be standing beside you.”
Abby took it all in. She raised the courage to ask the question that had been on her mind for all those years. “Jimmy told me that it was my fault that you left. That I destroyed our family with my willful ways.”
“My son is an evil piece of shit. How could he say that to a little girl? You were the only light in that dark house, and I should never have left you there.”
“You never wanted to leave me?”
“Never, baby girl. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I haven’t thought of my sweet granddaughter. For years I thought you were dead, then Max came along, and I could breathe again. I should have found you sooner, I should never have given up.”
In a heartbeat, Abby was in his arms. The familiar woodsy scent had her sobbing on his jacket.
“I think it’s time for a catch-up,” Max said. “I’ll brew a pot of coffee.” He carried their chattering munchkin down the hall, leaving Abby alone with her grandpa for a soul-healing hug.
Later that evening, Abby stood in the kitchen, stirring a beef stew while eyeing the dreaded carrot cake cooling in the corner. Turned out that Gabe loved it equally as much as his daddy. She mock-shuddered, but she’d bake it for the men in her life; they were worth it. Her world was detangling into shiny newness.
