Hanging his head, he laughed derisively at himself. This time, he’d run, not Tess. He’d left her when he should have stayed and helped her, or taken the heat he deserved. With a ragged sigh, Pete rested his brow on his arms, a tiredness sweeping through him worse than the one he’d brought back from Nam. Tears crept into his tightly shut lids, and a scream, forming deep down inside his gut, wrenched upward. It took away his breath, jamming high in his chest while his throat constricted. Pete wanted to howl like a wolf that had lost its mate. Never had he felt so alone, so abandoned. And the worst of it was, he’d created the situation. Tess hadn’t abandoned him. He’d run from himself.
“Pete?”
Swallowing hard, Pete slowly raised his head. He blinked back the tears, thinking he’d heard Tess call him. Impossible. And then he felt her hand tremble as it lightly touched his shoulder. Disbelieving, Pete turned around.
Tess winced at the tears she saw in Pete’s narrowed eyes. She allowed her hand to drop back to her side and stood before him, terribly unsure of herself. In the dawn light his face was deeply carved with shadows of grief.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, “for everything….”
Pete was afraid to breathe. He stood there, staring down at her. Tess’s face was pale, her eyes dark with suffering as she huddled in her silk robe, the coolness of the dawn surrounding them. “What?”
“I’ve been so blind, Pete,” she began unsteadily, and wrapped her arms more tightly around her body. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Tess shook her head. “War—God, I hate war. It tears us up, skews our perspective and rips the hearts out of us.” Taking a huge breath, Tess took a step closer, hoping that the love she held for Pete was enough to see them through this last, terrible test. She wouldn’t blame him if he walked out of her life for good.
“The last few hours, I’ve had time to think…feel, really. That’s part of my problem: I think too much, and I keep stuffing down my emotions, which is what got me in trouble in the first place.” She gave a small, nervous laugh.
Pete felt first one muscle and then the next begin to ease within his tense body. He attempted to smile. “Yeah, I got the same problem. At least we have that in common, Tess.”
Taking a terrible risk, Tess reached out, her hand settling on his arm. “We share so much more, Pete. Good things. Wonderful things. I—I just got off track when you told me what you’d done. At first,” she said, holding his bleak gaze, “I was angry at you for having done it. But then, when I had time to feel my way through what you’d confessed, I realized you’d done it out of love. Maybe even necessity.” With a shake of her head, Tess’s voice cracked. “How can I be angry at you when you did it out of unselfish love for me?”
Blindly, Pete groped for and found Tess. He hauled her into his arms and crushed her against him. “Jesus, I love you,” he whispered brokenly. “I’d never do anything intentionally to hurt you, Tess. Never.”
With a small cry, she reached up and framed his suffering face. “I love you. And I’m afraid I may have damaged your love for me because of what I did back there in the kitchen. I’m afraid I’m going to lose you….”
Pete realized the utter, raw courage it took for Tess to admit her deepest, darkest fear to him. With a little laugh, he gripped her by the shoulders. “That’s my fear, too.”
“C-can we be afraid,” Tess choked out, “together, Pete?”
A shudder worked through Pete, and he held her so tightly he was afraid he might crush her to death. “For the rest of our lives, Tess. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife. Hell, you’re my best friend already.” He kissed her repeatedly, kissing away the tears from her eyes and her warm, welcoming lips. “Marry me,” he pleaded huskily. “Marry me now. Today. This morning. I don’t want to spend another night without you in my arms, Tess. I need you, honey. I need you so damn badly I can taste it….”
EPILOGUE
Pete jerked awake, bathed in sweat. The darkness was complete. He wanted to scream, but he fought the clawing, desperate need. For one split second he felt that terrible aloneness—until he felt Tess stir at his side. Relief swept through him.
He eased back on the double bed and breathed raggedly, his heart slamming against his ribs. Tess. Tess is here, beside me. Oh, God, I’m safe. Safe.
“…Pete?”
Tess’s sleepy voice sheared through his panic, and the nightmare that lingered behind his tightly shut eyes began to recede. He felt her move, and then sit up in bed. The cool dryness of her hand skimming his sweaty chest took away some of the fear holding him captive.
“It’s okay,” he heard himself gasp. “I’m okay now….”
“I know, I know,” Tess soothed and leaned across him to turn on a small lamp on the nightstand. Pale, soft light flooded their bedroom. The clock on the stand read 3:00 a.m. Pete always got his nightmares around this time. Tess gathered him into her arms and pressed herself along his length. He slept naked, and the silk of her nightgown absorbed the excess perspiration created by the terror he’d experienced in the throes of his nightmare.
“Come here,” she urged softly, and she got him to turn onto his side and lean against her. He groaned and buried his face in her shoulder and thick red hair.
“Damn,” he rasped, “I’m sorry, Tess. What a lousy way to spend a honeymoon.”
She smiled gently and began to stroke his taut shoulders and tense back. Just touching Pete helped ease the anxiety he lived with twenty-four hours a day. “I’m not sorry for anything, darling. Just lie here and let me hold you….”
The combination of light from the nightstand and Tess’s touch eased the worst of the fear inhabiting Pete’s gut and head. After a few minutes, he heaved a long, unsteady sigh. He inhaled Tess’s sweet scent, inhaling life instead of smelling the stench of death that accompanied his nightmares. The strong silk of her hair was a cloudlike cushion for him to bury his face in, reminding him of her gentle, quiet strength. Most of all, her low, contralto voice flowed across his screaming nerves, releasing the rest of the nightmare from within him.
“I thought—” he whispered, “I thought three weeks back in the States would make them go away. Instead, they’re worse.”
Tess smiled softly. “Darling, when I started therapy with Sandy, my nightmares came boiling through me with a regularity that defied description. I thought they’d never stop. Sandy assured me it was natural—that when we tap directly into whatever we fear the most, those things quickly surface because we’re consciously stirring them up.” Leaning down, Tess pressed a kiss against Pete’s damp hair and tenderly stroked the side of his face. “You trust me enough to allow your fears to surface,” she whispered, “and what a wonderful thing that says about us.”
“Hell of a team, aren’t we?” Pete joked weakly. “A hell of a situation.”
Tess nodded. She kissed his cheek and rested her head against his. “We’re lucky, darling. There are so many men coming home to wives or families who don’t understand. We’ve both been through it, and we’ve gotten help, so we’re doing better than most of them.”
Pete eased his hold on his wife and propped himself up on one elbow. He guided Tess onto her back so that he could absorb her lovely natural beauty. It was the serenity in Tess’s eyes that gave him such stability, and the love shining in their depths for him alone. “I wouldn’t want to go through this kind of decompression with anyone but you, honey.”
She smiled tenderly and responded as he caressed the side of her breast beneath the silk of her gown. The nightmare was receding in Pete’s eyes, replaced with banked coals of desire. “You’re stuck with me,” she whispered.
“Glutton for punishment, aren’t you?” Pete teased as he leaned down, sought and found her willing mouth. The way Tess trembled as his lips parted hers sent a fire through his body. Pete had never been happier or more frightened than he had been in the past three weeks. Loving Tess with the newfound fierceness of his open heart had brought him to the heights of heaven. And just as
savagely, the nightmares had plunged him into the darkest depths of a living hell each night.
Smiling beneath his questing mouth, Tess gloried in Pete’s weight as he covered her. She never ceased to marvel at his fierce, rising passion for her. Time melted beneath his fiery assault, and a part of her understood that Pete needed to bury himself within her not only to escape, but to heal, too. Loving someone was quintessential, a multilayered veil of reasons, needs, passion and desires compressed together in one heated moment. A softened moan rose up through her as he found the straps of her gown. The silk fell away beneath his exquisite assault, and she turned, pressing herself against him.
Her breath coming in ragged gasps, Tess hungrily found his mouth again, wildly exploring him, feeling his strength, his need and longing. As his hand caressed her breast, she tensed, wanting him just as badly as he wanted her. The moment his lips settled on the taut peak of her breast, a little cry issued from her throat. She threw back her head and drowned in the fire created by their contact. Darkness ceased to exist and lights exploded beneath Tess’s closed lids as his hand sought and found the juncture of her thighs. As his knee settled between them, Tess shivered with anticipation, his hands reverently gliding across her until he captured her hips and brought her forward.
A cry of pleasure mingled with a ripple of heat as she met and felt him sink deep into her welcoming body. The rocking rhythm reminded her of a primal dance that created heat, fire and scalding pleasure in every nerve ending in her body. She heard him growl, his hands tightening, gripping her by the shoulders, and she arched upward, drawing him as deeply as possible into herself. As they strained together, a powerful explosion rocked through Tess. She clung to Pete, her face pressed against his corded neck, and she felt the steel-cable tension within him snap.
With a groan, Pete relaxed and felt Tess’s arms grow tight around his body. He held her against him, breathing raggedly, feeling the darkness turn into blinding, beautiful sunlight as the tidal wave of pleasure spread like soothing balm through him. Whatever fear and anguish had been left from the nightmare was burned up in the heat and desire of their love for each other. As Pete lay there for long moments afterward, sweat running in rivulets down his temple and along his jawline, he quivered. The beauty of Tess, of her loving heart and giving body had once again healed the wounds he still carried within him. Maybe the wounds were psychic, not physical, but it didn’t matter.
As Pete weakly raised his head and pressed a kiss to her pouty, glistening lips, he whispered, “I love you, woman.”
His words caressed Tess as she lay languidly in his embrace. “I know you do,” she whispered raggedly, and lifted her hand to touch Pete’s cheek, his beard prickly beneath her fingertips.
Pete reached over and turned out the light, plunging the room back into darkness except for the streetlight outside the hotel. Both of them had wanted to honeymoon in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Even in the tiny mountain town of Vail, streetlights reminded them of civilization. Picking up the sheet, Pete pulled it across them, then brought Tess back into his arms.
With a sigh, Tess snuggled against him. She was content to be held, kissed and touched. “I don’t want this week to end,” she murmured, resting her hand against his damp chest.
“Me neither.”
She opened her eyes, allowing them to adjust to the darkness. “Your orders are for El Toro?” It was a Marine Corps air base near Los Angeles, California.
“Yes.”
“I just worry they’ll send you back to Vietnam if this war keeps escalating.”
Pete snorted and kissed her hair. “No one’s taking me away from you. I don’t want to go back over to that mess.”
Relief flowed through Tess. “How much time do you have left on your six-year obligation?”
“One year.”
She licked her lips. “Will you sign back over?”
Pete heard the tremor in her voice. “If I do, I’ll be sent back to Nam.”
Fear jagged through Tess. “What will you do?”
“Find a job as a civilian chopper jockey.”
Tess whispered, “Thank God….”
Pete propped himself up on his elbow. Tess’s face was drawn with concern; real fear was mirrored in her eyes. “Honey, once is enough for you and me.” He brushed several errant strands of hair off her wrinkled brow. “I’ve got an idea. A real off-the-wall idea, but I think it might work.”
“What’s that?”
“I was thinking of putting a sales pitch together for some of these big hospitals in the metropolitan area—trying to talk them into contracting me and a helicopter that I’ll get a loan to buy once I get out of the corps. I can fly to the scenes of accidents and take the victims back for surgery. I got the idea in Nam with the guys who fly the medevac choppers. Time saves lives, Tess. I saw it happen so often.”
Hope thrummed through Tess. Although Pete was proud to be a marine, she didn’t want him to sign over again. Even though she would lovingly support whatever decision he made.
“That sounds wonderful!”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure, Tess. Maybe it’s just a crazy idea.” And then he grinned, some of his old cockiness resurfacing. “I gotta have some kind of job to support us. The way we’re making love almost every night is gonna guarantee a baby in no time at all.” He leaned down and pressed a warm, tender kiss to her lips. Smiling, he whispered, “Besides, you’re going to make one hell of a great mother. I’ve just got that feeling.”
Giggling as he captured her in his arms, Tess felt herself being rolled on top of him. Her hair flowed like a crimson waterfall across his chest as she opened her eyes and drowned in his happy gaze. “We’ve got each other, that’s all that counts. And if a baby comes along, I wouldn’t mind that, either.”
“Gib and Dany can hardly wait until their baby is born.” Pete slid his fingers through her hair in a gentle motion and grew sober. “I want that same kind of happiness for us, Tess. I know we can have it.”
“We’ll have to work for it just as we do now, Pete.”
“I know that.”
“We believe in each other. That’s what really counts.”
Whispering her name, Pete drew Tess down to kiss her long and hard. “From now on the only place I’m running is to your arms, honey. No more shadows on our lives. We’ve got a lot of wartime things to work through….”
“We’ll do them—together,” Tess whispered, resting her lips against his. “One day, one hour, at a time.”
As Pete captured Tess and lost himself in the splendor of her welcoming kiss, he knew their internal wounds, their memory of Vietnam, would wane but never completely die. As he brought her to his side to make love to her once again, he prayed that their children would never have to experience war as they had. What had brought them out of it, what was helping to heal them, was their love for each other—forever.
*
If you’re looking for romance, suspense and a tough-as-nails hero, don’t miss these great titles from the thrilling Shadow Warriors
series by NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author
LINDSAY McKENNA
Running Fire
On Fire (novella)
Taking Fire
Never Surrender
Breaking Point
Degree of Risk
Risk Taker
Down Range
Danger Close
“Talented Lindsay McKenna delivers excitement and romance in equal measure.”
—RT Book Reviews
Available wherever ebooks are sold.
Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Other ways to keep in touch:
Harlequin.com/Newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
HarlequinBlog.com
ISBN: 9781460394762
ONE MAN’S WAR
Copyright © 1992 by Lindsay
McKenna
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
One Man's War Page 20
