by Tawny Weber
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No," he said. It had been ridiculous to come here, but it was too late. He couldn't turn around and leave now. "I just needed to talk to you. Bad time?"
"No, I was just doing some yoga. Emma says it's good for me to move, and yoga helps quiet my head. Come in."
He did, and followed her through the foyer and into the kitchen. "I'm going to grab some water. Would you like something?"
"No, I'm fine." He waited while she filled a glass with ice and water.
Then he got worried she might stand there in front of him and drink it, and he'd have to watch the play of muscles in her slender arm, watch her jaw, her throat as the water slid down... He couldn't do that.
He made himself look away. "I'm going to ask you something that is absolutely none of my business, so if you don't want to answer—"
"Okay," she agreed helpfully, and yes, she was drinking her water.
"Were you seeing someone when you were in Buhkai?"
"No."
"How is that possible?" he asked.
"Well, it's not exactly the dating capitol of the world for an American woman."
"No. I mean before you went to Buhkai. You were seeing someone, weren't you?"
"Yes. An architect who lived in Boston."
Of course, she was. Beautiful, tanned, leggy blondes had boyfriends like that, architects from Boston. "What happened?"
"He thought it was unreasonable of me to go to a place like Buhkai to teach."
Will got that. It was a shithole of a country, especially for women, plus dangerous as hell. Granted, not as much of a mess when she first went there as when he pulled her out, but still...
"You broke up with him because he thought it was too dangerous for you to go to Buhkai?"
"No. I mean, he did think that, but mostly, I believe, he thought it was naive of me, idealistic, even silly to want to teach children in Africa, as if anything like that could make a real difference in the world."
"What an asshole."
"I thought so, too. So I broke up with him and went to Buhkai."
"How did you end up with a guy like that, Amanda?"
"He thought it was fine for me to be idealistic until I actually wanted to take a year of my life and work in a place like Buhkai, at which point my idealism wasn't interesting or sweet or cute anymore. It was annoying and interfered with the way he thought his life should be."
"Like I said, an asshole."
She nodded. "Is there a reason for this sudden interest in my love life?"
"None of my business, I know—"
"And I said it's okay. What do you want to know?"
He wanted to know if she'd been heartbroken. If that bastard had hurt her. If she missed him and wanted him back. "Tough breakup?"
"I don't know. I think I was more infatuated with him than anything else. His younger sister and I went to boarding school together in Switzerland, while her father was the head of a bank in Brussels. I spent a few holidays with their family, when my father was in a place that was too dangerous for me to spend holidays with him. Brad was five years older, which made him seem incredibly mature to me when I was sixteen or seventeen. I ran into him again in Boston, when I was in grad school, and we started dating. It was fine as long as I went along with what he wanted."
"Did he come to see you when you got back from Buhkai?"
"I don't think so. Although if he had shown up, my father might have run him off."
"Good. You can do better than Brad from Boston."
"That's what you wanted to tell me?"
"Not exactly. Someone said something that made me think a man in your life had walked away from you, after you were taken hostage."
"No, nothing like that."
"Okay. I just wondered. I would have beat the crap out of him, if he'd abandoned you when you needed him."
"Will, if he was the kind of guy who'd abandon me now, he's not a man I need in my life."
"You're right. I'd still beat the crap out of him."
"So, you came over here to see if you needed to go somewhere right now and beat someone up for me?"
He nodded.
She laughed, looking so beautiful it was painful to have to stand there and not lay a hand on her.
"You're a beautiful woman," he said.
She stopped laughing at that, but she gave him a big smile, and her eyes were sparkling and so bright.
"And absolutely my type," he added.
"Really?"
He nodded.
"You like blondes?"
"Not just blondes. Leggy blondes. Beach babes. Toned, tanned, natural, California sunshine girls."
"I'm not from California."
"Doesn't matter. You look like you are. You're perfect, as far as I'm concerned. I just wanted you to know that. And that I am not going to let myself do a thing about it."
She threw her head back and groaned, giving him a killer view of her neck. He wanted to nibble on it so badly. Dammit.
"I can't. It wouldn't be right," he said.
"Because I've been through a traumatic experience, and I'm still a mess."
"Not just that."
"Because I can't trust my own feelings right now? Especially for you, because you saved my life?"
"That, too. But mostly because of me. Of who I am."
"Oh, that."
He nodded. "I'm gonna be gone soon. I told you that, and it's the truth. I love my job. I'm going to do it as long as I can. But the life doesn't fit with relationships. I'm gone sometimes three hundred days a year. Even if we're just training, we're all over the place. It's not a line with me, Amanda. It's who I am. You need a guy who's around a lot more than a couple of weekends a month. You deserve it."
"Do I get a say in this?"
"No. If you ever end up in a dangerous situation again—and you'd better not—I'm the guy you want to come get you out of it. I'd be there. Anywhere, anytime. But day-to-day, ordinary-life stuff, being there, taking care of a woman the way she deserves to be taken care of—I am not that guy."
"Really?" She sounded like she didn't believe it.
"Ask anybody. They'll tell you the same thing. And I won't be a guy who disappoints you or lets you down. I can't do that to you. But it's going to be hard as hell to keep my hands off you. I just wanted you to know that."
"That's it? You say that's the way it has to be, and that's it?"
"Honey, I can't stand the idea of hurting you."
He looked so worried when he said that, so kind. He meant it. Amanda could see that. If she didn't show him she'd heard him and understood, she wouldn't get to see him at all.
"Well, I guess that's just how it has to be. I like you, too, Will, even if I shouldn't, so I think you're going to have to be like one of the Marine Guards at the embassy where my father was stationed when I was fourteen and fifteen."
"Marines? I'm no jarhead."
"I didn't mean it as an insult. I'm just trying to say that they were strictly off-limits. Well, I was, to them. I think the year I turned fifteen, new guards had to go to an orientation session on what would happen if any of them crossed the line with me, and on exactly where those lines were. I wouldn't be surprised if my father pulled out that lecture and gave it to you, too."
"Marines were coming onto you when you were fifteen?"
"No. Flirting. You remember flirting, don't you? The kind you did with girls when you weren't sure how old they were? If there was a question, you'd flirt first, pretty innocently, and ask their age later. I did my best to make sure they didn't know I was only fifteen, but my father ruined that with the orientation session. So, I talked to them—"
"You were flirting with Marine guards when you were fifteen?"
"I made friends with them—"
"Oh, I'll bet. I think this is the first time I've actually felt sorry for a Marine."
"What were we supposed to do? We were young and Americ
an, in the Middle East, where women are very sheltered and relationships between men and women are governed by about a million oppressive laws. They were so cute in their little uniforms, and in such good shape. So many of them were still teenagers or in their early twenties. We didn't have anybody else to flirt with."
"You did. You tormented the Marine guards."
She didn't deny it. She couldn't. "It made perfect sense, because I was safe with them. None of them would have done anything to me. They wouldn't dare. And what was I supposed to do? Fifteen-year-old girls flirt. It's part of growing up. But I knew if I ever got into trouble or I needed help, they'd be right there, that they'd watch out for me."
"Fifteen, jailbait, and the ambassador's daughter. I'm surprised no one got court-martialed over you."
"Those guys were made of stern stuff. I spent the whole summer I was fourteen trying to get one to kiss me, you know, without me just walking up to him and asking him to kiss him."
Will threw his head back and groaned. "He never did it?"
"No. I cried for days after he got transferred to another embassy."
"Guy deserved a medal for resisting you."
"Well, if I knew where he was now, I'd look him up. I could use a friend like that. One I felt safe with," she said. "Although, I'd rather that friend be you. And if I get a little too close at times, you know it's because I feel safe with you, and in a way, I feel like I'm fifteen again. Guys are mysterious and a little scary. Well, scarier than they were then, and I'm not sure how the whole relationship thing will work now. Not that I'm looking to start any kind of serious relationship. But it would be nice to be close to someone, to a man, and be comfortable with that. Maybe it's me latching onto you because you're one of the few people who feel familiar to me right now and who understand what I went through. But as long as we agree that nothing's going to happen between us—could we be friends like that?"
He looked uncomfortable. She thought he was going to turn her down.
"Unless there's a woman in your life who wouldn't understand. I don't want to mess up anything for you—"
"There's no woman."
"So, you'll do that? Be my friend? Until you're gone?"
"Okay."
It was all she could manage to not do a little dance around the kitchen, she was so happy. "Thank you."
He shook his head, as if he couldn't believe he'd just agreed to that. "You're going to torment me, aren't you? Like those poor Marines."
She shrugged, grinned so big. "You're not worried, are you? Navy guys are made of sterner stuff, right?"
"We are."
"Then it shouldn't be a problem," she said, happier and more hopeful than she'd been in ages.
After all, the man thought she was beautiful and exactly the kind of woman he went for. He even thought she was perfect, when she knew she was a mess right now, but still, it had been a thrill to hear.
So, let him try his very best to resist her.
She was not going to make it easy for him.
Chapter 12
Buhkai, Africa
January 16th
Amanda was caught in some odd place between sleep and waking. She was vaguely aware of moving, of air on her face. Every now and then, pain erupted in her ribcage and radiated outward.
She tried to get all the way up to full awareness, but it seemed so far to go, so hard, like having to fight her way from the bottom of the deepest, darkest ocean to the surface with no air and no strength in her limbs. Her head ached. It was exhausting to think, but she tried.
She'd reacted badly to anesthesia once after minor surgery on her wrist, and it had felt something like this. She'd somehow been removed from reality, conscious, but not fully in control of her own body. Back then, she'd been able to hear her father's voice, her doctor's, and she'd known they were talking about her, but she hadn't been able to open her eyes or to speak. She'd thought she was speaking—asking what was wrong, why she couldn't wake up, couldn't move—but they never seemed to hear her.
Her worst nightmares, over the years, had always been about some variation of that experience.
She'd thought then that maybe she was in a coma. Aware but not able to participate in the world around her.
She felt like that now.
Oh, God.
She tried again. Think, Amanda. She was moving. In a plane, or a car. Wherever she was, she bounced up, and came back down hard. Her ribs exploded.
"Ahh," she cried out.
"Sorry," a deep, unfamiliar man's voice said.
He heard her?
Somehow, that was even scarier than not being heard.
She tried to move, to get away. Oh, it hurt, and he had tied her down in some way. She pulled at the bindings, whimpered.
"Hey, easy," the voice said, strong, yet gentle. "We're almost there."
"Let me go. Please, just let me go."
She put all her weight into trying to tear herself free and nearly screamed at the pain in her ribs.
He put his hand on her, flat against her ribs, over the pain, holding firmly but not causing any more pain than she was already in. "Every time you do that, it's going to hurt right here, like it did a second ago, so why don't you stop doing that?"
"Untie me. Please. Please."
"Amanda, it's a seatbelt. Feel it." He put her hand on the strap binding her.
Okay. She felt its width, and the tight weave of the material. She followed it with her hand up to her right shoulder and then down across her body, down to... Was that the buckle?
His hand pushed hers away. "Don't open that. You'll fall out, and that will hurt even more."
It was possible he was telling the truth, she decided. It felt right to be a seatbelt.
Didn't it?
She tried to figure it out for sure until she was too tired to think anymore.
Baxter, Ohio
Amanda shot upright, her hand going to her side, her ribs, to help hold them steady, maybe stop them from being so painful when she moved.
But they barely hurt anymore.
She blinked once, then again, and through the near-darkness realized she was in her own bed, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, her back pressed against the corner of her bedroom in her father's house.
Her two night-lights were on across the room and a third in the bathroom. She could see light through the open door.
She was safe, in the U.S. Her heart was thundering inside her chest, and she was breathing hard, her gaze scanning the room constantly, looking for anything moving in the shadows. But nothing was waiting to jump out and grab her in the dark. It was just going to take a while before her mind could convince her body of that and she could calm down.
The dream had been so real.
She'd been so scared, hurt so much.
Had it been real?
That voice, the man?
Was that Will?
Getting her out of Buhkai?
Was that what it had been like?
She forced herself to breathe long, slow breaths. She counted her inhales and exhales, as Emma had taught her to do to help her calm down. She'd wanted to remember, and here it was, the longest stretch of time she'd recalled from that day, riding along a bumpy road with Will and scared half to death of everything, even him.
So, he'd been right about that, honest about it. He had scared her.
Not that it mattered. He'd saved her. What did it matter if he'd scared her at times?
She tried to go back into the memory, hear his voice again, calm, confident, commanding, and she wished she could be in that moment again and turn her face and see him. As it was, he was nothing but a big, faint shadow in her mind and a voice.
And the memory itself?
Okay, it was bad, and it wasn't even—well, shouldn't even have been—a particularly scary part of the ordeal. No one had been pointing a gun at her, no kids in danger, and still, she'd been terrified, confused, weak, unable to think.
Will had said she'd been in and out
of consciousness much of the time. That hadn't sounded so bad, but she hadn't realized how confusing it might be, how scary.
Still, it was kind of like getting her first clear look at the big, bad monster of her nightmares. She'd faced it, and she was still here, scared but here.
Take that, she told the monster.
She didn't see Will for a week, didn't go near the shelter, didn't do anything except see Emma.
She'd been so hopeful after the night Will showed up at her father's house, so happy to hear him say she was beautiful and excited when he admitted it would be hard for him to resist her.
But then, she stared remembering, which left her feeling edgy and lost, like more of the past might jump out and attack her at any time.
Leaving Emma's office, she walked down the sidewalk toward her car on a nice, sunny, cheery day. Then, she saw Will across the street, coming out of a hardware store.
He saw her, too, and changed direction, crossed the street and came toward her. "Hi," he said, when he got to her side. "How are you?"
"Okay. I just saw Emma."
"Want to get some coffee?"
"Sure," she said, surprised and happy at the offer.
His hand pressed lightly at the small of her back as he fell into step with her. She luxuriated in the reassurance of that simple touch, of having him close and feeling absolutely safe.
They sat opposite each other in a booth in the back corner. It was mid-afternoon, so it was quiet. He asked what she'd like and then ordered for them, two coffees.
"So, you're okay?"
She nodded. "You?"
"Yes."
"Everything at the shelter okay? The woman—Melanie—who came in the last time I was there? And her kids? They're okay?"
"They are."
And then they both started talking at once.
"I think I was—"
"I remembered something—"
The waitress brought their coffee. Will took his black, but Amanda added sugar and cream to hers, and they did nothing but sip coffee for a few moments. Will stared at her like he was trying to get inside her head and finding the effort frustrating.
