Code Name: Kayla's Fire (A Warrior's Challenge)

by Natasza Waters

  “Thing is, I didn’t feel the same way. Marriage, in my mind. is forever, Ms. Banks. You told me our son wants us to have forever.”

  She swallowed deeply, pinned in place by the steely blue of his gaze. She had said that, but she’d done that before. They didn’t have to be married. What was wrong with what they had?

  Thane’s fingers wove through hers. “The hard and the easy times, weaving a blanket through life. Each hurdle adding a new thread to make it strong enough to hold you both up when faced with the challenges that are sure to come.” His other hand closed around hers. “I never married, because I never met anyone strong enough or faithful enough to make that blanket with me, but then I found you, and although I said yes, you told me no. Has something changed, that I don’t know about?”

  The Captain pulled her gently to her feet, then stepped back behind his desk without waiting for her answer. The rhetorical question hung in the air. Without a word, she headed for the door.

  “Ms. Banks?” His voice rose half an octave.

  Something about this moment was eerily familiar. She remembered the day she faced Thane for the first time. He’d tested her. Though she didn’t know it then, it was the day he took command of her life. She turned on her heel to face him. “Do you want the truth, Captain?”

  The air of assuredness stilled around him, his smile disappeared, reading her expression, and suddenly he was just a man. Not a SEAL, not a hero or a bureaucrat, just a man—waiting for an answer. Thane nodded hesitantly as he looked in her eyes.

  “Blankets can be torn apart. What is love today, can be violence tomorrow. What seems innocent, can be deception. Truth always has a lie waiting in the wings. For thirty some years, men I trusted pulled that blanket out from under me. I have no more tests that I need to pass. I’ve passed them all with flying colors, because I’m still standing here. Men have raped me, taken my innocence, beaten me to within an inch of my life, and betrayed me.”

  “Marriage is supposed to be forever, but it’s not, it changes people.” She reached for the door handle. “You broke the mold. Without exception, you showed me a new path, one that didn’t include deception. Captain, everything falls apart with marriage, everything. I don’t want us to change.” Yanking the door open, she said, “Don’t forget the file on my birthday.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  She glanced at her watch as Gord walked in to relieve her. Giving him a quick handoff, she strode for the door. Earlier she’d called Lena, the owner of the Vicaroy reading house. Aside from getting an earful for disappearing and scaring everyone to death, she told her the boys missed her. She’d missed them too. Not having any of her own, it had given her a chance to mother them. Her four little guys were troublemakers, but their reading skills had improved greatly before she left. She couldn’t wait to see them again.

  Thane fell in step with her as she made her way to the elevator. “I’m not comfortable with this, Kayla.”

  She wasn’t going to argue about this like everything else in their lives. “I’m doing it anyway, Captain.”

  For seven days, he’d stayed away from her. The night following Admiral Timmons’ meeting, and their conversation on the trials and tribulations of marriage, Thane fell back. This morning she found a note on her kitchen table.

  I’ll be working with NCIS for most of the day, see you this afternoon. We need to talk.

  I love you.

  “Can we get a quick dinner in before?” he asked.

  She nodded, unsure of what was coming. Thane drove to a beach several miles down the coast. Parking the car, she saw a small bus parked on the shore side of the lot. Once they’d ordered dinner, which was a newspaper filled with grease, simulating fish and chips, they wandered down to the beach, and sat in the white sand. They ate in relative silence. She wondered whether or not he expected her to apologize.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked the benign, but polite question in a benign and polite way.

  “Fine.”

  He nodded. “You say that a lot, ya know.” He stared into the waves cresting on the sand. “But you’re not.”

  The wind was especially strong today. She reached in her purse and pulled out a band, tying her hair back.

  “Admiral Timmons called today. I told him it was your decision as to how you wanted to proceed, and he should speak with you about it.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” The ebbing summer sun warmed her shoulders, but not her concerns, nor her doubts.

  “Somehow, it feels like we’ve come three hundred and sixty degrees. We’ve passed through many fronts, rough seas, and now we’re sitting in the eye of the hurricane. Before I say what I need to say, I want you to know that I will always be here if you need me, and I will always be there for our son.”

  Thorns of worry pricked her heart. His introduction made plain what was coming next. “I understand.”

  “I’ve accepted a new posting. It means your position at Base Command is safe.” He paused taking a deep breath. “You have told me many times we weren’t meant to be together, and that we didn’t have a future. I fought that every step of the way, trying to win your trust.”

  “All week I thought about the mistake I made the other day, trying to goad you into saying you wanted marriage. Truth is, you’ve stood on your own feet from the moment you got here. You’ve been through a lot of hardship in your life. More than any person should have to go through.”

  Thane picked up a handful of sand, felt the weight, then let it slide from his fingers. She quickly turned her head away from him, and bit down on the emotion swelling into her throat.

  “All I really wanted was for you to look back at our footsteps in the sand, and see that when I carried you, I did it because I love you.” Thane pushed himself to his feet, and stood looking down on her. “Like you said, sometimes there’s no way to heal. No way to trust. There’s also no way for me to be near you and not have what I need. It’s old-fashioned, but I want you to have my name. Because of all the unholy things I’ve done, I want our union to be blessed and witnessed. It’s not good enough to hang our future on sentiment. It’s about the commitment, and I understand why you can’t promise to God and me, that you want to try again. It takes faith and hope, and you cut those words from your vocabulary long ago.” He brushed the sand from his hands and reached for her. When she accepted his help, he jerked her to her feet and grasped her ass, tugging her belly against him. “If you think for one goddamn second that I’m going to back down from your inner chicken, you’re wrong, lady.” Thane bristled with anger.

  Thane’s connection to her was more than soul mate to soul mate. His ire always ignited hers. “I am not chicken.”

  “Like hell you’re not. Gutless. So much for the stalwart bravery of a Canadian or her commitments.”

  Her mouth flapped open like the rear door of a military transport plane. “I’m not one of your damn SEALs. Marriage is not warfare. There is no gutless when it comes to, to…this.”

  “No shit. You’re half mule, and you almost had me giving up and letting you convince me we don’t need forever carved in stone,” he said, riveting his gaze on her.

  Why was this scene so familiar? she wondered.

  Here they were again, months later, feuding over their future with their feet stuck in the sand. The only thing different was she was about to have her boyfriend’s baby, and he was about to be shipped away. It would be a little hard helping her change diapers and holding his son while he took his first steps, and that—made—her—angry.

  “Jesus Christ, Kayla, what do you want? You won’t live with me. You won’t marry me, and I’m being posted thousands of miles away.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be in bed with the first skirt that rubs up against you.”

  “God dammit,” Turning sharply, he took ten paces to distance them.

  “By the way, Captain,” she said angrily, thrusting her hands to her hips. “I don’t think my hearing is that bad, but I must have missed the marriage pro
posal because one has never come out of your mouth.” She traipsed up the sand with an angry heal. “Not a real one.” She spun around, and poked him hard in the chest. “Don’t—you—dare, not in anger.”

  He raised both hands, backing up a step. “I’m not angry, I’m frustrated. You want me, then you send me packing. I ask you to marry me, and you told me no. I’m amazed I even got a ring on your finger.”

  She lifted her left hand, and shoved it into his face. “Do you see a ring on this finger?”

  “You gave it back.”

  “Because you made another woman pregnant.”

  “It wasn’t my baby, dammit.”

  “True, and you’ve had plenty of hours between then and now, haven’t you?”

  “I want…” her eyes narrowing stopped him from saying the rest, and he ground his teeth together. “Remind me again why I love your stubborn mule ass?”

  “Because I put up with your crappy attempts at wooing me,” she spit back.

  He jerked to a stop. “Woman, you have never been loved like I love you. Admit it.”

  “Why the hell do we have to get married? Get with the times. We don’t need a piece of paper.”

  “Oh, yes, we do. You belong to me. I want it legal. My legacy won’t be about being a SEAL, it’ll be about cornering the most stubborn woman on the fucking planet. I’m framing the certificate so you can look at it every day, and be reminded I was the one to bring you down and rope you in.”

  Her mouth yawned open again. “Américain arrogant. Je ne suis pas un morceau de viande. You arrogant American. I’m not a side of beef.

  He chewed down on the laugh hurtling out his throat.

  “Embarque dans la maudite voiture.” Get in the damn car.

  * * * *

  Thirty minutes later, she and her shadow showed up at the small home that doubled as a safe house for runaways, a foster home for some, and the reading academy.

  “Kayla, hey girlfriend.” Lena called out as she stepped through the door. “Whoa, you’ve brought company?” walking up to her and giving her a hug.

  Lena was a tall woman with well-endowed hips and a blanket of blonde hair she usually kept in a ponytail.

  Thane held his hand out to her. “Thane,” he offered shaking her hand.

  “This is Captain Austen, Lena,” she said introducing them, but already looking for her boys.

  “Okay, I’m guessing you know how to read, so…”

  Kayla walked through the house to the backyard, where her little men would be. “Hey guys,” she called out, seeing them in an all out brawl in the backyard. “Get your little bums over here.”

  They came running, and threw their arms around her hips when they reached her.

  “Kayla…we’ve missed you,” Casper said, resting his head against her belly. He gave her a toothless grin, and then his eyes rose to look behind her. “Who’s that?” he asked, but she didn’t miss the awe in his expression.

  “That’s Captain Austen. I work with him at the base.” The other boys were looking just as impressed, and she knew why. When he wore his uniform, he looked intimidating and very noble. The colored squares under his breast pocket said he’d been decorated many times, and his piercing eyes peered from beneath his hat, which he removed as he approached the boys.

  Cody took a timid step away from her and said, “Are you a real soldier?”

  Thane crouched one knee on the ground so he was more or less eye-to-eye with the boy. “Navy, son, we’re smarter. What’s your name?”

  “Cody,” he said, laying a hand on her for reassurance, and then glanced at his friends uncomfortably with the Captain’s gaze on him.

  “Come on boys, let’s go get some books,” she said, and glanced at Thane who remained kneeling and staring at her as if seeing her for the first time.

  They found a quiet corner outside in the ebbing evening light. There was so much action going on in the house it was hard to concentrate. They gathered in a circle on the grass, and she handed a copy of the book to each boy.

  Thane remained near the house scanning the backyard. She settled to an almost comfortable position and began to read.

  “Is he your boss?” Cody interrupted.

  “Yes, in a way. Come on Cody.” She flipped the cover of his book open and pressed the pages flat. “I want to hear how good you’ve gotten since I’ve been gone.” She held the book out to him, but he seemed too enamored by the man to pay attention to the story. “Is something wrong, Cody?”

  “He reminds me of my dad,” he said suddenly.

  “Your dad?”

  “Yeah, he’s dead,” Cody admitted, lowering his head.

  Her jaw clenched tightly. “When, Cody?”

  He plucked at the grass. “Couple years, I guess. All mom does is cry now. She misses him.”

  “Did he wear a uniform?” she asked.

  He nodded, and the blond wisps of tossled hair on his head flopped around in the wind. “Just like him.”

  “I bet you miss him too?”

  He nodded again.

  “Simon, go ahead,” she prompted the quietest of the boys. He had always been the toughest to get started, more unsure than the others, but he’d made a huge improvement before she’d left. The wind moved behind her, and she twisted to see Thane sit on the grass next to her.

  “What are you guys reading?”

  The boys instantly scuffled across the grass to surround him.

  “I’m reading this book,” Simon said, and thrust it in front of Thane.

  The story was about a ferryboat who talked to her passengers as she happily crossed the channel between an island and the mainland. Getting older, she knew she would no longer be safe to cross the water. Yet, when her days were over, they nudged her bow onto the shore and she became a place where families could still walk her decks and enjoy her faithful service.

  “Well, let’s see that,” Thane said, flipping to the first page and beginning to read with a low, strong cadence. The boys were enraptured, their eyes never leaving his face. “She was dependable, strong and beautiful, and the islanders loved her,” he said, describing the old ship, but his eyes darted to hers as he read the words.

  The boys took turns reading their books, and instead of her correcting them and helping them with the words they stalled on, Thane did it. She shored up her heart, because it was in danger of tossing itself against the rocks or him as a storm of emotion began to stir inside her.

  After an hour, they said goodbye to the boys. “I have to talk to Lena,” Kayla explained. “I’ll be outside in a second.”

  Lena waited, looking like she was about to bust at the seams. “Whoa, Kayla, who is that guy? And…” she practically beamed. “Is he the baby daddy?”

  “He’s the Captain in charge of the West Coast SEAL teams.”

  “Man he’s,”—she paused—“amazing.”

  “He’s kind of watching out for me.”

  Lena’s brow wrinkled. “Watching out for you?”

  “Lena—” she whispered, “you heard about the women that are disappearing around the base in Coronado?”

  “Well yeah, of course, why?”

  “I’m his next victim. He’s been tracking me for months. It’s only because of Thane he hasn’t caught me.”

  Lena’s face filled with worry. “What? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m not coming back here until it’s settled.”

  “Settled?”

  “I’m putting the kids at risk. We don’t know what this maniac will do. I can’t take the chance that he’ll do something to you. I just wanted to let you know. Tell the boys that I’m on a special assignment.”

  “I’d say you have a very special assignment,” she said and stared down at her stomach. “The Captain is the father isn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  Lena clutched her hands, but she didn’t look overly concerned. Darting a glance at Thane as he passed them heading out the front door, and then back at her, she said, “That man would
protect you with his life. I’m not worried.”

  Thane leaned against the porch post with his arms crossed, when she turned from closing the maroon-colored front door. “You told her you won’t be back for a while, didn’t you?”

  She nodded and wobbled down the whitewashed steps.

  “They’re good boys. I remember that little guy with the blond hair.”

  She stopped and gazed up at him. Standing there in his uniform, he seemed so untouchable, a hero, and so not meant for her and all her faults.

  “I remember putting the flag into his mom’s hands when her husband was killed. He worked with Seal Team Seven. His name was Cody too.” Thane swayed his head, his gaze falling to the stairs. “He was so damn proud when his son was born.”

  She swallowed and concentrated on the pebbled walkway leading to the house. “How many…” she didn’t think she wanted to know but she asked anyway. “ How many of your men die every year?”

  “One is too many. Last year was a bad year. I lost four men before you came.”

  “I’m so sorry.” The pain each and every widow had to go through left a raw mark inside her. She loved the warrior that stood before her. If something happened to Thane, there would be no hiding from the pain, but he was a SEAL, and always would be. “To think the public goes along on their merry way, and they have no idea how often you’ve stopped terrorism in its tracks. How have you managed to live so long?”

  The words poured out of his mouth. “I’m not going back to combat, Kayla. That’s not the position I’ve accepted,” pinning her with a hard look at the same time. He took each step with meaning until he stood in front of her. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “I’m not worried.” She wasn’t going to get into a debate and turned for the car, but his next words filled her feet with cement.

  “I stopped for you, Kayla. Only for you.”

  Taking a step back, she tripped over a child’s bike that lay strewn on the walkway, her arms flailing to keep her balance.

  His eyes burned into hers. “I won’t put you through what I’ve seen other women go through. You’ve spent enough time at war and so have I.”