by Cathie Linz
“Fine.” Pete’s face reflected his irritation even as he took her editorial suggestions. “I’ll start again. The family was staying in this very cabin when there was a strange light outside the window.”
As if on cue, there was a flash of light outside, making all the kids shriek.
“Thunder snow,” Joe explained, from his position near the window.
Prudence noticed that Joe had stayed there near the window and the entrance as if he were on guard duty. He’d grown increasingly tense all day. She meant to ask him about that as soon as the kids were asleep. If there was something about their situation Joe wasn’t telling her, then she needed to know what it was. Seemingly they weren’t in any danger now that they’d found shelter. They had food and water and heat. Even so, Joe had not relaxed his defensive stance.
“That wasn’t thunder snow, it was aliens,” Pete maintained, really getting into his story now. “And they waited until the family was asleep before sneaking inside and attacking them, sucking the life from them.”
“Okay, my turn,” Rosa declared. “It looked like the aliens were sucking the life from the family but it was really only their way of checking out who they were. The aliens didn’t kill them, they just did an ultrafast medical checkup on them and discovered how old each one was, that sort of stuff. But then the family woke up and…”
“My turn,” Sinatra said. “The family woke up and used their digital camera to take photos of the aliens and put those photos on the Internet using their palm held computer. The aliens had better computers, and could beam them right up into their spaceship.”
“But when they beamed them up, they killed them,” Pete inserted.
“You already had your turn,” Rosa reminded him.
“The aliens showed the family how to improve communications,” Sinatra continued, “and how to make their computers work just by thinking something. And then they…”
“My turn,” Keishon said. “And then they told them that they had to be good to animals and not eat meat.”
“What kind of weeny alien would say that?” Pete demanded in outrage. “There’s no way that would ever happen!”
“My turn,” Gem said. “And when they were beamed back to earth, the family realized that they’d picked up a terrible skin-eating alien disease.”
“Now we’re talking.” Pete’s voice reflected his approval, as did his high-five with Gem. “Skin-eating alien disease. Nice one!”
“It started at their toes and traveled up their legs,” Gem said.
“And the family was sure it was going to die, when they were suddenly surprised by a boy-wizard who came down the fireplace,” Rosa inserted.
Pete rolled his eyes at her. “Santa Claus comes down the fireplace, not Harry Potter.”
“He’s my wizard and I can have him do whatever he wants,” Rosa firmly maintained. “With a wave of his magical wand, he cures the alien disease.”
“Aliens are stronger than wizards,” Pete maintained.
A heated discussion followed on that topic until Gem pointed out, “We had aliens and wizards but no ghosts. Maybe we should start another story.”
“Fine. I’ll go first,” Pete quickly said. “It started here in this very cabin. The family sleeping here…”
“You can’t tell that same story,” Rosa told him. “You have to start again.”
“This isn’t the same story,” Pete denied. “This time the flash outside was caused by a ghost, not an alien.”
“I read a library book about ghost stories, you know,” Rosa said. “One had a big black dog who attacked anyone who came near. They could hear it bark and growl, but they couldn’t see it.”
“Probably because the barking and growling came from an audiocassette,” the ever-practical Sinatra said. “Sound effects, nothing more than sound effects.”
“The odds of aliens from other planets is higher than that ghosts really exist,” said the mathematically inclined Rosa. “Don’t you think so, Sergeant?”
Joe might not know about aliens and ghosts, but he sure knew about being haunted. And he was definitely feeling haunted at the moment. Haunted by being yet again responsible for a mission that had gone wrong.
As everyone else settled in their sleeping bags, Joe hunkered down in front of the fireplace—feeding the fire with the logs he’d brought in and feeding his inner turmoil with memories.
Guilt weighed on him heavily as he made his way back to his position near the door. It was colder here, but he didn’t feel the chill. He’d given up hope of ever really feeling warm inside again.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He’d given up hope of feeling at peace, but Prudence certainly did manage to make him feel warm inside. Very warm. Which was very stupid.
His commanding officer’s daughter was the one woman who was off-limits to him.
But that realization didn’t seem to stop the volatile chemistry between them from increasing. Not that being snowbound in a two-room cabin with five preadolescent VCRs was exactly a romantic setup.
Last night, when he’d walked out of his tent and found Prudence, he’d definitely felt a connection with her. A reluctant connection to be sure but it was there, despite his attempts to make it disappear.
Even now, he was aware of her as she tossed and turned in her sleeping bag. He heard her every sigh, felt her every move. She was driving him crazy.
When she suddenly jackknifed into a sitting position, he quietly growled, “Can’t you sit still for ten minutes?” She’d been bustling around the cabin all evening, fussing over her students, hovering over the large pot hanging above the fire as she made dinner from the food they’d brought with them supplemented by some cans of spaghetti stored in the cabin. How could he have known that he’d find her Suzie Homemaker routine incredibly sexy? “You’re going to wake up the…uh…your students.”
“I’m sorry, I…” The sound of her stomach growling interrupted her words. She blushed. He hadn’t seen a woman blush in ages.
“Here,” he said gruffly. “Eat this.” He handed her an apple from his ALICE.
“You were supposed to eat that last night,” she said in an accusatory voice. Because of the heavy weather, they’d had beef jerky, trail mix and apples for dinner last night. “You need to eat it.”
“Just take the apple. I saw the way you gave your helping to your students instead of taking enough food for yourself.”
“You did the same thing,” she replied, leaving her sleeping bag behind to pad over in her woolen socks to join him in the shadowy far corner of the cabin. He was sitting on one of the folding chairs. She carefully moved the other chair closer to him so that the kids wouldn’t hear them talking. Outside, the storm continued. Gusts of wind rattled the windows, making her grateful that they weren’t out there facing Mother Nature’s wrath unprotected. Prudence was protected, not just by the cabin’s walls and the warmth of the fire, but by Joe Wilder’s presence. “The least you could do would be to eat the apple since you didn’t have much of anything else.”
“Just take the apple and stop arguing.”
She eyed the apple before raising her eyes to meet his gaze. He really did have the most incredible eyes. They seemed to see clear into her soul. “I’ll split it with you.”
“I’m a Marine, ma’am, I don’t need much food.”
“I’m sure you chew nails for breakfast, Sergeant. And you can call me Prudence instead of ma’am. You said my name before.” At his slightly startled look, she added, “This morning when we first arrived at the cabin.” Taking the apple he still held out, she pulled a Swiss Army knife from her backpack and sliced the apple in half. “I cut, so you get to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“Which piece of apple you want.” She held out both her hands, each holding a portion of the apple.
“I already told you…”
“That you’re superhuman and don’t require food like the rest of the human race,” she completed for him with a teasing grin
. “I know, I know. Come on, just take the apple.”
“Said Eve to Adam,” Joe muttered.
She raised a teasing eyebrow at him before asking, “Do you think I’m trying to tempt you, Sergeant?”
“If you are, then the least you can do is call me Joe,” he drawled, taking the smaller piece of apple.
“I wouldn’t dream of trying to tempt a Marine,” she assured him.
“Why not? Think you couldn’t do it? Don’t sell yourself short.” His voice was gruff.
His words surprised her. She still had her black thermal leggings on as well as a long T-shirt and flannel shirt that almost went down to her knees. Not exactly a seductive outfit. Maybe he just couldn’t see her. She and Joe were both in the sheltering shadows where the fireglow gave way to the darkness. “Is that a compliment of sorts?”
“Affirmative.”
So he thought she could tempt him, hmm? Interesting. Prudence finished munching the last of the apple before speaking. “Then let me return the compliment by saying that I’m grateful for the great work you did in getting us to this cabin.”
His soft laugh was bitter. “If I’d been doing my job, you’d all be snug in your own beds tonight instead of up here on this mountain in the middle of a blizzard.”
She frowned at him as another gust rattled the window nearby. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s the truth.”
Or his version of it. “Look, you had no way of knowing this blizzard would hit. I listened to the weather forecast. They didn’t say anything about that storm coming ashore.”
“I didn’t like the look of the weather this morning,” Joe said, glaring at the darkness outside as snow piled up against the bottom of the windowpane.
“Did you know that a blizzard was coming?”
Joe waved her words away with an angry slash of his hand. “You don’t understand. You all could have died on my watch. If we hadn’t found the cabin in time, if one of you had twisted an ankle or broken a leg, if you’d suffered from hypothermia or frostbite—” He broke off, his voice was thick with emotion. For the first time his control showed signs of slipping.
Prudence put her hand on his arm. His muscles were hard and tense. “But none of those things happened,” she softly reassured him. “No one is going to die on your watch.”
He turned to glare at her and the cold fury in his blue eyes scorched her as he yanked his arm away. “You think it hasn’t happened before? It has. Three Marines are dead and it happened on my watch. Three families lost their son, their husband, their father. On…my…watch.” He said each word distinctly, bitterly, hopelessly. As if they were individual bullets searing his soul.
She could see the pain in his eyes, there beneath the anger. Then a shutter came down, shutting her out. “There was a helo accident a few weeks ago.” His expression was now blank, his voice military crisp, completely lacking the emotion of a moment ago. “We were finishing up a routine overseas op and I was the training officer in charge. There was another sergeant there, he asked if he could swap training missions with me. I did the scheduling, it was my call. I gave the okay. It was just a training mission, no big deal. The Cobra took off, then something went wrong. It suddenly lost power and crashed. There were no survivors. And it all happened on my watch.”
Prudence was deeply touched by his pain, even if he was making heroic efforts to hide it from her. She knew it couldn’t have been easy confiding in her. “I’m so sorry.” She touched his hand. He didn’t pull away this time, so she quietly continued. “I can understand how you might feel guilty, but the accident wasn’t your fault.”
Joe silently cursed his loose tongue even as he stood and moved away from her. What the hell had he been thinking of, confiding in her, letting her get close to him? He needed his head examined. And if that happened, if any whiff of emotional problems or instability went on his record then his life as a Marine might well be over.
Joe loved the Marine Corps. He came from a large military family, all of whom were rough, tough, can’t-get-enough United States Marines. He’d never had trouble coping with anything in his entire life. Until now.
Now everything he valued most was at risk.
He had to protect himself. He had to put her at arm’s length once more. “You understand?” His voice, his very demeanor mocked her. “I doubt that. What could a cautious daddy’s girl like you possibly know about guilt?”
“I know plenty,” Prudence quietly replied. “When I was a teenager, I almost killed my mom.”
Chapter Six
“What are you talking about?” Joe demanded, taken aback by her words.
“I just told you,” Prudence said, her gaze shifting away from his.
“That as a teenager you almost killed your mom?” he repeated in disbelief. “How? By driving her crazy with your stubbornness?” he scoffed.
“No, by driving recklessly and getting involved in a serious car accident.” Her voice vibrated with anger at his mocking attitude. “My mother broke her pelvis and was in the hospital and in physical therapy for weeks. So, yes, I do know all about guilt.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I had no idea.”
“You’ve got that right.” She ran a weary hand through her hair, tucking it behind her ears to get it away from her face. Lifting her chin, she gave him a challenging stare that dared him to turn away from her. “You had no idea, yet you still assumed that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that you were the only one who’d ever experienced survival guilt.”
“I apologize,” he said quietly, facing her look without flinching. “But your situation isn’t the same. Your mother didn’t die. She recovered.”
“And I thank God for that every day. But it doesn’t lessen the fact that I brought her a great deal of physical pain. Did I do it deliberately? No. Did you do anything that caused that crash? Were the mechanics working on it? Did you deliberately avoid getting on that helicopter because you knew it would crash? No, no and no.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “That doesn’t change the fact that if I’d been doing my job, you’d all be home safe in your own beds tonight.”
She blinked at him. “How did we jump from the helicopter crash to this spring blizzard? I don’t get the connection. I must not have gotten the memo saying you were in charge of the entire world,” she noted with mocking humor.
“Not the entire world. Just my corner of it.”
“What about me?” she countered. “I could just as well be saying that if I’d been doing my job, then I wouldn’t have allowed my students to get in this mess. After all, this weekend trip was my idea in the first place.”
Joe raised a dark eyebrow at her. “Are we going to argue about who should feel guilty about this mess?” he inquired wryly.
“Why not? We argue about practically everything else.”
“I’m not usually the argumentative type,” Joe said.
“Neither am I,” she admitted.
“I wonder what it is about our…chemistry together that makes us argue so much?”
“We don’t argue all the time.”
“Now you’re arguing about how much we argue,” Joe noted with a slow smile.
Grinning, she nudged him with her elbow. “Am not.”
“Are, too,” he retorted in kind, nudging her right back.
“Now we’re sounding like Pete and Keishon.” She nodded her head toward the fireplace where the kids were sound asleep in their individual sleeping bags.
Joe’s gaze followed hers. “I think Pete’s got a case of puppy love going on there and that’s why he argues with her.”
“Is that why you argue with me?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“No, ma’am,” Joe said solemnly, his blue eyes gleaming with humor in the shadows as he turned to look directly at her. “I only argue with you when you’re wrong.”
“Funny,” she murmured, nudging him again with her elbow. “That’s the only time
I argue with you, too.”
“Besides, my puppy love days are long gone,” he added.
“Mine, too,” she agreed.
“Who did you have a crush on when you were their age?”
“Bobby Wills,” she immediately replied. “How about you?”
“No, I never had a crush on Bobby Wills.”
She laughed. She had the feeling that, in the past, Joe was the kind of man who made a lot of women laugh. He’d probably made more than his fair share cry, too. Maybe not. Maybe she was judging him by an inaccurate yardstick, one thrown off-kilter by her experience with Steven Banks. There was certainly more to Joe than merely a gung ho Marine.
He was another tortured soul. Maybe that’s why she’d felt such a connection with him. She knew what he was going through, even if he doubted that she understood. She knew how guilt could eat you up and tear your heart out.
She wondered what the connection was between his reaction to the kids and the helicopter crash. Was it simply being responsible for them, as he’d been responsible for the men on his watch? Or was there more?
What had they been talking about before he’d cracked her up with his droll comment? Oh, yes. Puppy love. “I’ll bet you can’t even remember the name of the first girl you had a crush on,” Prudence challenged him. “I mean, there have probably been so many girls.”
“Her name was Betsy Wiseapple and she had red hair, freckles and braces.”
“You’re making that up.”
“A Marine never makes things up,” he solemnly replied.
“I should know that,” she said, turning to look at him.
Joe turned at the same time. His lips were now only a few inches away from hers. “Yes, you should.”
Prudence should also do the cautious thing and move away. Ever since her rebellious teenage years, Prudence had tried to stay on the straight and narrow and do the right thing to make up for her former wild behavior.
But sharing confidences with Joe in the shadowy darkness was tempting her to stop being prudent.
Slowly leaning toward her, Joe gave her every chance to pull away. Instead she watched as he came closer.
