“That’s not the case here, Jamie.”
“Maybe not,” she said, including them both. “But that’s how it felt. As if I’d walked into a setup.”
“Well, it’s not,” Kell answered, his expression earnest. “Roberta had a cancellation and put me in that time slot. You heard her. It was pure chance that it would be the hour before your appointment. And Dr. Hampton didn’t know I was on his schedule until he saw me.”
Her gaze locked with Kell’s. “I understand all that. But did you know I was coming in today?”
“Now, how would I know?” was Kell’s first response. But then his glance slid from her to Dr. Hampton. Jamie followed his direction and saw Dr. Hampton nod. She narrowed her eyes. Something was definitely up. Kell caught her gaze. “All right, I did know—but not until the very end of my session. I ran over my hour, and there you were. Hell, I didn’t even know I was coming in today until I decided this morning to call.”
“Why did you call?”
Kell ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. “I admit I wanted Dr. Hampton to talk to me about what you’re feeling, but he wouldn’t. He told me plainly enough that he and I could only talk about me…and how I feel about you.”
“Really?” Well, that took the wind out of her sails. Suddenly it was hard to hold on to her anger, no matter its cause. Kell was so darned vulnerable looking right now, so wounded. Like her. Jamie lowered her gaze to her upholstered chair’s arm and, with a finger, traced the floral pattern she found there. “And what did you tell him…about how you feel about me?”
“I told him the truth.” Kell’s voice rang with the conviction of his words. Jamie looked up at him. His black eyes were compelling. “That I love you and I can’t get through to you. That no matter what I do, it’s wrong. That I don’t know how to make you happy…and that maybe I should just stop trying.”
Jamie’s heart lurched. “Oh, please don’t stop trying, Kell. I don’t want you to do that.”
Kell leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs. “Then what do you want, Jamie? Tell me what to do. I feel like I’m the only one trying here. Like I’m jumping through flaming hoops and you keep adding more with a bigger fire.”
Dr. Hampton chose to break in. “Jamie, Kell, if you’ll excuse me…” He stood up. “I just remembered something I have to do that might take a while. I know this is highly irregular, but do you two think you can talk alone for a bit?”
Though a little startled, Jamie’s answer was automatic. “Sure.”
“Good.” He turned to Kell. “Commander? Are you comfortable with that?”
“I am.” Kell never looked away from Jamie as he answered.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him, either. Every line in Kell’s body radiated a passionate intensity that made her breath catch. Suddenly she wanted Dr. Hampton gone so she could hear what Kell had to say. Whatever it was, it promised to be exciting. She thought again of Donna’s advice. Quit thinking and act. Listen to you heart and not your head. A sudden giddiness raced through Jamie. She licked her lips.
“Excellent,” Dr. Hampton said. “I wouldn’t normally do this, of course. But I feel that with Jamie’s credentials, she will take the appropriate steps to see that things don’t get out of hand. However, should things get uncomfortable for either one of you—”
“We got it, Doc.” Kell’s voice was sharp. “We’ll be fine. You can go now.”
Jamie understood the urgency that lay behind Kell’s words. She looked at her therapist. “We’ll be okay, Dr. Hampton. Take your time.”
He smiled and nodded, then turned around and left the room. They were alone now. Jamie crossed her arms and stared hard at the handsome man she loved so very much. “He was just giving us a chance to talk, I guess. After all, I was his next appointment.”
“So it would seem.” Kell stared at her, his black eyes glittering.
Jamie couldn’t deny that her heart was thumping erratically. Nor could she deny that all she wanted to do was fling herself into Kell’s arms and tell him what had happened over the weekend. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him and how much she needed him to hold her right now.
“Truce?” Kell said suddenly.
“Truce,” she agreed. Go for your dream, Jamie. Make that man yours.
Kell leaned forward on the couch, running a hand through his hair, and said nothing. As always, he was fascinating for Jamie to watch. She tried to be detached but failed, consoling herself with the realization that Kell’s presence in any room commanded attention. Still, she waited for him to speak. “You look tired. You okay?”
Was she okay? She didn’t know. But then she thought about it. “Yeah. I’m okay. I really am—maybe for the first time in a long time. How about you?”
“I’m good. You sure you’re all right? You’re giving off some weird vibes, Jamie.”
Jamie quirked her mouth. “I said I was fine, and I am.” If he kept this up, she’d be crying. And she really didn’t want to do that. She felt she’d done enough crying over the weekend to last her a lifetime.
Kell looked around the room awkwardly. “This isn’t going the way I had hoped.”
“Things in life rarely do. For anyone.”
He exhaled, then looked back at her. “That’s true. We always manage to screw up even the best of things, don’t we? All I know is I don’t want to walk out of this room until we have that damn closure thing, one way or the other.”
Jamie swallowed, felt the betraying prick of tears in her eyes. She wasn’t sure she could do this today. She wasn’t sure she could face another loss. But it looked as if Kell wasn’t giving her much choice. “Go on.”
“All right.” He sat forward, his expression intense. “We’ve been trying for two weeks now to see if this thing between us is going to work. And all we’ve managed to accomplish is great sex—which I’m totally on board with. But still, everything else is killing me. It’s like I can have you physically, but not emotionally.”
Jamie frowned. “That’s what I say about you.”
Kell sat back, crossing his legs and with his arms spread across the sofa’s spine. “I know. So when did we both get to be such tight-asses?”
Jamie blinked. “I hadn’t thought of myself that way. Donna thinks I need to get over it and do something. Chase my dreams and get them.”
“Good advice. I’ve always liked Donna.”
Jamie smiled. “Me, too.”
“I like you, too, Jamie. I think you should know that.”
That got to her. “I like you, too, Kell. This sounds like a junior-high conversation. You know, like passing notes that said ‘check here if you like me.”’
A corner of Kell’s mouth quirked up in amusement. “We actually did that in junior high, remember?” His dark eyes glittered. “I checked that I like you. Nothing’s changed. I liked you long before I loved you, Jamie. I think that’s important for us to remember.”
“I do, too, Kell. We were friends first and cared about each other with a different sort of passion. I loved that feeling, didn’t you? I could always count on you for anything. You were always there.”
“I still am, Jamie. Just as you are for me. You were a little girl with pigtails who trailed after me and annoyed the hell out of me. And I couldn’t have loved you more. I have always needed you, even when I couldn’t say it to you or even admit it to myself.”
Jamie’s defenses melted. She felt warm all over, liquid, vulnerable. “Oh, Kell.” She raked her hands through her hair. “I just want everything else, all the stupid thinking and doubting and worrying I do to just go away. God, I just want to be happy.”
Kell hadn’t moved, but he seemed closer to her. “I want that, too, Jamie. I just don’t know how to get us there. Do you?”
Jamie stared into his eyes, then found herself noting the little things…like how his watch fit his wrist, how manicured his nails were, how he sat. She looked again into those black eyes of his. “I don’t know anything anymore, Kell.
I’m just damn tired of myself and my own thoughts.”
“Well, lucky for you, I never am.”
“I don’t know why you’re not. I give you nothing.”
“You give me everything.” Kell pointedly looked around the room they were in and indicated it with a sweep of his hand. “We’re in a psychiatrist’s office. And you’re a psychologist.” His grin was warm and infectious. “Let’s just talk, see where we go, where we end up. What do you say?”
Jamie answered his smile with one of her own. “I say yes.”
Yes. It was a first for her. A hopeful first. Suddenly, she began to feel as if she meant it, too.
KELL WATCHED JAMIE…that sweet face he saw every night in his dreams and wanted to see every morning when he woke up. That was his goal, his targeted end. How to start? “So, Jamie, you made quite the impression on Jeff and Melanie.”
Her eyes rounded. “I did? Good or bad.”
“Good. Come on, you know you never make a bad impression on people.”
“No, I don’t know that. But I’m glad to hear it.” Her expression changed, became curious. “So…what’d they say?”
Kell chuckled. This was the Jamie he loved. And, God, how he loved her. “Well, Jeff wouldn’t let me leave his hospital room until I promised to ask you to marry me.”
Jamie’s face colored. “Why in the world did he do that?”
She put a hand to her chest. Kell noticed how her pink blouse snugly fit her full breasts. He was sure he could smell the warm, sweet scent of chemistry between her perfume and the skin in the intimate space of her cleavage. He forced himself to meet her waiting gaze. “Right now he thinks the whole world should take the day off, find itself a nice woman and settle down.”
“Well, that’s a good philosophy.”
“He thinks so. Probably because he’s happily married and about to be a father.”
Jamie smiled brightly. “Yes, Melanie told me. How exciting! She said they’d been trying for five years.”
“Yeah. So, what else did Melanie tell you the other day at the hospital?”
“She told me…about you.”
Not sure how he felt about that, Kell sat back on the couch “I see. That had to be fun.”
“Fun, no. Informative, yes.”
“Great. I feel like I’m about to be skewered on a barbecue spit.”
“It’s not as bad as all that.”
“Make me believe you.” He patted the seat cushion next to him. “Care to join me?”
She looked from his face, to the cushion, and back to him.
“I promise to behave,” he assured her, again noting, and wondering about, the tired lines that bracketed her mouth. Something was very wrong with her. Silently, he watched her get up and cross the space between them. She sat down…not too close, not too far away. He studied her up close. She looked pale, sad…like she’d gotten bad news. He opened his mouth to question her again, but she spoke first.
“Okay, about my talk with Melanie,” she said. Despite his worry about her, Kell’s gaze seemed to stray to her legs…long, tan, muscled from her jogging. “Kell?”
He jerked his gaze up to her face. “I’m listening.”
“Sure you are. But, anyway, Melanie…” Jamie got a faraway look on her face as if she was ordering her thoughts. Then she focused on him again. “Okay. I suppose she talked more about the mission than anything. Don’t be mad at her. Her husband was there, too.”
Kell’s jaw tensed. “I’m painfully aware that Jeff was there. Go on.”
“Well, she told me about things you really could have told me, Kell. And I wish you had. I wish you felt as if you could trust me with things the way you trust her.”
Duly chastised, Kell reached over and took Jamie’s hand in his. Her heart was in her big blue eyes. “All right.” He rested his head against the couch’s spine and closed his eyes. After a few moments of difficult silence, he began talking. “There were five of us. We’d been there three days. We’d parachuted in, then lived off the land, making our way to our target at night, skulking through the woods, sleeping in shifts during the day. The usual stuff. That third night there, we approached our objective and set the explosives. Then all hell broke loose. They were on to us, about twenty of them, armed to the teeth. We had to fight our way out, radio the helicopter that we were under fire—and still blow up the munitions plant.”
He opened his eyes and rolled his head until he was looking at her. Her face was a bit paler now. “You didn’t hear that.” She shook her head. He then assumed his former position…head back, eyes closed. “Anyway, we blew up the target and I got hit with flying debris—”
“The cut on your thigh?”
His answer was a nod. “I went down. Jeff grabbed me up and was helping me limp away while the other guys were covering us. We went around a corner—right into a nest of bad guys. Long story short, Jeff shielded me and took a couple of bullets meant for me. It damn near killed him.”
“And you.”
There was a catch in her voice. Kell opened his eyes and looked over at her. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. He reached up to wipe them away. “Hey, it’s okay,” he told her. “I’m all right, and I’m right here.”
She smacked at his chest. “Dammit, Kell, you could have been killed.” Her voice, though muffled a bit by his shirt, was ragged. “You have to stop doing that. You just have to.”
Feeling more content and calm than he had in weeks—Jamie was here, that was all he needed—Kell rubbed her back. “I keep telling you that I have, Jamie.” He pulled her up so he could see her face. Her troubled expression had Kell’s heart turning over with poignant tenderness. “Honey, remember that desk job I told you about? It’s the truth. There’s no more going back into the field for me. Or Jeff, if I get my way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jeff wants to come in out of the field. I’m looking into making him my second-in-command.”
“Oh, Kell, that is wonderful. Melanie will be so glad.”
“Yeah, Jeff, too. He’s tired of the grind of being a field operative. Who could blame him? He almost had his butt shot off. Right now that’s in his favor. He’s not in peak physical condition and may never be again after this last complication—”
Jamie had grabbed his arm. “Oh God, don’t tell me—did something else happen?”
“No. I’m talking about his last setback. Anyway, he’s going to take a while to heal. So the best use of his training and skills would be in my office. We’ll be hell on wheels with all the bureaucracy—the paper pushing and budgets and strategy meetings. Picture that—middle management in the military world. Actually, I’m beginning to think it will be pretty exciting to be in a position to have the big picture finally, instead of being stuck in a muddy ditch somewhere halfway around the world and wondering why I’m there.”
Jamie nodded. “I hope it works out for Jeff and Melanie. And for your sake.”
Her voice was flat. Kell was getting more and more worried. “My sake? Why mine?”
“Because Jeff means a lot to you. Kind of like your brothers.”
Kell nodded. “Yeah, he does.” Then he rubbed at his injured thigh and chuckled. “Hell, Brandon and T.J. would take one look at this scratch on my thigh and laugh, wouldn’t they?”
Jamie shook her head. “No, they wouldn’t. Mom told me that she talked to your mom. She said your mother told her that they were both pretty upset about it.”
Kell sank back on the cushions. “Yeah, I know. They called me, too.”
“You don’t sound like that went so well.”
Kell turned to look up at her. “Actually, it did. Both calls. I expected them to be, I don’t know, disappointed in me somehow.”
Jamie shoved at his shoulder. “Kell, for God’s sake, they’re your brothers. You don’t have to blow yourself up to make them care about you.”
He grunted. “That’s pretty much what they said. It was dumb of me to worry about what they’d think. I wa
s getting the chip on my shoulder about it, though.”
“And now?”
Kell grinned up at her. “Well, Ms. Counselor, I think I’m okay with them. And with me. How about you? Are you okay with me?”
Jamie looked down at her lap. “I am.” Then she took a deep breath, as if she was trying to find the courage to say something to him.
“Jamie?” Kell prompted. “What is it?”
She looked over at him. “My mother says hello. I talked to her last night. About a lot of things.” Jamie’s gaze shifted away from him. “She…asked me if I was going to be alone. And I told her no, that I’d call you.”
Kell sat up straighter on the couch. Alarm bells were going off inside him. “But you didn’t call me. And why would your mother suddenly be worried about you being alone? What’s going on, Jamie?”
She stared at him…hollow-eyed. “I meant to call you. I did. I just…fell asleep after I talked to her. It was late.”
Kell raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t get any of this, Jamie.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me. Look, when I took you home Friday night from the beach, we kissed and said we’d talk the next day. So I didn’t think anything was wrong. Then I spent all weekend trying to reach you. But you wouldn’t take my calls.”
A stricken look came over her face. “It wasn’t that I wouldn’t take them, Kell. I wasn’t there to take them.”
“Well, where were you?”
She took a deep breath. “I left early Saturday morning and was gone all weekend. I just got back last night.”
Kell looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You just—? Where’d you go? You never said anything on Friday about having to go somewhere.”
“I know.” She looked down at her lap silently. Unheeded seconds ticked by. Jamie’s face grew pale. Finally, she raised her head. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know, myself, until it happened. And then when it did, I couldn’t talk to you. I just couldn’t. Not until it was over.”
Kell’s heart pounded against his ribs. “Hell, Jamie. What is it?” Her blue eyes were swimming with tears. Kell took her hands in his. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong? Just tell me.”
Her Only Chance Page 16
