Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  He scrambled to his feet.

  Max found her feet at the same moment he did. Her face was a blazing shade of red.

  Kyle’s breath rasped along his throat. “Stop spinning your wheels worrying about someone else, Max, and leave me the fuck alone!”

  “I just agreed to marry you, Kyle! Do you think I’d make that kind of commitment, then walk out during one of the most wretched moments of your life?”

  Sweat beaded his brow like droplets of hot dew. A sock was draped over his shoulder. He snatched it off and hurled it to the floor.

  “I will never leave you,” Max vowed to him. “Hear me on that. Never.”

  He stared her down, his eyes feeling so gravelly they had to be red-rimmed as hell. “If you don’t leave me,” he ground out, “someday I’ll bail on you.” He abruptly turned away from her and stalked across the room, giving her his back.

  “This is you sabotaging again.”

  He rounded on her whip-fast. “The hell it is! This is a warning. I leave everyone, Max. So get out while you can.”

  “Who have you left?” Max demanded, then cut a gesture at the front door. “Not Sienna, certainly.”

  He turned away from her again, clenching his fists tight enough to knot the muscles in his forearms. “My son is dead because I left him,” he said to the photo of him, LZ, Beans Vanderby, and Bingo Robbins skiing at Mammoth. “I should’ve done more…given him more bone marrow…something. Anything!”

  “God, Kyle. No. You did everything possible to help.” He could hear the tears in Max’s voice. “Brodie was just too sick.”

  The Mammoth Ski trip photo blurred. Reflected across the glass of the picture, Kyle saw a vision of himself, baseball glove on his hand, throwing a ball across a grassy field.

  What do you like to do? Sports?

  Yes, sir.

  Which ones?

  Baseball.

  On the other end of the field, Brodie caught the ball, no tubes, no hospital bed, only his Kyle-look-alike face, smiling. The boy tossed the ball back…but now it was Kyle’s father who appeared across the grass in Kyle’s place. Matthew was dressed in a saggy, unstylish suit directly out of Death of a Salesman, but he appeared pixelated, like he wasn’t real. Because he wasn’t. When the baseball came at him, Matthew let it sail right by. Then he vanished.

  Kyle inhaled a torn breath. You were going to leave Brodie’s hospital room today, weren’t you? His throat pumped rapidly. “The day I visited Brodie in the hospital,” he croaked out, “it was too much for me. Too…painful, too hard. I nearly left right then and there. I even took a step toward the door before I stopped myself.” He swung around and sniffed hard. It felt like twin cactus bulbs were stuffed up his nostrils. “And the day of the ambulance crash in Pakistan, when I started to feel something for you, I wanted to leave then, too.”

  “So what?” Max returned, nothing but tenderness for him in her expression. “So you thought about leaving. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “No. Thoughts don’t mean anything, Kyle.” Max marched over to him. Huge pools of tears had gathered along her lower eyelids, weighting them open into a Sailor Moon look. “Everyone has stupid, crazy thoughts they don’t mean. Do you know how many times my mother has pissed me off, and I’ve wished a car crash on her? Do I really want her to get hurt? Of course not! I’d be devastated if anything bad happened to her. Thoughts don’t matter. Actions are what count.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Have you ever actually left?”

  He traveled back in his memory, far back, and…couldn’t come up with a single time.

  Max’s voice lowered. “You’re so afraid of becoming like your deadbeat dad you condemn yourself for every little piece of evidence, real or imagined, that you assume proves you are him.” Teardrops moved onto her lower lashes and sat there like tiny jewels. “You’re the farthest thing in the world from a deadbeat, Kyle Hammond. Remember the day in Pakistan,” she pressed, “when you told me I should give myself a break and let someone else carry the load? I said I couldn’t because no one follows through. Well, do you think I ever would’ve agreed to marry you—would’ve fallen in love with you!—if I wasn’t one hundred percent sure you were the man I could depend on.” The tears tumbled over her lashes now.

  He watched shiny, wet trails form on her cheeks, and the tsunami rose again, escalating fast. Shouts. Shrieks. Wails. He dragged his tongue across his quivering lips.

  “You’re so loyal,” she went on, “that you wouldn’t even leave me after the helicopter crashed and sank. You drowned yourself for me, Kyle! That’s the kind of man you are!” Her tears fell heavily now.

  His heart lurched. He wanted to reach inside himself, twist it in half, make it stop. Make all of this stop. Jesus, his lips were trembling so hard now…

  “You drowned yourself for me!” she repeated fiercely. “For God’s sake, can you not see who you are!?”

  He must’ve seen, because suddenly all the “Kyle the Shithead” recordings he’d kept rolling through his mind for years flipped from one side of the soundtrack to the other.

  You were going to leave Brodie’s hospital room today, weren’t you?

  But I didn’t fucking leave!

  He shuddered as his chest splayed open, vomited out a bunch of dark gorge, then—

  Quiet.

  The Shithead recordings went completely silent.

  He gasped in his next breath. A lifetime of self-destruction leaving him all at once hammered him down to his knees. As he hit the carpet, he threw back his head, covered his face with his palms, and howled.

  He cried for everything. For Brodie, who Kyle had no right to cry for, because he barely knew the kid, but Brodie represented the innocent remaking of the boy Kyle wished he’d been himself, and now was gone…and what poor kid deserved to die at seven years old, anyway? For Jobs—because, dammit, Kyle hadn’t cried for him yet—for the pilot and the man Steve would never have a chance to become. He cried for all the women he’d used, all of them, even Max. And he cried for himself, for not having the father he’d wanted and needed so badly, and for all the soul-grinding sabotage he’d done to himself for too many years to count.

  If Max hadn’t come into his life, there was no telling where he would’ve ended up. Probably alone in a sewer, asphyxiated by his own barf.

  Max… She was on her knees, hugging him to her tightly.

  Lowering his hands from his face, he dropped his brow to her shoulder and clutched her, making himself shut the fuck up. That’d been a world-class cry-fest. “I’m so glad,” he whispered hoarsely, “you didn’t let me kick you out.” He wasn’t sure he could’ve made it through this cathartic outpouring if Max hadn’t been here, waiting for him on the other side of it.

  “I belong with you,” she said, her breath warm over the top of his ear, “and you belong with me. You and I together. We belong with each other.”

  He choked up again. It was the same thing she’d said to him the first time he tried to kick her out of his life, the morning after they had sex without a condom. “Yes,” he rasped out. “Forever. I need to quit being an idiot about that.” He was a little afraid to move, so he just stroked her spine with a light movement of his thumb. “Thank you so much for saving me, Max. You have no idea how many different ways you’ve rescued me.”

  “And you don’t think you’ve saved me, too? I was so”—her breath hitched—“incredibly alone until you came along.” Max caressed a hand down the back of his hair. “Same as the helicopter crash. You said I saved your life by dragging you up from the wreck, but…” She took him by the shoulders and eased him back far enough to look into his eyes. “I wouldn’t have been able to save you if you hadn’t saved me first by getting me out of the seatbelt.”

  His heartbeat tripped out of its regular cadence. “So what are you saying?” he asked. “I’m here for you when you need me, and you’re here for me when I need you?”

  She sent him the bright, dazzlin
g warmth of her smile. “Exactly.”

  He caught her face between his palms, put his forehead against hers, and feathered his thumbs across her cheeks. “Sounds like the makings of a great marriage.”

  “It sure does.”

  They stayed like that for a long time. Through one of the open living room windows the far-off slap and whoosh of a gentle surf filled the passing moments, rhythmic and soothing and timeless.

  Chapter Thirty

  November, seven months later, Hotel Del Coronado

  There had to be upwards of three hundred people at the wedding.

  The Crown Room, where the reception was being held at the Hotel Del Coronado, which was the poshest hotel in San Diego, was decked out to extremes, everything done in white and gold—tablecloths and centerpieces—twinkle lights all over the place, and an entire greenhouse of flowers. The hotel itself was an architectural marvel, the pristine white main building topped with a turret-like red roof that any aviator stationed in San Diego could recognize from the air in his sleep.

  When Kyle and Max, his lovely wife of six blissfully wedded months now, first entered the room, Max had quietly blurted, “My God.”

  “Trust fund baby,” Kyle had told her out of the side of his mouth.

  Eric O’Dwyer came from money. A load of it. He definitely had the fat stacks to spend on his wedding to Nicole Gamboa…although there’d first been talk of having a barefoot ceremony on the beach or something equally bohemian. An idea, Kyle knew, that surfaced more out of Eric’s need to annoy his father, who’d wanted to invite a million executives to the shindig, rather than for any real need to go native.

  In the end Eric and Nicole hadn’t wanted to deny any of their own peeps an invitation, so they went big, and now the place was packed to the rafters with Nicole’s DEA coworkers, Eric’s former Wolf Pack squadron buddies, and more officers from Eric’s current job at AIRPAC, plus his extended Irish family.

  None of Nicole’s family were here, though. Apparently her parents had passed away, but it was still odd that no other relatives were in attendance. The only two people who could be counted as even close to family were two old friends of Nicole’s mother, Manolo and Kalani Rojas. Manolo must be a very good friend, because Nicole had already danced with the man four times.

  Since Nicole’s parents weren’t in the picture, it was Eric’s dad, Sean O’Dwyer, who’d escorted her down the aisle. A bitter pill for Eric to swallow? Yes and no. Although Eric probably had as many daddy issues as Kyle himself, Eric was also looking to be more of a family man now that he was getting hitched. Other than the lingering joy of jabbing an occasional stick at his old man, Eric was basically burying the hatchet with Sean, who was, incidentally, recently widowed, and making serious time over at the champagne fountain with a DEA receptionist.

  Eric was also growing closer to his three brothers, a breach-healing that’d been spearheaded as much by Eric’s younger brother, Brett, as by Eric himself. But even with the four boys getting more buddy-buddy, Eric had still asked Kyle to be his best man—a role Eric had played in Kyle’s own wedding, although Eric had been co-best man alongside Kyle’s younger brother, Andy.

  Kyle had said yes, of course, so for today’s festivities both Kyle and Eric were dressed in their military best. The “mess dress” uniform consisted of black slacks, a white dress shirt with gold buttons, a short, black jacket—white in summer—with shoulder boards to display an officer’s rank and a gold chain as a front clasp, all topped off with a black bow tie. The quasi-tuxedo was uncomfortable, but worth stuffing into on occasion for the attention it got a naval officer from the ladies.

  Kyle smiled to himself as he navigated through the crowd to one of the many bars. Max had taken one look at him in this uniform, and had almost convinced him to make them late.

  Leaning an elbow on the bar, Kyle ordered a gin and tonic…and a second later was slapped on the back.

  “You having a good time?”

  It was Eric.

  “Definitely. This is a great party, LZ.” Even though Kyle was Eric’s best man, the two of them had exchanged only a few words all evening. A lot of social grippin’-’n’-grinnin’ duties went along with being a groom, as Kyle well knew.

  Kyle picked his drink off the bar and lifted it in a toast. “Here’s to being off the market.”

  Chuckling, Eric found his new wife across the room. “No hardship there, my friend.”

  Kyle followed Eric’s gaze to Nicole. I’d say not.

  This was the first time Kyle had seen the badass DEA agent put some solid effort into looking nice, and the effect was absolutely astounding. Nicole’s hair was half-up in a complicated ’do and partially covered with a down-the-back veil, her makeup done to accentuate her exotic features, and her wedding dress was a real gaga number, sleeveless, with a neckline that showcased her rack to an impressive degree. The rest of it hugged her athletic figure in a design of careful, swirling beadwork until just below her thighs, where it then flared out. Kyle didn’t know much about fashion—he’d heard several women whisper the name Vera Wang…?—but whatever the dress was, the way Nicole looked in it had every guy in the room nearly swallowing his tongue. When Nicole first appeared at the end of the aisle in the church, quite an expression had crossed Eric’s face.

  Kyle might’ve felt a twinge of jealousy, if his own wife wasn’t so outstanding. You have no idea what a fantastic wife I’m going to make you had proved to be a colossal understatement. Fan-fucking-tastic was more like it.

  Within a month after marrying, he and Max had moved into a new house in Poway, a suburb of San Diego with a great school district. The coveted schools would help Kyle rent the place out when it was time to transfer to a new duty station, but the decision to buy in Poway had also been highly motivated by thoughts of his own future kids…and who the hell would’ve ever thought he’d make a decision to buy a house based on children? Ha! But, yeah, here he was, happily married to the woman of his dreams, with a clean bill of health from genetic testing, and eager to reach the end of the one-year wait period he and Max had agreed upon before starting a family. When the moratorium was lifted, he hoped, privately to himself, their first baby was a girl. He still ached some for Brodie…although maybe he always would.

  “Eric!” A large man strode up to them. “Congratulations, man!”

  Eric’s eyebrows flew up. “Whoa…Barry Murdock? I haven’t seen you since flight school.”

  “Yeah, long time.” Barry, known as the Bear, for his tremendous size, reached out and shook Eric’s hand, then Kyle’s. “I see you two are still partners in crime. You crash any more training helos together?” he asked with a guffaw, referring back to the flight Eric and Kyle had taken together in flight school, when a flock of birds collided with their helicopter and took out their engine—and a helicopter couldn’t exactly stay airborne without an engine.

  “Crash?” Eric’s shoulders lifted in a shrug as he looked at Kyle. “I don’t remember crashing a training helo, do you?”

  “As I recall,” Kyle drawled, “we landed that bitch.” The landing had been extremely rough, but still…

  “All right, all right…” Still guffawing, Barry held up his hands.

  Plus, the only true crash Kyle planned to log in his career was the one in Pakistan. The AMB37 had cleared him of all culpability, and Kyle had since come to terms with the accident. In his mind, he would always blame the way the mission went down on Admiral Dickfuck Kelleman for not heeding Kyle’s warnings about the possibility of extra terrorists. Had Kyle wept a tear when Admiral Kelleman was fired as commander of Strike Group One? Not a single one…although he kept the sentiment to himself.

  “I hope you don’t mind me coming to your wedding,” the Bear was saying. “I’m just checking onboard with the Wolf Pack, but I was told the entire squadron was invited.”

  “Don’t mind at all,” Eric said magnanimously. “Welcome to the party.”

  “I’m recently a married man myself. My last tour
was in Pensacola as a flight instructor, and guess who I found still there?” The Bear made a come here gesture, and a woman broke away from a group and arrived at his side.

  She was—Oh, shit. Kyle drank a quick gulp of his G&T to hide a sudden, uncontrollable laugh. Oh, ho-ho. Poor LZ.

  “You remember Leslie?” Barry said.

  “Of course.” Eric reached out to shake Leslie’s hand. “How are you, Leslie?”

  Props to LZ for not showing even a tic of a flinch over running into an ex-lay. Because back in Pensacola, Leslie used to have a serious thing for Eric.

  She’d also been known as “the Barracuda,” the not-so-nice nickname earned from her reputation of having peanut butter legs—easy to spread—with flight students.

  Just about every weekend of the year Kyle had been in Pensacola, he’d spotted Leslie hanging out at McGuire’s Pub. He’d thought her appealing enough, with her shoulder-length brown hair, full figure, and strange golden eyes that were probably capable of seeing right through a flight student’s bravado to the scared ninnies they’d all really been.

  “It’s a good thing,” Barry told Eric, “that you never took up Leslie on the crush she had on you.” The Bear raised a balled fist the size of an iron mallet in front of Eric. “Or else I might have to pop you one.” Barry was wearing a huge smile, only half joking, but—

  Kyle still stuck his face back in his drink and tightened his abs to keep from shaking. DO NOT laugh.

  Eric maintained an affable expression, but Kyle sensed LZ was gearing up to grind his heel into Kyle’s instep if he did anything to give away the fact that Eric had banged Leslie the night before Eric shipped out of Pensacola. It’d only happened the one night, so no one knew about it, except for Eric’s former flight school roommate, Albert Bobcheck—and Kyle.

  Leslie wrapped her hand around the Bear’s fist and lowered it. “Now, sugar, don’t be ill-bred,” she said with a sweet Southern accent. “It’s the man’s weddin’ day, after all.” Leslie turned back to Eric. “Congratulations on your marriage, Eric. Your bride is simply stunnin’.”