by Cindy Dees
“How long?” Lily gasped.
“Few minutes,” he gasped back. The heat was incredible. It felt like they were being baked in an oven. Intellectually, he knew Alpha Squad had blown up the cabin with shaped charges that directed most of the force of the blast outward, away from their hiding spot. Ideally, most of the cabin was blown out and away from them, too, minimizing the amount of debris burning on top of them now. At least that would have been the plan.
Lily’s arms crept around his waist, and he put his arms around her as well.
“I love you, Carter,” she murmured around the mouth breathing unit.
“I love you, too.”
She took her unit out long enough to say, “I’m sorry I messed up all your plans for noble sacrifice, but I just couldn’t let you go. I hope you’ll forgive me, but after we saved the world, I just had to save ours, too.”
He chuckled, startled that his chest muscles were already easing up enough to allow for that. He reached up and took out his unit to reply, “If this is your idea of saving someone, I’d hate to see your idea of messing someone up.”
“It is a little extreme, isn’t it?”
“Just a bit.”
They waited for several endless minutes and then he heard a noise that made his heart sing. A big, noisy engine rumbling toward them. Like a fire truck. Within minutes, hot water began to drip in around the edges of the Mylar blanket. He adjusted their wet quilts to catch the runoff as the fire crew put out the blaze overhead. The air around them cooled noticeably and they were able to take their breathing units out entirely.
Lily wasted no time picking up their conversation where they’d left off. “Forgive me?”
He smiled down at her. “How can I not? I love you and I want nothing more on this Earth than to be with you.”
“Even if you have to give up being a commando?”
“I think that ship has sailed. I’m done with that phase of my life.” The knowing sank into him as deep as the heat and fury of the fire above them had. But shockingly, he was calm inside. At peace, even. Lily was right. He knew being an operator couldn’t go on forever. But he had an outstanding education and Brady had already asked him to continue working with H.O.T. Watch when he retired from the field. Life would go on. He got that now, thanks to Lily.
“This was a crazy scheme, you know,” he murmured. “Did you have to blow us up?”
She shrugged. “You love me because I’m a little bit nuts. I think outside the box.”
He laughed. “That’s a word for it.”
“You won’t mind having to lie low at H.O.T. Watch and live like a recluse?” she mumbled against his chest.
“Not if you won’t.”
“Will we be together?” she asked.
“Forever. I promise. Mr. and Mrs. John Doe.”
She was silent for a moment. He waited her out, holding his breath in tense anticipation. Finally, belatedly, her body went rigid against his. “Mr. and Mrs. Doe?” she echoed.
“You know, for a brilliant astrophysicist, you sure can be slow on the uptake, kid.”
Her voice rose on a note of excitement. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“What do you think, Einstein? Of course I am.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Oh!”
“Well?” he demanded. “Well, what?”
“Well, what do you say? Will you?”
Just then their blanket ripped away from them. Alarmed, he rolled on top of Lily protectively.
“You two okay?” a firefighter in full gear asked from above them.
Carter handed Lily up to the guy and then climbed to his feet, as well. They picked their way carefully through the black and smoking debris.
Brady came over to join them. “Good to see you two in one piece. Alpha Squad reported that the Russians bugged out when they heard the sirens. Alpha’s trailing them back to New Orleans as we speak.”
Lily turned into Carter’s chest, and his arms came up around her.
She started to shake. Alarmed, he tilted his head down to see if she was crying. But the shaking increased, and in the faint glow of the firelight still seeping around the edges of their protective shell, he saw she was laughing.
“We did it. We fooled them!”
“You’re okay then?” he asked.
“Of course I’m okay.”
He paused. Then he took a deep breath and dived in. “And about what I asked before? Will you marry me?”
“For a soldier, you can be pretty dense sometimes,” she declared. “You think I led a hit squad to us, let your boss blow up a building around us, and hid beneath a burning blaze with you, and I don’t want to marry you?”
Joy exploded in his heart, and without warning the remaining tension in his muscles released. All of it. All at once. Gone. He’d found the trigger that would release his freeze-ups. Lily. And love.
He had no illusions that he would get better overnight, or even that the spasms would ever go away entirely. But with her help and her love, he had faith he could learn to control them and live with their remnants. He drew her up against him and kissed her with all the profound relief and bone-deep happiness in his soul.
“Promise me one thing,” he murmured against her smiling lips.
“Anything.”
“You’ll finally get around to wearing that red teddy on our wedding night.”
“You’ve got a deal, Carter Baigneaux. You’ve got a deal.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8830-4
SOLDIER’S NIGHT MISSION
Copyright © 2011 by Cynthia Dees
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**The Medusa Project
†H.O.T. Watch
