Unbroken Vows

by Frances Williams

  “So we can leave for Bogota fairly soon then.”

  “Anytime you want to.”

  “I made arrangements with my partners to have four weeks of free time so I could make a last concerted effort at tracking Tommy down. If I don’t find him by the end of that time, I’ll bow to everyone’s opinion that I should quit looking for him. At least then I’ll know that I’ve given it my best shot.”

  “I’m glad to hear that you don’t intend to go around in sackcloth and ashes over the guy for the rest of your life.”

  She ignored the comment. “How about heading for Bogota next Monday?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll contact my travel agent tomorrow to order our airline tickets and hotel reservations. Naturally I’ll pick up our expenses while we’re down there.”

  “No. I’ll take care of the tickets and expenses.”

  “But I already told you I planned to do that, David. It’s only fair. You wouldn’t be going at all if it weren’t to help me out.”

  “Forget it. You picking up the tab would make me your employee, and I don’t intend to take orders from you. Certainly not once we hit Bogota. This way, I’m in charge.”

  “But it’s all so expensive.” Cara worried her bottom lip. She already was in hock up to her eyeballs for college loans. Her income from her medical practice wouldn’t pay off those bills for years.

  “Don’t worry about it. Money isn’t a problem for me. Never has been. If I’d wanted to, I could have sat around Chandler Hall on my duff instead of joining the navy.”

  “So you’ve decided that you have to pick up the tab. You sure are into maintaining control of everything and everyone around you, Commander.”

  “You’re no slouch in the control department yourself, lady. The first time I saw you, I ordered you off my land. But here I am preparing to jet off to South America with you.”

  She threw in the towel on the disagreement.

  “Okay, you pay the bills for yourself. But I pay my own way. And we’re equal partners. You’re in charge of conducting our investigations in Colombia. I’m in charge of handling Tommy once we find him.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up too high. Bear in mind that we’re not even certain that Tommy is there. Bogota is a sprawling city of almost six million people. Even if he’s there, your chances of tracking him down in the time you have aren’t good. The only way you might find him is if he has contacts among the North American colony.”

  “I’ll never know if I don’t try.”

  Despite David’s high-handed take-charge attitude, it was a huge relief to have found someone willing to share the burden of her search. And she suspected that injured leg or no, she couldn’t have found a better partner than David Chandler Reid.

  His home, Chandler Hall on Virginia’s James River, meant he wasn’t exaggerating about having the option of sitting back and enjoying a life of wealth and privilege without lifting a finger. He chose instead to enter a profession that would push him to his physical and mental limits, to risk his life in situations very few people could handle.

  “One more thing, David,” she said softly. “Graduating from Annapolis, making it to the SEALs and to the rank of commander isn’t exactly just joining the navy.”

  She glanced at her watch. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to drive you to some hotel, when there’s a perfectly good guest room waiting for you right through that door.”

  “I guess I might as well stay.”

  Strange how much she wanted to go on sitting here quietly talking with him instead of leaving him to get the rest he needed after today’s painful problem with his leg.

  She didn’t feel like examining why she should feel so glad that David Reid hadn’t already walked out of her life for good. Not that he wouldn’t someday, of course, but she’d be ready for it by then.

  Not happy with the direction her thoughts were taking, she uncurled herself from the sofa.

  “Let’s see if I can find you something to wear.”

  The wave of disappointment that swept through him when Cara left, David thought, didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He’d been in firefights that had tightened his stomach muscles less than had spending most of the day in close proximity to Cara Merrill.

  It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed such a simple pleasure as dining with a woman, as having a real conversation with anyone. But those pleasures were enough to bring him a painful reminder of what real life had been like. And why he’d withdrawn from it to his mountain.

  She returned holding a silk, paisley-print robe, and draped it over the back of the sofa.

  He frowned down at the garment. “Tommy’s?”

  It made him furious that every time he noticed the ring on her left hand, every time she mentioned Tommy, a flame of anger licked through him. A man who didn’t know what to do with a woman like Cara Merrill didn’t deserve to be given a second chance. The possibility that Tommy might get exactly that brought an exasperated frown to his face.

  “No. Tommy’s never been in this apartment. My brother’s. He brought the kids here to see the tall ships a couple of weekends ago, and left the robe behind. I haven’t had a chance to return it yet. You’ll find toiletries in the bathroom. If there’s anything else you need, just let me know.”

  He planted the cane in front of him and used it to push to his feet. “Thanks. Good night, Cara.”

  She turned at the doorway to her room and loosed a smile on him that hit him like a blow right in the center of his chest.

  “Good night, David. Sleep well. If your leg starts giving you trouble during the night, don’t hesitate to call me.”

  Slowly she closed herself behind the door.

  He scooped up the robe and made for the bedroom. He pulled off his shirt and pants and tossed them carelessly on the nearest free surface—a dresser—as usual. Then he went back and folded them neatly before laying them down again.

  One quick look into the bathroom sent him scrambling for the robe. Why did they put in bathroom mirrors that were big enough for half a dozen people to use at the same time? All he needed to shave or comb his hair—when he bothered to do that—was the small mirror on his medicine chest.

  After he’d finished in the bathroom, he parked himself glumly on the edge of the bed.

  How in the name of everything holy did he get himself into this position? That threat of possible danger to her had pushed his mouth into volunteering the rest of him before his brain had a chance to kick in.

  Evidently personal experience had made him too damn much of a sucker for loyalty in a woman.

  He wasn’t doing this because she asked it of him, he told himself. No, he was doing it out of sheer self-protection. If anything happened to her, he’d have to shoulder that guilt on top of everything else he was dealing with. And any more mental stress would surely send him screaming into the arms of the guys in the white coats.

  Damn Elliott. The man had to have a sadistic streak in him. The same suspicions that crossed his own mind about Grant’s whereabouts must have occurred to the intelligence officer. He’d gone ahead anyway and pointed Cara in David Reid’s direction. Not that this was a mission that required a whole man to do it. He’d be little more than a glorified tour guide. Action that shouldn’t prove too much for a cripple.

  His mouth twisted in a self-directed grimace of disgust.

  Never mind Elliott, an undiscovered streak of masochism must lurk inside himself, too. What kind of fool would head right back into the place that wrecked his life?

  He hoped he’d be up to handling any danger they might run up against in Colombia. There’d been a time when he’d been convinced he could handle anything. Convinced, that is, until he came up against the frightening fact of his own physical weakness.

  What he wasn’t at all sure he could handle was the different kind of danger that tugged at him from only a few feet away.

  Returning to Colombia would be tough e
nough. Based on the kind of reactions the beautiful doctor already raised in him, he had the sinking feeling that returning there with her would be like walking on fire.

  He didn’t like these new and chaotic emotions she inspired in him. He’d arranged his life neatly and orderly, exactly the way he wanted it.

  What he didn’t want was to feel the softness she called to life within him. Didn’t want to feel the urgent need to touch her that had bedeviled him all evening. For sure, he didn’t want to feel that warm swelling between his legs. Not with this woman. And what irony that was. Be careful what you pray for, you might get it.

  But how could he be expected to overcome these dangerous feelings that tempted him down pathways he didn’t want to go, when he was lying in a bed separated from hers only by thin sheets of wallboard?

  He doused the lamp on the bedside table and slid between the sheets. A faint sound from her room reached his ears. In the darkness his eyes turned toward the wall between them. He fought off the visions that kept assaulting him. Tantalizing visions of her wandering around in there dressed only in some skimpy night thing.

  Call her, she’d told him. Call her? He wouldn’t call the woman if his whole body seized up into one giant charley horse.

  Chapter 4

  Cara peered out through the small window next to her seat and watched the broad blue length of the Caribbean unrolling thirty thousand feet below.

  This wasn’t how she’d envisioned carrying out her search for Tommy. She’d expected to track him down through the mean streets of Baltimore or New York, not have to fly to another part of the world to find him.

  David dropped his head on the seat back and closed his eyes.

  One of his hands rested on his left leg. The long, lean fingers curving around his thigh moved back and forth. He drew his mouth tight and shifted slightly, obviously in some pain.

  She felt a startling desire to comfort him. But if ever a man appeared completely self-contained and self-sufficient, it was David Reid. The fact that he might be locked in an emotional cage of his own making shouldn’t concern her as much as it did. She wasn’t responsible for him. She was responsible only for Tommy, who was locked in a tighter cage. One from which he probably could never escape without her help.

  She laid her hand beside David’s on his thigh. She should have foreseen the shock of pleasure that streaked through her when her palm met the tingling warmth of his body.

  His eyes immediately flew open and his gray gaze cut quickly to her. For a moment she thought she read an unexpected defensiveness in his eyes. Defensiveness about anything other than his disability didn’t seem a part of his makeup. He always seemed primed for attack.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.” The huskiness in his voice suggested otherwise.

  A subtle change had come over him during the days they were making preparations for the trip. There was a banked energy about him now, like a slow-burning fire glowing beneath graying ashes.

  She couldn’t believe how unshakable was the attraction he held for her. That testosterone-driven stoicism of his, that irritating lack of sensitivity represented so much of what she’d never cared for in a man. Somehow on David, those weaknesses came across as personal courage and plain truth-telling.

  He’d made a surprisingly good impression on her family. She was a little annoyed to find out that her brother had checked him out without first letting her know. But Stephen’s report on Commander David Chandler Reid had calmed her family down about her trip to South America. It couldn’t have been David’s charm that so easily won them over, but they all seemed comfortable about taking him on trust.

  They weren’t alone in that reaction. She hadn’t known David long, but she’d never been able to trust Tommy in the way she’d already learned to trust her partner.

  Trusted him in most things, she thought glumly. Not in their seesawing personal relationship that she refused to call romantic, but felt a long way from platonic.

  A line of thought she didn’t want to pursue.

  “What did you do with the cat, David?”

  “Huh?”

  “The cat. You’re not at the house to feed it.”

  “I took care of that problem.”

  Alarm shot through her. “David! You didn’t—?”

  “The woman who runs the general store down in the village is looking after it while I’m gone. I’ll probably have that nuisance animal on my hands for the rest of its miserable life.”

  Cara smiled. He’d have the animal on his hands because he couldn’t bear to get rid of it. The hard-as-nails commander harbored a soft spot a mile wide.

  The beautiful dark-haired flight attendant who’d been eyeing David since he first came on board, strolled over to him again. She noted Cara’s hand lying on his thigh and slid her an openly envious glance. Cara went right on with her gentle kneading. She didn’t care if the woman thought her action was a sexual one instead of a simple soothing of a man’s painful muscle.

  “May I get you anything, Commander Reid? Coffee? Something from the bar?” Cara couldn’t blame the attendant for her interest in the man. His now always clean-shaven face and a decent haircut had enhanced the rugged good looks that had been evident even beneath his former grunge.

  “Coffee, please. Cara?”

  She nodded.

  David had hardly glanced at the attendant. Cara wondered if he’d even noticed her interest. For some unfathomable reason, it pleased her that he didn’t.

  “I have to admit,” David said, “that I never really believed you’d get this far. I hoped you’d come to your senses and bail out at the last minute.”

  “Why does everyone think I’m crazy for wanting to find Tommy and help him?” she asked with some irritation. “If something terrible happened to me, I’d want someone to care. What if he’d been involved in a car accident that left him in a wheelchair? Should I have abandoned him then?”

  David pressed his lips together and didn’t answer.

  “If he’d been injured in some way, or if he’d come down with some life-threatening disease, I wouldn’t have deserted him. So why should I write him off now?”

  “You didn’t desert him,” David said pointedly. “He deserted you, remember?”

  “Thank you for reminding me.”

  The acid tone of her voice didn’t deter him.

  “Besides, drug addiction is hardly the same as an accident, and I don’t buy the theory that it’s a disease. A man makes a choice to use drugs. He has no choice when he’s hit by a car, or when he’s shot up trying to rescue a couple of DEA agents held hostage in a jungle drug lab.”

  Cara jerked her cup to a halt halfway to her lips. David had finally volunteered a mention of the incident that left him with a ruined leg.

  “Is that what happened to you, David?”

  He gave a deliberately offhand shrug and found a sudden interest in the contents of his coffee cup. The man seemed embarrassed that he’d ventured even that much.

  “We were talking about you and Tommy-the-Sensitive.”

  That David so quickly clammed up about himself didn’t surprise her. She already knew that he wasn’t a man to let it all hang out. Over the past few days, he’d turned away most of her inquiries about himself. But for his sake she was sorry he hadn’t been able to go a little further about the incident that left him so badly wounded.

  “Wouldn’t you stick by someone close to you if they were injured?” she asked.

  “Maybe I would. But not everyone is as adept as you are at the self-sacrificing little woman bit.” She’d already decided that he tried to push her buttons on purpose, just for the fun of seeing her get riled. This time she didn’t rise to the bait. “My wife for one.”

  “You’re married?”

  That important little nugget of information exploded like a firecracker in her mind. The subject of his marriage had never come up. He’d spoken fondly of the grandmother at C
handler Hall who insisted that he call her once a week to let her know that he hadn’t fallen off the mountain. Nothing about a wife. He wore no ring. She had simply assumed he was single. Why it should matter so much one way or the other, she had no idea, but she held her breath for the few seconds it took him to answer.

  “I was. I’m not anymore. The final divorce papers came through last winter. Except for a few minutes in court, I haven’t even seen Anita since the day I came home from the hospital nineteen months ago.”

  Was there something in the coffee that was loosening his tongue? Cara wondered. He hadn’t taken any alcohol but that glass of champagne with lunch. In fact, she hadn’t seen him with anything but the occasional glass of wine since that morning on his deck.

  “When my wife saw what was left of me she did some serious backpedaling about our relationship.”

  Cara’s heart contracted painfully. How could the one person a man should be able to count on run out on him at a time of such aching vulnerability? But she was in no position to throw stones. Hadn’t she herself done something similar to Tommy?

  She touched David’s hand.

  “It’s not uncommon for serious disease or injury to take its toll on personal relationships.” Her professionally correct attempt at consolation fell so far short of what she wanted to say. “I’m very sorry that it happened to you.”

  “Take its toll on a relationship? I’d say so. Anita took one look at me after I came out of the hospital and ran into the bathroom to vomit. When she came out, she bolted to the man she already had waiting in the wings.”

  David had thrown out the words with clipped coolness, but a nerve worked in his jaw. And his hands were clenched in his lap.

  His wife’s brutal rejection coming on the wings of his injury must have destroyed him. Just listening to his recounting of it made her flinch. Tears burned behind her eyelids. She turned away to make sure he wouldn’t see. He’d probably read her tears of sympathy as a sign of pity, and would hate it.

  Muttering a soft curse, David raked a hand through his hair.

  “I don’t know what made me tell you that. It’s not something I usually inflict on people.”