“Don’t bother giving me any orders to vacate the premises,” she said. “I won’t go.”
“I wasn’t going to waste my breath. You didn’t go the last time, either.”
Her skirt billowing out around her, she sat down on the planking and circled her arms around her drawn-up knees.
“You went back to Kane’s island,” she said, with an accusing frown. “You shouldn’t have. You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Thank God for that. And thank you, David, for what you did for Tommy. That was incredibly courageous of you.”
“Not so courageous when you consider the backup team I took with me. I simply served as the intelligence officer. The team did all the grunt work. They took out the guards and nabbed Dan Kane and Tommy.”
“Robert?”
“Last I saw of him, he was high-tailing it out to sea in a speedboat. We let him go.”
“I’m glad you blew up the drug warehouse.”
“By the time we got there the yacht was fully loaded and ready to put to sea. We blew that, too. Those drugs were only a drop in the bucket compared to what floods into the country every day. But if what we did saves a few lives, or prevents only one kid from getting hooked, it will have been worth it. And there were several dozen assault weapons that won’t be used against the cops, Colombian or American.”
Both of David’s hands were spread wide on the planking, holding. himself in place. Looking at the long, lean fingers brought her a painful recollection of how exciting those hands could be when they were stroking over her.
She bit her lip and looked away.
“But why did you go back for Tommy? You loathe the man.”
“I figured I owed him something for stopping Kane from having us taken out and shot right then and there. Besides, you’d tried so hard to get Tommy back, you deserved to succeed at that. But don’t get the idea I went back out of sheer altruism.”
His face hardened into a scowl. “I don’t like to fail at a mission, and I don’t like to be pushed around by scum like Dan Kane. I wanted to put the slimy bastard out of commission for good so we wouldn’t have to worry about him coming after us.”
“Out of commission?”
“He’ll be in jail for some time. Our people were eager to get their hands on him for what he did in ’Nam and what he’s done since then. The Colombian authorities were quite willing, to help us get rid of him. Elliott had no trouble mounting the mission.”
It was difficult to keep on chatting about everything but what she really wanted to talk about: their relationship. Which, of course, was over, even though she was having a lot of trouble getting that hurtful fact through her heart.
“I came to see you because I thought you might like to know that Tommy checked himself into the treatment facility I mentioned. Whether or not that will complete the job of getting him clean that you started, who can say. But from here on he’s on his own.”
“I wouldn’t make book that the jerk will have the sense to use the chance you gave him.”
From the rigid set of David’s jaw, she could well imagine that Tommy’s month in the country had been no vacation.
“Either way, he’s not my problem anymore.”
“Yeah. Well...”
David’s interest in Tommy’s future seemed to have reached its limit. An uncomfortable silence fell between them, broken only by the soft slap of the waves ruffling the surface of the lake. She’d said her piece. What she ought to do now was bid David as cheery a farewell as she could manage and leave. But the thought of making the long walk back to her car all by herself and then leaving David for good made her feel ill.
“So,” she said, glancing up over her shoulder to the house. “I saw the stuff in the truck. Looks like you’re getting ready to leave.”
He nodded. “Yes. Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading back to Chandler Hall and my grandmother. I’ve really missed Anne. She’s a great old lady. She never gave me any hassle about my holing up out here, although I knew she was worried about me.”
“Have you made any plans...?” She felt so full of sighs, she was running out of voice. “You know...for what you’ll be doing from now on?”
“For starters, I have a round of apologies to make to my friends for turning them away all this time. Then I’ll be going to work. The navy has asked me to help set up a new SEAL training program. I thought I’d give it a shot.”
“You’re going back on active duty?”
“No. The doctors would never sign me off on that. I’ll be working as a consultant, mostly from home. Computer work. Research. Evaluating different training techniques. That sort of thing.”
Sounded as if he was on his way to rejoining the human race. She was glad for him.
“That’s great, David. I know you’ll be good at it.”
There didn’t seem to be much left to say. At least not much that he would want to hear. She clambered to her feet. “Well, goodbye, Commander. Good luck with your new job.”
“Yeah. Thanks. You, too... uh, with your old one.”
So that was that.
“You ever need a doctor, you know where to find me.”
The flicker of a humorless smile came with his quick farewell salute. “Right. I’ll keep that in mind.”
She’d bet the M.D. shingle hanging on her office door that he’d never make it back to Baltimore again. At least not to her street.
“Well ... See you later, Commander.”
This would be a whole lot easier if he’d just end their meeting by swimming away instead of floating there holding his gaze on her.
“Mmm ... See ya.”
Impossible to leave without touching him. She went down on one knee and reached out to lay her fingers over his. The tremor that moved through him kept on going through her.
He let out a sharp breath.
The gray gaze that continued to do quivery things to her insides wasn’t coolly blank. It hadn’t been since he’d glided up to speak to her. What she thought she saw in their depths now was pain. And indecision.
Pretty much what she felt herself.
She felt as if an impenetrable wall of glass lay between her and David. On the other side of the wall she could see everything in the world she wanted, but she couldn’t reach it.
She didn’t believe in fate or magic, but there’d been something of both in her relationship with David. How could she turn her back on that without one last effort to make him understand what she could see so clearly? That they were meant to spend their lives together. If they didn’t, she had the horrible feeling that some vast celestial plan would surely go awry.
He’d labeled her loyalty to Tommy as sheer stubbornness. Maybe it had been. But didn’t she owe even more of that same kind of stubborn loyalty to the man she truly loved?
She might be about to make a fool of herself again, but she’d already done that over David Reid. What did one more time matter?
“Whether you want to hear this again or not, David, I’m going to say it. I love you. And that love is now as much a part of me as my breathing. It will never change.”
The curtain of his eyelids dropped over his eyes. His face jerked to the side, as if he’d just received a blow.
“I refuse to believe that you don’t have any feelings for me,” she continued relentlessly. “How could that be true when you made love to me in a way I’ll never be able to forget for as long as I live? That I’ll never want to forget for as long as I live?”
His face contorted. He shoved himself off from the wharf and swam in a small agitated circle back to her.
“Cara—please. I—I can’t—I—”
Any sensitive person would back off in the face of the man’s obvious distress. But this was too important. This was about the rest of her life. And his.
No matter how much it hurt either one of them, she intended to press him until she heard him say flat out that he didn’t love her. David Reid could be as evasive as the best of
them. He’d given her no inkling of his plans that last evening in Panama. But he was no liar.
“I love you, David. That gives me the right to demand to know how you feel about me. Maybe I’m just dense, but the response I sense when I’m in your arms doesn’t square with what you say. Or rather what you don’t say. So you’ll have to spell out for me exactly what those feelings are. Or aren’t.”
A breeze swept off the lake and chilled her to the bone. If only she could take back that last stupid throw of the dice. She didn’t possess enough bravery to stand here and listen to him say she meant nothing to him. But it would take nothing less to rub her nose in that devastating truth and finally make her believe it.
Weak with apprehension, she thumped her bottom back down on the dock and folded her arms in front of her in a show of determination that was just that—a show.
“And I’m going to sit right here until you do.” To her ears, her voice sounded much too loud and strained.
David muttered a curse and threw her a dark, snared look.
“You’d do just that, wouldn’t you?”
He hauled in a huge breath and blew out the mouthful of water that came along with it.
“Okay. Here it is. Frankly I wish I had the nerve to go ahead and lie to you.” He sighed. “But with you sitting there looking at me like that, I can’t. I’m in love with you.”
A shower of happiness sparkled over her. “Oh, David.” She melted toward him. “I knew it. I knew it.” She reached out to lay her fingertips across his wet, warm lips.
He propelled himself backwards a couple of feet out of her reach.
“Can’t you understand, Cara? It’s because I love you that I refuse to inflict a cripple like myself on you. How can a woman like you really love a man who can’t even walk properly, whose body is a mass of ugly scars?”
Her face must have displayed the blank incomprehension in her mind.
“Believe me, David, no woman with an ounce of sense would turn away from you. I speak from experience. Your limp never seemed the least bit important to me. I was too involved admiring—and doing my best to fend off—that incredibly attractive and damnably forceful virility of yours.”
Her compliments seemed to confuse him. His gaze jerked down one side of the lake and then the other as though he though he might come across the real meaning of her words lying around someplace on the shore.
“You’ve never seen all of me, Cara. I’m such an awful mess that it made my wife sick to her stomach.”
She rocked back on her heels. This was all about his damaged body? She knew a ten-year-old boy who’d lost a leg who was handling that physical challenge a lot better than David was handling his. She opened her mouth to pitilessly order him to get over it.
The words never made it past her lips. The bleakness she caught in his eyes gave her a sudden flash of complete understanding.
David’s reaction to his feelings for her wasn’t really about how he looked. It wasn’t solely about his injuries at all. It was about his spirit. His reluctance to show himself to her was a symptom, not a cause.
All along he’d been trying to tell her what he might not consciously comprehend himself. She’d listened, but she hadn’t really heard.
This was a man who’d been honed to the toughest standards of stoic, macho military expertise. A man who not only took pride in, but who defined himself by that powerful self-image. A man accustomed not simply to competence, but to excellence in performing any task he undertook.
As she did with her profession, he saw his work with the navy as much more than just a job. He viewed it as a special vocation, almost a sacred calling.
The burst of weapons fire that tore into flesh and bone had also shattered his basic sense of self. In the blink of an eye he found himself in a world where—in terms of what he’d been—he no longer counted. Undoubtedly, his wife’s desertion had administered the coup de grace to the last of his already precarious self-esteem.
When he spoke of being afraid he might be impotent, he wasn’t merely talking about sexual impotency. He was confessing his fear that sustaining massive trauma to nerves and muscles somehow made him less of a man.
Not only did he have to recover from his physical wounds, he’d had to completely reinvent himself mentally, rebuild a definition of himself from the ground up.
No wonder he’d retreated to his mountain.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said, once more turning out toward the center of the lake. “Goodbye, Cara.”
“Is a decorated naval officer afraid of a little serious conversation about this?”
“There’s no point,” he continued. “I don’t even know what your this is supposed to be.”
Evidently he hadn’t considered that when he jackknifed beneath the surface, he’d give her a pleasant glimpse of a bare and very attractive male behind. She waited until he came up several yards distant.
“I’m not entirely sure, either. Let’s find out together.”
He didn’t turn, but he didn’t continue swimming either. He tread water with his back to her.
“Please, David, come and talk. Maybe you don’t need to, but I do. Remember what we shared at the pool? Remember how wonderful that was? Come back and talk out of respect for what happened between us then.”
If that plea didn’t work, nothing would.
She allowed herself a bit of hope when he fumed and swam slowly toward the dock.
“Thank you,” she said, when he’d reached her.
“That last tactic of yours comes pretty close to blackmail.”
“I’m sorry. But it’s not easy to get you to do something you don’t want to do.”
A strange snort of laughter burst from him.
The deep vulnerability she’d just discovered in him called up her strongest nurturing instincts. She wanted to cuddle him in her arms and murmur comforting words.
Exactly what he wouldn’t want.
Instinctively she knew that too much gentleness on her part, any hint of pity or sympathy, would send him racing for the farthest end of the lake. She had to tread carefully, but not softly, on a battered ego.
“I don’t suppose I can get you up on dry land.”
“I’m fine right here.”
“How about if I jump in there with you?”
“No. You said you wanted to talk. So talk.”
“Okay.” With no time to think through how to bring up the subjects in a way he wouldn’t find threatening, she had to go with the direct approach. “I’d like to hear what your concept of manhood is.”
“Oh, for—We’re about to get into psychobabble here, aren’t we?”
Best to ignore that one, she decided. “Then I’ll give it a shot. You just listen and tell me if I’m right.”
His wary sideways squint warned he wasn’t going to stick around for long. She had to talk fast.
“I think your idea of real manhood involves a male who possesses the kind of perfectly trained body you once enjoyed. A man who’s capable of the kind of action they make movies about. Like invading a drug baron’s stronghold, rescuing someone and blowing the place to kingdom come.”
His eyes rolled heavenward. “Yeah. We’re into psychobabble, all right.”
At least he seemed to have understood that she was saying he still possessed a good deal of that particular kind of manliness.
“I agree, David, that men like those in special forces such as your Navy SEALs are due considerable admiration and respect. But their work demands that they focus strongly on the physical aspects of masculinity. I think there’s a lot more to manliness than that.”
“And you’re going to tell me what that is, whether 1 want to hear it or not.”
“Right.” She hoped her smile was broadcasting something to the effect that See? This isn’t so bad after all.
“In my concept of manhood, a real man—whatever shape he’s in—is one who has strength of character. Trust me, David Reid,” she said dryly. “Y
ou’ve got strength of character coming out your ears. A real man is one who looks out for the people in his life, even those who have no rightful claim on him. You went out of your way to help a stranger—namely me—who came to you with an outrageous request that you accompany her to South America.”
“Not that big a deal.”
“Yes, a big deal. Your first instinct, telling me to get lost, was the sensible one. You came anyway. On top of that you risked your life, not only for me, but for a man you had no use for.”
“Still don’t,” he added.
She sighed. He was going to fight her every step of the way. Well, she could be every bit as stubborn as he. She had Tommy to thank for developing that trait in her.
“Let’s just go on. My version of a real man is one who’s tough, yes, but one who can be gentle and tender, too.” She tried to fill her voice with all the richness of her feelings for him. “You were certainly all of those with me.” Especially when she was in his arms. “What I’m trying to say, David, is that my idea of a perfect man is exactly who you’ve been since the day I met you.”
His eyes flared wide. His mouth dropped open. What he was thinking she didn’t know, but she sure as heck had his attention. To hold that interest she quickly plowed on.
“Think about it. Doesn’t it count for something that a man of the calibre of Roger Bryce Elliott thought enough of you to put in effect a plan to nudge you out of your seclusion, along with helping his grandson’s doctor? I’m sure he had that in mind when he sent me to you. He probably didn’t think for a moment that I’d lead you into the kind of trouble that we faced. Together,” she added, to remind him of how well they’d worked as partners. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, when he put me in touch with you, he was also engaging in a little matchmaking between us.”
“That’s ridiculous. Elliott isn’t the type to—”
“Play Cupid? Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. The point is, I think it’s high time you quit focusing on your physical weakness and recognized your real masculine strengths. So you’re not Rambo anymore. So what? Personally I’ve never been that fond of the emotionless Rambo-type.”
“But I...uh...you don’t ...”
Unbroken Vows Page 24
