The Ranger's Secret

by Rebecca Winters

  Her thoughts drifted back to Kabul. When they’d come home to either of their apartments at the end of the day, he’d crush her in his arms and say, “My kingdom for a drop of cold water, but first I have to have this.” They’d kiss until there was no beginning or end. Inevitably they gravitated to the bedroom. The water and room-temperature cola came much later.

  So deep was her reverie, she didn’t realize Chase had come into the kitchen until he turned on the cold water tap and drank for a good half minute. When he lifted his head, his glance fell on the can in her hand. “Some habits never change.”

  Annie realized he remembered too. “No,” she whispered.

  “Thank you for that much honesty.”

  Her pulse picked up speed. He smelled and looked wonderful. The black T-shirt and well-worn jeans molding his powerful thighs took her back in time. He needed a shave. He always did at the end of the day. It added to his sensuality, making her ache to the palms of her hands. She had to take an extra breath to regain her equilibrium.

  He lounged against the edge of the counter. “What brought you over here tonight?”

  “I need to talk to you about Roberta.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He stayed where he was, which was too close to her. Right now he reminded her of the old Robert. The only way to describe him was that he seemed more aggressive, yet he’d done nothing overt. She drank nervously from the can.

  “She has this fantasy about you and me.”

  “So do I,” came the quiet assertion. He put his hands on either side of her neck, rubbing his thumbs in circles over her tender skin. His touch hypnotized her. “You and I haven’t had a chance until this minute to give each other a proper hello,” he whispered against her lips. The warmth of his breath seemed to ignite her whole body.

  “Robert—” she gasped softly.

  “The name’s Chase. An hour before the explosion that changed our world, we had just made passionate love. It was the morning we set the date to leave for the States and get married.”

  “I remember.”

  “So do I. Every detail,” he insisted. “Afterward I very reluctantly left your arms for work and let you sleep in. My mind was so full of the future and how gorgeous you were, I didn’t notice until the second before oblivion hit that a couple of unfamiliar trucks had pulled up to the site.”

  The moan she heard was her own, resonating in the kitchen.

  “It’s taken longer than I expected to get back to you, Annie, so don’t refuse me now. I couldn’t take it.”

  There was no escape route as his lips closed over hers and she was pulled into his embrace. Ten years might have gone by, but her mouth and body recognized him and responded as if it had only been an hour since he’d left their bed. The frustration of not being able to use both her hands and arms was driving her insane. She realized the only difference between then and now was that her cast prevented their bodies from achieving a total melding.

  He kissed her with a hunger that kept growing more voracious even while it was being appeased. How she’d lived this long without knowing his possession again was anathema to her. She could no more stop what was happening than she could stop breathing. There was a reason she shouldn’t be doing this, but so help her, coherent thought had fled and she couldn’t remember why.

  Somehow her back ended up against the counter until there was no air between them. Without conscious thought her free hand slid up his chest and started to wind around his neck, but the pads of her fingers had run over ridges and bumps beneath his T-shirt that hadn’t been a part of his torso before.

  Visions of the photos Sid Manning had tossed on the floor illuminated her mind. Horrified once more, she gave an involuntary gasp and slid away from him, forcing him to relinquish his hold. She started to lift his shirt so she could see, but he took her wrist in a firm grip, preventing movement.

  “No, Annie. Not yet.”

  She stared into his eyes and saw the same fear she’d seen in them earlier. “What do you mean not yet?”

  “You don’t want to look. Trust me.” He averted his eyes.

  “But I’ve seen the pictures.”

  “Those are nothing compared to what’s left.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The blood-spattered man I saw riddled in bomb fragments had been given up for dead. You’re alive!”

  He rubbed the back of his neck in a gesture she interpreted as a sign of insecurity. She couldn’t comprehend him falling victim to that weakness. Not Chase.

  “You mean what’s left of me.”

  Her hand knotted into a fist. “I didn’t think you had a vain bone in your body.”

  “I don’t remember thinking much about it either until I looked into a full-length mirror and found myself staring at one of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments.”

  “Don’t say that, Chase! Don’t ever speak like that again.” Her body shook so hard she had to hold on to the sink for support. “No one would ever guess in a million years.”

  He smirked. “With clothes on, you mean?”

  She had trouble swallowing. “What do you do when you swim?”

  “I don’t.”

  Annie bit her lip. “Are you telling me you’ve never been with a woman since?”

  “No, I’m not telling you that,” he came back with brutal honesty.

  “Does that include Rachel?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  Chase had enviable control. “Rachel was never interested in me. It was Vance from the moment tempers flared in his office. If she told you anything different, she was lying.”

  “No,” Annie answered honestly. “She said as much to me, but evidently you were interested in her.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You want your pound of flesh, don’t you. Well here it is. Rachel had a sweetness about her including an inner strength that made her attractive to me. The truth is, she reminded me of you, but Vance had already gotten under her skin. There was no contest. Does that answer your question?”

  She looked away, ashamed she’d brought Rachel up to him.

  “Why don’t we talk about the number of men who found you attractive over the intervening years. Roberta has told me about one of them. Greg somebody? The whiz kid from Pennington Mutual your parents introduced to you? She said he flew the two of you to his yacht moored in the San Francisco Bay area several times.

  “I also remember her talking about a professional golfer named Lucky Sorenson who invited you to see the PGA Open at Pebble Beach. I understand you stayed overnight at his home in Carmel.”

  She should never have opened this up. “You’ve made your point, Chase.”

  “Did you sleep with them?”

  Annie would love to lie to him, but she couldn’t. “No,” she answered in a quiet voice, “but you’ve been with other women who’ve seen your scars.”

  “They could handle it,” he fired back.

  “But not me.”

  “Especially not you.”

  Flame stained her cheeks. “Why?”

  “I’d rather you remembered me the way I was.”

  “If you mean dead, it’s too late for that now!”

  His eyes grew bleak. “I know.”

  Full of pain she cried, “Evidently you always thought of me as a high-maintenance princess who needed to be pampered all the time and couldn’t take anything the real world handed out.”

  She watched his features harden. “I asked you to marry me a long time ago and you said yes. Shall we see if your answer is the still the same now?”

  In front of her eyes he pulled his T-shirt over his head. Next came his jeans, leaving him stripped down to his boxers. “Behold the man you once said was the embodiment of your every fantasy.”

  Looking at Chase was like looking at a picture taken at a carnival. The kind where you stood behind a cardboard stand-up that distorted a portion of your body. She’d always considered him the personification of male beauty. In her eyes he always would be.

  “This is onl
y the frontal view.”

  He turned around so she could see his back all the way to where the scarring was covered up by the waistband. “More plastic surgery might make me a little prettier, but with all my dreams obliterated, I never had the incentive to do anything about it.”

  When he faced her again, his hands were on his hips in that warriorlike stance she and Rachel had talked about. One brow dipped. “What do you think? Shall I have it done for your wedding present, or don’t I stand a chance in hell?”

  Annie couldn’t talk. It wasn’t the scarring that stopped her, although it was massive and no doubt represented years of pain and anguish while he healed. What wounded her was the darkness that had crept into his psyche over the intervening years. A menacing grimace distorted his smile.

  “I’m waiting for an answer, my love. Even if our dreams were shattered, do you have the guts to make our daughter’s come true?”

  Suddenly she was reminded of Roberta the first year she took swimming lessons. All the other kids in her class had finally learned to dive off the side. When it came to her turn, she backed away from the edge. The teacher urged her to try it.

  Roberta had denied that she was scared and insisted she didn’t feel like diving right then. That look in her eyes was identical to the one in Chase’s. Pure, unadulterated, defiant fear.

  Chase had said he still wanted her, that he wanted to marry her. He’d kissed her tonight as if he’d never stopped wanting her. If marriage could take away his inner demons, maybe it could heal her demons, too. Nothing mattered except that he was back in her life, a man who’d faced terror and was still standing.

  Her chin went up. “I do if you do. Your scars change nothing. I love you, Chase. How soon do you want to plan the ceremony?”

  “Annie—” he cried, but as he reached for her, his cell phone rang.

  She felt as well as heard his frustration at being interrupted. It frustrated her too because she knew he had to answer it. With one arm still around her, he reached for the phone lying on the counter, and clicked on, but whatever he heard on the other end changed his entire countenance. His arm slowly fell away.

  Even in the light she could see he’d paled. All the joy in his expression of moments ago was gone. Extinguished. Annie felt sick to the pit of her stomach.

  He covered the phone. “I’m afraid this is going to take some time,” he said in a gravelly voice she didn’t recognize.

  “You want me to leave?”

  She’d never seen Chase look more tormented. “It’s the last thing I want and you know it. But under the circumstances it would be better. I’ll come to your house later.”

  He gave her a swift, hard kiss on the lips before she grabbed her parka from the chair and left the kitchen. All the way to her house she hugged her cast against her chest to subdue the fierce pounding of her heart. She had the awful premonition something was about to threaten her happiness all over again.

  Chapter Nine

  Annie slipped in the house, relieved to discover everyone had gone to bed. She wasn’t in any condition to face her parents or Roberta. Tonight she’d known such intense joy in Chase’s arms, and the shock of having to leave him the second she’d told him she’d marry him had filled her with paralyzing fear.

  Once before he’d left her to go to work, and he’d never come back. It couldn’t have been normal ranger business making demands on his time tonight; for that, he wouldn’t have lost color or sent her away.

  He’d said he would come to the house later.

  She glanced at her watch. Now it was later. What was going on?

  If he didn’t knock on her door in five minutes, she would run back to his house to find out why. While she was pacing the living room floor, her cell rang. Annie lunged for her purse lying on a chair. She pulled out the phone and clicked on.

  “Chase?” She hadn’t even looked at the caller ID.

  “It’s Vance.”

  “Oh, Vance. Forgive me. I—I’ve been waiting for Chase.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. He’s dealing with an emergency in another part of the park and doesn’t know how long he’ll be. Since he knew you’d be worried, I told him I’d call you.”

  She gripped the phone tighter. It was much more serious than Vance was making it out to be or Chase would have called her. Maybe there’d been a bear attack on a camper, or a shooting he had to investigate. As much as she wanted to ask Vance for details, she held back. He’d been kind enough to phone and assure her everything was all right.

  What kind of a ranger’s wife would she make if she fell apart every time Chase had to respond to a crisis? “You don’t know how much I appreciate your call. Thank you for being so thoughtful, Vance.”

  “You’re welcome. We’ll be seeing each other soon. Nicky’s living for Halloween.”

  “So is Roberta.”

  “Tonight he reminded us it’s only three days away.”

  She laughed in spite of her anxiety. “We’ve been going through a similar countdown here.”

  “It’ll be a fun night for everyone. Don’t tell Nicky, but I’m just as excited as he is.” Vance was a wonderful man. “Good night, Annie.”

  “Good night.”

  Once she’d hung up, she got ready for bed and slid in next to Roberta. But after an hour of tossing and turning she grabbed a blanket from the hall closet and spent what remained of the restless night on the couch instead.

  When morning came, Roberta was up and ready for school, none the wiser that Annie had gone over to Chase’s last night. By the time Annie had prepared breakfast, her parents had joined them.

  Her mother gave her a searching glance. Naturally she wanted to know the outcome of last night’s visit, but she didn’t say anything in front of their sober granddaughter.

  “Aren’t you going to finish your toast?”

  “I’m not that hungry, Mom.” She looked at her grandparents. “I wish you didn’t have to go back to San Francisco today.”

  “Don’t you worry. We’ll drive up here next week,” Annie’s father assured her.

  “Okay.” She slid out of the chair and kissed them, then grabbed her backpack from the chair in the front room.

  Annie followed and gave her a hug. “See you after school.”

  “Daddy said Nicky and I could drop by headquarters for a root beer on our way home.”

  “That sounds fun.” What else could she say? Hopefully Chase was back at his house in bed by now.

  “Bye!”

  All three of them watched her from the porch until she disappeared around the corner, then they went inside. “I guess we’d better get going too,” her dad muttered without his usual enthusiasm.

  “Before you do, I have something important to tell you.” That got her parents’ attention in a hurry. “Last night Chase asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

  Their eyes lit up. “That’s the best news we’ve ever heard.” The next thing she knew they were hugging her, cast and all. While she wiped her eyes, her mother said, “Why didn’t you tell Roberta this morning?”

  “Chase and I want to do it together.” Their conversation hadn’t gotten that far last night, but she knew him. He’d missed out on everything else to do with their daughter. Annie wasn’t about to take that moment away from him.

  Her father kissed her cheek. “How soon do you plan to be married?”

  “Soon—” she blurted, feeling her face go hot. They hadn’t talked about that either, but their hunger for each other demanded nothing less. She couldn’t wait to go over to his house later.

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense long.”

  “I promise to phone you the moment we’ve set a date. Last night he had to go out on an emergency before we could make plans.”

  “Oh, Annie!” Her mother embraced her again. They’d all been through so much since her return from Afghanistan. She knew what her mom was saying without any more words having to be said.

  A few minutes later she walked them out to
their car. “Drive safely.”

  “I will.” Her dad gave her another long hug. “Tell Chase we said welcome to the family.”

  Annie nodded. She couldn’t wait!

  Once they’d gone, she rushed inside to do the dishes and take a shower. Though she couldn’t do anything about being ten years older than she’d been when they’d met, she intended to make herself look as beautiful as possible for him.

  By the time she was ready, she phoned headquarters first, just to make sure he wasn’t in his office. The dispatcher, Ranger Davis, said he hadn’t been in and she didn’t know when to expect him. Annie had thought as much.

  Five minutes later she discovered his truck wasn’t in the driveway, nor did he answer the door. If he was in a deep sleep, she didn’t want to rouse him from it. It looked like she had no choice but to go back home and start doing the job she was getting paid for.

  The minutes crept into hours while she waited for him to phone at least. When the call never came, she phoned headquarters again. Still no sign of Chase being in his office. By quarter to four she was ready to call Vance when Roberta ran into the house. “Mom?”

  Annie hurried down the hall from the room she’d turned into an office. “Hi, honey! How was school today?”

  “It was okay, but Dad wasn’t at headquarters. Can I go over to his house?”

  “Of course,” she said, not having to think about it, “but he might not be there.”

  “I know. If he’s not, I’ll come right back.” She dropped her pack on a chair and took off out the front door.

  Please be home, Chase.

  Fifteen minutes passed, long enough for Annie to assume all was well. Giddy with relief, she had decided to walk over there and join them when Roberta came through the front door with a long face. “You were right. He wasn’t home. Has he called?”

  “Not yet, but I know he will the minute he can. Vance said he was called out on an emergency last night, so we don’t know how long he’ll be gone. Do you want some fruit or a sandwich?”

  “Maybe some string cheese.”

  Good, Roberta wasn’t too upset to eat. Annie was determined to keep things normal no matter what. “Why don’t you ask Carly to come over. I’d like to meet her.”