by Janice Lynn
With that, her mother considered the conversation over and returned her attention to the San Diego traffic.
Amelia stared in awe at the petite dynamo in the driver’s seat. All these years she’d thought her mother had simply gone along with her father’s wishes. In that moment, she’d seen her mother as the neck steering the head in whatever direction she wanted the Stockton family to go.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, because there’s no man I admire more, but I always thought Daddy a bit of a dictator.”
Her mother laughed. “Are you kidding? Your father is a big pussycat.”
“Only you would call Admiral John Stockton a pussycat.”
Her mother blushed then laughed a sparkly little laugh that spoke of years of love. “You might be right on that, but he loves you children with all his heart. Perhaps he was a bit stern, but he wanted you to grow into strong individuals. Each of you has.”
For the rest of the drive, Amelia was forced to reevaluate every assumption she’d ever made about her parents’ marriage. Sure, she’d never doubted her parents’ love for each other, but she’d always believed her mother the victim of loving a man who was too militant to fully express that love.
Obviously her mother didn’t see it that way. Her mother felt quite loved.
She was still marveling at her misconceptions when they arrived at a typical Californian-style home with stucco walls and a red tile roof. A white sedan sat in the driveway, as did her father’s Humvee, his pride and joy.
A few days home would do her good. Amelia loved her family and missed the closeness her siblings and she had shared while growing up. All for one and one for all.
Her mother parked the car, turned off the ignition, jumped out and was grabbing bags of groceries from the backseat before Amelia finished soaking in the fact that she was home. At least, the closest thing she had to home.
If Amelia thought learning her mother led the family just as much as the Admiral did had surprised her, the sight that greeted her when she stepped onto her parents’ patio stole ten years of her life.
Her father stood at a grill, flipping burgers, chatting to a man sitting on a wrought-iron swing a few meters away.
The most infuriating, frustrating, unbelievable man Amelia had ever met.
Cole.
Her gaze went back to her father. Why wasn’t he screaming at Cole? Threatening to skewer him with a cooking utensil? Instead, he was chatting with him as if they were old buds. Where was the Twilight Zone music? Or maybe some camera crew was going to jump out and tell her she was on some hoax show? That she’d been had?
There had to be something, because everything about the scene was wrong.
So wrong she thought she might be physically ill.
Unless Cole had told the Admiral the truth about his and Clara’s canceled wedding plans.
Was he seeking her father’s forgiveness?
Had he known she was coming to her parents’?
Her legs wobbled and she grabbed hold of the frame of the sliding glass doors.
“Amelia?” Her father spotted her. “Don’t stand there at attention, girl. Get over here and grab a plate. The burgers are cooked.”
Would her legs even hold her up? Could she even put one foot in front of the other?
What was Cole doing at her parents’ house?
Could she pretend nothing had happened between them for her parents’ sake?
“Hello, Admiral.” Just as she’d been doing since she’d been old enough to walk, she saluted the distinguished-looking silver-haired man who, even surprisingly wearing a kiss the cook apron, could never be mistaken for anyone other than a man who commanded authority.
He saluted her back. “Hand me that plate, then tell me all about your deployment, Lieutenant.”
She couldn’t keep her gaze from going to Cole. “Perhaps you’ve already heard?”
Her father’s expression didn’t change. Not that she’d expected it to. None of the Stockton four could ever get so much as an eyebrow rise out of their father. Not that they’d done much to push their father’s buttons. High IQs ran in the family and they hadn’t wanted to die at a young and tender age.
But even under John Stockton’s eagle eye her brain cells all migrated toward Cole.
His blue gaze had settled onto her and she felt heat burning into her skin. He wore civilian clothes. A pair of khaki shorts and a T-shirt that showed off the shape of his chest and narrow waist. How dared he be in her parents’ backyard looking so comfortable? So gorgeous? So…like he belonged?
Why hadn’t she taken time to stop by the bathroom and wash her face? Wait a minute. What she looked like didn’t matter. He had left her. Again.
“I asked you to tell me.” Her father’s shrewd eyes held hers. “Unless there’s a reason you’d rather not?”
Her face flushed with embarrassment. Did he know what had transpired between her and Cole? She’d swear her father could see right through her, could read her mind. Hadn’t he always been able to?
“No reason, sir,” she said all the same, wondering if he’d call her on it.
He didn’t, just flipped the burgers one by one onto the plate she held. “Good. Now tell me.”
“The deployment was uneventful, sir.”
“Uneventful?”
“I worked, learned a lot, got to visit Singapore and made new friends, but you already know all that, sir.” Oh, and I slept with my sister’s ex-fiancé who is sitting in your backyard swing listening to every word I say. A man I happen to love and I’m not sure why he is here. Perhaps he came by to give me the opportunity to throttle him for once again breaking my heart?
“Singapore? I was on board Kitty Hawk when she made port call there when the port first opened. But you already know that.” Her father’s eyes narrowed and again she was struck with the idea that he knew every single thing that had happened between her and Cole. But that was impossible. Cole wouldn’t have told her father.
If Cole had, he wouldn’t be breathing.
To further confound her, her father took the burger plate from her. “I’m going to take these in to your mother.”
He was leaving her outside with Cole? Alone? Had he gone mad?
“I’ll go with you.”
He frowned. Being frowned at by her father was like being told you’d never eat ice cream again. A very bad thing.
“Or I could stay out here, sir,” she amended, barely able to breathe. What was going on? Why had her father just maneuvered her into forced time alone with Cole?
“Good idea, Lieutenant.” He nodded, motioning toward where Cole sat in the swing, observing their conversation. “For the record, I said yes.”
Yes to what? she wanted to ask, but her father had already disappeared into the house, closing the sliding glass door, and if she didn’t know better she’d swear she heard the sound of the lock clicking.
No way would her father, the great Admiral John Stockton, have just locked his middle daughter out of the house with a man her family despised. Or, at least, they had. Apparently things had changed.
“Are you going to say hello?”
Her gaze cut to where Cole had risen from the swing. “Oh, you mean the way you said goodbye?”
Oops. She hadn’t meant to say that. She’d meant to be calm, cool and collected. Had meant to act as if it didn’t matter that she loved him, had believed he loved her, and he’d walked away from her.
“There was something I needed to do first.”
“Something you needed to do before saying goodbye to me? Gee, I see a pattern here.”
He nodded, walked toward her. “There were a lot of things that needed to be settled prior to us saying goodbye, Amelia. Surely you realize that.”
“Okay, now that we’ve established that ground-breaking news…” she rolled her eyes, turned away from him because she couldn’t bear looking at him a moment longer “…maybe you can tell me something I don’t know.”
“I love you.”
>
Sure she’d heard wrong, Amelia spun toward him. “What did you say?”
Inhaling a deep breath, he raked his fingers through his hair, and held her gaze. “I love you, Amelia. That’s something I’m not sure you know, although you should.”
Every cell in her body turned into jumping beans on speed, threatening to burst free and causing complete chaos throughout her nervous system.
“I don’t understand.” Probably because her brain had turned to short-circuited mush. For a short while she’d believed he cared for her, but even then she hadn’t dared to believe he really loved her. She’d hoped, but she’d never quite let herself believe his feelings ran that deep.
“I’ve been in love with you for years. I’m not sure the exact moment the way I felt about you changed, just that it did.” Cole held his breath, watching every play of emotion cross Amelia’s beautiful face. She didn’t believe him.
Not that he blamed her. Why should she trust a man who she believed had abandoned her twice?
“You’re saying you’re in love with me?” She sounded ready to burst into laughter.
“I am. I do.” He glanced around the backyard, hated it that they had no real privacy, knowing he had to tell her everything, that it was now or never. “Not quite seven months ago, I went to your father and asked for his permission to date you.”
Her mouth dropped, her eyes staring at him incredulously. “You did what?”
“I told him that I deeply regretted what happened between Clara and me, but that I couldn’t marry your sister. Not when it was you who took my breath away.”
Had her eyes grown even wider? “You told him that?”
“And much more,” he admitted. “Your father didn’t trust me. But he’s a fair man, and he did trust you. He arranged for me to be assigned to the USS Benjamin Franklin. What happened from there was up to us.”
“My father helped you get assigned to my ship?” She picked up the metal spatula, waved it at him.
Hoping she wasn’t planning to swat him, Cole nodded. When the Admiral had offered, he’d been floored, but he hadn’t had to be asked twice. He’d jumped at the opportunity to spend six months with Amelia, to have six months to work through the feelings they’d once had for each other, that he’d still had for her.
“Let me get this straight. My father helped you sleep with me?”
Cole winced at Amelia’s outrage. “That’s not how I’d put it.”
“How would you put it?” She pointed the tip of the spatula at him. “You were the one who said we were only about sex.”
“You and I were never just about sex.” He reached for the spatula, but she shook her head, waving the tool menacingly at him. Sighing, he dropped his hands to his sides, wanting to touch her, take her into his arms and tell her all the things in his heart. Could she ever forgive him? “I have never felt about any woman the way I feel about you, Amelia.”
Her eyes darkened, closed, reopened with uncertainty in their shiny depths. “Once upon a time you could say the same thing about my sister.”
“Clara and I were about friendship and mutual understanding of each other. We got along so well I just assumed the natural next step was marriage because I felt so comfortable with her.”
She lowered the grilling tool. “Am I comfortable, too, Cole?”
“Comfortable?” He had to laugh at her question. “Amelia, you are more like a hot poker to my backside.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I meant that in the nicest possible way.”
“Because hot pokers to backsides have a nice way.”
Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him, and he struggled to explain. “You push me to be more, to take chances, to see things in a different light. You make me want to move forward and walk planks that drop off into unknown seas just to experience them with you.”
“I don’t push you.”
“Perhaps you don’t realize the effect you have on me, the effect you’ve always had, but let me assure you, you have impacted my life in untold ways.”
“Because I’m Clara’s little sister?”
“Because you are you, Amelia Earhart Stockton, the woman I love with all my heart. Let me love you.”
Dared Amelia believe him? God, she wanted to. So badly. But to what avail? She could never trust him. Not with her heart. She’d constantly be waiting for the next time he’d leave and wasn’t sure she could endure the pain of him abandoning her again.
“You’re too late.”
He winced, as if she’d struck him with the spatula she held. She dropped the tool onto the grill’s side table.
“If you’d said something on the ship, perhaps I could believe you. Perhaps things could have worked. As is, there is too much bad blood between us, Cole.”
“Because of Clara?”
“Because of what happened between us,” she insisted. “Because of the fact you shut me out, ripped my heart to shreds on the night we made love when you insisted it was just sex, that all we were was sex.”
“I had to protect you.”
“Protect me? You broke my heart, Cole.”
“If I hadn’t put space between us, we’d have made love again.”
“Had sex, and, yes, you’re probably right, we probably would have.”
“We might have been caught. I couldn’t let you risk your career that way. Not for me. Not when you’d hate me if I cost you your career.”
“I loved you, Cole.”
“And now you don’t?”
She bit her lip, not wanting to answer him.
“Because, like someone once said to me, I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t toss my words back at me. This isn’t a game, Cole.”
“No, it’s not. It’s the story of the rest of our life.”
Our life. As in singular. He said the words as if they had a life together, as one. They didn’t. Did they?
“How can you be sure?” she demanded, tiring of the toll his words were taking on her heart.
He took her hand into his, placed her palm flat over his heart. “That’s how I know.”
His heart pounded against her palm, beating strong and fast. For her.
“I want to believe you, Cole. I really do.”
“I know you do, sweetheart.” He put his finger on her chin, tilted her face upwards to his. “Just give me the rest of your life to prove how much I love you.”
The rest of her life. What was he saying?
“I asked your father for permission to date you, Amelia. That was six months ago. Earlier today I asked his permission to ask you to be my wife, to do everything within my means to convince you to spend the rest of your life letting me love and take care of you.”
Amelia’s vision blurred and she was pretty sure she swayed and that Cole caught her. Either way, his arms wrapped around her, holding her close, keeping her from collapsing onto the concrete patio.
“What did he say?” she croaked, wondering why she wasn’t telling Cole there was no way she’d marry him. She didn’t want to get married, had never wanted to get married. Except, on the weekend of Clara’s wedding, she had wished it was her who’d been going to walk down the aisle to Cole, had wished it was her who’d be spending two weeks with him in a honeymoon suite.
Her father’s parting words hit her.
“He said yes,” she gasped.
“He said yes,” Cole agreed. “But the more important question, Amelia, is what do you say?”
Holding her hand, Cole sank to one knee.
Amelia started shaking her head. “Don’t do this, Cole. Please, don’t.”
He hesitated only a second then, looking up into her eyes, asked her to marry him. “Be my wife, Amelia. My life partner, friend and lover. Be the best part of me and let me spend all my days showing you how much I adore you.”
“You adore me?” A crazy question at this point, but his word choice caught her off guard, seemed out of place for a man like Cole.
“I adore you, love you
, want you.” He squeezed her hand and she realized his trembled. “I need you, Amelia. For two years, I floundered, trying to convince myself I didn’t, but I do. I need to know you’re there, waiting for me, loving me in return. Maybe asking you to marry me is rushing things, but we’ve been apart too long already. I know how I feel about you and I know you’re what I want for the rest of my life.”
“Cole,” she began, knowing she had to say no. She didn’t want to get married. She didn’t want to constantly worry that he’d leave her again someday. She needed her freedom.
But Cole’s love was what freed her, gave her the power to be anything she wanted to be. And what she wanted to be more than anything else was his.
Because he was here, loved her, made her whole in a way no one else ever could. Because she’d rather be left by him a thousand times than live a single day without him. Because what she saw in his eyes assured her he’d never leave her, that for the rest of their lives he’d be by her side.
“I love you, Cole.”
He pulled her hand to his face, rubbing the back of her fingers across his cheek. “You’ll marry me? You trust me?”
Amelia didn’t have to think about her answer. She dropped to her knees, cupped Cole’s face and nodded. “With all my heart.”
EPILOGUE
COLE smiled at the woman lying in his arms, knowing without doubt he was the happiest man alive.
“What are you thinking about?” Amelia asked, trailing her fingers along his throat, blasting him with a fresh shot of desire.
“What a lucky man your husband is.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Her lips curved in a delicious, contented smile. She stretched out beside him, contentment and happiness bright in her eyes. “Today was perfect, wasn’t it?”
He rose, propping himself on his elbow to look at his wife. She lay against the cream-colored sheet of the San Diego hotel room they’d arranged for their wedding night. In the morning they’d fly out to New Zealand for two weeks of backpacking, kayaking, and just enjoying nature and each other. Not everyone’s ideal honeymoon, but when they’d discussed places they wanted to go, exploring New Zealand had topped both of their lists.
