He stepped forward, crooked a finger in the front of her jeans, and pulled her to him. “This deployment is all kinds of screwed up, but another A-Team is coming in a month. Even if our trainees aren’t ready, we’ll go home. They’ll need our CLUs for the new team, and they can wrap up the training with the Djiboutians before they start with a new set of trainees.”
She rested her forehead on his chest. “I can wait a month.” She lifted her head and met his gaze. “But I’m going to have to get used to you being gone on long deployments, aren’t I?”
He nodded. This was the hard part of being in the Army and a relationship, and something he’d managed to avoid for nearly a decade. “This is my job. And when it doesn’t suck, I love it.”
“Don’t worry. I’m in, Bastian. A hundred percent. If I only get you six months out of the year, I’ll take it and be happy. If USAID were still a possibility for me, I’d seek short deployments while you’re gone, but at this point, I’m too much of a kidnapping risk. So maybe I’ll set up my foundation near Fort Campbell, Kentucky.”
Bastian’s heart expanded. “You’re going to stay in my apartment?” He’d offered his home to her several times, but she hadn’t been ready to make a decision.
She nodded. “Pax told me yesterday that Morgan’s heading to Fort Campbell in a week. I don’t really know her, but…I don’t know…the idea of having an almost-friend there to help me settle in is appealing. Plus she’ll be missing Pax as much as I’m missing you. We can commiserate.”
He kissed her nose. “You should know my apartment is nothing like your home in Casablanca. There’s a lot more Ikea going on than hand-stuffed by fairies.”
“As long as it doesn’t have a pit toilet, I’m good.”
“Um—” He winked at her.
She laughed and stepped back, turning to the sink where she brushed her teeth, then studied the bruises on her neck in the mirror. “Damn, I look like hell.”
“You’re beautiful. You look like you’ve been through hell. There’s a difference.”
He stepped up behind her. “I’d like to Skype my parents today and introduce you to them.”
In the mirror, her eyes widened. “Are you sure? Maybe you should mend your relationship with them before you throw me into the mix.”
He planted his hands on her hips and turned her to face him. “You are the most important person in my life. I want them to meet you. To know what you mean to me. I’m proud that we’re together, that you love me. Hell, I want a do-over of the flight deck ceremony so I can step up to the microphone and tell the whole world Brie Stewart is mine. And if you were still Gabriella Prime, that wouldn’t change how I feel. I don’t love you for your name, your money—or lack of it—or any façade the world sees. I love you with everything I am.” He paused. “When I watched that plane explode—” He cleared his throat as his eyes teared. “I—I—” He shook his head. “There aren’t words for the feeling.”
Her eyes filled with tears that didn’t fall.
He pressed his lips to her forehead and took a deep breath, then said, “I’m not going to waste another moment of my life on hurt and anger. I’m not going to spend another day pissed because my parents chose Cece over me. I left instead of fighting, but I’m not going to run anymore. I love them. I love you. If they don’t see that inside you were never the person the world believed you to be, then they aren’t giving you a chance.”
She cupped his face between her palms. “I love you so much. I’m scared you’ll be hurt in this. I don’t want to be the cause of more pain between you and your parents.”
He took her arm and ran his fingers over the needle scars. “You’ve owned your past, and you’ve busted your ass to make amends. Hell, you were the reason the pipeline failed in the first place. If they can’t see who you are, it’s on them. And in that situation, you wouldn’t be the cause of my pain. They would. But that’s not going to happen, because I have a feeling I’ve underestimated them in my hurt and anger. They love me. I know they want me to be happy. And when I’m with you, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
She pressed her forehead to his chest. “In the Turkish bath—I couldn’t believe how happy I was, in spite of our crazy situation. I was happy because I was with you. Even being stranded in South Sudan was fun in the strangest way.” She let out a soft laugh and lifted her head to meet his gaze. “We’ll always have South Sudan.”
He laughed. “Damn. You beat me to it. That was supposed to be my line.”
She stroked the stubble on his cheek. “So, your enemies call you asshole. Lovers call you bastard. What do friends with extreme benefits call you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had one of those before. What do you want to call me?”
She draped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Mine,” she said. “All mine.”
Author’s Note
Readers of my Evidence Series will recognize a certain Russian character in this book and might wonder about the timeline differences between the two series. Where possible, I avoid identifying the exact year in the books, but I will say that Catalyst—set in the “nebulous now” that happens to be spring 2017—takes place about six months before Cold Evidence. If you haven’t read the Evidence series but want to know more, you can start with Cold Evidence, where the Russian makes his first appearance.
I couldn’t resist connecting this series to another one of my books, Grave Danger. Set in Bastian’s hometown of Coho, Washington, in the year 2002, Grave Danger is the story of the Kalahwamish Tribe’s treatment by the owners of the historic sawmill town. A romantic mystery, Grave Danger features an archaeologist who digs up an old murder victim, and a police chief who battles both attraction and suspicion from the moment they first meet. You won’t find fifteen-year-old Bastian in the story, but you’ll probably meet him as a teen when I write the sequel.
The issue of girls in the developing world dropping out of school because they have no way to manage their period is real, as is the crisis of famine and civil war in South Sudan. If any part of this story has touched you, and if you can afford to give to those in desperate need, please join me in donating to a charity that sends reusable menstrual panties to the developing world, and/or food aid to South Sudan. Some suggestions are Days For Girls or Pads4Girls for menstrual products, and World Food Programme or Oxfam for food aid.
Thank you for reading Catalyst. I hope you enjoyed it.
If you’d like to know when my next book is available, you can sign up for my mailing list or visit my website. If you follow me on Goodreads you can see what I’m currently reading (usually research material for my next book).
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Infectious Disease Specialist Jennifer McQuiston for answering my questions about Ebola. Her opinions do not represent the opinion of the CDC. Inaccuracies due to error or fictional license are all on me.
Thank you to Vicki Lowe, descendant and involved community member of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, who read this manuscript with an eye for sensitivity in writing a character with a different ethnic background from myself. Any mistakes in this area are my own.
Thank you to Darcy Burke and Elisabeth Naughton for endless (and patient) plotting help with this book (that would not end). Thank you to Gwen Hernandez, Gwen Hayes, and Toni Anderson for both their plotting wisdom and for critiquing this manuscript.
Thank you to all the authors who are there for me online—using Twitter, Facebook, or private messages—who keep this from being a lonely profession.
To my readers, thank you for all the wonderful emails, Tweets, and posts. It means so much to me to know my work brings you joy, something I greatly need during this difficult time.
Thank you to my children for accepting the chore of making dinn
er more often without complaint. I write better when I eat healthy, home cooked meals.
Thank you to my husband for his support and patience as I struggle with characters and scenes, but mostly thank you for sharing this wonderful life with me.
About the Author
Four-time Golden Heart® finalist Rachel Grant worked for over a decade as a professional archaeologist and mines her experiences for storylines and settings, which are as diverse as excavating a cemetery underneath an historic art museum in San Francisco, survey and excavation of many prehistoric Native American sites in the Pacific Northwest, researching an historic concrete house in Virginia, and mapping a seventeenth century Spanish and Dutch fort on the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles.
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She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children.
For more information:
www.Rachel-Grant.net
[email protected]
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