by April Hunt
She pulled her hand away and inspected her red-painted fingers. Panic had her struggling for each breath. Trey stared at her hand and then into her eyes. Elle blinked, battling against the funhouse spin of her head—then came the crushing weight on her chest.
“Elle.” Trey gently reversed their positions, and then her name fell from his lips a second time, but it sounded different. More muffled. Further away. Despite their faces being only inches apart, things starting going blurry.
And darker.
“Elle!” Trey’s shout barely sounded like a whisper.
So dark.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fire licked up Elle’s arm, making her groan…and then her groan made her groan. Someone must’ve forced her to swallow a bucket of rusty nails, because that’s what it felt like when she coerced her tongue to move. And fire. Someone had set the rusty nails on fire and then stabbed her shoulder with a pitchfork…while an elephant sat on her chest.
Elle hissed as a bright light seared its way into the deep recesses of her corneas.
“About time you joined the land of the conscious,” came a familiar voice. “You really are a sucky hostess, love…sleeping while you have visitors and all. No wonder you became a nurse instead of a society wife.”
“Charlie.” Elle grinned groggily and winced when her dry lips protested the movement. “Damn it. I don’t think there’s a part of me that isn’t hurting right now.”
“Hurting means you’re alive and, trust me, it was a little hairy there for a while.” Charlie’s voice was stern, but she leaned over, gently squeezing Elle’s hand. “Be thankful that it’s a rare occasion and I’m here by myself, and not with a half dozen broody, overwhelming apes.”
Here. Elle blinked and tried to figure out where here was.
Sterile white walls surrounded her. A cardiac monitor beeped steadily on her right. And the tubes. One arm bore an intravenous line infusing red blood cells, while a second line was running clear fluids.
“When did I get to a hospital? And what the hell happened?” asked Elle.
Charlie snorted on a humorless chuckle. “We tend to take people to hospitals when a bullet nearly shreds a main artery. And not that I don’t applaud what you tried to do, but let’s remember that you’re not bulletproof, okay?”
Images from the cabin slowly started coming back—the shouting, the moving, the loud bang of the gun going off. Trey!
Elle’s heart shuttled up to her throat, making the monitor next to her go ape-crazy. “Trey! Is he okay? Oh, God. And Sophie?”
Charlie cringed at the monitor and gave her fingers a soothing squeeze. “Calm down. You’re going to make that thing explode. Sophie’s fine. Trey’s fine—if you call being a raging basket-case fine. Rafe was about ten seconds away from raiding the hospital’s narc box and injecting him with a severe dose of Chill the Hell Out.”
Charlie waited a beat and added, “And just so you know, he’s been here every second since they brought you in. The guys finally convinced him to go wash the literal stink off his skin. I’m surprised the smell of him didn’t wake you up.”
Elle attempted to sit up and, holy craptastic pain, that was a big mistake. She grabbed her shoulder and inspected the heavy-duty bandage beneath the starchy hospital gown. “How long have I been here?”
“Forty-eight hours. We airvac’d you off the mountain, and they rushed you into surgery the second the helo touched down. You’ve been out ever since. Hell, you were intubated until this morning, but you kept trying to buck the vent—as they called it. Basically, they said it was you telling them to take the bloody tube out of your throat and let you do your own thing. Stubborn even when in a medical-induced coma.”
“And what about Winters?”
“Rotting in the local jail and waiting for a military transport. Turns out not only is it illegal to steal and sell American military weapons, but faking your death and going AWOL from the United States Army isn’t exactly an acceptable practice either.”
A throat-clear turned both Elle’s and Charlie’s attention to the white-haired older man standing in the doorway. He was dressed in a lab coat and wore a stethoscope around his neck. “Good afternoon, Miss Monroe. I’m Dr. Foster.”
He stepped into the room and pulled up her patient chart from the computer attached to the wall. “I’m the surgeon who performed your procedure two days ago. For the extent of your injuries, you’re making a tremendous amount of progress. Is it okay if I speak frankly about your condition in front of your friend?”
Elle offered Charlie a small smile and a wink. “Of course. She’s family.”
Dr. Foster’s attention bounced back and forth between the two of them: Charlie’s pink hair to Elle’s blonde; Charlie’s snarky grin to Elle’s seemingly innocent smile. They were both petite, but that’s where the similarities ended. Yet Elle meant every word. Everyone at Alpha was her family.
“You heard the lady.” Charlie’s brown eyes shone with a suspicious mist as she cleared her throat. “We’re family. Continue.”
“You’re a very lucky young woman, Miss Monroe,” Dr. Foster continued. “You suffered a pretty severe concussion on top of the gunshot—a wound, I might add, that had it been a half inch to the right, would’ve destroyed your pulmonary artery. When I say you’re a lucky woman, I mean it. You and your baby both must have a guardian angel looking out for you.”
Elle knew it had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with Trey—and Charlie and the guys. She gave Charlie’s hand another squeeze—and froze. Not only had she gone still, but Charlie had too. Eyes wide, the other woman stared at Elle, as Elle stared at the doctor.
“Wait. You said ‘baby’? I’m sorry, doctor, but I think you must’ve looked at the wrong patient chart. I’m not pregnant. I can’t get pregnant.”
Dr. Foster clicked through a series of multimedia files and turned the computer for her to see…
A sonogram…
With her name on it…
And a small, lima bean–shaped mass in a sea of black.
“H-how?” She gaped at the doctor and clutched Charlie’s hand until the other woman winced. “I don’t understand. How is this possible? It shouldn’t be possible.”
“When they brought you in, the hospital had your previous medical records faxed to us, and I have to admit, it did make us take a little pause. The injuries you sustained in your car accident were definitely severe.”
“Leaving me only one ovary that wasn’t capable of producing eggs,” Elle clarified to the doctor.
“I know what the reports said—which is why after we made certain that everything was okay both with you and the baby, our OB/GYN looked into things a little more. We were in agreement that, at the time of your diagnosis, your body most likely wasn’t able to produce viable eggs. But as the body healed, enough regeneration must have transpired to make the improbable possible.”
Dr. Foster clicked a button and a black-and-white image printed—which he placed in her shaking hand. “Everything looks right on track for a healthy five-week embryo. Congratulations.”
Elle couldn’t move. Or speak.
A baby.
A tiny, barely-a-month-ago-conceived baby.
* * *
Trey stormed down the hospital corridor like a raging tsunami, hell-bent on getting to Elle’s room ASAP. Go shower, they said. Go eat something, they said. He hadn’t been able to deal with the constant nagging anymore and had finally given in, and what the fuck happened?
She woke up—and he wasn’t there.
Trey reached her room and pushed the door open with a flourish—and stalled. Elle lay asleep on her side, golden hair fanned across the pillow and hands tucked beneath one cheek—which definitely had more color since he’d left. The heavy weight on his chest lightened the tiniest bit.
Careful not to wake her, he sat in the chair next to her bed and gently stroked his knuckles over her newly warmed skin.
Four tours overseas. Countless black o
p missions. Years with Alpha. And Trey had never felt fear as intense as he had while Elle bled out in his arms—except for when the nurses had wheeled her out of his sight and all he’d had left of her was the blood soaking his shirt.
No way was he letting her walk, run, or wheel her little self away from him again. Ever. He loved her—straight down to the fundamentals of his DNA. Losing her in any way would be to lose his heart, body, soul. His very fucking existence.
Soft fingers skimmed the top of his hand. “Trey?”
Eyes half-mast and heavy with sleep, she peered up at him through long lashes.
“Hey there, sweetness.” He brushed his knuckles over her cheek again. “I’m here.”
“You’re okay? And your mom’s really okay?”
“Everyone’s fine…except you.”
“I’m okay.”
He shot her a loving glare and pointedly glanced from the heart monitors to the IV lines to the bag of blood still infusing into her traumatized body. “Try convincing someone who didn’t watch you pass out from blood loss.”
Her sleepy grin widened. “Well, I didn’t say I was ready to go climbing any mountains just yet. Or hills. And I may want to take it easy on speed bumps for a while.”
“I think you’re going to be taking it easy on everything for a while.”
“Doctor’s orders or yours?” Elle teased.
“Both.” He scrubbed his hand over his face and took a deep breath. “Goddamn, Elle. You scared the ever-lovin’ shit out of me. What the hell were you thinking, jumping in front of Cummings that way?”
“That I didn’t want to lose you,” she confessed in a whisper.
Her honesty floored him and doused him in a flash of hope. For two fucking days, he’d replayed their last conversation, and for those same two days, he’d tortured himself about what would happen when she woke. With the way he spoke to her, she had every right to tell him to go fuck himself.
Trey eased her chin up, gently redirecting her focus to his eyes. “That goes both ways, sweetness.”
Careful not to bump her IV, he threaded his fingers through hers and stared at their interlocked hands. Her once smooth, creamy skin had nicks and bruises, a sign of what she’d been through the last few days—because of him.
“There’s so much that I want to say to you that I don’t know where to start.” Trey swallowed the lump of fear in his throat. “But I guess I’ll begin with telling you that I’m sorry. Christ, I know that sounds really fucking lame, considering you almost died, but I am. You wouldn’t even be lying here right now if it weren’t for me.”
Elle squeezed his fingers. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the entire situation with Cummings.” Thinking about the bastard rotting in jail, Trey got pissed all over again. “If it weren’t for me, you never would’ve been put into this position.”
“You’re not responsible for the actions of others, Trey. Winters made his own choices. He put me in that situation, not you.” She gave his fingers a firmer squeeze when he started shaking his head. “It wasn’t you.”
“I wasn’t the one who kidnapped you, but you were put in that situation because of how I feel about you.” Trey took a deep, shaky breath. “Which brings me to the second thing I want to talk about…actually, it’s more of a warning than anything. And it’s that I’m not going to let you push me away—no matter how hard you shove. I’m here. With you. For good. For the rest of our lives.”
“That’s…a really long time,” Elle commented softly.
“Damn straight it is.” Trey dug into his pants pocket until his big, clumsy fingers found what he was looking for. He pulled the ring out, feeling like he was going to throw up as her eyes registered the emerald she’d admired at Charming Treasures.
“What are you doing?” she asked, breathless.
“Let me finish, baby, please.” He cleared his throat and, hell, got direct and to the point. “I want you in my life, Elle. And more importantly, I want you to be my life. I know you have worries, and I get it. I do. But I’m going to make it my life’s goal to prove to you that as long as we have one another, nothing else matters. It’s you that controls my heart, body, and soul. I love you—so goddamned much. I’m in love with you—so goddamned deep. Marry me. Make me the luckiest bastard in the world.”
“But what about chil—”
He cupped her cheek and rubbed a stray tear away with his thumb. “No buts. I love you. I want a life and future with you. I’m happy as long as I have you.”
Elle’s tears started dropping too fast for him to catch them. It scared the living hell out of him. He was two seconds away from getting the nurse, thinking she was in pain, when she graced him with a watery smile. “Do you really mean that?”
“Sweetness, I’ve never meant anything more.”
He waited for her answer.
And waited.
Goddamn, he couldn’t fucking breathe. He released a nervous chuckle. “So are going to accept my ring or are you going to leave me hanging?”
Elle giggled. The soft sound was a symphony to Trey’s ears. “I want to give you something first.”
* * *
Elle pulled out a grainy black-and-white photo from beneath her pillow and handed it to Trey with a trembling hand. Then she waited and watched for any sign that he knew what he was holding. His brows stayed furrowed in concentration as he stared down at the sonogram.
“Dr. Foster was here a bit ago,” she explained. “He assured me that the surgery went as planned and that our baby and I are doing great.”
He looked up from the photo, his mouth hanging open a bit—shell-shocked—a feeling she knew well. “Our baby?”
He didn’t say anything else. Just as she started getting worried, Trey cupped her face and kissed her. It was barely a brushing of mouths, yet the fiercest and most emotional one they’d shared to date. Elle gripped the back of his neck and groaned out her displeasure when he gently pulled away. He leaned his forehead on hers and, from this close, there was no disguising the hope and love lighting up his eyes. “Seriously?”
Elle nodded, unable to say the words.
“Oh, baby.” He kissed her again before gently placing his palm on her flat stomach. “And baby.”
The gesture brought fresh tears to Elle’s eyes. “It’s still so early…”
He rubbed his thumb absently against her belly button but never took his eyes off her face. “Being part of us, there’s no way she’s not a fighter. She’s already defeating the odds.”
“She?” Elle gave him a watery smile. “You want a girl?”
“Hell, yeah, I do. Blonde and blue-eyed and tough like her mother. Though you realize that dating will have to be put off until she’s thirty. Maybe forty.”
“Wow. You’re really looking into the future, aren’t you?”
“I am. I love you, Elle. So much.” He took her hand and held the beautiful emerald ring between his fingers. “Now that you gave me one incredible gift, I’m going to be a greedy bastard and demand you give me the best one yet.”
“Demand?” Elle teased coyly. “I don’t do demands, Mr. Hanson. But I do happen to do happily-ever-afters with the man I love.”
It was Elle’s turn to pull his mouth to hers, and she kissed him until her cardiac monitor started beeping in protest. “I love you, Trey Michael Hanson. Former Delta operative. Son. Brother. Soon-to-be-father—and husband.”
“So is that a yes?” Trey murmured against her lips.
“Yes!” Elle laughed.
No doubt her face was a red, blotchy mess, but she didn’t care. Trey had swaggered into her life as a one-night stand—and then he refused to go. Not only did he help her rediscover herself, but her strengths, too. And her dreams. And her fears. And the realization that love really could break through all obstacles.
Elle pulled him into a kiss that left her cardiac monitor screaming in protest.
“I’d say, ‘Get a room,’ but you already have one
.” Vince’s voice broke up a heated kiss. The SEAL’s teasing was cut off by a loud grunt and a curse. “Christ, woman, watch where you’re aiming that pointy elbow.”
“I did, and it landed perfectly. Can’t you see they’re having a bloody beautiful moment? You’re lucky I only aimed for your stomach,” Charlie growled.
Trey and Elle chuckled as they relinquished each other’s mouths to see the entire team—plus Sophie Hanson—standing just inside the doorway. And then everyone rushed inside, offering hugs and kisses, and shedding more than a few tears. Somehow, Trey fought his way back to Elle’s side and she just knew—that’s how they’d always walk through life.
Side by side.
Epilogue
Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Six Months Later
Trey scanned the area, growing more impatient by the second. Failure was not an option. No fucking way. Not this time. Not ever. “It’s got to be here.”
“It is.” Vince nodded to the buzzing freezer chest in front of him. “Right the hell there, man. Grab it and let’s go. Bea’s looking at me like she’s trying to make my clothes disappear with her mind.”
The all-night clerk at the Grab-N-Go, who had to be pushing ninety, waggled her eyebrows and red-tipped fingers in their direction.
“Christ, man. Hurry the fuck up,” Vince muttered.
He nudged Trey away, probably glad to have something to focus on other than Bea’s sex-me-up stare, and plopped a gallon of ice cream into Trey’s hands. “It says right there that it’s chocolate damn chip. Take it, pay, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“This is the one with extra chips. They made Elle sick the last time she had it.”
“So get her the damn cookie dough.”
“Raw dough isn’t good for pregnant women.”
Vince looked ready to strangle someone, and no doubt Trey was high on the list. It didn’t matter. His woman wanted chocolate chip ice cream and he was getting chocolate chip ice cream—and the right fucking one.
