by Geri Krotow
Reality crept in, inevitably. This wasn’t her room anymore; it wasn’t their bed, their life.
It was all Drew’s.
She turned her face into the pillow and inhaled. Under the aroma of fabric softener and cotton, she could smell Drew’s clean scent. Regret over all she’d lost seeped into her mind, and her morning lassitude disintegrated.
Getting up and dressed was still something she had to think about, but the promise of seeing Rosie and Nappie again, having a cup of coffee, spurred her on. She could dress later. For now she threw on her plush, pink, terry robe. It felt like heaven after wearing the same clothes for months on end. Her skin was still pretty red and scabbed over in some places where the filthy fabric had rubbed away the surface layers. Yet after only a matter of a week on antibiotics and special prescription ointments, it already felt so much better.
She headed for the kitchen, perhaps her favorite place in the house. Memories of meals she’d eaten here with Drew seemed to cling to the backsplash tiles they’d set themselves, and to the oak-stained cabinets they’d made a mess of until they’d found a rhythm, figured out how to work together on their new home. They hadn’t been able to afford all the optional extras offered with the house when it was built. Lucky to get into the exclusive development with its priceless view of the surrounding area, they’d happily taken on the finishing touches themselves.
Somehow, between Drew’s studying and her deployments, they’d done it. They’d made the bare-bone house a comfortable if not luxurious home, complete with modern conveniences that included a small cedar-lined sauna in their basement.
It was the house they were supposed to bring babies home to, not break in two during a divorce settlement.
At least they still both owned it. Drew rented her half, giving her a nice amount to invest each month. When he eventually sold the house, they’d split the profits.
The image of Drew with a new wife, moving into a different home, wasn’t something she cared to dwell on. Friends or not.
She found the coffee and filters where they’d always been and started a pot.
The hardwood floor was warm under her bare feet. She stood in the spot where a sunbeam danced across the kitchen, the very spot Nappie wanted to claim.
“I know this is yours, but we can share it.” Gwen sat down beside Nappie and looked into the dog’s droopy, sad eyes before she hugged her. Gwen burrowed her face into Nappie’s fur. The once-rich chestnut of her coat was peppered with gray, noticeably more than eight months ago. It was at once endearing and alarming to see the brown muzzle turning snowy white.
They’d named her after the second honeymoon they took to Napa Valley, California. While doing a bike tour of the valley, stopping at wineries whenever they wanted, they’d come upon an abandoned dog and her litter of puppies. Gwen had wanted to save all of them but practicality dictated that even one dog might be too much with their schedules. They took the mother and pups to a local vet, and ended up adopting Nappie, the runt of the litter.
Their friends had teased them, saying a dog was the “tester child,” the step before the babies came.
No babies had happened for them. They’d never tried for kids because she’d never felt ready. Still, there’d been a few scares along the way, as in most marriages.
Once they were divorced, she’d known it had all worked out for the best.
“You’re getting too old too fast, girl.” Gwen rubbed Nappie behind the ears and the dog sighed her contentment before she released a noisy blast of gas.
“Lovely, Nappie.”
“Helloooooo.” Rosie the ring-necked parakeet sang her jealousy. She was in fact a parrot, but small compared to the kind normally associated with pirates. It didn’t stop the spirited bird from talking all day long. Drew had surprised Gwen with Rosie when he’d gotten out of the navy—his way of telling her he was going to be their anchor and keep the home fires burning while she finished out her time.
“Don’t be so jealous, Rosie. Nappie was here first.” Gwen stroked Nappie’s velvet-soft ears. “She’s a jealous bird, isn’t she, Nappie?”
“Oh, noooooo.” Rosie was as opinionated as she was loud.
Living on the run with nothing but dirt and jungle humus under her battered flight boots made this ordinary morning feel like paradise—one she’d never thought she’d have again. It helped ease the ache in her heart where it was broken from having to leave Pax behind.
“Lie down, lie down!” Rosie chanted at Nappie. The old hound ignored the nagging bird, used to her chatter and hypnotized by Gwen’s strokes.
Gwen laughed. “I missed you, too, crazy bird.”
“They both missed you.” Drew’s voice reached down from the upstairs loft.
Gwen jolted in shock. “I thought you were at work already.”
“Obviously,” he grumbled as he came down the open-backed stairs. The floor plan was everything they’d hoped their marriage and their life together would be. Bright, designed to let in the maximum amount of light. On the top level they had views of water, mountains and fir-tree forests. The window over the kitchen sink offered a spectacular view of Mount Baker when the skies were clear.
Unfortunately, the stunning house couldn’t make up for the effects of the mutual neglect they’d heaped on their marriage. Not to mention the hard truth they’d reached, too late. They were more concerned about their careers than each other. “Are you going in late?” Her skin broke out in gooseflesh as he walked up next to her. No matter how long they’d been divorced, she’d never lost her physical awareness of him.
Even in those last painful months of their marriage.
She’d hated herself for her continued attraction to him. Wished she was more in control of her reaction to Drew. But after the last months of sifting through her life, self-loathing became an unaffordable pastime.
“The office thought I could use a couple days off. They’ve threatened to beat me off with a weight bar if I show up before tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Of course they were protective of him. He’d been through so much. First an unsuccessful marriage, followed by a divorce. Then his ex-wife went missing, presumed dead, only to return six months later. To stay with him. While her career demands hadn’t allowed the time necessary for her to know the staff well, she’d always enjoyed Drew’s company picnics and holiday get-togethers. His staff’s respect for him was reflected in their joking banter.
“This has to be an awful shock for you. Don’t think for a minute that I’m foolish enough to think my reappearance is stressful only on me.”
He rubbed his eyes and poured himself some of the coffee she’d brewed.
He didn’t speak until he’d swallowed half of it.
“Not really, Gwen. I knew you were still alive.”
“You don’t have to do this, Drew. There’s nothing wrong with believing I was dead. It’s not your job to make me feel better about the fact that people accepted I was gone for job.”
“I’m not.” His eyes smoldered as he kept his gaze on her a heartbeat too long. “We have a connection. Maybe it’s because we met so young, knew each other so well and remained friends after the divorce. Just because our romance died, our marriage ended, doesn’t mean the entire thing, the bond, is shot.”
She wished she’d picked one of the oversize hand-thrown pottery mugs from the cupboard for her coffee instead of the small Japanese porcelain cup between her hands. She had nothing to hide behind.
“Didn’t they tell you I was dead? How could you think I was still alive when I didn’t come back with the aircrew? I never made it to a life raft, and the waters there—”
She didn’t have to tell him. He knew the odds as well as she had.
“Yeah, everyone thought you’d died, from the commodore to your aft observer. They said navy intel and other ‘sources’ all pointed t
o the fact that you’d been lost at sea. Ro admitted that even though she wanted to believe you were still alive, her professional training forced her to accept that you were gone.” He stared at her. “Did you ever attempt to launch a flare?”
“I couldn’t. From the moment I felt solid sand under my boots I had to stay on the move.” She shook her head. “Do you know, even as I was celebrating that I’d made it to shore, that I was going to live, I saw my first sign of insurgents. They’d left a makeshift base camp near the beach, on the edge of the jungle. There wasn’t time to come back and try to contact anyone. I lost my radio, but I still had a map and the compass on the watch you gave me.”
He’d given her an aviator’s watch for Christmas seven years ago, complete with a minibarometer and compass.
“You still have that?”
“Thank God for navy training, right?” She smiled at him.
He didn’t smile back. “I never believed you’d do anything but survive, Gwen. Of course, it didn’t hurt when Scott stopped by—he let me know he had some other info that indicated you probably made it to shore alive.”
Scott Stauffer was a colleague they’d met when they’d all been junior officers in their first P-3 tour. He’d gone on to work for a “corporation,” which they assumed was the CIA, though he never told them as much. All they knew was that he remained single and was often gone for months at a time. He’d surface every year or two, blowing into town and having dinner with them.
Maybe Scott had experienced similar situations to her six months of survival in the Philippine jungle.
“If Scott knew so much, why didn’t someone come and get me?” She heard the slam of her mug on the counter, saw the shards of the porcelain fly across the granite, before she realized she’d smashed it.
“Whoa.”
Warm breath, the musky scent of male—pure Drew. He grabbed her hand and put it under the faucet and ran cool water over the three small cuts.
Shame heated her face, and tears welled in her eyes. The drops mingled with her blood and the water as she leaned over the sink. It was simultaneously heaven and hell to be so close to Drew.
“I didn’t mean to—” She stopped at the trembling in her voice.
“It’s okay, Gwen. You’re allowed to be pissed off. You should’ve been saved sooner. No GI should go through what you did.”
“There aren’t any guarantees.” They’d both known that when they’d raised their right hands and taken their oath of office. It was what she’d still known when she’d accepted her command tour, and what they’d both known when Drew got out and she stayed in. At any moment she could be called on a dangerous mission she wouldn’t return from.
“No, no promises about what you’ll be asked to do. But if you think I haven’t had a few angry outbursts of my own, you’re kidding yourself.”
She removed her hand from his and shut off the water. Reaching for a kitchen towel and wrapping it around her fingers, she looked at him.
His skin was paler, his cheekbones more pronounced.
He’d lost weight.
“Wasn’t it a relief? You wouldn’t have to worry about keeping up our friendship. Face it, Drew, it’s not easy to be buds with your ex. Especially on Whidbey. We kept running into each other. There’d be no more pet-sharing to worry about, either.”
“That’s your reentry uglies talking, Gwen.”
“You’re not denying it. You never contested the divorce, never stopped to ask if we were making a mistake.”
They’d quietly filed for divorce two weeks before she’d gone out on a deployment five years ago. With neither of them willing to compromise their individual careers for a relationship that had died, it was best. The divorce was final by the time she’d returned.
“Wait, it’s the SGLI, isn’t it?” She jestingly referred to the life-insurance policy that every active duty person in the military was entitled to. She’d signed hers over to Drew when he’d been her spouse.
“Do you think so little of me?” His tone was scarily even as his eyes burned with anger.
“I’m just kidding, Drew. You have to admit it’s kind of funny.”
She desperately wanted to believe that he’d spoken with sincerity—that he’d always believed she’d come back alive.
“Your death is nothing to joke about. If I was after the money, I would’ve pushed for you to be declared KIA instead of MIA, don’t you think?” There was a menacing edge to his voice she’d never heard before. She knew she wasn’t the woman who’d left Whidbey for deployment almost eight months ago. The past six months had irrevocably changed her.
Had Drew changed, too?
Her chest and neck itched; the plush fabric of the robe suddenly became a straitjacket.
“I need to get out of here. This isn’t going to work.”
“Holy hell, Gwen!”
She held up her hands.
“I agreed to do what the psychiatrist suggested, and you were kind to pick me up at the hangar, to keep me last night. But—” Her gaze drifted to their wall calendar.
It was still on the month she’d left for deployment.
His gaze followed hers.
He swallowed. His face reddened. “I’ve had a lot on my hands with the office.”
“And with your ex-wife disappearing and showing up again?”
His wary expression made her feel like a fly in a spider’s web.
“Something like that.”
That tiny glimpse into his soul warded off the impending anxiety attack. Nervous energy swirled into the sexual energy that always existed between them. Her toes curled. Lust mixed with compassion, and she moved toward him. She let her hand smooth the lines on his forehead.
“I’m so sorry, Drew. Thank you for stepping up to the plate.”
“That’s what you think this is, stepping up to the plate?”
His tortured stare turned bold in the same instant she realized what he was thinking about.
“Drew, wait a minute...” But she let him draw her close to him, right up against him.
“Waiting gets old, Gwen.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HIS LIPS WERE firm and decisive as he kissed her. Classic Drew, once he made up his mind to do something, he went for it.
Gwen couldn’t figure out if it was exhaustion from her ordeal, jet lag, the sudden unexpected nearness of Drew after being without him for so long or all of the above. It didn’t matter, but at some point in the past twenty-four hours she’d decided she wanted one last time in Drew’s arms.
Why not now?
She kissed him back with months of pent-up sexual frustration and longing. Her tongue fought with his, she nipped at his lips. He untied the belt on her robe and his hands roamed confidently up and down her back, her butt, her breasts. It was surreal to watch as Drew—Drew—bent to her breast. She loved the feel of his hair as much as the anticipation of his sucking on her. Gwen was stunned by the quickening of her desire; she went from needing his touch to downright greedy and on fire for him in the breath it took him to lick her nipple before he devoured it.
“My God, Drew, it feels so good.”
“The couch, Gwen.”
They were five easy steps from the long, wide, leather sofa but it felt more like running through jungle overgrowth. She would lie down on the kitchen floor for him if he asked her.
She dropped her robe off her shoulders and lay back naked on the sofa.
“No,” she said.“Take your clothes off before you come one step closer.”
Drew complied and as much as she’d always enjoyed watching him undress, all she cared about in this moment was seeing that he needed her as much as she did him.
As his jeans and underwear dropped to the floor, she was rewarded with the sight of his erection.
“Come here.”
* * *
HE WANTED TO drive into her before they ever hit the couch, but she looked so thin, more fragile than an eggshell. And God, the bruises on her body were enough to make him weep. Quickly he knelt between her legs and supported his weight on his forearms. He wanted to kiss every inch of her but she had her hands on his ass and her wet center was hot with the same need he had.
“I don’t want to crush you, sweetheart.”
“Crush away.” She grasped his face and pulled it to hers. Their tongues met before their lips, and Drew was lost to her.
It was as good as it ever had been and perhaps more. They weren’t strangers to homecoming sex—it was one of the perks of the long navy deployments. But this was different. They weren’t celebrating a simple reunion.
He pressed his pelvis against Gwen’s and her moan sent gratifying shudders through him.
“Your skin, baby. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not. I need you now. Now.”
She wriggled her hips under his in the way she knew drove him mad.
“No, let me please you first, honey.”
“This pleases me.” She wrapped her hand around him.
“Wait.” He reached over to the drawer of the end table and pulled out a condom.
Gwen took the packet from him and put it on him. His erection swelled.
“Now,” she said again.
Drew’s last shred of restraint disappeared and he thrust into her. He cried out at the sheer sensuality of their joining. Then his need and Gwen’s murmured urging drove him to push into her again and again. He managed to hold on until her first cry. He climaxed with her pulsing around him.
* * *
IT TOOK SEVERAL minutes before either of them moved or spoke. Drew lay atop her, still inside her, still connected.
Oh, God, what had she just done?
Besides have the best sex of her life.
It’s the homecoming magic. It’s not real.
But Drew’s chest, crushing her breasts, was very real. So was the heat of her response to him, slowly being replaced by the warmth of her embarrassment.
