The reason for her mother’s call. Of course. “You wanted to share the excitement of the moment with someone since Dad couldn’t be there.”
“Pretty much, and who better to share it with than my daughter?”
Nikki pulled her tattered nerves together enough to speak a while longer, for her mom, for her dad, too. “Everything looks good?”
“Perfect so far for a forty-two-year-old mother-to-be. I just need to keep my feet up after the spotting and cramping scare.” She laughed low. “Am I crazy to do this?”
“You and Dad are great parents.” They’d just sucked at being married for the first twenty-two years. Now that they’d finally figured it out, they seemed determined to start over in every sense of the word, including with a new pair of kids since their first daughter and son were already grown.
She admired her mother’s determination, even as she resolved not to put herself through the hell of waiting for years for a man to get his head out of his butt and commit emotionally. “Could the technician see if it’s a boy or girl?”
“Yes,” Rena paused, “but I want to tell your father first.”
“You know how I hate secrets.” Her parents had tiptoed around telling their kids the truth about their problems, as if she and her brother Chris couldn’t hear the fights and feel the dark silences afterward. She and Chris had kept their schedules packed as teenagers trying to avoid the tension.
“You’ll be the first to know after I get in touch with him.”
Nikki scrubbed a hand over her eyes. The dizziness kicked into overdrive, exhaustion nailing her. “I’m glad everything’s cool with Freckle. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the pictures later today. Okay?”
“Are you sure you don’t need—”
“I just want a nap, then I’ll come by later this afternoon. I promise.” She swallowed hard. “I love you, Mom.”
She disconnected, already dreading the conversation to come and the burden she would place on her family because of whatever the hell she’d done last night, because of her poor judgment in choosing Gary Owens. Her father was flying in a hot zone and so didn’t need the distraction of worrying about her. Although there was nothing she could do to stem the eventual tide of gossip that would flow through e-mail overseas.
Being an adult and independent meant accepting responsibility. What she did affected others—like her family.
Turning her back on her too-pale reflection in the medicine cabinet glass, Nikki scooped a rubber band from a rolling table and gathered her hair away from her face. She needed to get her life together and work on putting this behind her. No more nursing a ridiculous broken heart for a man who flat-out didn’t care. She wouldn’t be like her mother, losing years of her life waiting for a guy to realize what he was throwing away.
Besides, she had bigger concerns right now. Like getting through the interview with the OSI agent due to walk in the exam room.
Why wouldn’t Nikki call a lawyer?
Thumbing the disconnect button on his cell phone call from work, Carson kept his eyes locked on the exam room door while he paced past the row of vinyl-covered chairs and sofas. If only he could infuse his will through the panel into the idealistic woman on the other side.
Growing up, he’d watched countless guilty-as-hell people get off with a slap on the wrist because of expensive counsel, greased palms and a few wealthy connections. How could she simply trust her entire future would be okay if she just told the truth? What little she could remember. He couldn’t stomach even the possibility of Nikki losing her freedom when he knew without question that woman was not a murderer.
He’d spent the past couple of hours on the phone taking care of crises at the squadron, arranging for an officer, chaplain and doctor from a base near Owens’s parents in Nebraska to make a notification visit. He wished the couple lived closer so he could have made the visit himself. But he would travel from Charleston to Omaha to attend the funeral, along with every squadron member available. Regardless of what Owens had done last night, he’d still been an officer under Carson’s command.
The door swung open. The OSI agent ambled out, slow, but Carson wasn’t fooled by the guy’s sleepy-eyed act. Special Agent David Reis’s cynical eyes were taking everything in, and Carson wasn’t so sure cynicism would work in Nikki’s favor.
Nikki stepped through a few paces behind the agent, speaking with the nurse at her elbow flipping pages on a metal clipboard, stray words drifting about lab results and release forms for her to sign. She seemed okay, steady on her feet and confident even in surgical scrubs that somehow managed to accentuate her mile-long legs and skim over gentle curves he had no business noticing, especially today.
Good God, regardless of how strong she looked, bruises still marked her arms and heaven only knew where else. He forced his hands not to clench. He kept tracking her moves, searching for answers—or at least clues—as to what happened when the uneasiness settled with the weight of a stare boring into him. Slowly, Carson turned.
Special Agent Reis stared back with those half-open assessing eyes.
Carson nodded toward Nikki. “She’s free to go?”
“Yes, sir, as soon as she finishes signing her release papers. We’ve covered everything for now. She just needs to stay in town until we have a few more answers.” Absently, Reis reached into his inside jacket pocket, frowned then brought his hand back empty. “You’re going to take her home?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He fished into his pants pocket and brought out gum this time. “No matter what shook down in that VOQ room, she’s had a helluva shock.”
Carson tugged his leather jacket off the back of a waiting room chair. “Guess you can’t tell me what she said.”
“You’d guess right.” He folded a piece of gum into his mouth. “Sorry.”
“You’re only doing your job.” He understood all about that. He wouldn’t get anything more out of the detective, but it wouldn’t hurt to be amiable and form a connection that might lead the guy to give him a heads-up about info in the future. Carson nodded to the empty gum wrapper in Reis’s hand. “Just quit smoking?”
Reis grin-grimaced. “Yeah, I still reach for the cigarettes. Doublemint sticks aren’t helping much.”
“Try drinking everything with a straw for a while.”
“Like a drag from a smoke.” His working jaw slowed. “Good call. Addictions suck.”
“That they do.” And since the opening was there, he continued, “Speaking of addictions, you need to know that Owens had a gambling problem. He seemed to have it under control, but.”
“Sometimes old contacts can still be hard to shake.”
Nodding, Carson reached to stroke his mustache—damn it—only to find it gone. “I just thought you should know.”
More than that he couldn’t say without betraying confidences, and he really didn’t know more that would be helpful. Still, he’d stuck to the standard squadron knowledge. Reis would have found out eventually. Carson had only sped up the process for safety’s sake.
Reis studied him through half-open eyes. “Not that you have any reason to send me in a direction other than Nikki Price.”
“I just thought you should know,” he repeated.
“Duly noted.” Reis tucked his gum pack back in his pocket and pivoted away.
Carson chewed on a curse harder than the investigator chomped gum. So much for keeping his damned drooling over Nikki a secret.
He could deal with the rest of the world knowing. But it was far tougher—and more essential—to keep the rogue attraction hidden from Nikki.
Rohypnol, a date-rape drug, had somehow been slipped into her drink last night.
Nikki settled into the bucket seat of Carson’s sparkling Ford F-250, still rocked to her toes by the lab results that had arrived while Special Agent Reis questioned her. She hadn’t been able to determine from the detective’s expression if the news worked in her favor or not. Worst of all, there was less chance of her
remembering now since the memory loss wasn’t simply a by-product of trauma-induced stress.
A long sigh swelled low in her chest, rolling up without any real release in the tension kinking her muscles. The drizzly day outside Carson’s windshield and pattering on the cab roof mirrored her mood. Thank goodness she wouldn’t have to hold it together much longer. Another twenty minutes and she would be in her apartment.
Riding home with Carson was preferable to her trip over in the ambulance with Special Agent Reis. Barely.
Except she owed Carson big for the hours he’d spent looking out for her today so she wouldn’t have to upset her mother. Sure he’d done it for her father, but he had seemed concerned for her, too …
God, she was already weakening around him again, the warmth and scent of his leather jacket more enticing than it should be. And while she’d always found his mustache sexy, his fully-revealed sensual upper lip was all the more enticing.
A dangerous thought.
Still, she should answer the unspoken questions lurking in the clammy air between them. “The doctor said I wasn’t raped.”
His knuckles went white on the steering wheel, even as his face stayed blank, aviator sunglasses hooked on the collar of his flight suit. “You didn’t have to tell me, but thank you.”
“Of course I would tell you.” She scavenged a smile. “And you would have found out all the details anyway since you’re Gary’s commander.”
He kept his eyes forward on the traffic-packed road, watching the streetlight. “I would have found out because I’m worried about you.”
She let herself soak in the concern in his voice until the light turned green.
“Thank you.” She blinked against the glare streaking through the window as the sun peeked from behind the clouds.
Her head thunked back to rest and she watched the telephone poles whiz past as they drove toward the winding bridge. Everything blurred from exhaustion and more. Definitely more than she wanted to acknowledge because then she would have to admit that spending time with Carson was important. “The hospital put a rush on my lab work. Someone slipped Rohypnol in my drink last night.”
His curse hissed long and low. “And somebody’s going to pay for that, no damn question.”
“At least I understand the memory loss.” Although that piece of knowledge came with another sense of having been violated. Who’d done it? She’d finished one drink before Gary arrived, and been almost through the second when he slid up beside her, elbow on the bar smiling as if totally unaware that their relationship was going nowhere. How could he have not realized?
Or had he? “I should be relieved I’m not suffering some mental break from trauma, right? Instead I’m just … ”
“Pissed off. Of course you are.” He glanced over at her, gray eyes steely with a repressed anger glinting through. “You have every reason to be upset.”
Damn it, he’d given up the right to be her friend a long time ago. “Please quit being so nice.”
“You want me to be an ass?”
She cranked the heater higher even though she knew the chill went bone deep from things that had nothing to do with dreary January weather. “I’d like an excuse to holler.”
“I could take you out on my boat to the middle of Charleston harbor and let you yell if you think it would help.”
“It won’t.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call your mother?”
“No. I’ll tell her. Later though—” She stopped short as an awful possibility pushed through her muzzy mind. “Do you think what happened will hit the news soon?”
“The basics, but the names are being withheld until Owens’s family is notified.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, guilt pressing hard against her chest over the crushing pain Gary’s parents would suffer. Because of her?
“The investigator is withholding your name for your own safety.”
What? She shifted in her seat to face him. “I thought they believed I’m guilty.”
“They saw the wisdom of at least considering other options.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Thank you anyway for staying with me today.”
“Your father would have my ass if I didn’t look out for you. Sharing an enemy prison cell forges a bond I can’t explain.”
Those days when her father’s crew had been missing, then reported taken by enemy warlords, had been hellish. She’d feared for her father’s safety as well as for the man she’d thought she loved—even if at that time Carson had not noticed her beyond a kid sister kind of way.
Until later.
She so didn’t need to think of later right now with him sitting so close and her in need of comfort in a big way. Who wouldn’t be rocked by what had happened? But she was strong. She could hold on until she got in her apartment where she would have a long soggy cry in her bathtub. A man was dead, a man she’d cared about enough to date. A man she’d kissed and apparently nothing more, thank heavens, but he deserved to be mourned. Even if he’d done something so horrible she’d struck out and killed him.
Bashed in his skull.
Bile burned high in her throat. “Pull over.”
“What?”
“Pull over or you’re gonna need your carpet cleaned.”
He whipped the truck across two lanes and onto the shoulder. She jerked her seat belt free and lurched from the cab to the swaying reeds and tall marsh grass.
Thank God he didn’t join her while she heaved up her empty guts. If only she could pitch the horror of the day into the marsh grass, as well.
Finally, she straightened again, weaving as she sucked in chilly winter air until the double vision of afternoon traffic meshed into a single world again. Turning back, she found Carson leaning against the passenger-side door, waiting in case she needed him, but not intruding.
Emerging sunlight glinted off his blond hair and sunglasses now shielding his eyes, his body every bit as tall and strong and appealing as the first time she’d seen him strutting across a tarmac when she’d been waiting to welcome her dad home from an overseas tour. She was too tired and heartsore to feel attraction, but God, how she yearned to rest her head on that broad chest.
Instead, she planted her feet into the grassy incline and made her way back up slower than she’d descended.
She stopped beside him. Traffic whooshed past in blasts of wind.
Carson passed her a handkerchief without speaking. She took the small folded linen from his hand, three tiny initials embroidered in the upper corner. She studied the larger “H” with a “C” and “A” on either side. Who carried monogrammed handkerchiefs anymore? Apparently Carson. She’d thought he was a friend, had even shared a bed with him and didn’t even know he carried a handkerchief, much less what the “A” stood for.
Nikki swiped the cloth across her mouth before clutching it in her fist. “Thanks.”
“Are you all right now?”
“Who would be?”
“Right answer.” His curt nod gave away less than his shielded eyes as he stood in the freezing mist without the least shiver. Maybe he seemed so perfect because he wasn’t even human. “It’ll take the drugs a while to wear off.”
She sagged to rest beside him against the truck, drags of the prickly cold clearing her head. “So I didn’t hurl because I’m an emotional wreck after all?”
“Over in Rubistan, after your dad and I were rescued, I barely made it to the barracks bathroom before I lost the MRE the soldiers gave me.”
She pressed her fingers between her eyes against the ache his image brought. She’d hurt for him then and wasn’t anywhere near as distant as she wanted to be now. “I appreciate your telling me that, especially since it must be difficult for you to talk about that time. My dad still doesn’t discuss what happened over there very much.”
Carson shrugged it off his broad shoulders as if it were no big deal when they both had to know otherwise. “We h
andle crap like that in different ways. The important thing is that you deal with it.”
“Even if that means hurling in a ditch.”
“Hey, join the trauma-hurling club.” The strengthening sun glinted off his smile as brightly as it did his golden hair.
“And you’re a badass.” A badass who happened to look like an angel who could lead a saint to sin.
“So are you.”
Ohmigod, everything had been easier when she could keep her distance from him. She could almost delude herself into thinking he wasn’t as—charming?—no, that wasn’t quite right. Carson had seemed nice, a flat-out nice guy she’d liked, admired, wanted so much she’d been a blind idiot.
She really needed to go home fast. “Thanks for the quick reflexes in pulling over. I’m ready to leave now.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay alone?”
“You can’t be offering to stay with me?” She knew full well he had to get back to the squadron. Already he would have to work late into the night to clear through all the work and crises that would have piled up while he was out of the office—
Whoa. Stop.
Why had she taken so much note of his work schedule when she’d been dating other guys? It had been bad enough before when she took note of everything about him, back when she’d thought he felt the same attraction.
Carson swiped his sunglasses off and dried them on the leg of his flight suit. “I do have to get back to work, but I could pull together supper for you before I go. I haven’t eaten today either, and I’m actually a competent cook.”
“I know.”
He stopped midswipe on a lens. “You do?”
Oops. Might as well fess up. He probably knew anyway and pretending she hadn’t once followed him around like a silly puppy would only hint she still had feelings. While she might still have feelings, they sure weren’t the tender kind anymore. “I used to pay all sorts of attention to what you did back during my ‘crush’ days.”
His smile pulled tight. With guilt? He hooked his glasses on the neck of his uniform again. “So let me cook for you then.”
Ready for Anything, Anywhere! Page 38
