Ready for Anything, Anywhere!

by Beverly Barton

  Shifting to his side, he pulled her closer, holding her while she slept. No more delaying. He would have to tell her about his alcoholism, something that could, and very likely should, send her running.

  Why hadn’t he done this back when the prospect of losing her didn’t rock him even more than facing combat?

  Resting on her side, Nikki watched Carson’s perfectly sculpted face as he slept, not a peaceful nap, but restless, mixed with the occasional twitch as if he might wake at any second. The tiny digital clock blared three in the afternoon, plenty of time to let him relax a while longer. She stretched her arm from under the fluffy weight of the comforter and clicked off the tiny light, casting the cavelike cabin and Carson’s features in shadows.

  She’d sensed a tension in him while they made love, connecting in some way that scared her to her toenails. She hadn’t known the emotions would come so fast, so thick, swamping her in more—deeper— feelings for Carson than she’d ever dreamed. She wasn’t so naive that she couldn’t recognize the explosiveness of how he made her feel in bed.

  Four orgasms in one afternoon was nothing to sneeze at, although he seemed to tease them from her as easily as an achoo.

  She’d thought their first time making love had been special, even their abruptly ended encounter months ago. Now she knew none of it had come close to what had been waiting for them.

  Because they knew each other better? Or cared more? Could things grow stronger?

  The caring part scared her. Really scared her. Because she didn’t trust him not to break her heart again if they got closer. Her cold toes warming between his legs, she allowed her hands the unobserved pleasure of touching him, stroking along his muscled arms that had held her close, down his chest and lower still to his six-pack, tanned even in winter.

  She couldn’t avoid hearing whatever he’d wanted to say much longer. She’d chased off admissions with sex earlier. But whatever he was holding back, his reasons for leaving her that had nothing to do with work, would all come out soon.

  Along with his connection in knowing Billy Wade’s father, a man with a gambling problem.

  Nikki flipped to her other side, away for distance, her toes already chilling just seconds after leaving the warmth of Carson’s legs. Déjà-vu jiggled the vision in front of her as she fell asleep, taking her back to that strange night.

  Strange room.

  Strange bed…

  How had she gotten here in this strange hotel-like place? And who was talking, their masculine voices so low she could barely distinguish the two from each other as she sprawled on the bedspread?

  She couldn’t remember anything after she’d climbed into Gary’s car, sleepy. So sleepy. Her head pounded. Her stomach roiled. A couple of drinks shouldn’t have done this to her. What was wrong with her?

  Voices. In the hall or in the room? She struggled to focus, but her heart in her ears pounded louder than the whispers. She peeled her eyes open. Gary and another man stood at the foot of the bed. So close, she should be able to hear them but the world kept kaleidoscoping in and out.

  She studied the back of the second man. He seemed familiar, even in jeans and a leather jacket, his hair trimmed military short.

  His blond hair.

  Panic clenched a vise grip around her throat.

  The man in jeans and an aviator jacket turned in slow motion. No! built in her chest, crawling up her throat to stop him and what she didn’t want to see but already foresaw. The denial lodged in her throat and he kept pivoting until she saw …

  Carson.

  Carson cranked the anchor up, prepping the boat to set sail back to Charleston. Before they reached shore, Nikki would know every dark secret from his past. Although he almost wished now he’d broached the subject with her earlier, when she’d been in a more receptive mood.

  Nikki had gone silent since he woke from his catnap, refusing to meet his eyes and he didn’t have a clue why. Now she sat back by the wheel, studying the other boaters in the distance, hugging her knees as she stared out over the stretch of murky water. No ponytail or ball cap, just wild windswept hair and the elegant curve of her neck he’d explored with kisses a couple of hours ago.

  Before she’d shifted to deep freeze mode.

  Women were tough enough to understand on a regular day and never had understanding a woman been more important. Stepping over lines and a loose life preserver, he made his way toward her. She flinched. Flinched?

  Once under full sail power, autopilot set, he asked the question burning his brain. “Is something wrong?”

  She dropped her forehead to rest on her knees. “I’m just confused, that’s all.” She turned her face to stare back at him, tears in her eyes. “I want to trust you, but it’s difficult when I can’t help but think you’re not being straight with me.”

  Had her father already spoken to her? Regardless, the time had come to tell her what he’d only discussed with J.T.—and a room full of people sworn to uphold the anonymity of the program. “I’m an alcoholic.”

  “What?” Her head jerked up, confusion chasing away tears. “Wait. I heard you, I just don’t understand. You hardly ever drink. Even with your flaming Dr Pepper call sign, I can only think of one time I’ve seen you with alcohol.”

  One time, the night they’d been together.

  But if she hadn’t been questioning his drinking with her initial comment, what had she thought he was keeping from her? They would get back to that shortly.

  “Yes, I was drunk the night we slept together.” Guilt hammered all over again, as strong and fresh as the morning he’d dragged his hungover butt to A.A. “I’d been working on staying sober for two years until then.”

  A wry smile kicked through the furrows of confusion. “Great. I was a drunken mistake.”

  He was making this worse, and that was quite an accomplishment since the situation had pretty much sucked from the start. “You could never be a mistake. You are the most amazing, tempting woman I’ve ever met. The only mistake was my selfishness that night, because I knew I would hurt you eventually.”

  Her chin jutted with a quiet stubbornness he’d seen often in her father. “You hurt me by walking away.”

  And in that stubbornness he could see that, regardless of her words to the contrary, she hadn’t forgiven him, not really. So why was she sleeping with him?

  He’d assumed being her first meant he was somehow special to her. Now he wasn’t sure of anything and he didn’t like that feeling one damn bit. “I joined A.A. after our night together. I’d had blackouts before, but not one that led me to hurt someone. It was a wake-up call.”

  She blinked fast, straightening. “You had a blackout that night?”

  “We discussed this before—the reason I didn’t remember we never had sex that night.”

  “A blackout? You didn’t remember anything?”

  Hadn’t he already said that? “Not much, no.”

  He wasn’t sure if that helped her come to grips with this or not, but it certainly sent her eyebrows trenching deeper until she softened and leaned ever so slightly toward him. Her deep freeze seemed to have ended. He could all but see the wheels churning in her brain as she sifted through his words. A promising sign and incentive to keep spilling his guts even if the talk grated all the way up his throat.

  Carson rested an elbow on the silver railing, the waves below offering none of their usual comfort or answers. He shifted his attention to the speedboat in the distance. “I’ve always known I wouldn’t get married. That’s the reason I dated women with zero interest in commitment, until you came along and I started questioning what I knew, damn it, what I still believe, but am having trouble holding strong all over again.”

  “Why are you so sure you shouldn’t get married?”

  “My parents were drug addicts. Two of my grandparents had substance abuse problems, as well as an aunt and a couple of uncles. I’ve stopped counting the cousins with chemical dependency issues.” He ticked off the dreary stat count on
his fingers. “It’s in my genes and I’ve seen what it can do to a family.”

  “Did any of them acknowledge the problem or get help?”

  “My dad tried, along with one of my uncles, a couple of my cousins. But even with all the successes in A.A., I’ve seen failures, too. Hell, I was a selfish failure with you seven months ago.”

  She shifted to face him, her hands falling to rest on his thighs and searing through his jeans. “So you’re doing this totally selfless thing in pushing me away, which proves you’re actually a really good man. You’ve put us in a no-win situation, pal.”

  He gripped her fingers. “Jesus, Nikki, you just don’t know how bad it was.”

  “Or maybe I know how good it can be.”

  Her optimism could be contagious, dangerously so. “I’m glad that you’ve had a life that leads you to trust that easily.”

  “So you’re walking out again?”

  “We’re on a boat. I’m not walking anywhere.” They were definitely stuck here until they hashed this out one way or another.

  Her jaw shot out again. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “Being with you scares the crap out of me, no question about it. That night I saw you at Beachcombers, it rocked me. Hard.”

  The mast creaked and groaned as an ominous silence stretched between them. “And you’ve been dry since last May? No more blackouts?”

  He’d already answered that once. What was she driving at? Even as he understood he hadn’t done squat to deserve her trust, he couldn’t escape the sense of impending doom, thickening the late-afternoon air. “I’ll admit, seeing you at Beachcombers that night was tough for me.”

  The boat pitched to the side, mast cracking, leaning.

  Falling.

  Seconds away from crashing into Nikki.

  Chapter 14

  Screaming, Nikki grappled for the boat rail. Anything stable in her abruptly tilting world as the mast leaned, held only by a couple of pathetically frayed metal lines.

  “Carson!” she shouted, extending her arm toward him as she slid backward, toward the ocean.

  “Jump!” he barked back. “Get clear of the lines before the boat pitches—”

  A crack split the air as the mast careened out of control. The boat lurched to the side, catapulting Nikki airborne with only a few frozen seconds to gather her thoughts before.

  Water gushed up her nose. Frigid and dark as she sank, not at all like the clear depths of a pool.

  Up or down? Nikki couldn’t determine which way since the bubbles swirled all around. All she’d learned in swimming classes said follow the bubbles but the underwater world churned and her senses shrieked conflicting messages.

  She kicked. Against seaweed? No. Stronger. Slicing. Lines from the boat.

  Ohmigod. Panic urged her to gasp, but she kept her lips pinched shut. She struggled to slide the metal lines—shrouds, Carson had called them—off her ankle and wrist. Shrouds? How horribly ominous that sounded.

  And what an interesting word to tell her little student later. What an off-the-wall thought that stung her eyes with tears over the possibility she might not get to share in expanding his vocabulary any longer.

  The watery world closed around her, wrapping like a blanket. Or a sail. The fabric sealed to her skin.

  Her lungs burned, her skin numbing. Her brain even more so.

  Panic gave way to terror that this might really be beyond her control. She could die.

  How could she have been caught so unaware that she didn’t notice the mast crashing toward her until too late? She’d been obsessed with the dream of Carson in the VOQ room the night Gary died.

  Carson. Terror squeezed tighter. Where was he? If he’d been knocked unconscious, he could be drowning even now.

  No. Hell no. She wouldn’t let it happen.

  She didn’t care what he may have done the night Gary died. If Carson had been there, she was certain he didn’t remember … none of which mattered if she couldn’t find him now. She kicked against the restraints seeking to suck her deeper, ignoring the bite of metal through her skin.

  The bubbles sparkled, brighter, her head lighter, her arms and legs sluggish even as she continued to fight. Not much time left. Now that she was seconds away from checking out, too, she realized that the image of Carson had come in a dream, not in a memory flash like the recollections she’d recorded in her journal. Her confused and terrified mind could well have been playing tricks on her.

  Something bumped against her. The boat? A shark? She shivered even though she’d long gone beyond numb.

  Light pierced her cocoon. Death? No. The sail parted, sliced open, Carson’s form looming as he split the water with sluicing sweeps of his arms, a knife in his hand.

  He was alive. Relief threatened to steal precious seconds. She had to help or he would die trying to save her.

  Kicking, he plunged down, unwinding the line encircling her ankle while she loosened the snaking vise around her arm. Freedom.

  He clamped her to his side, surging up. She blinked back unconsciousness, but couldn’t escape the stab of guilt over even thinking he could have lied about the night Gary died. Carson may have kept the alcoholism a secret, but this man would never have let her hang for his crimes. That much, she knew with a certainty as strong as the muscled arm banded around her.

  The world righted as her equilibrium returned, up, up, blasting through the surface by the wounded boat. The massive keel along the bottom had righted the craft, even if the mast stretched a good thirty feet or more along the water, lines and sails such a tangled mess she wondered how he’d found her, much less freed her.

  His feet trod water, brushing her with vital reassurance. Still he held her. “Are you all right? The mast didn’t hit you?”

  “I’m fine.” She gasped, lungs aching, her feet pumping now as well since she didn’t have to worry about dragging him down. “Thank you. Ohmigod thank you. And are you okay?”

  “Fine.” He didn’t look fine. In fact he looked really pissed, his eyes stormy below a purpling bruise on his head.

  Well, she was petrified to her toes. Only an idiot wouldn’t be. They were in near-freezing waters, and while there were boats in the distance, they needed to book-it over before somebody lost a foot—or worse—to exposure.

  “Somebody’s head’s gonna roll for this.” Anger simmering, Carson paced in a back office at Beachcombers, while Special Agent Reis jotted notes. “I’m thinking it’s going to start with you soon, Reis, if you don’t figure out who the hell’s trying to kill Nikki before she remembers what happened.”

  The horror threatened to crash over him again as heavy as that boom. The mast giving way, tipping the boat, launching both of them into the water. Then watching Nikki sink in a tangle of shrouds and sail.

  His boots pounded hardwood floors in the antebellum building, intense, louder.

  “Major, I understand you’re frustrated.” The agent sat on the corner of a desk, working a piece of gum while he typed notes in his PDA. “A freezing dip in the ocean will ruin a good mood.”

  “No.” He stopped short, the window behind Reis providing too clear a nighttime view of the dock where someone intent on harming them had lurked in the past couple of days. “A deliberately broken mast will do that to a person.”

  “We can’t know that for certain until your boat has been recovered and examined.”

  Carson wrenched his attention off the dock, back to the present and getting answers this man had the power to provide. “And I’m telling you, I keep that craft in tip-top shape.”

  “You weren’t at all distracted today?” The agent tucked his PDA into an inside jacket pocket. “Couldn’t you have screwed up locking the mast in place?”

  For a second Carson wondered if maybe … then as quickly shoved aside the doubts. “I’ve been sailing by myself since I was ten.” Which now that he thought about it didn’t sound all that safe, but he’d been an expert in ditching his parents and nanny in those
days. “And on the job, my life and the lives of others depend on following checklists. I do not ‘screw up’ in the air or on the water. Inspect those lines. I bet you’ll find someone filed through the metal just enough to weaken one or two of the shrouds. Even a couple of small cuts would be imperceptible to the eye, while posing an insidious danger. Once the sails filled and pulled the lines taut, it would continue to fray until it snapped.”

  “An angle to investigate. I’ll look into that once your boat has been impounded. I’ll also ask around about activity at the dock.”

  Tension downgraded to half power. The guy was doing everything he asked, keeping him posted with all the facts.

  Or was he? Had they all been wrong to assume Reis was top-notch at his job?

  The door swung open, Nikki stepping through in a borrowed jean jumper from the proprietor, Claire McDermott, the dress a couple of inches short on Nikki, but dry.

  And tempting with that extra stretch of exposed leg.

  Reis straightened from the desk, his interrogator-perceptive eyes ping-ponging between the two of them. “Ms. Price, I assume you’re all right.”

  She pulled up alongside Carson, fidgety, but understandable given their ordeal. “I’m running out of those nine lives, but otherwise okay.” Her gaze skipped around the room full of spice plants. “And, uh, I think I remembered something on the boat right before all of this happened.”

  What? Carson’s attention snapped as taut as the lines right before they’d popped.

  “It wasn’t a full-out memory like the other times, more of a mishmash dream. But I’m certain of one thing.” Her restlessness settled into steely resignation. “There was another person in the room with Gary and me that night. A man. A blond man.”

  The implication sucker punched him. No wonder she’d gone tense after their nap and then asked him about blackouts. She thought he’d gotten drunk, gone after Owens and then forgotten.

  His alibi only lasted until two in the morning with the emergency on the flight line that had called him away from his meeting. So he had no way of accounting for the in-between hours—except for a freaking zoo of origami animals he’d folded through the night to distract himself from thinking about seeing Nikki at Beachcombers, knowing she was dating another guy.