"Jet?"
"Yeah. It’s private, but it belongs to a friend of hers, who flies it. Gram just goes along for the ride."
"Oh, good." His tone was dry. "Is this the other little thing you had to tell me?"
"No." She took a breath, scooted away from him and sat up. "No. I just… I want you to know that it’s not an accident that I took your name during the ceremony, that I’m a—a Crockett now."
"No?" Soft, curious. "So simply assuming you’d change your name makes me an ass? The way I assumed you changed it back to Brannigan after you and John divorced?"
She laughed, fiddling with the ring on his left hand. "I didn’t say that. Implied it, maybe, but the words are yours."
"So, Mrs. Crockett, what should this ass know?"
"I’m Colonel Crockett now, too, Nat," she said.
He felt something in his heart clutch. As long as he’d known her she’d been Captain–Major–Lieutenant Colonel–Colonel Brannigan.
"I filed the paperwork last week," she continued, as though she weren’t exploding a bomb underneath him. "Before the wedding. I never did that for John. I was never Mrs. Maximovich, for him either. I was whatever–my–rank–at–the–time Brannigan or Ms. Brannigan. No Maximovich added to my name. No convention. Ever. Not even for Libby."
He couldn’t breathe. Damned woman. What the hell was she trying to do to him?
"I hardly ever wore my wedding ring, either—figured I didn’t need all the trappings to feel married. But maybe John needed me to have them. You and I didn’t marry for love, but we did get married, and I want you to know that I take this…this commitment seriously, and that this family is the top of my priority list…."
His pulse wouldn’t cooperate and his lungs were starving for air. Damned, insane, lunatic woman. Whatever he was feeling, whatever was tearing little pieces out of him and stapling them back in some chaotic, gee–hawed order he couldn’t recognize, he hadn’t expected to feel this. He expected her to make him hotter for her than a heat–seeking missile, that was a given. But this was not heat of that nature. This was something fuller. Something rarer.
Scarier, too.
"I don’t know how much longer I can stay on this leave, or if there’s a post in need of my… specialty… around here, but I want you to know I consider myself really married—your wife, my husband—and I’ll do whatever I can to make this work…. Nat?"
He was on his knees in front of her. His hands were on her arms, holding on to her so hard he could almost feel the bruises forming beneath his fingers.
He couldn’t let go.
"Nat, what’s wrong?"
"I don’t know." He swallowed, trying to get hold of himself, but the only thing he managed to get hold of was the thought that the one consistency available to him where Helen Crockett was concerned was completely uncivilized and more than a little depraved.
Want. Need. Avarice.
Craving.
Take the laundry room, for instance. Helen had accepted him—hell, taken him as much as he’d taken her—there for their maiden voyage, as it were, without thought or protest or anything. Amanda would have demanded a bed in a fancy hotel with satin sheets and all the trimmings—and then the act itself would have been satisfying but strictly conventional: baby–doll nightgown, bathroom primping, champagne, darkness and traditional position.
He wasn’t used to feeling insecure with a woman and despised himself for giving in to the ye–olde–immature jealousy cliché, but he suddenly couldn’t stop from wondering if Helen had been as generous with herself with John, and he found himself wanting to leave his mark on her the way John had imprinted himself upon Amanda.
Savagely. Visibly.
God, did people who’d been married to other people who’d divorced them and married each other ever get over the urge to compare notes?
Maybe with maturity.
"Helen…"
He was floundering in deep water, and she was the lifeline he’d never intended to need to depend on.
"Nat." Her voice was soft and sure, and she seemed to understand something he didn’t. "Nathaniel."
No one had ever said his baptismal name quite that way before, with quite so much love or proprietorship.
No one had ever said it so it sounded quite so…
Right.
You are my husband, I am your wife….
"Nathaniel."
His hands were still clenched around her arms. She couldn’t shake him loose without losing him, so she simply turned her hands palm up and hooked his elbows, drew him with her when she eased herself back onto the bed.
"Nathaniel, be my lover," she whispered, untangling her legs to wrap them around him. "Be my lover, be my lover, be my husband—"
He didn’t let her say any more, was afraid to let her, so in self–defense he released her arms and moored her face between his hands and pillaged her mouth.
Instead of being silenced and ravaged, she moaned. "Yes…"
Instead of laying siege to her to protect himself, he surrendered to her. His mouth grew tender, his hands gentled and he let himself get lost, exploring her without caring that the trail back had collapsed behind him.
Not just sex.
She knew that before his hands strayed off her shoulders and over her breasts; felt it in his kiss and her response to him. Hid the knowledge deep, where her heart wouldn’t find it at the same time that she found him. Skimmed her hands beneath his shirt to cover territory there’d been no time to explore this afternoon.
Touched him and felt the burn begin in her, rising like fever when he groaned and hiked off his sweatshirt fast.
Kissed and tasted him, familiarizing herself with his flavor, heady and drugging.
Addictive.
More than sex. And more and more.
He’d known this afternoon that it was, known it from the first time he’d kissed her, first time he’d seen her—forgotten it in the practicality of their practical marriage. Lost sight of it with his vision and Amanda’s desertion and his anger at Helen for not keeping better track of her husband.
And now he was her husband.
Be my lover, you are my husband…
Yes, he thought. I am.
Yours.
Sliding away from her face, he found her breasts, treasured them with palms and fingers, mouth and tongue. Moved without haste to sample the flavor of her belly, learn the fabric of the inside of her thighs with his fingertips—with all his senses extended to absorb the essences and nuances of Helen.
While she absorbed his.
He felt the wetness of her open mouth on his shoulders, his neck, felt her tongue with her ragged breath in his ear, and laughter, wild and reckless, surged through him.
In here, this is where you stand with me… This belongs to us in here….
"Nathaniel, please—"
He shed his gym shorts and caught her hands, linked them with his as he rose over her. And this, he thought fiercely, driving into her, is mine.
Not just here, but out there, too, among the children, in the midst of the relatives, amid strangers in the street. Mine.
"Mine," she sighed aloud. The echo of his thoughts. And repeated it in a gasp when he withdrew and thrust into her again. "Mine… Yes… Please…"
He tore the words from her mouth with his tongue, swallowed them along with her startled, pleasure–filled "Ahh… Nat…!" when he brought her suddenly to the ledge and sent her sailing off.
He didn’t expect her to make sure he went flying with her. Expected to take his time, stoke the fires and feel her burn again. She had other ideas, twisting against him and locking her heels at the small of his back and pulling him in and in—to the heavy contractions coursing through her, to the shattering swirl and eddy of recognition, to the heat of a place he’d never imagined or felt.
A place where the only name he knew was hers, where the light was so intense he would have been afraid that it would blind him—if he’d been able to think enough to be afraid
at all, and if he wasn’t blind already.
A place of no tomorrows and no todays, no yesterdays, but where all three of them were bound inextricably together in a soul–devastating now.
It took him a long time to come back from the place she’d brought him to, longer still to understand that the salt taste he kissed from her cheeks and temples was tears—hers.
To comprehend that the clogged and shaky whisper he heard was his own voice proclaiming through the rain of kisses, "Mine."
Mine.
And he meant it.
Chapter Ten
~FIRST MONDAY OF ADVENT~
He slept sprawled across her, with one hand tucked beneath her right shoulder, the other beneath her neck, his head pillowed on her chest. She slept with her arms wrapped around him and her fingers sifted into his hair.
There was a lot of wasted king–size bed to either side of them.
It was a good thing neither of them had remembered to unlock the door, unclothed as they were, because the children were up before them, pounding on it.
"Mom!" Libby shouted. "Get up! The door’s locked and it’s a quarter to eight. We’re going to be late!"
"Huh? What?" Groggy, foggy. Wishing to still be asleep.
"Dad, come on!" It was Cara this time, pleading. "We have to be to school on time or we’ll be late for the buses. Colonel, I have to take an 1870s lunch today to eat on the field trip, no juice boxes or plastic bottles or thermoses. What can I take? Do we have any big pickles or apple butter or homemade bread?"
"Tern’l!" Jane was cranky and demanding. "In!"
"Daddo, don’t forget to call your eye doctor today." Max–the–calendar was putting in his two cents. "Kern’l, we have to go to the dentist after everybody gets out of school, bemember."
"Come on guys." Zach’s voice sounded disgusted. "Door’s locked, you know what that means—leave ’em alone, they’re probably naked. Come on, let’s just get dressed. They’ll be up."
"Well… Okay." Libby, both dubious and rebellious. "But if they’re not out of bed by the time I get dressed, I’m findin’ the screwdriver that unlocks this door."
"We’re up," Nat groaned, without lifting his head. "Geez–oh–pete, we’re up!"
"No, we’re not," Helen assured him sleepily. But she made certain Libby didn’t hear her.
Nat turned his head, dragging his mouth and beard across the breast that had pillowed them, leaving a trail of damp kisses in his wake. "I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave a wake–up call for this morning, did you?"
"Absolutely not. Would I do that to us? Not to mention I don’t know if I can move, and you feel too damned good for me to want to even think about getting out of bed yet."
"Mmm." Nat used the hand cradling her head to lift it for his seeking mouth. "That’s definitely mutual."
Their "good morning" was warm and a tad too erotic to ignore.
With an effort, Nat raised his head. "How long do you think we’ve got?" he asked thickly.
Her response was breathy. "Fifteen minutes, max."
He made an unprintable comment. "I need a shower."
"Me, too. We could lock the door and take one together. I could scrub your front…."
He pulled her in for a scorching kiss, hauled her across the bed with him. "What about your daughter and her screwdriver?"
Helen caught his hand and tugged him to her, into the bathroom. "She needs a different screwdriver for this door," she murmured against his mouth.
"Ah," Nat said, enlightened, and he bent to her without further encouragement.
When he hooked his foot around it to shove it closed, the bathroom door clicked tight behind them.
* * *
The reality check came in the form of a phone call, after she’d dropped the kids and Nat off at school and returned home to a day of organizing what promised to become a busy week. She had meals to plan and phone calls to make in order to line up workers for the Santa’s Secret Shop that would open at school next week.
Twenty years in the army had made her a natural for the PTA.
"Colonel Crockett?" the diffident voice asked when Helen caught up the receiver.
Grimacing as she swallowed a single, heartfelt oath, she acknowledged her identity.
"Hold for General Greene," the voice said.
Muttering epithets that should have scorched her adjutant general office boss’s ears, Helen did as instructed. It took two–star general Caroline T. Greene exactly one hundred thirty–five seconds to pick up on her end—by which time Helen was both antsy and frothing.
"Colonel—"
"Look, General, I don’t know what this is about, but I requested two months and you signed my paperwork and it’s only been five weeks. I just got married Thursday, the kids are insane—"
"Whoa! Hey, Helen," the thick Arkansas accent drawled. "Start out with ‘Hey, how ya doin’, ma’am?’ before you jump down my throat would you? Shoot, ’s a damn good thing we been friends a long time or I might decide you’re spoutin’ insubordination ’n have to come down on you for it."
"I won’t go down alone, Caro," Helen said frankly.
The general laughed. "Didn’t think you would, now did I?"
"Not since that night in Cairo, anyway." Helen grinned. "So, hey, how ya doin’, ma’am? This a social call or do I jump down your throat now?"
"Stow it for later. Right now the AG’s got a problem in your neck o’ the woods. Grayling’s got a reservist jailed on charges of serial rape. You’re senior in the area and this one needs your… expertise."
"Find the facts, expedite the situation and damage control with the media?"
"In one."
"Whose kid is it?" Helen asked bluntly.
Another short laugh. "‘S what I like best about you, Colonel, no flies. You’re quick."
"I know," Helen acknowledged. "Hence my reputation and the reason you let me get away with half the stuff I do. Whose kid?"
"Representative—" She mentioned the name of a female out–of–state politico Helen wasn’t familiar with. "Friend of a friend of a lobbyist with clout out here."
"And sonny boy’s innocent."
"She hopes so." Regret was evident. "But she’s not countin’ on it."
Helen felt sick with the knowledge that politico–cum–mother must have been here with her grown child before. Reaction was swift. "Cripe, Caro, dump it on somebody else, can’t you? I’ve got my hands full—"
"Stuff it, Colonel." The laid–back Arkansas drawl was gone. The voice in Helen’s ear now was crisp and commanding, the boss, not the friend. "I understand your situation, but this has to take precedence for the moment." Her tone softened. "Heck, Helen, if I could dump it elsewhere, I would, but I got my orders, too. This wants your rank, but mostly it wants your reputation. Clean it up, put it to bed, go home and stay there. I’ll make sure you’re comped."
Helen articulated her frustration with a well–chosen word. "Yeah, till the next time."
The general was silent.
Helen dug at a molar with her tongue, blew out a sigh. Sorry, Nat. "When?"
"I dispatched a helo out of Grayling. Should be at Oakland County International within the hour. You oughta be able to put this one down in three days, tops. Two if you’re as good as you think you are. Just make sure that if the kid did it, he goes quiet and does his time."
"Three days?"
"Maximum."
Helen pinched her nose, rubbed finger and thumb across her eyes. "I got a husband out of touch on a field trip, a three–year–old comin’ home from preschool in ninety minutes, a kindergartner out in two and a half hours and five kids to take to the dentist this afternoon. You sendin’ me a babysitter and a marriage counselor with this helo?"
The general chuckled. "What was it you always used to say about women in the military balancing family with career while they tried to get ahead?"
"With all due respect, General," Helen said mildly, "stuff it, ma’am."
Then she hung up and cal
led Sam.
Samantha was, Helen was disturbed and suspicious to discover, a little too enthusiastic about being asked to pick up Jane and Max at their required times, babysit for the afternoon, then go back later to collect Nat and the rest of the kids. And she was downright thrilled to be asked to deliver the message of Helen’s whereabouts to Nat, along with Helen’s assurances that she would call about dinnertime to talk to everybody.
But Helen didn’t have time to worry about what Aunt Sam might be cooking up—or merely setting up for the rest of the plotters. Instead she packed her bag, put on her uniform, polished her brass and headed for the airport.
* * *
Ex–navy officer though he was, Nat was hard put to accept Helen’s absence after the day he’d put in with Cara’s class.
While not wanting to appear ungrateful for his willingness to help chaperon the field trip—particularly as a father who could take young men to the bathroom—Cara’s teacher was more than a little nervous about leaving four students plus Cara in his keeping. She’d hovered near him most of the day, continually counting heads, until Cara and her friends convinced her that they liked dragging Nat around, showing him everything.
A blind man was a novelty to them and far too interesting a phenomenon for them to stray beyond his reach. He was handsome and they were nine–year–old girls. He had a smart dog. He needed things described to him. He listened to everything they said no matter how outrageous. He knew things about Greenfield Village and its history their teacher didn’t, and when he talked about it, he spoke from a different perspective and was interesting. And he appealed to their baser kid instincts by talking out of turn in the mock 1870s classroom session, correcting the teacher when she made a math mistake. When she made him sit in the corner wearing the dunce cap, he laughed, then made faces behind her back until he got caught when his charges forgot to signal him that she was watching.
Cara thought he was wonderful.
Her teacher signed him up for the next field trip immediately.
Still, he was exhausted by the end of the day and looking forward to Helen’s promised private time—a little clandestine foreplay while the kids did their homework or watched TV after dinner—and an early night.
Five Kids, One Christmas (The Brannigan Sisters) Page 15
