“A hard-ass.”
“Was he ever.”
Wes searched her eyes, which were fraught with pain. “What happened?”
“Plenty.” Diana looked up at the ceiling of the aircraft. “I was young, easily impressed, and I didn’t listen to my mother. I should have. Bob was on leave when I met him. I was eighteen and had just graduated from high school. Living on a reservation all my life hadn’t prepared me for the outside world. At least, not then. Now it’s different. I fell head over heels in love with him. He was a warrior, and I was enamored with men like him. But I was idealistic. I didn’t see all of Bob.”
“So you married him?”
“Two weeks after I met him.” Diana shook her head. “I was crazy to do that. But I was starry-eyed. I listened to no one. I knew my mother saw things in my future, but she didn’t say anything. She just begged me to take my time, to think through Bob’s proposal. I didn’t. I thought I knew everything.”
“Yeah, at eighteen I was pretty cocky and sure of myself, too,” Wes said wryly.
“I think it’s a teenage disease.” Diana managed a laugh, but it was filled with the pain of memories.
“So you married him. What happened?”
“Too much to go into, except for the spectacular highlights.” Diana met Wes’s somber gaze. “Bob was a closet alcoholic. He spent more time at the Officers’ Club than home with me. When he did come home, he beat me up.”
Wes’s hand automatically tightened over hers. “He hit you?” Rage filled him.
Diana shrugged. “I’m ashamed to admit it. I’m ashamed to tell anyone that I stayed in that miserable excuse for a marriage for seven years. But I was too ashamed to tell my mother and sister what kind of a hell I was going through. I knew I’d made a terrible mistake, and I didn’t know how to correct it. I was raised to think that marriage was forever. My mother married my dad, who was a white man. They had a wonderful, happy marriage, and I thought that I’d automatically have the same thing. That’s why I was eager to get married—to find that happiness I’d seen at home.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.”
“No…” Diana cleared her throat and went on. “Bob made major, then lieutenant colonel. We moved more places around the world than I can remember. I was alone. I was like a cowering animal just waiting for him to come home every night, drunk and violent.”
“What ended it for you?” Wes asked quietly.
A tremble went through Diana, and she opened her hands and tightly grasped his larger, stronger one. “I—it’s so hard to talk about. I’ve only been able to tell my mother, not even my sister, Wes. I’m so ashamed….”
“Your secrets are safe with me,” he whispered roughly, cupping her jaw and forcing her to meet his eyes. Her gaze was tortured, and he managed a poor semblance of a smile for her benefit. “Remember? I’m the one with the secrets? If I can trust you to hold mine, will you trust me to hold yours?”
It was so easy to whisper yes, to drown within the vivid blue of his clear, warm eyes that Diana felt tears sting her own. She was wildly aware of his hand gently cupping her face, his fingers calloused and rough. How much pain Wes had endured, and yet he was able—somehow—to reach out and help her heal. His depth amazed her, for she’d never encountered it in a man—though admittedly she’d been afraid to look since her failed and miserable marriage.
“Oh, Wes, it’s so painful to talk about….”
“I know, I know,” he soothed, “but a lady I like one hell of a lot told me that talking and sharing is part of the healing process.”
Her lips parted and she felt the warmth of tears trickling down her cheeks. “I—I became pregnant, Wes. I know I was about three months along when I told Bob.” Her lashes dropped and she took in a convulsive breath. Forcing herself to look at him, to see his reaction to her trauma, she whispered, “When I told him I was pregnant, he started hitting me. He beat me up so badly that I ended up miscarrying and almost dying.”
Wes’s mouth thinned. He turned in his seat and framed her face with his hands. He could see her abject misery, the way the guilt and torture over her lost baby was eating her up. “Listen to me,” he rasped unsteadily, “it wasn’t your fault. Get that? Men like him are sick. I saw guys like that in the military. They’re little men with brittle egos and nothing inside themselves, so they hurt and humiliate women and children to try to feel strong and important.” He stroked her cheek. “I’m sorry, Diana. I’m so damned sorry it happened to you.” His mouth worked, and he couldn’t repress the gamut of emotions he was experiencing. “I wish I could make your pain go away. Make the memory leave, too. But they won’t. Just know that you did the best you could in a hellish circumstance. At least you got out. You have to give yourself credit for that.”
In that moment, Diana felt her heart opening, in a way it hadn’t for years. Wes had said her mother was a healer, but in his way, he was a healer, too. The discovery was poignant, beautiful. She raised her hands and placed them against his. “It’s taken me the past two years to realize that, Wes.” She shrugged. “I came back to the reservation and lived with my mother. I needed to be here, to be home, to heal my grief.”
“I see it all now,” Wes said, taking her hands and holding them across the armrest between their seats. “I understand your reaction to me. I’m the past. I’m ex-army. I bring back everything bad that happened to you.” The corners of his mouth turned in with pain. “No wonder you didn’t want to be around me.”
“No!” Diana lowered her voice. “No…I—I felt the violence around you, Wes. I misinterpreted it. I thought you were the same kind of man that Bob was—an abuser. But you aren’t. Wh—when I pick up feelings, I don’t always filter them correctly.” She touched her brow and gave him a weak smile. “Just because I’m psychic doesn’t mean I’m always right. Just like anyone else, every feeling, thought or sensation is run through the filter of my life experiences. Because of Bob’s abuse, if I sense violence around any person, I automatically and unconsciously react to it.”
Reaching over, Wes took a strand of her hair and tamed it behind her delicately formed ear. The gesture was satisfying to him, and he wanted to touch her more, touch her intimately and with love. Love? Where had that feeling come from? Wes laughed at himself, but it was a laugh filled with pain and longing, not humor.
“I’m glad to know all this.”
“About my past or my psychic gifts?”
“Both,” Wes murmured, caressing her thick, black hair. Like yesterday, she wore her hair in braids, and on Diana they were beautiful—and natural. He met and held her tear-filled gaze. “You’ve had two years of healing. I don’t know how long it takes to get over something like that. Or if you ever do.”
“Mother says I will, with time.” Diana closed her eyes, absorbing his trembling caress. How she ached to kiss Wes, to move into his arms and be held—and to hold him. They both needed to be held, she realized, for different reasons. But she also realized that somehow they fed each other in a positive sense, and were able to give something good and healing to each other.
“If we weren’t here,” he told her in a low, gritty tone, “I’d kiss you. I’d kiss you until you melted into me and I melted into you, Diana.”
Her lashes lifted, and she felt his growling words vibrate through her, touching her wounded heart and thirsty soul. The flame in his blue eyes was inviting and made an ache begin low in her body, fanning out until she was consumed with the knowledge that she wanted more than just his kiss. Coming together with Wes felt more right than anything in her entire thirty years of life. And she was old enough, experienced enough, to know the difference now. Her lips parted into a shy smile.
“And I’d return your kiss.”
Her words fell like molten heat across him. He saw the sincerity in her brown-and-gold eyes. He absorbed her honesty, her courage to reach out to him—her woman to his man. Gently, Wes brushed her lower lip with his thumb. “This world isn’
t for cowards,” he told her unsteadily. “You have to have a lot of heart, a lot of belief in yourself, in order to survive. And you have, Diana. Maybe you’re not whole, but nobody is.” He stopped caressing her lip and forced himself to place his hands over hers.
“Damaged goods,” Wes muttered. “That’s what we all are. My adopted mother worked hard and long on me, to make me understand that my real mother loved me enough to give me up to a better life, where I’d have a chance.”
“And because I’d had such a loving, secure childhood, it gave me the courage to finally leave Bob, to break free,” Diana quietly admitted, soaking up his small ministrations.
Running his thumb across the back of her hand, Wes murmured, “In a way, we’re both lucky. We got a lot of love when we were young, and it helped us survive.” And right now, he wanted to love Diana. Already he saw obstacles to those possibilities. He was ex-army, a stark reminder of her tortured past and the loss of her baby. Could she look beyond those life-wrenching elements to see him for himself, not in relation to her nightmare? Wes didn’t know how, and he wasn’t going to force his attentions on Diana. The last thing she would respond to would be any sort of aggressive move.
He smiled wryly. “Your mother broke loose a lot of stuff with that healing, didn’t she?”
“Then you believe that it happened?”
He shrugged. “Proof’s in the pudding, isn’t it?”
Internally, Diana sighed. “I’m so glad you accept the gift that was given to you, Wes.”
His laugh was derisive. “I don’t think I had much choice in the matter, do you?”
Her spirits lifted at the sound of his deep, husky laugh. How wonderfully the shape of Wes’s face changed when he laughed. That hardness that usually kept his expression rigid and emotionless had dissolved. In its place was a radiating joy. Oh, how Diana wished they could be anywhere but here right now!
“I wish—I wish we were back on the reservation,” Diana admitted softly, “so I could take you to my old childhood haunts, those favorite places where I was happy, where I dreamed dreams.”
Wes nodded. “Maybe, when this mission is over, we can do that…together?” Did he dare to hope? Dare to dream? How many dreams had been torn away from him in his life? Reality was so harsh, so demanding, that he had learned to stop dreaming. Idealism never went hand in hand with realism. Ever. But as he held Diana’s joyous gaze and saw the hope and desire burning in the depths of her eyes, Wes did dare to hope. To dream.
Diana smiled through her tears. “I’d love you to come home with me, Wes. To see where I come from. Who I am. I’d like nothing better.”
Wes sat very still, enjoying the timbre of her husky voice. Had he heard correctly? His mind wanted to reject it as impossible, but his heart was pounding like a runaway steam engine. Grappling with his strewn emotions, he rasped, “Yeah, I’d like that, too, Diana. I’d like to see where you were raised. What’s made you the wonderful way you are….”
Diana listened, believing but still stunned by his agreement. “You and I,” she began unsteadily, “are a lot alike, I feel.”
“Yes and no.” He picked up her hand and placed a small, warm kiss on top of it. His gaze drifted to hers to see her reaction. He saw surprise, and on its heels, warmth and desire in her eyes. “You come from a world I’ve never known. It’s a world of invisible things. Unproven things. I come from a prove-it-to-me world of reality. If I can’t see it for myself or in some way prove it, I’m lost, Diana.”
Sadness blanketed her joy. “I was raised to believe in the unseen, the invisible, Wes. I saw my mother perform healings all my life, with unseen energy. But I did see the results of those healings. I saw the goodness she gives to others without thought to herself. My sister and I were raised in a home where songs, chanting, rattles and ceremony were a natural part of our life. My mother’s a pipe carrier, and I saw that if she prayed with the pipe, miracles could happen for others.” She gave him a bleak look. “All of these are invisible things, Wes. I can’t show you how it works—or even why it works—I just know that it does.”
“In your world you live on your faith, your belief,” he said.
“Yes, every moment I breathe is an act of faith. Faith in the unknown, knowing that it is there—even if I can’t see it or prove its existence with human machines or methods.”
“My world is on a different level.”
Sadly, Diana nodded. It was vital to her that Wes accept her reality, although it was diametrically opposed to his own. If he could not, then she knew there would be no bridge built between them. And she saw that he understood that, too. Grief serrated her. Wes had given her life when she thought no man would ever touch her heart again. But Diana couldn’t offer her heart to him unless he accepted her world; to do so would be living a lie. She had lived a lie once before, and she’d sworn never to make the same mistake twice.
“Bob always made fun of my beliefs, my gift for psychometry,” she said softly, opening her hands. “He hated my mother and said she was a witch.”
“He didn’t respect either of you.”
“That’s true.” Diana’s voice became low and fervent. “Wes, you need to understand, I can’t give any man anything unless he values what I bring to him. He doesn’t have to embrace it, but he has to accept it.”
“I know….” And he did. “All this talk about songs, rattles, ceremony and pipes is alien to me, Diana. It’s like having someone from outer space drop in and talk to me.”
Miserably, Diana nodded. “I realize that.”
The utter grief in her eyes moved him deeply. “I know I’m not the most open-minded person in the world, but you have to understand where I come from. In Delta Force, everything was black and white. It was all about training, about men working as a team, getting reinforcement from satcoms, satellite communications—real things we could see and hear.” Gripping her hand, which was now cool and damp, Wes probed her sad gaze. “We had no room for feelings, for intuitions or some psychic energy floating around us, Diana. Hell, if any of us had counted on those kinds of things, we’d be dead.”
“Maybe not,” Diana said quietly. “Maybe if someone had used his intuition, his gut hunch, he might have checked those helicopters before they took off and crashed in the desert, killing so many of your friends.”
Bleakly, Wes held her gaze. “I don’t know….”
“I do. My psychometric gifts aren’t my imagination, Wes.” She held out her hands to him. “Why isn’t it possible that some people in this world have hands that can feel more than just the texture of something? Why isn’t it possible to pick up the energy that surrounds that object? The whole universe is composed of nothing but sound vibration. Why isn’t it possible that a human being could pick up on these subtle vibrations and be able to accurately interpret them?”
“I don’t know,” he said grimly.
Desperately, Diana searched for a parallel in Wes’s world. “What if you’re out in the desert and there are hidden enemies in front of you? What tells you there’s danger ahead?”
Wes shrugged. “Experience.”
“What do you base the experience on?”
“The fact that it’s happened before.”
Frustration thrummed through Diana. She sat up and gestured strongly. “You haven’t seen them or heard them, yet you know where they are. How do you explain that, Wes?”
Stubbornly, he shook his head. “You don’t understand, Diana.” He jabbed his finger into the air. “If I have an enemy in front of me, I’ll be looking and thinking about a lot of things based on my training and experience. First, there are better places for an enemy to hide than others. I’m trained to look at camouflage and terrain for a potential hiding place. Secondly, if I have radio contact with other squads, infrared info or satellite intelligence, I can narrow it down even further.” Wes saw her disappointment. “Everything in my world can be explained.”
“Mine can’t be.”
Wes shook his head. “No.”
>
Grimly, Diana sat back. “Then I’ll have to prove to you. Somehow, before this is over, you’ll understand, Wes.” Somehow…
SHAD11004SEEING IS BELIEVING
Chapter Four
Diana took in the natural beauty of the red-rock country of Sedona, Arizona. They had landed at Phoenix International Airport an hour earlier, then hopped a single-engine Cessna aircraft that took them a hundred miles north to the smaller airport just outside the town of fifteen thousand people. The red sandstone rose around the tourist community like natural cathedrals against a dark blue sky. A white limestone cap on the sandstone made the geology even more spectacular. Wes, however, seemed immune to the staggering beauty of the region. He had said little since landing at the Phoenix airport.
They met a local police officer, Larry Thomas, at the gate, and Diana followed the men, locked into absorbing the sensations of the area. Her mother had told her that Sedona was a very sacred place to all Native People in North and South America. It was a female region, an area rich with energy and invisible vortices that whirled at incredible rates of speed. Indeed, Diana felt a bit dizzy from the powerful energy surrounding the airport, which was high atop a mesa overlooking the town.
The sun was shining brightly, and the temperature hovered in the nineties, but Diana felt comfortable in her short-sleeved, white cotton blouse and light blue skirt. Glad she’d worn sandals, she continued behind the men into the geodesic-looking airport building to retrieve their luggage. Sedona was high desert country at four thousand feet above sea level. The red earth was thickly dotted with dark green junipers for as far as she could see in any direction. Officer Thomas was speaking in low tones to Wes, who nodded occasionally. But Diana was content to wait in the center of the airport structure while they retrieved the luggage. If Wes wanted her to know something, he’d tell her. She was glad to be left alone just to feel. And feel she did. The invisible force of the vortex was incredible, and her body swayed subtly with the flow of the circular release of energy coming from deep within Mother Earth.
Seeing Is Believing Page 5
