Make Mine a Marine

by Julie Miller

  She'd been so young when Jonathan disappeared. Not for the first time, Emma wondered if she had projected her own sadness, her anger and feelings of betrayal, onto Kerry. She'd worked so hard, talked to so many counselors, to keep her daughter from being victimized by her troubles. Kerry might be a tad shy, but she did well in school and had a circle of real friends of all ages. Emma couldn't explain her daughter's handicap. Yet she couldn't cure it. So she chose not to argue about Faith this time, and worked instead on the more tangible problem she could address.

  "I'm not sad tonight." Confused, yes. Feeling more guilty than she cared to admit. But not sad. She opened the album on their laps. "I was looking at some pictures of your father." She stopped on the page with Jonathan's formal portrait taken when he'd earned the rank of lieutenant colonel. "Here's your dad. Isn't he handsome? He loves you so much."

  Kerry studied the picture. "My d-dad doesn't look like that anymore."

  "You're right. He may have gray in his hair now. Or wrinkles. Do you remember what your dad looks like?"

  "I know wh-what Daddy looks like."

  Emma smiled and hugged her close. "You've seen his picture a lot, haven't you?"

  Kerry squiggled free, pushing the album to the floor and kneeling in front of her. Her forehead crinkled into a frown as she studied Emma with a grown-up intensity. Emma pulled the seam of her lips between her teeth, fighting the urge to smile in the face of such a serious expression.

  "D-Drew is my daddy."

  "What?" Any urge to smile vanished.

  "Faith told me. D-D-Drew is my daddy."

  * * *

  She sat at the main desk, greeting him with a smile that radiated from the fresh-scrubbed shine of her freckled face and made him forget the purpose of his visit. Surrounded by tiers of equipment, stacks of paper, and shades of beige from floor to ceiling, she smiled.

  She stood out from the drab decor like a poinsettia stands out against snow. She had lustrous dark hair, classic features, and that sweet, sweet smile.

  "May I help you?"

  "Stand fast, you bastard!" A very different voice intruded, splintering the serene picture in his dreams.

  "Stand fast or I'll shoot!"

  The grenade pin sailed through the air. He fired his weapon and contorted his body, diving, crashing into his enemy. He was scorched by heat, numbed by pain.

  "No!"

  Drew thrashed in his sleep as the nightmare took hold.

  He wanted it back. He wanted the peace. The momentary glimpse of beauty. He wanted...

  "Don't listen." Another voice. More of a thought than a sound.

  "You crazy son of a…"

  "Tenebrosa is a helluva place to die!"

  His voice? Or another man's?

  Certain death. Kill or be killed.

  "Believe with your heart, not your head."

  He twisted, fighting to pinpoint the soft-spoken source of the warning.

  He'd stared at her too long to be polite, but not long enough to finish cataloguing every beautiful detail of her appearance.

  "Sir, may I help you?"

  "Emma?" He called to her in his sleep, a croaking plea for something just beyond his reach.

  His world exploded in a flash of fire and searing pain, ripping his flesh, tearing at his heart, and plunging his mortal soul into oblivion.

  * * *

  Drew shot up in bed and rubbed his forehead, wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes. The top sheet and blankets pooled around his hips, exposing his torso down to the waist. The remnants of his nightmare flashed through his mind. He shivered.

  Dream or vision?

  He combed his fingers through the hair at his temples, smoothing the damp strands behind his ears. The jungle, the heat, the chase—the details were always the same. But now Emma Ramsey had appeared to him a second time, her face added to her distinct husky voice—the only reprieve from the indecent torment of his sleep.

  "Ah, lady." He punched his pillow as if he could silence the turmoil that spun in the blank hole where his memories should be. "What the hell do you have to do with me?"

  The ringing of the phone saved him from having to face sleep again. He snatched it off the night stand and hit the talk button. "Gallagher."

  A moment of static answered the sharpness in his voice.

  "Drew? Did I wake you?"

  An unexpected calm seeped through him at the soft sound of Emma Ramsey's voice.

  "What's wrong?" He snatched his glasses off the nightstand, the pleasure of hearing her voice giving way to instincts that warned him of news he didn't want to hear even before he could see the clock. Two in the morning. She didn't bother with pleasantries, and neither did he. "Em?"

  "Can you come over to the house? There's something I need to discuss with you."

  "Now?"

  His heart went out to her as he heard her swift intake of breath. Damn. He wished he was there to hold her right now. To take her hand again. To support her with his presence if that would be all she'd accept from him.

  "Yes."

  "I'll be there in thirty minutes, if not sooner."

  * * *

  Drew paced back and forth in the kitchen, hot, strong coffee warming the mug in his hand. He stopped at the tile counter and raked his fingers through his hair, feeling totally out of his league. "So what do you want me to do? Talk to her?"

  Emma matched his pacing on the opposite side of the table. "No. Yes. I don't know." She planted her hands on her hips and tipped her head up to the light of the Williamsburg brass chandelier, revealing the shadows that marred the translucent skin beneath her eyes. "I don't see how she could be so confused. You and Jonathan are nothing alike. He's taller. Dark. Incredibly structured and organized. He lives and breathes the military. You're less…"

  "Less heroic?" There was nothing like being compared to another man and coming in second to humble a man’s ego. He dared her to deny her opinion of him.

  She met his eyes and his challenge, then dropped her gaze into the shadows. But he felt the intensity of her glare, the sting in her correction. "Less predictable. Less polished. And as much as Kerry likes you, you don't strike me as a family man."

  Drew swallowed hard and turned away. Hell. He didn't know if he was a family man or not. Maybe he had lost a family that was glad to be rid of him. No one had come for him in the Mexican hospital. No one had responded to his picture at police stations across the North American continent. He couldn't imagine anyone looking for him the way Emma pursued her missing husband. Nah, he probably wasn't a family man.

  He certainly knew little enough about kids. Kerry's behavior mystified him. She sure was a pistol, though. Pretty as a picture, like her mom. Delicate, and endearing with that speech impediment. But strong and opinionated beyond her years. Like her mom in that department, too.

  He lifted his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug, as if Emma's words hadn't stirred up the haunting question of his past. "I wouldn't know."

  "You don't know if you're family material? Or you just haven't found the person you want to make a family with yet?"

  Backed into a corner, Drew had to decide whether to tell Emma about his amnesia or make up one of the cover stories that came too easily to him these days. He settled for an explanation somewhere in between. "I don't have any family now."

  His vague statement left plenty of room for interpretation, and he could imagine Emma speculating on all the possibilities.

  "You lost your family?"

  The tremulous compassion in her voice carried across the room and breathed new life into his lonely heart. She understood what it was like to have your life ripped away. Maybe better than anyone else could. Drew squeezed his eyes shut at the answering swell of emotion inside him. The skin on his chest and arms tingled with the need to hold her again. His heart ached to open up and share the healing truth he sensed he could find in this woman. "Ah, lady—"

  He snapped his eyes open, hearing the endearment on his lips the same way Emma must have
heard it. As her lost husband would have said it.

  He jumped to soothe her. "I'm sorry. I know…" But the slip had already cost him the shared moment. The electric current that had bound them for a few moments vanished in the echo of a misspoken word. Drew swallowed his coffee, relishing the burn of the hot liquid in his mouth and throat. He didn't know which hell he preferred, the nightmarish abyss of his forgotten life or the way his heart kept getting twisted up by the husky voice and rare courage of Emma Ramsey.

  That she would reach out to him when she suffered her own heartache seemed unjust. That he could spoil her attempt with a single word seemed par for the course.

  He shed his confusion, his feelings, and pulled out the edgy self-reliance that had gotten him through the last five years. "I thought I was here to talk about Kerry, not me."

  Emma covered her own exposed emotions by crossing to the coffee-maker and pouring a few drops into her already full cup. "You must have said something to her to make her call you Daddy. I think she's experiencing some sort of hero worship. I'll call her therapist in the morning."

  "But you called me tonight. You must want something from me." Drew watched her lift her head up and straighten her spine. He recognized the effort to gird herself against an unpleasant task. He squared his own shoulders, bracing for his defense. "All I did was read her a story and tuck her into bed."

  "And rescue her from that ‘bad’ man’."

  "She asked me if I was a good guy."

  Emma turned and looked him in the eye, a maternal version of the corporate warrior he'd seen before. "In her mind, you are."

  Drew bristled at the underlying implication. To Kerry, he might be a good guy, but Emma didn't believe it. And he couldn't say or do anything to change her opinion. The impression of being attacked for no good cause sprang upon him. The lonely, fortifying posture of being the outsider hardened the set of his jaw and shut down his willingness to reason with her. He'd read and observed how mothers weren't necessarily the most rational of creatures when they thought their children were at risk.

  Two hours of tortured sleep, the gnawing emptiness in his mind, and his mixed-up desire for a woman he couldn't have, had hardly put him in the mood to be reasonable or patient. He pulled out the chair at the head of the table and straddled it, leaning over his elbows on the table and staring at the mug he balanced between his hands.

  "So how do you want to handle this?" He put the decision in her hands. "You want me to quit the case? Bug out of your life for good so you don't have to deal with me?"

  "Quit the case?" She set her mug in the sink and moved a few steps closer. Maybe he hadn't destroyed all her goodwill. Judging by her response, she hadn't considered that option. Yet.

  Drew forged ahead, the independent survivor in him determined to force Emma to make a conscious decision to eject him from her life, even though the lost soul in him yearned for her to make the opposite choice and ask him to stay. To openly, irrevocably invite him into her life.

  He spelled it out for her. "I'm one hell of an inconvenience. Your friends don't approve of me. I put you in the line of danger. I apparently make your daughter think crazy things. You should put your life back the way it was before you met me."

  Emma now stood at the far end of the table, her expression unclear in the shadows cast by the overhead light. To his surprise—or maybe not so surprising, since she was a woman who preferred the direct approach—she breezed past the other chairs and sat to his immediate left. She matched his posture, resting her elbows on the table and leaning in to share the same circle of light.

  "According to what we heard and saw last night, I'd be in danger whether you were around or not. At least with you here, there's someone else to sense the threat before it strikes, or to think on his feet and get us out of it. Begosian would have followed me, anyway. Because of you, we learned something from it."

  Just when he thought she'd stay wholesome and superior enough to justify holding a grudge against her, she threw him a curve. She actually saw value in the slimier skills he possessed in such abundant supply. He tried not to read anything personal into it. He'd think of it as a professional compliment, an olive branch thrown out onto a negotiating table. "We didn't learn very much."

  She counted off items on her fingers. "We have another name. Clayton Roylott. We have a boss--"

  "He's just a voice, Em."

  "A voice I may know." She touched his hand and pulled it down to the tabletop, moving his focus and securing eye contact with him. "We could go back to Lucky's and snoop around, try to put a face to that voice. And we know he has other plans, other people in place. So someone else will try to contact me."

  Drew set down his coffee cup, alarmed by the reckless determination gleaming in her eyes. "You're not going back there."

  "Why not? That Clayton thinks he knows you. Maybe he'll open up and talk. I could mix with the crowd and see if I recognize anyone."

  "Do you understand what kind of people those men were?"

  "They're criminals."

  "They're not just petty thieves or gamblers." He captured her fingers in his. "Did you hear the directive about Begosian? We’ll be reading about his dead body floating in Brush Creek or tied up on the river docks in the next day or two."

  He'd intended to shock some sense into her with his harsh words, but he hadn't prepared for his own reaction to the ebb of color from her cheeks.

  Even the gray-blue color of her eyes seemed to blanch at the truth.

  Her gaze dropped to the tangle of their fingers on the table. She clutched his hand with the same force he had used to snare her attention. "I know Jonathan dealt with… people like that."

  Drew reached out and tucked a straying tendril of hair behind her ear. He cupped his hand there, gently turning her focus back to him. "Those are the kind of men we're dealing with. They're the kind of men I deal with. Think about it. Am I the kind of man you want hanging around you and your company? Or your daughter?"

  She leaned back beyond his reach. She pulled her lips between her teeth and fought to control her reaction. A kernel of pride by association took root inside him as he watched her regain her poise and think things through. He'd seen men twice as big and twice as tough lose their cool a hell of a lot sooner than Emma.

  "Do you want me to fire you?" she asked.

  "Isn't that what this is about? Your little girl has fixed her hopes on the wrong man. I think you need to get rid of me. But if you ask me to stay, I want you to be clear on what you're asking for."

  "I may be under some stress." Drew risked a grin at her talent for understatement. "But I've been blessed with a good head on my shoulders. I know what I'm asking. I'm asking you to live up to the trust I have in you."

  His amusement vanished. "Don't put your faith in me, Em. I might let you down."

  She stood, pulling the sleeves of her brick-red sweater down past her knuckles and curling her fingers inside. She hugged her arms around her stomach as she walked toward the French doors that led onto the deck off the rear of the kitchen, as if preparing herself for the cold she expected to feel through the insulated glass. "I woke you up in the middle of the night, and you drove halfway across town to help me. You're not the same kind of man as Begosian or Roylott or his boss, or even this James Moriarty. You may think you're a man of mystery, but I know what kind of man you are."

  Drew followed her. He maintained a respectful distance, but stood close enough to look over her shoulder into the crisp night sky. The snow reflected the light from the back porch, making it impossible to see the stars. But Drew had a feeling Emma was looking at something else altogether, something hidden deep inside of her.

  "What kind of man is that?" he prodded.

  "A man of honor. I know it. Kerry knows it."

  She huddled tighter in her sweater, apparently fighting a chill in the warm kitchen. Drew's gaze settled on the proud set of her shoulders and the tiny quiver along her chin.

  Her voice was a husky whisper, as
dark and lonely as the night outside the windows. "I never believed in heroes until I met Jonathan. My father… was an abusive alcoholic. My mother never had the strength to leave him, and I… I couldn't leave her to face his senseless rages all alone."

  He hadn't seen this coming. The admission that she came from such a background struck him in the gut like a sucker punch. "Did he hit you, too?"

  Her tight-lipped silence, which locked away so many emotions, gave him the answer he didn't want to hear. "Oh, Emma."

  She raised a hand to the nape of her neck and massaged the skin above her collar. He recognized the clinical detachment in her voice as the defensive mechanism it was, distancing her from painful memories. "We never had a lot of money, so I worked all through high school. My father burned my college scholarship applications. I missed the deadlines for my freshman year. I was too ashamed to admit what had happened, so I took on a second job and tried to raise tuition money that way."

  "He didn't want you to leave, either."

  "One night I came home from the hospital where I worked as a floor clerk." She rolled her neck, trying to ease a tension borne from deep inside her. "My mom had fallen down the stairs, according to my father."

  Drew breathed in deeply through his nose and out through compressed lips, quelling the rage building inside him. She combed her fingers through the hair at her right temple. He recognized the nervous expression of energy, the subconscious escape valve she allowed herself to keep the awful memories from overflowing. "You don't have to tell me this," he offered, wanting to ease her pain.

  "I want you to understand where I'm coming from." She gathered all her hair at her nape, clenching and unclenching it in her fist. "Mom had a broken neck. I called for help. By the time the paramedics arrived, my father had passed out in his recliner. The police couldn't wake him. He'd had some sort of cerebral hemorrhage."

  Her posture still hadn't bowed, but she dug her fingers into her hair with a more brutal force, trying to shake it free from imaginary constraints.

  Drew might not have the right, but he had the need to go to her. He gently pushed her fingers aside and gathered her hair in his hands, shaking it free and fanning it loose down her back. He closed his hands over her shoulders and dipped his nose to the crown of her head, inhaling the fresh, clean scent of her, hoping she could feel the same purity in herself. He kneaded her arms lightly, imparting what portion of his strength she would accept.