Dangerous Illusion

by Melissa James

  “Get him in! Get him inside!” she screeched. The chopper swayed and rocked as it dashed frantically toward the ship. And inch by agonizing inch, McCall was lifted up, up—

  The Apache was gaining on them, less than half a mile behind.

  Four feet to the chopper, and safety—three—

  Snap.

  His body hurtled past her helpless, useless arms, and she couldn’t do a thing to save him. “Brendan!”

  Three. Two. One… Splash. Her eyes snapped open. They’d reached the ocean before he fell. They were actually past the beach, the bay and were in open seas. Protected by that double-thick, strong wet suit, maybe he could have survived the fall, but she was trapped inside this damn stupid harness with two busted arms—

  Another body hurtled past her—a big, male body attached to two lines. He dived like an Olympian, straight and graceful and fast, over sixty feet down into the ocean.

  The chopper dropped altitude until it was only about twenty feet above ocean level. And slowly, slowly Beth felt her harness jerk and lift, until at last she’d made it inside the chopper.

  As the big, bearlike Nighthawk pulled her in, and Danny, not understanding the gravity of the situation, had swarmed on her before she was fully standing, Heidi dropped a rescue stretcher-harness attached to six lines leading into two, right and left.

  With a neat splash, the diver entered the ocean about eight feet from where Brendan floated facedown in the water. In seconds he’d flipped the body over and onto the stretcher-harness and hooked both himself and Brendan securely onto it. He signaled up to the chopper, and began CPR as they lifted up, up—

  A strange honk, honk noise came from the chopper, like something from a Hollywood thriller, but Beth barely registered. Her world had shrunk to two people, and for once, one wasn’t her son, cuddled safely on her lap. The two men on the stretcher held all her attention—Brendan and the tall, bronzed man with the dark hair…Wildman—who was struggling to keep Brendan alive.

  The honk, honk sounds were piercing; she heard the captain yelling, but it all seemed far off, surreal. She only noticed the Apache swinging away in her peripheral vision, noting it with the same sense of distance that she’d accept a news item on TV.

  Then four choppers seemed to burst into existence all around them, rotor blades filling the air with sound and furious whirring. The navy choppers from the second warship passed their chopper. The cavalry had finally arrived, and were chasing off Falcone’s Apache. It was over. Falcone couldn’t escape.

  Then Braveheart, Heidi and the gunners brought Brendan and Wildman into the chopper. “He’s alive but losing blood beneath the suit,” Wildman reported. “Captain, apprise Team Commander Two of the situation and tell him to set up the O.R. with the ship’s surgeon. And get to the ship, stat!”

  “Aye, sir. ETA four minutes.”

  The race was on to save the man she loved.

  Chapter 23

  “N ine hours. It’s been almost nine hours!” Even bound by two slings and plaster on one arm, and in obvious pain, Beth paced the room like a caged tigress. Anson almost felt the lashing of her tail, she was so wound up. “What could be taking so long?”

  “He has three bullets lodged in him,” he replied on a sigh. “It takes hours to stabilize a man, and the wet suits are real hard to get off without hurting him. They’d have to cut it off with razors to avoid further injury.”

  “But what if they found something pierced…an artery? What if infection set in, and he hasn’t got the strength to fight it—”

  “That’s some imagination.” He tried to smile, hating the picture she’d painted. “You should try your hand at writing.”

  “A spy novel,” Wildman suggested, grinning. “You could write a blockbuster, based on your life story.”

  But the woman wasn’t diverted—nope, not a bit. She didn’t even acknowledge the news of Falcone’s capture, or his sitting in the brig below, awaiting immediate extradition to the States. He doubted a nuke dropping in front of her would get her interest. “What if one bullet’s lodged too deeply to reach? And if—”

  Braveheart stepped in front of her, not touching her—the woman had Keep Off signs posted all over her. “He’ll pull through—he has a lot to live for. He has a family.”

  “But—but I—” She worried at her lip, clearly on a negative and fearful trip, despite the nonresponse of the team.

  Skydancer took over the job that Braveheart had, for once, failed to get right. He smiled at Beth with the understanding of a family man. “Beth, I’ve seen Flipper pull through impossible situations and heal from wounds in weeks that would take most guys months. You know him, he’s one tough nut to crack—”

  “That he is.” She gave a short, bitter laugh, and like a torrent bursting from banked-up clouds, she broke. “He told me about his past, you know, but only when it suited the mission. He gives me so much, but he doesn’t share unless it helps his job. It’s as if my knowing anything about him as a man is a breach of international security!”

  The men all shared wry looks. Yeah, that sounded familiar. Adrenalin junkies, they could respond to an SOS in seconds, but when it came to love they were as dysfunctional as a fourteen-year-old boy suddenly meeting Elle Macpherson or Cameron Diaz.

  Even Heidi had that look on her face. The comprehension none of them wanted to face: how their lives and personas squared up to civilian expectations, and their complete inability to live up to that one word none of them could handle. Sharing.

  But Anson had seen the look on Flipper’s face when he looked at this woman and the kid curled up on a cot in the corner. After ten years of the most faithful life-and-death service he could ask for in a commander, McCall needed—and deserved—a bit of help here. But what to do he didn’t know, apart from handing over Flipper’s file, which was classified information. Right this moment he was almost tempted if it would keep the damn woman quiet for half an hour and let them worry for Flipper without imagining him bleeding to death on the table.

  Before he could do more than toy with an idea he knew he’d never give in to, the O.R. doors swung open and she forgot everything else. Her gaze fixed on Irish, blazing with hope and need and terror. It was obvious that Beth Silver didn’t just love Flipper—she’d handed him her soul. Anson felt another tug of crazy wistfulness—the kind he’d felt too often lately.

  No. It was irritation. Losing his best, always-on-call operatives to love. Evoking damnable, irremovable memories.

  “Well?” he barked, to cover his weakness.

  Irish looked hollow-eyed and gray with exhaustion, but he and Songbird had radiant smiles on their faces. “He’s lost a lot of blood and his spleen’s gone, but he’ll make it. He’s awake.”

  While the Nighthawks celebrated with grins and back-slapping and jokes, McCall’s woman fell to her knees, her face incandescent with gratitude and love. And though she spoke in Portuguese, almost everyone could translate her words. “Thank you, Father, oh thank you for saving the man I love. I will keep my promise to you. I will make him happy for the rest of his life.”

  Damn grit in his eyes. He wasn’t the kind of guy who indulged in emotion. Hell, no. He had a life, and it was best lived alone. It had been that way since he was eighteen and made the one decision that set his life in stone.

  But that grit in his eyes was damn annoying.

  Anson shook his head to clear it, and stalked into the O.R. to apprise his Commander of the outcome of the mission, before he let love have its way with the most committed and courageous commanding operative he’d ever had.

  Fairy kisses wakened him from the exhausted doze he’d fallen into when Anson finally finished the debriefing of the mission.

  They were featherlight, sweet, tickling sensations shooting through his nerve endings. Each and every one was a healing of body and spirit. Each whispered word a balm on his wounded soul.

  “Amo-o,” she whispered, over and over as she kissed his face with ultimate tenderness, in pure love.
“Minha alegria, faz me viver, meu amado, meu Brendan.” I love you. You are my joy, you make me live, my love, my Brendan.

  “You have to get well,” she whispered between kisses. “I can’t live without you. I need you so much. I love you so much!”

  He turned his face, meeting her petal-soft kiss with one of his own. “I know,” he whispered back in Portuguese. And the miracle was, he did know. He finally felt her love in all his damaged heart and soul. He’d had nowhere to hide from the moment she’d risked her life to save him. The thought of what she’d done for him unlocked the dark vault holding his trust captive. His terrified cynicism could no longer override the faith in her that had begun the night she’d given him her name, and her heart. She loved him. She’d held him up for miles before she’d had to let him fall. Beth, his wonderful, incredible Beth, truly loved him, a one-in-a-lifetime love. It wasn’t like the brief infatuation Mom had had with his handsome, wild father, easily won, just as quickly destroyed. “I love you, too,” he said, still in her native tongue.

  She kissed him again, then again. Her eyes, those amazing, unforgettable eyes were shining with happiness. “I know.”

  He grinned. “Love in two languages. This is fun.” Then he truly looked at her. She was beyond exhausted, still clad in the grubby gear from the church, arms bound in slings and plaster, but her smile was radiant, lighting her eyes from within.

  She leaned into him, nuzzled his unshaven cheek, his jaw, his lips. “I’ve been so scared, Brendan. Life without you…” She shuddered, but her kiss was filled with sweet relief.

  When the kiss ended, he touched her sling, her plastered arm. “You broke your arms, holding on to me until we reached water.”

  Her lovely eyes, red-rimmed with exhaustion, filled with tears. “I had to. My life is empty without you, meu amado, minha alegria,” she said simply. “Don’t make me live another ten years without you.”

  My love, my joy. To Beth, that’s what he was—what he’d always been. After long years of wandering in the darkness alone, Brendan McCall found home, and love and the courage to give her his complete heart. “Not even ten minutes. We’re getting married—properly this time—and we’ll never be apart again.”

  She shone and glowed like the sun, but shook her head. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You’ll always have to go away on missions. Just make sure you come home to us,” she whispered, and kissed him. “I can’t do what you do, but I’m proud that you help make life safer for so many people. You keep making a difference. I’ll be at home with our children, waiting for you.”

  Moved beyond words by her love and pride in him, not trying to change him, he drew her down for a long, deep kiss. “You’ll never have cause to regret it. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “So long as I have your love, and our family, I’ll have all I ever wanted,” she whispered, kissing him over and over. “I want babies, Brendan. I want lovely fat babies with forest-green eyes and smiles that melt my heart, just like their daddy.”

  His own heart melted at her words. “We’ll start on that as soon as we’re both healed,” he murmured huskily.

  “Daddy?”

  The doors had swung open while they’d been wrapped up in each other, but at the quavering little voice, McCall looked around. “Hey, Danny boy. I could use a glass of water, if you’ve got one on you,” he joked, to lighten the worry on his son’s face.

  His son. Man, it felt good to think of this adorable, giving child as his own son and to be a part of a family as beautiful as the one that had claimed him. To know that, for the rest of his life, they’d be there for him as he’d be for them, loving him as much as he loved them.

  A family. He had a family…

  Danny was beside him before McCall had finished his sentence, patting his bandaged chest with a shaking little hand, as if needing to reassure his baby mind that his newfound father was still alive. “I love you, Daddy. I love you.”

  McCall grinned fatalistically as he hugged the boy. Knowing his Beth, she’d said something to Danny about telling people you love them in case they die. He’d have to keep that woman so busy in the future, she wouldn’t have time to scare the hell out of their kids with her fearful pronouncements. But words of love had been rare in his life, and they crept inside his heart with bone-warming sweetness. “I’m fine, Danny boy. I’ll be up and out of this bed by tomorrow.”

  Danny’s anxious dark eyes scanned McCall’s. “Really?”

  “Really-really,” he vowed solemnly. “We’ll be playing ball in a few weeks. Got to get you off that reserves bench.”

  Danny’s face broke into a smile—a big, wide-open grin of disbelieving joy. “We’re going home? You’re coming with us?”

  “You betcha, kid.” McCall winked at him, ignoring the pulling twinges of pain in about a million different areas of his body. Pain meds must be starting to wear off.

  Danny sniffed and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “I thought you’d be angry, and not want to be with us no more…I was such a bad boy. I’m sorry, Daddy…”

  The déjà-vu slammed into him and with it, a revelation that Danny—and he as a child—couldn’t know. Beth made a tiny sound of distress, but McCall spoke before she could. He’d been there—man, had he been there—and only he, McCall, could stop Danny’s fear from turning into damage. “Danny, I don’t have any experience at this dad thing, so I’m going to say and do things that hurt you sometimes, but you could never make me so angry that I’d leave you. If I’m ever so stupid as to leave, it won’t be your fault, it will be mine. Kids don’t make adults so mad they’d go away. Grown-ups are just taller kids, Danny, they make mistakes, too.”

  “Huh?” Danny’s head tilted in puzzled inquiry.

  McCall was too lost in a stunned kind of newfound freedom to answer. He finally saw his mother with the clarity of adult perspective; he knew why she’d taken only Meg, and left him behind. Meg, quiet, artistic and playing with her dolls, had been easy. She’d made Mom feel good about her limited child-rearing skills and low tolerance for any trouble. He’d been a difficult child, always into everything and aggressive—but that wasn’t why she’d left. It was her problem. He’d been a little kid in need of patient guidance, not her tears, condemnation and comparisons to Meg. Mom hadn’t run away from him, she’d run from reminders of what she liked least about herself.

  He’d brought himself up, with help on the way, but all in all, he’d done a pretty good job. He’d dragged himself out of his sordid world and created a better one. A man who defined success by what he gave to others. He was a man who could raise a son in pride, who could have love and family, yeah, even a picket fence.

  Looking at the anxious face of his little boy, he smiled. “I guess what it boils down to, is that I love you and your mom, so you’re stuck with me from now on.”

  He winced as Danny almost jumped on him, snuggling his head almost flush against a bullet wound, but he didn’t complain. He didn’t think he’d ever feel like griping at the inconveniences of being so thoroughly loved. “It’s all right, son,” he murmured, caressing Danny’s spiky mop of dark hair as the boy held on to him, afraid to let go.

  “Yes, sweetie, it is all right. It’s all going to be fine,” Beth caressed Danny’s back as she spoke, her voice holding a confidence, a security McCall had never heard in her before, but it was McCall she looked at, her eyes filled with absolute trust and total love. “Daddy’s coming home with us, and we’ll be a family. Daddy will help you play football, and with homework, and we’ll give you brothers and sisters. How does that sound?”

  Danny lifted his face. McCall gulped at the look of utter joy there, but the responsibility fell gently onto his shoulders with a rightness, a pure feeling of happiness he’d never known before. Having a family would be hard work, but he’d never faced the unknown with such eager anticipation. He nodded and winked at Danny. “It’s true, pal. I’m your dad from now on. Now where’s that water I asked for, son?” He added with a grin, “Lesson
one in having a dad—you obey him when he wants water. Off you go.”

  Laughing, Danny dashed off, and McCall turned to Beth with a smile. “So when will we set the wedding date for? I’d like Mitch and Lissa and the kids to come. We can ask them about it when we pick up Bark.”

  It didn’t even surprise him that he felt no fear, expected no rejection. Looking into Beth’s eyes, he felt absolutely bathed in her love. Beth knew all about his sordid past, and she still loved him with all her fierce loyalty and pride, loved both the boy he’d been and the man he’d become.

  After years in black, rusted chains, he walked free of his past, and faced the future with the sun on his face.

  “It had better be soon, I think,” Beth replied, with more butterfly kisses. “Or I’ll be walking down the aisle with a big fat tummy.”

  He frowned. “But you can’t know already if—” Yet the thought thrilled him. Beth, rounded with his child.

  “I know,” she sighed. “No, I’m planning ahead.” She smiled down at him and whispered, “You’d better get well soon, amado. You have a very bad girl on your hands. Here I am with two broken arms, you with bullet wounds and almost died last night, and all I can think about is when I can jump you.”

  He burst out laughing. It felt damn good, healing even, despite the twinges of pain it caused his wounds. “My tigress.”

  “You’d better believe it, McCall.” Her brows wiggled in naughty provocation, so unlike the reserved woman of last week. Happiness had changed her, given her wings, and man, she was flying. “And when you’re well, I’ll prove it—thoroughly. Now that I don’t have to keep my hands off you, they’re going to be a permanent fixture on your body.”

  He grinned. “Hold that thought for the next forty years.”

  “Here it is, Daddy. I got your water.” Danny returned at that moment, proudly carrying a dripping glass.

  “Thanks, pal.” But though he drank it, right now he wanted something other than water. Putting down the glass, he held out his arms to them, holding them close against his heart, and felt true peace for the first time. “I have a son. A wife. Babies to come.” He shook his head. “Six months ago, I was alone.”