SEALed Forever

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  “And the first one says, ‘Well, I don’t want to be responsible for letting him continue—limping like he is. Tell you what. So-and-so is a really good medic. We’ll ask him to evaluate Mr. Vale’s condition. If he says it’s okay, we’ll let him finish.’

  “So they put me in the jeep and they take me to the medic who is like five yards from the finish point. And they sit there shooting the breeze, and the medic looks at my leg, and about the time my two buddies catch up to us, they ask the medic, ‘What do you think? Is the knee too bad, or can we put him back in?’ And the medic says, ‘Yeah, I think it’ll be okay to let him finish.’

  “And so they wave my buddies over and tell them ‘Mr. Vale can finish.’ So the guys come over to the jeep and help me down, and the lead instructor gets this big grin on his face and says, ‘You are all secure from Hell Week.’”

  “What does ‘secure from Hell Week’ mean?”

  “It meant we had successfully completed it, and Hell Week was now behind us.”

  Bronwyn was silent while she thought his story over. Her eyes narrowed. “The instructors helped you. Was what they did breaking the rules?”

  Garth waggled a hand. “More like a creative interpretation. They couldn’t actively help me, so they made the guidelines they had to follow work to my advantage.”

  ***

  When she was done treating his scratch, she looked him over for other wounds. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the long scar on the outside of his thigh, near the hip. It was darker than the surrounding skin and fresh enough to still be shiny and raised.

  He tried to imagine what it looked like to her. Until this moment, he’d never given a thought to its appearance. For her, he wanted everything perfect; he wanted to be perfect and knew he wasn’t. He sighed. It was what it was. They would have to work with what they had. She was a doctor; she had probably seen worse.

  At length she stepped back. “It looks clean. No permanent damage.” She tossed the used pad in the trash, then stripped off the gloves and tossed them in behind it. “That’s a bad scar on your thigh,” she observed in a tone so casual it made every nerve in his body go on alert. “Do you have any loss of function?”

  She was fishing for something, but he couldn’t guess what. “It aches sometimes if I have to stand for long periods. Squats aren’t as much fun as they used to be.”

  She didn’t smile at his tiny joke. She crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned against the butcher block. “All right. What’s the real story about where Julia came from? You’re not this baby’s father.”

  Chapter 14

  There is no “I” in Team.

  —SEAL motto

  “You’re not this baby’s father,” Bronwyn told the big man perched on the kitchen counter. She fought sick disgust at herself for letting the situation come to this. She’d had her doubts from the moment she’d seen him—at least she’d sensed there was more than he was saying. Still, she’d let the feeling that, regardless of appearances, everything was okay—coupled with the fact that she had met him—keep her from doing what she should have done in the first place: turn the whole situation over to the authorities.

  But she didn’t know enough about him to know what he was capable of—not really. And as for the elusive resemblance to Troy, she couldn’t trust it. Police officers and, she suspected, navy SEALs were forced by their jobs to see the world differently than ordinary people did. They made choices that kept them on the right side of the law, yes, but they had some of the same qualities and had learned to think in the same ways as those they hunted. It would be a mistake for anyone to assume that all SEALs or all cops were, by definition, good guys.

  Even now she wasn’t handling the situation right. When hospital staff realized a child’s illness or injury was inconsistent with the parent’s story, they were supposed to make an excuse to get the child out of the room and then call the authorities. They weren’t supposed to confront.

  But there had been the disorienting shift in reality a few minutes earlier when she’d understood the hulking silhouetted figure was Garth. With her heart still pounding from the jolt of adrenaline, she had nevertheless been sure that everything was all right. Finally.

  The feeling that he was familiar—that he was in some way known to her—had been so strong that the concern she had felt when he had returned wet and muddy and bloody had been effortless; she had treated him like a friend. Slipping into banter had been the most natural thing in the world. And now she was paying the price. She didn’t intimidate him one bit.

  In his bronze face, his teeth shone white in a smile full of challenge. “Her mother says she’s mine. How can you be so sure she’s not?”

  The smile made her stomach flutter and her knees get weak. That was bad. She fisted her hands on her hips. “Simple deduction. I’m certified in emergency medicine. I’ve seen plenty of scars like that.” She pointed to his thigh.

  She tried not to think about the masculine power and beauty it encapsulated. She tried not to remember how she’d been able to see the pain in it when she first met him. She tried not to get sidetracked by her intuition that some inflammation needed to be addressed.

  “I’d guess it’s more than six months and less than a year old. The baby is about eight months old. Add nine months gestation, and you get seventeen months. Ergo, you were nowhere near this baby’s mother when she was conceived. You were in Afghanistan.”

  He didn’t deny it. His face registered no emotion she could read.

  “If I’d been able to reach JJ,” she added, “I would have already put all the facts together and called the police.”

  His smile didn’t change. “What facts?”

  “What facts?” Bronwyn’s voice was rising, but she couldn’t help it. His dead-level calm questioning of the obvious made her see red.

  “Yes. What facts necessitate bringing in the authorities?”

  “Fact,” she spat. “You are in possession of a baby who is not yours! Fact: she was drugged and allowed to get dehydrated!” Bronwyn took a cleansing breath. When she spoke again, she managed a more judicious tone. “The simplest explanation is that you kidnapped her, accidentally overdosed her, and became alarmed.”

  She reached into her pocket for her cell phone but remembered she’d plugged it into the charger. She crossed her arms under her breasts. “Start talking. And you’d better include all the reasons I shouldn’t report a kidnapping.”

  The house creaked in the silence that ensued as they faced off. He sat absolutely immobile—immobility she had no doubt he could maintain for hours.

  His intensely blue eyes were the only life in his face. On an Alaskan cruise, Bronwyn had seen icebergs breaking off a mountain of a glacier and dropping into the sea. The deep, clear aqua of ice that had been under pressure for eons had been exactly the same color.

  Deep inside she shivered. The color thrilled her now as it had then with its beauty and with its message that she was in the presence of immense forces. Her heart pounded. Her nerves stretched tight. Still she refused to look away. She had already yielded to the force of this man’s presence too many times today.

  At last the brilliance of his eyes faded slightly—almost sadly—but his eyes didn’t waver. “I can’t.”

  “Huh?”

  “I can’t tell you.” He elucidated.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either.”

  Bronwyn huffed in disbelief. “Not good enough! You really don’t think I’m going to let you walk out of here with her, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” he responded gravely as if he hadn’t understood the rhetorical nature of her question. “I want to tell you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. More than I’ve ever wanted anything at all,” he repeated in the same gravelly, uninflected tone. “Except to kiss you.”

  Chapter 15

 
Anyone can just go in there and kill someone, but you can’t get information from a corpse.

  —SEAL saying

  Garth watched Bronwyn’s cheeks flame hot as the full import of his words sank in. He had spoken without thought, something he never did, but this was his mate, dammit. Every second he was around her, he became more convinced that was what she was. He’d been instructed by Kohn to go looking for a wife, and, by God, he had found her.

  But this was so not the way to go about courting the love of his life.

  They weren’t supposed to be squared off. They were supposed to stand together, side by side. He had already lied as much as he could to her and more than he wanted to. He had wanted so much to tell her the truth—if not the truth about the baby, then truth about something—that he’d blurted out what every cell in his body, every scrap of his soul, wanted.

  Thank God, he hadn’t used the verb he really had in mind. He’d switched to the more acceptable “kiss” at the last possible instant.

  Now the atmosphere between them was weirder than ever. She backed away from him. It took every ounce of self-control, but he let her.

  “Um. Put your shorts back on.” She held his gaze, but she seemed to be talking more to herself than to him. “I need to get my phone from the charger. I’m calling the cops.”

  When she turned aside to retrieve her cell, he tossed aside the towel and pulled up his shorts. The sound the snap at his waist made was loud. “Wait. Please.”

  She whirled around. “What should I wait for? For you to tell me what’s going on? Or maybe you think you’re sexy enough to make me forget all my questions if I’ll just give you a little time to soften me up.”

  Sexy enough, huh? He liked the sound of that, but he didn’t think this was the moment to tell her so.

  Her voice rose with exasperation. “Explain something. Anything! Just one tiny little thing.”

  A whimpery protest came from the darkened room beyond. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mildred get to her feet. She peered over the side of an open carton, sniffed, and then trotted into the kitchen to bump her nose at the back of Bronwyn’s leg—just as if she were trying to set Bronwyn in motion.

  Garth knew he had seconds to make his case. “Okay, listen. Calling the police is a bad idea. I’m trying to keep her safe.”

  For a long tense moment Bronwyn’s clear, tea-colored eyes held his. “That’s all?” She stared in disbelief. “You don’t think that’s adequate, do you? What kind of danger is she in?” The dog bumped her again. “What is it, Mildred?” The dog’s toenails clicked rapidly on the oak floor. “Okay, I’ll go get the baby.”

  Bronwyn went over to the large box Mildred had sniffed. “Hey, sweetie,” she cooed, reaching into the box. “Are you awake and thirsty? You’re in luck. Your da—you have bottles, and—”

  “A box?” Garth demanded in the steely, dead-level calm tone that let his men know they had better account for themselves. He had thought he’d pushed that first sight of Julia after he lifted off the box top far, far away. Who knew that revulsion could rise up in his throat at the very suggestion it had happened again? “You put her in a box?”

  “Just to sleep when I got too sleepy myself to hold her—so she’d be safe—if she’s not crawling yet, she will be soon—” Bronwyn straightened with the baby in her arms and stared, transfixed by the expression on his face. “What? What’s the matter?”

  Garth ran his hand over his face. Tired. He jammed his hands in his pockets, fighting now to keep his control. Shake it off. Breathe. Bronwyn was innocent of any wrongdoing. She’d only been using her best judgment under the circumstances. She deserved to understand why he had overreacted.

  “I found her closed up in a box,” he explained.

  Bronwyn’s white skin grew whiter as understanding dawned. Her arms tightened on the baby. “You mean it was a complete accident that you found her? She was hidden… in a box… in the hangar?” Her eyebrows pushed a little pleat into the area over her nose. “How much more is there to this story?”

  “Not much more. I wouldn’t have found her if I hadn’t smelled her dirty diaper. She was in—” He cut himself off. He had already said too much. Bronwyn had amply demonstrated she could put together every crumb of fact she obtained. Before she could formulate the next question, he said, “I don’t think she had been left there to die. There were diapers and a cloth doll in the box. I think someone left her there thinking she was somewhere she would be better off.”

  “Did the note say her name is Julia?”

  At last, an easy question. He smiled his relief. “I don’t know her name. Julia is my mother’s name. I borrowed it.”

  “Oh.” Bronwyn jiggled the baby while holding his gaze as if she wanted to read his mind. “Get the bottles out, please,” she said at last, “and wash one so we can give her something to drink.”

  When the baby was on Bronwyn’s lap and making contented sucking sounds as her pursed lips pulled at the plastic nipple, Bronwyn raised her eyes to his, trying to read the truth in them. She asked sadly, “Was there really a note from the child’s mother?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know, or think you know, whose child this is?”

  “Honestly, I don’t.” He willed her to believe him. “I will return Julia to her mother if I can.”

  “Despite the condition you found the baby in, you would let the mother have her?”

  “I don’t think she was trying to get rid of her. I think she was trying to save her.”

  Chapter 16

  Build in opportunity, but use it sparingly.

  —The Moscow Rules

  Bronwyn shifted the child on her lap to ease the pressure of the amazingly heavy little head on her arm. The baby felt subtly better, less floppy. Her hands grasped at the bottle with more coordination. She lay with one leg cocked. Her tiny foot, with its delicate, translucent pink toes, was propped on Bronwyn’s chest.

  When, from time to time, she raised her eyelids to look up at Bronwyn, her pupils were more normal, her slate-blue gaze more focused. That confirmed Bronwyn’s diagnostic impression that no disease underlay the infant’s dehydration—she had simply been drugged and given nothing to drink. Bronwyn noted how angry such neglect made her but filed the emotion away. Responding emotionally to what had been done to Julia would not help her sort out the truth now.

  The fact was, the improvement in the baby’s alertness as the drug wore off lent subtle credence to Garth’s story—what little he had told her. Drugging a child to keep it quiet made sense if the child was to be hidden for any length of time in a box.

  And if there was one part of his story she didn’t doubt, it was that Julia had been in a box and Garth had been appalled to find her there. Though controlled, Garth’s surprise and fury at learning that she had let the baby sleep in a carton were so disproportionate that for a second she had had a direct glimpse into the shock and horror he had felt when he found Julia.

  Something within Bronwyn that had been squeezed tight to the point of pain unfurled as she concluded that he had had no part in how the infant came to be neglected and abandoned.

  He was nothing to her; the sooner she had him out of her house, the sooner she could reassemble her fragile peace, but she didn’t want him to be one of the bad guys. She could report a case of child abandonment to the police without getting him into trouble.

  “Look,” she told him, “I believe you didn’t kidnap Julia. I even believe you found her in a box—and you had nothing to do with how she got there. But it doesn’t matter what I believe. Legally, I have to report child neglect. Actually everyone does, but because I’m a doctor, responsibility for failing to act would fall heavier on me than it would on you.”

  Garth jammed his hands in his pockets. “What will happen if you don’t?”

  “I’m not sure what the penalty would be, but even if I w
ouldn’t go to jail, I could lose my license.” Bronwyn heard her own words as she spoke them. Was she practicing defensive medicine again? Did she believe turning the child over was the right thing to do, or was she covering her ass? “Why do you say calling the police is a bad idea? Can’t they find out where she came from and who should take her better than you can?”

  “I found her on a plane. The flight didn’t originate in the States. When the cops try to find out where she came from, they’ll need to involve the FBI. The FBI will question where the plane came from and why, but they won’t get far before they are told for ‘national security reasons’ to stop the investigation. Someone will be sent to take custody of her, and she will disappear—without a hope of tracing her—finally and forever.”

  Bronwyn noted the sudden inclusion of the plane detail. Put together with the secrecy that surrounded everything, his explanation almost made terrible sense. Sick, cold dread made it hard to breathe deeply. “They would kill her?”

  “Maybe not.” But the way he said it made her know he thought it was a real possibility. “No one would ever know what happened—but if her mother is looking for her, she would never find her.”

  Impatience with his evasiveness welled up again. She wasn’t going to fall for a bunch of paranoid nonsense. “This does not compute. What are you leaving out? Why would federal agents clamp down on an investigation of a baby stowaway in the name of ‘national security’?… Do they really make people disappear never to be heard of again? Give me a break. Your story sounds like you’ve been watching too much TV. It isn’t real—is it?”

  “Bronwyn, I know how these things work.”

  “Because you used to be a SEAL?” He was silent. “Where did you plan to take her after you left here?” She gave him a warning glare. “And don’t say, ‘Don’t ask.’”

  He smiled.

  Bronwyn had finally figured out what it was about his smiles that had bothered her, although they seemed genuine enough. Whenever he smiled, she had the feeling he’d had to go a long way to get the smile and hadn’t dusted it before he put it on. But this time it was like his smile was one he had made fresh, just for her.