“You know what they say about why SEALs, dedicated as they are, get out. Officers get out when they want more. That would be you, Garth. You don’t want more money, power, or prestige. You want more life with Bronwyn than you will have as a SEAL. Enlisted men get out when they’d had enough. That would be me. I’ve had enough of having my brain shaken, and I want more sunsets.”
Chapter 42
She was beautiful. Her hair glowed deep red, a silken cascade that just touched her collarbones where white skin gleamed and glowed as delicately pink as the inside of a seashell in the hollows.
She was so alive. She was life and light and warmth. He couldn’t remember why there was anything else he wanted, anything that was an obstacle or would take him away from her.
He heard the words of the marriage ceremony and knew that was what he wanted—not a poised hostess, not someone with the right political instincts, not a household manager who would make him look good.
He wanted to love her forever. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. Whatever else came with it, he would take.
He took her hand. “Come with me.”
“Let’s not start anything here. Tonight let’s just be happy for JJ and David and let it go at that.”
“Come.” He drew her out one of the French doors and across the flagstone patio. When she saw he intended to go down the steps that led to the boat landing, she hauled back on his hand. “Wait. Where are we going?”
“Someplace we can talk—someplace private.”
She had talked for what seemed like hours to people she had little to say to. Everyone seemed to know who she was and had had to exclaim over the novelty of what she was doing. One thing for sure, by the end of the evening, everyone in eastern North Carolina would know who and where she was. Maybe building a practice wouldn’t take as long as she thought.
But it had exhausted her—as having to meet so many people and being unable to connect to them always did.
At the end of the long dock, the excursion boat hired to taxi those who wanted to come by water lay moored, the gay lights stringing its canopy over empty seats. It puttered to itself, a deep-throated idle purr. A boardwalk led to another dock, going off at an angle that widened at the end into a screened gazebo.
“We’ve said everything we have to say.”
“No, we haven’t. I haven’t.”
“Garth, we’ve been over this. I’m not going to be in a relationship with a man whose life I don’t share. I don’t need a relationship to distract me from my life. I don’t want and I don’t need a man to be my fix, my empty thing that keeps me from focusing on all the other emptiness.”
“I hate long good-byes.”
He slipped his hand beneath her hair. He stroked the tender, sensitive nape and then cupped the back of her head. With cool competence, he held her in place for the slow seeking of her mouth. “I’m not saying good-bye.”
And there it was. Warm, dark-bright, as if she had walked into an electromagnetic field that expanded the energy of every cell in her body. Always familiar, always new. She inhaled the scent of him that was like desert nights and tall green grass, salty warm and earthy. Civilized scents of starched cotton and the clove and sandalwood. She opened her mouth to let him plunder. He took her acquiescence as his due. With inexorable skill, he set about inflaming her.
Without releasing his control of her head, he held the screen door open.
Bronwyn understood that he needed to dominate her, just a little. She couldn’t claim she didn’t love him, and at the same time she had frustrated him repeatedly. She moved. But just to make the point that the frustration went both ways, she grabbed his tie and tugged him along with her. Inside the gazebo it was deeply shadowy. The screens rendered everything outside indistinct. A world with no edges. It smelled of treated wood, sunshine, and rain, and always the salty, marshy smell of the Waterway.
From the outside, unless they happened to be silhouetted against a patch of moonlight-brightened water, they were invisible. Inside, it was like the outdoors had been encapsulated. They had all the expansive freedom of being in open air with the protection of feeling enclosed. Bronwyn made a mental note to find out what it would cost to build a gazebo like this on her dock.
The rumble of the excursion boat’s motors would cover any sound of their voices.
“This connection we have, it means something,” Garth said. “Did you know I feel a buzz every time I touch you?”
“A buzz?”
“A hum. Something. There’s an energy. Nobody else feels it but me—I’ve asked. It’s because I get you. I know you can’t—shouldn’t leave here. You’re where you’re supposed to be. I thought I needed someone who could go anywhere with me, since there was no telling where my job would take me. Then I realized I’m the one who can live anywhere. If I can live anywhere, I can live where you are.”
“Having your mail delivered to my house won’t change anything.”
“Pay attention. I said I want to live forever wherever you are, Bronny.”
“And not be gone all the time and not have secret compartments in your life I can’t go into?”
“I want to be married to you, to live with you. You want me to share my life?—You’ve got it. I’ll share everything I have and everything I am.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck as far as they would go, which wasn’t very far, but he was always ready to help her out. At the bidding of her tiny hand on his nape, he bent to take the kiss she offered.
In seconds, the kiss turned incendiary. Fire spread through his veins so quickly that he was surprised his hair didn’t light up. He lifted her higher and pushed at the straps of the green evening gown. He palmed the treasure he had sought and groaned to feel the already budded nipples.
Bronwyn’s soft, oh-so-intelligent hands sought his fly.
“I didn’t intend this—” he started to say.
“Don’t talk.” She went for a different angle on the kiss, emphasizing her point with a sharp little nip.
“—to get out of hand—”
“I don’t care.” She had him unzipped, his balls nestled in her palm as her thumb stroked his penis.
“Slow down.”
“I don’t want to slow down.”
He pulled up fistfuls of her dress. He palmed her derriere a moment and then pushed her panties down. “Step out of them.”
She did, and he knelt to pick them up and tuck them in his jacket pocket. Still kneeling, he said, “Now put one leg up on the bench. Put your hands on my shoulders.”
Bronwyn’s legs almost buckled when she felt the hot slide of his tongue against her most tender flesh. He steadied her with his large hands on her bottom.
The air was cool on her legs and bottom. The contrast made the heat of his mouth and hands almost burn. The tension gathered and coiled, and each increment seemed to draw off strength from the knee that held her up.
“Hold your dress out of the way,” he instructed and lifted her. She instinctively clasped his waist with her legs and then positioned him at her entrance. He drove into her. Drove home.
“Mine,” he said.
There was no time for refinements. No special technique. There was only pounding and the surging seeking of flesh to flesh in the ancient rhythm.
They came almost simultaneously.
***
“Excuse me. Lieutenant Vale? Would you come with me, please?”
The flunky hadn’t caught them in the act, thank God, but Garth wasn’t ready to sacrifice the afterglow. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Admiral Stephenson would like you to join him.”
Bronwyn meant more to him than any retired admiral, no matter how powerful. Admiral Stephenson no longer had anything he wanted. “Tell him I’m busy talking to the lady.”
Bronwyn laid a tiny hand on hi
s arm. “Go talk to him.”
Garth checked out her face. No question, Bronwyn picked up on things he didn’t. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He kissed her. “Don’t leave. Promise you won’t leave!”
Chapter 43
It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The black-suited man did not introduce himself when he admitted Garth to the upstairs meeting room. Instead, after an instant of sizing Garth up, he simply stepped to one side.
Admiral Stephenson stood at the window—the very picture of a powerful man relaxing. The cut-crystal tumbler in his hand held whiskey on the rocks. Though he gazed out the window at the lighted courtyard, he inclined his ear to the middle-aged man with Colonel Sanders white wavy hair who stood beside him doing most of the talking.
“Admiral Stephenson, sir?” The door-answerer interrupted his boss. “Lieutenant Vale is here.”
“Ah.” Stephenson turned, showing long, white teeth in an intelligent smile. He was a study in shades of gray—probably a clue to his personality. Deep pewter-gray hair swept straight back from a high forehead. He had a long, thin nose and eyes the color of hammered steel. He wore a gray suit and a lighter gray shirt. Even his voice was gray, dry and dusty. Nothing he said would ever quite be the truth, nor unequivocally a lie. “Thank you for joining us, Lieutenant. Have you met Senator Calhoun? Vale has a bright future, Senator, very bright.”
“I’m always glad to meet a young man with a bright future.” Calhoun offered a large-knuckled, manicured hand. “I understand you’re a SEAL.”
Garth took the senator’s extended hand. I used to be, and apparently, according to the admiral, I am again. He didn’t allow the cynical humor he felt at the senator’s remark to show. “Yessir.”
Politician to the core, Calhoun smiled in delight. “A dear friend’s daughter who is like a member of the family to Charlotte and me married a SEAL last year.”
“Yessir. Caleb and Emmie Dulaude. I attended that wedding.”
“Did you?” Calhoun looked disconcerted but recovered instantly. “You should have come over and introduced yourself! We’ve become very fond of Caleb. He treats my daughter Victoria like a little sister.”
A signal passed between Stephenson and his aide, and in a moment, Calhoun was drawn away.
“Close the door, Vale,” Stephenson directed after the other two men had left, “so we can be private for a minute. But first,” he motioned toward drink setups on a table, “what can I fix you?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
Stephenson splashed whiskey over ice and handed it to him. “Sit down. I understand, a couple of weeks back, you took charge of an unscheduled delivery.” His thin lips slipped a little sideways at his own pun. “Good work. I would like to see the child well cared for. Since you would, too, I thought we should confer.”
What the hell was going on? The Great Man offers to confer with the lowly lieutenant? The implied honor was a little hard to swallow. Renfro had indicated that the admiral had acted almost relieved that Julia had disappeared.
Garth accepted the drink but continued to stand. “Why should I confer with you at all? I’ve taken care of her so far.”
“I have a reputation for being generous to those who cooperate with me.”
“Admiral, I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to keep Julia alive and off the grid.” There was no point in denying that he had the baby or in hiding anything about her. Stephenson knew. “Why should I believe you have any more right to her than I do or that you will guard her as carefully?”
Stephenson smiled slightly, a tiny twitch of his lips. “They said you thought for yourself and had a habit of questioning orders. You questioned being sent into that Afghan village. Did you suspect a trap?”
“If I’d suspected a trap I’d have been behind the insurgents, not in front of them. But I did think searching the village was a waste of man power and time, and I said so.”
Stephenson had just as good as confirmed MacMurtry’s story that Garth’s platoon had been set up. And added credence to Renfro’s implication that Stephenson might have had something to do with the false intel. This might be the only chance Garth would ever have to get some answers. “Did the orders to send us into ambush come from you?”
Stephenson swirled the ice in his glass as if he was weighing several answers. He took a swallow. “No.”
“I feel like that’s only half an answer. Sir.”
Stephenson’s aide slipped back inside the room. “Let’s return to the topic of the service you did me recently.” Stephenson smiled genially at Garth. “You have done well to care for the child and to keep her out of hands I wouldn’t have wanted her to fall into.”
Garth refused to be charmed or flattered by the VIP’s praise. “First of all, whose child is Julia?”
“Julia?” Stephenson sent a questioning glance to his aide.
“Estelle,” the man supplied.
Stephenson nodded. “Ah. You named her Julia. She is the child of an American serviceman and an enemy combatant, also an American, who was a double agent and sometimes a triple agent.” Pain, regret—something flickered in the older man’s eyes, before he added, “She’s dead now.”
Not She died but She’s dead now. It sounded like Stephenson had played a part in Freytag’s execution. Had he been trying to help her, or had he set her up? “The serviceman. The father. Are you entitled to act for him?”
The admiral smiled frostily. The aide’s lips moved slightly, too, like they shared an inside joke. It suddenly occurred to Garth that American serviceman could be used to describe Stephenson himself. “No one—else”—Stephenson looked pointedly at Garth—“will question my right. There is no family. That is all you need to know.”
And that, apparently, was all the admiral was going to say about that. He took a sip of his drink. “Now, about you. I can see to it that you are reinstated and that you get the promotion that’s coming to you.”
Garth allowed himself something close to a snort. “Right. And I’ll be shipped off to the Aleutians to monitor Russian trawler radio traffic for the next ten years. I’m credited with being a yellow, lying, fuckup.”
Again, the almost nonexistent smile. “I think you’ll find that my cleaners will be able to remove all stain from your reputation. It will be best to transfer you to a West Coast Team. However, I can assure you, your future there is bright.”
Stephenson was a most unlikely Santa Claus, but he seemed to have read everything on Garth’s wish list and was set to deliver. The future that had seemed shut down from the moment he had awakened after surgery suddenly had the lights on again and was inviting him inside.
Not for a minute did Garth doubt that the admiral could do everything he said. In fact, the arrogance within Stephenson’s very soft, understated voice told Garth he could fulfill every promise and more. But no matter where Garth went, he would be Stephenson’s man. And the line would get blurrier and blurrier.
“No.”
Stephenson swirled the ice in his glass. “What then? A Pentagon slot could be arranged, or maybe you’d like an embassy liaison.” He studied Garth’s face. “No? Money?”
“I want a discharge from the navy. No stalling, no paper-fucking, and no kick in the pants. A nice honorable discharge—oh, and you can throw in that reputation cleanup.”
“You surprise me, Lieutenant. Frankly, I’m disappointed. I understood you were a dedicated career man.”
I’ll just bet you’re disappointed, you old sidewinder. You had my career all planned and every way you would use me all figured out. Garth showed some teeth of his own. “Not so much, anymore.” He paused to let that si
nk in, and then added, “A discharge isn’t all. I want Julia.”
“You want the child, Estelle?” The aide spoke aloud for the first time since he had returned.
“Julia, Estelle, whatever you want to call her. Free and clear. With every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed on every single piece of documentation that makes her indisputably mine forever.”
Stephenson lowered thick pewter eyebrows over hammered steel eyes. He swirled his drink. The only sound in the room was the clink of ice on crystal. “Is that all?”
Garth smiled crookedly. If he was asking, he’d might as well ask for everything. “You can expedite Petty Officer First Class David Graziano’s medical discharge, making sure he gets full benefits.”
“Did you get all that, Franks?” Stephenson asked.
“Yessir.”
Stephenson crossed the room to the window, where he stood looking out as he had been when Garth first saw him. “Franks, maybe Lieutenant Vale has the answer. I was prepared to take charge of the infant, but she can’t live with me. My… situation would not be good for a child,” he said pensively. His shoulders under the fine gray wool of his suit were as square, his back as straight, but he looked a little bit older. He swirled his drink. The ice had melted.
“Let me refresh your drink,” Franks said.
Franks took the glass Stephenson handed him and clinked two ice cubes into it. Then he added a teaspoon of whiskey.
“More.”
Franks almost smiled. He obligingly poured in enough to darken the ice.
Stephenson nodded his thanks. “Thinks he can fool me into believing I’ve had two drinks if he adds ice to the first one.”
Franks’s little affectionate game had worked, though. The admiral had his composure back.
“Now for my conditions regarding the child. I do care about Estelle… Julia’s welfare. Allow me to send her presents and enquire about her from time to time.” His voice was dry as crushed bones. “If she needs anything… call… um…”
SEALed Forever Page 29
