The euphoria rippled through her in a storm. No one had ever kissed her like she was his all, his everything. She had never wanted to be any man’s either.
And so the kiss lengthened and ended only because they needed air.
He pushed her back against his thighs, his hand sinking into her hair. “Abby, get up. Now. Come around the other side and crawl back into bed.”
Totally without a thought in her head, she obeyed. When she had settled onto her back, he ran one strong arm around her waist and pushed her to her side. He adjusted his body behind her, his corded length along her own, one leg over her hip. Then he hugged her tightly to him. “Tomorrow morning, if I’m not here when you wake up, don’t panic.”
She did now. She whipped her head around to stare at him over her shoulder. “Why?”
“Oh, honey.” He kissed her nose. “I’m not leaving. I’m going for an early swim.” He moved closer, and the feel of his mighty erection against her ass gave the evidence of his rationale. “I’ll need it. This will be the longest night of my life.”
Chapter Five
They climbed into the taxi at eleven-thirty the next morning. Visiting hours for the Burn Unit at the hospital started at noon, but his class didn’t begin until one. He wore his fatigues for the class. Abby wore a cherry-red T-shirt and white linen trousers, her heavy hair in a bun at her nape. But her skin was pale, her lips tight with worry.
“Thank you,” Nick told the valet as the man closed the door on their cab. He slid next to Abby and wondered how the hell to reach her. She’d been closed off all morning. The only glimmer of the woman he met last night was apparent when he returned to their room after his morning swim. Her golden eyes had lit up like lights on a Christmas tree when he walked around the room in his swim trunks.
He inhaled. Well, good. He still interested her physically, maybe in other ways, too. Wanting to ensure she’d continue to look at him like he was her next addiction, he had tried conversation. But during breakfast in the hotel dining room and afterward when they went to buy her a swimsuit at the mall next door, she remained quiet as a mouse.
Only now was he beginning to realize that the problem was not him, not their growing relationship. No. Every time he mentioned a detail of visiting BAMC, she’d clutch. Her fear centered on seeing her brother again. Nick didn’t have any cures for that, but he did know one thing, and he was going to use it.
“Want to tell me what’s troubling you?”
She fiddled with the straps of her purse and shook her head. “I don’t know how to act.”
“With me?”
“No. You are—”
He loved her eyes. He could admire them for decades and never tire. He hated to see them clouded with fears, their beauty dimmed by circumstances she couldn’t change. “I am what?”
“You haven’t changed.”
“Not in the past twelve hours, no.” He tipped his head, smiling. “But I will. I can. Everyone does.”
She rolled a shoulder. “What’s happened to Terry is different.”
“His is bigger change. But people are in accidents all the time. Others experience shocks, surprises. One day they have a headache, and the next they’ve had a stroke.”
She crossed her arms. “You’re a fatalist?”
“I’m a realist.”
She pressed her lips together. “Guess that makes me naïve.”
“Maybe you’ve never had too many negative things happen to you.” He didn’t like the sound of that on his lips. But hey, he knew the shoe fit. He’d heard Terry say the family seemed to be blessed. Except for the recent death of his and Abby’s parents in a small plane crash, their extended family of famous war heroes and politicians enjoyed charmed lives.
“That’s true,” she said. “But Terry has never had anything terrible happen to him.”
“He’s told me that himself.”
Abby waved a hand. “I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Me, neither.”
“I just don’t want to show him how devastated I am for him. I think I overreacted last month when I was here. I want to make things easier for him, not crazier.”
“I would suggest the best you can do for him is learn what you’re up against.”
“Go to the support groups?” She checked his face and nodded. “Yes.”
“I hear the ones for relatives of wounded warriors are very good. Free. Maybe join one.”
“Yes. I’m so used to Terry flying through every challenge that I thought I wouldn’t need to go. But if I’m going to be a basket case, I won’t help him. I should make time for one. They hold a few in Bethesda at the Naval Hospital.”
“It would be better to have a few tools to deal with your own depression before you try to deal with his. If he is depressed, that is.”
“And if I am.” She hastened to correct him…almost a bit too fast.
Oh, wow. “You’re angry with me for suggesting you might be? I get it.”
“No.” She considered the traffic outside. “I don’t think I am depressed. But I am anxious. In a haze because Terry has never needed anyone. He was always the one with the sunny disposition, the best grades, the right answers to any problem, the guy everyone looked to. Everything went his way. And now, I don’t know if he has any means to cope with the fact that he can’t change this.”
Nick relaxed into his seat at her own acceptance of her brother’s challenges. “Terry knew what he signed up for when he joined the military, Abby. And when he earned his Trident, he knew that a big percentage of the force suffer injuries. Some of them fatal.”
She swallowed audibly.
“What do you do for stress?” he asked when she continued to work on suppressing her sorrow.
“Yoga.”
“We’ll do it when we go back to the hotel.”
“You do yoga?”
“Sure. Why not? Tai-chi, too.” He arched a brow. “I have an exercise for you.”
“Here?”
“You have someplace else to be?” he teased.
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Fanny back into the crook of the seat.” To show her, he wiggled his ass back so that he sat perfectly straight. “Good. Hands on each thigh. Eyes straight ahead at infinity. Right. Now imagine you see a red ball and it sits at the bottom of your spine. On an inhale, watch the ball rise all the way up your backbone, up your nape, up your scalp, and at the top, you begin to exhale. Slowly. Okay, keep watching the red ball as it drops over your forehead, down your nose, over the tip, down to your lips and over the top and over the bottom, down your chin and your throat and down your chest to your belly button and through your intestine back to where the ball began. You should be finished with your inhalation and your exhalation.”
She darted her eyes to his, not moving any part of her body. “And this does what for me?”
“Gets you centered and relaxed.”
She pressed her lips together.
“We can do it again.”
“Okay.”
At the end of one more exercise, she sat with a smile on her lips. “I like that.”
“Good. Took your mind off your, um, challenge?”
“It did. Maybe we should have done this after we saw our Confederate ghost.”
Nick noticed in the rearview mirror that the cab driver shifted his gaze to Abby. Ghost was the attention-getting word. He caught back a grin. “We could have. I wish we’d been able to see the hotel manager this morning and given her a piece of our mind about booking you into that room. That receptionist should never have done that.”
Abby shook her head. “No, it’s fine. I don’t want the negativity of complaining. While I hate to think— Correction. I hate to believe there are such things as ghosts, I saw him. You saw him. The two of us can’t be delusional together, and she said they have tried to get rid of him.”
“Them,” he amended.
“Right. Them. And I’m certain they have to fill the rooms, even if they do have
ghosts. You and I are here. Johnny Reb didn’t hurt us. So, there you go.”
If ever there was an expression of someone accepting the things they couldn’t change, hers was one. Nick reached across and took her hand for the umpteenth time. Once more, to hold her was a heart-warming experience like no other. “Still they could have warned you about him. That he might be there.”
“Oh, right.” She laughed. “They’d say, here’s your key, Miss, and by the way, don’t mind the ghost in your room. He has the same last name as you, but he’s harmless.”
“Which reminds me, did your cousin call you back yet?” This morning before breakfast, Abby had texted her cousin who ran the family genealogy website. She didn’t see a Mabry in the tree so she’d asked her to look up records to see if there was a Mabry Stuart in any branches of the lines.
“I haven’t looked at my phone.” Abby dug it from her purse and punched in her code to get the main screen. “Let’s go to the Alamo this afternoon when we get back, okay?”
“You want to see it?”
“Sure. The legend intrigues me,” she said as if she would say more but decided not to.
Nick decided to tell her his reaction to the old mission fort. “I like seeing it, learning about the battle, but I have to tell you, I get the creeps when I go there.”
She pulled back to stare at him with a glimmer in her eye. “You? Get the creeps? From going to the Alamo?”
“Weird,” he said with a shrug. “Each of us has a burden to carry.”
She caught a laugh in her throat.
“That’s the same feeling I had when I looked at our Colonel Stuart yesterday.” He frowned. “Maybe I’m just attuned to ghosts.”
“You mean you’ve seen them in the Alamo, too?”
“Oh, no. Never there. Just in your room two-twenty-two, I’m happy to say.”
“That’s a relief,” she said with finality.
“Wouldn’t want to date a guy who talks to dead people, right?” he chided her.
“Wait, wait. You not only see them, you talk to them, too?” Her expression drifted from teasing to incredulous.
“No, no. I’m pulling your leg. I just feel the power of history, you might say, when I visit some places. Gettysburg, Richmond, the Alamo.”
“I’ll take that as an explanation I understand. I often feel that way myself.” She paused a minute and closed her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I was just recalling that…well, when I first came to the Menger last month, I hated walking down the halls. I had this idea that someone was looking at me. Searching for me. I never saw anyone in the hall. Not a guest or a maid. No one.”
With a sudden trepidation, he squeezed her fingers tightly. “Weird.”
She wiggled in her seat. “Yeah. Like the hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was as if an electrical shock flowed through me.”
“Different from what happened to you when we first shook hands?” He was curious how strong her tingles were. Were they, for example, similar to his when he walked into the Alamo? Or were they stronger?
“Nothing like what we had yesterday when we met,” she told him with a grin bringing brilliance to her features. “More like a steady humming flow.”
“Okay.” That was the same sensation he felt.
“Folks,” the driver said. “We’re here. That’s five-sixty.”
“Let me pay,” Abby said, digging a few bills from her purse. “You treated last night. My turn.”
They climbed out and walked into the multi-story glass and brick hospital. Within minutes, they were shown to the floor where Terry was a patient.
In the middle of the hall, Abby halted. She looked like a deer in the headlights.
“Come on. You’ll be fine,” he told her. “I’d hold your hand, but we might incite Terry to have more questions than we have answers.”
“Agreed,” she said with a curt nod. “Let’s go.”
****
Abby’s brother was hooked up to IVs for saline solution and a catheter. But he sat up, his complexion on the undamaged side of his face much more normal than when she’d visited him last month. His eye above his wound did not look bloodshot but clear, and his injured arm was still immobilized in a brace. He’d lost more weight in the intervening four weeks since she’d seen him. But with time and a good exercise regimen, she had no doubt he’d build himself back up to body-builder proportions.
“Hey, hey, hey.” He beamed at them as Abby kissed his uninjured cheek. “Did not know I’d get the honor of a sister and a friend. What’s up with this? You guys meet each other in the hall or what?”
“Hi, Stu.” Nick greeted him the way he usually did and shook his good hand. “Actually, Abby and I met on the plane.”
“I gave him my seat,” she explained while she took note of his heart and blood pressure monitors.
Terry whistled. “First class, pal. Hard to come by. Glad you took her up on it.”
“I also offered him dinner,” she explained as she took the only visitor’s chair. “But I was one-upped on that.”
Nick piped up. “I took her to dine at my sister’s restaurant.”
“Oh, that’s first class, too, I hear.” Terry’s speech was slow, but his articulation was better than it had been.
“It was,” Abby agreed.
“How are they treating you here?” Nick leaned back against the ledge of the window and crossed his arms.
Abby smiled, happy Nick had asked the leading question.
“Oh, you know.” Terry winced and tried to shift, but with all his apparatus, the move caused him apparent discomfort. “Tough goin’ some days. The baths are killers. I’d rather sit in a jungle in a wool ghillie and let the fire ants eat me alive. But nothing I can do. I gotta endure.”
“Nice facility,” Nick said, avoiding any follow-up to the negative comment.
“First rate,” Terry was quick to agree. “Supposed to be the latest treatments. Don’t know if I can live through it though. Some days, it’s a damn bitch.”
“I’m sure,” Nick said.
Abby stared at her brother, half of him there, half of him this different man. Half of him the jovial guy, the other half, stiff, partially paralyzed, his hazel eyes cold gray.
“How long are you here for, Nick?”
“Only until Sunday. I’ve got a class that starts in a few minutes. It runs this afternoon and tomorrow.”
“You staying at the Menger, too?” Terry asked.
“I am.”
“We’ve gotten to know each other,” Abby said, hoping to head off any statement about their sleeping arrangements. Terry was very protective of her and wouldn’t find the excuse of the ghost or the booked hotel useful.
“Good. Good. Gives you someone to keep you company while you’re here waiting for them to let you in to see me. I asked for more, but they’re not budging. You’d think they’d understand about the cost of family flying here to the end of the world.”
Terry sounded angry and self-pitying. She didn’t like that in him. “It’s necessary. Not a hardship for me.”
“Not for you, Abby. But lots of these parents and wives have no money to be flying in on weekends.”
Nick flashed her a warning look.
“I can see that would be a problem. Not often enough—”
“Or worse,” Terry said, his jaw tight with bitterness that filled the room, “not at all.”
Nick and Abby stared at each other as she searched for a way to flip the conversation to a topic more positive.
“We’re going to go to the Alamo this afternoon,” she put in. “I’ve never been.”
“You’ll like it,” Terry told her and started to say something else but stopped.
“Oh?” She picked up the thread. “Have you been through?”
“I have, yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound happy about continuing the subject. “I hopped a ride from Norfolk Air Station a couple of times down here. That was before my last d
eployment. Did the Spanish Missions. Three and four-hundred year-old churches, you know. The Alamo was one of them, then got caught up in the Texans’ war for independence from Mexico.” He frowned, looking into middle space.
“Wow.” She marveled at her brother. “You know a lot. Especially for a guy who hates history.”
One side of Terry’s face moved up into a smirk. “Well, I wasn’t here for the margaritas.”
That was a leading statement. But it was also one laden with resentment. Abby had no idea just who or what Terry was so angry at. And she sure as hell was not about to ask. Instinct told her it was none of her business.
Nick lifted his chin at her in what she took was a warning to stay away from the subject of tourism in San Antonio. He walked closer to Terry. “I understand you have a lot of physical therapy.”
Terry inhaled. “Not as much as my regular workout for duty. Here I’ve got exercises designed to keep the muscles stretched and limber. Except for my arm.” He glanced down at his injured limb, and in his gaze was disgust that socked the air from Abby.
“That’ll come,” Nick told him. “Later.”
“So they say. But I have nerve damage so I might never recover my full range.”
Abby wanted to add a few soothing words, but she didn’t find anything that didn’t sound patronizing. So she sat back, swallowing her best intentions. This was probably not the best time to argue with Terry about giving her access to his medical records. She remained silent and hated the choice.
“Look, you two,” Terry said as he blinked back moisture in his eyes. “You should go, huh? I’m not up to too much today.”
Nick examined him a long minute.
Reluctantly, Abby got to her feet. “Sure. Don’t want to tire you out.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow.” Nick strode forward and put his hand on Terry’s forearm.
“Right. Do that,” Terry said with forced enthusiasm. “I’ll be ready.”
Abby went over to kiss her brother on the cheek. “Take it easy, buddy.”
A few minutes later, she and Nick were outside in the blazing hot sun. She strode straight for the main gate as if a pack of hyenas were on her heels.
You Were Always Mine (7 Brides for 7 SEALs Book 1) Page 6
