Behind them the technician cleared her throat uneasily. “Perhaps I should come back later,” she said.
Neither McKay nor Carly paid the slightest attention as she shook her head glanced at the monitor, then slipped out of the room.
“There are—were—reasons,” McKay said. “Damned good reasons.”
“Name one.”
“This,” he said, tracing the jagged scar above his collar. “There's another across my back.”
“So? You think all I wanted was a pretty face?” Carly's hand opened and closed on her tunic. “No commitments, McKay. We agreed, and I can accept that. But you had a right to know about the baby and I had a right to know that you were safe. If you wanted to move on, you should have told me. Dammit, it was wrong to make me wait and worry.” To make me bleed inside day after day.
“You don't get it, do you?” McKay raked his fingers through his hair. “I've got a plate in my head and two new joints, Carly. I've got a knee that may never work right again.” He spoke in a rapidfire burst, as if the knowledge cut him to the quick even now.
“I was there, remember? I saw the explosion and the helicopter going in to airlift you out. My imagination conjured up a lot worse than a few new joints.” She pulled the gown down over her stomach and struggled to rise. She didn't like the idea of settling her entire future while lying flat on her back. She certainly wasn't going to cede any psychological advantage to this man who already wielded too much power over her future.
His hand shot out, helping her to sit up, then preventing her from leaving the table. “You think I don't want you?” His gaze fixed on the wall, as if he couldn't bear to look at her. “I wanted you. I want you now, dammit. The memory of your face brought me awake every morning and followed me down into sleep every night. Thinking of you always helped me find a way through the pain.” He frowned. “But wanting isn't enough. I had to know what kind of future I could offer you. I wanted my answers to be cut and dried, with no maybes or complications when I finally saw you again.” He gave a mirthless laugh as he glanced at the monitor. “But this definitely qualifies as a complication. Now I don't have the luxury of time to make it up to you as I'd planned.”
“What are you saying?” She clamped down on her urge to touch his hand.
She wouldn't give in yet. The stubborn man would have to spell it all out, for better or worse.
McKay closed his eyes. “I'm saying I couldn't allow myself to want you, not with this banged-up body and a career that was over just when it was getting interesting.”
“You think I care about a few scars or a limp?”
“No, you wouldn't care, but I would. At least I thought I did.” He gave her that irreverent grin she had been so drawn to from the first. “Call it a ‘man thing.’ ” Abruptly his hand closed on her shoulder, his expression grave. “I was a damned fool, but I had to know there was something I could offer you. Both of you,” he added hoarsely.
“I won't let this baby become a bargaining chip.” Carly took an angry breath. “I'm not pulling emotional strings here.”
Fury roiled over his face. “You think I could leave now, knowing you're carrying my child? You think you could make me leave? There's not a chance in hell.” His hands were shaking hard as he tilted her head back, his eyes blazing. “I told you once that I'd be responsible and I meant it. It's my fault that we—”
“I was there too, remember? The fault belongs to both of us, and it's a consequence I will never regret, whether you're in my life or not.” Carly pushed his hand off her shoulder. “You know that I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself and my child. You can walk out that door right now if you still have any questions about that. I won't say a single word to stop you.”
His hand slid along her tear-streaked face. Funny, she hadn't even realized she was crying.
“Dear God don't cry, sunshine. I can't take seeing you cry and knowing my stupidity caused it. I should have called you.” He paused. “Every day I walked to the phone and had to fight not to dial your number. But I told myself I was doing what was right, what was best, even though every thought of you drew blood.”
Her breath caught at the sound of his admission. She
wasn't above hoping he was as miserable as she'd been over the last few months.
He smoothed her wet face with his strong hand. “Good sweet God, don't cry or you'll have me crying, too.”
“Is that another thing SEALs don't do?”
“SEALs don't do a lot of things, including make good husbands. You don't think that's been on my mind?” McKay pressed his fingers to his eyes. “But that's no longer an issue. I'll be manning a desk at headquarters, coordinating operations in Virginia. I still don't know if I can handle that, but seeing you—you, sunshine, not the image on that screen—makes me think I've got a decent shot of succeeding. I'll enjoy the hell out of being able to come home every night. I'll like knowing that someone will be missing me. I won't even regret not having to pack up and pull out at a moment's notice.”
“Of course you will,” Carly said with a tight laugh, not quite ready to believe what he was saying.
“Yeah, I'll miss it,” he conceded with a grin. “Maybe for an hour here or there. But it will be nothing beside how much I'd miss you. Now I have one more thing to get off my chest.” Stiffly, he slid a small box from his pocket.
Carly watched, dazed, as he took out a ring with a diamond surrounded by a dozen tiny sapphires.
“I've been carrying this around for eight weeks now, telling myself I was the worst kind of idiot. I guess I knew I'd give in to reason eventually, and I wanted to be prepared when I did.” Tenderly he slid the ring onto Carly's finger. “Live with me. Share my life. I thought I was a strong man, but you taught me that a strong woman makes a man even stronger.”
Carly stared at the ring on her finger.
“I can't hear you. Is that a yes?” He raised his brows, favoring her with that commanding look he used so well. “It had damned well better be a yes.”
She couldn't speak, staring at the glittering stones.
Remembering a champagne bottle at sunset and a diamond bracelet. Remembering a man who had brought light into her life.
McKay hadn't known about the baby when he'd bought the ring, yet he'd opened his future to the child without a single stumbling word. Only terrible wounds had made him wait, determined to do the right thing.
Foolish, stubborn man.
She kept her face calm. “It's a maybe.”
Emotions swirled across his face and Carly thought he wavered on his crutches. The enormity of her love terrified her at that moment, and she knew she could delay her answer no longer.
“Make that a yes. A definite yes.”
A shudder went through him. He braced his forehead on hers and brought her hand slowly to his lips. “I should never have made us wait.”
“No, you shouldn't have.”
“If I do something that stupid again, I'm counting on you to give me another boot in the butt.”
“Glad to oblige, commander.”
She sank against him, her hand on his shoulder, feeling safe beyond words with his arms wrapped around her.
“You've been healthy?” he demanded suddenly. “You've been eating properly?”
“I'm fine, McKay. I'm just here because Daphne needed some tests.”
He slid a finger beneath the top button of her tunic and studied the lush swell of her breasts. “You're different.” He traced a faint blue vein. “Because of the baby?”
Carly shivered as his thumb brushed her nipple. “Everything is sensitive right now.” Her breath caught as McKay traced her other breast with exquisite tenderness. “Don't take it personally.”
“Oh, I intend to take it very personally, you can count on that. I'll start tonight. I've got some leave coming, and I've got the perfect idea how to spend it.”
“Can I bring some baby oil for your chest?” Carly murmured wickedly.
His answer was lost in
the slow, delicious madness of their kiss.
Outside in the hall, Izzy stood guarding the door and grinning broadly at the members of Ford's team who had appeared with all the stealth and instinct of Navy SEALs.
“Told you she'd bag him. The man's been walking wounded since the first moment he set eyes on her.”
“Gotta be a boy.” This smug announcement came from Ford's second, a tall, wiry man with a broken nose and a million freckles. “Give you odds on that.”
Izzy shook his head. “No way, Brew,” he said confidently. “It's going to be a girl. Someone guaranteed to drive men wild and make her father stark raving mad. I'll lay a cool fifty on it.”
“Deal.” The two men shook.
“Make it a hundred,” another one of the team countered.
Daphne and her father watched the big men trade good-natured insults while Izzy presided over the betting as proudly as if the child were his.
All heads turned to the door as it opened. McKay emerged, his arm anchored around Carly's waist and a large lipstick mark branding his cheek, to which he was entirely oblivious.
“Well, sailor,” he said to his freckled second. “What are you looking at? Stop grinning like a drunken hound and come meet the woman who's just promised to become my wife.”
Daphne rushed to hug Carly, and Ford's team members broke out in catcalls and cheers.
The noise almost drowned out the sound of the door opening a second time.
“Ms. Sullivan?” The technician raised her voice to be heard over the din. “Mr. McKay?”
As Carly and McKay turned, she held out a grainy black-and-white image freshly printed from her equipment. “You didn't give me time to finish inside.”
McKay bent close to Carly. Together they looked at the paper.
The tech tapped one corner, where a white form nudged the edge of the image. “That's one, already a good size.”
“One?” McKay croaked.
She smiled as she pointed out another shape. “Here's number two. Quite an active little thing, judging by the movements I picked up.”
McKay swallowed hard. “You mean—”
“Actually, I mean triplets,” she said pointing out a shape near the bottom of the image. “This is three.”
Ford's face went sheet white. “You mean there are three of them in there?”
Carly traced the images on the paper, counting them for herself, feeling joy bubble wildly inside her. Three babies. Three amazing destinies that would be entwined with McKay's and hers.
“Give the man a cigar,” Izzy announced initiating another wild round of cheering that had doctors, nurses, and curious patients peering out of neighboring rooms. “Better make that three cigars!”
“I just might be dying here,” McKay muttered unable to look away from the black-and-white picture in his hand. He took a rough breath. “Did she actually say three?”
“Today, basic math; tomorrow, advanced physics,” Carly said then pulled her dazed husband-to-be down for a long and very satisfying kiss that raised another round of rowdy cheering.
Western Puerto Rico
Seven months later
Moonlight glinted coldly.
A lone figure jogged over the deserted beach. Straightening his headset, he listened tensely.
“Message received Panda. Tracking target now.” Sweat dotted his brow as he kicked up his pace, sprinting across a stretch of mud, vaulting a cement wall, all the while scanning the underbrush through the pale green glare of night-vision goggles.
Forty feet ahead of him a figure crouched at the edge of a sheer cliff. Sweating heavily now, the runner plunged down the trail and dropped beside his target. “Get on the radio and bring him out,” he ordered. “Do it now.”
“No can do.” The figure at the cliff shrugged without turning. “The mission has begun. No one goes in or out until completion.”
“Yeah? Just watch me.” The runner jumped caught the rope dangling above the pitted rock face, and pulled himself up, hand over hand. By the time he reached the cliff top, his face was streaked with sweat beneath his headset and his arms were burning. He sprinted across a rocky slope where a broad-shouldered man stood motionless in the moonlight, his night-scope binoculars trained on a small runway beyond the trees. The officer in black didn't glance up as the runner moved in beside him.
“Sir.” The new arrival saluted smartly.
“I left orders for no interruptions. We have two
minutes to secure that perimeter and retrieve our hostage before he's dog meat.”
The runner cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. Sorry to intrude, commander.”
“You'd damned well better be sorry.” The binoculars tilted sharply. “That's real ammo they're firing out there, in case you weren't listening.”
Three bursts of yellow-white light rocked the landing strip, followed by a shrill blast of sound. The binoculars froze. “Good placement on those flash-bangs,” the officer in black said. “Now blow that hatch or the hostage is gone.”
The air filled with smoke and cordite. Automatic weapons hammered from the runway as a black-clad force stormed the main cabin stairs and blew the forward hatches.
In fifteen seconds the team was in, the cabin under their control.
Only when the news was relayed did Ford McKay relax his tense stance and survey his team with pride. “Not bad,” he said, aware that it was a sweeping understatement. “Next time we'll do it even faster.”
Beside him, the runner cleared his throat. “Sir.”
“Fine. Now you can tell me what was so damned important that you had to interrupt my training mission,” McKay said curtly.
“We've got a chopper waiting for you down at the beach, sir.”
“What for?” McKay rubbed his shoulders. “Not another ambassador nabbed in Afghanistan, I hope.”
“No, sir. Operation Blue Panda,” the runner explained tensely.
The SEAL commander took a sharp breath. “My wife's not due for another month,” he said hoarsely. “Something must be wrong. Let's have the rest of it.”
The young soldier tried to keep his voice emotionless but failed. “Sir, I'm afraid… there were complications. The delivery wasn't going smoothly.”
McKay turned and ran toward the beach, his face a grim mask.
Dear God, let her live.
McKay hunched forward, his head bowed, blind to the jungle rushing past the chopper's window.
Pull her through this and I swear you can take me anytime you want. Just don't take Carly Please …
But there was so answer in the night, no break in the rushing darkness below.
When McKay burst through the double doors of the hospital's delivery wing, he found Nigel Brandon pacing in the corridor.
“Where is she?” McKay snapped.
“Inside with Daphne.”
“How bad is it?”
The governor-general looked gaunt. “There was a problem with the fetal heartbeat. Abnormal basal rate, they called it.” Brandon ran a hand across his forehead. “On top of that, the labor's not progressing.”
“Nigel, you're scaring me.”
“I'm scared too. Carly looks so tired.” Brandon's jaw worked hard. “I can't bear the thought that she might not—”
“We'll bring her through this, and that's final.” McKay clamped a hand on Brandon's shoulder. “I need to see her right away.”
“Wait.” Brandon summoned a wisp of a smile as he tossed McKay an elegant linen handkerchief. “Lose the black camouflage paint. Otherwise you'll scare her into hard labor.”
McKay told himself he was ready for anything. He kept telling himself that as he pushed through the doors
to the delivery room. His face was scrubbed clean and he wore a blue hospital gown along with a confident grin, which wavered when he saw Carly's strained face.
He exchanged a quick look with Daphne, then sat down beside Carly. “Looking good sunshine,” he said huskily.
Carly gripped his hand hard her b
ody straining beneath another contraction. “I look like h-hell,” she said between panting breaths. “Something's wrong.”
McKay cradled her cheeks. “Nothing's wrong. All you have to do is breathe, okay? Now let's get to work.” He made the short, puffing breaths that they'd learned together in prenatal classes. Fully briefed on what to expect, he spoke calmly and slowly, though his stomach was tied in knots. “First this nurse is going to give you some oxygen. Then the doctor will help you move into a better position.” He spoke gently, holding her gaze and letting her feel his unshakable confidence. “After that, we're going to welcome our new family into the world.”
Tears ran down Carly's face. He kissed her softly, then moved back as the nurse slid an oxygen mask into place. At that moment, with machinery beeping and humming around them, McKay remembered dozens of high-altitude jumps and missions gone south and knew his toughest assignment was right here. For Carly's sake, he couldn't lose his cool.
He took her hand, squeezed hard, then leaned close, kissing her ashen forehead. “Okay, let's get this show on the road sunshine. I'll count, you breathe.”
In the waiting room, Izzy drained his sixth cup of stomach-scouring coffee and glared at the closed doors of the delivery room. “What's taking so long? This never happens in the movies.”
“It's her first delivery, and they don't go fast. Daphne took ten hours.” Nigel Brandon rolled his stiff shoulders.
“At least McKay's here. Now she can relax, and things should speed up.”
Izzy began to pace. “Are you telling me that because you believe it or because you want to believe it?”
Brandon paced right beside him. “Don't ask.”
The door swung open and Daphne emerged, her hospital gown flapping over the strapless silver evening gown she had been wearing at her first Tradewind Foundation charity event when Carly's contractions began.
Going Overboard Page 30
