Hero of My Heart (The McRae Series, Book 5 - Will)

by Teresa Hill

  "Honestly, I can't."

  "So for him to think that even for a minute or two, I was brave? That felt so good. I want to be brave. I want to be strong. I don't want to go through the rest of my life being afraid."

  She wanted him to admire her. She also wanted to see him again, the way a woman wants to see a man in whom she's interested.

  And that felt good.

  Chapter 7

  Answering the door at the shelter on Tuesday morning, Will found Amanda's father there.

  Great.

  "Master Chief, I think we need to talk," the ambassador said.

  "Yes, Sir. Come on in."

  As he stepped into the momentarily quiet living room, the ambassador said, "I believe you've seen my daughter?"

  "She was here on Friday," Will admitted, something about the man leaving Will feeling like a pathetic kid.

  It wasn't that air of authority the man wore like a second skin. Will was used to dealing with that. He showed respect to those who deserved it, and if he absolutely had to, to those who didn't. It was the superiority thing the ambassador had going, not like someone with a military rank, but simply as a person. His sense of importance, of expecting to be respected, not even questioned. It rankled.

  It was the sort of thing that had gotten to Will since he was a kid, and everybody in the world had seemed superior to him. He had lived on the fringe, mostly taking care of himself and trying to keep himself fed, to be invisible so no one messed with him.

  Amanda Warren's father brought back a thousand memories Will had fought to forget.

  "I knew over the weekend that something had upset her," the ambassador said.

  Damn.

  Will had been afraid of that. "I'm sorry, Sir."

  The man nodded. "I thought we had an agreement, that it was better if she didn't see you."

  "We did, Sir." Will didn't want to sell Amanda out, but he didn't like being accused of going back on a promise, either. "But she has questions about what happened to her—"

  "I know that. Her doctors know that. We're handling it."

  Not to Amanda's satisfaction, obviously.

  What was Will supposed to do? Hide when he saw her coming? He wasn't going to do that. He'd let her father keep him away from her twice already, supposedly for her own good. Once at the hospital in Germany and again when Will got to Ohio.

  So, it was fine for Will to risk his life to get her out of Buhkai, but his usefulness ended there? Despite all the missions, the medals, the lives he'd helped save, he still wasn't good enough for the ambassador's daughter?

  Shit, it wasn't like he was trying to date her. All he'd wanted to do was talk to her, help her if he could, and know she was okay.

  "I'll say to you again," her father said, "for all our sakes, let her be. Let me and her doctors handle this."

  "Sir, she knows where I am. What do you want me to do? Slam the door in her face, if she shows up here again? I'm not going to do that."

  "I think you could handle the situation with a little bit more finesse than that."

  So, now the man thought Will was capable of something like finesse?

  "I have no intention of doing anything that makes life harder for your daughter," Will said.

  "So, you are going to see her again?"

  What could he say? He'd give just about anything to see her again. Will could imagine what the ambassador would say to that. He was still trying to figure out how to answer the man when the doorbell rang.

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, Will said, "Excuse me for a moment, Sir."

  He opened up the door, and there was Amanda.

  Oh, bad timing, he thought. Really bad.

  Her father was going to whisk her out of here, and all Will would get was a glimpse of her. But she surprised him by smiling, then saying, "I believe my father's here?"

  Will nodded, stepping back from the doorway so she could come inside. He even had a moment to enjoy the look on her father's face as he got caught here.

  "Amanda? What are you doing here? Did something happen?"

  "I think we need to talk about what you're doing here, Dad."

  Ouch. Will tried his best to not let either one of them see how much he enjoyed hearing that.

  "Fine. We'll go home and talk," her father said.

  "Dad, did you come here because you found out I came to see Will? Are you here to tell him again to stay away from me?"

  Her father shot a sharp look Will's way. A little tick in his upper lip made Will think the man wasn't as calm and in control as he'd like to be.

  "He didn't do anything," Amanda said. "I tracked him down."

  "Really?" her father asked, then looked at Will.

  Will thought he might have earned an inkling of approval for not trying to deflect the blame for their talk onto Amanda. Just an inkling.

  "All right," her father said. "We'll talk. Let's go home—"

  "No, I'm not going. Not yet—"

  "Amanda," her father tried again.

  "I'm going to apologize to the man who saved my life for the way my father's treating him—"

  "It's not necessary," Will said.

  She shot an annoyed look his way, too. Okay, he'd stay out of this one.

  "I'll see you later," she told her father.

  That tick in his upper lip was back with a vengeance. Amanda waited the man out until he offered a curt goodbye to Will and left.

  Then she turned to Will and offered him a shaky smile. "Hi."

  "Hi."

  He could have happily just stood there looking at her, not saying anything. He'd been too rattled last time to take in how different she looked from the woman he'd rescued in Buhkai.

  How she looked on a normal day.

  Well, almost normal. Getting closer all the time.

  She looked great.

  She had a lot to deal with, as shown by the dark circles under eyes. They hinted at sadness, and maybe nervousness. But she looked better than she had on Friday. He hoped she got a little bit farther from the trauma she'd experienced every day.

  "Sorry," she said finally. "Didn't mean to drag you into this mess between me and my father."

  "It's okay."

  "No, it's not. Was he mad at you? Because I found you and came to talk to you?"

  "He's worried about you. I understand."

  "I'll make it clear to him that it was all me."

  "Amanda, do you really think I need you to defend me to you father?" The idea was sweet. Laughable, but sweet. He'd be in serious trouble if he couldn't handle one retired diplomat.

  "No, I wasn't saying that. Just that you shouldn't have to."

  Damn, she was trying to protect him.

  He couldn't remember a woman ever trying to do that.

  Except maybe Rachel, when he was a kid.

  Protection wasn't something he looked for from a woman. It surprised him how appealing it was, even if the idea was ridiculous.

  "I think you have enough going on without worrying about anything your father might say to me. Why don't you let us handle this?"

  "It's not right. I feel bad about him giving you a hard time."

  "Well, don't." She shouldn't feel guilty about anything. She needed people in her corner, looking after her right now. "Honey, your father obviously adores you. He'd have moved mountains to get you back safely. He practically did. We had the kind of cooperation and assistance from the U.S. military, the State Department and other branches of government that I wouldn't have believed anyone could arrange that quickly in such a sticky diplomatic mess."

  "I know."

  "Don't let anything he might say about me come between the two of you."

  "I won't. I have a hard time being mad at him. Well, staying mad at him."

  "Good." He wanted that for her, for them to be close, because her father was going to be around long after Will was gone. Despite how the ambassador made Will feel, Will would never fault a man for honestly worrying about and tryi
ng to take care of his daughter.

  "Do you think I was too hard on him? I saw his car parked outside, and I knew exactly what he was doing. He treats me like I'm a child again, who needs her father to run her life. And, granted, sometimes I feel like that, but... Well, that was probably more than you needed to know."

  Aw, hell. He wanted to know everything about her. That was one of the many problems he had where she was concerned. "Amanda, you can tell me anything you want."

  Her head came up at that, and she gave him a shy smile. "Really? I was afraid to come back. Last time, it seemed like you didn't want to see me."

  Damn.

  No way to win with any answer to that particular question.

  He very much wanted to see her. He thought about her all the time, continuously fought the urge to go find her.

  And yet, he knew they'd met under extraordinary circumstances, where people sometimes got very close very fast, but the connection wasn't quite real.

  She was home now, and she was safe. He was not a part of her life, except for the little quirk of fate that had brought them together in the first place, and the second one of Will being here temporarily. Otherwise, he'd likely have never seen her again after getting her out of Buhkai.

  He didn't want her to get attached to him out of some sense of obligation or because of the experience they'd shared. As soon as his eye healed and he was cleared to go back to work, he'd be gone.

  If she was ever in a place like Buhkai again, she might need Will again, but what were the odds of that?

  He looked up to find her still waiting, looking so tentative he couldn't send her away.

  "I worry that I'll bring back bad memories for you," he said. "I don't want to do that. I promised I wouldn't do anything to make this harder for you."

  "Promised my father?"

  "Promised myself."

  "Well, what if I wanted to be here?" she asked. "What if... I didn't just get ticked off that my father was here giving you a hard time. What if... maybe... I was looking for an excuse to talk to you again? And was... maybe driving by, trying to come up with an excuse to come inside and talk to you?"

  "So, that thing with your father? That was an act?" He'd known women who could pull off that kind of pretense, but he would have sworn her annoyance with her father had been genuine.

  "No, I was mad at him. He doesn't have the right to give you a hard time about anything. But to be honest, now that he's gone, I'm not exactly sorry to be here."

  "Okay." She wanted something from him? More information about what happened to her in Buhkai? Or something else?

  It was maddening how important that distinction was to him at the moment.

  "Now I'm worried. Was I awful to him? " she asked. "Because I know he's a wonderful father, and I know I put him through hell. When I came to in the hospital in Germany and saw his face, I thought something horrible had happened. To someone else. Maybe him. And then, I found out the terrible thing had happened to me."

  "Which is no reason for you to feel guilty," Will said.

  "No, but going to Buhkai in the first place is, and staying there weeks after my father asked me to come home is. The man's spent his life as a diplomat. He knows when a country's unstable. He told me to come home, and I didn't. I wouldn't. I didn't want to leave my students, and I thought my father was just being overprotective of me. He does that. I keep trying to show him I'm strong and capable of taking care of myself, and I did the exact opposite."

  "Honey, more than a hundred Americans were still in Buhkai, despite U.S. government warnings against travel there. The U.S. embassy was still open, so for you to think everything that happened was your fault—"

  "No, I'm not saying that. Just that it was within my power to get out before anything ever happened. I could have saved myself, and I didn't. I've always been so proud of the work my father does. I wanted him to be proud of me for going there to teach."

  "And I think you're being too hard on yourself," Will said.

  "No, it's my way of trying to make sense of it. Analyzing. Rationalizing. Intellectualizing. Rather than dealing with my feelings about it. Trying to convince myself I did have some kind of control over the situation, that I could have prevented it. Emma says it's easier to accept that it was partly my fault than to accept that it was something out of my control, that life can be so random and dangerous."

  Life could be just that random and dangerous, Will knew all too well. He just wished she didn't.

  "What happened to you was... a lot of things, some just plain bad luck, Amanda. A trifecta of bad luck. Please don't think danger like that is lurking around every corner. You want to be careful, to make good decisions. But please don't let this ruin your life."

  "Emma says the same thing. She says I can get past this."

  "Of course, you can. You will."

  "Thank you. I need to hear that, to believe it. From someone who's not my shrink."

  Oh, he was so screwed.

  A little honestly from her, a little sincerity, that sweet, tentative smile, hearing that she just wanted to make her father proud, and he was a goner. He understood her better than ever now. He admired her, and he feared he'd do anything for her. "So, what had you lurking on the street out front?"

  "I wanted you to know that it was good for me to talk to you last week. I felt better—"

  "Amanda, your father just told me he could tell something had upset you this weekend. He was sure it was talking to me on Friday. And Emma—I talked to Emma about you. I know I probably shouldn't have—"

  "She told me. It's all right."

  "Em didn't really tell me anything. I just don't want to do the wrong thing with you."

  "I understand. Really, I do. Talking to you did stir up memories and make me anxious for a while, but I felt like I was making progress, dealing with everything. I mean, just that thing about corners..."

  She stopped talking and laughed a little, looking embarrassed, too. It was adorable. The color on her face lit up the freckles across her nose and on her cheeks.

  "Okay, this I've got to hear," he said.

  "No."

  "What do you mean, no? I can't imagine anything we talked about would have helped you feel better, much less come close to making you laugh."

  "I mean... I didn't mean to tell you this," she said.

  "Why not? You said you wanted to talk."

  "Not about this."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's embarrassing," she finally admitted.

  "You said it was something good. Come on, Amanda. Tell me something good. Tell me something that makes you laugh, even if it does embarrass you."

  She made a face, looking annoyed and embarrassed and even more appealing.

  "Since we talked last week, I've spent some time... sitting in a corner of my bedroom. I don't try to fight it anymore. I get scared, and I go sit on the floor in the corner, and I feel safer, ridiculous as that sounds."

  "Hey, I want you to feel safe, whatever it takes," he said, still hating the idea of her scared in her own father's house.

  "Sometimes life's so bad you just have to laugh. It's better than crying."

  "Yes, it is." He'd much rather she laughed than cried.

  "I did something else, too. The corner felt so good to me that two days ago, I moved my bed there. There's one corner of my bedroom with no windows and no doors nearby, just two solid walls coming together. It's great. Now I can sleep in the corner."

  She smiled, but still Will hated to hear that. She'd had nightmares in Buhkai, but he'd been with her, to hold her, to try to reassure her and help her get back to sleep. Here she was not so far away, but still all alone in her father's house.

  That was hard, knowing she was still so scared and so close.

  Danger-Close, he decided.

  It was a military term. When soldiers were in real trouble and calling for air support, the pilots overhead, as a matter of safety, couldn't fire too close to the soldiers' position on the ground. But if
the enemy was close, too, and you figured your only hope was weaponry from a helicopter or a plane, you called for it anyway, and you had to use the term Danger-Close to get the pilot to do it.

  As in, Yeah, you're going to drop it practically on top of me, but do it anyway, because I am in deep shit, and I don't see any other chance of surviving.

  She was too close, too pretty, too appealing, too vulnerable, too everything.

  He wanted to fix every bad thing in her life. He had almost from the first moment he'd heard about her in Buhkai, especially once he'd seen a photo of her, looking so young and so sweet. Once he heard about her getting the kids in her classroom out safely, he was a goner.

  "You're having trouble sleeping?" he asked finally.

  "Yes, but you're missing the point. I like my corner. I like pressing my back against the wall and knowing nothing's back there that can get me. Of course, there's still that whole monsters-under-the-bed thing, which I thought I'd outgrown when I was eight, but it seems to have come roaring back lately. I'm thinking about taking the bed apart and sleeping on the mattress on the floor, in the corner, of course. What do you think?"

  "I think you might have a hard time explaining that to your father."

  She nodded. "I know. He's already curious about why I moved my bed."

  "You could tell him the truth," Will said.

  "He'd worry even more, and he's already worrying so much. Now I've kicked him out of here. I'm sure he'll worry about that, too. But it got me in here, and I just... I hoped I could talk to you some more."

  "About what happened to you?" he asked.

  "Yes. No. I don't know. About anything?"

  She gave him an embarrassed, mischievous smile.

  No way in hell he could resist that.

  * * *

  Oops.

  Amanda hadn't meant to say quite that much.

  He stared back at her, like he was trying to peel back the layers and see right inside her.

  "Okay, I didn't mean that," she said.

  "You didn't?"

  "No, I just want to talk to you about Buhkai. That's it. Nothing else." But then she ruined it by grinning, couldn't help it.

  "You're a really bad liar," he said.