The Army Doc's Baby Secret

by Charlotte Hawkes

  And how he wanted to drive his way inside. Zeke had no idea how he held himself back.

  ‘Say it,’ he commanded in a voice he barely recognised.

  ‘You know.’ Her head gave a jerky little shake of disbelief.

  ‘Say it. If you really want it.’

  ‘I want you...’ She bit her lip shyly. But then, suddenly, a spark leapt into her eyes.

  A flash of the old Tia he had lost so long ago. His Tia. His wife.

  ‘I want you, Zeke, inside me.’ Clear, sexy, sure. ‘So deep that I don’t know where I end and you begin.’

  It was like a lightning bolt through his entire body. The words he hadn’t expected to ever hear from her again. And he couldn’t deny her. He moved so that he hovered at her entrance for a moment, then thrust inside.

  Long, deep, hard. Whilst his Tia cried out and lifted her hips to meet him, tightening around him as though to draw him in all the more. He held her tightly to him, withdrawing slightly only to drive back inside her, again and again, until they were both tied up in knots and he didn’t think he was going to be able to last much longer.

  She was exquisitely perfect. Matching him step for step in this raw, primal dance.

  Her body began to tense beneath him, to pull around him, and he reached down between them one more time, and found the hard little bud. This time when he thrust his way home, he flicked his finger and pressed down, and she screamed out his name.

  And when she finally hurtled over the edge, falling and tumbling, and shattering into nothingness, he let go and toppled into the blissful abyss with her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE LIFEBOAT BOUNCED through the heavy seas, every member of the crew on the lookout for the missing yacht.

  Given the crashing waves, it was understandable how his antenna had likely been damaged, but it meant locating him was going to be a problem. The search and rescue helicopter was on a shout but had confirmed they would come and help with the search once they were freed up.

  Still, Tia thought, peering through the windows, time was going to be a factor, and even though the skipper of the yacht had activated his distress beacon, no one knew what state he was going to be in by now.

  ‘Think I’ve got him,’ a shout went up and Zeke turned the lifeboat in the appropriate direction.

  The past couple of weeks had been amazing. Better than anything Tia could have dreamed of, back in France.

  Their last week at the chateau had been glorious. Working in the mornings, then being a family afternoons and evenings. Sometimes going together to Look to the Horizon, other times simply going to a local market, or a show, or even just the beach.

  Then this week back at Delburn Bay had been wonderful. It had been tempting to move in with Zeke at his house in Westlake when he’d asked, but she’d managed to resist. It seemed premature until Seth knew that Zeke was his father, although she didn’t know why they were still holding back.

  Perhaps it was because she still didn’t know what Zeke had been about to say that night in the chateau, when she’d finally silenced his arguments by making love to him her way.

  Or perhaps she was just being over-cautious—Seth was going to have to find out some time—but until she knew exactly how much of a family they were going to be able to be, she didn’t want to give her son false expectations.

  Or herself.

  They’d reached the yacht by now, and even a loudhailer wasn’t rousing the skipper.

  ‘I don’t want to go alongside in this weather,’ Zeke decided. ‘Not unless I have to. That yacht is getting thrown around all over the place and the last thing we need is for both boats to be thrown together.’

  ‘I’ll go over in an inflatable,’ Jonathon, one of the more experienced crewmen, suggested. ‘I’ll take the tow line across and I can check on the skipper. Then I’ll stay below decks with them whilst we start the tow-ride back to Delburn.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Tia moved alongside Jonathon.

  ‘You stay here for now,’ Zeke decided. ‘Until we know what state they’re in.’

  Tia pursed her lips.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense. They’re likely to be cold and shaken at the very least.’

  ‘Once that yacht is at the end of the line, there’s no way to control it or choose which wave it can dodge. It will just have to follow us,’ Zeke countered. ‘If it goes broadside, that could be the three of you in the water.’

  ‘There was enough of an issue to activate their personal distress beacon. Hypothermia and shock would be my initial concerns. It doesn’t make sense to risk the trip across twice.’

  She silently willed him to think twice. This was the first shout they’d been on together and if it had been anybody else, she doubted he would have been so reticent. And neither of them wanted their working relationship to be like that.

  He scowled briefly, but she could see the exact moment he switched from lover to professional.

  ‘Fine. Get whatever kit you think you could need and we’ll see you both over. Once you’re there we can shorten the tow if you need anything else, but it’s going to be a long ride back.’

  ‘I might be able to temporarily rig the radio somehow through the GPS aerial,’ Jonathon suggested.

  ‘Good.’ Zeke nodded. ‘Okay, get your kit and I’ll manoeuvre you as close as I can for launch.’

  * * *

  It was twenty minutes later by the time the two of them reached the yacht and climbed on board, with Jonathon securing the tow as she took the exhausted yachtsman—who had been on deck for their landing—back below deck.

  His core temperature was low, but he wasn’t yet in hypothermic shock.

  ‘Okay, let’s start by you getting out of your wet gear and into some dry clothes whilst I make you a warm, sweet tea.’

  ‘I’d prefer coffee,’ he joked weakly, despite his shivering.

  ‘Glad to see you’ve still got your sense of humour. Coffee it is, then. We can gradually add layers to avoid sending you into thermal shock by heating you up too quickly. And I’m going to set up a saline drip just to be on the safe side. We’ve got a pretty long tow-ride back.’

  ‘Tow line is set up.’ Jonathon dropped below for a moment. ‘I’m going to stay here for a little longer to make sure it doesn’t part. All we can do now is wait.’

  ‘We can’t dodge the waves—we could still capsize,’ the yachtsman said quietly.

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Tia acknowledged after a moment. ‘But we’ve got one of the best coxswains out there. He’ll do everything he can to keep us safe.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s going to be missed when he goes on that mission of his next week.’

  ‘What mission?’ Tia snapped her head up perhaps a little too quickly, but Jonathon had his back to her and didn’t notice.

  ‘You’d have thought he’d had enough of it in the military, wouldn’t you? But I guess that’s his life, he can’t stay away. We always pray he’ll come back safely.’

  * * *

  Tia faced him, anger swirling around her like some kind of ballroom dancer with a cape. If it hadn’t been the last thing he needed right at this moment, he might have taken a moment longer to admire the sheer force of his wife.

  ‘You can’t go back there, Zeke.’ However firm, and calm, and rational she was clearly trying to sound, her evident desperation was undermining her. ‘Look what happened the last time you were in a place that dangerous.’

  He felt guilt and elation all at once. As much as he had no desire to hurt her, it was buoying to see how much she cared. He just needed to allay her fears.

  ‘I have to go out there, Tia. These are my men, a close-protection squad who I have personally trained, and they’ve just lost their team commander to something as unforeseeable as a motorbike crash. It has shaken them, and for two of these young men this is their first ev
er job without the full force of the military behind them.’

  ‘And they think you being out there can protect them?’

  It was the disdain in her tone that got to him. A dismissal that his father had perfected. A disregard he had sworn he would never again allow anyone to make him feel.

  It was as though his very blood were effervescing. His whole body a mass of coiled nerves. His skin almost too tight to contain it.

  He couldn’t explain the part of him that wanted to roar at her. To tell her, yes, he could protect them all. Because he knew that was illogical. He couldn’t guarantee that.

  But he’d feel a damn sight better about sending them out there if he was with them.

  ‘You can’t protect everyone, you know,’ she hurled at him, as if reading his mind. ‘You can’t stop something from going wrong, if that’s what’s going to happen. You should know that better than anyone. Or are you saying that if your commanders had been there that night, you would never have lost your leg?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The admission felt as though it were being ripped from his mouth. His little Tia made her point a little too well. Worse, she might as well be reading his very soul. ‘I’m not going out there to protect them. I’m going out there to appraise them.’

  ‘You keep telling yourself that, Zeke.’

  ‘So, you think I should be happy to send them out there to protect the life of a principal who has virtually no military training, yet cower back because it’s safer?’

  ‘A principal?’

  He grasped it as though it were a lifeline.

  ‘The principal,’ he repeated. ‘The individual who is paying us to protect them out in an environment which is utterly hostile to them.’

  ‘I know what a damn principal is, Zeke.’ Tia raised her voice a notch, clearly unable to stop herself. ‘But those men you’ve trained are all former military. The environment isn’t hostile to them.’

  ‘I still know it better,’ he barked.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t. You and I both know that conflict zones are rapidly changing environments. What worked six months ago, a year ago, two years, won’t work any more. Tactics change, old exploits stop working, weaknesses get strengthened. It’s why the military always choose a selection of troops fresh out of theatre to train the next deployment to go in. Because their intel and experience is the most up to date and relevant.’

  ‘Which is precisely why I go out there several times a year.’

  ‘But not into direct conflict, Zeke. You go into passive conflict zones. You and I both know there’s a difference.’

  ‘Is that what you came down here for, Tia? To chastise me? To remind me that I’m disabled now and try to set limits on me as a result? I thought we got past this. Didn’t Look to the Horizon teach you anything about my attitude to my capabilities?’

  ‘My God, Zeke, is that what you really think of me?’

  He forced himself to stand still. Not to move or even to blink. Merciless. Pitiless. Which made it all the more incredible when he began to finally talk to her.

  ‘I need this, Tia—you must see that?’

  ‘You need it? You’re a multimillionaire. You have Z-Black and Look to the Horizon. Why would you need to put yourself through all that again?’

  ‘Because it makes me feel alive. It reminds me who I am, and what I’m capable of.’

  ‘You make it sound as though, if you don’t go out there, you’ll be someone different.’

  He didn’t answer immediately, but then he met her confused gaze.

  ‘Maybe that’s what I fear.’

  He willed her to understand but she only furrowed her brow all the more.

  ‘I don’t understand. If it was so important to you, then why not be one of those hundreds of major limb amputation soldiers who have gone back into service? Some even back into war zones.’

  He knew what she was thinking. No doubt as an army doctor she’d seen former soldiers hell-bent on getting back to their buddies, to the only life they’d ever known. He certainly had. And she would know how fired up they could be. How single-mindedly they chased down their goals.

  Tia had known him for nearly two decades, she would surely imagine that he would have been worse, or better depending on perspective, than any of them.

  ‘But I was SBS. The kind of things we do—the things I did—are demanding enough on the human body when it’s at its peak. An operative with one leg...that’s a liability.’

  ‘Let me guess, you refused to settle for what you would have seen as second best?’

  ‘I was black ops, of course anything else was always going to feel like second best to me.’

  ‘Really?’ She wanted to stop but she couldn’t. The words—the hurt—were all there. ‘Like a family? Like Seth and me?’

  ‘That’s a completely different thing, Tia.’

  ‘Is it?’ she challenged. ‘Only, from where I’m standing, it feels exactly like that. Despite everything we said, and faced up to back at the chateau, for some reason you’re still punishing yourself.’

  ‘And you know all this, do you?’ He was contemptuous, valiantly trying to ignore the fear that ran beneath the surface, that she might just be right. ‘Just because we’ve been sleeping together for a couple of weeks? Just because I finally let you see my stump?’

  She blanched.

  It should have felt more of a victory.

  ‘We’re going around in circles,’ she mumbled at last. ‘Every time I think we’ve sorted it out, somehow it finds a way to resurrect itself.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because I’ll never get away from it, Tia. It’s who I am. You should know that by now.’

  ‘You need to change,’ she announced suddenly.

  He didn’t know what it was about her tone, but a shiver moved over his entire body.

  ‘Why do I need to change, Tia? For me? Or for you?’

  ‘For my son.’

  ‘Our son,’ he corrected furiously, a coldness washing through him as she shook her head.

  ‘No.’

  It hung between them, casting a shadow that looked bizarrely menacing.

  ‘Yes, Tia. Our son. You don’t get to shut me out.’

  It was the sudden silence that scraped at him, he realised. The awful, bleak, dangerous lack of sound as Tia stared at him wordlessly.

  And this time when she spoke, it was the careful, quiet, deadly way she controlled her voice that made the hairs on the back of his arms stand to attention.

  ‘I do. Or, at least, I will do everything within my earthly power to do so.’

  ‘Say again?’ His tone was lethal.

  ‘I won’t agree to you telling Seth who you are if you go out there.’

  ‘You’re threatening me.’ He was incredulous.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ she corrected. And then, without warning, a sadness crept into her words.

  ‘You aren’t listening to me. I told you what I went through with my mum. With you. I can’t put my child through that, Zeke. I won’t.’

  Tia stopped, choking on her words and her tears, unable to go on.

  She didn’t need to. Zeke could hear them, loud and clear, and destructive, echoing around his head.

  He had no idea how long they stood there, glaring at each other, her stifled sounds slowly subsiding.

  ‘This is who I am, Tia. This is what I do. It gives me purpose.’

  ‘You have Z-Black,’ she croaked. ‘Look to the Horizon.’

  ‘I told you, they aren’t enough.’

  ‘Seth should be enough. He is four years old.’ She dropped her head, the whispered words barely audible. ‘He won’t cope with losing his father. He won’t understand it.’

  ‘We’ll explain it to him...’ Zeke began, but he already knew that he never would.

  ‘I
don’t think I can understand it...’ she choked out. ‘You were the one, Zeke. You were always the one. There has never been anyone else for me but you, and there never will be.’

  Had his chest exploded, right there and then? It felt as if it should have. He had no idea how he managed to stay calm.

  ‘Is that so?’

  She swallowed before saying anything more.

  ‘But I can’t be with you, Zeke. Not if you go back out on missions again.’

  Her words were like a hidden propeller slicing into him again and again. Wounding him, damaging him. He was caught in the momentum and there was no escape.

  ‘Tia, you have to understand why this is so important.’

  ‘I do,’ she gasped, as though fighting for every breath. ‘I truly do. But you also have to understand that we can’t lose you, Zeke.’

  Her words struck him, their impact feeling much the same as the time he’d been struck in the Kevlar-protected chest by a shotgun round. How he’d stayed upright was beyond him.

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘You can’t guarantee that.’

  ‘And I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t walk out of that door and be hit by a speeding motorist.’

  ‘It isn’t the same and you know it. One is a pure freak accident. The other...you’re deliberately putting yourself into a hostile environment. I can’t have Seth living like that. Always watching the door and wondering.’

  ‘You’re telling me not to go.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘I’m desperately hoping that you won’t want to, any more.’

  It was like a black, oily slick, spreading through his body, into his brain, clogging his mouth.

  Something in him wanted to oblige. He could feel his throat tightening and loosening as though preparing for the words, but they never came.

  All he could do was shake his head. Once. Brusquely. As though that might ease the white light pain slicing through his head.