by Kaylea Cross
She winced when someone applied pressure to her side. What had hit her? Another bomb?
More shots fired from close by. The rotors sped up, the whine of the engine rising to a shrill pitch. Her body jerked with uncontrollable shivers. Her jaw clenched, teeth chattering. She was shaking apart, cold to the marrow of her bones. She must be dying.
Someone was lowered next to her. She tried to turn her head, but it was so heavy. Another man came into view, blocking her line of vision. His hands moved fast as he ripped open a sterile pack of needles, a bag of blood clenched between his teeth. As he shifted to work on his patient, Bryn recognized Spencer’s pale, pinched face lying next to hers.
He was still alive. She tried to lift a hand as she whispered his name. She didn’t see anyone else. Had they gotten her father out on another chopper? Someone placed an oxygen mask over her nose. Then Dec’s face appeared above her, and she cried out his name through numb lips.
His expression brimmed with concern as he moved to straddle her legs with his knees. “Where were you hit?”
“S-side.” The word distorted because of the oxygen mask.
He took hold of her shirt hem and gave a quick yank, rending it down the side seam. She gasped, but he ignored her and turned her halfway over. More pressure against her side and shoulder, and she winced as the pain burned through her flesh like greedy flames. She had the vague impression of being airborne and wondered if the helicopter had taken off yet.
“Dec,” she whispered, focusing on his handsome face above her. His golden eyes stared directly into hers, as if he could hold her there with the force of his gaze alone. His warm fingers wrapped around her icy ones.
“I’m here, sweetheart, I’m holding your hand. Can you feel me?”
She nodded jerkily. “C-cold. So cold.”
“It’s shock, Bryn. You’re in shock.” His voice was so calm. “But you’re safe now. We’ll get you to a hospital.”
Maybe she wasn’t dying, then. Alive and safe. And Dec was with her. But then her vision blurred and she lost it. “Dec!”
He leaned closer, took her face between his hands. She registered the warmth of his fingers against her skin. “Look at me, Bryn, only at me.” The stark command in his voice snapped her eyes to his. “Hang on, sweetheart. Hang on just a little longer, okay?”
“C-cold,” she whispered, agonized by the way the shudders hurt her wounds. Burning—like someone had poured acid over her skin.
“I know.” He wrapped a heavy blanket around her, rubbed his hands briskly over her uninjured side to warm her. “Better now?”
It helped a little, but the terrible shaking wouldn’t let up. “Dec…”
“Just think of being back home in Oregon.”
Home. Oh God, she wanted to be home. She nodded, holding on to his strength, to the comforting sound of his voice.
“Think of sitting on the beach watching the sun set over the water…”
She closed her eyes, the lids too heavy to keep open. His voice held her steady, lulled her, kept her calm as she floated away from the pain. Her mind filled with images of rolling waves and crimson-stained sky, and then she slipped under the tide of blackness.
Chapter Seven
Day 5, Hospital
Morning
When Bryn woke the next morning, dozens of wounds throbbed and stung across her back and right shoulder, down her upper arm and along her ribs where the surgeon had removed pieces of shrapnel. They’d come from a rocket propelled grenade, he’d informed her before he’d presented the metal shards to her in a stainless steel dish. Sitting up in her hospital bed, she poked them around with her forefinger, studying them with a kind of detached horror.
She must be living in an alternate reality. Any minute now, she was going to wake up back in her bed on the Oregon coast and hear the waves crashing on the sand. Yet the way her body hurt meant all of this was no nightmare.
So much for wishful thinking.
She closed her eyes and lay back against the thin plastic pillow hospitals used to make their patients extra uncomfortable, and focused on breathing calmly. Her poor father was up in the neurological ward after undergoing emergency surgery to drain the blood from his skull. Even with the pressure removed from around his brain, he hadn’t regained consciousness. Though she’d asked repeatedly to see him, the staff had refused to let her upstairs, saying she would be allowed in if he improved or worsened. The surgeon had told her to prepare herself for the worst.
Now Bryn faced the reality, the cold truth. She would probably lose her father. She might be an independent, strong-willed adult, but the prospect of life without him made her feel small and helpless.
Her father had always been so strong, so fiercely intelligent. For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to make him proud. Of anyone important to her, she saw him the least, yet his approval was what she’d wanted more than anything. Without him she felt adrift, like her anchor was gone.
Tears burned her eyes even as she scolded herself. She kept her lids closed and bit her lips together until she could get a grip on her emotions. Crying wasn’t going to bring him out of his coma, and he would have hated seeing her sniveling during a crisis.
He would have said death was a part of life, and that it was natural he die before she did. Practical and analytical to the core. Some would say cold, but those people hadn’t heard the tenderness in his voice when he’d told her he loved her in their earthen cell. Why had he waited so long to say that to her?
Stop it. At least he said it. At least you have that to hold onto.
Once the fear of the crying jag passed, she opened her eyes and stared down at the metal dish in her hands. The jagged splinters glinted, some of the pieces stained rusty red from her blood. God, she could not believe—
“Hard to believe they dug all that out of your skin, huh?” Spencer asked from his bed beside her. Since the hospital was overcrowded, they’d been roomies since he’d been moved in from recovery. “Pretty amazing.”
He sounded like he thought it was cool. Maybe it would be to a SEAL, she didn’t know. They were all a little crazy to begin with, so there was no telling how their brains functioned. “I guess so,” she allowed. The RPG had been aimed at the helicopter, the staff had heard from Dec, but if she hadn’t hit the ground when she did, she’d have taken the shrapnel in the head or neck and probably died.
She sighed. She needed a distraction. Watching the clock, waiting and worrying about her father wasn’t going to make the second hand move any faster. She shoved away all thoughts of him and her own discomfort and switched her attention to Spencer, propped up with his left leg in a cast from groin to ankle. “How are you feeling, by the way?”
“Damn lucky to be alive.”
“What did the doctors say?”
“Busted femur, artery patched with a Dacron graft. You know.”
Yeah, sure, standard stuff. Because this sort of thing happened to people all the time.
In hell.
Bryn searched for a safe topic. “Did you call your wife yet?”
Spencer looked away, made a show of smoothing his blanket. “Nah.”
She angled her head toward him, frowning. “How come?” Considering what he’d said after he’d been shot, Bryn had assumed he’d want to talk to her first thing. But maybe the Navy had already contacted her? She was probably on a flight right now to come see him.
He fiddled more with the blanket, his brow furrowing. “Well, thing is, I’m not really sure if she’s still my wife or not.”
“Why not?”
“The final divorce papers were supposed to be delivered this month. She might already have sent them in to her lawyer, I don’t know.”
Oh, poor Spencer. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, thanks.” He lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes. Faint grooves around his mouth hinted he was in more pain than he let on. “She just couldn’t take me being in the Teams. I’m away so much and I can never tell her anyt
hing about where I’ve been or where I’m going, and even when I’m home I’m training all the time. It doesn’t exactly make for a close, trusting relationship, right?”
She nodded, waited for him to continue. Her heart ached for him.
“It’s hard for the women,” he said. “A lot of marriages don’t work out for guys like us.”
No, they didn’t. Just look at the awful mess Rayne’s mom and dad had gone through. She thought of all the scenarios she encountered as a social worker, ran through the likely causes of divorce, other than what he’d said. He seemed like such a nice guy, she couldn’t imagine him hitting his wife, so…
“And were you…I mean did you ever, you know…cheat on her or anything?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why, because I’m in the Navy and we sailors are supposed to have a girl in every port?”
She held up her hands, flinched and dropped them as her wounds pulled. “Hey, I’m just asking. Didn’t mean to offend.”
“Christ no, I never cheated on her. Have I been tempted? Sure. Would I ever act on it? No way.”
“That’s good.” She stayed silent, giving him the opportunity to keep talking about it if he wanted. The least she could do was listen.
“I even thought about leaving the Teams, hoping that would make her want to work things out, but…” He let out a ragged sigh. “Truth is, it’s probably too late now anyway. We’ve grown apart too much to fix it, even if she was willing. I don’t blame her, really.”
He didn’t blame her? Well, why the hell not? It took two, didn’t it?
No, she told herself. Don’t go there. It really wasn’t any of her business. No reason for her to put in her two cents’ worth. But dammit, she was outraged on his behalf. If his wife had been through what they had in the last two days, out there in the field with terrorists on their heels, she might have been more understanding.
Watching the SEALs in action was something Bryn was never going to forget. She had half a mind to call Spencer’s wife and tell her exactly how close he’d come to dying—to protect a total stranger.
The anger felt good after all the fear she’d suffered. Too good, and she let herself go with it until the hard words crowded in the back of her throat. Riding a wave of outrage, she couldn’t stop herself from blurting, “If she married you knowing you were in the Teams, then she should stick by you.”
Spencer’s smile was weary. “Bryn, you don’t know what it’s like for her when—”
“Oh, yes I do. My best friend’s dad was a SEAL, and you know what? Over twenty years ago he left his family thinking he was doing them a favor, and to this day his wife pines over him. Trust me on this, Spencer, she would move heaven and earth to make it work with him. You think your wife has it tough? Maybe. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but she can’t just up and quit like that. That’s not how it works.” She huffed out a furious breath. “So the way I see it, she didn’t deserve you anyway. If she’s ready to give up, then you’re better off without her.”
He rubbed a hand over his chest, his expression chagrined. “Well, shit. Tell me how you really feel, why don’t you.”
She lifted her shoulders. “Sorry. Just saying.”
Oh, man, she’d love to get his wife on the phone and tell her off. He could easily have bled out last night. He and the others put their lives on the line every time they went to work, even for training. She was living proof of their skill and bravery. No way would she have survived without them.
As the silence grew and held between them, Bryn regretted shooting her mouth off. Ranting about how his wife didn’t deserve him probably wasn’t the nicest thing to say, especially not to someone recovering from a serious gunshot wound. The anger drained away as quickly as it had come, leaving her filled with guilt. Oh, hell. Blame it on the Demerol. Now she wanted to crawl over to him and hug him.
“Spencer, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my place to say that. I just…you deserve better.”
“Nah, it’s okay.” He cleared his throat, shifted his gaze over to her.
She took the eye contact as a good sign. Maybe he didn’t hate her.
“You know,” he murmured, “I probably didn’t seem thankful at the time, but I appreciate what you did out there. I owe you big time.”
Bryn’s cheeks heated. She hadn’t done it to be heroic. Anyone in her place would have tried to help him. “Don’t be silly. I didn’t do anything—”
“Except drag his sorry two-hundred-pound ass behind cover while taking enemy fire,” Dec interrupted from the doorway, making her heart stutter, “and then stop him from bleeding to death.”
Dressed in clean fatigues, face freshly shaven, he strode over between the beds and clasped Spencer’s hand. If she’d thought he was hot with stubble and camouflage paint all over his face, now he was heart-stopping. Tall and muscular, his dark hair and brows a startling contrast to his golden eyes.
He grinned down at Spencer before shifting his gaze to her. “Isn’t this cozy? Just look at you two.”
Self-conscious, she made a face at him. He stood there so clean and fit and strong while she was covered in bandages with only a sponge bath to take her body odor down to a dull roar. She wanted to wash her hair so badly she could have screamed.
“Did you come for something important, or are you here to gloat about how healthy you are?” she asked him.
Dec’s eyes lit with amusement. “Not feeling so hot, huh?”
“That’s an understatement. I’ve been blown up twice now in four days. Makes me bitchy.”
He smothered a laugh and sat on the bed next to her hip. A glance at his hands showed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. This close she got a whiff of his soap. Her body temperature went up a couple degrees. “I just checked on your dad. No change yet, but he’s holding steady. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks.” His thoughtfulness made her throat close up and the word came out in a husky rasp.
“I brought you something.”
She appreciated his changing the subject. “Yeah?” What had he brought to cheer her up? A chocolate bar maybe? Or a bag of chips? No—an icy cold can of Coke. Oh, God, she’d kill for that right now. Her mouth watered.
Instead, he pulled a piece of paper out of one of the pockets in his camouflage pants and unfolded it, holding it out for her to see.
Bryn stared at the purple crayon drawing of a heart-shaped medal. She glanced up from the paper, glowered at him. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“What?” he asked, all innocence. “It’s a Purple Heart.” He pinned it to her hospital gown with a safety pin, the brush of his fingers against her left collarbone making her heart knock against her ribs. She stared at his hands. Powerful yet gentle at the same time. “Took me all morning to find a purple crayon.”
“Where’s mine?” Spencer demanded.
“Yours is coming,” Dec informed him. “But Miss McAllister is a civilian, and she wouldn’t have gotten one if I hadn’t made one for her.” His white, even teeth flashed as he grinned at her, dimples appearing in his lean cheeks. “Wear it with pride, sweetheart. I don’t know any other woman half as tough as you. I think you just might have made it through Hell Week, you know that?” His amazing eyes showed something close to affection.
Bryn fingered the paper medal, ridiculously pleased by his compliment. “Nah. Sleep deprivation would’ve made me ring out after the first night.”
“I don’t think so, sweetheart.” Bending down to smooth the hair from her face, he made her blush even more. She almost leaned into his touch, but managed to hold back at the last second.
He shook his head in wonder, dimples peeping again. “You’re something else, Bryn McAllister, you know that?”
And before she knew what he was about, he leaned over her and pressed his mouth to hers.
Bryn stiffened. Heat roared through her with stunning force. His mouth was shockingly soft. He kissed her with a lingering thoroughness, his lips warm and firm but tender. He waited until she’
d thawed a little before pulling back to gauge her reaction and hovered there, watching her eyes, then dipped back down for another slow taste.
Her fingers curled helplessly into his t-shirt. Every nerve in her body seemed to go haywire, a pool of lava forming low in her belly. When he finally lifted his head she’d forgotten her own name. She wanted to grab him by his muscled shoulders and kiss him senseless, and he knew it.
To regain control of the situation, she pushed him back and cleared her throat, stomach jumping with nerves. “Are you headed back to your base?” Did SEALs stay on a base? “Or is it an aircraft carrier?” A nuclear sub, maybe.
“In a couple days, maybe. For now we’ve got to clean up the rest of that cell we tangled with.”
Her heart seemed to stop beating for a second. “Tonight?” She hated the thought of him going back out there, now knowing full well what kind of danger he’d be in.
He held her gaze. “Best time to hunt is at night. That’s where we’re in our element.”
“Yeah, and I’m laid up with a busted leg and a patched artery,” Spencer said glumly from beside them.
“True,” Dec agreed, “but look who you get to room with.”
Spencer sighed and closed his eyes with a smile. “There is that. I still haven’t thanked her properly, by the way. You interrupted us before I could finish.”
Dec sat back and gestured to her with a sweep of his arm. “Be my guest.”
“I can’t do it with you watching,” Spencer complained. “I’m waiting until you leave.”
Dec raised his eyebrows. “Oh? And just what are you going to do to her that you don’t want me to see?”
Spencer shrugged. “Some more of what you just did, only better.”
A nurse came in and checked his vitals, then adjusted the flow of the IV drip and over his protests added another dose of pain medication.
“It will help you sleep,” she insisted, coming around to check Bryn’s bandages. “And you, too,” she informed her. “You both need it.”
