“As long as we get to go to bed together.”
“I’m counting on it.”
She froze and so did he. They weren’t playing anymore.
He held out his hand. “Dance with me.”
And she did. Silently. Talking softly about anything, mostly seductive. For hours until the crowd thinned and the bell rang for last call. They broke apart and he extended his hand again. She knew if she took it this time they would be heading for a different kind of dance, the one she had come here searching for.
Again, her hand fit perfectly in his. A short stroll later they had walked to his room in the visiting officer’s quarters. He kicked the door closed behind him.
She didn’t even bother telling him she’d never done anything like this before. Truth or not, she didn’t want to sound trite and she didn’t intend to see him again anyway. He seemed okay with that. No guilt for either of them. She was through with words and he seemed to feel the same way.
Between kisses, their clothes fell away until only their underwear remained. Skin to skin. Her hands explored the hardened expanse of his muscles more impressive than she’d even imagined.
And her imagination had been mighty darn amazing. She’d been right to do this. This was exactly the escape she needed this weekend to take her away from the ordeal that awaited her next week.
His talented hands made fast work of the front clasp on her bra and he swept the lacy scrap down her shoulders with reverent fingers. A long, slow exhale slid from his mouth, blowing an appreciative whistle over her exposed skin. “Wow, lady, you are something to behold.”
Gulping back emotion, she lifted his hand, placed the callused warmth over her bared breast and savored the sensation as if for the last time. Which it very well could be.
Because Monday, combat veteran that she was, she began her toughest battle ever—one that started not with a mission briefing, but with a mastectomy.
Chapter 1
Present Day: Wilford Hall Medical Center, Texas
Major Rick DeMassi forced his steel-pin-filled legs to move as he gripped the metal bars for balance. He narrowed his focus to a tunnel as he always did on missions, and no undertaking had been more important than getting back on his feet again.
Every day in rehab he resolved to end this one better than he finished his final assignment during the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina. The carnage had threatened to suck him under, but he’d kept his eyes on the teddy bear ahead, sticking halfway out of the muck. After years of search and rescue, he’d known in his gut there was a child close by.
Too bad his gut couldn’t tell him if that child was alive or dead.
Now there weren’t teddy bears to zero in on, even theoretically. His teenage daughter was long past the age of such toys. Still he wanted to greet her on his own two feet someday soon—as the hero she thought he was. So he went through the daily torture of grabbing these damn bars and shuffling one shattered leg in front of the other.
What a joke in comparison to the old days when he leaped from helicopters. Swam churning waters. Or sludged through unstable wreckage toward a stuffed toy to pull out a child.
“Careful, sir.” The voice echoed in his head. Then or now, he wasn’t sure. The stench of antiseptic burned his nose as strongly as the stench of rotting muck. “Steady is better than fast.”
One foot in front of the other.
Step.
Step.
Step.
For the kid. For his child. For the trapped child. Both merged in his head. The past and the present. Both times painful, squeezing labored breaths from his body until he thought he didn’t have anything left inside him but somehow he kept going. Running then. Shuffling now. The irony didn’t escape him, but he wasn’t a quitter.
“There isn’t much time left,” the sergeant said, an orderly watching him like a babysitter in case he fell, but the voice could have been from the past, rushing him along. Urging him to the cargo plane. But he couldn’t leave the little girl and her doll behind.
gue
Five Years Ago: Randolph Air Force Base, Texas
Lieutenant Nola Seabrook accepted that she could face death on Monday. But for the weekend, she intended to celebrate life to the fullest.
She gripped the door of the Officer’s Club bar, preparing herself to do something she’d never even considered before. She intended to find a man—a stranger—for a one-night stand.