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.
He’d been a crap father to his daughter, always on the job, barely a presence in her life. He wouldn’t let this wounded little girl down, too. Even if the best he could do was recover her dead body for burial…
Rick gritted his teeth. “Five more minutes, Sergeant, and I’ll be done.”
“Roger that, Major.”
He would reach the end of this walk without falling. Not like before.
Step.
Step.
Pain. Penance. Step. The sound of airplane engines had hummed in the background much the same as the heater now. Gusting wind over him. The antiseptic scent of the hospital as unwelcome a stench as the stench of…worse than muck…
Death.
Except the child had been alive, even if barely. He’d seen the doll flutter as if tugged.
Walk now. Run then.
He’d pulled the girl out, a child maybe four. They’d even made it to the emergency personnel where he’d passed her off…just as rotten boards gave way underneath him.
Agonizing pain razored through him. The ground sucked him in. Nails and boards cut into skin and muscle. Bones snapped. Wood tore into his legs. Ripped tendons.
Reach up. Out. Trudge. Don’t give up.
His vision tightened the tunnel until he could swear he saw the load ramp at the end of his metal bars. How damn ridiculous was that? Maybe it was just some of that visionary crap the shrink was always telling him about.
Picture what you want. Yeah. That was it. He wanted his job back.
Hell, he wanted his life back.
Okay, the load ramp gaping at the back of the airplane. Go with that image. Move toward it.
Light faded and blazed as he struggled with consciousness. A voice tugged at him from his past. He blinked, cleared his vision and his eyes agreed with his ears. What the…?
He must be delusional thinking of that woman who’d left his bed with only a terse little note five years ago.
Still he couldn’t stop himself from croaking out the name. “Nola?”
The woman moved toward him, stepping into the light streaming through the rehab area’s windows and revealing a face from the past he’d never expected to see again…
At a time when he very likely didn’t have a future.
Putting the past to rest so she could move forward with her future was easier said than done. But Nola was a determined lady.
She needed to wrap her brain around a reality she barely dared dream was real. She’d reached her five-year remission mark.
Her docs all encouraged her to celebrate. The mind and body worked in synch after all.
Easier said than done. Believing in the future was tough after so long of living for today. Milk the most from each second because today was a gift and tomorrow an unknown. Walk to the towering
