Secret Agent Sam
Kathleen Creighton
Reporter Cory Pearson's penchant for working in war zones had gotten him into hot water before, but this was uncharted territory, even for him. Because the pilot assigned to fly him into danger was none other than Samantha Bauer.Once she'd been Sammi June, an eighteen-year-old girl who'd looked at him starry-eyed. Now she was Sam, a very competent professional, whose eyes seemed to hold all manner of secrets.If Sam was thrown by learning who her new client was, she couldn't afford to show it–or the fact that her strong feelings for Cory hadn't changed. But if he couldn't accept who she was back then, what would he possibly want with her now–now that her life had taken a direction neither of them could have imagined…and left them both clinging to each other for their very survival?
Sam. Can’t be. Can’t be can’t be.
In all the world, he told himself, there had to be more than one female pilot named Sam. Had to be.
A coincidence. A little quirk of fate.
Out on the shimmering runway, the pilot straightened and moved out of the wing’s shadow. Her movements were unhurried…lazy, even. She stood waiting for them to approach, hands clasped behind her, one knee slightly bent, one hip slightly canted…chin up, head tilted back.
How well he knew that stance. She’d stood just that way, he remembered, the first time he’d seen her, that day in the White House.
Anger, joy, resentment, regret, pain, lust—all those things and others he couldn't name—lumped deep in his belly and exploded through his brain like mortar rounds, leaving him reeling. Shell-shocked. Numb.
“God,” he whispered, not knowing whether or not it was a prayer.
Secret Agent Sam
Kathleen Creighton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KATHLEEN CREIGHTON
has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today she says she is interested in everything—art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.
FOR PAT TEAL,
So much more than an agent…
My beloved friend.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Prologue
He saw Samantha for the first time in the White House rose garden.
“How many people can say that?” Cory Pearson said aloud to the computer screen as he slid the cursor to the Save icon and thumped the mouse.
The words he’d written, black letters stark on a vast white field, seemed to shimmer in anticipation. He stared back at them, wrists propped on their ergonomic supports, fingers poised…
Nothing. Hell.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have the words. Problem was, he had too many. Memories, impressions, images, emotions—everything translated automatically into words in his mind, always had, as far back as he could remember. He hadn’t understood then, not until much, much later, that not everyone’s mind behaved like this. And the fact that his did was something he’d been both gifted and cursed with at birth. And that this was what made him, whether he liked it or not, a writer.
By the time he’d come to that understanding, thanks to the combining of this gift—or curse—with a curious and adventure-some nature, he was already well on his way to becoming one of the most respected war correspondents-slash-journalists of his time.
It was shortly thereafter that those same attributes got him thrown into an Iraqi prison. Which, in turn, had set in motion the chain of events that had resulted in his presence in the White House rose garden on that particular day in May. And was also how he’d come to know, only a few months before that, of the existence of a girl named Sammi June Bauer.
Oh, he had plenty of words. Words swirled in his mind now like leaves in a whirlwind. Experience told him that attempting to force them into a semblance of order and paragraph form would be like trying to catch those windblown leaves in his hands. But he knew, if he was patient, eventually they would begin to settle and arrange themselves into patterns of their own making….
He watched her from a distance as she wandered among the rose beds, noticing how she seemed separate from all the other guests, isolated even in a crowd. It struck him that this apartness must be natural to her.
And, in retrospect, perhaps it was something he should have paid more attention to, perhaps…
What if I had? Cory asked himself as he stared at the blinking cursor. Would it have made a difference?
Probably not. He let out a breath and went back to typing.
The humid heat of a May afternoon, thick with the scent of crushed grass, rose around him as he moved closer to her, stalking her the way a nature photographer stalks a leopard. Through the heat shimmer he saw her throw a furtive look over one shoulder before she bent toward a half-open rose blossom, rather as if she meant to steal the flower itself rather than merely a sample of its fragrance. After a moment she looked up and cocked her head. Her lips formed a pout of disappointment.
“Try this one. It seems to have some smell to it,” he said, and felt a surge of strange delight when she gave a start, then turned with the slow dignity of an offended duchess.
As she studied him, hands clasped behind her back, head tilted back and chin out-thrust, he couldn’t help but smile. Not much about her resembled the pictures her father had painted for him during those weeks in Iraq, but remnants of the scruffy, combative ten-year-old soccer-playing tomboy she’d been could still be found in that chin and jaw. And that attitude. Oh, yeah.
But for the rest…
For starters, she was a whole lot taller than he’d pictured her—nearly equal to his own six feet in the high-heeled boots she was wearing—and a good part of that seemed to consist of legs. Slim, tanned, well-muscled legs, judging from the portion visible between the tops of her boots and the bottom edge of her dark pinstriped skirt, which was, in fact, a considerable amount. The rest of her was slim, too, but strongly built and athletic, like her father. Her hair—thick and shaggy, a rich blond shot through with gold—was a gift from her mother, but the eyes were Tristan’s. Dark and mysterious as moonlit waters. A man could drown in those eyes…!
“I’m Cory Pearson,” he said as he ambled toward her, wearing a disarming smile and trying to make it seem as if he’d just happened to be wandering by that way. “I was—”
“I know who you are. I’ve seen you on television.” She gave her shoulder-length hair a toss and her chin jerked a notch higher, if that was possible. “You’re the reporter who was with my dad in Iraq.”
“Yes. And you’re Sam—”
“Samantha,” she said in a breathless rush.
Not Sammi June. Not anymore. Of course not. The little-girl name had gone the way of the freckles and ponytails. She was a grown-up woman now.
He accepted it with a solemn nod, and a peculiar quivering pressure behind his breastbone. “Samantha…”
Cory sat back, his hands grown sweaty on the keyboard. The same pressure was there in his chest now, and letting out a long, slow breath didn’t ease it much.
There’d been more to that day, of course. A lot more. He remembered every moment of it, every word, every look, every gesture.
She’d confided in him, for some reason, although his intuition told him she was a private person by nature. She’d told him about ordinary stuff—her life, about soccer and school, and her newly born dream of becoming a pilot, like her dad. And some not-so-ordinary stuff—what it had been like to lose her father as a little girl and get him back again as a grown woman. Amazingly, in the midst of her own emotional turmoil she’d asked about Cory, too, how it had been for him.
He hadn’t been able to hide his pain from her that day, not completely, though God knows he’d tried. Just the first of many times in his relationship with Samantha Bauer when his will had failed him….
He’d listened to her speak of adult loss with a child’s simplicity, and of a child’s heartbreak with an adult’s passion.
And he’d fallen in love with her. Right there, that day, in the White House rose garden.
He let out another breath as he once more hit the Save icon, then darkened the monitor. He’d had enough. Couldn’t do any more, not now.
Nor, he imagined, would he make another attempt any time soon. He should have known it was too soon. That it would still hurt too damn much.
Writing had always been his lifeline in difficult times. His medicine, his therapy, his healing balm, his anesthetic, better than a bottle of Scotch. He’d thought, he’d hoped…it would help get him through this. But it seemed there was no medicine on earth powerful enough to dull the pain of losing Samantha.
Chapter 1
The tiny airstrip simmered in the afternoon heat, denied out of functional necessity even the small solace of trees. To Cory Pearson’s eyes the ragged cluster of clapboard buildings with rusting tin roofs that apparently served as hangar and maintenance sheds as well as terminal and business offices seemed to have hunkered down beneath the pounding sun with the silent endurance of penned livestock.
The taxi driver who had brought them from Davao City cut off the elderly car’s engine—to keep it from overheating, Cory imagined—which of course rendered the air inside the cab unbreatheable within roughly three seconds. Feeling his breath catch in an instinctive effort to keep that awful heat out of his lungs, Cory hurriedly thrust a handful of bills at the driver across the back of the seat and opened his door. On the other side of the car, his best friend and favorite photographer, Tony Whitehall, hefted the cases containing his cameras onto his knees and did the same. Hot air rushed inside the car like the breath of a ravenous beast.
“God,” Tony said, the profanity halfhearted and forlorn.
“Beats a monsoon, or so I’m told,” Cory said cheerfully as he hooked the strap of his laptop carrier over his shoulder and climbed out of the car. “Hard to see how, but if we’re still here in a few weeks, I guess we’ll find out.”
Tony just grunted.
The two men waited in stoic silence while the driver—spare, wiry and apparently eternally cheerful—retrieved their bags from the trunk of the cab. Returning their nods and muttered thanks with more nodding and smiling—Cory’s tip had been generous—the driver climbed back behind the wheel and started up the engine with a rackety explosion of noise and exhaust. He drove off with a full-armed wave of farewell from his open window.
“You couldn’t have picked a hotter month to do this?” Tony inquired as they stood motionless and watched the taxi undulate and seem to hover above the ground in the distant shimmer of heat waves. Moving from the spot seemed almost too great a task; the heat sat on their shoulders like a burden.
“Believe me, it was a whole lot cooler when I started negotiations last November.” Cory bent and picked up his bag and Tony did the same, and the two men began walking slowly toward the uninviting-looking cluster of buildings. “When Fahad al-Rami finally gave me the go-ahead to do the interview, I didn’t argue. I said, ‘Tell me the time and place, and I’m there.’”
Tony paused and set his bag down long enough to fish an already damp handkerchief out of the pocket of his jeans. “Yeah, well, I just hope we get something out of this—besides one hell of an interview, I mean.”
Cory glanced at him. “The hostages, you mean.” Tony, in the process of tying the handkerchief pirate-style around his shiny mahogany-colored head to protect it from the blazing sun, didn’t reply. Cory faced forward again, squinting even though the photosensitive lenses of his glasses had already adjusted to the glare. “Goes without saying. Not that I’m holding out much hope.”
Tony’s sunglasses flashed toward him briefly as he picked up his bag. “Why not? They’ve released other hostages.”
“For money. The Lundquists are missionaries—in most cases like this the churches back home are too poor to pay the ransom.”
“Then why the hell’d they take ’em?”
“Probably didn’t know who they were getting. Just scooped up a bunch of tourists from a seaside resort. The way I understand it, the Lundquists just happened to be vacationing there at the time.”
“Poor devils,” Tony said. Then, in a blunt tone and with a thrust of chin that might have been taken for callous if Cory hadn’t known him so well, he asked, “So, why keep them? They’ve had ’em for what, going on a year, now? Why not cut their losses? Turn ’em loose or kill ’em. One or the other.”
“I expect they’re hoping to get something for their trouble—leverage of one kind or another.” Cory pulled open a door marked Office and held it for Tony to squeeze through with his assortment of bags and cases. “Which is why I don’t hold out much hope for us securing the release of any hostages through this interview. It’s not like I have anything they want.”
Tony grunted as he nudged past him, then paused to let his eyes adjust to the dimness. “Other than the interview, you mean,” he said as he began lowering bags to the dusty linoleum floor.
“Hell,” Cory said with a grin as he let the door close behind him, “they had that for the asking.”
Tony took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket, then threw him a grin back. “A favorable interview. Maybe they’re figuring on holding the hostages over your head so you’ll make sure and show them and their cause to the world in a sympathetic light.”
It was a possibility that had already occurred to Cory, and another reason he didn’t entertain high hopes of bringing those hostages back with him. Not through negotiations, at any rate. As far as other means…he had some ideas on that score.
Which he was keeping to himself, for the moment. What Tony didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. And it could probably save a whole lot of arguing.
He dropped his overnighter on the floor and eased his laptop down beside it as he surveyed the room. Except for the two of them it seemed to be empty of people, the atmosphere rendered only slightly more tolerable than the outdoors due to the valiant efforts of a rackety fan sitting on a wooden countertop. The counter divided the room roughly in half. Furnishings in the half Cory and Tony occupied consisted of a wooden bench to the left of the entrance and a soft-drink vending machine on the right. Beyond the bench was a door marked with the universal male and female symbols indicating toilets. On the wall next to the door was a cork bulletin board sporting faded pictures of tropical resorts and sunset beaches, and above that, black letters individually pinned in an arch spelling out, WELCOME TO SEA CHARTERS.
On the countertop, a stack of brochures fluttered intermittently in the breeze from the oscillating fan. Behind the counter, a computer monitor sat atop a gunmetal-gray desk, its screen turned discreetly away from public view in the manner of airline ticket counters everywhere. Beyond that, through a bank of windows partly obscured by bamboo blinds, Cory could see an expanse of sunbaked earth interrupted by splashes of yellow-and-brown grass. Beyond the grass, before a backdrop of distant palm trees, a large twin-engine plane sat waiting on a hard-packed dirt runway.
In the shade of one low-slung wing, a slim figure wearing a dark blue baseball cap and khaki cargo pants belted over a white T-shirt lounged against the slanting fuselage. Nearby, moveable steps waited below an open doorway located in the rear of the plane, between the wing and the tail.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said Tony—who hadn’t been a practicing Catholic in years—as he came to stare past Cory’s shoulder. “S’pose that’s ours?”
“Pretty much has to be, since it appears to be the only thing out there with wings,” Cory said absently, his attention distracted, for the moment, by that distant figure under the aircraft’s wing. Something about her…
“That’s a damn Gooneybird,” Tony said as if Cory hadn’t spoken, his voice hushed. “I didn’t think those tail-draggers were still flying.”
“Gooneybird?” Cory glanced over at him, laughing a little. “Come on. That would be Second World War, right?”
Tony was staring reverently out the windows. “Yup. Douglas DC-3. They were the workhorse aircraft during World War Two. Commercial airlines flew ’em after the war—hell, they pretty much started commercial passenger service. That’s a damned antique out there.”
“Didn’t know you were an airplane buff.”
“Not me—my dad. His dad—my granddad, never knew him myself, he was in the Navy, in the Pacific. The Cee Bees—you know, the construction battalions? Anyway, before he got killed—Guadalcanal, I think it was—he helped build quite a few landing strips for those things. They used ’em for troop transport back then. Dad used to build models of all those World War Two planes—tried to interest me in doing it when I was a kid, but I was more into Nintendo.” He threw Cory a look, grinning. “Guess more of that stuff soaked in than I thought.”
He looked back at the plane, then did a double take. “Damn. I think that’s a woman.” He launched into a string of his favorite cheerful profanities before adding in an exaggeratedly ominous tone, “That wouldn’t be our pilot, would it?”
“Sexist pig,” Cory said with a lopsided grin. Coincidence, he thought. An odd little twist of fate. “Women have been known to fly airplanes. Does the name Amelia Earhart ring any bells?”
What surprised him—shocked him, actually—was the twisting he still felt in his guts when her name…her image…flashed through his mind. Not Amelia’s, of course.
Samantha.
Before Tony could reply, the door to the left of the windows opened and a man bustled in, showing tobacco-stained teeth in a wide, welcoming smile shaped like a lying-down half moon. He was of indeterminate age and ethnicity, with long salt-and-pepper hair pulled loosely back in a clubbed ponytail that left a halo of loose frizz around his broad, swarthy face. He wore rumpled light tan slacks and a Hawaiian-print shirt that hung unbuttoned over a dirty vest-type undershirt and a solid-looking mound of belly.
“Welcome to SEA Charters,” he said, slightly out of breath, in an accent that sounded vaguely Australian, adding, “Sounds like a boat business, dun’it? Stands for South East Asia. We pretty much cover the islands from here to New Zealand…Indonesia…anywhere you want to go. That’s our motto. Anywhere you want to go, we can get you there. I’m Will, by the way.” In what appeared to be a habitual gesture, and probably explained most of the dirt on the undershirt, he brushed his hand across his belly before thrusting it over the counter to shake first Cory’s hand, then Tony’s.
“I’m guessing you’re the reporters, right? Going to…” Still bustling, muttering under his breath, he dodged back behind the computer monitor, tapped some keys and bent over to peer at the screen. “Let’s see…” He glanced up, shaking his head as he whistled softly. “Not too many people going in there these days. Government warnings, you know. That province is in rebel hands. Well—off and on, anyways. Been a lot of government activity goin’ on up in those hills lately. ‘Government activity’—that’s a euphemism for fightin’, you know. They been warnin’ foreigners to stay away.”
“I was told you could fly us in.” Cory was fishing in his shirt pocket for the folded paper that contained his e-mail confirmation.
The other man waved it away with a fatalistic shrug. “Oh, yeah, we can get you there, that’s no problem.” His lips quirked and his eyes gleamed. “Getting you back could be, though.” Then the smile broadened into the half moon again, and his eyes narrowed into cheery little upside-down half moons to match. “Just kidding. Government always tends to exaggerate these things—you know how it goes.” He tilted his head toward the windows. “That’s your ride, right there, all gassed up and ready to go. So…lemme see…that was Visa, right? I’m just gonna need your card for a minute….”
While Cory was hauling out his wallet and extracting the plastic, Will pushed a sheet of paper across the counter toward him. “And if the two of you’ll just sign this waiver…” The half moons came out again. “Just a formality—since there is a government caution in effect. Nothin’ to it, really.”
Nothing to it, Cory thought as he scrawled his signature on the appropriate line at the bottom of the paper, except several hundred terrorists, a few-dozen tourist kidnappings, an occasional car bombing and a couple of missionaries held hostage for over a year.
He shoved the paper and pen toward Tony, who poked at them and tried not to look nervous.
“So, that’s our pilot?” Tony asked with a casual nod toward the windows as he pretended to study the paper. Cory cleared his throat and nudged him with his elbow.
Will looked up from making an old-fashioned slide impression of Cory’s credit card to beam at him. “Yep—she’s one of our best.”
“Wow, a woman, huh?” Tony was still fingering the pen.
Cory elbowed him in the ribs again and muttered, “Sign the damn thing, already. What’s the matter with you?”
“Like I said, one of our best.” Will brought the credit card slip to the counter and waited for Cory to sign it, after which he tore off and handed him his copy and tossed the other onto the cluttered desk.
“Okay, if you’ll come right this way, please.” He unhooked and folded up a section of countertop to let them through.
Cory tucked the credit card slip into his pocket and went to collect his bags. Tony, after hastily scrawling his signature on the waiver, did the same.
As they sidled through the door Will was holding for them—and tried not to gag as the heat assaulted them with renewed force—Will said in a chummy, confidential aside, “Hey, man, don’t you worry about Sam, there. The woman could probably put that bird down on a tennis court, providing you get the net out of her way.” He showed them his teeth and his half-moon eyes briefly as he pulled a cigarette pack from his shirt pocket, then turned away to light one.
For which courtesy Cory was intensely grateful. How would he have explained the look of blank shock that must have come over his face just then?
As it was, his step stumbled as if he’d taken a blow, and to cover it he paused briefly to shift his laptop carrier strap on his shoulder. When he continued on, there was a ringing sound in his ears.
Sam? Can’t be. Can’t be can’t be. In all this world, he told himself, there had to be more than one female pilot named Sam. Had to be.
A coincidence. A little quirk of fate.
Out on the shimmering runway, the pilot straightened and moved out of the wing’s shadow. Her movements were unhurried…lazy, even. She stood waiting for them to approach, attitude relaxed, even arrogant…hands clasped behind her, one knee slightly bent, one hip slightly canted…chin up, head tilted back.
How well he knew that stance. She’d stood just that way, he remembered, the first time he’d seen her, that day in the White House rose garden.
Her eyes, in the shadows beneath the bill of her cap, would be half-closed, he knew, measuring their approach with the cool appraisal of a well-trained sniper.
“God,” he whispered, not knowing whether or not it was a prayer.
Anger, joy, resentment, regret, pain, lust—all those things and others he couldn’t name—thumped deep in his belly and exploded through his brain like mortar rounds, leaving him reeling. Shell-shocked. Numb.
For which small favor he was fervently thankful. Because the numbness was the only thing that made it possible for him to continue to function. To walk up to her with a steady step, to nod and calmly say, with the coolest of smiles, “Hello, Sam. Small world.”
Oh, boy, thought Sammi June, I’ll bet he’s mad.
At least she told herself—half-hopefully—that he must be, and that, as determined as he might be to hide it from her, there would be telltale signs. A steely glint in his normally compassionate eyes, perhaps…those dark blue eyes, set deep behind the wire-rimmed glasses he almost always wore, eyes she’d always felt could see inside her soul…except, okay, right now his eyes were barely visible behind darkened lenses, but there was the tiny muscle flexing in the hinge of his jaw, the set of his mouth, the almost imperceptible hardening…
His mouth…normally so sensitive. So incredibly skilled. She remembered the way it felt like warm silk on her skin…sometimes. And at other times like liquid fire. And it tasted like…
No. I can’t. I can’t.
A thrill of excitement, of—God help her—anticipation shivered through her, astringent and heady as chilled wine.
“Helluva small world,” she replied easily, nodding at him. “Hello, Pearse.”
She thought it best not to offer him a hand to shake, since hers were cold as ice. Hoping he wouldn’t notice, she tucked them casually in her back pockets to warm them.
And saw the quick flicker of his eyes. Of course he’d notice. He was a reporter. He noticed everything. Especially if it had to do with her. He always had.
“Been a long time.”
“Yes, it sure has.” And what a scintillating bit of repartee this is, she thought. How many more of these can we come up with? Long time, no see…. Fancy meeting you here.
“You two know each other?” The guy with Cory—he’d be the photographer—was looking back and forth between the two of them, a puzzled and suspicious frown apparent, even though sunglasses hid his eyes.
Tony Whitehall didn’t look like a man she’d want to mess with if she could possibly avoid it, being half a head shorter than Cory and probably outweighing him by fifty pounds, none of it fat. His head resembled an egg, both in shape and hairlessness, but from roughly his earlobes down he looked to be one hundred percent solid unbreakable muscle. His skin was a warm, glossy mahogany, although his features, including wide cheekbones and a jutting hawk’s beak of a nose, hinted at a heritage more Native American than African.
Taken feature for feature he was almost marvelously ugly, but at the same time, in an indefinable, ruggedly offbeat way, she thought, rather attractive.
“Samantha Bauer,” she said, smiling at him. And since the circulation seemed to have returned to her hands, she pulled one out of her pocket and offered it to him. “Cory and I go way back.”
He smiled as he took her hand. “He and I go back a ways, too, but I swear he’s never mentioned you.”
As she felt her hand being swallowed by one the approximate size and texture of a baseball mitt, she could feel Cory’s eyes on her, intent and unwavering. Broadening her smile to a grin, she said, “Doesn’t surprise me. He’s just—” she let her gaze slide casually across Cory’s “—an old family friend.” She was gratified by his barely audible snort.
“Hey, if you were a friend of my family’s, you can bet I’d mention you.” Now there was an unmistakable lilt in his voice. Obviously, the flirting lamp had been lit.
Cory gave another snort, a louder one this time, and said dryly, “Tony’s got a thing for your airplane.”
Sam retrieved her hand but kept her smile where it was. “Yeah? You familiar with the DC-3?”
“Familiar?” Tony’s voice climbed the scale to a squeak that was almost comically unsuited to a man of his size and shape. “Oh, yeah, sure…like at the Smithsonian.”
Sam laughed, then wished she hadn’t. The laughter served to ease some of the tension that had tied her belly in knots, but without that tension holding her together, she suddenly felt loose and shaky inside. Fighting to keep the shaking out of her voice, or at least camouflage it, she waved Tony toward the steps and turned to walk beside him. “The DC-3 is probably the most reliable aircraft ever built. This one’s been restored, of course. She’ll probably outlast both of us.”
As she followed the photographer up the steps, she felt Cory fall in behind her. Felt his eyes on her. Of course she did; she was conscious of every movement he made—always had been. And the worst part of it was knowing he’d know that. He’d know exactly how aware of him she was, no matter how earnestly she chatted with Tony about the history and merits of the DC-3 aircraft. He’ll know, no matter how I try to hide it. He always knows what I’m feeling. Damn him.
How, exactly, was she feeling?
I can’t think about that right now. I can’t think now.
I thought I was ready for this. Dammit.
At the top of the steps she moved aside and gestured for Tony and Cory to pass her. “Go ahead and get settled in. I just have a couple of flight details to go over with Will. Shouldn’t take but a minute. We’ll be underway shortly.”
To be truthful, she was feeling on the verge of suffocation as she stepped back through the doorway. At the top of the steps she paused and lifted closed eyes to the merciless sun and hauled in a great gulp of the syrupy air as if it were pure oxygen. After a moment, when her head seemed to have stopped swimming, she clattered down the steps and headed for the shimmering terminal buildings. Halfway there, in spite of the heat, she broke into a jog.
Inside the stuffy cabin, Cory was putting himself through the necessary mental fortifications to deal with the awful heat. It was an exercise he’d learned long ago, and one that had gotten him through far worse circumstances than these. Mind over matter, that’s all it was. Mind over matter. The air was only unbreatheable if he thought it was.
Seeing Samantha again was only unendurable if he let it be.
Originally designed to carry around thirty passengers, the restored cabin had been reconfigured to hold maybe half that many. The furnishings were spartan, but the seats were wide enough to accommodate even Tony’s massive shoulders, and set far enough apart to afford a lanky six-footer like Cory adequate leg room. By mutual and unspoken agreement, he and Tony selected seats across the aisle from each other about halfway up the sloping cabin and set about stowing their bags in heroic silence.
Having secured his precious cameras to his satisfaction, Tony again took off his sunglasses and hooked the earpiece in the neck band of his shirt. He took off the bandana, wiped his face and neck with it, then sank into his seat with a heavy sigh.
After a moment he sat up again restlessly and looked over at the man in the seat across the aisle from him, the man who was most likely the best friend he had in the world, and who he admired and respected probably more than any other living human being. Nevertheless, and in spite of the fact that the man had a good five years on him, Tony more often than not felt a big-brotherly need to look out for and protect this man. And, at the moment, he felt a strong urge to throttle him.
When looking over a couple more times failed to get his attention, Tony tried shifting around and clearing his throat—not too subtle and a little bit childish, sure, but in Cory’s case, it usually worked.
This time, however, Cory went on staring straight ahead at nothing, absolutely still but in no way relaxed, neck and shoulders rigid with tension.
Tony leveled a black scowl at him. He considered himself to be normally a good-natured soul, but his aggravation levels were rising rapidly. They were rising because he was trying to work himself up to doing something completely alien to his masculinity and that he was resisting with every macho bone in his body. And he was becoming royally ticked at his buddy for making all that necessary.
He was about to do something guys, in his experience, simply don’t do, which was ask a guy friend a personal question.
“So,” he said, after clearing his throat a couple more times and finally hitching himself around in his seat in the heavy, flopping manner of a landed marlin. “What’s with you and Amelia Earhart?”
Cory jumped as if he’d been a million miles away—which he probably had been, mentally—and threw him a frowning look. “Who? Oh—you mean—”
“You know damn well who I mean.” Tony jerked his head toward the tumble of buildings beyond the wavy window glass. “What’s the story?”
Cory took off his glasses and went to polishing them on the tail of his shirt, an activity Tony recognized for the delaying tactic it was. “You heard her. I’m just a friend of her family. Her father’s…actually.” He put the glasses back on and pushed them up on the bridge of his nose. Since his nose was slippery with sweat, they slid right down again.
“Friend of the family, my foot,” Tony said, and was rewarded with a sideways look and a lopsided grin.
“Your foot?”
Tony shrugged and grinned back. “I don’t know, my mom used to say that. I guess it was the best she could do, since Gramma wouldn’t let her swear. Anyway, you get my drift. You and I go back quite a ways, too, buddy. I was best man at your wedding, in case you’ve forgotten. What’s maybe more germane to this discussion, I was there during your divorce. I stood by you—”
“Not too much standing involved, as I recall, unless you consider perching on a bar stool—”
“Hey, I was there, that’s what counts. Ready and willing to lend you a shoulder if you needed one.”
“The way I remember it, you were the one needing a shoulder—not to mention a ride home, and on one memorable occasion, at least, bail.”
Tony gave an affronted snort. “Don’t try to sidetrack me, Mr. Wordman. Whatever was between you and Amelia Earhart had to be something major. Hell, you know me—when it comes to understanding women, I’m no Dr. Phil, and even I felt it. Out there. Just now. The way the sparks were flying back and forth, it’s a wonder you two didn’t set the damn plane on fire.”
Cory didn’t reply, just gave him a hard, steely stare, a look that normally would have had Tony backing off. This time it didn’t work, and after a moment Cory put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.
It took a long, slow ten-count before Tony succeeded in throttling back enough to press on in a calmer, quieter voice. “Look, man, you know me, I don’t butt in where it’s not my business. But this isn’t exactly a picnic in the park we’re going on. I mean, here we are, heading into a place that’s supposedly so dangerous no commercial airline or boat or bus service is even willing to take us there, supposedly to interview a major terrorist who, if he had his druthers, would probably just as soon kill us as look at us. If you’ve got history with the woman we’re trusting to get us in and out of there alive, I think I ought to know about it.”
There was a long, suspenseful silence, during which Tony watched, with a sinking feeling in his gut, the little muscles working in the side of Cory’s jaw, and wondered if he was going to have to start looking for a new best friend.
Then, to his great relief, Cory straightened abruptly and said, “You’re right, you do.” Tony let out a silent, careful breath.
He waited, heart thumping, while Cory glanced over his shoulder toward the terminal buildings, again took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. Put the glasses back on. Leaned toward him across the aisle and spoke in a soft, conspiratorial way, although there was no one else around to hear.
“You know I was a prisoner in Iraq, right?”
“Yeah, sure—about ten years ago, wasn’t it? Special Forces went in and got you out in the middle of the Second Iraq War. Didn’t you win the Pulitzer with some of the articles you wrote about it afterward?”
Cory nodded in a dismissive way. “So you probably also remember there was another guy rescued same time I was. Tomcat pilot—he’d been shot down over the no-fly zone between the two Gulf wars. Given up for dead. They’d had him for eight years, and nobody knew.”
“Holy jumpin’ jeezits,” Tony exclaimed, whacking the armrest with an open palm, “I remember that! I was working in Richmond at the time—I think it was maybe my second or third big assignment—they sent me to Andrews to cover his return. Had all us media people corralled away from the action behind a chain-link fence so we wouldn’t interfere with the big family reunion. Never got one decent shot. Let’s see…I seem to remember he had a wife…a daughter…”
Cory nodded, took a breath and let it out. “He did. And that pilot out there, Samantha Bauer—” he dipped his head toward the windows “—Amelia Earhart, as you call her…”
“Don’t tell me,” Tony said, in the same reverent tone with which he’d first spoken of the airplane they were sitting in.
“Yep,” said Cory, in a voice like the echoes of doom. “She’s the Top Gun’s daughter.”
Chapter 2
“I met her in the White House rose garden,” Cory said, following a gleefully profane exclamation from Tony.
He could still smile, remembering that day, but carefully, tentatively, with great care not to jostle the memories too hard. The turbulence of seeing her again had shifted and tumbled them—and the feelings that went with them—inside the compartment he’d stuffed them into years ago, and right now he feared if he opened that door too wide and too suddenly they might tumble out and bury him.
He spoke rapidly to get past the danger.
“There was a reception for us—for him, really—Lieutenant Bauer—I was more or less an afterthought. The guy was a genuine hero, and you know what the media does with heroes.”
“Aren’t you the media?”
“That’s why I get to bad-mouth—it’s like family. Anyway, you’re not the media when you’re part of the story.”
“But you wrote those stories.”
“Yeah, mainly to get through it. Get past it. I wonder, sometimes, how it would’ve been if I hadn’t had that outlet. I know Tristan had a tough time of it—of course he’d been gone a lot longer than I was. They only had me a few months. Him they’d had for eight years.”
“Hard to imagine. Impossible, maybe.”
Cory nodded, the knots in his belly relaxing a little. He was always more comfortable concentrating on someone else’s story. “It was tough on his family. They’d assumed all along he was dead. Jessie—his wife—hadn’t remarried, though, which was one good thing. What a mess that would’ve been. Still, it was hard—they had a lot of readjusting to do. But it was hardest, I think, on Sammi—on Samantha. She was just a kid, a ten-year-old tomboy when she lost her dad. That’s how he remembered her—how he described her to me, when we were together in that Iraqi prison. He talked about her all the time. A tomboy with ponytails. With bandages on her knees from playing soccer.” A smile fluttered like a leaf on the gust of his exhalation. “Let me tell you, that’s not what he came back to.”
Not even close.
Oblivious to nuances, Tony whistled. “I guess not. She’d have been what, then—eighteen?”
“Yeah. In college. A grown-up woman, the way she saw it.”
“Still just a kid, though,” Tony said in a musing tone, then threw Cory a quick frown as it finally hit him. “What, you’re telling me you had something going with her? I never figured you for a cradle robber, man. You must have, what, ten or twelve years on her?”
“It wasn’t my intention,” Cory said, putting his head back with a sigh. “Believe me. Well—” the smile this time was brief and wry “—not at first, anyway. Not that I didn’t fall for her. That happened probably the first minute I laid eyes on her.” He threw Tony a look and shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you’ve seen her.” He glanced toward the window and his heart gave a jolt as he saw the tall wavery figure in khakis and a baseball cap striding toward them across the scorched grass.
Alerted by what he saw in Cory’s face, Tony, too, turned to look out the window. After a long moment he said in a reverent tone, “I can see how she’d get your attention, yeah. Even dressed like that I can see it.”
“It wasn’t about her looks, though.” Cory waggled his shoulders, uncomfortable even with the thought. Blond hair, brown eyes, long legs…great legs…okay, sure, she’d had all that. So had any number of other women he’d met in his lifetime and over the course of his career, in one variation or another. But Sammi June—Samantha—there’d just been something about her. So much…more.
“So, you had it bad for the college kid,” Tony said. “So, what happened?”
“About what you’d expect, I guess. Didn’t work out.” Cory lifted one shoulder and closed his eyes, hoping maybe Tony would take the hint and let it drop.
Naturally, he didn’t. “Didn’t work out? That’s all you have to say?” His voice rose in pitch as it lowered in volume. “Look, man, I know you. You’ll make a story out of a trip to the 7-Eleven.” With his eyes shut Cory felt the voice come nearer, and drop to a conspirator’s mutter. “Hey—I saw your face when you recognized that woman out there a while ago. Like you’d been whacked upside the head with a plank.” There was another pause while Tony settled back in his seat again.
After a moment he exhaled in an exasperated way. “Look. Three years ago I stood by your side and handed you the ring while you got married to a woman who just happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to this pilot of ours—don’t think I didn’t notice that—and I gave up my couch when you divorced that same woman barely a year later—not that I minded. I never liked her that much, anyway. Now, I may be crazy, but I’m getting the idea there’s a connection there somewhere. So trust me, ‘didn’t work out’ ain’t gonna cut it.”
“What do you want me to do? I can’t very well get into it now,” Cory threw back at him in an exasperated whisper. “She’s gonna be back in here in a minute.”
“Yeah, well…don’t think I’m letting you off the hook on this one, pal. First thing when we get to Zamboanga—okay the second, but once we’ve got a couple of cold brewskies in front of us, I want the whole story. I’m not kiddin’, man.”
Cory let out his breath in a gusty sigh.
Of all things to happen, he thought. On this, of all assignments. It had to be the mother of all coincidences.
Or maybe just fate, catching up with him.
Outside on the steps, Sam paused with one hand braced on each side of the door as if she were preparing to withstand a gale-force wind. Which she supposed she was in a way, or at least the emotional equivalent. And so far she wasn’t pleased with the way she’d held up in the face of it. No excuses, she’d had plenty of time to prepare. She should have had her emotions battened down a whole lot better than this.
One thing, one small triumph she could cling to: the look on Cory’s face when he’d realized who his pilot was. Hah—complete and total shock. His face had gone ash-white. You might be able to control your expressions and voice, Pearse, but there’s not much you can do about your blood vessels.
He’d had absolutely no clue, she was sure of it. And his reaction to seeing her again told her one thing: The man still had some feelings for her.
Okay, so she was probably never going to know exactly what those feelings were, but at least she knew he wasn’t indifferent.
A little buzz of something—excitement? Triumph?—zinged through her and a smile curved her lips. Indifferent? Not by a long shot.
The smile stayed put while she got the steps pulled up and stowed away and the door secured. The smile was still in place, feeling as if it had been molded out of clay and drying fast, as she started up the aisle, nodding at Tony Whitehall, who had turned to look at her with an expression of unabashed curiosity, and a glint in his exotic golden eyes.
She wondered what Cory’d been telling him; she knew Tony had to have asked about her the minute she was out of earshot. And what an internal battle that must have been, she thought, between Cory’s two selves: On the one hand, the reporter, who’d made a life and a career out of finding out secrets, getting to the bottom of things, solving mysteries, telling the story. On the other, the intensely private man who’d mastered the art of protecting his own secrets.
He, naturally, seemed completely unperturbed by her presence, or anything else, for that matter, sitting square in his seat, face forward, head back against the headrest. He looked as if he might even be enjoying a little nap.
But she knew better.
Or did she? Had she ever been sure what was going on behind those deep, all-seeing eyes?
“Air controllers at Davao City airport have cleared us for takeoff. If you-all wanna fasten your seat belts, we’ll be getting underway in a few minutes,” she announced in her this-is-your-captain-speaking voice, pausing to check that the two men’s bags had been properly stowed in their compartments. “We should be in Zamboanga in about an hour and fifteen minutes.” She threw Tony Whitehall a smile and a wink.
She didn’t look at Cory, but to her great annoyance, felt a distinct prickling sensation between her shoulder blades as she continued up the sloping aisle to the cockpit, an awareness of eyes watching her with unfathomable intensity….
From his seat Cory could see clearly through the open cockpit door. He watched as she ran through her preflight checklist, and try as he would to deny it, felt a little burr of admiration, even pride, begin to hum beneath his breastbone. He’d never flown with Sam at the controls before.
The baseball cap had been replaced by a bulky set of white headphones that left her sun-streaked hair in the kind of sweaty disarray he’d always found particularly sexy. Sexy even now, cut short like this, shorter than he’d ever seen her wear it. Her strong hands and long-boned fingers moved nimbly over the complicated array of dials and switches in a way that brought back vividly the no-nonsense, straight-ahead way she’d always had about her, even when they’d made love. The way she’d had of touching him that was uniquely hers, without shyness or hesitation, with a certain bold edge and a hint…just a hint of wickedness.
And it was that more than anything, he thought, that had ignited the fires in his blood back then. Maybe that part of her had connected with the secret danger-lover and thrill-seeker within him, like two live wires touching….
Come off it, Pearse. It’s over. It was over long ago.
One after the other, the twin engines fired with a deep-pitched growling sound that hummed in his bones and put him in mind of old black-and-white war movies, or something he’d watch on the History Channel. The plane sat vibrating in place while the engine rpm’s climbed and the growling changed in pitch and intensity. Then it slowly began to move forward.
Cory felt his own pulse pick up speed as he watched the hands that had once stroked him to feverish arousal skillfully manipulate the throttles while she steered the plane in a tight right turn onto the runway, then tight left to straighten out. He saw her reach down with one hand to lock the tail wheel in place. The growling sound continued to grow in volume and intensity and he could feel the vibrating now in his belly as the plane began to accelerate down the runway.
Tearing his eyes away from the open cockpit door, he glanced over at Tony, who looked back at him and hummed the first few bars of “Off We Go, into the Wild Blue Yonder,” grinning like a madman. He felt his stomach drop and his body press heavy into his seat, and he jerked his gaze to the window in time to watch the scorched grass and palm trees and tin-roofed buildings drop away under him.
“Hot damn,” said Tony with a gleeful chortle.
Cory didn’t reply. He leaned forward to stare through the window as Davao City came into view, slowly spreading out below him, with the glittering blue of the water beyond. His stomach dropped and the earth tilted as the plane banked sharply, and when it slowly rotated back into position, he could see Mount Apo draped in haze on the horizon.
And still the plane climbed steadily, the deep growling of its powerful twin engines creeping into his bones and invading his brain until he almost felt as if he were a part of the plane himself, as if he were the one laboring skyward with the sun in his face and the wind solid beneath his wings. He felt a soaring, lifting inside himself, too, to think of the woman he’d held soft and naked and trembling in his arms, in control of such awesome power.
He found the notion damned exciting…a pure turn-on, in fact. Which surprised and unnerved him more than a little.
When he felt the plane level out and the engine growl ease off to a steady purr, Cory unbuckled his seat belt. He got a look from Tony when he got up and stepped into the aisle, but something Tony saw in Cory’s face must have warned him, because whatever it was he’d been about to say never got said.
Sam glanced back at him as he stepped through the radio operator’s compartment, lips curving in a smug little Sammi June smile he remembered well. He couldn’t see her eyes because of her sunglasses. He wished he could have seen them, though he wasn’t sure why. Was he remembering the way they’d once lit up at the sight of him, wondering if the glasses were hiding that same glow now?
Wishful thinking, he told himself.
She tilted her head toward the right-hand seat. “Hey, Pearse—have a seat.”
He eased past the controls and settled himself gingerly, his fascinated gaze sliding over the bewildering array of gauges and levers and dials to the view through the wide rectangular windshield. “Wow,” he said.
Sam said lightly, “I guess this is a first.” She threw him a smile. “You’ve never flown with me before.”
“With you at the controls, you mean. No,” he said, gazing once more at the hazy horizon, remembering other times when she’d seemed unknowingly to echo his thoughts. “I guess not.”
There was a pause before she asked, with a slight edge of impatience, “Well, what do you think?”
He hedged, naturally, since there wasn’t any way he could have told her the truth. Which was that he’d lost the ability to think the moment he’d set eyes on her, standing there beside the old World War Two airplane, wearing the arrogance that had always captivated him so, that was like her very own signature perfume.
In that first moment, the years since he’d last seen her had evaporated and it was as if she’d never been gone from his life or his mind, not for an instant. It was all there, in total recall—her face, her body, her voice, her laugh…the way her skin felt, its texture and heat…its softness and its tiny imperfections…the freckles, the way she smelled, the way her hands felt touching him…the way she tasted.
“Of the airplane,” he dryly asked, “or you?”
She laughed, that husky chortle he’d always liked. “The plane, of course.” Once again her smile quirked sideways. “Me being a pilot isn’t exactly news.”
“I never had a problem with you being a pilot. You know that.”
“Yeah, right.”
He shifted in his seat and changed the timbre of his voice, the way driving a car he might have shifted gears to gain traction through a muddy patch. “Somehow I never would have pictured you flying World War Two prop planes for a dumpy little back-water charter outfit in the Philippines, though. The last I heard, you were crewing on passenger jets to China. How in the hell did you wind up here?” He let go of an incredulous huff of laughter. “I’m still trying to get my mind around the coincidence of that.”
She shrugged and said lightly, “Long story,” as she reached to tap some dials and gauges, an activity that, as far as Cory could tell, produced no changes whatsoever in the plane’s behavior.
“We’ve got time.”
Sam felt herself tensing up; she couldn’t help it. It was the calm, almost gentle way he said it that got to her—hadn’t it always?
As the old resentment flared, she fought the urge to glare at him, kept her eyes fixed on the horizon and said sweetly, “I don’t know, I guess it must have been my ‘childish lust for adventure.’ Isn’t that what you called it?”
And she couldn’t help the little glow of satisfaction she got from the silence that followed, even though voices were hissing and moaning in dismay in the back of her mind. Ooh, what did you wanna go and say that for, Samantha June? You don’t wanna dredge up all that old stuff again. That’s water under the bridge, honey-child…you should just leave it be.
She could feel his eyes on her again, that quiet, steady gaze that made her squirm because it seemed it must see right inside her.
“You could have warned me,” he said mildly.
Now she looked at him, her lips curving in an evil grin. “Deprive myself of the look on your face when you saw who your pilot was? No way.”
He chuckled and shook his head, and his eyes found hers even through the shielding lenses of her sunglasses. “Same old Sammi June. Always got to be on top.”
Something thumped hard in her belly. She kept the smile, but it no longer felt like part of her face. More like the clay mask again. “You used to like that about me.”
He held her eyes for a long, intense, awful moment, then eased his shoulders back in the copilot’s seat and exhaled, sounding weary. “I used to like a lot of things about you, Sam.”
Damn you, Pearse. Damn Will, too, for requesting me for this assignment. And damn me for being stupid—no, arrogant—enough to think I could handle it. What was I thinking?
What were you thinking, Sam? How about that you’re a highly trained professional, with the skills and guts it takes to do this job?
So, do it already. Focus, Sam. Do your job. So you had an affair with the man once upon a time. Forget it.
An affair. She cringed at the word. It made the whole thing with Cory sound…frivolous. Fleeting. Bittersweet and nostalgic—rather old-fashioned, really. Like something you’d read about in an old diary.
But it wasn’t just an “affair,” dammit. I loved you, Cory Pearson. You were the love of my life. And you broke my heart. No—you tore out my heart, tore it into itty-bitty pieces and stomped them in the dirt! God, how I hate you for that.
She did—oh, she did. But most of all she hated that she’d never known if she’d succeeded in hurting him back. She’d tried—you’d better believe she’d tried—but if she had managed to hurt him, he’d never let her see it. Not once.
And for that, more than anything, I swear I am never gonna forgive you.
She cleared her throat, took a deep breath. “Look, Pearse…I know this is probably awkward for you—”
“Awkward?” She heard the smile in his voice, and irony that was gentle, not bitter. “Like…hell is awkward, you mean?”
So, he thinks seeing me again after two solid years is hell? Well, good. I’m glad.
She was glad. So why did she feel a need to grit her teeth and swallow hard before she could answer him?
“Yeah, well…I’m gonna need to know if you’re okay with it. If you’re not, just say the word. When we get to Zamboanga—”
“Of course I can handle it,” he said softly.
Of course he can handle it, she thought, sarcastically. He’d handle it the way he handled everything. Like a journalist, clear-eyed and objective, but careful to keep himself one step removed from the messy stuff. Stuff like…emotional turmoil. And pain. It was the way he’d handled Iraq and its aftermath, wasn’t it? And probably all sorts of stuff that had happened to him in his distant past he’d never been willing to talk about to anyone, not even her.
Seconds ticked by in silence, while the farmlands and forests of Mindanao unfolded slowly below them.
“So, tell me,” Sam said in a falsely bright, conversational voice, shaking off the strangling sense of futility that had coiled around her, “how’s Karen these days?”
She heard his sharp hiss of exasperation and felt her cheeks heat with a weird mixture of triumph and shame. What was it that made her want to needle him? The forlorn hope he might lose his cool? That was never going to happen. And even if it did, what would that accomplish?
At least I’d know he cared. That I’d hurt him, maybe a fraction as badly as he hurt me.
Okay, the devil made me do it….
“For God’s sake, Samantha,” he said in a weary voice.
“What?” She threw him a wounded look. “She was your wife for…what was it, a whole year? Knowing you, I’m sure the divorce was amicable. You probably keep in touch, exchange Christmas cards…all that stuff, right?” She lifted a shoulder and turned her eyes back to the horizon. “I was just wondering how she was doing. She looked like a nice person. I wish her well.” Sure you do. You wish her in hell, is what you mean.
“How do you know what she looks like?” Cory’s voice sounded idly curious, remote and far away.
“I saw the wedding pictures you guys sent Mom and Dad. She looked…happy. So did you.” She looked over at him, chin lifted in defense against the suffocating pain in her throat and chest. “So, what happened, anyway?”
He was maneuvering himself carefully around the controls and out of the copilot’s seat and didn’t reply.
“Hey,” she said in mock dismay, “we’re still a half hour out. You don’t have to go back to your seat yet.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said flatly. “If you think I’m going to discuss my failed marriage with you, you’re crazy.” With one hand on the back of the right-hand seat, the other on hers, he paused as if listening to a replay of what he’d said inside his own head. Then he added in a softer tone, “Not now, anyway. I guess we are going to have to talk, but this isn’t the time or the place.”
It wasn’t until he’d left the cockpit and was on his way back to his seat that Sam realized her heart was pounding. And that she felt shivery inside—a purely feminine kind of weakness she hadn’t felt in…oh, years and years. Well, two, to be exact. Which happened to be the last time she’d spoken face-to-face with Cory Pearson.
Feminine weaknesses—or any other kind, for that matter—she surely did not need. Lord help her, especially not now.
Well, hellfire and damnation—as Great-Grannie Calhoun might have said—what was she supposed to do? She hadn’t expected to feel so much, not after all this time.
Tony’s stare followed Cory down the aisle and into his seat.
“Don’t even think about asking,” Cory warned in a hard, flat voice that carried over the loud click of his seat belt.
Tony promptly closed his mouth. A moment later, though, he opened it again to say, jabbing a finger at Cory for emphasis, “Okay, but just so you know, the minute we get to Zamboanga, it’s the brews first, then the buzz. I mean it, man. The whole story. Or you can find yourself another cameraman. Swear to God.”
Cory put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.
He wasn’t worried about losing his photographer. In addition to being a close personal friend, Tony’d have to be comatose and chained to a bunker before he’d miss this assignment. But he was right—the three of them were going to be depending on each other for a lot during the next week or so, including, possibly, their lives. They were a team, for better or worse. Tony deserved to know about his history with the third member of the team—some of it, anyway.
Definitely not everything.
God, how it all came back to him, the way things had been with Sam and him. Every laugh, every tear, every heart-thumping, gut-twisting, sweaty detail. The chemistry—the fireworks—had been there from the first moment for both of them, although he’d done a pretty good job—heroic, he thought, considering what he was up against—of holding it at bay for as long as he had.
There’d been the age thing, of course, but Sam hadn’t wanted to hear about that. Far as she was concerned she was a grown-up woman of legal consenting age, and that was that. Didn’t help matters, either, that her mother had been the same age when she’d met and fallen in love with her dad.
Then there’d been Cory’s friendship with Tristan, forged during those hellish days spent together in an Iraqi prison. Tris hadn’t been happy when his baby girl, the daughter he still remembered as a ponytailed tomboy, had declared her intention of dating a thirty-two-year-old friend of her father’s. Cory had been fighting a strong sense of guilt about that the weekend he’d gone to visit Tris, Jessie and Sam at the lake house. Memorial Day weekend, it had been. Lord, how well he remembered that terrible day….
It’s been a beautiful day. Last night’s thunderstorms have moved on, and the skies have cleared to a typically hot, hazy, sun-shiny summer afternoon. The lake is crowded with boats of all kinds, shapes and sizes: pontoons loaded with partying lake-dwellers waving to neighbors on their docks, flat-bottomed bass boats with solitary fishermen stoically riding out the chop in quiet coves, lots of other ski-boats, and of course the Wave Runners and Jet Skis, zipping illegally in and out amongst them all.
In the midst of all the chaos, Sam is determined to teach me to water-ski. I’ve never considered myself particularly talented when it comes to sports, but she’s patient—or stubborn—and it seems as if I might be getting the hang of it, finally. I’ve gotten up—again—and this time it feels like I might stay here awhile. Tris is driving the boat, while Jess sits watching me from the spotter’s seat in the rear, and Sam rides beside me on her knee board. Above the hiss of the water’s spray I can hear her shouting encouragement and praise.
He remembered the feel of the goofy grin on his face, the breathless exhilaration when he successfully jumped the wake.
He remembered the two kids on the Jet Ski, a boy and a girl riding tandem, cutting in close…too close.
I hit the water with that stinging thump that’s become all too familiar to me this day, and I hear Sam’s yell and Jessie’s whoop, and the sound of the boat’s motor throttling down, then circling slowly back to me. Jess leans over the back of the boat, calling to me, asking if I’m ready to call it quits.
That’s when it happens.
I don’t see the accident, none of us do, except maybe Tristan. But we all hear it—that terrible grinding crunch. I hear Tris shout as he guns the boat, and then he’s heading away from me toward the mouth of a nearby cove. Far off across the roiling surface of the water I can see the teenagers’ Jet Ski floating at a crazy angle next to a capsized bass boat.
Then I’m swimming, swimming toward the wreck, swimming as hard as I’ve ever swum in my life before, and my heart feels like it’s on fire in my chest.
I hear Jessie screaming at Tris, and the sound of a splash as Tris hits the water. And after what seems an eternity, I see Tris’s head reappear, and next to it that of the unconscious fisherman. I feel an awful jolt of adrenaline shoot through me a moment later when I see both Tris and the fisherman slowly sink back beneath the surface of that muddy water.
A thought flashes through my mind: No! No way he survived eight years in an Iraqi prison to die in this godforsaken pond. No way!
That’s when I haul in air and dive.
Things become confused…I’m operating on instinct.
I’m underwater, I feel something…I grab hold of it. It’s Tris, and I grab hold of him and try to fight my way back to the surface. And I realize I’m fighting a losing battle because Tris still has a death grip on the bass fisherman and isn’t about to let go.
I think, God help us, we’re all going to drown.
And then…my head’s above water, and I see Sam, plowing toward us through the water on her knee board, digging hard with both arms and yelling and cussing like a maniac, and she’s shoving life preservers at me, and her strong hands are everywhere, helping me, lifting Tris, pulling them both up out of the water.
There’s a lot of yelling and thrashing around, and everything is gasping, coughing, choking, sobbing pandemonium….
In spite of the confusion, some images stayed clear in his mind: Sam treading water while breathing into the fisherman’s mouth. Jess doing the same for the teenaged boy in the bottom of the boat while she sobbed and swore furiously at Tris between breaths. Tris clinging to the side of the boat, gasping for breath and glancing over at Cory with haunted eyes.
Later that evening, after paramedics had flown the three accident victims off to the hospital in a medevac chopper, after Tris and Jess, Sam and Cory had all showered and eaten and calm had been restored, Sam and Cory took the boat and went out again onto the now-serene and all but deserted lake. To watch the sunset, Sam said, but Cory had known her real reason for wanting to get out of the house was to give her mom and dad some privacy. They’d been having a rough time of it since Tris’s return from the dead, Cory knew. It was Jess’s concern about her husband that had led her to call Cory, to ask for help from the one person she felt might understand what Tris was going through.
How well he remembered that night, too, and what a strange contradiction there seemed to be between the peace and quiet of tranquil water reflecting sunset clouds…the first and brightest star of evening…and the sense inside himself that something profound had happened to him this day. That being here with this woman, a milestone had been passed in his life, one equal in import and magnitude to his parents’ death and his sojourn in Iraq, one that would change the direction of his life irrevocably.
“Look,” Sam says, “there’s the Wishing Star.”
She tells me, then, how she wished on that star when she was a little girl, and she tells me the poem and we recite it together: “Starlight, star bright, first star I’ve seen tonight…”
“What did you wish for?” I ask her, smiling, thinking how very young she is.
“Uh-uh. You’re not supposed to tell. Otherwise, it won’t come true.” And she smiles and tilts her face up to mine.
It was then, in that moment, that he’d forgotten any thoughts he’d ever had about how young she was. He’d remembered instead her strength and her courage. He’d remembered her intelligence and sensitivity, her stubbornness and arrogance and husky, sexy laughter. And he’d lowered his head and kissed her.
Oh, how he remembered that kiss.
What do I expect—something sweet and innocent and virginal, maybe? Instead…I find myself lost. Lost in a sensual jungle…lush, humid, beautiful, exhilarating…terrifying. I’m afraid I may never escape; I don’t want to, really. But at the same time I’m afraid, as inside me I feel battlements I’ve spent a lifetime erecting begin to shiver and quake.
It takes all my wits and will, but I fight my way free, and I’m thinking, How am I ever going to hold out against this?
And I think, Tristan, my friend, I’m sorry—forgive me—but I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with your daughter….
He had held out for a lot longer than he’d believed possible, though he hadn’t been able to make Sam understand why, even with her long, silky body warm and soft against his, her strong fingers tracing paths on his skin for her eager mouth to follow, when all her woman’s instincts and the evidence of her senses told her how much he wanted her, he could still refuse to take her to bed.
Sam hadn’t understood, that night on the lake…a night and a kiss so beautiful, so full of sweetness and hope and promise it had made his soul ache. It was only the first of God-knew-how-many times he’d disappointed her.
Chapter 3
“Okay, I just wanna know one thing.” Tony wiped beer from his lips with the back of his hand and leaned back in his chair. “If you still had a thing for this Sam chick, why in the hell did you marry Karen?”
Cory watched the waiter in his white tunic and black slacks weave his way between tables on his way back to the bar. “Boy, you don’t mess around, do you?” he said mildly. “Straight for the throat.”
“Whatever works,” Tony said, burping agreeably.
Cory picked up his beer glass and sipped, then reconsidered and took a couple of hefty gulps. Talking about personal stuff—his personal stuff—never had come easy for him; he figured priming the pump a little couldn’t hurt.
He coughed, frowned and said, “It’s not that simple.”
“Never is.” Tony nodded at him in a so-go-on kind of way. “Quit stalling.”
Instead of replying, Cory shifted around in his chair, ran a hand through his hair and swore under his breath.
“Okay,” Tony said, sitting forward and planting his forearms on the table, “I’ll get you started. You met this…”
“Samantha.”
“Yeah. You met Samantha right after you came back from Iraq, right? And it was love at first sight. Dyn-o-mite. So that’d make it…” he counted on his fingers “…six—no, seven—years later you married Karen. I have to assume you dated the lady some before you popped the question. So, what were you doing during the previous six years? Were you and Samantha together all that time?”
“We dated,” Cory hedged, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “Off and on…”
“Dated…as in, dinner and a movie? Or dated…as in, you give her a drawer in your apartment and she keeps your aftershave on her sink?” Cory glared at him. “Hey, you were sleeping with her, right?” Tony waggled a finger back and forth like a tiny windshield wiper. “Look, man, the kind of sexual tension I been pickin’ up here, that doesn’t come from nothin’. So gimme a break, okay?”
There was a pause while Cory drank more beer, then pursed his lips, steeling himself. “There were long periods when we didn’t see each other,” he said at last, in a voice Tony had to lean closer to hear. “She was in school in Georgia, I was working out of New York, on assignment a lot of the time. When we did manage to get together, it was like we’d never been apart. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It was…” he waved a helpless hand “…like touching a match to fireworks. Like dropping a torch in dry tinder. Like that. We couldn’t seem to help ourselves.”
Tony stared at him for a moment—probably in shock, Cory thought, to hear him give up so much personal stuff at once, and so easily. Then belatedly he nodded, as if in sympathy. Cory glanced at him, shifted in his seat and forced himself to go on.
“Then, the time together would end, she’d go back to Georgia, I’d go back to New York, we’d resume our lives. She had hers, I had mine. Not,” he said wryly, “that I didn’t spend a lot of my time thinking about her when I wasn’t with her. I’d like to think she spent some time thinking about me.” He paused for an absentminded sip of beer. “I never asked her whether or not she dated anyone else when we were apart. I have to assume she did.”
“Tough way to run a relationship,” Tony offered, shaking his head in sympathy.
Cory nodded, then shrugged. “We both had other things on our minds, I guess. For me, I think it was a case of…I was just biding my time, keeping busy, traveling a lot, waiting for her to finish school. In the back of my mind was always the thought that once she graduated, we’d find a way to work things so we could have a more…I don’t know, steady relationship.” Once again the wry grin stretched the unwilling muscles in his face. “As it turned out, she had other ideas.”
Tony was nodding, hunched over his beer, apparently staring at the front of Cory’s shirt. “Things to see…places to go…people to…uh.”
“Something like that.” Cory lifted his beer glass, discovered it was empty and signaled the waiter with it instead. “Her big thing was, she had her heart set on being a pilot, like her dad. Her mom wasn’t going to hear of her joining the military, so off she went to flight school. Didn’t take her long to get her private pilot’s license, and again I thought…okay, maybe now. But after that…” He frowned, distracted by the waiter’s approach. When their order for two more of the same had been taken and the waiter had gone away again, he resumed. “After flight school, she pretty much disappeared for a while.”
“Wait a minute. Disappeared? As in…went missing? That’s kind of freaky.”
“As in, dropped out of sight. Out of my life. Oh, I’d get phone calls from her. Sometimes she’d e-mail me. Always full of how much she…how much she missed me. But also how much she loved what she was doing, how exciting it all was, and that it was what she’d always wanted to do. And if I happened to have some free time, let’s say, and suggested we get together, she was always off somewhere ‘training.’ Well, hell,” he added bitterly as the waiter arrived with two fresh glasses of beer, “a man can only take so much.”
“You got that right,” said Tony stoutly, lifting his new glass in a salute.
When the waiter had been disposed of, Cory claimed his glass and leaned in, in a companionable sort of way. He’d been right about the beer; telling his story was definitely getting easier. “I mean, I’d been waiting for the woman for five years. Then, too, I wasn’t getting any younger. You know, I was in my late thirties, approaching middle age, and I’m feeling like there’s something missing in my life. I’m thinking maybe it’s time to be settling down, cut down on the travel, have some kids before I’m too old to enjoy ’em. You know?”
Tony was nodding again, like one of those little dogs people put in the back windows of their cars. “You got the ol’ nesting urge. Happens. Hasn’t happened to me, yet, but I’ve heard about it.”
“So, right about then’s when I met Karen.”
Tony went on nodding. “She caught you at a weak moment.”
“Yeah,” said Cory gloomily, “I guess.” But he felt guilty even saying it. It had been a whole lot more complicated than that, but he didn’t feel much like getting into it with Tony. Not now. Not with Sam back in his life and “What was I thinking?” the phrase uppermost in his mind.
After a moment he straightened himself up and said, “Hey, I’m not proud of it, okay? She was there and Sam wasn’t, and after a while I convinced myself what I felt for Karen was love, and that made it all right, somehow. It was a case of somebody being in the right place at the right time.” He tilted his head, considering that. “Or, from her point of view, maybe the wrong place at the right time…. Anyway. So—” he shrugged, drank beer, burped gently and waved his glass in a c’est la vie gesture “—I got married. End of story. Or anyway, you know the rest.”
“Uh-uh.” Tony’s head movements had changed direction. “Not so fast. What about Samantha? How’d she take it, you going and getting married on her like that?”
Cory gave him a sideways look. He was feeling defensive again. “Come on. It wasn’t like that. Not like I sent her a Dear John—or Jane—letter, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’d already agreed it was time to cut each other loose…go our separate ways. I sure as hell didn’t need her…her permission.”
Tony said, “Humph,” in a thoughtful way, then narrowed his eyes. “Who called it off? You break up with her, or she break up with you?”
“What difference does it make?” Cory said, squirming a little.
“Helluva difference. The dumpee always carries a bigger grudge than the dumper. It’s kind of a natural law.”
“Look, it wasn’t like that, okay? Anyway, I don’t know if I even remember.”
Oh, but he did, though. He probably remembered every moment of that last night together, every word spoken. The things he’d said to her—gently, he’d thought at the time. Calmly. Rationally. Explaining to her that he wasn’t getting any younger, and…oh, all the other things he’d just told Tony, and how patient he’d been, waiting for her all through college and flight school, and as much as he loved her and always would, how long did she expect him to wait for her to grow up?
Oh, boy. He’d realized the moment those words were out of his mouth they might not have been the best choice. Plus, no matter how gently he’d phrased it, what he’d done was force her to make a choice between him and the career she loved, and Sam never had taken well to ultimatums. He remembered, could feel it still, the sick, sinking feeling in his stomach when he saw her eyes harden to cold, dark fury. He felt chilled even now, remembering the implacability in her voice as she’d replied.
“Then don’t,” she says. “Don’t wait for me anymore.”
Just that; Sam never has been a great one for words.
As I watch her walk away from me down a rain-slicked Georgetown street, part of me—a long-buried, almost-forgotten part—is howling in pain and anguish like an abandoned child, all set to hurl myself after her and beg her to forgive me, forget everything I’ve said, that I will wait for her forever if that’s what it takes to keep her in my life.
But another part of me, the adult part that has governed me since I was nine years old, is already deadened to the pain…growing numb with acceptance that this is for the best. And already growing used to the idea that the woman I’ve considered the love of my life for so long, I must henceforth remember as the one who got away….
“Uh-oh,” Tony said. “Speak of the devil. Uh…not that I think she’s…well, you know what I mean. Look who just walked in.” He hauled his beer close and subsided, looking vaguely ashamed, while Cory shot a quick guilty look toward the bar’s entrance.
In keeping with the hotel’s “tropical hideaway” theme—which meant many of the guest rooms, including his, were on stilts, right at the water’s edge—the bar’s ambiance was lush and exotic. Reminded Cory of the old Tiki Room at Disneyland, which he recalled visiting once during his college days. Here, though, the plants and flowers were real, and the sounds of trickling water came from miniature waterfalls that cascaded invisibly through the greenery. Instead of the clacking of animated birds, the background music emanating from hidden speakers was muted, exotic and unfamiliar.
The entrance was a small elevated landing flanked by stands of bamboo that leaned inward toward each other to form a doorway arch, illuminated by a soft mellow spotlight. It was like a small stage, and dead in the middle of it stood Sam, looking as though she belonged there, her head held high in that almost arrogant way she had, her short blond hair shining like sunshine, spiked and curling slightly with the damp.
His heart slammed against his ribs, but all he said was, “I see her.”
No cargo pants and baseball cap tonight. She wore a wrap skirt in tropical splashes of orange and peach and red that hit her a couple of inches above the knee and set off the soft golden tones of her skin, and a yellow knit tank top that clung to her small firm breasts and slender waist like the hide of an exotic animal. She looked confident and at ease, there in the light, her long, naturally lean body relaxed, but seeming to vibrate with strength and energy held in reserve.
“So does every male in the room—every one that’s got a pulse,” Tony muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Man, I only wanna know one thing. How in the hell’d you ever let a woman like that get away?”
Cory winced. The question was too close to what he’d been thinking to himself a moment ago. He said in a voice gone unexpectedly guttural, “Like I said, I tried my best. She had other ideas.” He took a swallow of beer that seared his throat.
“Think she’s looking for us? Hey—she’s looking this way.”
“No—don’t—” But it was too late. Tony had already lifted his beer glass and was gesturing with it in a welcoming way.
“Hey—Captain—over here.”
With his pulse a hollow tom-tom beat in his belly, Cory watched Sam give Tony a little smile and a nod, pause briefly to speak to the white-jacketed host who had rushed over to greet her, then make her way unhurriedly through the maze of rattan tables.
As she walked among the tables, it occurred to Sam that her legs felt rather odd. Not weak—she’d never say weak—but…as though they weren’t all that well strung together, put it that way.
Oh, Lord, it’s still there. All these years later, and it’s as bad as ever. Like one of those tropical diseases, she thought, that pop out every now and then even when you think you’re over it. Like malaria.
She tried hard to keep her eyes on the bald guy, the photographer—Tony, that’s it. She kept her eyes and her smile focused on him and tried not to look at Cory, but how could she help but see him sitting there? Sort of leaning back in his chair, relaxed as always, wearing a loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt in some kind of coarse, rugged material softened and faded by long wear and many washings.
He’d be watching her, she knew, with his lips slightly curved, eyes dark and intent behind the rimless glasses he always wore. It was the attitude that made him such a successful reporter, that way he had of making a person feel they were the most fascinating and important person in the world, that nothing mattered more than what they had to tell him.
It would only occur to them a long time afterward that they’d spilled their guts to him, told him their deepest, darkest secrets…and that they knew absolutely nothing about him.
“Hey,” she said by way of a greeting, in the manner of the deep South in which she’d been born and mostly raised. She slid into the chair Tony had gallantly shoved out for her with his foot.
After risking a glance at Cory, who raised his beer glass a fraction of an inch, tilted it toward her and gave her his enigmatic little half smile, she turned the brightest one she could come up with on Tony.
And found he was already signaling a waiter. “Hey—can we get another one of these over here?”
She started to shake her head, but before she could get a word out herself, she heard, “Sam doesn’t like beer,” in the quiet, deep voice that always made something thrum beneath her breastbone, like bass synthesizers thumping in the distance. “She’s got a sweet tooth. Rum and Coke’s her drink. Right, Sam?” She swiveled her head toward him, braced for that first contact with his penetrating blue gaze. “At least, it used to be.”
“Still is,” she said lightly, and although it nearly killed her to do it while her teeth were clenched, nodded and smiled at the hovering waiter. We have too much to deal with tonight, she told herself. Silly to start with a fight over something so trivial.
“Hey, Captain, you’re looking mighty fine tonight.” Tony was smiling at her in a way that, though blatantly flirting, still managed to be unexpectedly charming.
The man definitely has charisma, Sam thought with regret. What a pity it was wasted on her. What a relief it would be to enjoy something so simple, so painless, as pure, uncomplicated sexual attraction.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling at him as she shook herself back in her chair. “I do like to change out of my khakis now and then. Shower…you know—get rid of the hat-hair.”
“You used to wear it longer.”
The casual words stung her nerves like wasps. She looked at Cory and—no great surprise—found him staring at her, although something in his eyes…
“Don’t like to drink and run…” Tony abruptly shoved back his chair, making her jump. For those few seconds she’d forgotten his existence.
“Don’t rush off.” She said it automatically, in the time-honored Southern way, and Cory echoed, “Don’t you want to eat something?”
Already in the process of taking his wallet from a back pocket, Tony took out some bills and put them on the table, saying as he did so, “Naw, I’ll just order something from room service. I’ve got things to see to—want to sort out my equipment, make sure I’ve got everything I’m gonna need—you know.” His settling-up completed, he flicked her a smile. “What time we figuring on taking off in the morning, Cap’n?”
Sam dipped a nod at Cory. “That’s up to you guys. You’re the paying customers.”
Cory coughed and shifted forward in his chair. “My instructions are to go to the rendezvous point and wait to be contacted.” His lips tilted without smiling. “I’m not sure what that means, but I’m envisioning unknown numbers of heavily armed men wearing black hoods emerging from the bushes. So I doubt the timing is all that critical. That said, I’d like to get to the spot with as much daylight ahead of us as possible.”
Sam dipped her head again. “No problem. We take off at daybreak, then.” She looked at Cory. “You got maps, I assume?”
“In my room.”
“I’ll need to see those. I’ll be filing my flight plan before we leave in the morning.”
Cory nodded. “Of course.”
“Okay, I’ll be sayin’ good night, then.” Tony winked at Sam, gave Cory a little one-finger salute and left, dodging around the waiter who was just arriving with Sam’s drink.
“You having another?” she asked Cory. He glanced up at the hovering waiter, shook his head and politely lifted a declining hand.
The waiter went away. Sam took a sip of her rum and Coke. Through a strange buzzing in her ears she heard Cory’s quiet voice say, “What about you? Want something to eat?”
Are you kidding? The way my stomach feels, if I ate anything it’d probably erupt like Mount Vesuvius. That’s what she wanted to say. What she did say was, “No, thanks. I’m not all that hungry.”
She took another sip of her drink. Not looking at him. Not wanting to look at him. Knowing she had to. Not to look at him was stupid. Childish. Sooner or later, with Cory it always seemed to come down to that, didn’t it?
So, she shook back her hair and lifted her head and looked straight at him. And found him looking back at her—of course he was, what had she expected? They looked at each other, neither saying anything, and Sam felt her face grow achy and stiff, and a horrible and unexpected desire to cry begin to gather behind her eyes.
To head it off, she gave up a bubble of husky laughter. “Okay, this is awkward.”
Without smiling, Cory said mildly, “Did you think it wouldn’t be? You saw my name on the charter, you knew who the customer was. You had to know this moment was coming. You must have had…I don’t know, days to think of something bright and clever to say.”
Cruel, she thought. That isn’t like you.
But then, what did she know? Really?
“Well, I’d have thought you’d have more to say,” she shot back at him. “I’ve never known you to be so stingy with words.”
He sat back in his chair. “What is there to say? You told me never to call you or speak to you again.”
“Jeez! You got married!” There. Yes! Anger felt so much better.
“And divorced.”
She stared at him through a shimmering haze. “And that was supposed to make it all okay? We could…what, pretend it never happened?”
His jaw looked tense; she could see the small muscles working. “We can’t talk about this here,” he said stiffly. “I need to give you those maps, anyway. Let’s take this back to my room.” He sat forward in his chair.
She leaned back in hers, cringing away from him. “Uh-uh—no way.”
He paused then, and a smile broke wryly across his face. “Don’t tell me you’re chicken? Afraid to be alone with me? Doesn’t sound like the Sam I knew.”
She bristled, then, as he’d known she would. The one sure way he knew to get to Sam was to question her courage.
“I’m no chicken, which you know damn well.” Though she glared at him still, he could see a faint blush creep beneath her tan. Her lips twitched, and she pressed them together to stop them from softening into a smile. She drew a quick, faint breath. “But if you think I’m going anywhere near a hotel room with you…”
He gazed at her, letting his compassion for her warm his eyes and his smile. His wanting, his hunger for her, he kept hidden, a secret thumping heat in his groin, a bitter ache in his heart. “Still there, isn’t it?” he said softly, for the sheer pleasure of seeing her eyes flare hot.
She opened her mouth to deny it, and he watched the struggle play itself out in the changing expressions on her face. It was a familiar battle, one he’d seen waged there many times before. Pride versus honesty. With Sam, though, the victor was never in doubt. After a long, anguished moment, she closed her mouth and, chin elevated, turned her head away.
Cory said gently, “If I promise not to touch you, will you let me explain?”
What could she do? True, his gentleness had driven her mad sometimes, possibly because it was impossible to resist. She could feel herself growing shaky inside; the protective walls she’d thrown up so hurriedly were beginning to crumble already. How much longer would they hold? What would happen to her when they fell?
In a desperate effort to shore them up, she stiffened her back and said tartly, “What is there to explain? I came back from training and they told me you were married. I had to hear it from Mom and Dad.” And her whole body vibrated with the tension, the sheer willpower it took to keep him from seeing how much that had hurt.
“Sam,” Cory said, gentle still, “we’d cut each other loose. We’d agreed…”
Yes, but I never thought…I didn’t believe…I didn’t know you meant it! I thought…I thought you’d always be there. I thought you’d always love me, and wait for me….
Childish of me, probably, to think so.
“Yeah, right,” she said abruptly, then caught a breath. “I know. It was…just a shock, I guess.” She gave her head a toss and pasted on a smile. “You should have told me. I’da sent you guys a toaster, or something.”
“Sam…” He shook his head, and she caught a glimpse of sadness in his eyes before he veiled them from her with a downward sweep of his lashes and rose to his feet. “Come on—let’s get out of here.”
Hollow and shaken, Sam didn’t wait for him to settle with the waiter. She made her way to the lobby, where she fidgeted restlessly, surreptitiously checking herself out in the mirror above the check-in desk. Satisfied with what she saw, reassured that none of her inner turmoil showed on the outside, she was able to flash Cory a confident smile when he joined her there a few minutes later.
He gave her a nod and they walked outside together. Together, but not touching. As they strolled unhurried along the bamboo breezeway that led to their rooms she thought how odd it was to be doing that, while a memory tumbled out of the past and threatened to inundate her with sadness…a memory of walking like this, the two of them side by side but not touching, down the lane at Grandma’s house in Georgia, she with her insides all aquiver with the strange joyous awareness that she was falling in love. How scary that had been, and how beautiful and sweet at the same time. Remembering made her ache with yearning, and she wasn’t even sure what for.
It’s the air, she thought. That’s what brings it all back. Reminds me of those early-summer Georgia evenings—soft and humid, still warm even this late at night. Except here, instead of cicadas and frogs backing up a giddy whippoorwill, I hear surf sounds and the chirp of night birds I don’t recognize making a different kind of harmony with the music from the bar.
They walked in silence until Sam, feeling easier, maybe, with the cloak of semidarkness around her—not having to see his face—spoke softly…carefully.
“Look—I’m sorry, okay? Divorce is sad and awful. I have friends who’ve gone through it. So I’m sorry you had to.” She paused, waiting for his reply. When none came she ventured on, still focusing on the path ahead. “So…what happened? I mean, it only…you were married for such a short time. Did something…” Her voice trailed miserably off.
Please, she thought, say the words. Say it, even if it doesn’t fix anything: My marriage failed because…she wasn’t you.
After a long suspenseful moment he said in the same slow and careful way, “I think…let’s just say we both had expectations the other wasn’t able to meet. Leave it at that.”
Leave it at that? Why did I dare to hope for more?
“At least,” she said lightly, with a soft breath to hide how disappointed she was, “you didn’t have kids. That’s a good thing. I guess.”
“Yes.”
She waited, but again there was nothing more. Never known for her patience at the best of times, she felt her frustration level rising with every pulse beat. Inevitably, in spite of every promise she’d made to herself, it boiled over.
“Is that all you have to say? That’s what drives me crazy about you. You know what, Pearse? You never let anybody know what’s going on inside you. What you’re feeling. I know you’ve got feelings. Nobody could write the way you do and not have feelings. Huge, deep feelings. But you never let anybody see them, me included. In all the years we were together—”
“Don’t try to tell me I never told you how I felt about you,” Cory said on a surprising note of anger. “Because I did. You know I did. You knew how I felt about you.”
She considered that, head tilted to one side, ignoring the little thrill she felt at his unexpected display of emotion, however brief. “Did I? See, the thing is, I thought I knew, but then it turned out I was wrong. So either you didn’t tell me, or I missed something, or maybe you lied—”
“Come on, Samantha. I’ve never lied to you and you know it.”
“No—that’s right. You don’t lie. You just leave blank spaces.”
“Blank spaces? What are you talking about?”
“You, dammit. You’re one big blank space.”
“Sam, you’re being ridiculous.”
“Don’t you dare go all tight and reasonable on me,” she fumed. “Do you realize I don’t know anything about your past? Your childhood? How long were we together, and yet, I don’t know what kind of child you were—what kind of books you read, what games you played, what songs you sang. Nothing. I’ve told you every little thing about mine—I even taught you the Wishing Star poem, remember? Almost the first time I met you. But you’ve never told me…anything.”
“You’re talking about facts, not feelings. I told you I grew up in foster care,” he said quietly. “Okay, you want feelings? It wasn’t fun. What else is there to say?”
“You see?” She gazed at him for a long moment, then shook her head and said in a voice tight with frustration, “Maybe it’s because I don’t know the right questions to ask. That’s your talent, not mine. You have that gift, you know? You can get inside people’s heads. Before they even know it, they’re telling you their life history. I wish I could do that, but I don’t know how. Which probably explains why, even after all the years we were together, I don’t really know you at all, Pearse. What does that tell you?”
He’d never seen her look at him that way before. The bewildered anger in her face tugged at his heart, but it was the bleakness he saw there that shocked him. She looked…defeated. Sammi June, his Sam, who he’d never known to be any way but upbeat, determined, confident…who went gung ho after what she wanted with chin held high and never even considered the possibility of failure. How he’d loved her arrogance, her self-confidence, and at times, drawn strength himself from her courage. Now, the sadness and defeat in her eyes was more than he could bear. He reached for her, then remembered his promise….
But almost at the same moment, she jerked away from him with a small cry that pierced him like a dart. “No. I’m not going through this again, Pearse. I’m not.”
He snatched his hands back, held them up and away from her, then folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the breezeway’s rattan railing. The door to his room was only a few feet away, with Tony’s next to it and Sam’s a little farther on. He glanced at his door, then away, while words, thoughts and emotions pounded like thunder in his head. Knowing any attempt to voice them would be futile, he simply shook his head.
“Why did you do it? Why did you call me…after the divorce?” Her voice sounded so small, but still it managed to hold all the anger and bewilderment, the sadness and defeat he’d just seen in her face. She didn’t wait for him to answer, but plunged on in the tiny, wounded voice that was so not Sam. “I mean, what did you think was going to happen? What did you expect me to do? Or say?” He looked at her then, opened his mouth to reply, but again she rushed on.
“Like—you getting divorced just…erased everything? Hey—maybe getting a divorce erased your marriage, but it didn’t erase anything else, you understand?”
She was gazing fiercely at him but tapping her own chest with an angry finger; that, and the stark anguish in her eyes told him what he knew she’d never say: You hurt me, Pearce. Nothing can fix that or take it away.
“No, you’re right,” he said stiffly. He wanted to swallow, to cough, do something to relieve the tight, raw feeling in his throat. “That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. What you said to me—I deserved that.”
She didn’t answer. He heard a faint creak as she, too, leaned her hip against the railing. Beyond it—and utterly wasted on the two of them, Cory thought—the sea shimmered in the light of an almost-full moon like a tropical hideaway ad in a honeymoon brochure.
After what seemed like a very long time, he heard her say in a soft, bleak voice, “Anyway, it wouldn’t have worked, because nothing had changed. That was the thing, you know. It still hasn’t. I still am a…pilot. I have a career that…well, you know. And you want…”
“Yeah,” he said, straightening abruptly. What in the hell did he want? He wasn’t sure he knew himself, anymore. He’d once thought he did, and look how wrong he’d been.
Right now, all he knew was what he didn’t want, which was to stand here talking about it with the one thing he wanted and couldn’t have—a woman he’d been craving like an addict and hadn’t even known it…a woman he wasn’t allowed to touch. His whole body, every muscle and nerve and sinew in it, quivered with the strain of denial.
He turned and lurched for his door, at the same time plunging a hand into his pocket and pulling out his room key. It was the old-fashioned kind, the metal fit-into-a-lock-and-turn kind, and while he was struggling with it, he felt Sam come up beside him. Felt her warmth like a tropical breeze on his skin…her womanly scent like an intoxicating drug. His head swam.
The key turned and he shoved the door inward. It was all he could do to say thickly, “Look, I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Shall we say…whoever gets up first, rouses the others?”
“Fine with me.”
He stepped into the room and turned toward her. Instead of backing away, saying good-night, she followed him in.
Hell. He’d forgotten the maps.
His overnighter was on the floor beside the door. He unzipped the outside pocket, took out the folded maps and handed them over without looking at her. “I’ve marked the rendezvous point and the location of the airstrip.” His breath felt meager, his chest tight.
She nodded—he could see that much as he flattened his back against the open door, making room for her to slip past him. Then she moved, and he had time for one surprised breath before she stepped close, slipped her arms around his neck, lifted herself and pressed her mouth against his.
Oh, no, she’s still the same. Still Sam. The confidence, the certainty, the sheer possession in the way she kisses me.
She knew him so well…knew just how and where to touch him…how to slide her body against his…melt her mouth into his. Fire squirted through all his veins; his thoughts turned to vapor, his bones to water.
Oh, God, she’s still the same.
“Sam,” he said feebly when at last she pulled away, “I promised I wouldn’t—”
“You promised,” she said in her old, familiar, arrogant way. “I didn’t.”
She patted his chest once with the folded maps, then went away and left him standing there.
Chapter 4
As the plane droned steadily eastward, the sun rose like an angry red sentinel and rushed to meet it. Sam blinked as its heat struck her face and its light assaulted her eyes even through the dark lenses of her sunglasses, and she drew a long exhilarated breath. It seemed like a personal challenge to her, that sun, a gauntlet thrown down in her path. Confidence swelled inside her, warm and red as the sun.
Yes! Whatever this day brings, I can handle it.
She glanced over when Cory eased into the copilot’s seat beside her. Something fluttered in her stomach, up high near her heart, then eased, leaving only the quickened tap-tap-tap of her pulse.
“Hey,” she greeted him, not trusting herself with more, for fear the gladness, the exhilaration inside her should leak into her voice. She hadn’t expected it, waking up this morning with this happiness, this almost giddy sense of triumph and well-being.
Last night had been a test of her strength and will, and she’d passed it with flying colors. Yeah, sure, the hunger, the lust, the craving for him were still there, and as powerful as ever. But it wasn’t an addiction. I can control this. I can handle it. I won’t let myself be hurt again.
“Hey, yourself,” he answered in his neutral way, and she could feel him studying her with his probing, inquisitive reporter’s eyes.
“Sleep well?” he inquired.
What with the hurry and hustle of getting everyone up, breakfasting, gathering belongings and equipment, getting to the airport, filing flight plans, prepping the plane and getting underway, it was the first moment they’d had alone together since she’d left him the night before.
“Yes, I did.” She didn’t try to keep the satisfaction—maybe even smugness—out of her voice. “How ’bout yourself?”
He made a soft dry sound, then muttered something under his breath. Something along the lines of, “Same old Sam…”
The urge to grin made the muscles in her face cramp, and she bit down hard on her lower lip to quell it.
Cory clasped his hands together, then leaned forward to gaze through the windshield at the low, cloud-shrouded smudge on the horizon. Fidgeting. The thought flashed into her mind: That’s not like him.
She said, “That’s the island you’re looking at out there. We’ll be landing in about…forty-five minutes.” He nodded but didn’t reply.
After listening to the droning of the aircraft’s engines for several minutes, she said, “Mind if I ask you something?” The look he threw her was both surprised and wary—she didn’t usually ask permission. “I’m curious—Will and I both were, actually. Why charter a plane for this? Why didn’t you just hire a boat? Woulda been a lot simpler—cheaper, too.”
He gave her a look and said mildly, “I’m going into a terrorist’s hideout to interview one of the most wanted and dangerous men in the world. When I’m done with that, I’d rather not have to get through forty miles of jungle before I’m home free.”
“Okay, I can see that. Then wouldn’t a helicopter be more practical?”
The look he gave her this time was wry. “I was specifically warned not to use a helicopter. Apparently, both Philippine government forces and U.S. Special Ops are active in that area. When al-Rami’s troops see a chopper they do their best to shoot it down.”
“Ah,” said Sam, keeping her voice neutral. “So…” she persisted after a moment, “why did you ask for such a big plane? There’s just the two of you. Why not a Cessna? It’d be a whole lot easier to land and take off on those remote airstrips.”
He shifted again as if something was irritating him, but replied in a calm, almost conversational way. “That’s not a problem. Apparently, there’s a landing strip near the rendezvous point that was built by the Americans during World War Two, and the villagers have kept it up—they get most of their supplies that way. The roads in and out of the region aren’t reliable at the best of times, and during the monsoon season they’re sometimes impassable.” He threw her a grin. “You shouldn’t have any trouble. In fact, this old bird ought to feel right at home.”
Sam frowned at the cloudy horizon. “That still doesn’t explain—” Then she broke off as it hit her. “Oh, good God. They have hostages. You’re going to try to get them out.” He didn’t answer. She looked over at him. “Aren’t you? That’s what this is all about—the interview—” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “That’s how you were able to get approval from State, isn’t it? I should have known.”
Dammit, I should have known. Why weren’t we told about this? Same old story…left hand doesn’t have a clue what the right hand’s doing….
Cory’s quiet, reasonable voice broke in on her silent fuming. “I intend to try to negotiate for their release during the course of the interview, sure. How can I not try? What else would you expect me to do?”
She let out a short, sharp breath. “Nothing—absolutely nothing. It’s exactly what you would do. Like I said—I should have known.” She threw him a distracted glance, not even registering the puzzled look on his face or the probing intensity of his eyes as she switched to her captain’s voice.
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