Hot Under Pressure (22 page)

Exhaustion, stress, worry, and guilt made for quite the mood-killing cocktail, and as the cab sped past the familiar townhouses, bakeries, indie bookstores, and mural-painted walls of downtown Berkeley, Skye felt her mood turning black.

But then the taxi pulled onto the bustling side street that was home to the Queenie Pie Café, and for the first time in what felt like forever, warmth suffused her chest and lifted her heart.

The sight of her restaurant never failed to make Skye happy, and today was no exception. Even seeing it all closed up when it should be bright and busy with happy customers couldn’t dim her joy.

“This is it,” she told the cabbie, tapping on the thick plastic separating the front seat from the back. “You can drop us anywhere along here.”

They paid and got out, Skye nearly tripping over her own feet in her hurry to get inside the café and check on everything. She’d come by when she first got back to San Francisco after the Chicago leg of the competition, but that was nearly a week ago now.

Fumbling for her keys, she dropped the heavy ring once before managing to slot the right key into the lock on the glass door. Pushing the door open with a flourish, Skye turned back to wave Beck inside, vividly aware that her hair was a mess around her flushed, beaming face but unable to care.

“Enter!”

She ducked into the dark restaurant and flipped the wall switch to flood the place with light while Beck hovered, his looming form filling the entire doorway.

He looked more uncertain than she was used to seeing him, and something about the way he held himself reminded her forcibly of the first time she’d taken him to meet her parents. He had that same odd mixture of defiance and supplication, his hands curled loosely at his sides and his stern, strong-boned face set in uncompromising lines.

Skye couldn’t help it; her instinct was the same now as it was back then—to treat Beck like a barely tamed wild thing, to be lured and gentled.

“We came all the way out here,” she said softly, her heart thudding unevenly in her chest. “Don’t you want to see the place you helped me build?”

Something in his closed-off expression opened up as surely as if she’d slipped her key into the right lock.

“This is what you always wanted.” His voice was gruff, like sand over glass. “A place to call your own.”

She nodded, throwing her arms wide and twirling in a slow circle. “Queenie Pie is mine: every booth, every chair, every cup, every spoon. And I love everything about it, from the broken exhaust fan above the flattop range to the wobbly legs on table thirteen.”

Fierce pride lit Beck’s eyes to darkly glowing coals. That look, right there—that was why she’d brought him here.

“I gave you this.”

He didn’t phrase it as a question, but Skye stopped twirling and looked him straight in the face. “The money you sent, and the fact that you were in the Navy, gave me the collateral to get the bank to extend me a loan, yes. A loan I’ve almost finished paying off.”

And wouldn’t it be amazing to be free, out from under the burden of that debt? She could hardly wait.

Propping those big hands on his lean, sturdy hips, Beck studied the layout of the space. His laser beam gaze took in everything, from the wood-framed chalkboard mounted on the back wall, still advertising coq au vin blanc and summer vegetable risotto, the night’s specials from a month ago, to the mismatched vintage light fixtures she’d found in thrift shops around town.

The soft red of the walls combined with the creamy yellow light to cast a warm glow over his face, his brown hair, tanned skin, and black T-shirt standing out darkly against the cheerful color.

Skye found her own anxious gaze drifting to the tiny imperfections she knew were there: the nick in the countertop running the length of the left wall and serving as a bar, where people could have a cocktail or a glass of wine while they waited to be seated; the one lightbulb that always burned more dimly than the others on the sixties-era Italian brass fixture over the back corner of the café, no matter how many times she replaced it; the scuff marks on the swinging doors that led into the kitchen.

Swallowing down a swarm of butterflies, she made her voice as casual as she could. “So. What do you think? Did you make a good investment?”

He paused long enough that Skye’s butterflies threatened to come right back up, but finally he tilted his chin down and met her gaze. “If anything I did helped you achieve this, then I’m proud. And glad. I think my leaving was the right thing to do.”

Her instinctive rejection of that last statement nearly strangled her. And as she tried to relearn how to breathe, the truth reached up and smacked Skye in the back of the head.

As much as she loved the café, she would’ve given it all up if it had meant keeping Henry at her side.

Shaken, Skye dropped her woven hemp satchel on table four and headed for the kitchen, her only thought to grab a few seconds alone to process what she was feeling.

But before she could push open the kitchen door, Beck was there, his long arm propping it open for her. Ignoring the way his bicep stretched the sleeve of his shirt and the corded tension of his lightly furred forearm, Skye reached for the light switch.

In contrast to the mellow softness that lit the front of the house, the kitchen’s brilliant overhead lighting buzzed to life in a blinding rush of fluorescence, illuminating every nook and cranny of the small, cramped rabbit warren of cook tops, freestanding tables, and wire shelving.

“Wow,” Beck said, his voice rumbling softly above her head, close enough to make her jump as she felt his breath stir the curls at her crown. “Not a lot of room to maneuver back here.”

“It’s an old building,” she choked out, moving away from him as swiftly and smoothly as she could, even though it felt like everything under her skin was jumping.

“I’ve seen more space in the galley of a submarine.”

Her heart skipped a beat, leaving her breathless. He’d never talked about what it was like for him on the boat, not in any of the stilted conversations they’d managed after he left.

Not that there’d been a lot of time—he’d only been gone three months when it happened, and they’d had that final, awful phone call when she’d had to tell him the news. And after that … nothing.

Until now.

Her fidgety fingers smoothed over the familiar lines of her workspace, trailing across scarred wooden cutting boards and gleaming-clean stainless steel countertops. The open wire shelves were still stacked with the long-lasting ingredients they used the most often, white plastic tubs of basics like flour, salt, and sugar alongside crates of condiments like Sriracha, Dijon mustard, and jars of Queenie Pie’s own canned pickled vegetables.

“So … I know why you left me.”

He jerked as if she’d shot him, but Skye barreled on, babble filling her mouth like dirt that she had to spit out, or choke on it. “I mean, I know what you said at the time, and I think I even know why you didn’t come back—but what I’m wondering now is why you left the service. Was it because of the…”

“What?” he growled, crossing his arms over his massive chest so the muscles bulged.

“You know.” Skye waved her hands around helplessly. “The space issue. The claustrophobia.”

Surprisingly, he relaxed at that, the tension melting out of his shoulders as he dropped his hands to steady his lean back against the corner workstation Nathan used. “That was part of it. After that last stint on the boat, I never wanted to see another submarine, much less go out in one.”

Hungry for any scrap of information, Skye couldn’t mask the eagerness in her voice. “Why? What happened?”

She expected Beck to shut down, the way he always used to when she asked questions, tried to get him to talk about anything in his past, but instead he just shrugged, a slight frown touching his mouth.

“Nothing out of the ordinary, except they kept us out there on the ocean for nearly seven months. Which wasn’t all that out of the ordinary, come to think of it.”

Seven months. She couldn’t imagine it. “I thought … when you first joined up, they said the submarine operated on a schedule of three months out, three months on land.”

He shrugged. “That schedule—it’s not set in stone. It can’t be. Shit happens, things Command can’t foresee. We were used to it.” Pausing, Beck shrugged again, more tightly this time. “Doesn’t mean we liked it and accepted it with zero bitching, but we got it. We went where we were needed.”

When he put it like that, Skye felt like a selfish bitch for the thought that kept running through her head.

But I needed you, too.

Afraid to say anything that might break this confiding mood Beck seemed to be in, Skye murmured, “That must have been tough.”

Somehow, that was exactly the wrong thing to say. Beck pushed away from the counter he’d been leaning against, straightening his spine as his face settled into its usual sculpted stone lines. “It was a job,” he muttered. “And it was worth doing.”

Stung by the implication, Skye put her hands on her hips. “I never said it wasn’t!”

He snorted. “Come on. This is me. I know you, Skye. I know how much you hate war and violence.”

“Of course I hate violence! That doesn’t mean I hate soldiers, or that I’m not grateful for their sacrifice and protection.”

Beck narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t believe her. “The way you acted when I told you I’d enlisted, though…”

Skye couldn’t believe he didn’t understand. “I was worried about you,” she cried. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“No, it was more than that.” He had that stubborn, closed look again, and Skye squeezed her eyes shut, tried to control her jumpy stomach and heaving lungs.

“Yes, it was. I didn’t want you to go, because I didn’t want to be without you.”

Chapter 21

Everything inside Beck’s head rearranged itself, as if a giant hand had swept through his mind, scattering the building blocks of his memories, all the choices and reactions that made him who he was.

For years, he’d carried the knowledge that Skye hated him for the decision he’d made to go to war. That his sweet, gentle, hippie girl could never forgive him for going against everything she believed in. And now, she was saying … what?

“Are you saying you don’t care that I joined the Navy?”

She pressed her lips together as if to stop their trembling, but it was no good—she wore her emotions like some women wore makeup.

“No. I care. I wish there was no need in this world for anything like a navy or an army, or for anyone to have to go to war. But that’s not the world we live in, and I thank God there are men and women like you who are strong and brave and willing to give up years of their life in service to their country. And I know that makes me a hypocrite for being selfish enough to wish you hadn’t gone at all, but I can’t help that, because I loved you more than my own life, Henry, and I needed you beside me when I found out about our…”

She choked off her word, but it echoed in Beck’s brain as if she’d shouted it.

Baby.

Their baby, the baby they’d made together, but never had the chance to hold or touch or see.

The baby Skye had miscarried at five months, three months after she’d begged Beck not to leave her alone—and he’d left anyway.

Their baby, the baby Beck avoided thinking about as much as possible, because part of him was terrified of what would happen if he let himself really feel the loss.

He tried to push the emotion down, box it up and shove it away, but it was too late.

Darkness filled Beck’s chest, a crushing weight of grief and guilt that gave him the exact same feeling as being trapped in a submarine, breathing recycled air and longing for sunlight.

“I should’ve been here,” he said, the words torn from him like yanking a knife out of a stab wound. “I should’ve been with you. If I’d stayed, maybe…”

Alarm widened those pretty blue eyes, and the tears that had been threatening spilled unheeded down her soft, round cheeks.

“No! Don’t think like that. Henry, oh my God, I thought I explained it on the phone … there was nothing anyone could do. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t your fault.”

All he could do was shake his head. His memory of that final phone call was vague, blurred by time, distance, and the sound of blood rushing in his ears from the first moment Skye had picked up the phone and sobbed out, “Hello?”

He’d been on liberty, halfway around the world at a port in Italy where the boat had docked to re-provision, and he’d managed to find a phone and snag himself a calling card in the midst of his personal mission to find some fresh herbs and fruit to take back to the galley kitchen for the seven-week journey back to the States.

He tried to call Skye every time he had liberty, but it didn’t always work out, and email wasn’t reliable, either. Everyone on the boat was only allowed to send out a single two-hundred-word message per week, so he checked in that way as much as he could, but he didn’t get her responses immediately. Skye’s daily emails to him were held up, read over, and then printed out for him to read, usually once a week.

But for the last month, even that much communication had been suspended, as the boat had dived too deep to transmit anything.

Heart in his mouth, Beck had dialed the complicated series of numbers to make the phone card work internationally, and then waited for Skye to pick up, hoping like hell she was at the apartment and that she’d be happy to hear from him.

Given the way they’d left things, he wasn’t always sure if he should even bother calling, knowing how she felt about where he was and what he was doing, but he had to make sure she was okay.

As it turned out, she was at the apartment … but she was pretty fucking far from okay.

He knew she’d explained everything that day about what was going on with the pregnancy, and he remembered the words “chromosomal abnormality,” but most of it was a fuzzy nightmare of terror and helplessness unlike anything Beck had experienced since he was eight years old.

Passing a hand over his dry mouth, Beck tried to focus on the present. “You said … you told me…”