Men of Courage II (12 page)

“Six years later?” he asked, tossing the same question back at her. There might have been a hint of amusement, a thread of challenge. But mostly she thought he sounded, well…sincere. Like he really needed to know.

She turned her head then, looking to where she knew his eyes would be. “Yes.” Just the one word. Simply stated. And yet with so much more riding on it than either of them likely comprehended.

“Well, that makes this decision much easier,” he told her.

Her entire body quivered—hard—at the possibilities. “Which decision is that?”

“This one.” And the gently urging pressure at the back of her neck vanished. His palm slid to cup her neck fully. He held her there, for an interminable breath of time before his mouth found hers. Found her, claimed her with the same unerring precision as before. The
same precision that had guided Cooper Harrison to his prominent place in their profession. After all, no one was better than Cooper at being able to pinpoint, with absolute accuracy, the exact, most dangerous place to be.

T
HIS WASN
’
T LIKE LAST TIME
. Yes, they’d once again cheated death. Together. But everything else had changed. They weren’t reeling like adrenaline junkies, drunk on a prolonged rush, giddy from shooting history-making film footage. He wasn’t an idealist, still dreaming about making his mark. Marty wasn’t a bright-eyed coed, fresh diploma almost in hand.

This time she was soaking wet, her skin damp and gritty. Her hair hung in ropes, snagging his fingers. She’d been battered and banged up, even before they’d come close to being sucked directly into the vortex of a twister. She still had a smart mouth and a sharp mind.
He was older now, supposedly wiser. And yet he’d never felt so confused. Conflicted about his future, conflicted about taking what he wanted, instead of doing what he was supposed to. He’d learned to master his impulses, but she’d undone all that. He understood actions had consequences, which meant he had no business pushing her like this.

But the body pressed up against his was all woman. And her lips were shockingly warm. The instant his mouth brushed hers, what common sense he possessed was ripped clean away, just like the roof off that barn. He’d often wondered if he’d idealized the way they fit together, if his reaction to her had simply been the adrenaline talking. But six years fell away in a blink when she returned his kiss. No more wondering. Bedraggled and muddy, yet she tasted even sweeter than he remembered. No more wasting time wishing he’d handled things differently. She was in his arms again, her lips so soft, pliant under his. Now was his chance to pursue what could be. He might not know what he wanted to do with his life, but he definitely knew what he wanted to do with Marty McKenna.

She sighed against his mouth, her body sinking into his as she returned his kiss. She clutched at his shirt, her body trembling hard. He wasn’t sure if it was from the dank air, their wet clothes or the kiss. And he couldn’t manage to tear his mouth away from hers long
enough to ask. Instead he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into the relative warmth of his body. But his hands refused to stay still. The tease of her curves as he slid his arms around her beckoned him to explore her body just as he was exploring her mouth. He smoothed wide palms up and down her back, making her shudder harder as she huddled even closer to him, her fists still full of his shirt.

“Cold?” he managed to say against her jaw, as he drew his mouth along the soft contour of her cheek, ending with his teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her earlobes.

She shook her head, but his face was pressed to hers and he could feel her teeth chattering.

He didn’t know whether to laugh or swear. Here he was, mauling her like an animal, mistaking her clutching response for an admission of similar need, when all she was doing was trying to get warm. Keeping her wrapped in his arms, he shifted them both around, then put out one hand, searching blindly, hoping to brush against shelves or something stocked with survival supplies.

He stumbled over the handle to something, swearing, even as he tightened his hold on her to keep her from stumbling, too.

“Cooper,” she began, struggling for him to let go.

“You’re cold,” he told her. “I’m sure they have some blankets down here somewhere.”

“It’ll pass soon,” she told him, her speech halting as her teeth continued to chatter. “We won’t be down here long. I’ll be fine. Just—”

“Just, what?” he asked, pausing in his blind man’s search to nudge her face back to his. “Let you go?” He brushed his lips across her earlobe. “I don’t want to.” This time when she shivered, he didn’t think it was from the chill. And he was talking before he could convince himself otherwise. “I didn’t want to six years ago, either.”

She stilled for a second, and he felt her shift in his arms, felt her gaze on his, even though he couldn’t see it. “Then why did you?”

“You made that decision for me. I knew you were leaving for that job in Kansas, and I still had another semester to go. And, afterward, you didn’t seem…” He lifted his shoulder, let the sentence trail off unfinished.

“I didn’t know how to handle it,” she confessed. “I didn’t want to feel foolish by saying something I’d regret later.”

“Like what?” He slid his hand to her face, tilting it to his, wishing like hell he could see her eyes. “What did you want to say to me, Marty?”

She said nothing, but the trembling returned.

He braced her shoulders. “Stand here. Don’t move.”

“Still issuing orders, I see,” she managed to say, sounding amused despite that her teeth were chattering.

His tone was wry in response. “I’ve been told I’m quite good at it.” He made sure she was steady, then turned with both hands out, edging his toes forward as he moved to what he hoped was one wall. If he had to, he’d shuffle around the entire perimeter until he found something useful. Most families stocked canned goods, bottled water and dry blankets or clothes. He supposed this particular family could have taken their supplies with them after they’d lost their home in the fire, but if he was lucky they’d left something behind.

His outstretched fingers finally smacked against a shelf, rattling what sounded like canned food. When he gripped the rack to steady it, his fingers brushed against a pile of something soft and cottony. But his “eureka” of discovery was lost when a thundering crash shook the earth around them, rattling both doors of the shelter so hard he thought they might disintegrate.

He instinctively leaped toward Marty, who’d let out a shriek—and who was still standing close to the stairs leading out of the shelter. Too close.

Water droplets, forced through the sliver of air between the wood planks, flew in every direction as the doors groaned beneath the impact.

“What happened?” Marty yelled.

Her voice echoed loudly inside the small underground chamber and Cooper realized that when the shuddering vibration of the impact had died out, so had
the roaring sound of wind. The twister had passed right over them. And as was often the case, the roiling black clouds should have moved on as well, and probably had. But the density of the darkness ensconcing them remained unrelieved. Not so much as a sliver of light seeped through the wood planking. Which meant that whatever had landed on the doors had blocked them completely.

The storm might have passed, but the danger to them had just gotten worse.

“What in the hell just landed on top of us?” she asked.

“Sounded like the entire barn,” he muttered, moving slowly toward the stairs leading up to the double doors.

She must have heard his shuffling. “Cooper, don’t go near them. For all we know, you’re right and the whole barn is lying on top of them. We don’t know if the doors will hold up. We should move back as far as we can, in case they cave in.”

What Marty didn’t say, but what Cooper knew they were both thinking was that they’d better hope that whatever did land on the doors caved them in, because the alternative was they were probably blocked in permanently. He tried not to think about the fact that the storm shelter, barely visible before, was now likely completely hidden from view. Other than their cars out on the road—if they were still there—and trampled field grass, which could all be flattened by now, the
storm had likely left nothing behind to indicate where they could be found.

When Marty didn’t say anything else, he suspected her thoughts had traveled in the same direction. It wouldn’t do any good for either of them to panic. They’d deal with the situation. But first things first. “I think I found some blankets or something,” he told her, returning to the shelves and groping along until he found the soft pile of fabric again.

“Good. Because I’m thinking I’ll take you up on that offer of keeping warm now.” Her voice still sounded a bit shaky, but her determination shone through.

That made him smile. “Let me see what else I can find while I’m over here.” He heard her shuffling now. “Why don’t you just stay—”

“I realize that finding my car upside down in a ditch might indicate otherwise, but I’m generally not all that helpless,” she informed him. “I can find my way around down here same as you.”

“Probably better than me,” he told her. “After all, you were the navigator.”

“And a damn good one.”

He picked up the stack of blankets. “I haven’t forgotten.” In fact, it seemed all he could do was remember. Memories, bits and pieces of their past, were crowding more and more of his brain. He remembered why he’d liked having her along on his chase crew. She got just
as caught up as he did in the excitement of it all, but she never stopped working. Always checking maps, calculating data, even as she excitedly pointed him in this direction or that, she was competence personified. Why he thought she’d need him now, he had no idea.

Judging from the sounds, she was shuffling away from him toward the opposite wall. “Jackpot,” she shouted a moment later. “A lantern and a flashlight.”

He heard clicking sounds, but no light came on.

“A flashlight with dead batteries. Oh, well. Hopefully…” She trailed off for a second and he could hear her foraging around. “Excellent,” she breathed a moment later. There was a scratching sound, then a small flame popped into brilliance, creating a glowing circle of light in their black cave. “It’s flickering,” she said approvingly, as she jockeyed the lantern so she could light the wick.

He knew why the flickering was a good sign. It meant that whatever the hell had landed on the door hadn’t sealed it completely. Air was getting in.

The small space glowed to life, forcing him to shield his eyes momentarily until they adjusted to the sudden light after prolonged exposure to absolute darkness. However, when he lowered his arm, instead of immediately taking in and gauging their surroundings, plotting their escape…he looked at Marty.

Her hair was still a wild mass of snarled tangles, her
clothes clung to her skin, muck and other gunk clung to her clothes. “I know this is going to sound like such a line,” he told her with a smile as he held out a blanket, “but you know, maybe you should get out of those wet things.”

She walked toward the open center of the shelter, setting the lantern down on a five-gallon bucket. She gave him a considering look, but didn’t say anything as she accepted his offering.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t know exactly how to handle the situation. She had him completely turned upside down. Words, thoughts, needs, desires were all tangled up inside him. So he forced himself to look away, hoping he’d quickly regroup. After sitting the remaining stack of blankets down in the middle of the floor, he took note of the room for the first time. The whole space was maybe twelve-by-twelve-foot square. Two walls were lined with metal and wood shelves. The back wall was blocked by a clutter of junk—shovels, rakes and, inexplicably, an upright vacuum cleaner—that had all been shoved in front of it. The remaining wall was angled and comprised the stairs and the huge overhead double-door panels.

He turned his back to her and folded his arms, giving them both a much needed moment of privacy. “I promise I won’t peek,” he told her.

She just snorted.

“You think I would?” he asked, honestly surprised by the reaction.

“It just seemed an unnecessary offer, considering. I mean, it’s not like you haven’t seen, well, everything.”

“Once. A long time ago,” he told her.

“You’re saying I’m forgettable then?” she asked with a laugh. “Or is there a statute of limitations on something like that?”

“I’m just trying to be a gentleman here.”

“Why start now?”

Gaping at that comment, he barely resisted the urge to turn around. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you weren’t all that gentlemanly in the back seat of your truck six years ago,” she said, quite calmly, sounding almost amused, in fact. “And I don’t recall complaining then. In fact, I don’t think I was complaining six minutes ago, either.”

His body leaped at the mere suggestion that she might be coming on to him. “Meaning?”

He was startled when she came up behind him and touched him on the shoulder. Turning around, he found her smiling. Gritty, pale skin, snarled hair and sparkling eyes, as it turned out, packed quite a punch.

“Meaning that sometimes being a gentleman is highly overrated.”

He couldn’t stop himself from touching her then. He stroked the side of his thumb along the curve of her
cheek, along her jaw, then across her lips, making her tremble again. Only now he could see the look in her eyes, and he knew it wasn’t the wet clothes making her shiver.

It was him.

“You’ve been through a lot today,” he choked out through a suddenly tight throat. “I didn’t think a little TLC was out of place.” Her lips quirked and he couldn’t keep from rolling his eyes. “Why is that so hard to believe? I’m a pretty decent guy. We worked together for a long time. It was one wild afternoon, yes, but on a day-to-day basis, didn’t I always treat you fairly?”

“You did. You treated me well that afternoon, too. In fact, you took very good care of me.”

She’d said it matter-of-factly, but tell that to his body, which was hard as a rock and basically throbbing for some direct attention at this point. And he was pretty damn sure he could take very good care of both of them again right now if she’d let him. He struggled to keep his hands where they were, stay focused on the conversation. “So why the look just now?”

“You’re just not a TLC kind of guy, that’s all. Well, you’ve got the ‘C’ part down, it was those other two letters that gave me pause.” When he scowled, she quickly went on to explain, but that hint of a wry smile still crooked the corner of her mouth. “I know you cared about us, about the team,” she clarified. “But
tender? That’s not a word I’d associate with you. Dedicated, driven? Definitely. And a great motivator by example. And, don’t take this wrong, but the only thing you ever really showed love for was your work, your research.”

He opened his mouth to reject her assessment, then closed it again. She was right. About the man he’d been then. And the man he was now, too. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but the gut reaction wasn’t a good one.