Morgan's Wife (15 page)

"Let's go in the living room and have dessert," Jim suggested. Pepper had barely eaten anything on her plate. He'd felt the unmistakable tension in the kitchen after he let it be known he wanted to get to know her, the woman, not the smoke jumper. Oddly, the shoe was on the other foot, he thought, frowning as he cut two slices of freshly made cherry pie. Placing them on dessert plates, he took them into the living room.

His pet had already made himself comfortable on Pepper's lap when he came in, and he chuckled.

"Frank's got an unerring instinct about people who love cats." Jim handed Pepper the pie, fork and paper napkin. Sitting down on the couch less than a foot from her and the contented alley cat, he noted Pepper's wary expression. Could he blame her? "It's a good thing you left the army," he said slowly.

"Oh?"

"You don't hide your emotions very well." He gestured to her eyes. "You broadcast everything in them."

With a groan of desperation, Pepper continued to stroke the cat, setting her pie aside on a nearby lamp table. She wondered if the animal had sensed her trepidation and come over to assuage it. Cats and dogs were psychic in that sense, and Pepper was grateful for Frank's comforting presence and the excuse to do something with her hands. Jim was too close, and she felt trapped. Clearing her throat, she said, "I did find it a minus in my work in the army, but it's been a plus in my job as a team leader with the smoke jumpers. Maybe because I've got five other women on my team, and we're used to looking into one another's eyes and reading how we're feeling or what we're saying, on almost a telepathic level. Over time, the men have learned to communicate the same way." With a shrug, she added, "My team functions as one body, one brain. They've been with me two years or more…and we more or less grew up together out there in those forest fires. They're like my extended family." Smiling a little, she noted, "They
are
my other family."

"I see…." Jim noticed the softening in her eyes when she spoke about her team. Without thinking, he reached out and touched her hand—and saw the fear come back into her eyes. "We've got less than nine hours to develop that level of communication, Pepper. The mission we're going on could easily kill us. I want us to survive, and I know the mechanics of that kind of survival." He moved his hand back to his lap. "We need to talk about ourselves.
Us."

Pepper's mouth went dry. Her skin tingled pleasantly where Jim had so briefly touched her hand. Despite her fears, a part of her wanted his continued touch. It had been so long. So long…"It's hard for me to just sit down and talk about myself."

Wryly, Jim said, "I can tell.
How about if I go first?"

Pepper met his gaze and felt a kind of warmth she'd never encountered before. What magic was going on here? Was the inner Jim Woodward really so different from his Marine Corps image?
"A-all right."

He set his dessert plate on the coffee table and placed his hands on his thighs. "I was born in
Maryland
—very near
Annapolis
, as a matter of fact. My father owned his own software company, and my mother enjoyed staying at home. I wanted to become an engineer like my dad, so I went to
Ohio
State
, where they were known for excellence in that area. When I graduated, my dad convinced me to put in six years as an officer. He said his six-year hitch in the corps had served him well for the rest of his life.

"I agreed, and went into the Marine Corps, following his footsteps." With a grin, Jim said, "It turned out to be a career. I like my work. I prefer field assignments to sitting behind some officious desk at the Pentagon, but this is what I have to do right now to punch the ticket to get to general someday. Well, that's pretty much my background." He opened his hands and gave Pepper an encouraging smile.
"How about yours?"

Her hands stilled on the gray-and-white tomcat in her lap. "Well…I was born in
Montana
. Actually,
Cam
came first—my brother. Our dad was a silver miner near Anaconda."

"And your mother?"
Jim was curious about Pepper's role model. He couldn't imagine her mother as a woman satisfied with being a housewife and parent only.

Pepper grinned. "She was a real hell-raiser, born way before her time. Mom is a CPA—that's how she met my dad. She worked for the silver company that gave Dad his paycheck. He found a mistake on his check one time and went into the front office to find out who'd made the error. Mom told me later the sparks flew."

"I'll bet they did." Jim chuckled. He watched the way Pepper's eyes and face became animated as she spoke of her family. How easy it was for her to plug into her emotions. He envied her that ability.

"My mother is also a horsewoman, and she rides to this day. She was twenty-nine years old when she met my father, so she already had a pretty independent life established."

"You're a real
Montana
gal, aren't you?" Jim observed.

"I'm a Westerner not only by birth, but by heart, too," Pepper answered. She petted the cat fondly. "My mom was born in Anaconda, so I guess it's in my genes. My dad is a real outdoorsman, and he taught us to fish and hunt at an early age. I couldn't enjoy killing those beautiful animals, so I quit hunting and fishing and stuck to horseback riding.
Cam
loved hunting, though, so he always went with Dad. I will say this—my father and brother hunted and used the food. They never killed for sheer sport."

Jim
realised
how important that was to Pepper, and he found himself mesmerized by the graceful way she used her hands to punctuate her statements. Finally, he was becoming privy to the woman inside the confident smoke jumper. "What made you go into the army?"

"Dad asked me the same thing," Pepper said wryly. "Mom thought it was a great idea. She said the military would teach me discipline and organization. She was right—it did. But it taught me a lot more. When the army wouldn't let me attend Ranger graduation after I was the top student in my training group, I resigned my commission. I went back to
Montana
to find my roots and see if I couldn't give back to the land that had bred me, in some way."

"Why?" Jim asked quietly.

Startled, Pepper glanced up at him. In the shadows of the large room, his high cheekbones and square jaw seemed emphasized. She felt herself automatically acquiescing to his reassuring steadiness. "I guess…well, I've never really thought about it, but I love the wide-open, blue sky, the miles and miles you can go without seeing another person. It's serene, but at the same time teeming with wildness and beauty."

"Sort of like you?"

Shaken badly by his insight, Pepper frowned. "I don't know about that."

"I think I do," Jim said, settling back more comfortably against the couch cushions. "It sounds like your mother and father really supported your being all you could be, not caring that you were a girl."

She nodded. "My parents have always been way ahead of their time, that's true.
Cam
and I were raised in a pretty even-handed way in that sense. Not that I wanted to play football in high school or anything."

"But you didn't go out for cheerleader, either."

She laughed. "No, I didn't. I was with the band. I played saxophone for four years. And, since I had my own horse, Mom and I would compete in shows on weekends." Her hand stilled on the cat's back, and she said, "I had a happy childhood. I'm very close to my parents, and to
Cam
and his family."

Jim sensed the tension still stalking Pepper. "So how'd you get the name Pepper?" he teased, his mouth curving into a smile.

Flushing
, she laughed. "Oh, that…well, I guess I was a pretty active baby. Mom told my father about five days after I was born that I was like a hot pepper bouncing around in the crib. I wouldn't lie still. I was always moving my legs or arms or rolling back and forth.
So Pepper stuck."

"What's your given name?"

"Mary Susan." Pepper wrinkled her nose. "I can't imagine anyone calling me that, though. It sounds so foreign!"

Laughing, Jim shrugged. "It's not a bad name."

"I know," Pepper grumbled good-naturedly. "My mother named me Mary, after her mother, and my father named me after his mother, Susan. Go figure." Her laughter was husky. "However, I did know there was hell to pay whenever my mother or father used my given name instead of my nickname. That meant I was in
big
trouble."

Jim chuckled. Then he sobered a little and said in a quiet tone, "
Cam
's married, and it sounds as if you really dote on your family. How come you haven't married?"

It felt as if a spike had been driven through her heart. Pepper sat very still, wrestling with her unleashed emotions. Her hands rested on Frank, and she stared down at the animal. Finally, her tone strained, she said softly, "I was going to get married…but that was a long time ago. Or sometimes it seems like a long time ago. Then again, sometimes it seems like yesterday…."

Jim said nothing, holding his breath. He saw the anguish in Pepper's eyes and heard it clearly in her voice. Something tragic had occurred, there was no doubt. "Go on," he coaxed gently, "what happened?"

With a one-shouldered shrug, she whispered, "I met Captain John Freedman when I was in the army, six years ago. A lifetime ago…" Pepper raised her chin and stared blindly across the room, not really seeing it, lost in her past. "He was an incredible man. He didn't care if I was wearing a uniform. You know how a lot of men are—they see a woman in uniform and automatically write her off. Well, John didn't. I was wary of him, because I'd been hurt before by other officers, in a few attempts at relationships that ended badly. He was so patient. That was one of the many things I liked about him.

"John was a Ranger and head parachute instructor at the school. He taught me about parachuting, and pretty soon I was skydiving with him and his friends. I came to love jumping." She compressed her lips. "I came to love John." Pepper felt tears coming to her eyes and she self-consciously wiped them away. "He gloried in me, in who I was. I didn't have to play any games with him. I didn't have to fit into his idea of what a woman should be. He accepted me just as I was, without apology.

"We had known each other a good
year,
and we'd decided to get married. I wanted to marry a man who didn't hold a prejudice about women's roles. I knew…" Pepper swallowed against a lump forming in her throat. "I knew the kids we'd have would be raised in the same kind of environment
Cam
and I had been raised in. I was excited about life—about spending it with John and watching our kids unfold like unique flowers, watching them blossom…."

Pepper closed her eyes, pain making her voice hoarse. "Two days before the wedding, we went skiing with the army skydiving club. It was a celebration John's friends had arranged for us. He was a wonderful skier. He was good at anything he did, to tell you the truth. I'd skied all my life, being from
Montana
, and it was just one more thing we had in common." Pepper felt the lump in her throat hardening. Helplessly, she opened her eyes, her voice cracking. "He died on the slope that day in a freak accident.
A broken neck.
We—we were skiing together, and his left ski hit something under the snow. Later, we found out it was a rock. He fell and rolled. I went on, thinking he'd get right up again. When I looked back and saw him lying in the snow, I thought he was playing a joke on all of us, because he did that kind of thing." She stopped, struggling with her grief for a moment. "It was all so crazy.
Crazy.
I went back and saw his best friend, Steve, turn white with shock when he leaned down to see how he was. As I came up, Steve told me John was dead. I couldn't believe it. I stood there, frozen."

Pepper dragged her gaze to the ceiling and fought back tears. "I don't remember very much after that…." Anguish wrapped her in its persistent embrace. Pepper didn't tell Jim that since John's death, she'd made a decision never to fall in love again. She'd decided it simply wasn't worth the risk. She knew she couldn't survive a second such loss. The decision had been easy—born out of the fires of her grief. And she'd lived by her promise for six years, successfully sidestepping any romantic attachment—until now. Unable to explain why Jim touched her in that forbidden region of her heart, she felt confused and scared.