Return of a Hero (7 page)

Smiling gently, he placed a chaste kiss on her wrinkled brow. “Sweet, guileless swan. Come on, you’ve had a long day, and it’s time for bed.”

Morgan’s kiss had been fleeting. His mouth had been strong against her forehead, and Laura felt the heat escalate within her at his unexpected gesture. “I think you’re right,” she whispered. “This swan is ready to call it a night.”

Chapter Four

“B
e quiet, you little beggar, or you’ll wake up Laura,” Morgan growled at the robin, who frantically cheeped in her cage. Morning sunlight cascaded through the green curtains at the windows. Rubbing his face tiredly, Morgan went through the motions of feeding the baby bird. Who could believe this almost featherless creature could cause such a ruckus?

Morgan knew he’d overslept. He’d been unable to sleep for a long time after his conversation with Laura by the fireplace. And then his sleep had been broken with nightmarish memories intermixed with Laura’s haunting face dancing before him. Dressed in only a pair of pajama bottoms, Morgan enjoyed the feel of the sunlight against his upper body as he stood at the sink, feeding the robin her morning meal.

“I’ll tell you what, little lady, you’re lucky I put up with you.”

“Morgan?”

He turned, hearing Laura’s sleep-filled voice. His heart tightened in his chest as he took in her rumpled appearance. Sasha, who’d slept in her mistress’s bedroom, wagged her tail in greeting as she ambled toward Morgan. Sometime during the night Laura’s bandage had slipped off. Her blue eyes were incredibly large and thickly lashed. Dragging in a deep breath, he felt that same molten desire explode through him just as it had the night before.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “We both overslept and this little beggar was hungry.”

Laura smiled and walked slowly toward Morgan’s voice, her hand held out in front of her. “I heard Robby cheeping like crazy. I thought something was wrong,” she offered huskily, finding the countertop and halting.

Laura’s eyes were puffy with sleep, her hair mussed and framing her face. Morgan swallowed hard, putting the robin back in the cage. “She won’t squawk for at least an hour. I stuffed her with four worms.”

Laura chuckled and tried to smooth her hair away from her face. “Despite all your snarling and growling about feeding Robby, I really think you like her.” Wildly aware of Morgan’s overpowering masculinity, Laura sensed she was very close to him. Her dreams had been torrid, centering around her in Morgan’s arms.

“You look beautiful just the way you are,” Morgan said thickly. He placed the cage back against the wall and turned to her. The white cotton gown was wrinkled, the boat neck revealing her finely sculpted collarbones and emphasizing the smooth expanse of her throat. “And you’re going to catch your death of cold if you don’t get a robe.”

“Oh, dear, I forgot to put it on.” Laura pressed both hands to her cheeks, feeling heat steal into them. The gown she wore wasn’t sexy in her mind, but she heard the longing in Morgan’s tone. “I’m sorry,” she began lamely. “I’m so used to padding around here alone in my gown when I get up in the morning.”

Squeezing her upper arm, Morgan murmured, “Don’t be. Hold on, I’ll get the robe for you.”

Laura turned toward the sunlight, reveling in the warmth enveloping her. In a minute, Morgan returned and helped her on with the chenille robe.

“Can you see anything yet?” Morgan asked, standing next to her, studying her flawless blue eyes. The pupils were huge and black.

Dejectedly Laura shook her head. “No—nothing.” She bit down on her lower lip. “Morgan, what if Dr. Taggert is wrong? What if this isn’t temporary?”

He heard the carefully concealed terror in her voice. “I learned a long time ago to live one day at a time, Laura. You do the same.”

All her fears surfaced as Morgan’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. “My livelihood depends on my being able to see. I’ve got three articles due at different magazines in the next two weeks. They’re typed, but they need to be edited and then a final copy run off on the printer.”

“One day at a time, little swan,” Morgan urged, sliding his arm around her drawn shoulders. There was no reasoning around Laura, he realized with a pang as he drew her against him. She brought out so many withheld emotions in him, and he responded to them without even thinking. Giving her a quick squeeze and then releasing her, he said, “Let me make breakfast. You have your bath and get dressed. After we’re done eating, I’ll help you with those articles.”

Laura turned, gripping his hand. “Oh, Morgan, would you?”

He smiled down into her eyes, which sparkled with renewed hope. “I’m not very good at typing, but we’ll get them done. Let’s go to your bedroom and figure out what you want to wear today. Then I’ll whip up a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon.“

“Well,” Laura asked, sitting at her office desk, “what do you think of the first article?”

Morgan had brought another chair into the office and placed it next to hers. He’d finished reading the ten-page article on spy satellites. “Very good.”

She caught the admiration in his voice. “I can almost hear you asking how a woman could know so much about something so complex, right?”

He grinned up at her. Laura had chosen to wear a pink long-tailed shirt that hung over her curved thighs and a pair of jeans. She had begged him to leave the bandages off her eyes, and he’d agreed. Her blond hair framed her face in a natural page boy, barely grazing her shoulders. The bangs fell softly across her brow, following the gentle slope of her eyebrows.

“No…I’m more impressed with
how
you got this kind of information. Isn’t it classified?”

She chuckled. “No. I’ve got friends down at the Pentagon vaults where all the declassified material is kept. I practically live down there some days, reading through hundreds of pages of information, pulling out interesting tidbits and then compressing them into an article format.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Will you read the article back to me, sentence by sentence? That way I can listen to it and see if something needs to be changed or tightened up.”

“Yeah, and I’ll input the edits and then print out a final draft for you.”

She reached out, her hand coming in contact with his chest instead of his arm. The tensile strength of his muscles sent a thrill through her. She moved her hand to find his arm, giving it a warm squeeze. “We work well as a team, don’t we?”

“Since the beginning,” Morgan agreed huskily, lost in the beauty of her eyes. Eyes that showed him the world in a frame of hope, not despair. Rousing himself from his discovery, he grabbed a pencil. “Okay, here comes the first sentence. If we’re lucky, we’ll be finished by noon.“

Morgan dawdled over the noontime meal of tuna salad sandwiches, sweet pickles and potato chips with Laura. The first article was completed. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had so much fun or laughed as hard as he had in that three-hour period. Between editing and the five phone calls that Laura had answered, the article had been revised and printed out to perfection.

Laura licked her fingers after finishing off a third sweet pickle. A new kind of excitement was growing inside her—a sweet euphoria she’d never felt before. It was all due to Morgan, she realized. The need to know more about him never left her. Picking up the paper napkin, she blotted her lips. Sasha sat by her chair, begging for another sweet pickle, a favorite food of hers.

“Every time you feed the robin, you act as if you don’t like to do it,” Laura noted. “Why?”

Disgruntled once again by her acute hearing and observation, Morgan said, “When I came home from the naval academy on leave for the first time, my sister, Aly, and I went out hunting together. Actually,” he went on, frowning, “I was the one who wanted to hunt. Aly was happy just to tag along.” He shook his head, a smile edging his mouth. “She was only twelve at the time and had missed her big brother, so she was like my shadow on that first leave.”

Laura leaned forward, hearing the nostalgia in Morgan’s voice. “It sounds as if Aly idolizes you.”

He laughed softly. “Yeah. She was a great kid sister, always hanging around with Noah and me.” Glancing up at Laura, he halted, realizing just how much he’d divulged about his past by naming his brother and sister. Would Laura piece things together? Judging from the tenderness in her eyes, Morgan guessed not, and slowly continued.

“I had this .22 caliber rifle I’d grown up with as a kid. My dad and I had gone deer hunting every fall for as long as I could remember. Aly didn’t usually like to come with us because she hated to see anything killed. I’d taken the rifle along for the hell of it as we walked through this wooded grove. I wanted to keep up my proficiency shooting, so I was aiming at tree branches in the distance, not birds or animals.” Morgan crumpled the napkin in his hands, staring down at the light-green tablecloth.

“I picked out a branch on one tree and fired. There was a robin’s nest on it, hidden by leaves, and I hadn’t realized it was there. The nest fell out of the tree. Aly ran over to it. When I got there, she was crying.”

“Oh, Morgan,” Laura whispered, sliding her hand outward, making contact with his. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, the memory returning powerfully to him. “Two of the three baby robins were dead. The third one had a broken wing, and Aly gently picked it up. She thought we could save it, so I wrapped the bird up in my handkerchief to keep it warm for the walk back to the house.

“When we got home, Aly and I got a shoe box, made a little nest for the bird and kept it warm. She went outside with me to dig worms. I felt terrible, because I’d had no intention of killing anything,” Morgan admitted.

Laura tightened her fingers around his. “Did the baby live?”

He sighed. “It died two days later. It must have had internal injuries. The bird should have survived with only a broken wing.”

“You both must have been devastated.”

Morgan took her hand between his, lightly tracing each of her long, artistic fingers. “Aly cried for hours after the baby died. All I could do was hold her and tell her I was sorry, that I hadn’t meant to hurt the robin.”

“She wasn’t upset with you, was she?”

“No, not Aly. She’s just as softhearted as you are.”

Sniffing, Laura swallowed back her tears for Morgan’s sake. He might misconstrue her compassion for pity. “Robby brings all those memories back to you, doesn’t she?”

Looking over at the robin, who slept contentedly in the makeshift nest of grass in the cage, Morgan nodded. “Yeah, the little beggar brings it all back to me. Except maybe this time I won’t kill it. Maybe she’ll live despite me.”

The urge to whisper his name and pull him into her arms was real. Instead Laura held his hand tightly. “Why do I get this feeling that you think everything you touch is somehow worse off?”

“Not much in my life has had a good ending, Laura,” Morgan warned her darkly, getting up. “I don’t have to stay in one place long before things turn to hell in a hand basket. Look at you. All you had to do was see me at an airport and you got injured saving my miserable neck.”

“I don’t believe it,” Laura told him fervently. “You’re a kind and good person.”

“Tell that to the world,” he growled, picking up the plates and taking them to the dishwasher. “Come on, let’s get back to work on those last two articles.“

Phone calls from well-wishers who had found out about her injury via the newspaper, and editors whom Laura had worked with, came in all afternoon. Some flowers arrived, and Morgan brought them into her office. Her enthusiasm over receiving the fragrant bouquet did nothing but remind him that he should have had the sensitivity to bring her some, too. By six o’clock, Morgan was in ill humor.

He got up and went to the kitchen to make them supper. His anger at the situation bred more frustration. What if she was blinded for life? He couldn’t just leave her stranded. In his mind, no one who was loyal ever deserted. As he peeled the potatoes, he began to consider the possibility of staying stateside. He now knew he wasn’t a CIA mole. So it didn’t matter whether he signed up for another five-year stint with the French Foreign Legion or not.

Throwing the potatoes into a pot to boil, Morgan began collecting the vegetables from the refrigerator for a salad.

“Here, little beggar,” he muttered, throwing the robin a piece of lettuce. The bird promptly climbed out of her nest in the bottom of the cage and gobbled up the greenery. Morgan grinned tightly, throwing her another piece. “Greedy little thing, aren’t you?”

So was he, if he were honest with himself. He liked Laura a hell of a lot—and not for reasons of pity or owing her for saving his life. Looking around at the quiet kitchen, he was astonished, as he always was, by the peace that reigned within this home. Tearing up bib lettuce leaves and putting them in a large bowl, Morgan realized his newfound contentment was due to Laura.

And if Laura’s sight came back in two weeks, what would he do? He released a long sigh, grabbing a carrot and methodically beginning to slice it into the bowl. With her background in military information, she’d recognize him sooner or later. Disgruntled, he found himself wanting to stay, but realized it was a stupid dream. This was still nothing more than a beautiful dream that would end very abruptly.

“Mmm, smells good, whatever you’re cooking,” Laura said, coming into the kitchen. She found a chair in the nook and sat down. “Can I help?”

“I’ve got chicken in the oven, and I’m working on a salad. Just sit there and look beautiful.”

Smiling, Laura murmured, “I wish I could see your face, Morgan Ramsey, when you say that.”

“Oh? Why?”

“To see if you’re teasing me or if you mean it.”

He grinned as he chopped up a scallion. “And if I did mean it, Ms. Bennett, what would you do, I wonder?”

“You’re such a rogue,” she said with a laugh, clapping her hands delightedly. “And too much of an officer and a gentleman to take unfair advantage of me.”

Scowling, he scooped the scallion into the bowl. The tomato was next. “Not anymore.”

Undaunted by his growling rejoinder, she sat, enjoying his presence. “So, you graduated from Annapolis as an officer?”