SEALed at Midnight (12 page)

Every mile took him farther away from Ginny, and Thom realized there was nothing he could do about it.

She was going to worry. Worse, she would think he’d snuck out on her.

After all they’d done, she’d hate him for that.

He’d have to figure out a way to fix it when he got back. For now, he had to get his head in the game, because in his line of work the stakes were life and death.

Thom drew in a breath. “Thanks for doing this, Chris.”

“It ain’t no big deal. I gotta log a minimum number of hours in the air.”

“But it’s Christmas.”

“Brody and I weren’t going home to Alabama anyway. We were just there for Thanksgiving and with the number of people in my family, no one will miss us. Believe me.” Chris shot Thom a good-natured grin.

“Still, I’m going to repay you for whatever you laid out.” How he’d do that, Thom wasn’t sure.

Between child support, alimony and gifts for his kids, he was broke until payday.

“Don’t worry about it, bro. I’m making Brody pay for half the fuel for the plane and the car rental. Consider it our gift to you. Merry Christmas.”

Thom snorted. “Thanks.”

CHAPTER 11

Ginny’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

Turning off her inner editor, she ignored the typos and misspellings and refused to let herself stop to nitpick and wordsmith.

She’d go back and fix all that later.

Now, her sole goal was simple—to get the story onto the page.

Her phone buzzed on the desk next to her, dragging her eyes and her concentration off the work in progress and to the display that read
Molly
.

She had already lost her train of thought so she grabbed the cell and hit to answer with a sigh she couldn’t control. “Hello.”

“Am I bothering you?” There was a good dose of attitude in Molly’s questions.

Ginny’s greeting had been short and brisk and apparently her friend had noticed. “I was just writing.”

Molly let out a snort. “You’re always writing.”

Spoken like a non-writer.

“I’m in the final chapter. That should make you happy.” Ginny shouldn’t bother trying to explain. Her friend wouldn’t understand. Neither did her family when she said she had to write rather than drive to see them.

That was fine. She didn’t need them to understand her motivation. She did, however, need them to leave her alone so she could finish this book.

Ginny vowed that when she hung up the phone, she would turn it off completely, or at least put it in the bedroom where she wouldn’t hear it.

“Is this that historical thing you’ve been working on forever?”

“No. I told you, I put that away and started a new one. A contemporary romance this time, about a Navy guy with amnesia and the girl he meets in a snowstorm.” Just saying it aloud twisted her inside out. When the details got no reaction from Molly, Ginny said, “Don’t you listen to anything I say?”
 

 
“Yes. And why are you in such a miserable mood?”

Ginny sighed. “I’m not.”
 

She was pouring her heart and heartbreak into this book and nobody gave a damn.

Of course, that could be because no one knew. She’d never told another living soul what had happened on Christmas.

It had become very apparent very quickly that Thom was never coming back. By the time she left for her parents’ house, the devastating realization that he was gone had hit Ginny. She’d managed to hold herself together and pretend nothing had happened in front of her family.

It was when she was alone that was a different story.

Admitting, even to her friend, that she’d given herself to a stranger who’d ditched her while she slept wasn’t high on Ginny’s list of things to do.

But she was all right. Thom disappearing after their night together, without a word, with nothing more than a note in which he had lied when he’d written he’d be right back, had all been good for Ginny.

It spurred her into ditching her old book and starting this new one.

That first story was on her computer in a file that might never see the light of day again. There was a good chance none of her writing would, but at least this was a book she wanted to write.

The words flew like magic from her brain to her fingers and onto the screen.

In the three weeks or so since that fateful night she’d pumped out a full-length novel. That was something she’d never thought possible when she’d agonized to eek out a few hundred words a day with the old book.

Now, she was up to the ending and she had a choice to make.

What should she do to wrap up the story? Write the realistic end—her ending—where the hero disappears, sneaking away like a thief, never to be heard from again?
 

Or write the end she’d always dreamed of but knew would never come to be. The happy ending where the hero and the heroine reunite amid tears and professions of love.

How she wished real life was like a romance novel. That happily-ever-after did exist.
 

Maybe that’s exactly why she had to write a happy ending. So she and every other woman could hold on to that tiny flicker of hope that maybe, one day . . .
 

Ginny brought her attention back to the situation at hand—the reason for her friend’s call. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.” Molly sighed.

Typical Molly. She’d call when she got bored, and she got bored easily, especially on a cold January day.

“Marco’s not around?” Ginny asked.

“No. He had tickets to the playoff game. He left at the crack of dawn to tailgate in the parking lot of the stadium.”

“Better him than me. It’s cold out there.”

“I know!” Molly agreed and launched into a rant about the guys Marco had gone to the football game with.

Ginny glanced out the window. Snow still covered the ground. It wasn’t going anywhere as long as the daytime temperatures continued to barely break freezing. That was okay. She’d gotten used to it.

In fact, she liked this weather. It was perfect for writing. A good excuse to hibernate since it was too cold to do much else.

Unlike Molly, she didn’t get cabin fever easily. Aside from the occasional trip to the food store to stock up, Ginny was very happy to not go anywhere.

She was still gazing outside, watching a cardinal land in a tree in the yard, when a black SUV pulled into the driveway. She frowned, not recognizing the vehicle.

The family she was housesitting for wasn’t due home until March first so it wasn’t them.

Ginny hated when people dropped by unannounced.

If it were some sort of door-to-door salesman, she’d give him a piece of her mind. Though she probably didn’t look all that intimidating in her snowflake flannel pajama bottoms and her red thermal, long sleeved T-shirt.

Crap. She hated getting caught in her pajamas in the middle of the day. At least she had put on a bra.

The driver’s side door opened and the man who stepped out had Ginny’s heart skipping a beat.

“Um, Molly, I gotta go.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just somebody at the door.”

“Who would be at the door?”

“I don’t know.” Ginny’s hand shook as she watched Thom walk up the path and toward the porch. “I’ll call you back.”

“All right. Bye.”

“Bye.” Ginny hit to end the call and stood frozen in place.

As much as she wanted to see him—wanted him to have a good excuse for disappearing—she held firm to a healthy dose of distrust.

This was a man who’d been intimately familiar with every inch of her, and then had disappeared without a trace.

She’d listen to his excuse and decide if she believed him or not. Thank God she wasn’t so gone over him that she’d given in to blind trust.

Sometimes being a suspicious pessimist worked in her favor, such as when she refused to let his appearance at her door raise her hopes . . . but God how she wanted him to have a good excuse.

She flipped the lock and drew in a bracing breath as she pulled open the door.

He stood on the porch, hand raised to the button for the doorbell he’d never gotten a chance to push. “Ginny.”

“Thom.” She crossed her arms, not moving out of the doorway.

“I’m sorry.”

His apology was a start, but not nearly enough. “What happened?”

“Can I come in?”

“To explain?” She countered his question with one of her own, somehow maintaining her hard ass demeanor.

“Yes.” He dipped his head, looking contrite.

It was hard to ignore that he looked even better than the last time she’d seen him.

That shouldn’t have been a surprise. This time he didn’t have hypothermia from hiking through a blizzard after cracking his head open in a car crash.

“Come on in.” It was probably a huge mistake, her resistance was plummeting, but she took a step back from the door.

“Thank you.” He wiped his feet on the mat before coming into the house.

Damned gentleman
. He was making it very hard to stay mad at him.

She closed the door, walked to the sofa and sat. She wasn’t about to stand on ceremony with Thom. He might be a guest but they’d done enough together in this very room she wasn’t going to treat him as one.

He followed her into the room and hesitated, as if debating where to sit before he settled on the chair.

Forearms braced on his knees he leaned forward and leveled his gaze on her. He took so long to start speaking she felt the need to prompt him.

“Go on.”

“I’m deciding where to start.” He shook his head. “I went over what I wanted to say in my mind the entire drive from Virginia, but I’ll be damned if I remember a word of it.”

She raised a brow. “It shouldn’t be that hard if it’s the truth.”

He let out a short laugh. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

He drew in a breath and then said, “I left that morning to find my car, planning to assess the damage and then come right back. I found the SUV and my cell phone. I also found out I’d been called back to base. I had to go, Ginny. I didn’t have time to come back here to explain, and I didn’t have your number to call.”

It all sounded a little too convenient and not all that plausible.

She cocked a brow. “On Christmas Day the Navy called you back to Virginia knowing you were in Massachusetts?”

“Yes.”

The son of the family who lived next to her parents was in the Navy. Yes, some years he was deployed for the holidays. But when he wasn’t he had a bunch of days off for Christmas. He’d come home to visit and never once had he been called back to base.

Ginny folded her arms. “I don’t believe you.”

It pained her to say it because she so wanted to believe him, but she just couldn’t.

“You don’t?” He looked a little shocked.

“Nope.” She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Because the sailors I know aren’t on call like doctors or, I don’t know, firemen.”

He ran his hand over his face. “What can I do to prove it to you?”

“Tell the truth.”

He hesitated for long enough she started to worry what he was going to reveal. Finally, he said, “I’m in a counterterrorism unit.”

Counterterrorism.
That sounded even more farfetched than the rest of his story.

He stood. Taking a step forward, he extended his hand to her on the sofa. “Will you come with me?”

“Where? Why?”

“To my parents’ house. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe them.”

First her elusive one-night stand showed up out of the blue, and now he wanted her to meet his parents?

“Please, Ginny.”

“I’m not dressed.” It was a lame excuse but it was all she could come up with on the spot.

“Then get dressed. I’ll wait.” He sat back down.

She was torn, but eventually, curiosity won out. “Okay.”