The Gauntlet (23 page)

Cam was prepared. Just the sight of Molly bleeding was enough to make him want to kill Martin. He took great satisfaction in striking the pilot in the face. Bone crunched and broke beneath the force of his well-aimed blow. Martin cried out and crumpled to the floor, covering his face with both his hands.

“My nose! You broke my nose!” Martin shrieked.

Breathing hard, Cam hunkered over him, his fist wrapped in the pilot’s flight suit. “You son of a bitch! I’ll break more than your nose. Don’t move!”

Sobbing for breath, Martin kept his hand over his head. “I won’t, I won’t! Don’t hit me again!”

Molly heard several men running up the rear exit stairs. Three sailors with Shore Patrol badges on their left arms appeared at the other end of the hall and hurried toward them. Once they arrived, Cam released Martin to their custody and straightened.

“Arrest Lieutenant Martin for trespassing without authorization, and for assault,” he snarled.

Still sitting on the floor, Molly breathed a sigh of relief. She saw anxiety replace Cam’s unadulterated anger as he came over to kneel beside her.

“Johnson,” he snapped at one of the Shore patrol men, “call an ambulance.”

“Yes, sir!” The petty officer went into the computer room to use the phone to call the dispensary.

“No,” Molly protested. “I’m okay. Really, I am.”

Cam’s hands shook badly as he framed her face. “Like hell you are. You’re a mess. You’re bleeding from your nose and mouth, Molly.” He carefully touched her brow where it was turning black-and-blue.

“I am?” She reached up and touched her upper lip. “Oh, dear…”

Cam kept his hand on her shoulder as she paled considerably after that discovery. Was Molly going to faint on him? He wouldn’t blame her. “Hold on,” he pleaded with her. “I’ll get you over to sick bay in a few minutes.”

Darkness kept edging her vision. Molly remembered what Dana had told her about how to stop fainting, and lowered her head between her knees so the blood would flow back into her skull. Cam’s hand felt comforting on her shoulder.

The Shore Patrol took Martin away, and she and Cam were alone in the hall. Molly kept her head bowed for at least three minutes until the black dots in front of her eyes disappeared. Slowly she lifted her head and looked up into Cam’s grim features.

“I found my printout on the table and the flight program on the monitor, Cam. Somehow, Martin got my access code and retrieved the information.” She pointed to the printout sheets scattered nearby. “He changed some of the numbers, Cam. They’re circled in red. When I tried to take the evidence, he stopped me.”

Cam shook his head. “He could have killed you, Molly.” God, how courageous she’d been. He saw anger and stubbornness in her green-and-gold eyes.

“I wasn’t about to let him foul up my flight plan again, Cam! I figured it out. He changed my other flight plan, too, and made me look bad. I got a poor grade on that test flight.”

“Yes. And he was the one who brought up the fact to Vic that he should recheck your math figures on the printout,” Cam muttered. “It all makes sense. That bastard!”

Pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose to stop the bleeding, Molly started to feel giddy and happy. “That’s why I had to keep that printout as evidence. I tried to get out the door, but Martin jumped me from behind.” With a grimace, Molly added, “I’m afraid I’m not much of a fighter. I’m sure Dana or Maggie would have beat Martin at his own game. All I did was scratch, claw and scream.”

Cam slid his arm around her shoulders. His voice was low with feeling. “Angel, you could have been killed. I don’t know if Martin would have gone to that length, but it wasn’t worth the risk. I need you alive. God, I was so scared when I came up here and saw you sitting there bleeding.”

Molly whispered his name and threw her arms around Cam’s shoulders. Reality was starting to impinge on her state of shock. She clung to him, her head nestled against his shoulder. Just the smell of Cam was like a perfume to her heightened senses. “Cam, just take me home. Stay with me tonight. I don’t want to be alone. Please?”

His voice was gravelly with emotion. “I wish I could, but I’ve got the duty, angel.” God, how Cam wanted to be with her, hold her and care for her! Right now, Molly needed him. Gripping her by the shoulders, he stared down into her traumatized features. “What I’ll do is have Johnson drive you home after the doctor’s seen you.” His voice deepened. “I’m sure he’s going to tell you to stay home and rest tomorrow. You can fly that spin test next week sometime. I’m sorry I can’t be with you tonight, Molly. I want to be…. God, how I want that for both of us.”

She tucked away her disappointment, realizing Cam was right. An SDO couldn’t go off base for the night and return in the morning. No. Cam had responsibility for everything that happened on base for a twenty-four-hour period. He couldn’t be with her, no matter how badly they both desired it. “I’m sorry. I should’ve remembered,” she whispered unsteadily, her head beginning to ache in earnest.

Cam heard several men coming up the stairs. It had to be the medics that Johnson had allowed to enter the facility. “Can I take a rain check?” he asked. “Friday evening I’ll come over. We need to talk, Molly, about a lot of things.”

She nodded. “If you came over tonight, I don’t think I’d be of much use to anyone. I feel awful, Cam.”

He tenderly kissed her hair. “I know, angel. You took a lot of punishment from Martin. Here come the medics. They’ll take you out on a gurney.”

Molly started to protest. But, when she struggled to rise, Cam clamped his large hand on her shoulder and forced her to remain sitting. Used to taking care of herself all her life, Molly realized she’d forgotten what it was like to be cared for. Acquiescing, she allowed the medics to check her over and place her on the gurney. Once she lay down, Molly felt exhausted. It was as if the physical confrontation with Martin was the last straw. There was no more fight left in her.

* * *

Cam nervously fingered the huge bouquet of autumn flowers in his hands as he waited for Molly to answer the door to her apartment. The November wind cut through him, although he wore a leather bomber jacket with a white wool scarf around his neck. The door opened. Cam’s heart thudded once to underscore how very much he needed to see Molly. She stood there smiling at him, dressed in an ivory crewneck sweater and a pair of pink cord slacks. His heart went out to her when he realized she was just as nervous, perhaps more so, than he was.

“Come in,” Molly invited.

Cam inhaled. “You must have cooked me dinner.” He grinned as he gave her the bouquet after she shut the door.

“I did. The flowers are just gorgeous! You didn’t have to do this.” Molly sniffed at the flowers’ individual scents, loving Cam for his thoughtfulness.

Shrugging out of his jacket and scarf, Cam hung them up in the hall closet. He noticed a black-and-blue goose egg on Molly’s forehead. Otherwise, she looked incredibly well. “You deserve a Purple Heart, not flowers,” Cam teased, shutting the door and coming to join her. Nervously he put his hands in his pockets. “How are you feeling?”

“Like new.” Molly reached up, slid her arm around his shoulder and pressed a kiss to his mouth. “Thank you.” It had taken everything on her part to initiate the kiss that was begging to be shared between them. Before she could move away, Cam’s hands came out of his pockets and captured her. The flowers were between them.

“Do you know how much you’ve changed?” Cam asked, holding her startled but pleased gaze. His body cried out to consummate the love he knew had grown and blossomed between them.

Molly relaxed in his embrace. “No. I feel the same old Molly.”

He smiled and pushed back her blond bangs so he could inspect her goose egg more closely. “I wonder if, five months ago, you’d have fought back—or fought at all—for what was yours? Not that I condone you going after Martin.” Cam frowned. “He confessed to everything today, Molly. Not only did he change figures on two of your flight programs, but he did it to another engineering student, too.”

Cam’s touch was fleeting, and Molly savored his closeness and care. “Not to mention the assault on me.”

“He’s up on charges for that, too.” Cam allowed his fingers to drop away from her hairline and he tilted her chin. “How are the nose and mouth?”

“When I hit the floor I just jarred my whole head. My nose is fine, and I have a small cut inside the corner of my mouth. That’s all.”

“At first I thought you might have broken your nose or lost some teeth,” Cam admitted. With the huge bouquet of flowers still between them, he knew it was useless to embrace her. Which was exactly what he wanted to do. Reluctantly, he released Molly and walked with her into the kitchen.

With a laugh, Molly placed the flowers on the drain board and hunted up a vase to place them in. “I’ve got a hard head, Cam, so no real damage was done. This will end Martin’s career, won’t it?”

Sitting down at the table, which was set with Oriental-designed plates rimmed in gold, and gold-colored flatware, he nodded. “He’ll get court-martialed for this,” he promised grimly.

Molly cut the stems of the bouquet of flowers one by one and placed them in a cobalt-blue vase. “I can’t believe any pilot would do what he did. Doesn’t say much for competitiveness, does it?”

“Martin went overboard.” Cam watched Molly arrange the flowers, her every movement graceful and lovely to watch. “Did you call your father and tell him what happened?” he asked her finally.

“No.” Molly put the vase at one end of the table, pleased with her artistry. “Why should I? He didn’t care that I almost drowned in the Chesapeake after ejecting. Why would he care if I got into a brawl with a male pilot?”

Cam said nothing, but he saw the hurt in Molly’s eyes. She poured them each a glass of white wine and placed a shrimp salad before him. She sat down at his elbow.

“You didn’t have to make me dinner, you know,” Cam said, enjoying each forkful of the tangy salad.

“I wanted to. It’s so much fun watching you enjoy every bite. I’ve never met a man who loved his food as much as you do.”

“It comes from seven years of being spoiled,” Cam told her.

The reference to his past caused a twinge in Molly’s heart. She kept her head bent and continued to eat.

Cam had seen her eyes grow dark. He placed his fork beside the emptied salad bowl. “What are your plans after you graduate? You know you have two weeks’ leave coming after that, don’t you?”

“First, I have to graduate, Cam. I’ve got another month to go.”

“You’re number four in the standings.”

“That doesn’t promise anything.”

“I’m sure that once the commandant reviews your case and the fact that Martin altered your flight software figures, he’ll probably reassess your grades upward.”

“Do you really think so, Cam?” Molly felt a thread of hope. She saw him smile. It was a tender smile for her alone, and it made her feel wonderful.

“I’d put money on it. If he does, that’ll cinch the number-three position for you. Then all you have to do is maintain your average this last month and you’re home free.”

Sitting back in the chair, Molly whispered, “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“You’re going to graduate,” Cam repeated. “What are you going to do with that two weeks’ leave?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” she admitted ruefully, getting up and taking the salad bowls back to the drain board. Pulling baked chicken with long-grain rice from the oven, she put it on a huge platter. “I’ve been living one day at a time, Cam, ever since I got to TPS.”

“Look ahead. What will you do with it?”

Molly set the platter before him on the table. She brought the gently steamed broccoli over in another bowl and sat down again. “Why are you pushing me on this?”

Cam carved up the chicken and dished some onto her waiting plate. “Because I want to spend a week of it up in the Smoky Mountains hiking with you, that’s why.”

Molly stared at him.

“Okay?” Cam put chicken on his plate and spooned out some rice beside it. He glanced up at her, his heart beating hard in his chest. Would she turn him down? There was a look of surprise in her eyes. “Well?”

“I…”

“You don’t want to?”

“No! I mean—no, it’s not that,” Molly said hastily, joy cascading through her along with confusion. “Tell me more about this week I’d be spending with you.”

“I know a nice rustic resort up in the Smoky Mountains. You can rent a cabin by the day or week, and hike the Appalachian Trail. I thought it might give us the time we need to know each other better.”

“Better?”

“Yeah, you know.”

“No, I don’t.”

With a grimace, Cam put down his flatware and then picked up one of Molly’s hands. “I feel we deserve the time to get to know each other, Molly, without the stresses of school. Ever since I met you, I’ve wanted to pursue a more serious relationship with you. Going to the cabin with me has no strings attached, no pressure and nothing expected from either one of us. I just want the time alone with you.”
Because I love you, and I want to find out if you love me, too.
Cam searched her serious features.

Curling her fingers around his larger hand, Molly smiled shyly. “I’d like that, Cam.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

She smiled. “A lot.”

“What about the other week?”

With a sigh, she said, “I think it’s time I faced my father and brother. If I graduate, I don’t expect them to come down. But I want to go home and try to patch up things.”

“Want company?”

Molly held his tender gaze. “Are you serious? You’d come with me?”

“I’ll come if you want me to, angel.”

Molly smiled uncertainly. “I’d like that. Although I’m not sure Father will be happy to see you.”

“That’s his problem.” Cam released her hand, and suddenly his appetite returned with a vengeance. He dug hungrily into the food, asking, “What’d you make for dessert?”

With a shake of her head, Molly said, “Baked apples with vanilla sauce.”

“God, I’m in heaven with an angel for a cook.”

“And you’re such a pushover, Cam Sinclair.” Throughout the meal, Molly could barely think, only feel. A week with Cam alone! The thought was like lightning striking through her, filled with promise, with hope. If only she would graduate. If only…