To the Brink (27 page)

"Of course, it's a nice plus that she also comes from a little money."

Yeah, like that was really important to him. It was obvious that Nolan Garrett was deeply, wholeheartedly lost in love with his wife. Jillian could have been a pauper and he'd still be crazy about her.

"A
little
money?" Darcy glanced around the plush cabin.

He laughed. "Just a little. Kincaid is just about richer than God, I'd guess. We can thank him for funding this little adventure, not to mention the use of the plane and his pilots."

And that led them right back to territory she didn't want to tread. She averted her gaze to her hands, which she was surprised to find clenched tightly on her lap.

"Can I ask you something?"

When Darcy saw the probing look on Nolan's face, she knew what was coming.

"What happened? What happened between you and Ethan? I know. We only had that one opportunity to meet, but you two seemed so great together. And if I might make an observation, it's pretty damn clear you're still in love with each other."

She could have disputed his statement, but what was the point? She looked down at her hands again. "He never ... never said anything?"

"No. Nothing."

She pinched her lips, looked over her shoulder out the porthole window.

"Okay. Look. Sorry. I was out of line. It's just—"

"I know. You care about him."

Nolan touched a hand to her shoulder, squeezed. "You, too, Darcy. I care about you, too."

"I know. I don't know how I'll ever repay you ... for all you've done. You and Manny and Dallas. You could have been killed. You took so many risks."

"Okay, now you're just plain insulting us if you think there was risk involved. Superstuds like us? Hell. This was a walk in the park."

She smiled because Nolan wanted her to.

He squeezed her shoulder, playing big brother again. "You need to stop thinking about this and get some sleep. And quit worrying about Ethan. He's strong as a bull. And he really is going to be okay."

Nolan dropped a kiss on her forehead and left, closing the door softly behind him. She sat there for a moment, thinking about what Nolan had said.

Walk in the park.

"A park littered with land mines maybe," she said into the silent cabin. Then she rose and checked on Ethan.

He seemed to be sleeping peacefully. His brow was cool. His color was good. She wished she could be sure that Nolan was right. But there was only one thing she was sure of.

She wasn't letting Ethan out of her sight until she was sure he was out of the woods. Or until it became necessary for her to leave him for his own protection.

Six hours to Anchorage. Maybe she should try to sleep. Feeling very weary suddenly, she walked to the other side of the bed and lay down facing Ethan.

And she thought of other nights in her bed when she'd lain awake in the dark and just looked at him. Just looked at him to assure herself that he was real and hers and because she simply loved to look at him. Loved to be with him. Could no longer imagine life without him.

They really had been good together.

So very, very good.

Until Tel Aviv. Then everything fell apart.

Chapter 19

TEL AVIV,
 
ISRAEL

SEVEN
 
YEARS AGO

Darcy was beat. And it was only Monday.

"Give me visa apps any day," she told Lisa England as she pushed away from her desk and grabbed her purse from the bottom drawer.

"Yeah. We live for bureaucracy." At the desk beside hers Lisa England shut down her computer. The pretty blonde—whose husband was an Air Force pilot stationed in Saudi—had joined the Tel Aviv embassy staff three months ago. She and Darcy had bonded over Big Macs and fries at a McDonald's where Darcy went once a month to remind her of home. Now they went there together and commiserated about the pitfalls of long-distance relationships.

"Okay. They may be boring," Darcy agreed, heading for the door, "but I'm not up for any more drama like this afternoon."

She must have considered two dozen applications for temporary visas in the morning, all of them with enough complications to slow the process to a crawl. Assisting the lovely couple from Colorado with the adoption of their infant nephew, whose Israeli parents had been killed in a car accident, had been a pleasure but a long, arduous process.

"You get those other folks taken care of?" Lisa asked, walking out of the office behind her.

"Finally."

"I missed most of the commotion. What happened anyway?"

Their heels clicked on the glossy tile in the hallway as they headed for the stairs.

"American tourists—from Manhattan, Kansas, no less—got stranded on the road to Jerusalem when their bus broke down. One of the women on board decided it was a great time to have an anxiety attack. She'd been certain they were going to get ambushed by the PLO or Hesbollah and damn near created an international incident by the time the bus driver contacted me."

Darcy shook her head as Lisa opened a stairwell door and they headed down. It had taken several calls, but Darcy had finally managed to contact an embassy staffer who by some minor miracle was within five minutes of the scene.

"Thank God John was in the area. I raised him on his cell phone and he drove over and put out the fire—at least until I made arrangements for overnight lodging."

"I can offer sympathy but not absolution. So no calling in sick tomorrow," Lisa warned with a grin when they reached the main floor. "I'm not going into the monthly staffing without you riding shotgun."

"Don't worry. I'll show up," Darcy said as she hit the front door—and stopped dead in her tracks when she stepped outside.

Ethan.

He was standing on the top step of the portico. In full dress greens. His beret settled smartly on his head.

He had one hand buried in his pocket. In the other, he held an open roll of cherry Life Savers.

"Want some candy, little girl?"

"Ethan. Oh my God! Ethan!" She flew into his arms. Held on tight as he swung her off her feet and hugged her so hard it hurt. She didn't care. She didn't want him to ever let go.

It had been six months since she'd left him in Lima. She'd been brokenhearted ever since. And she hadn't had a clue that he was coming.

His arms were strong and possessive and thrilling wrapped around her. And when he kissed her, she tasted everything from cherry, to longing, to misery, to joy.

"Okay," Lisa's voice reached her from a few feet away. "So, forget what I said about calling in sick. I've got a feeling you're going to have a problem getting out of bed in the morning."

Darcy finally broke the kiss, laughing. Ethan pressed his forehead to hers and without breaking eye contact with Darcy asked, "Who is this woman and why do I like her already?"

"Hello,
problem
,"
Lisa said with a grin, and held out her hand. "I'm Lisa. And I'm jealous as hell."

Gathering Darcy close to his side with his other arm, Ethan returned her handshake. "You have a thing for my wife?" he asked, deliberately misunderstanding.

Lisa laughed. "Life might be simpler if I did."

Happy beyond belief, Darcy explained. "Lisa's got a flyboy hubby she hasn't seen in—"

"Three months, two weeks, and five days—if anyone's counting," Lisa informed them. "Nice to meet you, Ethan. Take care of her. The girl's had a bad day."

"It's about to get a whole lot better," he promised, and dragged her under for another deep, drugging kiss.

They spent the next several hours in bed in her apartment. Loving, talking, sleeping, catching up. Everything was perfect. Whatever problems had cropped up in Lima before she'd left were distant memories.

In the moonlit night, in the quiet, Darcy stared at their joined hands where they rested on Ethan's bare chest. She hadn't wanted to ask until now. Hadn't wanted reality to intrude.

But reality had. He'd just told her why he'd been pulled out of Peru. Sort of. Things had gotten too dicey for him to stay there any longer.

Ethan didn't elaborate. In a way, she was glad. Right now, she didn't want to know what had happened, how close he may have come to being killed.

"Where will they send you?"

"I don't know yet." He aligned the pads of their thumbs, danced them slowly back and forth. "And you know I couldn't tell you if I did."

Right. She had known that. She'd find out eventually, all the wives did, but it would be long after he was deployed.

"I hated leaving my team."

She knew that, too. A-teams worked, played, ate, slept, and lived like family.

But she didn't want him sad in this bed.

She pushed herself up on an elbow. "How long do we have?"

"Two weeks."

Two weeks. Fourteen days.
And one of them was almost gone. She opted to show excitement over disappointment.

"I can work you over pretty good in fourteen days," she said, slinging her leg over his lap and sliding it back and forth seductively.

He laughed. "Do your worst."

"Oh, I plan to. I plan to."

She brought their joined hands to her mouth. Kissed his fingers. The pulse at his wrist. The inside of his elbow.

"I've dreamed of this," she whispered in the dark, and rising over him trailed kisses across his naked chest.

"I've missed you," she murmured, loving the warmth of him, the vibrant beat of his heart beneath her mouth. "How I've missed you."

He lay supplicant, letting her do what she would.

"Dreamed of touching you. Here. Tasting you. Um. Here."

She lingered over his left nipple. Licking, nuzzling, indulging in the taste of her man, in the power she felt over this warrior who could be so gentle, so giving, and, at the moment, so totally focused on what she was doing to him.

"I love you," she murmured, breathless and adoring the feel of his restless hands as they skated up her naked back, over her shoulders, and knotted in her hair.

"You're diving me crazy." His words came out on a strained groan.

"Oh yeah?" She smiled against his skin, rimmed his navel with the tip of her tongue, and glided her hand down past the flatness of his belly. Found his sex. Hard and pulsing and jumping in her hand.

"Oh God. Yeah." He arched his hips when she cupped his scrotum and gently squeezed.

"Then this is going to push you right over the edge."

As she'd teased her tongue around his navel, she teased it around the glistening tip of his penis. Making him swear. Making him groan. Making him understand that she would do anything,
be
everything he needed her to be.

If need had a taste, it was him. If love had a sound, it was the one she made when she took him into her mouth and with deliberate sloth and gentle suction set out to drain him of his last slippery grasp on control.