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She nodded and her hand brushed lightly over his face, lovingly caressing his jaw. “And you’re alive. Oh, Rush, I nearly lost you.”
She bit into her bottom lip and Rush knew she was struggling not to cry. He wished he could have spared her all worry and doubt.
“Where am I…? How long?”
“You’re in a hospital in Hawaii. Two days now.”
He frowned. “That long?” Now that his eyesight was clearing, he could see the dark smudges under Lindy’s eyes. She was as pale as death, as though recovering from a bad bout of flu. And much thinner than he remembered. Too thin. “You look terrible.”
She laughed, and the sweet, lilting sound wrapped itself around his heart, squeezing emotion from him. Dear God, he loved Lindy. So much of the accident remained clouded in his mind. All he could remember was hearing a horrendous noise and seeing a ball of fire come hurling toward him. Everything had happened so fast that there had barely been time to do anything more than react. All he knew was that he didn’t want to die. He wanted to go home to Lindy. His Lindy. His love.
The next thing he remembered was pain. Terrible pain. More acute than anything he’d ever experienced. He knew he was close to dying, knew he might not make it, and still all he could think about was Lindy. Dying would have stopped the agony; slipping into the dark swirling void of death would have been welcome if only it would end the torment, but Rush chose the pain because he knew it would lead him back to Lindy.
“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” she asked, her lips twitching with a teasing smile. “You’re not exactly ready to be cast as Prince Charming yourself.”
“You’ve been sick?” he pressed, his tongue faltering over the words. It was a struggle to keep awake, the pull back to unconsciousness greater with each second.
“No, just worried. It took them nearly forty hours to find you after the accident and until then you were listed as missing.”
“Oh God, Lindy, I’m…sorry.”
“I’m fine now that I know you’re going to be all right.” Again her fingers touched his face, smoothing the hair from his brow, lingering as though she needed the reassurance that he was real.
“How many…dead?”
“Seven. Three on the flight deck and four on the bridge.”
Rush’s jaw tightened. “Who?”
Lindy recited the names and each one fell upon his chest like a boulder dropped from the ceiling. “…good men,” he said after a moment, and was shocked at how fragile his voice sounded.
“More than twenty suffered serious injuries.”
Rush felt himself drifting off; he resisted, but the pull of the tide was too powerful for him to fight. “How bad…”
“The burn victims are the worst.”
He nodded and that was the last he remembered.
When he woke again the room was pitch-dark. He felt a straw at his mouth and he sucked greedily. “What time is it?”
“Two a.m.”
“Lindy, is that you?”
“Do you need something for the pain?”
He shook his head. “No.” Her fingers curled around his own and he held on to her, savoring her touch. He slept again.
* * *
Lindy sat in a chair at her husband’s side. She’d tried to sleep countless times, but the rest her body craved continued to elude her. Just as she’d start to drift off, the horror of those two days of not knowing if Rush was dead or alive returned and snapped her awake. She’d come so close to losing him. Seven men had died. Honorable men. And Rush had come a hairsbreadth from making the count eight. The men who had died were husbands, fathers, lovers—and now they were gone.
Standing, she walked over to the window. Palm trees swayed in the late afternoon breeze. The sun shone and the ocean lapped relentlessly against the white, sandy beach. The flawless beauty of the scene should have soothed her troubled spirit, but it didn’t. Instead she felt a cold hard feeling settle in her lungs. It spread out, making her breathing labored and causing her throat to ache. Those men had died, and for what? Lindy had no answers, and every time she closed her eyes the questions started to pound at her, demanding answers when she had none.
“Lindy?”
She took a minute to compose herself, pasted a smile on her face and turned around. “So Sleeping Ugly is finally awake. How are you feeling?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Concern moved her to his bedside. “Should I get the nurse? She said if you needed something for pain, I could…”
“I’m doing okay.” His brows folded into a tight frown as he looked up at her. “You’re still looking like death warmed over.”
She forced a cheery laugh and decided to put her makeup on with a heavier hand before her next visit. “That’s a fine thing to say to me!”
“When was the last time you had a decent meal?”
She opened her mouth to tell him, but paused when she realized she didn’t know herself. “I’m fine, Rush. You’re the patient here, not me.”
He looked for a minute as if he were going to argue with her, but he didn’t. “If you’re not hungry, I am.”
“I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”
She returned a few minutes later, carrying a tray. But it was soon apparent that Rush had no appetite and had used the excuse of hunger as a ploy to get her to sample something.
* * *
Three days passed. Rush grew stronger with each one, and Lindy grew paler and thinner. She still couldn’t sleep—not more than an hour at a stretch.
A week after Rush arrived in Hawaii, Lindy strolled into his hospital room to discover her husband sitting up for the first time. His left arm was in a cast and hung in a sling over his chest. The swelling in his face had gone down considerably, and he looked almost like his old handsome self once more. Lindy paused and smiled, perhaps her first genuine one since she’d arrived in this tropical paradise.
“You’re looking fit.”
“Come here, wife,” he said holding out his one good arm to her. “I’m tired of those skimpy pecks on the cheek you’ve been giving me. I’m starved for you.”
Lindy walked across the room like a woman who’d been wandering in the desert and been offered a glass of water. Once Rush had his arm around her, his mouth claiming hers, she felt whole again. He smelled incredibly good and tasted of peppermint.
The fears and doubts that had been hounding her all week dissolved in the warmth of his hold. When he lifted his head and smiled, Lindy felt weak and breathless in his embrace.
“Lindy, dear God, I’ve nearly died, I’ve wanted to hold you so much.”
Angry, selfish thoughts flooded her mind, and she clamped her mouth shut. He’d nearly died, yes, but it was from a terrible plane crash and explosion that didn’t have anything to do with her. But when Rush directed her mouth to his, she was engulfed in his kiss, lost and drowning. Nothing else mattered. As his lips closed over hers, demanding and hungry, he reclaimed everything that had once been his: her heart, her body, her soul. There was nothing left inside her to protest. He owned her so completely, so unquestionably, that she hadn’t the will to say or do anything. All she could do was submit.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him, giving him her tongue when he sought it, taking his when it was offered. Their need for each other was urgent. Fierce. Savage, yet tender. Nothing else in the world made sense except this. Only the driving need Lindy felt to be a part of Rush.
Moisture appeared in the corners of her eyes and Rush sipped away her tears. He kissed her eyes, her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, and nuzzled tenderly at her neck while his fingers tunneled through her dark hair.
“Lindy,” he breathed. “My love, my own sweet love.” His long fingers brushed the wisps of bangs from her face and wiped away the last trace of tears, as though she was the most precious thing he had ever touched.
“I talked to the doctor this morning,” he whispered. “I’m going to be released at the end of the week.”
Lindy’s tender heart swelled with unrestrained joy.
“We have one night, love, just one night before I fly back to the Mitchell.”
For one frenzied moment, Lindy was sure she’d heard him incorrectly. Going back? He couldn’t possibly be returning to the Persian Gulf after what had happened.
“No.” She freed herself from his grip and took a step back. “You can’t go back!”
“Honey, I have to. It’s my job.”
“But…”
“What did you expect me to do?”
Lindy wasn’t sure what she’d assumed would happen. Anything but having him return to the same nightmare.
“Honey, listen. We’ve only got six weeks of the cruise left. Hell, for all I know we could even be headed back sooner than that, depending on the amount of damage we sustained. Six weeks isn’t such a long time. I’ll be home before you know it.”
Somehow Lindy managed to nod. They had precious time left, and the thought of spending these last days together arguing was intolerable. After all, there wasn’t much she could say. She’d thought—or at least hoped—he’d be coming home with her now. She needed him sleeping at her side to chase away the demons and dissolve the horror from her mind.
Rush may want to make love to her, Lindy realized, but he wanted to get back to his ship more. She’d noted that when he started talking about the Mitchell his eyes had seemed to spark with new life. He didn’t like lying around the hospital; she would have been surprised if he had. Rush longed to go back to his ship, back to his men. He wanted to leave her behind, safely tucked away in a Seattle apartment while he was gallivanting all over the world, risking his life. Risking her peace of mind. Risking their happiness.
“I hope that hotel room of yours has a double bed,” Rush said, smiling up at her.
“It does,” she assured him, averting her gaze to the scene outside the window.
* * *
Something was wrong with Lindy. Rush knew it, felt it every time she walked in the room. She looked a little better—at least he knew she was eating regularly. Some color had returned to her pale cheeks when they’d walked in the sunshine.
Rush tried to draw her out, tried to get her to tell him what was troubling her, but she held it all inside and he didn’t press her. He would be leaving the hospital early that afternoon and leaving Lindy first thing in the morning. She’d been through a great deal and so had he. If what was bothering her was important, she’d say something to him.
The petite blond nurse who had been assigned his room strolled in, holding a small white cup and a glass of water. She was young and pretty, the kind of woman who might have attracted his attention before he met Lindy. Now he only had eyes for his wife and barely gave the woman more than a second glance.
“Pill time,” she announced cheerfully.
Rush grumbled and held out his hand. The blue-eyed nurse waited while he took the two capsules and swallowed down a glass of water.
“Where’s your wife this afternoon?”
“She’ll be by later,” Rush explained. He was surprised Lindy wasn’t there all ready. Lindy was as keen as he was to get out of this sterile environment, but he was far more eager to get his wife into bed. One damn night was all they had. He wished to hell it could be more. It seemed their entire married life had been crammed into three all-too-short nights.
“I hear you’re leaving us.”
He nodded. He didn’t like the antiseptic smell here, and he swore the food must taste better in prison. It had been torture to be this close to the ocean, to smell the clean tangy scent of it and be prohibited from doing anything more than gaze at the blue waters. He was anxious to get back to the Mitchell. He felt a lot like someone who had fallen off a horse and needed to climb right back on again. He’d been mentally shaken by the accident, his courage tested. He needed to set foot on the bridge, look down on that flight deck and know he was in control once more.
“I don’t know when I’ve seen a woman more in love with her husband. Or more worried,” the pretty blond nurse went on to say. “When your wife first arrived, I thought we were going to have to admit her. I swear she was as pale as bleached flour. I suppose you know she wouldn’t leave your side. For three days, she didn’t move. The doctors tried repeatedly to assure her you were going to be all right, but she wouldn’t believe it. Not until you woke, and even then she refused to go.”
Rush rested his head against the thin pillow and held in a sigh until his chest ached with the effort. He’d known that every time he woke Lindy had been with him, but he hadn’t realized she’d spent every minute at his side.
“I hope you appreciate that woman,” the nurse continued.
“I do,” Rush countered. Tonight he’d show Lindy just how much.
* * *
Lindy was determined that this one night with Rush would be as perfect as she could make it. She planned to blot out all her doubts and grab hold of what happiness she could before Rush returned to the Persian Gulf. She yearned to encapsulate these last hours together and hold them in her memory until he returned safely to her in December.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, once they were inside her hotel room.
“A little weak,” Rush admitted reluctantly. “But I’m getting stronger every day.”
She helped him into a chair. It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest he wait a few more days before flying across the world and rejoining his ship, but she knew it would be useless. She knew Rush. She’d seen that hard look of determination he wore more than once. He wouldn’t listen to her.
“I thought we’d order dinner from room service,” she said, standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor.
He nodded. “Good idea.” He hesitated and gave her a look that was almost shy. “I have another good idea, too. Come to me, Lindy. I need you.”
She couldn’t have refused him had her life depended on it. He stood, reached for her hand and walked her to the bed. He kissed her once, hard, his tongue delving into her mouth, stroking hers. His right hand was fumbling with the buttons of her blouse, but the left one was incapable of giving much assistance. With their mouths still linked, Lindy brushed his hand aside and helped him. When she was finished with her own, she freed his uniform shirt from his waistband and unbuttoned it for him.
“Thanks,” Rush breathed hoarsely, when she’d finished the task. Lindy paused, biting her lip as she ran her hand over the dark-furred chest. The muscles of his abdomen felt hard and sleek, the curling hairs wispy against the tips of her fingers.
“I want you like hell,” he groaned.
Lindy let her eyes fall and released a short, delicate chuckle. “I can tell.” His free hand cupped her breast and her nipple blossomed and grew incredibly hard. “I want you, too.”
He flicked his thumb over the rose tip of her breast and she moaned.
“I can tell,” he repeated thickly.
They finished undressing each other with trembling hands. Lindy helped Rush with the parts he couldn’t manage, and he helped her the best he could. Soon they were lying on the mattress, their bodies on fire for each other.
When he moved on top of her, Lindy smiled up at him, craving the fiery release his body would give her. Still trembling, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to this experience. She allowed herself to be swallowed up in his tenderness, and when he entered her, her body answered in perfect counterpoint to his. Rush’s touch, his lovemaking, was a balm, a healing potion for all they had suffered. Tears wet her face and his lips found them. Intuitively he knew she needed assurances and he gave them to her with the ebb and flow of his body into her own. No matter what the future held, he seemed to be telling her, no matter what happened in the next six weeks, they would have this night to hold on to and to remember.
They made love again after dinner, and he held and kissed her long after midnight. While Rush soundly slept, Lindy climbed out of bed and cuddled up in the chair across from him.
She’d tried so hard to put the fear behind her, but she couldn’t. A hundred times in the past week, she’d hungered to tell him how she’d nearly gone crazy with worry, and she hadn’t said a word. She wanted to explain how every time she closed her eyes the same freakish nightmare haunted her sleep. But again and again she’d held her tongue, gliding over what was important for fear of shattering the peace of these past days together.
In a few hours Rush would return to his ship and she would go back to Seattle. She’d been wrong not to tell Rush what she was feeling, wrong to allow him to assume she could go on playing this charade. Steve was right. He had been all along—she wouldn’t make a good navy wife. It wasn’t in her to bid her husband farewell time after time and handle whatever crisis befell them with calm acceptance.
Twice now Lindy had found herself deeply in love, convinced she knew her own heart each time. Confident enough to wear the rings each man had given her. Both times she’d been wrong. She wasn’t the type of woman Rush needed. She wasn’t strong enough to endure months of loneliness and deal with the knowledge that she would always take second place in her husband’s life.
Hot tears scalded her eyes and when she could restrain them no longer, she let them flow freely down her face, no longer willing to hold them back.
Rush raised his head from the pillow, looking disoriented and groggy. He turned and stared at his sobbing wife.
“Lindy,” he breathed her name into the night. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you love me, Rush?”
“Of course I do.” He threw back the sheet and sat on the edge of the bed. “You know I do.”
“If you love me…if you really love me, you’ll understand….” She paused.
Rush moved off the bed, knelt down in front of her and took her two hands in his one. “Understand what, honey?”
“I want you to get out of the navy.”
He tossed his head back as if she’d slapped him. “Lindy, you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do know. I know you love it. I know you’ve always loved being on the sea. But there are other jobs, other ways…. I can’t bear this, Rush, not knowing from one day to the next if you’re going to be dead or alive. Let some other man put his life on the line. Someone without a wife. Anyone but you.”
“Lindy—oh love.” He pressed his forehead on her bent knee and seemed to be pulling his thoughts together. When he raised his head, his eyes were hard. “The navy is my life. It’s where I belong. I can’t walk away from a fifteen-year commitment because you’re afraid I’m going to be injured again.”
Lindy felt as though her heart were crumbling, the emotional agony was so intense. She pulled her hands free of his grasp and stiffened. “Then you leave me no choice.”
Chapter 14
“I don’t leave you any choice? What do mean by that?” Rush demanded.
Lindy didn’t know. All she did know was that everything the other wives had warned her about was happening. Rush and she had such little time together and, not wanting to say or do anything to disrupt these precious few days, Lindy had skimmed the surface of their relationship, ignoring the deep waters of unhappiness and strife. They’d avoided any chance of conflict in their marriage until everything was ready to burst inside her.
“Well?” he repeated.
“I don’t know,” she admitted reluctantly. “I want you to do something else with your life. Something outside of the navy that isn’t dangerous. You’ve got me to think about now…and children later. Maybe you think I’m being selfish, but I want you to be a husband and father before anything else. The navy is first with you now and I’ll always be a poor second. I hate it.”
Rush rammed his fingers through his hair. “Honey, you can’t change a man from what he already is. You don’t have any idea what you’re asking me to do—it’d be impossible.”
“You don’t seem to understand what you want of me,” she countered sharply. “You claim you love me. You claim you want our marriage to work. But I’ll always play second fiddle in your life, and I can’t. I just can’t deal with that. If playing hero is so important to you, then fine.”
Rush’s lips tightened and he stood and walked away from her.
“I love you, Rush.” Her voice was taut, strangled. “All I’m asking is for you to love me as much as I do you.”
“I do love you,” he shouted.
“No.” She shook her head with such force that her hair went swirling around her face. “You love the navy more.”
“It’s been my life for fifteen years.”
“I want to be your life now.”
“God, Lindy, you want me to give up everything that’s ever been important to me.” He threw back his head as a man in agony would, closed his eyes and then glared at the dark ceiling.
Lindy bounced her index finger against her chest. “I want to be the most important person in your life.”
“You are!”
“No,” she murmured sadly. “I’m not. Look at you. You nearly died on that stupid aircraft carrier and you can hardly wait to get back. I can feel the restlessness in you. It’s like you’ve got to prove something.”
Rush whirled around to face her then, his eyes wide, his body taut. “You knew what I was when we got married. You were perfectly aware how I felt about the navy then. You were willing to accept it as my career. What happened to that unshakable confidence you had that we were doing the right thing to rush into marriage? Lord, I can’t believe this.”
“I was confident I loved you. I’m sure of it now.”
“The navy is part of me, Lindy. A big part of who and what I am. Don’t you see that?”
“No.” Her voice cracked, and she sobbed once.
The sight of her tears seemed to tear at him and Rush knelt beside her and pulled her into one arm, holding her tightly, as though he felt her pain and was desperate to do anything he could to alleviate it. Lindy wept against his shoulder, her arms moving up and clinging to his neck. His mouth sought and found hers and he kissed her into submission while his hand worked its magic on her body, destroying her will to argue.
Before Lindy knew what was happening, Rush had her back in bed and his mouth was sucking on her breast; he was tormenting her nipples with his tongue, and she was being devoured by the licking flames of desire.
“No…no,” she sobbed, and pushed him away. She jumped out of bed, her shoulders heaving with the effort it had cost her to leave his arms. “You aren’t going to use me this way!”
Rush rolled on his back and closed his eyes in angry frustration. “Use you! Now it’s a sin to make love to you, too?”
“It is when you use lovemaking to bury an issue.”
“Can you blame me?” he shouted, his patience obviously on a short fuse. “I’m flying out of here shortly. I won’t see you until the middle of December—if then, from the way you’re talking. I’d prefer that we spend our last hours making love, not fighting. If that’s such a terrible crime, then I’m guilty.”
The alarm rang, and the tinny sound echoed around the room, startling them both. Lindy glared accusingly at the clock radio. Already it was time for Rush to leave her, and she hadn’t said even half of what was in her heart.
Without a word her husband climbed out of bed and started dressing in his uniform. He had some difficulty, with his left arm in a cast, but he didn’t seek her help, and she didn’t offer.
Numb with pain and disbelief, Lindy watched him. Nothing she’d said had mattered to him. Not one word had seemed to reach him. He was so intent on getting back to the Mitchell that nothing, not her love, not her demands or her pleas, was important enough to delay him.
Once he finished buttoning his shirt, Rush picked up his things that littered the room, preparing to leave.
Lindy hated the way he ignored her so completely. For all the notice he gave her, she might as well have been an empty beer can. Savored for the moment of pleasure it brought, discarded once used.
She was kneeling in the middle of their bed, and the tears streaked her face. “It’s either the navy or me,” she said, and her voice wobbled as she struggled not to beg him.