Embattled SEAL (4 page)

And she knew he would be. It was just so natural for her to worry about him.

“I’ll stick around for a few hours.”

Cat gave Duncan an appreciative look. “Thank you. I thought you might.”

Chad stepped forward to take her hand. “I have to go back to Denver for a while, but I’ll be back in a few days if he’s still here.”

“You people are talking about me as if I’m not even here. I don’t need babysitters.”

Cat shared a wince with the other men.

“Quit it,” Harper snapped.

Cat laughed and turned to leave the room. “I’ll be back tomorrow, big guy.”

Harper mumbled a goodbye.

She paused for just a moment, wanting to cross and give him a kiss like she used to. Then she forced the urge away and left. They weren’t in a place to do that yet.

Cat didn’t blame him for being pissed. If she were in his position she’d be aggravated too. Unable to see anything or anyone would be beyond frustrating.

Rather than take a cab to the hotel, she made herself walk the few blocks to the Marriot. Sitting in the hospital room for so long hadn’t done her body any good. By the time she got back to the hotel room she was feeling whipped. She’d reached her limit. Plugging her cell phone into the charger and setting the alarm, she dropped to the bed face down, exhausted.

Harper wanted to
get up and pace. Sitting in the fucking bed was making him insane. Yes, there was pain, but he could block that out. It was early morning so the hospital was quiet too, which made it all the worse. One of the nurses had turned the TV on for him, but he’d gotten pissed when he couldn’t figure out how to change the channel. Now he was listening to an infomercial on hair removal. And gritting his teeth in frustrated fury.

Chad and Duncan had left last night a couple hours after Cat and for the first time in a long time he’d felt completely alone. As a sniper you got used to your own company. If you had a spotter with you, great, but for the past year working at LNF he’d been without. Now that he was injured, with no vision, he felt at the mercy of the world. An afterthought.

He heard the hiss of the door as it slid open.

“You’re awake already? I kind of figured you would be.”

Harper could have wept at the sound of Cat’s morning-husky voice. She was the only one who knew he loved to be up at the ass-crack of dawn. Many, many times over the years he’d been in the military she’d gotten up with him, made him breakfast and coffee and sent him on his way. Sometimes she’d been the one to wake him up because she was a natural early riser as well.

“I need you to get me the fuck out of here,” he rasped.

She must have heard the desperation in his voice because he heard her drop her things to the chair beside the bed. “Let me talk to a nurse.”

“I don’t care what the nurse says,” he grumbled. “I need to walk and I can’t do that without bumbling around like an idiot.”

“I know that,” she said patiently, cranking his ire. “But you can’t walk around with your ass hanging in the air. That johnny barely fits you.”

Oh. That did make sense. Shit.

So he set his jaw and waited as she went out and sweet-talked somebody into bringing him a pair of scrubs pants. The nurse that brought them also took the irritating IV out of his arm. They’d taken his catheter out the night before, to his never-ending relief. “Now,” she told him sternly, “no bending over, no running and until you’re more steady, no stairs. We would prefer you stay on this floor, but as long as your wife is with you you can go down to the cafeteria. The doctor should be here later this morning to take a look at you, so don’t get lost.”

He almost saluted the crotchety old woman. Turning in the bed, he let his feet drop to the floor. He’d fumbled his way to the bathroom once already, dragging the IV pole, so he knew he could hold his weight. The disorientation was what got him.

The nurse seemed satisfied that he wasn’t going to keel over so she fitted him with a sling for his left arm. “I know it’s not comfortable but if you’re out of bed you need to wear this, otherwise you’re going to rip something open.” He grimaced but she patted him on the cheek like a child and left him alone with Cat. He heard her whisper something to her on the way out the door.

“What did she say?” he demanded.

Cat snorted. “That you’ve got a nice ass.”

“No, she didn’t,” he snapped.

She laughed. “No, she said you were stubborn.”

That he could believe, but he didn’t care. Stubborn had served him well all his life.

Harper patted around on the bed beside him, then held the scrubs out toward Cat. “She said I’m not allowed to bend over.”

Silence met his statement and it was several long seconds before she took the pants from his hand. Harper shrugged the gown off and threw it toward the bed, then waited to see what her response would be now that he was standing in front of her naked. Fuck, he wished he could see.

“Looks like you’ve been bulking up,” she murmured.

He grinned when he heard the huskiness in her voice and incredibly, even with all the nasty shit going on, the aches and pain and vulnerability, his body began to respond. “Yeah, I have.”

He felt her body heat as she moved in front of him and knelt down. Blood surged and he knew she was getting an eyeful, but the proximity was totally his undoing. Even without his sight Cat was the sexiest woman he’d ever been near. Just the sound of her voice, so dear after not hearing it for so long, made him ache.

Her fingers pressed on his right ankle and he lifted his foot, then his left. As she began to draw the pants up his legs, then his hips, he wondered how far she would go. All the way apparently. The elastic scraped over his erection as she settled the waistband at his hips and tightened the drawstring. Before she pulled away though, she shocked the hell out of him by cupping him in her hand. “It’s very nice to touch you again, Harper.”

He wanted to pull her into his arms and find her mouth, but her warmth moved away. And that was probably the smartest thing she could do. Guilt turned his stomach as he thought about his situation. What business did he have encouraging anything between them? Nothing had really changed.

She took his right hand and placed it on her shoulder. “I’m going to lead you out of the room, okay? You are on my left shoulder. I’ll make sure I walk wide around things. There’s a nice patio just outside the cafeteria. We’ll head there. Sound good?”

“Yes.”

Anything sounded good compared to staying in this freaking room.

She was as careful as she promised to be and he could tell there were people walking wide of them. It made his skin creep that he couldn’t see what they were doing, but he trusted Cat to watch his six. She paused at the end of the hallway. “Are you doing okay? Want to stop for a minute?”

He did but he wouldn’t admit that to her. “I’m fine. Keep going.”

When they got on the elevator he didn’t expect the vertigo that hit when it started down. He swayed and clutched at the slick walls but almost immediately Cat was there, wedging herself beneath his good shoulder and bracing her feet. Harper tried not to rest on her too much but the weakness in his knees about took him down. When they landed at the bottom she stayed propped against him, not moving. “We’ll go when you’re ready.”

Harper dragged in oxygen and waited for his head to stop spinning. “I’m ready.”

The elevator doors had already closed so she pressed the button to open them and came back. When she tried to position his hand he reached a few inches farther and settled his hand at the nape of her neck, on the right side. It placed them in a closer proximity, but her hips brushing against his as they walked was really very nice. The awareness from earlier surged back. It had been more than a year since they’d been together. Seventeen months and three weeks, actually.

And I can only blame myself.

As soon as she led him through a set of automatic doors he could smell and feel the cool, fresh air. He dragged it in, filling his lungs, until a sharp pain ripped through his chest from the movement. She led him to a table and put his hand on one armrest of a wrought iron chair. Ever so carefully he lowered himself down in. Cat moved to his right. “You’re on a paved patio with four sets of tables and chairs. A concrete path winds through some little trees to the left and it looks like it leads to a longer walking path. There are seven people out here right now, mostly nurses. And, of course, your back is to the wall.”

If he hadn’t had the bandages on his eyes he would have gotten a little choked up again. She knew exactly what he would have looked at when he entered the area. “Thank you,” he murmured.

They sat for a while just enjoying the sun and fresh air but Harper knew they had things to talk about. He just hated to drag them up. He took as deep of a breath as his chest would allow.

“How’s Dillon?”

Silence stretched between them and he wondered if she’d even respond.

“She’s fine. Growing like a weed. Becoming a young woman.”

Harper swallowed hard, devastation rolling through him. He thought he wanted to know but maybe he didn’t. Fuck. The thought of the time that he had lost with his almost teenage daughter was the greatest regret of his life.

“I told her you were on a long assignment. She told me the other day though, that she thinks you’re dead and I’m just scared to tell her. She hasn’t heard from you for a long time. Neither one of us has.”

Whether she meant them to or not her words destroyed him, more even than the physical pain he was fighting.

“Tate,” she continued, her voice matter of fact, “has stopped asking where you are because I give him the same answer over and over and over again.”

“And what is that?” he growled.

“That Daddy will come home as soon as he is able to.”

Though he had no sight he turned his head away from her to try to recover his breath. His teeth were clenched so hard something popped in his jaw. Being away from his kids devastated him, but they were safer with him not in the house.

After that last time getting shot up in Afghanistan he’d handed in his walking papers. Though he was only in his mid-thirties at that time he was a little old by SEAL standards. His kill record had been impeccable but the deployments were getting harder. Not just physically but mentally as well. Being shot that last time had been a hard recovery and he’d been tired. Not just body tired but spirit tired as well.

So once he’d recovered from being plugged he’d taken a training job on base. It hadn’t been as exciting as hopping on a ’copter and taking off for parts unknown, but he’d still been immersed in the Teams lifestyle.

He’d had issues with paranoia though. When the guys left on deployment he worried the base would be attacked because it was less protected. When they were in-house he worried the base would be attacked. The terrorists had taken out bounties on all snipers’ heads and he worried that he, himself, would draw danger to the States. To his family. When he’d been in the Teams the target on his back had felt so real. Distance hadn’t helped. So he’d carried a weapon everywhere—grocery store, auto mechanics, kids’ school until they’d posted no weapons, even for the servicemen. That paranoia, and an incident with Tate in the fall had led to his breaking point.

Cat had fought him when he’d threatened to leave. It had been the most bitter fight they’d ever had because they’d repeated it so many times. But the nightmare of waking up and seeing his four-year old son holding his loaded side arm out to his sleeping wife, barrel first, had literally terrified him. He’d kept the M11 Sig Sauer 9mm on the bedside table beside him at night because he had dreams of being caught unaware by terrorists. Cat hadn’t liked it, but she’d understood his need to feel safe when he was home. In the desert or wherever he was sent, he had the weapon on or mere inches away twenty-four seven. It was difficult to try to give it up when he came home after so many years of his life depending upon keeping it close.

That night had cemented in his head how wrong it was for him to subject his kids to his neuroses. If the kids needed Cat in the night they’d go straight to the master bedroom where they slept. First he’d gotten an apartment a few blocks away, coming home for dinner and seeing the kids off to school in the mornings then going to training, but that had seemed to confuse them. For a couple of weeks they carried on that jagged schedule until Cat had put her foot down. He needed to move back into the house. They would deal with his issues together as a family, get counseling. But he hadn’t done it. Their safety was paramount and he just couldn’t be near them.

“Hawthorn and the others still come over to check on us sometimes. His little boy is on the T-ball team with Tate. And Katey and Lucas have us over for dinner occasionally.”

Gratitude tightened Harper’s throat, making it hard to swallow. He couldn’t be there in Virginia but his Team had stepped in like they’d promised they would. They’d carried his Swiss-cheesed, two hundred and seventy pound ass out of Kandahar and they were still carrying him three years later. Every once in a while his phone would ping with a message from one of the guys but he very rarely responded. Then the longer the stretch of time went the harder it was to respond.