Fully Engaged (13 page)

Lauren had cried her eyes out. Stomped her feet. Slammed a door—kicked the door. He’d told her to save her tantrums. She could come for Christmas and they would talk then.

She’d called him a liar since he’d missed out on so many holidays in the past and the truth in her words had just about broken his heart. Keeping her alive was more important than hurt feelings.

So, now he was sticking to overpopulated places. Such as an amusement park.

Hauling his exhausted butt through thrill ride central, Rick figured if he kept the two females in his life busy and in large crowds, the unpredictability would up the safety odds. He wanted Lauren home safe and sound with her mom, but her mother simply said Lauren would run again, which Lindsay deemed more dangerous.

Tough. He was putting Lauren on a plane and Lindsay better sit watch over the girl 24-7 until he had Nola safe and could deal with his daughter.

Rick gritted his teeth against the frustration and the strain of walking through the park all day, even with his crutches maneuvering around tattooed inline skaters and parents loaded down with stuffed animal prizes.

Nola toyed with the straw in her soda cup after their lunch at the park. “I guess if I mention you should sit down and rest that would fall on deaf ears.”

“Pretty much.”

“Your daughter isn’t going to love you less if you limp a little.”

“Let’s not go there again, Nola.” He thumped ahead with his crutches, sidestepping a spilled box of popcorn. “The weekend dad gig leaves me cramming a lot into a short time.”

“I’m not a parent at all. After putting my foot in my mouth yesterday, I’ve vowed to mind my own business.”

Now she decided on silence after the top had already been blown off his world and he could actually use some extra input?

“You mentioned wanting kids.” He watched for her reaction, for her consent to continue. When a passing family caused he and Nola to pause, he skimmed a kiss over the top of her head for reassurance before continuing. “I assume you meant with your ex-husband? Or is that too personal a question?”

“I guess you and I stopped respecting each other’s boundaries a long time ago.” She stirred her straw through the ice, reminding him too vividly of how seductively she’d drawn on her milk shake.

“Pretty damn much. Why not go ahead and go for broke?”

“Yes, I wanted children.” Her eyes lingered on a mother ahead pushing a stroller while a toddler raced alongside with a balloon. “He kept putting it off. The timing wasn’t right and so on. Thank God, though. We didn’t need to have kids together with the way things ended up between us.” She jerked to look at him. “No offense meant to you and your ex.”

“None taken. It certainly would have been easier if we could have stayed together.” He gestured for his daughter to hold up while he stopped at a duck-shoot booth.

Lauren—still sulking and “torturing” him with the silent treatment—leaned against the corner, feigning disinterest. He wondered what Nola thought of his child and wished he could play home videos of his daughter giggling as she chased bubbles. Smiling as she shared flowers. She’d been such a happy, generous kid once upon a time… Now, she seemed determined to ignore Nola.

Was this how she treated Lindsay’s Ben, who Lauren labeled a “dweeb”? If she behaved this way, it was no wonder they didn’t get along.

Rick leaned on his elbows, took the toy gun and began popping the tin ducks.

Nola chewed her bottom lip. “There were, uh, other issues with Peter and me…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.” But he hoped she would keep talking anyhow since he found himself drawn to her no matter how much he tried to keep those boundaries shored up. He focused on the worn yellow waterfowl that had seen better days and downed the next, smaller row.

“I look at your beautiful daughter and I…”

He glanced over from his toy gun. “Think ‘what if.’”

She nodded, her blues eyes turning paler with the sheen of tears. She flung the drink into a nearby bin with extra force.

He only wanted to reopen a dialogue he’d probably been too quick to shut down yesterday. Somehow he’d gotten sidetracked and hurt her, the last thing he ever wanted to do. Time to detour them again.

Rick cashed in tokens for two medium-sized stuffed monkeys, one pink, one purple. He turned to the two women. “Ladies, pick your prize.”

Lauren rolled her eyes. “How lame.”

He noticed her eyes lingered on the purple, so he passed the pink to Nola and searched for a distraction from the awkward moment caused by his currently bratty daughter.

Dead ahead waited the perfect distraction.

Rick tossed the purple monkey to Lauren and jerked his head toward the bullet drop. “Come on.”

He gathered his crutches from where they leaned against the booth.

“What?” Nola cradled her monkey like a baby.

“If I don’t catapult my body out of something soon I’m going to go freaking nuts.” An understatement if ever he’d heard one.

He hadn’t realized how much he missed the sensation until he looked at that ride, something so damn pathetic in comparison to what he used to do on the job. And here he stood, shaking on the crutches in anticipation of climbing onto a kid’s carnival attraction. Talk about a revelation. He hadn’t left his past behind at all. He’d merely buried it under a mountain of determination to get through one day at a time.

Pausing on his crutches, he pivoted to his daughter, “Lauren, come on. The bullet.”

“Go ahead without me.” She stuffed her monkey under her armpit in a stranglehold and held out her hand in the universal “gimme money” plea. “I want a funnel cake. I’ll sit on the bench and wait.”

Rick considered ordering her to join them, but that would start another eye rolling, slouching, foot stomping, sighing, ad nauseam teenage response of disgust. Why had she crossed multiple states in the first place if she hated him so much? “Fine. We’ll meet you back here in five minutes and I’ll be watching you. Stay by the security guard.”

“Of course. I’ll get an extra funnel cake for you and Nola.” She wiggled her fingers.
Money
.

“Thanks.”

While Nola settled into the ride, he passed his crutches to Lauren for safekeeping and climbed into the seat. A teenager lowered the safety bars from overhead to lock them in place for the hydraulic lift before they were dropped. He watched Lauren sit with her funnel cake, happily chatting away with a park security guard, then turned to Nola.

Chalky pale Nola? The afternoon sun beating down on them left no room for misinterpretation.

She pulled a wobbly smile. “Have I mentioned that I hate heights?”

“Holy crap, Nola. I just assumed you would like this too. You’re a pilot for crying out loud.”

“I like to land with wings. Not a nylon pillowcase.”

“You should have told me no. I could have ridden by myself—or not at all. I’m not a kid who would pitch a tantrum if I didn’t get my treat.” He looked around for a way to call this off, but the ride was already full ahead and behind them. They were seconds from launch. Still, he cupped his hands around his mouth to shout—

Nola put her hand on his arm. “I want to share this with you. Let it go.”

He’d been with enough newbie jumpers to know distraction worked best, so he started talking, while periodically checking on Lauren. “I love to jump so much, sometimes I forget that others aren’t as addicted to it as I am. My mother vowed I gave her a heart attack when I was only two. She found me on top of the garage, ready to jump. I leaped off fences, swing sets, slides, car tops, balconies…and that was before first grade.”

“Your poor parents.” Her eyes lit as brightly as her grin.

“No kidding. I broke so many bones, they knew me on a first-name basis in the emergency room.” He reached surreptitiously to take her hand. “I’m sure my parents lived in fear of investigation by child services since I got hurt so often.”

“Is that how you came by your call sign? Lurch—like lurching forward?”

The ride jerked as if in tandem with the word
lurch
. Her hand jerked in his. He linked their fingers tighter.

“I wish. That would be far more dignified.” The capsule started its ascent upward. “On my fifth jump, I started feeling—how should I put it?—too confident. I made my way toward the open hatch, ready to roll, certain I could take the elements…and I knocked myself unconscious heading out the door.”

Her shoulders jerked upward with a burst of laughter.

He nudged her foot with his as they rose higher and higher, the people below growing smaller. “Hey, at least my call sign’s not ‘Sewer.’”

“Ohmigod, I’m not sure I want to know the story of how he got that one.”

“In his defense, the coordinates were off so it wasn’t his fault he landed in the sewage plant.”

She rolled her head along the rest to stare at him with serious eyes as blue as the sky he missed. “You really do miss it all.”

“There’s nothing like the jump.” Or was there? He stared into those endless blue eyes of hers and—

The bottom fell out. The capsule fell and his stomach welcomed the fall. Nola screamed, but a happy yelp so he allowed himself to savor the moment. His head thunked back, his eyes closed and…

Swoosh. The ride slowed as it eased to a stop all too soon. And that was it? Everything was over. He told himself the letdown came from the ride being so short, not a dissatisfaction from the experience. Parachuting took longer. That was the difference.

But inside him a voice niggled that there was something…missing. Something he didn’t have time to explore now because he had to haul his butt out of the seat for the next person to take his or her turn.

He followed Nola onto the landing and forced a smile he didn’t feel. “How was it?”

She kept her hand linked with his. “Pretty much like the first time I saw you.”

“What does that mean?” And did he really want to know right now when he was chin deep in questions about his own response to this experience?

She pivoted on her heel to face him, no smile in sight but unflinching. “My stomach jolted and I wasn’t sure if it was in a good or bad way, but there was no denying the reaction.”

He might have a number of questions, but on this he completely agreed. “Amen, lady.”

Rick tucked a knuckle under her chin and tipped her face up as he ducked to skim his mouth over hers. Thing was, though, that he couldn’t just taste. He always needed more when it came to this woman. The ride was never long enough, and he didn’t mean sex.

Pulling back, he stared down into her eyes and wondered what to do with
that
revelation. Luckily, he had time to ponder it a while longer since Lauren served as one helluva chaperone. “Let’s find Lauren.”

He took the steps slowly, arm looped over Nola’s shoulder as he made his way back to the bench. His crutches rested exactly where he’d left them…

But there was no sign of his daughter.

Chapter 12

N
ola thanked God and more than a few saints that Lauren was sleeping soundly in her hotel roll-out bed, her long dark hair splashed out over the pillowcase. Rick would take one of the double beds, while Nola slept on the other.

The ten minutes spent looking for the teenager at the amusement park had been the longest in Nola’s life. She and Rick had notified the park authorities, called the police. Just as the all-out search kicked into high gear, they found Lauren walking out of one of the restrooms.

The cops and park officials gave Rick and Nola indulgent looks.
Too protective, overreacting, hyper-
vigilant
. She’d heard them whispering the judgmental assessments.

They didn’t know the fear of being kidnapped. She did. And she’d been an adult. She couldn’t even bear the thought of that hell being lived out by a child. Rick’s child.

Nola’s hands trembled around her cup of instant hot cocoa from the hotel’s coffeepot as she sagged into one of the chairs in the kitchenette area of the upscale dive crowded with bags since they didn’t know how long they would be gone. She puffed cooling breaths into her mug while Rick adjusted the lighting, darkening the sleeping area and leaving only a small lamp on in the kitchen area.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly, dropping to sit in the chair beside her and propping his feet on the nearby mattress.

“Yeah.” She nudged a second mug of hot cocoa toward him, blown away anew by how much he’d accomplished in a short time. It would be so easy to lean on a fella like this. “No. I’m still freaked out from this afternoon. I know you’re the one who should have the corner on the market for that since you’re her father and I’ve only known her a day. But ohmigod, Rick, I was so afraid I’d caused something to happen to your precious child.”

He reached over to grip her shoulder, his finger slipping inside her tank top to caress her bare skin with a hint of intimacy, even if they couldn’t take things further with Lauren in the room. “She’s all right. You don’t need to worry. I won’t let anything happen to either one of you.”

She should be consoling him.
His
daughter had been missing. Still, she couldn’t stop the shakes and guilt over the danger she’d brought into his life. “I appreciate your presence and your dedication. But you can’t know that. Bad things can happen so quickly.”

“I know, babe. I know.” He stroked back her hair. “Is there something else going on here?”

“While we thought Lauren had been kidnapped… it brought back some bad memories, more fallout from the job.” She sipped a bracing drink from the generic black mug. “I was taken captive on a mission in South America.”

“Holy hell. When?”

“Not too long after you hurt yourself, actually. We were sent to Cartina to aid in a smash and grab, to bring out someone from a drug lord’s compound.”

“Not your usual trash-hauling mission.” He took the mug from the table and knocked back a swallow.

“Not by a long shot.”

“So what went wrong?”

She couldn’t miss the dual intent in his eyes, concern for her and assessment, a need to understand on a professional level what had gone wrong as if perhaps
he
could have saved her. Would she have been rescued right away if someone like Rick had been sent out? She felt the shift inside her, the tiny voice whispering,
Trust him
.

“Our squadron commander went for a walk and didn’t come back. I got worried, didn’t follow orders, went looking for him. Everything went to hell when a rival drug lord staged an attack. I was caught flat-footed there in the middle of a jungle war.”

She downed the rest of her cocoa. “Definitely not my finest judgment moment, but you would have to know this commander. He was one of those who…well, he wasn’t the warm fuzzy type. He micromanaged the hell out of us. Then all of sudden we hear he had this wife who died, except maybe she was alive after all. Suddenly he had this vulnerable chink like the rest of us.”

“So you worried when he didn’t come back and went searching.”

“Right. And got caught in the middle of a turf war between two of the biggest badasses in Cartina.”

The horror of it washed over her again.

“Which group caught you?”

“It wasn’t a group, but rather the leader of one group fleeing after his compound was overrun. Luckily, he didn’t know I was military. I ditched my flight suit and just kept on my running shorts and the tank top I was wearing underneath. The last thing I wanted was to be identified as military to these guys.”

Nola shivered. She’d been under the knife so many times during her surgeries. She’d never imagined landing in the hands of amoral animals who cut people for pleasure. “I pretended to be an escaped captive of the other guy. I figured things would go better for me that way since I would have some value as a hostage.”

“You think well on your feet.” He set his mug aside and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning closer. “You’re a tribute to the uniform.”

“Thank you.” She shoved her mug out of the way and cupped his face. “And no, I wasn’t raped, in case you’re wondering.”

A long exhale rattled through him. “I wasn’t going to ask, but thank you for letting me know. I also know, though, that there are plenty of other horrors. It must have been a hellish time.”

“Ramon Chavez was a strange man.” She sagged in the wingback chair. “A brute on the one hand, but with these old world values on the other. He didn’t think twice about slapping me around, but he never laid a sexual hand on me. It was as if he saw me as a rebellious daughter type and he was a tyrannical father.”

“A father with a gun to your head.” He gripped the arms of his chair with barely contained rage.

She nodded.

“For how long?”

“Time was so weird, surreal, but basically about three days.” Those days rolled through her memory again, the determination and the fear. Silence stretched now and she appreciated that Rick gave her the moment to digest those memories in this quiet room with nothing but the sound of the dripping faucet and Lauren’s gentle snoring.

Eventually—she had no idea how much later—he turned his mug around and around on the table and looked at her again.

“How were you rescued?” More of that professional assessment gleamed through, but with a steely determination that he
would
have rescued her faster.

“Rescued? I got away from Chavez myself.”

“Oh.” He blinked hard and fast. “I apologize for underestimating you.”

“I managed to stay alive long enough to find a time to overpower him and escape.”

She remembered well the thrill of that fight, the need for vengeance. It wasn’t a pretty feeling to realize how vulnerable she was to someone like Chavez. She’d been so close to plunging a knife between the man’s ribs while he lay there unconscious.

In the end, she’d palmed the blade, hog-tied him and run for the nearest city where she knew a safe house waited. “I bided my time and kicked Chavez’s butt. He died later in a tunnel collapse trying to infiltrate an airbase.”

“There is justice in the world.”

“I guess.” The death seemed too easy for all the grief he’d caused so many. “Although I would have preferred to see him stand trial for all the havoc he wreaked on people’s lives. I figure that just wasn’t meant to be.”

“You were denied your closure,” he offered with an insight she hadn’t expected.

“That’s quite a perceptive comment, especially for a man.”

“For a man? And that’s quite a sexist remark, lady.”

“I apologize.” Yipes. Open mouth, insert foot. “I have to confess I haven’t had much experience with men in touch with their emotions.”

“All right, I’ll ’fess up. They made me go through all sorts of brain-probe sessions during rehab. I’m full of cool, psychologically sensitive catch phrases.”

“Don’t be flip about this, please. It feels good to have you say something like that, to have someone understand, because, you’re right.” She could get used to having someone like Rick around. “I didn’t get my closure with the jerk who held me hostage. I may have knocked him out and run away, but I wanted to kick the crap out of him for how helpless he made me feel.”

It had been like a return to the hospital, at the mercy of cancer, not knowing if she would live or die, her options of fighting back limited. A totally hellish trot down memory boulevard.

Her hand fell to rest on his thigh. “We military types don’t deal well with the whole helpless thing.”

They shared a silent understanding, a link.

She could see that, all sensitivity aside, he wouldn’t outright admit how much it bothered him. So she would say the words for him.

“It’s a horrible experience losing control that way. But in a really strange, twisted way, it was also a liberating experience because I found my strength again.” She held up her hand. “No. Wait. I learned to trust my strength. I would wish that for you.”

“Are you deliberately being dense or you just slow today? We’re in two different situations. I’m not going to have my old life back.”

“You’ll build a new one.”

Mr. Sensitivity was long gone. Rick looked downright pissed. “How would you have felt if someone said that to you?”

“Just because I can still fly an airplane doesn’t mean I’m the same person. I lost a part of myself during that process.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. I know you went through hell and you’re an amazing woman to have come back. But that’s you and this is me. I’m not comfortable with the preaching. So if you value our roomie status, we need to end this conversation.”

“That’s quite a long speech for a man.”

“Then take it to heart.” He shoved to his feet, his eyes already on his bed and apparently leaving her to hers. “I must really mean it.”

How strange that just when she realized she didn’t want her space after all, Rick decided to rebuild his walls again.

Even a year later as he lay in the comfort of his hotel bed in historic downtown Charleston, Ramon Chavez could still taste the mud of the collapsed tunnel pummeling him. Even with the luxury of the high-class accommodations he’d sprung for, he couldn’t rid himself of the suffocating stench of fear as he’d clawed his way through to daylight. Having people think he’d died proved quite beneficial, however. He could move around with stealth to gain his revenge on those who’d caused him such pain.

One person in particular topped his list, a woman who had emasculated him, stolen his honor by taking him down in a fight. Honor, his manliness, those were everything to him and until he killed Nola Seabrook, he couldn’t regain his true self.

Once Rick DeMassi’s daughter had arrived, Ramon thought he would have a new tool to torture them, then…poof. They’d disappeared. His frustration had grown since that Rick had lost him with his fancy driving techniques. Where were they while he cooled his heels?

Ramon clicked off the remote control and tossed it aside onto the end table. He still couldn’t believe his bad luck in seeing the teenage girl from the diner in Texas show up here. What if she remembered him? If she saw him here and recalled him from before, the mention could set off alarms to Nola and her friend. Time to lie low and quit trying to follow them around.

He snorted. A convenient plan since he’d lost them anyway.

Still, he could set some additional traps in place for the final showdown, because eventually, they would have to return home. And when they did he would be ready for Nola.

This time away had actually played right into his hands.

Ramon grabbed the other pillow and stuffed it under his head, simply for comfort, not because his body nearing sixty years old was starting to creak. He kept in prime condition with workouts in the hotel gym and swimming pool.

He wouldn’t underestimate Nola as he had in South America. She was a strong woman. This time, he would weaken his opponent. He didn’t know where they were now, but he did know—thanks to his skill at charming a secretary in Nola Seabrook’s squadron—that her unit had planned a Thanksgiving weekend party at a local hangout, Beachcombers Bar and Grill. He only needed to poison Nola with a mild dose, just enough to slow her and dip the odds in his favor so she couldn’t fight back so fiercely.

This time, he would accept nothing but total victory. And he would take down anyone who stood with her.