Healing A Hero (The Camerons of Tide’s Way #4) (19 page)

Chapter 35

April 2015

Camp Lejeune, North Carolina

“WHEN WERE YOU going to tell me about Julie?” Seated with his back to the wall in the busy lunch canteen, he did his best to keep the tumult of hurt and disappointment out of his voice.

The night before, still reeling and trying to come to grips with his changed situation, he’d pulled up in front of Elena’s, hugged Julie hard before letting her go, and watched her run up the stairs and let herself into the apartment. He’d driven aimlessly for nearly an hour before ending up at the beach where he sat in the dunes replaying all the facts in his head.

The truth of the situation wasn’t in question. The more they’d talked, and the longer he studied Julie’s face, the plainer the connection had become. Eli might have blue eyes, but he didn’t have high cheekbones or a dimple in his cheek. Except for the smooth, young skin with the warmth of her mother’s Hispanic heritage framed by silky black hair, Julie’s face was so like the one Philip had been looking at in the mirror for his whole life, he felt the bond clear down to his bones. Julie was his daughter. Conceived in spite of their precautions, and in the heat of a love that had changed Philip’s life and soul forever.

He hadn’t returned to his quarters for hours and hadn’t slept much when he did. He just kept replaying his memories of the passion he and Elena had shared all those years ago. And more recently, a week so full of hope, a week of hope built on the quicksand of deceit.

He’d called Elena as soon as he’d gotten to his desk this morning and asked her to meet him for lunch. Whatever happened between them didn’t need to hang like a cloud over the tenuous relationship he was fostering with Julie.

“I was going to tell you—”

“You should have told me fourteen years ago,” he said, cutting her off, his tone harsher than he intended.

“Fourteen years ago I didn’t think you cared.” Elena set her untouched sandwich back into the wrapping it had come out of.

Her accusation slammed into Philip with the force of a sucker-punch. “After everything that happened to us that summer?” he asked incredulously. “How could you ever have believed I wouldn’t care?”

“You never replied to my emails. What was I supposed to think?”

“You could have called Jake. He’d have told you why I couldn’t write.”

“I didn’t know Jake knew about us.”

“He knew I loved you,” Philip shot back. He shoved the sandwich he no longer felt like eating into the bag and pushed it aside. “You could have swallowed that damned pride of yours and called my parents.”

Elena blanched. “I couldn’t call them, Philip. I’d have been too embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?” Philip shouted. Several heads turned their way. Coming to the canteen for this conversation had been a bad idea. His uniform betrayed his rank, and his behavior was inappropriate. He lowered his voice. “You going to eat that?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Let’s get out of here.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her from her chair, led her through the now-goggling crowd, and out the door. He kept walking, dragging her along in his wake until they were clear of the buildings. He turned onto path where the grass was flattened by feet taking a shortcut to somewhere on the next block. He finally stopped when he reached a cluster of young trees that afforded them at least the illusion of privacy.

“My parents would never have blamed you. I’d have gotten a reaming, but if you’d gone to them, they’d have helped you out in any way they could.”

“I barely knew them.” Elena crossed her arms over her chest.

“But they’re my parents. Julie’s grandparents. And they’d have been better able to reach me and get me back home to accept my share of the responsibility for getting you pregnant. I might have been in disgrace, but I’d have come no matter what was happening in Afghanistan. I’d have found a way.” Distress was tearing him up inside.

Elena lost some of the defensive posture, but her body language told him she still blamed him for everything she’d endured.

“Do you have any idea how I felt when I got back and discovered you were married? After you promised to wait for me?” His chest ached.

“I can explain.”

A bloom of anger erupted, shoving the pain aside. “You’ve had fourteen years to explain. You were pregnant with my baby. I had a right to know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry!” Philip shouted. He felt the veins popping out in his neck and temples. He shouldn’t be dumping on her like this, but he couldn’t seem to stop the steamroller that had gotten hold of his self-control and was flattening everything in its path. “I’ve missed my daughter’s whole growing up. And you’re sorry? You can’t ever give those years back, Elena. They’re just gone.”

Elena stopped arguing. Stopped apologizing and just stood there cringing like a whipped puppy. Philip ignored the stab of doubt and plowed on.

“What about last week? When we were baring our souls and promising each other a new beginning? What about then? Why didn’t you tell me then?”

Philip’s cell phone rang. He ignored it.

“Didn’t you think it would be important to tell me about Julie when we were talking about the rest of our lives? You’re as big a liar as Holly.”

Elena looked like he’d hit her.

“What about Julie? Didn’t she have the right to know her own father? If you’d told me you were pregnant, I would never have forced you to marry me if you didn’t want to, but I had a right to know. Julie is my daughter. I had a right to know about her. And she had a right to know who her real father was.”

Unable to stand still, he turned in an angry little circle and came back to loom over her. “When I got home that next summer, I was all set to hunt you down and find out why you stopped writing. I meant for us to get reconnected. Then Andy told me you were married.

“Married!” Philip rammed his fingers through his already disheveled hair. “You can’t begin to understand how I felt. Every dream I had of coming home and making a life with you was smashed all to hell and back. I couldn’t volunteer fast enough to get back into action so I could forget. But if I’d known about Julie, I never would have gone.” His phone rang again, and again, he ignored it. “I wouldn’t have been shipped out of the country on every deployment I could get signed up for since then either.”

“But you
were
gone. And Julie had Eli. Eli was her father as far as she knew.” The whipped puppy was gone. Elena squared her shoulders and punched two fingers into Philip’s chest. “She had a father who was there for her.”

Philip jammed his left hand into his pocket and began rubbing frantically at the lining.

“And that was a lie too, wasn’t it? I’m beginning to feel sorry for the bastard. You lied to me. You lied to Julie. And you lied to Eli.”

“I never lied to Eli. He knew from the beginning how I felt.”

“You married him. You promised to love and cherish him. Or have you forgotten that part of the vows?”

“We were married by a justice of the peace.”

“So you never mentioned love? Or fidelity? What did you promise him that you didn’t really mean?”

“I promised to be his wife. And I did mean it.”

“You put that man through hell because you couldn’t muster up the kind of love a wife should feel for her husband. Gratitude doesn’t cut it, Elena. No wonder he went looking elsewhere.”

Philip’s phone rang a third time.

“Dammit!” He yanked the offending gadget from his pocket and glared at it.
Crap!
He should never have started this conversation when there was never going to be enough time to finish it. “We’re not done. But I have to answer this.”

“We’re definitely not done,” Elena snapped. “But don’t bother to call me again until you cool off. You aren’t the only injured party here.” With that, she spun on her heel and stormed off through the trees to the lawn beyond.

Philip gasped at the pain slicing through him. In just two short days, he’d gone from ridiculously happy, thinking he’d won back the one woman he could love for a lifetime, to finding out he had a thirteen-year-old daughter he barely knew, to this.

To this shattered empty place where his heart used to be.

Chapter 36

1 May 2015

Camp Lejeune, North Carolina

PHILIP’S FINAL evaluation proceeded without conversation except for Elena’s brief instructions and his quiet responses. Before the art show and the night that followed it, she had been afraid she might never see him again if he knew how close she was to clearing him for return to active duty, so she hadn’t told him. But, keeping him on base and in her life had been a fantasy.

Even if there hadn’t been the complication of their past relationship and her responsibilities, she’d known from the beginning that she couldn’t carry her assignment to a successful conclusion without it resulting in him going back to the job he loved. She should have heeded the warning bells in her head. There were good reasons for not getting emotionally involved with a patient. It was a huge conflict of interest. But, she couldn’t have it both ways. She’d done her job. And now he’d be leaving.

Ignoring that reality while her daughter was on the west coast had been a huge mistake. Worse, giving in to her desire and heedlessly throwing caution to the wind for one sensational week had forced her into a corner she hadn’t found the courage to get out of. After cramming years of yearning into five nights of passionate lovemaking, they’d talked long into the night, telling each other all their secrets.

Except for the one secret that mattered most.

She should have confessed when he told her about Tommy. Especially after he’d told her how hard it had been to give Tommy up and why. And now it was too late. The fury and hurt she’d seen in his eyes the day he’d confronted her about Julie had been even more devastating than she’d feared.

She shook her head to clear the image.

“Close your eyes and hold your right hand out palm up,” she directed as she reached for a short length of fishing line with an aching heart.

He did as he was told, and she dragged the tiny filament across his palm. He quickly closed his hand, opened his eyes and looked to see what she was doing.

“You felt that,” Elena stated unnecessarily.

“It tickled.” He opened his hand again.

“It’s supposed to.”

His mouth turned up in a slight smile, then returned to the unreadable expression he’d been wearing before.

It was her fault. In spite of her claim to the contrary, he had every right to be angry. For years, she’d been clinging to the conviction that he’d abandoned her, and she’d been the only one who’d suffered. But he hadn’t married someone else without giving her warning. He really had been caught up in circumstances beyond his control, and she’d never given him a chance to put things right.

She couldn’t change the past, but there had been plenty of opportunities to tell him about Julie. And she hadn’t. She’d found one excuse after another to put off telling him the truth about his daughter.

She should have trusted him, but she hadn’t. How could she blame him for being hurt? Any man would have been, but especially Philip, for whom family meant so much. And she could hardly blame him for expressing that hurt in angry words. She’d been just as angry, but without the justification. When he’d confronted her with his newfound knowledge, she’d shouted at him and told him not to talk to her until he cooled off.

Well, he’d cooled off, all right. The careful detachment he’d brought to this therapy session sliced at her heart like a dull knife, ripping and tearing. She’d killed his love once and for all. Her heart ached as she numbly went through her checklist.

By the time the appointment was done, the rest of the department was empty. Even Rob had gone home unusually early.

Philip took his hand from her grasp and laid it on his thigh. “Elena,” he began, his eyes downcast. Then he lifted his head and looked directly at her for the first time since their angry confrontation. “I’m sorry I lost my temper the other day. I was upset, but I shouldn’t have said some of the things I said.

“I left you in an awful mess, and you did what you thought you had to do to take care of yourself and your—our baby. When I cooled off and thought about it more, I realized that just because I didn’t know about Julie didn’t make that time any less terrifying for you.”

Philip fiddled with the fabric of his uniform. Then he took a deep breath and went on. “You were alone and scared and Eli was there. I wasn’t. And I’m sorry.” His gaze fell back to his lap.

His unqualified apology shocked her to her core. If he opened his arms, she’d throw herself into them. And probably bawl like a baby. She’d tell him she was sorry for all the bad decisions she’d made and accept her share of the blame. And maybe they could start fresh again, this time with no secrets left to wrench them apart.

But he didn’t open his arms. He sat quietly folding and refolding a pleat in the khaki fabric and not looking at her.

“I want to see Julie whenever I can. I hope that’s okay.”

Every bit of her ached. He was so distant and oddly hesitant. So not the man she was in love with. He was acting more like a man sorting out the rules of engagement concerning the child of a broken marriage than one eager to put a relationship back together.

“Of—of course.” She reached for the paperwork she’d prepared before his arrival and handed it to him.

He took it and stopped playing with his trousers, but he didn’t look at the papers. “She asked me to play in the parent-team tennis tournament. I told her I would.”

And Elena would have to watch them play and pretend her heart wasn’t breaking. “She’ll like that.” At least, Elena guessed Julie would like it. Julie hadn’t spoken to her much over the last week. She’d called Eli on the phone a couple of times, and she’d talked to Philip nearly every night. But she’d said very little to Elena beyond informing her that she was going to meet her new grandparents the following weekend.

“She wants to meet my parents,” Philip said, still sounding unsure of his place.

“So she told me.” Told rather than asked.

“You’re invited down for the weekend too.” Philip finally looked up. His blue eyes were dark and filled with emotion, but Elena couldn’t read them. Did he want her to go? Or was he being polite? He smiled briefly. Just a flicker of his dimple appeared, then he sobered again. “I—I’d like for you to come.”

Does he still think we can fix this mess I’ve made?
She’d never been the watering pot type. She didn’t weep at weddings and rarely cried even at funerals. But everything in her wanted to cry at the thought of losing Philip forever. She blinked hard to keep the tears from falling.
Say yes, you idiot. This might be your last chance to get it right.

“Okay.”

He sucked in a sudden gasp as if he’d been holding his breath, waiting for her answer. He hadn’t even asked for an apology from her, but he deserved one.

“If you’re sure you want me along.”

“I’ll pick you both up early. My parents are really excited to meet Julie, but if you’d rather not stay overnight . . .” His voice trailed away without offering an alternative.

Julie had made it clear she expected to stay for the weekend. If Elena went and then wanted to come home, she’d have more of Julie’s sullen silent treatment to endure. But what if this was just an olive branch to end the argument and not an invitation to fix what she’d broken? How awkward could things get if he continued to treat her with this distant civility?

“A weekend at the sea sounds nice,” Elena said, careful not to sound too eager or assume too much. “Maybe we can find some private time to talk.”
And I can find some backbone and apologize
.

Philip got to his feet and reached for his uniform blouse. “We’ll make time.”

He still hadn’t looked at the paperwork. He still didn’t know she’d just cleared him for full, unrestricted return to duty.

She wanted to reach out to him so badly, she had to fold her arms across her chest to keep from doing so.

He bent and kissed her so abruptly she didn’t have time to respond. “I’ll see you Saturday.” He kissed her again, a tad more thoroughly, but still too briefly for her to gather her wits and kiss him back. And without any echo of passion.

As he turned on his heel and walked toward the door, Elena brought trembling fingers to lips that still felt the warmth of his.

The jumble of emotions churning inside her were beyond working through. The logical part of her said that if they could just sit down and talk things out, they could find a way to make it all work. But if they did, and things worked out, then what? The illogical emotional side was caught by the fear that the next time he was shot, it wouldn’t be just his hand. How could she protect herself from that possibility? Or Julie?

And what about the baby she was almost certainly carrying now? She
had
to tell him about that. When they’d made love two weeks ago without even trying to avoid pregnancy, she’d said she didn’t care, thinking she was safe. He’d said he didn’t care either, but he did.