Night Is Mine (20 page)

With the grace of a butterfly taking wing, she reached back over her shoulder and pulled the tie on the hospital gown. A shrug and it slipped free to pool in their laps, dangling from the one arm that reached to his face, but hiding nothing.

Not even in his fantasies had she looked this good—and she’d looked damn incredible in his fantasies. Dressed only in dog tags, her body awash in pale gold shadows of the night light.

He wanted to tell her how magnificent she was. How much he wanted her.

Her thumb kept his lips closed but rubbed back and forth.

A smile lit her face, only then did he put together what she was doing. She was feeling his smile because she couldn’t see it.

Ever so slowly, in perfect, agonizing, movie slow-motion, she lay back into shadows. Totally open to him.

He hadn’t brought any protection. Would never have thought he’d need it. And he wasn’t about to go ask the nurse for any. That only left a few thousand options in his imagination. So, tonight would be about those. About her. He liked that. Completely about her. He kissed her right below the dog tags between those perfect breasts.

Emily woke slowly, languidly, stretched out, and clanked her hand against the bed rail of the hospital bed. A quick brush confirmed that the sheets and hospital gown once again covered her.

“How are we feeling this morning?”

Standard nurse question. One she most certainly wasn’t planning to answer directly.

“Fine.”
Floating.
“No more headache.”
Liquid.
“I’m hungry.” Smiling with every square centimeter of her body.

Her brain offered to dismiss last night as a mere dream, after all, Mark was in Southwest Asia. And they’d never said a word. Not a single word.

Yet her body insisted she’d been wide awake every single, solitary, soaring, rocketing instant of Mark’s exquisite attention to her tingling flesh. He’d taken her places she didn’t know you could go and still be alive afterward. Places you could only reach with someone you trusted implicitly. She wanted the nurse gone so that she could relish every moment, every instant of—

With a blast of noise and activity, several people entered the room, easily a half dozen by all the rustling.

“Hey, Squirt.” That explained it.

“Hey, Sneaker Boy.” Again the barely controlled laugh from an unseen person in the room. Mark? Was he still here? Or had he departed as silently as he’d made love to her. Or at least to her body. He’d given exactly what she’d needed. Though how he came to be in her hospital room rather than—

The doctors took over. Questions about pain, none. Dizziness, none. Sleep, almost none. But she wouldn’t mention that. Felt too good to mention that. Chart shows you’re hungry, good. How do you feel? Frustrated enough to rip your throat out if you don’t do something about these damned bandages, fantastic enough to be dubbed Queen for the Day.

They finally got down to it. Someone ordered the room lights dimmed. Someone else tipped up the bed until she was mostly sitting. And, at long last, the bandages began to come off. They kept explaining what they expected to see and the worst possible scenario.

She’d had better training so she forced herself to focus on the best possible outcome. Focus on strength, and you will be strong. Focus on weakness, and you will wind up dead.

“I see light.” And she did. Vague, fuzzy, but a brightness through the remaining layers of bandages.

An excited buzz filled the room that the doctor abruptly silenced.

“Even if there is nothing wrong with your eyes, they may be a little blurry at first. You haven’t used them in three days. Think of it as waking up. But I don’t want you to rub them.”

Not until she acknowledged his instructions would he proceed.

The last few layers came free.

The images were dim, blurry.

Each time she blinked, they became clearer. But they didn’t brighten.

“Why’s it so dark?” She fought to keep the fear from ripping out of her gut.

“The lights are very low in the room.” She’d forgotten. A deep breath. Two. Three, and she felt a little better. She glanced sideways at the rack of med equipment, and the brightness of its dials appeared normal. She turned back and blinked a few more times.

“The focus seems good.” She could clearly see two doctors, a nurse, and Peter’s anxious face hovering over her. More were hidden back in the shadows.

She could see. The relief welled up inside until it threatened to bury her. Then the fears rolled forward like an advancing line of tanks. She could see, but how well? In the darkened room, everything was soft-edged. And color. Any significant loss of color acuity, and she’d be relegated to flying transports the rest of her life.

“Let’s run a few tests before turning up the lights.”

They swung an apparatus over her face and determined in minutes that she was 20/20. Color tests revealed no failure of rods and cones. Every time someone said, “Normal,” after one test or another, the relief piled up inside her. Building broader and deeper. At first she could crawl, then stand. Soon she’d run, and if they kept going, she’d fly.

A flight surgeon came to the fore and ran his tests, tests she’d had so often that it felt like coming home. And still the room lights remained low, even if the tests were often painfully bright.

They put drops in her eyes to dilate the pupils. Peter tried to tease her about something while they waited the twenty minutes for her eyes to react. She appreciated his effort, even if it fell flat, drowned in the tension in the crowded room.

Within an hour of when they’d started, they were done with all their inspections and tests. The doctors and flight surgeon moved to step out of the room. She called them back. They’d speak in front of her or not at all.

They might as well have left the room for how much of their medical terminology she actually understood.

At long last, they broke their caucus and the flight surgeon came forward.

“Captain.” He saluted her formally in the dim light. “We will officially wait three more days to be certain of no relapse. But, other than that one contingency, it is my privilege to inform you that you are certified fit for flight.”

She covered her mouth with both hands to stop the scream of joy that tried to burst forth. He remained at attention until she nodded for him to finish.

“No restrictions.”

She didn’t stop the scream this time.

As she returned his salute, a cheer broke out in the room. Doctors, nurses, a round of applause that sounded like the accolades of thousands, though it was more likely half a dozen. Someone even riffled her hair. Peter. It had to be.

She did her best to simply smile, as for a second time tears streaked her cheeks. Emily didn’t wipe her face, hoping that in the dim room nobody noticed them. She’d fly again. That was all that mattered.

They gave her dark glasses to put on. “We dilated your pupils for the tests. Don’t want them to hurt when we turn on the lights.” She adjusted the glasses and used the motion to discreetly wipe her cheeks.

A nurse moved toward a wall switch in the now barely discernible shadows.

As she did so, a shadow of a shadow moved through the room. Coming from a distant corner of the darkened room, he moved out the door without turning to look at her. Without anyone noticing. Even the Secret Service agents didn’t turn to watch him go.

Mark.

Her hands now knew the shape of that shadow, could still feel each curve against the inside of her palm. And no one else moved like that, the powerful walk of the dominant male of the species, unchallenged wherever he roamed. And, because of his Special Forces training, near invisible in a lit room.

Then the lights flashed on and Emily was forced to squeeze her eyes shut despite the dark glasses.

By the time she could blink them open, he was gone.

The doctors and Peter moved down past the foot of her bed in what looked very much like a male-bonding session. Congratulating each other on their part of her recovery. It was her body that had done the hard work.

The nurse came over to check on her, noticed Emily’s attention on the door.

She looked around, a bit surprised, her eyes finally seeking an empty chair in the far corner of the room.

“Oh, your guardian angel is gone then.” Her accent had the short clip of a New Englander. “Arrived yesterday afternoon shortly after the President’s visit. Sat there like a stone for the last twenty-four hours. Night nurse said he never moved. Never said a word. Didn’t give his name, but he must have signed in. A lot of decoration on his uniform. I can see who it was, if you’d like.”

“No. That’s okay. Thanks.”

Emily leaned back as Peter and the doctors laughed over their mutual triumph. She closed her eyes and did her best to picture the shadow that had left her room only after she’d been declared fit to fly.

The shadow that had sat silent vigil with her for the longest night of her life and offered his hand in comfort when most needed. Far more important than what she had taken from him afterward. She’d be forever thankful for that hand and the shoulder to cry on.

Could she have found a more unlikely guardian angel than Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson? And who knew angels could make her feel so damn happy.

He should be shot. Mark didn’t doubt it for a single second.

The jet engines blasted away loudly enough that he could sit in undisturbed contemplation. One idiot and eighty tons of food and medical supplies in the belly of a C-5 Galaxy. Nine hours until he switched planes at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Seven more back to the carrier.

And all he could think was that someone should take a gun to his head and put Major Mark Henderson out of his misery. If he could wipe the damn smile off his own face, it might help matters a bit. His cheeks were actually hurting.

He’d taken absolute, complete, and total advantage of a distressed woman strained far past rational consideration. It had been up to him to set the boundaries, boundaries he’d promised to uphold, and he’d blown right through every one.

Finagling, hell, demanding the three-day pass the moment he’d confirmed the news report. Calling in a hundred favors to get him to D.C. in record time. Keeping his temper as he passed through the Secret Service, which had been harder than he’d imagined, despite his uncle, General Arnson, clearing the way. He hadn’t expected such a barricade around the First Lady’s pilot and chef; it just wasn’t that important a role.

And finally to sit and watch and wait with her through the long afternoon, evening, and night. A blond guy with a bandage on his head had held her hand briefly, though that appeared to be more for his own comfort than hers. Parents. Various doctors. Only one or two of the more observant nurses had noticed him seated back in the shadows. His dress uniform so in place at Walter Reed that he’d blended right into the background. They’d wisely let him be when visiting hours ended.

He didn’t even know why he had come. The hours stretched and he had to face that he was no medic, no doctor. He wasn’t even technically her commanding officer any more. All he could do was wait, and she wouldn’t even know he sat there with her.

But he’d needed to be there. To sit with Emily Beale in silence, even if that was all he could offer her. The world as a place worth defending made less sense if there weren’t women like Emily Beale in it. Hell, a world without this one and only Emily Beale would suck. No better word for it. For all the hours of silence, he’d come no closer to understanding his own motives. He simply needed to be there. For her. For him.

The tears. He’d never had power against a woman’s tears. How many nights had he witnessed his own mother weeping? Weeping alone after providing the brave face for his dad, SEAL Commander David Henderson, as he left on no notice for yet another don’t-know-if-you’ll-ever-see-me-again mission. But Dad had survived. Against all odds, survived to retirement. Now the happy couple had a horse ranch in Montana where her man led mountain tours and taught wilderness survival classes and she no longer had to cry alone in the dark.

When Beale had wept, Mark had crossed to her bed against his own will. Stood for a handful of minutes feeling twice an idiot before taking her hand.

She had swarmed into his lap and held on like no tomorrow. He had never felt so strong, so powerful as when she’d curled against his chest as her safe place to be. And he’d never been so aroused by any woman as the one in a sheer hospital gown who smelled like springtime and the ocean salt of tears. Every breath, every gasping moment building to the next shuddering sob, had run through his hands and arms, perversely making him stronger.

He rubbed his face and looked around the echoing cargo bay of the C-5. Dozens of pallets of food and dozens more of bottled water hitting Aviano before turning south, off to some African disaster.

If only he could take back what he’d done next. But even as his hand crossed over his face, he could feel his own traitorous smile.

When she had lain back in the shadows of the soft night light, her gown lying across her lap, he’d forgotten everything else. Forgotten the nurse who had watched him for almost a minute as Beale had wept in his arms before moving quietly about her appointed rounds. Forgotten that Emily Beale was blind and in a fragile state of mind. Forgotten he was a superior officer who could destroy both their careers in an instant.