The Calling (24 page)

“Have you thought of talking to him?”

He pursed his lips, the unease in his dark eyes growing steadily. “You mean, ask him why he’s a standoffish son of a bitch?”

She swallowed hard. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“I spent ten long years of my life waiting for him to come back to me. I wrote him letters, sent pictures, asked him to visit me. He never answered with more than a sentence or two, usually something about being at sea on his fishing boat. When I turned twenty, I wrote him off. End of story.”

Mandy sighed, not convinced that was the end of the story. The hurt he tried so hard to hide was a testament to his longing. Every boy, and every man, needed a father. She laid her head on his shoulder, afraid if she spoke again, he’d stop sharing. When he reached over, turned off the light and pulled the covers over them, she knew he was done for the night.

She rolled on her side, facing away from him, and clutched her pillow, wishing she could come up with something profound to say that would make everything okay. But that was the problem with family relationships. Sometimes, they were what they were, and no amount of talking or plotting could change them.

Justin curled behind her and draped his arm around her waist. He squeezed her so tight she couldn’t move. His breath tickled the back of her ear, as he said, “We’ll never end up like my parents.”

She thought of her own parents and how they still loved each other after thirty-two years of marriage. Justin might not have had good role models to learn from when it came to relationships, but Mandy did. And Justin wasn’t one to give up on anything. She was sure that included wedding vows.

Mandy cuddled closer to him, resting her head on the inside of his arm, and inhaling his ocean scent. “No. We won’t.”

The tension drained from his body, and his hold on her loosened. For several minutes, they lay in silence while she listened to his steady breathing. She longed to end the night with the words they’d only said once before, but maybe he wasn’t the type to repeat what he assumed was a given.

Just before she drifted to sleep, she felt Justin shift behind her. His lips brushed her ear. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she replied, knowing she was lying beside the man she wanted to share a bed with forever. With a tranquil aura enveloping her, one of protection and belonging, she drifted to sleep wrapped in Justin’s warm arms.

Chapter 17

Justin sat on his bed and slipped the diamond ring on his pinky, the white gold cool against his skin. The half-carat solitaire wasn’t exactly up to bling standards, but the stone had come from his mother’s wedding ring, and he’d decided it deserved a happy ending. Plus, it warmed his heart that Mandy would wear something that signified his parents’ love—they had loved each other, once upon a time.

He wiped the ring on his T-shirt until it glistened in the lamp light. The setting was new—a platinum band with blue sapphires, the color of Mandy’s eyes, on either side of the marquis. It had cost him a month’s salary, but she was worth every penny.

Justin smiled, imagining her reaction when she opened the black velvet box. This evening, the wait would be over because, on the beach, where they’d spent their first night together, he was going to ensure she’d be his forever.

His smile disappeared behind a cloud of doubt. What if she said no? He’d tried to make his intentions obvious since they’d begun dating. She had to know it was coming. If she didn’t… well, he’d cross that bridge when he got there. For now, he’d just assume her answer would be yes, and that the ring belonged to her.

A light tapping sounded on the window, like fingernails restlessly pelting a tune on a desk—rain. He groaned and tilted his head toward the ceiling, his gaze locking on an old water stain left by a tropical storm a few years ago. It seemed the weather was going to sink his beach plans. He’d have to think of somewhere else romantic to propose, but at least he had all day to brainstorm a new location, as long as a nasty storm didn’t drag him into work. He’d been so preoccupied with his proposal, he’d forgotten to check the forecast.

A few hours later, he got the call he’d been dreading.

“We need you at the station,” Dale said. “A tropical storm’s bearing down on the Gulf, and we’re getting distress calls right and left. We can’t keep up.”

“I’ll be there in ten.” He hung up and mentally prepared himself for a busy night.

By the next day, when the storm intensified, he knew he was in for a long weekend at the base. “I’m on call all weekend,” he told Mandy over the phone.

She sighed deeply. “I’ll pick up an extra shift to keep from missing you too much.”

“We can go to dinner Monday night.” Hopefully, the storm would have passed by then, and he could stick to his original plan of a proposing on the beach.

“I look forward to it. Be careful,” she said, her voice too tense for his liking.

“Always.” He hung up, hating that she was worried about him.

Suddenly, the hairs at the nape of his neck stood at attention. A cold dread filled his chest. Only one other time had he felt that sense of foreboding—the night his sister had died.

* * *

The skies whirred with the pounding of helicopter blades and the fury of a tropical storm. Below, the tides clashed in a cross-sea of conflict, waves ripping and tearing at one another, their crests reaching for Justin, threatening him even though he dangled thirty feet above their violent crowns. He’d trained for weather such as this his entire life, yet fear constricted his heart and made his body numb, his mind cloudy.

Relax
. He took a deep breath, the salty air filling his lungs, then blew it out slowly through his clenched teeth.

“If you’re not comfortable going in,” Dale said over the intercom. “I’ll turn around. The cutter Tahoma will be here in thirty minutes.”

By then, every one of the men swimming in the ocean, after having fled their sinking ship, would be dead from hypothermia, if they didn’t drown first. “I can handle it.” He was the descendant of a water god, for Christ’s sake. He had nothing to fear. So why did his heart hammer against his ribs as if he were facing a dragon instead of thirty-foot waves?

“It’s nasty down there, Justin,” Dale said, his voice thick. “Don’t get yourself killed playing the hero.”

Justin snorted a laugh. “I didn’t know I was up for the role. I would’ve told my agent.”

“Wiseass. Just be careful and pull out if your hackles rise.”

“I’m not a dog, Dale.”

“Maybe not, but follow your instinct.”

If he were following instinct, he wouldn’t deploy at all, but there were men in the water who needed him, and he wasn’t going to fail them. Bad vibes or not, he was going in.

While he waited for his pilot and Ty to work out the details of his jump, he surveyed the commercial fishing vessel. The boat listed starboard, quivering under the assault of wind and waves. Three men had already jumped overboard. They wore bright orange life vests, the strobes attached to their protective suits blinking brightly.

Fingers of darkness quickly closed around them, strangling the last remnants of light filtering through the leaden clouds. He swallowed hard. With nightfall fast approaching, those men’s lives might just depend on the twinkling lights attached to their survival suits.

Two more men prepared to abandon ship. They leapt into the violent water and disappeared beneath the sea. A second later, they surfaced, their arms flailing against the churning ocean. Another person clung to the rigging, not moving toward the water as his shipmates had. Since he had seen boats in better predicaments sink in less than fifteen minutes, he had to think that the man was intent on going down with the ship.

Ty nudged him. “You ready?” he yelled over the roar of the helicopter, wind, and rain.

Justin nodded. He and Ty had become experts at ignoring each other over the last few months, at least until the time came to save lives. Then, they worked as a well-oiled machine, their gears meshing in perfect unison. Ty raised his hand and, with a snap of his wrist, motioned for Justin to deploy.

Justin took a deep breath, his blood humming from adrenaline. With a quick shove, he heaved himself over the side of the chopper. The cold air whipped past his face, his body dropping like a lead weight, and then the frigid water engulfed him. His exposed cheeks and eyes stung as he plunged deeper. He spread his arms wide to slow his descent and, with a few kicks of his fins, he emerged from the ocean.

The tides pushed and pulled while he fought to secure his snorkel and mask. From the battlefield, the world was more beautiful and dangerous than he’d imagined sitting thirty feet in the air. What had seemed a vast expanse of inky water, punctuated with frothy spray, was in reality a scale of colors from green to deep blue. And the waves were the size of mountains, angry and teaming with ominous shadows as they loomed over him.

A colossal wave bore down on him, black in the trough, blue in the slope. He dove under the water crashing overhead and burst out the backside of the swell. Twenty yards from his position, the men bobbed up and down like buoys in the cool November water. He dove under the next wave and popped out the backside, then slid down the wall of water to the trough of the next wave. Over and over, he repeated the same charging motion until his muscles burned.

Justin reached the men, all of them alert and fighting against the roiling tides. He peered up in the sky, searching for his team. The bucket splashed down in the water, five feet to their left. With the sun nearly set, the helicopter floodlights lit up the water around the basket.

He loaded the men two at a time. In less than ten minutes, he had them all aboard the chopper except for one.

“How many are in the boat?” Justin yelled.

The fisherman struggled to speak as waves slapped against his face. Justin grabbed him and pushed him to the edge of the bucket.

Choking and spitting, the man clutched the metal frame. “One more. He can’t swim.”

Justin heaved the fisherman into the rescue basket. When the bucket lifted, he peered back at where he’d last seen the sinking vessel. Night had officially descended, and his eyes saw nothing outside the bright rays of the floodlights. Had it already sunk? He’d been doing this job for five years, yet every time he lost a person, it felt like the first, the shame at having failed overwhelming him. Christ, he hoped it wouldn’t be one of those nights.

He glanced up at the helicopter. The bucket and man disappeared inside, and the aircraft took off toward the vessel, its nose light casting powerful beams across the churning ocean. Praying for a miracle, he sucked in a deep breath.

In the tendrils of light cast by the chopper, the vessel emerged, violently pitching to starboard. The searchlight trained on a man clinging to the rigging. Justin roared into action, diving under a wave. He gruelingly fought the savage sea to the crippled vessel. His fingers intertwined in the fishing net hanging portside, and he heaved himself up the rope. The ship shuddered under the pounding waves as he climbed toward the deck and scrambled over the railing.

The vessel pitched further starboard, the force of a wave ramming the bow. His finned feet slid down the deck as if he were walking on a thin sheet of ice. He grabbed the railing and inched toward the terrified man clinging to the fishing net hoist. The closer he got, the younger the man looked, until he didn’t seem to be a man at all.

When Justin was finally upon the hoist, he realized he was staring at a kid no more than seventeen. The boy’s eyes flitted around wildly.

His gaze washed over the kid’s clothes. It was a blessing he hadn’t jumped in the water after his crew because he was dressed in a rain suit with no thermal protection. The cold sea would have sucked his consciousness away in less than twenty minutes.

The kid fleetingly met his gaze, then his feral eyes went back to fluttering around the sinking ship. Justin pulled himself to within a foot of the kid and, trying to hold his gaze, got in his face. “I’m with the Coast Guard,” he yelled. “What’s your name?”

“B-B-Brian,” the kid stuttered. A hulking swell rocked the boat, and the rigging dipped into the white-capped waves. The kid squeezed the metal hoist tighter. His eyes seemed to grow wilder with each pummeling wave.

“Listen, Brian.” Justin waited until the kid looked at him. “I don’t want to bring the bucket on this boat. If the rope gets tangled, that helicopter could go down when the ship goes down. You understand?”

Brian nodded, though his gaze broke from Justin’s and darted around as if he saw nothing but the crashing waves sinking his ship.

Justin checked the kid’s life vest. When he had it properly secured, he gestured toward the lowest point of the vessel. “We can either jump from the port side or climb down the net. Your choice.”

“N-n-no. I can’t.”

“If you stay on this boat, you’re going to die.” Justin squeezed the kid’s shoulder, reassuringly. “I promise I’ll be with you the whole time.”

The boy clung harder and shook his head with a jerky movement.

“Don’t you have a mama you want to see again?” Justin asked.