The Complete Mackenzie Collection (41 page)

“In sickness and in health,” she prompted; then suddenly tears welled and overflowed, trickling down her temples.

He cradled her head in his hands and caught the tears with his tongue, tenderly nuzzling against her. His own chest felt tight. He’d never imagined his valiant little warrior crying, and it was almost more than he could bear. “Why the tears?” he murmured, pressing light kisses across her face and neck. “Did I hurt you?”

“You nearly killed me,” she replied. “When you didn’t believe me.” And she balled up her fist and punched him on the side of the head, because it was the only place she could reach. It was an awkward punch, because of their closeness and her position, and didn’t pack as much power as she would have liked, but he gave a very satisfying grunt. “Don’t let it happen again.”

He jerked his head back and glared down at her. “Why in hell did you do that?”

“Because you deserved it,” she said, and blinked back another tear.

Joe’s mouth twitched, and the glare turned into something tender. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, feathering a kiss on each corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry. I was a blind, bull-headed ass. Just the suggestion that you might have betrayed me sent me into a flat spin, and I couldn’t pull out of it. I was on my way over to see you when you came marching toward me, right down the middle of the base like you owned it, when you were supposed to be under guard.” A quick frown knitted his brow, and he pulled back a little to scowl at her. “How
did
you get out?”

“I dismantled the glass slats in the bedroom window and crawled out.”

He looked astounded. “You can’t fit through there. It’s too little.”

“Hah. I got some scrapes from it and hurt my shoulder when I fell, because I had to go out headfirst, but it can be done.” Then she judiciously added, “Though I don’t think you would fit through even if you were greased from head to foot.”

“Or any other man on base,” he said dryly.

“Well, times have changed,” she pointed out. “The security police should realize that women are a permanent part of the Air Force, even flying fighters into combat now, so they should adjust their thinking.”

Typical of Caroline to point out the security police’s errors in letting her escape. He would be sure to pass them on to Hodge. If he beat Caroline to it, that is.

She gave a delicate little cat yawn, and her dark sea-colored eyes looked sleepy. Still, Joe was reluctant to disengage their bodies, though she was lying naked with nothing beneath her but the hard ground. He solved the problem by anchoring her hips with a hard arm and rolling so he was on bottom. She made a soft sound of contentment, very like a purr, and nestled her head into the hollow where his neck and shoulder met.

He leisurely stroked her slim back for a minute, then abruptly his hands tightened, and he lifted her off his chest to give her a hard look. “What about you?” he demanded sharply. “Do you love me, Caroline? Say it.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” she murmured in response to the commanding tone. She supposed it was something he couldn’t help. “I love you, Colonel, sir. Stupid of me, wasn’t it, to fall in love when you were so determined to hold back, to not give me anything more than sex?”

Tension pulled the skintight across his cheekbones, starkly revealing the chiseled bone structure. He felt the nausea of panic coiling in his stomach, because suddenly he saw that Caroline would never tolerate that rigid control, doling out passion and love in measured amounts. She wanted all of him. A cliff yawned at his feet, and if he stepped over the edge his life would never be the same, but if he didn’t take that one step, he would lose her. He knew it all the way down to his bones, and just the thought of it was a hammer blow to the chest that told him he would never be able to survive the reality. His instincts were too sharp, too primal, for him to think he would be able to shrug it off. She was his mate; there was no other for him.

Somehow he forced his lips to move, though they felt numb. “I…I need to be in control.”

He felt her hand on his hair, gently stroking, her soft fingertips trailing down to his cheek and then to his lips. “I noticed,” she said, softly wry.

It was hard to explain, impossible with her lying on top of him, so close that she couldn’t miss even the most minute change in his expression. He lifted her off him, though his body felt abruptly incomplete without the linkage to hers. She looked disoriented by the sudden shift, automatically crossing her arms over her bare breasts in response to her inner uncertainty. The gesture was so innately feminine that he grabbed her to him, holding her close and savoring the feel of her silky skin, gathering his strength. He brushed the dirt from her back, took off his shirt and slipped it on her. Her own clothes, he saw, were a tangled mess.

He kissed her, hard and quick, before tension drove him to his feet. He stood with his back to her, staring out over the stark, lovely desert.

“Dad was put in prison when I was six years old,” he said. His voice was hoarse and raw. “He was innocent. The guy who had committed the crime was finally caught for something else, and he admitted everything. But Dad spent two years in prison, and for those two years I was in foster homes.”

There was total silence behind him, but he sensed the intensity of her attention. “Maybe there was just something about me that the man in the first home hated. Maybe it was because I’m a half-breed. They kept other foster kids, but he singled me out. I was just a kid. I broke things, I’d lose my temper playing with the other kids, the way kids do. I was bigger and stronger than most kids my age, but I didn’t know how to control that strength. If any of them said anything about Dad being a dirty half-breed jailbird, I went at them and did as much damage as I could. God, did I have a temper.

“And this man would beat me whenever I did something, even if it was stumble over an ashtray that he’d left on the floor. At first he used a belt, but it wasn’t long before he was using his fists. I fought him, and he beat me that much worse. I missed more school than I attended, because he wouldn’t let me go to school with my face bruised up.”

It got harder to say, the memories blacker as he dredged them up, and the worst was yet to come. He made himself continue. “He kicked me down the steps once, broke a couple of my ribs. And still I kept fighting him. I guess you could say I didn’t have stopping sense, but my temper flashed like black powder, and I couldn’t control it. He started burning me with cigarettes if I sassed him, or twisting my fingers, just to see if he could make me cry.

“I was in a nightmare and I couldn’t get out,” he said softly. “Nobody seemed to care what happened to me. I was just a half-breed, worth less than a mongrel dog on the side of the road. Then one day he slapped me, and I really lost my temper. I went on a rampage. I kicked in the television set, threw all the little knick-nacks against the wall, got in the kitchen and started breaking the dishes, and he was right behind me, hitting me with his fists, trying to kick my ribs in. I lost, of course. I was only six, even if I was big for my age. He dragged me down to the basement, stripped me naked and beat the bloody hell out of me.”

His heart was pounding now, just as it had been that day almost thirty years before. He’d never said it before, but it had to be said now. “Then he raped me.”

He could hear the swift movement behind him, feel the rush of air as Caroline surged to her feet. He kept his back turned.

“Looking back, I think it shocked him that he’d done it. He never touched me again, even in the slightest way. And I never lost control again,” he said remotely. “He must have called the welfare people, or maybe his wife did. I was gone from that house within two weeks. I spent those two weeks in the basement, alone, silent. I stopped talking. The other foster homes were okay, I guess, but I didn’t take any chances. I did exactly what I was told, never lost my temper, never lost control, never talked. Then one day, when I was eight, Dad showed up. He’d gotten out of prison and tracked me down. I don’t know if he had authorization to get me or if no one was brave enough to tell him he couldn’t, but he picked me up and held me so close it hurt, and it was the best hurt in the world. I was safe again.”

“Did you tell him?” she asked, the first time she had spoken. He was a little startled at the harshness of her tone.

“No. I’ve never told anyone, until now. If you knew my dad, you’d know why. He would have gone after the guy and literally killed him with his bare hands, and I couldn’t stand to lose Dad again.” He steeled himself to turn and face her, braced for the pity he would see in her eyes, but what he saw was a long way from pity. She was standing with her fists clenched, her face savage with rage. If that long-ago man had been standing there right then, Caroline Evans would have killed him, too. She wasn’t a half-breed Comanche warrior, but her spirit was just as swift and fierce, and her sea-colored eyes were blazing. Startled, he began to laugh.

“Don’t laugh, don’t you dare laugh!” she roared. “I’ll
kill
him—”

“You don’t have to, sweetheart,” he soothed, jerking her into his arms when she evaded his more gentle attempts to embrace her. “He’s dead. He died two years after the welfare people took me away. After I had graduated from the Academy I decided to check, just for the information. Hell, who am I kidding? There’s no telling what I would have done if he’d still been alive.”

He pushed her hair away from her face and kissed her. “Maybe I was tougher than most kids, but he didn’t damage me permanently, except for always wanting to be in control. He didn’t warp me sexually. Being around Dad was probably the best therapy I could have had, as far as sex is concerned. He was always totally open about it, treating it as just part of nature. And we had the horse ranch. A kid learns the basics damn fast on a ranch. I was okay with in six months of getting back with Dad. There was a bedrock of love there that never let me down.”

“Except you’re still a control fanatic,” she growled.

He had to laugh again. “You can’t even lay all the blame for that on what happened. I’m a fighter pilot. My life depends on being in control. It’s part of my training as well as my personality.”

She nuzzled her face against his sweat-dampened chest. “Well, you have a reason for it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

“No, I don’t guess you would,” he said in amusement. “That’s why you continually push me, trying to make me lose control. Well, lady, you succeeded. Are you pleased with yourself?” His voice turned deep and serious. “I could have hurt you, sweetheart.”

She looked like the cat who had had an entire gallon of cream, not just a measly saucerful. “It was
wonderful,
” she purred. “And I wasn’t frightened. You can’t hurt me by loving me. The only way you’ll ever hurt me is if you stop loving me.”

His arms tightened around her. “Then you’re safe for a lifetime.” He held her close for a long, long time, and he felt something relax within him, something that he hadn’t even known was tightly wound. She was inside his defenses now, and he no longer had to keep his guard up. Defeat had never been sweeter, because he’d come away with the grand prize.

At the moment his grand prize was bruised and half-naked, but still valiant. He released her with a little swat to her bare backside. “Get your clothes on, woman. It’s sundown, and we have to get back to the base.”

I
t was almost anticlimactic. The danger the night before had been very real, but it wasn’t long after dusk when they veered back close to the road and a car came by, cruising very slowly, shining a spotlight off to the side. Caroline gasped and started to hit the dirt, but Joe kept her upright with a firm grip on her arm. His eagle eyes had spotted something she couldn’t make out in the darkness: the row of lights on top of the car. Literally dragging her in his wake, he strode out into the road.

The car stopped. The spotlight wavered, then settled on him. “I’m Colonel Joe Mackenzie, out of Nellis,” he said. His deep voice carried that unmistakable note of command. “I need to get back to the base as soon as possible.”

The state trooper switched off the spot and got out of the car. “We’ve been searching for you, sir,” he said in a respectful tone. Military personnel or not, there was something about Joe Mackenzie that elicited that response. “Are you all right, injured in any way? A van was found—”

“We know about the van. We were in it,” Joe said dryly.

“We were ordered by the governor to give every assistance to the military in finding you. A statewide search was started this morning.”

Joe put his arm around Caroline and ushered her into the back seat; then he went around and took a seat up front. Caroline found herself staring at the back of his head through steel mesh.

“Hey,” she said indignantly.

Joe glanced back and began to laugh. “Finally,” he said, “I’ve found a way to control you.”

“The sensor alarms went wild,” Captain Hodge said. “Once when Ms. Evans entered the work area after she was already recorded as being inside, and again when you entered without your ID tag, Colonel. The first guard was there within two minutes, but the building was empty. They must have dragged both of you out immediately and then panicked. They loaded you in Mr. Gilchrist’s van and bolted.

“Ms. Evans’ quarters were checked and she was discovered missing. Amazing. I didn’t know anyone could get out a window that small,” he said, glancing at her.

“I’m not very thick,” she replied coolly.

He cleared his throat at the look in her eyes. “I tried to notify you, Colonel, and found that you were missing, too, though there was no record of you leaving the base. Nor had Ms. Evans attempted to leave. There was a record, however, of Mr. Gilchrist leaving immediately after the alarm had sounded.”

“The other guy must have been hidden in back with us,” Joe said.

“Who was he?” she asked. “He looked familiar, but at the same time I didn’t know him.”

Hodge looked at his ever-present clipboard. “His name was Carl Mabry. You’d probably seen him in the control room. He was a civilian working with the radar.”

“How did Gilchrist get involved with him?” Joe asked. “And there are others. Have you found out anything about them?”

They were sitting in his office. Both he and Caroline had been checked over by the medics and declared basically sound. Somewhere along the line, Caroline’s clothes had vanished and the well-meaning nurses had tried to stuff her into one of the too-revealing backless, shapeless gowns that were standard for every hospital. Caroline’s sense of style had been outraged, but the green surgicals had appealed to her. She was wearing a set now and somehow looked dashing in them.

“Evidently, Gilchrist was recruited after he began work here,” Hodge said. “Mabry belonged to a radical group that opposed defense spending. You know the type. They want the money for humanitarian purposes, even if they have to kill to get it.”

“Then just how,” Caroline asked in an awful tone, “did he get security clearance?”

Hodge winced. “I—uh, we’re still checking on that. But he didn’t have clearance into the laser building.”

“So how did he get in without triggering the alarms?” Joe asked impatiently.

Caroline snorted. “The program has a major weakness. The alarm is set off by a body entering or leaving without a card—but not a card entering or leaving without a body.”

Hodge’s hair was too short to pull, so he ran both hands over his crew-cut head. “What?” he almost yelled.

“Well, it’s obvious. I certainly didn’t go into the building with Cal when he was supposedly searching for my tag, but the computer said that I did, which means he must have had the tag with him and flashed it so the sensors would pick it up, thereby destroying any record that he had entered the building alone and discrediting my story of having misplaced my tag. There wasn’t anything Cal didn’t know about computers. He probably figured it out not long after he started work on base, testing it by swinging the tag through the doorway on a string, or something like that. If he’d been caught, he wasn’t doing anything he would be arrested for, just playing with the computers like any hacker would. Evidently he picked up my tag when I lost it, but left at the same time I did that day so the sensors weren’t set off. He carried it off base and had it duplicated, then returned the original to me the next morning so there wouldn’t be a report on it. The night we caught them—” She paused, looking confused. “When was it? Just last night?”

“Seems longer, doesn’t it?” Joe commented, grinning at her.

“Anyway, he would have entered with the duplicate tag, then tossed it through the doorway to Mabry, who would also have used it to enter. If you check the logs, you’ll probably find entry, exit, then reentry with just a few seconds between.
If
you had been on your toes, Captain Hodge, you would have made certain my code had been immediately deleted from the computer instead of waiting until morning, thinking you had me safely under guard.”

Hodge was crimson with embarrassment. “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.

“Likewise, instead of assuming you had the problem contained, the entire laser team should have been restricted to base until you were certain.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The sensor program needs to be rewritten. It’s humiliating to think of a sophisticated security system being bypassed by two people tossing ID tags through a doorway like kids playing catch.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Joe had covered his mouth with his hand to hide his grin, but his blue crystal eyes were shining. Poor Hodge, by-the-book person that he was, was no match for Caroline at her most haughty, and his little hedgehog was most definitely feeling put upon. He decided to intervene before the captain was reduced to a sense of total inadequacy. “You used the past tense when speaking of Mabry. Is he dead?”

“Suicide. Gilchrist, by the way, was doing it for the money, not for any ideological reason, but Mabry firmly believed that the Night Wing program should be scrapped. They intended to cause so many problems with the tests that funding wouldn’t be granted. Good plan, considering the economic and political climate. Pressure is high in Washington to spend money only on things that
work.
We’ve tied Mabry to a group called Help Americans First. I don’t know if we’ll be able to implicate any of them without his testimony, but we might be able to turn up a paper trail that ties them to it. We know they were willing to kill both you and Ms. Evans to complete their sabotage of the lasers, so we aren’t talking about innocent do-gooders here.”

“I want them nailed, Hodge,” Joe said softly.

“Yes, sir. The FBI is working on it.”

Caroline yawned. Despite sleeping all day, she was tired; it had been an eventful twenty-four hours. Joe leaned back in his chair and hooked his hands behind his head, watching her. It gave him a deep sense of contentment to watch her.

“You’re the first to know, Hodge,” he said lazily. “Ms. Evans and I are going to be married.”

To his amusement, a look of disbelief crossed the captain’s face. Hodge looked at Caroline the way he would have looked at a wild animal that had suddenly been turned loose, as if he didn’t know whether to run or freeze. She returned the look with a sort of warning indifference.

“Uh…good luck, Colonel,” Hodge blurted out. “I mean—congratulations.”

“Thank you. And I’ll probably need that luck.”

Two weeks later Caroline whirled in her husband’s powerful arms to the strains of a waltz. Washington society glittered around them. The huge ballroom was resplendent with silks and satins, jewels both paste and real, bright chatter and serious dealing. Intermingled with the formal black, gray and midnight-blue tuxedos of the civilians were the gorgeous dress uniforms of the various branches of the military. Joe looked magnificent in his. Caroline saw more than one set of feminine eyes following him wherever he went, and she had been forced to glare several of the owners of those eyes into submission.

“We should have waited,” she said.

“For what?” His arm tightened around her as he swung her around.

“To get married.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“For your family.”

He laughed aloud. “Dad understood. When he decided to marry Mary, he had the deed done within two days. It took me three.”

“General Ramey seemed pleased,” she commented.

“He is. The Air Force likes its officers to be married. It makes us more settled.”

“Sure,” she replied doubtfully. “If going Mach 3 is considered settled.”

The funding for Night Wing had been granted by a wide margin in Congress the day before. Joe had had to testify before the committee, requiring his presence in Washington, and he had categorically refused to be separated from his wife, so Caroline’s presence had also been required.

The federal investigation into Help Americans First was ongoing, as was the final phase of testing on the Night Wing project, but the aircraft and laser systems were all functioning perfectly. The damage Cal had done to the computer program had been rectified. And Caroline was slowly beginning to realize what it would mean to her life to be married to a career military officer. When the final testing was completed he would be taking over as wing commander of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing at Langley AFB in Virginia. She had learned a lot about the military in the ten days they had been married and knew that Joe would be up for his first star after that posting. He was thirty-five years old and would probably make general before he was thirty-seven. She would never admit it to him, because she felt he needed someone who didn’t jump every time he issued an order, but sometimes she was a little in awe of his abilities.

He pulled her closer, and the movement of the waltz brought her lower body into firm contact with his. Her gaze flew up to meet his, and she saw his arousal reflected in the glittering blue depths of his eyes.

“I like you in white,” he murmured.

“That’s good. I wear it a lot.” She was wearing it now. Her ball gown was pure, snowy white.

“You look better on white sheets than anyone I know.”

“Hmm. I’m going to take flying lessons, so maybe I’ll need to have several jumpsuits made in white.”

Incredibly, she felt his shoulder tense under her hand. “Flying lessons? Why? If you want to fly, I’ll teach you.”

She gave him a calm smile. “No. I’d turn you into a trembling wreck if you tried to teach me how to fly, and I’d be ready to kill you. But I need to know, so I’ll know something of what it’s like for you up there.” She figured it was the best way to get over the fear she felt every time he went up. Rather than risk clipping his wings, out of his concern for her, she would grow her own wings.

He still looked uneasy. “Caroline…”

“Joe,” she replied firmly, “I’m good at anything I decide to do. Physics, computers, sex. I’ll be good at flying, too. And having babies.”

He stopped dead in the middle of the dance floor. “Caroline!”

She lifted her brows, ignoring the smiling glances directed their way. “What?”

“Are you pregnant?”

“It’s possible,” she said serenely. “The timing wasn’t right during our weekend in Vegas, but what about since then? Name one time when you used any protection. If I’m not now, the odds are good I will be before the end of the year.”

He couldn’t seem to breathe. Hell, she probably was pregnant. As she had said, she was very good at anything she decided to do, and so was he.

“It’ll be interesting,” she said, “to find out if you make girl babies or boy babies.”

A slow grin moved his hard, beautiful mouth. “As long as I make you, I’m happy.”

“Oh, you do make me, Colonel Mackenzie. Very well indeed. When are we going to Wyoming?”

He adjusted to her lightning change of subject without a pause and resumed the dance. “Next month. I’ll only have a week, but we’ll get back for Christmas.”

“Good. I’ve talked to Boling-Wahl, and they’ll try to keep me assigned to projects in your general vicinity, though of course I won’t be working on any project for the Air Force. I may be working in Baltimore while you’re at Langley, but the commute isn’t bad.”

“Not bad,” he said doubtfully, “but I don’t really like the idea of you having to battle that traffic.”

She pulled back a little and her brows slowly rose. “Me?” she asked after a delicate pause.

He stifled a shout of laughter. “I have to be closer to the base than that,” he explained, keeping his voice level with an effort.

“Oh.” She considered the situation for a moment, then said, “Okay, I’ll do it this time. But you owe me, big time, because I believe inbeing comfortable, and fighting the traffic violates that belief. I’ll let you know when I think of some way you can make it up to me.”