Unbound Pursuit (14 page)

Wyatt girded himself
as he closed the bedroom door. He saw Tal sit on the side of the bed and lean down to rub her ankle, which he was sure was paining her. Once he’d locked the door, he shrugged out of his long-sleeved chambray shirt.

“I’m not up for sex right now,” Tal told him, frowning. “Is this why you wanted me up here, Wyatt? I’m still exhausted.”

“I know you are, darlin’, and so am I. And this isn’t about sex. I need to show you this.” He gripped the edge of the T-shirt, holding her gaze. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you about what happened out at that ravine last night, Tal. As I was skirting it, trying to get ahead of both Mark and the other soldier, things went south.”

She gave him a wary look, pushing her palms down her trousers, studying him. “What do you mean ‘went south,’ Wyatt?”

He pulled the T-shirt up and over his head.

Tal gasped, instantly on her feet, her eyes wide with shock as she stared at the deep, dark red-and-blue bruise in the center of Wyatt’s chest. She uttered a curse and then met his calm gaze. “You took a hit!” she cried, moving forward, reaching out, barely touching the swollen edges of the bruise, which was the size of a cantaloupe. “And it was right over your heart! Damn it, Wyatt, why the hell didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?” She glared up at him, gripping his arm. “You could have had a heart attack from this hit, damn you! And you couldn’t even tell me about it until just now? What the hell’s going on?”

Calmly, Wyatt stood there watching the woman he loved become shaken. Her fingertips kept barely brushing the edges of the swollen bruise, which definitely looked dawg ugly. “I’m sorry,” he rasped, lifting his hands, framing her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I took one round to the chest. I wanted to tell you, but I just didn’t feel there was any good time, Tal. I survived it. That’s all that matters.” His voice lowered, thick with feelings. “I love you, and the last thing I wanted last night was to tell you about this Kevlar hit. I knew it would really upset you.”

She slid her hands between his arms, breaking his gentle hold on her face, and stepped back. “Damn you, Wyatt! You do
not
hide things like this from me! I don’t give a damn how good you think your reasons are! Don’t”—she jabbed her index finger toward his shoulder—“ever do this to me again! Do you hear me?” Her voice rose in fury. “You could have died from this! That bullet was too close to your heart! I can tell by looking at this bruise that the shooter was less than twenty feet away from you.” She cursed, turning and walking away from him, her eyes dark with hurt and shock.

Wyatt pulled the T-shirt back on and picked up his chambray shirt, shrugging it over his shoulders. He had broken her trust, and it ate at his conscience like nothing else ever had. Tal paced across the room, and he could feel her mounting fury rolling off of her in waves. She wasn’t the kind of woman to lose it or start yelling or screaming. Her full lips were tight and drawn into a straight line, and the anguish glittering in her large, intelligent green eyes tore him up.

“Look,” he drawled, slowly approaching her after he buttoned up his shirt, “I’m fine. Mark stayed with me after it happened. That’s the part I didn’t tell you, for obvious reasons. He killed the man who fired point-blank at me, Tal.”

She turned. “Jesus, Wyatt! You could have fucking been
killed
!”

Wincing at the raw emotion in her voice, seeing how wounded she was by his keeping the information from her, he halted six feet from her, opening his hands. “Tal, I knew it was wrong to keep this from you. But put yourself in my place. There was so much shit going down last night, and at dawn this morning I did not want to add this to your worries. I knew you were stressed enough, and I didn’t want to put one more brick on your shoulders. And the whole family was there in the house, and I didn’t want them to know what had happened.” He gave her a pleading look, knowing that above all, Tal was a logical person. She’d run a huge sniper unit out of Bagram for five years, off and on, with great success. She’d commanded some of the finest Marines in the U.S. military, who were damned intelligent, independent, and competitive at a world-class level. She’d handled all of them with adroitness, using her highly developed management skills, knowledge, and experience. Would she be able to handle a personal situation in the same way? Would an “I’m sorry” be enough? Or had he permanently fractured their growing relationship forever?

T
al curled her
fingers into fists, staring at Wyatt, who looked like a little boy who had been caught red-handed doing something wrong. She saw sadness and regret in his gray eyes, in the set of that mouth she loved to kiss so much, a mouth that knew how to love her until she screamed with pleasure.

“Damn you,” she rasped, her spine ramrod straight, tension thrumming through her.

“I deserve whatever you want to dole out to me,” he agreed, giving her an understanding look.

“I don’t care how tired I was at dawn this morning, Wyatt.” She jabbed a finger at herself. “You should have told me!”

Nodding, he said gruffly, “I made a judgment error, Tal. And I’m sorry. I knew you’d be pissed as hell because I didn’t dump this into your lap right after it happened.”

“Damn straight I’m pissed.” She limped away, going to the other side of the room, pulling the lacy white curtains aside, looking out over the corral area. Suddenly, hot tears jammed into her eyes. Tal made a disgusted sound, turning her back toward Wyatt, feeling his concern, like an invisible blanket being wrapped around her hunched shoulders. She fought the tears, fought the memories of Brian, the Marine sniper she’d fallen in love with and who’d gotten killed, that came roaring back at her. Lost in pain that had been resurrected from the past, she didn’t hear Wyatt approach.

“Hey,” he murmured, settling his hands around her drawn-up shoulders, “turn around here, Tal . . . ,” and he guided her so that he could see her expression. Tears were tracking down her face, and she refused to look at him, her mouth tight as she fought to regain control. Groaning, he rasped, “I’m sorry, Tal. I really didn’t want to hurt you like this,” and he tentatively began to draw her toward him.

Wyatt was afraid she wouldn’t come. Tal was a natural-born leader. She was proud, confident, and knew herself well. Would she move into his arms, or would she fight him, pulling away? Fear ate at him, because Wyatt knew their relationship was still new. And something like this could fracture it but good. Why the hell hadn’t he thought about that possibility a little more last night? He pulled her forward. She looked up, her eyes shining with tears, and he winced.

“I’m so damned sorry, Tal,” he said roughly, moving his thumbs across her cheeks, removing the tears.

She stood there, wavering, undecided as to whether she should walk into his embrace or not. Seeing the regret in his dark gray eyes, she whispered, “You don’t get it, Wyatt.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “I think I do. This is really about losing Brian, isn’t it? You falling hard for him and then having him ripped away from you.” His hands firmed up on her shoulders as he saw the agony come to her face, knowing he’d hit the nail on the head. He smoothed some strands of hair away from her temple. He could feel her weighing the situation, thinking about it, looking at what he’d done and why he did it. She was a sniper by nature and by training.

Wyatt expected nothing less, so he allowed his hand to fall to her shoulder once more, waiting. This was not a woman he could push, nor did he want to. Tal was slow to make up her mind, but that was typical of a sniper. She considered everything carefully. Wyatt felt like the guillotine was invisibly hanging above his head, ready to fall. There were things he could say, but they wouldn’t change the facts of the situation. What had changed was that she had finally given her heart to him after the years he’d spent waiting her out, waiting for her grief and loss over Brian to finally be worked through and released so she could come to him.

Tal was fearless as she looked up at him, meeting and holding his gaze. Wyatt wasn’t going to try to dodge this bullet. This moment was far too important to him. To them. He’d wanted Tal, dreamed of her being in his arms, in his bed, living with him, even marrying him, for so long. Tears slid down into the corners of her mouth, and she licked them away.

“Why did you wait, Wyatt?”

He moved his fingers lightly across her shoulders, which held so much tension. “I guess . . .” He looked away for a moment, searching for the right words. “I wanted to protect you. I know you’re a combat vet like me, Tal. You’ve seen and done it all, but, darlin’”—he cupped her cheek, holding her wavering green gaze filled with tears—“you’re the woman I’ve fallen in love with. You hold my sorry-ass heart. I don’t want anyone but you at my side when I wake up in the morning or close my eyes at night. It’s you.” He swallowed hard. “I love you, Tal. I knew my getting hit like that, my heart damn near leaping out of my chest, making me think I was going to go into full cardiac arrest, would upset the hell out of you.” He gave her a searching look. “I knew you were worried enough about me out there. I knew you wanted to be at my side. If you didn’t have that broken ankle, I’m sure you would have been.”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He saw a slight softening at the corners of her beautiful, kissable mouth. Wyatt could feel her slowly beginning to unwind and he breathed a little sigh of relief. “I should have told you up front. I couldn’t put it over the radio for fear someone else in comms was listening in, Tal. But I should have told you right off the bat when I got home.”

“Mark stayed with you because you were having fibrillations, weren’t you?”

Wyatt grimaced and muttered, “Yes, I was. He saw where I’d taken the hit, came and knelt at my side, dug out the bullet from the Kevlar to make sure it hadn’t made it past the plates. And it hadn’t. He could hear me breathing raggedly and knew the situation.”

“God,” she whispered, placing a hand over her eyes.

“It was bad,” Wyatt admitted quietly, running his fingers through her hair, trying to give her some of his calmness, a sense that everything was okay when it wasn’t. “I didn’t know if I was going to go into arrest or not. Mark stayed with me to make sure he’d be there to try to save me if I did.”

“He was a Recon. He had enough training in CPR to have helped you.”

Wyatt gave her a cutting, one-cornered smile. “Yeah, he had his fist balled up, ready to slam it into my chest to jump-start my heart back to normal rhythm if it happened.” He brushed his thumb across her cheek, drying it. “But it didn’t happen, Tal. In about five minutes, my heart went back to its normal beat on its own.”

“And that’s when Mark left your side? Took off?”

“Yeah.” He urged her into his arms and she reluctantly came; he saw anger along with relief in her expression. “Just let me hold you. All I was thinking about out there on that slope after getting hit was holding you, wishing I’d said some things to you that I wanted to share with you but I hadn’t yet . . .”

She sniffled and shook her head, moving blindly into his opening arms, clinging to him, her cheek pressed to his chest as far as she could keep it from that swollen bruise.

Groaning, Wyatt whispered, “God, I love you, woman,” and he held her gently, pressing small kisses along her hairline, watching the scowl on her brow dissolve under his warm ministrations, his care and love for her. Tal’s arms slowly eased around his waist, and he bit back another groan as she gradually surrendered herself over to him. This wasn’t a game on Tal’s part. His decision had hurt her deeply, and now he regretted it. Not thinking about how Tal had lost Brian was the biggest mistake he’d made in his reasoning. As she pressed her long, tall body against his, he welcomed her home, a swell of emotions deluging him as she yielded to him, her hair grazing his chin.

“I love you so much, Wyatt,” she whispered brokenly. Her arms tightened around his waist. “Please . . . don’t ever do this to me again. I-I can’t handle it. Not again . . . You’ve served your country. You’ve risked your life so often. It’s enough . . .” She choked up, burying her face against the folds of his shirt.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Wyatt felt the full brunt of her anguish, her hurt, and her terror at almost losing him. Smoothing his hand across her shoulder, sweeping it down her spine, cupping her sweet ass, bringing her flush against his erection, he rasped against her hair near her ear, “It won’t happen again, Tal. I promise . . .”

*

The dinner table
was alive with everyone wanting to talk at once. Wyatt sat next to Tal. She wasn’t eating much because of their argument earlier and was the quietest of the lot. He understood she was still exhausted from the sudden lurch into that unexpected mission and then finding out he’d nearly died. All Wyatt wanted to do tonight after dinner was take her to bed and love the hell out of her. He was good with words, but he was better with his kisses, his touches, and loving her. There were things he could tell her in no other way than kissing her tenderly, bringing the full force of the love he held for her through the world of physical touch.