Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) (35 page)

“You are, and we’re gonna do somethin’ about that.” He trailed his right hand down her side until he reached her midriff, where he stopped to stroke the indentations between her ribs. “But that does nothin’ to distract from how beautiful you are. Hell, once you get some meat on those bones, you’ll be the most gorgeous woman in the world. Every other poor female on the planet will fade into the woodwork by comparison.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes, but that light, fluffy blanket of contentment filled her to overflowing.

“You don’t see it, do you? How special you are.” His arm slid around her waist and tightened. “That’s just one of the things I love about you. Your complete lack of ego.”

Shaking her head slightly, she smiled up at him. “My ego’s as healthy as the next girl’s. I guess I’ve just been more worried about my insides than my outsides. So I’ve never paid much attention to—” Abruptly the rest of his words kicked in and she froze.

Did he say what I think he said?

“Wh-wha—” The question was strangled beneath a wave of giddy anticipation. “What did you say?”

“That you don’t see how special you are?” The hand on her face slipped down to her chin and lifted her head. “That you don’t have an ego?”

The smile he laid on her was full of bland innocence.

“Not that, the other.” She breathed shallowly, a sense of stillness rising from within her. Expectation swelled, along with the certainty that her life was about to change irrevocably.

The expression on his face shifted from innocent to grave.

“What? That I love you?” The admission emerged as solemn as a vow.

The breath left her in a rush. “I think I love you too.”

He fell back to the bed, chuffing out a breath that was half laugh. “You
think
?”

“It’s just that we’ve only known each other
ten days.
And we’ve really only talked during the
past few days
. And everyone knows that extreme danger and adrenaline can mess with a person’s emotions. And—” Laughter burst from him. “Why are you laughing?” she asked, eyeing him with disgruntlement.

The blue eyes that locked on her face gleamed with amusement. Periodic ripples of laughter shook his torso, which in turn rippled through her body since they were pressed so closely together.

“Because none of that matters and you damn well know it.” He threaded the fingers of both hands through her hair and held her gaze. “Love doesn’t subscribe to a set schedule. It happens when it happens. Sometimes it’s instant, sometimes it takes years. And sometimes it takes ten days and twelve hours.”

Ten days and twelve hours.

The words resonated with her. He’d listed the exact length of time they’d known each other. And she knew he was right. The knowledge that she loved him sat warm and solid in her heart, even if her mind insisted on analyzing and second-guessing.

“Besides.” He nuzzled the side of her neck as his hands slid up and down her back in a soothing caress. “I reckon we’re not in an almighty hurry to move things along. We’ll give that scientific mind of yours plenty of time to examine and adapt and climb on board.”

It was the oddest thing, but the simple fact that he’d realized her brain and heart were at odds was an immense relief. If he knew her well enough to know that, maybe he did know her well enough to love her.

She studied his relaxed, certain face.

And maybe she knew him well enough for love to bloom too.

It felt right to lie there in his arms, pressed so closely against him she could feel the beat of his heart against hers, the warmth of his cooling skin.

It felt real, this emotion connecting them. It felt strong. It felt reciprocated.

Which was more than enough to hold tight to and build on.

Mac’s coffee mug froze midway to his mouth. He watched in disbelief as his corpsman, at the table to his left, set two plates piled high with eggs, bacon, hash browns, and French toast on the aluminum table in front of Faith Ansell.

Who in the hell did he expect to eat that heap of calories? While
Rawls might manage to wade his way through one of the plates—
eventually—his woman ate like a picky bird. She’d polish off a tenth
of
that mound at best.

When Rawls stepped over the bench seat and sat next to Faith, settling so close to her they were practically sealed together from hip to shoulder, Mac shook his head in disgust and lifted the mug to his mouth. Another good man down for the count. This falling in love shit had become an epidemic.

“Benji,” Amy said to his right as she neatly sliced her son’s fried egg into pieces. “If you spent half the time working on your breakfast as you do talking, you’d be finished eating by now.”

Her youngest, sitting across the table next to Cosky, turned to scowl at her. “But Mom, it’s important. I’m helping him get a dog.”

A dog?

Mac caught Cosky’s dry expression. Yeah, Cosky wasn’t the one interested in dogs.

He studiously ignored the heat blasting him from hip to shoulder thanks to the damn woman sitting so close to him. Why the hell couldn’t she have chosen a different table, hell, a different room—although he suspected a different cafeteria wouldn’t have lessened the effect she had on him.

Suddenly Cosky’s amused voice echoed in his mind
. . .
haunting him.

“Don’t think we haven’t noticed how you look at her, Mac. Fuck—you look at her the same way Rawls looks at his doctor.”

He shuddered and banished the memory of Zane and Cosky’s uproarious laughter when he’d denied having feelings for the woman.

Just because they’d formed their own personal pussy-whipped club didn’t mean he had any interest in joining them. His hand tightening around his mug, he avoided the woman on his right by concentrating furiously on the couple across from him.

Cosky and Kait sat directly across from him, while Marion was a bit more to the left. Empty plates were pushed to the middle of the table and half-full coffee cups sat in front of them. Their heads were tilted together as they quietly discussed something—probably wedding plans. Assuming they managed to extract themselves from this Goddamn mess and waltz into a new life together.

With a sour shake of his head, Mac glared down into the black depths of his coffee as though the bitter liquid held all the answers to their current predicament.

The failure the night before had been a blow. No, he hadn’t expected much, considering the intel had come from a Goddamn ghost. But there must have been some hidden kernel of hope lodged deep in his moronic brain, because the frustration and disappointment when the insertion hadn’t yielded even one fucking clue was so thick he could almost taste the bitterness on his tongue.

“You look like someone just shot your best coon hound,” Rawls said, pointing his fork toward Mac.

While Rawls’s head was turned away, Faith stealthily forked three slices of bacon on top of his plate.

Mac watched her fork an egg over as well and considered ratting her out on general principle. But hell, his lieutenant had to know she couldn’t eat that mountain of food. And from the way he’d demolished half his plate within seconds, maybe he’d planned on using her leftovers as a second course anyway.

With a grumpy yawn, he scrubbed a hand down his face and grimaced. “We need to recover that damn prototype of Dr. Ansell’s. It’s too dangerous to leave in enemy hands.” He paused to scowl. “And I’m getting damn tired of coming up empty-handed.”

He didn’t glance at Amy, but he could clearly imagine her tight, haunted expression. This moratorium on progress hadn’t just bit them squarely in the ass. It had bit Amy and her kids as well. As it stood, based on the doc’s latest round of tests on Brendan and Benji, Amy’s kids were well and truly fucked. That shit they’d been injected with wasn’t coming out anytime soon.

The combined pressure of frustration and fury pushed against his chest, threatening to smother him.

“At least we know who has it and who’s behind all this, which is more than we knew a couple days ago.” Cosky straightened, shooting him an undefinable look. “We’ve got actual names now.”

Rawls shot his buddy a surprised look. Mac knew just how he felt.

“Yeah, we got names”—he reminded Cosky sourly—“from a ghost.”

Cosky shrugged. “Rawls says the names are legit. Wolf says they’re legit. The lab, with the missing scientists, was exactly where they said it would be. That’s good enough for me.”

“James Link is our best bet,” Amy suddenly said from beside him. “Manheim will be harder to reach. He’s got the security to go with all that money. Link’s smaller potatoes. He’s accessible.”

He was also the current CEO of Dynamic Solutions. If anyone had a shot at helping Amy’s kids, it would be that tech-savvy company. Mac could hardly blame her for fixing her sights on the opportunity with the best odds of curing her kids.

Zane straddled the aluminum bench next to Mac and took a sip of his coffee only to blanch and gag. “Son of a bitch.”

What the hell? Mac watched his lieutenant commander’s face turn green.

“Beth tossing her cookies again?” Cosky asked with dry amusement.

With a grimace, Zane stood back up. “I need something to settle her stomach. Coffee seems to be her biggest trigger.” He paused to scowl, a world of frustration on his face.

No surprise there considering how much Zane liked coffee. Beth’s pregnancy and Zane’s mirroring her symptoms was really fucking with his LC.

Mac hid a smile behind the swipe of his hand.

“Get her some crackers. Saltines, or as close as you can find,” Marion advised, leaning forward so she could see Zane around Cosky’s massive shoulders. “She’s what? Four months along?”

“Four and a half,” Zane said, blowing out a hard breath. He frowned, worry lines wrinkling his forehead. “The doc said the nausea would improve by the end of the first trimester. She’s six weeks past that now.”

Marion sat back and swung her legs over the bench seat. Standing, she bustled over to pat Zane’s arm. “I’m sure she’s fine, dear. Every woman reacts differently. I was sick well into my second trimester. Why don’t Kait, Faith, and I drop by for a visit? She might enjoy some girl talk.”

“You better pick up double the rations on those crackers,” Rawls told Zane with a wicked grin. “Beth’s not gonna be happy if you munch on hers.” He glanced toward Faith, who was watching Zane with sympathetic eyes, and he slid an egg and a couple of slices of bacon back onto her plate.

If Mac wasn’t mistaken, it was the same egg and bacon that Faith had offloaded earlier.

“I’m going to set up a meeting with Wolf and his COs for later today, so make yourselves available. We need to track down that damn prototype of Faith’s and take it out of play,” Mac said.

With luck, their very well-equipped and tapped-in hosts would have a starting place in mind. If they didn’t, then James Link would have to do.

“Let’s hope they haven’t discovered its nifty little side benefit yet,” Cosky said, grimness hard on his face.

A shadow darkening his eyes, Rawls stopped eating long enough to glance at Faith. He caught her trying to sneak the egg back onto his plate. With a couple of quick slices he quartered it and lifted the morsel to her mouth. “Eat.”

She rolled her eyes and glowered, but opened her lips, accepting the offering.

“At least we have allies now,” Amy said quietly when the grim silence went on too long.

She was right. Mac relaxed slightly, taking another sip from his mug. They did have allies. Powerful ones too.

But even more importantly, they knew who their enemies were.

Assuming you could trust a ghost.

Epilogue

A
S YOU CAN
see from the test results, Dr. Ansell,” Francis Kerry said, sweeping his hand above the reams of data spread across his desk, “we have every reason to believe your heart has undergone a complete rejuvenation.” He sat back in his office chair and pushed his glasses up with a long bony forefinger.

From the armchair in front of his desk, Faith leaned forward to pick up an image of the echocardiogram that had been taken two hours earlier. Since the two prior scans had shown a thorough transformation of her heart muscle, just like this new one did, she suspected this additional imaging had been requested to rule out any sudden deterioration. After all, it would be a mistake to go off the immune suppressors and Cordarone if Kait’s healing had worn off and her heart had deteriorated again.

Which begged the question—did that ever happen, and if so, how often?

Dropping the film, she picked up the printout of the EKG she’d undergone two days before. The description confirmed a normal functioning heart—just as the reports on the transthoracic echocardiogram and Doppler echocardiogram had shown. The video taken of the ultrasound sessions had revealed the same as well.

A perfect. Normal. Heart.

For a moment, disbelief swelled, pressed against her chest. But it faded quickly. She’d had several days to acclimate to the possibility of miracles.

“What about the treadmill test?” Faith asked, rifling through the files, films, and printouts spread across the table. “I lost my breath pretty quickly during that. Isn’t that a sign of my heart not working properly?”

Okay, maybe she hadn’t accepted that she’d been the recipient of a miracle quite yet. There was a sliver of doubt remaining, a piece of her just waiting for the bad news to roll in.

“It can be, of course. But shortness of breath can also be due to a general lack of conditioning,” he said delicately.

Faith’s eyebrows rose. Had he just called her out of shape?

“With the exception of your breathlessness, the exercise stress test indicated a normally functioning heart. There were no irregularities in the blood flow or electrical rhythm.”

Which was doctor-speak for—
Hey dummy, you’re out of breath because you’re out of shape. Get exercising, for Pete’s sake
.

“So she can go off the cyclosporine, mycophenolate, and Cordarone?” Rawls asked.

Maybe he sensed the distance buffering her, because he leaned forward and covered the hand she had resting on the table with his. She tried to relax, to concentrate on the warmth of his hand, but the tension vibrating through her refused to back down.

“For now.” Dr. Kerry pushed back his office chair and stood up. “We’ll continue monitoring her. And it wouldn’t hurt to keep an emergency dose of Cordarone on hand just in case.”

Just in case what? In case Kait’s healing ultimately reversed and her heart failed again?

“So what are the long-term effects of this
. . .
healing?” Faith asked. “Has a healing eventually deteriorated? Is there a possibility all these miraculous findings could disappear and my old heart will return?” Faith asked.

Dr. Kerry laughed. “Admittedly Kait Winchester’s abilities are remarkable. But trust me, your heart’s transformation isn’t the result of some short-term magical spell. If her healings reflect the same outcome as William’s and One Bird’s—and I see no reason why they shouldn’t—your heart should remain at its current peak condition until normal aging kicks in.”

Should remain . . .

While the good doctor was babbling a convincing line of optimism, she couldn’t help noticing all the qualifiers he was throwing around.

“So what was my heart’s spontaneous restoration a result of?” At the baffled look he sent her, Faith frowned and rephrased. “I know Kait’s at the core of this
. . .
marvelous outcome
. . .
but you said it wasn’t a result of a magical spell, so what, exactly, was it a result of?”

Maybe if she had a better idea of how Kait had accomplished this phenomenon, it would be easier to believe that it had occurred and that the results would be lasting.

She could sense Rawls watching her. Did he think she was being a pessimist? Or God forbid, that she didn’t want to get better?

Dr. Kerry studied her face for a moment, before slowly sinking back onto his chair. “I can’t speak to Kait’s ability specifically since we haven’t begun testing her yet. However, William and One Bird’s ability draws in and then expels energy, which in turn stimulates or even supercharges the individual’s immune system and their body’s natural ability to heal. So the healers themselves don’t do the healing, they merely draw in and then provide the fuel to expedite the body’s own ability to heal, often at an accelerated rate.”

Faith nodded. That made sense. The strange tension that had grabbed her the moment they stepped in Kerry’s office eased. Curiosity stirred—normal curiosity, not that suspicious, moderately pessimistic interest of before.

“So how and where are they drawing this energy from? Have you pinned it down?”

“We haven’t, no,” Dr. Kerry said, rising to his feet again. He walked around his desk.

She jolted slightly in excitement. “You know, maybe they’re drawing from the same source that powers the Thrive generator. The pool is infinite; perhaps some people have a genetic predilection to—”

With a rumbling laugh, Rawls stood and wrapped a hand beneath
Faith’s arm, lifting her to her feet. “I’m sure Dr. Kerry will be happy to theorize with you another time, when he doesn’t have other patients to see.”

Flushing, Faith offered her hand. “Of course. Thank you, Doctor. I appreciat
e all you’ve done for me.”

After a brisk, up-and-down shake, Kerry dropped her hand and eased around the armchairs. “Feel free to go through the result again, if you like. Down the road a bit, we may schedule more tests, for monitoring purposes.”

A sudden flush of uncertainty hit. It must have touched her face because he glanced at her and offered a reassuring smile.

“Not that I expect there to be any need for such caution.” After one last heartening smile, he disappeared out the door.

He’d misread the cause behind the uncertainty. This time the worry had nothing to do with her heart and everything to do with her housing arrangements. While Wolf and his superiors had offered them hospitality for as long as they needed it, she couldn’t remain here forever. It wasn’t fair to drain their resources and offer nothing in exchange.

Although
. . .
maybe she could offer them something in return. She could talk to Wolf about joining their team of scientists. That experimental aircraft Rawls and Zane and Cosky kept talking about had to have come from somewhere.

The fact that Shadow Mountain command was more interested in destroying the Thrive generator than acquiring it for themselves had put her mind at ease. While this base was obviously of military origin, the men here had clear limits on what they were willing to do in order to advance their cause. She could work within those parameters.

“What’s wrong?” Rawls asked, sliding a warm, firm arm around her shoulder. “For a woman who was just given a new lease on life, you were damn tense in there.”

So he’d noticed that, had he?

“It just
. . .
it just seems too good to be true.” She stumbled over the explanation.

She’d accepted the fact that her heart had reached the end of the average transplant’s lifespan. She’d girded herself for her looming return to the donor lists, with all the uncertainty such lists carried. Both of which made it difficult to adjust to this sudden windfall of good fortune.

“Well, believe it.” His arm tightened around her shoulders, drawing her closer. He leaned down to brush a kiss across the top of her head. “And darlin’, I’ll be right by your side to remind you that good things do happen in life, if the doubts start creepin’ in again.”

She murmured an acknowledgment. But he’d just touched on the other half of the worry jumbling her all up.

It wasn’t just her new healthy heart
. . .
it was Rawls too.

She felt like she was caught in a dream. It was a great dream—true. Heck, even a wonderful dream. But a dream, all the same.

The two things she’d wanted most from life had been handed to her with absolutely no effort on her part: a healthy heart guaranteeing her a normal lifespan and a man to share that life with.

A man who would curl her toes, give her butterflies, and thoroughly cherish her. Who would put her first, accept all her quirks—who would even die for her.

Someone who would love her unconditionally and accept her unconditional love in return.

And Rawls embodied all the qualities of her faceless, nameless dream man. He’d put her needs first time and time again. For God’s sake, he’d even thrown himself in front of a gun to protect her.

But in her experience, dreams rarely came true, which made it hard to believe wholeheartedly in the miracle she’d been blessed with.

She kept waiting for the catch to kick in. For her heart to revert—or Rawls to realize he didn’t love her after all. That he’d been caught up in the drama and urgency of the moment.

“You know,” Rawls said, swinging her around and leading her to the door. “You just sit back and enjoy the ride, and I’ll believe for both of us.”

The heat of his big body penetrated her from shoulder to hip, settling into her like a warm, fluffy blanket. Warming her from the inside out, it banished the cold draft of pessimism.

Maybe, just maybe, she was being foolish. While the peril and adrenaline rush of the past few days were brand-new to her, they were old hat to Rawls. His career revolved around danger and tense situations. If such things affected him, he’d have a hundred ex-wives by now.

In fact, if adrenaline-driven emotional attachments were to affect anyone, it would be her, not him. Yet if she bypassed her head and listened to her instincts, paid attention to her heart, she knew what she felt for him was real. Her love for him wasn’t dependent on adrenaline and fear for survival. It was reliant on his personality and his temperament—neither of which would change.

If she could accept the fact that what she felt for him was real and permanent—why couldn’t she give him the same benefit of belief?

Besides, Rawls wasn’t the kind of man to declare his love unless he meant it. Unless he was sure of it. His sense of loyalty—just one more thing she loved about him—wouldn’t allow him to walk away once he made a commitment.

“You’re doin’ it again,” he said, his arm tightening and drawing her closer. He glanced down, an affectionate, knowing gleam lighting his blue eyes.

“What?”

“Overthinkin’. Analyzin’,” Rawls said, amusement in his voice.

He was right—she was. He knew her even better than she knew herself. Her tense muscles relaxed. She’d never have to worry that he didn’t understand what she was feeling, what she was thinking. A flush of happiness smothered the reserve.

With a soft sigh, she leaned into him, relishing the way his arm tightened even further, locking her against his side. He felt so perfect pressed up against her—his body heat toasting her. His arm a warm, sheltering anchor. Being with him felt right, it felt natural—he felt like home.

It was time to accept the fresh start life was offering her—a new heart, a new life, and the perfect man to share it with.

Sometimes dreams really did come true.