On Lavender Lane (37 page)

“And to keep things in perspective, since the entire war wasn’t about us, they’d been getting intel from the high-altitude, fixed-winged bombers heading back to base that there were a lot of guys down around us who weren’t looking like friendlies.

“So the commander told us to hang on the best we could—we were, after all, SEALS, and used to working in dicey situations—and they’d get to us as soon as they could.”

“How lovely of them,” she said dryly.

Then had a horrible thought. What if Lucas had died up there on that mountain? She suspected that, as angry as she’d been at him, the loss would have hurt for a very long time. Undoubtedly forever.

“So, what did you do?” she asked. “About the Marine? Opie?”

“We were down to our final option. Which was to cut directly into his abdomen, hunt down the slippery damn artery, and clamp it. The problem was, the more I dug
around looking for it, the more blood he lost, so I decided to try a transfusion.”

“You had bottles of blood with you?” Kara had told her that Lucas carried more supplies than any medic anyone knew, but what were the odds of that?

“No. This was a person-to-person deal.”

“On the battlefield?”

“It’s admittedly risky but yeah, it can be done. In a worst-case scenario, which this definitely was.”

“But wouldn’t you still need to match blood types?”

“Yeah. We got lucky.”

That definitely wasn’t the word she would have used.

“One of the guys was type O. Which is a universal donor.”

“That’s an amazing risk he took.”

Lucas shrugged. “The kid might not have been a SEAL, but he was one gung-ho Marine, and as much of the team as any of us. Any guy that day would’ve done the same thing.”

“Fighting for the other guy in the foxhole,” she murmured. It had always seemed like a war movie cliché. It never would again.

“That’s it. By now the kid was in so much pain, I decided to risk giving him some morphine. I finally managed to find the artery and clamp it; then I shoved some Kerlix, which is a kind of bandage, into the wound, but by then, even with the transfusion, he’d lost so much blood, his chances of surviving were slim to none.

“Quinn, the sniper I told you about, gathered up some of the ponchos from the guys we’d lost, because they didn’t need them anymore.”

“And Opie did.” Strange how knowing his nickname made the story all the more personal.

“Yeah. By now the wind had really picked up and was blowing snow mixed with sand, so we realized we had to get the kid somewhere more protected. The Chinook
would’ve been the best bet, but we’d already had some fires on it after we were hit in the air, so we didn’t want to risk another spark setting off the fuel.

“Meanwhile, Shane, the wounded Army pilot who’d been ferrying us, didn’t look all that hot, either, so we decided we had to get them into the bunker.”

He lifted the beer to his lips, drank, then studied the label for a long, silent time.

Suspecting he was revisiting that horrid night, Madeline waited.

“The guys who were still mobile managed to get them into the bunker,” he continued. “We covered them with the ponchos, some insulation we pulled from the copter, and pine boughs that had been shot off the trees during the battle.

“We all kept our best faces on, and although everyone in the bunker knew it was a damn lie, I assured the kid he was going to be okay. He might’ve been young, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew he was going to die.

“So that’s when he started telling us his life story. About his mom, who died of ovarian cancer when he was nine…”

For the first time since Lucas had started telling this story, Madeline found something she could identify with. But even then, her parents’ deaths were quick. Cancer was not.

“Since his dad was an active-duty Marine, he went to live with his grandmother in Kentucky.”

Something else Madeline could identify with.

“He was real proud of his dad, who was deployed as a gunnery sergeant in Desert Storm. Apparently, there’d been Cunninghams—that was the kid’s last name—in the Marines since they were first founded in Philadelphia in 1775.”

“That’s quite a coincidence. That you all would name him Opie, and Ron Howard played Richard Cunningham in
Happy Days.
”

“There’s more. The kid’s name was Richard Cunningham.”

That would have made her smile if the tale hadn’t been so tragic.

“I had no idea the Marines went back that far, to before we were a country.”

“According to the kid, who had no reason to lie, an ancestor had fought with George Washington, and after that, through every generation, whenever America needed a U.S. Marine, anywhere in the world, a Cunningham male had always been there to answer the call. Unfortunately, according to Zach, one of the guys who met his dad later down in South Carolina, Opie ended that streak.”

“Oh, that makes it even worse. Not that anything’s worse than death, but…”

“I know what you mean. And yeah, I agree. He was from Salt Lick, Kentucky, and had a fiancée who was going to school to be a beautician. They figured she’d be able to get a job fixing hair wherever he might be stationed after they got married.

“They were going to have two kids. And a couple bluetick hounds so he could take his boys hunting with him, the way he’d gone with his dad. Shane asked what he’d do if they had girls, which seemed to come as a surprise. But he thought about it for a minute, then decided he’d have to lock them in a closet to keep guys like us away from them until they were thirty.

“Or, maybe he’d switch from the Baptists over to the Catholics and lock them away in a convent.…We all laughed about that idea.”

He blew out a breath. Looked out the window at the wide, empty expanse of ocean.

“It’s going to sound really odd, because you had to have been there to fully understand, but it was cool for a while. The night was quiet, and it made the war seem like something that was happening to someone else. It was as if we were just sitting around in a bar, shooting the bull.

“Everyone started telling their own stories. All about girls.” He smiled at that, but his eyes were sad. And distant. “Zach, he was the guy with the type-O blood, talked about a girl back home in South Carolina. Sax talked about Kara. About how he’d fallen in love with her, but she’d been in love with someone else, so he’d never gotten to tell her how he felt.”

“I remember, during that time, thinking it must have been hard on him,” Madeline said. “Nearly everyone in town except Kara could see what had happened. At least he finally got to tell her. And they’ve definitely made up for lost time.”

“That’s for sure. I talked about you. Not because I was bragging or anything about us, you know…”

“Having sex like bunnies all summer.”

That earned a faint smile. “Well, I didn’t put it exactly like that, but yeah. I told how much I’d loved you, and how you said you’d loved me—”

“Which was the absolute truth.”

“I was a cretin who didn’t deserve you. And, for the record, every guy in that bunker, including Opie, told me I was an idiot.”

“Even a couple days ago you wouldn’t have received any argument from me about that. But things change.”

And people changed. Hadn’t they both? Yet the chemistry was still there. Even stronger than ever. It was something she’d never experienced before with any other man. Not even Maxime.

In the beginning, when she’d first met Lucas when she was thirteen and he was fifteen, although there weren’t any sexual vibes going on, there had been an instant connection. At first she’d thought that it was only because it was her first year living there and he was a summer boy, which automatically made them somewhat outsiders.

But then, each summer when he returned, the bond had grown stronger. Until what had started out as friendship blossomed into love.

But they’d been too young and too inexperienced in the ways of working out relationships. Although he’d definitely gone about it in the wrong way, she also knew now that he’d been thinking of her when he’d sent her off to Europe.

Again, while she was being totally honest, she had to admit that if she hadn’t followed through on her dream, not only would she not be the person she was today, with the career she’d established and the ability to help the other person she loved, but she might actually have come to resent him for holding her back.

“You’re right about things changing,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “But here’s the thing, Maddy. I understand that you’re a planner. You always have been, which is why you had your entire life plotted out by your teens.”

“And look how well that turned out,” she murmured.

“Except for the Frenchman, you’ve done really well, and, yeah, you might not be exactly in the place you thought you’d be ten years ago, but you’re damn close. While I’ve always been more of a go-with-the-flow kind of guy.”

“I don’t believe that. Kara told me that no medic carried more supplies than you, so you’d be ready for anything.”

“That was life and death. Which is my point. Life doesn’t fit neatly in all those boxes on a calendar. Or on a spreadsheet or a timetable. One minute you’re getting engaged and planning on babies and bluetick hounds, and the next minute, you’re dying in a bunker in some godforsaken place thousands of miles from home. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“We’ve already lost ten years.” He leaned toward her. “Which weren’t really a waste, because if we’d gotten married back then, it might not have lasted. But we’re adults now. I’ve never—ever—felt the way about any other woman the way I feel about you.”

“I’m the same way,” she admitted. It was difficult to say, given that she’d gotten married for what she now realized were all the wrong reasons. “About you.”

She polished off the rest of her wine, then stood up and held out her hand. “And I think it’s time we begin making up for that lost time.”

He stood up, as well. His eyes were heartbreakingly sad, but she could also see a familiar spark of lust. “I didn’t tell you that story to get a pity fuck out of it.”

“I’m so horribly sorry about what happened up there on that mountain. To Opie; to all of you. But believe me, Lucas, that’s not the reason I want to make love with you.”

Granted, his story had made her want to weep. To take him to bed and comfort him with sexual healing.

But Madeline realized that was the last thing he needed.

She’d always been a control freak. Perhaps it came from her parents falling from the sky. Perhaps from working in a male-dominated world where kitchens were like chaotic circuses needing the stability of a ringmaster to keep everything running smoothly. Or perhaps it was merely her nature.

Whatever the case, she understood that Lucas didn’t need her to control this situation. To soothe his pain with gentle hands and tender touches.

What he needed was the freedom to exorcise his demons with passion.

And because she loved him, and because he’d reawakened something inside Madeline, something that had remained dormant all during her marriage, she framed his tragically handsome face between her palms.

“You want me, Lucas?” Their eyes met and there was a flash of heat like a bolt of lightning over the sea. “Then take me.”

47

The challenge hovered between them, from her to him and back again. A sizzle of electric charge, like that first day he’d kissed her on the seawall so many years ago, arced between them.

Her scent floated on the rain-softened air, filling his head, flogging his senses, making coherent thought difficult.

Lucas had sworn that after all this time, after how he’d hurt her, he’d do things right. That he wouldn’t allow his hunger—or hers—to rush him.

“I do want you.” He traced a line down her cheek with a finger, stunned to find that his hands—the same hands that inserted IVs in the midst of raging battles—were far from steady. “So much I ache.”

Unlike the other night, when he’d carried her into the bedroom, he took her hand and they walked the short distance to the bedroom.

“I’m sorry I lied, Maddy.” He pushed some wild curls away from her face. “It was a stupid, fucked-up lie that I’ve regretted from the moment you ran out the door.”

She lifted her chin. Passion had turned her eyes to gleaming pewter. “Then here’s your chance to make up for it.”

“Oh, I fully intend to do exactly that.” He took hold of the bottom of her pretty sunshine-colored sweater. “Lift your arms.”

She did, shifting to help him pull it over her head. He tossed it across the room, where it landed on the back of a chair.

Practical gray cotton framed her voluptuous breasts. Forget the Grand Canyon. Or the northern lights. Maddy’s breasts were the true, natural wonders of the world.

Her nipples were the color of ripe strawberries, which brought up a fantasy of spreading chocolate on them, then licking it off. Which, in turn, had him wishing he’d thought to buy some Hershey’s syrup while he’d been picking up that wine.

Next time.

His lips dipped into the cleavage framed by the cotton as he inhaled her scent.

“Lord, you are one tasty woman.”

“It’s the lotion.” It took only the touch of his mouth on her warming flesh to make her tremble. “Gram makes it from the essential oil of peaches, vanilla, and coconut.” The possessive touch of a palm to one of those amazing breasts brought her to full arousal.

“It’s not peaches I’m tasting.” While his mouth stayed busy with her breasts, his hands whipped the thin gold belt through the loops of her jeans and sent it flying across the room. “It’s temptation.” He pulled her down onto the wide bed with him and got down to business. “And sex.”

The metal zipper of her jeans going down sounded unnaturally loud in the silence broken only by the surf below them, the sigh of the wind in the top of the fir trees surrounding the cottage, and their heavy breathing.

“Lucas.” She arched her hips.

“Soon,” he promised.

He slipped a finger beneath the elastic waistband of the cotton panties that were as utilitarian as her bra, combed a hot path through a narrow line of silky black curls, then skimmed a touch along the slick, moist folds.