The Gauntlet (13 page)

Thunderstruck, Molly stood very still. She stared across the living room at Cam. The terrible sadness that she’d seen in his eyes from the first day was there again, but magnified. His shadowy features were twisted with grief, and it cut through to her heart as nothing else ever could. Forgetting her own pain and defensiveness, Molly took a step forward, her arms dropping to her sides.

“My God, you lost your family!” she breathed, and her eyes welled up with tears.

Chapter Eight

M
olly’s cry shattered through Cam. He took in the devastation written across her face. What he saw was what she was feeling for
him.

“I’m so sorry, Cam,” Molly whispered, moving tentatively toward him. She saw the naked anguish carved in every line of his face. How could she ever have accused him of being an unfeeling machine? He’d lobbied so passionately on her behalf that he’d revealed his own wounded heart.

She saw the indecision, the utter hopelessness and ravaged feelings that losing his family had inflicted upon Cam. He stood tensely at her approach. Halting before him, Molly tilted her head to keep contact with his narrowed eyes.

“It makes my problems seem so inconsequential.”

“No!” Cam rasped, snapping his head up. “It doesn’t.”

Hesitantly, Molly reached out with her hand, her fingers barely touching his arm. Cam was trembling. What love this man must have had for his family. As she searched the darkness in his stormy blue eyes, Molly realized how much he must care for her to relive this agony. Her fingers tightened around his arm.

“I’m going to try and understand what you’re saying,” Molly said, her own voice shaky.

Molly’s fingers felt like fire on his arm, their warmth burning through his shirt to his flesh. Cam’s heart and shredded emotions screamed at him to sweep her into his arms, but he fought the need. God, sweet God, he needed Molly! He needed the warmth and compassion she was offering him. She stood serene and strong, when he felt neither. Wildly aware of her hand on him, Cam closed his eyes and dragged in a deep, shaky breath.

“You’re special, Molly. You’ve got the brains to do this. Don’t let your father and brother continue to control you. You can’t fight two wars on two different fronts at the same time. I don’t know how you made it through Annapolis with them on your back like that.”

“My friends, Dana and Maggie,” she answered simply.

Cam swallowed hard, tears welling up within him, begging to be shed. He hadn’t cried at the funeral. He’d merely felt utterly gutted and numb throughout the entire service. And tears had come only twice in the year since. Now, with Molly standing so close, Cam intuitively knew she could be strong enough for him, if he wanted to sink into her arms and sob out the grief still trapped in his heart.

“Cam?”

He winced at her low, pleading tone. In a superhuman effort, because Cam realized this was the wrong time and place for them, he pulled from her grasp. “I’ve got to get going, Molly,” he muttered, blindly turning away.

Bereft, Molly watched him move toward the door. Cam needed her. He needed to be held so he could cry. She could see it. But why was he leaving? Hurrying to catch up with him, she met him at the door.

“Why don’t you stay for a while, Cam?” she asked gently. “You’re in no shape to drive right now.”

“No.”

Molly stood her ground. His voice had been harsh, grinding like a dog snapping a bone between powerful jaws. “Look at you. You’re trembling, Cam.”

Cam stared down at Molly in disbelief. She was blocking the door! Her voice was calm and reasonable when he felt anything but. Feeling not anger but desperation, he reached for the doorknob.

“No!” Molly whispered, gripping his hand and holding it. She stared up at him. “What’s going on here, Cam? It’s okay to help me, but you don’t let anyone help you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. I want you to turn around and go back to the couch. Let me pour us some brandy. We both need it. We need to talk.”

For an instant, panic seized Cam. He wanted to push Molly aside and escape.
Why?
a part of his brain whispered to him. Molly was offering solace, a safe place when he’d had none in the past year. Surprisingly, the softness that was Molly had transformed her into a woman who was firmly in charge. He regarded her, too caught up in his own emotional reactions to figure out what had taken place.

“Come on,” Molly insisted, dragging Cam away from the door. She kept a tight grip on his hand as she led him back into the living room. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she pushed him down on the sofa. “Now, sit there. And don’t you dare move while I get the brandy and snifters. Understand?”

Cam nodded, hanging his head, the anxiety gone—replaced with such a sense of loss that he felt physically weakened.

In the kitchen, Molly quickly wiped the tears from her eyes. Cam mustn’t see them. He needed her strength, not her tears right now. As she brought the snifters down from the cupboard and located the apricot brandy to pour a bit into each, Molly shook her head.

“What’s going on?” she muttered to herself. There was no denying it any longer, Molly thought, capping the brandy and setting it back in the cupboard. Never had a man made her feel so much or want so much.

As she carried the snifters into the living room, Molly realized she was seriously drawn to Cam. She’d had relationships before, but none had ever touched the deep chords of her heart or turned her dreams into torrid longing until now. Molly tabled that discovery, knowing she couldn’t allow it to interfere with Cam’s healing process. It was obvious he was still grieving—and perhaps venting it for the first time—for his lost family.

Girding herself internally, she joined Cam on the couch. Slipping the snifter into his hands, she said, “Drink it. All of it.”

He twisted his head and looked at Molly with curiosity. There was nothing soft about her now. She was very much in charge. Grateful, he lifted the snifter and gulped down the small bit of brandy. His lips pulled away from his teeth, sucking air between them as the apricot brandy hit his throat and then his stomach.

“That’s powerful stuff….”

Molly smiled tautly. “My grandmother’s recipe. She was a real healer. I remember her telling my mother that a good dose of brandy always helped in emergencies.”

Cam studied the snifter as he slowly turned it around in his hands. “Yeah, this stuff will heal any crisis.”

Molly curled her legs beneath her, a foot away from Cam. She’d purposely turned off the living-room lights, intuitively understanding that darkness was preferable under the circumstances. Cam’s face was harsh and alive with emotion, the interior shadows cutting cruelly across its planes, emphasizing the grief he’d allowed to surface.

“There are many ways to heal,” Molly began in a low voice, watching him for reaction. “I want you to tell me about your family, Cam.”

“Why?”

“Because I care enough to listen.”
I care for you.
Molly bit back the real truth. “When I came to TPS and saw you for the first time, you scared the heck out of me. I’d never seen a man with such an emotionless face. I’ve never seen someone able to control their feelings to the degree you do. I kept wondering why you were that way. Now—” Molly sighed “—I know. You lost your family….”

“I lost everything,” Cam whispered harshly, his control starting to unravel, “to that goddamn airliner crashing. The bastard of a pilot tried to land during a thunderstorm. Why didn’t he take the plane around? Why didn’t he have the guts to tell the tower it was too dangerous, too dicey, and have them wave him off the landing pattern? Why couldn’t the son of a bitch have the brains to get rerouted to another field?”

Cam gripped the snifter hard between his hands as he stared out into the gathering darkness beyond the open windows. No longer was he in Molly’s apartment, nor did he feel her next to him as he talked. He heard the pain, the anger and utter hopelessness in his own voice. He thought he sounded like a wolf baying into the night, haunted and alone.

Molly sat, unmoving, her snifter of untouched brandy resting on her thigh. Every line of Cam’s body was frozen with tension, his shoulders steeled beneath the load he’d carried so long by himself. She didn’t dare move or reach out to touch him, for fear of breaking the connection he’d established with his deeply suppressed feelings.

“I dropped Sean and Jeanne off at the airport. Her parents lived in Dallas, Texas, and they hadn’t seen their grandson in two years. It was May, and a good time to go. I was stuck here at TPS with a new class and couldn’t get leave to go with them.” Bitterly, Cam rasped, “That was at three o’clock. I got off work a couple of hours later and went home. I already missed them. God, we’d been apart more than together in our seven-year marriage. I was aboard an aircraft carrier when Sean was born. Jeanne had to go through it alone. I wanted so damn badly to be there for her…to see my son born.

“I’d turned on the television because I couldn’t stand the quiet in the house. It was human voices, something to break the silence. I was out in the kitchen fixing myself a can of soup for dinner when the national news came on. I heard them announce that the plane Jeanne had been on had crashed at Dallas during a thunderstorm. They said there were no survivors.”

Cam hung his head, tears driving into his tightly shut eyes. His hands gripped the brandy snifter almost painfully. A sob worked its way up his throat. He clamped his lips shut and tried to fight it back.

Molly set her glass on the black lacquer coffee table in front of them. Gently she pried Cam’s snifter from between his clenched fingers. Sliding her arm around his shoulders, she whispered, “Come here,” and drew Cam against her, letting his head rest against her shoulder and neck.

Just the softness of Molly’s voice, her excruciatingly gentle touch, ended the battle between Cam’s emotions and his iron-clad control. As he leaned into her opened arms the first sob tore from him, shaking his entire body. He felt Molly’s arms enclose him, holding him tightly with her woman’s strength, her woman’s compassion.

Molly lay back against the couch as Cam’s arms reached around her, gripping her so hard that they squeezed the breath from her. It didn’t matter as first one sob and then another ripped out of him. She’d never seen a man cry, and it tore savagely at her heart and soul. Cam’s weeping was that of a storm having broken, wild and relentless in its fury. Her blouse was soaked with his tears. His hands opened and closed against her back as her body absorbed the painful sobs she thought would tear him physically apart.

All Molly could do was hold Cam and shakily stroke his hair, whispering words meant to comfort and heal. Molly had no idea how long they stayed locked in each other’s embrace, for time had ceased to exist. She cried for Cam, for his pain, his terrible loss. Understanding what it was like to lose someone she desperately loved, it was easy to capitulate to Cam’s grief and share it unselfishly with him.

Her eyes were wet with tears as she finally opened them. The storm had passed. Cam held her tightly, but his grasp had loosened somewhat. Except for the gossamer light from the kitchen, darkness surrounded them. Molly didn’t move, absorbing the feel of his strong body pressed against her.

Gradually, Cam released his hold on Molly. Her once silky hair beneath his jaw and cheek was damp with his tears. Inhaling deeply, he wanted to remember her wonderfully feminine fragrance, a sweetness subtle and yet unforgettable. She wore no perfume. It was her natural scent that dizzied him, reminding him of life, not death. Opening his eyes, Cam took in Molly as a woman—soft with curves, flexible and giving. God, was she giving—in a way he’d never felt before.

Though he wanted to keep her in his arms forever, Cam knew it couldn’t be. He was still healing; the past must continue to be put to rest. He lifted his head and gently broke their embrace. Looking down on her silhouetted features, he saw the paths of tears tracing down her cheeks. The fact that she’d cried for him shook him anew.

With his thumbs he wiped the remnants of tears from her pale cheeks. Her skin was velvety firm, and the newly awakened part of him, the man, wanted her. Dizzied by Molly’s closeness, Cam found it impossible to sort through all the emotions he was feeling. Sitting up, he placed his elbows on his thighs and rubbed his face.

“That was a long time in coming,” Molly said quietly, sliding her hand along his strong back. It felt good to caress him, to continue to give him comfort.

Her slender hand outlining the curve of his shoulders felt unbelievably healing to Cam. He was in awe of Molly’s intuitive knowledge of what he needed, and he sat like a starving man, absorbing what she offered him in the form of touching. He felt shaky and raw inside, still craving physical contact to stabilize him after the harsh release of his grief.

“When my mom died,” Molly went on in a low voice, “I didn’t know what to do. When you’re ten, the word
cancer
doesn’t mean much. She had liver cancer. It hit her fast and hard. She wasn’t sick for very long. I remember her coming into my bedroom one day when she didn’t look very well. Pooky jumped up and lay on my bed while she talked to me. Mom picked up my favorite doll, Amanda, and held us both in her lap. She tried to explain about the disease and where it was in her. She used Amanda to show me.

“I guess I didn’t have a very good grasp of heaven at that time. Mom said she’d be leaving soon for heaven. She said it would be as if someone took Miss Amanda from me and I never saw her again.” Molly sniffed back the tears. “That got my attention. I could understand if Miss Amanda suddenly disappeared from my room and never came back. She was my best friend next to my mom. I started to cry when it all sank in—that someday soon, my mom wouldn’t be coming back to me. We sat there all afternoon. She held me in her lap and just rocked me. I remember everything she told me even to this day. At the time, some of it didn’t make sense. But it does now. I loved her so much, Cam. She was such a warm, wonderful person.”

Cam roused himself, his heart feeling every nuance of emotion, both for himself and for Molly and her desperately unhappy childhood. Turning, he captured one of her hands and squeezed it between his. “You must be exactly like your mother,” he told her in a raspy voice. “A very special person.”