To the Brink (14 page)

Eight days. She'd known him eight days.

And she said yes without hesitation.

Darcy liked to think it was because of her connections at the embassy that they managed to get the paperwork rushed through the channels. Ethan never said, but she suspected that his relationship with Ambassador Hayden might have actually been the master key that turned all the bureaucratic locks.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was they had their marriage license. And that her family and Ethan's were happy for both of them.

"I know it's sudden, but I love him, Mom," she'd laughed on the phone the next day. "I just wish ... well. I'd always thought Daddy would walk me down the aisle and give me away.

"I'm sorry," she said, happy but tearful, "but Ethan's leave is almost over. We may not see each other again for months. If we don't do this now ... well, we so want to be married. Can you forgive me?"

Of course, her mother had. And Darcy's daddy had leveled a good-natured threat to Ethan about not hurting his baby girl, before welcoming him to the family.

"We'll plan a reception at home the first chance we get," Darcy promised them because she knew, deep in her heart, that this did hurt her parents—and Delia. Darcy and her sister had always promised they'd be in each other's weddings.

"I love your family," Darcy told Ethan later the same day.

He had called his mother and father. She'd spoken with them both as well as with his sister, Eve, who had just happened to be home visiting at the time.

"They loved you, too." Ethan wrapped her hand in his where it rested on his thigh. "I'm going to make you happy, Darcy. I'm never going to make you sorry."

There was such passion in his eyes that she cried.

Just like she cried the next day at City Hall. With Manny Ortega standing as Ethan's best man and Sandy Jankowski as Darcy's maid of honor, they swore to love and to cherish until death parted them.

Thanks again to Al Hayden pulling some strings they honeymooned in Brazil... long stretches of sandy beaches, long nights of hot, steamy sex. Lazy days of getting to know and love each other even better.

"No ... no!" Darcy repeated on a laugh and, twisting, somehow managed to pull away from Ethan's hold on her waist before he dragged her deeper into the surf.

Splashing through the thigh-deep Atlantic, she ran and laughed and sprinted for the beach.

"You can run," he taunted from behind her in his best villain's voice, "but you will never escape me."

Darcy had foolishly thought she'd made a great escape when he grabbed her from behind. Ignoring her laughing shrieks, he scooped her up in his arms and trudged back into the surf.

"Pervert," she sputtered through a grin when he carried her back into the water until they were submerged to their waists and he slipped his palm under her bikini bottom to cup bare skin.

"You love it."

"On a public beach? Not so much," she assured him, scooping wet hair out of her eyes.

"Then you shouldn't wear that suit you're almost wearing."

"It's Brazil. It's hot."

"And so, dear wife, are you."

He let go of her legs and they floated down into the water. Before her feet hit the sandy bottom, she wrapped her legs around his hips and hooked her ankles at his waist.

"You are killing me, here," he growled, and banding his arms tight around her ribs lowered his head for a deep, carnal kiss. "And as you pointed out this is, after all, Brazil," he reminded her while his hands wandered south again.

"Public beach," she cautioned him, and with a well-timed move that caught him off guard dunked him, then made another break for the beach.

"There are words for women like you," he called out when he surfaced.

She turned around, pleased with herself for getting the drop on him. "
Tease
?"
she suggested, liking the sound of it and the idea that she could drive him crazy.

Something in his expression held her where she stood. With the surf licking around her ankles she watched him wade toward her. The sun glinted off his sleek, tan skin. Salt water streamed down his body and matted his hair.

When he reached her, he touched a hand to her face. Smiled. "
Important.
That's one word.
Everything.
That's another.
Loved
,"
he said, adding the most important word of all. "God, Darcy, you are so loved."

He would never stop surprising her, this man who was now her husband. And he had the damnedest ability to make her cry.

She leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his neck. "You are the darnedest man."

He touched his forehead to hers and pulled her close as the surf eddied around their ankles, eroding the shifting sand beneath their feet. "That's a good thing, right?"

"Yeah," she said, cupping his precious face between her hands. "That's a very, very good thing."

He was so strong and vital and so in need of her. And she was so very, very much in love with him.

Later that day, levered on his elbows above her, in a twilight brilliant with the first evening stars and a moon that cast a pale yellow glow over the bed in their honeymoon suite, he told her just how much.

"Darcy ..." He whispered her name as he entered and withdrew in deep, slow strokes. "You'll never know ... never... know."

Breathless with love and sensation and weepy with the weight of knowing this was their last night together, she clung to him.

"Never know," he repeated, cradling her head in his hands, "how much I love you."

And much later, after he'd emptied himself inside her and they lay in the dark, their bodies limp and damp with perspiration, he spoke into the night. Whispered as if in prayer. "I existed until I met you. Now I'm alive."

"I don't want you to go," she blurted out, and finally let the tears fall.

He wrapped her tightly against him. Murmured words of comfort, words of love, and she sensed that this strong, brave warrior came very close to doing a little crying of his own.

Chapter 11

JOLO ISLAND

PRESENT

Ethan expelled a silent breath of
relief when Darcy didn't give him away. He'd seen her snatch up the Life Saver like it was a lifeline. Seen her pop it into her mouth. Good. It was all good. She was alert enough to destroy the evidence, in control enough not to let on that she knew he was here.

That's my girl.

She was smart.
Darcy has always been so smart,
he thought with a swell of pride that did amazing things to calm his heartbeat and level out his breathing.

Even battered and exhausted and starving, she had her wits about her.

Hugging the main trunk of a clump of dapdap trees and balancing his weight with a foot on an adjacent trunk, Ethan waited and watched as she stood, then remained statue still until her guard motioned permission with the muzzle of his AK-47 for her to return to camp.

Not once did she look up or look around. Not once did she let anyone see her excitement. But Ethan saw. He saw the little things that only a husband would recognize.

Ex-husband,
he reminded himself as he waited for another fifteen minutes, then shimmied slowly and silently down the tree.

Thirty minutes later, he rejoined Dallas and Manny back at camp.

If they were relieved to see him back in one piece, they didn't show it. Dallas went back to sleep.

Manny sat up, scrubbed his face with his hands. "I'll take second watch."

"No. Go back to sleep," Ethan said. "I'm good here."

The fact was, he was too wired to sleep. Manny must have recognized it, because he lay back down, tugged his boonie cap over his face, and was out within seconds.

Ethan opened up an MRE, forced himself to eat and drink so he'd be shored up physically for the confrontation to come.

So close. He'd been so close to her. And all he could do was wait. Hope he'd eased her mind.

He went over and over their plan in his mind, playing devil's advocate, looking for flaws, poking at weak spots. But he couldn't punch any holes in it. Only fate coupled with the Philippine military could do that.

He'd consciously blocked the fact that at this very moment a full company was marching in from the north and sandwiching Darcy in the middle. The potential of their making a showing was the wild card that could truly muck things up.

To a man, Ethan, Dallas, and Manny knew their only hope was beating the military to the terrorist camp.

We've got to get them out of there before the company of soldiers arrives. End of story,
Dallas had said earlier.

Even knowing they might be cutting it close, Dallas agreed that the hour before dawn was the best time to strike. They had the advantage of NVGs, but the women didn't. They couldn't run through the jungle in pitch-dark. At least not very far very fast.

So, they waited. And didn't kid themselves that they weren't on a damn near impossible mission.

One thing Ethan had learned about war in the trenches: battle plans were painstakingly made, but they usually got chucked the moment the first round was fired.

Then everything got real, and hypothetical and logical flew out the window.

In the meantime, fighting was what they hoped to avoid. A quick in and out and it would be all over but the shouting before anyone even knew Darcy was gone. Darcy and the other woman. God.

Anyway, that was the plan. And they would follow it to the letter until they had alphabet soup. Then instinct would take over.

Ethan's instincts had always been good.

He swallowed the last of his meal and stared in the general direction of the tango camp. Yeah. His instincts had always been good.

Except when it came to his marriage.

LIMA, PERU

EIGHT YEARS EARLIER

Ethan didn't want to leave her. Didn't want to leave her in the bed where they'd started their marriage.

He didn't want to head back to the field.

It was a first for him. He'd always been eager to get back on the job. Not this morning. This morning, he just wanted to be a husband. Just a husband.

But he left anyway, to the tune of the tired but true cliché playing over and over in his head.

Duty called.

He left his wife of three days asleep and snuggled deep into the bed he'd had to force himself to crawl out of.

He couldn't say good-bye. Couldn't stand the thought of seeing her cry. But he thought of her. Every hour of the flight as he sat alone in the plane and the cloud cover below obscured the rain forest to which he was about to return he thought of her.

He was still thinking of her when he went from lover to covert killer the next day.

"What?" he asked, his heart rate revving off the charts when he and Manny arrived back at base camp and they saw the look on Weasel's face.

Something was wrong. Something was bad wrong. Ethan felt it without a single exchange of hellos as their team members gathered to meet them.