Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines) (44 page)

Oh, she was going to feel bad about
that bit of rudeness later. Lance was, after all, her close friend. He didn’t
deserve her testy mood, but damn it, this was her time, and she didn’t want
anyone intruding on it for a few more days. She needed this ! And what did she
care what Nick thought? He’d walked out of her life with only a bouquet of
flowers as a goodbye. He didn’t have the right to say anything about what she
did from now on. He was a dream ended. And she meant to work hard at keeping
him there.

CHAPTER
30

BY THE END THE WEEK, Hanna knew she
was failing miserably at keeping Nick Kelly buried in the past. The awful chasm
between feeling so happy, then so miserable was simply too great to breach.

Her sailing excursion had sadly only
been a temporary bandage. Two days after her return, she went back to work. She
had to beg off teaching an evening class at the University Medical Center at
the beginning of September, though. She simply didn’t have the stamina to work
two jobs yet. Even her normal sixty-hour work week at the hospital was beyond
her for a while.

Since long hours and hard work could
not be her catharsis for a broken heart, she finally tried dating to get Nick
out of her system. She decided she would try very hard to become interested in
someone else, someone who actually wanted her. Rewarding his persistence, she
went out several times with Dr. Rick Penman. They even went sailing in her boat;
well, she sailed and he sunbathed. But putting a man in Nick’s place on her
Emerald Mermaid didn’t help to banish him. She only ended up comparing poor
Rick Penman to Nick Kelly, and, unfortunately for her heart, there was
absolutely no comparison.

In the weeks that followed his
brother’s departure, Lance intensified his attentions, too. Hanna hadn’t been
blind all these years. She knew Lance thought he was in love with her. For the
first time, she tried to look at him as more than a dear friend.

She went on a couple of easy salvage
dives with him, and puttered around his boat shop after her shifts at the
hospital. Her car was still so unreliable, he took her to work and picked her
up most days.

And when the Seattle Symphony began
their season in early September, she and Lance attended the first concert
together. Because the performance ended so late, they stayed overnight at a
hotel downtown, deciding they’d also do some shopping the next day before taking
the ferry back home.

At Hanna’s request they got separate
rooms, and then stayed up half the night in hers talking— mostly about
Christopher and how he had dealt with Lance’s absence. Interestingly enough,
though, they also talked about Christine and her fatherless daughter, and how
they were coping. Hanna discovered that Lance was surprisingly interested in
Dylan’s widow.

Eventually, the conversation turned to
Nick. Lance had questions about the nature of her relationship with his
brother. It was hard enough to hear his name mentioned, let alone discuss their
intimacy. Hanna tactfully avoided most of the questions. Instead, she got him
to talk about his month-long captivity at Li Chen’s compound.

It wasn’t easy to hear about the abuse
he’d suffered. She knew it was cathartic for him to talk about his experience,
though, so she listened without interruption. But while he was speaking, she
couldn’t stop herself from comparing him, too, to Nick. Except for his sandy
blonde hair and his brown eyes, he looked a lot like his older brother. The
shape of his mouth was similar, the shape of his nose and jaw. He didn’t have
Nick’s scars, though. Lance’s good looks were unflawed. He wasn’t as powerfully
built or as tall as Nick, either, but he was still broad-shouldered and solid.
He was a handsome, strongly masculine man.

Hanna tried to image herself
romantically involved with him. He cared a lot for her. He was a devoted
friend. They both loved Christopher to pieces. They enjoyed many of the same
things, particularly sailing. He’d make her a very good husband. They could
raise Christopher together. Maybe have another child. She could keep her two
jobs, remain close to their families, and stay in the Northwest, which she
loved. And she liked Lance, better than Rick Penman or some of the other single
physicians who had shown an interest in her.

But no matter how many good logical
reasons there were for getting romantically involved with Lance Kelly, she
couldn’t escape the fact that she didn’t love him, except as a friend. And if
she forced herself to have a more intimate relationship with him, he would
always and forever remind her entirely too much of his brother.

That wouldn’t be fair to Lance. Just
the fact that she had compared him to Nick wasn’t fair. It made her feel guilty
and selfish. If he knew, he’d be hurt. He deserved a woman who loved him for
himself, not because he was a reflection of another man.

And as his wife, she would become
Nick’s sister-in-law. God in heaven! That would never work! There just wasn’t
any hope for her, she thought miserably by the end of the evening.

In thirty-four years, she hadn’t met
the man who could fill Nick Kelly’s shoes. She was doomed to the lonely life of
a spinster. That last thought was so pathetic, she cried herself to sleep that
night, just as she had too many others in the past weeks.

On the ferry ride home the next
evening, Lance commented on her obvious melancholy. “I thought maybe the trip
to Seattle would cheer you up.”

Hanna smiled wistfully at the man
beside her. “I’m sorry. I tried, Lance. And it was fun. I enjoyed the
performance last night, and the shopping today.”

He laughed. “I doubt that. You didn’t
buy anything but a couple of new CDs. I thought shopping was supposed to be a
woman’s cure-all for the blues.”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m beyond a
cure. I seem to have tried everything. All that’s left is time.”

He reached over and covered her hand
as it rested on the rail. “Time is easy to give. I’m a patient man.”

“Oh, don’t be, Lance,” she implored.
“I was patient, and it got me nowhere. Don’t waste your life waiting for
impossible dreams.”

“Some things are worth the wait.”

“No, they aren’t.”

She looked at him and realized he
wasn’t going to be persuaded, at least not yet. Stemming her tears, she turned
back to the view of the Seattle skyline as they headed across the Puget Sound
toward home.

A WEEK LATER, Hanna was no less
depressed. She didn’t feel like sharing the usual Sunday activities with the
two families. She deliberately slept in too late to go to church. Later that
afternoon, she told her grandmother and Christine that she was too tired to go
to Jessie’s for dinner. They took Katie and left her without argument, much to
her relief.

She spent the day in her pajamas, and
once she was alone, she went upstairs to her bedroom to retrieve the large flowered
hat box that held all the letters and photos Nick had sent her over the years;
twenty years of faithful regular correspondence. There had never been a
significant lapse in his communication with her, until now. It had been over
two months since he’d left, and she hadn’t heard a word from him, though he had
talked to his mother and brother and even Colleen.

Taking the box downstairs, Hanna went
into the den. It had been an chilly, overcast day, so Colleen had lit a fire in
the hearth earlier. Hanna knelt down in front of the fireplace and fed it a
large log to rekindle it, then plopped cross-legged before the roaring blaze to
remove the lid from the box she’d brought down.

Initially, she just wanted to dump all
the contents into the fire in one big heap, but the instant she saw the first
photograph flutter out, she changed her mind. Twenty years of precious memories
overwhelmed her.

She dumped the entire contents onto
the carpeted floor in front of her. A letter written within the last year sat
on top of the haphazard pile. She picked it up and re-read it. Nick had been in
command of an elite unit comprised of a multi-national force, moving through
the mountains that bordered Pakistan, searching for insurgents. He told her how
cold and miserable it was, and how he wished he was home with her and his
family. It had been so long since his last visit. Did she remember?

Hanna closed her eyes and blindly
dropped the letter onto the carpet. She knew what he’d been trying to get her
to remember. She shut her mind to the memories of their first sexual encounter,
and picked up another envelop.

Before Afghanistan, Nick had been in
Iraq. Except for a few special assignments to other parts of the world, he’d
spent most of his career in the Middle East. Certainly, since 9/11, he’d been
over there almost continually. Letter after letter was written from one forward
operations base after another, though posted from Kandahar or more recently
Camp Leatherneck.

One of those special assignments had
been in Thailand. He hadn’t told her what he’d been doing, but she now knew
he’d been chasing the Triad and Li Chen. Though there were no photographs from
there, there had been letters. Again, several of his letters hinted at what had
occurred so intimately between them on his last visit home.

The photos were as heart wrenching as
the letters. And they were nearly as numerous. So many letters had come with at
least one photo, always taken by someone else, usually depicting Nick alone,
but occasionally with a few of his buddies.

Whether he was in his full dress blues,
fatigues, or civilian clothes, Nick Kelly was an imposingly handsome man; a man
who would never go unnoticed by any woman. Hanna especially loved the ones that
showed him in a tight Marine green t-shirt, or better yet, no shirt at all. For
years, she’d kept a few of her favorites in frames on her dresser, and one
always under her pillow, usually one minus any shirt.

After the Naval Academy, he had never
been in one place for very long. He’d been stationed on board ships, on every
ocean in the world, traveled to every continent, nearly every country. He’d
sent her gifts and cards from all over the world. He’d never missed a major
holiday or a birthday.

Nick Kelly was a man who took the time
to remember the dates, and who found comfort in keeping in touch with his
family and friends. Hanna had never considered his communication with her
unique. All of the family benefitted from his generosity and thoughtfulness. But
now, with it all spread out in front of her, she wondered if it had meant more
than simple friendship for him.

Why had Nick sent her so many pictures
of himself? To keep his memory alive with her? She wasn’t sure if he had kept
all the letters and pictures she had sent him, but, while she cherished his
correspondence, she had never needed it to keep her memories of him alive. Nick
Kelly had always been engraved on her heart. He’d always been part of her soul,
ever-present in her thoughts.

She found one of her favorite
photographs and separated it from the rest. It was a picture of Nick in his
cadet uniform at his graduation from the Naval Academy at Annapolis. How old
had he been? 22? He looked so young, so eager, so handsome. She fingered his
face lovingly.

He’d been disappointed she hadn’t come
to the ceremony. But she’d just begun medical school and hadn’t been able to
afford the time or the expense. In those days, she’d been a poor medical
student.

There were lots of letters from his
time at the Academy. They were so sweet, so dear; the letters of a boy, barely
turned a man. He’d been alone and on his own for the first time; excited,
anxious, and frightened that he wouldn’t be able to walk admirably and capably
in his father’s heroic footsteps. He’d reached out to her for help with his
studies that first year, and for the unconditional support she’d always offered
him. Though he had never known it, she had always considered him her soul mate.

In the end, she couldn’t bring herself
to part with twenty years of memories and mementoes. She couldn’t throw them in
the fire and destroy them. And yet they were so painful to recall, they filled
her with heartache; made her heartsick. She pulled her knees up to her chest
and locked her arms around her bent legs. Tears streamed down her face and
spilled onto the papers around her, blurring the ink, blurring her vision.
Rocking back and forth, she dropped her head and pressed her eyes hard into her
kneecaps.

Dear God! They were all so infinitely
precious to her, just like the man who had sent them! Damn, him! He was
thirty-eight and she was thirty-four. They’d lost half a lifetime. Neither of
them was getting any younger, and now there was probably no chance that they’d
ever reconnect with one another. Why had he left her like he had? Had he not
felt how deeply she loved him? Had he felt nothing for her in return? God help
her, how was she ever going to stop loving a man she had loved her whole
pathetic lonely life?!

That was how Nick’s mother found her,
on the floor in front of the fireplace, silhouetted by the fire’s flames, sobbing
and rocking back and forth.

Jessie had known Hanna wasn’t truly
getting over her oldest son. She looked like she’d lost twenty pounds in the
past two months. There wasn’t any spark left in her. It hurt Jessie to see the
woman she’d always loved like a daughter so miserable. She hadn’t intervened.
Hanna had confided in her over the years precisely because Jessie had never
betrayed any of those confidences. And she’d been hoping, praying, that Nick
would come to his senses and realize how lonely his life was going to be
without Hanna Wallace in it.

But Jessie couldn’t stand by any
longer. Nick had sounded just as unhappy these past few weeks. She’d heard it
in his voice every time he called; two, sometimes three times a week! For
heaven’s sake, he always managed to bring the conversation around to Hanna,
wanting to know how she was recuperating and what she was up to. Those were not
the sentiments of a man who had truly meant goodbye.