“How? What? I do not—”
Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She did not care that it was wrong; she kissed him back. Not thinking about his wife. Only reacting to the loneliness, the missing him, the fear and the love she would always and forever feel for this man.
JEFF COULDN’T BELIEVE he had Rabia in his arms again. The waiting had been hell. The worry that they wouldn’t get to her in time was crippling. Then Mike had called with the news.
“They’ve got her, Jeff. She’s on her way to the States now.”
“Thank God, thank God.” Jess had teared up with joy beside him. And for the first time in a very long time, he thanked God, too. “Where will they take her?” he finally had the presence of mind to ask.
“That’s up in the air for now.”
Jess had gotten on the phone then and told Mike the way things were. “Now,
So now here they were. In some top-secret military facility, one of several in the U.S. that only the top brass and immediate personnel knew about. Sharing a bed in an apartment that was generally reserved for the men with stars on their uniforms.
Jeff didn’t even know where the post was. Mike had sent a plane to International Falls. Between Brad and Jess, they’d managed to run interference with the press that had been camped out at the store since about two hours after the story broke. Using a couple of Brad’s buddies as decoys, Brad had driven him to the airport and put him on the plane—but not before he’d said his good-byes to Jess.
“You’re an amazing woman.”
“I know,” she’d said with a grin. “And you, my dear friend, are going to be just fine.”
He’d hugged her hard.
“You haven’t seen the last of me,” she’d promised, as more tears threatened. “No matter what, we’re family. Now… go to her. She must be scared half to death.”
Yes, she’d been scared and confused, he realized, as he watched Rabia sleep beside him in the bed that, in her eyes, was larger than any man and woman would ever need.
She wasn’t afraid anymore. She was thoroughly loved and blissfully sated. And now she slept in his arms, and all the missing her was behind him. She was here now. She was his now, and he was never letting her go.
He’d told her about Jess. There would be paperwork, but since he’d been declared legally dead, they weren’t even certain if they were considered married at this point. They would work it out.
Then he would be free, with Jess’s blessings, to marry her.
“Marry me?” Her onyx eyes had glittered with happy, bewildered tears as he’d brushed the hair away from her face.
“In America, we marry for love. I love you, Rabia.”
“Yes, I will marry you, Jeffery.”
Then, to his amazement, she’d fallen asleep. Just like that. Because she felt safe and because she could finally give in to the exhaustion and let him share in the sorrow over her father’s death that she’d carried by herself for too long.
With her sleeping peacefully beside him, he, too, finally gave in to the pull of exhaustion.
WHEN JEFF WOKE up several hours later, Rabia was lying on her side, watching him.
“Hello.” He smiled into her eyes.
She found his hand, brought it to her lips, and kissed it. Then she lowered it to her abdomen, pressed it against her. “Someone else would like to say hello.”
Her expressive eyes relayed both excitement and uncertainty. And as she held his hand there, spreading her fingers wide over his, her meaning finally dawned.
“A baby?”
She nodded, still uncertain.
He felt a smile spread from his heart to his eyes. “We made a baby?”
Seeing his happiness, she smiled, too. “On the roof. Under the stars.”
It humiliated him that he cried so easily these days. He’d done enough of it in the past month to last a lifetime. But these tears didn’t bother him. These tears were born in wonder and steeped in joy.
These tears celebrated the hopeless improbability that in the midst of such suffering and terror and ugliness, something as beautiful and miraculous as life had been created.
Chapter 33
“YOU KNOW,” TY SAID, SURPRISED when his brother, who he hadn’t seen in several weeks, walked into his office as if he did it on a daily basis, “last time you showed up, you brought bad news.”
“Hey, little bro. Nice to see you, too. How’ve I been, you ask? Why, I’m just dandy. Eva? Yep. She’s fit and fine.”
“Sorry,” Ty said, feeling like an ass. “Been a long day.” It had been a long freaking month. He missed Jess. He missed the life they had planned to have. He felt sorry for himself. But that wasn’t anything his brother was going to find out.
He rocked back in his desk chair as outside his office window, a small cargo plane taxied down the apron toward the runway, heat shimmering off the concrete under the hot Florida sun. “Folks OK?”
“Talked to ’em last night. They’re doing great. Worried about you, though. What’s this about not coming home for Christmas?”
He regarded Mike thoughtfully. “Until the past two years, you hadn’t been home for Christmas or birthdays or—wait—you hadn’t been home at all. For eight long years. I’m not allowed to miss one Christmas?”
“I’m the black sheep. I’m supposed to be a jerk. You’re the good son.”
Ty knew perfectly well why Mike had disappeared for eight years, and it wasn’t because he was a jerk. His brother was the best man he knew. But Mike had been in a bad place back then—which, most likely, was the reason he recognized exactly where Ty was right now.
“So how’s business?” Mike sprawled in a chair across from Ty’s desk and made a big show of checking out the whiteboards and the full schedule inked in with erasable marker.
“Banner year.” Ty still wondered why his brother had shown up but figured it had little to do with Christmas, which was less than a week away. “What do you want, Mike?”
Mike propped a boot heel on the corner of Ty’s desk, linked his hands over his belt, and regarded him with a wise-ass smile. “I think I might let you worm it out of me.”
For the first time, Ty laughed. “Sorry. Not playing.”
“Oh, you’re going to want to play this game.”
The Cheshire Cat smile was getting irritating. “I’m not coming to work for you, if that’s what this is about.”
“Nah. I knew that was a pipe dream.”
More of that ridiculous toothpaste-ad smile.
“You look really stupid, you know that?”
This time, Mike laughed. “And you’re going to
“OK, fine. Why are you smiling?”
“The reason rhymes with guess—which is kind of ironic, since you’re going to have to guess to find out.”
