The Top Gun's Return

Junior Homecoming Princess. To comfort her when she had to get braces, and when she'd missed being selected for the freshman cheerleading squad. How angry she'd been, though she'd never let anybody see it, not even Momma.

And now? Now that she was practically grown-up and didn't really need parents anymore, it seemed all those pathetic little-girl wishes had finally been granted. Her dad was alive. He was coming home. Was God playing a joke on her? She didn't know how she was supposed to feel.

The blinds clanked softly as they slipped back into place, and a tear left its silky track down Sammi June's cheek.

* * *

Jessie's fingertips stroked the image in the snapshot album she held in her lap-Sammi June, in her ball gown, head held high and tiara gleaming, radiantly smiling against the backdrop of an indigo sky. So lovely, so grown-up at not quite seventeen, and in her high heels already almost as tall as her escort, her uncle Jimmy Joe. And, Jessie remembered, she'd even managed to look graceful during that walk across the football field, in spite of high heels that kept punching into the damp turf.

A young woman. Would Tris even know his daughter? She'd been a knobby-kneed tomboy in ponytails when he'd seen her last.

The image blurred and wavered inside its protective plastic envelope, and Jessie hurriedly blotted her eyes with the sleeve of her heather-gray blazer. Her hand lingered there, lightly pressing her cheekbone…her temple, smoothing back wisps of hair. There was gray in those wisps now, that hadn't been there eight years ago. She'd changed a lot-lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth…her neck. Her breasts weren't as firm, her belly a bit more rounded. I've changed. Will he know me?

Lieutenant Commander Rees was waiting politely for her reply.

'I think-' Her voice shook and she drew a breath to steady it. An image rose in her memory of the only other time she'd ever seen Tris in a hospital bed, pale and groggy after the surgery to set the fractured leg that had grounded him during Desert Storm. It was the only time she'd ever seen him vulnerable and helpless. He wouldn't want her to see him like that again. 'I think Tristan would rather I waited for him at the residence. He's never been crazy about hospitals.'

She struggled to produce a smile for the officer before turning to gaze, unseeing, upon the German countryside.

He's been like that-vulnerable and helpless-for eight years, the man I knew and loved for his strength, his pride, and yes, even his arrogance. What did they do to him? How did he survive, all those years? How could he survive, without being irrevocably changed? Will I know him?

Butterflies danced and shivered inside her, and she thought, Yes. That's where the biggest changes will be, in both of us. There, deep inside.

Chapter 2

The guest residence had been privately built by a nonprofit foundation to accommodate the families of military personnel undergoing treatment at the medical facility. It was an imposing structure of stone and slate made hospitable by the boxes filled with tulips, daffodils and hyacinths that adorned every window. As Tristan drank in the sight, the lump that seemed never far away these days came back into his throat. It had been a long time since he had seen daffodils.

The sedan in which he was riding, a modest Mercedes, rolled to a stop beside the building's main entrance. Its driver, a young airman whose name Tristan could not remember, got out and came around to open his door for him.

The man sitting beside him in the back seat touched his arm. Al Sharpe, the air force major assigned as his escort, or 'shadow,' asked quietly, 'Would you like me to see you inside?'

'Thanks, I'll take it from here.' Tristan's attention was engaged with employing the cane he'd been given to lever himself out of the car. He wasn't happy about the cane, but the knee he'd injured punching out of his exploding Hornet eight years ago never had healed properly, and the unaccustomed activity of the past few days seemed to have aggravated it. The doctors had told him that, with good physical therapy and possibly some surgery, he'd likely get most of the use of it back. Eventually.

Most of it. Eventually. He wondered what that meant, and whether it applied to other things he'd lost. Eight years with his wife…watching his little girl grow up. The person he'd been. Nobody was ready to assure him so easily and carelessly about his chances of getting those things back.

Upright, he flashed Major Sharpe his out-of-practice smile. 'This is one mission I'd like to fly solo, if you don't mind.'

'I understand. We'll be back here for you at twenty-one hundred hours, then.' He paused to hold Tristan's eyes for a long moment. 'Remember what I told you-don't expect too much of yourself. One step at a time. And meanwhile, if you need anything, you just give me a call.'

'I will. Thanks. I'll be okay.' He nodded at the airman, who saluted briskly, then shut the door and got back in the car.

As he watched the Mercedes drive away it occurred to Tristan that for the first time in nearly eight years he was on his own. Completely alone. Unsupervised. It was a strange feeling. He turned and made his way slowly along the walkway to the door, thinking about the fact that those limping steps were his first without an escort since he'd regained consciousness in an Iraqi desert to find himself surrounded by gun-toting soldiers with hatred in their eyes.

A cold, sick feeling washed over him. He knew the feeling well; he'd lived with it in many forms, the past eight years. Fear. Strange, he thought, I'm about to see and touch the one person I dreamed of seeing and touching for all those years…the one whose face and voice in my dreams I think at times were the only thing keeping me alive. And I'm scared to death.

At the door he paused, turning to let his gaze sweep once more over the parking lot and the new-leafed trees and red-tiled roofs beyond. The sky was overcast, the sun breaking through the clouds in rays, like fingers. Beside the walkway, planters bright with more tulips, daffodils and hyacinths gave off a heady scent. The air was cool and seemed thin and light in his lungs. So different from prison air, which was thick and heavy. Prison air weighed a man down.

I don't know who I am, after breathing that air for so long, he thought. I know I'm not the same man I was when I left her. Nowhere near.

And he let them come, then, the questions he'd tried so hard to hold at bay: Will she love me still? Will she want this man-this shell-that I've become?

He closed his eyes and filled his lungs with the scent of flowers, and from long habit, her image came to fill the blank screen of his mind. Jessie's face, so vivid he felt as if he could reach out and touch it, every detail etched in his memory as if in stone. Her lips, curved up at the corners, and her nose, crinkled across the bridge with her smile…

But she'll have changed, too, he reminded himself. They'd warned him to expect that. In eight years, how could she not have changed? And yet-he caught a quick sip of the winey air, as if to give himself courage-she hadn't remarried, they'd told him. Why, when she'd been told he was dead? Did that mean-What did it mean? It could mean everything. It could mean nothing.

He realized his heart was pounding so hard it was making his chest hurt. He rubbed the spot ruefully as he reached for the door handle. Whatever it was waiting for him beyond that door, postponing it wasn't going to make it easier to face.

* * *

For the life of her, Jessie couldn't make a simple decision. She'd spent what seemed like hours deciding what to