A Dangerous Leap (16 page)

“Don’t lock her away. Open your heart and share her life as well as her death, but don’t pretend it never happened. Now it’s late, you should try and get some sleep. But if you ever need to talk about Miranda, or goodness honey, anything else, I want you to call me. I mean that Kelly, this has nothing to do with Ian, this is between us mothers.”

After Moreen left, Kelly stretched out on the bed, her mind struggling with her heart. Had she made things worse by refusing to admit how much she’d loved Miranda? Even denying in so many ways that she had been a mother? Cara quietly slipped into the room, and Kelly, too drained emotionally to talk anymore, feigned sleep. Two hours later, wide-awake with memories of Miranda, her failed marriage, and Ian careening around her head, Kelly tried to imagine risking her heart once more.

Maybe it was like her first jump out of a helicopter. All she’d needed was a deep breath and a leap of faith.

* * *

By dawn, people were stirring in the house. Kelly estimated she’d slept all of an hour sometime between oh-three-thirty and oh-five-hundred.

She zipped into and out of the bathroom, knowing the other women would need more time to get ready. With no conscious effort on her part, she avoided running into Ian. Would he still be mad at her? Last night he’d certainly looked like he could have taken a bite out of a Jayhawk’s rotor.

Kelly slipped into jeans and a tank top, listening with one ear to Cara and a couple of her cousins chattering in the bathroom across the hall. Between the whir of a hairdryer and the hooting laughter, she heard her name. Startled out of her own thoughts, she looked up.

“I don’t think it’s right, a woman doing that kind of job. I heard Brendan telling his dad about how she was on the news, that she could have been killed during that drug raid.”

Kelly rolled her eyes. She didn’t recognize the young voice, but she did recognize the snotty tone.

“You think she’ll quit when she marries Ian?” someone else asked.

Back to that marriage thing. Well, at least she’d be settling that little issue for everyone. A flutter of regret accompanied that thought. God, should she really consider marriage, even children? After talking with Moreen last night, she almost felt tempted. And a little shaky, but she wasn’t running to the toilet to throw up. Moreen must have cast some sort of spell on her last night to have her thinking like that in the light of day.

“Well of course she’d have to quit her job.”

Kelly raised an eyebrow over that while silently mouthing, “Like hell I would.”

“Why would she?” Cara asked, winning a smile of approval from Kelly.

“Ian wants lots of babies, that’s why. He’s always talked about having a big family. You think she’ll be jumping out of helicopters when she’s pregnant? Or that Ian would even let her?” Snotty Voice said.

A knot formed in Kelly’s stomach. How would her career affect a daughter or son? Would a child feel toward her the way she had her own mother—always an afterthought, or worse, not wanted, a burden?

The reality of her job demands and the responsibility of raising a child coalesced into a vortex of emotions. If she gave up her career for a family, how long would it take before she resented her children, or Ian? Acid churned in her empty stomach. Double-damn-son-of-a-bitch, what had she been thinking to even consider it?

Kelly grabbed her canvas bag and began packing with renewed vigor. Ian would be happier with a woman that wanted the same things he did. Someone like Penny, or Moreen, real mothers that wouldn’t put a career first and resent their children for making demands on their time and emotions.

It took her a moment before she recognized the buzzing sound of her cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. She’d switched the ringer to vibrate during the rosary service and forgotten to change it back. She snatched it up.

“Bishop,” she answered.

“Kelly, I hate to bother you, but they’ve chopped our air support to Savannah. They’re doing round the clock flood evacuations and need air crews ASAP,” Caitlyn said.

Kelly heard the excitement, the urgency, and her body responded immediately with a rush. If she’d had any lingering doubts, here was her answer—this is what she did, who she was. And why she had no business considering anything else.

Kelly contacted another swimmer who’d gone surfing on Cocoa Beach and arranged for him to pick her up on his way to Clearwater. She tried to ignore the small voice that called her a coward. She’d failed at being a wife and mother before, hadn’t she? “I am what I am,” she muttered to herself. She was the best of the best, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer and paramedic, not a mother or wife.

* * *

Ian was furious. His mother had refused to tell him what she and Kelly had talked about the night before. He certainly didn’t like the sad look that came over her when she thought no one was watching, either. Had she told Kelly about her own losses? That would certainly explain the sad look. He had no idea how Kelly would react to his mother’s intrusion on something so private.

“Take this out to the table,” Val said, handing him a platter of bacon and sausage. “Did anyone think to put a timer in the upstairs bathroom?”

Ian smiled as he carried the food to the dining room. His father had mandated strict time limits on bathrooms when they were growing up. The clatter of high heels, clogs and sandals announced the girls’ descent from upstairs. Would Kelly be with them, or would she keep herself separate from the group?

Would she go through with her planned announcement? Maybe he should preempt her. Or did he hope she’d rethink the idea given the circumstances of the family’s gathering?

Assorted aunts and uncles were already seated in the dining room. Brendan’s family arrived the same time the girls sorted themselves into groups around the table. Tension filled his gut. Still no Kelly.

“Ian, where’s your girl?” an uncle asked.

He smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “Must have slept in,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t have done any such thing. He sat down next to Cara and she leaned over to him.

“I’m sorry about last night, I—”

“Kelly, what’s with the bag?” Val asked, interrupting Cara’s apology.

Ian looked up and his heart sank. Kelly stood in the doorway, her bag slung over her shoulder, and her plastic smile firmly in place. Shit, she was going to make her announcement and get the hell out.

“I’m sorry, but I have to leave. They’ve reallocated our helicopters to an air station in Georgia because of the flooding up there. Air crews have been called back to duty.”

Her gaze circled the room but skipped over Ian. He stood and walked toward her as she thanked his family for their hospitality. Finally she looked at him and her smile trembled. He took a deep breath. Hell, he’d survived the humiliation of one failed “engagement,” this one couldn’t be any worse.

Except he hadn’t loved Julie.

“Want to keep me company until my ride comes?” she asked. Her hands moved up and down on the bag’s web strap in quick short spurts.

Surprised at her offer, and fearing the spark of hope was for nothing, Ian nodded and followed her to the front door. Maybe she’d decided to give him one more chance.

They stepped out onto the front porch together. The rain had let up, but the low clouds and heavy humidity promised more was on the way.

Kelly took a deep breath and turned to face him. “I think it would be best if we don’t see each other for a while,” she said. She continued to move her hands in nervous spasms up and down the strap.

Her words punctured the last of his hope. He leaned into her, crowding her. “What you really mean, but are afraid to come out and say, is we’re through. What I want to know is, why? Why are you so afraid to take a chance on us?”

Kelly’s head jerked up and her eyes glittered. Good, she was mad now.

“Because I’m not good at sticking. I know how to say goodbye, but dammit, I don’t have a clue how to make staying work.”

He was getting sick and tired of hearing that excuse. “Bull, all you have to do is want it bad enough—”

Her hands stopped moving. “You don’t know anything about me and what I want,” she countered, her voice rising. Twin spots of red colored her cheeks.

“Only because you never tell me what’s going on. Hell, why did I have to hear about your marriage and baby from your brother?” Yeah, that had hurt. Weren’t women supposed to be good at expressing their feelings? Why wasn’t Kelly? Why didn’t she trust him enough to confide in him?

She started to speak, then stopped, closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “God, I’m doing it again.”

She turned away and stabbed her fingers through her hair. “Every time you get too close I freak and start arguing with you.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. I just didn’t think you had,” he said. He leaned against the porch railing and waited.

She fiddled with her strap some more, then looking out at the street, away from him, she began talking.

“I was seventeen when my dad died in an explosion on base. Matt agreed to take me in, so I moved to California. He was gone so much of the time, the wives of the married SEALs took turns keeping an eye on me. Mostly I was on my own. When I turned eighteen, I vowed I’d never set foot on another military base or move again.”

Ian had to fight the urge to take her into his arms.

She shook her head and laughed without humor. “Jeez, guess I broke another vow or two I’d forgotten about. Anyway, I enrolled in college and set out to make a normal life for myself. I made friends with Jenny, a girl in one of my classes and we became roommates. At the time I thought she was my best friend…”

Kelly frowned and rubbed her forehead. He could feel the tension building in her, charging the air between them.

“Shortened long story is she got pregnant and died giving birth to Miranda. Then her stupid roommate, that would be me, agreed to marry a man she hardly knew to care for a baby that wasn’t supposed to live more than ten or twelve months.”

So much for his pledge to keep his distance. Ian took hold of her hands and pulled her into his arms. She stood rigid for several seconds, then slowly relaxed into him with a sigh. He cupped the back of her head and urged her closer still until she rested her cheek against his chest.

“Miranda lived until she was a little older than Riley. I thought Peter really cared for me, maybe even loved me. Talk about naïve, I was simply convenient and stupid. He got a babysitter with enough medical expertise to care for a very sick child, and a willing bed partner.”

If Ian ever had the misfortune to meet her bastard of an ex, he’d beat the ever-livin’ crap out of him.

A minute or two passed, and Kelly stirred, then pushed away from him. “So now you know. I…the only reason I can’t have children is because of fear. It, it’s all mental, not because of some physical impairment.”

She stopped his response with her fingers pressed to his lips. Her expression told him before her words. She wasn’t going to listen to any of his arguments.

“No, I’ve given this a lot of thought, especially after talking to your mom last night. I love what I do, and I’m too much my mother’s daughter to be anything else. For that reason alone I’d never wish myself on a child. All the things I hated about my own mother I’d end up repeating. You deserve better than that and so do your children.”

Two short beeps of a car horn made them both turn. A small car with a surfboard strapped to the hood had pulled into the drive and Ian recognized the fellow Coastie swimmer sitting in the driver’s seat. Kelly’s ride.

“This isn’t over,” he said.

She shook her head. “Yes, it is. It was over before it began. I am sorry I couldn’t stay for your aunt’s funeral.”

She turned and sprinted away before he could stop her. He watched her climb into the car but she never waved, and never looked back as it drove away. New doubts crawled into Ian’s mind.

Would he accept a wife and mother who wanted to continue working in a job that posed as many risks as a rescue swimmer’s? Was he so old fashioned that he expected his wife to make all the sacrifices when his job demanded a base move? What if he was deployed overseas? Would that be a unilateral decision with no discussion, just say goodbye, see you when I get back?

No, dammit, his answer wouldn’t match Kelly’s.

Chapter Eleven

Kelly had little time to brood about her decision to leave Ian. Once she returned to the air station her time was taken up packing additional safety gear on board six helicopters chopped to Georgia.

The flooding, caused by a tropical storm that dumped as much as eleven inches of rain on already saturated ground, had overwhelmed the local, county and state resources. Pride in the Coast Guard, and the Coasties that put themselves in harm’s way to save others, swelled her heart. These missions were the very reason she’d become a rescue swimmer.

“Saddle up, boys and girls, we’re heading out in five,” Caitlyn called on her way through the noisy hangar.

Joe helped Kelly stow the final gear and she was thankful he apparently had called a truce on their feud. Hopefully it would last. They would be working long hours under heavy pressure and the last thing anyone on the team needed was a personal war escalating out of control.

The two hundred fifty-eight nautical mile distance to the Georgia air station would keep them in the air for almost two hours. Caitlyn left the intercom open so the crew could talk on the headsets whenever she wasn’t doing her pilot-speak to ground radio stations or other aircraft.

“How’s Ian holding up?” Joe asked after they’d been cleared to their flight altitude.

Startled and thinking he’d heard about their breakup already, Kelly sat mute. How the hell had word traveled so quickly?

Joe frowned and tapped her helmet. “Mic on? Can you hear me in there?”

She nodded and tried to think of a flip answer. Except she still hadn’t come to grips with the finality of what she’d done. Given her history, how could she have done otherwise? Ian deserved better.

“I know Ian was close to his aunt. He visited her a lot, especially when her cancer was diagnosed as terminal.”

Guilty relief swamped Kelly. She swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah, he was doing okay, I mean just about everybody from the Razzamenti and Sullivan sides of the family were there,” she said.

Joe gave her an appraising look. “So how did you do? Did you pass muster with the clan?” He cocked his head to one side as if listening to something far away. “Do I hear wedding bells ringing?”

“Yeah, what gives? I expected you to come back wearing an engagement ring,” Ryan, their copilot chimed in from the cockpit.

An odd sense of déjà vu engulfed Kelly. They were acting just like Ian’s nosey family. “Yeah, right, me married to Ian. Not in this lifetime,” she said with a forced laugh. Her fingers traced the extra length of webbing on her seat belt. Would she have to hear this from everyone she met on base? Panic raced through her veins like a street drug. Good lord, had they all thought the same thing?

“Why not, he’s crazy in love with you,” Joe said.

Kelly rolled her eyes even as her stomach did a flutter kick. Why did her body persist in believing in love, and still desperately want Ian?

“I heard about the night he almost decked Tank. Man, I would have loved to have seen that. Ow! Hey, no hitting your invaluable copilot,” Ryan complained.

“Children, settle down. Maybe Kelly-girl doesn’t love Ian. It takes two to make a wedding,” Caitlyn said.

Kelly smiled at Cait coming to the rescue even as her heart rate climbed.

“Bullshit, she’s as in love with him as he is with her. Everybody knows it. So Kel, what’s the real reason? You can tell us, we’re all family here,” Ryan said, apparently undeterred by Caitlyn’s attack.

Kelly blinked. Ryan’s comment, echoing the claim she’d made last night to Ian, settled the wild beating in her chest. She looked at Joe. Even his normally hostile expression showed interest, maybe even a hint of concern.

“If you’re both in love, what’s the problem?” he asked. There was no sneer. No hidden agenda in his clear brown eyes.

The steady roar of the helicopter’s engines, marginally blocked by their headsets and helmets, was the only sound as they waited for her response. Like jumping into the ocean from a helicopter, there was no halfway. She sucked in a fortifying breath and leaped.

“He wants kids, lots of them. I can’t do kids and continue as a rescue swimmer.”

Joe’s blank look lasted for a second or two before he grinned. “I can see it now, Fish-Bait eight months pregnant. Every time she jumps, life rafts within three-hundred yards are swamped by the waves she creates.”

She couldn’t tell if it was Caitlyn or Ryan choking back a laugh from the cockpit.

Kelly sat up straighter. “Hey, I’m serious. I can’t give up my job. It’s what I do.” It defined her. Had given her life purpose.

“Why would you have to give up your job? Well, except during pregnancy of course. Heck, you’ll just get a desk job, or work in the clinic with Ian,” Ryan said.

Joe leaned forward, his eyes wide. “Hell no, she should teach. You could teach at the swimmer’s school. I heard from a buddy how well you did up there in training,” he said, surprising her once again.

Kelly couldn’t decide if the emotions bouncing around her stomach came from fear, excitement, or anticipation. Holy Hannah, maybe it was all three because she might actually be considering this craziness.

“Oh, goody, we get to plan the wedding,” Caitlyn suddenly chimed in.

Yeah, great best friend all right. Except Kelly found herself smiling. Wow, could she be stupid enough to make the same mistake twice? Her chest tightened and her respiration sped up.

“Personally, I wouldn’t let him talk you into having more than five or six kids,” Caitlyn said.

Kelly gagged, her comment swallowed by a coughing fit. Joe grinned as he pounded on her back. Her eyes filled, and not just from the coughing.

She couldn’t help grinning back at Joe, his image watery. My God, they really were a family.

* * *

Ian made it through the funeral service in an ugly mood of sadness laced with anger. Saying goodbye to Aunt Cara the same day Kelly walked away hurt like hell.

Fine, if Kelly were stupid enough to throw away a chance at happiness, he’d let her go. He’d find someone better suited as a wife and mother, just like she said. Someone he didn’t have to argue with. Someone he didn’t have to worry about whenever they were out of sight.

Yeah, only if he didn’t need his heart back, because as near as he could tell, she’d walked off with it.

“Why the long face, you worried about Kelly?” his father asked.

He grasped Ian by the back of the neck as they walked across the church parking lot. Obviously he hadn’t gotten the word from Mom yet. “No, not really.”

His father released him and followed along beside him to his car. “You’re not taking this little tiff seriously, are you son?”

Like a shark attack.
Ian rested his forearms on the roof of his truck. “Yeah, I am. Kelly’s career means more to her than a family does. I couldn’t put up with that kind of attitude. I wouldn’t want my kids to worry about whether their mom was coming home or not.”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel, why don’t you stay home with the kids instead?”

What the hell were they talking about? He didn’t have any kids. Besides, Kelly wasn’t talking to him anymore, let alone sleeping with him, so that pretty much eliminated their ability to make any kids too. “Why should I? I like what I’m doing.” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d said the wrong thing.

His dad crossed his arms over his chest and stared at him as if he didn’t understand. “But you go out on search and rescue calls. You could just as easily be the one that doesn’t come home. For that matter, you’re more likely to get killed on the drive to and from the air station than on a mission. Isn’t that what you always said when your mom worried about you flying?”

Now he was being ridiculous. “Look, it doesn’t matter, she’s gone and that’s the end of it.”

Val frowned, then turned and looked around the parking lot. “It’s a good thing I didn’t take your mother’s refusal that seriously, or we wouldn’t be standing here having this silly conversation.” He turned back to Ian and narrowed his eyes at him. “And here I thought you loved that little gal.”

Confused by his father’s earlier statement, it took Ian a moment to catch up. He scowled. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. Kelly’s the one you have to convince, not me.”

His father rocked back on his heels. “No, I don’t think so. You’re the idiot wanting her to quit a job she loves, and from everything I’ve heard, is damn good at. If you really love her, you’ll work something out. That’s what married folks do—work things out, compromise, do what it takes to be together. Your mother turned me down no less than four times over the course of several months. I didn’t give up because I knew she was the one.” He squinted up at the gray sky. “Now if Kelly’s not the one—”

“She is, but—”

“Quit with the ‘buts.’ Hell, if I keeled over and my heart stopped, would you stand there and say, ‘Oops, too bad, guess he’s dead’?”

Ian gaped at his father in disbelief.

“What’s the matter, was that too hard of a question for you?”

Ian shook his head, trying to dislodge the ugly scenario his dad proposed. “Hell no, I’d start CPR, yell for someone to call 911.”

Val grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good, you had me a little worried there. You’d fight like hell until you were absolutely sure I was in fact dead. Knowing you, they’d have to pull you off.”

Ian shivered at the thought. “That’s not funny.”

His father’s expression sobered. “No, it’s not. But are you so sure this thing with Kelly’s really dead? Wouldn’t you fight for her life just as hard? Then why not fight for your love?”

Ian shook his head. When had his father gotten so damn smart?

* * *

Joe watched Kelly in the deepening gloom as he lowered the cable with her attached by a strap. They’d begun pulling people out of the water within an hour of arriving at the Georgia air station. Now they were on their second day and another storm was dumping rain on the inundated countryside. He’d never seen so much water not in the ocean.

Kelly gestured with her arm as she twirled on the end of the cable. “Back ten,” Joe called to Caitlyn. The helicopter blocked the pilot’s view of the cable and anything hanging off it. She and Kelly both relied on him to get anything attached to the helicopter safely up and down. A responsibility he never took lightly.

Joe aimed the searchlight at the row of trees fifty feet off their port side, scanning for power lines. He didn’t want anything tangling in the cable, or impaling Kelly on her way down. There’d been a report of a car getting washed off the road, its passengers climbing into a tree to escape the rampaging water. Problem was the report had placed the car in two different spots with varying numbers of survivors. They were running out of natural light. And time.

The Coast Guard had strict rules about hours in flight and they were approaching the end of that window.

Joe checked Kelly’s progress again. She motioned for more cable and he lowered her another ten feet. She had to be dancing in the trees by now. He keyed his mic. “Do you see anything yet?” he shouted into the mic transmitting to her headset.

“Maybe. Give me another five feet,” her voice crackled back at him.

The Jayhawk shuddered as a gust of wind hit it. The shockwave traveled down the line and he saw Kelly’s head snap back and forth with the whiplash effect. Shit. “Bishop, are you okay?” he shouted.

She signaled she was all right but didn’t say anything over the radio. Hell, she’d probably had the wind knocked out of her. Tank had been right about her.

Pound for pound, inch for inch, she not only surprised him, she put him to shame. She never complained, was always eager to drop into the unknown, and didn’t take shit off any of them. Yeah, Tank was right. He was damn proud to have her on his team.

* * *

Kelly sucked air into her burning lungs and tried to stop her head from spinning. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a prayer of stopping the cable from twisting in the wind. She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing slow and steady. Blacking out wouldn’t accomplish anything. And they were running out of time.

She opened her eyes and picked a tree to focus on. It brought her brain back into line. And just like that she saw it. A flash of yellow among the green leaves. “Joe, give me five more feet!” she shouted. She motioned with her arm at the same time, demanding more line.

Yes, it definitely was a rain slicker. Her boots touched the top of the tree. Well, more like flattened the top as Joe fed her more cable. Just when she thought the raincoat must have blown into the tree, a white face turned toward her. God, it was a child. Sweat ran down the inside of her flight suit. No one had mentioned children in the car.

Kelly kicked her feet out until she found a branch to stabilize her spinning descent. “Are you hurt?” she shouted against the wind and rain.

The little face moved side to side but the mouth didn’t open.

Kelly swung her leg over another branch and eased her weight onto it. “Are you alone?”

Eyes grew larger and after hesitating, his head moved up and down. Kelly’s chest tightened. Poor baby. Stuck to a branch like a tick some thirty feet above boiling brown water that could sweep a house off its foundation. As if to punctuate that point, the tree shuddered.

Kelly adjusted her mic. “I’ve got a child in sight. Six or seven, about five feet to my left.” The words were barely out of her mouth before she felt the cable inching that direction. Only Caitlyn would try to maneuver that precisely during a rainstorm.

It took another five minutes to work her way to the little boy’s perch on the limb. And another ten to convince him to let go of the tree. The promise of a ride in a helicopter proved to be the magic motivator. He told her his name was Jeremy and once she had the wide strop positioned around the boy’s torso, she wrapped him in her arms and legs and signaled Joe to begin the hoist to safety above.

“Jeremy, don’t worry honey, I’ve got hold of you. If you look up you’ll be able to see Joe. He’s my hoist operator—the one running this cable up to the helicopter.”

It took a few seconds but Jeremy slowly tilted his head and squinted into the rain. The strobe lights on the Jayhawk cut through the darkness with comforting reassurance. “Kinda fun, huh?” Kelly said and gave him a hug. She was almost afraid to ask him about his parents. Had they been swept away by the floodwaters? Or were they clinging to another tree worrying about their little boy?