Coast Guard Sweetheart (17 page)

Sawyer held out his hand. Conflicting emotions rippled across his face. Sadness. Joy. A fierce vulnerability. His gaze traveled to her mouth. And lingered.

Her heart beating faster than the 3/4 time of the waltz, she took his hand. Her eyes locked onto his. And his eyes went opaque, a smoky blue.

With her hand clasped in his and his other arm around her waist, Sawyer maintained a careful distance between their bodies. She placed her free hand on the broad length of his shoulder.

Elbow up and carriage erect, he never took his eyes off her face. His hold never wavered as he led Honey in the waltz.

Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in love with you
, warbled a long-dead singer.

A muscle ticked in his cheek. Sawyer tightened his jaw.

Let me hear you whisper that you love me, too...

The music and the words flowed over her like gentle rain.

Keep the love light glowing in your eyes so true—

His chest rose and fell as if he were having difficulty drawing breath.

Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in love with you.

The music faded. The singer's voice died away. But Sawyer didn't let go. As if as reluctant as she for this dance to end. For their time to end.

Round and round the turntable, the needle scratched.

And then Sawyer stopped.

Sawyer removed his arm from her waist. It took him longer to relinquish her hand. “Thank you, Beatrice.” He stepped back.

Her heart pounded. “Must we stop?” Her words were fraught with more than she dared ask.

Sawyer moved away and lifted the needle from the gramophone. Going from candle to candle, he extinguished the light. “It's for the best.”

“Best for whom?”

He paused, his hand cupped around the rim of the hurricane globe. “Best for you.”

She seized the flower wilting on the mantel. “Stop assuming you know what's best for me.”

He straightened. Only the moonlight broke the darkness of the room. His eyes flicked over her face. “Time to go to dinner.”

“I'm suddenly not hungry.”

Sawyer held out his hand. “Then I'll take you home.”

Honey lifted her chin. “I thought that's where we were.”

Sawyer's mouth quivered before he gained mastery over it. “A guy like me doesn't have a home, Beatrice. You ought to know that about me by now.”

He dropped his hand. “Can we just go now...please?”

Without another word, she shouldered past him out onto the porch. As she waited for him to secure the door, she wanted to weep. For herself. For him.

But most of all, for them. For who they could've been together.

Chapter Eighteen

S
ector Hampton Roads radioed the Station Kiptohanock watchstander the following afternoon. A few miles offshore one of the barrier islands, an engine room fire had erupted onboard a cargo ship. The watch duty crew headed for the fast boat tied to the station dock. Sawyer was halfway out the door when Braeden stopped him.

“Do not under any circumstances set foot on that vessel, XPO.”

“But twelve souls are listed on the crew list.” Sawyer scanned the information sheet he'd been handed. “The
Cartagena
is carrying almost 20,000 tons of flammable chemicals. Mainly methyl tertiary...” Sawyer squinted at the words. “Butyl ether and iso...buta...nol.”

Braeden crossed his arms over his chest. “We don't have the proper protective gear, nor do you have the training to deal with that kind of ‘tetra-methyl-kill-you' cargo, Sawyer.”

“Chief—”

Braeden's jaw tightened. “The Atlantic Strike Team helo out of Elizabeth City will be en route to the burning ship. Fires are what they do. They've got the specialized equipment and training. Let the AST do what they do best.”

Sawyer bristled. “We've got the makings of an ecological disaster. Suppose—”

“With that type of cargo, if you set one foot on that tanker you'll be court-martialed per regulation.” Braeden jabbed a finger in Sawyer's chest. “You just need to do your job. And your job is to bring the crew—the tanker's and ours—back to Kiptohanock.”

Sawyer scowled.

Braeden got in his face. “You roger that, Petty Officer Kole?”

Sawyer went into a rigid salute, feet clamped together. “Roger that, Chief.”

On board the response boat, Sawyer shouldered aside the bos'n mate and took the wheel himself. He needed to do something with his hands. Anything to keep his mind busy.

It'd been a restless night, replaying the image of Honey's face over and over again in his head. In two days, Kiptohanock would celebrate Harbor Fest. In four, he'd be pointing the nose of his truck toward Highway 13, the Bay Bridge Tunnel and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Sawyer maneuvered past the other watercraft bobbing in the harbor until he cleared the marina. Shifting into higher gear, he spared one last look over his shoulder at the shoreline where the white steeple of the church pierced the azure blue of the November sky.

Going full throttle in the inlet, he steered the boat past the barrier islands and out toward the open sea. When he gunned it, Wiggins grinned at Sawyer and widened his stance to accommodate the roll and swell of the waves.

His heart heavy, Sawyer nonetheless smiled in return. “You know the only difference between a buccaneer and a Coastie, BMC First Class Wiggins?” he repeated in an echo of Braeden Scott's words to him once upon a time.

Wiggins's brow furrowed. “No, Boats, I don't. What
is
the difference between buccaneers and Coasties?”

Sawyer's lips curved into a smile. Boats—the Coastie term of affection for boat-driving guardsmen.

“Nothing, Wiggins.” He inhaled a hearty draught of sea air. “There is no difference at all between a buccaneer and a Coastie.”

Wiggins's chest rumbled. The other guardsmen barked with laughter.

Sawyer's shoulders lifted and fell. “Old joke, Coasties. An old joke.”

The laughter died when they spotted the cargo ship. Crew members waved from the tilted deck. None of them wore lifejackets. Several of the men's faces were burned.

Listing starboard, the stern lay submerged in water. Smoke billowed from below deck. Flames licked midship. Gusty winds and choppy waves rocked the tanker, hampering Sawyer's effort to bring the response boat alongside.

“We've got to transfer those men off the ship.” Sawyer edged the boat as close as he dared and cut back the engine. “But one spark and we could be blown to kingdom come.”

Seaman Apprentice Marshall nodded. “Watchstander reports the Strike Team's inbound, XPO.”

“Affirmative.” Sawyer glanced around at the men and women. “Now, let's do
our
thing.”

His crew knew their jobs. Handing the controls over to the bosun's mate, Sawyer helped transfer the men off the tanker's deck to the fast boat. Utilizing the Spanish he'd learned with the Latin American task force, he quickly ascertained all crew members were present and accounted for. Except the captain.

The first mate's eyes darted toward the bulkheads. The crew had managed to seal the containers in number three and four holds, he told Sawyer. They'd attempted to smother the blaze with carbon dioxide. But the captain remained behind to seal off the most combustive of the containers in hold five.

Sawyer imagined the barrier islands and the wildlife coated in petroleum and worse. He envisioned the leaking chemicals ebbing toward Kiptohanock, destroying the seaside beauty of the Eastern Shore and killing its marine life. He grimaced, helpless to prevent the larger tragedy.

The captain lurched onto the main deck. The deck roiled beneath his feet. A ripple effect brought the response boat within inches of the cargo ship. There was a collective gasp from the tanker's shivering crew. The bosun's mate barely managed to avoid colliding into the side of the burning tanker and into disaster.

“The captain's going to have to jump for it.” Sawyer exchanged a glance with Wiggins. “Then you get us away from this ship ASAP.”

“We're too far for him to make it. I can't get the boat any closer, XPO, not in these conditions.”

Sawyer took stock of the worsening weather. “Steady as she goes, BMC. Try to maintain a distance of at least two or three feet. Hold her as steady as you can for as long as you can.”

“Affirmative.”

Sawyer bellowed through the horn and explained to the captain what needed to happen next.

But resisting Sawyer's attempts to hurry him off the sinking vessel, the captain warned in broken English of fire and of the chemical cargo that must be secured.

Waiting on the rail, the CG crew members urged the man to jump. Sawyer kept an eye on the timing of the swells.
“Uno...”
he yelled. He held up his hand and ticked off his fingers for the captain's benefit.
“Dos...”

The tanker shuddered. The panicked captain didn't wait for the count to reach three. He leaped. With a splash, the captain went into the water. He disappeared from sight.

“Where is he?” Marshall shouted. “I can't find him.”

Life ring ready to throw, Perez paced the deck. “Keep looking.”

“How long can we search, XPO?” Wiggins gripped the wheel. “The ship's going to blow any moment.”

Sawyer kept his eyes trained on the spot where he'd last seen the captain. “Take the boat out of harm's way, Wiggins. I'm not giving up on him.”

“With all due respect—”

“That's an order, BMC. Do it now.”

Sawyer dived over the side. He plunged beneath the swells and swam the distance separating him from the captain's last location. But when he came up for air, he found no one. The oily film on the water stung his eyes. He swiped his hand across his burning eyes.

Then from the interior of the ship came a deafening boom. The echoing shock wave resounded across the water. Sawyer jolted. Searing heat blasted his face.

Flinching, he ducked as the detonation spewed jagged shards of twisted metal. Underwater, he dodged the flying debris and waited for the fiery hailstorm to abate. Below, he watched in horror as the red hot fragments ignited the water around him. He scanned the surface above for an open space in which to emerge. A place free of the flames. A place where he could find breathable oxygen. He couldn't wait much longer...

Rocketing upward, his body shot out of the water, his lungs heaving. Coughing and hacking the vile brew out of his lungs, he erupted into a world aflame. Fire engulfed the water around him in all directions.

Scissoring, he dove again. The circle of fire tightened like a noose in his wake. But there was nowhere left to return to.

And he knew in that instant he'd never make it. Time was up. No more second chances.

It seemed to him he'd been fighting, one way or the other, to survive his whole life. And he was tired. So tired.

Sawyer couldn't hold his breath forever. He could choose to drown. Or to burn.

He prayed Wiggins had gotten the boat away in time. And in that instant, Sawyer was overwhelmed with gratitude for being reassigned to Kiptohanock. For one last opportunity to make things right. Despite his best efforts, bubbles of oxygen escaped his mouth and nostrils.

Sawyer's chest deflated. He was losing oxygen too rapidly. He squeezed his eyes shut.

In his memories, he experienced again the eight-second thrill of riding an equine tornado. He felt once more the spray of the surf on his face. He beheld from long ago, his five-year-old sister torn out of his arms. He basked in the pride he felt every time he donned the Coastie blue uniform.

He envisioned the Duer home glowing with light. The sound of an old-fashioned melody. The white steeple piercing the sky above Kiptohanock.

Something exploded somewhere close by. Churning the water—along with Sawyer—like the wringer on a washing machine. And his last coherent thought?

Of brown-eyed Susans.

Chapter Nineteen

A
fter a sleepless night, she'd gotten a late start on the move-in. One of those days when nothing seemed to go right. Honey grimaced. Make that a lifetime of nothing going right.

Her sister and Baby Patrick left for an infant well-visit. Honey ended up taking Max to school. Before she knew it, half the day had gotten away from her, and it was afternoon before she managed to shake her lethargy, gather some boxes and head to the inn.

But the real reason it took her so long to get moving? It took her that long to summon the courage to return to the inn and face how, once again, Sawyer Kole had torn her heart in two.

With enormous dread, she drove alone to the house. Unlocking the door, she heaved her suitcase over the threshold. She ignored with a fierce determination the doused candles and silent phonograph. She headed straight for her bedroom to unpack.

It was the bell she heard first.

The sound of the bell rang over the trees. Above the rooftop. Over the watery expanse separating the inn from the village.

Stuffing her folded jeans into a drawer, she paused and lifted her head. Across the marsh, a flock of startled birds rose, cawing.

Honey cocked her ear toward the window. There it was again. The bell. Tolling as relentless as the tide.

She shivered. A cold metallic sound. Dull as impending death. Her bones vibrated with each clamor of the bell. Clanging across each tidal creek the bell rang, summoning Kiptohanock residents in situations of extreme maritime disaster.

Honey's breath caught. Never in her lifetime had the bell rung, except for the annual blessing of the fleet. Dad still talked about the nor'easter that crushed a half-dozen fishing boats when he was a boy, and how the bell had tolled then.

She covered her hands over her ears.
No, God. No more.

Her first thought was of her dad out on a charter. And then her mind jerked to Sawyer. Because whatever had happened, she knew as sure as she knew Sawyer he'd be in the thick of it. That's who he was. More than likely, both he and Braeden.

She raced out of the attic, down the stairs and out the front door toward her dad's truck. Cranking the engine, she hit the accelerator. Oyster shells spitting beneath her spinning tires, she hurtled out of the driveway and toward Kiptohanock.

In the village, a crowd lined the seawall, the wharf and the Sandpiper Cafe parking lot. The red-and-white lights of three ambulances whirred. The paramedics waited on the Coast Guard dock with multiple gurneys.

Not a good sign. What had happened? Who was hurt? And despite the crowd, an eerie silence hung over the waterfront, broken only by the sharp cries of the seagulls swooping above the harbor.

In the distance, a Coast Guard response boat approached. Circling the square, she slipped into one of the last remaining parking spots near the church. She vaulted out of the truck and plowed her way through the bystanders to the outer edge of the adjacent town pier. She spotted a tight-lipped Braeden catch the rope a guardsmen threw from the fast boat chugging into the station dock.

Relief for Amelia and Max flooded her heart. But what about her dad? Her gaze ran over the people pressing at her back and out toward the fishing boats moored in the marina. There, tied at another slip, the
Now I Sea
.

Her father—Honey's head swiveled—he had to be somewhere close. But where was Sawyer? She scanned the guardsmen emptying out of the rescue boat.

Paramedics rushed forward as one by one the guardsmen staggered onto the dock, their arms slung across the shoulders of the foreign nationals they'd rescued. Both the American and foreign-born seamen sported an assortment of burns and wounds.

Honey took a mental count. Marshall. Endicott. Perez. Schilling. Braeden took hold of Wiggins. Her heart pounded at the utter grief etched on the bosun mate's face.

Shaking his head, words poured out of the young man's mouth. The words floated across the water. Natural disaster. Explosion. Flying shrapnel. Couldn't get to him.

Her heart skipped a beat. Her eyes searched the now empty fast boat. Where was Sawyer?

“Come on,” she muttered under her breath. “Let me see that blond towhead of yours.”

Wiggins sagged, and Braeden transferred him to the care of a paramedic. Braeden caught her eye across the channel. He shook his head at someone behind her.

“No.” Honey fisted her hands. “No.” Someone touched her shoulder.

“Honey...” As if in a dream—a nightmare—the gravelly voice of her father. “Wiggins radioed the station as soon as he could.”

She flung off his hand. “It isn't true.” Her gaze searched the horizon.

Her father launched into a brief summary of the events of a SAR gone wrong.

“Why did they leave him? He's out there, Daddy.”

Her father closed his eyes momentarily. “The boat was caught in the explosion, too. There were injuries. Wiggins did the right thing. He had to get those men medical attention. But the cargo ship—there's a huge debris field, Honey.”

She jabbed her finger toward the open sea beyond the barrier islands. “They need to get back out there and find him.”

Her dad took hold of her arm. “The Hercs from Air Station Elizabeth City are on scene now. The ROMEO fishing fleet, we're headed out, too, to help with the recovery. But Honey, it will be getting dark soon...”

She wrenched free of his grasp. “Recovery? What happened to rescue? He's not—” Honey strove to contain the rising note of hysteria in her voice. “It can't end this way. Not like this.”

“Braeden says we can wait inside the station for updates.” At her elbow, tears coursed across Amelia's face.

She'd not noticed her sister's arrival. Honey shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

“The Guard is doing everything they can, Honey. But—”

“I won't believe it. Not until I see him.”

Amelia's mouth quivered. “Honey, you grew up here. You know sometimes they never find—”

“Stop it!” Honey yanked free of their restraining hands. She shouldered through the silent bystanders, past her friends, past the men and women she'd known her entire life.

“Honey...” her dad cried.

“Let her go,” Amelia called. “She needs to come to terms with this in her own way.”

Unable to bear the sympathy in their eyes, she stumbled past the diner. Somehow without realizing it, Honey found herself on the lawn of the church.

Her gaze shot to the white steeple Sawyer had almost broken his neck to restore. And a seething rage—the anger she'd kept stuffed inside herself since she was a girl—rose, lava-hot, to the surface. Foaming. Out of control.

“Why, Sawyer?” she screamed at the steeple. “Why do you always have to be the hero? Why do you take such chances?”

She shook her fist at the steeple. “And this time, you lost. What about the people you leave behind? The people whose lives will be devastated because you're not here.”

“People whose lives you will ruin,” she whispered.

But she knew why. He risked his life because he did care. Because he was a hero. It was who Sawyer was. What she loved the most about him.

And what she'd feared most about him.

She marched up the steps of the church and flung open the doors, which were never locked in peaceful Kiptohanock. She stalked down the aisle toward the altar. Head tilted back, she glared at the wooden cross on the altar table.

“Why did You let this happen to him? After what he went through as a boy, didn't he deserve to live to be an old, old man?”

She blinked rapidly. “Why do You hate Sawyer?” Her voice broke. “Why do You hate me?”

Only silence answered her.

She sank to her knees beside the front pew in the century-old church. And resting her head against the armrest, her body shook with sobs. Over the loss of her mom. Lindi and Caroline. For what she'd neglected to say to Sawyer.

“I love you.” Her lips grazed the wood. “I love you...” Arms wrapped around herself, she rocked back and forth on the floor. “I love you.”

Too little, too late. She'd never know if she'd spoken those words to him last night whether it might have altered the choices he'd made today. An image of him floating face down in the water filled her mind.

Honey moaned. She'd lost him for good this time. Like she'd lost everyone she ever loved. And she was so tired. So tired of trying to be perfect. Of maintaining this untouchable, always-got-it-together persona she'd created.

She wasn't perfect. Perfection was an illusion of control. Only God was perfect. Somewhere along the way she'd turned away from Him because He didn't do things her way. Condemnation for the choices she'd made flooded Honey. Condemnation—something Sawyer had struggled with until he found—

Honey opened her eyes. A black Bible nestled against the corner of the cushion. An old bulletin stuck into its contents piqued her curiosity. Romans, he'd said.

She pried the Bible loose. Her knees scraping the hard wooden floor, she held her breath and opened the book to its bookmarked position. And her eyes widened. What were the chances...?

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.—Romans 8

The “in Christ Jesus” part was key. Like for her mom and Lindi. Despite sickness and mistakes.

Another highlighted section toward the end of the chapter snagged Honey's attention.

What then shall we say to these things?... God did not spare His own Son...

Her eyes drifted toward the cross on the altar. Her gaze dropped to the printed page.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

She understood about separation. First, her mom. Then, Lindi. Caroline's inexplicable desertion. Sawyer. One after the other, she'd lost them.

But had she? Despite her father's encompassing grief, he'd fought his way through the darkness toward faith. As had Amelia and little Max. As had Sawyer.

Were those she loved the most gone forever?

No...

Her breath hitched as if the words written two thousand years ago had been written today, just for her. Though she'd probably skimmed these words a dozen times, they became suddenly alive with meaning.

She hungered for the peace those words had given Sawyer and her family. To know. To believe.

Her mother. Lindi. Wherever Caroline and Sawyer even now found themselves. They weren't lost to her forever. Not gone. Because of God's love for them and for Honey, too—they were okay. Better than okay. Just okay somewhere else.

“Forgive me.” She bowed her head. “Help me to trust You.”

She knelt in a pool of sunlight at the foot of the cross. Bathed in the rainbow squares of stained glass that dappled the altar. And she knew, whatever the search revealed, she'd be okay, too.

Never alone or forsaken. Forever safe in the loving arms of God. Like her mom and Lindi.

Like Sawyer?

“Please keep him alive,” she breathed. “Please bring him back to me.”

In the end, though, everything always came back to trust. Faith. And surrender.

“But Your will...” Her mouth trembled. “Not mine, be done.”