Going Overboard (40 page)

Near the end of the hall, Daphne stopped abruptly.

“What's wrong? More pain?”

“No, this is about you.” Daphne opened the door to a waiting room and gently pushed Carly forward. “In you go.”

“Me? What do you mean?”

“Since you were going to be here anyway, I made an appointment for you to have an ultrasound. The technician is waiting for you.”

“But—”

A technician approached, clipboard in hand, rattling off questions before Carly could protest further, and Daphne took advantage of the distraction to slip back outside. She was joined a few moments later by Izzy, who looked devastatingly handsome in a gray polo shirt and jeans.

Daphne raised one hand. “High five,” she murmured. After a resounding slap, she checked her watch. “Should be anytime now.”

Izzy spoke quietly into a walkie-talkie he took from his pocket. “Situation report?”

Static crackled, then a voice responded. “Target in sight, sir. ETA 1140 hours.”

“Roger,” Izzy said thumbing off his receiver. “Time to disappear.” He guided Daphne out of sight into a storage room across the hall.

Even as the door closed behind her, McKay appeared in the corridor, balanced on a cast from foot to lower thigh. A scar ran across his jaw and disappeared beneath the collar of his white naval uniform.

Izzy saw the strain in his eyes and remembered his first sight of McKay after the C-4 had sent him flying. A lung had been punctured and more than a few bones had shattered as he'd been flung into the air and slammed back to earth. He'd had a torturous crawl back to health, and only Izzy knew how much pain still haunted him. SEAL to the end he had defied the odds against a full recovery and rejected the potent pain medications after three weeks, claiming that the pain helped him concentrate on all the places he had to nurse back to health.

His face was thinner, almost stark, Izzy noted as McKay maneuvered along with fierce concentration. He'd grappled with more than physical pain in the last four months. His extensive wounds meant that his days of combat field assignments were over, and he had been recommended for a desk job at a primary SEAL base in Virginia, overseeing operations. Vronski's final act of destruction had yanked Ford out of the life he had carefully planned and the career he had single-mindedly pursued for over a decade.

Izzy knew he worried about how much mobility he would regain in his right knee and whether he could make the transition to being a desk jockey.

Or if he even wanted to.

Now he was about to confront another change— whether he liked it or not.

If he refused to marry the woman carrying his child then Carolina Sullivan had a right to hear that from the horse's mouth and not over the telephone.

Horse's ass was more like it. But Izzy was betting on the lady to cut through McKay's intractable wall of pride.

“You're late, Commander,” Izzy drawled. “But then what should I expect from a man who refused to show up for the nice funeral Vronski had planned for him? How's the knee?”

“I've already signed us up for a week of black diamond snowboarding in Vail,” McKay shot back. “I'm going to whip you good.” Only the set of his jaw betrayed his concentration as he made his way past a cart loaded with meals and cutlery.

“Dream on.” Izzy resisted an urge to move the cart out of McKay's way. He knew the gesture would meet with a silent glare. As stubborn as he was proud, the SEAL refused any special treatment.

“Where's the party taking place?”

Izzy ran his tongue across his teeth. “Right down the hall.”

It had required an intricate web of deception to summon McKay from the naval hospital in central Florida, but Izzy had felt no compunction in fabricating a story about a mutual friend who had been badly hurt in a training exercise in Puerto Rico.

McKay stared at the door down the hall. “Hamilton's in there? Are they doing some kind of test?”

“He should be done any minute. Why don't you go in and surprise him?” Izzy opened the door, all innocence as he watched McKay shuffle inside to the reception desk, where he was guided to a smaller examining room, just as Izzy and Daphne had arranged beforehand. Slowly, he approached the door in question and peered through the glass.

McKay's lips tightened. He seemed to be having trouble breathing.

He rubbed his eyes hard.

Then his hand opened, pressed tightly to the glass.

C
arly lay restlessly on a gray examining table, her linen tunic hiked up above her stomach. A smiling technician was sliding goo over Carly's skin while keeping up an unbroken string of comments about the Caribbean cruise she planned for the following week. Without a pause, the woman placed a small scanner on Carly's stomach and began moving it slowly.

“Look at the screen on the wall. Let's see what we have here.”

Dry-mouthed and breathless, Carly watched the incredible evidence of the life growing within her. Would she see delicate feet? A tiny face?

The nurse moved the probe sideways, expertly working the controls of the ultrasound scanner.

Carly had asked not to be told the gender. Technology was wonderful, but she preferred that secret to remain until the actual delivery.

Fuzzy black-and-white images shifted and spun on the monitor. The tech stopped the probe and grinned broadly. “There's a foot, right at three o'clock. One hand at eleven-thirty.”

Carly squinted hard trying to see if the white outlines were blotches or tiny fingers.

“Let's take a closer look,” the tech said. “Especially over here to the left. I want to get some measurements.”

As the door opened, Carly turned her head and looked up, expecting to see Daphne.

Her heart plunged into free fall. She blinked, half convinced this was another full-color daydream like the others that had plagued her over the last four months.

A man in a dazzling white uniform stood staring back at her, his mouth set, his gaze fixed on her face.

“McKay?” Her voice shook. She couldn't seem to breathe.

“Right here,” he rasped, looking fairly shaken himself. He was paler now, his face more angular, and Carly saw that he had lost weight.

He stared at the technician, then up at the monitor with a look of awe. “A baby,” he whispered, a universe of shock and wonder in the word.

“Is that why you're here?” Carly asked, her hand rising toward his face, then dropping back to the table. She wanted desperately to touch him but knew that her control was too fragile to risk it.

McKay didn't seem to notice as he watched the screen raptly. “Here?” he repeated, distracted. “Izzy told me an old SEAL buddy had been hurt in a training exercise. That's why I came.” He laughed tightly. “I'm going to have to murder that man.”

Right after I finish murdering Daphne
, Carly vowed. “This isn't right,” she whispered. “They shouldn't have brought you here like this, because of a trick.” She was awash in conflicting emotions, and the worst of them was pain.

He hadn't come to explain himself. It was strictly a cold case of deception that had brought him to her side.

Her heart ached. Carly wasn't about to bring the child into this, at least not until he'd come up with some reason for his callous indifference to her over the last four months.

“No, they shouldn't have used a trick,” he agreed, his gaze skimming her stomach, then fixing on her face. “The hard fact is, they shouldn't have needed a trick to

get me here. But I can't say I'm not grateful. Maybe I needed a good swift kick in the behind.” He nodded toward the screen. “I think this qualifies.”

The technician watched McKay curiously. “Shall I go on, Ms. Sullivan?”

“No.”

“Yes,” McKay countered flatly. “Is that the head? Is he up or down? Is he normal?”

“He or she,” the woman answered. “Ms. Sullivan has requested that the gender remain undisclosed. And at a first reading things appear to be normal. Of course, we don't always see—”

McKay didn't wait for her to finish. “Sweet Holy heaven, a baby,” he whispered. “How old?” he asked Carly.

“A little over four months.”

“I didn't know.”

“Of course you didn't know. You didn't return my calls. You didn't give any sign of interest or concern.”

McKay's body tensed. “I was damned well concerned. I knew you had called.” He shook his head and glanced down at the cast, the crutches. “I couldn't call at first. After that I didn't know if I should.”

Carly refused to let her anger melt in a wave of tenderness at his obvious injuries. The future had to be discussed and she had to stay hard and focused to do that. “You're not a man given to indecision, McKay,” she said in a monotone. “I can't believe the only problem was your wounds. After all, people can still punch in a phone number in spite of a leg cast.”

Behind them the technician cleared her throat uneasily. “Perhaps I should come back later,” she said.

Neither McKay nor Carly paid the slightest attention as she shook her head glanced at the monitor, then slipped out of the room.

“There are—were—reasons,” McKay said. “Damned good reasons.”

“Name one.”

“This,” he said, tracing the jagged scar above his collar. “There's another across my back.”

“So? You think all I wanted was a pretty face?” Carly's hand opened and closed on her tunic. “No commitments, McKay. We agreed, and I can accept that. But you had a right to know about the baby and I had a right to know that you were safe. If you wanted to move on, you should have told me. Dammit, it was wrong to make me wait and worry.”
To make me bleed inside day after day.

“You don't get it, do you?” McKay raked his fingers through his hair. “I've got a plate in my head and two new joints, Carly. I've got a knee that may never work right again.” He spoke in a rapidfire burst, as if the knowledge cut him to the quick even now.

“I was there, remember? I saw the explosion and the helicopter going in to airlift you out. My imagination conjured up a lot worse than a few new joints.” She pulled the gown down over her stomach and struggled to rise. She didn't like the idea of settling her entire future while lying flat on her back. She certainly wasn't going to cede any psychological advantage to this man who already wielded too much power over her future.

His hand shot out, helping her to sit up, then preventing her from leaving the table. “You think I don't want you?” His gaze fixed on the wall, as if he couldn't bear to look at her. “I wanted you. I want you now, dammit. The memory of your face brought me awake every morning and followed me down into sleep every night. Thinking of you always helped me find a way through the pain.” He frowned. “But wanting isn't enough. I had to know what kind of future I could offer you. I wanted my answers to be cut and dried, with no maybes or complications when I finally saw you again.” He gave a mirthless laugh as he glanced at the monitor. “But this definitely qualifies as a complication. Now I don't have the luxury of time to make it up to you as I'd planned.”

“What are you saying?” She clamped down on her urge to touch his hand.

She wouldn't give in yet. The stubborn man would have to spell it all out, for better or worse.

McKay closed his eyes. “I'm saying I couldn't allow myself to want you, not with this banged-up body and a career that was over just when it was getting interesting.”

“You think I care about a few scars or a limp?”

“No, you wouldn't care, but I would. At least I thought I did.” He gave her that irreverent grin she had been so drawn to from the first. “Call it a ‘man thing.’ ” Abruptly his hand closed on her shoulder, his expression grave. “I was a damned fool, but I had to know there was something I could offer you. Both of you,” he added hoarsely.

“I won't let this baby become a bargaining chip.” Carly took an angry breath. “I'm not pulling emotional strings here.”

Fury roiled over his face. “You think I could leave now, knowing you're carrying my child? You think you could make me leave? There's not a chance in hell.” His hands were shaking hard as he tilted her head back, his eyes blazing. “I told you once that I'd be responsible and I meant it. It's my fault that we—”

“I was there too, remember? The fault belongs to
both
of us, and it's a consequence I will never regret, whether you're in my life or not.” Carly pushed his hand off her shoulder. “You know that I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself and my child. You can walk out that door right now if you still have any questions about that. I won't say a single word to stop you.”

His hand slid along her tear-streaked face. Funny, she hadn't even realized she was crying.

“Dear God don't cry, sunshine. I can't take seeing you cry and knowing my stupidity caused it. I should have called you.” He paused. “Every day I walked to the phone and had to fight not to dial your number. But I told myself I was doing what was right, what was best, even though every thought of you drew blood.”

Her breath caught at the sound of his admission. She

wasn't above hoping he was as miserable as she'd been over the last few months.

He smoothed her wet face with his strong hand. “Good sweet God, don't cry or you'll have me crying, too.”