SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (57 page)

“How about a swim?” he asked, in a voice croaking like a thirteen-year-old’s. A dip in cool water seemed rather urgent at the moment.

“A swim? Sure you’re up to it?” she asked in that lilting voice of hers.

He winced at her choice of words. Yep, he was definitely rising to the occasion. “Are you going to let me beat you to the water?”

Luke unwrapped the Ace bandage from around his ribs as she untied the sarong from around her hips. The wraps fell together in a heap on the blanket. Her body was so beautiful it hurt.

“I’m winning!” He walked as fast as he could across the hot sand toward relief.

In the cool, clear water she came to him. His toes barely touched the sandy floor and she treaded water just out of reach. He opened his arms and she swam closer to rest her palms on his shoulders. There was only water between them.

Hundreds of people could have been watching, but he didn’t care. The connection between them was an electric current in the water—sizzling, sparking brighter than the sun. He wanted her. Badly. The desire both surprised and thrilled him.

“How do you feel?” she asked, her eyes searched his.

Like singing. Like dancing. Like kissing you, hard.
“Fine,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Never better.”

“Four days.” She squinted. “I wish you could stay longer.”

The thought of leaving gripped his gut like a steel fist. He hadn’t felt this way for a woman in a long time and he didn’t want to let her go. He blurted out, “Come to California.”

“California?”

“San Francisco, to be exact. The ticket’s on me. Stay a few weeks, months, as long as you want.”

She shook her head. “What of my clinic? I can’t leave.”

Your clinic is dead
. He didn’t say it out loud. “I can find you a new job in the Bay Area. In a hospital, clinic, private practice, you name it. I have connections. Lots of them. What do you think?”

A mixture of emotions contorted her face—pain, sadness, hope. She settled on a frown. “The clinic is my life.”

“Your life should be happy, Ysabeau. You deserve joy and sweet dreams.” He moved closer, locking his fingers with hers. “To be loved.”

“Does that happen in real life? I haven’t seen it, except in the movies. I am so tired of fighting against death. So tired of living alone.”

“You’re not alone. I’m still here.” He lifted their locked fingers out of the water.

“In a few days you’ll be gone too.”

“Come to San Francisco with me.” He pulled her closer, holding both of her arms. “Stay with me.”

Her big eyes widened. “I…can’t.” She started to kick and wiggle free. “Let me go!” She pushed against his chest breaking free from his embrace and dove under the water. Her spray choked him when she swam like mad for the shore.

*

Feeling like an
idiot, he slowly swam after her. What was he thinking? Why would she want to come with him to California? Her life was here. But she wasn’t happy.

She was back on the red and white-checkered blanket, her knees pulled up to her chest. Huddled under a towel, she could have been freezing except it was ninety degrees in the sun.

“Ysabeau?” He spoke her name as gently as he could. Water ran down his skin as he waited for a sign from her. Should he sit down beside her? Take a walk?

“When I worked at GHESKIO, there was a patient. He was very sick. And scary…” She stopped talking as if the words wouldn’t come. She stared at a fly on the blanket.

It gave him a moment to search his memory banks for the word GHESKIO and remembered it was the center that specialized in research and training for HIV/AIDS. Ysabeau had been a research scientist for them.

He didn’t like how pale she was. “How scary?”

She twisted the towel in her hands, as if trying to wring out the story. “Sometimes patients become attached to the staff. If a patient doesn’t have family, the nurses and doctors become his only source of companionship in those final days. Their only link to humanity. It’s very sad.”

Luke nodded. He understood her words, but needed a roadmap to see where they were going. He eased down beside her, not touching, giving her all the space she needed. “It must be horrible to die alone.”

“Yes. I did my best to make sure that didn’t happen. No one should be alone in the end.”

That was one thing he did right—Soli died knowing she was loved. He blew out a slow breath. “The patient?”

“At first, I thought this was a textbook case of doctor infatuation. I was wrong. He was…” She shrunk inside the towel, pulling back into a safe hole. “…dangerous. His aura was deep red, almost black. Pure evil.”

“Sorry,” he interrupted gently. “Aura? The glow psychics supposedly see around people?”

She nodded.

“You can see a person’s aura?”

“Always.”

He cocked his head, but he held that discussion for later.

“His attentions scared me. I started to believe it wasn’t infatuation at all, but something darker. Revenge, maybe? He was angry, so angry at the hospital. Why couldn’t we heal him? Why did we get to live, if he couldn’t? It was a fair question, to which there were no fair answers. I wondered why some patients responded to our medicines and others didn’t. I tried to avoid him, even had another doctor treat him. It was no use.”

There was a sickening squeeze in his chest. “A stalker?”

She looked up and he noticed how red her eyes were. “Worse.”

He stopped breathing.

Her gaze refocused on the fly. “Everywhere I went, in crowded places, quiet ones, I saw him watching me with those crazed eyes.”

She shrank even further into the beach towel. He wanted to hold her, tuck her under his arms. Keep her safe. And then pound the guy into the ground.

“The letters and phone calls started. Threatening, demanding. He laughed when I told him to leave me alone. I can still hear the sound of it. His laughter,” her eyes flashed up to his, “haunts my dreams.”

He sat silently watching her, understanding a little more about her nightmares.

“Guards were placed outside the lab to protect me. They couldn’t stop him. He would wait around the corner, or hide near my house. He disappeared when the police were called. Vanished like an evil Loa.” Her gaze fixed to the spot where the fly had been. It had long since flown away. “He wasn’t a spirit, just a very bad man.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She flinched with his touch. “Tell me,” he said, even though he sensed the answer was going to suck his guts out through a straw.

She spoke in eerily quiet tones, “One night, I awoke knowing someone was in the house. I felt him before I saw him. I knew what he was going to do to me. His letters had been very explicit. I ran to the kitchen to call the police. He grabbed me in the hallway. The knife against my throat scared me, badly, but the knowledge that he had AIDS and was about to rape me? I knew what it was like to die from AIDS, Luke. Too well. I didn’t want to die.”

Luke’s fists were clenched and so was his jaw. “I’m gonna kill him.” He was already imaging lots of ways to do it. No one would find the body.

“I fought him. He hit me so hard I lost consciousness. I woke up in darkness. A blindfold was on my eyes, a cloth in my mouth. He’d tied my arms and legs. Then he started touching me.” She swallowed so loudly that she could have been choking down sand.

Luke was no longer able to speak. He hung on her every word, dying inside.

“I don’t know how, but I spit the cloth out of my mouth and started screaming. I screamed until my voice was gone. The neighbors arrived and could barely console me. They untied me and searched the house, the entire neighborhood. He was gone. I knew he’d be back. Again and again. Killing me with AIDS, or a knife, one way or another he would have his revenge. I have never tested positive for HIV, but I know how bad AIDs can be. I live it ever day with my patients. Because of one man, I am afraid to be alone in the dark. Sometimes, if my arms are held down, like you did in the water…”

He understood. “Dammit to hell. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“There should be no reason to be sorry! That horrible man trapped me in my own house, my own body. He made me like this. Scared sick, all the time. Uncomfortable with men. I couldn’t let him get away with it. I had to take matters into my own hands.”

“You called the police?” His insides quivered with rage. He wanted to know the creep was in jail, or worse. Actually, he longed for worse.

“No. I couldn’t risk it. He threatened to hurt Grann if I called the police. I told Deolina everything, and she promised she’d take care of him.”

That
, he did not expect. “Your godmother. The receptionist slash Voodoo Priestess?”

“Yes. She is very skilled in black magic. Death curses and zombies are her specialties.”

“Listen, Ysabeau, I know you believe that stuff, but I’d feel better if we tell the police about this maniac.”
Or I handle him myself.
“I don’t like the idea a guy like that exists—”

“He doesn’t,” she said firmly, her gaze piercing, “exist.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“I am. Luke, I don’t talk about him. To anyone. I told you so you’d understand what happened last night. And out there.” She motioned with her head toward the water. “It’s hard for me to act the right way around men. Hard to be close. But I want to be normal.”

He exhaled deeply. “It’s not your fault. You know that, right? That bastard robbed you, stole your confidence, your innocence. You are not to blame.” He shifted closer to her. Slowly. “And I don’t want you to act any certain way around me. Be yourself, Ysabeau. I love who you are—strong, brave, caring, affectionate.” He blinked at the fact he’d just dropped the L-word on her. “I care for you. Deeply.”

“You have your life in the States.” She sighed. “I have mine here. What do you expect to happen?”

He didn’t know what to expect. He was treading in new waters, hoping he didn’t drown them both. “Things are moving fast between the two of us. I get that. We can take things slow. I don’t want to push you into anything you’re not ready for. But angel, being with you feels right for me, for the first time in many years. Don’t you feel it?”

Her face was sad. “We are worlds apart in every way.”

Gently, he tipped her chin up so that she could see the truth in his eyes. “We aren’t that different.”

“What about my clinic?”

He winced. It was the moment of truth. “Unless you are able to pull off a miracle in the next four days, the clinic is dead.”

She jerked back as if he’d jabbed a needle into her. “The Guardians still want to shut me down.”

“It’s not about want, Ysabeau. It’s about need. There’s only so much seed money available to fund research projects. If the results are not promising, I can’t get other investors involved. The seed money dries up and we have to move on. That’s the way it works.”

“What if the results improve? What if my serum finally works?”

He frowned. “If that happens, investors will pour money into your clinic by the millions. You will be rich beyond your wildest and greatest dreams.”

“Then we will dream big and have faith in the serum working. It has to.”

He didn’t believe it ever would. Still, he liked her dreams better than the more realistic future—the one where he broke her heart and she ended up hating him forever.

‡

La Saline Slum, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

G
ran’s kitchen door
opened and Gochi stepped inside carrying two grocery bags full of supplies. “Afternoon, ladies.” He smiled brightly at Deolina and Gran. “Special delivery from Vuno’s Voodoo Palace.”

“Gochi!” Deolina hoisted herself up off the kitchen chair and sauntered toward him using her famous man-catching-walk. “You don’t age a bit. I am always amazed at how muscular you are. How strong—”

“Down, Deo.” Grann stepped in her path, blocking her from her target.

Deolina nearly walked up the backside of her. “Hey!”

Grann shot her the evil eye over her shoulder. “We don’t have time for nonsense. Please, Gochi, tell us what happened.”

Plopping the bags down on the kitchen counter he nodded. “The deed is done. And you were right, he doesn’t know. I touched him flesh on flesh,” he said of the handshake that took place inside Ysabeau’s car. “Poor devil doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him. Or us.”