Secret Dream: Delos Series, 1B1 (2 page)

In the five years since then, Lia had struggled—hidden, really—in Costa Rica working for that charity. Jerry, who was her boyfriend when she was attacked, couldn’t stand looking at her and had run away from her, never to see her again. Two years ago, she had gotten into a relationship with Manuel, a Costa Rican, but when he saw her scarring, he was disgusted by it and her. Steve knew his daughter was lonely. He and Susan had envisioned her married and with a passel of kids surrounding her by now, at age twenty-six. She was a natural mothering type, like his wife, who loved children and animals more than anything else. Except—he smiled to himself—them.

“Yes, until that drug lord Dante Medina murdered the other two teachers at the charity school and then put a hit out on Lia. God, I thought charities were safe,” Susan whispered rawly, pushing strands of blond hair away from her cheek. “I never thought in a million years that Lia would be caught in that kind of crossfire.”

“Me neither,” Steve agreed, sipping his coffee. “But at least the folks at Delos reacted instantly, Susan. They started rebuilding the school that Medina burned down and hired Lia a bodyguard.”

“Yes,
him
,” Susan muttered darkly, scowling.

Steve smiled a little. “You know nothing about him, Susan. We’ve both spoken to Lia since she came back to Alexandria, Virginia, to work at Delos headquarters. Cav Jordan saved her life down in Costa Rica. Remember? He stopped her from being kidnapped by Medina. He put his life on the line for her. So how bad can he really be?”

Susan glared at her husband of thirty years. “Okay, I’ll admit that Jordan did save her, and I’m grateful.”

A faint grin touched Steve’s darkly tanned, weathered features. “You sound awfully accommodating.”

Susan sat back, watching a grin crawl across her husband’s rugged face. She loved this man as fiercely as when she met him thirty years ago at a barn dance at a neighbor’s beet farm. She punched him lightly in the arm, feeling the corded strength beneath the blue chambray shirt he wore. “Am I going overboard?”

He chuckled. “Maybe just a little, sweet. I know you’re concerned for our daughter’s sake, but don’t target this poor fella before he gets here and gives you a chance to sit down and really check him out and talk with him. He’s an ex-SEAL. He can’t be all bad. You know, he’s put his life on the line for our country to keep it safe, Susan. I can’t imagine that Lia would be bringing him home to meet us if he wasn’t something real special to her.”

Rubbing her face, Susan whispered, “Oh, I know, Steve . . . but she was devastated by Jerry’s immaturity. It hurts me so much to even remember that time, when she came home to stay with us after it happened. Lia cried in my arms, Steve. Do you know how that feels? She was so hurt, she sobbed until she ran out of tears to cry. I cried with her until I couldn’t cry anymore. If anyone is all heart, it’s our daughter. You know that. She was crushed twice by two idiot men who couldn’t see
her
, just her scars. It absolutely sickens me.”

He lifted his arm, sliding it around his wife’s tense shoulders. “Lia’s made of strong stuff. She’s inherited our backbone. I know she was hurt by Jerry and that dude Manuel, but that was two years ago. She’s rebounded, and now I think she’s found a fella that is the real deal. She sounded excited about him on the phone last night, Susan. You heard it in her voice, the hope?”

“Yes, I did. But you know how starry-eyed and idealistic Lia is. She doesn’t see men realistically.”

He patted her shoulder, smoothing out the white cotton of her blouse. “And she’s never brought a man home for us to meet, either, sweet. So, there’s something special between those two. We can’t judge without meeting him. And when we do? We have to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know our first knee-jerk reaction is to protect Lia, but she’s twenty-six years old, Susan. She’s an adult. And she can make her own decisions.”

“Yes,” she sighed. “I know you’re right, darling, but I worry. I worry this guy is like Jerry. Same kind of jerk, just a different name and face.”

Chuckling, Steve pushed his chair back and released her. “I’ve never met a mother who wasn’t protective of her child. Just don’t bring out the shotgun and shoot the poor guy at fifty feet, okay?” He gave her a grin and picked up his plate and flatware, taking it to the sink.

Susan grumbled under her breath, “I wish she’d sent a picture of him, Steve.”

He turned at the sink after rinsing off his hands. “Why? So you can throw darts at it?”

Susan had the good grace to laugh. “I’m really being ridiculous, aren’t I?”

Steve held up his thumb and forefinger. “Just a smidgen, sweet.” Wiping his hands on a red and white checked towel, he added, “The man saved our only daughter’s life down in Costa Rica.” He hung the towel on a nearby hook. “If Cav Jordan hadn’t been there to protect Lia, we wouldn’t be seeing either one of them here today. Hold on to that.”

*

Cav Jordan wished
he could share his fiancée’s excitement as they left the security area of the Ontario, Oregon, airport. Lia looked fetching as the sunlight glancing through the large, tall windows brought out the red and gold highlights among her brown curls, which nearly touched her shoulders. When he’d met her met her in San José, Costa Rica, she had been a pale, scared ghost of herself. She had just escaped being murdered five days before by a regional drug lord, Dante Medina. Her friends, two women teachers, had been brutally murdered, and their school had been burned to the ground. She’d been smart and run to the jungle before his men could find and kill her.

As they walked down the green and white tile floor toward an escalator that would take them to the baggage claim where her parents were waiting for them, his mind went back to that afternoon. He had been hired by Dilara and Robert Culver, who owned the global charity Delos. Lia worked for their Home Foundation charity in La Fortuna, in northern Costa Rica, near a volcano known as Arenal. He had been hired to be her bodyguard, and it was the first time he’d met her.

Nothing had prepared him to see the deep, slicing scar on her left cheek or the semicircular one that ran along the left side of her neck. Cav, because he’d been a SEAL and knew knife work better than most, saw that Lia had, at some time in her past, been savagely attacked. He didn’t know how bad it was at first because she always wore long-sleeved blouses and jeans to hide the scars on her forearms and calves. The worst one was across her belly, which he didn’t see until months after they’d fallen in love with one another.

That love had changed both of them in the best of ways—dramatic, breathtaking ways. Lia had been a silent shadow, her hair cut shorter than most men’s, when he’d first met her. She hid in her clothes, wary of men in general. Ashamed of her facial scar. He’d met her at probably the second-worst time of her life, a few days after she had narrowly escaped being killed, and she was still terrorized by the experience. Medina’s men had attacked Delos’s school in La Fortuna, and Lia had run and hidden in the jungle, the only survivor. The trauma left her pale, shaken, and more ghost than woman. Yet he’d seen so much more in her that she’d hidden from the world, and he’d fallen in love with her regardless. At first, he didn’t know the real root of her shyness and reserve, but as he got to know her, he had found out about her assault at Bagram, and it had sickened him. She was just twenty-one years old when two Army soldiers in her unit attacked her one night when she was alone and on watch. It had been a major miracle that she hadn’t bled out before escaping and getting help. Cav admired her quiet bravery, her resilience, and her desire to regain her old self. Her stubborn courage had given her the strength to work past the scars, to reach out to him and build a relationship with him.

Cav had to admit he wasn’t the best-looking fruit on the tree, for sure. And his nightmare childhood haunted him to this day. He knew what it was like to suffer. And maybe that’s what had drawn him and Lia so powerfully to one another, like metal to a magnet.

As he slanted a loving look over at her, he smiled at her eager, flushed face, her gray eyes alight with joy over seeing her parents once more. She was bringing him home to meet them. And even though he’d asked Lia to marry him last month, they’d told only a few close friends at this point. It was simply his promise to her that he loved her, wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, have kids, have a home, a loving home—that was something he’d never had. Lia’s walking into his life had changed it forever in the best of ways. She represented a dream he had never thought could come true for him: falling in love with a woman who he wanted to carry his baby. Lia had made that dream a reality. In fact, Lia had made so many of his dreams come true that he was still spun out by all of it.

At twenty-eight, Cav had never thought he’d ever fall in love. He’d had a lot of sex with women, but none had grabbed his heart. Until Lia came like fog, silent and timid, into that Delos board meeting in a five-star hotel in San José one afternoon. He knew now that he’d fallen hard for her from the moment he saw her stand unsurely in the doorway of that meeting room. And instantly, he’d wanted to protect her, because he felt her rawness, her vulnerability, and saw that look in her intelligent gray eyes that told him she was afraid for her life. It wasn’t drama on Lia’s part. She had almost been killed. If not for her having been in the Army and having military thinking and training, she would have been shot in the head just like the two teachers who worked for Delos had been.

And now? She was his. And she held his wounded heart so tenderly between her small, slender hands, the most kind, giving person that Cav had ever known. Since she’d met him, Lia’s old self had begun to emerge from the trauma of that attack on her life five years earlier. Every day, he enjoyed discovering a new facet to the woman he loved. Cav knew how important this meeting was to Lia, and he wanted badly for it to go right for her sake. She was trying to decide whether she was going to tell her parents that they were engaged to be married. She nattered about her mother, Susan, who had been overly protective of her since she’d been attacked at Bagram and nearly bled to death.
That seemed like a natural reaction for any parent who cared about their child
, Cav thought.

Cav had never experienced a healthy family until Chief Jacoby, his SEAL sea daddy, had taken him under his wing. His father had been addicted to cocaine and used every bit of money his mother earned to feed his habit, not his family. There were mornings during Cav’s childhood when he woke up and wondered if he’d live to see the sun set that night. His father was violent and anything could set him off. His poor mother had done her best to protect him and paid a horrific price for it. Cav had seen her shield him from his raging father, only to have her nose, jaw, arm, and cheekbone broken over time. And then, one day, Cav saw his mother give up. From twelve years old onward, he tried to defend and protect her. And his father would use him as a punching bag, trying to teach him not to interfere between him and his wife. Cav touched his broken nose, remembering all too clearly the day that his father had done this to him. So he didn’t know much about what a real family was like at all until Jacoby stepped into his life and showed it to him. And there was a touch of curiosity on his part to see Lia with her healthy family like Jacoby’s family had been toward him. He hoped so.

As the escalator emptied them into the busy baggage claim, he saw there were just two baggage carousels. Ontario was a very small airport. Suddenly he heard a swift intake of breath from Lia. Her hand gripped his even more firmly.

“Cav! There’s my mom and dad!” She practically ran toward them, dragging him along with her. Though she was a tiny little thing, Cav had learned early on she wasn’t weak.

Cav saw a tall, darkly tanned man in a straw cowboy hat, a chambray shirt, jeans, and work boots standing next to a woman. She had blond hair and was wearing a short-sleeved white blouse, jeans, and flat, sensible leather shoes. He saw their faces light up when they spotted Lia.

“Hey,” he called to Lia, “go to them. I’ll follow.” He released her hand but she turned, giving him a pouty look.

“I’m not leaving you behind!” Lia grabbed at his hand once more, turning and urging him to hurry along. Cav broke out into a self-conscious grin as he saw her parents watching their exchange. Is this what a family did when a stranger was brought along, dragged hurriedly to them? Cav felt out of place, uncomfortable, as he saw Lia’s mother scowl, her green eyes narrowing judgmentally upon him. He hoped what he was wearing didn’t make her think he wasn’t worthy of Lia. Because the way she was sizing him up, Cav felt the full impact of her all-terrain radar, which was focused solely on him. He’d worn bone-colored chinos, a bright red polo shirt, and a black baseball cap. He’d purposely kept his dark glasses hanging out of his shirt pocket. As a SEAL, he would always wear them, but Lia complained constantly that she loved to look into his hazel eyes, not see her reflection in his shades. Cav had to remind himself that he wasn’t in PSD—personal security detail—mode, that he was with the woman he loved. Lia was practically jumping up and down now, hurrying to reach her parents, who were smiling widely. That was a relief. Susan Cassidy could smile. That laserlike look she’d given him was gone now.
Phew.