Reckless Endangerment (28 page)

“That’s what the brochure said, transitional facility.  Definitely not hospital,” he added. 

“Things could get dangerous at my house.”  She scrawled her name on each highlighted line, gritting her teeth the entire time.  “Aren’t you worried about your patient, Beck?  I may wreck him.”

“More secure at your house than here.”  Becky left them to stuff his bag into the back of the jeep.  “Your building is set-up like Fort Knox.  He’s assured me that he’ll do his exercises, take his medication and be back here promptly Monday morning for his therapy.”

“Oh, he has, has he?”  God, she felt sick.  Their argument echoed in her mind and collided with the guilt she felt for the deaths on her conscience.  “I hope you’re okay with him living on beer and take-out because I haven’t had any time to grocery shop.”

“Tell me, Colonel, do you plan on drinking beer and eating take-out in the real world?” Becky asked him while snatching the papers away from her. 

He pretended to think about the question.  “Yes, I do. In fact, I need assistance in rediscovering those activities.”

“Okay, that’s it.  What the hell is going on here?”  Anger blazing in her soul, she faced them.  “Since when are you two so buddy buddy and why in the hell did Devon rat me out?”

Devon’s cab arrived on cue.  She winked before slipping away and making her escape. 

“Take me home, Hope.”  He snagged her hand and squeezed until she looked at him.  “I’ve been waiting a long time to come home.”

That did it.  Those words.  She sighed and broke eye contact.  “I’m too tired to argue.”

* * * *

She hesitated with one hand on the passenger door and the other on her hip while she looked between him and the elevated SUV.  His red-haired angel.  A jean clad, bruised, pissed off, exhausted angel. 

“This day never ends,” she whispered beneath her breath before meeting his gaze.  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?  This is what you want?”

“Get me the hell out of here.” The smile began somewhere deep inside his heart before it found its way to his lips.  His red-haired angel was taking him home.  About damn time. 

“What are we getting ourselves into?” she wondered aloud.

“We can handle it.”

“I swear they’ve got you on some nasty medication.  Your mood swings are phenomenal.” 

He laughed before looking up to the passenger seat.  So much for his certainty about handling anything for the sake of freedom.  Getting into the SUV would be a challenge.  From the concern on Hope’s face, she thought the same thing. 

He bent forward and released the straps on his legs.  With one hand on the door and one on the seat, he pulled himself up.  She moved to hold his waist, but he managed to stand, albeit briefly. 

“I see you have some skills you’ve been keeping secret.” She met his gaze, her hands on his hips.  “You’re standing.”

“Ta-da,” he said with a sarcastic grin.  “That’s it.  Don’t expect me to run a marathon.”

“I don’t expect anything.” She looked up at him, eyes churning with confusion. “I missed looking up at you.”

He grabbed the passenger seat and hauled himself inside the Jeep with as much style as he could fake.  Her looking up at him had done crazy things to his nervous system.  He’d had a glimpse of normalcy.  He closed his eyes for a minute and tried to grasp the gravity of these changes.  In only one week with Hope, he’d made more progress than he had in all of the months at Walter Reed. 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she muttered as she arranged his legs in front of him.  “I don’t expect anything, I don’t.” 

“But you should...” He snagged a strand of long hair that brushed over his thigh as she knelt over him.  “You’re my wife...you need to have some expectations of your husband and make sure he tows the line.”

“Yeah, well, I know better than to try to make you do anything.”  She met his gaze.  Again he was struck at the change in her today--sadness had her in a death grip.  

He wanted to pull her into his lap and kiss her breathless, erase the pain he saw in her eyes. 

She slammed his door closed and stared at him through the window.  The wind tossed her red hair across her face.  He questioned this tactic, wondered if it was truly too late to repair what he’d done.  She looked removed from him in more ways than physical. 

Becky tapped her on the shoulder, said something he couldn’t hear and waved at him. 

His heart sunk a little as she walked around the front of the jeep, head bent, not exactly enthusiastic about taking her husband home despite fighting for this for months. 

She pulled herself into the passenger seat and briefly checked on Dude who had perked up during the activity.  Tension reverberated off of her like a force field.  Without looking at him, she faced forward, started the car and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. 

“I pull out of this lot and it all changes.  You.  Me.  No going back.  We need to have each other’s backs, no more doubts and accusations.  I won’t accept anything less than that.  Do you understand that?  Are you ready to be married to me, Michael? For better or worse and all of that?”  Profile to him, she bit her lip.  

“I am.”  He squeezed her forearm with his left hand until she looked down and noticed that he’d put on his wedding ring for the first time since Mykonos.  “Are you ready to be married to a bastard like me?”

She linked her fingers through his, her gaze locked on his ring. “About the pregnancy...I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that.  I wanted to tell you after we...after we were on solid ground, not in the middle of a fight.  I’m sorry.  I’m tired of fighting.”

“Take me home, babe.”  Baby Cedars...the thought squeezed his heart in two.  They had lost so damn much.  “Have you even stopped moving since Frankfurt?”

“Not really.” She dragged her gaze to his and grinned.  “So you’re supposed to keep me in check, huh?  Is that the grand plan you’ve cooked up here?”

“We’re both a catastrophe of epic proportions, you realize that, right?” He leaned his cheek against the leather seat, enjoying looking down at her.  He’d missed it, too.  He’d missed a lot of things. 

“Speak for yourself.  I’m pretty cool.”   She dropped his hand and drove from the lot.  “Feel good to be out of there?”

“Feels like freedom.”  His fingers stroked the outline of her face.  He couldn’t explain how it felt to be sitting here with her, the moon roof open, elbow on the window.      “It’s been awhile, you know, since I’ve been a civilian.”

“You’ll always be a Colonel to me.”  She glanced in the rearview mirror and sighed.  “This does feel a little weird, though, doesn’t it?  You and me together again in Denver...a word away from where we met. Surreal is an understatement.”

He lifted his face to the breeze as they drove.  Late afternoon traffic clogged the downtown streets as she maneuvered toward her home.  As they neared the loft building, unexpected nerves skipped along his spine. 

He looked at his wedding ring. The past months had been a constant stream of struggle and uncertainty.  Sitting here with his wife about to come home--permanently--seemed too good to be true. 

“Having second thoughts about this?” she asked when he remained silent.

He looked at her profile.  “I’m unemployed, you know.  You married a Colonel and now I’m simply Michael Cedars.”

“I like Michael Cedars.” 

“What do you like about him so much?  He hasn’t been very nice to you.”

“True.”  She changed lanes and said nothing else. 

“Why do you have such faith in me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”  She shrugged as if that were the simplest thing in the world to say.  “We’ve seen a lot together.  Fought a lot.  Saved each other’s lives more than once.  Yes, you’ve hurt me but…that’s not you speaking, that’s the pain.”

“What if the pain never goes away?”  He snagged a strand of her hair that tossed in the wind. 

“Is that what you think? That it will never go away?”  She looked at him once they stopped at a stoplight. 

“This story has you spooked, doesn’t it?” He held his hand up when he noticed her automatic defensive posture.  “I’m not starting a fight.” And then a thought whispered through his mind that he couldn’t quite believe.  He rested his cheek on the seat and looked at her tapping her finger against the steering wheel, eyes darting toward the rearview mirror more than necessary, jaw working overtime.  “I know I’ve been locked away from society for awhile now and my social skills aren’t what they used to be.”

“An understatement,” she muttered.

“And my instincts are a little rusty but…” he glanced into the side mirror, “if I had to guess, I would say that you think we’re being followed.” 

“I thought you weren’t trying to start a fight.”

“Is it true?  C’mon, babe.”  His hand moved to her thigh.  “Tell me.”

“You have no idea how tired I am.  I probably shouldn’t even be driving.” She exhaled long and hard.  “Okay, so maybe I think we’re being followed.  That same black Mercedes has been behind us the entire drive from New Horizons.  And, yes, I do feel safer with you, okay?  Happy now? I’ll feel much safer with you next to me tonight. Satisfied?  Is that what you want to hear?  Yes, I’m happy you’re coming home with me even if it does feel like an ambush.”

He squeezed her legs and wanted to shout with joy for the first time in months.  She needed him.  She truly did. 

“Jerk.”  She smiled but didn’t look at him. 

He could never explain to her what it was like to simply ride in this vehicle with her, to know he was going to a place that didn’t have a hospital bed or a nurse checking on him every few hours, to know that she would wake up with him in the morning.  He could barely believe it.  Freedom...at last.  Home in the good ol’ USA. 

She slid her parking pass into the card reader before driving into the underground garage. Her hands lingered on the steering wheel long after turning off the engine.

“Scared?” he asked when she failed to move.

“Maybe a little, but not because of the wheelchair.”  She twisted in the seat and looked him in the eye.  “Colonel Michael Cedars is here in Denver with me and I want…”

“What do you want?”

“I want to get it right. No more fighting.  I want my husband back.”  She slipped her hand into his.  “At the end of the day, I’m just a girl with a crush on a guy.”

“Lucky guy.” He squeezed her hand. 

Their gaze locked, bonded by history.

Dude whined, reminding them both that puppies waited for no one and had zero respect for romance.  Hope sighed, opened the door to her car and scanned the lot with her gaze, the nervous energy returning as if it had never left. 

As she removed his wheelchair from the back of the jeep, he wondered what other secrets she kept and if either of them would ever get a chance to heal each other.  He wondered if the pain would ever go away or if they’d simply learn to live with it. 

Chapter Seventeen

Oh, she needed him.  No question.  Her thighs throbbed at the sight of his bent head as he petted Dude.  She shifted her weight from foot to foot.  Do not rush him to the bedroom, she cautioned herself.  Feed the man.  Give him a beer. Take care of him.  Act like you have some sense. Do not jump his bones as soon as he sets foot inside the loft.  Do. Not.

“This is bad,” she whispered aloud in the elevator without noticing.

“What is?  Bringing me here permanently?” He angled his head to look up at her. 

“You’re not the only one of us who’s screwed up, let’s leave it at that.” 

Her panties melted to her skin at the thought of him lying beneath her in that king size bed again.  She shook her head and gulped down the extra saliva that seemed to be accumulating in her mouth.

“Hope, you—”

“Oh, please, shut-up, Michael.”  She closed her door, punched the alarm code in to the pad on the wall.  “If you must know, I’m trying to convince myself to keep my hands off of you at least until you’re settled because Becky is right, you’ve been through a lot in the past few days, not to mention a traumatic past few months.  And the last two times I’ve jumped your bones, I’ve hurt you.  And I’m tired...so tired...I can’t even concentrate. I need to show some kind of self-control.”  She relocked the deadbolt on her door before facing him. “When it comes to you, I have zero restraint.”

“You’re trying to control yourself?  Why?”  His grin turned wicked as his gaze raked over her.  “Want a repeat of last night? Only this time you get to scream my name.”

“That’s not helping.”  She walked to the windows overlooking the street. 

The black Mercedes had parked on the opposite side of the street.  Bastards. She fought the urge to call Devon and demand to know what was going on with Gannon.  He’d left in his jag from the strip club....where had he gone?  To check on his property?  Her lips curled at the idea of calling another human being property.  She pressed her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes for just a minute. 

“I’m glad you chose a place downtown.  It suits us, I think.  You’re always thinking ahead, aren’t you?  I never actually realized that about you.”