Course of Action: Crossfire. Lindsay McKenna

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       Cait!

      Maybe he wasn’t dead after all. Her touch felt so damned good. Steadying. Stabilizing. She felt so very close to him. And like a starving animal, Dan eagerly inhaled her scent deep into his body, and it fed him, helped him focus.

      Minute by minute, Dan’s mind started to hinge back together. The more Cait stroked his head, rearranging his hair here and there because it nearly touched his shoulders, Dan acquiesced to her light ministrations. Some of her words ran together. He didn’t care what she said—it was Cait. He loved her so damn much and he’d never told her. Never. It would have hurt Ben to know that he ached for Cait.

       Ben...

      Blips and flashes exploded behind his shut eyes. He saw Ben, heard himself screaming at him, running to his side. The whole scene downloaded from his spinning brain and suddenly, Dan was there, not in recovery. Cait was with him. He could hear her soothing voice speaking to him, but he was back in the village, trying to stop Ben’s bleed. There was such anguish that roared through him—his body jerked and then tensed. Cait’s hand gripped his shoulder firmly, her voice low, fraught with anxiety, near his ear.

      Dan couldn’t hear anything except the explosions, the M-4’s throaty roar, the popping of AK-47s and the thumping of Apache helicopters racing toward their compromised position. No! No! Ben couldn’t die! He just couldn’t!

      A low animal cry tore between his thin, contorted lips. His entire body jerked in response. Pain exploded in his leg and it raced up into his torso, sucking the breath out of him. Cait’s husky, urgent voice broke through his barrier of agony. Dan tried to hold on to it, fought to follow it even though he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He tried to concentrate on her fingers moving soothingly across his tense shoulder, trying to calm him down.

      Ben died! He died! He’d bled out! A moan, like that of an animal being tortured ripped out of Dan. He was too weak to move. Too weak to open his eyes. And how he wanted to see Cait, but he couldn’t. The last thing he remembered feeling was Cait’s lips pressed against his sweaty brow, her voice trembling with emotion, her hands cupping his sweaty face. Anguish, grief and loss plunged Dan into a spinning, darkening hell and he knew nothing more.

Chapter 2

      Cait Moore tried to fight back her tears as she watched Dan Taylor slowly become conscious. Her brother, Ben, was dead. Word had reached them a week ago. No one had told her and her family how he’d died. Looking at Dan’s face, the deep tan, the slashes on either side of his thinned mouth, she knew he would know. Maybe it would give her and her family some desperately needed closure. They’d buried Ben three days ago at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl Crater on the island of Oahu. Her heart ached with loss for her big brother.

      She stood watching Dan, who was in a slightly elevated position on the bed. He’d come out of seven hours of surgery at Tripler Medical Center, his second surgery in seven days. Cait had found out that they’d planned to amputate his leg during his first surgery at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. Dr. Allison Barker, who was an exceptionally talented ortho surgeon, had stopped the amputation. When Dan had arrived at Tripler, Allison had put screws into Dan’s leg instead, saving it from amputation.

      Her heart swelled with feelings for Dan. Beneath his tan, he had an unhealthy pallor. Her gaze drifted to the two IVs, one in each of his arms. One was a continuous morphine drip because bone pain could only be addressed with this opiate. The other was feeding him the necessary fluids and nutrients he needed to stay alive and recover. He wore a blue hospital gown that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and his powerful chest.

      Memories assailed her as she stood, her hand lingering on his arm, feeling the sprinkled dark brown hair beneath her fingertips. Would Dan ever be able to surf again? Allison and her surgical team worked on soldiers and Marines whose limbs had been destroyed. Dan would become Cait’s patient at some point because she’d pleaded with her boss, Dr. Jackson Berringer, to allow her to work with him. Cait was grateful Jackson had granted her request. She was a damn good physical therapist, and she wanted no one else but her to help Dan to recover his ability to walk and do the things he had done before being wounded.

      Absently she moved her fingers slowly up and down Dan’s ropy forearm, watching his lids quiver. He was finally coming out of the worst of the anesthesia. She couldn’t settle her roiling feelings, which swung between her grief at Ben being dead and her relief that Dan had gotten out of that firefight alive. Tears stung her eyes at the thought that Dan could have been killed, too. She wiped her tears away and sniffed. He couldn’t see her crying. He’d ask why, and she couldn’t tell him. How long had she loved this brave soldier? Ever since she’d met him.

      Cait made a frustrated, muffled sound, forcing her tears away. Dan’s eyes would open at any moment now. How she loved him. And he didn’t know. She’d never spoken of it to him. Ben had wanted her to consider Dan a brother, but she never had. Her big, overprotective brother would have been crushed if she’d ever admitted that she had, over time, fallen hopelessly in love with Dan.

      Everything had changed now. Cait knew Ben had always worried about her falling in love with a military man. He’d warned her they were out for sex and sex only, that she needed to marry a medical doctor because they were more stable and reliable. They would respect her for her keen intelligence and she wouldn’t have to worry about her husband being killed in combat, making her a young widow.

      Ben had wanted her to be happy. And to have a good, stable marriage. But it had become so tough on Cait, every time they came home on leave, to pretend and hide her feelings from Dan. And keep the secret from her brother.

      Her hand stilled on Dan’s forearm. How many times had she dreamed of Dan loving her? Kissing her? Cait’s gaze drifted to his strong, chiseled mouth that only now was beginning to relax. The morphine drip was giving him some badly needed relief from the nerve pain.

      Suddenly, he opened his eyes.

      Cait moved closer, fingers wrapping around his wrist, watching his gray, cloudy gaze. He was drifting in a morphine cloud.

      “Dan? It’s Cait.” She smiled down at him, reaching out, grazing his cheek and pushing his long, nearly shoulder-length hair behind his ear. His gray eyes suddenly became raptor-like and fastened on her. Her smile grew. “You see me?”

      “Y-yeah...Cait...”

      His voice was hoarse and rough. “It’s okay, Dan. You’re coming out from anesthesia.” His dark brown brows dipped. “Am I speaking too fast for you?” Cait knew words ran together when anesthesia still lingered in a person’s body. Her heart mushroomed with powerful emotions, wanting to kiss him, but he was conscious now and he’d remember if she did. And how could she explain her actions to him then?

      “N-no...fine...where?”

      “Tripler Medical Center. Honolulu.” She didn’t want to stop touching Dan. At the very least, there was the healing value of touch with physical therapy, but her need to touch him ran much deeper.

      His large, black pupils widened as she ran her fingers through his mussed but clean long hair. The nurses had washed it, but it needed to be combed. Cait knew Special Forces A teams grew long hair and wore beards so as not to stand out in the Middle East.

      She watched his eyes grow dazed and then slowly wander back to her and actually look at her. Cait couldn’t stop smiling. How badly she wanted to kiss Dan, welcome him home, celebrate that he’d survived.

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