He didn’t look at anything but his controls, and the ground. He knew there’d be emergency equipment waiting for them, knew the base’s fire trucks would be there, ready.
I’m damned if I’m going to survive the fucking Battle of Britain to become a smear on the airfield here in Texas.
The next few seconds sped up so that in hindsight they seemed like a blur. The first bump of the wheels on the field barely registered, though his heart nearly froze with the bounce. Gerald put every bit of his force of will into controlling the stick, bearing down smoothly on the brakes, until finally, finally, the bird was down, and slowing, and stopped.
The airman in front of him wasted no time in throwing back the canopy. Now time seemed in sync with reality. Gerald unclasped his harness, shoved it off, and got his legs under him—legs that felt like jelly. He ordered the airman out—they weren’t waiting for assistance—and then followed him down.
Then they ran like hell away from the bird.
Gerald stopped and turned around, in time to see the fire trucks surround the plane and douse it with chemicals. Steam arose from the engine. The sight of the white cloud eased his nerves. He turned to look at the young man who’d shared that ride from hell with him.
“You okay there, Stevens?”
“Now I am, sir. May I offer my congratulations on your engagement?”
“Not until I get home and pop the question.” He clapped the young man on the back. “You did fine, Stevens.” The kid
did
do fine—he didn’t panic, or puke.
“Thank you, sir. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go…um…change.”
“You go right ahead.”
Patrick sauntered toward him. One look at his brother’s face and he knew Pat had been as scared as he.
“Good landing.”
Gerald shrugged and took the same casual tone his brother had used. “I don’t know. It could have been better.”
“You realize the commander is going to want to see you, right?”
“He can see me. Just as soon as I talk to the line chief.”
Gerald strode over to the man in question, a chief master sergeant who was in charge of all the maintenance on base.
The man saluted, and looked mad as hell. He ran a hand through his very short salt-and-pepper hair. Gerald recalled seeing the man earlier that day, stubby cigar clenched in his teeth, showing one of his new men—one of the brothers he’d washed out of flight training a few weeks back, in fact—something in the guts of another plane.
“Major, I have no idea what the hell could have gone wrong with her, sir.”
Gerald read the man’s name tag. “Well, Chief Master Sergeant Thomas, you’d better find out. This is the second plane I’ve had trouble with. This one didn’t sputter, but it seemed to burn hot”—he waved his hand toward the fire crew—“obviously.”
“It shouldn’t do that, sir. I’m going to have this baby towed in and I’ll take the fucking bitch apart myself.”
“Good enough. But I have a question for you. Have there been reports of other planes not quite performing up to snuff?”
“Seriously, Major? These Vibrators shake the innards of everyone who flies ’em. Any of the instructors who’ve flown other craft, they all bitch.”
Gerald looked at the man, and knew he couldn’t help the way his left eyebrow went up. “I was thinking more on the lines of the planes coughing, sputtering, or running hot.”
“Yes, sir. There’ve been a few grumblings. Now that I think about it, maybe a few more grumblings than normal.”
“Then give that plane a good look at, Sarge. Maybe you’ve gotten in some bad replacement parts.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, sir. Like I said, I’m going to be on this myself.”
The man had a reputation as being one of the best, a fact Gerald didn’t doubt one bit. He stepped back and let the man supervise the moving of the plane.
“You’re thinking something is really wrong with all the planes?” Patrick waited until they were alone and walking toward the main building before asking that.
“I don’t know if it’s all of them, or just a few. I’ll be sure to mention my suspicions to Colonel Hamilton.”
“Maybe we can snag a few hours off base,” Patrick said. “We haven’t seen Kate for nearly a month.”
“I was thinking the same thing. I very badly need to hold our woman right about now.”
Patrick placed his hand on Gerald’s shoulder and squeezed. “What do you want to bet that our new cousin, Miranda, has been telling her what married life with two husbands is really like?”
“That little spitfire Marty and Nick married? Hell, the woman’s a schoolteacher and not afraid to speak her mind, as I recall.” They’d only met her once, when their cousins had begun to date the woman. They’d missed the wedding, but neither he nor his brother had been the least surprised that Miranda had said yes. “She probably not only gave her a host of personal details, she probably drew diagrams for our Kate.”
“Yes,” Patrick sighed. “That’s what I’m thinking. Personally, I can hardly wait to see what Kate makes of all that.”
“Captain Somerville, I know this is hard.” Kate sat on the bottom step of the staircase and met the gaze of the wounded man sitting, stone-faced, in the wheelchair.
Craig Somerville had arrived at the Home earlier that day, in the wheelchair, which she found astounding. Yes, he was missing a leg, but the man didn’t appear to have any other physical injuries. No, his wounds went deeper. She’d been told he didn’t even want to try to adapt to his new reality.
His attitude surprised her, because he’d been wounded in a training accident by a mortar, while saving the life of one of his comrades. The man was a hero. And she was going to do everything she knew how to do to help him.
“I don’t see you missing a leg,
Major
. So I don’t see how you could possibly know how hard it is. Ma’am.”
“No, I’m not missing a leg, and I’m sorry, very sorry, that you are.”
“I’m only half a man now. How am I supposed to live my life like this? How am I supposed to take care of my wife and boy, run my ranch?”
Kate spread her hands. “You live your life, and you take care of your family. You live it because others—many others—won’t have that chance.” She sat back and recalled the information she’d read in his file. He’d left Philadelphia, and acquired homestead acreage on the heels of the stock market crash of 1929. When war had been declared, he’d enlisted.
According to what she’d read, his wife and son had wanted to visit him while he was in the hospital in Washington, but he’d told them to stay home. She knew that the cost of the trip was only part of the reason for his refusal to see them.
“I understand you got yourself a homestead grant in Colorado about ten years back. You were in Pennsylvania before that, weren’t you? Captain?”
The man didn’t seem inclined to chat, but the use of his rank reminded him that whether he liked it or not, she was a major, and a superior officer.
“Yes, ma’am. I expect you know all sorts of stuff about me.”
Kate shrugged. “Not really. I guess it was pretty easy, waltzing out West and taking free land for nothing.”
“Wasn’t nothing about that was easy. Debra and me only had our backs and our hands and a few dollars besides. We had to build the house ourselves, put in a bit of a crop—feed crop, to care for the few head of cattle we bought at auction. Damn near went broke more than once. Damn near fucking
died
when we got stranded between the barn and the house in a blizzard.”
Kate had riled him up, and that was what she’d intended to do. She nodded. “I stand corrected, Captain. That sounds a hell of a lot harder than learning how to manage with one leg less than you started out with.”
He didn’t say anything, but she pressed on. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a leg, but I do know this. A man who can carve a life for himself and his wife out of the unforgiving land can do just about
anything
he puts his mind to. Your room is the second on the right at the top of the stairs. You have the bed by the window. Dinner is in three hours.”
There was an empty bed downstairs, but Kate didn’t think Captain Somerville was incapable of getting up those stairs. Yes, it would be hard, but he needed to begin to try.
She couldn’t really help him until he began to help himself. But she had the beginning of a plan in mind for him.
Kate gave him a smile and a nod, as if everything was settled between them. She got up, and headed out toward the front porch. She needed to think about this plan. She needed to talk to someone who could help her with it—someone who could tell her, first and foremost, if what she wanted to do was even possible.
She stepped out onto the porch and slammed into a solid wall of man.
“Steady, Major. I wouldn’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.”
Kate’s heart tripped as she looked up in response to the familiar and missed voice. Gerald Benedict had placed his hands on her arms, ostensibly to do just that—steady her. She couldn’t hold back her smile, but she was very conscious of her surroundings.
The late-afternoon sun shone down, keeping the temperature in the midseventies. There were at least a couple of her patients enjoying the warmth of the day, rocking on chairs that lined the porch.
“Major Benedict. It’s good to see you again.” She looked to Gerald’s left, and met Patrick’s laughing gaze. “And you, Major Benedict.”
“Major. We couldn’t carry on to the Big House until we stopped in and paid our respects.” Gerald had removed his hands from her arms, but not before he gave her a little squeeze.
Kate wanted nothing more than to throw herself at both men. She’d had no idea they were coming home today. It was the very devil, having to play this role of polite acquaintance.
“Thank you, gentlemen. May I invite you in for some coffee?”
“That would be delightful, Major Wesley. Thank you.” Patrick’s eyes positively sparkled as he said those words.
Of course the lascivious look he directed toward her breasts completely belied his polite conversation. Fortunately, no one saw that look but her.
She nodded in response to Patrick’s words, and led the way into the house. Since her men were both in uniform, they received the salutes of the men who saw them—and returned them, she noted, quite smartly.
She also noted that the wheelchair Captain Somerville had so recently occupied sat empty beside the stairs.
The man himself was nearly at the top. She watched for a moment, satisfied that he had himself well in hand. She hadn’t told him that she’d
known
he could climb stairs—the notation had been in his file.
Captain Somerville was an angry man, and that notation had been in his file, too. Kate could see nothing wrong with that. As far as she was concerned, the man was entitled to a certain amount of anger.
She just happened to believe that anger was a first-rate raw material that ought not to be wasted.
Kate entered the short hallway that would lead toward the kitchen. A hand on her arm deftly changed her course, and in the blink of an eye she was being propelled toward her bedroom.
She began to tremble inside, because there was nothing she wanted more in that moment than to be led to her bedroom by the men she loved. At the same time, she couldn’t think they meant to make love to her in broad daylight, in a building that currently housed more than twenty recuperating soldiers.
They entered her room. She heard the door close, and then she was turned around and pulled into a pair of strong, muscled arms.
“Hush, sweet Kate. We just need to say hello to you properly.”
Gerald pulled her flush against him. She wound her arms around his neck. “There’s nothing proper about this, Major Benedict.”
“I know.” Gerald gave her just a flash of that smile she so loved. And then he laid his lips on hers.
Oh, God, she’d missed this, missed the taste of him and the way it felt to be held hard and close in his arms. His tongue plundered her, plunging into her mouth again and again. She tasted his arrogance and his masculinity, and, she thought, more than a bit of desperation.
She returned his kiss with as much fervor as she could muster. All the nights she’d spent alone since that one they’d spent together, the three of them, had built a reservoir of need inside her, need that she’d had to keep hidden and unmet for nearly a month.
She never doubted that they missed her. Their letters had told her as much. Madeline had told her, too, that on the two occasions when they’d been able to call home, they’d asked first of her.
She felt Patrick close to her back, felt his heat and his hands as he stroked her. Gerald released her but didn’t step back. Patrick used a gentle touch to angle her face toward him. He kissed her, his lips less forceful, his tongue less demanding, and yet his essence was just as seductive and necessary to her.
She slid her tongue along his, and then she had what she’d craved, the flavor of both men at the same time. She drank Patrick in while Gerald held her, and she felt the shivers neither man could contain.
They were all breathing hard when Patrick tapered his kiss. She knew then that this reunion had been more than just a reunion of lovers parted. The desperation had been raw, nearly feral.