Behind her, Ross sucked in a breath.
Nate didn’t take his eyes from her face. “As a soldier, the thing you’re most scared of isn’t dying. It’s failing your brother when he needs you. Steve needed me, Claire. I couldn’t let him down again.”
Her stomach plummeted, her knees started to shake. “You shot him,” she whispered.
“Yes.” A grave statement of fact. She saw no remorse, no apology, no guilt. A soldier’s eyes. Not Nate’s. Stoic in their acceptance of the horror of war. It was unbearable, incomprehensible. Wrong.
Dan moved. Empathy in his face, he placed a hand on Nate’s shoulder. His silent support enraged her. When Claire felt Ross’s comforting touch, she spun away. “No! It’s not right. It will never be right. Don’t you dare accept this as normal.”
“Claire.” Nate only had focus for her. She took one step back, two. “I hate this,” she cried. “I hate all of it. Don’t any of you follow me!” Pivoting on her heel, she shoved past Ross and ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
T
HE
REVULSION
IN
Claire’s face stopped Nate in his tracks.
How could he have expected her to understand? How could any civilian? And yet there’d been no doubt as he’d raised his weapon and adjusted the sights, pain blossoming inside him until it obliterated everything but grief and love.
Knowing it would kill something of him to do this, he’d never hesitated. Hesitation meant agony for Steve.
After he pulled the trigger he’d gone into autopilot against the rebel attack, firing, reloading, moving like a robot between grenade launcher and his M4A1 semiautomatic. Changing magazines as they emptied with clinical precision. Feeling nothing, not even hatred.
He worked to save Ross’s life because Steve had told him to, but at his core Nate waited for death with a calm fatalism. He barely heard the incoming American Apache gunship, barely registered the arrival of reinforcements or the counterattack. Certainly he felt no relief. Only when Dan peeled his fingers off the assault rifle did Nate grasp that it was over and returned from the dead himself. Only, part of him didn’t. Part of him died with Steve.
Another part of him was dying now.
“It’s over,” he said. Over with Claire before it had begun.
Dan’s fingers tightened on his shoulder. “You don’t know that, she’s in shock.”
But he did. Her repugnance had made it clear. “Make sure she’s okay,” he said.
“Ross is on it.”
Dazed, Nate tuned in. Ross paced the living room with his cell, his limp barely noticeable. “Viv? Send Jo after Claire. She’s headed to the surf beach and she’s upset. Keep Ellie and Lewis occupied until I phone.” He stopped to listen and then rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I knew I could rely on you, babe.”
“Was I wrong?” Nate asked when Ross ended the call. Horror, deeply buried, welled up and threatened to spill over.
“No,” said Ross.
Dan’s hand was still on his shoulder. “I hope I’d have had the guts to do it,” he said hoarsely. “And I thank God I didn’t have to.”
Ross came up and hugged him. “We’ll share your burden, soldier. You’ve carried it alone long enough.”
* * *
T
HEY
SENT
J
O
after her. Claire couldn’t have coped with a male right now. Her friend stopped a couple feet above the tidal edge where Claire stood, arms wrapped around her body like a straitjacket.
“You need to talk?”
“Men and testosterone, war and grief,” she raged. “What about the women and children, Jo?” A bigger wave rolled through, water hissed across the sand and surged over her sneakers, soaking the hem of her white jeans. She didn’t care.
“I have no answers,” the redhead said. “Confronting death, overcoming cancer made me feel more alive. But choosing to put your life at risk as a professional soldier? I’ve never understood that.… What happened, Claire?”
“Your husband didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
Claire did. All of it. “Nate shot Steve,” she finished wildly. “He shot my husband. He shot his best friend.” A bigger wave surged against her shins, nearly knocking her off balance. “I want this to stop,” she said. “The horror, the grief. I can’t do this anymore, Jo.”
Jo started wading through the tide. “Come here, honey.”
“No, don’t touch me.” Her friend backed up. “But…don’t go anywhere either.”
“I won’t.”
“I made love to him,” Claire said. In Nate’s view he’d done what he had to do. He didn’t see this as the barrier she did.
“What are you afraid of?” Jo asked.
“Of not being able to get past this with Nate.” Claire hugged herself tighter. “Let’s walk,” she said. “I have to move.”
“Okay,” said Jo. “We’ll walk.” They trudged along the beach while Claire’s thoughts whirled, shaken snowflakes in a globe. Whenever they settled, she’d think,
Nate shot Steve,
and raw emotion shook them up again. On their second circuit, she ran out of nervous adrenaline and gestured to the base of a sand dune. “Can we sit a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
The tide had receded as they’d walked—Claire figured they must have been gone half an hour. She started. “Lewis and Ellie?”
“Don’t worry, Viv is keeping them busy.”
“I need more time to decide what I’m going to do.”
“We have time,” Jo soothed.
Claire pressed her throbbing temples. “Except I can’t think,” she cried. “It’s too much.” Too big, too terrible.
“And you’re exhausted,” Jo said softly. “Then rest a few minutes. Just sit.”
“Yes.” Next to her, the spinifex stirred softly in a light breeze. Claire cupped her hand over it, felt the caress on her palm as she stared out to sea, letting the sound of gulls and crash of rolling waves drown out the clamor in her head. On impulse she lay down on the warm sand and spread her arms wide, watching the grains spill across the sleeves of her pink sweatshirt in a glittering sparkle as the sun caught them.
Jo lay down too as if it was the most natural thing in the world for two thirty-something women to sprawl in the sand fully clothed. “I’m glad you’re here,” Claire said. When her friend’s fingertips touched hers, she didn’t pull away.
The sky stretched overhead, a limitless blue. It was easy to believe your dead watched over you from a sky like this.
Help me, Steve. Help me find my way.
“I’ve never told you this,” Jo said, “but I wouldn’t have married Dan while I had cancer hanging over me without your insight. Do you remember? You said, even though you’d lost him, Steve was worth it.”
At the time Claire had thought if she concentrated only on the good she’d never have to confront her deep sense of betrayal. “He was worth it,” she said. It was even truer since Nate helped her own the anger and move beyond it. God, she was so confused.
“Now you have to decide whether Nate is worth it.”
Claire said nothing. She fancied she could feel the pulse of the earth under her back and closed her eyes. Let her mind go blank under the hot sun. Rested.
Jo’s cell rang. “It’s Dan.…Honey? Yeah, she’s coping.…Uh-huh. Well, can’t you stop him?” Opening her eyes, Claire turned her head. “I’ll tell her.” Jo flipped her cell closed. “Nate’s packing. He seems to think it’s over, and that it’s unfair for you to see him, as upset as you are. Dan can’t talk him out of it. Ross has gone to help Viv hold off Ellie and Lewis.”
Her grip tightened on Claire’s. “That choice you need to make about whether Nate’s worth it? I’m sorry, but you need to make it now.”
* * *
T
HE
INSTANT
SHE
SAW
Nate, Claire knew her decision didn’t matter. He was set on leaving.
She found him on
Heaven Sent
in the cabin, stuffing his belongings into his bag. He’d changed out of last night’s clothes into jeans and a black leather jacket, worn over a forest-green T-shirt. Zipping the bag closed, he picked up the passport lying on the bed beside it—and saw her.
Instinctively, his dark gaze scanned her face, ascertaining she was okay. Then he dropped the passport into the pocket of his jacket, his expression shuttered. “I meant to be gone before you got back,” he apologized gruffly. “But I had to wait for Ross to clear the coast first. He and Viv are walking Lewis and Ellie over to Stingray Bay South.”
“No goodbye?”
Momentarily his expression was raw. “I didn’t think you’d appreciate one.”
Claire went and sat on the bed next to his bag. “Why didn’t you tell me before we had sex?”
“Because I’m stupid.” Nate raked a hand through his hair. “I said we needed to talk. You said no second thoughts, and I let it go without any myself. I honestly didn’t think it would have anything like the same impact of telling you I left Steve. It was only when I saw your reaction—” he swallowed “—your revulsion, that I understood how badly I’d misjudged. I deeply regret that, Claire.”
She searched his face; he didn’t hide from her. “I believe you.”
“Leaving Steve ate me up with guilt, but sparing him an agonizing death—I can’t regret that.”
She flinched.
“And that’s why I’m leaving,” he said, and went to pick up his bag.
Claire put her hand on it. “I don’t condemn your choice.”
“But you can’t live with the man who shot your husband.” There was neither a question nor a trace of self-pity in his voice.
“I don’t know.” And that was the God’s honest truth. She loved him too much to leave this unresolved.
His mouth tightened, in a calm voice he said, “My bag, Claire.”
Her fingers tightened on the strap. “What made you decide to tell me Steve’s last words the other night? I mean, I get why you didn’t. You hoped to protect me from the details of his death. But you’d kept the secret for eighteen months?”
“Because you wouldn’t have forgiven him otherwise,” Nate said. “Because no matter how awful his passing, I knew it would cut you up more to carry a grudge against him. Because you loved him and he loved you and in the end, Claire, that’s all that really counted. Isn’t it?”
“Yes.” All her confusion lifted and she was left with one simple conviction, unadulterated by doubt. “I ran scared because I didn’t know if I had the courage for this…for us,” she admitted.
Two extraordinary men had made heroic sacrifices for each other in extraordinary circumstances. And she’d been loved by both of them. They must have seen something in her. Now Claire drew strength from that. “Stay, Nate.”
She expected relief; she expected an embrace. Instead, he began restlessly tidying away every reminder of his presence—dumping a newspaper in the trash, putting away a cup left to dry on the galley counter.
“I keep going back to something you said about Steve when I refused to sign the sales agreement,” he said, digging his hands in his jacket pocket. “‘I want to forgive him, but all the good feelings are tangled up with the bad. There’s no clarity anymore.’”
Feeling sick, Claire forced herself to ask. “Do you…want to go?”
“When I arrived, you said
Heaven Sent
and Stingray Bay represented a fresh start. I can never give you that. I kidded myself that it didn’t matter, but it does—for both of us. I’ll be a daily reminder of grief and pain.… There’s too much that you’d have to forget to love me.”
“I don’t want to forget,” she said. “Even if that were possible.”
“And I don’t want to question the decision that still feels like the most honorable thing I’ve ever done.”
Nate scanned the cabin in a last check for any belongings and that’s when Claire glimpsed his old work clothes thrown in the trash can.
The sight hurt her. Only half conscious of what she was doing, she pulled them out, smoothed and folded them. “I thought I told you the next time you intended breaking someone’s heart you had to run tactics by me first.”
Nate removed the folded linen from her hands, his own cold, and returned them to the trash. “Claire, don’t make this harder.” There was an anguished plea in his tone.
Of course she was going to make this harder. She was fighting for her life. “How could I not fall for a man whose heart is so big he can put aside his own trauma to reconcile me to my dead husband?” she demanded. “How could I not fall for a man who always puts others before himself, regardless of the personal cost?”
Nate set his jaw. “So let me do the right thing by you now.”
A horn tooted outside. She watched in disbelief as he shouldered his bag. “I don’t understand.”
“I ordered a cab,” he said. “Tell Lewis… No, don’t tell him anything. I’ll phone him from the airport. I won’t make things worse for you than I already have.”
He glanced around the cabin with the blind gaze of someone who didn’t wish to see. Stunned, Claire followed him onto the deck. “We have to talk about this.”
He shook his head. “You’ll be glad I found the guts to do this when you’re settled with a guy who has no scars on his soul, no shadows in his eyes and no blood on his hands.”
He’s leaving me.
The certainty hit her like a blow. “What about the trust?” she said, because any words would do while she struggled for the ones that would stop him making the biggest mistake of his life.
“I don’t know.…” For the first time his face showed his exhaustion. “Courier any documents… I’ll sign and send them right back. But there’s nothing urgent in the short term. You have the sale money.”
Bag over his shoulder, he descended the ladder, the iron clink of each step resonating through the boat shed. Numbly, Claire stood at the railing. She felt trapped in a horrible dream, because her limbs, her brain felt as sluggish and leaden as they did in nightmares when she tried to outrun monsters.
At the bottom Nate looked up and love burned in his eyes, bright as the eternal flame, unquenchable. Why couldn’t he believe she felt the same way? Why couldn’t he feel it?
“Goodbye, Claire.” Abruptly, he started walking away.
She found her voice. “I gave you redemption,” she said. “In forgiving Steve, I saved you, Nate. Now save me.”
He paused. “Someday,” he said without turning around, “you’ll find another guy like Steve.”
Her stomach clenched. “What if I want a guy like you?”
Shaking his head, he resumed walking, long strides that took him swiftly away.
“You know what I wish for?” she said through a tight throat. “What I really need? A man who loves me enough to stay.”
Nate’s steps slowed, and then stopped. Claire held her breath and it seemed she held it forever. She wouldn’t beg, she wouldn’t plead. She’d begged Steve and he’d placated her with words, with kisses and with promises.
This had to be Nate’s choice. Commitment had to be
freely given. He adjusted the strap over his shoulder. Her heart beat faster. Her future, her son’s future, hung suspended on one held breath.
He turned around.
Claire gasped in air and then released it on a sob. Dropping his bag, Nate walked toward her, faster and faster. No shadows in his eyes now. No barriers, either. She scrambled down the ladder, jumping from halfway and he caught her, crushing her to his chest as he rained kisses on her brows, her eyelids and cheeks. “You have my heart,” he said, and kissed her lips. “You always will.”