Bungalow Nights (Beach House No. 9) (42 page)

She glanced down at the frame he pushed into her hands and then her gaze came back to his. “What?”

Was she blind? “It’s the Helmet List. The one your dad gave to me. I had it framed, along with a couple of photos. One is the picture of you he always carried.”

Her head bent again as she studied the item. The art shop had mounted the simple lined notepaper on a special backing. It took center stage, the crease marks and smudges of dirt and sweat still apparent. On the upper left, he’d had them place a photo of her father, something he’d taken from Griffin’s stash. On the lower right was little-girl Layla, the child he’d expected to host at Beach House No. 9.

The woman he’d fallen in love with looked up. “I...” She lifted one hand from the frame and made a helpless gesture. “Thank you. I...I’ve got to go.”

All his muscles and tendons seized. He opened his mouth, trying to recall a single one of the speeches he’d rehearsed during her absence. Not a word of them came to mind.
Hell,
he thought.
What now?

A seagull swooped low, and his eyes shifted, his gaze once again landing on the sun. “We haven’t ticked off the green flash yet,” he said quickly. “Don’t you think—”

She shook her head, her refusal emphatic.

Vance’s mouth dried. It was like waking up to that empty bed all over again. The alarm he’d felt upon opening his eyes and discovering her gone had turned to dread when he’d read the note she’d left.
Thank you, thank you so much for everything,
she’d written,
but now it’s time I go
.
Goodbye.

Maybe she’d really meant it, after all.

“Why did you leave like that?” he asked baldly. Those few words had felt a thousand times worse than Blythe’s long-winded Dear John. He swallowed, then forced out the question that had to be asked, though it put his pride on the line. “Is it because that night I told you I loved you?”

Her Bambi eyes flared wide. “What? That was me.”

He frowned. “No, I said it. I wasn’t sure you heard me before you fell asleep.” His heart started thumping, hammering in his chest, his throat, at the ends of his fingers, for fuck’s sake. Had she just implied she loved him, too? “I’m in love with you, Layla.”

Her knuckles went white on the frame, and then she shook her head again, clearly panicked. “I thought we were clear we didn’t want that.”

He laughed a little, trying to ease his anxiety. “Yeah, well, sometimes it just happens, remember?”

“That was chemistry,” she said, edging toward the stairs leading to the sand.

“Layla, stay put.”

Instead she kept moving. “I didn’t plan for anything like...like love.”

He held himself still, worried about frightening her away. “Well, it’s not something you plan,” he said. “Just ask Baxter. Or Fitz. But if you’re ready, and in the right place—”

“I’m not ready!” she cried out. “I’m not in the right place.”

“Sweetheart, what’s the matter?” Concerned by her distress, he took a careful step toward her. “Would the two of us...would love be so bad?”

“Yes.”

He blinked.

“Because it’s weakness,” she said. “And dependence and...and...”

“And what, honey? And what?”

“And heartbreak!”

“Heartbreak?” He blinked again.

“My mother didn’t make it to my third birthday.” She swallowed. “My father was in and out all my life and now he’s gone forever.”

Oh, sweet girl,
Vance thought, as a crack crawled over the surface of his heart.

“So how do I know that what you say you feel will last beyond...beyond the next moment? Or the one after that? I can’t trust it.” Her brown eyes were as big as he’d ever seen them, and so, so serious. “Because the fact is, Vance, I’ve only ever been loved in very small doses.”

Oh, God.
The fracturing organ in the center of his chest made him slow to react, so slow that when she whirled and leaped down the steps and onto the sand, he missed his chance to catch her. Keep her.

And this time he worried he might have lost her for good.

* * *

L
IKE THE OTHER TIME SHE’D
run from the beach house, Layla sprinted northward, frantic to outdistance herself from Vance and the confusing and conflicting feelings he’d provoked. He said it had been
his
whisper in the dark. He said he loved her.

The idea of it terrified her even more than knowing
she
loved
him
. If it was true, how could she ever leave him? And if she didn’t, how could she ever be safe from pain?
Attachment is the source of suffering.

Her eyes and lungs were burning when she finally dropped to the sand, all breath gone. Her resting place was at the base of the same dune where she’d stopped before, the night he’d danced with her on the beach house’s deck. Air heaving in and out of her chest, she tried directing herself to calm, but the order wasn’t working. Realizing she still clutched the frame Vance had given her, she dropped it to her lap and buried her face in her hands.

“Layla? Are you all right?”

Her head jerked up. So unnerved was she by her confrontation with Vance, she hadn’t noticed that Jane Pearson was sitting on top of the dune, beside Skye. The brunette’s focus was out to sea, her arms wound tightly about herself.

“What are you two doing?” Layla asked, picking up the frame so she could clamber to her feet.

Jane glanced at Skye’s set face then looked back at Layla. “We’re getting some fresh air.”

“Something’s happened to Gage,” Skye said, her voice colorless.

“What? Your pen pal Gage?” Layla looked to Jane for confirmation. “Isn’t that your fiancé’s brother?”

“Twin.” Jane grimaced. “And his twin-sense has been tingling for several days. Then Skye called and said it’s been too long between letters from him.”

“Mail can be erratic from that part of the world,” Layla said. “Believe me. Even the military postal service isn’t always reliable.”

Skye shook her head. “He’s in trouble.”

“I...” Layla let her next platitude go unsaid. She knew how useless they were. People would tell you it would be all right. Have faith, be strong, think positive thoughts. None of that changed a thing.

You could avoid the cracks in the sidewalk, bargain with some higher power or just your inner fears, and the unthinkable still could happen. A mother would leave her husband and her small daughter. A man’s letter would fail to arrive. One day there’d be a knock on the door and the sight of the uniform on the other side told you everything you needed to know but never wanted to hear.

Loving someone meant you set yourself up for hurt.

“Do you want to come sit here with us?” Jane asked. “You look upset and like they say, misery loves company.”

Layla stared at the other two women, shaking her head. She didn’t want upset. After already losing people in her life, she didn’t want to position herself for miserable again. Her hands tightened on the frame until the edges dug painfully into her flesh. Glancing down, her gaze landed on the Helmet List, and then the last item listed on the notepaper.

That wasn’t her father’s writing, she thought with a frown. The others were in his precise, spare hand, but the last line was not. Someone else had written the final words:
Keep Layla safe
.

She stared at them, her earlier roiling emotions coalescing into a heated ball that burned in the pit of her stomach. Instead of feeling vulnerable and insecure, she glanced at Skye, then at the frame in her hands, and experienced a righteous rage.

Murmuring a quick good luck to the other women, she spun around and marched back to Beach House No. 9.

Her feet sounded loud on the wooden steps. Coming to a halt on the deck, she saw Vance rise out of a chair, his watchful gaze on her face. She hesitated a moment, tripped up by
his
face, that arrangement of tanned skin, masculine bones and blue eyes that would be almost pretty without the accompanying heavy musculature of his rugged body.

She thought of those long, hair-roughened limbs sliding against hers in the dark, the hot rush of his breath against her neck, those sinewy hands cupping her breasts and sliding between her thighs as he unraveled her in bed.

I love you. I’m in love with you.

He’d said that.

The liar.

Her ire rose again and she stomped across the painted wooden planks to confront him. “What’s this?” she said, shaking the framed list in his face. “What’s all this about ‘Keep Layla safe’?”

Rubbing the backs of his knuckles against his whisker-stubbled cheek, Vance regarded her warily. “Do you mean because it’s in my handwriting?”

“Hah,” Layla said. “So it
is
yours.”

He frowned. “Yes. On that last afternoon...he asked me to add it, and about that—”

“Well, I don’t need your pity promise,” she shot at him. “I know you, Vance Thomas Smith, and if you swore to my father you’d keep me safe, then you’d do whatever you must to make that happen.”

“What are you talking about?”

She poked him in the chest. “Telling me you love me...that’s your way of giving me the security my father wanted for me, isn’t it?”

“I keep telling you, I’m no hero. I wouldn’t—”

“You were going to be my friend, you said. You’d write me, email me, call me. But that wasn’t enough to appease your conscience, was it? Instead, you decided to tell me you love me and—”

“Jesus Christ, woman.” Vance scowled. “I
do
love you.”

He’d said it again, and those four words brought her up short. She’d thought he’d back down if she called him out on his game. It made her anxious again, her stomach roiling, her palms sweating. She stared at him, unsure how next to proceed.

“Sweetheart,” Vance said now, his expression softening, his voice gentle. “I love you.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I’ll tell you a thousand times if I need to. I’m in love with you.”

She wrenched back. “That’s not keeping me safe!” Her whole body felt on fire now, her tongue a flame. “That is
not
keeping me safe.”

“I know,” Vance said. “And if the colonel was here right now, I’d have to admit that’s the one promise I made that I can’t keep. Love takes risk, Layla.”

She shook her head, aware her anxious voice was rising higher. “I don’t want any more risk. I can’t take any more risk without breaking into a million pieces.”

He stared at her a long, long moment, as if assessing her state of mind. “All right,” he said slowly. “I understand.”

The lump in her throat made it hard to swallow. “Okay. Good. You don’t love me. That’s better.”

“Oh, I still love you,” Vance said, with maddening calm. “And you can walk away from it if you want, if that gives you the protection you think you need. I won’t fight you on that—but it won’t extinguish my feelings for you, either.”

Layla wanted to tear out her hair. What was she supposed to say to that? Didn’t he get it? “Attachment is the source of suffering and—”

“No. Attachment is the source of joy. Parent to child. Brother to brother. Man to woman.”

Panic turned her cold then hot again. He was speaking of his family, and how could she deny what he said after meeting them? But still...

“How can we count on something we didn’t get to choose? Love—” and she put scare quotes around the word “—forced us—”

“No.” Vance interrupted her again. “Love didn’t force the two of us together, Layla. The two of us together
create
the love.”

Oh, it sounded pretty. But it would hurt so much to hope and feel and then someday to have it disappear or die. She opened her mouth.

“Wait.” His gaze had jumped over her shoulder. “Turn around,” he ordered. “Turn around right now.”

At his urgent tone, Layla spun. Her gaze swept the beach, uncertain what she was supposed to notice. Vance came up behind her, his big body crowding hers. His head bent to her ear as one hand landed on her shoulder and the other pointed to the horizon. “The sunset,” he whispered. “Watch the sunset.”

Layla stared westward, holding the framed Helmet List to her breasts. The sand had lost its golden luster and was a dark shadow spilling into the gleaming, silvery blanket of the ocean. Beyond that, the orb of the sun was more than half gone now, its curved edges distinct between the water and the thin clouds above that had taken on its orangish glow.

There was an orange reflection on the water, too, a narrow-to-broad cone that reached toward shore, but then pulled farther and farther back as the sun slid lower. The orange turned to yellow as the sun seemed to flatten. It became a disk, thinner than a dime, lying on top of the water. In a half breath it was almost gone, just the smallest spot of light. Then even that shrunk in on itself, going smaller...smaller...smaller—

Until shafts of green shot from the tiny point, a deep emerald flash.

Awed, Layla gasped, then gasped once more, as a dolphin leaped high from the water, its sleek body arcing as if to catch the jewel. Then it dove back under, and both were gone.

Vance squeezed her shoulder. His other hand crossed her waist, holding her to him. “Make a wish,” he said against her ear.

To be brave,
a voice inside her whispered. Then it was Uncle Phil she heard, presenting two choices.
You’ve got to decide if you want to do it my way—only on paper and in dreams—or if you actually want to step onto the plane and fly.
And then, finally, it was Vance’s voice.
The two of us together
create
the love.

She spun again, out of his arms, to stare at him, mouth dry, blood rushing in her ears louder than the waves on the sand. “Do you...do you really love me?”

A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “What did Jules Verne say again?”

“That a person who has seen a green flash can’t be deceived. That they’ve gained the power to read others’ thoughts.”

“So you tell me,” Vance said, reaching out to brush a lock of hair behind her ear. “What am I thinking?”

As always, his touch thrilled and burned and made her shiver. She swallowed. “That...that you love me and that you know I love you. And that I should stop being such a coward and instead be a little reckless so we can start being happy together.”