Code Name: Nina's Choice (Warrior's Challenge) (10 page)

* * * *

Nina’s mom m
entioned the lawn tractor had gone on the fritz last week.
Mace had to keep himself occupied while Nina grabbed an appointment with her
stylist, so he wandered out toward the garden shop, which was bigger than his
parent’s house. The exterior matched the g
uest and
main house on the property. A fenced oval pool sat on the east side of the
landscaped acre. He
meandered
the groomed pathway. The gardens
bloomed with groupings of flowers and bushes every few feet. Dirt and carefully
set rocks mounded to give int
erest to the landscape.
There were plants here you’d never see in California. Massive spiraling cedars
stood guard, providing privacy from the neighbors. Nina had grown up with
money. His family could barely make ends meet. Everyone pitched in and helped.
As soon as they were old enough they were on a paper route
or working at some pizza joint. A SEAL’s salary would never provide this kind
of luxury, and he wondered if that concerned Nina. She said it didn’t, but how
could it not?

“Wait up, Mace.” Gabbs
ran
at full-throttle down the path until she caught
up to him. When she reached him she slid her hand into his. Man, this kid was
something else. She never turned off, and was smart as a whip. “Where ya
going?” she asked, her steps quickening to keep up with
him.

“To
fix your lawn mower.”

“The garden man does
that,” she said.

“Well, I’m not doing
anything. I’ll give him a hand.” He stopped at a flowering bush and admired its
blossoms. The tangerine blooms tugged at the stems with their weight.

“But you’re a gu
est. Guests don’t work.”

“Why
not?
It feels good to help out.”

“It’s pretty,” she
said fingering one of the flowers. “This is Mom’s favorite bush. It’s called an
azalea,” she said confidently.

“I can see why.”

He carried on walking,
holding Gabbs’ hand.
Nina had pulled her hair back
into a single ponytail like Nina often wore, and it bobbed as she trotted
beside him. “Are you going to marry my Mom?”

He knew the question
would eventually come, just not this quickly.

“Everyone at my school
has a dad, but I
don’t. I’ve got
pappy
, but he’s my grandpa. If you love Mommy
that would mean you’d have to love me too, right?”

They reached the
garden shop, and Mace drew open one of the wide double doors. “That’s what it
would mean.”

Gabbs stopped at the
door and hung
on to it. “So, could you?”

Mace dropped to one
knee, and curled his finger. Gabbs wandered toward him, but she looked uneasy.
“I could easily do that, Gabriella.
If
it was okay with your mom and you.”
His heart melted with the smile that
grew on her pixie features. She flung herself at him and he lifted her into the
air.

“It’s okay with me,
and I think Mom’s okay with it too.” She nodded, satisfied all was well in the
world. “When will you be my daddy?
”

He carried Gabbs
across the open work area and plopped her on the bench. With a hand on each
side of her, he leaned over and looked her in the eyes. “When the time is
right, I’ll ask both of you, okay?”

“Not me,” she
squealed, and laughed at him.

“Why
no
t?
I’ll ask you for permission to marry
your mom.” He brushed her chin gently. “But we have to wait.”

“For
what?”
He turned toward the tractor and pulled open the hatch covering the engine.
Gabbs jumped off the bench and scuttled onto the tractor seat.
“Wh
y not now?”

Nina had kept Kayla’s
disappearance from Gabbs. She said Gabbs bugged her all the time as to why
Kayla hadn’t called her. Sadness coiled in his chest, and he understood what
his captain was going through right now. If something happened to Nina
, he’d go crazy trying to find her. “There’s a right and
wrong time to do everything, Gabbs.” Becoming this little girl’s father would
be too sweet. Good sense warned him it might be too early to be thinking of
them as a family, but he couldn’t help doing
it.
Coming home to both of them after a mission would make him the happiest man on
earth. Sometimes a man got lucky in life. That encompassed everything from
coming home alive to being loved by a good woman when you did. Ghost had
finally found someone to
live for when he set his
eyes on Kayla. They all prayed she was still alive.

“You look sad, Mace,
what’s wrong?” Gabbs’ little hand covered his, drawing him from his thoughts.

This little gal
noticed everything. “I was thinking about a friend. He’s going t
hrough a tough time, but he’ll be okay.” He offered her a
reassuring smile.

Gabbs deliberated his
answer. “We could send him a card. I know how to do that. I made some in school
and we took them to the hospital and gave them to kids who are sick. Is he sic
k?”

“No, he’s not sick.”
Ghost would never admit he was scared to death. The man’s love for Kayla had
begun to heal years of what war had destroyed. If she died, so would Ghost. He
knew it as well as he knew his own name. The warrior would give up everythi
ng to spend eternity with her. “I don’t think he needs a
card. I think he needs our prayers.”

“We can do that before
bed,” she said with a hopeful expression.

“We’ll do that. Now,
are you going to help me fix this thing?”

“Of course,” she
chirped with a br
ight smile. “Does it need oil?”

“Let’s find out.”

Chapter Seven

Mace pulled up to a
schoolyard overflowing with kids and parents. A sea of running shoes, gym
shorts, and ball caps swarmed near the enormous playing field.

“I’ll drop you guys
off here,
and find a place to park,” Mace said,
turning in his seat toward Nina and Gabbs, who bounced in her seat with
excitement.

“How will you find us,
Mace?” Gabbs asked.

“Don’t worry, if I can
find a bad guy buried in the middle of the desert, I can find two b
eautiful redheads in a sea of people.”

Nina chuckled, and
leaned over top of her daughter to kiss him.

“Mommy, Mace, stop
kissing. I want to go.” Gabbs pushed on each of their chests to separate them.

“Find us,” Nina said,
giving him a wink.

A block away h
e found a spot big enough to fit Nina’s one ton. The woman
liked her trucks big and her men bigger, she’d said last night when she slowly
ran her hand up his leg to his hopeful shaft. Why the hell couldn’t he get a
full hard-on?

He was still digesting
what
Dr. Dorchester had explained as the reason he
had erectile dysfunction. The doc explained the difference between psychogenic
and reflexogenic erections. Psychogenic erections involved visual or auditory
inputs that interface with the cortical organizing r
egions
of the brain, whereas reflexogenic erections involve genital sensory
stimulation through a spinal cord reflex. It was all Greek to Mace. All the
reasons behind the syndrome didn’t hit home until the doc mentioned severe
trauma and PTSD.

They discuss
ed his mission and what had happened. The doc also assured
him his case appeared to be temporary. Dr. Dorchester attempted to explain that
his initial injury caused the lack of response, but it was being exacerbated in
his mind. The physical injury had hea
led, but Mace’s
mind had decided he was incapable of having an erection. It sounded like a lot
of gray area bullshit to him, but there was no doubt he couldn’t get it up, and
it drove him crazy, which meant the doc might be onto something. How the hell did
he convince himself if his need for Nina was there, but it
still wouldn’t stand up like it should?

The hardest part to
swallow was the doc’s summation. It’s in your cognitive ability to change this,
you just have to put the doubt aside. When Mace balked a
t drugs, the doc said that as the trauma of the mission subsided, in time
the dysfunction would disappear. He half-way believed him, when he’d initially
come home there was nothing, at least now there was some response, but not
enough to penetrate Nina. Th
ey’d tried once, and he’d
given up in frustration, although he did his best to conceal it from her.

Getting away from San
Diego and the naval atmosphere rejuvenated him; now if it could only rejuvenate
his junk, he’d be one happy man. For the last week he’
d
been filling his days with avoidance tactics, evading Nina’s sister, Dawn.
Helping Gabbs run faster and longer preparing for today had given him a chance
to make himself stronger. When he and Nina had a moment alone, he took all the
loving he could handl
e from her and it was something
he could do for the rest of his life.

Coming to Canada had
been the best thing he’d ever done. At least he understood his condition a
little better. In the last week his confidence
rose
more than it had with three weeks of t
herapy at home. The rest of his body was operating at
satisfactory levels. He wouldn’t be able to pass the physicals yet for the
teams, but he knew he was going to get there.

He’d also made his
mind up on something else. Nina and Gabriella were his future.
Between making himself useful around the house,
wrong—mansion, and trying to impress the hell out of her parents, Nina played
tour guide. She took him to every nook and corner of Victoria and the
surrounding area. Victoria was a Navy and Coast Guard town
as much as it was a favorite tourist hangout.

They’d wandered down
Government Street and mixed it up with herds of people on the beautiful
waterfront positioned regally against the Empress Hotel, bistros and the
Province’s capital building. It wasn’t the W
hite
House, but it was damn impressive. They had dinner together. Gabbs was either
on his shoulders, in his arms or holding his hand. He couldn’t shake
him,
nor did he ever want to.
Holding that little girl’s hand made him
instantly proud.
Whoever her fath
er really was,
he was
missing
something special not being
part of her life.

Sports Day was a big
deal here in British Columbia. It signified and celebrated another year of
school and the onset of summer vacation. The June sun shone warmly, but it
wasn’t st
ifling like it could be in San Diego.
Colored banners fluttered in the wind, representing at least twenty schools. He
swam through the people toward the track where parents cloistered together
chatting. Kids mulled about, but he couldn’t tell what kid belo
nged to whom. A starter gun fired off and a group of kids
barreled down the track, heels flying and arms pumping. It looked like a
hundred meter dash, and the kids running gave it all they had.

Gabbs would be in
several events today: long jump, high jump a
nd some
sprints. His little redhead could put on a load of steam. He bet she’d win at
least a few of the races against her age class.

“Mace,
over here.”
He heard Nina call out, and zeroed in on her standing with a group of women
fifty feet to his right. He
veered off, and Gabbs
wiggled from her mother’s hold and ran toward him. She jumped into his arms,
and he hinged her on his hip. When they reached the group of gaping women,
Gabbs said, “This is Mace, Mrs. Tickner, he’s going to be my dad one day.”

A brun
ette with friendly eyes elbowed Nina and she gave her a
wink. Leaning forward, she brushed Gabbs’ chin. “Well, then you’re a very lucky
little girl, Gabriella.”

“I know,” she said
spritely, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Mace Callahan,” he
greeted,
extending his hand.

“Nice to meet you,
Mace, I’m Wanda Tickner, Gabriella’s teacher.”

“And my friend,” Nina
added. “This is Kate, Carla, and Ruby,” she said introducing three other women.
“They all work in Esquimalt on the base.”

“Hi,
ladies.”

“Navy SEAL,
huh?” Ruby the tall, lithe blonde said.

“Yes,
ma’am.”

“My husband is
deployed right now. He’s serving as XO on the HMCS Algonquin.”

“When’s his tour
over?”

“Not for a while yet,
I’m afraid.” Ruby sighed.

A tall blond, broad
shouldered man stepped up to
the circle. A whistle
hung around his neck and “Coach” was embroidered on his pocket.

“Hi,
Mr. Mitchell.”
Gabbs gave him a wave.

“Well hello,
Gabriella. How’s my star sports girl?” he asked, showing a perfect row of teeth
when he smiled. Blue eyes glinted
in a tanned face.

“Good.”

“Nina, it’s a nice
surprise to see you here. How are you?” Mr. Mitchell’s gaze stalled on her for
a little too long. Mace watched the other women’s expressions, and they all
muffled a grin.

“I’m good, Jack.”
Nina’s eyes darted to
him. “Ah, I’d like you to meet
Mace Callahan.”

Jack worked him over
with a territorial survey. Mace had little to figure out. Competition, but was
he?

“Mace.”
He extended his hand and the grip
confirmed his suspicions.

“Jack, I guess you’re
one of Gabbs’ t
eachers?”

“Physical
education.
I’m not supposed to have favorites, but Gabriella is the best in my class.”

Yeah right, he was
sure she was, but voicing it was to suck up to her beautiful mother.

Jack grilled him with
a look. “What do you do for a living, M
ace?”

Gabbs piped up. “He’s
a hero, Mr. Mitchell.”

“A hero, huh?” he
echoed, but the glint had left his eyes.

“United States Navy,”
Mace explained. “Not a hero.”

“Nooo,” Gabriella
corrected. “United States Navy SEAL, they’re better,” she said proudly.

Jack
Mitchell’s face almost contorted with dislike. “Gabriella
knows better than that, don’t you? War is not the way to resolve global
conflicts. It wastes money and lives.”

Mace didn’t blink.

“Gabriella understands
the military just propagates hate and unrest
. Those
who support it do the same. It’s hypocritical for countries to be killing off
young men in a fight that doesn’t concern them, especially the United States.”

Mace shifted Gabbs in
his arms, and stole a swift look at the women who were captured in th
e moment. Nina however, had her afterburners powering up.
“No one wants war, Jack,” he agreed in a steady voice, “The fact that you can
state your opinion freely tells me I’m doing my job.”

“My brother did his
too, and my parents visit his grave every Sund
ay. He
didn’t listen to me either, and he died in Afghanistan,” Jack said, anger
simmering in his eyes.

“I’m sorry for your
loss, Jack, but he died protecting Canadians and the other NATO countries.”

“He didn’t protect me
from anything, he died for nothing
. He talked about
you SEALs once. Said you and some of the other elite groups were the difference
between failure and success on some missions. Murdering innocent people isn’t
my idea of virtuous, teaching young minds like Gabriella to figure things out pa
ssively is.”

Gabbs had been very
quiet in his arms, and she suddenly looked up at him with big eyes. Her little
brow furrowed. “Mace doesn’t murder people, he takes out bad guys. That’s what
Mommy says.”

Jack foisted a fake
smile on his face. “Your Mom is
a smart lady,
Gabriella, and beautiful too,” he added, his gaze stalling on Nina again.

“Thank you, Jack,”
Nina said, her voice barely above sub-zero. “Did I mention I work for the
United States Navy now, and I can tell you one thing for
sure.
” Her brow
lifted and an icy
smile cinched her mouth to one side. “The Navy SEALs are not murderers, but
warriors. There is a difference. If you pulled your head out of your ass, maybe
you’d know that. If the forces did not exist, you’d be speaking some form of
Arabi
c or some other language. Not everyone thinks
like you, especially terrorists and other countries that have nothing else in
mind, but to dominate.”

Jack gently rested a
hand on Nina’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Do you mind if we have a
word in
private?” he asked, but before she could
answer he’d wrapped his hand around her arm and pulled her away.

Mace chewed on the
inside of his mouth, and then cocked his head at Gabbs. “That guy likes your
mom, doesn’t he?”

She nodded and leaned
in to whisper
in his ear. “He keeps sucking up to me
because he wants to go on a date with Mommy.”

Mace grinned. No one
would ever pull anything over on his Gabbs. “So, she hasn’t yet?”

“Na-uh.”
Gabbs shook her head with a dramatic
swing.

“He might be hot, but
he’s an
asshole,” Kate said, crossing her arms. “He
just stood there and insulted all of us.
Both Ruby and I are married to Navy. My
father was Navy as well.”

“I’m not married,”
Carla piped up. When the other two women gave her a
get
real
look, she shrugged.
“I’m
just sayin’.”