Authors: Lindsay McKenna
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “My Mom has one, too. I guess I inherited it.”
He studied her. “What does a sensitive stomach do?”
Lia grimaced. “It’s not polite table talk, Cav.” She saw him scowl, but he returned to his food. Feeling guilty because she knew he was genuinely concerned, she whispered, “When I get emotionally upset about something, I get nauseous.”
Cav nodded. He knew what a sensitive stomach was, but pretended ignorance. Somehow, he had to draw Lia out, get her to talk and to trust him. His first task was to find out where and how he could goad her into talking. He’d seen the guilt in her eyes when she’d tried to deflect his question.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That can’t be a very pleasant symptom of stress.”
Her mouth quirked. “It’s not, believe me.”
“Does it happen all the time?”
“No, thank God, it doesn’t.”
“Just on big things? Like this attack by Medina?” He saw her gray eyes grow dark and he cursed himself. Not wanting to cause Lia pain was a major objective for Cav, but how else was he to plumb her depths and find out who she was and what made her that way?
“Yes…” and she felt the grief coming up. She turned her attention on the food Cav had prepared for her, forcing herself to eat more. Miraculously, her stomach didn’t roil this time around when Medina’s name was mentioned. Lia found that amazing!
“What are some of your happiest memories when you were younger?”
She smiled a little. “Riding Goldy bareback with just a halter. Racing along the edge of one of my Dad’s sugar beet fields, the wind whipping through my hair, my hands outstretched. I loved the feeling of the wind tearing between my fingers. The way Goldy galloped, that wonderful rocking motion.”
“That’s a nice image you just created,” Cav said, touched by the wistful quality of her voice, the dreamy look that came into her gray eyes. It just made him want to kiss those soft, full lips of hers even more. “Do you get to ride around here at all?”
“No, I’m way too busy.”
“But some of the resorts offer horseback rides?”
“Yes, some do.”
“Have you ever gone over there to ride?”
“No, I’m way too busy with the kids and the school.”
“I see. So if you had time, would you?”
“I’d love to.”
Cav finished off all his breakfast and noticed that Lia was continuing to eat. He’d purposely left some scrambled eggs in a bowl, and he saw her put some more on her plate.
“Finish them off, Lia. I’m done,” he told her.
Lia nodded and scraped them onto her plate. “Do you like horses, Cav?”
Heartened that she was opening up a little, he pushed the empty plate aside and pulled over his cup of coffee. “Well, unlike you, I didn’t live in farm country.”
“Do you like horses, though?”
“I like all animals.” He added wryly, “It’s just the two-legged variety that I don’t trust.” He saw her eyes deepen with sympathy.
“All two-leggeds?”
“Well,” he hedged, “maybe not ALL.”
“Do you trust me?”
The question hit him hard. Cav didn’t want to destroy the small amount of trust he’d worked so hard to build with her. “Yes, I do. I did from the moment I met you.”
He saw her tilt her chin, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studied. The silence between them grew. Cav would have given anything to know what she was thinking.
“Seriously?”
A wry smile edged his lips. “Yeah, seriously.”
“But how could you
know
you could trust me?”
“SEAL intuition.” He watched Lia digest that blunt statement. Cav rarely spoke about this part of being an operator. She looked confused, so he went a bit further.
“When you deal in life-and-death situations all the time,” he told her quietly, “you develop this knowing, Lia. For example, I can feel when an enemy is near me, even if I can’t see him yet. I just
know
he’s there.”
“Will you know
where
he is?”
“Sometimes I’ll get a hit, and I’ll look in a particular area first, but if it yields nothing, I’ll look elsewhere until I can locate him.”
“Wow!” she murmured, impressed, diving into her eggs.
Cav pushed the toast toward her and Lia glanced at him. “Are you like this with the people you actually trust? Do you always push their toast toward them?”
Chuckling, he said, “The people close to me know I’ll do stuff like that. Yes.”
“Have you always been a mother hen in disguise?”
He liked the radiance that he now saw in her eyes, and was delighted to see her opening up even more to him. He smiled back at her. “Pretty much. I guess you found me out.”
“Is this part of what being my guard demands of you?”
“No. Like I said, operators are all different. I tend to want to natter around my detail.”
“Natter?” she laughed, meeting his eyes.
Cav felt heat move through him like a warm sunbeam. For a moment he felt euphoric. He rarely felt happiness, but right now, hell, he was celebrating! Lia had finally come out from behind that massive wall, and her laugh was low and husky.
He had a sudden thought: Would she look that way when they made love? Cav found himself veering away from using the word “sex” with this woman because he wanted more—an emotional and mental connection with her. Sex was a physical release. But with Lia? He wanted her on every level. He wanted to absorb her, soak up that dreamy look in her eyes right now, hear her sighs, her cries of pleasure, knowing he could please her.
“I love the word, ‘natter,’” Lia said. “What does it mean to you, Cav?”
Now it was his turn to blush. Dammit, he could feel the heat sweep up from his neck and into his face. “It was a term my mother always used,” he admitted, his voice lowering. “I was a pretty quiet kid, and she’d draw me out by nattering.”
“Talking?”
“Being chatty.” He shrugged. “Sometimes I was pretty down on myself, and she’d see it and come and sit with me and just talk.”
“What would she talk about?”
Cav felt that, suddenly, Lia had turned the tables on him. He was the one who was supposed to ask the insightful questions to gently draw her out. Now, it was his turn, and he realized that Lia needed this kind of feedback. He’d seen her blossom before when he’d openly talk to her about himself or his background.
“Oh, anything. She’d tell me about someone at work, their trials and troubles. Or she’d describe how a cardinal landed on the window of her office and pecked on it…stuff like that.”
Cav did not want to go into his sordid adolescent years, nor did he want to lie to her. She had perked up and devoted her full attention to him, forgetting about the eggs momentarily.
“You need to finish your breakfast,” he noted, pointing at the eggs still on her fork.
“Are you nattering at me again?” she grinned, and dutifully turned her attention to her food.
He chuckled. “I guess I am.”
“You are your mother’s son.”
“Yeah, and it’s a good feeling.” And it was. He’d loved his mother fiercely until the day she’d died of a heart attack. He had been eighteen, a month away from joining the Navy, when it had happened.
Lia was eating well now. When she finished the eggs, she brought over the toast, pulling it apart and slathering butter over it.
“She used to tell me everyone needed a little nattering every now and then,” Cav added with a slow smile.
“She obviously loved and cared about you very much,” Lia said softly.
“You’re the same way with children,” he said, turning the tables back on her. “Yesterday, you were a mother hen with those kids who came running to see you.”
Color warmed her cheeks. “You know, I’ve known these kids and their parents for four years. They’re like family,” she explained.
“I could tell.”
She chewed on the toast and kept her gaze on him. “They deserve protection and help. Medina doesn’t come up here often, but when he does, I see the whole village contract.”
“What do you mean?”
“Medina drives fear into people and now you can see why. He comes up here maybe four times a year, spends a week and then leaves. The adults are deathly afraid of him and their fears play out to their children. We saw kids with more upset stomachs, loss of appetite, and clingier behavior as a result.”
“It makes sense,” Cav said, remembering his own reaction to leaving school and having to go home to his abusive father. He’d always been a skinny kid growing up. Only when he left for the SEALs had he started to bloom. He gained fifty pounds in weight and muscle, and was happy living with his fellow SEALs.
But he understood as few others could what Lia was observing in her charges, who lived in a state of insecurity.
“I wish he would go away and never come back,” Lia muttered, shaking her head. “He’s pure evil…”
Cav decided to change the subject. “I’m impressed by how much those kids love you.”
She rallied. “I feel like a spiritual aunt to them. They’re my heart.”
“And their parents seemed to know you very well, too.”
“I’m a known quantity to this village and its people. I love being here. It makes me feel good to do something positive for so many.”
Cav took a chance. “I imagine the man in your life doesn’t mind sharing you with so many others.”
Lia frowned. “I have no man in my life. The kids are my life, Cav. It’s better that way.”
“What about you? Are you married?” she asked, surprising him.
His brows lifted. “Me? No. I’m single and unattached. In my business, I’m gone way too much to sustain a relationship. Women want to settle down, have a home, have children. I’d never be there that much, and it wouldn’t be fair to her or the kids.”
“That’s kind of a lonely existence,” Lia said, finishing her toast. She placed the plate aside and picked up her coffee, studying him.
“Yeah,” he admitted heavily, “sometimes, it is.”
Like right now.
But the words remained unspoken as he calmly watched her.
“Why do you do this kind of work, Cav?”
“Because it makes me feel good.”
Her lips curved. “What? Nattering with your clients?”
Heat stirred in him as her gray eyes sparkled with happiness. “The nattering is free. I don’t charge for it.”
She released a delighted, full-throated laugh.
Just being with Lia invited all kinds of dreams and fantasies, he was discovering. And dreams had never come true for Cav, except for once: when he’d achieved his dream of becoming a SEAL. Lightning never struck twice in the same place, so Lia was an unexpected gift that had slammed into his life. A lonely, gut-wrenching sadness moved through him, leaving him craving Lia as never before.
Sipping her coffee, Lia relaxed into the quiet that surrounded them in the room. The morning sunlight filtered in, giving her quaint home a warm glow. Suddenly, she put down her cup and became serious.
“Listen,” she began in a low voice, “You need to know something about me, since you’re staying here at night.”
Cav said nothing, but gave her a nod, wondering if she was going to tell him about her sleepwalking. He felt her armoring up, as if to protect herself from his reaction.
“I—well, I get nightmares sometimes,” and she risked a quick glance over at Cav. She saw no change in his expression except for a slight darkening of his eyes. “I get them maybe twice a week.” She sighed and looked away.” And since this attack by Medina, I’ve gotten them three times in the last six days. It’s not something I’m very proud of.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I get them, too.” Cav stunned her with his admission. He found himself opening up to her as she was doing to him.
Lia’s mouth dropped open. “I didn’t think black ops people got them!”
“It’s bad P.R. to admit it, but we do.” And he gave her a wry smile. “I know very few guys from my team who don’t get them every now and again.”
Her ashamed expression now turned to relief. “Well! That makes me feel a lot better than I did before.” She moved the cup between her hands, staring down at it. “Sometimes, I wake myself up with my own screams, Cav. You need to know that.”
Instead of shrinking away from her, Lia saw the same caring, helpful expression on his face—the one she was having trouble getting used to. Was this man for real?
“Is there any way I can help you when it happens?” was all he said.
That was all it took. Tears burned in her eyes at his words, but even more, from that tender look in his eyes.
Men had run
from
her, not toward her. “Well…I…uh, no…there’s nothing you can do…” She gave him a helpless look. “I wish there was, but there isn’t.”
“If it happens again, would you like me to come in and sit with you? Would that help?” He was going to give her a choice, not push himself on her. Cav knew in his soul that Lia would feel safe if he embraced her.
Lia chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t know. I never had anyone around when it happened.”
Cav wanted to ask questions—so damned many. If he did, he knew she’d close up. “If it happens again, how do you want me to respond?”
“I don’t know…” she whispered, clearly in pain. “I live alone. I’ve lived alone for so long…”
Cav saw that she was resisting his suggestions, and quickly reverted to a simple, “No worries. How about if it happens, we’ll just take it one step at a time. You can tell me then what you want or don’t want? Okay? No pressure here, Lia. If you want me to stay away, I will.”
That was a complete lie and Cav knew it.
The instant relief he saw in her eyes told him he’d been right about not putting undue stress on her right now. It was the last thing he wanted to do. He stood, giving her a slight smile as he gathered up the dishes. “We need to leave in about forty-five minutes. I’m going to do dishes.”
“I can help.”
“No way. You just go about doing something that you enjoy doing. I think I can handle washing a few dishes.” He said it teasingly and left for the kitchen.
Lia sat at the table, chewing on her lower lip. Every moment she was with him was pushing her closer to falling into Cav’s arms. But if she awoke from one of her nightmares, how might he react to seeing her scars?
And should she tell Cav what happened? One man had seen them and he’d run away from her, unable to deal with her trauma. Could Cav? He was so different from the men she’d drawn into her life before the assault. Cav was quiet, keenly alert, missed nothing and said little. A small stream of warmth curled around her lower body, reminding her that she was physically drawn to this man, as well. And he was single! No attachments! Lia found that hard to believe.