“Rafael,” she murmured, making music of his name. “You make me believe that someday I may even sing again.”
Rafe turned his head until he could kiss the slender palm that rested against his cheek. He whispered Alana’s name against her hand and smiled as her fingers curled up to caress his lips. Slowly Alana’s other hand crept up to Rafe’s head, hungry for his warmth and the smooth thickness of his hair between her fingers.
Moving as slowly as Alana did, Rafe tilted his head down until his lips could slant across hers. The kiss was so gentle that it was impossible to tell the exact instant when it began.
Alana neither hesitated nor pulled back when she felt Rafe’s mouth caress hers. Instead, she whispered his name again and again, lost in the sensations that came as his lips brushed slowly against hers. His mouth moved from side to side with gentle pressures that made her fingers tighten in his hair, pulling his head closer in silent demand.
The tip of Rafe’s tongue slid lightly over Alana’s lower lip, then traced the curves of her mouth until she sighed and her fingers kneaded down his neck to his shoulders, seeking the long, powerful muscles of his back. Her mouth softened, fitting itself to his.
When Alana’s tongue touched first his lips, then his teeth, Rafe made a sound deep in his chest. His hands clenched at his sides as he fought not to give in to his hunger to hold her, to feel her body soften and flow over his as surely as her mouth had.
Hesitantly Rafe touched the warmth and sweetness of her tongue with his own. Even then she didn’t retreat. The kiss deepened until the sound of his own blood beating inside his veins drowned out the cascade’s rushing thunder.
Rafe heard Alana call his name with hunger and need, a sound out of his dreams. As gently as a sigh, his fingers dared to touch her face, the smooth curve of her neck, the slenderness and feminine strength of her arms. When she showed no fear, he rubbed his palms lightly from her shoulders to her hands and back again.
She murmured and moved closer to him, letting his heat radiate through her. He shifted his stance, fitting her against him, touching her very gently with his hands while the sweet heaviness of desire swelled between them.
Alana forgot the past, forgot the nightmare, forgot everything but the taste of Rafe and the rough velvet of his tongue sliding over hers. Fire shimmered through her, called by his hunger and her own, fire melting her until she sagged against him, giving herself to his strength.
Rafe’s arms circled Alana, holding her as she held him, molding her against the heat and hunger of his body. She responded with a movement that brought her even closer, standing on tiptoe, trying to become a part of him.
And then she moved sinuously, caressingly, stroking his body with her own.
With a ragged sound, Rafe let his arms close around Alana. As his arms tightened, they tilted Alana’s hips against his thighs. The movement lifted her just enough that for an instant her toes lost contact with the ground.
In that instant, Alana went from passion to panic.
11
E VEN AS ALANA tried to wrench free of his embrace, Rafe realized what had happened. Cursing himself, he released her completely.
“I’m sorry.”
They both spoke quickly, as one, identical words and emotions.
“It’s not your fault.”
Again their words tangled, each hurrying to reassure the other.
When Alana would have spoken again, Rafe gently put his fingers across her mouth. -
“No,” he said in a husky voice. “It’s not your fault. I should have known better than to hold you. I thought I could trust myself. But I’d forgotten how sweet and wild you are. Even in my deepest dreams, I’d forgotten.”
Alana’s black lashes closed. She tilted her face down so that Rafe couldn’t see her expression until she was more certain of her self-control. When she looked at him again, there was no fear in the dark clarity of her eyes, only apology and the luminous residue of passion.
“Did you really dream of me, Rafael?” Alana asked, music and emotion making her voice as beautiful as her eyes.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It was all that kept me sane in hell.”
Alana’s breath caught at the honesty and pain in Rafe’s voice. Her eyes searched his expression.
“What happened?” she asked.
Rafe hesitated. “It’s not a pretty story. I’m not sure it’s something you want to know.”
“If you can stand to tell me, I can stand to hear it.”
When Rafe still hesitated, Alana took his hand and started back along the lakeshore, leading him with a gentle pressure of her fingers.
“Never mind,” she said. “We’ll eat lunch and then we’ll lie in the sun and count aspen leaves. Remember?”
The darkness left Rafe’s eyes. His lips curved into an off-center smile.
“I remember,” he said. “The first one who blinks has to start all over again.”
“After paying a forfeit.”
“Of course,” Rafe said in a husky voice. “I remember that part very well.”
A sideways look into his brilliant whiskey eyes told Alana that Rafe indeed hadn’t forgotten. Her fingers tightened in his as he brought her hand up to his lips. He rubbed his mustache teasingly over her sensitive fingertips. Then he nibbled on the soft pad of flesh at the base of her thumb.
“What’s that for?” asked Alana breathlessly. “I blinked,” admitted Rafe. “Didn’t you see me?”
“No. I must have blinked, too.”
“That’s one you owe me.”
“But we haven’t started counting aspen leaves yet,” Alana pointed out.
“Well, if you’re going to get all technical on me, I guess I won’t start keeping score until after lunch.”
Smiling, Alana led Rafe to the hollow where they had left their backpacks. While he retrieved the fishing gear he had abandoned when he heard her scream, Alana set out a lunch of sandwiches and fruit.
They ate slowly, letting the sun and silence dissolve away the last residue of fear and nightmare. When Rafe was finished, he stretched out on his back with his hands linked behind his head.
After a few moments he said lazily, “Twenty-three.”
“What?”
“I counted twenty-three aspen leaves before I blinked.”
“You can’t even see any aspens from where you are.”
“Sure I can,” Rafe said, his voice deep. “Just off over your shoulder.”
Alana turned and looked. Sure enough, a golden crown of aspen leaves rose above a thick screen of dark evergreen needles.
“You blinked,” Rafe said. “How many?”
“Eleven.”
“That’s two you owe me.”
Saying nothing more, Rafe resumed staring over her shoulder.
“Aren’t you ever going to blink?” asked Alana finally.
“Nope.” Then, “Damn. Got me. Thirty-seven.”
Alana shifted until she could look at the aspen without twisting around. She counted swiftly, then groaned when she blinked.
“It’s coming back to me now,” she said. “I used to lose this game all the time.”
Rafe smiled. “Yeah. I remember that best of all. That’s three you owe me.”
He settled into counting again.
After a long pause he said, “It’s coming back to me now. The trick is not to stare too hard—and be sure the wind isn’t in your face. Then—damn. Forty.”
Alana got as far as thirty-five before she blinked. She groaned again.
“That’s four,” Rafe said.
“Aren’t you worried about collecting?” Alana asked, for he had made no move to kiss her.
Rafe’s glance shifted.
“Are you?” he countered in a soft voice, watching her.
Alana’s breath shortened, then sighed out.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, remembering both the pleasure and the panic she had felt by the lakeshore.
“Then I’ll wait until you know,??
? he said simply.
Alana propped herself on her elbow and rolled over to face Rafe. He ignored her, counting quickly, aspen leaves reflected in his amber eyes.
She looked at the grace and strength of him as he lay at ease, legs crossed at the ankles, jeans snug over his muscular thighs and lean hips. The dark blue T-shirt had pulled free of his pants, revealing a narrow band of skin the color of dark honey. A line of hair so deeply brown that it was almost black showed above the low-riding jeans. Where the shirt still covered him, it fit like a shadow, smooth, sliding, moving when he did, a cotton so soft that it had felt better than velvet against her palms when she had touched him by the lake.
“Seven thousand six hundred and ninety-two,” Rafe said.
“What?”
“Seven thousand six hundred and ninety-two.”
“You can’t have counted that many leaves without blinking,” she protested.
Rafe smiled. For the last few minutes, he had been watching Alana rather than aspen leaves, but she hadn’t noticed because she had been watching every part of him except his eyes.
And her smile told him that she very much approved of what she saw.
“Would you believe two thousand?” Rafe asked innocently.
Alana shook her head so hard that the motion sent her silky cap of hair flying.
“Two hundred?” asked Rafe.
“Nope.”
“Fifty?”
“Well . . .”
“Sold,” Rafe said smoothly. “That’s five you owe me.”
“But I haven’t had my turn yet.”
“Think it will do any good?”
Alana sighed and stared very hard at an aspen, but all she saw was the image of Rafe burned into her mind, into her very soul. She blinked to drive away his image, then groaned when she realized that single blink had cost her the contest.
“Fifteen,” she said in disgust.
Rafe smiled and turned his attention back to aspen leaves quivering in the breeze. When Alana’s fingers touched his cheek, his counting paused, then resumed. When her hand slid up the arm that was pillowing his head, his counting slowed. When her fingertip traced the supple veins showing beneath his skin, her touch sliding slowly up and down the sensitive inner side of his arm, Rafe stopped counting altogether.
“You’re cheating, wildflower,” he said in a husky voice.
“I finally remembered.”
“What did you remember?”
“How I used to win this game.”
“Funny,” he said, “I remember us both winning. Every time.”
“I wish—” Alana’s voice broke. “I wish that it could be like that again. I wish you had never gone away that last time.”
She took a ragged breath and then asked the question that she had asked herself a thousand times since she had learned that Rafe was alive.
“What happened, Rafe? What did I do to deserve your silence?”
He didn’t answer for so long that Alana was afraid he would refuse to answer at all.
“Do you mean the letter I returned to you?” he asked finally.
“Yes, but even before that. Why did you let me believe you were dead? Other people knew you were alive, but not me. I didn’t find out until a year ago.”
“I thought you were happily married.”
Alana searched Rafe’s expression with eyes that were too dark, remembering too much of pain and not enough of happiness.
“How could you believe that?” she asked. “I loved you. I thought you loved me.”
“I did.”
“Then how could you believe I loved Jack?”
Rafe’s lips flattened into a grim line. “It happens all the time to soldiers. The Dear John syndrome. One man goes off to war and another man stays to comfort the girl who was left behind.”
“It wasn’t like that,” whispered Alana. “I married Jack because singing was all I had left after they told me you were dead. It was a business marriage.”
“Alana—”
“He never touched me,” she said, talking over Rafe. “I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t bear to be touched by any man but you.”
Rafe closed his eyes. When they opened again, they were hard, focused on the past, a past that had nearly destroyed him.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “All I knew was that six weeks after I ‘died,’ the woman who once said she loved me became half of Country’s Perfect Couple. Everywhere I turned I saw Jack ‘n’ Jilly, America’s favorite lovers, singing songs to each other, love songs that were beautiful enough to make Broken Mountain weep.”
“Rafael . . .” Alana’s voice frayed.
“Let me finish,” Rafe said tightly. “I may never talk about it again. God knows I’d just as soon forget it, every second of it.”
“The way I did?” she asked, her voice flat, all music gone. “That wouldn’t make it better. Believe me, Rafe. Forgetting the way I did just makes it worse in the long run. I can’t imagine anything more awful than my nightmares.”
Rafe closed his eyes and let out a long, harsh breath.
“I know,” he said. “I learned the hard way that forgetting or ignoring doesn’t make anything go away. So I’m going to tell you something that’s buried in filing cabinets in the Pentagon and in the minds of the very few men who survived. Something that never happened at all, officially.”
Alana said nothing, afraid to move, straining to hear Rafe’s low voice.
“I told you I was in the army,” he said. “Well, I was, but in a very special branch of it. I was trained in counterinsurgency, with special attention to rural areas.” He smiled grimly. “Really rural. God, but I learned to hate jungles.”
After the silence had stretched for several moments, Alana touched Rafe’s arm with gentle fingers
“What happened” she asked, her voice soft.
“Four years ago, I’d just about decided that I’d rather fight lost causes with my thickskulled father in Wyoming than fight lost causes in the jungles of Central America. I owed the army some more time, though.”
Alana waited, remembering. When Rafe had asked her to marry him, he had also told her that they would be separated a lot of the time for two more years. Then he would quit the army and come back and marry her.
“Just before I left Wyoming the last time, some of our men were taken prisoner along with a native guerrilla leader,” Rafe said. “There was no chance of getting our men back through regular diplomatic means, because the men weren’t officially there in the first place. The records had them posted to Chile or West Germany or Indochina, anywhere but Central America.”
Motionless, Alana listened.
“We couldn’t just write off the men,” Rafe said, “even though word was that nobody survived prison there for long. And we needed that guerrilla leader. My group was asked to volunteer for a rescue attempt.”
Alana’s eyes closed, knowing what was coming next.
“You volunteered,” she said, her voice barely a thread of sound.
“I knew the men who had been caught. One of them was a very good friend. Besides,” Rafe said matter-of-factly, “I was good at what I did. With me leading the raid, it had a better chance of succeeding.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. For the first time, some of the agony she had gone through four years ago began to make sense.
“I understand,” she said quietly.
“Do you?” Rafe asked.
He looked directly at Alana for the first time since he had begun to speak of the past.
“Do you really understand why I left you?” he asked. “Why I volunteered to leave you?”
“You couldn’t have lived with yourself if you had stayed safe and the other men had died,” Alana said simply, stroking the hard line of Rafe’s jaw with a gentle fingertip. “That’s the kind of man you are. You’d never buy your own comfort with another person’s life.”
Rafe kissed the finger that had moved to caress his mustache.
“Most wome
n wouldn’t understand.”
“Most women never know a man like you.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Rafe said harshly. “I’m no hero. I scream just as loud as the next guy when the rubber-hose brigade goes to work.”
Alana’s eyes widened darkly as the meaning of Rafe’s words sank in. She touched his face with gentle fingers, smoothing away the lines of rage that had come when he remembered the past.
“You’re a man of honor, Rafael. That’s all anyone can ask.”
For long moments Rafe said nothing, responding to her with neither look nor words. Then he let out his breath.
“I’m glad you think so, Alana. There were times I didn’t think much of myself. Men died. I was their leader. I was responsible for their lives.”
“They were soldiers. Volunteers. Like you.”
“And I led them right into hell.”
Alana’s fingers smoothed the grim lines bracketing Rafe’s mouth.
“Was there another way you could have done it?” she asked softly.
“No.” His voice was bitter. “That’s how I knew I’d led them into hell. The road there is paved with the best intentions. The better the intentions, the deeper you go.
“And all the way down you know that there was nothing you could have done differently, that if you were put in the same position again you’d do the same thing again, the honorable thing . . . and you’d take the same good people down with you.
“And that,” he said savagely, “is my definition of hell on earth.”
Words crowded Alana’s throat, all but choking her. She spoke none of them, sensing that the only words that could help Rafe right now were his own. She caressed him gently, her fingers smoothing his skin in undemanding touches that told him she was there, listening, sharing his pain as much as she could.
“I’ve thought about that mission a lot,” Rafe said after a time. “But I’ve never said anything to anyone since I was debriefed.”
“You couldn’t.”
“It wasn’t so much the security regulations that kept me quiet. I just never found anyone who I thought would understand what it was like to be scared every second of every day, to be scared and fight not to show it, to face each dawn knowing that it probably wouldn’t be better than yesterday and often it would be worse.”