Hot Zone (Elite Force #2)(66)
Author: Catherine Mann

She shook her head. “I’m over him, and you know it.”

“And I believe you about as much as you seem to believe me.” He stepped back, feet planted, shoulders braced. “It’s time for you to get on that plane.”

“That’s it? One minute you’re in love with me and the next you tell me to get out of your life?”

“This isn’t about saying good-bye forever. It’s about you staying somew—” He ground his teeth as a trio of Red Cross workers passed, carrying stacked boxes of meals. “This isn’t the time or the place for an argument.”

“Yeah, well, I disagree. If I’ve learned anything over the past week, it’s that we can’t take a minute for granted. I want to be here, to help, and yes, to be with you.” Her scraped chin jutted, her sunburned cheeks peeling, and still she was magnificent. “I’ve also learned I’m a lot stronger than I realized. I’m not just a fighter in the courtroom, and then a wimp when it comes to facing the rest of the world.”

“I could have told you that.” Although her stubborn strength was a pain at the moment.

“Then why are you the only one who gets to be a crusader here? Why do I have to be shuffled aside to a safe little corner? Hell, it’s not like I’m going to be crawling under collapsed buildings the way you are. What if I were to ask you to take on a safer role?”

“That’s ridiculous. This is my job. My calling.”

“Well, while this may not be my job, believe me when I say I do feel called to be a part of the cleanup efforts here, to do something for the place that gave my family Joshua—”

Her voice cracked, and she looked away fast.

Realization seeped into his brain. “You don’t want to get on the plane with them. Do you?”

And as much as he knew it was going to hurt her, he said the words he hoped—he prayed—would make her get on that plane anyway. “I’ve heard there are no more planes carrying civilians out for God only knows how long, because they’re locking down the island until Jocelyn can be found. We’re almost certain she has one child with her and there could be more.”

He didn’t want her to miss that last plane, and he didn’t want her to be here if he failed in a mission that had become everything to him. Desperation pounded through him. “I thought you said you weren’t a coward? Well, get on that plane and face your brother and his family.”

Her head snapped back toward him, her eyes blazing. “That was cruel and manipulative.”

“I’m just doing what has to be done to make sure you don’t end up dead.”

Pressing the bridge of her nose, she squeezed her eyes closed, her jaw trembling for a vulnerable minute, before she looked at him again. Pain and anger blended in her eyes, jelling into disillusionment. “You know, Hugh, maybe we’re both right here, in a sad way, not the good kind of way. Perhaps you and I are stuck in the past. You, so afraid of losing someone, it paralyzes you. And me, so afraid of being betrayed until I just can’t trust what I’m hearing.” She held up her hands. “So you win, Hugh. I’ll go. For what it’s worth, I think I could have really loved you too.”

She pivoted away, her head high as she marched toward the C-17. The setting sun bathed her tequila-colored hues, giving her a golden sheen. Relief damn near made him dizzy. His head and his heart were too wrecked to consider the consequences, but he had to believe he’d done the right thing even if it tore him apart inside.

“Dude?” a familiar voice called from just behind him, Jose “Cuervo” Jones. “You okay?”

Cuervo studied him with perceptive eyes, everyone’s buddy, always checking up on folks with their freaky weird sense of when people were about to crash. Wade “Brick” Rocha stood beside him, one of the Red Cross meal boxes in his hands and open. He shoveled down the protein bar in two bites. Must have been a long mission with no time to eat.

So was he okay? “Yeah”—no—“just tying up loose ends before I get back to work.” Was that all he had left for the rest of his life?

“Uh-huh.” Wade nodded, pulling out a sandwich. “Women don’t like it much when you issue them military orders.”

Jose leaned in. “Not that we were eavesdropping. You were mighty vocal there at the end.”

Hugh scrubbed a hand over his head. “So I’m just supposed to let her hang out here in an earthquake zone when there’s a perfectly good seat waiting for her?”

Raising his hands, Jose backed up. “I’m not the one to ask, dude. I’m still single.”

Hugh’s gaze skated back to Amelia, meeting up with her family. She had her brave face on, smiling even as Aiden and Lisabeth Bailey hovered over their kid with that new-parent awe he remembered well.

And yeah, Amelia was right in saying he was scared of the thought of committing again. Putting his heart in another child’s tiny hands? Damn. But what scared him most? Never having the chance to stand in a trio like that with Amelia—her, him, and their kid.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, kicking himself over his own thickheadedness. He clapped both of his buddies on the back. “I’ll catch you later at the hooch. I’ve got something to take care of first.”

Jogging toward the cargo plane, he kept his eyes locked on Amelia even as he wove around human traffic, litters being loaded, other refugees making their way up the load ramp. He even saw the nurse from the hospital—her name finally came to him: Lieutenant Gable—reaching for a baby in a woman’s outstretched arms.

He frowned, something niggling at the back of his mind. He looked closer, his feet carrying him across the packed earth. The woman a few feet away behind Amelia looked like any number of other relief workers in khakis and a cotton shirt, waist cinched with a gun belt. Like a dozen others here, she wore a hat to shade her face from the sun.

The wind rolled in from the ocean and picked up the brim of her hat enough for him to see—

Horror iced the blood in his veins as he recognized Jocelyn Pearson-Stewart standing only two feet away from Amelia.

***

Standing with her family, waiting to board, Amelia kept a smile plastered on her face even though she ached to scream out in frustration. For heaven’s sake, she made her living with words and persuasive arguments. How could she have let the conversation with Hugh go off the rails so abysmally? She knew full well why.

Because when he’d told her he loved her, she’d panicked. She’d picked a fight with him to avoid facing what the two of them shared back in the supply tent. To delay dealing with the love growing inside her so very fast.