Buzz sat at the makeshift desk in the glassed-in office and stared unseeingly down at the chopper maintenance reports in front of him. It was the fourth or fifth time he’d had to start reading the same report, and already he’d forgotten what he’d read. He wanted to believe his lack of concentration was because of the lingering pain in his shoulder. He wanted to blame it on the pain killers the doctor had prescribed. But he knew neither of those things had a damn thing to do with his concentration. First, he hadn’t taken any of the pain medication for almost a week. Second, he was honest enough with himself to admit his inability to concentrate had more to do with a pretty brunette with dark eyes and the kind of smile a man never quite got over. If Buzz figured right, she was on her way to the airport about now.
Yeah, so much for concentration.
He told himself he could handle living without her. As long as she was happy. As long as Eddie was happy. That was all that really mattered. He had his work here and the cabin. Of course, she would have to tolerate him on occasion because there was no way in hell he was going to let Eddie grow up without knowing his father. He didn’t give a damn what that pencil-neck Quelhort had to say about it.
Two weeks had passed since that last day on the mountain. Buzz didn’t want to admit it, but already he could feel her disappearing, as if a little piece of him had been cut out every day he didn’t see her, and an open wound had been left to bleed out.
As much as he hated to admit it, he missed her, damn it. He missed Eddie. Two facts that ticked him off almost as much as they hurt.
Cursing, he threw the pen across the room. He looked up in time to see Colorosa and Maitland standing at the doorway, exchanging knowing glances. The two men pretended not to have noticed the pen caper, but Buzz figured his team had already figured out what was going on with their surly team leader.
Hell, what a mess.
“Can I help you ladies?” Scowling at the two men, he walked around the desk and was in the process of picking up the pen when he heard the outer hangar door open. Straightening, he looked through the glass partition to see an all-too-familiar female figure silhouetted against the bright sunlight beyond—and felt his knees go weak. Next to her the smaller figure of a boy strained to extricate his hand from his mother’s.
Kelly stood motionless for a moment, and in less than two seconds all activity in the hangar screeched to a halt as five sets of male eyes darted toward the hangar door. The tension broke when Eddie, wearing blue jeans, a Captain Kudos T-shirt and his RMSAR cap, darted into the hangar and blinked the sunlight from his eyes.
“Mommy, look! There’s the chopter! Can I go see it?” Even as he asked for permission, he sprinted toward the behemoth craft. “Flyboy! Can I sit in the pilot’s seat again?”
“How’s it going, sport?” came Colorosa’s voice as he started toward the boy.
Buzz frowned when Colorosa cast him a glance over his shoulder, moving his brows up and down like Groucho Marx. Maitland combed a hand through his hair and ducked quietly out of the office.
Idiots, Buzz thought, and braced for what he figured was going to be a very difficult goodbye.
Why couldn’t she have come by his cabin so they could have a little privacy, for God’s sake? How was he supposed to say goodbye to his son with his entire team watching? How was he supposed to let the only woman he’d ever loved walk out that door without making a damn fool of himself by dropping to his knees and begging her to stay?
Vaguely, he was aware of Kelly approaching the chopper and talking briefly to Colorosa. He saw Tony point toward the office where Buzz stood. Kelly looked over at him, and his mouth went dust-dry. He told himself it wasn’t nerves that had his heart pounding, his palms slicking with sweat. But damn it, there were certain things a man liked to do without an audience.
Buzz watched her approach, trying not to notice the subtle sway of her hips or the habit she had of opening and closing her hands when she was nervous. He loved the way she walked. Loved the way her hair fell over her shoulders. She smiled when she got close enough for him to see her face, but he could plainly see the nerves behind it. Damn, this was going to be tough.
He worked hard to shore up his defenses in the seconds before she reached him. But for the first time in his life, Buzz couldn’t quite manage. He felt unbearably vulnerable. Stripped bare. As if all his protective outer layers had been peeled away and his heart lay in plain view, beating and bleeding and hurting a lot more than he wanted anyone to see.
She stepped into the doorway a moment later. Buzz took a deep breath, felt her scent fill his lungs, and wished for the thousandth time things could have worked out differently. In the back of his mind he wondered if Mr. Pencil-Neck was outside, waiting, smirking because in five minutes she would walk away from the father of her child and the door would open for him to step in and take over.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” Brilliant response, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything else. What could a man say when the woman he loved was about to walk out of his life forever?
“I tried to call you.” Nervously, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Kept getting your answering machine.”
Buzz tried not to notice the way the gesture made the fabric of her shirt stretch across her breasts. Everything they’d shared up on the mountain flashed in his mind. The ensuing emotion moved him, shook him, and the regret tasted bitter at the back of his throat.
“I’ve been busy,” he said after a moment.
She nodded. “How’s the shoulder?”
He looked down at the sling. “Should be good as new in about four weeks.”
“Hurt?”
“Not much.” Not nearly as much as this is going to hurt, he thought.
Moving slightly, he looked over her shoulder. Colorosa and Maitland had Eddie in the pilot’s seat and were showing him the safety harness. On the other side of the hangar, Jake was in the process of marking the park ranger stations and RMSAR headquarters on the topographical map.
Confident he had some relative privacy, Buzz looked at Kelly. “I want to be part of Eddie’s life,” he blurted out.
She blinked. “Buzz…”
“I mean it, Kel,” he said, more firmly. “I can handle your having a relationship with Quelhort.”
“Quelhorst. And for the tenth time, I’m not—”
“I don’t care about that.” God, that was a pathetic lie. “I don’t. I just…want to see Eddie. I can fly out to Tahoe. I can drive once or twice a year. He can come here to see me in the summer. Maybe on spring break if you can spare him.”
“Buzz…”
“I have a right to see my son, Kel. I know I told you I never wanted children.” His voice broke and a sharp pang of humiliation washed over him. Jesus! He was losing it. Buzz Malone, hard as steel and cold as stone, losing his cool. He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe his emotions were going to betray him and humiliate him in front of the woman whose opinion had suddenly become of vast importance to him.
“Damn it.” He turned away from her and paced over to a dented steel file cabinet. He didn’t need anything in the freaking cabinet, but he yanked the drawer open anyway. He stared blindly into the drawer because he desperately needed a few moments to pull himself together.
“I’m not going to Tahoe,” Kelly said.
It took a moment for the words to register in his brain. When they did, he turned to her, not understanding, and waited, not daring to hope the explanation had anything to do with him, with those precious hours they’d spent together on the mountain. Hours when he’d finally realized what it could mean for a man and a woman and a child to be together as a single strong unit, a family, one powerful force bound together by love.
Her brown eyes were luminous in the glare of the fluorescent lights of the office. He stared at her, felt his emotions burgeon, his throat lock up, his chest compress his heart until he thought it would explode.
He never would have bel
ieved he could break like this. For the first time in his life, he felt…fragile. As fragile as glass, and he wondered if this woman would shatter him.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you something I didn’t tell you before,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”
He looked at her, felt the pull to her, worked hard to hold his ground. He wanted to speak, just to let her know he could, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I came here to tell you I love you,” she said simply.
The words shattered him. Buzz felt himself coming apart, like glass thrown to the floor. He felt the pieces scatter and cut and he knew they would never go back the same way they were before.
He stared at her, not sure what to do next, terrified to let himself feel because he knew once he did there was no turning back.
She stared back at him with eyes that weren’t merely luminous, but filled with tears. Crystal tears that pooled and sparkled. Tears of hope for a future and the hurt of the past and terrible fear that things had already moved beyond the point of no return.
Suddenly, he knew he needed to let her know that it wasn’t too late. That it was never too late.
Clamping his jaws together to hold his own emotions at bay, he crossed to her. “Come here,” he growled.
He didn’t wait for her to acquiesce. His uninjured arm wrapped around her and pulled her against him, and he wished fervently that his other arm wasn’t in a sling.
“Put your arms around me,” he said.
“You’re bossy.”
“Damn straight I am.”
Her arms went around his neck. “I love you,” she repeated. “I came here to tell you that.”
“Say it again.”
“I love you. I’ve always loved you. God, Buzz, I’ve missed you.”
He buried his face in her hair. Closing his eyes, he breathed in her scent, let it fill his senses. “I’ve missed you, too,” he said.
“I’ve spent the last two weeks agonizing over what to do. But this is the only thing that felt right. The only thing that makes me truly happy,” she said.
“I never stopped loving you.”
“I hurt you.” Pulling back slightly, she looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry for that. I mean it.”
“I couldn’t give you what you wanted. I hurt you, too.”
“You had good reasons for not wanting children.”
“Fear is never a good reason, Kel.”
“I know that now.”
He kissed her. The pleasure jolted him. The rightness of it sent a zing of happiness through him. The kind of happiness some men search for their entire lives and sometimes never find.
She pulled away again, put one hand against his cheek. “It was incredibly selfish of me to demand you give up your career because I was afraid.”
“You lost your brother and your father. That kind of loss doesn’t leave a person unaffected.”
“It almost cost us everything,” she whispered.
“But it didn’t.”
She blinked rapidly, fighting tears that continued to stream unacknowledged down her cheeks. “You risked your life for a son you’d never met. You would have risked your life even if he hadn’t been your son. I never realized what that meant before.”
“I’m just a man, Kel. I’m the same man I’ve always been. Stubborn. Uncompromising—”
“Courageous and decent and kind.”
He kissed her mouth, her temple, her nose. “Keep going.”
“Buzz, you’re not the same man you were before.”
Pulling back slightly, he met her gaze, felt the power of it shake him so profoundly he raised his hand to touch her cheek, just to make sure she was really there.
“I’ve seen the way you look at Eddie,” she whispered. “I know you love him.”
Buzz stared at her, awed and shaken and so moved he couldn’t draw a breath. “I do,” he said. “I love him with all my heart. I want to be his father, Kel.” His voice broke, but he trudged on before he lost his nerve. “I want you to be my wife.”
She trembled in his arms. Even before she spoke Buzz saw the answer in her eyes. He felt the answer coming through her body and into his.
“Marry me,” he said.
She smiled through her tears. “That would make me incredibly happy. I know it would make Eddie happy, too.”
“I’ve only got two bedrooms in the cabin, but I’ve been meaning to add an extra bedroom. Maybe I could just make it two.”
“Eddie’s always wanted a little brother or sister.”
“Maybe both.”
She laughed. “Okay, two bedrooms.”
“And a dog.”
“You’ll love Brandy.”
“You got yourself a deal, Mrs. Malone.”
The rise of applause spun them around. Buzz looked up to see his entire team standing just outside the glassed-in office. Eddie was perched on Tony Colorosa’s shoulders, clapping his hands.
“Buzz just kissed my mommy!” he squealed. “Flyboy, did you see that?”
Tony Colorosa raised his hand and Eddie slapped his palm in a high five. Madigan and Maitland broke into raucous laughter.
Grinning, Buzz crossed the room, closed the door and lowered the mini blinds. “Idiots,” he muttered, then turned to his new fiancée and took her into his arms. “Where were we?”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0114-9
A CRY IN THE NIGHT
Copyright © 2002 by Linda Castillo
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Linda Castillo, A Cry in the Night
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