Protector (Navy SEALS Romance Book 3) (5 page)

He tried to hold her back, but Madison wasn’t waiting around. She fought against the way he guided her hips slowly, pounding against him instead. She took his hands in hers and wrapped her fingers between his, pushing against his flexed arms so she could take him in deeply.

“God baby, I’m so close,” she breathed, panting for air as she continued to ride him. Angel could only nod, gripping her hips so tightly once again he was afraid he might leave mark. He’d worry about that later, instead he felt himself on the brink of exploding inside of her.

It was exactly as wonderful as he remembered. The feel of her, the taste of her, the way she breathed contentedly against his chest when they floated down from the high of an incredible release…it was all exactly as perfect as it had been before.

All except the part where he knew she wasn’t his.

T
he sound
of the phone ringing jolted Angel out of a deep sleep. For a moment, he thought he’d dreamed everything: the car accident, his mom, his sheer luck at finding Madison again. But when he turned to reach for his phone from the nightstand, the gentle brush of long hair against his bare chest told him it was all real.

The night had been everything he’d thought it would be from the moment he’d seen her face in the hospital. He’d blocked every thought and memory of her for so long that he wondered if he’d remember what she felt like, but when he carried her to his bed, the lost years dissolved. The smell of her hair, the sounds she made when he curled against her, all of it came back to him.

He looked down at Madison’s sleeping form and his breath caught in his throat. He had to force his attention back to the phone, which he answered with a brush of his thumb.

“Hello?” he whispered after seeing his sister’s number on the screen.

“Angel! It’s Mama!” Manuela cried, choking back a sob before she could speak.

“What? What happened?” he demanded, sitting up straighter and pulling his arm out from under Madison’s head. She, too, sat straight up in the bed, pulling the sheets tighter around her.

“No, no. It’s good news… Mama opened her eyes! You’ve got to get up here!”

“I’m coming, Mani. You tell Mama I’m on my way!” he shouted into the phone, already jumping from the bed and reaching for his jeans. He slid them on while Manuela tried to fill him in, dropping the phone only long enough to reach pull his shirt over his head.

“Should I…” Madison gestured to the door, but Angel shook his head.

“No, stay here! Don’t you dare leave!” he hissed, holding the phone away and kissing Madison quickly on the lips. “I’ll call you and tell you what’s going on.”

She nodded, but the second Angel was out the door she fell back against the pillows, doubts creeping into her mind. The sight of his fleeing back racing out the door in the middle of the night had been every nightmare she’d had when they were together, and the reality of what they’d just done hit her full force.

There was no going back from this. They’d slept together, and any second thoughts she had now would be the end of them...for good.

* * *

“
M
amacita
! Estoy aqui!” Angel said urgently when he burst through the door of her room. For the entire drive over to the hospital, he’d imagined his mother sitting up in her bed, smiling at his sister, maybe drinking sips of water now and then. She would hold out her arms to him and let him hold her close now that she wasn’t hooked up to machines.

The reality was far from it.

“What’s going on, Mani? I thought you said she opened her eyes!” he said, fresh anguish at seeing her still connected to wires and tubes, her eyes closed tightly, pouring over him.

“She did, I promise! But the nurse said it’s a long process. It’s not like the movies, where the guy waking up from a coma just blinks his eyes and asks what happened,” she explained. “They don’t just yawn and roll over, you know. It can take days for her to regain consciousness, and even then the breathing tube won’t let her talk until they take it out.”

“I know, I’m sorry kiddo. Come here,” he replied in a dejected voice, reaching for his tearful little sister. He hugged her tightly and said, “I just got all excited about Mama waking up.”

“It’s okay. We’re all tense. But the nurse said the more we talk to her and encourage her to open her eyes, the better she’ll be. I’ve been reading to her from her favorite magazine.” She pointed to Spanish
People
lying on the chair.

“Mama always did love the celebrity gossip! Hey, why don’t you nap in the chair, huh? I’ll wake you up if she so much as moves a pinkie toe.”

“You promise?” Manuela asked, forcing back a yawn. She glanced at her watch instinctively, her shoulders drooping when she saw the time.

“Of course. Just go to sleep right there, I’ll talk to Mama for a while.” He waited until his sister had her head resting against the chair back and a thin hospital blanket pulled up to her neck, then he sat on the edge of his mother’s bed and took her hand, giving it a firm squeeze.

“Mama, you’ll never guess what happened,” he began, whispering as he looked over his shoulder to make sure his sister wasn’t hearing him. “It’s about Madison. Remember her? Remember how mad you were when she… no, don’t worry about that now. It doesn’t matter anymore, because Mama… she’s back. And she still loves me. And she’s been taking such good care of you. She wants to you to get well, Mama, we all do. Can you do that? Can you get well for us? Open your eyes, Mama...wake up for us…”

He repeated his litany of storytelling and gentle begging through what remained of the night, thrilling every time his mother’s eyelids fluttered or her fingers twitched. He woke Mani once when he thought her eyes were about to open, and his sister’s smile at the sight was all the reassurance he needed to keep talking.

“Mama, I haven’t told you about work. There’s this kid, a really young kid, and he’s missing. His parents are so worried about him, but I can’t help the guys search for him if you’re laid up like this. I need you to wake up and get all better so I can help them find him. But I can’t leave until I know you’re okay, Mama…”

* * *

“
D
ude
, I’m trying to tell you, the kid’s not here. I’ve been hovering over these coords for an hour and there’s no sign of him. This island just isn’t that big.”

“I’m telling you, Mike, I’ve got this gut feeling. He’s here, or he’s been here, or something!”

“Jake, we’ve got to head back. The cutoff to call off the search is coming up, bro. I’m sorry. I know how bad you wanted to find the kid, but there’s no sign of him. Not even on satellite.”

Mike continued to move in a circular pattern around the small island, trying to keep from blasting his teammate with sand and pieces of rock, even while trying to convince him to give up. Jake had been searching the small outcropping for hours but had turned up nothing.

“I’m telling you, chief, the kid’s here. I can just feel it. I don’t know how, but you’ve just gotta trust me.”

“I do trust you, Jake, but I also trust my orders. Remember those? Those things the mission leader sends out? And the mission leader’s orders are that this search is over in exactly twenty-three minutes. At that time, the family will be notified that there’s nothing else we can do.”

“God, Mike! Is that really what you want to do? You want to tell two people that their only kid isn’t coming home because you don’t want to search anymore?” Jake was out of breath as he argued, lifting more and more debris away from every crevice and rock outcropping, hoping it would give him some sign of their victim. His gear weighed him down and baked him a little bit in the hot sun, but he wasn’t about to give up on the kid, not after finding his surfboard.

“It’s not about what we want,” Tanner interjected, “it’s about our orders. Remember those? Those commands we have to follow from a higher up?”

“Well, last time I heard anything, we were forced into some kind of stupid early retirement, or reserve unit, at least. So that means no more orders, right? If they want me to follow orders, especially from some pinhead beach patrol guy sitting in an office somewhere a hundred miles from here, then they should probably make me active duty again,” Jake shot back angrily, still pulling driftwood and rocks out of his path.

His anger fueled his effort, forcing the adrenaline in his veins to become energy to his tired muscles. Those two could sit up there on their asses and call out orders for all he cared, he was down here getting the job done.

“Look buddy,” Tanner began before Mike could say something smart-mouthed, “we’re all frustrated about sitting around picking our noses while our SEAL brothers take on all the dangerous work. But this isn’t going to prove anything to anyone, certainly not to any commanders who may be wondering if we could be useful again. So just come on back to the hoist and let’s head back the SEArch&Rescue. We’ve done our job, Jake.”

“You might see it that way, but until I lay eyes on our missing surfer, I wouldn’t say we’ve done our jobs. And I certainly won’t be able to call it a day and head back to my nice soft bed, not if there’s a chance he’s still out here somewhere.”

Jake continued to crawl his way around the small jetty of land in the middle of the waves. It couldn’t really be called an island and the narrow strip of rock that served as the beach was far from picturesque, but something about this place kept calling to him. Statistically, there was no reason to think the kid had stuck with his board. In fact, if he’d been knocked unconscious or been separated from the board by the pull of the riptide, he could be dozens of miles away from it. Hundreds even.

But Jake just knew that this was the place, the spot where he should focus his effort. Mike and Tanner could spot him from the air all day long for all he cared, and they could just cut his rope loose and leave him here. Whatever it took, he wasn’t a quitter. And he wasn’t about to quit on a frightened, injured kid.

He picked his way over the sharp rocks, careful not to cut snag any of his gear, while overhead somewhere he knew that Tanner and Mike were arguing. If he was really unlucky, they’d gone silent on him, switching channels so they could confer with Knox back at headquarters.

Let them. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it come hell or high water. Besides, if Angel had been here, he’d have had his back. Angel would never let something as stupid as an arbitrary cutoff time stop him from fulfilling his mission, and Jake wasn’t about to throw in the towel just because Ruiz was gone tending to some family business. They were a team, even when one of the team was gone.

He focused his anger on one particular spot that seemed to loom high above the rest of the rock face. It looked like the kind of place he’d try to climb to if he knew a surge of seawater was going to crest around his only source of dry land. Jake thought about having Mike bring him up higher so he didn’t have to waste precious time or calories on climbing, but for a second, he didn’t trust Mike to actually bring him up there. There was a small part of Jake’s brain that thought Mike might just drag him out of there by his rope if he so much as hinted that he wanted to climb into the hoist.

Fuck that
, he muttered aloud to himself, almost hoping his teammates in the helicopter heard him.
I’m not about to let a number on a clock tell me this kid’s a goner
.

Jake stretched out one bruised hand and pulled himself up until he could look over a rock ledge, his forehead just barely reaching above it. He took a deep breath as he clung to the semi-sheer rock face, steadying his nerves as he assessed his surroundings.

There, nearly out of sight and far, far out of reach, was a human foot.

“
B
ird
, I got something, over. Repeat, I’ve got visual on the ground,” Jake shouted, reverting to their mission-speak now that he had no reason to lose his cool.

“Roger that, ground team. Repeat your find,” Mike said, his voice returning to something close to professional. They fought like brothers sometimes, but when it came down to the wire they fought for each other, too.

“Repeat, I’ve got visual on a person, moving in for more details.” Jake pulled himself the rest of the way up the rock face, wondering how in the world they could have missed this from the air. Only after he’d made it halfway did he see that a large piece of volcanic rock was shielding the area; the only view was from the eye-level side of it, whereas an aerial view would have shown nothing but more rock and more ocean.

He pulled himself up higher, switching on his body camera now that sighting had been made. Jake continued to climb horizontally, creeping towards the person lying wedge beneath a rock. His footing became unsteady as the rocky surface gave way to large gaps between the jagged boulders, causing him to pause from time to time to map out the safest route. Eventually, the crevices between the rocks grew large enough that they couldn’t simply be climbed over. Jake thought about radioing Mike to retrieve him and then drop him directly overhead of the body, but then decided against it. The only way to know where he could safely position himself for the rescue would be to have managed it firsthand.

“Jake, can you copy?” Mike asked hesitantly.

“Roger, bird,”

“I gotta set her down, I’m just burning fuel while you make progress. There’s a level outcropping on an island about twenty miles from here, still within radio range. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

“You’re not gonna stick around for this?” he teased back, pausing to catch his breath while he waited for a response.

“Dude...I admire your drive here, but you know this is a recovery mission now, not a rescue. Right? Even if your sighting is our missing surfer, there’s no way he’s survived. I’ll be waiting for your update, just don’t be too long about it. Knox sent over a satellite update and there’s a bad storm coming in over the western edge of our quadrant.” Mike held his breath, half expecting a profanity-laced tirade. Instead, Jake didn’t answer for a few seconds.

“Yeah… I mean, roger that.” Jake sighed and released his comm switch. He knew Mike was right, at least from a probability and logical standpoint. But he wasn’t busting his ass scaling a rock face while the waves pressed closer and closer just to bring home a body. He had to believe this was their missing person, and that he was going to be okay.

* * *

N
ight fell
outside the hospital window, making the room seem larger as it all reflected back at Angel. Manuela had fallen asleep in the chair again, staying awake as long as she could after her shift. The poor kid, Angel thought as he looked down at her. She was too young to have to do this. She was on summer break from college so at least she didn’t have to worry about failing any of her classes, but there was still her regular job to work around.

Is this what I did to my family?
Angel thought, taking in the sight of both his mom and his sister. His two other sisters were still trying to make their way back to Texas, one from New York and one from Michigan, but with their jobs and their kids being out of school, they couldn’t just walk away and head home.

I lost Madison so I could go play Rambo halfway around the world, and now what’s left of my family is scattered all over creation, just trying to keep their heads above water. I should have stayed
, he chastised himself.
I never should have left them. I would never have lost Madison, my sisters wouldn’t have taken jobs anywhere their degrees would pay them...

He shook off the negative thoughts and focused on his mom’s peaceful face. What’s done is done, he realized. All that mattered now was his mom.

And Madison
, a quiet voice inside his head reminded him.

They’d spent the night together, and during those few hours it had felt like there had never been any distance between them. But Angel wasn’t naive enough to believe anything had changed, at least not for her. One night of pleasure brought on by the stress of seeing each other again in a time of pain and need didn’t exactly form the basis of a relationship. Besides, Madison hadn’t even been in to check on his mother all day long, or to see him either. There hadn’t been so much as a phone call or a text. It felt a whole lot like she was avoiding him, and that could only mean that she was feeling pretty bad about last night.

As if by some kind of divine intervention, the door opened and Madison slipped through. Instead of looking like a nurse dutifully seeing to her charges, she looked guilty, like a thief who doesn’t want anyone to know her whereabouts. She stood at the foot of the bed, only edging closer to Angel when she saw his sister still there.

“Hey,” she whispered, an air of awkwardness around her.

“Hey yourself,” he whispered back, trying to keep things light. Instead of humor, he felt for all the world like he was trying to keep from spooking a beautiful wild animal, alarming it into running away.

“I heard she’s been showing some more brain activity today, so… that’s good.”

“Yeah. She hasn’t opened her eyes again, but I’ve seen her fingers move every once in a while.”

“Yeah? That’s really good. You’re still talking to her and stuff, right?”

“I’ve talked ‘til I’m just about hoarse,” he answered.
Like I once had to do with you, but with no luck
, he thought before pushing that thought away. “So, you didn’t have to work today?”

“Oh no, I had too much overtime this week. I had to drop a shift to keep the bosses happy. I wouldn’t even be here now but two nurses are out and there’s already a shortage in other departments. I’m here but I’m off the clock.”

“Hey, they’re not allowed to do that to you!” he fired back, angry at the way higher ups could treat their employees and get by with it. Madison waved her hand like it was no big deal.

“I’m not about to sit at home and let my patients be the one to suffer. It’s not the hospital’s fault, either, so here I am.” She forced a smile, but didn’t want to look too eager.

Angel and Madison stood silently for a long time, each one desperate to break the tension in the room, but neither one knowing what to say.

You’re a freakin’ SEAL, you wimp
, he argued with himself.
You can shoot a terrorist at fifty yards but you can’t talk to a girl you slept with last night?

“Um, Madison… I don’t even know how to begin…” he started to say, but she cut him off.

“You don’t have to say anything. I’m the one who came over there, it’s not like you forced your way into my apartment or took advantage of me. You don’t owe me anything just because we… I mean, I’m not sorry we… God, I’m screwing this all up.” She sighed in frustration while Angel watched, his spine searing with pain from tensing up. Was she really telling him that last night didn’t mean anything, that they should just forget it?

Hell no
, he thought, a fierceness in his movements. He squared his jaw as he saw the conflicted look on her face, then came around the bed and stood in front of her, staring down into her wide eyes for a moment before kissing her deeply. Madison froze for a moment, more from surprise than anything else, then slid her hands up Angel’s chest to link them behind his neck, pulling him closer.

“Stop,” she said suddenly, leaning away from him and taking a step back. Angel felt the absence of her in his arms and the effect was like falling through the ice. She shook her head. “I need to know…”

“What?” he pressed when she didn’t finish her sentence.

“I can’t,” she finally managed, shaking her head. “If this isn’t going to mean something, it hurts too much. I was in pain all day, wondering if last night was just a one-time thing or some trip down memory lane. And then there was the hurt of not knowing what it was that I wanted myself. But if we don’t plan to go any further, then this should stop.”

“But I do want it to go further. I want
you
,” Angel answered in a desperate whisper, coming towards her again. “I never stopped wanting you, even when I was so angry that I never wanted to see you again.”

“How does that even work?” Madison asked with a soft laugh.

“I don’t know! I never said it made sense, I said I wanted you but didn’t want to see you!” He returned her quiet laugh as he took her in his arms, kissing her once before pressing his forehead to hers. “Whatever we have to do, we can make it work.”

“But there’s your job...and mine…”

“We’ll work it out, I promise. Just tell me that you want it to work, and we’ll make it happen.”