Queen (15 page)

In less than a month school would start. Cody stood on the deck behind the house and watched the boys playing their favorite new game, Queen's now famous one-eyed cat. They ranged so far apart in age, he feared that when school started they would slowly grow apart, especially Donny, who was now an official teenager. He just hoped that the basic closeness between them didn't diminish during the years.

"Who's winning?" Queen asked.

Cody turned and grinned. "No one. Everyone. That's the beauty of that game, isn't it?"

Queen nodded. "My sisters and I always played it. Partly because we didn't have anyone else to play with, and partly because there wasn't room in the backyard for more than one base."

"Do you miss them?" he asked.

She bit her lip and looked away. "More than I thought possible."

"You could always call them. I wouldn't care about the bill. You know that, don't you?"

Queen remembered how carefully he'd been treading around her feelings since that day in Snow Gap, and she nodded. "I know. It's just… Lucky and I have no way of contacting each other at all. And I did try once to reach Diamond, but all I got was the runaround."

She frowned, remembering the disdain in the secretary's voice at the offices of the record label under which Jesse Eagle sang. She couldn't really blame the woman. They probably got similar calls constantly from fans with an unhealthy devotion, and they had to protect Jesse Eagle's privacy. "For all I know, I may never see them again," she said, trying to disguise the tremor in her voice by clearing her throat. But it was difficult to hide the pain of saying her worst fears aloud.

"Why?" Cody asked. "I always imagined you were close."

"We were… are," she corrected herself. "But when Johnny died we no longer had a home. Not in Cradle's Creek. And we were all going different directions in life. There's no longer a centre in our lives."

"Why? Because you sold your house?" He knew bits and pieces of her life, but not enough, he now realized. She sighed. "It was an impossible situation. If we'd stayed, we would not have survived." She walked into the house, leaving him to make what he would of her answer. Although she never let on, he decided she must often get lonely for her family.

He turned back to watch his sons' ball game and remembered his own childhood. Cody had been an army brat and an only child. He'd grown up with no roots, attending a new school every year or so, depending on where his father was relocated next, and he accepted it as a way of life. In his second year of marriage to Claire, his parents passed away within months of each other, but by then he'd already learned to give everything possible to his work, and what little was left over went to his family.

As Lieutenant Colonel Cody Bonner, squadron commander assigned to Fifty-ninth Fighter Squadron, Eglin Air Force Base, state of Florida, his was an impressive rank with an impressive group of men. He was a good damned officer but an on-again, off-again, father. And after Claire's death, it had nearly cost him his sons. Now he knew that nothing was worth that loss.

He sighed, shoved his hands in his pockets, and followed Queen into the house. Sometimes the most difficult thing in life was just the living of it.

Night came. The boys, exhausted from their wild game of ball, inhaled their food, slopped through their baths, and fell into bed with less than the usual amount or argument.

Within a few hours the house was silent and only the sounds of distant thunder from a faraway storm could be heard. Now and then a floorboard creaked as it settled against the night, and dry leaves from the trees surrounding the yard rolled outside beneath the legs of the deck, rustling along with the wind, crackling like paper being consumed by a wild, gusty fire.

Queen kicked restlessly and turned to pull an extra cover over her shoulders. She had almost resettled into that comfortable spot on the edge of her pillow when she heard the cry. It was high-pitched and heart-stopping, and she'd heard it before.

Without thought for the chill of the floor or her scant clothing, she was out of bed and down the hall in a flash, opening and then closing the door to Cody's room, anxious to stop the dream before he woke the children.

"Oh, Cody," she whispered as she ran to his bed. "I thought this was behind you."

Held in the throes of the nightmare, caught in the twisted covers of his bed, he lay on his back, arms out—flung, legs jerking against the linen confinement. Although the night was chilly, he lay bathed in sweat from the exertion in his mind.

Queen slid onto the bed beside him and took his face in her hands. "Cody! Cody! You've got to wake up!"

But nothing stopped the progression of the nightmare.

Stroking the sides of his face with the palms of her hands in a slow, comforting motion, she felt the tension in his jaw as it clenched and reclenched beneath her touch.

He groaned, muttering unintelligible words. Queen's hand slid from his face to his chest, and unconsciously her fingers splayed across it, feeling the heartbeat beneath. It was rapid and irregular, and when his body arched, she threw herself across it in a desperate effort to keep him from falling.

The movement had been instinctive. Of course he couldn't fall. He was flat on his back in bed. But she'd sensed that he'd reached the point of his dream in which he'd ejected from the plane, and the instinct to catch him and keep him from falling was immediate.

"Oh, God, Cody, wake up. Wake up," she whispered, and laid her face against his chest.

She slid her arms around him, closed her eyes, and knew only that when he came out of the dream, she couldn't bear for him to think he was hurt and lost as he had been in the desert. She had to be there, in body as well as spirit, and this was the only way she knew how to let him know he wasn't alone. She held on for dear life… and for Cody.

He shuddered. The last thing he remembered was blacking out after hitting the ground. He groaned softly and reached out, trying to lift the weight from his chest and clear his eyes. But this time something was different. It wasn't tight bands of straps he felt across his chest. It was a woman. He could feel her soft skin and gentle curves and could even smell the scent of shampoo. He wondered why no one had ever told him that when you died and went to heaven, angels would smell and feel this good.

When his arms moved upward to lift the helmet from his face, it wasn't there, just a fine webbing of angel hair spread over his cheeks. His fingers slid over the hair and then downward. Clutching a fistful of curls with each hand, he sighed and opened his eyes.

She knew when it was over. He became still, and his body went limp. But before she could move, he'd entwined his hands in her hair. She was caught, trapped where she lay by a man filled with pain. She lifted her head, and in the shadowy darkness of his room, their eyes met. And just for a moment before he blinked and looked away, she imagined she saw into his soul.

"Queen… it's you." He dropped his head back to the pillow, released her hair, and covered his face with his hands. "What the hell happened?"

She resisted the urge to caress his face. Asleep she'd been able to touch him, awake he was out of bounds.

"You had another dream," she said, and started to rise.

He didn't even know he was going to do it until his hand closed around her wrist and he held her beside him with desperate force. "Don't," he begged, and then loosened his hold and let his hand slide slowly up her arm, coming to rest at the slender curve of her neck below her chin. "Don't leave me, lady."

Queen's heart pounded. Her stomach tightened as an answering coil of want began to spiral low in her body. He'd asked something of her she wasn't ready to give.

Their eyes adjusted to the darkness between them. Cody could see the slender outline of her body through the old, soft fabric of her gown. His own body hardened and rose, aching with a need he'd long been denied. Queen not only had awakened him from the dream, she'd awakened another part of him that he'd tried valiantly to ignore. But the want between them had been too close to the surface for too long.

He reached out and cupped her breast, molding the fabric against it until she looked to have been carved of marble. He felt a shiver of longing so deep inside him, he shuddered from the need.

She covered his hand with her own, and for a long quiet moment he was caught between her body and her touch.

"I can't," she finally whispered, and could have wept when his hand slid away and dropped onto the bed beside her.

"Why? Because you don't trust me? I wouldn't hurt you, lady. You mean more to
me than any woman has ever meant in my entire life. I know you think I'm crazy,
but—"

"Don't!" Her hand covered his mouth before the words could be finished. "You're not crazy. You're a survivor, that's all." Her voice softened, and he strained to hear her continue. "You're a survivor… just like me."

Cody held his breath, sensing that she was about to reveal more of herself now than in all the time he'd known her. "But you don't trust me," he said softly.

Queen shuddered. "I don't trust anyone. Not even myself."

She buried her face in her hands, and for a moment Cody thought she was crying. But then her head jerked back, and she dropped her hands into her lap. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet but strong.

"We had nothing. We were nothing. Nothing but the gambler's daughters. Johnny loved us, but he didn't know how to care for us. All my life I've felt like I was on the outside looking in. We never belonged… my sisters and I… except to each other. We were judged and found lacking so many times by so many people that I grew up believing it. And by the time I was old enough to know that the fault was theirs and not ours, it was too late. Oh, God, Cody! Don't you understand? I don't know how to trust, because I don't know how to love."

Her heartbroken cry brought him upright, but it was not in time to catch her flight. She was off his bed and out of his room before his feet hit the floor. And by the time he thought about following her to her room, he realized the futility of it all. She'd just told him all there was to be said. It was now up to him to decide if she was worth fighting for, because he didn't think she would walk across that imaginary line in her head on her own and fight for him and the chance for love.

It didn't take him long to make a decision. But soldiers had a way of knowing the thing that had to be done to survive. And Cody Bonner was a survivor. He'd already proved that, to himself as well as everyone else.

He went back to his bed and lay down, staring up at the ceiling with single-minded intent until the ache in his body finally subsided and exhaustion claimed him.

Cody soon realized that the easy camaraderie between him and Queen was gone. The relationship that had taken months to develop had been destroyed in the space of a night. Only with the boys was she still the same. For Cody she was, once again, the woman he'd dragged from beneath his truck on the day that they'd met. When they spoke to each other it was in single sentences and answered with monosyllables. Whenever they could they dodged each other and made weak excuses to the boys and to themselves as to why being alone together was no longer an option.

But it didn't change the past. Neither could forget the memory of that night and how close they'd come to stepping across that invisible line. Of how easy it would have been to lie down in each other's arms and forget, if only for a while, that there were nightmares within each of them that wouldn't turn loose.

Cody's hell was one born of a single incident in his life. Queen's hell had been created from a lifetime of incidents. She wouldn't let go, and he didn't know how to make her. And so they hung, halfway between love and loss, and wished that life had been kinder to them both.

When the day came for new beginnings, it was not for Cody or Queen, but for the boys: their first day of school in a new environment.

Queen wasn't the only one who was dreading the change. Will and J.J. had dogged her every step all morning and looked ready to claim sickness with little provocation.

And then it was time to go, and there was no time left for procrastination.

"Are you going to be lonesome while we're gone?"

J.J.'s plaintive question pierced the silence in the hallway as the boys got ready to leave. Queen heard more in the question than nervous excitement about a new school. J.J. was afraid she wouldn't be here when he came home.

Queen smiled and knelt as she helped him button his jacket. "I might, just at first," she said. "But I'll stay busy and the time will pass, and before I know it, you guys will come running up the driveway from the school bus, yelling for something to eat. Right?"

He grinned. "Right."

She stood, brushed at the wayward lock of hair that wouldn't stay out of his eyes, and knew that he'd gotten her message.

Will slipped up beside her, as always, a quiet shadow of the other two boys and their ebullient personalities.

"Will, do you have your lunch money?" She caressed the soft skin on the side of his cheek.

He nodded, his eyes beseeching her to comfort him.

"It will be okay," she said. "You and J.J. are going to the same school, remember?"

He nodded again and then slid an arm around her waist and quietly leaned against her. His head came to just above her belt buckle, and she felt his reluctant sigh through the fabric of her shirt.

Queen hugged him gently, then turned him loose. It would have been too easy to never let him go. "I'll make brownies," she offered.

Will smiled. And because it was rare, it was all the more precious.

"They'll be fine," Donny said. "We all ride the same bus. And my school is just across campus. If they have a problem, I can be right there."

His words came as no surprise to Queen. Cody's oldest son was already quite a man in his own right, even if he was only thirteen. He surprised himself as well as Queen when he dropped his backpack and gave her a big, impulsive hug.

"But it's good to know that when I can't handle everything"—he grinned to make his point, a silent reminder of the day in Snow Gap when she'd come to their aid—"you'll be around. Right, Queenie?"