“Half hour?” It was a rough guess.
“Perfect. I want to hear you scream my name.” He carried me to the bed, and a few seconds and some shedding of clothes later, we were both blissfully naked.
We were experts at quiet sex, the kind where mouths and hands covered the sounds of orgasms, where you stole showers or middle-of-the-night sessions to avoid the inevitable kid interruptions. We’d long since moved the bed’s headboard off the wall.
But having the entire house to ourselves for a half hour? It was an excuse to be downright hedonistic.
He moved over me, and I cradled his hips between mine as he kissed me to oblivion. No matter how secretive he might be about his time in the military, he was an open book while we were in bed. Our bodies communicated effortlessly, and we somehow managed to get better at it every time we made love. The fire I’d half expected to fizzle out only burned brighter and hotter.
“Beckett,” I groaned when he took a nipple into his mouth and slipped his hand between my thighs.
“Always so ready. God, I love you, Ella.”
“I. Love. You.” Each word was punctuated by a gasp. The man knew exactly how to bring me to the brink with nothing more than a few—
Ring. Ring. Ring.
I forced my head to the side, where I saw Beckett’s cell phone illuminated on the floor next to his jeans.
“That’s. You.”
“I don’t care,” he said before he kissed me. Between his tongue and his fingers, I was already arching up to meet him, desperate to make the most of our time alone. These were the moments when nothing else mattered, where the entire universe melted away and nothing existed outside our bed—our love.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Damn it. I looked again and made out the letters on his screen. “It’s the station, and if they’ve called twice…”
Beckett growled his annoyance but leaned over the bed to retrieve the phone. “Gentry.” He put his mouth to my belly, and I ran my hands over the broad expanse of his shoulders. “Don’t care. Nope.”
His tongue trailed back up to the curve of my breast, then abruptly stopped.
He sat up on his knees, and I knew before he said a single word that he was leaving, because he was already a million miles away.
“I’ll be there in ten.” He set the phone down and gave me the look—the one that said he wouldn’t go if they didn’t need him.
“It’s okay,” I told him, already sitting up.
He put his hand on my knee. “I wouldn’t go if they didn’t—”
“Need you,” I finished for him.
“Exactly. There’s been a rollover near Bridal Veil Falls, and a ten-year-old girl is missing. She was thrown from the vehicle. It’s…it’s a kid.”
Kids were the one demographic he never turned down. Even if he wasn’t on call, if it involved a child, he went in.
I leaned forward and kissed him softly. “Then you’d better go.”
“I’m so sorry.” His eyes raked down my body. “So. So. So sorry.”
“I know. I love you. Go save someone’s little girl.” I shooed him out the door with Havoc, and five minutes later, I stood fully dressed in my bedroom.
With an empty house.
The options were endless. I could read a book. I could watch something I’d DVR’d months ago. I could even take a bath. Sweet, blissful quiet.
Instead, I chose laundry.
“I’m going to start a nudist colony,” I muttered as I grabbed Maisie’s basket and headed down the steps.
My phone rang midway, and I did the basket-to-hip shuffle to get it answered. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Gentry?”
As lovely as that sounds— I shut that thought down.
“No, I’m Ms. MacKenzie, but I do know Beckett Gentry.” I made my way to the small laundry room and tossed the load in. If we ended up living here after Maisie was cured, then the first thing on my list was to ask Beckett to install a new, bigger washer and dryer.
Holy crap, I’d just made plans not only for Maisie to live but for Beckett to still be with me. Wasn’t I just the optimist today.
“Ms. MacKenzie?”
The optimist who had completely ignored the phone for her daydream.
“I’m here. I’m so sorry, what were you saying?” I poured soap in and hit start, then got the heck out of the laundry room so I could hear the woman.
“My name is Danielle Wilson. I’m with Tri-Prime.” Her tone was all business.
“Oh, the insurance company. Of course. I’m Maisie MacKenzie’s mom. How can I help you?” Man, those dishes needed to be done, too. What the heck had the kids concocted with Ada this afternoon?
“I’m calling in reference to the letter I sent to Sergeant First Class Gentry’s commanding officer. The same one copied to you as well.” She was certainly annoyed.
I thought of the small stack of insurance envelopes on my desk that detailed the paid claims. “I’m so sorry, I actually haven’t opened those in a couple of weeks. I’m usually way better about it.” But knowing we had a couple of months off treatments made me feel all reckless about not opening cancer-related mail. I felt like Ross in that episode of Friends, telling the mail that we were on a break.
Then what she said hit home.
“His commanding officer?”
“Yes. Captain Donahue? We sent him the letter last week as well, in way of notification.”
Beckett was out. He said he was on terminal leave when he got here in April, and it was already the first week of March. I didn’t know much about the army, but I didn’t think terminal leave lasted a year. Oh God, had he lied to me?
“I’d like to schedule a time to come out for a preliminary interview. Next week is available. Say noon on Monday?”
“I’m sorry, you want to come to Telluride?”
“That would be best, yes. Does Monday work, or would Tuesday be better for you?”
She wanted to come to Telluride in two days.
“Monday is fine, but can I ask what this is about? I’ve never had an insurance company visit before.”
What she said next stunned me to silence. It kept me motionless until the kids came home with Ada. Then quiet through dinner and baths. My mind went in ten thousand different directions as I got the kids to bed…and didn’t stop for hours.
It was after ten p.m. when Beckett walked through the door, using the key I’d given him seven months ago.
He was exhausted, with streaks of dirt running down his face. He stripped off his Search and Rescue jacket, hanging it on the rack by the door, and Havoc stopped by for a little rub before she headed toward her water dish.
“Why don’t I have a key to your place?” I asked.
“What?” He stopped abruptly when he saw me sitting at the dining room table amid the open insurance papers.
“I gave you a key to my place, and you sleep here most nights now. It just seems so symbolic, you know? I let you all the way in, and you keep everything locked up so damn tight. I only get to visit when you open the door.”
He sat in the chair around the corner from mine. “Ella? What’s going on?”
“You still have a commanding officer? Donahue?”
The way his expression faded to blank told me that answer. Ryan got the same expression whenever I’d asked him something about the unit.
“Were you going to tell me that you didn’t get out?”
He took off his ball cap and pushed his hands through his hair. “It’s a technicality.”
“I kind of view being in the military as a pregnant thing. You are or you aren’t. There’s no halfway technicality.” The dark, angry doubt I’d kept at bay started to cut through my chest, working its way to my heart. “Have you been lying to me this whole time? Are you still in? Are you just waiting until I don’t need you anymore to go back? Am I still just a mission to you? Ryan’s little sister?”
“God no.” He reached for my hand, but I pulled it back. “Ella, that’s not what’s going on here.”
“Explain.”
“Someone showed up right after I got here, asking me to return, and I declined. After what happened, I wasn’t really fit for returning, anyway, and Havoc might obey you guys, but she won’t take working commands from any other handlers.”