She nodded, knowing she was being foolish and emotional, and wiped the tears off her cheek with the back of her hand. “He’s my life, Buzz.”
The muscles in his jaws flexed. “Hey, Kel, come on. I do this for a living, remember? Once we clip on it’ll take less than two minutes for us to be winched up to the hatch, another minute to unhook him and another minute for me to get back down to you. Five minutes max and we’ll be on our way to RMSAR headquarters.”
“I know. I’m just…. God, Buzz, this scares me.”
“Everything’s going to be fine.” Reaching out, he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
The gesture touched her deeply. Kelly wondered if she would ever be able to tell him how much it meant to her at that moment.
“You’ve got my word.” Cupping her chin in his palm, he forced her gaze to his. “You know I always keep my word, don’t you?”
The intensity in those stormy eyes stole the answer hovering on the tip of her tongue. Speechless and expectant, her heart racing with fear and anticipation, she stared at him, felt the ground move beneath her feet.
She didn’t expect him to kiss her. Not in full view of Eddie. Certainly not in front of his testosterone-laden teammates on board the chopper. But one minute she was standing there wishing with all her heart they didn’t have to do this, the next she was swept into his embrace, and his mouth was making love to hers with an intensity that sucked all the oxygen from her lungs and the last vestiges of rational thought from her brain.
Kelly didn’t intend to kiss him back, either, but her body reacted instinctively. Fear for her child mingled with a clash of emotions for the man holding her and made her legs tremble. But the pull of his mouth was too strong to resist. She looped her arms around his neck, her body falling full length against his. She heard his breath quicken. Her own stalled in her lungs when he deepened the kiss. Shoving logic and restraint and a hundred other emotions aside, she opened to him. And for a split second the rest of the world ceased to exist. Their hearts beat in a wild, simultaneous rhythm. Once. Twice.
As abruptly as he’d executed the kiss, he broke it. His eyes were dark, his pupils dilated when he eased her to arm’s length. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. His eyes conveyed all the things she needed to know.
“We’re not finished,” he said. “With a lot of things.”
Logic ordered her to correct him, to tell him they were, indeed, finished. That they’d been finished for a long time. But her brain was scrambled and her heart was beating so wildly she felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath.
“Hey, why’re you kissing my mom?” came a small voice.
Buzz looked down and grinned at Eddie. “Hang on to me, sport,” he said. “We’re going up.”
“Be careful,” Kelly managed, but the words were lost in the maelstrom of wind and debris kicked up by the rotor blades.
Buzz looked up at the belly of the chopper hovering forty feet overhead. “We’ve got to go.” Then he looked at her one last time. “I’ll be back for you.”
Stepping away from her, he looked over at Eddie, who was staring at them as if they’d just sprouted horns. “Ready, partner?”
Eddie nodded, but Kelly could tell he was still bewildered by the kiss. She wondered how to explain it without confusing him when she couldn’t even explain it to herself.
She wanted to touch her son one more time, but Buzz warned her away with his eyes. Turning the little boy toward him, he lifted Eddie so that they were facing each other, then buckled their harnesses together. Looking up toward the chopper, he stuck out his arm and gave a thumbs-up signal. A moment later a cable with a closed hook on the end was lowered by the winch stationed just above the main hatch.
Buzz caught the shank in his hand, then quickly secured it to the carabiner on his harness. He gave another thumbs-up signal and an instant later, the cable went taut. Man and child were jerked off their feet.
Kelly wasn’t sure which was louder, the rotor blades or her own heart as she watched Buzz and her son being hoisted upward. She saw them talking, saw Buzz’s arms go around her child. Eddie wrapped his little legs around Buzz’s body. Upward they went. Twenty feet. Thirty feet. Forty feet. She could see a dark-haired man in an orange flight suit just inside the hatch, waiting for them.
A heavily gloved hand reached out and snagged the cable. A moment later, Buzz and Eddie disappeared inside the hatch. Relief made her legs go weak. The man in the orange flight suit looked down at her. She couldn’t see his face because he was wearing a helmet with communication gear, but the thumbs-up said it all.