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Fully Engaged
Praise for RITA® Award-winning author Catherine Mann
“Riveting action, to-die-for heroes—this must be another military romance by the fabulous Catherine Mann!”
—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann
“Catherine Mann is one of the hottest rising stars around!”
—New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster
“As we say in the Air Force, get ready to roll in hot! From page one, Catherine Mann’s military romances launch you into a world chock-full of simmering passion and heart-pounding action. Don’t miss ’em!”
—USA TODAY bestselling author Merline Lovelace
“Hold out for a Catherine Mann hero! Her Air Force flyboys will wing their way straight to your heart.”
—Bestselling author Joanne Rock
Fully Engaged
Catherine Mann
MILLS & BOON
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CATHERINE MANN
Five-time RITA® Award finalist Catherine Mann pens contemporary military romances, a natural fit since she’s married to her very own Air Force flyboy. Since June 2002 she has won the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award and the Booksellers Best Award, as well as being a finalist for Romantic Times BOOKclub’s Reviewer’s Choice Award. A former theater-school director and university teacher, Catherine graduated from the College of Charleston with a B.A. in fine arts: theater and received her master’s degree in theater from UNC Greensboro. Now, following her aviator husband around the world with four children, a beagle and two tabbies in tow offers endless inspiration for new stories. For more information, visit her Web site at www.catherinemann.com or write her at P.O. Box 6065, Navarre, FL 32566.
In memory of Jeri Houghton and Susan Jeglinski.
You are remembered.
And to Harlequin/Silhouette author Bonnie Gardner. I appreciate more than I can express your sharing details of your breast cancer recovery journey. Your strength and courage humble me. (Any mistakes about breast cancer treatment and recovery are my own. To learn more about breast cancer detection and treatment, I hope you’ll visit the American Cancer Society’s Web site at www.cancer.org.)
Acknowledgments:
I’ve long wanted to tell this story and always imagined myself digging in and immersing myself into the writing process. Well, my world didn’t cooperate and the time to put this book to paper came at one of the most chaotic moments of my life. This story of my heart could not have happened without the critiquing, proofreading and hand-holding from five very dear people. My heartfelt thanks to my friends Joanne Rock, Stephanie Newton and Karen Tucker, to my sister Julie Morrison, and to my husband, Rob. I love you all!
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
Five Years Ago: Randolph Air Force Base, Texas
Lieutenant Nola Seabrook accepted that she could face death on Monday. But for the weekend, she intended to celebrate life to the fullest.
She gripped the door of the Officer’s Club bar, preparing herself to do something she’d never even considered before. She intended to find a man—a stranger—for a one-night stand.
Lucky for her, she was away from her home base, which gave her a wealth of unfamiliar faces to peruse. Country music and the clang of the bell over the bar swelled as she swung the door wider to reveal the Friday-night crowd.
No crying. No fear. She would forget herself with some stranger and lose herself in sensations she might never feel again.
Nola shouldered deeper into the press of bodies. The room reverberated with cheering. The place was packed, as she would expect on a Friday night, but the majority clustered in a circle to the side, was the source of the whoop, whoop, whoop. And “Go, Lurch! Go, Lurch!”
Lurch? Now there was a call sign for a guy worth investigating.
Curiosity nipped, sucking her feet sideways.
She angled toward the commotion. Sidestepping an amorous couple making tracks toward the door, she caught sight of a chalkboard mounted on an easel. A bartender stood beside with a stubby piece of chalk to scratch out numbers. Ah. Bets. But what for?
She sidled through to the inner circle. Her eyes homed in on the source of the noise. The focus of the cheering was…
A man.
Holy cow, what a man. On the floor pumping push-ups in BDU pants and a brown T-shirt, he clapped between counts—ninety-five at the moment. The number hit a hundred and still he didn’t stop or even hesitate. Must be his size that earned him the nickname “Lurch” because, holy cow, he was big.
Two men in similar uniforms split from the crowd carrying a fifty-some-odd-year-old waitress on their shoulders like Cleopatra. With ceremonial hoopla, they placed her on the man’s back. His arms strained against the T-shirt, muscles bulging, veins rippling along the stretch of tendons, but still he pushed.
Up. Down. Again and again.
Ohmigod, her own tummy did a flip of attraction. Arousal. And hadn’t she come here for just this reason?
Twenty-five years old and she didn’t have anyone else to turn to for comfort, which could really pitch her into a tailspin if she let herself think on it for too long.
Her elderly parents gone. Her marriage kaput because her ex-husband couldn’t take the stress of a wife who might not live to see thirty. Zero siblings. Her best friend deployed to Turkey. Her only other friends a bunch of rowdy Air Force crew dogs who spent as much time on the road as she did, and she really couldn’t see herself showing weakness by bawling her eyes out to any of them.
Charge ahead, girl.
She made a quick check of his left hand. No wedding band. No pale cheater mark along his tan ring finger. Sheesh, she wished she’d thought to change into something other than her flight suit.
Too late for regrets. She was here now, and if she left to change, the man in front of her might be gone by the time she returned. Besides, she didn’t want to miss a second of this display.
Sweat started to pop along his forehead and even a hint along his shoulders, but still he kept moving. The man was a poster boy for health and vitality.
Invincibility, perhaps? All things she so desperately wanted to soak up right now. She found herself clapping the count along with everyone else.
“One hundred forty-eight.”
He switched to one-handed push-ups. The crowd roared louder.
“One hundred forty-nine. One hundred-fifty.”
He reached behind to steady the waitress and jumped to his feet, easing the apron-clad lady to hers, as well. With all the showmanship of his single-handed display, he wrapped an arm around the waitress’s waist, dipped her and gave her a quick kiss before setting her free. “Thank you much, Delphine.”
“No problem for you, Captain Rick. Anytime you’re in town.”
Rick. She liked that name. Solid.
However if she didn’t get her butt in gear and make a move soon, he would be gone. Nola stepped forward. And thank you, Jesus, that’s all it took.
He looked her way and his deep chocolate eyes held. Without breaking the stare, he smiled, snagged the rest of his uniform off the back of a chair and slid his arms through, slowly buttoning up over his chest.
DeMassi was stitched over the left pocket and above that she recognized the insignia for a pararescueman. He hurtled himself out of planes. Penetrated the most hostile of territories. Anything to save a downed airman, to bring someone like her home.
Honorable to the core and darn near invincible, for sure. Even his patch proclaimed That Others May Live.
He fastened the last button and started toward her. “Hello, Lieutenant Seabrook.”
“Hello to you, Captain DeMassi.”
“Do you have a first name?”
“Nola, like New Orleans.”
“Ah, classy.” He extended his broad hand toward her. “I’m—”
“Rick. I heard from your cheering section.”
“We’re all away from home, coming in from maneuvers to one of our favorite Officer’s Clubs, needing to let off some steam. They would have cheered on anybody.”
“So you say.” She folded his hand in hers, warm and strong.
More of that vitality she needed. Her imagination skipped ahead to thoughts of his hand against her skin. She didn’t need to worry about concerns of compatibility or depth. This was about the moment. She refused to let echoes of her mother’s preaching voice make her feel guilty or shallow.
Nola’s hand stayed connected to Rick’s, shaking, seesawing slower and slower, up and down like his push-ups until finally she inched away with a self-conscious laugh, wiping her hand against her flight suit leg. “This is awkward.”
“Why so?”
“I want to be all collected and say something femme fatale perfect but now I’m…” She started to turn, her nerve wobbling. “Forget it.”
His hand fell on her shoulder, heavy and warm sparking another jolt of that alive feeling she needed.
“Wait,” he said.
She looked back and what she saw in his eyes mirrored the sensations zipping through her like lightning traveling through an aircraft—not fatal, but hair crackling, unsettling, and oh so invigorating.
“Yes?” She meant the word as a statement as well as a question.
“How about this?” He held her with those deep eyes rather than his hands, as if sensing she needed space. Would he be this perceptive in bed? “Let’s not worry about saying the right things. We can say whatever we want, even if it’s a damn awful first date wrong thing to say.”
Date? She was thinking encounter, but okay. Breathe. His game had intriguing merit. The bar patrons kept their distance, even if they watched with half-veiled interest.
Hesitantly, she hitched her elbows back onto the bar. “You go first.”
He propped one arm beside her and leaned in to make his move, his shoulders blocking everything but him.
“I live with my parents.” He thumped his chest with his fist and belched. “Mom does my laundry.”
She burst out laughing. Settling a somber expression, she responded, “Speaking of laundry, I just don’t get what all the hoopla is about fancy underwear.”
“Ouch. You go right for the jugular, lady.” He grabbed his head in mock agony. “All right, time for the big guns. My doc said not to worry. It’s only a cold sore.”
“Then you should be able to enjoy our meal together.” She reached for the laminated menu wedged between the condiments. “What’s the most expensive item featured?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter since I maxed out all my credit cards.”
“Fair enough, since it will soon be our money because I’m husband hunting.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Her divorce left her scathed, but good.
“Ah, good one.” He tapped his forehead, then snapped his fingers. “As long as you don’t mind going a lifetime unsatisfied in bed.”
“As long as we get to go to bed together.”
“I’m counting on it.”
She froze and so did he. They weren’t playing anymore.
He held out his hand. “Dance with me.”
And she did. Silently. Talking softly about anything, mostly seductive. For hours until the crowd thinned and the bell rang for last call. They broke apart and he extended his hand again. She knew if she took it this time they would be heading for a different kind of dance, the one she had come here searching for.
Again, her hand fit perfectly in his. A short stroll later they had walked to his room in the visiting officer’s quarters. He kicked the door closed behind him.
She didn’t even bother telling him she’d never done anything like this before. Truth or not, she didn’t want to sound trite and she didn’t intend to see him again anyway. He seemed okay with that. No guilt for either of them. She was through with words and he seemed to feel the same way.
Between kisses, their clothes fell away until only their underwear remained. Skin to skin. Her hands explored the hardened expanse of his muscles more impressive than she’d even imagined.
And her imagination had been mighty darn amazing. She’d been right to do this. This was exactly the escape she needed this weekend to take her away from the ordeal that awaited her next week.
His talented hands made fast work of the front clasp on her bra and he swept the lacy scrap down her shoulders with reverent fingers. A long, slow exhale slid from his mouth, blowing an appreciative whistle over her exposed skin. “Wow, lady, you are something to behold.”
Gulping back emotion, she lifted his hand, placed the callused warmth over her bared breast and savored the sensation as if for the last time. Which it very well could be.
Because Monday, combat veteran that she was, she began her toughest battle ever—one that started not with a mission briefing, but with a mastectomy.
Chapter 1
Present Day: Wilford Hall Medical Center, Texas
Major Rick DeMassi forced his steel-pin-filled legs to move as he gripped the metal bars for balance. He narrowed his focus to a tunnel as he always did on missions, and no undertaking had been more important than getting back on his feet again.
Every day in rehab he resolved to end this one better than he finished his final assignment during the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina. The carnage had threatened to suck him under, but he’d kept his eyes on the teddy bear ahead, sticking halfway out of the muck. After years of search and rescue, he’d known in his gut there was a child close by.
Too bad his gut couldn’t tell him if that child was alive or dead.
Now there weren’t teddy bears to zero in on, even theoretically. His teenage daughter was long past the age of such toys. Still he wanted to greet her on his own two feet someday soon—as the hero she thought he was. So he went through the daily torture of grabbing these damn bars and shuffling one shattered leg in front of the other.
What a joke in comparison to the old days when he leaped from helicopters. Swam churning waters. Or sludged through unstable wreckage toward a stuffed toy to pull out a child.
“Careful, sir.” The voice echoed in his head. Then or now, he wasn’t sure. The stench of antiseptic burned his nose as strongly as the stench of rotting muck. “Steady is better than fast.”
One foot in front of the other.
Step.
Step.
Step.
For the kid. For his child. For the trapped child. Both merged in his head. The past and the present. Both times painful, squeezing labored breaths from his body until he thought he didn’t have anything left inside him but somehow he kept going. Running then. Shuffling now. The irony didn’t escape him, but he wasn’t a quitter.
“There isn’t much time left,” the sergeant said, an orderly watching him like a babysitter in case he fell, but the voice could have been from the past, rushing him along. Urging him to the cargo plane. But he couldn’t leave the little girl and her doll behind.
He’d been a crap father to his daughter, always on the job, barely a presence in her life. He wouldn’t let this wounded little girl down, too. Even if the best he could do was recover her dead body for burial…
Rick gritted his teeth. “Five more minutes, Sergeant, and I’ll be done.”
“Roger that, Major.”
He would reach the end of this walk without falling. Not like before.
Step.
Step.
Pain. Penance. Step. The sound of airplane engines had hummed in the background much the same as the heater now. Gusting wind over him. The antiseptic scent of the hospital as unwelcome a stench as the stench of…worse than muck…
Death.
Except the child had been alive, even if barely. He’d seen the doll flutter as if tugged.
Walk now. Run then.
He’d pulled the girl out, a child maybe four. They’d even made it to the emergency personnel where he’d passed her off…just as rotten boards gave way underneath him.
Agonizing pain razored through him. The ground sucked him in. Nails and boards cut into skin and muscle. Bones snapped. Wood tore into his legs. Ripped tendons.
Reach up. Out. Trudge. Don’t give up.
His vision tightened the tunnel until he could swear he saw the load ramp at the end of his metal bars. How damn ridiculous was that? Maybe it was just some of that visionary crap the shrink was always telling him about.
Picture what you want. Yeah. That was it. He wanted his job back.
Hell, he wanted his life back.
Okay, the load ramp gaping at the back of the airplane. Go with that image. Move toward it.
Light faded and blazed as he struggled with consciousness. A voice tugged at him from his past. He blinked, cleared his vision and his eyes agreed with his ears. What the…?
He must be delusional thinking of that woman who’d left his bed with only a terse little note five years ago.
Still he couldn’t stop himself from croaking out the name. “Nola?”
The woman moved toward him, stepping into the light streaming through the rehab area’s windows and revealing a face from the past he’d never expected to see again…
At a time when he very likely didn’t have a future.
Putting the past to rest so she could move forward with her future was easier said than done. But Nola was a determined lady.
She needed to wrap her brain around a reality she barely dared dream was real. She’d reached her five-year remission mark.
Her docs all encouraged her to celebrate. The mind and body worked in synch after all.
Easier said than done. Believing in the future was tough after so long of living for today. Milk the most from each second because today was a gift and tomorrow an unknown. Walk to the towering man inching slowly her way.
Her hand closed around her purse, which held her very organized day planner, which held her list.
The list. A list of all the people she needed to make contact with for closure. She’d already contacted every friend she could think of that she may have wronged. A flight student she’d been unnecessarily harsh to during a check ride because in her early days as an instructor perhaps she’d been a bit full of herself.
She’d even contacted a guy from junior high who she’d picked on unmercifully all because she’d liked him and had been too immature to know how to show it. He’d thought she was nuts for calling, but ah well, such was life. She wasn’t as worried about looking cool these days.
Today she’d finally tracked down Rick DeMassi, the man she’d left high and dry and gloriously naked in a VOQ room. Once she’d learned of his injuries, her relief at finding him alive had been stronger than she would have expected for someone she’d only spent thirty hours with five years ago. But they’d been a crucial thirty hours. He’d given her a great gift over that weekend, even if he hadn’t known.
His talented touch had been the last she’d felt on her breasts. More importantly, his gentleness and strength had bolstered her to walk into hell alone and she would never forget him.
She’d had a mastectomy, but beaten the cancer. Now she needed to see Rick one more time to complete her list before she could close the door on the recovery part of her cancer journey.
So she’d driven all the way from her home base in Charleston, South Carolina, and here she stood at a physical rehab center connected to the same hospital where she’d started her treatments. How ironic was that? But somehow serendipitous.
How bad must his injuries have been for him to still be recovering a year later? Her stomach knotted at even the mention of hospitals. Walking into one usually had her fighting back an anxiety attack. Striding into this one in particular threatened a flat KO.
But she refused to let anything stop her, especially once she’d heard he was the patient. No way could she turn her back until she was certain he had everything he needed. Theirs may have only been a weekend together where he unwittingly gave her comfort, but those two days stayed with her still. His face on the back of her eyelids, recalling his touch to override pain…
All of it carried her through hell as surely as his arms had carried her across a room to rest her so gently, seductively on a mattress.
Right now, he could barely carry himself across the room.
Overall, he might be slimmer, but his chest bore the same rippled muscles, his eyes the same fathomless intensity. But his face had an angular cut to it, his features a hard enigmatic look. No joking this go-round as he shuffled the last two feet between them to stop. She’d seen his lips move with a muffled whisper, but couldn’t hear what he’d said.
She inhaled deeper with a bracing breath and noticed something else familiar. Even through the antiseptic hospital smell she recognized the spicy scent of him.
A cleared throat pulled her out of her reverie. The sergeant—a therapist of some sort—raised a brow, mumbled something about break time and draped a hand towel around Rick’s neck before leaving.
Okey doke. Time to quit daydreaming.
“Hello.” She forced a smile over her lips when she really just wanted to stare awhile longer, and doggone it, there went her mother’s voice again about rude manners. “I don’t know if you remember—”
Long lashes swept down over his chocolate brown eyes and up again in his first sign that he’d actually noticed her. “You’re a memorable lady, Nola.”
Thank God, thank God, thank God he remembered her name and she hadn’t just made a total idiot out of herself.
Then a smile twitched at one corner, just a hint but enough of the man she’d known to help her relax her grip on the Tupperware container she’d forgotten she held.
“Why thank you, Rick.”
“And you’re here because?” He released one bar and held on single-handed.
He looked more “okay” that way. She couldn’t gauge the extent of the injury to his legs since he wore dark blue sweatpants and a gray T-shirt with Air Force logos imprinted. Whether or not his sudden easy stance was an act for her benefit she didn’t know, but it eased some of the tension inside her. She understood about “brave front” acts.
“I have a list.” She blurted.
Sheesh. She was a mature woman. A seasoned combat veteran, trained to fly multimillion-dollar cargo jets and here she was acting like hormonal mush.
All right. Maybe not hormonal. More like knocked off balance by the whole hospital scene and seeing his pain. Remembering her own. Knowing how pride hurt more than any needles.
Rick shifted from one foot to the other and studied her through narrowed eyes. “They took me off the painkillers a long time ago, so my brain’s clear. Still, you’ll need to run that by me again, because you’re not making a bit of sense.”
She couldn’t help but notice how he continued to grip the bar, his arm not even shaking, but his complexion beginning to pale beneath his tan.
