Familiar Stranger

“Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered, as he carried her unconscious body to the shade of the porch.

Choosing the nearest chair, he sat down, cradling her carefully as he looked at her face, trying to find the girl that he’d known in the woman he held in his lap, but she was gone.

It wasn’t until her eyelids began to flutter and he saw the clear, pure blue of her eyes that he found the girl he’d left behind.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Her hands cupped his face—her eyes wide with disbelief.

“David? Is it really you?”

A car drove past on the road beyond the house, and David looked up, suddenly aware of how public their reunion had become.

“Let’s go inside. We need to talk,” he said, and started to carry her inside when she slid out of his lap and threw her arms around his neck.

“How? Why? Did you—”

He put a finger across her lips, momentarily silencing her next question.

“Inside…please?”

Cara grabbed him by the hand and led him inside the house. The moment they entered the hallway, she shut the door behind them then stood, staring at his face with her hands pressed to her mouth to keep from crying.

David ran a shaky hand through his hair, then gave her a tentative smile.

“I don’t know quite where to start,” he said. “Do you want to—”

Tears rolled down her face, silencing whatever he’d been about to say.

“Oh, honey, don’t. You know I never could stand to see you cry.”

And then her hands were on his shirt, moving frantically across the breadth of his chest, then up the muscular column of his throat, then tracing the outline of his features. He grabbed her fingers, trying to put some distance between them so he could think. But there had already been forty years of distance, and for Cara, it was forty years too much.

His name was just a whisper on her lips as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Before he could think, she’d kissed him—a tentative foray that went from testing ground status to an all-out explosion. It was instinct that made him pull her against his body, but it was need that kept her there.

“If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake,” Cara muttered, and then pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks.

His stomach flattened as he inhaled sharply. The feel of her fingernails against his skin was an aphrodisiac he wouldn’t have expected. Then her arms were around his waist as she lifted her lips for his kiss. David was broadsided by the sexual tension erupting between them. He’d planned for everything—except this.

“Cara…God, Cara, we shouldn’t be—”

“Since when did shouldn’t become part of your vocabulary?” she asked.

She caught him off guard, and he laughed. And the moment the sound came out of his throat, he wanted to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d known joy. His eyes narrowed hungrily as he began pulling at her clothes, undoing buttons and shoving aside fabric. Her hands were on him, as well. Somewhere between one moment and the next, his shirt was on the floor and his slacks were undone. He lifted her off her feet and then spun around, pinning her between his body and the wall. Her arms were around his neck, her legs around his waist and she threw back her head and laughed when he slammed into her.

One hard, desperate thrust followed another and another, as if they were trying to destroy all the bad memories with this sexual act. Somewhere between one breath and the next, it began to change—turning into a dance between lovers.

Cara’s eyes were closed, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she followed the rhythm of his body and was taken by surprise by the force of her climax. While she was still riding the high, David spilled himself within her in what seemed like endless, shuddering thrusts.

The silence that came after was as abrupt as their mating had been. David’s hands were slick with sweat as he eased her down, and when she moved away and started rearranging her clothes, David followed suit. He could tell that she was as shaken by what they’d done as he, and was afraid she’d withdraw in embarrassment before he had a chance to explain. He touched her shoulder, and when she turned, he cupped her face in his hands.

“Look at me,” he said.

Cara hesitated, then lifted her head, meeting his gaze straight on. Again, disbelief came and went as she stared at him. Then she touched the swollen edges of her mouth, as if needing the reminder of pain to assure her what had happened was real.

“I see you,” she said. “Oh, David, there are so many things I have to tell you. After you left, I found out I was pregnant. We have a—”

“I know,” he said. “Bethany.”

A look of shock came and went on her face and then her eyes narrowed sharply.

“You knew we had a daughter?”

He nodded.

The timbre of her voice rose a notch. “You knew and you still didn’t come back?”

David felt as if he’d been sucker punched. He should have seen this coming, and yet after what they’d just done…

“It wasn’t like—”

“No. Wait. Let’s start this meeting all over again.”

The anger in her voice was blatantly apparent now, and he knew there was no going back.

“David Lee Wilson, just where the hell have you been?”

Chapter 2

“Cara, please…can we do this somewhere else?”

She made no attempt to hide her pain. “Maybe we should adjourn to the bedroom to talk, since we just had sex in my hall.”

David inhaled slowly, using every mental skill he had to remain calm.

For Cara, his silence was stronger than any denial he might have made. Courtesy demanded she apologize. She lifted her chin.

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. What happened just now was more my fault than yours. If you don’t mind, I’d like to change my clothes. The guest bathroom is just down the hall if you’d like to…uh…I’m just going upstairs now and…”

“Ssh,” he said softly, and lifted a lock of her hair with one finger, gently pushing it into place. “Go do what you have to do. I’ll be here when you get back.”

The tenderness in his voice was her undoing. Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to let them go.

“You’ll pardon me if I have doubts about that,” she said. “I seem to remember telling you the same thing about forty years ago and look what happened.”

She walked away, leaving him with nothing but a cold, hard truth. He had walked out on her—twice. Once when she wouldn’t run away with him and then again when he left for Vietnam. He headed for the bathroom, feeling a lot less optimism than he had when he walked in the door with her earlier.

Cara barely made it to her bedroom before she started to cry—huge, gulping sobs that shattered her all the way to her soul.

Tearing off her clothes as she went, she staggered into the shower and then turned the water on full force, standing beneath the stinging spray until her mind was numb and her skin was burning.

One minute led to another and then another until she lost all track of time. The adrenaline rush of making love to a man she’d long thought dead was fading, leaving her shaken and weak. If it hadn’t been for the slight discomfort between her legs, she could have made herself believe it was nothing more than a dream.

She flinched as the water began to run cold and reached down and turned off the faucets. She pushed back the curtains only to find David sitting on a small stool by the door.

He handed her a towel.

“I got worried.”

She clutched it in front of her nudity like a shield, and as she did, realized any show of modesty was like closing the barn door after the horse had escaped.

“If you’ll give me a few moments…”

He stood up and quietly closed the door, leaving her alone to finish drying.

Cara’s hands began to shake as she swiped erratically at the moisture clinging to her body. It wasn’t until she was completely dry that she realized her clothes were in the other room, with him. She grabbed her bathrobe from a hook on the back of the door and quickly put it on, wrapping and tying it firmly before making another appearance. To her relief, he was nowhere in sight.

As she began to dress, she glanced at the clock. It was almost three. It had been just after one when she’d come around the corner of the house. No wonder he’d come looking for her. He probably thought she’d gone to her room and slit her wrists.

She snorted lightly as the thought came and went. If ever there had been a day when that thought had crossed her mind, it was long since over. She’d survived a lot more than this with a hell of a lot less reason. Except for their child. After she’d known about Bethany, everything had changed. David Wilson might have walked out on her, but he’d left a piece of himself behind that he’d never get back. With that thought in mind, she gave herself the once-over in the mirror, nodding in satisfaction at the simplistic style of her clothes. No need dressing like this was any kind of a celebration, because it felt more like a wake. But as she started down the stairs to face the ghost from her past, she had to accept the fact that she didn’t want to bury him again.

David was lost in thought, staring at the array of family pictures displayed on the mantel and trying not to resent the picture of the short, stocky man with his arms around Cara. Ray Justice. They had been laughing when the picture was taken. He took a deep breath, making himself accept the reality of her life. She’d done just fine without him. Maybe being here was another selfish act on his part and he should never have come back. Before his thoughts could go further, he heard her footsteps in the hall and turned to face his accuser.

She saw him by the mantel. Her gaze slid from his face to the pictures behind him, and she realized what he’d been doing.

“She’s beautiful,” David said.

Cara’s lips trembled, but she nodded. “She has your coloring. All that pretty dark hair and your eyes.”

“But she has your smile.”

Cara caught back a sob, determined not to fall apart again.

“Oh, David…where have you been? We were told you were dead, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

Cara tried not to stare as she sat down on the sofa, but it was difficult not to do so. Her memories encompassed a young, gangly sixteen-year-old boy, not this powerful, secretive man.

“Won’t you please sit?” she said, as she seated herself on the sofa.

“I think better standing.”

She sighed and then smoothed her hands down the legs of her navy slacks.

“I couldn’t form a rational thought right now if my life depended on it,” she said.

David shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

“I know this is going to be difficult for you to understand, but you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that what I did, I did for you, not to you.”

Cara’s eyes teared again, but she remained firmly in her seat.

“Letting me think you were dead was doing me a favor?” Her voice started to shake. “Even if I didn’t matter to you anymore, how could you father a child and then ignore her existence?”

“No…no…not that. Never that.”

“Then explain,” Cara begged. “Make me understand.”

He took his hands out of his pockets as he began to pace, and Cara couldn’t help but stare at the animal grace of his movements. And then he started to talk and she became lost in the sound of his voice.

“It began with the letters.”

“What letters?”

“The letters I wrote to you.”

“I didn’t receive any letters.”

“Yes, I know…at least, I knew after a while, but before I found out, I kept wondering why you didn’t answer mine. There were dozens and dozens. I wrote almost every day for about three months and then as often as I could after that.”

She stiffened. “I don’t believe you.”

He strode to a chair and picked up a packet he’d gotten from his car while she had been dressing.

“See for yourself. I carried the damn things all over Nam after they came back. Half a dozen times I thought about chucking them, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. Even though you hadn’t opened them, they were the last link I had to you.”

Cara’s brows knitted as she dumped the contents of the packet into her lap.

“That’s not all of them,” David said. “But enough for you to know I’m telling the truth.”

As she turned them over, she started to shake. The evidence was there before her eyes. Water-stained papers. Ancient postmarks. All addressed to Cara Weber and all unopened. But it was the two newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, that startled her. One was of her wedding, the other an announcement of her baby’s birth.

“Where did you get these?”

“Your parents sent them to me, along with all of the letters I’d written you.”

She gasped.

“The message was plain,” David said. “I had no place in your life anymore. You had a husband and a child.” He tried to smile, but the pain of saying what he’d lived with all these years made it impossible. “Only I knew the child was mine. I knew you would never have cheated on me before, and the baby came too soon after your wedding.”

“But David…why let everyone think you were dead? I would never have refused you the right to know and love your own child.”

“I know, but you have to understand. It was hell over there and Frank died about a month after I got the package. After that, I guess I pretty much went out of my head. I tried so many damn ways to get myself killed, but it didn’t work. I volunteered for mission after mission, and each one should have been my last. When my tour of duty was up, I reenlisted. I was there when Saigon fell.”

Tears slid down Cara’s face as she sat with her hands clenched tightly in her lap.

“Why didn’t you come home then? Why did you let me…let everyone…think you were dead?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Hell…I felt dead, I guess I was just waiting for my body to catch up with my mind. Only thing was, Uncle Sam beat me to it.”

“I don’t understand.”

He hesitated, trying to figure out exactly what he could say without giving too much away.

“I can’t tell you everything,” he said. “But I got recruited by a Special Forces unit and became involved in some covert missions for the government. One thing led to another and now, let’s just say that my years with Uncle Sam are coming to an end.”

“Are you telling me you became a spy?”

“Don’t ask me anything more, honey…please. I’ve already said more than I should have.”

“My God,” Cara muttered. She stared down at the unopened letters in her lap and then covered her face with her hands.

David dropped to his knees and took her hands in his.

“Cara?”

Forced to look at him, she realized that, for the first time, she was really seeing the man—and his secrets—and his scars.

“Why did you come back? Why now, after all these years?”

He hesitated again, still carefully choosing his answers.

“Because I needed to make peace with myself and with you. I needed to look you in the face and tell you that when I left for Vietnam, I had every intention of coming back and making a life with you. I couldn’t go to my grave knowing you still believed I’d walked out on you, leaving you pregnant to raise our baby on your own. I swear to God, Cara, I would never have done that to you. I loved you.”

“What do you mean, go to your grave? Are you ill?”

He slid into the seat beside her, reaching for her hands.

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m fine.”

Cara looked down at his hands, so gently worrying the knuckles of her fingers, wondering if it was safe to give so much of herself away. And then she shoved the worry away. They’d already lost too many precious years. Whatever he had to give her, she was willing to take.

“What are your plans?” she asked. “I mean…can you stay awhile? Maybe a few days? I want to show you things…and oh, David, you have to stay and meet Bethany. She and her family are on vacation, but they’ll be back at the end of the week. Five or six days. You can stay that long…can’t you?”

He heard himself answering and knew he was making a mistake, but there was no way he was going to lose her again, at least not yet. There was every reason to believe that his final showdown with Frank could be his last. He didn’t want to give Cara false hope, but on the other hand, he couldn’t deny himself this little bit of heaven.

“Yes. I’ll stay. At least for a while.”

For the first time in a very long while, Cara felt a sense of anticipation.

“Are you hungry? I was coming in the house to make myself some lunch when I heard you arrive.”

The lilt in her voice only deepened his guilt, but he found himself agreeing. “That sounds good. I can’t remember when I last shared a meal with anyone.”

Cara pulled out of his embrace. “Can’t remember when you last shared a meal? My God, David, what kind of life have you been living?”

“You don’t want to know.”

It was the dripping faucet in this excuse for a kitchen that finally sent Frank over the edge. He picked up a pan and began hammering on the fixture until it broke off in the sink. Water shot up like a geyser, spraying the ceiling and cabinets alike. A string of virulent curses filled the air as he reached for the shut-off valve beneath the sink. Finally, the water ceased to flow and Frank was left with a bigger mess than before he’d started. But it wasn’t the condition of his decrepit hideout that was pushing his buttons. It was the fact that, once again, he had failed to reach his goal. The water pooled around his pant legs as he leaned back against the cabinets and closed his eyes. He’d been close, so close.

He’d seen the stealth chopper coming in and knew in his bones it was David. Who else would have access to such state-of-the-art military equipment but the infamous Jonah?

As he thought of David, the muscles in his wounded shoulder gave a twinge and he shifted, easing his back to a more comfortable position against the cabinets. It was nothing but a flesh wound. He’d had worse. And the wound on his ear was almost well, too, although it would never be the same. Then he ran his hands through his hair in mute frustration, absently fingering the ancient burn scars on the side of his face. Hell, nothing had been the same since the day his own brother tried to burn him alive.

Disgusted with the mess in which he was standing, he went to the phone to call the manager to fix the sink. It didn’t occur to him that, like the sink, all of his troubles stemmed from something he’d done, rather than something that had been done to him. Afterward, he strode into the bedroom to change his clothes, absently stepping on a cockroach as he went. As he crossed the threshold, he caught a glimpse of himself in the cracked and dusty mirror across the room and froze. In that moment, he saw himself as others saw him, a tall and aging man with a glass eye and a bitter expression. His gray, thinning hair was brushed back, baring his scarred face for anyone who chose to look. Oddly enough, the look seemed to appeal to a certain type of woman, although he rarely took advantage of the fact. He still mourned his beloved Martha, his wife of so many years.

As he thought of her, pain shafted. He turned away, moving to the closet to get a fresh change of clothes. As soon as his shoulder was better, he was going after David himself. No more trying to get to him through the agents who worked under him. He was tired of this game. He wanted it over.

He dressed quickly, his mind shifting from one scenario to another, imagining the pleasure of watching the life drain out of David’s body. There was no future for him beyond that fact. His daughter had ceased to exist for him when she’d defected to the other side by falling in love with one of the agents. If only Martha was still alive. She’d been his reason for living. Then he blanked out the thought. There would be time later to wallow in memories. Right now, he had murder on his mind.

Night had come when Cara wasn’t looking. One minute she was cleaning up their supper dishes and tidying the living room and the next thing she knew it was dark. The idea of sleeping under the same roof with David Wilson was almost frightening. She’d known the boy, but she didn’t know this dark, brooding man. Then she reminded herself that his persona hadn’t bothered her enough to stop her from making love to him in her hall. Surely they could sleep beneath the same roof without incident. It wasn’t like he was going to murder her in her bed.

And the moment she thought it, her sanity took a hike. He’d all but said he was a spy. Spies killed people. Then she shook off the thought. He’d also been a soldier, and they killed people, too. It didn’t make them heinous. It made them heroes.

Having settled that in her mind, she began to rearrange the magazines on the coffee table, unaware that David was watching her from the doorway. It wasn’t until she straightened and started to leave that she saw him standing in the shadows.

“Oh! David! You startled me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Was there something you needed?” she asked.

Yes, my life back…with you. “Not really. I was just watching you, thinking how very beautiful you are.”

“I’m a middle-aged grandmother,” she muttered, and gave the coffee table a final swipe with her dust cloth.

“With a damned fine body and a face that could still break a heart,” he added, and then walked into the room and took the dust cloth out of her hands. “We need to talk.”

Her heart fluttered, then settled back into a normal rhythm as she reminded herself there was no need to be nervous. The man was the father of her child. But when he took her by the hand and pulled her close to the light, she felt naked all over again beneath his gaze.

“I frighten you, don’t I?” he asked.

Cara blushed then sighed. Finally, she nodded. “A little.”

“My life has been ugly, I’ll admit, but I would die before I’d hurt you.”

The tenderness in his words was shattering. Before she knew it, her hands were on his chest, her face tilted toward the light—and him.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t thinking physical harm. It’s just that I’ve been alone for almost three years now and just starting to learn to live without the sound of someone else’s voice. It’s hard to become accustomed to loneliness when you’ve shared your life with another.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Again, his answer pulled at her emotions.

“What I’m trying to say is…you were my first love, David. I gave the truest and best part of myself to you.”

He groaned and started to take her in his arms when she stopped him.

“No…wait…let me finish.” She took a deep breath. “The only thing that kept me going after you left was knowing that I carried your child. My husband was a good man. He loved Bethany as if she was his own and never made a difference between his affections for her and our other two children.” She ducked her head and then made herself look at him. “But I’m ashamed to say that I never gave him what I should have because I’d already given it to you. Dead or alive, you had my heart. Now he’s dead and you’re back and I’m afraid. I’m afraid to get to know the man you’ve become. I’m afraid I’ll love him as much as I loved the boy.” Her voice trailed off into a whisper. “And I’m afraid that if I do, I won’t get over losing you again. So…what I guess I’m asking is, why did you really come? Was it just to assuage what you perceived as guilt, or were you looking for something more?”

He wanted to assure her, but he couldn’t lie. As long as Frank was loose, his life wasn’t worth a damn.

“I’d be lying if I said I’d only come to say hello. But there are a lot of loose ends to my past that have to be tied, and until that happens, I don’t have the luxury of making plans.”

Cara felt the blood draining from her face. That wasn’t what she expected to hear.