Page 20 of Hostile Territory

“Oh, no,” Sierra whispered, shaken.

“She died two weeks after I got home. Her and our baby.”

Sierra reached out, sliding her hand across his back, resting her head against his sagging shoulder, closing her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Mace… so sorry for all of you,” and whether he wanted it or not, she hugged him with all her strength. They were bound by grief.

CHAPTER 7

Mace abruptly stoodup. He had to. His heart felt like it was getting ripped out of his chest. All that grief he’d sat on for so long was tearing up through the center of him, squeezing his heart until he thought he was going to have a cardiac arrest. He moved swiftly, silently, out of the tree line, turning to the right, M-4 in his hands, unsafed, his hearing keyed. If he’d remained next to Sierra one more second, he knew he would have made the biggest screw-up of his whole career. He had almost been about to turn and sweep her into his arms, crush her against him, and cry until the tears over his loss ran dry.

What the hell was the matter with him? Why was he so damned reactive to Sierra? Pulling up his NVGs, he flicked them on, heading for the main trail ahead. Lightning flashed in the distance, illuminating the cottony puff-ball clouds hanging silently overhead. His heart felt like it was going to leap out of his body. Rubbing his chest, he slowed and then halted at the intersection. Breathing hard, raggedly, Mace was barely aware of the night noises around him, his whole focus on the loss of his wife and baby so long ago. He couldn’t remember feeling this torn up before. But in truth, he’d savagely sat on all his emotions after he buried Ana Beth. And their baby. Tears leaked out of his eyes, running down the sides of his face. He didn’t try and stop them.

The wind picked up, desultory, the leaves of the trees swatting against one another, the outflow of some thunderstorm miles away. The cool, heavy, and humid air felt good. He wiped his face. His flood of tears mixed with his sweat. Freezing for a moment, Mace felt strung between the past and the present. What was the magic that Sierra brought with her? Clearly, something was there. He wiped his face again, forcing the tears back, taking several gulps to tame his rampant emotions screaming to be released. Men didn’t cry. HE didn’t cry. More tears fell.

Half turning, he worried about Sierra. He could barely see her grainy, green form still sitting on that log. Relief poured through Mace. He didn’t want her coming after him. He hoped she was old enough, mature enough, to understand he needed to be alone. If she walked up to him right now, he wasn’t sure he could control himself. Grab her, hold her. Just feel her woman’s body against his own. Wanting her arms around him as he sobbed out his heartache. Mouthing a curse, Mace turned his back on her. He had no way to comfort her, to tell her he was sorry, or apologize for his abrupt departure after she’d given him that tender hug that had conveyed so much to him. Her arm had been strong, caring. And he’d damned near fractured and broke into a million pieces right there.With her.Somehow, Mace sensed just how strong Sierra really was. He gulped, trying to stop crying, his mouth contorted, and he wanted to scream out all the unfairness that life had dealt him. Strapping the M-4 over his shoulder, he pulled out his canteen and slugged down half of it, the tepid water feeling good to his twisted insides.

Capping the canteen, Mace felt steadier. A little less out of control. He looked up and down the trail, finding nothing. There wouldn’t be, most likely. His mind was churning with so many memories, remembering Sierra’s husky words, her voice so damned gentle as if she knew something terrible had happened to him in his life. Bitterly, Kilmer turned and slowly walked across the feeder path and down the main trail, keeping his ears tuned in. His tears abated, and he took swipes at his cheeks to get rid of them. His mind was on Sierra. So was his heart, but he damn well didn’t want to go there. She was on this mission for a real-world reason. Not just as someone for him to yearn for, to fantasize about. He was so fucked.

Lightning zigzagged closer, illuminating the cottony-white clouds hovering over the muted jungle. Mace jerked the NVGs down, flicking them off. His night vision was ruined. He’d have to wait until his eyes adjusted. The roll of nearby thunder told him a storm was headed their way. The wind had picked up in warning gusts, too. Turning, he walked back to where Sierra was sitting. He could barely see her face, only the shine in her eyes and he felt as if she were sad for him. Few people knew what had happened to him.

He sat down, leaving another foot between them. “There’s a storm coming,” he said in his roughened, low voice. “If you’re on guard duty, stay here. The tree canopy is going to stop most of the deluge.”

“I’ll still get wet? But not as wet?”

He grinned tightly, hearing the amusement in her husky voice. He ached to tunnel his fingers through the thick mass of her black hair, unbraid those strands, run them through his hands, spread them like a halo around her golden face, and watch her eyes grow drowsy with arousal. He wanted her arms around him again. They took his pain away. “Yeah, we’re going to get wet. It’s just a little more protected in here, is all.

“I can handle that.”

She sounded low-key, unperturbed. How badly Mace wanted to look into Sierra’s eyes, read her, see the emotion in her face and see how she was feeling. Right now, she was the cool, calm professional. No feelings in her voice. Just clear clipped sentences, short and concise. He inhaled deeply, grateful for her maturity and understanding, somehow, that he’d needed to be alone for a while.

The rain started almost immediately. First it was plopping sounds, like small bombs, huge drops detonating far above them in the large treetop leaves. And then it began to sound like someone had opened up with a nonstop machine gun, the rain coming faster and faster. Mace felt his shoulders becoming wet, and he lowered his head a bit so the rain coming down would wash over the bill of his cap, leaving his eyes dry so he could see. There could be no more talking. Suddenly, the whole jungle around them sounded like marbles in a glass box being shaken, the clatter ramping up until the deafening noise made any verbal communication impossible. Lightning flashed above them. Crackling thunder followed seconds later. And every time, it seemed like the bolt tore open the belly of the unseen storm anew, dumping more water on them. The wind whipped around, frenzied, and chaotic, tearing at their faces and clothes.

Mace turned to check on Sierra. She was sitting stoically, head bowed, her gloved hands across the M-4 in her lap. Yeah, he was sure she’d handled all kinds of weather as a sniper. Hours of it. Suffering in heat or bone-chilling cold. Or leg-numbing snow. A sniper didn’t budge when out on a stalk. No matter what kind of weather was thrown at them. They just took it. Dealt with it. Part of a sniper’s trade. Yet, dammit, he WANTED to slide his arm around her hunched shoulders. He could see she was wet and shivering. Most people thought it never got cold in a jungle, but a thunderstorm could drop the temperature from eighty to forty in a heartbeat. And most people just weren’t prepared for it. Just like she wasn’t.

“Come here,” he growled, hooking his arm around her, drawing her against him, bringing her head in beneath his chin so he could warm her a little. Sierra was trembling badly. He could hear her teeth chattering uncontrollably. Her hand gripped her rifle hard to herself, keeping the barrel away from them. At first, she tried to draw away, but he used his strength to keep her against him. And Mace wouldn’t let her go. He opened up his cammy coat, twice the size of hers, drawing both sides of it around her head, shoulders and back, as far as they would reach. She’d drawn up her knees, clinging to him, pressing against his huge, warm body. He was used to this weather. She’d come out of hot, arid desert terrain where constant hundred-degree Fahrenheit peaks had thinned her blood for three months. After going through that, being thrown into this kind of humid, hot and cold climate, would take any man or woman down.

“It’s all right,” he told her gruffly, her hair piled up over his stubbled chin, tickling his cheek and nose. Sierra smelled so good. Part sweet, part musky, rich earth. All in the silky strands of her thick hair. Closing his eyes, Mace knew no Russians were going to be out on this night. They never were. But that didn’t mean that danger wasn’t all around as he held her, warming her against his body and the dry layer of his inner clothing barely separating his skin from hers. Nature had stepped in with its own threats. The lightning was frequent, the thunder over the jungle quaking and trembling the mud underfoot. The powerful downbeats of the rolling roar surrounded them. The ground shook whenever bolts hit nearby.

As the storm rolled over them, deluging them with rain, rivulets running like small torrents around a log that had come to rest slightly higher up the slope, Mace felt Sierra slowly stop trembling. One slipping step at a time, he got her to the log and managed to sit both of them down on it, his coat still wrapped around her. Little by little, he was sheltering her against the storm, warming her with the natural heat radiating off his tightly muscled body, holding her safe. Protecting her. Mace didn’t give a shit about women being strong or not. Sierrawasstrong. She was just adjusting to an opposite climate that was going to stress her to the nth degree. And he wasn’t going to abandon her. He wasn’t going to shove her off to sit alone on the other end of the log, her fingers turning numb, her teeth chattering nonstop, just to be tough. That was a bridge too far for Mace. He’d already screwed up by forcing her to jog six miles right after she’d just got off the Blackhawk. It had been small of him to do that. He should have welcomed her, treated her like an equal, instead of acting like a snarky patriarchal bastard. He’d delighted in hurting a woman. Was that who he was?! He hoped not. Maybe this humane gesture would partly cleanse what he’d done earlier. To somehow, forgive him. He hoped so.

He didn’t want to care about Sierra. But he did. And Mace was confounded by this. Sierra was the antithesis of Ana Beth. She was strong where his wife had been like a waif, barely here, barely alive in some ways. Sierra had come to him when he’d asked her to. Ana Beth had fought that when he’d asked the same of her, proclaimed herself strong, and gutted it out without his help or support. And to what end? As Mace sat there huddled with Sierra in his arms, his mind roiled. What was real strength? Was it being physically tough? Mentally tough? Knowing when to surrender? When to ask for shelter or help? How often had he, through the first two years after he became a widower, asked himself these questions over and over again? What could he have done different to keep Ana Beth alive?

If Ana Beth had taken the life of the three-month-old fetus to save herself, she might still be alive. The doctors he’d talked to had said she had a chance to survive with aggressive chemo and radiation treatments. Yet, she gave HER life in the hope her baby would live. And in the end, because of her choices, her stubbornness, they’d both died. He ended up with nothing. Mace wondered why Sierra had capitulated to him. Had, after he insisted, surrendered to his superior strength, to his experience in this situation she knew little about. Who was smarter here? Who was more survival-oriented? So many questions he’d asked over the years. And he’d never found an answer. Not one damn answer.

The storm was slowly letting up, the flashes of lightning lessening by the minute, the thunder rolling past them, booming and striking the earth and making it shudder far away from them. Sierra had stayed snuggled beneath his jaw, relaxing into him, no longer trembling, just a small shiver every now and then. Inhaling her scent, Mace closed his eyes and thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Sierra was not weak. She didn’t whine. She didn’t complain. But she knew enough about real survival to trust him. And it was trust.

Tears stung Mace’s closed eyes. The word ‘TRUST’ hung like the Sword of Damocles over him. Ana Beth had NEVER trusted him. She had told him repeatedly that he was a man. How could he know what a woman wanted or needed? She would tell him what she needed from him. Yet, Mace had recognized Sierra’s stress. She hadn’t asked for help. But she hadn’t refused his embrace and help when he offered it, either. Sierra had trusted him. A cold, hard knot deep inside him, released. A knot that Mace had felt for years tied around his heart. He felt it unknot, relax, and then dissolve in a sudden heat that suffused his entire chest. He felt the heat of that release. He felt freed from the prison of his grief and anger over Ana Beth’s decision to give up her life for the baby she carried.

There wasn’t any right or wrong in this. Mace had cried so much after their deaths. He’d cried until his heart felt torn in half. What he did realize, out of that whole mess of his feelings, was that Ana Beth had never trusted him. Mace had never been able to figure out why. He’d always loved her, treated her as an equal, respected her. He just couldn’t figure it out. And all the anguish of that had turned into a hard rock in his heart. A rock that had suddenly just dissolved the moment Sierra came willingly into his arms. Trusting him.

Sierra slowly stirred. She was damp but warm from of Mace Kilmer’s furnace-like body heat. The feeling of his arm sheltering her, holding her close, his cammy jacket spread across her upper body, made her sigh with relief. And gratefulness. The rain had finally quit and no one was gladder than she was. Licking her lips, she whispered, “Mace?”

“Yeah?”

His chin was resting lightly on the top of her hair. She smiled a little. “I think I’m okay now.”

“Sure?”

No. But Sierra knew if she stayed, she couldn’t trust herself to remain professional. She was afraid she’d lift her left hand and slip it up beneath his damp t-shirt, feeling his slab-hard belly, feeling the power of his chest, the silky hair across it tangling through her fingertips. The man was so damned sexy. She swallowed, not wanting to leave. “How did you know?”

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