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She could hear the warmth in his voice, the relief that she was healing. Her heart amped up with silent hope. How badly she wanted to tell him that she loved him. Her fingers tightened around the receiver. Quickly, she filled him in.
“So, how do you like riding a desk?” he teased.
Smiling a little, she said, “It’s okay. Better than I thought it would be. I’m good at mission planning, and with my extensive ops background and experience, I can add what I know to the mix. Make the missions safer for our people. It’s a worthy goal.”
“You sound happy.”
Closing her eyes, Sierra’s throat closed. “I’m… okay…” There was a long silence. She couldn’t hear any noise in the background. Mace might be in a hotel in Cusco, away from downtown traffic.
“Are you taking care of yourself, Sierra?”
Wincing inwardly, she compressed her lips. “Well, it’s been a huge change in my life. Lauren Parker, my girlfriend who works at Shield, Alex Kazak’s wife, is harping on me to gain back the lost weight. She’s now taken me on as a mission,” and she forced a laugh she didn’t feel. “What about you, Mace? Are you, Cale and Nate, okay?” She knew that what he did was top secret, and she was now out of the loop. He wouldn’t be able to tell her much and Sierra knew it. Still, just little things made a difference to her, however. Mace must have heard the strain in her tone.
“Yeah, we’re all fine. Nate got some foot rot, which pissed him off to no end. He’s the medic and you’d think he’d be more watchful about keeping a dry pair of socks around and changing them more often, but he didn’t.”
“Poor Nate. Probably hurt his 18Delta feelings. Huh?” and she smiled, feeling a little lighter. When Mace laughed, her heart swelled with love for him. He rarely laughed.
“Yeah, he’s in his room here at the hotel drying out his white, wrinkled feet as I speak.”
“And Cale? How is he?”
“Fine. So am I.”
“Has it been hard since I left? I mean, trying to hunt down Kashnir?” She could feel Mace wrestling with what to tell her.
“We’re still chasing the bastard.”
“I hope Sacha is okay? Do you know if he is or not?”
“I saw him last week. He’s good. He asked about you and I told him what Nate had said about your injury.”
How badly Sierra wanted to speak of serious, personal things. “What are you calling on? A throw-away cell phone?” Because he couldn’t use the sat phone for personal calls like this.
“Yeah, bought one in the pharmacy here in the hotel.”
There was silence. Sierra felt like her chest was going to explode with so many things she wanted to share with Mace. “I was wondering about something. You said you would go back to North Carolina when your deployment was up. Do you have a house there? An apartment?”
“Nothing. When I return, I stay at the NCO barracks.”
Her heart squeezed with pain. Mace had no home. Was that why he was so interested in her cabin? Her home? Setting the bowl of popcorn on the table, she said, “Since I’m limited to what I can do by my doctor, I asked her if I could do some wood working. Jack has an incredible carpentry area at Shield. When my doctor said I could do some hammering, sawing and nailing, I got hold of one of the security contractors who knows a lot about making things. I asked if he’d help teach me how to make flower boxes for my two front windows. You’d be proud of me, Mace. I not only cut my own planks, but I nailed them together. And I sanded them, stained them and now, they’re ready to go once we get Spring around here.”
“Sounds good. What kind of flowers are you going to put in them?”
She heard his voice relax. As if… as if sharing something so insignificant as flower boxes was a tiny piece of a home he no longer had. Mace was rootless. Aimless. There was nothing for him to come back to here in the States. “Well, I figure if you come visit me in June, you can help suggest the best kinds to put in them.” Her heart thudded once to underscore her fear, that he was going to tell her he wasn’t going to come for a visit. That whatever they had, was over. Again, there was a long, drawn-out silence.
Sierra swore she was still connected with Mace, could feel him, his moods, even though he rarely gave them words. She felt him now… felt him wrestling with all the unspoken emotions he was feeling. Why, oh why, couldn’t he just be personal? Intimate? They had been on that level before. They’d shared their worst secrets back and forth between them.
“I’d like that, Sierra. I’m kind of a geranium guy. My mother loved them, had them planted everywhere when I was a kid.”
She heard such yearning in his low voice. For what? A home? Someplace to go? Someplace where he was welcomed? To someone who wanted to see him? Throw their arms around his shoulders? It was painful to swallow, the tension thrumming through her. “Mace…I, this is so hard for me.”
“What?”
Closing her eyes, Sierra whispered, “I miss you so much I ache. I can’t think two thoughts without thinking of you. I worry its one-sided, that it’s just me. I used to think I was a realistic person, logical and with a lot of common sense. But now…, now I feel like I’ve turned into some romantic idealist who is a dreamer, and my reality has shot out the window.”
She held her breath, knowing she was blurting out how she really felt about him. How would Mace react? She feared it was one-sided. Her side only. That she had fallen in love with him, not the other way around. But his kiss… his kiss had been warm, life-infusing, breathing his breath into her lungs, lifting her, making her feel cherished. And loved.
A hand moving to her throat in worry, she could hear her heart beating in her ears, as if adrenaline were starting to flow into her bloodstream. She was that fearful. Threatened by harsh truth. Mace had to answer. He wouldn’t avoid it, she knew that. Now, Sierra found herself anxious and sorry she’d said anything. It was impossible for her to keep up the social patter, to walk around the elephant in the room.
