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“Don’t beat yourself up,” Lauren told her, taking the upset out of her tone. She pulled out the chair, turned it around, and hitched her arms over the back of it, staring at Sky. “I WANT to share happy moments with you and Cal. God knows, you deserve some happiness after all the shit you’ve gone through and survived.”
Sky rallied a little. “Cal and I were talking earlier, after you two went to your guest rooms. We’re going to try and get married again.”
Lauren felt her heart squeeze in sympathy for her friend. Sky had been captured by Alexandrov’s men one day before the wedding had been set to take place in Coronado, California. Cal’s SEAL Team 3 friends, whom he’d fought beside for years, were going to be there as well. It would have been such a happy occasion. And Lauren had been slated as Sky’s maid-of-honor. It had been such an upper for Lauren. She didn’t believe in happily-ever-after. She didn’t believe in love because she’d been taught otherwise growing up. But Cal and Sky had something special, something so beautiful and strong between them, that Lauren had been devastated when her friend had been kidnapped. “That’s good,” she told Sky, seeing the happiness banked-up in her eyes. “When? And where?”
“Well,” Sky said, hesitating, “Cal wanted the wedding here, at our home, before the baby comes. Nothing fancy like we had planned before. Just you, Alex, and Jack Driscoll, and us. Cal’s SEAL buddies are on deployment again. None of them can make it. I was just… well… worried if you’d consent to come or not because we’d invited Alex, too. And then, next June 16th, we’ll go back to Coronado, when all his SEAL team buddies will be back off duty, and hold an ‘official’ wedding.”
Lauren saw how important it was to Sky that she be in attendance. “I’ll be there for both of them,” she promised Sky. “I’ll just ignore Kazak.” Instantly, Lauren saw relief in her friend’s face. Sky never could hide an emotion, unlike herself. Lauren had learned to put on a game face starting at seven years old. She cracked a grin. “Am I still your maid-of-honor?”
Sky made a happy sound, rose, and walked over, giving Lauren a swift hug. “Of course you are!”
“Do you want me to help you find the right flowers for your bouquet again?” Because Lauren enjoyed the details. As a sniper, details ruled her life. And she’d had so much fun with Sky choosing from hundreds of flowers from the San Diego florist, for the blooms she’d wanted for her wedding.
“Would you? There’s a great florist in Alexandria, Virginia. I thought, maybe, if you had time, you could drive up next week and we could go look at them?”
“Sure. Are you still going to wear that beautiful wedding dress we picked out?” Lauren had gone along to the bridal store and had driven the seamstress crazy with small details to make sure it fit exactly right on Sky’s willowy, slender frame.
“Well,” Sky laughed, placing her hands over her belly, “I don’t know if it’s possible. Look at me: I’m four-months along and I can’t button my jeans anymore.”
A smile tugged at Lauren’s full mouth. “Get an appointment with the bridal seamstress at that shop? We’ll go over and see if she can create some magic for you? That dress is drop-dead gorgeous on you, Sky. And you’ve already bought it. It would be a shame not to wear it. In fact, if the fitting can be done? You’ll be able to wear it twice. Once here, and then again next June for the ‘real’ wedding at Coronado. You won’t be pregnant then, and I know the dress will fit you beautifully.”
“I know,” Sky sighed, smiling softly. “I just wanted a magical and wonderful wedding so badly…” She shrugged. “I guess that during my time spent in the closet of my parents’ home I dreamed a lot. I’d be in there for hours and, after I’d get done sobbing my heart out, I’d dream. It would take me away from all of it.”
“And you dreamed of a big wedding?” Lauren remembered her harrowing midnight visits once a week down in the basement with her foster father. She wished she had the ability Sky did to remove herself from the pain and suffering, but she didn’t. Reality was a bitch. And it hurt. Always.
Sighing, Sky nodded. She stood by the large window, looking up, seeing the first stars twinkling in the coming night sky. “I had my doll. I would hold her, sing to her for hours in the closet. I felt safe there, Lauren. I loved reading. I read all the King Arthur fables about white knights rescuing damsels…”
Lauren held back her own black response to that info. Sky was hauntingly fragile and yet, somehow… and God only knew how… she had survived her terrifying childhood far better than she, herself, had. And Sky was still an idealist. “Cal was your white knight on his horse riding to your rescue.”
Sky laughed a little and turned, her blue eyes radiant with happiness. “Well, he really was. He’s saved my life twice.” And then she became serious. “And the second time, it was your Shield Security team who rescued me. I’ll be forever grateful to all of you, Lauren. You all put your lives on the line to rescue me out of that hellhole.”
Nodding, Lauren said, her voice thick with feeling, “It’s the only time I feel really good about myself, Sky. When I’m rescuing someone. Taking out an evil guy with one shot, knowing he will never hurt or kill another innocent human being, makes my day. I’m not an idealist like you.” And then she gave Sky a warm look. “I wish I could be. It would go easier for me. Wouldn’t it?”
Sky opened her hands, aching for Lauren, for the loads she carried invisibly on her shoulders from her dark past. “Being able to daydream helped me survive,” she admitted quietly. “I didn’t realize it then of course, as a six-year-old.” Her voice lowered with feeling and understanding for Lauren. “I wish… I wish there was some way to help you, Lauren. I don’t know how you handle carrying all that stuff… all those memories. You never cry… you rarely talk about it…” She sighed. “If I couldn’t talk about it, if I couldn’t cry, I think I’d implode. I just don’t have the internal strength you do to handle it and keep a lid on all of it and do what you do as a black ops sniper. You are amazing and so strong to me.”
“Stick to your idealism,” Lauren said, “because my way isn’t good, either.” She grinned a little, wanting to stop Sky from looking so glum. This was a happy time in her life and Lauren hated being a downer to her best friend. “Tell you what; You daydream for me, okay? Keep those good thoughts coming my way.”
Laughing a little, Sky came over and patted her shoulder. “Do you mind if I daydream a knight in shining armor riding to your rescue on his white stallion someday, rescuing you? Would that work?”
“Not likely,” Lauren muttered, but she grinned up at Sky. “But who am I to say it doesn’t work? Look who you dreamed into your life: Cal. And you two are so much in love with one another, I can’t believe it. I never knew that kind of love ever existed.”
“I didn’t either,” Sky admitted, “until Cal found me two years after I was shot. I ran, like I always did, Lauren. Jack’s investigation and research found me in Peru, and then Cal came and got me. At first, I was so scared of him and, in truth, I was afraid of myself. I was so drawn to him two years earlier in Afghanistan, but I was just too fearful to take that step toward him.”
“Good thing Cal was a SEAL,” Lauren murmured. “Once one of those guys sets his sights on a goal, they don’t veer off course from getting it. Hell could rain down on that guy, but he’ll get that goal.” She looked up at Sky. “In this case, he fell in love the day he met you. He followed his heart and he wasn’t going to let you walk away from him, either. So, yeah, you bet he’d come after you once Jack located your whereabouts. I’m glad he did.” Lauren reached out, gently pressing her hand against Sky’s belly. “And look at you now. You’re happy. You have a baby on the way. Cal loves you so much…”
“Well,” Sky said, smiling down at her, “then I will dream that you meet a man who loves you so much that he can’t ever turn away from you.”
“Now,” Lauren growled, “don’t go there. You KNOW I don’t believe in love for myself.”
And Sky knew why. “I know. But you’re so beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished.”
“Yeah, don’t remind me, okay? I don’t WANT their attention, Sky.”
“I understand,” she said. “But you can’t go through life alone, either, Lauren. I can’t tell you how lonely and alone I felt. I was like you: prepared to live a life like a hermit when Cal walked in. My few experiences with men scared me off. They scared ME.”
“It wasn’t like you didn’t know they couldn’t hurt you, because they did. Why on earth would we run toward what gave us pain, Sky?”
“I know… but I guess I felt so damned alone, that I let Cal inside my walls I had put up. And he knew. He knew I liked him. He was a SEAL. Their sensing is so powerful, their intuition, and he knew I liked him. A lot.”
