Bungalow Nights(67)

Skye shook her head. “He’s in trouble.”

“I...” Layla let her next platitude go unsaid. She knew how useless they were. People would tell you it would be all right. Have faith, be strong, think positive thoughts. None of that changed a thing.

You could avoid the cracks in the sidewalk, bargain with some higher power or just your inner fears, and the unthinkable still could happen. A mother would leave her husband and her small daughter. A man’s letter would fail to arrive. One day there’d be a knock on the door and the sight of the uniform on the other side told you everything you needed to know but never wanted to hear.

Loving someone meant you set yourself up for hurt.

“Do you want to come sit here with us?” Jane asked. “You look upset and like they say, misery loves company.”

Layla stared at the other two women, shaking her head. She didn’t want upset. After already losing people in her life, she didn’t want to position herself for miserable again. Her hands tightened on the frame until the edges dug painfully into her flesh. Glancing down, her gaze landed on the Helmet List, and then the last item listed on the notepaper.

That wasn’t her father’s writing, she thought with a frown. The others were in his precise, spare hand, but the last line was not. Someone else had written the final words: Keep Layla safe.

She stared at them, her earlier roiling emotions coalescing into a heated ball that burned in the pit of her stomach. Instead of feeling vulnerable and insecure, she glanced at Skye, then at the frame in her hands, and experienced a righteous rage.

Murmuring a quick good luck to the other women, she spun around and marched back to Beach House No. 9.

Her feet sounded loud on the wooden steps. Coming to a halt on the deck, she saw Vance rise out of a chair, his watchful gaze on her face. She hesitated a moment, tripped up by his face, that arrangement of tanned skin, masculine bones and blue eyes that would be almost pretty without the accompanying heavy musculature of his rugged body.

She thought of those long, hair-roughened limbs sliding against hers in the dark, the hot rush of his breath against her neck, those sinewy hands cupping her breasts and sliding between her thighs as he unraveled her in bed.

I love you. I’m in love with you.

He’d said that.

The liar.

Her ire rose again and she stomped across the painted wooden planks to confront him. “What’s this?” she said, shaking the framed list in his face. “What’s all this about ‘Keep Layla safe’?”

Rubbing the backs of his knuckles against his whisker-stubbled cheek, Vance regarded her warily. “Do you mean because it’s in my handwriting?”

“Hah,” Layla said. “So it is yours.”

He frowned. “Yes. On that last afternoon...he asked me to add it, and about that—”

“Well, I don’t need your pity promise,” she shot at him. “I know you, Vance Thomas Smith, and if you swore to my father you’d keep me safe, then you’d do whatever you must to make that happen.”

“What are you talking about?”

She poked him in the chest. “Telling me you love me...that’s your way of giving me the security my father wanted for me, isn’t it?”

“I keep telling you, I’m no hero. I wouldn’t—”

“You were going to be my friend, you said. You’d write me, email me, call me. But that wasn’t enough to appease your conscience, was it? Instead, you decided to tell me you love me and—”

“Jesus Christ, woman.” Vance scowled. “I do love you.”

He’d said it again, and those four words brought her up short. She’d thought he’d back down if she called him out on his game. It made her anxious again, her stomach roiling, her palms sweating. She stared at him, unsure how next to proceed.

“Sweetheart,” Vance said now, his expression softening, his voice gentle. “I love you.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I’ll tell you a thousand times if I need to. I’m in love with you.”

She wrenched back. “That’s not keeping me safe!” Her whole body felt on fire now, her tongue a flame. “That is not keeping me safe.”

“I know,” Vance said. “And if the colonel was here right now, I’d have to admit that’s the one promise I made that I can’t keep. Love takes risk, Layla.”

She shook her head, aware her anxious voice was rising higher. “I don’t want any more risk. I can’t take any more risk without breaking into a million pieces.”

He stared at her a long, long moment, as if assessing her state of mind. “All right,” he said slowly. “I understand.”

The lump in her throat made it hard to swallow. “Okay. Good. You don’t love me. That’s better.”

“Oh, I still love you,” Vance said, with maddening calm. “And you can walk away from it if you want, if that gives you the protection you think you need. I won’t fight you on that—but it won’t extinguish my feelings for you, either.”

Layla wanted to tear out her hair. What was she supposed to say to that? Didn’t he get it? “Attachment is the source of suffering and—”

“No. Attachment is the source of joy. Parent to child. Brother to brother. Man to woman.”

Panic turned her cold then hot again. He was speaking of his family, and how could she deny what he said after meeting them? But still...

“How can we count on something we didn’t get to choose? Love—” and she put scare quotes around the word “—forced us—”

“No.” Vance interrupted her again. “Love didn’t force the two of us together, Layla. The two of us together create the love.”

Oh, it sounded pretty. But it would hurt so much to hope and feel and then someday to have it disappear or die. She opened her mouth.

“Wait.” His gaze had jumped over her shoulder. “Turn around,” he ordered. “Turn around right now.”

At his urgent tone, Layla spun. Her gaze swept the beach, uncertain what she was supposed to notice. Vance came up behind her, his big body crowding hers. His head bent to her ear as one hand landed on her shoulder and the other pointed to the horizon. “The sunset,” he whispered. “Watch the sunset.”

Layla stared westward, holding the framed Helmet List to her breasts. The sand had lost its golden luster and was a dark shadow spilling into the gleaming, silvery blanket of the ocean. Beyond that, the orb of the sun was more than half gone now, its curved edges distinct between the water and the thin clouds above that had taken on its orangish glow.

There was an orange reflection on the water, too, a narrow-to-broad cone that reached toward shore, but then pulled farther and farther back as the sun slid lower. The orange turned to yellow as the sun seemed to flatten. It became a disk, thinner than a dime, lying on top of the water. In a half breath it was almost gone, just the smallest spot of light. Then even that shrunk in on itself, going smaller...smaller...smaller—

Until shafts of green shot from the tiny point, a deep emerald flash.

Awed, Layla gasped, then gasped once more, as a dolphin leaped high from the water, its sleek body arcing as if to catch the jewel. Then it dove back under, and both were gone.

Vance squeezed her shoulder. His other hand crossed her waist, holding her to him. “Make a wish,” he said against her ear.

To be brave, a voice inside her whispered. Then it was Uncle Phil she heard, presenting two choices. You’ve got to decide if you want to do it my way—only on paper and in dreams—or if you actually want to step onto the plane and fly. And then, finally, it was Vance’s voice. The two of us together create the love.

She spun again, out of his arms, to stare at him, mouth dry, blood rushing in her ears louder than the waves on the sand. “Do you...do you really love me?”

A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “What did Jules Verne say again?”

“That a person who has seen a green flash can’t be deceived. That they’ve gained the power to read others’ thoughts.”

“So you tell me,” Vance said, reaching out to brush a lock of hair behind her ear. “What am I thinking?”

As always, his touch thrilled and burned and made her shiver. She swallowed. “That...that you love me and that you know I love you. And that I should stop being such a coward and instead be a little reckless so we can start being happy together.”

He tilted his head. “So...”

Her heart lurched as she gazed upon this beautiful man: soldier, healer, nurturer. Lover. As her father had said, there was something special about him.

Thinking of her dad, Layla felt herself smile, and for the first time it wasn’t tinged with the bittersweet pain of loss. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if that green flash truly signified his soul had crossed over.

“So...” Vance prompted again.