Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(118)

He froze. “Kelsey?”

Holy shit. Gabe didn’t want to be there the day a woman kicked his boss’s ass, but there he was, smack dab in the middle of what was no doubt going to be the Armageddon of all marital discords.

“Alex,” she whispered. “You’re... alive? You’re here?”

The man took two long strides into the room, his arms outstretched before Kelsey threw herself into them.

Shelby sidled closer to Gabe, clutching his hands as the scene unfolded.

Kelsey had hold of Alex’s neck, her cheek pressed to his, her eyes closed and tears flowing. “You’re alive. I knew it. No one but Gabe and Zack believed me, but I knew it.”

The saddest groan crept out of Alex. No words, just a fierce intensity as he held his wife for the first time in too many days. He’d closed his eyes. Sheer agony etched his clean-shaven face, but his fingers were clamped onto his wife like grappling hooks.

She leaned back enough to look up into his face. Her hands smoothed over his nose and cheeks, up to his forehead and down the side of his face again, never breaking contact. Raking through his hair. “Where have you been?”

He didn’t answer, just kept holding her, the darkest shadow in his gaze.

The unthinkable happened. She cocked her arm and slapped his cheek with a hard right. “Tell me, Alex.” Her voice pitched ragged. “Where have you been?”

He never let go of her left arm while she slapped him again. “Tell me! What was so important that you had to do this to me? To us!”

Gabe held his breath.

Poor Alex, his face reddened from the slaps, his eyes glistening.

Poor Kelsey, tears dripping over her cheeks, her brows spiked and—So. Damned. Angry.

“You let me bury you! Do you have any idea how that felt? God, Alex, I saw your dead body at the morgue. I shook all of your friends’ hands and cried with them at your damned funeral. Roy and Murphy were there. Everyone was there. Every single one of your friends. Our friends. How could you do that to me? To them?”

He bit his bottom lip, as in he really bit it. A thin trickle of blood tracked down his chin, but she wasn’t through. She launched herself at him, pummeling his chest. “Say something. Damn you! Say something!”

He took the hit, another wretched groan lifting out of him, until, at last, he snagged her flailing wrists and pulled her struggling body into his chest. He buried his face in the crook of her neck. Still no explanation. No defense. Just sorrow so thick that Gabe could taste it.

Her rant turned to sobs in the circle of his arms, her face buried in his dress shirt. “I’m so mad at you,” she whined, her arms and hands moving under his suit jacket and over his back. “I knew you were alive. I knew you had to be doing something critical for national security or... or maybe the world... or something, damn you. I knew you’d never hurt me on purpose. I just knew it.”

The man still hadn’t offered a single word of self-defense, just held his wife as if he’d never let her go again, her feet lifted nearly off the floor. Great shudders shook his shoulders. Even with his eyes squeezed tight as they were, he could not hold back the tears that trickled down his face.


At last three very definite, very pain-filled words growled out of him. “I. Love. You.” That was all. No excuses. Just a battle weary warrior’s binding declaration to the sadly treated lady of his heart.

Kelsey sighed, and it seemed everyone in the room sighed with her. This was the hardest homecoming Gabe had ever witnessed.

“I missed you.” She hiccupped, her hands smoothing up and down his back under his jacket, comforting him. Maybe even forgiving him. “God, my poor Alex. I’ve missed you so much.”

Shelby sniffled, drawing Gabe’s gaze from his boss. The woman was a mess, crying along with Kelsey. Gabe handed her a tissue from his bedside table, then took one for himself. Zack watched from the other side of the room, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes hooded.

“I never stopped loving you. Not even for a moment,” Kelsey cried, still burrowing into her husband’s broad chest, her head under his chin, and Gabe couldn’t deny the energy of this powerful couple. Now. At what had to be the worst moment of all their time together, they were locked in a death grip as if they were the only two in the room. Only it was more like a life grip, more binding than death.

Shelby lowered to the side of his bed, so Gabe scooted over and made a place for her to sit. She laid her head on his shoulder, crying at the tender scene that was taking place in front of them. Like him, she had no words.

At last, Alex eased Kelsey away enough to tip her chin up to meet his eyes, his thumbs on her teary cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

She sniffed once, then lifted up on the tips of her toes. “No, Alex. I’m sorry,” she said, caressing his cheek. “I shouldn’t have hit you. I do trust you. I always have. I always will. And I know you. You would never hurt me. I was just so angry.” She’d barely offered her lips when he crushed his mouth to hers, and she was off her feet and in his arms.

God, that kiss. He ravaged her mouth and she gave it right back to him, her arms around his neck as if she’d never let him go again.

Gabe had to look away, the tender scene too intimate. Shelby sobbed into his neck, and he had a hard time holding it together, too. His eyes kept tearing up. Damn. Could any two people love each other more than the couple locked together in unconditional love right there in his hospital room? The kind of love that could forgive the unforgiveable and do it with a simple sigh? The kind that seemed able to see beyond anger and still cling together in the middle of a damned ugly storm?