What the Heart Holds Safe (Delta Force Book 4) Read online

  “I remember every single minute,” Deek’s dark eyes studied her closely. Then he raised a hand and brushed her hair back in a soft caress.

  For a moment she was lost in it, the breathtaking gentleness from such a hard man. The warm brush of his fingertips as he tucked her hair around the back of her ear. She could—

  Three

  “Don’t!” Cindy’s snapped command had Deek jerking back his fingers as if they’d been burned.

  “What? What did I do?”

  “Nothing,” but her arms were clenched so tightly about her chest he was afraid she would shatter. “Just don’t touch me like that.”

  “Okay.” But he’d always wanted to touch her like that. He’d only ever held her once, that single moment captured in Jimmy’s damned photograph. It was the day he’d taken them to Central Park to celebrate—the day after he’d convinced their father that there were worse things than dying if he ever touched either of his children again.

  All the women he’d ever been with, he’d ended up wishing they were Cindy Borman instead. Not one of them had been able to purge her wholly from his thoughts.

  She was the standard that no one could ever live up to.

  When he’d learned the strength she’d had, what she’d done to protect her brother, he’d been utterly humbled. That was the moment he’d fallen in love. Dopey-ass word, but it was the only one that fit. She’d gone from being the only girl he was friends with, to his personal definition of righteous strength.

  Ever since then, he’d done his best to match her standard, though no way was he ever going to pull that off.

  Sitting here in her plywood cube in boots, camo pants, and tan t-shirt, he’d never seen anything so incredible. He’d watched her work for five, maybe ten minutes before she’d noticed him. He had barely been able to breathe during that entire time. Her blond hair, no longer in a Jennifer Aniston shoulder-length style, was breathtaking chopped off at jaw-level. It was more…her. Her blue eyes now watched him, wide with…fear?

  “What is it?”

  She just shook her head, leaving him no guide signs for what to say next. He reached out and took her hand again, peeling it free from where it clenched her other arm. She wasn’t fighting him, it was just as if she couldn’t let go. He clamped her fine fingers between his two hands. He could feel her pulse racing where his finger lay against the inside of her wrist.

  “Breathe, Cind.”

  “Can’t!” It was a hard gasp.

  “C’mon,” he coaxed her. “You pass out on me and we’re going to have a situation on our hands. I’m a shooter not a medic. I was so crappy I barely made it through the training.” Combat first aid was a part of every Delta’s training. He didn’t need to have gone for the extra year of medic training to see that she was panicking. Even if he didn’t have a damned clue why.

  She nodded in agreement but didn’t relax. Had she been holding the hurt of Jimmy’s loss inside her all this time? Closest thing he’d ever had to a little brother; it hurt like hell. She must be feeling it times ten.

  At a loss, he just held onto her hand, imagining he was driving heat into it, though how her fingers could be so cold in the scorching summer of Djibouti he didn’t know. It was over a hundred outside and the air-con vent was a joke.

  “I really miss the little shit.”

  She barked out a laugh which was closer to a breath. “He really loved you.”

  Deek nodded, at a loss for what else to do. The big brother worship had been clear and he’d ended up liking it despite himself. He’d protected both of them when they were kids, and had been cool playing Delta Big Brother to Little Brother Ranger for that month before Jimmy went down. They never talked about the past—except one mention that Cindy was with AFRICOM at Camp Lemonnier—but Jimmy was an easy guy to be around. Deek had liked keeping a protective eye on him—right until the moment he’d fucked up and let Jimmy die.

  He knew that wasn’t true. The sniper had been well trained. Good enough that they’d sent in a Delta team to clear him out.

  So it only felt like it was his fault that Jimmy had gone down, even though he knew—and the mission review team agreed—that it wasn’t.

  He closed his eyes and raised Cindy’s hand to press his cheek against the back of it. Even if it was just for a moment, he had to feel her touching him. For one little instant, he’d believe that it was somehow possible that—

  “What are you doing?” She yanked her hand free.

  She’d never let him touch her, except that one fine day.

  He stood up. Right. Nothing here for him.

  He braced himself in the doorway, but didn’t turn to look at her when he spoke.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect him better.”

  “If he died with you at his side, at least he was happy.”

  “Uh-huh,” he couldn’t make the next step off the threshold. He knew if he walked away from Cindy now, he’d never be able to face her again.

  But—

  “Wait. What?” He looked back at her over his shoulder, still holding onto the doorframe. A battered metal desk, a big computer screen, and the most beautiful woman who could never be his.

  “He loved you so much.”

  “You said that already.”

  “It’s true.”

  Deek thought about that for a moment. “Guess I loved him too.”

  “You guess?” Her sadness flashed into fury as she jolted to her feet and strode the three steps to face him.

  He turned and looked down at her. Not far. He’d forgotten how tall she was for a woman. Five ten of powerful soldier.

  “You guess!” Her fair complexion was turning a mean red. He’d also forgotten that she had a temper—nothing ever phased her brother. He’d go quiet sometimes, but that was all. Cindy? Never any doubt what she was feeling. The only question was—would it hurt.

  Apparently a shrug wasn’t the right answer as she pummeled the side of her fist against his chest.

  “Derek!” No one used his full name. It sounded foreign, even from Cindy.

  “He…” Deek started to shrug again then thought better of it. “Jimmy was the best little brother anybody could want.”

  “I’m talking about you, not me,” Cindy’s voice sounded as if she was trying to talk to a dumb child and he didn’t much like it.

  “He was like a little brother to me too.”

  Four

  “He was…” Cindy stumbled over the words and almost tripped into Deek’s chest. “He loved you.”

  “You keep saying that. I know it already. I’m not some dumb Jarhead. I’m Delta.”

  Cindy could only stare up at him, “Jimmy loved you, Deek.”

  “I know that!” His voice lowered dangerously.

  “Oh my god,” she stumbled back from Deek’s dark frown. “He never told you. But I assumed you were—”

  “Never told me what?”

  No. This could not have landed in her lap to do. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t possible. If her brother was still alive, she’d kill him. Right here. Right now.

  “Cind?” He’d followed her back into the room though she didn’t recall retreating until she’d collapsed back into her chair once more.

  “Jimmy…was never interested in women. And there was only one man that he ever loved.”

  Deek blinked twice, then dropped into his own chair, facing her once more.

  She waited. To be a Delta Operator meant that he was damned smart. A different kind of intelligence than hers maybe, not one that earned straight As in boring high school classes and everything else since then, but damned sharp.

  “Oh shit!” It took him less than five seconds. “He never told me.”

  “You’re seriously telling me that you didn’t know?”

  His abrupt laugh snapped out like a slap to the face. “He’s not my type, Cind.”

  “Then who is?”

  Deek’s thin sheen of humor switched off as if it had never been. His dark eyes stared straight a
t her. Being a man of few words, he slowly raised one finger and pointed it at the center of her chest.

  Five

  Deek continued his killer workout all through the hot afternoon. The obstacle course was busy with a whole team of swabbies getting their land-side workout and he didn’t want to have to eat their dust—something the whole damned country specialized in. Instead he’d eat his own. Delta often fought solo, and he was fine sweating solo. Nobody pushed an operator harder than himself.

  Besides, he needed to be alone and do some serious thinking.

  He found a tractor tire no one else was using along the back fence of the Special Ops compound and set up a workout. Fifty flips of the five hundred pound tire. Then a hundred agility hops into and onto the tire—first both feet, then right foot only, then left only, coming to a stable stop in each position. Then fifty crunches, sitting on one edge of the tire with his feet hooked into the far side—a fifty-pound weight on his chest as he lay back until his head touched the ground, then back up.

  By the fourth complete rep his mind finally cleared enough that he could review what had happened.

  Cindy had thrown him out. Only one word, “Leave!” and her own pointing finger jammed in the direction of the door.

  Like the dog he was, he’d tucked his tail and run.

  But it didn’t make any sense. How was he supposed to know that Jimmy liked guys? Or liked him…that way? He knew it happened. This was the new, enlightened military. And that and ten cents didn’t buy you a stick of gum. There was another stupid phrase. Had anyone ever sold gum by the stick? Must have, he supposed. But enlightened military? Yeah, right. No wonder Jimmy had gone so kick-ass tough.

  Deek knocked back a bottle of water and went back to flipping the tractor tire up and down the brown packed-dirt stretch behind Task Command’s CLUs. The containerized living units rose three stories high and were exclusively for the use of Special Operations teams. His present home, as much as he ever had one, was third row, second tier, fourth from the left.

  Here behind the last row, the waste heat of all the individual air conditioners raised the temperature another five or ten degrees but at least they put out some damned moisture into the air, a few extra percent anyway. It also had the advantage of isolation. No one except security patrols wandered back here because the security fence which cut off the SOF compound from the rest of the camp stood only a few meters away. Any grunts out in the main camp wanted to watch him flip a tire, they were welcome to—he had nothing to do with them.

  Deek supposed that Jimmy’s actions made some kind of sense. Deek had never seen him with a girl. But then again…the three of them were total loners in high school. Deek still had been until Jimmy was assigned to his detail. He didn’t know about Cindy, but there hadn’t been a single picture in her office other than the Command-in-Chief’s, such as it was.

  Jimmy had always hung close to Deek when he had a chance. On the long quiet watches, he’d act as if he had something to say, but never did. And now Deek knew what it was.

  Poor kid.

  But that still didn’t explain Cindy’s reaction, sending him off like that.

  His ears were starting to ring from the repeated thumps of the big tire on the hard earth. His muscles were well past burn and deep into sear. It felt good. It felt familiar. Another couple full reps and he’d go down to the rifle range to work on his accuracy while going through lactic acid withdrawal. He drank back half a bottle of water, dumped the rest on his head, turning the dust that coated him into mud, then chucked it aside and picked up the fifty pound weight.

  Cindy had looked really pissed. Like some goddess of fury come to life. And he still didn’t know why.

  “You’re a smart guy, Deek,” he lay back then grunted himself upward to start another set of deep crunches with the weight on his chest.

  “Figure it out.” Crunch.

  “She’s mad because…” That lasted him through five more crunches without finding the next word.

  “She’s mad because…” he grunted upward again and froze.

  Cindy was standing not ten feet away. Feet planted, arms crossed.

  The fifty-pound weight he’d been clutching to his chest overbalanced him and took him down again. Coming back up from that one was hard. Once he was back up, he dumped the weight to the side and just looked at her.

  She still looked absolutely amazing. Not the most beautiful girl in any crowd, but when you knew the person inside…nobody else stood a chance.

  And he was sweaty, muddy, probably stank like a workout, and his breathing was so ragged that he was getting lightheaded just watching her.

  Cindy stepped forward and, after he pulled in his legs, stepped into the tire and sat across the circle from him. Their knees were only inches apart. He leaned over for another two liter water bottle and their knees brushed together. He pulled his in closer and she did the same.

  Guzzling down half the water did nothing for his parched throat.

  “She…doesn’t know why she’s so mad,” Cindy finally said softly.

  “Huh.” Deek couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Six

  It was all jumbled up inside her. She had tried going back to her data, but it was a low priority research project that she still had a couple days on before it was needed. It hadn’t been enough to draw her focus. Cindy had thought about going for a run…and had come to half an hour later still staring at her locked computer screen.

  There was no way she could eat.

  She didn’t have any really close friends on base, didn’t have any that she could call either. It was like when she found out her brother had died. No one to tell. No one to care.

  Except for the man sitting across from her.

  He hadn’t been hard to find. She’d just followed the tortured grunts of someone working past their limits, but not acknowledging they had any limits to begin with. Nothing ever stopped Deek. Nothing.

  “I didn’t know,” he finally said softly. “I swear I didn’t.”

  “Neither did I.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her.

  “I knew about Jimmy,” her voice drifted softer. “I didn’t know about you.”

  He nodded.

  But there was more. Her assumptions weren’t the only reason she hadn’t tried to crack Derek Davies’s loner shell. Who could want a girl who had chosen to be raped by her father? Even if it was to protect her brother. Nobody. That’s who. Certainly not the only person she’d ever told about it. Jimmy had to know, to have understood. But he’d never let on. Some things were better never spoken about.

  Whereas Deek…

  “Oh my god. You’re the one who stopped him.”

  “Your dad? Damn straight.”

  That took a second to sink in. Another thing she’d never known. Derek—Deek no longer sounded right to her—had protected both her and her brother. She covered her face for a long moment. How could she not have known? It was so obvious now that she thought about. “Friends” had been too strong a word for what they were, but they were all each other had in those times. She looked back up at him, unsure of what she’d see. But he still looked like the same, dirty, sweaty, amazing man he’d always been. Maybe a lot dirtier and sweatier than usual.

  He shrugged his shoulders, not in a denying way, but rather as if he wished he could do it again. In retrospect she was surprised that Derek hadn’t killed him outright. He’d certainly had the strength to.

  “The photograph. That day.” She’d never connected that either. “That was the day it all stopped.”

  He nodded and drank some more water.

  “You said it was a day of celebration. That’s why you smiled like that.”

  He looked aside for a long moment. “I did that for Jimmy. So that he’d know it was over. It was harder on him than you. He was never half as strong as you are. Maybe that’s what made him try so hard as a Ranger, trying to make up for what he couldn’t do as a kid. I was trying to cheer him up.”
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  “Whereas me…”

  Again, the look aside.

  This time she waited him out.

  He finally looked back. “You I held. Even for that one moment, I just held you safe.”

  She didn’t know what to say and didn’t have the chance.

  “I also wanted to feel how someone could be so strong. Could take so much shit and still be so incredible. I wanted to know what it felt like to be as good as you. And care about someone, anyone, as much as you did for Jimmy. That caring was never part of my life, but it shone out of you like the sun. I’ve spent every minute since trying to live up to that feeling.”

  Cindy laughed, “I think that’s the longest speech of your entire life.”

  Derek shrugged, finished the water, and smiled at her. Not grinned, smiled. Not the goofy look he’d made for her brother’s sake. This was genuine and deep.

  “I’m not all that strong.”

  “Bullshit!” Now Derek grinned. “Ain’t a heroine in the movies got an edge on you. They’re strong on the outside. Hell, any idiot can do that.”

  He thumped a fist against the tire and she could feel the vibration of it through her tailbone.

  “You’ve got it in here.”

  He tapped her chest—they were close enough for that to be easy, though he pulled back his hand quickly and might even have blushed a little.

  “That’s how I made Delta. Trying to be as strong as you on the inside.”

  Cindy’s head was spinning. One of America’s top warriors, trying to be as strong as her. As he imagined her. No, as he believed her to be.

  The way Derek saw her was…incredible.

  “I told myself I was angry at you for rejecting Jimmy. For not returning what he felt so deeply for you.”

  Her man of few words was back, twisting his neck until she could practically hear the crackle along his spine.

  “And I know for a fact that I was angry as hell that he got you and I didn’t.”