Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
W illow tried to steady her heartbeat as she and Dev waited on the tarmac of Dejazmach Belay Zeleke Airport in Bahir Dar, standing in the long shadow of the control tower. The sun had barely risen, the September dawn a coolish fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit. It had rained the night before and Lake Tana in the distance looked a beautiful blue, as if clear of the pollution from the city proper to the northwest. The humidity was high.
Willow’s blood had thinned long ago, and the coolness had made her wear her favorite old denim jacket over her green flight suit. She’d braided her hair, so it hung in one long rope down her back, her olive-green baseball cap in place with the Delos insignia on the front, one arm of her aviator sunglasses hooked into the v of the zipper of her half-opened jacket. Dev shifted restlessly, from one flight boot to the other. She wasn’t one to stay still for long. They watched as the C-130 Hercules transport plane landed, the red and yellow horizontal stripes down the length of its fuselage, denoting it a Delos aircraft. Up on the tail section was the institute’s rising sun logo, representing hope; a bare glimpse of light dawning on the horizon after the long, dark night of need the poverty-stricken here had sheltered through.
In Willow’s hand was a clipboard holding the flight manifest with all the names of the people on board. On the flight, there were fourteen Shield Security team personnel, disguised as Delos security staff, and twenty undercover US Navy Seabee construction crew members, Shep Porter among them. What did he look like now, as opposed to what she remembered from three years ago? They had sent emails back and forth, but not any photos specifically of one another attached. The emails had always been brief and fairly impersonal. She watched the plane touch down on its tricycle gear and heard Dev’s low sigh under the sharp, brief screech from the rear tires. Smiling, Willow turned to her.
“Like old times, huh? Almost feels like we’re back in country again.”
Dev grinned and took off her green baseball cap, moving her fingers nervously through her ponytailed hair. “Yeah, no kidding. I thought we were done with bullets flying, here in Ethiopia, but now, what with David stirring up trouble and all, it feels like we’re in Afghanistan again.”
Nodding, Willow watched the C-130 anchor at the end of the runway, and then slowly turn, the shrieking, whistling sound of the four prop engines filling the air as it headed toward the parking area near the tower and rows of hangars. There was a passenger ramp on wheels, standing by for the transport plane to come to a halt. In actuality, the entire rear of the plane would open up and be one big disembarking ramp, but the local guys didn’t know that. Two airport staffers stood ready, watching the C-130 lumber toward them. Once it was parked, engines off, chocks would be thrown beneath the wheels to keep it from moving. She was sure everyone on board had already been told to exit via the rear ramp once the plane halted in the revetment area.
“Damn, it’s cold,” Dev griped.
“Weather desk said low of fifty-two and high of seventy-three today.” Willow looked up at the turbulent, quickly changing sky. “We got garbage can cumulus right now, which means the end of the front has come through. Maybe by noon you’ll warm up as these clouds leave and the sun shines down on us once again.”
“One can hope.”
Dev was always the pessimist. Always dark. But she had been born into a dark, severely dysfunctional family, so Willow understood how she saw the world through that murky, dirty lens. She was sure the day would warm up nicely, a good welcome to Ethiopia for all those people on board the Delos C-130 trundling like a pregnant cow toward them.
“You nervous?” Dev asked.
“Yeah, a little,” Willow admitted grudgingly.
“The great unknown always digs up our fear,” Dev said, nodding. “At least Wyatt Lockwood thinks your ex has matured and will be a professional.”
“I’m hoping that’s true,” Willow agreed. Her hands tightened a little as the whistling of the four engines on the C-130 drew closer. The two airport crewmen waved their bright-orange light sticks, indicating where the pilot was to bring the transport to a halt. The air was filled with that shrieking ear-splitting and hurting whistle. In no time, the aircraft halted, all engines cut and props slowing down, the painful sound dissolving. Willow’s throat grew dry as she watched the rear ramp slowly open up and start to disgorge the many passengers.
To her surprise, she suddenly wanted to cry. Her! She rarely cried. She’d cried for days after leaving Shep. Some of those tears were of rage and frustration that he couldn’t bend, couldn’t compromise, couldn’t try to be flexible with her. How lost she’d been that first year after they’d divorced. She’d cried some more when the divorce papers were served. And when they came back to her, signed, it only compounded her grief.
Wiping her mouth out of sheer nervousness, Willow felt shaky all over inside. Even her knees felt momentarily weak and unsure. Part of her wanted to run away and not meet Shep after three years of his absence. Another part wanted to run TOWARD him! That realization shocked Willow. As she stood there, watching the people trundling down the ramp, she felt like she was careening every which way emotionally, could almost feel herself lofting and diving, as if on a plane of her own that she had lost control of. There were fusions of paired emotions of heady joy connected with rage, and grief entwined with hope, and a final spare, all-on-its-lonesome one of longing for Shep. Why hadn’t they been able to make the compromises? What was wrong with them? Look at the result.
Standing rock-solid, but not feeling so, the sky overhead a patchwork of clouds, showing through them the blue of the Ethiopian dawn and the rising sun, Willow took another deep, serrating breath. In times of fear and trepidation she would mentally and emotionally shore herself up by simply willing it away. Her knees tightened and she felt more stable inside, her gaze riveted on that ramp. Willow was sure Shep would be among the first people out because he was the boss of the entire operation.
Sure enough, she saw him emerge, wearing a bright-red nylon coat over a dark-green t-shirt, jeans and roughout boots. He still wore his hair down over his ears, very un-Marine like, slightly curled, and that five-to-ten-day growth of beard. He got away with such choices because he was here undercover, but his surfer dude look hadn’t changed a bit, and she felt a warmth in her chest. Such typical faire for a civilian engineer, her mind clocked. The cover was working. He was tall: six foot three inches, roughly around two hundred pounds of lean, hard muscle. Even at this distance in the dawn light, she could see that Shep was deeply tanned from all the time he spent in the sun. If he was anywhere even near an ocean, she was sure he was surfboarding on off hours; he never lost his love of the sport. He wore a Delos brown baseball cap with their rising sun logo on the front. The bill was up enough that Willow could see his face fully as he turned his attention her way.
And then, their gazes locked.
A spasm of grief roared through Willow. What had they done to one another? How much hurt had they created by walking away? But what were the options? There had been none. Shep’s azure gaze scanned hers as he hesitated fractionally at the bottom where the ramp met the concrete revetment area, holding her image for that split second. Willow felt so much, as if back in that freaky mental telepathy mode they seemed to always have with one another. As if it had just been reactivated. He moved with such natural male grace. Shep had grown up in La Jolla, California, where his father owned and ran a construction company. He’d lived in a house less than half a mile from the Pacific Ocean and had started surfing when he was nine years old. And that was what had first drawn her to him: his youth, his wildness, his love of the ocean, and watching him tame it with his ever-present surfboard. Yes, he was a gorgeous-looking man, no question. But it had become so much more than that, and Willow could feel herself absorbing his deep, searching look, as if he were trying to touch her mind and heart all in that split-second gaze.
And then, he broke eye contact with her, turning and waiting for the rest of his people to disgorge. He was a damn fine boss, and manager of people in general. She had loved that part of him. He watched as each person come down the ramp. Yes, no question, Shep was a focused, responsible leader. For once, as an Air Force officer, it had been nice for Willow to set that role aside in Afghanistan and be in Shep’s arms and his care. When they’d lain in bed, talking, touching, kissing and exploring one another on every possible level, she’d fallen so quickly for the man. And he’d fallen just as quickly for her. They were a mutual admiration society, keeping their private lives private at the busy Army air base.
The group assembled. It was time to go meet them. Willow felt as if she were in some dream-time movie, and this wasn’t real. As she forced her feet forward, Dev at her side, the clipboard gripped in her left hand, she floated out-of-body. Heart aching without relief, Willow felt as if someone had stolen the air out of her lungs. She struggled to breathe, struggled to remained grounded and focused.
Three years .
Three years without Shep’s tender touches.
Three years without his rich, deep laughter as they shared a joke together.
Three years without his tall male body curved around hers as she slept.
As a lover, she’d never had anyone better than Shep. To say she swooned as he played her body with his touches and kisses, was an understatement. Even now, her lower body warmed with memory. And need.
How to be professional? They’d fought like hell, but the making up had been out of this world. She still woke up some nights from torrid dreams of Shep joined with her, loving her, taking her with him to some unknown galaxy where they both languished in carnal pleasure together. Now, she had to put on her game face, as the military referred to it. Be all business.
***
How the hell was he going to keep a straight face? Shep could feel himself unraveling deep within and it was because Willow was walking across the tarmac toward him. In the three years since he’d seen her in person? She had grown even more beautiful. He was an engineer. His whole life was about noticing subtle details and missing nothing. She had flawless gold-green eyes the color of newly birthed willow leaves in early spring. Her mother had named her such for that very reason. Just from the gentle sway of her hips, the set of her chin, a burning confidence radiated around her like blinding sunlight. That flight suit hid her best assets and the palms of his hands literally itched for a second, in memory of them on her smooth, firm flesh. He had it BAD. A lot worse than he’d first believed. Three years, he realized with stunning and sudden clarity, seemed now like only days since he’d last seen Willow.
He couldn’t ignore the frizzy red tendrils that always caressed her temples, and those high cheekbones of hers. That untamable red hair was more than just a sign about her personality, it was an absolute symbol. Willow was fiery, willful, assertive and her confidence was a turn on to him. She walked like she owned the whole damned world even now. Her shoulders were thrown back with natural pride and her gaze was focused like a laser on him. She didn’t blink. Hell, she was a combat pilot. Why would she blink when she was in the midst of a dangerous fray? There was NOTHING, dammit, that turned him off to her as she walked with purpose toward him and his following team.
Willow never wore makeup. In fact, she disdained it as Shep recalled from one of their after-sex talks. It was the time he’d enjoyed the most, feeling exhausted physically, but his mind crisp and clear and centered on sensual, wild and untamable Willow. She had been his wife. How many times had he awakened in the middle of the night in some foreign country, wondering why the hell they’d split up and divorced? She had enriched his life, made it exciting, unexpected and spontaneous. He was none of those things without her. As an engineer, he was a man absorbed in the details of numbers, measurements, building things and making them work correctly. Willow walked into his life that one night at Bagram and blew his world to smithereens and he’d never looked back.
Her red braid lay against her back and he realized she had allowed it to grow even longer after divorcing him. As a combat pilot, wearing a helmet all the time, she’d kept her hair mid-length between her shoulder blades. Now? Three years later and a civilian, her long hair stirred his desire, and his fingers itched to tangle themselves in that frizzy mass that crinkled in the Lake Tana humidity. Sweat was beginning to stain his long-sleeved khaki shirt even at this coolish time at dawn. He excused himself from his people, who were led away by the airport attendees, and he walked toward the two women pilots.
Shep didn’t know the other woman, but she had the look of eagles in her gray eyes. Nothing to mess with was the intuitive warning he got off the copilot who flew with Willow. There was a dangerousness to that woman, but things were distracting him too much for Shep to hone in on the sense any further than that. Both women wore holsters with .45s in them. A reminder that Ethiopia was not a safe place in many respects.
Shep took the lead, extending his hand to her as they slowed. “Willow? Nice to see you again.” He was SUCH a liar! He wanted to grab her, kiss her senseless and then carry her off to a bed where they’d slide into sexual oblivion together. Her fingers met his, slightly damp, long and beautiful, nails cut blunt. So many little things slammed into Shep as her fingers closed around his work-roughened, calloused hand. Remembering on one dawn that was crawling up into the night sky and chasing it away, Willow telling him she hated fingernail polish. She felt it was like putting a toxic poison on her nails that would be absorbed into her body. It was horrid stuff. A hundred small, everyday actions and reactions between them when they were married, slammed through him. Her fingers curved around his, not weakly, not overly strong either, but a solid connection, nevertheless. He saw something in her eyes, some momentary flicker of emotion in them that she quickly covered up.
“Nice to see you, Shep.” She quickly released his hand, as if burned. Turning, Willow said, “I want you to meet my copilot, Dev Mitchell.”
Dev stepped up, shaking his hand firmly. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Porter. Welcome to Ethiopia.”
“Call me Shep,” he insisted, “and thanks for the welcome. I know you ladies are really busy with details you don’t normally have to deal with.”
Willow pulled up her clipboard and said, “We’ve divided our duties to get your two groups some downtime and rest, to get over the jet lag, after they finish their passport stamping inside the terminal.” She turned, pointing at three bright-yellow school busses parked along the curb of the airport terminal outside the chain-link fence behind them. “Dev is going to take your security and construction teams to a nearby hotel where they can rest up, get a shower and some food. They’ll stay there until tomorrow morning.” She lifted her gaze from the clipboard. “You have a condo rented for you and your head of security. It will be in the same building Dev and I have our condos. That way, you’ll have ease of communication with us whenever you come back to Bahir Dar for a few days R he wasn’t gonna say shit. It was on a need-to-know basis only. Shep had made that clear from the start when they’d had a second meeting with Luke at Shield Security. One out of several briefings that had followed.
Once they’d singled Luke out, Shep made introductions. He felt a bit of jealousy as he saw Luke’s game face falter for a moment when Willow shook his hand. He instantly felt like a male lion protecting his lioness, but then he harshly reminded himself to stand down. Jealousy had been one of his weaknesses as Willow had heatedly pointed out to him time and again during their rugged two-year marriage. What he’d never told her was that his father had had an affair that had destroyed his mother. They’d then divorced and his mother Bess, a well-known children’s book illustrator, had taken care of him, loosely speaking, on her own. He had been thirteen at the time. And he’d seen his mother slowly falter and die before his eyes. It had served to put Shep on notice that men weren’t to be trusted in a marriage situation. He’d grown up thinking his parents were forever, but they weren’t. And it had wounded him in a way that played into his marriage with Willow. And now, dammit, that green-eyed monster within him was back on red alert over the way Luke had looked at Willow.
“I’ll be riding back to the condo with Flight Officer Mitchell,” Luke told them. “See you then, Shep.”
Nodding, Shep was relieved. It would be just him and Willow. Alone. And there was so damned much he wanted to share with her. One of her main issues with him was that he was too self-centered, that he never asked how she was, what was she thinking, or commit in other ways to any real communication between them. But this time, Shep was determined to at least show Willow he could be unselfish and share, and communicate with her. That was something he could fix. What he couldn’t fix was her broken heart or his. That was the pain he felt in his chest, and he’d thought nothing would make it go away. But it had when their hands had touched, and he’d gently squeezed her fingers. Getting to touch her had been a thrill. Heat had tunneled through his heart.
The clouds were lessening over the busy airport. Porters brought the luggage out to the front of the building as people began sifting through the bags, finding their own, and moving toward the awaiting, assigned busses. Shep found his two dark-green canvas duffle bags and gripped one in each hand. They were damned heavy, but that couldn’t be helped. He followed Willow to her SUV parked outside the guarded fence. He saw passengers from a British Airways flight disgorging and several families of locals crossing the two-lane asphalt road, hurrying into the airport to meet them. There were big palm trees and a lot of jungle-like greenery around. Ethiopia sat a bit north of the Equator and the Northern Provinces, where Tana Lake was, were the coolest areas of the country. Shep was glad. He’d run construction crews for years in the hot, unforgiving deserts of Afghanistan before the U.S. had erased their presence from that country.
The smells in the air were of jet fuel mixed with the mouth-watering aroma of some kind of bread baking, perking his tummy’s attention. The women were beautiful in his eyes, different shades of ebony to mahogany, the colorful saris, and hajibs they wore making them look like dazzling, colorful tropical birds. He followed Willow, appreciating her from behind. Once, his hands had freely roamed her body, lavishing her with pleasure. She was as untamable as that naturally curly red hair of hers. A part of her was still a wild child, there was no doubt, but that part of Willow only came out to play when he allowed his own self to become loosened up and playful. So often, as she’d accused him regularly toward the end of their marriage, he was always serious, always away, lost in his head and his damnable engineer logic, and not in his heart. He was closed up tighter than Fort Knox, she’d told him many times. Willow was loose, free, risk-taking, empathetic, and he was the opposite. At least she had stopped just short of calling him anal.
Willow unlocked the very dusty silver SUV, much in need of a wash, but no one washed their cars here. She opened the rear hatchback door, allowing Shep to heft his bags into it.
“Thanks,” he said, catching her gaze as she stood to one side.
“What?” she drawled. “You think I’m not going to be my old self around you? Did you think I’d make you open the hatchback on your own?”
He grinned wearily, watching that shield of hers thin, amusement darting in her green eyes for a split second. Relief swept through him. He didn’t want her ice-queen game face on all the time. “I was hoping you’d be your old self when we were alone,” he admitted, grateful, settling the second duffle bag into the cargo area. He pulled the hatchback down, latching it in place. A bare three feet separated them but to Shep, it might as well have been the Grand Canyon yawning between Willow and himself.
With a snort, she muttered, “I didn’t change that much over time, Porter.”
His heart swelled with so many unexpected emotions. “That’s good to hear, Willow,” and he deliberately walked around her and opened the driver’s side door for her. For a second, she stood, her lips parting, eyes widening. He’d always insisted on being a gentleman. Yes, even in this day and age? He opened doors for women. Standing there, he struggled not to grin fully. “Well? Are you driving? Or maybe, I’ll drive, and you can tell me where we’re going? I have an international driver’s license.”
That challenge startled Willow. “Like hell!” she growled so only he could hear it, scowling and striding up to the door.
Shep stepped back, giving her space. Willow wasn’t a person to be crowded. Ever. That red hair was a warning about her temper, too. He saw a mix of amusement, shock and merriment in her expression. She was allowing him to see her. Maybe not all of her, but more than he’d ever expected at this first meeting. His heart soared with hope.
Once they were both in the SUV, she started it up and drove quickly out of the parking lot, heading through the palm-lined streets and weaving in and out of the early morning traffic with a confidence born from familiarity. She had the windows all down.
“It’s too cold for air conditioning, but the humidity will get you,” she explained.
“That’s fine.” He obliquely studied her out of the corner of his eye. Willow had classic model features in his opinion. Her nose was long and cleanly shaped. Her broad, high cheekbones were the foothills sloping up to her large, damned-intelligent eyes that missed nothing. Her long crimson lashes were the perfect frame for her nearly unearthly green eyes. As his gaze dropped to her lips, he couldn’t stop from feeling his body stirring whether he wanted it to or not. It had a mind of its own, as Willow had often accused him. That was true. That was the only safe port in their marriage that had gone right all the time, every time: sharing sex. They’d never taken their anger or any other luggage to bed with them. Well, “bed” in the figurative sense. He used to have been tied to the idea that the literal bed was where people had sex. But with Willow, any place, so long as it was private, was an opportunity. He almost smiled in memory of that. She was an opportunist of the finest kind, opening him up to other creative possibilities. When she’d first met him, she’d accused him of being ultra-conservative because he was an engineer. Shep had had no defense on that one, because it was true. Most engineers were exactly that: conservative, careful, looked before they leaped, and lived in their heads, ignoring their emotional apparatus, unlike women like her.
“How are you?” he asked, tipping his head in her general direction. Instantly, Shep saw her soft mouth thin. Her hands tightened around the steering wheel as she contemplated his quietly asked question.
“I’m okay. How about you?”
He wasn’t put off by the sudden tension in her voice or by feeling those shields of hers come back up into place. “I’m okay.”
She gave him a look, shaking her head. “You’re lying, Porter.”
“So are you, Chamberlin.”
A sour grin edged one corner of his wide mouth. She sped through a yellow light, going way faster than she should. Taking her foot off the accelerator for a moment, she added, “Just like old times.”
The hurt rolled through him. “Yeah, old times.” Bad times. Painful, agonizing times he never wanted to ever revisit. Now, he knew what his mother had gone through when his father had that affair and had come home one afternoon and told her he wanted a divorce. His mother had crumpled in shock and agony. Shep realized that he had repeated what he thought was probably a similar pattern to the daily, ongoing pain of his parents’ fractured relationship, and that ripped him up inside.
His mother had lost her job as an illustrator for a major publishing house. The sudden absence of her husband had emotionally destroyed her. He’d never been any kind of warm, loving dad to Shep who went on to punch his fair share of walls, raging at what the bastard had done to his innocent mother. She had died shortly after he turned eighteen, right when he was getting ready to go off to college. He’d buried his father six months later. It had been a raw time in his life. These were things he’d never talked to Willow about. In fact, after sex, her favorite time, they talked only about her, her family, her risky adventures as a young girl, but he never spoke about his parents and the first eighteen years of his life. And often, Willow would become pissed because he always shut that particular door in her face, refusing to talk about it. The single biggest reason for why she walked out on him was because he refused to communicate on that kind of personal and emotional level with her.
You’re like a robot, Shep, she had heatedly accused him. All head, no heart. If I’d wanted to marry something with no heart, no feelings and emotions, I would have hooked up with a damned doorknob! You’re flesh and blood. What the hell happened to you to make you so fucking closed up and unavailable even to ME?
He’d heard the argument often from her, feeling backed into a corner where there was no escape from the red-haired harridan who was on a mission to split him wide open so he’d spill his dark, twisted, wounded emotional guts to her. That’s all she’d wanted; to share their lives, their ups and downs, and to be able to hold onto and cry with one another in the bad times, and laugh in the good ones. But he’d frozen up, and Shep had known it’d been driving her away from him. He’d been too fearful of opening up for so many reasons. Not to mention his greatest fear, the one that came true: that Willow would walk out on him. Just like his father had walked out on his mother, Bess. But she hadn’t done it because of some affair like his father had. She’d done it because she felt married to a heartless robot.
Shep wasn’t an idiot. He knew why this brief interaction with Willow had brought all those submerged memories and feelings bubbling up to the surface. He made a fierce internal effort to choke it all back down, and looked out of the car’s window at the unravelling view for cover;
The city of Bahir Dur was busy and he saw some donkeys pulling carts, men hurrying along toward work, the day just beginning in this Ethiopian city by the largest lake in the country. He could smell the lake, the odor of rotting fish and the dank humidity rolling in across the smooth water. There was pain rolling off Willow as well, and he could feel it as sharply as a knife scoring his heart. He had loved… still loved… this woman. And, at all costs, he didn’t want to purposely hurt her again. God knew, he’d already screwed that up royally in the past. “I’m going to try to be better at communication with you this time around,” he told her, glancing over at her, watching for her reaction.
For a moment, Willow gave a slow blink, tilted her head in his direction and met his eyes briefly, then returned to driving the bustling morning streets of the city. She licked her lower lip. Her hands tightened around the wheel for an instant but then she forced herself to relax.
“It’s taken you three years to finally admit that?”
Shep winced inwardly, hearing the raw emotion in her low voice, the hurt, the hours of arguments, the tension and her crying. He couldn’t stand to see her cry because it meant he’d hurt her and dammit, he loved her. Staring at her profile brought a violent need for her, entwined with the love he still held for her. He had no idea how much he’d buried for three years until right now. It felt like he was on an out-of-control roller coaster. One moment a flash of a happy memory would hit him and then, in the next breath, the dark agony of splitting up, the divorce and loss of Willow. When she left, his life became a gray, ongoing, unrelieved daily mission just to survive.
It mirrored his past. His life as a teen had continued to spiral out of control. There had been a court battle shortly after the divorce, and Shep had been given over into the custody of his mother. All he could do was visit his father now and then, but later, he left California with his new family, moving back East. He and his mother were too poor to fly him back and forth, and so Shep deeply lost touch with his father as a result, except for occasional emails. And not only did he lose his mother just before leaving for college, but he also lost his father from a sudden heart attack shortly after that. A heavy weight settled in his chest. As he glanced over at Willow, every cell in his being screamed that he had not wanted this to happen to them as it had to his parents. They’d spent three years apart. Now, Fate had thrown them together again.
Shep wasn’t one to believe in miracles. Or even Fate. That came from his fanciful, imaginative and creative mother. She very much believed in synchronicity. It had always left a bad taste in Shep’s mouth for many reasons. Despite his heart warring with his strong mentality and keen intelligence, he couldn’t separate out his feelings from his brain, right now. Then, after marrying Willow, she had accused him on many occasions of being “all head and no heart.” She was sitting next to him. He could smell her skin, the scent of her red hair, her favorite shampoo, the familiar plumeria fragrance. He was so close to her. And yet, so far away. Desperate, his mind moved into overdrive on how to apologize to Willow. If he did nothing else while he was with her for this construction assignment, he would give her the apology long overdue. A huge one. He was the one who’d put himself in Hell. Worse, he’d wounded this beautiful, willful, life-loving woman to the quick. If nothing else, he silently promised her , I will tell you how sorry I am for chasing you away from me.