"Thanks," Rush breathed hoarsely, when she’d finished the task. Lindy paused, biting her lip as she ran her hand over the dark-furred chest. The muscles of his abdomen felt hard and sleek, the curling hairs wispy against the tips of her fingers.

"I want you like hell," he groaned.

Lindy let her eyes fall and released a short, delicate chuckle. "I can tell." His free hand cupped her breast and her nipple blossomed and grew incredibly hard. "I want you, too."

He flicked his thumb over the rose tip of her breast and she moaned.

"I can tell," he repeated thickly.

They finished undressing each other with trembling hands. Lindy helped Rush with the parts he couldn’t manage, and he helped her the best he could. Soon they were lying on the mattress, their bodies on fire for each other.

When he moved on top of her, Lindy smiled up at him, craving the fiery release his body would give her. Still trembling, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to this experience. She allowed herself to be swallowed up in his tenderness, and when he entered her, her body answered in perfect counterpoint to his. Rush’s touch, his lovemaking, was a balm, a healing potion for all they had suffered. Tears wet her face and his lips found them. Intuitively he knew she needed assurances and he gave them to her with the ebb and flow of his body into her own. No matter what the future held, he seemed to be telling her, no matter what happened in the next six weeks, they would have this night to hold on to and to remember.

They made love again after dinner, and he held and kissed her long after midnight. While Rush soundly slept, Lindy climbed out of bed and cuddled up in the chair across from him.

She’d tried so hard to put the fear behind her, but she couldn’t. A hundred times in the past week, she’d hungered to tell him how she’d nearly gone crazy with worry, and she hadn’t said a word. She wanted to explain how every time she closed her eyes the same freakish nightmare haunted her sleep. But again and again she’d held her tongue, gliding over what was important for fear of shattering the peace of these past days together.

In a few hours Rush would return to his ship and she would go back to Seattle. She’d been wrong not to tell Rush what she was feeling, wrong to allow him to assume she could go on playing this charade. Steve was right. He had been all along – she wouldn’t make a good navy wife. It wasn’t in her to bid her husband farewell time after time and handle whatever crisis befell them with calm acceptance.

Twice now Lindy had found herself deeply in love, convinced she knew her own heart each time. Confident enough to wear the rings each man had given her. Both times she’d been wrong. She wasn’t the type of woman Rush needed. She wasn’t strong enough to endure months of loneliness and deal with the knowledge that she would always take second place in her husband’s life.

Hot tears scalded her eyes and when she could restrain them no longer, she let them flow freely down her face, no longer willing to hold them back.

Rush raised his head from the pillow, looking disoriented and groggy. He turned and stared at his sobbing wife.

"Lindy," he breathed her name into the night. "What’s wrong?"

"Do you love me, Rush?"

"Of course I do." He threw back the sheet and sat on the edge of the bed. "You know I do."

"If you love me… if you really love me, you’ll understand---" She paused.

Rush moved off the bed, knelt down in front of her and took her two hands in his one. "Understand what, honey?"

"I want you to get out of the navy."

He tossed his head back as if she’d slapped him. "Lindy, you don’t know what you’re asking."

"I do know. I know you love it. I know you’ve always loved being on the sea. But there are other jobs, other ways---I can’t bear this, Rush, not knowing from one day to the next if you’re going to be dead or alive. Let some other man put his life on the line. Someone without a wife. Anyone but you."

"Lindy – oh love." He pressed his forehead on her bent knee and seemed to be pulling his thoughts together. When he raised his head, his eyes were hard. "The navy is my life. It’s where I belong. I can’t walk away from a fifteen-year commitment because you’re afraid I’m going to be injured again."

Lindy felt as though her heart were crumbling, the emotional agony was so intense. She pulled her hands free of his grasp and stiffened. "Then you leave me no choice."

Chapter Fourteen

"I don’t leave you any choice? What do mean by that?" Rush demanded.

Lindy didn’t know. All she did know was that everything the other wives had warned her about was happening. Rush and she had such little time together and, not wanting to say or do anything to disrupt these precious few days, Lindy had skimmed the surface of their relationship, ignoring the deep waters of unhappiness and strife. They’d avoided any chance of conflict in their marriage until everything was ready to burst inside her.

"Well?" he repeated.

"I don’t know," she admitted reluctantly. "I want you to do something else with your life. Something outside of the navy that isn’t dangerous. You’ve got me to think about now…and children later. Maybe you think I’m being selfish, but I want you to be a husband and father before anything else. The navy is first with you now and I’ll always be a poor second. I hate it."

Rush rammed his fingers through his hair. "Honey, you can’t change a man from what he already is. You don’t have any idea what you’re asking me to do – it’d be impossible."

"You don’t seem to understand what you want of me," she countered sharply. "You claim you love me. You claim you want our marriage to work. But I’ll always play second fiddle in your life, and I can’t. I just can’t deal with that. If playing hero is so important to you, then fine."

Rush’s lips tightened and he stood and walked away from her.

"I love you, Rush." Her voice was taut, strangled. "All I’m asking is for you to love me as much as I do you."

"I do love you," he shouted.

"No." She shook her head with such force that her hair went swirling around her face. "You love the navy more."

"It’s been my life for fifteen years."

"I want to be your life now."

"God, Lindy, you want me to give up everything that’s ever been important to me." He threw back his head as a man in agony would, closed his eyes and then glared at the dark ceiling.

Lindy bounced her index finger against her chest. "I want to be the most important person in your life."

"You are!"

"No," she murmured sadly. "I’m not. Look at you. You nearly died on that stupid aircraft carrier and you can hardly wait to get back. I can feel the restlessness in you. It’s like you’ve got to prove something."

Rush whirled around to face her then, his eyes wide, his body taut. "You knew what I was when we got married. You were perfectly aware how I felt about the navy then. You were willing to accept it as my career. What happened to that unshakable confidence you had that we were doing the right thing to rush into marriage? Lord, I can’t believe this."

"I was confident I loved you. I’m sure of it now."

"The navy is part of me, Lindy. A big part of who and what I am. Don’t you see that?"

"No." Her voice cracked, and she sobbed once.

The sight of her tears seemed to tear at him and Rush knelt beside her and pulled her into one arm, holding her tightly, as though he felt her pain and was desperate to do anything he could to alleviate it. Lindy wept against his shoulder, her arms moving up and clinging to his neck. His mouth sought and found hers and he kissed her into submission while his hand worked its magic on her body, destroying her will to argue.

Before Lindy knew what was happening, Rush had her back in bed and his mouth was sucking on her breast; he was tormenting her nipples with his tongue, and she was being devoured by the licking flames of desire.

"No…no," she sobbed, and pushed him away. She jumped out of bed, her shoulders heaving with the effort it had cost her to leave his arms. "You aren’t going to use me this way!"

Rush rolled on his back and closed his eyes in angry frustration. "Use you! Now it’s a sin to make love to you, too?"

"It is when you use lovemaking to bury an issue."

"Can you blame me?" he shouted, his patience obviously on a short fuse. "I’m flying out of here shortly. I won’t see you until the middle of December – if then, from the way you’re talking. I’d prefer that we spend our last hours making love, not fighting. If that’s such a terrible crime, then I’m guilty."

The alarm rang, and the tinny sound echoed around the room, startling them both. Lindy glared accusingly at the clock radio. Already it was time for Rush to leave her, and she hadn’t said even half of what was in her heart.

Without a word her husband climbed out of bed and started dressing in his uniform. He had some difficulty, with his left arm in a cast, but he didn’t seek her help, and she didn’t offer.

Numb with pain and disbelief, Lindy watched him. Nothing she’d said had mattered to him. Not one word had seemed to reach him. He was so intent on getting back to the Mitchell that nothing, not her love, not her demands or her pleas, was important enough to delay him.

Once he finished buttoning his shirt, Rush picked up his things that littered the room, preparing to leave.

Lindy hated the way he ignored her so completely. For all the notice he gave her, she might as well have been an empty beer can. Savored for the moment of pleasure it brought, discarded once used.

She was kneeling in the middle of their bed, and the tears streaked her face. "It’s either the navy or me," she said, and her voice wobbled as she struggled not to beg him.

Rush paused at the door, his hand on the knob, but he didn’t turn around to look at her. "I love you, Lindy, but I can’t change what I am because of your fears. I could leave the navy, but it wouldn’t be the right decision for either of us. If you’re going to force me to decide, then I have to go with what I am."

Lindy felt as though he’d struck her. She closed her eyes and covered her face with both hands. The door of the hotel room opened, and desperate now, she scooted off the bed. "Rush."

He paused.

"When the Mitchell returns, I won’t be on that dock waiting for you!" She shouted the words at him, in a voice that was threatening as a shark’s jaw. "I mean it. I won’t be there."

His shoulders were stiff, his head held high and proud. "Then I won’t expect you," he said, and walked away from her without looking back.

Steve was waiting for Lindy when she stepped out of the jetway that led into the interior of Sea-Tac Airport. He brushed a quick kiss over her cheek and took the carry-on bag from her hand. When he lifted his head and looked at her, he paused and frowned.

"How was the flight?"