Point of Departure Read online

  He looked around her kitchen. “This is strictly off the record. We’ve got a lot of work to do and it will probably take three or four hours to plow through it all.” Glancing at his watch, he said, “It’s almost dinnertime. How about I take you out to eat? That way, you don’t have to hobble around here fixing food for yourself.”

  Callie suddenly found herself hungry in another way: she wanted the opportunity to get to know Ty Ballard on a personal level. “Do you think if the board gets a hold of the fact that we went to dinner together, it could work against me?”

  He shrugged. “Good question. I don’t know, Callie. We can always say it was business, not pleasure. Besides, the place I have in mind, a small seaside restaurant down in La Jolla, is off the beaten path of most of these guys.”

  Her smile broadened. “How did you know I love seafood?”

  Ty glanced down at her feet beneath the table. “Any woman who likes to be barefoot has to like sandy beaches.”

  “You’ve got a lot more insight than I gave you credit for, Commander Ballard.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, Lieutenant Donovan. Well? May I take you to dinner? Afterward, we’ll come back to your place and work on the hearing.” Never had Ty so much wanted a woman to say yes to his invitation. He saw the joy in Callie’s blue eyes and heard the joy in her voice. But he also saw wariness, and some worry. If only he could find out who had made her react this way. If only…

  “Frankly, I’d like the chance to get out of the house for a while. I’m going a little stir-crazy right now.”

  “A change of scene is what you need,” Ty agreed. With me. He hoped his elation hadn’t transferred to his face, being all too aware that Callie was particularly sensitive to body language.

  “This restaurant, is it a fancy one?”

  “No. All you need to do is put on a pair of sandals or shoes and you’ll be allowed in the door,” he teased. Her smile was heart-stopping, and Ty gratefully absorbed her momentary happiness. As Callie got to her feet and hobbled out of the kitchen on her crutches, Ty felt life moving through him so strongly that he closed his eyes and savored the intense sensation.

  A year of hell had numbed his senses and pulverized his emotions into a nonfeeling state. But whatever it was about Callie, regardless of the pressures on her right now, she affected him deeply. Forever. His unraveling feelings felt like a dam had burst within him, allowing joy to flow through him. Ty took a long, ragged breath. He hadn’t believed that Callie would go out with him on a personal invitation. A major miracle had to be at work, he realized, for such a thing to happen.

  “What a hell of a bind this is,” he muttered as he got to his feet and retrieved his garrison cap. If the situation involving Remington hadn’t happened, Ty would never have met Callie. And now he had to defend her at the board hearing. If they lost, it might destroy the relationship he had in mind for them. Callie could, at any point, again perceive him as part of the problem because he was a naval flight officer. That could kill any hope of a relationship, too.

  With a shake of his head, he settled the cap on his head and moved to the foyer to wait for Callie. Each moment spent with her had to count. And like a man without water, he found himself thirsting for Callie. More than anything, Ty wanted the dinner to be a positive experience for Callie—and for them.

  “I feel like that stuffed lobster I just ate,” Callie groaned, patting her stomach. Ty sat across from her in the oak booth appointed with red leather. The restaurant, a laid-back place that was spare and simple, served gourmet-quality food. To be truthful with herself, Callie had to admit that although the food was excellent, Ty’s company was the real dessert for her. She’d watched his naval and military image fade to the background during dinner, and the man emerge.

  Ty gave her a good-natured look and handed the two large, oval plates to the waitress, who took them away. He wiped his hands on his napkin. “Stuffed is a mild word to describe how much I ate.”

  “Piggy?”

  He chuckled indulgently. “Possibly.”

  “I ate like one.”

  Ty held her smiling gaze. “You probably haven’t eaten much since all this happened, so you were catching up tonight.”

  Again, his insight was startling. Since the harassment, Callie had, in fact, eaten very little. She’d had no appetite at all.

  The waitress cleared the rest of the table, then brought them each a piece of cheesecake topped with strawberries and a cup of fragrant Colombian coffee.

  “When I was a kid growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, I lived out near Luke Air Force Base,” Ty told her. “I used to stand next to those huge cyclone fences, hands gripping the wire, watching those birds take off and land. I couldn’t get enough of it. All I dreamed of was flying someday.”

  “Sounds like you started early,” Callie commented between bites.

  “I guess I did. How about you? Did you dream of a military career?”

  With a laugh, Callie said, “Not hardly.”

  “What did you dream of?”

  “Being an artist. Painting.” She shrugged. “In a way, I do that now.”

  “Oh?” Ty was thrilled that she would share some personal information with him.

  With a shy smile, Callie said, “On my days off, I take my camera and equipment and go to the seashore to photograph things. I also teach a class on photography at the local college.”

  “What kind of things?” Ty held his breath, wanting so much for Callie to continue to reveal her real self.

  “Oh, you know, tidal pools, pretty clouds that make interesting shapes in the sky, sunsets, the ice-plant flowers you find along the cliffs.”

  “Black-and-white or color photographs?”

  “Both.” She smiled softly. “I’ve always dreamed of someday selling a book to a publisher just on seashore topics.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ansel Adams I’m not,” she parried wryly, warming beneath his intense interest.

  “You could become Callie Donovan, photographer.”

  “There’s not a lot of money to be made in an artistic kind of career.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” he hedged, “but you could apply yourself, hang in there and eventually create an opening for your work.”

  “It’s not really that good….”

  “Do you have some of your work at home?”

  Startled, Callie looked across the table at him. The shadows of the restaurant accented his rugged features, but all she saw in his gray eyes was genuine sincerity and a smoldering warmth that made her feel a little breathless. “Well…sure.”

  Ty glanced at his watch. “It’s time we got back, anyway. I’d like to stay here another couple of hours, but that isn’t to be. Ready?”

  Callie placed a large photo album before Ty. He was sitting at the kitchen table and had refused to start working until she showed him her photos. Nervously, she stood at his shoulder as he opened the album.

  “I don’t show these to anyone,” she murmured, clasping her hands in front of her. “To me, photos are very personal. They tell a great deal about a person, their feelings….”

  Ty absorbed the first photo—a color print of a golden sunset with silver lining the puffy cumulus clouds that rose like small turrets above a glassy ocean. The sun’s rays shot through the towers of clouds like magical, translucent spokes on a wheel. The effect of the photo was profound and moving. Ty took a deep breath, then glanced up at her.

  “This is an outstanding photo. Why should you be nervous about showing this kind of work? It’s pretty awesome, if you ask me.”

  With a slight laugh, Callie shrugged, relieved that at least he didn’t think it was awful. “You know how artist types are—they think everything they do is gorgeous. I try to keep a discerning eye on my work. I might take thirty or forty photos, and maybe only one will be worth keeping or working with.”

  Ty nodded and turned the page. The next photo was of a little girl, perhaps four years old, in bright red coveral
ls and a tiny white T-shirt. The child’s hair, thin and blond, glinted with sunlight, creating a halolike effect around her head. She was crouched over a tidal pool, a small brown-and-white shell in her hand. Callie had captured the awe in the child’s face to perfection. The pool itself was clear, so that a bright red starfish and a purple sea anemone could be seen, like undersea flowers.

  “This is incredible,” he breathed. “That kid’s expression is priceless.” Twisting to look up at Callie, he murmured, “You must have spent a long time waiting for just the right moment to snap that.”

  “Actually, I shot two rolls of film to catch it,” she admitted.

  “Yes, but you had the patience to wait and watch.”

  “That’s the story of a photographer’s life—catching the right moment,” she said with a laugh. Thrilled that Ty appreciated her work, Callie began to relax. She pulled a chair up beside him. The next photo was of a woman riding a horse bareback through the ocean surf. “Wow,” Ty said, “will you look at this….” He grew quiet, absorbing the photo. The young woman was in her late teens, her hair black as a raven’s wing, tinted with bluish highlights as it streamed across her shoulders. The horse she rode at a gallop was also black. The rider wore a green blouse and faded blue Levi’s, her feet bare. A look of sheer joy radiated from the woman’s face as she leaned forward, the horse’s long black mane flowing around her arms and hands. The horse looked equally joyful, with thin, transparent veils of water on either side of him rising in sheets as he galloped full-speed through the shallow ocean surf.

  So much in the photo spoke to Ty about Callie. The blue and green of the woman’s clothing combined the colors of sky and ocean, making horse and rider a part of the landscape and vice versa. The utter freedom, the abandonment of the moment came across vividly in the photo. He lay his hand across the plastic protecting the print.

  “Have you ever ridden a horse?”

  “No. I’d like to, but they’re pretty big and I’m pretty small. I’m intimidated by size,” she murmured, seeing the admiration in Ty’s face.

  He nodded. Every photo, twelve in all, had a reoccurring theme: freedom and a wild, joyful intensity that affected him deeply. Some were of flowers, others, the ever-changing sky, and others still of women or children. Wanting to see more, he begged Callie to show him the photos she didn’t really think were as good.

  For the next hour, Ty poured over the huge box of neatly dated and captioned photos. Callie’s talent was overwhelming. The obvious sensitivity and care that she put into each shot amazed him. Finally, he set the box aside and just shook his head.

  “You’re wasting your talent as an Intelligence officer,” he muttered. “Those photos are incredible.”

  She smiled softly. “What did they do for you, Ty?”

  “They made me feel. They made me remember back to when I was a kid, or a time when I felt like that woman on the horse—that sense of absolute freedom. You’re really something, lady, and I mean that sincerely. I think you ought to send your stuff to magazines, to book publishers. You’ve got the background—nine years in the navy developing and poring over photos. I mean, what more could a publisher ask?”

  His enthusiasm made Callie feel drunk with unexpected happiness. The burning light in his gaze drew her, and she wondered blankly what it would be like to kiss that strong, smiling mouth, to be enveloped in his intensity, the passion he so obviously felt for life.

  Her mouth suddenly dry, she got to her feet and nervously took the box and set it on the counter. “Maybe someday I’ll do those things,” she said. “I just don’t feel I’m good enough yet. I see the flaws in my photos.”

  Frowning, Ty watched her come back to the table and sit down. The real Callie Donovan was an earthy, breathtaking creature with a sense of whimsy—and a shyness he couldn’t understand. Forcing himself back to the business at hand, he growled, “For my money, you’re already a professional photographer. All you lack is enough belief in yourself to do it.”

  “That’s the confident jet jock talking,” Callie retorted with a laugh. “But thanks for looking at them. It’s nice to be appreciated for something other than being able to look at microscopic details on a satellite photo.”

  Ty wanted to appreciate Callie in a lot of ways. Without thinking, he reached across the table and captured her tightly clasped hands. “You remind me of a butterfly that’s trapped in a chrysalis, Callie. I see the freedom in your photos. And I wonder how much freedom has been taken away from you.”

  Shaken, Callie looked down at the table, feeling the heat from Ty’s hand enveloping her own cool ones. “My freedom was taken away from me a long time ago,” she choked out.

  Chapter Eight

  Ty slowly removed his hand from Callie’s, all the while holding her unsteady gaze. She was nervous. Terribly nervous. And the pain in her tone made him wince inwardly. Taking a breath, he decided to broach the topic. Callie trusted him, he hoped, enough to level with him. The fact that she’d entrusted her beautiful photos, expressions of her most intimate self with him was the sign he’d needed.

  “Look,” he began heavily, “I get the feeling there’s something tragic in your background, Callie.” He pointed to the reports. “If it has any bearing on this hearing, we need to discuss it.”

  Callie sat very still, her heart plummeting with fear—and shame. Under no circumstances could Ty learn of the humiliation that had been done to her at Annapolis. “No,” she whispered, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Remaining very calm and trying not to overreact to her decision, he said, “If it has anything to do with what’s happened, Callie, I should know about it. Don’t you think?”

  The pain tearing through Callie’s gut almost made her bend over. She wrapped her arms protectively around her stomach and refused to look at Ty. The tenor of his voice was kind and searching, and she knew that he was trying to be sensitive to her needs.

  “I…no, I just can’t, Ty. Please, don’t press this issue.” She glanced apprehensively up at him, to see his face set and grim. “Let’s just stick to this incident. It’s enough.” Her voice cracked with sudden emotion. “It’s more than enough for me to handle.”

  Searching her shadowed blue eyes, Ty sensed her pain as if it were tangible. Mentally, he went back to Callie’s precious photos, the statement of her as a human being, and as a woman. The photos were about nature, about children and mothers. He hadn’t seen a photo of a male, adult or child. Looking deeply into her eyes, he tried to ferret out why. There was such fear in her face that he didn’t know what to do or say.

  Rubbing his jaw, rough with beard this late in the evening, he muttered, “You know that the defense will bring up your Annapolis record. Nothing is sacred in this hearing, Callie. If there’s anything in your background that they can use against you, they’ll do it.”

  “I have no doubt,” she retorted, obviously rattled. “But you see, my record is spotless. I was a 4.0 for four years. I graduated fourth out of my entire class. They won’t find anything to hang me with if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Ty cocked his head, hearing the tightly held anger laced with a brittleness that made him sense she was very close to breaking into tears. “Okay,” he whispered and held up his hand in a sign of peace. “I’ll back off.” For now.

  Relief, sharp and dizzying, cut through Callie. Rubbing her brow, she forced back the tears that clogged her throat. Shame moved through her, and she found herself trapped in the past. The photos had stirred memories, too. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop the tears from forming behind her closed lids.

  “Excuse me,” she said abruptly, getting up and leaving the kitchen as quickly as possible. Reaching the refuge of her bedroom, Callie shut the door. Hating the crutches, she threw them on the carpeted floor and hobbled under her own power to her bed. There she sat down and grabbed a tissue from the box on the bedstand. Tears began leaking, unchecked, from her tightly shut eyes.

  As much as Callie want
ed Ty to be holding her, she couldn’t ask that of him. Although he was slowly mending her trust, in a larger perspective he still represented what had happened, and she couldn’t shake that knowledge—at least, not yet. Sitting on the bed, quietly sobbing, Callie realized just how lonely she really was. Ty provided such a powerful sense of intimacy and nurturance for her starved, beaten emotions.

  Callie sat for a good half hour after crying, thinking long and hard about Ty Ballard. He had a past, too, she realized. In fact, his reputation preceded him, and she’d nearly damned him for that. But despite his less-than-glorious reputation, he’d turned out to be a decent human being. Confused, Callie shook her head. Her whole life seemed to be changing with such frightening speed that she didn’t know how to act or respond.

  When she finally returned to the kitchen—without her crutches, because she refused to continue to feel so crippled—Ty had made coffee, poured himself a cup, and was at work. At first, immersed in the report, he didn’t notice her, and Callie had a rare precious moment to observe him, to appreciate him and his efforts. Then, although she’d made no sound or movement, it was as if he suddenly, on some subconscious level, sensed her presence.

  Ty jerked his head up and his eyes widened at the sight of Callie standing brokenly before him. Her shoulders were slumped, her hands hung at her sides and her eyes were rimmed in red. Putting his pencil aside, he scraped back his chair and rose. He wasn’t thinking, only feeling, as he rounded the table and headed for her. Her grief-filled eyes beckoned him, and throwing caution aside, he reached out as he approached Callie.

  Taking her hands in his, he halted inches from where she stood with such uncertainty. She took in a ragged gasp of air at his touch, but she didn’t jump away from him. In fact, she didn’t try to pull out of his grip at all. She tried to smile but failed terribly, her mouth pursed, still holding back some unknown anguish.

  “I’m sorry,” he rasped thickly. “I didn’t know you were crying or I’d—” He halted. He’d have done what? Gone to her? Held her? Ty swallowed hard and shrugged. The very fact that Callie had run from him, not asking for his help, told him the bitter truth: she still didn’t trust him when the cards were on the table. But somehow the rejection didn’t matter, and Ty followed his instincts.