Hold Me: Delos Series, 5B1 Read online

  She watched Beau nod, smile, and stride over to him. The two men shook hands and she could tell by their body language that there was genuine affection between them. Grandpa Graham had been an unsung hero in the Persian Gulf War. No one would ever know how many men’s lives he’d saved that fateful day in Iraq. He and Beau had just naturally gravitated to one another and Callie knew her grandpa treated Beau like the son he’d never had. Beau was special in that way. His easygoing West Virginia charm, his earnestness, and sincere warmth, had made her entire family fall in love with him.

  Tears burned in her eyes but Callie swore she wouldn’t cry. It would tear Beau apart, and she wanted him to leave thinking she’d be fine. She would cry tonight, alone, without him at her side in their small cabin behind the main ranch house.

  The two men hugged one another, slapping each other on the back, and then separated. Callie pasted on a smile, swearing silently to make this parting good for Beau. She didn’t want him anxious about her in any way because it could distract him when on a mission and get him killed.

  Walking toward him, she smiled up into his eyes, opening her arms. Beau halted and swept her into his arms, his mouth crushing hers. She moaned as he took her lips hungrily and then grew tender, worshipping her, sharing his love for her in another way. Unable to get enough of him, of his strong mouth cherishing hers, she wanted to scream, to cry, to beg him not to get on that plane.

  Beau regretfully eased from her soft lips, holding her gaze. “When I get to Bagram I’ll email you first thing so you know I arrived safe and sound.”

  Giving a jerky nod, she said, “Yes, thanks. Just be careful Beau.”

  He released her and picked up his carry-on bag. “I’m going to marry the girl of my dreams.” He leaned over, giving her one last hard, swift kiss on the mouth. “I’ll come home to you, sweetheart. That’s a promise …”

  And he was gone.

  Just like that.

  Callie stood there, watching him disappear down the corridor, heading to the plane. Wrapping her arms around herself, she felt devastated by Beau’s immediate absence, even though she could still see him. She knew that he felt the same way, though he didn’t show it the way she did.

  “Hey,” Grandpa Graham whispered, walking up to her, sliding his arm around her hunched shoulders, drawing her against him. “He’s going to be all right, baby girl.”

  Just her grandpa’s roughened, low words, soothed some of her terror. “I’m sick with worry,” she sobbed, placing her fingers against her lips, looking up into his somber blue gaze. He was a big man at six-feet, five-inches tall, and his once black hair was threaded with silver, still cut military short.

  He eased his rough, calloused hand across her mussed red hair. “I know you are. But that’s because you love him so much.” He patted her arm. “You were brave for him just now, baby girl. I’m proud of you.”

  Hot tears welled in her eyes and now she sobbed, pressing her hand against her mouth to try and stifle the sounds.

  “Let it go, now. You don’t have to be brave for Beau anymore,” Graham told her roughly, pulling her into his arms and holding her. “Just let it go …”

  *

  Beau was bleary-eyed as he arrived at the Delta Force barracks at Bagram. There were only thirty operators on the team and many of them were home on leave because of the holidays. His room was a sharp contrast to the cozy ranch house he’d left behind. It was plywood with thin walls and he could hear his brother operators snoring in the early morning hours. Throwing his duffle bag on his bunk, he looked at his watch, seeing it was 0400. He’d already checked in with the duty officer, gotten all the paperwork out of the way, and trudged back to his new digs.

  The flights were hideous this time of year, filled with uncomfortable passengers packed into too-small seats. He’d slept as much as he could during that time. He breathed in Callie’s scent on his Levi’s jacket as he shrugged out of it. For a moment, he held it up to his face, inhaling her sweet scent. He’d already sent her an email from the main HQ to let her know he arrived safely. That would give her some peace, at least.

  It was snowing right now, not hard, but just enough to make driving around Bagram miserable. Ice on the asphalt had turned it into a skating rink. At this time of year, Beau knew Bagram was pretty much shut down for the holidays, since most people knew the Taliban were back in Pakistan for the winter. He got undressed, found his towel, washcloth, and soap, and padded down the hall to the showers. Everyone else was still fast asleep.

  His mind was disoriented from jetlag, coupled with fatigue, but his heart already ached for Callie’s presence. He worried about her because she was still entrenched in the PTSD from what she’d experienced last November. Beau had known she was traumatized from her capture by the Taliban. His captain let him take leave after the attack, close to Christmas, so that he could be with her at that time. Because he’d sustained a gunshot wound to his calf during her rescue, he’d received permission. They had needed each other so much, and their time together had strengthened them both.

  As he opened the door to the white tiled area, he placed his towel on a wooden bench outside the five showers. Turning on the faucet, he felt the warm spray of water begin to dissolve some of his jetlag. He lifted his face, allowing the water to drench his black hair. He’d had it cut and trimmed, his beard gone, for going home to Butte to visit Callie. Now it would all grow back. The operators wore beards in order to fit into the male Muslim culture. He wiped his face, the warm water feeling good, washing away the human grit collected during the long, boring flight.

  He knew Graham McKinley would take good care of Callie in his absence. The retired Marine sniper would be a fierce guardian for his granddaughter. The men had talked in private about Callie’s emotional instability and PTSD. Beau agreed with Graham that she would do much better being outside, riding, working in the barn, and just focusing on keeping busy. He knew that Callie didn’t do well in an office setting.

  Graham promised him he’d keep Callie outdoors on good days when a blizzard wasn’t visiting the area. He loved both his granddaughters, Dara and Callie, but Beau could see that headstrong, wild child Callie, was his personal favorite. Graham would never admit that, but Beau sensed it and his intuition was never wrong about such things. He’d managed to stay alive, thanks to his hunches.

  His mind turned to his own parents, Cletus and Amber. They, too, worried about him returning to Afghanistan. Beau knew that there wasn’t a time that they weren’t worried about their three sons. Coy and Jackson were younger, and they were Marine Recons, black ops. Both were in harm’s way all the time, just as he was as a Delta Force operator.

  His parents, he knew, tried not to let their worry about their sons overwhelm them. But Beau always tried to put himself in their shoes having three sons in danger all the time. He was seeing it play out personally with Callie, trying her best to put on a brave face so he wouldn’t worry about her while he was here in Afghanistan. He knew that there was very little he could do to help her from here, and hoped Graham would take her under his wing and get her through this lonely period.

  He scrubbed his hair clean with Afghan lye soap, the only soap he’d use. The Taliban had good noses, and if the wind was right, they would smell the scent and think nothing of it. But if he stupidly brought some U.S. brand of soap and used it on his body, it could be his death knell. The Taliban would smell it and know in a heartbeat that he was the enemy.

  His mind moved forward to June, when his enlistment was up and he’d be leaving the Army for good. Never had he envisioned that happening until he’d seen Callie belly dance. At that moment, his whole world had been upended in the most wonderful way. Yes, he’d chased her and proven to her that he wanted a real relationship, not just a roll in the sack, as she’d automatically thought. He couldn’t blame her for feeling that way because she was young, vibrant, and beautiful. She easily drew men’s attention precisely because of that. When he’d met her, she had been sick and tired o
f being stalked for sex without love or a commitment.

  He smiled through the suds on his face, knowing he had the patience and resolve for the long haul with Callie. She hadn’t believed he was sincerely smitten with her at first. He had been a security detail for the Hope Charity Orphanage and had been changing babies’ diapers and washing out the diaper buckets for the four Afghan widows who worked there. When she saw him working the diaper brigade, Callie recognized that he was indeed different from the sex-hungry males she had encountered before Beau. From that moment on, she slowly let down her walls and allowed him access to her beautiful, generous heart and body. He’d already fallen in love with her that first night she belly-danced for the Thanksgiving USO show. God, he missed his woman. And it was far more than just missing her sexually. She had captured his heart and soul, too. He wanted no one else in his life but Callie.

  Pushing his face beneath the spray of water, eyes closed, he allowed himself to feel his loneliness without Callie at his side. She was a bright sunbeam in everyone’s life. Or at least, she had been until that damned Taliban ambush. He and Callie had escaped with her sister, Dara and Matt Culver. The couples had split up in hopes of splitting their Taliban attackers, improving their chances of making it out of that ambush alive. Fortunately, they had all reunited in safety, but the whole nightmare had turned Callie’s life inside out.

  Turning off the faucet, Beau shook his head, water droplets flying around him. He grabbed the towel sitting on the bench near the entrance. As he padded barefoot out of the shower room, his worry centered on Callie’s PTSD. When he’d been with her it had diminished a bit, and he’d talked to Graham about it, who was no stranger to PTSD, either. Callie doted on her grandparents and Beau knew if anyone could steady her in his absence, it would be Graham. She was at a turning point with the symptoms and he hated to leave her in such a vulnerable state.

  Rubbing his face and hair dry, he walked to the wall of lockers and dried himself off. At this hour, no one was in the shower area and he was glad because he didn’t feel like reconnecting into the dangers of his job just yet.

  Before meeting and falling in love with Callie, the Army had been his mistress and he felt complete and satisfied with his lot in life. But once Callie came on stage in that purple belly dancing outfit, the silver coins beneath her breasts and around her hips tinkling and swaying, his moorings with the Army had been torn loose. Suddenly, Beau wanted more, much more. He dreamed of marriage, a partner, and becoming a parent.

  His mother, Amber, ever the wise woman, had shaken her calloused finger at him one day when he’d been living at home. He was helping her weed her garden and she told him that someday, he’d meet the woman he was going to marry. And when he did, she’d turn his world topsy-turvy. “Just like that,” she predicted, and she’d snapped her fingers, grinning at him from another row of onions she was weeding.

  “Ma, that’s never gonna happen,” he said, chuckling, squatting between two rows of stringed beans.

  Amber laughed. “You’re too young and you don’t know life yet, Beau,” she said, smiling over at him. “Your pa saw me when we were just kids, maybe six or seven-years-old, at the Thorn cabin. He says he fell in love with me then.”

  “How can a six-year-old know he’s in love?” Beau scoffed, shaking his head.

  “He knew,” Amber intoned. She always wore coveralls, the knees blackened with soil. Pushing her wide-brimmed straw hat up off her sweaty brow, she said pertly, “He knew and so did I.”

  “But did you ever talk about it?”

  “Never. We were too young to know what we were feeling, what was pulling us like North and South Pole magnets toward one another.”

  “You married him when you were eighteen,” Beau said.

  “Indeed I did. He was nineteen at the time. He’d already gone into his father’s furniture making business and was pulling in a right steady income for a hill boy that young. He brought the dowry to my folks and told them he wanted to marry me when I graduated from high school. They said yes.”

  “But didn’t my grandparents talk to you first?” Beau asked, alarmed, sitting up, resting his dirty hands on the thighs of his jeans.

  “Of course, but everyone on Black Mountain knew we’d eventually get hitched.”

  Smiling, Beau went down on all fours, hunting for those pesky weeds. He often helped his mother, as did his younger brothers, Coy and Jackson, with the five-acre garden. “Oh, that’s good. But I’m twenty-four, Ma. Not six. I’ve never met a woman yet that cold cocked me like Pa did you.”

  Throwing a bunch of weeds into her nearby, white five-gallon plastic bucket, Amber snickered. “You have the magnet gene, as Pa and I call it. When the right woman prances in front of you, you’ll go down like a felled ox, too, smarty pants.” She gave Beau a warm look, her mouth wide with a knowing smile.

  He snickered. “Okay, Ma, I believe you. But I just don’t think it’s gonna happen to me. Maybe to Coy or Jackson. But not to me.”

  “Just wait and see,” she said, waving her finger toward him. “I’m going to die laughing when it does because your head will be in the clouds and you’ll be completely flummoxed. Mark my words, young man.”

  As he dressed in a dark green Army t-shirt and trousers, Beau smiled as he recalled that moment with his mother. Her words had come true. In spades. He closed the locker and took his damp towel to a canvas container and dropped it inside. When he checked his watch, he saw that nearly an hour had passed. He calculated that he was ten hours and thirty minutes ahead of Butte, Montana. And it was still Sunday there, right around family dinnertime at five-thirty Mountain Standard Time. They’d all be sitting down for a feast at the long trestle table in the warm, ranch house kitchen.

  Beau had loved Sundays with the McKinley clan. His own family was like that, too. Everyone always looked forward to a late afternoon dinner on Sundays.

  Only this time, he wasn’t seated next to Callie. Graham and his wife, Maisy, would be at either end of the table, with Callie’s parents, Connor and Stacy, sitting across from her and Beau. Rubbing his chest, he walked out of the shower area, making sure the door didn’t slam shut. Thanks to the plywood rooms, he could hear everything, since there were no real walls or insulation to stop noise. Padding silently down the corridor, he pushed open the door to his tiny, cramped room. It was about as wide as a boxcar and one-third the length. Beau didn’t mind. He and his brothers had slept in a small bedroom in their cabin, all squished together in one little room. For him, small, tight spaces were associated with comfort, warmth, and good memories of growing up.

  He desperately needed to sleep. His bunk was high and narrow, with six green wool blankets placed across it. The place was barely above freezing, since the walls weren’t insulated and most of the warm air leaked out here and there. The quarters been thrown together by early Delta operators, not wanting to wait for the Navy Seabees to get to them. They already had a long, busy schedule for building accommodations for the various military groups in the area.

  Lying down and drawing the thick, heavy blankets over himself, Beau settled back on the goose-down pillow he’d brought from home, and decided that tomorrow he’d Skype Callie to see how she was doing. There was usually at least a twenty-minute wait between Skype calls to family by the operators. But with so many of them gone back to the States for the holidays, Beau knew he wouldn’t have to sign up on a list and wait hours for his turn.

  He had grown so used to sleeping with Callie and he acutely missed her soft, curved warmth against his body. He also missed her slender, graceful arms and those beautiful, artistic fingers of hers curving around his naked waist. He always looked forward to sleeping with her close to him, her curly red hair tickling his jaw, her cheek against his warm, hard shoulder. After thirty days together, he realized how much he’d lost by not being in love until he was twenty-seven. When he told his mother that he’d fallen in love with Callie, she’d laughed knowingly. And Beau was enough of a gentleman to admit to her that
she’d been dead right: Callie McKinley owned him body, heart, and soul.

  CHAPTER 2

  January 5

  Callie about jumped out of her skin when her computer beeped and a Skype message popped up on the screen. Her heart pounded as she hurried to sit down in the small office off the main hallway. It was a little past ten on Monday morning. Was it Beau?

  Her hand trembled as she took the mouse and moved it to open up Skype on her screen. Beau’s stubbled face appeared and she could see that he was exhausted. She calculated it was around eleven p.m. Tuesday, local Bagram time. He was wearing an old, frayed Army baseball cap and a green t-shirt showing off his impressive chest and broad shoulders. His eyes were bloodshot and he was fatigued. Jetlag, for sure.

  “I was so hoping you’d Skype me,” she said breathlessly, smiling at him. Now, Callie wished she hadn’t put her long, red hair into two braids. She should have left it down because Beau loved running his fingers through its long, thick strands.

  “I got lucky,” he grinned. “The guy who had this time slot got food poisoning from one of the chow halls, so he offered me his turn. Boy, you’re a sight for sore eyes, sweetheart.”

  Her heart thudded fiercely with love for him. As jetlagged as Beau was, he knew how to lift her sagging spirits. Twining her fingers around one of her braids, she whispered, “I wish I looked prettier for you, maybe with my hair down …”

  “Shucks, Callie, you’re beautiful no matter what you do or don’t do with your hair. I didn’t fall in love with your hair. I fell in love with you.”

  She knew that all their Skype calls were taped and monitored by the CIA, so she tried to keep their conversation light. “Well, braids make me look like a kid,” she said, shrugging, and watched his gray eyes lighten with amusement.

  “On the other hand,” she teased, “you’re looking kinda like a hobo who just missed his train!” She motioned toward his beard.