Point of Departure Read online

  “You,” Maggie said softly, “don’t have a choice. Let’s make the best of this—for all women.”

  Chapter Five

  Callie jumped inwardly when her doorbell rang an hour and a half later. It was Ty Ballard, she knew. When she’d called him shortly after Maggie left, he’d answered the phone with a growl, obviously still upset from their last brutal meeting.

  Emotionally girding herself, she answered the door and stepped aside. It was dark, the warm, dry California air filtering in and mixing with her apartment’s air-conditioning as the door swung wide. Ty Ballard stood before her, grim-faced, his briefcase in hand. But this time, instead of a uniform, he was wearing civilian clothes.

  Callie swallowed convulsively, drawn powerfully to his shadowed features, the late-day darkness of beard lending his face a dangerous look. Ty wore a dark red short-sleeve shirt and beige chinos. His white tennis shoes seemed inconsistent with his fighter-pilot and military-officer image.

  “Please,” Callie whispered, “come in.” The phone call between them had been terse and monosyllabic. She hadn’t wanted to discuss the agenda over the phone, wanting instead to judge Ty’s facial reactions as they talked.

  “The kitchen?” he demanded in a brusque voice.

  “Yes.”

  Ty moved through the foyer, heading directly to the kitchen. He still smarted under Callie’s distrust of him, but he was trying to get a handle on his anger. He knew it wasn’t her fault.

  Hearing her coming, he looked up from the briefcase he’d set on the table and opened. In the light, Callie looked more washed out, more defeated, than ever before. The edge on his anger melted.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Callie asked.

  “No, but I could use a drink at this point. Some whiskey, if you’ve got it.”

  Cringing beneath his blistering look, Callie knew she had to stand strong and be counted. She didn’t want to wilt the way she usually did under the withering fire her fellow officers sometimes aimed at her. Or she would use her favorite defense and run and hide. But this time she couldn’t do either. Maggie was right: she had to reach down into the wellspring of her soul and somewhere find some courage—and fast.

  “I don’t have hard liquor. Will wine do?”

  “Yes.” Ty snapped his briefcase shut and set it down on the tile floor with a little more force than he intended, the sound echoing through the kitchen. Callie had limped to the refrigerator and drew out an unopened bottle of wine.

  She took the wine to the counter and searched in a drawer for the corkscrew. Ballard’s unhappy presence was enough to make her hands shake as she popped the cork on the green bottle. She turned and saw him sitting at the table, looking like a bullterrier ready to bite her. Could she blame him? She’d accused him of many things, some of them unfairly.

  Moistening her lips, she placed the bottle on the table with two crystal goblets. “You pour,” she instructed as she sat down opposite him.

  Ty said nothing, but he tipped the bottle as she’d directed. The tension was electric. He didn’t know what to expect next. Callie, despite her paleness, had a resolve he’d never seen before. He felt it, too—a kind of invisible strength that enveloped her. Handing her a glass filled with the pinkish blush wine, he got up, retrieved the cork and put the wine back in the refrigerator for her.

  Running her fingers slowly up and down the slender stem of the goblet, Callie waited until Ballard had sat down again. He lifted his glass.

  “To us, whether either of us likes it or not.”

  She stared at him, the cynical words grating on her feelings. “Hell of a toast, isn’t it?” she asked candidly.

  “We’re in a hell of a situation,” he shot back.

  “You said ‘we.’”

  “Well? Isn’t that correct?”

  Callie held his cold, gray stare and matched it with one of her own. “I’m not apologizing for anything I said earlier.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “Men expect women to cower or back down in the face of confrontation.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Lieutenant Donovan—you’re not the normal ‘woman’ and I’m not the normal ‘man.’ Can we at least agree on that?”

  “There is nothing normal about our situation. That I will agree on, Commander Ballard.” Callie held her glass steady as she barely touched it to the lip of Ballard’s glass, never breaking eye contact. She’d had practice at this as a kid, she thought incongruously, when she and her sisters would try to stare one another down—to see who could go longest without blinking.

  “You’re one tough lady when it’s time to get in the trenches, do you know that?” Ty acknowledged, giving her a grudging score against him. He sipped the cold, sweet wine. This was a new and fascinating side to Callie Donovan—her strength was showing through. Surprised but pleased, he took a second gulp of the wine to soothe his frayed feelings.

  “How do you think I survived the academy, Commander?”

  “Touchñae.” Ty took a third and then a fourth sip of the wine. He set the glass aside and folded his hands in front of him. “Okay, are we on for this board thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve thought about getting a civilian attorney?”

  “Yes, and it isn’t feasible. He won’t know the UCMJ as thoroughly as you do.”

  Pleased at her analysis, Ty gave a bare nod of his head. “Okay, that passes the first hurdle. What about me?”

  “My sister filled me in on you.”

  His brows moved up a fraction. “Maggie?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That’s private, Commander. What you need to know is that I feel I can trust you—at least up to a certain point—with being my counsel.”

  “Where don’t you trust me?” Ty clamped down on his slow-burning anger. Callie had stirred up a lot of old, painful memories from his destroyed marriage.

  “Where?” Callie smiled grimly. “You’re a man. You’re a ring-knocker. The men who are going before that board are ring-knockers, too. The brotherhood sticks together against all comers, Commander. And I know I’m seen as a threat to you and them.”

  “Hold it,” Ty growled, raising his hand. “Don’t you think you’re a little arrogant to be lumping me with Remington and his kind?”

  “No, because before you were married, you may have been as bad as Remington.”

  Easing back in the chair, Ty held her challenging gaze. “You’re accusing me of not trying to give you a fair chance at that board, then.”

  “I guess I am. But I don’t have a choice, Commander Ballard. And I can’t really blame you. I think the peer pressure of the brotherhood, which is heavily weighted in numbers at this station, will be brought to bear on you if you do try your best to win my case.”

  Holding on to his building fury, Ty glared at her. “Where do you get off accusing me of that kind of stuff? You don’t know me. You know nothing about my morals or values.”

  “Commander, I know the academy. Remember? They mold you. They play with your head. They mess with you until you break and do things their way. Four years of brainwashing does wonders. I’ve been in the navy for nine years and I’ve repeatedly watched the brotherhood close ranks on me and other women officers whenever their position, their authority or potential rank, was threatened by one of us.” She tapped the table with her finger. “The glass ceiling is well in place in the navy. I’m just letting you know that I’m going into the hearing with my eyes wide open. I don’t expect anything from you, Commander.”

  Anger and hurt soared through him. Ty caught himself and realized that it was because he liked Callie Donovan so much that her assessment of him cut so deeply. Wrestling with that realization, and fighting to salvage some kind of relationship with her, Ty put a steel grip on his escalating fury. “You expect me to betray you?”

  “Yes,” she continued calmly. “Whether you mean to consciously or not, I believe the peer pressure will f
orce you to not do your best—to not investigate this matter to its fullest extent.”

  Ty’s eyes rounded. The charges seared him. He shoved the chair away from the table, the legs grating loudly against the white tile floor. “You are really paranoid, lady.”

  Callie watched him move to the counter, turn and face her fully, anger clearly etched in his eyes. “That’s right, Commander,” she answered, refusing to back down. “I know the system. I’ve been screwed by it again and again—only this time will be worse. Because I’m a woman, I’m a second-class citizen in the military—an outsider. Don’t worry, I’m cognizant of the psychological reason for why it’s this way in the navy, and I grudgingly accept them—whether I like it or not.” Callie took a deep breath and willed herself to keep her gaze focused on Ballard, although her heart was pounding. “Do you know why I accept it?”

  “I’d like to,” he conceded.

  “Because I love my job,” she answered simply. “I love what I do, and I believe in serving my country the best I can. If that means working with one hand tied behind my back, being cheated out of earned promotions by a male officer who has less on the ball than I do, then so be it.”

  Clenching his teeth, Ty realized her attack on him wasn’t personal. It was aimed at the entire male-dominated system. The anger sloughed away, and he stood there for a long moment assimilating her honest appraisal of the military. Finally, opening his hands, he offered, “Yeah, it’s rough on a woman.”

  “Life is rough on a woman, Commander, but I’m not going to get into that. I live in a microcosm called the navy. Well, my number is up and there’s no escaping it now, as much as I might want to. From what Maggie says, I don’t believe you’ll deliberately sabotage my case, but I do feel you’ll bow to the pressures that will without a doubt be brought to bear on you.”

  In spite of himself, Ty almost smiled. There was a toughness to Callie that he liked one hell of a lot. More women needed this kind of inner strength but didn’t have it—or perhaps they suppressed that possibility within themselves, he realized. His ex-wife certainly had it. And he’d screwed up by not recognizing or supporting that facet of Jackie. Instead of reveling in her natural strengths he’d been threatened by them, and had tried to break her. By the time he’d realized what he was doing, it was too late. In his need to dominate Jackie, their love had been destroyed. The lesson had been a harsh one. And Ty had sworn never to forget it.

  Studying Callie, her black hair neat and soft, her lips set, her eyes narrowed with fear and determination, Ty silently promised her that he wouldn’t fail her as he had Jackie.

  Working his mouth, trying hard to hold his emotions at bay, Ty muttered, “I know my reputation around here is a little jaded.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  His slight smile was bleak. “My ex-wife is a very strong woman, Callie,” he began, deliberately using her name to try to reestablish a more friendly, teamlike rapport. “In fact, she’s a lot like your sister Maggie. I made some serious mistakes. Instead of respecting Jackie’s strengths, I tried to control her and them, thinking that she shouldn’t be like me.”

  “You mean, that she shouldn’t be like a man in some ways?”

  “Yes, she was very assertive—a go-getter.”

  “Men praise a fighter pilot for being aggressive, but if a woman pilot has the same moxy, she’s seen as pushy,” Callie offered.

  Ty nodded as he came back over and sat down. “That’s how I saw my ex-wife. She accused me of setting a double standard, and I admit now, I did.” He shook his head, feeling old pain. “I caused the destruction of the marriage because I wouldn’t respect her in those areas. By the time I realized what I had done, it was too late. Too much water had gone under the bridge, I’d said too many damaging things. I wanted to try to make up, to get back together, but she said no.”

  Callie not only heard, but felt Ballard’s pain. What had it cost him to admit this to her? She knew how arrogant, how cool and icy fighter pilots were—and how out of touch with genuine emotions they could be. Seeing the regret in his gray eyes, now dark with anguish, she lost some of her edginess toward him.

  “Well,” she murmured, “maybe I’ve been a little harsh in accusing you of not trying to win my case for me.”

  “Maybe not,” Ty said. “I hamstrung Jackie in a lot of ways. I’ve had a year to reflect on what I’d been doing to her, the emotional games I played to try to keep her in her place—or what I thought was her place.”

  She gave him a strange look. “And what did you learn out of that?”

  The question was incisive and Ty silently praised Callie for her insight. “I learned that you can’t categorize women. I used to have this image in my head—and yes, maybe it was shaped by the academy—about women. I’ve been seeing them in a different light since my divorce, trying to realize it’s okay if they’re as assertive as men.”

  Callie gripped the glass on the table in front of her, intuitively evaluating Ballard’s honesty. He looked lost, in one respect, as if the discovery of allowing a woman to be herself had taken its toll on him. Sipping at the wine, she held his gaze. “And since your divorce, have you gone back to your old ways, Commander? You know, reputations die hard in the navy.”

  Ty grimaced. “I do go over to the O Club after work—especially after flying a Mach 3 for a couple of hours—to get a beer. But that’s it. I don’t hang out with the guys anymore, and I don’t hang out with the groupies.”

  Should she believe him? His words fit with what Maggie had told her she’d seen.

  “So what do you do with all that time on your hands, Commander, if you haven’t gone back to your watering hole?” Callie couldn’t help the slight derision in her tone. Four years of brainwashing at the academy had taught her just how effective the brotherhood was against a woman officer. Could Ballard really have slipped out of that mode?

  Ty finished off his wine and set the glass aside. “Since my divorce, I’ve more or less buried myself in work. After my time is up here, I want to be a test pilot at Patuxent River in Maryland. In order to do that, I’ve got to get up to speed on aeronautical engineering. I’m working on a second degree right now, so a lot of my time is tied up in night school.”

  A little more relief sped through her. “I see….”

  Ty leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him. “I know the navy isn’t perfect, Callie. I know I’m not, either, but your career, to put it bluntly, is on the line. You and I both know that, although the board will deny it.” He drew a paper from the sheaf at his elbow. “The board has brought sexual harassment charges against the three pilots under Article 133 of the UCMJ, conduct unbecoming an officer.”

  “Sexual harassment,” Callie repeated dumbly. “Not assault?”

  Ty saw the anger in Callie’s narrowed blue eyes. “The CO of the station read Dr. Lipinski’s report and evaluated it that way.”

  “But I was pushed and shoved. I was slammed against the car and to the ground. Doesn’t that constitute assault?” Her voice cracked with anger and she reared back in the chair. “Oh, brother, I can see the handwriting on the wall on this one without ever going before the board. They’ve already lessened the charges so that the pilots won’t get what they deserve. The brotherhood is working, isn’t it?”

  “Hold it, Callie. You weren’t exactly forthcoming and descriptive to Dr. Lipinski about what happened to you, either. She can’t read your mind. She had to pull every stitch of information out of you.”

  Callie sat angrily for a moment, breathing hard, her chest hurting. “Because I knew it would hurt my career! I’m trapped!”

  “Surviving is tough,” Ty agreed quietly, trying to soothe her. She was angry, but her eyes told him of the pain she carried for the many injustices she’d endured during her years in the navy. “The navy has a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual harassment.”

  “Sure,” Callie grated. “Look the other way and pretend it didn’t happen—that’s how zero tolerance work
s in the navy.”

  “I won’t argue that point with you,” Ty said. Just the way the light moved across her sleek cap of hair, picking up bluish highlights, made him wonder what it would be like to stroke those silky strands. That was hardly a professional thought, he chastised himself immediately. But there was something terribly vulnerable about Callie that aroused an unexpected yearning in some buried part of him.

  Wearily, Callie pointed to the paper in his hand. “So, it’s sexual harassment charges?”

  “Yes.”

  She felt as if she’d already lost the case. “What happens next?”

  Ty placed the paper aside. “Most of it happens on my end. I’ve got a week to prepare our side.”

  “Among your other demands of school and teaching?”

  “I’m asking my boss to relieve me of my teaching at the Top Gun facility so I can give this my full attention.”

  Callie’s lips parted in disbelief. The officer corps at Top Gun thrived on getting their daily or weekly F-14 flights and playing fighter pilot, she knew—often at the expense of everything else in their lives. For Ty Ballard to walk away from his first love in order to take on her case said something startling about him. Maybe the divorce really had opened his eyes to the fact that women had every right to be themselves. Swallowing, Callie said, “I never thought you’d do something like that.”

  The softening in Callie’s eyes made Ty feel like a soaring eagle. Instead of her usual wariness, he saw respect glimmering in her gaze, and it made him happy in a way he’d never experienced. “I just got back from a two-week course on UCMJ reporting procedures,” he admitted a little shyly. “One of the areas that was covered was sexual harassment. There’s a defined way of going about collecting background information for such a case.”

  Callie sat back in her chair, dazed. “I feel a little lucky, for once.”

  Ty smiled as the hope surfaced in her voice. It was all crazy, he decided, this chance encounter of meeting Callie. But in his heart he knew that there was something good, something worth exploring with her, and he wasn’t going to give up on her—or it. “We got off to a bad start,” he continued smoothly, “but I’m not letting that stop me with the investigation I have to do.”