Dare To Love

“Who am I?” Matt shrugged. “Two years ago I might have been able to tell you who I was. I can’t anymore.”

Kai tilted her head, detecting carefully hidden pain in his voice. It was reflected in the depths of his charcoal-gray eyes, now opaque. She watched Matt shake his head as if trying to cast off a haunting memory.

“Who hurt you?”

Matt regarded her for a moment. “I lost someone two years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence engulfed them. Suddenly not hungry, he stared down at the half-eaten hamburger. “She was quite a woman,” he admitted quietly. He raised his head, meeting her emeral gaze. “A little like you. Special.”

“Ask Frank, and he’ll call me something other than special,” she parried grimly.

“Family jealousy?”

“That’s part of it. I wasn’t really raised with that silver spoon you talked about. The one oil well dad brought in when I was born made him ten million. He turned all that money into another well and sunk a dry hole. I was fifteen before he was financially stable. Even then, we weren’t really rich.”

“So you didn’t go to the rich kids’ school to become a snob?”

Kai shook her head. “No, good old public school like everyone else. When I wasn’t in school, I was out in the oil fields with my dad. I was at his side many a time.”

Matt grinned, seeing her in a new and interesting light. “So you were a tomboy?”

“With pigtails and freckles to boot.”

He looked closely at Kai and saw a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were breathtakingly alive as she spoke of her past. Matt found himself caught up in her life story. “When your father married again, you inherited a new mother and a couple of half sisters and a brother?”

“When Vera Holt married my father, her children knew they were rich beyond their wildest dreams. They took advantage of my dad’s generosity.” Kai pursed her lips. “And they tried to play me against him. It hasn’t stopped to this day.”

“Is that why you joined the service? To escape the family pressures?”

His perception was unsettling. Kai’s brows dipped. “Yes. I’ll be the first to admit I’m a chicken when it comes to family dissension. I felt the best solution to the problem was to leave.” She gave him a sad smile. “Every year I come home on my thirty days of leave and visit dad.”

“You could have handled things differently, you know.”

“How?”

“Stayed and fought for your position in the family.”

Her green eyes grew tender. “I’m not good at fighting for myself. I learned that long ago. I’m great at helping other people fight their battles, but I don’t enjoy manipulating people to get what I want. If you love someone, there shouldn’t be a need to fight for the right to share him.”

Matt nodded thoughtfully, digesting her statement. Kai Easton was like a well of unfathomable depth; he saw the world in simpler terms. “Sometimes, though, you have to give plenty to the person you love,” he countered, thinking back to his own marriage, before it had been condemned to death. “Haven’t you ever had to fight for the man you loved?”

Kai’s expression became less readable. “I thought I was in love twice in my life. Both times with military officers who were pilots.”

There was hurt lingering in her eyes. “But you didn’t marry?” How could any man allow her to escape?

She laughed ruefully. “Let’s put it this way. They loved their aircraft more than me. Both of them were carrier pilots. They lived to fly, Matt. How could I compete with the sky and their planes? I did fight for their love. But I lost.”

“Yeah, a woman never wants to come between a pilot and his plane, that’s for sure,” he muttered. “A plane is like a mother-in-law. You get one with every marriage if you marry a pilot. I know. My brother is a Marine Corps aviator who’s currently stationed aboard a naval aircraft carrier. He lives, eats and breathes flying. More than one woman has fallen for him, only to find out later that he loved flying more than he did her. I know what you’re talking about.”

Kai gave him a strange look. “Your brother’s in the military? And you’re making a living as a kidnapper?”

“Always a bad apple in every barrel. Didn’t you know that?”

“I may be ignorant, but I’m not naive,” Kai countered strongly. “It’s hard to believe that if your brother is so straight, you’d turn out like this.”

“Like I said, every family has a skeleton in the closet. I’m it.”

“But I hear the pride in your voice when you talk about your brother.”

“Oh, I’m proud of him, all right. He’s top stick in his squadron. One hell of a pilot. He’s so damn good that they’re going to send him to test-pilot school next year. That’s really something.”

“Did he ever marry?”

Matt grinned. “No, he’s smart enough to realize that his love affair with flying would interfere with a marriage. It’s a matter of choice to him, like it was to those guys you dated. He’s not celibate, as I said. Cal always has women around whenever his carrier pulls into a port.”

Kai gave him a sour smile. “I wish I had had the sense to realize that about carrier pilots before I made my fatal mistakes.”

“I think they were both fools to pass you up,” Matt said quietly. “Any man in his right mind would grab you and never let you go.”

A warm blush swept up into Kai’s face. Leaning back, she felt the accumulated tension flowing out of her limbs. “As you get older, you get wiser. No more relationships with carrier pilots, believe me. I learned my lesson the hard way.” The silence was ebbing between them. “Why is it so easy to talk to you?”

“Chemistry, maybe,” he murmured, watching the tension drain from her face. “Feeling better?”

“Yes.”

“Well enough to eat?”

“N-no.”

His gray eyes grew dark. God, why did Boyce have to attack her? There was no need. Matt studied Kai closely. She was a fighter. In this case, a good trait to possess. Her survival might hinge on her ability to think in a crisis.

“How about more coffee? Looks like you’ve finished off that first cup in a hurry.”

“Please.”

Her hand trembled as she held the cup, and he wanted to reassure her that everything would be all right. Hopefully in another twenty-four hours Kai would be home, in a safe and comfortable environment. But he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t promise her anything.

“I’ll bet your hospital patients think you’re pretty special,” Matt said, circumventing the anxiety he saw registering in her eyes.

“They become like family to me for that three to six months when they’re recovering in the orthopedics ward.”

“Then you deal with a lot of the military men who are wounded or injured in action?”

“Yes, mostly pilots who ejected from their planes or guys who were injured on the decks of the aircraft carriers. Both are terribly dangerous jobs. When we get them, they’re all doped up with painkillers and usually heading for the first of three to seven operations while they’re with us.”

“Not something I’d ever want to experience,” Matt muttered.