Coming Home for Christmas: Christmas Angel / Unexpected Gift / Navy Joy

She lifted her cheek from his hand. “No.” Kyle’s face grew concerned. She picked up his hand, so large and spare against her own. “I don’t care, Kyle. Do you understand?” She clung to his widening gaze. “I don’t think I can get pregnant, anyway.”

“I’m sorry, so sorry, Anna,” he growled. “I know how much family means to you.”

She smoothed her fingers across the tightening flesh on his cheekbone. “Listen to me,” she whispered, leaning forward, kissing him softly. “You are my family now, Kyle. I was just too much in denial and fear to admit it.” She eased away, tasting him on her lips. “Don’t you see? You’ve always been a part of my life.”

He drew in a ragged breath, moving his fingers gently along her tapered ones. “Yeah,” he muttered, “you’re right.” He gazed over at her. “I drew that heart behind you for a reason, Anna.” Swallowing against a forming lump, Kyle uttered, “Just looking at our shared past in the decorations, the good times, the laughter we shared, the tough times when we would hug and cry in each other’s arms.”

“You were always there for me.”

He slanted a glance at her. “No...not like I should have been, Anna. Not even close after I turned eighteen.”

“You needed to go explore the world, Kyle.”

He raised her hand, kissing her opened palm, hearing her breath intake sharply, feeling her response, watching those slender, working fingers of hers close slightly in reaction to his mouth lingering against her flesh. “I was young. I was bored here at the ranch, Anna. I knew there were adventures out there waiting for me. I wanted to chase them.”

“And you have.” She tilted her head, holding his disturbed gray gaze. “Are you happy now, Kyle? I knew you were before. At twenty-two, you were high on the SEALs. You believed with all your heart in what you were doing.”

His mouth quirked. “Anna, my knees are staved up. I’ve been shot twice. I’m twenty-nine and the old man in my platoon. I can’t keep up with the younger men like I used to be able to do. I’ve broken my wrist twice, lost count how many times I’ve broken a finger, strained my ankles, torn muscles...” He held up his left hand, showing her scars from surgery on his wrist.

The silence cloaked them and Kyle cradled Anna’s hand between his. He could see the small calluses across her palm and some on her fingers. She had such a delicate hand and yet she was strong internally in ways he currently was not. Anna had the guts to call him on himself. She’d opened him up by simply being herself. And God, he was hurting inside for both of them. Finally, he choked out, “We’ve lost so much time with one another....”

She tangled her fingers among his. “It’s never too late, Kyle.” And then she added quietly, “And maybe that’s the idealist in me again. It’s been my idealism that has distorted my life in some ways...with Tom....”

“Don’t ever lose who you are,” he rasped, holding her gaze. “You don’t know this, Anna, but when I was shot the first time—” he pointed to his left thigh “—I was bleeding out on that damned Afghan desert between two boulders. We’d hit a large force of Taliban, and they had nearly a hundred fighters to our four men. I didn’t think we’d make it out of that firefight.” His mouth slashed and he held her hand more tightly. “My femoral artery had been nicked. I was trying to get a tourniquet around my upper thigh to stop it from bleeding, but my hands were bloody and slippery.” He dragged in a deep breath. “I could feel myself going, Anna. Everything in front of my eyes started turning gray.”

His fingers closed around hers and he wrestled with violent emotions. Forcing out the words, he said, “I knew I was going to die. And the one thing I regretted the most was not marrying you. I saw your face in front of me then. And you were calling me back home, Anna.” He risked a glance up at her, saw tears glimmering in her eyes. “You told me to hang on. That help was coming. That you would be there beside me.” He shook his head and pointed to his collarbone area. “I had your tattered angel in my Kevlar vest. I swear to God, to this day, there was a powerful heat that seemed to radiate out of it and flow down to my wounded leg. The heat was so damned intense, I was crying in pain. And I never cry.”

The words were so hard to say, so hard to force out, but Kyle knew Anna deserved the truth. “I remembered this scalding, burning heat in my leg. I was so damned weak at that point, my hands slipped off the tourniquet. Bullets were flying all around me. I thought if I didn’t bleed to death, that I’d catch a bullet in the head. It was that fierce a firefight....”

Just her quiet presence was stabilizing to Kyle. He went on in a low voice. “I passed out from loss of blood. I remember waking up on a litter in a Black Hawk medevac. There was a woman working over my leg. I remember thinking I’d died because I’d never seen a woman combat medic before.” His mouth quirked. “She told me her name—Holly. Said I was lucky. That my femoral artery had closed itself off and I stopped losing blood. She said the way the artery was cut, it closed and it saved my life.”

Giving Anna a look, Kyle said, “But I knew different. I knew you or that angel had somehow stopped the bleeding.” His voice lowered and he kissed the back of her hand. “It sounds crazy, but you’d healed me with the love you’d always held for me, Anna.”

Tears drifted down her cheeks. There was love in her eyes for him alone. How could he have been so blind? So damned stupid? The best thing in his life was sitting right next to him. “You really are my guardian angel,” he admitted, giving her a slight smile. “You saved my life, Anna, in more ways than one.”

She released a ragged sigh. “Thank you for telling me, Kyle.” She held his gaze. “I have a secret to share with you, too. When Tom came at me, I screamed out your name.” Her voice grew hushed. “I don’t know why I did it, Kyle, I just did. He’d backed me into a corner, pushed me against the stove, and I stumbled backward and slammed into the wall. I remember so clearly that as he came forward, his fist cocked, I knew I was going to die.”

Anna touched her brow in a nervous gesture, risking a look into Kyle’s face. A bone-chilling rage smoldered in his eyes and she understood his anger was aimed at Tom, not at her. “I tried to protect myself. I screamed and begged him to stop. And he wouldn’t. He came at me again and I raised my hands, screaming out your name. He struck me here....” She touched her nose. “And the last thing I remember is seeing your face....”

Kyle stared at her, dumbfounded. “My face?”

She gave a slight shrug. “I needed you so desperately in that moment...realized all along that I’d never stopped loving you...needing you...that you and I were fated lovers. And that’s why I called out to you. Tom broke my nose, cheekbone and jaw.” Taking a deep breath, she said, “If my father hadn’t heard my screams as he walked past our house here on the ranch, I believe Tom would have finished me off. As it was, my father busted down the door, saw Tom hunkered over me and he stopped him. I have no memory of any of it, Kyle. I was bleeding and unconscious. My father, even at fifty-seven, beat the hell out of Tom. He left him lying in an unconscious pile in the middle of the kitchen, called 911 and then tended to me.”

“Jesus,” Kyle rasped, passing his hand over his face. “Why, Anna? Why the hell didn’t you get a hold of me? I’d have come home. I’d have been there for you.”

She shook her head. “I read the emails you sent your parents. You were happy doing what you were doing, Kyle. I wasn’t on your radar.”

“The hell you weren’t.” He wanted to cry, the lump in his throat so large that he kept swallowing it back down, afraid to let it rip out of him.

She studied him. “How was I to know?”

“I didn’t even know you were married.” He cursed and shook his head. “I know you said Tom was jealous and you couldn’t risk emailing me.” His brows gathered and he held her hand tightly between his. “I should have known something happened to you, Anna. Because you stopped emailing me six months after I left at twenty-two.”

“I’d met Tom at that time. When I mentioned you one time, he got angry. I knew never to bring up your name again. I couldn’t email you like I’d done in the past. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the depth of his jealousy toward you.”

“I always asked my mom about you. She never said anything about you being married.”

“Because I asked her not to talk about my private life with you, Kyle. Don’t you see? I couldn’t go there. I had to try and move on.” Anna touched her heart, and said in a low voice, “I loved you, Kyle. I never stopped loving you. But your job... The life you chose...”

“I’m one selfish bastard.”

“No. You were a young man full of fire, passion and adventure. You had to leave and explore the world.”

“Dammit!” Kyle released her hand and stood up, slowly pacing. “I wished to hell I could do this over again.” He halted, looking squarely at her. “I had heaven in my hands with you, Anna, and I walked away.”

“We can’t go back, Kyle. All we have is right now.”

He studied her, searching her sad green eyes. His chest felt alive with angry snakes writhing within. “I’ve made so many mistakes with you, Anna.”

“Stop it. You had to go, Kyle. If you hadn’t, you’d have wondered the rest of your life what you had missed. You’d have never been happy. Always wondering what you let slip through your hands.”

He stood there, absorbing her wisdom, absorbing her. “I love you, Anna. I need to know if we can make this work. I don’t want to walk away from you this time.” A well of emotion, so many regrets, rose in him as she sat very still, her hands in her lap, so beautiful, so alone in so many ways. She’d lost her parents last year. And now her foreman. She had no one. Nothing. And what could he offer her? More heartache and pain.

She had to be weighing everything. Was her love of him strong enough to transcend their obstacles? Never had he wanted her more. But the price was steep for Anna, and Kyle wasn’t sure about the future.

“I will take whatever you can give me,” Anna whispered brokenly, opening her hands. “Something is better than nothing with you, Kyle. I’ll take whatever you can give me... Your time... I know you’re always training, always away, but those few times when you could come home...?” Her voice grew hoarse. “Spend them here, with me.”

“Don’t say that,” he growled. Kyle walked over and drew her up and into his arms. He held her so damned tightly he felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. She sobbed. Once. Anna buried her head against his chest, clinging to him so tightly, not an inch of space existed between them.

Kyle kissed her hair, kissed her cheek and pulled back just enough to absorb her softened face, the joy in her eyes that he lived to see once again. His heart soared with the knowledge Anna would take him back into her life. Of all people, he didn’t deserve this second chance. But, God, he was grateful her generous heart and soul would allow him to return to her. He inhaled the lingering touch of oranges in her hair, the fragrant skin along the curve of her neck.

“I love you, Anna.... I need you...always,” Kyle said thickly, kissing her cheek, her closed lids, her brow. “I’m going to make this work between us. I promise, you aren’t going to be handed seconds anymore. You’re going to come first in my life, like you should have all along.” His voice cracked. Kyle crushed her against him, tears squeezing from beneath his tightly shut eyes as he held the willowy woman who had a far braver heart than he’d ever had.

* * *

ANNA AWOKE SLOWLY, as if some beautiful gossamer dream that she’d had all her life had just come true. She was naked, in Kyle’s arms, his soft snore near her head, his arm protectively wrapped around her, keeping her close. Drowsily, she opened her eyes, realizing daylight was creeping around the edges of the gold drapes. She didn’t want to move.

Her body was sore, but she smiled softly, luxuriating in the knowledge that they’d made love at least three times last night, unable to get their fill of each other. Kyle was a tender, considerate lover. She had felt cherished. Worshipped. There wasn’t an inch of her skin that he hadn’t kissed and explored.

Her eyes grew cloudy as she breathed in and out with his shallow breaths, their bodies locked against one another. Even in sleep, she could feel Kyle’s erection beginning to grow, pressing against her soft belly.

She understood he would be gone soon, and not sure of when he would return. And yet Kyle had repeatedly told her last night that he’d work things out. He wasn’t going to leave her again. The dark hair of his chest tickled her nose and cheek. Savoring the male scent of him, she dragged it into her lungs, always wanting to remember this night with him. He’d loved her until she nearly fainted from the intense, powerful orgasms he’d given her. He knew her body so well. Equally important, Kyle had held her as if she were a priceless gift that could shatter. Never had she felt more loved than last night.