Special Forces Father - By Mallory Kane Page 0,14
hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since he had gotten here three days ago. Holding his breath, he listened. Damn if the kid hadn’t quieted down. Maybe he could get some shut-eye now. He sighed and closed his eyes.
Then, through the closed door, Bent heard the kid yell, “I want my mom-eeee...!”
Groaning, he grabbed a throw pillow and jammed it over his head.
* * *
THE FIRST THING Kate thought when she woke up was that the horror of the day before had just been a bad dream. Then she opened her eyes and realized that she was not in her bed. She was on the couch in the living room and there was someone beside her.
For a few seconds, she tried to ignore her senses. Tried to stay in that netherworld between asleep and awake, where everything was just as it should be. Where Max was snuggled up beside her, safe and secure.
Max. She fell out of the dream world with a jolt. The nauseating fear that roiled up from her stomach like bile was no dream. It was all too real.
It wasn’t Max next to her. Her sweet baby was in the hands of strangers, scared and alone, crying for her. Probably thinking she’d gone off and left him. Her eyes, still swollen and sore, stung anew with tears. She pressed her hand against her chest, where her heart felt ripped to shreds. How was she going to bear the pain until this was all over? She had no one she could go to, no one to look to for help. She knew what would happen if she told anyone.
The person beside her breathed deeply, drawing her attention. She remembered. It was Travis. What miracle had brought him to her door the night before?
She didn’t know why he was here, but she did know he could help her. He was strong and smart. And he was a Green Beret. There was nothing he couldn’t do.
She didn’t want to wake him, so she shifted carefully, until she could look at his face. She hadn’t paid much attention to how he’d looked last night. She’d had a hard enough time coping with the shock of seeing him on top of the shock of finding out her child had been abducted.
Now she studied him. The best thing she could say was that he looked awful. She couldn’t see his dark eyes, since he was asleep. But his ridiculously long eyelashes, which his son had inherited from him, rested on the purple circles below his eyes. His cheeks were hollow, where Max’s were adorably plump, but there was no doubt that they were father and son.
She scanned his long, lean body. He was so thin. Of course, he’d never been bulky. At six feet one inch, he had the body of a basketball player or a swimmer. Lean but rock hard.
He must have lost twenty pounds. Had he been sick? She had no idea where he’d been or what he’d been doing for the past five years. He could have been sitting pretty behind a desk or stuck in a dark prison for all she knew.
Then she noticed a red line above his right eyebrow. Was that a scar? Now that she was looking for them, she spotted other small marks on his face—at the corner of his lip, on the curve of his jaw, at his hairline.
He opened his eyes. Kate gasped in surprise. She’d leaned forward as she studied his face, and now their lips were less than three inches apart. He lifted a hand and touched her hair.
Something happened inside her chest. A fluttering. She recognized it. She’d felt that same sensation every time he’d touched her back in college, and nothing had changed since she had seen him five years ago during his furlough.
The years fell away and her brain was suddenly sending her screen shots of all their good times together. Then Travis pushed his fingers through her hair and pushed all thoughts out of her head. He tugged gently, pulling her head down until he could reach her lips. “Morning, Kate,” he murmured, then kissed her lightly.
She swallowed. “Morning,” she said, looking into his dark eyes. His gaze held hers for a moment, then slid downward to look at her lips. He leaned forward again and touched her mouth with his. She closed her eyes. It felt so familiar, his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers.
But what was she doing? Her Max was gone. She