Course of Action: Crossfire. Lindsay McKenna
to amputate his leg during his first surgery at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. Dr. Allison Barker, who was an exceptionally talented ortho surgeon, had stopped the amputation. When Dan had arrived at Tripler, Allison had put screws into Dan’s leg instead, saving it from amputation.
Her heart swelled with feelings for Dan. Beneath his tan, he had an unhealthy pallor. Her gaze drifted to the two IVs, one in each of his arms. One was a continuous morphine drip because bone pain could only be addressed with this opiate. The other was feeding him the necessary fluids and nutrients he needed to stay alive and recover. He wore a blue hospital gown that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and his powerful chest.
Memories assailed her as she stood, her hand lingering on his arm, feeling the sprinkled dark brown hair beneath her fingertips. Would Dan ever be able to surf again? Allison and her surgical team worked on soldiers and Marines whose limbs had been destroyed. Dan would become Cait’s patient at some point because she’d pleaded with her boss, Dr. Jackson Berringer, to allow her to work with him. Cait was grateful Jackson had granted her request. She was a damn good physical therapist, and she wanted no one else but her to help Dan to recover his ability to walk and do the things he had done before being wounded.
Absently she moved her fingers slowly up and down Dan’s ropy forearm, watching his lids quiver. He was finally coming out of the worst of the anesthesia. She couldn’t settle her roiling feelings, which swung between her grief at Ben being dead and her relief that Dan had gotten out of that firefight alive. Tears stung her eyes at the thought that Dan could have been killed, too. She wiped her tears away and sniffed. He couldn’t see her crying. He’d ask why, and she couldn’t tell him. How long had she loved this brave soldier? Ever since she’d met him.
Cait made a frustrated, muffled sound, forcing her tears away. Dan’s eyes would open at any moment now. How she loved him. And he didn’t know. She’d never spoken of it to him. Ben had wanted her to consider Dan a brother, but she never had. Her big, overprotective brother would have been crushed if she’d ever admitted that she had, over time, fallen hopelessly in love with Dan.
Everything had changed now. Cait knew Ben had always worried about her falling in love with a military man. He’d warned her they were out for sex and sex only, that she needed to marry a medical doctor because they were more stable and reliable. They would respect her for her keen intelligence and she wouldn’t have to worry about her husband being killed in combat, making her a young widow.
Ben had wanted her to be happy. And to have a good, stable marriage. But it had become so tough on Cait, every time they came home on leave, to pretend and hide her feelings from Dan. And keep the secret from her brother.
Her hand stilled on Dan’s forearm. How many times had she dreamed of Dan loving her? Kissing her? Cait’s gaze drifted to his strong, chiseled mouth that only now was beginning to relax. The morphine drip was giving him some badly needed relief from the nerve pain.
Suddenly, he opened his eyes.
Cait moved closer, fingers wrapping around his wrist, watching his gray, cloudy gaze. He was drifting in a morphine cloud.
“Dan? It’s Cait.” She smiled down at him, reaching out, grazing his cheek and pushing his long, nearly shoulder-length hair behind his ear. His gray eyes suddenly became raptor-like and fastened on her. Her smile grew. “You see me?”
“Y-yeah...Cait...”
His voice was hoarse and rough. “It’s okay, Dan. You’re coming out from anesthesia.” His dark brown brows dipped. “Am I speaking too fast for you?” Cait knew words ran together when anesthesia still lingered in a person’s body. Her heart mushroomed with powerful emotions, wanting to kiss him, but he was conscious now and he’d remember if she did. And how could she explain her actions to him then?
“N-no...fine...where?”
“Tripler Medical Center. Honolulu.” She didn’t want to stop touching Dan. At the very least, there was the healing value of touch with physical therapy, but her need to touch him ran much deeper.
His large, black pupils widened as she ran her fingers through his mussed but clean long hair. The nurses had washed it, but it needed to be combed. Cait knew Special Forces A teams grew long hair and wore beards so as not to stand out in the Middle East.
She watched his eyes grow dazed and then slowly wander back to her and actually look at her. Cait couldn’t stop smiling. How badly she wanted to kiss Dan, welcome him home, celebrate that he’d survived.
“H-how long since...since I got wounded?”
“Seven days. They kept you in a drug-induced coma after taking you out of the field, Dan.” She saw his eyes grow to slits, felt the shift of energy around him. He remembered the firefight. She could sense it and see it in his wrinkled brow, the hardness coming back to his gray, murky eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Ben didn’t make it...but you did.” Cait swallowed and fought the tears flooding her eyes. “You’re alive, Dan. And you’re going to live...”
At that moment he jerkily lifted his hand, his roughened fingers weak but still able to lift and capture her hand.
“I tried to save him, Cait...God...I tried...”
“It’s all right.” She wobbled, heard the grief and guilt in his gruff voice. “No one’s told us what happened...only that he died in a firefight.”
Dan closed his eyes, fingers tightening around Cait’s slender hand. She wore a hospital uniform of blue scrub pants and top. Her beautiful red hair was up on her head in a loose, askew topknot. She wore pink lipstick, but the flush across her cheeks was natural. Her scent, the cinnamon shampoo she used, the steadying firmness of her warm skin beneath his cold fingers, helped him focus. Hearing the stress, the grief in her low, tortured voice, brought up his own anguish over Ben’s death.
Dan stared up into her green eyes glistening with unshed tears. She was fighting back those tears, and it ripped into him. He’d never had any defense against Cait. He was vulnerable to her at all times. His fingers tightened around hers.
“He didn’t feel any pain, Cait. He got hit in the neck.” He stopped. His voice had become harsh with agony. “I—I tried to save him... I’m sorry... I wanted to so damned bad but...” Dan choked, tears burning in his eyes. He turned away, embarrassed that tears ran down his face. He released her hand but Cait caught it, wrapping her fingers tightly around his.
“It’s all right, Dan. I know you did everything you could. God...I’m so grateful you’re alive...” She choked back a sob.
Just having Cait’s strong hand around his helped. Dan couldn’t stop the tears and finally pressed his face into the pillow. He couldn’t bear to look at her since he knew grief was written in her features.
Finally, as he got a hold of his floating, amorphous emotions, Dan forced himself to turn and look into her shadowed green eyes. “I—I’m so damned sorry, Cait...”
“Hush,” she whispered, lifting her hand, gently smoothing out the wrinkles on his tanned brow. “It’s all right. Ben died doing something he loved, Dan. And you were with him.” Her eyes grew misty. “At least he died with you there. That had to be a comfort for him.”
Dan shoved the grief down deep inside himself. “Yeah...I was there. I tried.” Her fingers trembled slightly as she continued to graze his brow, his cheek, her touch so featherlight. Dan felt like a dying man who was being given absolution by a saint. He lifted his lashes, staring into her warm, anguished gaze—Cait had never looked so beautiful, so fresh and alive, as right now.
“Are you in pain?”
Yeah, his heart felt like hell, writhing with anguish. “A little,” he mumbled. “I’m on morphine. I can feel it dialing back the pain.”
She smiled a little. “Yes, you are.”
When she continued to hold his hand, Dan felt a gratefulness he couldn’t give words to. How like Cait to intuitively know he needed her right now. She wasn’t