Two Alone

“I wanted you so bad last night, I thought I’d die,” he groaned when they moved apart.

“You didn’t want to be separated from me?”

“Not that way.”

“Then why didn’t you answer me when I called out to you at the airport? You heard me, didn’t you?”

He looked chagrined, but nodded his head yes. “I couldn’t be a performer in that circus, Rusty. I couldn’t get away from there fast enough. When I came home from Nam, I was treated like a hero.” He rubbed a strand of her hair between his fingers while he reflected on the painful past. “I didn’t feel like a hero. I’d been living in hell. In the bowels of hell. Some of the things I’d had to do... Well, they weren’t very heroic. They didn’t deserve a spotlight and accolades. I didn’t deserve them. I just wanted to be left alone so I could forget it.”

He tilted her head back and pierced her with a silvery-gray stare. “I don’t deserve or want a spotlight now, either. I did what was necessary to save our lives. Any man would have.”

She touched his mustache lovingly. “Not any man, Cooper.”

He shrugged away the compliment. “I’ve had more experience at surviving than most, that’s all.”

“You just won’t take the credit you deserve, will you?”

“Is that what you want, Rusty? Credit for surviving?”

She thought of her father. She would have enjoyed hearing a few words of praise for her bravery. Instead he had talked about Jeff’s Boy Scout escapade and told her how well her brother had reacted to a potentially fatal situation. Comparing her to Jeff hadn’t been malicious on her father’s part. He hadn’t meant to point out how she fell short of Jeff’s example. But that’s what it had amounted to. What would it take, she wondered, to win her father’s approval?

But for some reason, winning his approval didn’t seem as important as it once had been. In fact, it didn’t seem important at all. She was far more interested in what Cooper thought of her.

“I don’t want credit, Cooper. I want...” She stopped short of saying “you.” Instead, she laid her cheek against his chest. “Why didn’t you come after me? Don’t you want me anymore?”

He laid his hand over her breast and stroked it with his fingertips. “Yes, I want you.” The need that made his voice sound like tearing cloth wasn’t strictly physical.

Rusty perceived the depth of his need because she felt it too. It came out of an emptiness that gnawed at her when he wasn’t there. It caused her own imploring inflection. “Then why?”

“I didn’t follow you last night because I wanted to speed up the inevitable.”

“The inevitable?”

“Rusty,” he whispered, “this sexual dependency we feel for each other is textbook normal. It’s common among people who have survived a crisis together. Even hostages and kidnap victims sometimes begin to feel an unnatural affection for their captors.”

“I know all that. The Stockholm syndrome. But this is different.”

“Is it?” His brows lowered skeptically. “A child loves whoever feeds him. Even a wild animal becomes friendly with someone who leaves food out for it. I took care of you. It was only human nature that you attach more significance—”

Suddenly and angrily, she pushed him away. Her hair was a vibrant halo of indignation, her eyes bright with challenge. “Don’t you dare reduce what happened between us with psychological patter. It’s crap. What I feel for you is real.”

“I never said it wasn’t real.” Her feistiness excited him. He liked her best when she was defiant. He yanked her against him. “We’ve always had this going for us.” He cupped her breast again and impertinently swept his thumb across the tip.

She wilted, murmuring a weak “Don’t,” which he disregarded. He continued to fondle her. Her eyes slid shut.

“We get close. I get hard. You get creamy. Every damned time. It happened the first time we laid eyes on each other in the airplane. Am I right?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“I wanted you then, before we ever left the ground.”

“But you didn’t even smile, or speak to me, or encourage me to speak to you.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?” She couldn’t take any more of his caresses and stay sensible. She moved his hand aside. “Tell me why.”

“Because I guessed then what I know for fact now: we live worlds apart. And I’m not referring to geography.”