"He's outside the door talking to the security police standing guard."
Darcy sagged back against her pillows. Screw holding her emotions in check. She'd survived a hideous day, and her father would just have to take a chill pill.
Then the rest of her father's words trickled through her relief. SPs standing guard? Her mind swirled with too many questions.
She started with the most important one. "But he's totally okay? Max?''
Her father nodded.
The rest could wait. She would ask about the SPs as soon as she wiped the worried frown off her father's face.
Darcy pushed herself the rest of the way upright and held out her arms. "Come here, old man. I could use a hug."
His arms opened wide as they'd done when he'd found her on top of the cliff twelve years ago. Just as he'd done then, he gathered her close and held on a little too hard as she inhaled the familiar scent of starch and Old Spice. The past hours waiting for her to wake must have been hell on his aging warrior heart.
"I'm okay, Daddy." Darcy reassured herself as much as him. Willed the echoes of the past to dim. A damned near impossible task right now with her emotions already raw.
The day resembled too closely the horror of captivity in a jungle bunker, alone except for the drip of water and the crack, crack, crack as the guard outside ate sunflower seeds, pitching hulls into her sweltering cubicle.
Every sunflower seed she crunched open as an adult affirmed her freedom. Her strength over the memories. "It's not twelve years ago. Everything's all right."
"I know, baby."
She fought the irreverent urge to laugh over the "baby" comment, even welcomed the distraction. At least her crew wasn't around to hear. Darcy pulled back, shoving the past aside. "How did you get here so fast?"
He sank into a chair beside her bed. "Caught a hop from Korea the minute I heard."
She jammed a hand through her tousled hair. "I can't believe my crew ratted me out." Irritation stung like the pull of stitches in her arm. "Damn it, I bet it was Bronco, that overprotective lug. I'm going to stuff his lunch full—"
"No one from your crew called me."
And from the stern gleam in his eyes she suspected Bronco and Crusty would pay later.
"Then who?"
"Max Keagan."
"Max?" Betrayal swamped her with a power that made his rejection on the beach pale. He knew how she felt about her father's influence encroaching into her world. Why would he have done that? "So you've met him."
Her father nodded, strands of silver glinting through the brown. Most of those whitening strands had sprouted because of her.
"We've... talked."
Uh-oh. "Could you, uh, ask him to step in please?"
She needed to see Max, reassure herself he was alive. Then she would face the fury and hurt crowding her brain.
"I already planned to." All fatherly concern slid away, the General back. "Given what happened out there today, there are a few things you need to know."
Her father jerked open the door and called into the corridor, "Keagan, could you step in here? It's time for that talk."
She tensed. All the memories of their encounter on the beach and their fight afterward marched over her. What would they say to each other once her father left?
Max stepped into the open doorway. Backlit, he filled the frame with his broad shoulders and magnetism. Darcy's mouth dried. Man, she could use that cup of crushed ice perched on the sink corner right about now.
Then Max stepped into the light.
Her tongue turned to pure cotton.