Connie moved about the room, inspecting gauges, noticing everything. She jumped up and landed hard on her heels against the steel grates. The lightest shiver through the floor plates showed the tightness and size of the springs. Depth charges must have wreaked unholy hell on the occupants for such stiff springs to make any difference.

  She halted in front of the main control desk. In a room of iron and gray-painted steel, the stainless-steel levers shone like a beacon. Connie slid the levers, smiling as he had his first time at the smooth flow of their movement, unchanged in over seventy years.

  “You know, Connie. You’ve been making me feel a bit incompetent.”

  Again that owlishly slow blink. “I have? How? You’re the best helo mechanic I’ve ever worked with. I learn something new every time I watch you working.”

  That took him aback. He hadn’t imagined the Mechanical Wizard—Mech Wiz for short, as she was starting to be called behind her back at camp, or more often Mechanoid—learned anything from anybody, least of all him.

  “I’m always impressed at the integrity of what you do. Not a single bolt is left uninspected, not a single shortcut is taken.”

  His laugh was automatic. “Would you skip a step with someone like Major Beale at the controls?”

  “Not a chance.” Her smile was a testament to the abuse the major could unload on a machine. “If it can be overstressed, she’s the woman to do it.”

  John nodded. “You also share her strength. A quiet power. It’s mesmerizing.”

  Her smile bloomed slowly. Growing until it stunned him, until he lost the power of speech.

  “I like being called powerful. I like the way it makes me feel.” She reached out and grasped his jacket’s lapels. She pulled him in, like a sucker at a poker table who simply wanted to give all his money to this woman.

  Their lips didn’t meet with bruising urgency as they had before. It was power, but in perfect control. Slow and delicate testing. Her lips, as often as not drawn in a tight line of concentration, were the softest texture he’d ever experienced. As delicate as water, as strong as steel.

  He slipped his hands inside the coat she’d already opened against the warmth of the sub. He held that perfect waist. This time he didn’t fight the urge to slide one hand down the delightful curve of the back of the skirt. The thin fabric barely more than a suggestion between his hand and those tight, tight muscles.

  She moaned against his teeth as he used that hand to pull her in. Close against him. He lifted her, supported her with two hands, raised her until she sat on the control desk.

  Perched there, she faced him eye-to-eye. Ever so slowly, he traced the line of her neck, tasted the hollow at the base of her throat.

  Her hands dug into his hair and held his attention there. He wasn’t about to complain.

  And she didn’t complain either as his hands explored her torso. The curve of her rib cage fit his broad hand as neatly as her breast cupped against the inside of his palm.

  With the slightest downward pressure, she guided him to her breast. Through the fine blouse and sheer bra, he could taste her arousal, could certainly feel it.

  He wanted this woman. Wanted her so badly he couldn’t breathe.

  He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to feel her come apart. Feel all of that perfect control slip away. Then he had a thought and cursed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” She pulled him back up and kissed him full and deep and slow.

  “I didn’t think to bring any protection.”

  Connie giggled in his ear before nipping it sharply. He’d thought her shy and found her uninhibited. Not shy, but rather quiet. Another one of her fascinating dichotomies.

  “Someone else took care of that.”

  He pulled back enough to look at her. “You thought we might…” But she was shaking her head.

  She reached into the coat pocket and pulled out a string of four silvered packets. “Your little sister thought we would.”

  His little… Noreen. He was going to have to kill her, or at least lock her up in her bedroom until she was thirty, at a minimum. Or get down and kiss her feet.

  Connie twisted the strand back and forth. “She has a high opinion of your stamina.” Her grin was wicked.

  “Wa’ll,” John drawled in his best Texas. “This here sweet boat does have eight compartments, not jus’ four of ’em.”

  She reached into the coat’s other pocket and pulled out four more.

  All John could do was groan.

  “I was right, by the way.” Again that radiant smile that lit her up like a rocket flare.

  “About what?”

  “You look absolutely amazing in a suit.” She leaned in and nipped his chin. “Now let’s see how you look out of it.”

  John didn’t let Connie off her perch on the control desk and it didn’t bother her in the least. She liked being at a height with him, eye-to-eye. Liked the way he looked at her as if he’d ravish her in an instant. Chest-to-chest. The way he held her nearly stopped her heart as his kiss had accelerated it.

  He held her tight in a long hug that was enough to satisfy all on its own—or nearer than he’d ever felt before. Not hurried. Not on the road to somewhere else. He simply held her as if that’s where she belonged. And by that simple action, she did.

  And the way he undressed her so slowly, like a fragile and wondrous new system. A single released button of her blouse led to his hands, his lips, his tongue setting off on a whole new mission that made her body sigh with pleasure and hum louder than a helo’s turbine. A very well-tuned one.

  He watched her fingers as she unbuttoned his shirt, such a long row. She waited until they were all undone before pulling the shirt open. Open to a world of wonder she’d only imagined. His chest was a landscape a woman could spend hours exploring, even on an initial recon mission. Her hand a slim white craft on the vastness of a dark, unknown sea. Shape, definition, power. She leaned forward and nipped his pecs with her teeth and he hissed.

  As she continued to explore, she elicited a moan from him that she could feel rippling up his chest.

  Each time she expected John to be like any man, running for home port, he turned aside. Her bra remained long after her blouse. First he had to play with her hair and lean in for another one of those mind-searing kisses. Had to test skin-to-skin, his hands and arms so smooth across her back.

  When at last he’d undressed her, he stepped back, not forward. In the close compartment that was only a half step, but it was away.

  For half a moment old fears rose in her belly and quivered there, until she saw his eyes. Darker than should be possible, they inspected her slowly from her toes upward until his attention at long last reached her eyes. A look of the most desperate need she’d ever witnessed.

  “Damn!” the softest whisper caressed her nerves. “I didn’t know it was possible for a woman to look so amazing.”

  “That’s lust talking.” Not that she was complaining. But John merely shook his head at her words.

  Words formed there and momentary concern crossed his brow. A concern she didn’t like seeing.

  She reached out and cupped her hand behind his neck, the contact shock as huge as their first kiss by the fence, and then pulled him back across the gulf of that half-step between them. It started as a kiss, her hand on his neck sliding over to his shoulder. And their lips. Their contact built in slow waves. His hand cupping her face before trailing down over her breast to her waist. The slow drawing in as they met breast-to-chest, belly-to-belly, and finally, his hands lifting her buttocks, pulling her to him. She slid her legs about his waist.

  His entry, impossibly, painfully slow, staggered her with its shock of power. She felt his footing shift and she grabbed an overhead pipe to help steady them. Closed her eyes as she focused on the sensation of him filling her. She’d experienced nothing like it. Ever.

  When they were finally pressed hip-to-hip, she didn’t want to stop.

  She leaned back to drive them closer together, knowing his strong arms would never let her fall. She wrapped her other hand around the overhead pipes and leaned back, driving them together with the change of angle.

  John kept one hand in the small of her back and explored her front with the other.

  When she began to shift her hips up and down he actually cried out.

  It was the last sound she heard other than the roar of her own blood carrying her away, far beyond free fall.

  John could feel Connie’s body vibrate as she rose and then drove back against him at a higher and higher frequency. The exquisite agony rose in him as he waited for her, watched her. She become no more than a blur in his vision until she exploded.

  He could feel the pulses fire through her. Launching from where their bodies connected, fire rocketing up her back and through her chest until it found voice in a low desperate moan.

  It was the moan that got him. That tipped him off the deep end. A moan of such pure and perfect pleasure. It didn’t get loud, it barely filled the small chamber, but it echoed from so deep inside that her whole soul lay open before him.

  As he shuddered from his own release pounding through every nerve ending, he gathered her tight back against him.

  She held on to him. More tightly than any opposing tackle who had ever sacked the quarterback. She held on to him and he to her as the waves flared through them both.

  Connie tucked her head against his shoulder and nuzzled in against the base of his neck.

  And, amazingly, he felt the slow trickle of hot tears slip down his chest.

  41

  They didn’t finish the first strip of condoms, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was from sheer exhaustion. Making love to Connie Davis wasn’t something any man with a lick of common sense would ever hurry.

  All the concentration on details she brought to her life as a mechanic, she indulged on John’s body. He’d never bedded such a woman. Not being a complete idiot, he knew he’d never find another like her again.

  He wasn’t only thinking about the sex, though his body ached from its need for hers and was sore from the repeated sating of that need. John had also witnessed a woman of such deep-rooted passion that she made all others pale by comparison.

  And play. He couldn’t get over that. Connie’s soul possessed a deep humor, another layer he’d never seen. She’d made him feel as if he was sixteen when he’d chased her buck-naked into the aft torpedo room, her bright laugh and quick-dodging steps leading him the whole way. And there she’d made several comparisons between a torpedo’s size and his own before unlatching one of the crew bunks chained to the wall and pushing him down on it.

  She’d inspected, explored, teased until he ached for her past tolerance. Connie had practically crowed with triumph as she’d straddled over his hips and took him from above. As they finally dressed he could still taste her rich earthiness, the saltiness of her sweat, and the sweetness of her kiss as she’d sprawled back for him on the amidships crew’s mess table and he’d feasted on her body right past sated and into madness.

  His legs barely had the strength to climb back into the conning tower.

  Connie awaited him there in the three feet between the attack and observation periscopes. She had one hand on the controls for either scope.

  “There’s only one rule. No matter what you do to me, if I remove my hands, you stop and we trade places.” Her grin was wicked.

  He knew she was as exhausted as he. That, or she was an insatiable demoness who had already sucked out his soul. So he slipped up to her and kissed her the best he knew how. He kissed her and thought of the splendid use they’d made of each other’s bodies. He kissed her and thought of how strong and powerful she made him feel, not on the outside, but on the inside. He thought about how happy he was every moment he was with her.

  When he felt her arms wrap around his neck, he enjoyed the sensations for a moment longer and then pulled back enough to see those lovely eyes.

  “I guess I have to stop now.” He tipped his head to indicate her hands, which were wrapped around him instead of the periscope controls.

  She nodded in chagrin as she rested her forehead against his lips and he kissed her there.

  “Your turn.”

  “God, woman. Rain check. Rain check.” She laughed and nodded her head before turning for the exit hatch.

  The house was dark when they returned. John turned off the engine and lights.

  Connie didn’t want to get out of the cozy warmth. Didn’t want to leave this world of two people. Surprisingly, she understood that world. Had found an ease and comfort with John that she’d experienced with no other.

  In that house, she could feel Noreen sleeping with a knowing smile on her face. She could feel Grumps dozing as if he still sat in the sun. And Bee and Paps and Larry. All watching her. Wondering how she’d be with their boy.

  She’d surprised herself that she could be at ease with John. More than at ease. Silly. Giggling. Playful. It was a whole side of herself she’d thought dead and buried in a land as foreign as any remnant of her childhood. In John’s arms she found a joy she’d never experienced anywhere else.

  She knew how to be with a helicopter crew, and tonight she’d learned part of how to be with John. But not with a family. That remained a world far too foreign to imagine.

  He climbed out and came around to open the door. As if aware of her reluctance, he took her hand and raised it to his lips. The kiss he planted on her knuckles gave her legs the strength to move—an unlikely synaptic link but it worked.

  When he made to follow her through the dark house and into his bedroom, she stopped him with a hand on his chest. “John, your family,” she kept her voice low.

  He gazed up thoughtfully at the ceiling and shrugged that he didn’t care.

  Did she? It was his family. That wasn’t her issue. Unnerved in a way she hadn’t been all evening, she pictured them together in John’s bed. More intimate than anything they’d done in the submarine. Too intimate.

  But she also knew that in his arms there was a feeling of safety. That maybe with him, the nightmares wouldn’t shock her upright in the middle of the night. Images of tumbling helicopters and straining hands already burning in fire.

  “I want to wake up beside you.” Even in a whisper, his deep voice was loud enough for the world to hear.

  She put her fingers over his lips and could feel his smile. She cocked her head and listened to the silence of the night.

  That was something she’d like as well.

  42

  Connie watched John roll into the barn well after sunup. He wore old coveralls, a thick knit hat of orange and yellow wool with earflaps and a ridiculous pom-pom—and a sheepish grin that looked pretty damn cute on him. He also brought three large mugs and a thermos of coffee that Connie was absolutely ready for.

  He first served Grumps where he’d again perched on his milk crate to officiate. With no more words than a “Thank you” from her, they turned to the tractor.

  John thoroughly inspected her rebuild of the front end and offered a sharp nod for a job well done. They started reassembling the engine in easy harmony.

  Grumps picked up the story he’d been telling her before John arrived. A tale of Old Man George losing his two boys at a bridge across the Rhine and how it had taken the heart out of the old man and his farm.

  “That’s how we got the property to the west. We’d been planning to replace this old tractor in ’53, but Jeff died in Korea and none of his kids wanted the place. That brought us the south beet field. In 1960, Greg’s girls married college boys and none of them wanted the farm, so we picked up another couple hundred acres from him. Da and me, we started taking shifts, worked this old machine sometimes twenty hours in a day during the planting and the harvest.”

  He nodded at the work they were doing. “Each purchase brought us another piece of machinery, most of it too worn to do half of what was required. I rode this beast here right up to ’66. I drove her two more years extra to get her to her thirtieth anniversary, but we desperately needed a huskier machine. That’s the year I bought the JD 4020 down the end of the row there. A hundred horsepower instead of nine.” He waved his mug toward the far end of the barn.

  “And I finally got my butt off them damn steel wheels Da had bought for me.”

  She and John laughed together.

  They worked in silence, reassembling the engine while the old man catnapped.

  “Must be a hell of a mission coming up.” Connie startled slightly, not having noticed Grumps wake back up.

  She and John exchanged a careful look over the nearly finished block and head assembly.

  “What makes you say that, Grumps?”

  “One thing, you’re both hurrying a job like there might not be time to finish. Oh, not criticizing the work, this old bitch, pardon my language but it’s true, been wanting a fixing for many a year and you two are doing her proud. But you’re in a hurry. And I seen your girlfriend there check her pager twice this morning.”

  Connie carefully didn’t meet John’s gaze this time when he glanced over. She’d leave it for him to handle.

  “Well, could be.”

  Would be, Connie thought to herself. The range of new gear on their helos. They didn’t make upgrades like that in such a hurry unless there was a damned good reason. This mission was going to happen and it was going to be hot when it did.

  “Then again, might not.” John’s voice was smooth and steady. “You know how unpredictable these things are. I didn’t want to tell Paps or Mama; they’d start in to worrying.”

  “Mum’s the word, boy. Mum’s the word.” After a brief pause, Grumps started a tale about a tornado that had come through and torn out exactly one row of corn down the entire length of the northwest field.

  Larry drifted in and was soon put to work with a wire wheel knocking off the outer rust. Eventually Bee and Noreen brought out a huge platter of sandwiches and were soon outfitted with paintbrushes and a couple gallons of glossy green paint. About the time Grumps slid into a nap, Paps showed up with a fresh painted sign. John Deere green and yellow on a sheet of steel, but he turned it to the wall before anyone could read it.