Complicated Creatures: Part Two Read online

  “Sorry, mate,” Martin shook his head. “Both cars we had are out with Richter and Davies. Richter’s up near Macedonia, and Davies is running around with a few other journalists trying to get shots of the Serbians doing another round-up. I can call around to my other contacts, but with the ongoing violence and bombings, they’re burrowing deep.”

  “Shit,” Wes muttered, picking up a battered phone. He pulled out his passport along with the worn and wrinkled itinerary Sam had emailed him with her flight plan and the hotel she’d booked in Paris. She’d be waiting, wondering where the hell he was, why he hadn’t contacted her.

  Wes dialed, praying for a connection as he listened to the landline crackle as the mortars dropped outside, breathing a sigh of relief as soon as he heard ringing.

  “Hotel Balzac. Est-ce que je peux vous aider?”12

  “Pouvez-vous m’aider à trouver Samantha Wyatt, s’il vous plaît?”13 Wes asked in his high school French. “Elle est un client.”14

  “Mais bien sûr!”15 The receptionist responded, transferring the call.

  Wes’s heart leaped into his throat as he listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times—

  “Hello?” Samantha’s sleepy, sexy, come-back-to-bed voice rang clear across the line.

  Wes closed his eyes, resting is head against his hand. “God, baby, I miss you,” he got out, his voice breaking a little.

  “Wes!” she replied happily, coming awake. “God, I’m so glad it’s you! Where are you, baby? Are you in Paris?”

  “Christ almighty, Sammy,” Wes sighed against the receiver as he imagined her face. “I wish I was. I wish to God I was.”

  “What happened?” she asked, growing alarmed. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m stuck in Kosovo, darlin’,” he told her, rubbing his brow, exhaustion evident in his voice. “I’ve been trying to get out all week. I thought I had a flight out tonight but NATO shut down the airport. The city’s in chaos. I don’t know how the hell I’m gonna get out,” he admitted, defeat and emotional exhaustion weighing him down.

  “But you’re alright?” she asked, her breath catching a little in her throat.

  Wes loved her voice. Just hearing her low rasp after so many months without her made him think of slow sex and warm whisky. He glanced up at Martin, typing away on his laptop. Wes gestured toward the bottle of communal whisky sitting near him. Martin grabbed a grubby glass, and poured him a couple fingers, bringing it over to him with a grin and a wiggle of his bushy brows.

  “That your girl?” Martin asked, loud enough for Sam to hear.

  Wes just nodded, gratefully accepting the glass.

  “Wes, are you there? Are you alright?”

  “If you can call ‘being covered in dirty snow and missing my girl something terrible’ doing alright,” he muttered. “Then yeah, I’m fine.” Wes tossed back a mouthful, wincing a little at the singe. “We were gonna have five days together before you started training in Maryland. Now even if I somehow got out of here tomorrow, we’d have less than forty-eight hours,” he groaned. “Shit, it’s like we’re being punished.”

  “Hey, stop that,” she chided. “So it’s a shitty way to spend Christmas—you stuck in a war zone and me all alone in a five-star hotel, surrounded by art, food, and retail, and no one to enjoy it with,” she teased, trying to find levity in the situation, though he could hear disappointment lining her voice.

  “Jesus, Sammy, I miss you so much it hurts,” he admitted hoarsely. “I’m out here doing what I always wanted to do, but I can’t believe the shit I’m seeing. The things people are doing to each other.” Wes pinched the bridge of his nose as he fought back the accumulated stress of the last few months. “Baby, what the hell am I doing here? What am I doing away from you? I feel like I’m losin’ my damn mind.”

  Sammy sucked in a breath. He listened to her breathing, imagining her as she sat there thinking of the right thing to say. He could see her so clearly, her memory becoming more vivid in his overwhelmed mind.

  “You remember your old globe?” she asked suddenly, surprising him with the question.

  “Yeah—why?”

  “I kept it,” she confessed, her voice soft. “When we packed up your stuff and put it in your mother’s garage, I kept it.”

  Wes thought about all the little colored pins he put into it over the years, each pin representing a place that he’d read about, seen pictures of, and had marked to visit, explore, maybe even live in for a few months: Panama City, Kerala, Corfu, Chiang Rai, Reykjavik—

  “There are two hundred and sixty-seven pins,” she told him, her voice soft.

  He blinked in surprise. He didn’t even know how many pins he’d stuck into the globe over the years. But he did remember one in particular—the purple pin he stuck into College Station, Texas the week he met her. He recalled thinking he didn’t want to be anywhere else but there at that precise moment.

  “Whoever told you that living your dreams would be easy, baby—they lied. If it was easy, Wes, you wouldn’t want it. And yes, what’s happening around you is awful, and God, I miss you so bad it kills me, but you’re where you need to be, darlin’. You’re doing what you said you would do—You’re seeing the world in all its guts and glory.”

  Wes took a deep, shuddering breath, curling his chin toward the phone. He thought of the lives lost, the families huddled, caring for each other in their darkest hours, the incredible hope he’d seen in some people’s faces, and the terrible despair he’d found in others. The line crackled. Outside, he heard the mortar strikes, felt the tremble of the old building while Martin clacked away on his laptop, trying to meet a newspaper deadline as the lights flickered.

  “Tell me about you, baby,” Wes murmured. “Talk to me like we’re sitting in front of each other at a café in Paris,” he requested, his voice a little shaky.

  “My commanding officer told me I’m ranked first in my class. If I stay on track this last semester, he thinks I’ll get the All-Around Performance Award,” she told him, a smile in her voice.

  “Baby, that’s amazing.”

  “He’s introducing me to Captain Morrissey in Maryland,” she continued, excitement making her voice breathy as the line crackled. “He heads up the Kennedy Irregular Warfare Center in Houston. If I play my cards right, I think I’ll have my first post there in Naval Intelligence.”

  “That’d be so perfect, baby,” Wes told her, pride for her swelling in his chest. “You could still be close to the ranch and see your dad and Ryland regularly, too.”

  “And if you ever decide to open an agency in Austin, I’d already have the connections in Houston to be stationed back in Texas if I’m ever deployed,” she told him, her voice happy. “We could make it work, Wes. We could both live our dreams and make us work.”

  Wes downed the rest of the whisky as he listened to her making plans. He heard the exhilaration in her voice, her eagerness to begin her career. And the more she told him, the farther away she seemed—the farther away they seemed.

  Everything had gotten so far away from him…

  “Now you tell me what you’d say if we were sitting in a bar together, listening to Édith Piaf and drinking Armagnac,” she told him, the ultra-violet warmth of her voice curling around him. “Remind me why I’m so damn in love with you, Wesley Elliott.”

  The line crackled again as mortar fire continued to pummel the streets. Martin looked up from his laptop as lights flickered and dimmed before he bent back over the keyboard, typing faster.

  Wes closed his eyes. “I’d tell you that all the walls are down, baby,” he started. “I’d tell you that all the stakes are pulled up and that I’m adrift—a perfect, goddamn mess without you.”

  A close mortar slammed into the street beside them, rocking the foundation.

  “Bugger!” Wes heard Martin curse.

  The static on the line crackled and hissed. Wes wondered if she could still hear him.

  “I’d tell you that being without you, th
ere’s an empty space in my heart that is exactly your shape, Sammy.”

  The lights flickered, dimmed, and then went completely out, leaving Wes and Martin in darkness, the only illumination from Martin’s laptop as he heard Martin curse.

  “Wes—Wes, are—there—can’t—”

  He gripped the receiver, his fingers touching the mouthpiece as if he could touch her. “I’d tell you that no matter how much I love you, Sammy—I don’t think I’ll get to keep you. I don’t know if we can make it—”

  But she was already gone, the line dead in his hand.

  *

  December 8th—Early Morning

  The Wyatt Ranch, Texas

  S A M A N T H A

  Sam lazed back on the dewy grass, eyes closed and face raised toward the rising sun while she breathed in the scent of soil and fresh air, feeling the damp blades underneath her fingertips. She was serenaded by a cacophony of crickets, birds and the morning bees pollinating the flowers her Aunt Hannah kept lovely throughout the year.

  The family burial plot was situated on a hill overlooking their land, partially enclosed by an oblong cloister of Japanese red maples and dogwood trees surrounding the headstones of her family: her granddaddy, father, brother, and mother. Sam hadn’t been back since she buried her father and Ryland. But now, lying back between their headstones, an unexpected peace washed over her, serenity stealing over the garden of their resting place.

  She stretched her hand out beside her, touching the warming earth that covered her little brother. She imagined him, recalling the feel of his little shoulders under her arm, the comfort of having him near after so many years of denying herself the luxury of remembering him too clearly, the pain too acute, the loss still too powerful.

  But something had happened when she returned just a week ago—seeking reprieve and some kind of shelter. Her love for her family and this home that had once been her safest place on earth eclipsed the sadness and the irrevocable losses. The way Uncle Grant and Aunt Hannah held her, the way old Gus smiled at her as he led her horse, Valkyrie, out of her stalls like he had when she was young—it all felt like forgiveness. A forgiveness she hadn’t asked for and didn’t even know she’d needed. And that forgiveness felt like healing.

  She ran her fingers over Ryland’s headstone, the way she’d touch an old scar, remembering. She found herself speaking to him, telling him about what she and Carey had started at Lennox Chase, about how she’d bought a place in Chicago, though Texas still felt more like home than anywhere. And as she did, she felt herself relaxing into the ground, curative, restoring tears falling down her face unchecked while she laid herself bare, telling him how she loved him, how often she missed him.

  Rush radioed, shaking her from her reverie, and Sam wiped her face with her sleeve as she replied.

  “Wes just pulled up at the gate, Boss. He’s asking to see you. Over.”

  Sam thought about it a moment. She wasn’t surprised. He’d always been persistent. She half wondered sometimes if the only reason they’d gotten together was because he didn’t recognize the word, “No.”

  “Copy that,” she answered. “Have Gus give him a horse and send him up.”

  Though she knew he was coming, the hair raised on her arms when she eventually heard him ride up, pulling his mount to a stop a few yards away from where Valkyrie browsed, her tail snapping in content as she foraged around a nearby salt bush. Sam kept her eyes closed as Wes approached, his gait softened by the soft grass lining her family’s plot.

  Sam watched him lower to his haunches beside her, and for the first time since they’d seen each other again, she really allowed herself to really look at him.

  Her eyes passed over his handsome features, noting they were in sharper relief now that he was older, seasoned. His allure had only become more intense, more vivid with the years he’d lived between being hers and becoming him. Wes’s expressive, golden eyes glowed in the morning sun, and Sam forgave herself a little, for taking too long to get over him. Because her recollections hadn’t done him justice. And time had a way of smoothing rough edges, making the old anguish a little less keen, the once-sharp pangs just a bit more abstract. As Wes held her gaze, his eyes soft, Sam felt an unexpected equanimity steal through her.

  He didn’t want to hurt her. She saw that clearly. He wanted to be near her, a satellite orbiting her microcosm, and he was willing to risk being burned up upon reentry to accomplish it. And well, she supposed she respected that—that he would come to her, open and bare, understanding there would be no way to go back. Knowing there was no easy way to complete the journey, no opportunity to arrive and depart unscathed.

  She smiled just a little when he pushed her heavy braid over her shoulder before he trailed his fingers down her face. Sam could feel him mounting a charm offensive, a strategy to win her back in some way, so she cut him off at the pass, surprising him when she pressed a gentle kiss to the hand he held to her face.

  “All my life, I could make what I wanted happen,” she told him, pulling back to gaze out over the massive acreage in front of them. “I could see the goal and the path would light up. And because of that, I never really doubted myself. Never questioned the possibilities because I knew what I was capable of. Until you,” she admitted. “You were my first failure, Wes. The first thing I couldn’t get the way I wanted it. And I suppose I hated you for that more than anything.”

  He glanced away from her, his eyes falling on Ryland’s headstone. “I always believed it was because I failed you, Sammy. I never saw it as anything but my fault we couldn’t make it work.”

  “You came here for closure,” she remarked, glancing at him.

  Wes settled down beside her, stretching his jean-clad legs out as he looked out over the fields.

  “Nah,” he answered, smiling a little. “I came for something better.”

  “What’s better than closure?”

  “A win.”

  His unapologetic reply was so cocky, so unrepentantly Wes, it made her laugh, the surprised chuckle coming out of her mouth before she could suppress it.

  “You’re not getting that, but I like your nerve, Elliott.” She smiled. “I guess I’m feeling magnanimous today: I’ll give you absolution for your supposed sins, but that’s just about it.”

  “Generous of you.” He winked back, lowering to rest on his elbow. The breeze picked up his silky hair, longer now and a little darker. Her fingers itched to touch the waves, run her fingers through them like she had when they were young, but she contented herself with admiring him, careful to keep the space between them unoccupied with her nostalgic remembrances and his provocative intentions.

  “Sammy, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t go for broke.” He smiled, his teasing just bordering flirtatious.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she agreed. “I always liked that about you though. You were never afraid to go after what you wanted.”

  “I guess this is where I admit you were my exception,” he replied after a moment, languidly surveying the range, his leonine eyes squinting a little in the heat of the rising sun.

  “We’re similar in a way, Wes,” she continued. “We’re both ambitious, driven. For different reasons of course, but we have that in common. We both like to win. And we both like the sparks that come from competition.”

  He smiled at her. “I love our sparks.”

  “Oh, I know you do.” Sam replied, considering him. “But I realized something else about our time together. Something that made me madder than hell—”

  “That I wasn’t ready for you then?” Wes replied, his expression darkening as he admitted his culpability.

  “No,” she shook her head. “I was mad at myself for giving you everything and keeping very little for myself. I was angry for making you my reason for being, the litmus test for my personal sense of accomplishment and success.” She felt the familiar regret wash over her, held it for a moment, then let it go. “One person can’t be somebody’s everything, Wes. At least not to me. An
d I tried to make you that.”

  “I wanted to be that for you, Sammy,” he murmured, running his fingers across her hand in a feather-light stroke.

  “I was going to make you love me,” she went on, feeling the confession loosen the emotional scar tissue. “I was going to love you so good, you wouldn’t need anything else.”

  “I’ve never loved anyone else,” he admitted, his voice as heartfelt as the look in his eyes.

  “But it wasn’t enough, was it?” she commented. “Not for you and not for me. Took me a long time to get over that. A long time to admit it wasn’t your shortcoming—it wasn’t a transgression I had a right to lay at your door.” Sam covered her eyes against the sun’s rays. “We were flawed from the start, but you and I had a good run, didn’t we?”

  Wes laughed softly, shaking his head as he considered her. She raised her brow in question.

  “Never met another woman who could be so razor-sharp and so vulnerable at the same time,” he told her, his eyes warm. “You’re different now: smoother, more controlled; but you’re still you, Sammy. You just hide her better.”

  She glanced away, so he wouldn’t sense her longing, the unspoken sentiment to her acquittal.

  “I wasn’t lost,” Wes continued. “I didn’t go wander off in the desert, prodigal. I won’t lie and tell you I needed to figure out what I wanted. I knew what I wanted.” He leaned forward, plucking a wild flower from a patch near Ry’s headstone. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t need you. That doesn’t mean I didn’t learn to live with a piece of my heart missing.” He tucked the flower behind her ear, his fingers trailing down the braid of her hair, tugging a little at the end, until she looked at him again.

  “You’re my soul mate, Sammy,” he told her with quiet, genuine certainty. “I knew it when we were kids, but it took me losing you for more than a decade to understand it. We were always bound to collide.” Wes drew closer, and she didn’t stop it, entranced with the possibilities, her heart and mind teased with the question of what it might be like—to be close to him again.