Hard to Hold Read online

  Yes, for both of them. What had she been thinking? “I shouldn’t have worried you.”

  “Lieutenant J. G. Hansen called me this morning.”

  She couldn’t hide her surprise. Still, it made sense—her uncle and Jake were close. There was probably some kind of look after her directive going on, although she doubted Uncle Cal would be pleased that she was actually moving into a house with Jake. Unless … “Did he mention that he’s got rooms for rent at his house?”

  “He did.” As always, the tone of his voice was unreadable as to whether or not her moving in with Jake was an issue. Without elaborating further on that thought, he put his car in park in the driveway, next to the long, black Town Car her mother always traveled in, and turned to her. “Some paperwork from Doctors Without Borders came to your mother’s house yesterday.”

  Shit. Shit. Her mind worked quickly, but her uncle was already getting out of the car after giving her the heads-up. She caught up to him before he got halfway up the walk.

  “Uncle Cal, I’m not going to be happy at the clinic—not for the long term.”

  “Things will get better. You’re paying your dues.”

  Uncle Cal, of course, knew the truth as well as she did. Most of the military staff was still suspicious of Isabelle, and didn’t have a problem showing it. The younger nurses were slightly nicer. But being shunned in itself didn’t bother her too much; her female friends—any friends, really—had always been few and far between and she’d never minded.

  The girls she’d met in college were long gone—medical school had kept her too busy to keep up with those friendships. Medical school had been too competitive, especially among female surgeons, and she’d preferred to keep mostly to herself.

  She automatically touched her side as she thought about Sarah next and wondered where the photographer was.

  Evening number three in Djibouti. Isabelle had been exhausted, attempting to plow through the constant paperwork, the forms required by MSF in order to keep track of medications and money spent.

  A quick flash of light made her look up, startled. Instinctively, she hid her face behind her hand. “Oh, I don’t really like … I’m not really used to …”

  She’d spent a lot of time avoiding photographers and the press in general, had become so good at it that most reporters forgot that Senator Cresswell had a daughter.

  “Hey, it’s all right. I get it.” Sarah put the camera down on the table. “Cameras can freak people. Some cultures think that cameras can steal your soul.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “I think that a lot of people’s souls were never there to begin with.” Sarah took the top off a Fanta and handed the drink to her. “You’re doing well. Even Rafe was impressed and it takes a lot to impress him.”

  “You’ve known him before this?”

  “We’ve been at a few of the same camps together. I know what he is.”

  “A logistician.”

  “Sure, we can go with that.” Sarah lit a cigarette. “It’s okay. I’m not going to tell anyone. But most doctors don’t come here with their own bodyguards.”

  “I’m not most doctors.”

  Sarah smiled. “I know that too.”

  Sarah got her in a way that few women did, mainly because she was as complicated as Isabelle herself was. Their friendship had been one that not many people would understand and yet it was the most comfortable one Isabelle could ever remember having.

  She refused to believe that Sarah had any involvement in what happened. She’d had too much taken away already.

  “Izzy,” Uncle Cal called to her—he was already at the front door and she followed him quickly into the house.

  Her mother was waiting in the living room.

  “Izzy!” Her mom threw her arms around her. The affection was always surprising to Isabelle. In her political world, Jeannie Cresswell was stoic, her bearing regal. In private, she was warm and funny and Isabelle always wondered if living that kind of a double life was wearing or just necessary.

  “Hey, Mom.” Isabelle returned the hug, the familiar scent of her mom’s ever-present Chanel No. 5 immediately bringing Isabelle a sense of comfort. Although she and her mom weren’t always physically close, they had a pretty tight bond that Isabelle was grateful for, despite her mom’s over-protective nature, which had started with her family’s military background and had gotten worse with the political lifestyle. Isabelle could never get a firm footing as to what exactly her mother wanted from her and she’d given up early, had focused on doing what she herself wanted to do, and after a long while, there was an easy, if uneven, peace between the two women.

  The last trip to Africa had nearly broken that peace completely.

  “You look good, honey.” Jeannie held her at arm’s length. “Still too thin, though. Are you eating?”

  “I am, Mom. It’s good to see you.” And, really, it was.

  Her mother had been there every day, nearly nonstop, for the first week Isabelle had been in the hospital. They’d been watching Isabelle closely for pneumothorax; it had been something of a small miracle that her lung hadn’t collapsed or been punctured on the carry Jake had to perform. He’d run over some rough territory and in order to gain the speed necessary, he hadn’t been all that gentle. The extra morphine he’d slipped her might have helped, and so had the hold he’d shifted to after he’d run a short distance with her in his arms.

  She’d refused a lot of the pain meds they’d wanted to give her once she’d arrived at the hospital, hadn’t wanted to be groggy. Her entire body remained on full alert, even while she slept. And she’d been forced to speak to the FBI and the CIA and the military and a steady stream of people who kept asking her the same questions.

  She’d given them all the same answers, different than what she’d told Jake. Identified Rafe by picture over and over, knowing her life was never going to be the same.

  She forced her thoughts away from that, caught sight of the envelope near her mother’s bag as her mom and Cal shared a brief hug.

  Jeannie motioned for her to sit next to her on the couch. “I had lunch with Daniel today,” she said.

  Isabelle bit back saying anything, held her mother’s gaze for a few seconds in a big game of chicken. Jeannie gave in first. “He misses you, Izzy.”

  “You came to try to talk me into going back to Washington once my three months here are up.” She wondered if her mom had that idea before or after the MSF paperwork arrived at her doorstep. Typical, the political approach—start soft and friendly, reel them in and then strike hard.

  “Can I have the envelope from Doctors Without Borders, Mom?” she asked quietly. For a long moment, her words just hung there like a heavy weight pulling at all of them, until Jeannie leaned over to reach into her bag and then handed the now all-too-familiar packet to her. Isabelle flipped it over, saw her mom hadn’t opened it, but that didn’t matter—the return address clearly marked it as Médicins Sans Frontières.

  She tore the envelope open and saw the completed paperwork—they were letting it go through. She’d worried, at first, that MSF would stop her from going because of what happened.

  When she looked up from the papers, she found her mother staring at her and when she glanced toward Cal she found him staring out the front window, hands clasped behind his back. “It’s only for eight weeks this time.”

  “You are not going back there. She is not going back there.” Uncle Cal turned at the sound of her mother’s voice and her mom looked between the two of them.

  Isabelle turned to Cal. “You stopped me once. But I’m not going to comply with everyone else’s wishes this time. I’ve got to make myself happy.”

  “How can going back there make you happy?” Jeannie held a hand to her throat, and Isabelle knew she couldn’t explain it to her. Her mother would never understand … and that was all right.

  “Izzy, you signed a commitment to the Navy,” Uncle Cal started.

  “I’ll honor that. And then
, when I’m done with this Doctors Without Borders assignment, I’ll decide. I’m not going to be able to go through Officer Candidate School yet. I can’t even run two miles without pain.” The anger rose inside of her—hotter, faster than she’d ever remembered—and Uncle Cal shot her a warning look, but it was too late. She was tired of being handled.

  Her mother’s next words weren’t a surprise. “You haven’t given this new job a chance. You’re moving from one thing to the other too quickly—you’re not giving anything a chance.”

  No, that wasn’t true. She was giving one person a chance, the biggest chance she might’ve ever taken. “The clinic was always going to be a short-term solution for me. You both knew that.”

  “Maybe if you spoke with Daniel,” Jeannie suggested. At the mention of her ex-fiancé’s name again, Isabelle lost it.

  “Maybe if I spoke with Daniel, what? He’d make me see the error of my ways? Remind me that I’m supposed to sit home like some good little scared girl, never going anywhere but the safety of the hospital and then back home to him? I tried that. It didn’t work.” Her voice had risen and she fought back the sob that formed in her throat, wanting to give in to the pure white hot fury instead.

  Before she said something she’d regret, she walked away, past the two-man security team at the front door and out onto the front porch, heard Uncle Cal tell her mother to give Izzy a minute as she slammed the door behind her.

  She’d need much more time than that. She yanked her cell phone out of her pocket, dialed the number Jake had given her earlier, before they’d left his house that morning to go to the accident. Before she’d cursed at him.

  She hated being helpless—he was the first line of defense in stopping that.

  He picked up on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”

  That voice—his voice, floating above her—strong, comforting. Soothing. For a second, she closed her eyes and let his rough tones wash over her as he said her name, and she was in control again. When she opened her eyes her lashes were wet, and when she opened her mouth, nothing came out except a small sigh.

  “I’m not a mind reader, Isabelle,” he said softly.

  “Sorry,” she said. “God, Jake, I’m sorry …”

  There was a pause on his end, and then his voice again, gruffer than normal and twice as reassuring. “You don’t have to apologize to me. For anything.”

  “I never thought I’d have this kind of bond with anyone,” she said as the air bit through the long-sleeved shirt she’d worn under her scrubs, forcing her to pace the porch to try to avoid the wind. “It’s intense, so intense. I feel like I know you so well, on a level I can’t even begin to explain. Then again, I feel like I don’t even have to explain. You just knew. You just … know. And I’m not sure I like it.”

  She paused, hoping he hadn’t heard the hitch in her voice. “That night, when we were lying there and you were kissing me, I pretended that we were on vacation. On a beach, at night, after a long lazy afternoon in the sun. It was like a slice of heaven in the middle of all that hell.” She spoke quietly, more to herself than to him. Thinking about that night should’ve frightened her, but those memories weren’t a match for Jake. Most of the time.

  “What do you need from me, Isabelle?”

  “I need …” So much. “I need you to come get me.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen. Do you need me to stay on the line with you?”

  She smiled into the phone. “It’s okay—I’ve got to go pack. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  She clicked the phone off, shoved it into the pocket of her scrubs and walked back inside the house. Her mother and Uncle Cal still had their heads together and so she bypassed them, went upstairs to the room she’d been staying in and began to pack.

  “You’re leaving?” Her mother walked through the partially opened door.

  “I told Uncle Cal earlier—I’m so grateful for everything he’s done, for what you’ve both done, but it’s time for me to get on with my life.”

  “When were you going to tell me this?” her mother demanded of Cal, who stood in the doorway.

  “Okay, we all need to calm down.” Uncle Cal’s voice boomed but Isabelle’s temper was too far gone. And it felt good, really good, to unleash it. It was like taking back her power—and a little bit of her life.

  “I’m done being calm, Uncle Cal. I’ve got to heal the best way I know how. And that way is going to be totally up to me. Not you, and not you either, Mom.”

  “She is so stubborn,” her mother said to Uncle Cal. “She’s getting worse as she gets older.”

  “She is still in the room,” Isabelle said.

  “I know that you’re a grown woman, and that you can do whatever you like. God knows my interference hasn’t helped matters, but I’d really rather if you weren’t alone right now,” Jeannie pleaded.

  “Well, I won’t be. I’ll have roommates.”

  Cal shot her another look, which she ignored.

  “Roommates?” Jeannie asked.

  “Yes. They’re men Uncle Cal knows. From the base.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “SEALs, actually,” Isabelle admitted. “Part of the team who rescued me.”

  Her mother was silent for a minute. “Are you … dating any of these men?”

  “I think this is a good time for me to leave you two alone,” Cal said. He stood and left the room quickly, as if hearing about relationships was something he didn’t want any part of.

  “One of them is very special to me,” Isabelle said.

  “I just don’t think that’s such a good idea. I mean, he rescued you, Izzy. He knows …”

  “He knows everything, yes,” she told her mother. “And he doesn’t care. He treats me like I’m whole. Like I’m a flesh-and-blood woman. And why shouldn’t he?”

  Isabelle wasn’t able to stop the flow of tears and her mother pulled her into a fierce hug without reservation. “Of course he should. There’s nothing wrong with you. He’d be lucky to have you.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I was just thinking it might be easier with someone who doesn’t know what happened. That maybe he’s going to be a constant reminder of everything,” her mother explained, and Isabelle didn’t tell her that Jake was a constant reminder of just how right things could be eventually.

  “Nothing about the past months has been easy. But I need to do this. This man just lets me be myself. You don’t know how important that is to me.” Isabelle let her mother wipe the tears from her cheeks while she waited to hear the rebuttal.

  “Honey, I’m sorry. I do know how important that is. I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made.”

  It was perhaps the first time her mother had ever admitted anything so personal. Isabelle watched as her mom’s eyes grew slightly misty, how she suddenly looked very much like the young woman who’d fallen for a soldier at seventeen.

  “Falling in love with my father was a mistake?”

  “I was young. He was heroic. Dangerous.” Her mother paused, her hand worrying the silver locket she always wore around her neck. “Men like that have secrets. So many secrets. They’ll push you away if you try to get too close.”

  Jake did have secrets—that much Isabelle knew. She knew only the basics about what he’d grown up with, could fill in the blanks pretty easily herself, but she had a feeling that what she was imagining was far tamer than what actually happened to the young boy who’d been forced to carry the burden of his stepfather’s death all these years.

  “You think you can help them. Fix them. Heal them,” her mother continued. “But you can’t. Military men are just born different. Special Forces soldiers are in a class by themselves. Izzy, I just don’t think this is a good thing for you.”

  Isabelle knew her mother wasn’t really talking about her father at all. “I can make my own choices.”

  “I know you can. But I think this choice is being made for all the wrong reasons, because you think
you’re safe with this man.”

  I am safe with him. Those words tried to form on her lips, but they didn’t. The words safe and trust had been effectively wiped from her vocabulary two months earlier and it was a slow, torturous climb getting them back. “I’ll be fine, Mom,” she said instead. “Really. Just trust me.”

  “You don’t have a lot of experience with men. You spent so much time on school, your residency, your career. You’ve spent so much time alone. There’s a lot left for you to experience beyond your career.”

  “Being alone was my preference. And I was engaged,” she reminded her mother.

  “You didn’t love him,” her mother stated flatly.

  “How did you know that?”

  Jeannie reached out to put a hand over Isabelle’s. “A mother knows these things.”

  She recalled Jeannie’s earlier words. “I don’t understand why, if you knew how I felt about Daniel, you’d try to get me to go back with him.”

  Jeannie pushed some hair off Isabelle’s cheeks. Isabelle wound it back impatiently, into a ponytail. She’d pulled it down earlier because she knew that was how her mother liked it, but it was getting in the way.

  “You were always so alone. I know you prefer that—at first, I didn’t, though. I thought you were lonely, shy. I tried to get you to come out of your shell.”

  Isabelle remembered that all too well. “You finally gave up.” She wondered if Uncle Cal had heard this throughout his lifetime—he was the most solitary person Isabelle knew.

  “I did, once I realized that you enjoyed your own company. But I was thrilled when you finally let Daniel in. Or at least I thought you did.”

  Isabelle’s fiancé had treated her well, seemed to deal with her competitive nature—because he had no interest in trying to top her, maybe. He was a pediatrician, not a surgeon, and had no problem with his wife being more successful in her chosen field than he was in his.

  He’d been wonderful to her after she’d come home from Africa, more angry at himself that he hadn’t insisted on going with her for her MSF tour.