The Heart Beneath

Taking off her thick leather gloves, Callie took the pen Wes held out to her. When their fingers met, she felt a brief flash of warmth. Wes was amazingly calm and matter-of-fact, despite all the carnage around them.

Looking up, she saw a group of civilians, some with children in their arms, straggling toward the hotel rubble where Corporal Orlando and Private Bertram were waiting. Wes saw them, too. He knew they would be asking for help. The other part to his mission was to bring order to this chaos. He had a lot of responsibilities to carry out. Engaging the help of the survivors, all of whom were dazed looking, their faces drawn with shock and strain, would be his next order of business. By using the construction equipment, Wes could help locate other victims. But there were many things he couldn’t supply the survivors with yet, such as medical help, water and food. All he could do at this point was murmur empty platitudes.

His stomach tightened at that realization. He was an engineer, used to ordering people and equipment around to get things done. But in this situation, everything was difficult. He had neither the people nor the supplies to help survivors as he wanted to. Would they understand that? The expressions on some of their faces were heartbreaking. Some people were bloody, others simply disheveled and dirty. Two children had dust-covered faces, and even from this distance, Wes could see the tracks of their tears through the filth.

Right now, everyone in this neighborhood would be drawn to Wes’s camp, for he and his teams were the only authority around. Feeling helplessly overwhelmed with the magnitude of his mission, he looked down at Callie. Wes needed her serenity, gazed almost desperately at those guileless blue eyes that held the hope of the world in them. She was so strong right now; he felt it and sensed it in how she held herself.

As Callie hoisted herself up on the bumper so she could study the map and draw a quick sketch of the Hoyt’s rubble, Wes stood back, studying the group approaching. He counted at least ten people, very dirty and dusty, heading slowly toward Orlando and Bertram. The silver-haired man leading them, picked up his pace as Corporal Orlando waved him closer. Wes saw the man’s face light up with hope. Standing there, Wes didn’t feel the least bit hopeful. The pressure of people’s expectations weighed heavily upon him.

He lowered his eyes and watched Callie, hungrily absorbing her profile as she worked over the blueprint. She was like a breath of fresh air compared to the hell surrounding them. A wisp of her sandy hair had slipped free and was lying across her rosy cheek. Although she was no raving beauty, Wes found her face intriguing, especially her wide, soft mouth and those very deep, dark-blue eyes that he didn’t think missed a thing.

He found his heart opening, and that shocked him. Every time Callie was near him, or he thought of her or pictured her face, the same feeling overcame him. That scared Wes. The only other time he’d felt like this was when Allison, his fiancée, had been with him. Sadness overwhelmed him momentarily at the thought. She had been a firefighter. She’d died in a ten-story building fire, and his love for her had gone up in those flames, in that black smoke.

Wes had sworn he’d never again be drawn to a woman who did dangerous work for a living…yet here he was once more, with the same kind of tantalizing joy creeping through his heart. It told him he was powerfully drawn to Callie. But she had a dangerous job, dammit, and he simply couldn’t love her as he’d loved Allison. No, his heart couldn’t stand such a risk again.

Wes found himself wrestling with the past. Looking at Callie, he wanted to forget the stern promise he’d made to find a woman in a safe job. Callie was so beautiful in his eyes. That outgoing warmth she’d automatically established with him seemed to ease all his burdens, made him want to reach out, pull her into his arms and hold her tight until the air rushed from her lungs. That was the effect she had on him.

Trying to shake off the desire and need he felt for her, Wes tried to focus on what she was doing. She’d quickly drawn her grid with expert strokes and was now numbering each area.

“Okay, Lieutenant…” She laughed apologetically. “I mean, Wes…”

“I’d like to use first names when we’re alone,” he told her in a gritty, intimate voice, stepping close to her. “We’re both the same rank. I don’t have a problem with it—unless you do?” Sexual harassment was something today’s military was working hard to eradicate. The U.S. Navy had a color-coded warning system in place, and since the Marines Corps was technically a part of this service, they employed the same criteria.

“Green” meant that the person receiving the comment felt it was appropriate. “Yellow” meant that the comment or choice of words made the recipient uneasy and unsure of the sender’s intentions. “Red” meant that the sender had crossed over the line and the receiver considered the comment or gesture sexual harassment. Ever since the Tailhook 2 scandal in the early nineties, the navy used this three-color system to help everyone understand what was and was not sexual harassment.

Callie glanced over at Wes. She wanted to simply stare at him. His face was strong, and she liked the life that glimmered in his forest-green eyes. “Sure. Callie is fine. It’s a green, Wes.” Pleasantly surprised by his intimacy and friendliness, Callie knew he was questioning whether she felt his demeanor toward her was harassment. It wasn’t; his warmth was welcome under the circumstances. Saying it was a green situation told him that. It also meant she was leaving the door open for a much more potentially intimate relationship with him, but that had yet to be verbalized.

Her heart pounded briefly at her boldness. Could she say it to his face? What a coward she was! Callie felt incredibly drawn to him and unable to stop the energy that seemed to pulse between them when they were together.

She handed Wes the pen and leaped down off the bumper. As she picked up the leather leash, Dusty instantly stood up, his tail wagging. He was ready to go to work.