Phoenix Alight Page 9

  “I mean, you should put that boy out of his misery, once and for all. Don’t you think you’ve had him on a string quite long enough?”

  “On a string?” Frankie asked around a mouthful of spinach and egg.

  “Ever since last Fourth of July, Cameron Reynolds has been watching and waiting. And when you think he’s not looking, you stare just as hard at him. Don’t tell me he hasn’t spoken. Don’t you think you’ve played games long enough?”

  “What makes you think I’m playing games? And for your information, he hasn’t spoken. Not one word.”

  Mom looked unconvinced. “A word of advice, daughter, don’t feed bears by hand unless you want to lose your fingers.”

  Funny how they all thought it was her fault that she and Bear Boy weren’t mated. As if they couldn’t imagine Cameron Reynolds turning Frankie D’Angelo phoenix shifter and fighter pilot down. But all he had ever wanted were some pleasant romps.

  He had rejected her offer of immortality out of hand. What was she supposed to do? Marry him anyway? Deny her phoenix nature? As if.

  “You go look after Cam,” Mom rose to her feet. “But you think about what I’ve said.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” No point in arguing with Mom when she used that voice.

  She met Lincoln and Beverly walking up to the big house with Harding in a carrier on his father’s chest. “Mom and Dad up?” Linc asked.

  “Mom is, Dad’s flying Pierce and his family home.”

  Beverly chuckled. “That’s okay. Your mom will be glad to have Hardy to herself.”

  Frankie caressed Hardy’s soft cheek. His starfish hands grabbed for hers. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  The cottage kitchen was a disaster. Cam had obviously eaten and drunk. The remains of his breakfast were on the table, the stove, and in the sink. He had spilled water on the counter. She read the signs, he was still too exhausted and clumsy to be able to leave things shipshape.

  If there was one thing the military taught all its members, it was habitual neatness. This mess was a symptom of his illness, not a personality defect. Automatically, she cleared up and washed the dirty pan and dishes. She caught herself whistling a clean-up tune.

  She opened the kitchen window and let out the stale air. Cameron didn’t know it yet, but today was the first day of his new life. She was about to shake up his convalescence. His days of lying around in the dark in his own stink were at an end. This sunless retreat was no place for anyone to get well, let alone a bear shifter who loved the great outdoors.

  She was beginning to have a deep suspicion about why he was behaving as he was. From the moment she had asked him how often he had taken bear since his injury, and he had evaded her question, she had sensed that something was very wrong. Cameron was punishing himself for something. Probably for getting injured. Possibly for screwing up his mission. She didn’t have enough data, but she knew her bear.

  Without thinking, she began to hum a healing tune as she went into the dim and dusty living room, adjusting it as the sound waves intersected with Cameron’s brain waves. This time she thought her song was calming the spikes and waking up the troughs. Probably wishful thinking. Whatever Mom thought, healing was Eleanor’s gift, not hers.

  Cam was doing better than before she had arrived. But until she had shown up, no one had been nursing him. Not really. He was still far from normal. She was no expert in the art of healing, but even she could see that parts of his spectrum were still frozen and other parts erratic and incomplete.

  He was lying on his back, unshaven, wearing the T-shirt he had put on after they had made love. Had sex, she corrected herself. The pills she had set out the day before were all gone. An empty glass sat in a wet ring that was leaving a white mark on the wooden coffee table. His water jug was empty. So he had been taking his meds, and drinking.

  She readjusted her melody, tweaking his brain waves as best she could. He sighed and drifted deeper into the healing sleep he so badly needed to repair body and soul. The bedroom was a mess again, but not as nasty. She restored it to order, opening the blinds and pulling the curtains. Sunshine flooded in. She left the windows wide open to let in the warm spring air.

  She left him sleeping while she policed the rest of the cottage and took care of Grant’s bedroom for Mom. It was neat as a pin, but the sheets and towels needed to be laundered. Normally, Grant would have made sure that was done. But yesterday had not been normal.

  She spared an envious thought for Grant and Genevieve in their Jamaican villa. Would Gen have already swallowed the Egg of Immortality and now share a telepathic phoenix bond with her husband? Could she survive in a marriage with Cam without such a bond?

  When she had their picnic lunch ready she decided to rouse Cam. In the living room, she pulled the blinds and curtains and cranked the windows open. “Rise and shine, Fly Boy, it’s daylight on the swamp,” she sang.

  “What the hell?” Cameron sat up and clamped his big hands over his eyes.

  “You need fresh air and sunlight. Even if it hurts.”

  “The doctor said I was to have complete rest and quiet and a darkened room,” he ground out.

  “We’ve already established that none of your doctors knows you are a bear. Up and at ‘em, Fly Boy. We’re going for a walk in the woods.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Florence Nightingale, but my walker isn’t much use on rough terrain.”

  “You aren’t going to need your walker, Bear Boy.”

  * * *

  Cameron~

  Frankie had plainly lost her mind. Opening the blinds, flooding his injured eyes and brain with bright light. And this idiot scheme of hers to go outdoors was crazier yet. It had been hard enough yesterday when he had been able to wear an eye-shade in the car. But he was danged if he was going to go for a stroll in the woods completely blind. It was clear that Frankie hadn’t understood how badly injured he was. How crippled.

  He tossed the afghan off his legs. Let her take a good look at his damaged knee and the scars that ran up his thigh on either side. The staple marks made two obscene red zippers. The back was worse. Like Franken-damned-stein’s leg. She didn’t look shocked or embarrassed by his scars. She just pursed her lips thoughtfully.

  “That’s why you need sunshine, Sunshine. On your feet, Airman.”

  “Frankie, I can barely make it into the kitchen on a walker, there’s no way I can go play in the woods.”

  “That’s why you have to do it in bear.”

  Now that was embarrassing. He was going to have to admit that he could no longer shift. That his bear had died in the desert with his buddies. He no longer possessed even a vestige of his paranormal powers. But there was no way in hell he was going to advertise his weakness. Not to Warrior Woman.

  He needed to be fighting fit to deal with his wily phoenix. Unfortunately, what he really needed was for his bear be fighting fit. It was phoenixes who had the ability to regenerate. But his bear was dead. Not just injured. Finished. Kaput. Dead as the proverbial doornail. Cameron Reynolds was never going hunting ever again. At least not on four legs.

  He creaked to his feet. Grabbed that blasted walker. He had no idea where he had left his cane. “I’m going to take a piss.” He made his statement as crude as possible. Maybe Warrior Woman would take a hint and go.

  Frankie narrowed her eyes at him but she didn’t say anything. He could hear her singing as he made his halting way to the bathroom. Even though he was angry and upset, her song was lovely and eased something in him. But the face that looked back at him was still unfamiliar. Was he ever going to get used to this hollow-eyed stranger?

  His chin needed a razor, again. Even though he was blond, he had a bear shifter’s heavy beard. But he had scraped his face for the wedding. The swaying vagrant in the mirror needed a shower more than he needed a shave.

  He leaned against the tiles, and twice he slipped. He nearly tripped getting out of the tub, but he caught himself on the towel bar. Frankie had been busy. His bed had been m
ade and the room was tidy. But damned if she hadn’t raised the shades in here too.

  The sunlight seared his eyeballs. Pain shot through his skull like so many shards of shrapnel. But he didn’t think he had the strength to both lower the blinds again and get dressed so he could deal with his nemesis.

  He didn’t try for fancy. Jeans and a T-shirt. Bare feet. They gripped better anyway. And even with a walker, he tended to stagger. Learning to walk with his new knee, was harder than he had thought it would be when he had declined physical therapy.

  After all, he had made a freaking career of physical training. He had been sure that he knew everything there was to know about his anatomy and physique. But this steel ball and socket hurt like blazes, and moved like rusty machinery.

  Maybe it would’ve been better, if they’d amputated the whole damn leg. He had a cousin who’d lost a leg in Afghanistan*. Troy didn’t do too badly with his prosthesis. He’d been kicked out of Special Forces too. But Troy was married now and had a couple of cubs. By all accounts he was happy. Of course, Troy hadn’t lost his bear.

  “You going to be all day, Fly Boy?” Frankie demanded. “We’re going to lose the sun.”

  Cam clomped towards her until his walker was in her personal space. “I. Am. Not. Going. Out. So it doesn’t matter whether we lose the fucking sun or not.” He lifted the walker to take another step.

  Frankie put both hands on the front bar and held him effortlessly in place. “Listen up, Reynolds. You can’t get well, denying your bear fresh air and sunshine. You’ve spent two months indoors. It’s a wonder your bear hasn’t upped and died.”

  Had she guessed? “My damned bear is none of your business, D’Angelo.”

  * Bearly a Bride (Brides for the Bachelor Bears box set)

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cameron~

  His response confused Warrior Woman enough that she backed away from the walker and let him go back to the living room. She had wiped up the coffee table and his pills were in little plastic boxes today. Probably a good idea, it seemed he remembered, or maybe he had dreamed, that Quincy and Rebecca had found the saucers. It was hard to know. His memory was totally shot.

  “Which ones have the painkillers?” he mumbled.

  “None of the ones you’re taking right now.”

  “Who died so you could become Dr. D’Angelo?”

  “Eleanor advised me. She consulted a pharmacist. They worked out a schedule, so you don’t take meds together where their interaction is problematic. Trust me. You were poisoning yourself before.”

  Strangely, he did trust her. He resented the hell out of her interference, but he trusted her.

  “Anyway, I don’t have to be a doctor to know that painkillers are only the beginning with a joint replacement. If you want the pain in your knee to stop, you also have to do the exercises so that the prosthesis becomes a working part of your body.”

  She shook her head at him. “What you need is fresh air, sunshine, and physical training.” Hands on hips, she blocked his walker again and bent forward to put her face up close to his. “No, ifs, ands, or buts, Bear Boy.”

  “What part of no don’t you understand, woman?”

  Frankie smiled. She was beautiful, and never more so than when she smiled, but that smile froze his blood. She leaned a little further forward and kissed him smack on the lips. That shorted out whatever was left of his brain. It was all he could do to stay upright. He gripped the handles of his walker hard. He wanted to deepen the kiss, but she pulled away.

  “Have you noticed,” she asked conversationally, “That you’re not stuttering this afternoon?”

  “I’m usually better when I first wake up.”

  “And that you’re sleeping better?”

  “I figured that was because you were singing me to sleep.”

  She blushed, like the sky at sunset. It was pleasant to see Warrior Woman standing with her mouth wide open, at a loss for words. But she recovered quickly. Her teeth snapped together. “That’s right, Fly Boy. I’ve been lulling you to sleep with a phoenix lullaby. Why don’t you trust me to handle your pain?”

  “Want to let me sit down before I fall down?”

  “Actually, no. You might as well stay on your feet. I made us some sandwiches. We’re going to eat them outdoors. In the sunshine.”

  * * *

  Frankie~

  Cam had a hard time getting out to the pond behind the cottage. Six or seven times, she had to give him a hand. The ground was mowed short, but it was no manicured lawn, just patchy grass and weeds. The going was rough. But the real problem was that he moved like an old man.

  By the time she helped him ease down onto a log, his pale face was drawn, and his clean shirt soaked with sweat. They sat under a cottonwood in the dappled sunshine and ate their ham sandwiches and drank sweet tea. At least she had made sweet tea for this Georgia boy. Like a good Texan, she drank hers straight, over enough ice to clog the Gulf of Mexico.

  It was pleasant out here by the fishing tank. Daddy kept it well-stocked with smallmouth bass and trout. The catfish came on their own. She knew that Cameron was an avid fisherman. Yet in a month he hadn’t stirred himself even once to go fishing. It wasn’t as though fly fishing took that much energy if you did it from a chair.

  It was hard to know how much of his retreat from the world was because of that concussion. And how much was perfectly understandable depression. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was a real thing, but even for non-shifters, she didn’t think that drugs were ever one hundred percent of the answer. For shifters that route was full of booby traps. Spear-lined booby traps.

  The problem with depression was that it suppressed the immune system. No wonder he had not healed like a shifter and was still struggling with infection. No wonder he looked like death. No wonder his aura was blotchy and incomplete. He was dying. Dying by inches.

  It was time Cameron tried something other than medication. The drugs had their place, but so did talk therapy, exercise, nature, natural light, and common sense. She was about to inject some perspective into this bear’s regimen. And maybe some phoenix healing. But there was no use scaring the poor thing.

  “Want a brownie?” She passed him a plastic box.

  “Did you make them yourself?”

  As if. “I stole them from Dad’s secret stash.”

  He took two. He chewed them slowly and washed them down with the sweet tea. Now that he had stopped fighting her, his face was pinking up. At least she thought that was a healthy flush under his stubble. This would be a good time, and an ideal place, for him to take bear. Except that he seemed to have developed some strange ideas about shifting.

  Maybe he was worried that his knee replacement would screw up his change. Well, she wasn’t that sure herself what would happen. But he couldn’t go through life, being too afraid to find out. He had to give it a try and see what happened.

  The wind ruffled the pond. Dragonflies darted here and there chasing bugs. The trout broke the surface chasing those same insects. It was both pretty and peaceful. The breeze tossed the tender new leaves of the cottonwood playfully aside. The afternoon sun suddenly blazed through this new opening.

  Cam threw a hand over his eyes as if he had just been blasted with pepper spray. He swore. Long, loudly and profanely as only a serviceman could.

  “Do you know why your eyes are so sensitive?” she asked when he ran out of steam.

  “I assume for the same reason I have a concussion and shrapnel in my skull. Exploding shell.” His voice was terse and angry.

  She patted his knee. “Sucks.”

  He made a noise between laughter and hiccups. A snort of derision. “Now there’s a nice phoenix understatement.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “About what? How I led my team into an ambush? How I got six good men killed? How I fucked up totally and completely?” His voice got louder and more furious with every word. When he stopped his anger echoed in the soft air.

  “Ev
eryone died? Your whole team?” she asked quietly.

  After a long time he spoke. “I don’t know. I think so. Tell me, did the colonel and Tasha go back to Yuma today?”

  “First thing this morning.”

  “I may have dreamed it, but I seem to remember your brother coming by and telling me that one of the guys survived.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Probably just wishful thinking.”

  “This morning?”

  “I probably hallucinated it.”

  “Have you been hallucinating?” His fever had been high enough to induce delirium.

  Last night he had thought she was a dream. She had ruthlessly taken advantage of that. Her insides pulsed gently in remembered passion. But seeing as he hadn’t mentioned the episode, she had to believe he had either genuinely forgotten or really did think it was just a fever dream.

  “Yeah,” he didn’t elaborate.

  Frankie gave that some thought. There were limits to how much you could learn about pharmacology and medicine online. But she and Eleanor had done their best. Vivid hallucinations of all kinds were common side effects of the sleeping meds he had been on. So were sleepwalking, sleep driving, sleep eating.

  Lots of people had wound up dead or in Emergency after taking this new generation of sleeping pills. Who knew what they would do to a shifter’s brain chemistry?

  “Since I started organizing your drugs, have you kept hallucinating?”

  “That’s the trouble with hallucinations. They seem so danged real. How do I know if they have stopped?”

  “There is that. But if one of your buddies made it back, we can probably find out. You got a name?”

  “Onesalt. Sgt. Nelson Onesalt.” His head drooped. His voice wavered. “Spelt the way it sounds, One Salt.”

  “Give me a moment.” She whipped out her cell phone and ran a search. “This guy lives in Arizona, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wife named Zoe? Three kids.”

  “Yeah. Two boys and a girl.”

  “Looks like your buddy Onesalt is a hero. He is recuperating at home. His wife is posting pictures of him and the kids on Facebook. I’d say he’s alive, all right.” She handed Cameron her phone. Onesalt smiled at the camera while three small boys hung off his arms like piñatas.