Buck recalled seeing something labeled “blinkers”.
He located the button quickly. “This?” he pointed and asked.
“Yup. All you have to do is aim the mast using the periscope controls, then hit the button to cause light pulses, either long or short pushes depending upon whether you want a dot or a dash. Give it a try, and keep your eyepiece engaged so you’ll know if she sees you.”
Buck held his breath, put his eye up to the scope, then hit the button after aiming it at Bobbie. depressing it for a long hold that meant “look at me”.
He hoped she’d notice it before either of her brothers emerged from their hidey-hole.
“Come on, come on,” he prompted out loud, knowing Spence and Tabitha would understand his fervency.
Just when he thought he should give up, he saw Bobbie stiffen, like someone had virtually tapped her on the shoulder.
Slowly, she turned around and tipped her head.
Buck’s heart pounded harder as she squinted directly into his eyepiece.
He then gave her a signal she couldn’t mistake.
One, four, three.
Bobbie’s mouth screwed up in consternation, and Buck repeated the signal, hoping to differentiate the sub’s flashes from the sun that he knew danced across the sparkling waves.
One, four, three.
Within seconds, the most beautiful smile Buck had ever seen, broke across Bobbie’s face…
…and she blew him a kiss.
CHAPTER 30
“I love you, too,”Bobbie whispered under her breath, her heart pounding with excitement.
Buck was here!
She wished she could say the words out loud; shout it to the heavens, but her brothers were lurking.
Right. But fuck them.Her brothers might be skulking about, but the man to whom she’d been denying those special words had followed her out to sea. Dogged her in a freaking submarine.
Who did that?
Buck, apparently.
Something within Bobbie began slowly cracking with that realization, and without warning, the enormous walls she’d spent so long erecting, simply exploded; blew wide open, allowing her to finally see.
Buck was exactly who he’d always purported to be. She’d known it, logically, but it had taken this long to make it through to her reluctant brain.
And now, just like that, all the caution and misgivings she’d had about allowing the man back into her life, crumbled.
Holy shit.
Bucklovedher. He really,reallyloved her, and she’d been such an idiot. He’d been trying to prove it to her over and over again by not running from her myriad of problems, but she’d been too armored, too insulated to listen. And now…?
He was actually here to help her face her troubles, head on. If that didn’t say commitment and loyalty, she didn’t know what did.
Bobbie grinned. Buck wassooogoing to get lucky tonight; served up a feast between the sheets, for sure, but with a heaping side of love-confessions that he probably never expected to grace his plate.
“What are you smiling at, bitch?”
