“Before I get cleaned up, do you have any pictures of Rose? I’d like to know who to look for.”
He came around to the table as she thumbed through photos on her phone and then held it out to him, trying to keep enough distance between them to avoid his magnetic pull.
“Is that her natural hair color?” he asked about her sister’s mass of tight,coppery curls.
“Yeah. She gets that a lot.” Rose’s hair was as dark red as Caitlyn’s, despite her golden brown skin. “Her dad must carry the recessive redhead gene, which my mom obviously has too. It’s not common, but there’s a photographer who’s documenting mixed-race redheads from all over the world. Rose was amazed to see other people like her with red hair and brown skin. My brother, on theother hand, takes after his dad, brown hair, brown eyes, no freckles, maybe a shade lighter.”
Caitlyn shared several more photos of Rose, but she was pretty easy to spot in a crowd. “I was three years ahead of her in school, but we bonded over being freckled redheads. Especially when some of the kids started bullying her for her appearance. Strawberry Shortcake, etc. She had it far worse thanI did—like kids asking, ‘What are you?’—but she seemed to handle it better.”
Kurt frowned. “Kids suck sometimes.” He returned the phone. “Actually, so do some adults.”
Caitlyn could only nod as a deep ache invaded her chest. Why had she let her relationship with her sister languish? What if she and Kurt couldn’t save Rose? Caitlyn pressed a hand to her knotted stomach, now wishing she hadn’teaten.
“You okay?” Kurt asked, touching her shoulder lightly and far too briefly.
Shoving aside the fear and regret, she straightened and pushed away from the table. “I’m fine. Thanks.” There was no room, no time, for emotions.
Within an hour, the skies had cleared, and they were on their way to St. Isidore in her Piper Navajo. She rarely wore her hair down, and she was already regretting itas sweat formed on the back of her neck and strands of hair caught in the headset, tugging at her scalp.
“Do you get airsick?” she asked through the microphone.
Kurt sat pale and silent next to her in a charcoal suit and gray button-down shirt with the collar open. “No. I just don’t enjoy flying much these days.”
“Since Afghanistan?” Since his helicopter had crashed and he’d nearly died.
“Yeah.”
Shit. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he didn’t like to fly. She’d had no idea how much she was asking when she begged him to come here. “Why didn’t you say something? We could have rented a boat.”
He glanced at her. “I’m fine. Better to face it down.”
And that was so like him. Not fearless—because who really was?—but brave. Always pushing his limits. Testing himself. Never givinghimself an inch of leeway when it came to the hard stuff. She’d allowed herself to forget some of his best qualities after their friendship had fallen apart.
They flew over the crystal turquoise waters of the Caribbean in relative silence, the only sound the purr of the propellers. Caitlyn lived for this. The sky was freedom. Freedom from the expectations and limitations put on her by society,from the pressure to be “feminine,” to get married and have children, to measure her self-worth by her appearance or pedigree.
Not to mention, it was flat-out exhilarating to cheat gravity. Her little Piper might not be an F-16, but it got her in the air. Up here, the world was small. Insignificant. Nothing mattered but staying aloft.
All too quickly, they were skirting St. Isidore’s southerncoastline. Less than thirty miles long, the island had a rough arrowhead shape, with a mountain and rainforest on the southwestern end of the wide base, and dense jungle covering the rural areas. Lambert’s plantation sat on the coast, in a valley just north of Montagne de St. Pierre, a mountain that rose straight out of the Caribbean Sea.
“That’s it?” Kurt asked, his gaze out the window.
“Uh-huh.”
“The guys weren’t exaggerating when they said it was beautiful. Too bad it’s such a shit show.”
“Yeah. Things are getting better, but there’s a lot of work to do. Your team has had a positive impact here. You can be proud of that.”
“I guess so.” They rounded the lush mountain and dropped altitude. “Other than Tara, I’m the only one who’s never been here. Hell, even Mick was here as a PJ on ahumanitarian mission.”
“Mick?”
Kurt glanced at her. “One of my old teammates. The one who kept me alive after the crash.”
Thank you, Mick, whoever you are.
“I thought he was going to join me at Steele,” Kurt said, “but he got married. To Tara’s best friend actually, which is how I mether. Mick and Jenna moved to South Carolina a few years ago, and now they have a little boy. Robby’s two.”
Something in his voice made her ask, “Do you want kids?”
