Chapter 1

It didn’t really hit him until he landed the chopper on Respitio.  He’d packed a bag.  Actually, these days he kept one ready for any chance he got to take a few days off.  He’d turned the studio over to Alec permanently, but quietly.  He didn’t want the press hounding him all the way to the island.  Besides, Alec had been the man in charge of nearly everything they’d put out at the studio for the past year.  No one was going to be surprised not to see Straker on the sets.  He’d gone to Moonbase for the last time, surprised at how sad everyone seemed to see him go.  He knew he hadn’t been anyone’s favorite person.  He’d had a hard job to do and he’d done it, but it hadn’t won him any friends along the way.  He figured they’d be glad to give him his hat and wish him bon voyage!  Instead, it had felt almost like a funeral.  He had been relieved to get back Earthside and take his farewells at HQ. 

Only a skeleton crew remained to man the monitors with Ford left in charge while Alec was topside doing studio business.  So it had been easier to take his leave.  No tears there.  Ford had been happy as a clam to remain at his post, continuing to do what he’d done so well for so many years.  And Straker had known Earth would be safe as long as the military left him to it.  There might come a time when HQ would have to have a large staff again and need a committed commanding officer to lead them.  The universe was large enough – and enough of an unknown – to pretty much guarantee that day would come.  Eventually.  But in the meantime, Henderson was right.  Straker wasn’t needed there any longer. 

He’d flown to Nassau in the company jet, then taken an unmarked chopper to the island.  He’d fought impatience the entire trip, doing his best to stay outwardly calm while inside he couldn’t wait to see Anne and tell her the good news.  He could finally marry her.

In his heart this romance he had stumbled into had always been a forever fling.  Incredibly passionate and stronger than anything he’d ever felt for his exwife, it had been from the first a recognition of someone who was a crusader like himself – someone he understood at an instinctive level and who knew him in return.  A true soulmate.  Something he’d never believed in no matter how many romantic movies he’d made.  Until he met Anne.  He would have asked her to marry him two years ago if their respective lives hadn’t ensured that they would have to remain in different locations.

But now that he’d landed, now that he could see her standing where she always stood to meet him when he came to Respitio, it suddenly came to him that he had never spoken to her about marriage.  He’d wanted to.  Many times.  But there’d always been the fear at the back of his mind that she would convince him that they could make it married but living separately; that it wouldn’t end up tearing their relationship apart.  He’d known he wouldn’t have been strong enough to deny her what he wanted as well – just as he’d known that it wouldn’t have worked.  Eventually the strain of living apart when they needed to be together would take its toll and leave them both devastated.  So he’d bitten his tongue – countless times over the course of their affair – and never spoken about it.

Straker stared at her through the windshield of the chopper in dismay.  How could he ask her now?

He’d had a hope when their affair began, when they had been in the first flush of love.  When he had been awed and strangely humbled to realize he was her first lover.  She was a romance writer, after all.  She wrote about sex as though she knew all its ins and outs intimately.  It had amazed him to find that she had never before given herself to anyone.  Had never trusted a man that far – to give him her body.  Until him. 

He’d had a chance then to ask her while she was still blinded by passion.  Still in thrall to the feelings and sensations they shared whenever they made love.  He could have asked her then and been fairly sure of her answer.  She wrote romance.  She believed in happy ever afters.

But they’d been lovers now for two years.  The passion was still there between them.  In fact, it was stronger than ever.  Sometimes it worried him that the time might come when it consumed him completely.  It had gotten so hard to tear himself away from her and return to England.  To return to SHADO and his responsibilities there. 

He was always so happy with her here – in ways he’d never been before in his life.

Straker sighed and grabbed his bag, alighting from the chopper and closing the door.  Anne waved to him from the edge of the landing space, her straw hat shading her lovely face.  But he could see her smile as she stood there, the hills and trees of her island at her back.  And his heart squeezed with despair, knowing that he had left it too long.  He’d never be able to ask her now.  She’d never believe that he wanted her, not when he had never spoken about marriage in two years!  She’d believe – they’d all believe – that he wanted the island.  And he wouldn’t even be able to deny it.  He did want the island.  He wanted everything it represented for him: quiet peaceful days spent tending to the things that comprised life instead of death.  Warm tender nights in the arms of a woman who never ceased surprising him – delighting him! – with her love.

He had nothing now.  No job.  No studio.  No home.  Nothing to offer her to tempt her to change their status from affair to marriage.  She had nothing to gain by not keeping things the way they already were between them.

And a great deal to lose.

* * *
He looked so tired.  Anne almost lost her welcoming smile as he approached, once he was close enough for her to clearly see his expression.  She knew his job weighed on him.  How could it not?  But he had always been careful not to show her how much it drained him.  She’d had to learn how to read his true feelings through the stoic mask he had worn so long he rarely took it off.  Her greatest joys these days came from watching that mask fall away after a few days on the island, revealing the wonderful man inside.  She often wondered if he was aware how much more relaxed he looked when he left than when he came?

Now she only wondered what had happened to make him so sad it showed?  Was Earth . . . ?  But it did no good to worry about such things.  She wasn’t in a position to be of any help to him in that area.  She wasn’t military; she was just a writer!  The most she could do to ensure Earth’s safety was to help the man in charge relax and enjoy his few days of respite before he had to return to his impossible duties.  It was all she was allowed to do in her position as the commander’s mistress.  She widened her smile of welcome.  Let no one say she wasn’t doing her job!

“Ed!”

“Anne.”  He didn’t take her into his arms as he normally did upon arrival.  Instead, his blue eyes searched her face somberly as his hand came up to caress her cheek.  “It’s good to see you.”

She swallowed, trying not to let him see her concern.  If Earth was in danger, he wouldn’t be free to discuss it.  And certainly not with her.  “You too,” she said.

He looked away with a nod, laying an absent arm around her shoulders as they walked to where she had parked the jeep.  “Sorry I wasn’t able to give you more warning that I was coming.”

“You know I don’t mind, Ed.  You’re welcome here anytime.”

He met her eyes briefly as he got into the passenger seat.  Then he looked away again.  “I appreciate it.  More than I can say.”

Her heart lurched.  What had happened?  She’d seen him in many kinds of moods over the past two years since first meeting him.  Stoic, kind, determined, charming, passionate.  But none of them had come close to the weariness she sensed in him now.  And not just sensed, but saw in his face.  What had occurred to strip away his habitual mask and reveal the raw emotion beneath?  How bad could Earth’s situation get?

She shut down that line of thinking before it inundated her with hideous scenarios.  One of the problems with being a writer, she often thought, was that she could easily imagine things she would never want to experience in reality.  “How long can you stay?” she asked, feigning cheerfulness.

His sigh was heavy.  “That depends.”

“Well,” she said, determined to keep things optimistic if it killed her.  “We’ll just hope for the best then.”

His expression didn’t lighten.  “Yes.”