It was a strange sound, a soft sound, and Mia stood very, very still, hardly daring to breathe as she listened for it again.

There it was. It was the sound of ragged breathing, of nearly silent crying. Had Tasha awoken? Was Frisco already so soundly asleep that he didn't hear her?

Quietly Mia crept down the hall toward Tasha's bedroom and peeked in.

The little girl was fast asleep, breathing slowly and evenly.

Mia heard the sound again, and she turned and saw Frisco in the dim light that filtered in through his bedroom blinds.

He was sitting on his bed, doubled over as if in pain, his elbows resting on his legs, one hand covering his face; a picture of despair.

The noise she had heard--it was Frisco. Alan Francisco was weeping.

Mia was shocked. Never, ever in a million years had she expected him to cry. She would have thought him incapable, unable to release his emotions in such a visible, expressive way. She would have expected him to internalize everything, or deny his feelings.

But he was crying.

Her heart broke for him, and silently she backed away, instinctively knowing that he would feel ashamed and humiliated if he knew she had witnessed his emotional breakdown. She crept all the way back into his living room and out of his apartment, holding her breath as she shut the door tightly behind her.

Now what?

She couldn't just go back into her own condominium, knowing that he was alone with all of his pain and fears. Besides, she was still holding Tasha's medicine.

Taking a deep breath, knowing full well that even if Frisco did come to the door, he might very well simply take the medicine and shut her out, she rang the bell.

She knew he heard it, but no lights went on, nothing stirred. She opened the screen and knocked on the door, pushing it open a few inches. "Alan?"

"Yeah," his voice said raspily. "I'm in the bathroom. Hang on, I'll be right out."

Mia came inside again, and closed the door behind her. She stood there, leaning against it, wondering if she should turn on the lights.

She heard the water running in the bathroom sink and could picture Frisco splashing his face with icy water, praying that she wouldn't be able to tell that he'd been crying. She left the lights off.

And he made no move to turn them on when he finally appeared at the end of the darkened hallway. He didn't say anything; he just stood there.

"I, um...I had Tasha's medicine in my purse," Mia said. "I thought it would be smart to bring it over now instead of... in the morning--"

"You want a cup of tea?"

His quiet question took her entirely by surprise. Of all the things she'd imagined he'd say to her, inviting her to stay for a cup of tea was not one of them. "Yes," she said. "I would."

His crutches creaked as he went into the kitchen. Mia followed more hesitantly.

He didn't turn on the overhead lamp. He didn't need to. Light streamed in through the kitchen window from the brightly lit parking lot. It was silvery and it made shadows on the walls, but it was enough to see by.

As Frisco filled a kettle with water from the faucet, Mia opened the refrigerator door and put Tasha's medicine inside. As she closed the door, she saw that list that he kept there on the fridge, the list of all the things he could no longer do--the list of things that kept him, in his eyes, from being a man.

"I know it was hard for you to come and ask me for help tonight," she said softly.

Using only his right crutch for support, he carried the kettle to the stove and set it down. He didn't say a word until after he'd turned the burner on. Then he turned to face her. "Yeah," he said. "It was."

"I'm glad you did, though. I'm glad I could help."

"I actually..." He cleared his throat and started again. "I actually thought she was going to die. I was scared to death."

Mia was startled by his candidness. I was scared to death. Another surprise. She never would have expected him to admit that. Ever. But then again, this man had been surprising her right from the start.

"I don't know how parents handle it," he said, pushing down on top of the kettle as if that would make the water heat faster. "I mean, here's this kid that you love more than life itself, right? And suddenly she's so sick she can't even stand up." His voice tightened.

"The thing that kills me is that if I had been the only one left in the world, if it had been up to me and me alone, we wouldn't've made it to that hospital. I'd still be here, trying to figure out a way to get her down those stairs." He turned suddenly, slamming his hand down on top of the counter in frustration and anger. "I hate feeling so d.a.m.ned helpless!"

His shoulders looked so tight, his face so grim. Mia wrapped her arms around herself to keep from reaching for him. "But you're not the only one left in the world. You're not alone."

"But I am helpless."

"No, you're not," she told him. "Not anymore. You're only helpless if you refuse to ask for help."

He laughed, an exhale of bitter air. "Yeah, right--"

"Yeah," she said earnestly. "Right. Think about it, Alan. There are things that we all don't do, things that we probably couldn't do--look at your shirt," she commanded him, stepping closer. She reached out and touched the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She lifted it, turning it over and bringing the factory-machine-sewn hem into the light from the kitchen window. "You didn't sew this shirt, did you? Or weave the cotton to make the fabric? Cotton grows in fields--you knew that, right? Somehow a whole bunch of people did something to that little fluffy plant to make it turn into this T-shirt. Does it mean that you're helpless just because you didn't do it yourself?"

Mia was standing too close to him. She could smell his musky, masculine scent along with some kind of decadently delicious after-shave or deodorant. He was watching her, the light from the window casting shadows across his face, making his features craggy and harsh. His eyes gleamed colourlessly, but the heat within them didn't need a colour to be seen. She released her hold on his T-shirt but she didn't back away. She didn't want to back away, even if it meant spontaneous combustion from the heat in his eyes.

"So what if you can't make your own clothes?" she continued. "The good people at Fruit of the Loom and Levi's will make them for you. So what if you can't carry Tasha down the stairs. I'll carry her for you."

Frisco shook his head. "It's not the same."

"It's exactly the same."

"What if you're not home? What then?"

"Then you call Thomas. Or your friend, what's-his-name... Lucky. And if they're not home, you call someone else. Instead of this," she said, gesturing toward the list on his refrigerator, "you should have a two-page list of friends you can call for help. Because you're only helpless if you have no one to call."

"Will they run on the beach for me?" Frisco asked, his voice tight. He stepped closer to her, dangerously closer. His body was a whisper away from hers, and she could feel his breath, hot and sweet, moving her hair. "Will they get back in shape for me, get reinstated as an active-duty SEAL for me? And then will they come along on my missions with me, and run when I need to run, and swim against a two-knot current when I need to swim? Will they make a high-alt.i.tude, low-opening jump out of an airplane for me? Will they fight when I need to fight, and move without making a noise when I need to be silent? Will they do all those things that I'd need to do to keep myself and the men in my unit alive?"

Mia was silent.

"I know you don't understand," he said. The teakettle started to hiss and whistle, a lonely, high-pitched keening sound. He turned away from her, moving toward the stove. He hadn't touched her, but his presence and nearness had been nearly palpable. She sagged slightly as if he had been holding her up, and backing away, she lowered herself into one of his kitchen chairs. As she watched, he removed the kettle from the heat and took two mugs down from the cabinet. "I wish I could make you understand."

"Try."

He was silent as he opened the cabinet again and removed two tea bags. He put one into each mug, then poured in the steaming water from the kettle. He set the kettle back onto the stove and was seemingly intent on steeping the tea bags as he began, haltingly, to speak.

"You know that I grew up here in San Felipe," he said. "I also told you that my childhood wasn't a barrel of laughs. That was sort of an understatement. Truth was, it sucked. My old man worked on a fishing boat--when he wasn't too hung over to get out of bed. It wasn't exactly like living an episode of 'Leave it to Beaver,' or 'Father Knows Best.'" He looked at her, the muscle in his jaw tight. "I'm going to have to ask you to carry the mugs of tea into the living room for me."

"Of course." Mia glanced at him from the comer of her eyes. "That wasn't really so hard, was it?"

"Yes, it was." With both crutches securely under his arms, Frisco led the way into the living room. He switched on only one lamp and it gave the room a soft, almost golden glow. "Excuse me for a minute," he said, then vanished down the hallway to his bedroom.

Mia put both mugs down on the coffee table in front of the plaid couch and sat down.

"I wanted to check on Tash," he said, coming back into the living room, "and I wanted to get this." He was holding a paper bag--the bag the doctor had given him at the hospital. He winced as he sat down on the other side of the long couch and lifted his injured leg onto the coffee table. As Mia watched, he opened the bag and took out a syringe and a small vial. "I need to have my leg up. I hope you don't mind if I do this out here."

"What exactly is it that you're doing?"

"This is a local painkiller, kind of like novocaine," he explained, filling the syringe with the clear liquid. "I'm going to inject it into my knee."

"You're going to inject it into... You're kidding."

"As a SEAL, I've had training as a medic," he said. "Steve gave me a shot of cortisone in the hospital, but that won't kick in for a while yet. This works almost right away, but the down side is that it wears off after a few hours, and I have to remedicate. Still, it takes the edge off the pain without affecting my central nervous system."

Mia turned away, unable to watch as he stuck the needle into his leg.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "But it was crossing the border into h.e.l.lishly painful again."

"I don't think I could ever give myself a shot," Mia admitted.

He glanced over at her, his mouth twisted up into a near smile. "Well, it's not my favourite thing in the world to do, either, but can you imagine what would have happened tonight if I'd taken the painkiller Steve wanted to prescribe for me? I would never have heard Tasha fall out of bed. She'd still be in there, on the floor, and I'd be stupid, drooling and unconscious in my bed. This way, my knee gets numb, not my brain."

"Interesting philosophy from a man who drank himself to sleep two nights in a row."

Frisco could feel the blessed numbing start in his knee. He rolled his head to make his shoulders and neck relax. "Jeez, you don't pull your punches, do you?"

"Four-thirty in the morning is hardly the time for polite conversation," she countered, tucking her legs up underneath her on the couch and taking a sip of her tea. "If you can't be baldly honest at four-thirty in the morning, when can you be?"

Frisco reached up with one hand to rub his neck. "Here's a baldly honest truth for you, then--and it's true whether it's 0430 or high noon. Like I said before, I'm not drinking anymore."

She was watching him, her hazel eyes studying him, looking for what, he didn't know. He had the urge to turn away or to cover his face, afraid that somehow she'd be able to see the telltale signs of his recent tears. But instead, he forced himself to hold her gaze.

"I can't believe you can just quit," she finally said. "Just like that. I mean, I look at you, and I can tell that you're sober, but..."

"The night we met, you didn't exactly catch me at my best. I was... celebrating my discharge from the Navy--toasting their lack of faith in me." He reached forward, picked up his mug of tea and took a sip. It was too hot and it burned all the way down. "I told you--I don't make a habjt out of drinking too much. I'm not like Sharon. Or my father. Man, he was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He had two moods--drunk and angry, and hung over and angry. Either way, my brothers and Sharon and I learned to stay out of his way. Sometimes one of us would end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then we'd get hit. We used to sit around for hours thinking up excuses to tell our friends about where we got all our black eyes and bruises." He snorted. "As if any of our friends didn't know exactly what was going on. Most of them were living the same bad dream.

"You know, I used to pretend he wasn't really my father. I came up with this story about how I was some kind of mercreature that had gotten tangled in his nets one day when he was out in the fishing boat."

Mia smiled. "Like Tasha pretending she's a Russian princess."

Her smile was hypnotizing. Frisco could think of little but the way her lips had felt against his, and how much he wanted to feel that sweet sensation again. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch the side of her beautiful face. She looked away from him, her smile fading, suddenly shy, as if she knew what he was thinking.

"So there I was," Frisco continued with his story, "ten years old and living with this nightmare of a home life. It was that year--the year I was in fourth grade--that I started riding my bike for hours on end just to get out of the house."

She was listening to him, staring intently into her mug as if it held the answers to all of her questions. She'd kicked off her sneakers and they lay on their side on the floor in front of her. Her slender legs were tucked up beneath her on the couch, tantalizingly smooth and golden tan. She was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt over her cutoffs. She'd had it zipped up at the hospital, but at some point since they'd returned home, she'd unzipped it. The shirt she wore underneath was white and loose, with a small ruffle at the top.

It was her nightgown, Frisco realized. She'd simply thrown her clothes on over her nightgown, tucking it into her shorts and covering it with her sweatshirt.

She glanced up at him, waiting for him to continue.

Frisco cleared the sudden lump of desire from his throat and went on. "One day I rode my bike a few miles down the coast, to one of the beaches where the SEALs do a lot of their training exercises. It was just amazing to watch these guys." He smiled, remembering how he'd thought the SEALs were crazy that first time he'd seen them on the beach. "They were always wet. Whatever they were doing, whatever the weather, the instructors always ran 'em into the surf first and got 'em soaked. Then they'd crawl across the beach on their bellies and get coated with sand--it'd get all over their faces, in their hair, everywhere. And then they'd run ten miles up and down the beach. They looked amazing--to a ten-year-old it was pretty funny. But even though I was just a kid, I could see past the slapstick. I knew that whatever they were going to get by doing all these endless, excruciating endurance tests, it had to be pretty d.a.m.n good."

Mia had turned slightly to face him on the couch. Maybe it was because he knew she was wearing her nightgown under her clothes, or maybe it was the dark, dangerous hour of the night, but she looked like some kind of incredible fantasy sitting there like that. Taking her into his arms and making love to her would be a blissful, temporary escape from all of his pain and frustration.

He knew without a shadow of a doubt that one kiss would melt away all of her caution and reserve. Yes, she was a nice girl. Yes, she wanted more than s.e.x. She wanted love. But even nice girls felt the pull of hot, sweet desire. He could show her--and convince her with one single kiss--that sometimes pure s.e.x for the sake of pleasure and pa.s.sion was enough.

But oddly enough, he wanted more from this woman than the hot satisfaction of a s.e.xual release. Oddly enough, he wanted her to understand how he felt--his frustration, his anger, his darkest fear.

Try, she'd said. Try to make her understand.

He was trying.

"I started riding to the naval base all the time," he continued, forcing himself to focus on her wide green eyes rather than the soft smoothness of her thighs. "I started hanging out down there. I snuck into this local dive where a lot of the off-duty sailors went, just so I could listen to their stories. The SEALs didn't come in too often, but when they did, man, they got a h.e.l.l of a lot of respect. A h.e.l.l of a lot of respect--from both the enlisted men and the officers. They had this aura of greatness about them, and I was convinced, along with the rest of the Navy, that these guys were G.o.ds.

"I watched 'em every chance I could get, and I noticed that even though most of the SEALs didn't dress in uniform, they all had this pin they wore. They called it a Budweiser--it was an eagle with a submachine gun in one claw and a trident in the other. I found out they got that pin after they went through a gruelling basic training session called BUD/S. Most guys didn't make it through BUD/S, and some cla.s.ses even had a ninety-percent drop-out rate. The program was weeks and weeks of organized torture, and only the men who stayed in to the end got that pin and became SEALs."

Mia was still watching him as if he were telling her the most fascinating story in all of the world, so he continued.

"So one day," Frisco told her, "a few days before my twelfth birthday, I saw these SEALs-in-training bring their IBSs--their little inflatable boats--in for a landing on the rocks over by the Coronado Hotel. It was toward the end of their final week of BUDS. That week's called h.e.l.l Week, because it is truly h.e.l.l. They were exhausted, I could see it in their faces and in the way they were sitting in those boats. I was sure they were all going to die. Have you seen the rocks over there?"

She shook her head, no.

"They're deadly. Jagged. And the surf is always rough--not a good combination. But I saw these guys put their heads down and do it. They could've died--men have died doing that training exercise.

"All around me, I could hear the tourists and the civilian onlookers making all this noise, wondering aloud why these men were risking their lives like that when they could be regular sailors, in the regular Navy, and not have to put themselves in that kind of danger."

Frisco leaned closer to Mia, willing her to understand. "And I stood there--I was just a kid--but I knew. I knew why. If these guys made it through, they were going to be SEALs. They were going to get that pin, and they were going to be able to walk into any military base in the world and get automatic respect. And even better than that, they would have self-respect. You know that old saying, 'Wherever you go, there you are'? Well, I knew that wherever they went, at least one man would respect them, and that man's respect was the most important of all."

Mia gazed back at Frisco, unable to look away. She could picture him as that little boy, cheeks smooth, slight of frame and wire thin, but with these same intense blue eyes, impossibly wise beyond his tender years. She could picture him escaping from an awful childhood and an abusive father, searching for a place to belong, a place to feel safe, a place where he could learn to like himself, a place where he'd be respected--by others and himself.

He'd found his place with the SEALs.

"That was when I knew I was going to be a SEAL," he told her quietly but no less intensely. "And from that day on, I respected myself even though no one else did. I stuck it out at home another six years. I made it all the way through high school because I knew I needed that diploma. But the day I graduated, I enlisted in the Navy. And I made it. I did it. I got through BUD/S, and I landed my IBS on those rocks in Coronado.

"And I got that pin."

He looked away from her, staring sightlessly down at his injured knee, at the bruises and the swelling and the countless crisscrossing of scars. Mia's heart was in her throat as she watched him. He'd told her all this to make her understand, and she did understand. She knew what he was going to say next, and even as yet unspoken, his words made her ache.

"I always thought that by becoming a SEAL, I escaped from my life--you know, the way my life should have turned out. I should've been killed in a car accident like my brother Rob was. He was DUI, and he hit a pole. Or else I should've got my high school girlfriend pregnant like Danny did. I should have been married with a wife and child to support at age seventeen, working for the same fishing fleet that my father worked for, following in the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d's footsteps. I always sort of thought by joining the Navy and becoming a SEAL I cheated destiny.

"But now look at me. I'm back in San Felipe. And for a couple nights there, I was doing a d.a.m.ned good imitation of my old man. Drink 'till you drop, 'til you feel no pain."

Mia had tears in her eyes, and when Frisco glanced at her, she saw that his jaw was tight, and his eyes were damp, too. He turned his head away. It was a few moments before he spoke again, and when he finally did, his voice was steady but impossibly sad.

"Ever since I was injured," he said softly, "I feel like I've slipped back into that nightmare that used to be my life. I'm not a SEAL anymore. I lost that, it's gone. I don't know who I am, Mia--I'm some guy who's less than whole, who's just kind of floating around." He shook his head. "All I know for sure is that my self-respect is gone, too."

He turned to her, no longer caring if she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. "That's why I've got to get it all back. That's why I've got to be able to run and jump and dive and do all those things on that list." He wiped roughly at his eyes with the back of one hand, refusing to give in to the emotion that threatened to overpower him. "I want it back. I want to be whole again."