The Backup Plan. Sherryl Woods

scent of honeysuckle seemed idyllic. It was certainly as far removed from the tumultuous, horrific world of Afghanistan as she could possibly imagine.

      Not that she’d appreciated it all that much when she’d been growing up on the outskirts of Charleston in what she’d considered little better than a mosquito-infested swamp. She’d hated the slow pace, the unhurried speech, the steamy nights when it was almost impossible to catch a decent breath of air. She hadn’t been able to leave her overprotective parents quickly enough.

      Being the debutante daughter of Dorothy Rawlings Davis, a woman able to trace her roots back to the first ship to dock in Charleston, and Marshall Davis, a man whose granddaddy had amassed a fortune in South Carolina banking, gave Dinah a skewed view of her own importance. She’d been wise enough to recognize that and to rebel against it. Her brother hadn’t been so lucky. He’d drifted along, not only in his daddy’s shadow, but that of all their proud ancestors. Tommy Lee had nothing he could point to with pride and call his own.

      Dinah hadn’t been content to inherit her place in the world. She’d wanted to make one for herself. She’d needed to prove that she was as capable, as independent and as fiercely strong as the toughest of her ancestors. She wanted to be a successful woman first, a Southern woman second. Anyone who’d grown up in the South knew there was a difference.

      She’d chosen television journalism for a career because it was a profession with noble ideals, and she’d taken assignments that had placed her in the line of danger just to prove that she could stand tall next to the brightest and best in her field. It wasn’t enough to be good. She was determined to be outstanding, the correspondent viewers relied on for learning the truth behind the headlines.

      For ten years Dinah had accomplished exactly that by covering unfolding events in Chechnya, the Middle East, and lately Pakistan and Afghanistan. Whenever or wherever news was being made, Dinah was there.

      Her last assignments had been the most challenging. It had been impossible to calculate the risks, impossible to find trustworthy sources, impossible to predict whether she would live long enough to get the story on the air. Many said it took a danger junkie to accept such assignments, but she’d never seen herself that way. She simply had a job to do. The risks were worth it because events that unfolded without the glare of news cameras often led to untold horrors and chilling secrecy.

      Yet in all of her thirty-one years she’d never had such terrifying dreams. She figured she’d come too close to the edge and seen too much. She’d lost friends this time, some of the best and brightest in the business. That had sucked the life right out of her.

      Maybe Ray had been right. Maybe it was time—past time—for her to go home. There was nothing left to prove here.

      As she crouched beside her hotel room bed after being frightened by the unexpected ring of a phone, her heart finally slowed to a more normal rhythm. In that instant she realized that she couldn’t get home fast enough. If she stayed here any longer, she’d come completely unglued.

      Later that morning when Dinah told Ray what she’d decided, she was hurt to see relief and not regret in his eyes.

      “It’s for the best,” he assured her. “It’s not forever,” she replied because she needed to believe it. “A few weeks, a couple of months at most.”

      Ray got up and closed the door, then gestured for her to sit down. “Listen to me, Dinah. You get back to South Carolina and make a place for yourself. Get a job at the local station. Be their superstar. Find yourself a good man. Settle down and raise a family. This is no life.”

      “It’s my life,” she protested, horrified by what he was suggesting. It was too damn close to anonymity and suffocation.

      “Not anymore,” Ray insisted. “I’ve seen it happen before. An excellent reporter goes through a close call, sees someone they know die right in front of them, whatever, and they start cutting back on the risks. They’re a little more hesitant, they play it a little safer. Or they do the opposite and turn into some sort of rogue I can’t control. Either way, a reporter like that is no good to me.”

      Anger filled her at the grim picture he presented. “Are you saying I’ll never be able to do this job again?”

      “Never as well,” he said bluntly. “You’re beautiful and smart and talented. Put all of that to work for you back home. If not in South Carolina, then at the network in New York or Washington. I can get a transfer authorized anytime you say the word. Find yourself a real life and live it. What we do over here, it’s necessary, but it’s not living. It’s courting death.”

      “Are you telling me this just because I’m a woman?” she asked heatedly. “That’s a little sexist even for you.”

      “Maybe so,” he admitted candidly. “Mostly, though, I’m telling you this stuff because I like you. I want to know you’re out there somewhere safe and happy. I don’t ever want to have to make the same call to your folks that I’ve had to make to other reporters’ relatives.”

      Dinah drew in a deep breath and asked him the question that was burning in her gut. “Spell it out for me, Ray. Are you telling me I can’t come back, that you don’t want me here?”

      Ray hesitated before replying. “No,” he said with obvious reluctance. “The network would have my head for saying this, but I’m telling you I hope like hell you won’t.”

      He regarded her with a worried frown. “Listen to me, okay? Think about what I’m saying. You’ve done the heroics, proved whatever you set out to prove to yourself. You’re a top-notch journalist, one of the best, but maybe it’s time to stop and figure out who Dinah Davis really is.”

      Her stomach sank. She thought she had figured that out the day she turned in her first television news report. Now this man she trusted was telling her she’d gotten it wrong.

      “Then you think I should quit?” she asked, hating the fact that her respect for him ran so deep that she was actually considering doing as he asked.

      “Yes,” he said firmly. “Get a real life, Dinah.”

      She tried to picture the peaceful, ordinary life he was describing. The image eluded her. “You actually think I’m destined to be somebody’s wife and mother?” she asked.

      “Why the hell not?”

      “And if I decide that what I am is a foreign correspondent, that it’s all I was ever meant to be?”

      He gave her a sad look. “Then I pity you.”

      “It’s what you’ve done all your life,” she reminded him.

      “And look at me. No wife. No family. No one who gives a damn whether I come home or not. That’s not a fate I’d wish on you. Isn’t there someone back home you think about from time to time, some man who got away?”

      Dinah started to shake her head, but then an image of Bobby Beaufort appeared in her mind. She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. It had been ages since she’d thought about Bobby. He’d been in her life almost as far back as she could remember. He’d wanted to marry her, but she’d turned him down to chase after her dream.

      “There,” Ray said triumphantly. “I knew it!” “He was no one special,” Dinah insisted. “Just a friend.”

      A good friend who’d promised to be around if she ever got tired of roaming the globe. If she was ready for love, she was supposed to turn to Bobby. She would always own a piece of his heart, at least that’s what he’d claimed. All she had to do was come home, say the word and they’d be married before she could say Las Vegas. That was what they’d agreed when she left town. He was her safety net, her backup plan. She’d never expected to need him.

      She didn’t need him now, she asserted silently. All this stuff Ray was saying meant nothing. She’d straighten herself out and come back here … eventually.

      In the meantime, though, she met Ray’s worried gaze. “Okay, then,”