Unsung Hero

by Barbara Ankrum

  Those thoughts had no sooner formed in her mind than she rejected them. No. She would not take the blame for his infidelity. That was his choice and she refused to take responsibility for it. He could have been honest. He could have just told her he was having doubts. Then, at least they could have discussed things before he jumped into bed with another woman to torpedo their relationship. But talking things out wasn’t really his style. Maybe it wasn’t hers either.

  “We can pretend,” she told Lana. “Apparently, that’s what we’ve been doing for a while. It’s just…doing it in front of Nio.”

  “Sure you can.” She popped the last piece of cantaloupe in her mouth. “After all, you’ve pretended all these years that you didn’t still love him. Right?”

  Becca gaped at her. “I’m…I was engaged to Steven, which clearly means I am not in love with Nio Reyes. I let go of him the day he walked away from me without a word.”

  She tilted a disbelieving look at Becca.

  “Well, okay. After a while. But I’ve been over him for years. And years.” She gathered some scone crumbs and licked them off her finger.

  “If you say so. Wait. What if he’s married? Did you see a ring?”

  Was there? “That’s totally beside the point. I’m not interested. Period.” And I was too mesmerized by his chest to notice. She stared down at her nails.

  “But how did he look?”

  Her mind drifted back to the sight of him, all briny and wet from the ocean, looking…the way he looked. But ten years older. Ten years better. “Good,” she admitted. “Okay, great.” At Lana’s wicked grin, she added, “Like James freaking Bond walking out of the water, okay? Not that it matters.”

  Lana’s grin grew. “Oh, it matters.”

  Just thinking about him now made her feel illicit. Guilty. Was it wrong that she could have such thoughts the day after losing the jerk she thought she was going to marry?

  Hell no.

  But tears welled in her eyes all the same.

  Nio had been the son of her parents’ gardener; forbidden fruit to a girl so far out of his sphere they practically lived in different universes. But the irony of it all? None of that had mattered to her. He’d existed separately from all that. He was smart and kind and he’d never made her feel what other boys did, as if her father’s money mattered. They’d built a friendship from the ground up and what bloomed had been as solid as an oak.

  And her father, who swam in the upper echelon of moneyed Laguna and made no bones about controlling where and with whom his daughter mingled, was proven right when he’d said she couldn’t count on a boy like Nio. Her parents had sent her to the best private schools, imposed hawk-like supervision and nearly strangled her with expectations. All for naught. She’d fallen for Nio anyway. He was a few years older, had gone to a local public school and came from the wrong side of town. But oh. How she had thought she loved him.

  Maybe his “unsuitability” had been part of his appeal at first. A rebellion. But he’d become so much more than that. Then he’d just disappeared from her life without so much as a text.

  So…forgive him for that inexplicable abandonment all those years ago? She shook her head. Despite the dog wisdom that Milo had attempted to impart, she’d be a fool to open herself up to that kind of hurt again. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to know the answer to one question: why?

  Chapter Two

  Nio’s thoughts were still on Becca as he and Trey drove up the hill toward the surprise they had planned for their father—the beachside bungalow in a gated community south of town. The contractor Nio had hired to renovate the beat-up old cottage had spent the last four months remodeling and making it beautiful again.

  He’d stopped by last evening, too late to meet the contractor, but with just enough sunlight left to see the man’s handiwork on the inside. As the contractor had warned, the work was slightly behind schedule, especially and including the outside. Which was a problem considering Nio’s personal deadline. And since his father had been a gardener his whole life, the outside had to be perfect. Right now it was basically a blank that needed to be—

  He frowned as he pulled into the driveway. There were flowers planted along the walkway and the specimen trees were no longer sitting in boxes, but planted in the ground. Either the contractor’s crew had recovered quickly or—

  Trey jumped out of the truck first and stood on the sidewalk waiting impatiently for him.

  Confused, Nio said, “What are you doing? I thought you were just dropping me off and heading down to Dana Point.”

  Trey hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “Nope.”

  “Nope, you’re not dropping me off, or nope you’re not going fishing?”

  “That is correct.” Around the corner of the house, Mick appeared—tall and blond and looking every bit the Viking that had inspired his military nickname—dirt from fingertips to elbows to face, he was carrying a good-sized tree. Behind him by a few steps was Jase—aka ‘Cowboy’, carrying two huge bags of planting mix. Only then did Nio notice that the limp that had marred his stride for the past few years was nearly gone.

  The beds were half-planted already with lilies of the Nile, azaleas and ferns filling one bed already. His contractor’s downsized team of landscapers—meaning two men—were working on the other side of the yard in the bed that edged the glass-fenced cliff.

  They all must have gotten here at the crack of dawn themselves to accomplish what they already had.

  “Guys…” he managed. But that was all he managed.

  “What?” Mick said with typical good humor. “You didn’t seriously think we were gonna leave you here all day playin’ catch-up by yourself, did you?”

  “But the fishing charter…?”

  “Yeah, there never was a fishing charter,” Paul called from the doorway, his wheelchair blocking the front entrance. His shirt and cheek were smeared with paint. “We just said that to throw you off the scent. Anyway, who takes a damned wheelchair onto a boat? At least here I can paint a wall that doesn’t move on me.”

  Nio swallowed thickly. Paul was in the process of getting fitted for yet another prosthetic leg to replace the lower half of the one he’d lost in ‘the sandbox,’ as they none-too-kindly referred to Afghanistan. Of all of them, he’d had the longest struggle with recovery. He despised the chair he was forced to use, for now, but here he was, painting their father’s house.

  “I don’t know what to say…” Nio heard a crash and looked up to see a shirtless Tommy McGuire roped onto the trunk of a giant palm, some fifty feet up, hacking off loose fronds. Oh hell no! “What’s he doing up there?”

  Trey shaded his eyes and found Tommy silhouetted against the morning sky. “Bein’ Tommy. As usual.”

  They were all edge-walkers. To a man. After four years together as SEALs, the hellish battle they’d all barely survived that day in the ‘Valley of Death’ and the recoveries they’d faced—who wouldn’t qualify for that category? Even he had walked his fair share of edges. Still, he couldn’t help but think Tommy’s ‘edge’ was even sharper than the rest. Nio had once mentioned to Trey that he thought maybe Tommy had lost track of the line since the war.

  “Line?” Trey had said. “He never really had one. Much less considered Holly when he’s testing the limits of his mortality.”

  Whenever Trey had mentioned Tommy’s wife Holly before, he’d seen the same look that was in eyes now and wondered about it. If his brother had feelings about Tommy’s recklessness for the sake of the man’s wife, Nio felt sure there was more story to it. But he also knew well that she would be off-limits to him. No matter what that look meant.

  “Get your ass down here, Tommy!” Nio called. “Before I send the contractor up after you.”

  Hacking away with a razor-sharp machete, Tommy cackled as he sent a shower of fronds down to the base of the tree. “What? I can’t hear you!”

  Trey shouted, “You’re gonna break your neck, you maniac!”

  The other man
saluted him with a laugh. “You do know ropes are my thing?”

  Tommy climbed mountains. Not just any mountains. Mountains with names like K2 and Kilimanjaro. He’d been one of those kids who’d conquered four major peaks before he turned seventeen. A minor celebrity in mountaineering circles, with endorsements from several sporting companies, Tommy’s surprise enlistment and BUD/s training made news, though, after getting to know him, his path didn’t surprise his fellow SEALs. Adrenaline was his drug of choice, but duty had called him as even the mountains could not. Like the others, he was a patriot called to service. The battle that had put an end to his military career, and the lingering aftermath, had stolen some edge from him that he seemed to feel compelled to reclaim. Now, danger was a sparkly object that lured him. But not in the same way it had before. Now, he flirted overtly with that edge all of them walked.

  Relenting in the face of Trey’s insistence, he finally climbed down the palm. The boys always joked Tommy should be the next Tom Cruise and Nio had to admit they were right. But he was too busy actually living that lifestyle to grace Hollywood with that smile of his, which right now was aimed in his direction.

  “So how was the ocean?” he asked Nio with an impish grin. “More importantly, did you see her?”

  “Oh, he saw her, all right,” Trey told him. “She was all over him.”

  Tommy’s eyebrows went up.

  “Yeah, that’s close to what happened,” Nio grumbled, heading toward the house.

  “Ah. No fly zone, then?” Mick rightly concluded, following them inside.

  “Grounded, actually,” Trey said with a mock frown. “But that was…to be expected. He—”

  “Hey,” Nio said. “Quit talkin’ about me like I’m not here. In fact, this entire conversation about me and Becca is officially out of bounds until further notice.”

  Cowboy whistled. “That bad, huh?”

  Nio flattened a look at him. Thanks to Trey, all of them knew his bottom line for choosing Laguna as their meet-up spot this year and exactly how he’d lost her to begin with. There were few secrets among these men. Or, if there were secrets, they remained buried deep.

  “Okay, okay,” Cowboy said. “Just sayin’. I’m a damned good wingman. You know. If you need one.”

  Nio laughed. “Thanks. And…uh…thanks for all this.” He gestured at the house, at their unsolicited help. “All of you. Trey and I…we appreciate it. I’m not sure we would’ve made the deadline without you. Pops will be grateful for that amazing-looking garden out there.”

  “Hey.” Mick clapped him on the shoulder. “The least we could do for you and your dad.”

  An unspoken nod of agreement passed between all the men. They weren’t much for words. Or platitudes. And Nio had never wanted or needed them. But their friendship and loyalty spoke volumes. For that he was grateful.

  “Speaking of which,” Trey went on, filling a paper cup with coffee from the coffeemaker, “chop, chop. We’ve got trees to get in the ground. And you,” he said, pointing at Tommy with a half-serious threat. “You stay the hell out of them, hear?”

  As their one-time commander, Trey’s words still held sway. Tommy grinned, gave him a lazy salute and headed back outside.

  “It’s a great thing you’re doing here,” Cowboy told Nio. “You can tell Pops for me I’ll be expecting him to cook me up some of his famous chile rellenos in this new kitchen of his next time I’m in town.”

  “You sure you can’t stay for the big reveal, Jase?”

  “Wish I could,” he said. “Four days in Laguna is sure as hell not long enough.”

  “Hooyah to that,” Paul put in. “But Jase and I, we both take off early Sunday.”

  “I’ve got a house waiting for a roofing crew in Texas and—” Jase began.

  “—I’m gonna get me the hell out of this chair,” Paul finished. He boxed the wheels on his chair with two palms. He hated being confined to the thing almost as much as he hated the painful prosthetics they’d been fitting him with. He hadn’t been able to tolerate the first few. But an industry friend of Nio’s was in the business of a relatively new kind of prosthetic that might be just what Paul needed and he’d referred him.

  “Tell your old man I painted this wall for him, okay?” Paul added with that wicked grin of his. “But if I miss a spot, tell him Mick did it.”

  “Done.” Nio laughed and bumped a fist with Paul as he rolled past to go back to painting.

  Trey lifted a smile at Nio. “Was I right about these guys?”

  “One hundred percent. Thanks, Bro.” Nio pointed at the crew working in the living room. “I’m gonna go talk to the contractor. Join me?”

  Trey shook his head. “Later I will. I’m going to get started outside.” Admiring the craftsmanship in the room, he added, “How this has all happened long distance is beyond me. I’m glad I could get down here to help a little with the place.”

  “This is half you, little brother,” Nio told him.

  That they had resigned the past and their mistakes to their proper place made this gift to their father all the sweeter. To both Nio and Trey, this home felt like a resolution. A punctuation point on what came before. A place to move forward from. They both hoped their father would feel the same.

  Nio left the finished mudroom and moved to the sun-washed living room. The paint was mostly up except in the bedroom. The floors, in and polished. He stepped around plastic-wrapped furniture that had been delivered and waited for a spot in the house. Two other men were busy finishing up the redwood pergola outside the living room.

  Though he’d seen the house in person for the first time last night, the work his contractor, Bill Benson, had done on the place was spectacular. It was going to be everything he’d hoped for and everything he’d once dreamed of.

  He nodded at the man sweeping the living room floor, who looked up as he entered. “I’m Nio Reyes. You Mitch Collier?”

  The contractor’s foreman extended a hand to Nio. “That’s me. Nice to meet you, finally. Mr. Benson said you’d be stopping by. And…your friends. They’re kicking butt out there.” He hitched a thumb at Paul. “And in here. They saved our deadline. I’ve got four guys out sick with various things. So, what do you think of the place, Mr. Reyes?”

  Nio surveyed the cross-beamed rafters in the ceiling, the Craftsman windows, lovingly restored from the originals, and the woodwork that had been given a fresh coat of creamy white befitting the beachy environment; the crisp, gray walls. “I couldn’t be happier, Mitch. And please call me Nio. Save ‘Mr. Reyes’ for my father.”

  “Done,” Mitch agreed, his gaze scanning the room with pride. “We should have this place all ready for him by the end of this weekend, right on schedule thanks to all the help.”

  Nio smiled, walking over to the windows to inspect the view. Outside, Benson’s men were staining the deck, while Mick and Cowboy were putting finishing touches on the lush landscape that led directly to the beach. Blue flowering agapanthus and orange birds of paradise lined the walkway beside pathways thick with impatiens. Beneath the giant palm tree that anchored the hillside down to the beach, ferns mingled with hearty lavender and Mexican sage. A wide, covered veranda planted with bougainvillea led to stone steps that circled down to the sand where his father could sit and watch the sunset. A gardener’s dream. Nio had picked out the furniture but Trey had paid for it. This gift was from both of them.

  “Hard to believe this is the same place I saw in the photos,” he said.

  “It certainly is transformed,” Mitch agreed. “You have a good eye for design. If you’re ever looking to change careers, you look us up, you hear?”

  Nio grinned. He’d done all the designs and specs himself on the bungalow, but it had been a labor of love. This place was one he’d been planning in his mind for years and to see it now finally coming together got his heart pumping. It would be a surprise for the old man. One he would not see coming. Four years ago, Nio had bought him a beautiful condo down in San Clemente, but Juan Lu
is had never felt completely at home there. His father’s heart had always belonged to Laguna. Next week, he’d finally come back home.

  His cell phone rang and he excused himself to Mitch. He smiled as he pulled it from his pocket.

  “When are you coming back?” Eliza Rutherford, Nio’s longtime assistant asked without preamble.

  “That’s the wrong question,” he answered, heading down the stone steps toward the beach. The right question had a ‘why’ in it and summed up the reason he’d worked so hard until now.

  “It may be, but it’s the one everyone is asking.”

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Casey’s fine. And you’re deflecting. I’m getting calls from everyone and my maternity leave isn’t even officially over for another two weeks.”

  “That baby is everything. And don’t think I don’t know it.” It was Eliza’s third try for a child and she’d finally succeeded. He’d half expected her to tender her resignation by now to be a full-time mom.

  “I’m coming back, you know,” she assured him as if she could read his mind.

  “Take your time. You deserve it.”

  On the other end of the line, Eliza sighed. “I’m worried about you. You’ve been gone for two weeks. That’s not like you.”

  He’d been wrapping up loose ends in Vancouver and New York before coming here. “Because this is the first time off I’ve taken in ten years? Direct all those calls you’re getting to Brian. He’ll say the right thing.”

  “Oh, my God. You are contemplating walking away.”

  Nio paused. “You a mind reader now, too?”

  “Only yours. And right now, my spidey sense is telling me this isn’t just a simple reunion with the boys. Please tell me you haven’t lost your mind or joined a commune in Big Sur à la Don Draper. Or, is it…a woman?”

  That caught him off guard. Silently, he squinted out at the ocean.