Unexpected Hero

by Barbara Ankrum

  There was just something about Gemma Wayne.

  But he could already see the trajectory of their relationship. Where things would end. How they would end. If he’d met her somewhere else, some other time, things might have ended differently for them. But everything was based on a lie. His lie. And that, he couldn’t overcome.

  Even if he’d met her as Eamon Connelly, the whole dynamic would have shifted as those things always did with the women he met there. They were impressed with his money or his name or the power he wielded in business. Or they were intimidated by all of the above. Or they knew his history.

  Meeting Gemma here, outside the glare of the business world back east, was at once a blessing and a curse. She saw him differently than other women did. Without the family name or the trappings of his family’s wealth.

  More and more, he didn’t want that burden. More and more, he imagined living somewhere off the grid, where no one knew him and his past was just that. To the insatiable media, he was merely either a villain or a victim. His elusiveness with the press only made them hungrier. And when he appeared in public, they fought for pictures or selfies with him, all of which he avoided.

  He wanted his own life back. He would have reupped in the service, but his knee would disqualify him. His father’s death had put an end to leaving at all for a good long while. His mother needed him. His sister, Reena, too, even though her road to recovery was paved with spotlights and speaking engagements.

  Of all of them, ironically, she was doing the best. He supposed that was because she had not been at the receiving end of years of suspicion as the rest of them had been. Not that he would ever diminish what she’d been through. She bore her damages privately, and to the world she’d become an inspiration to the sheer act of survival. But his feelings about what had happened to them all still churned in him. Regularly, he burned that anger off with exercise, pushing his new knee past the limits his doctor advised. He couldn’t bring himself to be angry with his mother or with Reena. They weren’t responsible for what had happened. And not once, not even in the darkest days of her disappearance, had they blamed him. He blamed himself enough for all of them.

  Gemma nudged him out of his thoughts with a cold bottle of water and a smile as they checked out of the course and headed for the car. The temperature had shot up as the sun hit twelve o’clock and he was soaking wet. “Thirsty?” she asked.

  He twisted the cap off the bottle and took a long swig. Then, before thinking better of it, tugged off his soaked T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.

  Beside him, Gemma’s expression went flat at the sight of the scars on his back and lower torso. The ones left behind by the shrapnel that had hit him in the Korengal Valley fight.

  He reached into the bag in his car for another tee and began to slip the shirt on. But she stopped him with one hand as her eyes met his with concern.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking… I didn’t mean for you to—”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t apologize.” She reached out and touched a short, ragged scar that wrapped around his side. “Did…did that happen in the war?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh, Noah…” Her gaze wandered over his torso and back as she turned him to look. “I think…I think you were very lucky.”

  “I was,” he agreed.

  “What else?” she asked, her look traveling down him.

  He pointed to a scar. “This one took a kidney. But they didn’t kick me out for that.”

  “They kicked you out?”

  He flexed his knee. “I needed a new one of these after another firefight a year later.”

  “I would never have guessed the way you attacked those ropes this morning.” Shaken, she sent him a disbelieving look. “You must have worked really hard to recover from this.”

  He nodded. He hadn’t been the only one. All of them had come back from the war bearing scars. “The day this happened,” he said, indicating the shrapnel scars, “all of us got hit. All of the guys you’ve met here. If not for Trey—who also took a bullet that day—none of us would still be here. Which is why I couldn’t miss this wedding.”

  “I see.” Standing close, she flattened one palm against his chest and nodded. “I feel pretty dumb now, being afraid of a little rope bridge.”

  Lifting the thin strap of her white tank back into place, he said, “Nah. You did well.”

  “I wasn’t fishing when I said that.”

  “I know. I wasn’t kidding. You did great up there.” He brushed a piece of hair out of her eyes. “Better than I expected.”

  “Better than I expected,” she admitted, lifting a smile at him.

  Despite all the warnings he’d given himself about getting involved with her, he found himself unable to keep his hands off her. He wanted to touch her, smooth his palm over her shoulder, feel her mouth up against his again, taste her.

  But the first move was hers. Lifting on her tiptoes, she pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. A long, sweet taste of her before she pulled back, settling her steepled fingers against her lips. “Thank you. For today. For this weekend, really. It’s been…unexpectedly great.”

  In reply, he took her face gently in his hands and answered with a kiss that caught him off guard as much as it did her. As effortless as drinking water, kissing her felt like coming home. And even as that thought struck him, even as her hands slid around him, and he felt her breasts press up against his chest—the drum of his heartbeat told him this was a mistake.

  She pulled away first, breathing hard, dropping her forehead against his chest. “We probably shouldn’t—”

  “Sorry,” he said, almost automatically. He was. But that hadn’t stopped him. “Maybe I read things wrong.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I kissed you first.”

  “But you didn’t mean to?”

  “No, I did,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

  He shook his head, confused.

  “I like you.”

  Uh-oh.

  “No, I mean,” she clarified, “I really like you. And I…I really like kissing you. But I’m only here for the weekend. And so are you. I’m not…I don’t want to be that girl who has a fling out of town, thinking… ‘Whoo-hoo! This doesn’t even count!’ Then…wonders what the hell she was thinking after. Because this does count. It always counts.”

  “That definitely counted for me,” he said, still standing close to her. “And I like kissing you, too. But I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

  “We’re not kids. We both know where this will—might—go. For me, this is more of a…protective thing, really. Does that sound awful?”

  “You’re not over your ex yet? You still love him?”

  “Ash? God no. I’m definitely over him. It’s more like…I’m not over what happened yet. Maybe I never will be.”

  He took her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Listen to me. Letting that bastard spoil your future by giving him that kind of power is only gonna backfire on you. You deserve better. We’ve only known each other a short time, but I can already see who you are. You deserve better than that.”

  With a quick dark look, she met his gaze, then turned her back against his chest and pulled his arms around her shoulders. “You’re a good man. I hope you know that.”

  He dropped his chin on the top of her head and stared out at the beauty of the land around them. She didn’t know him, or his secrets. But she was right to nip whatever was happening with them in the bud.

  No one had ever mistaken him for a romantic. He was a pragmatist and had never believed in an instant connection with any woman. But for him, that’s what meeting Gemma had been. Like a lightning strike. And the past two days felt like something inside him had come back to life. But standing here with her in his arms only made him feel more confused about the road they’d started down the other night. More than that, he found himself confused about the one he’d chosen years ago that had left him without this feeling
for so long.

  She was right about one thing, though. This was a moment. Just a moment. Monday, she’d be gone and this weekend would be shuffled into his past and into his memory, where he’d bring this night up now and again to wonder why he hadn’t taken his shot. Why he’d let her get away.

  *

  For most of the rest of the afternoon, Gemma stayed in her room at the hotel and wrote. Writing was how she lost herself. And she very much felt like getting lost. The wedding piece came first and she composed a draft quickly that she would later revise. Then she switched to Noah’s story. She wrote draft after draft and deleted more than she kept.

  It wasn’t that she wrote something inaccurate or not up to Somerhalder’s exacting standards. Instead, the why of what she was writing troubled her. The more she researched his past, the more she felt the whole angle of the article was wrong. Rather than an exposé about a man hiding out from his responsibilities, she found a man hiding out from his life; a man who had carved a spot in another world that had nothing to do with the one he was born into. But none of those articles she’d read about him captured who he really was.

  He wasn’t at all the same inscrutable loner depicted in all of the articles she read about him. He was decent and honorable and brave. His friends loved him. They also seemed to have no idea who he really was.

  She found herself writing about this dichotomy simply to sort things out for herself. Who was Eamon Connelly? And how was he related to Noah Mathis?

  She found articles online about the battle in the Korengal Valley for which Commander Trey Reyes was awarded a Medal of Honor and found a photo of Mick, Paul and Jase standing beside him. And there was Holly’s late husband, Tommy. Noah was conspicuously missing from those photos. Had he not attended the ceremony? For fear of photographs? Or had he just dodged the cameras? It’s complicated, he’d said. Everything about him was complicated if you asked her.

  The battle that article spoke about had been as brutal as any in the long and troubled war—an ambush in the mountains and a daring helicopter rescue. Trey’s part in saving his men had been heroic, but no less than any of them who’d been so wounded they’d needed to be literally carried across a battlefield through gunfire to rescue. The details were all about Trey’s part in that rescue, but she had no doubt these men, these brothers in arms, had saved each other.

  She pondered the scars she’d seen on Noah. Contemplating what they had gone through was not something she even wanted to do. She could only imagine how the day must still haunt them.

  In a way, the mere fact that they all seemed so…normal…was impressive. They’d managed to move past what had happened and create new lives for themselves. Even Noah—or Eamon—had settled into his life with his family’s business, making the company even more successful in the last few years, if newspaper accounts were to be believed. He’d said nothing about that business, but if she were to guess, she’d say that wasn’t his chosen work. That was for his family. And that seemed absolutely true to what she knew about him.

  She thought about that kiss in the parking lot. The way he’d looked at her. His breath, warm on her cheek. A tremor of want traveled through her, sitting alone on her bed. How could a man she’d only just met, practically a stranger, cause her to basically throw away every protective barrier she’d managed to erect since Ashton? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about the scars on his naked back, or how good his arms felt around her? She knew better. She did. This was a fling for him. A vacation from his real life. One that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow her to even see, much less admit to.

  Her research into his sister’s story led her down a rabbit hole for another hour before she shut her laptop, put her running shoes on and headed outside.

  Late afternoon had cooled down the heat of earlier a bit and she turned up Main to find that running path Holly had mentioned near the courthouse. She needed to stretch her legs and shake the cobwebs out. River Bend Park wound around the courthouse and down through a stand of trees that seemed out of place in this expanse of prairie that ran between mountain ranges to the east and west. Everywhere else, as far as the eye could see, lay grassland, green with summer, thick with vegetation. And the river that ran through this place like a green snake, whose current moved soundlessly along its banks, was only a few feet from the trail further down. She jogged past a hill with caution signs left over from winter for sledders and imagined how fun a flying saucer would be here.

  She ran for a mile before looping back the way she’d come, taking in the peacefulness of the Paradise Valley. Even thinking about returning to that shark tank she worked in on Monday made her appreciate the quiet here all the more. A few other joggers passed her, one with a jogging stroller and her little smiling girl. The woman waved and said, “Hi!” Gemma waved back and winked at the little girl. She could get used to this kind of friendliness. In Seattle, as in most big cities, people avoided eye contact like the plague. As if a friendly “hello” might get them involved in unwanted interaction. But the greeting was a simple hello and the woman kept going.

  Back in town, breathing hard, Gemma paused at the railroad tracks to catch her breath. She told herself she should go back and write some more, but instead found herself taking a turn around the town. She walked down Main, stopping at Copper Mountain Chocolates—run by a sweet woman named Sage, who helped her choose just the right treats—before turning down Third Street and heading back down Front Avenue to the Graff.

  But the Palace Movie Theater marquee caught her eye. Alongside a couple of currently running movies, was, surprisingly, a screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  Gemma stopped halfway through her piece of chocolate, stared up at the marquee and laughed. She’d already missed the beginning, but she’d seen the movie before. As procrastinations went, this looked like a sure thing. So she bought a ticket and went in.

  It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust but once they did, she made her way down an aisle and scrunched down into a seat. Audrey—Holly Golightly—was climbing onto a fire escape to avoid a bad date.

  Gemma smiled and pulled another chocolate from her bag.

  From behind, someone leaned over the back of the seat beside her. She startled and practically did a double take at the sight of Noah grinning at her.

  “You have to quit following me like this,” he said softly. “I’m gonna start thinking you like me.”

  She laughed quietly. “What are you doing here?”

  “That cat was on my mind and here was the movie,” he said quietly. “Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

  She shook her head meaningfully.

  “Shhhhh!” a woman down her row shushed.

  They grinned at each other like naughty children.

  “Mind if I join you?” he whispered. “I have popcorn.”

  She shook her head and patted the seat beside her. He didn’t bother with the aisle, but hopped over the empty seat and slid down in the chair. He offered her some popcorn, which she sampled.

  “Here,” she offered him her remaining chocolate. “This one’s yours.”

  He sent her a grateful, playful smile and they settled in to watch the movie. By the time Holly Golightly got the telegram about her brother dying in the war, he was holding her hand.

  *

  Noah watched Gemma swipe at her damp cheeks as she exited the Palace Movie Theater. He was feeling a little emotional himself, what with the cat and everything, but showing that was out of his range. So he settled for threading his arm around her shoulders and tugging her against him.

  “Oh, that movie gets me every time,” she said, with a sniff. “And I’m not even a romantic.”

  “No? Could’ve fooled me.”

  She sent him a look. “No, really, I mean romance is fine on the big screen. It’s a good fantasy, isn’t it? And…maybe even true for people like Holly and Trey. But how long will that last? Maybe romance is just a big, commercial cloaking device, designed to hide the fact that nothing lasts.”<
br />
  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Maybe. I believed in love once and he…well, he kicked the cat out of the cab in the rain and drove off. For good. But let’s not talk about him. Or love, or any of that. Tell me how you ended up in that dark movie theater on this sunny afternoon. Your friends didn’t have plans?”

  “They did. A few of them went for a hike up in the mountains. I happened to be walking out of the Graff and saw the marquee. And since you called me Audrey, I felt compelled to do my due diligence and see if your theory held water.”

  “Ha, ha. And? Your conclusion?”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Little black dresses don’t suit me. But you might have a point.”

  She stopped. “Really? How so?”

  He brushed a piece of hair out of her eyes as she turned her face up to him. “She’s crazy about someone she won’t let too close. And she has…commitment issues. And that cat…well, he’s just everything in her life she’s about to throw away.”

  Her eyes flicked up to his for a heart-wrenching moment before she threaded her fingers through his. “Hey. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. And not for chocolate or popcorn. For real food. Do you want to get something to eat? I know a place.”

  They laughed through dinner at Grey’s Saloon, played a mean game of pool or two in the back room and drank more beer than they intended. Paul and Jase called separately to check on him and insist he come on the ride Trey had organized out at the Canaday ranch the next morning, before the wedding. He assured them he was fine and would see them tomorrow at the appointed time. Trey had asked Mick to be his best man. The rest of them were moral support.

  Over the din of music and loud conversation in the saloon, he reached for her hand across the table. “Come with me to the wedding? No strings. Just friends.”