She laughed as she stepped into the kitchen. “Blame the wives of Nevada gold. We had this get-together at the beauty shop, a ‘before the guys get home’ party. It was a riot, but I nearly got turned into a redhead. I managed to get a hair color a shade lighter, plus highlights to go with a trim.”
He gratefully accepted the glass of iced tea she held out. “Your husband likes it.”
“Good, because the only option is to watch it grow out.”
Melinda’s colored bottles on display had been joined by pottery, the counter had acquired three cookbooks, a cake plate with glass dome had donuts under its lid, the kitchen table had been covered with a red-and-white-checkered cloth, and irises clustered in a tall vase.
Gina cracked eggs for an omelet. “Bacon, ham, mushrooms, and cheese sound okay?”
“Wonderful. Powdered eggs just don’t cut it after a while.” He got a spoon out of the drawer, retrieved the already made fruit salad from the top shelf of the refrigerator, found a smaller bowl, and pulled out a chair at the table. Fresh fruit had disappeared from the Nevada a few days before the eggs, and he’d been craving a good peach. To his delight he found a layer of peach slices in the fruit salad. “Anything else you ladies did together?”
“We had baking days, garage sales, kid-fun trips. There are a lot of casseroles shoved into freezers, so time doesn’t have to be spent cooking meals, scrapbooks on what happened during the patrol, and a few houses with new paint jobs inside. We wives stayed busy.”
Bishop laughed at the way she said it. Gina had settled in with the group, that much was clear. As the captain’s wife she would have been invited to everything. Opportunities to make friends among the gold crew must have been abundant. “No major accidents or problems?”
“A snake in the yard I could have done without. I fell asleep one day and burned a pan of brownies, set off the smoke detector. And there are too many sounds in this house at night I’m not accustomed to yet, so security walked the place a few times when I was uncomfortable. I lost a cat on three different occasions—eventually figured out they were sleeping in an odd spot and ignoring me.”
Bishop looked down at the cats now stalking the dog’s tail. Pongo had crashed on his shoe to anchor Bishop from moving anywhere. “Cats will be cats,” he offered. “I see bells on their collars—those are new.”
“They’ve figured out how to move slowly enough so the bells don’t ring.”
Bishop grinned. “Of course.”
She turned the eggs and added items to the omelet. “Jeff is off on R and R somewhere, but he promised he’ll make Chicago on the 20th for our wedding celebration. Your mom and I have the invitations ready to go in the mail tomorrow if the date still works for you.”
Bishop smiled. “It does.”
“Good, because I already ordered the cake for that date.”
She folded over the omelet and slid it onto a plate, brought it over to the table for him. She took a seat next to his.
“How’s Daniel?” Mark asked.
“Good.” She rested her chin on her palm. “He was invaluable at the TCC. He headed out with the Nebraska five days ago. I made him a dozen music playlists to take with him—our credit card kind of whimpered,” she admitted. When he only chuckled, she went on, “I promised I’d keep an eye on the new saltwater aquarium he’s added to his place.”
Mark nodded and reached for a napkin.
“He pulled me into the TCC just before lockdown closed the doors, so we had a front-row seat to everything that happened. It was helpful to have him as a sounding board while it was unfolding.”
“That’s one of the reasons I wanted him with you.”
“It helped, Mark, hearing his perspective. We figured out what happened with China’s sub by creating new topology maps for the East China Sea before and after the sub went missing. We spotted the seamount it hit. From there, it was simply a matter of figuring out where the crippled sub was, and a photo helped with that.”
“Your science did its job.”
“A very good job,” she agreed. “By the way, Daniel has recently met an ocean biologist. She’s finishing a Ph.D. thesis on porpoise vocalizations, and the Navy has a lot of audio recordings that fit what she needs.” Gina smiled. “I just might have introduced them.”
Bishop leaned over and kissed her. “You might have, indeed. Does she like the sea?”
“Grew up in Hawaii, surfing for an hour before school most mornings. Her father runs a deep-sea fishing charter.”
“Nicely done.” He finished half the omelet. “What else did you do while I was away?”
“Missed you. Wrote you a bunch of letters. Thought about how much I’m going to enjoy Montana for a honeymoon.”
“Three days to hand-over, and then it’s a big wedding and a long honeymoon,” he promised.
She reached over and ruffled his hair. “You need a haircut before then. I like it, but it’s so not the normal you.”
Bishop caught her hand and kissed the inside of her palm. “I lost a crew challenge at the halfway-night party and conceded not to see the crew barber until we were back onshore.”
“Going to tell me the challenge?”
“Never.”
She laughed. “The guys would have needed some levity by the end of the patrol.”
“We got through it.” He finished the meal and pushed back his plate. “I’ve missed your face, Gina, and your smile.” He brushed her hair back. “I should have taken more pictures with me than I did. I nearly wore out the ones I had.”
“I’ll remember that for the next patrol. I kept finding your notes for weeks after you left. They were really nice, Mark.”
“I hoped they would bring a smile.”
“They did. Oh, hold on. I found something of yours.” She left the kitchen and returned a moment later with a book in her hand, setting it beside him on the table.
It was a book of poetry, one he recognized. He picked it up slowly, and it opened to a page his first wife had often stopped at. A note fluttered out. Mark picked it up. It was addressed to Melinda.
“Did you read it?”
“Yes. I was too curious not to,” she admitted, sitting again beside him.
He nodded and opened the folded page.
Melinda, my love,
I know you read this book most often when you’re sad. I wish I was there to dry your tears and hug you tonight and tell you I love you. Read page 92 and think of me.
Yours forever, Mark
“I remember writing this,” he said quietly, then looked over at Gina.
She rested her chin on her hand as she nodded. “I’m thinking you’ll leave me a note like that one, expecting me to find it one day. And for whatever reason it will remain for another decade or two where you placed it, so that someone in a future generation finds it and reads the words my husband wrote for me. They’ll wonder about the love affair between Mark and Gina. You and Melinda had that for nine years—a good marriage and love affair. Now it’s our turn to build a chapter of that love story together. I get mushy just thinking about it,” she said softly.
“You kept my notes?”
“I think it’s good to have a relationship immortalized in words.”
Mark thought of the notes and glanced back at her. “Including the one I left under my pillow?”
She smiled. “Yes, I found it the first night—when I slept on your side of the bed, missing you more than I can say. It would be incomplete without that one.” She got to her feet, held out her hand. “A shower, a back rub, some sleep. What time does Nevada need you back?”
“Seven a.m.”
“I’ll nudge you that way at six.”
He interlaced his fingers with hers, surprised how easily the first night was fitting them back together. “Are we really okay, Gina?” he asked, concerned he was seeing a determined all-is-well appearance rather than the layers below it.
“Yes. I love you. I know you love me. I’m not wasting tonight on what might have h
appened or what might have gone wrong. I’ve got a future with you, one I want very much. The rest is details.”
He relaxed. She’d meant it. “We’ll talk about those details another day,” he assured her as they walked upstairs together.
“We will. There’s a honey-do list for you on your nightstand in case you get to feeling like I managed just fine without you. And a wish list of movies I want to see, and books I’d like you to buy me.” She bit her lip. “Actually I bought most of the books and called them a gift from you, so maybe you should give me back that list to update once more.”
He laughed. He switched who was in the lead and led her into the bedroom, saw the shoe box full of letters on the bedside table. “Do I start from the front or the back?”
“Oldest ones are in front.”
He stepped out of his shoes, not letting go of his hold on her hand. She stepped out of hers, and the dog pounced on a sandal. “The pets fight over who gets to sleep in the dog bed downstairs. Most of the time the cats claim it first, and Pongo plops down by the front door so he can bark when the newspaper gets delivered at five o’clock.”
“An interesting wake-up time for you.” He turned on lights in the bathroom. “You repainted in here.”
“Pongo attacked the shower curtain, and the new one didn’t work with the walls, so I decided painting was easier than returning the shower curtain and selecting a new one.”
“Works for me.” He glanced at the mirror and accepted reality. He needed a shave or his wife was going to have whisker burns in the morning. He let go of her hand, but she merely created a space on the bathroom counter and perched there to watch him. “I’m going to cut my neck the way you’re studying me,” he mentioned.
“I missed this routine,” Gina replied, smiling. “I had all these ideas for your first night back, and they didn’t include watching you shave and talking about where the pets sleep.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I thought I’d kiss you senseless and then go from there.”
Mark grinned. “I might let you do that. I’m glad you waited to get married, Gina. You could have settled down with some Ph.D. candidate back when you were 20, and then where would I be tonight?”
“Not as happy,” she said.
“Your self-confidence is improving.”
“I like being married. I like being married to you.”
He leaned over and kissed her, transferring a good bit of shaving cream to her chin in the process.
She laughed and wiped it away, sliding off her perch on the counter. “Nevada gold wives also went shopping together. Shall I show you what I bought for tonight with you in mind?”
“Not while I’m shaving,” he replied with a laugh. He reached for a square of toilet paper to stop the bleeding from the nick on his jaw. “I lived through a tough patrol. I might not survive my wife flirting with me tonight.”
She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his back. “I love you, Mark. I’m awfully glad you’re back.”
Mark set aside the razor and wiped a towel across his face, turned around and picked her up. “I adore you, precious,” he said, finding he was so full of emotion at the moment, the words came out in a whisper. “Did you ever regret marrying me while I was gone?”
She shook her head. “Nope, not a single millisecond of time. You?”
“Never. I spent the patrol thinking about how soon I’d be home again.” He rested his forehead against hers. He loved this woman. “Mrs. Bishop.”
“Hmm?”
“Change of plans.”
“Does it involve me having to find my shoes? Because I think Pongo just stole one of my sandals and took it downstairs.”
Mark laughed. “It involves my bag I left downstairs, and a stack of letters I wrote you. I want you to start reading them while I get this shave finished and take a shower. Then I’ll let you kiss me senseless.”
“We need ice cream if we’re reading letters.”
“Works for me.”
She reluctantly stepped away. “I’ll hurry.”
He smiled. “Start with the first letter and read them in order. There are only 10, but I added to each one over a few days, so they’re long.”
It was after midnight when Gina finally set the alarm for six so her husband could be back at the Nevada on schedule. As captain, it was important that he set a good example of being on time. In three days, though, he’d be on R and R, and she wouldn’t have to give him up to the Navy in the mornings.
“I just realized you’re ticklish,” she said with a chuckle, letting her fingers slide back to that spot.
He groaned even as he laughed and caught her hands. “Go to sleep, Gina. I’m fried here. I’m getting too old for a young wife.”
“I’d say you’re about perfect.” She kissed his chin. “Nice shave. But you missed a spot.” She giggled as he rubbed her cheek with it. “Do you think we’re going to be an old married couple one day?”
“How old?” he asked, his voice already heavy with sleep.
“Ninety, and a hundred.”
“Sure. I’m in great shape. And we’ll work on getting you to the gym occasionally.”
“Hey.”
He grinned and then kissed her. “Go to sleep, precious.”
She closed her eyes because he needed the rest, and while she liked to tease him, part of being his wife was taking care of him. She could have lost him, could have lost Jeff, to what was heading toward a war. She was going to take care of her guys. The rest of life could revolve around that priority.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked. She opened her eyes to see him resting on his pillow, studying her face.
“Life is good,” she replied.
“Hmm. It is.”
“Good night, Mark.”
She said it softly, deliberately, and after a quiet few seconds his arms tightened around her in a hug. “You’re kind to me, precious. I love that.”
She interlaced her hand with his, smiled, and let them both drift to sleep. She had what she most wanted—a good husband. And she loved being a wife. Life was good. And he was safely home from the sea.
Dee Henderson is the author of numerous novels, including Unspoken, Jennifer: An O’Malley Love Story, Full Disclosure, and the acclaimed O’MALLEY series. Her books have won or been nominated for several prestigious industry awards, such as the RITA Award, the Christy Award, and the ECPA Gold Medallion. Dee is a lifelong resident of Illinois. Learn more at DeeHenderson.com or facebook.com/DeeHendersonBooks.
Books by Dee Henderson
* * *
Danger in the Shadows
The Negotiator
The Guardian
The Truth Seeker
The Protector
The Healer
The Rescuer
True Devotion
True Valor
True Honor
Kidnapped
Before I Wake
The Witness
God’s Gift
The Marriage Wish
Full Disclosure
Jennifer: An O’Malley Love Story
Unspoken
Undetected
Resources: bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook
Website: www.bethanyhouse.com
Facebook: Bethany House
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