A Soldier Saved--A Clean Romance

by Cheryl Harper

  “Watch your step.” The captain of the ship was standing on the dock as Angela stepped down. He was wearing the crisp white uniform, the hat, the whole captain ensemble. This was an excellent selfie opportunity. She was behind in the selfie game, but it was impossible to miss this chance. “Thank you for joining us.” He offered her his hand. “And if there’s anything we can do to make your visit to Miami better, please do let us know.” Instead of letting go, he held her hand and Angela froze.

  “Oh, I’m not visiting. I live here.” Why did she have to correct that? Was he hitting on her? Right out here in the open? In front of people?

  When she managed to meet his stare, he smiled slowly. He was. Oh boy. When she told Greer, her girl was going to freak. And then she decided to go for it.

  “Captain, would you...” She wasn’t going to do it.

  Was she?

  “Could we take a selfie together?” Angela shrugged. “That would be a great souvenir for this day.”

  He took her phone from her before draping an arm over her shoulder in a friendly manner. “Say cheese, then.”

  Stunned at her own boldness, Angela tilted her chin up and gave the biggest grin she could muster. Ready to hurry back to the boardwalk so she could post the photo and wait for Greer’s call, Angela held out her hand but the captain was... Was he entering his phone number? Oh man.

  “In case you might like to get together sometime, Miss I-live-here.”

  The urge to deny that she may be interested was strong. But she smiled and said, “Thanks for the photo and the tour.” Angela desperately hoped he missed the flush of...what? Embarrassment? It would be best if he assumed she’d gotten too much sun.

  In a hurry to escape now, Angela forced her feet into what she remembered walking looked like. When she made it to the end of the dock, she refused to check over her shoulder.

  Since the divorce, she’d focused on rebuilding her life and work. Not men.

  Did she want to spend any time tangled up with dating now? Hard to say.

  “Ice cream. That will fix everything.” The nervous flutter in her stomach was unusual. It had been so long since she’d been in that situation. Her body was fighting off its own freak-out.

  “You need a captain.” When she realized what she’d said, Angela said slowly, “Caption. Not captain. Caption.” Talking to herself out loud while she waited for her turn to build her own ice cream was worrisome, so Angela bit her lip and concentrated on what the caption might be. Nothing was coming to mind. Having a man get her number had rattled all the creativity away.

  She’d met Rodney in college. They’d married as soon as he graduated, and then they’d been together until almost three years ago. After the separation, while they tried to work out how to stay together, and after the divorce that blew apart her life and relocating to Miami, men were not even on the list of things to do.

  But that zing of awareness? She’d missed it. In a hurry, she typed, Is this the Love Boat? under the photo and posted it. Then she shoved her phone back in her pocket.

  “Here you are, miss.” The teen girl behind the counter couldn’t be any older than Greer, but she’d still gone with “miss” instead of “ma’am.” Angela should stick with a ponytail and sunglasses every day. Without them, she never failed to be called “ma’am.”

  Angela snapped a picture of her ice-cream cone, took the cone and the bottle of water, and then stepped back out on the boardwalk. She’d stroll and eat her dessert, then go find seafood. When she posted those photos, she’d need something clever to say about them. Angela licked her ice cream and poked the empty spot in her brain where good words should be. With a shrug, she studied the boardwalk. The words would come.

  She was a writer. This was her thing.

  As she walked along and idly studied the windows of the souvenir shops and the kiosks selling airboat rides, haunted after-dark tours and enough T-shirts for everyone in Florida, Angela turned the corner to the quieter end of the boardwalk. The parking deck was to the right, but she wasn’t quite ready to go home, so she went left. From this shady end, she could see the bustle of the tours, the swimming area on the opposite side of the bay and the marina that stretched for miles past the parking garage.

  And there, on a bench, was Jason Ward.

  This was a tourist trap. She hadn’t expected to run into any of her students or Sawgrass faculty.

  She certainly wasn’t dressed to impress with scholarly authority. The ponytail and sunglasses were drawing misses instead of ma’ams.

  If she hadn’t frozen in her tracks, she might have had the opportunity to skulk away if she’d wanted to. Since Angela couldn’t decide what she wanted—to escape without notice or to engage in a conversation with the student who had such interesting things to say—it was fine that fate took the choice out of her hands.

  Jason turned and looked right at her. “Is this one of those places where, if I sit here long enough, the whole world walks by?” Jason made a show of studying the lack of foot traffic. “Can’t be that, so do you come here often?” He frowned, as if that wasn’t his best effort.

  Since she was struggling to come up with witty one-liners herself that afternoon, Angela understood.

  And it was enough to put her at ease. “I come here never. You must live here on this bench.”

  Jason shook his head. “Never seen it before in my life. It’s almost as if we were meant to run into each other today. No other way to explain it, is there?”

  Angela considered that. “I guess not, and I did need to talk with you. About your assignment, the one I don’t have.”

  He sighed long and loud. “I should have let you keep on walking. You were going to move right on past me as if you didn’t recognize me.”

  “But this is so much better.” Angela slid down on the bench next to him. The whole day had been unexpected. She’d started something with her lie-turned-truth with Greer and it had been an adventure so far. Jason might be right. If he was meant to be a part of her adventure, he’d chosen exactly the right bench. The breathless shock of the captain and his phone number maneuver was back, but this time, when she was faced with another conversation with Jason Ward, she would definitely call the emotion excitement. There was no edge of anxiety with it, only the fizz of interest he sparked. Sunshine. The ocean. Ice cream. Yachts as far as the eye could see. And a handsome man she was going to talk to about poetry. It was nearly the perfect Saturday.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THERE WAS VERY little that could convince a man he’d aged overnight as well as limping around a tourist trap in search of a comfortable bench. When Jason had discovered his spot, the deserted bench in a shady bend of the boardwalk where he could watch the busy bay without all the conversation and loud, excited shouts of sugared-up kids washing over him, he’d sunk down gratefully.

  Then he’d started to think.

  About how his life had changed.

  And if it would always be this way.

  Depressing.

  Realizing he wasn’t alone hadn’t done much to poke holes in the gloom, but when he’d turned his head to find a pretty woman with an ice-cream cone in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, he’d perked up.

  The fact that she was shifting from one foot to the other, as if she was trying to decide whether to move toward him or away, was a problem, but he’d recognized her quickly, and his mission was clear. Convincing her to move forward was easy enough. Calling her out had stopped her thoughts of retreat and now, here his creative writing professor was, seated next to him on the world’s most perfect bench.

  Depression disappeared in the face of anticipation. That same buzz he’d enjoyed all week. “Where did you find this?” He tapped the water bottle.

  “Ice-cream parlor.” She waved her cone. “I wasn’t sure how long I was staying, worried I might need hydration.” She held it out to him. “Thi
rsty? I got it for you.”

  He waved it off. “Thank you. Can’t take it.” Even if he was as thirsty as he’d ever been—like after a day run in Afghanistan—in that heartbeat, he couldn’t take it.

  “Won’t take it.” She set it on the seat between them. “Yet.”

  Was he thirsty? Yes. Would he allow his already banged-up pride to suffer further damage by accepting her charitable offer?

  “You look thirsty.” She shoved her sunglasses on top of her head and bit the edge of her ice-cream cone. “I have ice cream.”

  He was thirsty, but seeing her eyes changed his whole focus. At this range, she wasn’t pure energy in motion as she was in front of her classroom. Instead, she was just a beautiful woman.

  No professional’s suit of armor, either.

  Dressed in red shorts, a gray tank top with watermelons all over it, dark sunglasses, a swinging ponytail and sandals that showed off a bright red pedicure, she might be a cute college student.

  Jason regretted that he knew what color she’d chosen for that pedicure. He’d spend too much time thinking about that now. He reached over to pick up the bottle to have something to do with his hands.

  “Thank you for the water.” His tone was closer to a grumble than real appreciation. Not very thankful, for sure. Walking to the ice-cream shop would take most people little energy and less time, but he wasn’t most people. Not that afternoon. Jason took the cap off and swallowed quickly. It didn’t burn, this swallowing of his pride. When he set it back down, her lips were curled. Was that satisfaction? Probably.

  “You know, I had high hopes for you. You understand poetry. You got it day one. Some students do, some don’t. I can teach a few of those who don’t, but not everyone has the appreciation for what language can do. How it’s a picture and music all rolled into phrases. I thought you were one of those.” She shrugged a shoulder before popping the last bite of her cone in her mouth.

  Jason rolled the cold bottle between his hands and straightened his legs. The skin on his left leg was burning, but some of the fatigue had receded, so it was easier to enjoy a sunny day by the water.

  Now that the Poet was here anyway. Angela. Today, they were Jason and Angela.

  “But now I’m the past tense. You’ve already given up on me? You haven’t even read anything I’ve written.” A second after the words left his mouth, Jason knew he’d fallen into her trap.

  Angela waved a finger. “Exactly! You missed the deadline. I have received eleven poems in varying stages of goodness. I know because I marked up my ledger yesterday, the one I use to submit grades.” She made a show of rolling up her nonexistent sleeve, which only drew his attention to her smooth skin. Angela tapped her naked wrist. “Today is Saturday. That comes after Friday, doesn’t it?”

  “End of the week. That was the deadline. Couldn’t that be Saturday at midnight? Or our week starts on Mondays.” Jason shook his head as he watched her cross one leg over the other so her foot could swing in annoyed little taps. Whatever she intended, he was enjoying the show and the conversation. “Can I have an extension?”

  “Do you have a poem?” she replied, her dark brows arched. “Hit Send and I’ll accept it. I should have been more specific, included an hour on my deadline.”

  “I’m working on it.” He waved one hand expansively to take in the water and the marina. “Soaking up some nature and people. Inspiration is all around me even as we speak.”

  “Do I sense sarcasm, Mr. Ward?” Her tone was perfect for a schoolmarm controlling a wild classroom, but he was pretty sure they were both enjoying the conversation.

  “A little, maybe. I’ve sat down at my computer more than once this week, read some great stuff on the sites you mentioned, but nothing came together. Your first class should have been about writer’s block.” Jason stared down at the bottle in his hands, one thumb picking at the label. “Everything I could write was too dark.”

  Angela didn’t respond immediately. Eventually, she said, “My usual answer to something like that is that darkness is part of the human experience. We’ve all been there. We’ll all be there again someday. There is truth in the hard things, maybe more than the easy, but I understand. As writers, we make the decision about what we can show other people. There are pieces of ourselves that we protect because we have to.”

  They were quiet, seated there on the perfect bench, while they contemplated hidden fragility.

  “Do you have truth that’s too hard to put into words?” Jason asked. He wasn’t sure why, but the small frown and how her humor faded made him wonder if they had more in common than he’d expected.

  The connection would be nice, but if her truths were scary or dangerous, he didn’t want to know.

  He didn’t want that for her. She was energy and enthusiasm and passion. Hurt and fear had no place in her life.

  Then he realized how silly that was. Hurt and fear and all those things he hated to face belonged to everyone. They were unavoidable.

  Angela shrugged a shoulder. “Lately, I’ve been fighting against some emotions I don’t want. They aren’t who I should be.” She leaned closer to him. “I might have a truth that could hurt others if I spend too much time airing it out. The people who love me, who want good things for me, that’s the hurt I want to prevent at any cost.”

  An image of his mother’s stubborn face flashed in his mind. If she knew the depths of his emotions, she’d be hurt. Before he could ask Angela for more details, because he sensed there was something important there in her own world, she said, “I still need a poem from you before class starts on Monday. Paint me a picture of this day, this scene. Doesn’t even have to be good. Could be a greeting card sentiment, a cheap greeting card sentiment. Everybody starts somewhere, Mr. Ward.”

  “Can you call me Jason?” he asked. What was the protocol? He wanted her to use his name.

  “Yes. I just...” She nodded firmly but moved to put more space between them. “Of course I can. Jason. There. Now, will you promise to get me a poem before class starts?”

  “Roses are red, violets are blue, candy is sweet, and so is honey,” Jason drawled to match Sean Wakefield’s delivery. “That’s the best I’ve got, and I didn’t even write it.”

  “The rhyme was right there, literally. ‘Blue’ and ‘too.’ ‘Candy is sweet and honey is, too.’” Angela slowly tilted forward on the bench, so it was difficult to see her face until she turned her head. “I did not expect that, Jason.” Her reluctant laugh was gorgeous, free and too loud. “I’ve been teaching a long time. It takes a lot to shock me. You did it. Your poem would work, except you admitted you didn’t write it. Can’t let that go. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be hard to write something similar.” She plopped back on the bench, one hand wrapped over her stomach.

  Jason would drop the class if that was the best poem he could write. “A note on the rhyme. Got it. That’s why you’re the teacher. I’ll come up with something better. My creativity needed some fresh air.” Getting outside had always worked to clear his mind. The leg had eliminated his number one remedy: running.

  “So, instead of one of the many less-crowded spots in southern Florida, you’re at a tourist trap in Miami Beach.” Angela pursed her lips. “Interesting tactic.”

  Since he’d grimly muttered the same thing to himself when his mother insisted he accompany her here, he couldn’t disagree.

  “New in town. I need a local to show me the best spots.” He stretched an arm along the bench and waited for her to turn toward him. How easy it would be to seize his chance. To ask her out. The pinch at his knee reminded him he wasn’t ready to run yet.

  Her quick grin convinced him she knew exactly where he was headed, but she was good at swerving. “Too bad I’m not a local. I could give you some tips, but I’ve only been here two years. I’m still hunting them myself.”

  He’d opened the door. She’d pulled it gently cl
osed. Fair enough.

  “If it’s not Miami, where is home?” Jason asked. He hadn’t expected them to both be fish out of water, but he liked the connection.

  “Let’s see. I was born in Virginia, but my daughter is in Nashville. I guess that’s home. It was for a long time. When I get homesick, I miss Greer. That must be home.” She looked down at his arm on the bench, but she didn’t brush it away. The tip of her chin convinced him she was weighing the rights and wrongs of their conversation. It wouldn’t do to let her think about it for too long.

  “How old is she?” Good question. Whatever ups and downs he’d gone through, he hadn’t forgotten how to keep someone talking.

  “In actual years, almost seventeen. In maturity, forty or fifty. Scary smart.” Angela pulled her phone from her pocket and wiped away all the messages cluttering the screen to pull up a picture. “Here we are, last summer, at a nice beach off Key Biscayne if you’re ever hoping for more sand and sea than yachts and tourists.”

  “Sand is overrated, but the sea is nice.” Jason studied the picture. Greer was a younger version of Angela. Same dark hair with a bright smile. They were messy and happy. “Why isn’t she here?”

  Some of Angela’s pride dimmed a bit. “Greer’s in a great school with big plans to make it to Harvard or Yale, where she will earn a law degree and change the world. She’s working an internship that my ex finagled with a state senator and her life is right on track. I couldn’t stay in Nashville, not teaching at the same university where my ex-husband would be my boss.” She wrinkled her nose. “I also couldn’t bear to pull her away from everything she dreamed of, so sometimes I’m homesick.”

  If he had to guess, they’d wandered into the neighborhood where that truth that might hurt others if Angela explored it too deeply lived, but he was the last guy to poke where it hurt. Her truth, her timeline. They were quiet, but Jason could see more notifications cascading over Greer’s happy photo.