A Soldier's Quest

by Lori Handeland

John pulled Bobby into his arms. “About time, son,” he whispered, then he just held on.

  Throughout childhood their father had been the voice of reason in a house of insanity. Bobby couldn’t blame his mother for being on edge. Too many kids, too close together, did that to a woman. Make five of them boys and they were lucky she wasn’t in a corner talking to her toes most of the time. Not that she hadn’t, mind you, but she usually stopped after a few hours.

  Dad had been the calm one, the sane one, the one, despite their mother’s daily fury, that you did not screw with. When the man spoke, they all listened. Except for Dean. For some reason John and Dean struck sparks off each other to this day.

  “Everything good?”

  John released Bobby, then smacked him on the shoulder in lieu of a kiss. Luchetti men might hug, but they drew the line at kissing.

  “Good enough,” Bobby answered.

  “Met the girl.” John patted the pocket of his work shirt in an eternal hunt for the pack of cigarettes that was no longer there. He glanced hopefully at Dean.

  “I quit,” Dean murmured. “Mom’s got a nose like a bloodhound.”

  “Can’t think it would hurt to have one cigarette a day. But no.” John lifted his chin in Bobby’s direction. “So tell me about the doctor.”

  Quickly Bobby explained about Mexico, D.C., drug dealers, kidnappers and snipers, which took less time than he would have thought.

  “You think we can keep things quiet for a few days?” Bobby asked.

  “Maybe,” John said slowly, thoughtfully. “We don’t have to go to town, but you know how people love to visit. We’ll keep an eye on the road. Anyone shows up, you two get out of sight.”

  “My plan exactly.”

  “Tim’s got eyes like a hawk, and he knows everyone’s vehicle. Strange car coming down that road, he’ll ring the dinner bell.”

  Since Bobby couldn’t buy better security than a six-year-old with a dinner bell, he nodded.

  His dad clapped him on the back, the force of the blow indicating the level of his joy at Bobby’s homecoming. “Your old room is exactly where you left it, son.”

  JANE WAS PLAYING CATCH with Tim when a car turned into the lane. Tim glanced that way, then continued throwing the football, so Jane assumed the vehicle was one he knew.

  Bobby, Dean and John had gone into the barn to examine a new bull. Jane had declined. She’d seen quite enough bull in her life, thank you.

  Eleanor was cooking supper. She hadn’t wanted any help. Since Jane was lousy at cooking, but not too bad at playing with little boys, she didn’t mind.

  Lucky kept trying to steal the ball and give it to the doodles. They’d finally locked all the dogs behind a fence, where they ran back and forth barking until Eleanor shouted, “Knock it off!” from the kitchen window.

  Only Lucky was dumb enough to bark one last time. The sound ended on a yelp when one of the others snapped at her tail.

  The car rolled to a stop just as Bobby appeared in the barn doorway. A woman got out of the passenger seat; her gaze went directly to him and she sprinted across the yard, launching herself into his arms and planting a big smooch right on his lips.

  “That had better be his sister,” Jane muttered.

  “She’s Kim. Sister. Yep.”

  Tim fired the ball right at Jane’s stomach.

  “Oof,” she said, and doubled over.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Bobby was already on his way over. She waved him off. “I’ll live.”

  He took the football from her hand, then threw it over the fence. One of the doodles grabbed the thing and was gone.

  “Fetch, kid,” Bobby said, and Tim scampered off.

  Bobby’s sister studied Jane as if she were a slide under a microscope. Jane stared back with the same expression. One girl in a family of six. Jane, an only child, couldn’t imagine what that had been like.

  Kim Luchetti, now Riley, was tiny. Even with the two-inch heels, which were completely inappropriate for the gravel driveway, she came in at just over five feet tall. She was pretty and petite. Something Jane would never be, and she wanted Kim to like her so badly, she could barely breathe.

  Bobby introduced them. They shook hands. Smiled. Nodded. Then a whirlwind in a hot-pink dress erupted from the car.

  “Mommy!”

  The little girl with bright green eyes to match her mother’s and curly light brown hair to match that of the man chasing her ran straight past Kim and threw herself at Jane.

  “Up!” she shouted.

  The child’s shoes matched her dress, as did the ribbon in her hair.

  “Okay, that’s just cute.” Jane picked her up. “You’ve got to be Zsa-Zsa.”

  The child grinned and threw her arms around Jane’s neck for a hug.

  Jane glanced over Zsa-Zsa’s head. Kim stared at her with a contemplative expression.

  “Kids like me,” Jane explained.

  “Kids are usually right.” Kim walked past her and into the house.

  Jane wasn’t sure, but she thought that might be a compliment.

  “I’m Brian.” Jane glanced at the girl’s dad. “I’ll take her.”

  “Noooo!” Zsa-Zsa’s arms tightened, nearly choking Jane.

  “I guess no,” Jane managed, and Zsa-Zsa loosened her hold. “She’s fine. Really.”

  Jane had always liked the feeling of a little body clinging to hers like a monkey. For a change, the child she held wasn’t feverish, dying or abandoned. Life was good.

  Unless she decided to dwell on the fact that someone was trying to kill her.

  “Supper!” Eleanor shouted.

  People converged on the house from every direction. Dean released Bull and Bear from the pen at the side of the barn. They charged up the lane.

  “If a car comes down the road,” Bobby said, “they’ll lose what’s left of their minds.”

  A Midwestern farmer’s answer to electronic surveillance.

  Supper consisted of chicken, potatoes and vegetables, and lots of it. The conversation revolved around the Luchetti and Riley farms, Kim’s last year of law school, which she would begin in the fall, and Tim’s progress with his meds.

  Jane had been right; the boy suffered from ADHD. What she hadn’t figured was that Dean had been diagnosed with the same thing. No wonder the two had bonded.

  “Tell us about your work, Jane,” Kim said.

  Jane had been enjoying the flow of conversation all around her while she tried to keep Zsa-Zsa from spreading mashed potatoes through her hair. When everyone turned their attention toward her, she stuttered, “I—uh—”

  “Jane’s a physician with the Doctors of Mercy,” Bobby said. “She provides medical care to disadvantaged countries.”

  “Can’t be much money in that,” Dean observed.

  “Hardly any.”

  “I thought most folks became doctors to get rich.”

  “And here I thought they did it to help sick people.”

  Kim giggled. The sound made Zsa-Zsa laugh and clap her hands together. The resulting shower of mashed potatoes, in which her chubby little fingers had been covered, speckled Jane from forehead to neck.

  Zsa-Zsa’s eyes went wide; her mouth made an O. The entire family stared at Jane, waiting to see what she’d do. Was this a test? How did one pass? Worse, what if she failed?

  Jane couldn’t help herself as she took in the expression on the little girl’s face, the mashed potatoes dripping off her own nose… She snickered, choked, and then she couldn’t stop laughing.

  BOBBY HAD NEVER HEARD Jane laugh like that. Oh, she’d laughed, and he’d been charmed. But he’d never heard her snort, giggle and guffaw. He was more than charmed; he was turned on.

  So when she excused herself to wash up, Bobby waited only a minute before he did the same. Nobody even noticed. They were too busy cleaning off Zsa-Zsa, the floor, the wall, and chattering as they talked louder and louder in an attempt to hear one another. Even though so much had changed since Bobby ha
d left, he still felt as if he’d never even gone.

  He climbed the steps to the second floor, which sported three bedrooms and one bath. The halls seemed to ring with the ghosts of the arguments that had ensued over that single bathroom, since Kim had hogged it more than if they’d had three sisters instead of one.

  Their parents’ room had been moved to the attic, beneath the eaves, at about child number four. They had their own bathroom. No one could ever accuse the elder Luchettis of being slow on the uptake.

  Bobby glanced into his and Colin’s old quarters. His dad was right. Everything appeared pretty much the same.

  He could still see the line they’d drawn in Magic Marker down the center, could hear their childhood voices vowing to stay on their own side. That had worked pretty well until their mom walked in.

  They’d spent the following Friday night repainting the wall and all day Saturday scrubbing the floor. They’d never completely erased that line, and their mother had never let them forget it.

  But no matter how much he and Colin fought, no matter what they’d said or done to each other during the day, when the lights were off and they lay in their bunk beds, they’d talked about everything—girls and school, dreams and hopes, secrets and fears.

  A sense of nostalgia, of loss, filled Bobby. Would he and his brother ever retrieve the closeness they’d once shared?

  “I guess I know which side of the room was yours,” Jane said from behind him.

  “Not much of a mystery.”

  While Colin’s half was papered with pictures of faraway destinations torn from magazines and newspapers, Bobby’s had toy soldiers marching across the shelves attached to the wall and a camouflage shade on his desk lamp. He wasn’t even going to mention the khaki sheets on his level of the bunk bed.

  Jane leaned over Bobby’s shoulder to get a better look. Her breasts pressed into his back. He remembered the sound of her laughter and the flavor of their very first kiss.

  Spinning around, he took her in his arms, swallowing her surprised gasp, tasting mint on her tongue. She’d not only been cleaning mashed potatoes off her face but brushing her teeth.

  “Mmm,” he murmured, and relished the feel of her lips beneath his.

  Her hair had come loose from the fancy crown of the night before sometime between D.C. and Ohio. She’d tossed the pins out the window and let the breeze stream through her hair.

  The memory reminded him of what he’d felt like then—uncomfortably hard and unable to ease the tension between his legs since they’d been busy running for their lives.

  However, they were safe now, and there was a bed too close to be ignored.

  That they’d never kissed before last night, though they’d slept together many times, had made the embrace unbelievably erotic. Even on the dance floor, in the middle of hundreds of people, he’d been so aroused, the only thing that would have kept him from sneaking into a linen closet and taking her against a wall was a near-death experience.

  Bobby started to back slowly into his old room, pulling Jane with him. As enraptured with the embrace as he was, she didn’t realize what Bobby was up to until he pulled her onto the lower bunk along with him.

  “Hey! What’s the deal?”

  “I always wanted a woman in my room.”

  She smiled. “Childhood fantasies?”

  “Adolescent. You wanna make my every dream come true?”

  “If it involves having sex while your entire family eats supper one floor below, I’d say, no.”

  He pushed her back on the pillow, then rolled on top of her. “How about we just make out?”

  “Okay.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and her ankles around his calves. The resulting shift in position dumped his lower body onto the mattress right between her thighs. He could get used to this.

  Her tongue slid along his lower lip, then her teeth tugged just a little. She tightened her hold, pressing her breasts against his chest. He wanted to tear off her clothes, bury himself inside her and stay there for a week and a half.

  He’d never been this hot for a woman. Maybe he should try abstaining from first base more often.

  The sex had been great in Mexico, even better in D.C. In Illinois, he had a sneaking suspicion it would be spectacular.

  Bobby forgot they were only supposed to be making out. His hand crept under her shirt, slid along her ribs, sidled across the slight fullness of one breast and settled over the peak. She rubbed herself against his palm as he rolled the nipple with his thumb.

  He remembered taking her in his mouth in the darkness, the taste of sweet flesh on his tongue, the softness of her skin against his chin, the sensation of a nipple against the roof of his mouth as he suckled her until she cried out over and over and over again.

  She reached between them, cupping him through his jeans, and he nearly lost control for the first time since he was fifteen.

  He went still, then lifted his mouth and rested his forehead against hers. “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  Her voice was breathless, as if she’d just run ten miles, or been rolling around with him on a bunk bed trying to make him come.

  “We weren’t supposed to be doing this.”

  “Why not?”

  Her eyes were heavy, her lips wet and full. He still had his hand up her shirt, her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He couldn’t stop himself from caressing her. She was both soft and hard, a tantalizing combination of contrasts.

  He tried to remember why not, too. “Door’s open.”

  “Is there a lock?”

  “No.”

  His parents had a lock on their door. They’d taken a lot of “naps” when he was a kid. But locks weren’t allowed on any other doors. As his mother had always said whenever anyone asked: Got something to hide?

  “We should—”

  Jane flexed her fingers, nails scraping the hardened length of him. He drew in a sharp, hissing breath and forgot what he’d been about to say.

  He had to count backward from twenty, trying to get his mind off the heat, the need, the throbbing in his brain, his pulse, his groin. It wasn’t working.

  The only thing that could cool him down faster than a bullet whistling past his head was his mother’s voice from the doorway.

  “This doesn’t look like an assignment to me.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  JANE HAD THOUGHT THE phrase “my blood froze” just an expression, but she learned differently with a jolt like an ice-cream headache right between the eyes.

  She shoved Bobby. Since he was in the act of scrambling off the bed, he fell on the floor. She thought she heard choked laughter from his mother, but when she glanced at the woman’s face, there wasn’t a hint of amusement to be found.

  Jane sat up, searching frantically for a bright side to this fiasco. At least Eleanor had gotten here before they’d torn off each other’s clothes.

  “Jeez, Mom. You mind?”

  “Actually, I do.” Eleanor’s blue eyes, so much like her son’s, met Jane’s. “In this house, there’s no sleeping together without a marriage license.”

  Bobby made a disgusted sound. “I’m thirty-three.”

  “Congratulations. You still don’t get to do her under my roof.”

  Bobby winced. “Mom!”

  “Just once I’d like a Luchetti grandchild to arrive more than nine months after the wedding.”

  “We aren’t—” Jane began.

  “Looked like you were just about to.”

  “Getting married,” Jane finished.

  Eleanor tapped her foot on the wood floor. “Then you—” she jabbed a finger at Bobby “—sleep at Dean’s house.”

  Without another word she spun on her heel and marched out. When she reached the ground floor she shouted, “Hey! Supper’s downstairs.”

  Jane cringed. So did Bobby.

  “Sorry,” they both said at the same time.

  “You think she’ll tell the family?”


  “I don’t think she’ll have to.”

  Jane’s headache got worse, and she put her fingertips to her forehead as she groaned.

  “Why don’t you stay here.” Bobby was still on the floor. He scooted closer and laid his hand on her knee. “Lie down. Rest. You’ve had a rough…”

  “Month?”

  “Near enough.”

  “That’s too cowardly, even for me.”

  “Cowardly? That’s a word I’d never put in the same sentence with you.”

  “Thanks.” Jane got to her feet. Bobby followed. “Come on. Let’s face the music.”

  Bobby glanced down. His pants still appeared to have a sock stuffed down the front. “I need to use the bathroom,” he muttered, and fled.

  Jane decided not to wait. She’d faced more frightening things than Bobby Luchetti’s mother. She wasn’t going to start hiding now.

  Downstairs, she went straight into the dining room, meeting everyone’s gazes head on.

  Brian, Zsa-Zsa and John barely glanced up from their plates. Dean smirked. Big shock. She stuck her tongue out when his mother wasn’t looking.

  Except Eleanor zeroed in on her so suddenly, Jane was left with her tongue curled toward her nose and her face twisted. Eleanor merely lifted a brow. Kim grinned and gave her the thumbs-up.

  “Where were you and Uncle Bobby?” Tim asked. “Daddy thought he was getting in your pants.”

  Bobby barreled into the room at that moment and stopped dead just inside the door.

  “But he’s still in his own pants. Daddy, how could Uncle Bobby be gettin’ in Dr. Jane’s pants? He’s way too big for ’em.”

  Jane’s face flooded with heat. She wanted to crawl under the table, or maybe beneath the porch with the doodles.

  “Nice.” Thankfully, Eleanor was staring at Dean and not at Jane. “I leave the room for one minute and you’re teaching him a new expression. Keep it up and the judge is not going to agree that Tim’s better off with you than anyone else on the planet.”

  Panic filled Dean’s eyes. Tim started bouncing in his seat. “Whad I say?” he asked.

  Dean put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and Tim immediately stopped bouncing. “Never mind, kid. Go feed the dogs.”