by Lori Wilde
The delicious aroma of meat loaf was even stronger in here. Underneath it, he picked up the scent of buttery mashed potatoes, rustic carrots, and yeast rolls. Awkwardness stole over them.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
She pushed a tendril of hair back from her face, her cheeks pinked, and she glanced away. She’d never been comfortable with compliments. Had never considered herself beautiful. She might not be a classic beauty, but in Gideon’s eyes she was a goddess. She had the smoothest skin, and he knew she was diligent about using sunscreen. Some might consider her nose a bit too strong for a woman’s face, but he thought it kept her features from being too soft and gave her a sense of purpose.
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” she invited. “You can toss a salad.”
“Putting me to work already, huh?”
“Yes.” She took the salad bowl from the refrigerator pinned with kitschy magnets that held childish crayon drawings in place. And he couldn’t help wondering who’d drawn them. She set the bowl on the cabinet along with a pair of tongs and a bottle of Italian dressing. “Toss away.”
It had been a very long time since he’d been in a civilized kitchen, helping a woman cook. It felt as alien to him as sleeping on the ground in a desert mountain range would feel to her. Gideon did as she asked, pouring a moderate amount of dressing onto the salad and tossing it.
Caitlyn bent to pull the yeast rolls from the oven, and he couldn’t help casting a surreptitious glance at her butt.
Man, she still had a world-class ass. That had not changed one bit.
She raised her head, caught him staring at her rump. Quickly, he returned his attention to the salad tossing.
A fresh silence fell between them, as uncomfortable as the first one. He wished this were easier, that things felt more natural between them. But that’s not how it was.
Was this a bad omen?
“So,” Caitlyn said as she buttered the rolls. “How did the reading of the will go?”
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“He left you a chunk of the ranch,” she guessed.
“He left me all of it.”
“What?” She laid down the butter knife, turned to stare at him.
“And eleven million dollars.”
“Gideon!”
“I’m not accepting it.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want anything that belonged to J. Foster.”
“That’s some grudge holding.”
“Maybe.”
“Does this mean you won’t be staying in Twilight?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I’m still getting accustomed to America all over again.”
“Oh,” she said. Did she sound sad or was it just his imagination? “It must feel very different, coming home.”
“You have no idea.”
She put the rolls and the salad on the table, then turned back to him. “What was it like over there?”
He shrugged. “You couldn’t imagine it if I told you.”
“Try me.”
He laughed.
“You don’t think I’m capable of understanding?”
“Your life here”—he paused, swept his hand at her kitchen—“is the opposite of my life in Afghanistan.”
“In what way?”
“In every way imaginable.” It made him aware of just how different they were. How isolated he was.
“May I ask you something personal?”
He tensed, not knowing what to expect. “As long as I have the option of not answering.”
“All right.”
He stepped closer, loomed over her to see if he could stem the tide of nosy questions. “Then fire away.”
She didn’t back up. In fact, she raised her chin in a determined gesture. “Why didn’t you come home after you were discharged? After . . .” She glanced at his missing hand.
How could he begin to explain that one? People talked easily of duty and honor and freedom, but few understood the real price that servicemen and women paid so those on the home front could live free. Gideon tightened his jaw, felt everything tighten inside him, but he didn’t step back, just stayed there, standing close, inhaling her sweet scent that smelled of lavender and fresh-baked bread.
How did you wash the ugliness from your soul? Was it even possible? He’d been trained to kill. How did a man return to a quiet life filled with lavender and homemade bread? It seemed so beyond his reach. Such sweet peace.
And yet, when he looked in Caitlyn’s eyes and saw the caring and acceptance shimmering there, he wanted so badly to believe in possibilities. In happily-ever-after miracles.
But he knew better.
How he wished that he could undo the past, unsee the things he’d seen; undo the things he’d done. But no matter how he wished it, the stain on his soul could not be washed clean. It struck him then that he was too damaged for her, his mangled arm just an outward manifestation of the emptiness inside him. There were things he simply could not tell her. Things he desperately wanted to protect her from. Like the ugly world lurking beyond the protective boundaries of Twilight, Texas. She had no clue what was out there. Nor did he ever want her to know. He would carry that burden forever, never let her shoulder it with him. It was the price he paid as a Green Beret.
“Caitlyn,” he whispered, “I can’t do this.”
“Do what?” She appeared genuinely confused. Was he that baffling?
“Be normal.”
“It’s not that hard. Just act normal.”
“Fake it?”
“Until you make it. That’s what everyone does.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t begin to explain.” He found himself moving away from her. He was the one who couldn’t handle the proximity, not she.
“Don’t pull away from me. Don’t shut me out.”
Gideon thought about a man he’d been forced to kill up close and personal in hand-to-hand combat. Thought about the look that had come over the man’s face as he’d taken his last breath. He’d looked oddly peaceful, as if he welcomed the escape of death. Such dark thoughts didn’t belong in this cheery yellow kitchen.
“I . . .” He swallowed hard. “I have to. I can’t . . . I’ve got to protect you.”
“So let me get this straight. By denying what you’re feeling, you think you’re somehow protecting me?”
“I know I am because you can’t handle what I am. What I’ve become. I have nightmares—”
“Why don’t you let me decide what I can and can’t handle?”
She was so naïve. He reached out and ran his thumb along her jaw. “You are so sweet. So loving. You have no idea what the world is really like.”
She tilted her head up, met his gaze. “You think I haven’t suffered? You think I haven’t seen loss?”
“You can’t begin to imagine what I’ve gone through.”
“So tell me. Let me help shoulder your burden. Let me in, Gideon.”
He shook his head and turned his back on her, forced out the words in a harsh whisper. “I can’t. It’s too hard to talk about.”
“Gid . . .” The pleading in her voice was a knife to his heart.
“I just can’t . . .” He paused. “Soil you with the dirty details.”
“Soil me?” Caitlyn laughed. “Gideon, I’m not some delicate flower. I’m stronger than you can possibly imagine. I know what I’ve been through here can’t compare to what’s happened to you, but things haven’t been easy for me—”
“You lost your husband.”
“Yes, but that’s not all.” She hitched in her breath. “Sit down. We need to have a talk.”
“What about dinner?”
“It can wait.” She pulled out two chairs from the table and sat.
Gideon sank down opposite her; he felt vaguely nauseous, but had no idea why. He dropped his left arm, hiding his missing hand from her underneath the table. Why the h
ell had he not worn his prosthesis? On the window ledge, he spied a tiny red Hot Wheels roadster. The crayon drawings on the fridge. The toy car. Of course, why hadn’t he realized it before?
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “It may come as something of a shock.”
“You have a child,” he said.
She blinked. “Yes.”
As if on cue, the back door opened and a boy’s voice called, “Mom, Mom, guess what—” The child’s words broke off when he saw Gideon. He looked to his mother as if to say, Who’s this guy?
“We’ve got company for dinner, Danny,” she said.
The second Gideon stared into the child’s eyes, his head spun and his world upended. His breath scraped across his teeth, coming out wary and weighted. He heard his heartbeat thudding in his ears, felt it hammering at his throat, tasted it surging adrenaline into his mouth.
The boy looked exactly as he had looked at that age. Brown-eyed, black hair with a cowlick that stuck up in the back, ears a little bit too big for his head.
Involuntarily, Gideon reached his hand to the top of his ear, felt his heart stutter in his chest, a battered old pump breaking down. The kid looked to be around seven or eight years old. Gideon did a quick bit of math. It was entirely possible the child was his.
That realization was a heart-stopper.
“Mom?” the boy said. “Why are you crying?”
Caitlyn was crying? Gideon swung his gaze back to Caitlyn. She was swiping at her eyes with both hands. The moment crystallized like a drop of amber preserved forever in time.
The kid notched up his chin as his mother had done earlier. Freckles dusted the bridge of his nose. He got those from his mom too.
Seeing the boy, recognizing for the first time that he was his, hit Gideon like a pile driver. He stared at Danny.
Danny stared back, his small eyebrows lowered in an intense frown, and stepped forward, his little hands knotted into tight fists. “Did you make my mommy cry?”
“No,” Caitlyn said. “I’m not crying. He didn’t make me cry.”
Instantly, Gideon was jettisoned back in time, engulfed by a memory he’d completely forgotten. He’d been a bit younger than this boy was now. Maybe five years old and standing in the kitchen of the trailer house he and his mom had lived in near the train tracks behind the feed store. He could smell the grainy dust of that long-ago air, thick with the odor of hay and oats, corn and cottonseed.
A man had been sitting at the kitchen table, wearing only a white undershirt and boxer shorts; a black cowboy hat perched on the table. His mother had been straddling the guy’s lap, her dress hiked up around her thighs, her arms threaded around the man’s neck. He recognized the memory man he’d long forgotten. J. Foster Goodnight.
Gideon blinked away the memory, met the boy’s stare. He didn’t want any child to feel the way he’d felt in that moment. Like someone was taking his mother away from him. He struggled to figure out what he was feeling, what he was going to say to her, to the kid. He knew what it was like to walk into a room and find your mother looking chummy with a man you didn’t know—a kick to the gut, a stab to the heart.
“Danny,” Caitlyn said, her voice coming out too breathless and high. “I want you to meet Mr. Garza.”
Danny swiveled his head toward his mother, his eyelids lowered, dismissing Gideon. “Crockett invited us to the Rangers’ opening game. It’s the first Saturday in April. He’s already bought the tickets. Can we go?”
Crockett Goodnight. His half brother. Had he asked Danny to the game just to needle him? Right, you self-absorbed jerk. He didn’t trust Crockett any further than he could throw him, but that was being too suspicious. Shit, he didn’t know how to act anymore. He’d been in country for eight years. His hometown was more foreign to him than the Middle East. And his son was a total stranger.
“Don’t be rude. Say hello to Mr. Garza,” Caitlyn admonished.
The kid dipped his head, kicked the tile floor with the toe of his sneaker.
Gideon thought of the times his mother had forced him to be nice to her boyfriends. He’d hated it. Not that he was Caitlyn’s boyfriend. Not that she had a string of boyfriends. He knew her. She wasn’t like that.
Correction, the old Caitlyn wasn’t like that. He didn’t even know this woman.
No, she hadn’t changed that much. She’d always been true blue, the kind of woman a man could count on. The kind of woman he’d once needed to show him that all women were not fickle when it came to love.
“It’s okay,” Gideon said, even though inside him something withered.
Five minutes ago, he hadn’t even known he had a son, now he was a father. Funny, how parenthood worked. Everything changed in an instant. You didn’t want your kids to suffer the way you’d suffered. You wanted to spare them everything unpleasant. This new feeling was strange and yet wonderful. He tested it in his mind. Dad. Pop. Pa. Father.
It made him wonder then how his own father could deny who he was. In the end, of course, J. Foster had finally recognized him, but it had come years too late. Regret was a steamroller, flattening everything in its path. He was a screwed-up cliché. Loose mother, father who refused to accept him.
“Tell Mr. Garza hello,” Caitlyn insisted.
Gideon shook his head, narrowed his eyes, sent the silent message, no. He didn’t want the kid to feel obligated to be nice. That would only make the boy resent him more.
Danny snaked a quick glance at Gideon. “Hello,” he mumbled, then glanced back up at his mom. “So can we go with Crockett?”
Caitlyn shook her head. “You know I have to work on Saturdays.”
“Why can’t I go with him by myself?”
“Because you’re too young.”
“You treat me like a baby!” Danny shouted. “I’m not a baby. I’ll be eight in a couple of months.”
“Well, right now you’re certainly acting like a baby, throwing a temper tantrum.”
Danny folded his arms over his chest and scowled darkly.
Gideon felt a jolt clean to his toes. Danny’s gestures exactly mirrored his pout attitude when he’d been his age. Mad at the world and everyone in it. “I’ll take him.”
Where the words came from, he didn’t know. They just popped from his mouth, making promises he couldn’t keep.
Caitlyn met his eyes. “Are you sure?”
Spend the afternoon at the ballpark with his half brother whose inheritance he’d usurped and the son he hadn’t known he’d sired? That was one for the record books. He shrugged, tried to show he was game for anything. “Yes.”
Danny threw his hands in the air. The look of exasperated surprise on his face was so comical Gideon almost laughed. “Great, you won’t let me go alone with Crockett, but you’ll let me go with Crockett and some guy I don’t know?”
The kid had a point. He was sharp as a razor. Much smarter than Gideon had been at that age.
“Okay, you can go,” Caitlyn said, “but only if Mr. Garza goes with you.”
The scowl was back. “Who are you?” Danny asked.
It was the perfect opportunity to simply say, Your dad. But of course he couldn’t do it. Instead he opted for “An old friend of your mother’s. You can call me Gideon.”
“Well, you’re not my friend.”
He understood perfectly where the kid was coming from. He’d been in his shoes. He couldn’t blame him for his attitude. But neither could he deny the way it made him feel. Unwelcome, unwanted, on the outside peering in. The guy who’d never really belonged anywhere except in the army.
But Danny belonged. His great-great-great-great-grandparents had founded this town. You couldn’t get any more entrenched in Twilight than that. Here was something Gideon couldn’t relate to. What it was like to be part of a larger-than-life legacy.
And yet, your father was J. Foster Goodnight. Kin to Charles Goodnight, one of the key figures in Texas history. But that was different. He’d never been claimed as a Goodnight. Not unti
l this morning.
“If you want to go to the game,” Caitlyn repeated, “it’s with Gideon or not at all. The choice is up to you.”
Danny jammed his hands in his pockets. The black cowlick, just like one Gideon had, stood up at the back of his head. “Yeah, okay, all right, he can come with us.”
Gideon didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. It looked like he had a date for the first Saturday in April, but it wasn’t the date he’d expected.
“Go wash up now,” Caitlyn said. “It’s time for supper.”
Danny studied Gideon with caution, but then he nodded solemnly, turned, and left the room.
“We have a son?” Gideon whispered, truly feeling the reality of it for the first time. “You and me? We have a son?”
“Yes,” Caitlyn confirmed. “Danny is our son. But he thinks Kevin was his father. Everyone in town believes it too. I wanted to make things easier for Danny, and Kevin agreed. I didn’t want Danny to—”
“Grow up a bastard.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Were you ever planning on telling him about me?”
“I was. I suppose. I am. I—”
“You were ashamed of me.”
“No! God, no. Never.” She got up, paced, wrung her hands. “I remember how you told me what a tough time you had growing up, never knowing your father. Feeling like you never belonged. Like no one cared. I simply wanted Danny to feel loved. Kevin was so good with him and I thought you were dead.”
Gideon stood up too. “So you lied to our child.”
“You don’t have any right to get angry with me. I tried to find you when I discovered I was pregnant, but you’d left no contact number and then later, when I scraped together the money to hire a PI . . .” She waved a hand. “It’s all water under the bridge. What’s done is done. What we have to decide is how do we proceed from here.”
“Yes,” Gideon said harshly. “Easy enough for you to say. You haven’t just found out you’ve got a child you knew nothing about.”