“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” she assured Marissa, dodging the issue.
Clearly annoyed, the shop owner tapped a high-heeled foot on the faux marble tiles.
“Really, Abigail, I would appreciate a bit more notice before you juggle the work schedule like this. I have a customer coming in at two for a consultation. I’ll need you on the floor then.”
Abby headed for the back door, throwing a reassuring smile over her shoulder. “I’ll be back.”
“Maybe,” Pete tossed in.
He shut the door on the shop owner’s indignant glare and followed Abby outside.
“Whew! What’s the politically correct term for witch these days?”
“I wish I knew. Marissa’s become…a bit more difficult than usual since I gave notice.”
She led the way to the rental car furnished by the Pines and unlocked the passenger door for Pete. As she walked around to the driver’s side, the bright sunshine put a spring in her step. After the drizzle of the past days, the sky was an impossible blue. The cool, clean November breeze carried more zip than nip. Abby breathed the crisp air, felt it bubble in her veins.
She paused with her hand halfway to the door handle. As it had at the inn, the intensity of her sensory perceptions startled her. She felt as though she’d suddenly wakened after a heavy sleep.
Sobering, she recognized that this singing in her veins had little to do with the sunshine. Careful, she cautioned herself as she slid behind the wheel. Tread lightly here, Abigail. You have only a few hours.
It took half of one of those hours to reach their destination. Peabody Street wound through a once-fashionable part of Atlanta that had succumbed to age and abandonment and was now fighting its way back. Many of the deteriorating mansions on either side of the wide street still bore the scars of subdivision and graffiti, but a good number had been restored in loving detail with grants from the Georgia Historical Places Preservation Society. The peppering of For Sale and Sold signs planted in the front yards was a sure indication of the resurgence of interest in the area. Abby had staked her future on that renaissance.
Her house stood on a corner, a white two-story Palladian-style home with a columned front porch that was perfect for the wicker furniture and ferns she planned to set out. The entire front facade was skirted by green rhododendrons and azaleas that would blaze with color in the spring. A huge magnolia shaded half the front yard. On the other side, a latticework arch in dire need of a coat of white paint framed a weed-clogged fountain.
Cleaning the fountain would be one of Abby’s first priorities. She could almost hear the soft trickle of water from the imp’s stone urn as she led Pete up the brick sidewalk. Eagerly she gestured to the three-sided two-story window embrasures on either side of the front door.
“Those bay windows will make perfect display areas. When the shutters are thrown back, you can see right through the house.”
Abby fiddled with the touchy lock on the weathered, peeling doors. “I’m going to paint these….”
“I know.” His mouth crooked up in the grin that did such funny things to her respiratory system. “Green.”
She nodded and pushed the double doors open. She was surprised and pleased that Pete would remember such a small detail.
He did a slow turn in the center of the wide hall that ran from the front to the back of the house, taking in the tall-ceilinged rooms on either side. Abby’s gaze followed his, skimming over peeling wallpaper and chunks of plaster missing from the ceiling. She wasn’t sure why his opinion mattered so much, but she waited for it anxiously. When he brought his gaze back to hers, it held a touch of doubt.
“You’ve got your work cut out here.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “I know.”
“But I can see why you’re excited about this place.”
His doubt folded into a smile. “That crown molding must be eight inches all the way around.”
“Ten,” Abby said, her breath coming out in a little rush. “It’s solid oak, too, not pine. So is the wainscoting in the dining room. Wait until you see it!”
Pete followed her through the downstairs rooms, his initial doubts easing with closer inspection. From what he could see, the basic structure of the house was sound. The fixtures and walls and wiring needed work, though. A lot of work.
Abby didn’t minimize the challenge ahead of her. Instead, she seemed to relish it.
“I’m going to do a room at a time,” she told him happily. “I’ll start with the downstairs, since that will be my main display area, and work my way upstairs. Eventually, I may open some of the upstairs rooms, as well. I’ll have to see how it goes, and how much privacy I want to maintain.”
Pete followed her up the wide, curving staircase. “You don’t anticipate any problems with living and working in the same location?”
“No! I want to showcase my pieces in a home, not cram them into a cluttered, overcrowded rabbit warren like Things Past. My clients will see them as they should be seen, well-used and well-loved.”
She stopped outside the room at the front of the upstairs landing, a rueful smile on her face.
“Of course, there is a small problem with that plan. I have a tendency to get too attached to some of my acquisitions…like old George here.”
Throwing open the double doors to the master suite, she stepped aside. Pete whistled, low and long. The massive four-poster bed stood in solitary splendor in the center of the room. Without mattresses or draperies, it still presented a majestic air, as though it had reclaimed its rightful place in the world.
“So this is Mrs. Clement’s legacy.”
Strolling into the room, Pete ran a hand over the intricately carved footboard. A pineapple motif was carved into the polished mahogany, matching the knobs that topped the four tall posts.
“How in the world did the movers get it up those stairs?”
“The movers didn’t. I did.”
“What?”
“It comes apart,” Abby told him eagerly. “The posts have several sections that unscrew on wooden dowels. The frame just hooks together. Even the headboard and footboards are made of grooved wooden panels that come apart easily. Furniture used to be crafted that way so it could be transported overland by wagon.”
She gripped one of the tall posts and swung in a small arch.
“Yet it’s so solid when it’s put together. So…so enduring.”
Pete didn’t realize he’d stepped too close until her swing brought her in his direction. Without thinking, he caught her in his arms, surprising himself as much as he did Abby. Her smiling exuberance slipped away, like the sun going behind a cloud. She looked up at him, confusion and wariness creeping into her eyes.
The confusion Pete could understand. He felt it, too. In spades. The wariness made him ache.
He didn’t try to deny any longer the need that had brought him into the city this morning to see Abby. He recognized that it wasn’t lust, wasn’t simply a dangerous mix of chemicals. It went deeper, spread farther through his mind and his heart. If he hadn’t seen her face as she showed him her house and her bed, he might have risked asking her to…
To what, O’Brian? Move with him every eighteen or twenty-four months? Keep her treasures in storage and put her dreams on hold for another eight, ten years? Grow more and more bitter with each remote assignment, less tolerant with every short-notice deployment?
Fighting the need to tighten his arms and bring her warmth into his, he tried to make her…and himself…understand.
“I have to leave tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to.”
Christ, he hadn’t meant to say that! He didn’t know why he had, except that it was the truth. Only this particular truth complicated matters far more than he’d intended when he climbed out of that cab.
She swallowed, then managed a shaky smile. “I didn’t know that.”
That small, trembling curve of her mouth pierced through his shield li
ke a Teflon-coated spear point. He combed his hands through her hair, allowing himself one last touch.
“I could love you, Abby. So easily.”
She searched his eyes. Then her smile softened into a gentle acknowledgment that tore at his soul.
“You did love me,” she replied. “So wonderfully.”
“I can’t stop thinking about those hours we spent together.”
“I’ve thought about them once or twice myself.”
Pete forced himself to go on. He didn’t want any shadows or unanswered questions between them when he left.
“Sweetheart, if I could, and if you’d let me, I’d curl up with you in that bed and spend the rest of my life there.”
Her lips parted, closed, then parted again, as if the words she wanted wouldn’t come.
“But you can’t,” she got out at last.
“No.”
“And I wouldn’t let you. I’ve seen you in action, remember? I know how good you are. Despite that twisted piece of metal you carry around like a hair shirt—or maybe because of it—I suspect you’re one of the best.”
She tried for light and easy, but Pete saw the hurt in her eyes. Dammit! He’d sworn he’d never cause another woman that kind of hurt.
“I won’t ask you to put aside all your dreams and come with me, and I can’t ask you to wait for me. Aside from the fact that I don’t have the right, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Maybe…” She wet her lips. “Maybe I’m a better judge of what’s fair for me.”
“I’ve been down this road once, Abby. I’ve seen what happens when there are too many goodbyes between a man and a woman. I don’t want that to happen to us.”
Abby pulled out of his arms and turned away, refusing to let him see the piercing ache his words gave her. And the anger. She’d discovered that she didn’t like being compared to Pete’s former wife. Any more than she liked his assumptions about what would and wouldn’t be fair to her.
Shoving her hurt into a small corner of her heart to be examined later, she drew her dignity around her. As with Derek, she wouldn’t try to bind a man who wasn’t sure he wanted her.
“Look, I appreciate your concern over what would or wouldn’t be fair for me, but I’m a big girl. I make my own decisions. I have for a long time. That’s why I chose to leave the inn when I did, before we both—” she gave a helpless shrug “—before we started worrying about goodbyes.”
Pete raked a hand through his hair. Abby saw frustration in the abrupt gesture and in the wire-tight lines of his body. She might have sympathized with him, but she was feeling more than a little wired herself right now. There was no point in prolonging the agony, for either of them.
“I’d better get back to the shop.”
He studied her face for long moments, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’d better.”
Abby left the bedroom first. Trailing a hand along the smooth, well-worn banister, she started down the stairs. From the corner of her eye, she saw Pete give the bed a last long look, then firmly shut the bedroom doors.
They made the drive back downtown in uneasy silence. They really didn’t have anything more to say to each other, Abby realized as she negotiated the traffic. They’d said it all. All that could be said between them, anyway. Except those damnable goodbyes.
They made them quickly—Abby first, then Pete.
She hoped that his medical board went well.
He wished her success with her new home.
Then they shared a brief kiss that satisfied neither of them.
Abby stood beside the rental car while he slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses, shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and turned to leave.
She made it to the back door of the shop before she swung around, her hand on the brass knob and her heart in her throat.
“Pete?”
He turned, his eyes shielded behind the mirrored lenses. “Yes?”
“Just for the record, I could love you, too. Easily.”
Chapter 9
The white-coated surgeon dropped a thick manila folder on his desk and swiveled to face his patient. “It’s the classic good-news-bad-news scenario, Sergeant O’Brian. Which do you want first?”
Pete tugged on his uniform coat to square it over his shoulders. After five days of tests and more tests at Wilford Hall, the huge medical complex located on Lackland Air Force Base, just south of San Antonio, he was ready for the final verdict.
“Give it to me the way that makes most sense, Doc.”
The surgeon drummed his fingers on the sheaf of X rays and lab reports, marshaling his thoughts. A lieutenant colonel with two rows of framed degrees behind his desk and a blunt, no-nonsense air of authority, Dr. McMillin took his job seriously. So seriously he’d requested that Pete meet him in his office on Saturday morning, instead of waiting for his scheduled appointment on Monday.
“Your right anterior cruciate ligament is shot to hell. Your last jump shredded what little was left of it after twenty-plus years of hitting the ground harder than a body is supposed to.”
Pete’s mouth curved. “Is that the bad news or the good news?”
“The bad. And it gets worse.” The surgeon’s gray eyes met Pete’s steadily. “Our initial tests indicated there might be enough ligament tissue left for us to weave in a synthetic fiber and restructure the ACL, but it appears there isn’t.”
Although the second series of tests he’d gone through had given Pete the suspicion that the damage was more extensive than he’d thought, the verdict hit him square in the chest. With more than twenty-two years in the jump business, he accepted bad knees and spinal compression as a risk of his profession. But there were bad knees, and then there were bad knees. Most could be repaired enough for a man to return to jump status. From what the colonel was saying, it seemed his couldn’t.
He leveled the doc a straight look. “I hope you’re not going to suggest that the good news is a total knee replacement?”
They both knew that an artificial knee would take him off jump status permanently.
“No, I know that’s the last option you’d consider,” Colonel McMillin replied, passing a hand over his buzz-cut gray hair. “What I want to talk to you about is a new procedure we’re testing. It involves fitting a plastic cap over your own bone. We attach the muscle to that with artificial ligaments.”
“I’ve heard of the procedure,” Pete replied. “I’ve also heard it hasn’t been all that successful to date.”
“It’s had mixed results,” McMillin admitted. “A civilian surgeon who specializes in sports-related injuries reports some success. We’ve tried it twice here, once on a teenager who took a body block during football practice and once on another PJ.”
Pete knew the man the doc was referring to, a shoe-leather-tough Vietnam vet, a good troop and a damn fine PJ. He now served behind a desk.
“Let me be sure I’ve got it straight, Doc.” He leaned forward, wanting his options laid clear. “If this plastic cap works, I go back on jump status. If it doesn’t, I don’t.”
“It’s not quite that cut-and-dried, O’Brian. This is still an experimental procedure. We haven’t had a good take with it yet. If it works, then we’ll evaluate whether you should start hitting the chutes again.”
Pete nodded, his eyes hooded. “Fair enough.”
“Think about it over the weekend. If you decide you want to be our third guinea pig, call my secretary Monday morning and we’ll set you up for surgery.”
Pete walked out of the multistory medical center, his highly glossed jump boots sounding a steady beat on the concrete sidewalk. Bright Texas sunlight glinted on the silver USs pinned to his lapels and on the shiny wings positioned above the rows of ribbons on his chest. With the unconscious arrogance that came with being a PJ, he squared his maroon beret on his head, then tugged it to precisely the right angle over his brow.
As he made his way toward his rental car, a distant drumbeat carried on the morning air. He stopped, cocking
his head as the sound took on a familiar rhythm. He hadn’t marched to that beat in years, but he identified it immediately. The basic trainees were marching onto the parade field adjacent to the hospital complex in preparation for their graduation ceremony.
As the center for all air force basic military training, Lackland conducted a formal parade every six weeks or so to mark the recruits’ graduation from boot camp. Since the base was also the site of the ten-week PJ indoctrination course that followed immediately after basic training, Pete had attended a good number of these parades prior to interviewing the candidates for the PJ career field. He always enjoyed the ceremony. The color and pageantry of the event stirred something deep within him.
The beat of that distant drum now drew him like a siren’s call. After his session with the doc this morning and too many long nights of thinking about Abby, he needed to focus on something outside himself. Something simple. Something basic.
Something he could enjoy, then walk away from without a sense of having left a part of himself behind.
Dropping his car keys into his pocket, he headed for the broad, grassy field a half mile or so away. He stood down field, well away from the bleachers filled with proud parents and spouses, excited children, invited guests and the uniformed training instructors who’d worked twenty hours a day for the past six weeks to turn raw recruits into disciplined airmen.
The troops were massed across the field from the bleachers and the reviewing stand, with the colors in the center. The Stars and Stripes waved in the breeze. Several foreign flags ranged next to it, in recognition of the students from other nations sent to Lackland for basic training. Behind them flew the service flags, heavy with battle streamers earned during bloody engagements on land, on sea and in hostile skies.
Pete’s eyes fixed on the blue air force flag. Even from this distance, he could pick out several of the distinctive streamers. They matched the campaign ribbons he wore on his chest. He’d served in his share of distant battles, and flown through a few hostile skies.
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