One Tough Marine

by Paula Graves

  “But you have friends here. People who’ll watch out for you and Stevie. Everybody can use friends.”

  “How about you?”

  He dropped his hand away from her face. His expression shuttered. “I’ll be going back to San Diego when this is over.”

  “You may change your mind once you get home to Alabama.”

  He shook his head, stepping back toward the bathroom. “I won’t.” He closed the door behind him, shutting her and Stevie out in the hallway.

  So much for feeling more confident, she thought, trudging down the hallway toward Ross Langston’s old room. She found Wanda inside, changing the sheets.

  “There you are. I’ve just about got the bed made.”

  Abby set Stevie down on the floor and smiled at her old friend. “I can finish that. Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen watching those turnip greens? My mouth is watering already.”

  “Billy’s watching them. All done now, anyway—the corn bread will be out of the oven soon, and the ham’ll take just a minute to warm up in the microwave.” Wanda patted down the sheets. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have fried up some crappie for you—Ross caught a limit last week on Wright Patman Lake. I know how you love fried fish and hush puppies.”

  Abby laughed. “Maybe it’s a good thing I have to leave first thing in the morning. You’d pack ten pounds on my butt before the week was over with your cooking.”

  “Oh, I’d work it off you in the garden.” Wanda gave her a hug. “Are you sure you can’t stay? At least another day?”

  “We can’t stay,” Luke said from the doorway.

  At the sound of Luke’s voice, Stevie toddled over to him, holding up his arms. Luke gave him an odd look, not moving immediately. Abby found herself holding her breath.

  Then he bent and scooped Stevie up, tucking him close. “Hey there, scooter. You hungry as I am?”

  “Take him on into the kitchen,” Wanda suggested, putting her arm around Abby’s waist. “We’ll be right in.”

  Luke transferred Stevie to his hip and headed down the hall, pausing just a second to look back at Abby before he disappeared from view.

  Wanda was quiet for a moment, her arm tightening slightly around Abby’s waist. Then she let go and turned to face her, her brown eyes warm with sympathy. “Does he know?”

  Abby wasn’t sure what Wanda was asking. “Know what?”

  “That he’s Stevie’s daddy.”

  BILLY WASN’T IN the kitchen when Luke entered, but the sound of raised voices in the backyard made Luke’s hair stand on end. Setting Stevie on one of the kitchen chairs and handing him a plastic napkin ring to play with, Luke crossed to the kitchen door and looked through the curtained pane.

  Outside, Billy was arguing with a tall, rangy man wearing a police uniform. He had Wanda Langston’s wiry build and Billy’s dark hair and expressive face. This must be their son, Ross, Luke realized, watching the two men exchange urgent, heated words from his hiding place behind the curtains.

  Great. Just great.

  Abby’s old boyfriend was a cop.

  Chapter Ten

  “It’s not what you think,” Abby murmured.

  “I don’t really know what I think,” Wanda replied gently. “Your husband’s been gone for three years, so I don’t reckon you were cheatin’ on him or anything.”

  “It happened once, after Matt’s death. Then Luke left for an overseas assignment and that was it.” Abby winced inwardly. Maybe if it had been an affair that had ended the normal way, it would have been easier to deal with. But a one-night stand on the night of her husband’s funeral? Humiliating.

  She should probably hate him for it. But Luke had made no promises to her, nor she to him. And she didn’t think there was anything that could make her hate Luke Cooper, anyway.

  He was Stevie’s father.

  “Does he know?”

  “I hadn’t seen him since—no. He doesn’t know he’s Stevie’s father,” she answered.

  The creak of floorboards just behind her sent a ripple of cold dread down her spine. She turned to find Luke standing in the doorway, Stevie perched on his hip. From the intensity of his gaze, she could tell that Luke had heard what she said.

  He just didn’t seem too surprised to hear it.

  “Luke—” she started, swallowing a painful lump of dread that had lodged in her throat.

  He shook his head, as if to dismiss an unwelcome subject. Instead, he turned to look at Wanda, his gaze accusatory. “You could have warned us that your son was a cop, Wanda.”

  Wanda looked surprised. “Is Ross here?”

  “He’s outside, arguing with Billy. Wonder why?” Luke’s voice bit with sarcasm.

  “Ross isn’t going to cause trouble for Abby,” Wanda said firmly. “You can depend on it.”

  “I can’t depend on anything,” Luke said darkly. “Abby, we have to get out of here. Now.”

  Abby understood Luke’s concern, but Wanda was right. Ross Langston wouldn’t hurt her. Not on purpose. And they could use all the help they could get. “Luke, it’s okay. Ross may be able to help us. If nothing else, he’ll know if the Texarkana Police Department receives an APB on us.”

  “I’d say they already have,” Luke answered. “He and Billy were going at it pretty hard.”

  “I’ll go see what’s up. Y’all stay right here.” Wanda patted Luke’s arm on the way out. “And you stop worrying, you hear? He may be a grown man, but I’m still his mama. Ross won’t be any trouble for you. I won’t let it happen.”

  Luke watched her go, a furrow creasing his brow. “I think we should get out of here before Wanda has to test that theory.”

  Abby crossed to him and took Stevie, who leaned toward her with his arms outstretched, looking anxious. She kissed his forehead. “It’s okay, baby. Everything’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry.” Luke made a move toward them with one hand, then seemed to think better of the gesture, dropping his arm back to his side. “I didn’t mean to scare him.”

  “All this tension was bound to catch up with him,” she answered. “He needs a little stability in his life again.”

  Sympathy tinged his voice. “I know.”

  “These people are the closest thing I have to family. Hell, they are my family. All I have left. They’re not going to do anything to hurt either of us. I know it as surely as you know you can trust your family to watch your back.”

  Luke didn’t answer right away. His gaze was dark and intense, as if he was struggling to believe her. After a moment, he sagged against the door frame. “Okay. We’ll stay put for now.”

  The sound of the back door opening sent a little shock wave through Abby’s strung-out nervous system. She hugged Stevie closer and looked up at Luke, trying not to second-guess her trust in the Langstons. This was Texarkana, not San Diego, and unlike half the people she’d known over the past few years, Wanda, Billy and Ross didn’t deal in secrets.

  Maybe it was time to kick the habit of looking behind every smile for the lie it hid.

  Billy entered the hallway, his expression calm. He flashed her a grin and a wink, and she felt more of the tension start to leave her body, unknotting the twist in her stomach. “We’ve got a dinner guest,” he announced.

  “We know,” Luke said grimly.

  Billy’s expression fell at the open hostility in Luke’s response. “Hell, son, I know y’all are in a mess of trouble, but you don’t have to snap at me.” He turned toward the kitchen. “Come on in here, Ross. The surprise is ruined.”

  Ross Langston stepped into the hallway. “Hey, Abby.”

  Despite the boulder-size lump in her stomach, she couldn’t help but grin at his sheepish expression. “Hey, Ross.”

  He’d aged well, a few lines chiseled into his thin face, erasing the boyishness of his youth. He was taller than ever, lean but not lanky, with wide shoulders and strong-looking arms.

  His grin widening, he picked up the pace, stopping in front of Abby with a look of familiar a
ffection. “Hell, would you just look at you, Abigail Seymour. All grown up and prettier than ever.” He tucked a twig of hair behind her ear, just as he’d used to do back when they were dating in high school.

  “Sweet talker,” she said with a grin. “So, still a policeman, huh? Never thought you’d last. You always liked trouble too much.”

  “You’d know. You got me into most of it.”

  “Liar.”

  Ross’s grin faded, his brown eyes going serious. “Daddy says you’re in a real mess. So tell me what you need me to do.”

  The offer, so simple and honest, hit Abby like a battering ram, breaking through her thin veneer of bravado. Overwhelmed by memories and a deep, abiding affection for her old friend, Abby flung herself into Ross’s arms and started to cry.

  “THE OTHER GIRLS on the dance team swore up and down that the chewing tobacco would make the bee sting stop hurting, and, well, you know Abby. She can’t stand to see anybody in pain.” Ross gave Abby a look of smitten affection that made Luke’s blood go from a low simmer to a full-on boil.

  “Hey, you were screaming like a little girl. I thought you were dyin’, for Pete’s sake.” Abby’s accent was in full drawl, Luke noted, and he’d never seen her look so relaxed or alive. He was really starting to hate Ross Langston now.

  “How come you never told us this story back when it happened?” Wanda asked, mock censure in her motherly voice. Luke could see how happy she was to see Ross and Abby together again.

  What woman wouldn’t want her son to find a sweet, smart girl like Abby?

  His own mother was going to love Abby once she met her. At least, she would if he could manage to drag Abby away from the Langstons and their stroll down memory lane long enough to remind her that scary bad men were hunting for them.

  “So anyway, nobody warned me it was a bad, bad idea to swallow even a little of the tobacco juice,” Abby said.

  Despite his escalating annoyance with the happy reunion tableau spread out before him across the kitchen table, Luke had to wince with sympathy at the look of horrified memory on Abby’s face. “Ugh.”

  She looked up with surprise, and Luke realized it was the first time he’d spoken since they sat down to dinner. “I thought I was going to throw up my liver.” She shuddered.

  “I was laughing so hard I forgot all about the bee sting,” Ross said with a chuckle. “Poor thing turned green.”

  “You haven’t touched your food,” Wanda murmured to Luke. “I could fix you something else if you don’t like this—”

  He met her generous gaze and felt like a complete jerk. “No. This is great. I haven’t had home cooking in a long time.” He ate a bite of turnip greens and washed it down with treacle-sweet iced tea. It was all delicious and so familiar to him that it made his chest ache.

  He needed to go home every bit as much as Abby needed to stay here in the warm and loving circle of her second family. But they couldn’t separate. Not yet. Not until they found what Matt had taken and made sure Abby and Stevie were safe again.

  What about then? a traitorous voice whispered in his head. Can you really walk away from her and your son again?

  He clenched his jaw, forcing back the temptation. If Cordero ever found out the truth about Stevie—

  He couldn’t stay with her. End of discussion. Abby would understand, once he told her the whole truth.

  She loved Stevie too much to risk his life for Luke.

  He spent the rest of dinner avoiding her gaze, not yet ready to talk about the secret she’d revealed while talking to Wanda. But he felt her gaze fall on him several times, almost as tangible as a touch. He wondered whether she was hoping for a chance to talk to him about what he’d heard—or dreading it.

  He finished his dinner, gave Wanda sincere praise for her cooking and gladly took up Ross Langston’s suggestion that they go take a look around the property’s perimeter to make sure nobody was lurking around. Abby might be hoping for a chance to talk, but Luke wasn’t ready yet. Because he had a feeling that the truth wouldn’t make Abby feel any better in the long run.

  Outside, Ross lifted the collar of his uniform overcoat to ward off the cold breeze blowing in from the west and nodded for Luke to follow him down the slate-stone path toward the narrow lane that ran in front of Billy’s house. “I don’t reckon they’ve had a chance to figure out where you are yet, but it won’t hurt to take a look-see.”

  “I guess Billy told you there’s an APB out on the RV.”

  “Can’t say I was happy to hear Dad’s harboring a fugitive.” Ross shrugged. “But Abby needs help, so we’ll do it.”

  “I had a feeling you’d say that.”

  Ross looked sharply at him. “What’s going on between the two of you? Are you together?”

  Luke felt the unexpected urge to laugh. “Are you about to declare your intention to win her back or something?”

  Ross glared at him. “No. That’s over. Was before she ever left. But I care about her like family.”

  “Like a sister?” Luke asked softly, immediately feeling like a jerk. He had no right to feel jealous of Abby’s relationship with Ross Langston, whatever it might have been.

  “Close enough,” Ross answered. “You got any sisters?”

  “One.”

  “You’d do about anything to protect her, wouldn’t you?”

  Luke nodded. He’d already exiled himself from his family to protect all of them. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to keep Hannah and the rest of his family safe.

  “Well, then you get where I’m coming from,” Ross replied. “I’m just not as convinced as Daddy is that getting out of town is really what will keep Abby safe.”

  “You think you can protect her here?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Luke sighed. If he really believed Abby would be safe here, he’d leave her and Stevie behind and pray that Cordero never got the chance to connect them to him.

  “This’ll be one of the first places folks look for her. Hell, we’re taking a risk just staying here overnight.” Luke shook his head, delivering his final assessment in terse, unyielding words. “We have to go first thing in the morning.”

  “Go where?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Ross’s eyes narrowed. “Because you don’t trust me.”

  Trust wasn’t the problem, Luke thought. He took Ross at his word, that he’d protect Abby with his life if necessary. But Luke believed the men who’d come here to question him and his family wouldn’t be the type of people who’d accept a lie, even an earnest one, at face value.

  And they’d have painful ways of getting to the truth.

  “If you’re lying to them, they’ll know it. This way, you won’t have to lie. You won’t know where we went.”

  “I’ll know what kind of car you’re in.”

  “That won’t matter.” In a day or so, they’d be in Alabama. He could get Sam’s help in ditching the borrowed car and finding another set of wheels. All he had to do was get to Alabama, and they’d be in a lot better shape.

  “Okay,” Ross said after a long, thoughtful pause. “I don’t need to know where you’re going or what you plan to do. But I’d kind of like to know where you’ve been.”

  Luke frowned, not following.

  “How exactly do you know Abby? Where’d you meet?”

  Luke wondered just how much Abby had told the Langstons about her life in San Diego. Despite his closeness to her, there was little about her life before California that Luke knew. She’d seemed to compartmentalize her life into “before Matt” and “after Matt.” She hadn’t talked about her past, beyond mentioning that her parents had died just after her graduation from high school. No talk of old boyfriends, old childhood memories—nothing that touched on her mysterious past.

  Luke had often wondered if she’d had an unhappy childhood she’d been trying to escape. Now, he could see his speculation had been entirely wrong. It wasn’t a tragic past that she had been hiding from. It was
the tragic end to a happy one.

  “I was her husband’s friend,” he answered Ross. “She became my friend when they married.”

  “I never met her husband.” Ross’s voice rang with regret. “Abby didn’t write to me much after she went off to college, and I never visited her out there. I guess she missed her folks so much it was hard to have reminders of them. We would have been major reminders. Our families did everything together. Daddy was Mr. Seymour’s right-hand man. We took vacations together, she and I went to school together—I always figured that’s what she was really running from when she headed off to the other damned side of the country for college.”

  “Probably,” Luke agreed.

  “Was he good to her? Her husband?”

  Luke wasn’t sure how to answer. In many ways, he’d been a good husband to Abby—loving and attentive. He’d just never fully accepted the idea of fidelity. He liked to have fun, liked to scratch all his itches, and he’d never been much for deferring pleasure when it was there for the taking.

  “He was good to her mostly,” Luke answered carefully.

  “Mostly?” Ross asked.

  Luke shook his head. “If you want to know about Abby’s marriage, you should talk to her. Not me.”

  “You’re right.” Ross sighed, digging his hands into the pockets of his jacket. They’d made it to the end of the Langstons’ property, where it edged a narrow, burbling creek that glistened in the pale blue moonlight overhead.

  It must have been a fun place to grow up, Luke thought, a little more flat and open than the hilly woods where he’d played out the boyhood dramas of his own childhood, but not so very different that he couldn’t sympathize completely with Abby’s clear desire to stay here and stop running.

  She’d been running for a long time, more than just these past few days. So had he. And fugitives eventually reached the point where capture didn’t seem as bad as running one more step.

  Another thing he and Abby appeared to have in common.

  “Let’s head back in,” Ross suggested.