It took her mother a long moment to answer, and the hair at Teri’s nape began to tingle even before her mother spoke.
“That’s Shane Gregor.” She stroked a wisp of Teri’s hair, her hand trembling. “You remember Shane, don’t you?”
No. Uh-uh. Impossible.
He’d been Crow Hill High’s star wide receiver, an eighteen year old built for speed. This man was . . . more. Broad and defined and well-aged, his neck corded, his skin bronzed, his bearing large and impressive and nothing like that of the boy she’d tutored.
Her stomach tumbled, and she wondered what he was thinking, coming here. Where he got the nerve after the things that had passed between them. If he’d thought about her even once since leaving, or about the extent of her humiliation at his hands.
His hands. She remembered the feel of his fingers closing around hers. And then she made a fist. “He’s back? In Crow Hill?”
“Teri, he’s here to help.” Her mother’s voice held a warning note: let bygones be bygones.
But it wasn’t her mother who carried the memory of those days. “Help? Seriously? Is that what he’s calling it?”
“Enough,” her mother said. “We don’t have time for this. And there’s something you need to know.”
Not if it was about Shane Gregor. “What?”
“Shane’s father and stepmother were killed in an automobile accident last month.”
Oh, God. Teri whipped her gaze back to her mother’s, her heart a jackhammer in her chest. “What?”
Her mother nodded. “They had an eight-year-old daughter. Shane’s half-sister. Shannon. He’s taken leave to see to her.”
Wait a minute. Neither one of her parents had mentioned any of this before today. “Taken leave?”
“He’s in the navy. I don’t know how long he’ll be here. I guess he’s her only family now. Such a shame.”
A shame. A tragedy. Absolutely heartbreaking. Teri didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. What can I do?”
The older woman took a deep breath as if thankful to move on. “Your father’s down at the barn. You go on and help him.”
“What about you?” she asked, turning her back on her past.
“I’m fine here. I’m gathering up documents and photos and things we can’t afford to lose in case we have to leave in a hurry.”
“Okay,” she said, kissing her mother’s cheek. “I’ll see what Dad needs.”
She hurried to the barn, swearing she’d do anything to see her parents didn’t lose their belongings. If she had to take orders from the man in charge, so be it.
But she would stay as far out of his way as possible, and not for a moment would she wonder what had compelled him to show up at her childhood home and run this operation.
Shane Gregor might be somebody’s hero, but he meant nothing to her anymore.
10:20
Shane Gregor’s focus was on the fire, the ground and air temps, the humidity, the barometric pressure, but especially on the wind.
He’d been a volunteer firefighter in high school, been schooled at Brayton Fire Training Field in College Station while attending A&M, been accepted as a wildland firefighter for the Texas Forest Service after graduation.
A short two years later, in those initial disbelieving days of fear and panic and patriotic duty that swept the country post 9/11, he’d enlisted in the navy, gone through the grueling months of BUD/S training, and been a SEAL ever since.
So he knew about focus. He knew about discipline. He knew the true strength of the mind and that of the body. He could be a team player as well as lead. And he hadn’t forgotten the challenge of successfully fighting a fire with fire.
But none of those deeply instilled qualities kept him from noticing the arrival of the bright yellow truck or the woman behind the wheel.
Teri Stokes.
He pictured her looking like she had the night she’d changed his life. Her blonde hair in an intricate braid against the back of her head, tendrils loose around her face, her blue eyes wide as he lowered his head to kiss her.
He hadn’t expected it to happen. He hadn’t expected to carry so much guilt for his treatment of her after it had.
Most of all, he hadn’t expected her to kiss him back—with more intensity, more involvement, more intimacy than his seventeen-year- old self had known what to do with.
He’d lived with the memory for sixteen years. He hadn’t cherished it, or been obsessed with it, but it had been there inside of him, breathing of its own accord, keeping him going, keeping him alive.
He’d taken it out once in awhile and let it ground him. Let it, too, remind him of the amends he needed to make.
“Shane! Over here!”
He watched Teri disappear into the barn’s dark interior, then trotted across the property to where he was needed. Before the end of the day, no matter what happened with the fire, he would get her alone.
It might be his last chance to tell her the things he’d been saving up all this time.
10:40
“Daddy?” As the darkness of the barn wrapped around her, Teri removed her sunglasses, hooked the earpiece in her blouse’s neckline, and used the low angled slats of the sunlight to look around for her dad.
Ladders banged against the side of the structure. Footsteps pounded overhead. The water pouring from buckets and streaming from hoses brought to mind afternoon showers, short bursts, then silence, the cycle repeated again and again.
If the truth of things hadn’t been so frightening, the sounds would’ve had her climbing into the hayloft and curling up with a flashlight and a good book the way she’d done so many times in the past.
But because she was frightened, she breathed deeply, drawing in the scents of hay and leather and horse that the years hadn’t been able to erase, as well as those of linseed oil and aged wood, of dry dust—all of it underscored by the incoming smoke.
Insidious, it fingered its way through knotholes and loosely hinged doors and window casings and gaps in the weathered planks which had stood their ground against a half century of punishing elements. So much history. So easily wiped out by fire.
Shivering not with cold but with apprehension and awe, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “Daddy?”
“Back here, Teri,” Gavin Stokes called.
She turned toward her father’s voice, saw him waving from beside a row of framed paintings covered with blankets and leaning against the wall. Winding her way that direction, she ran her fingertips over a cast iron headboard, along the front of a highboy, across the smooth surface of a mahogany pedestal table.
A row of long bulbs lit the side of the barn where her father was working. He ducked out from beneath the low-hanging roof created by the floor of the hayloft above, his tall body lean and limber. He met her for a long wordless hug, his fears broadcast by the length of time it took him to set her away.
Both hands on her shoulders, he looked down, his blue eyes—her eyes—bleary from the pollution poisoning the air. “Were you able to get a truck?”
She nodded. “Are you still going to pack up? It looks like the whole population of Crow Hill is outside helping.”
“We’ll pack as much as we can. And by we I mean you and I. Your mother can load some of the smaller pieces. And I imagine Shane can grab a couple of men for the most valuable of the larger ones.” He dropped his hands from her arms, his gaze to the floor, swallowing once before looking up again. “I guess you saw Shane.”
“I did.” It was all she said. It was enough.
“You going to be okay with him here?”
She thought of the past. She thought of the present. Her present. Shane’s. “Of course. Mom told me what he’s been through. What he’s still going through.”
“He turned out to be a hell of a man.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She only knew the boy who had hurt her. “What do you want me to do?”
Her father pointed toward the far corner of the barn. “Start at
the back. There’s a stack of moving blankets and rolls of bubble wrap in the supply stall. You lived with your mom long enough to know what she’d want to take.”
“Got it.” She gave the contents of the barn a cursory glance, dazed by the scope of the job that lay ahead of them, wondering how much time they had, wondering if her first instinct to get the hell out of here hadn’t been right after all. Then she shook off her doubts. They were doing nothing but getting in the way. “We’ll be okay, right? We’ll get through this?”
“We’ll be fine. Even if we lose everything, we’ll be fine.” Her father dropped a kiss to her forehead as he’d done thousands of times in the past. “I’m going to go check on things with your mother. And Shane.”
Teri nodded once, and then she got to work.
11:00
Once he finished advising Gavin Stokes, Shane turned toward the barn. The volunteers had things under control, and he had some overdue business. The long hours ahead would be interminable if he and Teri had to spend them walking on eggshells. They’d done enough of that their senior year, and he wasn’t that boy anymore.
He entered the building, his steps silent, his breathing soundless and measured. Even had he been a bull and the barn a china shop, he doubted anyone inside would’ve heard his approach. Overhead, the water showered down like rubble, and in the near distance, diesel engines shook the ground with the roar of heavy artillery.
In contrast to the controlled chaos outside, the barn’s interior was still as a holding pattern. He cocked his head, his eyes adjusting to the shadows. A soft grunt followed by banging drew him toward the structure’s northeast corner, and as he passed a head-high stack of storage crates, she came into view. He slowed, stopped, stared.
Her back was to him, her hair—still blonde and crazy with waves—caught in a careless knot. She wore jeans and a white top that was already smudged with cobwebs and dirt, and as she bent to reach for a moving pad, the fabric rode up her back.
He stared harder, remembering the feel of her skin beneath her clothing, her warmth when the air outside had been so cold, the light in her eyes in a night so dark . . . just not dark enough to keep them from being seen.
She straightened then, turned, and noticed him there.
Her intake of breath shook him, but he didn’t move, just gave her a moment to acclimate while their gazes held, while the past flashed like a stun grenade between them.
Then he nodded and simply said, “Teri.”
“Shane.” She stood still, her hands hidden in the folds of the pad, her pulse visible at the base of her neck. “How have you been?”
“Good.” He shrugged, cleared his throat and added, “Relatively speaking.”
She pulled one hand from the pad and tucked the hair that had escaped her band behind her ears. “I’m so sorry about your parents. Mom just told me. I didn’t know or I would’ve . . . ”
She let the sentence trail, and he wondered what she would’ve said, what she would’ve done. If with all the things hanging between them, she wouldn’t have stayed away and let the gulf of silence between them widen further.
He wouldn’t have blamed her. She owed him nothing.
“Thanks. Dad and I were never close,” he said, burying years of regrets with the confession. “And I’d only met Shannon’s mother once, but it’s still a tough one. It’s been especially so for her.”
She picked at the moving pad’s loose threads, a smile softening her features. “It’s hard to think of you having a little sister. Especially this you.”
She didn’t know the half of it, Shane mused, grinning in return and breathing better as the tension between them eased. “Shannon’s a pistol. Cute as a button. Of course, she doesn’t know me at all, so she’s staying with a friend from school while we work things out.”
“I can’t imagine she won’t love having a big brother. Once y’all are more comfortable together.”
“I hope so. Mostly she’s missing her folks.” Balancing the world of weight he carried on wide-spread feet, he looked down and shoved his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. “It’s hard being the guy telling her they’re not coming back.”
“I’m so sorry, Shane,” she said, her voice shaky, battered. “And again, thank you. For being here. For helping. Especially with all you have on your plate. Being suddenly responsible for an eight year old can’t be easy.”
“It’s more intimidating than anything,” he admitted with a coarse laugh. “I’ve been responsible for getting a lot of armed men in and out of some really tight spots, so this is a new one for me.”
“That’s right. Mom said you’re in the navy.” She spread out the moving pad on a giant spool empty of cable.
He let that go without comment because he wasn’t here to talk about his military career or the upheaval in his personal life. He was here for only one thing. “Teri, I owe you an apology.”
“For what?” she asked, her hands that had been smoothing the pad going still.
“For high school. For the way I treated you. For what I let happen.”
She blinked once, then turned her attention to the three music boxes she was preparing for transport. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter. We’re both older. We’ve both moved on.”
He came closer, ducking beneath a beam, holding onto it with one hand as splinters pierced his palm. “It does matter. I shouldn’t have let it go all this time without making it right.”
“C’mon, Shane,” she said, her voice sharper now, though she still refused him her gaze. “You kissed me and then you blew me off. I’m not the first teenage girl that’s happened to. I won’t be the last. It wasn’t the end—”
“Teri.” He stepped forward into her space, planting his hands on the spool and leaning close. “You were the best friend I had in school and I ruined it.”
She shook her head as if not wanting to hear. “What are you talking about? You were friends with everyone.”
“Friendly, not friends. Big difference.” One that had been hammered home continually over the years. He gave a gruff snort. “I’m not even sure I was friends with Karen.”
Finally, she looked up, her gaze searching his for the truth. “You two dated for three years. How could you date her and not be friends?”
“It was high school. Dating’s not always about liking someone as much as being part of something, or the attention.” And damn if that wasn’t humiliating to stomach. “You gave me all the things she didn’t.”
“What did I give you?” she asked with a scoffing laugh. “Grief over your horrible handwriting? A hard time about checking your watch?”
A kiss I will never forget. “You gave me your full attention and didn’t expect anything in return.”
“That’s not quite true. I expected you to listen,” she said, and then grew silent as if realizing he was asking the same of her now. “Shane—”
“I know I hurt you. I’ve wanted to make it right for a long time, but I wasn’t sure when or if I’d ever get back to Texas.”
“You could’ve called. Or emailed. If it was that important to you.”
“It was that important. It is that important.” Why wasn’t this coming out right? Why couldn’t he find the words? “Important enough that it had to be said face to face.”
“Fine. You’ve said it. Apology accepted.” Her hands shook as she covered the music boxes with bubble wrap, storing one after the other in a crate. “Was there anything else?”
Crap. He rubbed at his forehead, then jammed his hands to his waist. “I meant it, you know. When I kissed you. I wasn’t trying to score. I liked you. I liked you a lot.”
She picked up the crate, shoved it at him, her gaze steely and lacking the vulnerability she’d let slip earlier. “Set this behind the truck, will you? Save me one trip out at least.”
“Sure.” He took it from her hands, ducked to avoid the beam as he stepped back. She said nothing more, done with him, and he turned to walk away, faltering only on
ce when he swore he heard his name whispered on a sigh.
16:00
Standing near the copse of cottonwoods down the rise behind the house, Teri stared into the distance. Facing away from the fire, it was almost possible to believe the flames weren’t licking their way toward Crow Hill. Almost, because the scent of burning earth scorched the air and scratched at her lungs when she breathed.
She was sweaty, dirty. Her muscles ached from the heavy lifting teaching kindergarten never required. After hours of digging, sorting, wrapping and packing, she’d taken a break to eat. Then she’d needed more. An escape, a moment of silence, something. Anything to help her get a grip on the things Shane had said.
That he’d liked her. Liked her a lot.
That she had been his best friend.
Their reunion hadn’t been at all what she’d expected, and with each word he’d spoken, her childish animosity had fizzled another degree. And why wouldn’t it? He’d been her first real grown-up kiss. The first boy she’d let beneath her clothes. But he’d made her no promises.
Neither had he been the one to raise a hand against her.
And his voice hadn’t been the one to make threats.
Looking back, their contact had been innocent, nothing to raise the eyebrows it had, to start the gossip mill churning. Especially compared to the things she knew her friends were doing. Things Shane had been doing with Karen Best. The ones Karen explained in great detail when cornering Teri in the locker room and ordering her to lay off.
Their confrontation wouldn’t have been so bad if Teri hadn’t been alone, and Karen surrounded by her cheerleading posse, the girls moving in, shoving her, kicking her, each with her own pairs of scissors, and leaving ragged snips of Teri’s hair on the floor.
Behind her, she heard the rustle of long grass, legs moving through the dry brush, whooshing, but she was back on the hard wet floor, her eyes crushed closed as she listened to the slice of the blades.
“You doing okay?” Shane asked, and she nodded, her eyes coming open to him handing her a bottle of water.
The icy plastic felt like heaven in her hands. She twisted off the top, brought it to her mouth, watched Shane do the same with his. And then she stopped drinking because looking at him reminded her of her where she was, that the past was the past, that this was the present and Shane had chosen to be here. With her.
SEAL of My Dreams Page 25