by Hill, Teresa
She opened the door to find not one, but two pretty women, one of whom was in a sleek, futuristic-looking wheelchair.
They looked surprised to find Dani there, but before she could say anything, Leah came to the door and didn’t hold back.
“Really? More of you?” Leah said. “Let me save you some time. No, he’s not here. No, we don’t know when he’ll be back in town. Have some self-respect, ladies. If he knows you well enough for you to show up at his door and try to barge into his place, you must know that if he actually wanted to see you again, he’d call or come find you. Believe me, he doesn’t lack female attention.”
The woman in the wheelchair turned to the other and said, “He’s shacking up with two at once, now?”
“Or maybe it was a hook-up threesome,” the other one said.
“We’re not shacked-up or hooking up,” Dani said.
“All right, if you say so, although it’s fine if you are. We do miss him, but we’re allowed to. We’re his sisters.”
“Oh, shit!” Dani said. “I’m so sorry. Come on in.”
“It’s okay. We’re used to this kind of reaction.”
They walked in, laughing. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to go find him so he’d give me a ride home or because Mom or Dad needed him, and he’d be with some girl who glared at me for so much as speaking to him. I’m Rae, by the way.”
They all introduced themselves. Rae was the next-to-youngest of his four sisters. Annie, the baby, was the one in the wheelchair. She had short brown hair and Mace’s eyes.
“Was he expecting you? He didn’t say anything about you coming,” Dani said.
“No. We’re surprising him. We were supposed to be at the beach at Padre Island, but some frat boys trashed the condo we reserved, so we decided at the last minute to come see Ace instead.”
“Ace?” Were these two at the right apartment.?
They laughed. “At home, he’s always been Ace. He wasn’t Mace until he got to SEAL training,” Rae said. “He was named after our dad, who’s Martin, but no one ever called him that. Alexander is his middle name, but he’s always been Ace to us.”
“Oh,” Dani said. “We didn’t know. And I’m sorry. He’s out of the country, hopefully just for a few days. We’re house-sitting and doing a little painting.”
She wanted to add that she didn’t normally look this bad, but it would probably seem weird to try to convince them of anything about her appearance.
“Since when does he need a house-sitter? Did he get a dog? Or a plant?” Rae asked Annie, who shrugged.
Dani explained about the renovations and redecorating.
“He’s selling this place? I don’t want him to sell this place. We love coming here. Although if he’s being transferred to San Diego, we could handle that. Right, Rae?”
“Sure. I’m up for California.”
Leah told his sisters about his plan to rent this place and buy another. “Although he might have just made all that up to get Dani here. He doesn’t approve of where we’re living, doesn’t think it’s safe.”
“That’s Ace,” Annie said. “He doesn’t approve of where I’m living, either. Keeps trying to get me to let him pay my rent for a nicer place.”
“He hasn’t tried that one on Dani yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s next.”
They laughed, then Dani asked, “Has he always been this way with women? Wanting to take care of them all?”
Neither of them laughed then. Dani knew she’d said something wrong.
“He’s always had a protective streak,” Rae said finally.
His sisters said they were off to find a hotel room, but Dani and Leah insisted on leaving instead. The sisters said he’d get mad and blame them if Dani and Leah left. They finally agreed — at least for one night — that they’d all stay. Dani and Leah would share one bedroom, his sisters the other.
They ate leftover pizza together until Dani and Leah had to go to work.
His sisters were funny, one a nurse and one a social worker, and clearly adored him. Leah asked them a million questions about Mace — girls he’d dated and how long they’d lasted, how he’d treated them. Dani couldn’t stop her. The protective questions embarrassed her, but she also wanted to know everything about him, particularly him and women.
The next day, they all pitched in on painting the main room of the condo and the kitchen. Leah and Rae headed for the grocery store, and Dani found herself alone in the kitchen cleaning their paint brushes. Annie joined her with a serious look on her face.
“It’s because of me,” she said, “that he’s so protective.”
“Uhh … because you’re in a wheelchair?”
“Because he still blames himself that I am.”
Dani gasped. Annie gave her a small smile as she popped a wheelie and waited for Dani to take that in.
“He didn’t say anything about it? Me or the chair?”
“No.”
Annie shrugged. “I didn’t really think he would have. Whenever I meet a new friend of his, they’re always surprised.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“My horse spooked and threw me. I landed the absolute wrong way on a bunch of rocks sticking up out of the ground. Crushed lumbar vertebrae, and pieces of them dug into my spinal cord. A fluke injury, the doctor said, to do that much damage from falling off a horse. Not that Ace ever accepted that.”
“He was with you?”
“No, he just thinks he should have been watching me more closely. I loved to ride, but I wasn’t allowed to go by myself. I was seven. Ace was seventeen. He had his license and Dad’s old truck, was playing high school sports and had discovered girls in a big way, from what I could tell at seven. I hounded him all the time about going with me so I could ride.
“One day, Mom went into town to meet a friend. It was a rare thing for her, with five kids to look after. Ace is the oldest, and she left him in charge of us. Did you know there are four of us girls? He was grumbling about his plans with some girl he liked, and how he was going to be late if mom didn’t hurry, and how much of a pain in the ass we all were.
“He said that all the time. It was an inside joke in the family. He’d say it, and we’d all pile on him. He’d pretend we were strong enough to tackle him. We’d all end up on the floor laughing.”
“I imagine he must have been a great big brother.”
“Oh, he was,” Annie said. “Anyway, he had all four of us to keep up with that day — not an easy job. I kept after him all afternoon to leave our oldest sister in charge of everybody else for a while so he could take me riding, but he wouldn’t. He said it was going to rain, but I thought it was just an excuse. I got mad and bored, then decided to go by myself. I had my own horse, Blue. She’s so sweet. One thing that went right that day — Blue survived. I’m so thankful for that. I love her and would have had a hard time forgiving myself if she hadn’t.”
Dani thought it would have been very hard to still love a horse who threw you and left you paralyzed, but Annie obviously put no blame on the horse.
“I couldn’t saddle Blue by myself,” Annie continued, “but she’d dip her head down so I could get her bridle on her, and then she’d stand beside the fence. I could climb up and get on her and ride bareback. It wasn’t the first time I’d done it, and I knew I’d get in trouble, but I did it anyway.”
Dani could imagine the horrible toll this had taken on Mace.
“Storms can come up fast in Texas. The sky behind you will turn black without you even realizing it until the wind kicks up and warns you. Thunder comes roaring in, and the sky opens up in a pounding rain. That’s what happened that day.
“Blue never would have thrown me if she hadn’t been so scared. We heard thunder. I turned us around, and then a huge bolt of lightning shot out toward us. I screamed, which had to scare her even more, and she threw me.”
Annie paused and forced a small smile across her face.
“Poo
r Mace is the one who found me. He was frantic. It was raining like crazy. I was soaked and shaking, crying, lying on the ground. I’d already tried to get up and couldn’t. He asked me if anything was broken, and I couldn’t tell him. I’d never seen him so scared or so unsure of what to do. Pick me up and carry me home or leave me there and ride back to where he could get a cellphone signal.”
“What did he do?”
“He left me there. The look on his face when he did … He was like Superman to me, my big brother. I thought he could do anything, that nothing ever scared him. He called for help, then rode back and sat with me. He held my hand, told me stories to try to distract me and kept telling me how much he loved me.”
Dani was crying by then. So was Annie.
“I’m not crying for myself,” Annie said. “I’ve come to terms with what happened. I have a good life. I’m happy. I’m crying for what I put my brother through that day and every day since then. He’s never forgiven himself. I’m afraid he never will. Nothing I’ve ever said has been able to change that.”
“I’m so sorry. For both of you.” She hated thinking of Mace carrying that around with him his whole life.
“I wanted you to know, so that when he tries to help you or protect you, you know where it’s coming from. He’s a great guy. The best. I just wish he could get past this and be happy himself. I worry that he never will. It’s like he’s still doing penance. He barely comes home to Texas to see us. I think it’s just too hard for him to see me, or maybe even to be on the ranch where it happened.”
“But … I’m sorry. I have to ask. None of you blame him, do you?” No telling what Dani might do if they did.
“No. We all blame ourselves. My mother hates that she left that day. My father hates that he was somewhere working on the ranch, where no one could get in touch with him for hours. My sisters all wish they’d kept a closer watch on me or let me play with them, so that maybe I wouldn’t have been bored enough or mad enough to sneak away on Blue.
“We love Ace and miss him so much. We show up on his doorstep without calling first so he can’t make excuses about being busy to keep us away. I think I’m the reason he joined the SEAL teams in the first place, so he could try to save other people and make up for not being able to keep me safe.”
“I thought it was just me, that my life was so pathetic he felt sorry for me and had to help me,” Dani said.
“No. He’s like that with all women.”
“That explains so much.”
“It’s how he got the nickname Mace. Did he tell you those stories?”
Dani groaned. “He told me. I … uhh … I pepper-sprayed him the night we met.”
Annie gaped at Dani, then burst out laughing. They both kept at it until tears ran down their cheeks.
Rae and Leah, home with the groceries, found them like that. “What? I want to know. I could use a laugh.”
Annie pointed to Dani and tried to speak. “Maced!”
“Ace did what?”
“No, maced! Dani maced him!”
It was embarrassing, but funny. She ended up telling them the whole story, how persistent he was in trying to take care of the drunk and the two guys wanting her to go home with them.
It meant also telling them about Aaron and the train shooting, why Mace felt responsible for her. His sisters were near tears then.
“We were so scared when we heard about the shooting and that one of the U.S. soldiers died,” Rae said. “We knew Ace was in Europe, because he ran into an old friend of our dad’s there, and we knew it was the day or close to the day he should be heading back home, and he loves to take the trains there, especially the really fast ones.
“It felt like forever before we found out anything. It wasn’t a military operation, so no one in his unit knew anything. No one would tell us anything. He’d been in the hospital in Germany for three days before we even knew he was there. Then he spent weeks in the big military hospital in Maryland. It was horrible.”
Dani closed her eyes and tried not to imagine him wounded, bleeding, broken. He’d told her himself he’d suffered worse injuries. Or was it just that he thought he’d come closer to dying at other times?
She bit her lip and blinked back tears.
“I’m sorry,” Annie said. “I didn’t mean to make it all about us and him. You lost your fiancé. That must have been horrible.”
“Mace thinks he could have saved Aaron, too. I don’t know if that’s true. I haven’t been able to let him tell me about that day. But I don’t blame him. I just wanted you to know because I don’t know how to help him deal with that. I wish I could. He’s done so much for me.”
“You’re probably helping him just by letting him take care of you,” Annie said. “He’s a do-er. Tell him he’s helping you, and he’s happy. When I ended up in the chair, Mom and Dad took turns being with me in the hospital, and Mace worked like crazy to get the house ready for me to come home. Wheelchair ramps, moving my bedroom downstairs, redoing a bathroom for the wheelchair. He didn’t know how to do all that stuff, but he figured it out.”
“I think it’s the only thing that kept him half-way sane in those first few months,” Rae said.
They all fell silent. Rae was standing beside Annie’s wheelchair, and Annie leaned into her sister’s side. Dani had the urge, unusual for her, to go hug them, the way Mace sometimes hugged her.
Sometimes people just needed to be close to someone and hang on. Mace had shown her that, and now it extended to his sisters, too.
They finally managed to pull themselves together. Rae cooked dinner for them all, the slow-cooked pork and tortillas that Mace loved so much. In case he didn’t get back before his sisters left, she wanted Leah to know how to make it. She didn’t think Leah could duplicate the tortillas, agreeing it was an art form that required much practice, but the spicy pork should be possible.
They were cleaning up when Dani’s phone dinged announcing an incoming text message.
Good day there?
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mace
He waited all day, every day, just to be able to text with her before he went to sleep. Waiting for her to respond felt like crap, because he kept worrying that one day, she wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t be able to find her and figure out why until he got back home. He didn’t even know when that would be. The mayor who’d performed the marriage ceremony for her and Aaron was out of town. Greece had no computerized records of anything, as though people were still living in Biblical times. And no one hurried to do anything, not ever.
He got lucky texting that night. Dani answered him right away.
Your sisters are here.
Shit. Forget texting. He hadn’t heard her voice since he’d left, and he needed to, so he hit a button to call her.
“Hi.” Her voice was tentative and trembling.
“They just showed up?”
“Yes.”
“Which ones?”
“Rae and Annie.”
“Dammit, they always do that to me. I keep telling them that one of these days they’ll do it and I won’t be there, but they won’t listen.”
“They said if they tell you they’re coming, you always find excuses about why you can’t see them.”
True, but that wasn’t his concern right now.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he told her. “I’ll put them up in a hotel.”
“Leah and I tried to leave, but they insisted we all stay here.”
“And you did?”
“Last night, we did.”
“Dani, promise me you’ll stay.”
He was talking so loudly they all must have heard him. The next thing he knew, Rae was on the phone.
“Hi, stranger,” she said cheerfully.
Mace fought the urge to yell at her. She’d tell Annie he didn’t want to see them, and he couldn’t stand for Annie to think that. He didn’t want anyone in his family to think that. He just kept trying to convince them he was bus
y all the time.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. He was busy a lot of the time, but he got leave. He could have made it home a lot more often than he did. He missed them all. He knew they missed him. It was just so hard to be there.
“Don’t you dare kick her out of my condo. Don’t let her leave,” he said in the same tone he’d use to bark out orders at his squad when he was really frustrated with them or the situation.
“Don’t worry. We’re having a great time. It’s like a big sleepover. We stayed up half the night talking about you. We must not have told Dani anything she thought was really awful, because she’s still here.”
“That’s not funny, Rae!”
“Whoa. Touchy today, isn’t he?” he heard Annie say.
“Rae, could you go somewhere so we can talk, just you and me?”
“All right, Grumpy.” He waited, barely, until she said, “I’m in your bedroom. Alone. What is wrong with you?”
“Dani can’t go back to her apartment. Her roommate’s boyfriend scares the crap out of me. She probably won’t admit it, but he scares her, too.”
“Mace, she’s a grown woman. I’m sure she can — ”
“He left bruises on her,” Mace yelled.
“Oh. Okay. Sorry.”
“Promise me you won’t let her leave.”
“I’ll try, but what am I supposed to do if she insists? Tie her up and gag her until you get back?”
“Yeah, if that’s what it takes!”
“You’re losing it, big brother.”
“She means a lot to me, okay? She’s been through hell, and she doesn’t have anybody to look out for her.”
“Yes, she does. You.”
“I’m not there, Rae. I don’t know when I will be. How long are you and Annie staying?”
“We planned on a week.”
“Look, just pick some other place. Wherever you want to go. On me.”
“No. We’re not leaving, either. We haven’t seen since you got out of the hospital, and before that, it had been a year and a half. We need to see you — ”