by Lucy Score
“I’d die a happy man if you would make me a pie a week,” Aldo sighed from across the cozy fire. There was that skitter of nerves again. Gloria wondered if she’d ever have a social interaction that didn’t scare her out of her skin or turn her into an overanalyzing fool.
After pie came marshmallows, and Gloria basked in the praise at her perfectly toasted delicacies. Her father had taught her on a camping trip the summer before he left. At least she had that small piece of him.
“Hey, lover boy,” Aldo called to Luke, holding his bottle aloft. “If you’re done staring dreamily at your girl, I’m empty, and it’s your turn to play host.”
Gloria had watched Aldo throughout the night. He’d stuck with water until after dinner. This would be his second beer. Aldo Moretta didn’t seem like the kind of man to overindulge in anything.
“Sure. No problem.” Luke rose from his chair and reached for Aldo’s empty. He tipped his friend’s chair sideways and dumped Aldo onto the ground.
Gloria winced, waiting for his reaction, waiting for the quick rush of anger, the escalating retaliation.
But Aldo sat on the grass and laughed.
“Ladies, can I get you anything?” Luke offered.
Harper jumped to her feet. “I’ll help you,” she offered brightly. They hurried toward the house.
Aldo climbed gracefully to his feet, brushing the dirt from his shorts. He took the seat that Harper had vacated next to Gloria. “I give it ten minutes before they kick us out,” he predicted.
“Well, it is a work night,” Gloria said.
“I don’t think they’re worried about getting a good night’s sleep,” He said with a wink. “So, how are things?”
“Things?” she repeated. Gloria ran a hand through her hair, still surprised at the length. She was suffering from nightmares of a reality she’d only just exited. She had no concrete plans, no confidence, and she wanted another piece of pie. But she was spending a spring evening under the stars with the boy from high school who gave her butterflies. “Things are pretty good.”
“What’s next for you?” He asked.
Stop the dreams. Remember what it’s like to be a person. “I’m looking for a job,” she blurted out.
“Yeah?” Aldo asked, looking interested. “What kind of a job?”
Gloria chewed on her lip. “I don’t know. Something that makes me feel good. Something that lets me do something…nice.” She laughed. “How’s that for vague?”
“I’d offer you a job at my office, but I have a feeling designing bridge restorations and expense reports wouldn’t be good or nice.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Probably not.” She’d once wanted to be in fashion or marketing. Something with color and beauty and fun. Though getting to stare at Aldo Moretta all day would be its own perk.
But she didn’t want to be beholden to anyone. She wanted to earn a spot somewhere.
“You’re staying around here, aren’t you?” Aldo pressed. His tone and his warm brown eyes were serious.
She nodded, her earrings swinging against her neck. “Yeah. I’m staying.”
That was one thing she wasn’t going to let Glenn Diller take from her. Home.
9
“Geez, don’t let the door hit you,” Aldo quipped as Luke slammed the front door behind them the second their feet hit the front porch. The look of love passing between the happy couple was hot enough to start a house fire, and Aldo didn’t want to accidentally catch a glimpse of Luke’s junk…again. They were close, but not that close.
“Where’s your car?” he asked Gloria. “I’ll walk you to it.”
“It’s in the shop. I walked.”
“I’ll drive you home,” he offered. No way was he letting the woman who’d just walked out of a nightmare find her way home in the dark.
“Oh, I can walk,” Gloria insisted.
“I know you can walk,” Aldo teased, guiding her down the walkway to the street where he’d parked. “But if I drive you home, you’re going to feel obliged to give me that last piece of pie, and, Gloria, there’s something you need to know about me.” He paused by the passenger door of his truck.
“What?” she breathed. He wasn’t imagining it—the air between them was charged. There was a connection being made. Whether it was natural or a side effect of the decade-long crush he’d had on her, Aldo didn’t care. He reveled in it.
“I love apple pie for breakfast,” he whispered.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re ridiculous,” she told him, but there was a smile behind her words.
“I’m ridiculous, and I’m taking you home.” He opened the door for her and gave her his most charming smile. Legions of women had fallen for this. Well, maybe not legions, but a respectable number. They’d all been practice for the real thing. He’d been honing his weaponry, his skills, for this woman, this night. And he wasn’t going to lose.
She took a step forward and hedged, second-guessing herself.
“Gloria, it’s okay if you don’t want a ride home. I’ll walk you home, tell you you’re the prettiest woman I’ve seen in my life, and make sure you get inside safely. We can drive or walk. The choice is yours.”
She sighed. “Drive.”
He ushered her into the truck and closed the door. Aldo for the win. Sliding behind the wheel, he started the engine. There was a part of him that didn’t quite believe he had Gloria Parker sitting next to him. She’d been a pretty little thing in high school. All sweetness and sunshine. He’d looked more than twice. But the age difference meant a lot more back then. He was a senior, and she barely had a driver’s license. By the time he’d decided it didn’t matter, Glenn “Fuckhead” Diller had stepped into his place.
He’d thought about throwing his hat in the ring, but the one time he’d come close, Gloria had paid the price. Aldo never forgot that.
“So tell me what a structural engineer does,” Gloria said, piping up over the low croonings of Blake Shelton.
Aldo grinned at her and made a left turn. “A structural engineer designs structures like bridges and tunnels and buildings. We do inspections, some demo. We work a lot with contractors and architects to make sure what they’re building isn’t only pretty but sound.”
“Wow. And you’re in the National Guard, too?” she asked.
He nodded. “We’re deploying soon.” In two weeks. Which was why he needed Gloria to know where he stood. He wasn’t letting another decade go by without telling her how he felt. But tonight wasn’t the time. She was still brittle, fragile. He’d watched her disappear into her head a half-dozen times tonight only to fight her way back. He admired the hell out of her for it. Enduring what she had and then making small talk around a picnic table was something a lot of soldiers couldn’t handle when they came home.
“Oh,” she said softly. “When?”
“Just over two weeks.” He felt the twist in his gut when he said it. Before, picking up and hauling out had been inconvenient. But there wasn’t much difference to him whether he was working his ass off at the office or in a godforsaken desert. He still had no one to come home to. That, to Aldo, made all the difference.
“Wow,” Gloria breathed. “Where are you going? Are you nervous? When will you be back?”
He did the thing that felt most natural. He reached over the console and took her hand in his. “Afghanistan. I’m already anxious to come home. It’s a six-month deployment.”
“Six months?” she sounded upset, and it did something wonderful to his ego.
“Six months.” He nodded. “Imagine where you’ll be when I come home.”
She sat quietly in the dark of his cab, eyes straight ahead. But she held his hand tightly as if she were afraid he’d pull away.
“Did you always want to be an engineer?” She asked, finally changing the subject.
“No. I wanted to be a ninja for a while. Then I moved on to a superhero. Then in kindergarten, I decided I wanted to be a dinosaur until my mom told me dinosaurs were extinct and I
was a dumbass.”
“No, she didn’t!”
“Ina Moretta is a loud, mean woman,” Aldo told her. “One time when Luke and I were kids—stupid kids—we were playing on the lake when it froze. Without adult supervision of course.”
“Oh, no,” Gloria said, covering her eyes with her free hand.
“Oh, yes. The ice broke, and I sank like a lard ass until Luke fished me out. But when Ma heard about it, she made me take ice baths for a week as punishment.”
“She did not!” Gloria laughed.
“Okay, so maybe they were lukewarm baths, but still. The woman is a mercenary.”
“I’d like to meet her someday,” Gloria mused.
Aldo brushed his thumb over hers. “Say the word. I promise to stand valiantly between the two of you.”
She laughed, the brightness of it filling up his truck, his chest. Yeah, this was worth coming home to and worth not leaving again.
He eased up to the curb in front of Gloria’s mother’s house. If she wondered how he knew where she lived, Gloria didn’t ask. She slipped her hand out of his and fished the pie plate off the floor. “I believe this is your payment for chauffeuring me,” she said.
He caught a whiff of the cinnamon-y goodness under the foil. “I think we should get married,” he decided.
Gloria’s jaw dropped, and then she laughed again.
“I’m serious,” he insisted. “Just, maybe spend the next six months thinking about it, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” she said, still laughing when she released her seatbelt.
“Hang on,” he said, sliding out from behind the wheel. He hurried around to her door and opened it. “You’re engaged to a gentleman.”
She stepped down onto the sidewalk. “I am?” There was a lightness in her words and in her eyes that sparkled under the streetlights, and Aldo couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to kiss her right then and there.
There was a low rumble behind them, and Gloria flinched, the light fading from her face, was replaced with a flash of fear. Aldo turned, putting her behind him, and spotted a neighbor two houses down wheeling their trash bin to the curb.
He turned back, intending to rub the goose bumps off her arms with his big, warm hands. But when he reached for her, she took a nervous step back. “Sorry,” she whispered, hunching her shoulders.
“Gloria.” He said her name softly. “It’s okay.”
She gave a jerky shrug of her thin shoulders that broke his heart a little bit more. “No. It’s not. And I don’t know if it ever will be.” Her whispered confession destroyed him.
“Sweetheart,” he tried again. But when he saw her nervously swipe her slim fingers under her eye, he couldn’t stop himself. She couldn’t cry in front of him. He’d never give her a reason to, he vowed.
Slowly, carefully he wrapped his arms around her and held her against his chest. She tensed against him for a second, and with a sigh too big for her body, she let go and relaxed into him.
“Have you thought about talking to someone?” he asked gently.
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” Her muffled voice carried just enough annoyance that it made him smile.
“I meant a professional. Like a counselor, a therapist. Someone who knows what you’re going through.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “I don’t have health insurance. And I’m not sure if I even have the words to talk about anything with anyone.”
He wanted to fix it for her. Wanted to step in and solve every problem she faced. But that wasn’t what she needed. Gloria needed to find out that her own two feet were steady, dependable.
“Everything is going to be just fine, Gloria Parker. You wait and see.” They stood there under the night sky, and Aldo stroked his big hand over her back until her shivers went away.
10
“About time,” Aldo said, tossing his duffle in the back and climbing into the passenger seat of Luke’s truck. They were needed on base for the usual pre-deployment medical exam and a handful of briefings. The perpetually early Luke—Captain Garrison for the next day or two—was running twenty minutes behind and had a shit-eating grin that wouldn’t quit on his face.
“I’m not that late,” Luke argued, pulling away from the curb.
“No explanations needed. I can see from the stupid look on your face why you’re late.” Luke Garrison was getting some. While Aldo would, of course, rub it in his friend’s face, he was happy to see Luke finally moving on with his life.
“You’re full of shit,” Luke shot back.
Aldo snorted and changed the radio station. “I’ve known you since I saved your ass from that beat-down in first grade. I know your stupid looks.”
“And I still maintain that I could have taken those guys on my own.”
“There were three of them, and they were in fourth grade,” Aldo said dryly.
“Well, if you did assist me in that situation, I saved your ass from drowning in the lake when we were twelve.”
Aldo shrugged. “I thought the ice would hold.”
“We were grounded for all of January for that one,” Luke recalled.
They chuckled. “Our moms were so pissed. So, what does Claire think of Harper?” Aldo fished. Luke was a fucking underground bunker. He didn’t open up easily. Or ever. Every once in a while, Aldo took a crowbar to his friend. Mostly to test the man’s mental state. And partly just to screw with him. It’s what guys did.
After a brief, stony silence, Luke crumbled like an origami crane. “She loves her. Thinks she’s just what I need.” That shit-eating grin was gone.
“Is she?” Aldo prodded.
“What I need is peace and quiet. Harper is anything but that.”
Aldo laughed. It was Luke’s fatal flaw, believing that what he needed most was to be left alone with his grief and regrets. If anyone could convince him otherwise, Aldo hoped it was Harper Wilde. “So why is she here?”
Luke shrugged, taking the ramp for the highway. “It started as a favor. The girl had no place to go and no way to get there.”
Aldo knew the story. After a very bad day, Harper had coasted into Remo’s parking lot on fumes and spotted Glenn Diller attacking Gloria. When Glenn had turned his fury on Harper, Luke had appeared and smashed the monster in his fucking face. Aldo’s hand balled into a fist in his lap.
What he wouldn’t give to have been the one to finally stop him.
“And then?” Aldo asked, keeping the conversation moving.
Luke cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve met her.”
“I have,” he nodded. “Think she’ll stay?”
Luke shook his head, his jaw tightening. “Nah. She’s got things to do, places to go. Six months is a long time to ask someone you just met to wait.”
“It’s a long time to ask anyone to wait,” Aldo reminded him. “She would, you know.” Harper would. The way she looked at Luke, like that grumpy son of a bitch had invented vibrators, screamed the big L-O-V-E.
Luke scrubbed a hand over his chin. “I don’t know if I’d want her to.”
“Bullshit,” Aldo argued cheerfully. It was fear that had Luke by the throat. Fear that feeling something for another woman would somehow lessen what he’d once felt for his wife.
“Kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Where do you think I learned it?” Ina Moretta’s vocabulary would make a trash-talking UFC fighter at weigh-in blush. Her mastery of four-letter words was legendary.
“Speaking of women,” Luke said, suddenly chipper. “Harper seems to think you have a thing for Gloria.”
Aldo let out a sigh through his teeth. “She’s not wrong.”
“You’ve always had a thing for anything with a nice pair of legs and big brown eyes,” Luke pointed out.
“Where do you think I got my type?” It was true. Aldo had sowed his wild oats, expecting that high school crush to fade away into nostalgia. He’d dated. He’d fucked. He’d enjoyed the hell out of himself, all the while w
ondering where the connection was.
He’d found it, finally. Monday night with Gloria wrapped up in his arms under that lonely streetlight.
“So, if you’ve been carrying this torch since high school, how is Glenn still alive?” Luke asked, knowing his friend so well.
Aldo automatically tamped back the reflexive burst of fury. It hadn’t been his business. When she stayed, he accepted her choice. She wasn’t his to defend and protect. “I ask myself that every day. The deployments made it easier to think about something else. Gave me something to focus on.”
They’d also given him an escape from what happened the first and only time he’d done something about Diller. The price paid hadn’t been his. And that haunted him to this day.
Aldo drummed his fingers on the roof of the truck. “I gotta say,” he said, changing the subject. “I’m thinking about retiring. This is number four, and I want to make it my last.”
“Really?” Luke asked, sounding surprised. To Luke, the Guard and the deployments were what kept him going, kept him trudging one foot in front of the other.
“We’ve been doing this since high school. That’s twelve years of packing up and moving out and hoping we come back after the job’s done. I’m ready to stay put. I want to put more time into some engineering projects. And then I want to make a nice girl the next Mrs. Moretta.”
“Jesus, Aldo.” Luke sounded shocked…and a little sick. “When the hell did you decide all this?”
They’d enlisted together, trained together, deployed together. This was the first time Aldo’s course had diverged from Luke’s.
“About ten seconds after I found out Gloria moved out.” It was the truth. It was time. Aldo felt it in his bones. He was ready to be a full-time civilian, a husband, maybe a father. It was time for the rest of his life to start. “Don’t tell me you’re not ready to hang it up.”
“It’s all I’ve got,” Luke said quietly. “The Guard and my business.”
“You’ve got your family and could have Harper, too, if you wanted. Come home to that sweet face every day and find out what trouble she got herself into? There’s something to look forward to.”