Familiar Stranger

by Sharon Sala

  She bent to pick up her hoe, and as she did, her blond chin-length hair brushed the sides or her face. She straightened, tossing her head to get it out of her eyes, and made a mental note next time she came out to tie it all back. As she started toward the gardening shed, a stiff breeze came out of nowhere, molding her clothes to her body and momentarily outlining her slender, willowy build. From a distance, she could easily have passed for a young, thirty-something woman. It wasn’t until one looked closer that the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the small laugh lines framing her mouth were evident. Her stomach growled as she put up the hoe and tossed her gloves in the basket. She glanced at her watch, surprised that noontime had come and gone.

  As she started toward the back door, she heard the sounds of an approaching car. It couldn’t be Bethany. She and her family were on vacation and weren’t due back for several days. Maybe it was the mailman with a package, she thought, and hurried toward the front of the house, anxious to catch him before he left.

  It wasn’t until she rounded the corner of the house and saw the tail end of a dark sedan that she knew it wasn’t the mailman. She paused in the shade beneath the cluster of maple trees and watched as a tall, middle-aged man emerged from the driver’s side of the car. His shoulders were broad, his belly flat beneath his white polo shirt. He walked with a military bearing—head back, chin up. His hair was short and dark, but winged with silver above his ears. In reflex, she touched her own hair, aware that the same silver threads lay there among the taffy-colored strands, only not as evident as those on the man.

  He didn’t see her at first, and so she allowed herself to stare, trying to think why he seemed so familiar. She was certain she’d never seen him before. She would definitely have remembered. And then the stranger suddenly stopped and turned, as if sensing her scrutiny. She waited for him to speak.

  David didn’t have to look at the map to Cara’s home that he’d downloaded from the Internet. It was burned into his memory. Even though he knew how to get to her house, he felt lost. As Jonah, he’d done something unheard of by seeking out any part of his past.

  But it wasn’t as if he’d just walked off the job. There was enough equipment in the trunk of his car to connect him with everything from spy satellites to the President of the United States, should the need arise. For all intents and purposes, he was still in charge of SPEAR, but in his heart, he was already pulling away.

  Frank had set the ball rolling in this direction the day he’d kidnapped Easton Kirby’s son. After the last incident with Maggie and her baby, David had mentally called it quits. There would be no more people assigned to risk their lives on his behalf. Not for an issue that was technically personal. The President knew David’s feelings on this, and although David had not said a word about looking for Cara, he made sure the President knew things were going to change.

  As he came around a curve, his heart started to pound. He was almost there. He began slowing down, then turned the steering wheel, guided the car into a long, graveled drive and pulled up to the house. He killed the engine and then sat for a moment, absorbing the structure.

  It was a long, rambling two-story brick home with a porch that ran half the length of the house. A chimney rose from the center of the roof, evidence of warm fires on cold winter nights. Ancient trees threw large patterns of shade upon the lawn while flowers in bloom abounded everywhere.

  He sighed. It looked so beautifully ordinary. Would a woman who lived in a home like this be able to accept what he was going to say? Then he took a deep breath and got out of the car. Hesitation would gain him nothing. Centering his sunglasses comfortably on the bridge of his nose, he started toward the house.

  More than halfway up the walk, he caught a movement from the corner of his eye and paused, then turned.

  God in heaven, it was her—standing beneath a cluster of maples with a curious look on her face. Once he’d seen her, his feet moved of their own accord. When he was only yards away, he said her name, and as he did, he saw confusion and then panic as it registered on her face.

  “Cara.”

  She gasped, then in spite of the heat, shivered.

  He took a step toward her, and then another. Cara started to shake.

  “Cara, don’t be afraid.”

  “No,” Cara moaned, and covered her face. “No ghosts. No ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Suddenly his voice was right beside her. She opened her eyes.

  “I’m not a ghost.”

  “David?”

  His stomach knotted. After all these years, hearing his name from her lips was more painful than he would have believed.

  Before he could answer her, she shook her head in vehement denial.

  “You’re not David. David is dead.”

  This was harder than he’d imagined. “Cara… I’m sorry…so sorry.”

  He reached for her hand. When he touched her, she shuddered once, then her eyes rolled back in her head.

  He caught her before she fell.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered, as he carried her unconscious body to the shade of the porch.

  Choosing the nearest chair, he sat down, cradling her carefully as he looked at her face, trying to find the girl that he’d known in the woman he held in his lap, but she was gone.

  It wasn’t until her eyelids began to flutter and he saw the clear, pure blue of her eyes that he found the girl he’d left behind.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Her hands cupped his face—her eyes wide with disbelief.

  “David? Is it really you?”

  A car drove past on the road beyond the house, and David looked up, suddenly aware of how public their reunion had become.

  “Let’s go inside. We need to talk,” he said, and started to carry her inside when she slid out of his lap and threw her arms around his neck.

  “How? Why? Did you—”

  He put a finger across her lips, momentarily silencing her next question.

  “Inside…please?”

  Cara grabbed him by the hand and led him inside the house. The moment they entered the hallway, she shut the door behind them then stood, staring at his face with her hands pressed to her mouth to keep from crying.

  David ran a shaky hand through his hair, then gave her a tentative smile.

  “I don’t know quite where to start,” he said. “Do you want to—”

  Tears rolled down her face, silencing whatever he’d been about to say.

  “Oh, honey, don’t. You know I never could stand to see you cry.”

  And then her hands were on his shirt, moving frantically across the breadth of his chest, then up the muscular column of his throat, then tracing the outline of his features. He grabbed her fingers, trying to put some distance between them so he could think. But there had already been forty years of distance, and for Cara, it was forty years too much.

  His name was just a whisper on her lips as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Before he could think, she’d kissed him—a tentative foray that went from testing ground status to an all-out explosion. It was instinct that made him pull her against his body, but it was need that kept her there.

  “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake,” Cara muttered, and then pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks.

  His stomach flattened as he inhaled sharply. The feel of her fingernails against his skin was an aphrodisiac he wouldn’t have expected. Then her arms were around his waist as she lifted her lips for his kiss. David was broadsided by the sexual tension erupting between them. He’d planned for everything—except this.

  “Cara…God, Cara, we shouldn’t be—”

  “Since when did shouldn’t become part of your vocabulary?” she asked.

  She caught him off guard, and he laughed. And the moment the sound came out of his throat, he wanted to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d known joy. His eyes narrowed hungrily as he began pulling at her clothes, undoing buttons and shov
ing aside fabric. Her hands were on him, as well. Somewhere between one moment and the next, his shirt was on the floor and his slacks were undone. He lifted her off her feet and then spun around, pinning her between his body and the wall. Her arms were around his neck, her legs around his waist and she threw back her head and laughed when he slammed into her.

  One hard, desperate thrust followed another and another, as if they were trying to destroy all the bad memories with this sexual act. Somewhere between one breath and the next, it began to change—turning into a dance between lovers.

  Cara’s eyes were closed, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she followed the rhythm of his body and was taken by surprise by the force of her climax. While she was still riding the high, David spilled himself within her in what seemed like endless, shuddering thrusts.

  The silence that came after was as abrupt as their mating had been. David’s hands were slick with sweat as he eased her down, and when she moved away and started rearranging her clothes, David followed suit. He could tell that she was as shaken by what they’d done as he, and was afraid she’d withdraw in embarrassment before he had a chance to explain. He touched her shoulder, and when she turned, he cupped her face in his hands.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  Cara hesitated, then lifted her head, meeting his gaze straight on. Again, disbelief came and went as she stared at him. Then she touched the swollen edges of her mouth, as if needing the reminder of pain to assure her what had happened was real.

  “I see you,” she said. “Oh, David, there are so many things I have to tell you. After you left, I found out I was pregnant. We have a—”

  “I know,” he said. “Bethany.”

  A look of shock came and went on her face and then her eyes narrowed sharply.

  “You knew we had a daughter?”

  He nodded.

  The timbre of her voice rose a notch. “You knew and you still didn’t come back?”

  David felt as if he’d been sucker punched. He should have seen this coming, and yet after what they’d just done…

  “It wasn’t like—”

  “No. Wait. Let’s start this meeting all over again.”

  The anger in her voice was blatantly apparent now, and he knew there was no going back.

  “David Lee Wilson, just where the hell have you been?”

  Chapter 2

  “Cara, please…can we do this somewhere else?”

  She made no attempt to hide her pain. “Maybe we should adjourn to the bedroom to talk, since we just had sex in my hall.”

  David inhaled slowly, using every mental skill he had to remain calm.

  For Cara, his silence was stronger than any denial he might have made. Courtesy demanded she apologize. She lifted her chin.

  “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. What happened just now was more my fault than yours. If you don’t mind, I’d like to change my clothes. The guest bathroom is just down the hall if you’d like to…uh…I’m just going upstairs now and…”

  “Ssh,” he said softly, and lifted a lock of her hair with one finger, gently pushing it into place. “Go do what you have to do. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  The tenderness in his voice was her undoing. Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to let them go.

  “You’ll pardon me if I have doubts about that,” she said. “I seem to remember telling you the same thing about forty years ago and look what happened.”

  She walked away, leaving him with nothing but a cold, hard truth. He had walked out on her—twice. Once when she wouldn’t run away with him and then again when he left for Vietnam. He headed for the bathroom, feeling a lot less optimism than he had when he walked in the door with her earlier.

  Cara barely made it to her bedroom before she started to cry—huge, gulping sobs that shattered her all the way to her soul.

  Tearing off her clothes as she went, she staggered into the shower and then turned the water on full force, standing beneath the stinging spray until her mind was numb and her skin was burning.

  One minute led to another and then another until she lost all track of time. The adrenaline rush of making love to a man she’d long thought dead was fading, leaving her shaken and weak. If it hadn’t been for the slight discomfort between her legs, she could have made herself believe it was nothing more than a dream.

  She flinched as the water began to run cold and reached down and turned off the faucets. She pushed back the curtains only to find David sitting on a small stool by the door.

  He handed her a towel.

  “I got worried.”

  She clutched it in front of her nudity like a shield, and as she did, realized any show of modesty was like closing the barn door after the horse had escaped.

  “If you’ll give me a few moments…”

  He stood up and quietly closed the door, leaving her alone to finish drying.

  Cara’s hands began to shake as she swiped erratically at the moisture clinging to her body. It wasn’t until she was completely dry that she realized her clothes were in the other room, with him. She grabbed her bathrobe from a hook on the back of the door and quickly put it on, wrapping and tying it firmly before making another appearance. To her relief, he was nowhere in sight.

  As she began to dress, she glanced at the clock. It was almost three. It had been just after one when she’d come around the corner of the house. No wonder he’d come looking for her. He probably thought she’d gone to her room and slit her wrists.

  She snorted lightly as the thought came and went. If ever there had been a day when that thought had crossed her mind, it was long since over. She’d survived a lot more than this with a hell of a lot less reason. Except for their child. After she’d known about Bethany, everything had changed. David Wilson might have walked out on her, but he’d left a piece of himself behind that he’d never get back. With that thought in mind, she gave herself the once-over in the mirror, nodding in satisfaction at the simplistic style of her clothes. No need dressing like this was any kind of a celebration, because it felt more like a wake. But as she started down the stairs to face the ghost from her past, she had to accept the fact that she didn’t want to bury him again.

  David was lost in thought, staring at the array of family pictures displayed on the mantel and trying not to resent the picture of the short, stocky man with his arms around Cara. Ray Justice. They had been laughing when the picture was taken. He took a deep breath, making himself accept the reality of her life. She’d done just fine without him. Maybe being here was another selfish act on his part and he should never have come back. Before his thoughts could go further, he heard her footsteps in the hall and turned to face his accuser.

  She saw him by the mantel. Her gaze slid from his face to the pictures behind him, and she realized what he’d been doing.

  “She’s beautiful,” David said.

  Cara’s lips trembled, but she nodded. “She has your coloring. All that pretty dark hair and your eyes.”

  “But she has your smile.”

  Cara caught back a sob, determined not to fall apart again.

  “Oh, David…where have you been? We were told you were dead, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Cara tried not to stare as she sat down on the sofa, but it was difficult not to do so. Her memories encompassed a young, gangly sixteen-year-old boy, not this powerful, secretive man.

  “Won’t you please sit?” she said, as she seated herself on the sofa.

  “I think better standing.”

  She sighed and then smoothed her hands down the legs of her navy slacks.

  “I couldn’t form a rational thought right now if my life depended on it,” she said.

  David shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

  “I know this is going to be difficult for you to understand, but you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that what I did, I did for you, not to you.”

  Cara’s eyes teared again, but she remained firmly in
her seat.

  “Letting me think you were dead was doing me a favor?” Her voice started to shake. “Even if I didn’t matter to you anymore, how could you father a child and then ignore her existence?”

  “No…no…not that. Never that.”

  “Then explain,” Cara begged. “Make me understand.”

  He took his hands out of his pockets as he began to pace, and Cara couldn’t help but stare at the animal grace of his movements. And then he started to talk and she became lost in the sound of his voice.

  “It began with the letters.”

  “What letters?”

  “The letters I wrote to you.”

  “I didn’t receive any letters.”

  “Yes, I know…at least, I knew after a while, but before I found out, I kept wondering why you didn’t answer mine. There were dozens and dozens. I wrote almost every day for about three months and then as often as I could after that.”

  She stiffened. “I don’t believe you.”

  He strode to a chair and picked up a packet he’d gotten from his car while she had been dressing.

  “See for yourself. I carried the damn things all over Nam after they came back. Half a dozen times I thought about chucking them, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. Even though you hadn’t opened them, they were the last link I had to you.”

  Cara’s brows knitted as she dumped the contents of the packet into her lap.

  “That’s not all of them,” David said. “But enough for you to know I’m telling the truth.”

  As she turned them over, she started to shake. The evidence was there before her eyes. Water-stained papers. Ancient postmarks. All addressed to Cara Weber and all unopened. But it was the two newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, that startled her. One was of her wedding, the other an announcement of her baby’s birth.