Conard County Marine

by Rachel Lee

  Kylie smiled. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  But she wasn’t really, Coop could tell. The tension that had returned on their walk still rode her and hadn’t really let go. It would probably remain with her in the morning, as well. If he didn’t understand what she was going through so well, he might have sighed.

  But he understood it perfectly. He went through some version of this every time he returned from a combat zone. And no matter how you adapted and settled in, you could never return to the old normal, the innocent kid you’d been when you started out. Your life remained haunted, your sense of security and safety permanently damaged.

  Sometimes he’d wished he could forget it all ever happened, but now, considering Kylie, he had to accept that forgetfulness would never do the job. The scars went beyond memory, beyond the conscious mind, to a place too deep to restore. The best you could ever hope for was to make peace with it.

  Kylie was a long way from that, and as he listened to her and Glenda talk casually about safe and unimportant subjects, he wondered what the hell would happen to Kylie if she recovered her memory. Would she be able to deal with it? If it came in small bits, maybe. But what if she got slammed with the whole thing at once? She might drown in it.

  At least his experiences, awful as many of them had been, had mostly been parsed out over time. There’d been breaks, times he’d been able to hunker down in relative safety at a base and deal with it. And the rest of it...well, there was a certain acceptance and adaptation to being at war when you dealt with it day after day. Adjustments made. A change in the way of thinking.

  Kylie wouldn’t get that, however he looked at it. Her trouble had apparently come out of nowhere, an attack in the night without warning. No time to prepare, no time to deal or adjust, and then...nothing but the remaining terror.

  He hoped she never remembered that attack. Never. While he understood she felt she’d been robbed of her future, maybe she could get back all the missing stuff that was good and skip the bad things.

  Yeah, how likely was that?

  He raised a hand to rub his chin and realized he desperately needed a shave. But not tonight. The rasping sound of his skin against the stubble drew Kylie’s gaze his way. He saw the fear pinching her eyes even as she offered a small smile.

  “I need a shave,” he remarked, trying to keep things light.

  “Thus speaks the marine.” Glenda grinned. “You’re not on duty, Gunny. Let it go.”

  “I often did when I was on a mission.” He seized on something that might amuse them both. “For a while I had a beard halfway down my chest. I blended better that way.”

  The eyes of both women widened and he could tell they were trying to imagine it.

  “Seriously,” he said, making a blade of his hand across his chest. “Down to here once.”

  Kylie tried to imagine it. “But wouldn’t your uniform give you away? How was that blending?”

  “I wasn’t always in uniform.”

  Simple truth. There were times he’d looked more like a mujahid than most of the mujahideen. Like an Afghan rebel. But he wasn’t allowed to talk about those times he’d been slipping around in places he wasn’t supposed to go, so he dropped it. No need to get into any of that. It wouldn’t help him to remember it and it wouldn’t help Kylie with any of her problems.

  Then Kylie turned the conversation back to their walk. “Was I crazy to feel I was watched? Coop?”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “No, I felt it, too. Most people can feel eyes on them. It was probably just folks looking out windows or whatever.” Lie. He didn’t believe it, but he didn’t want this woman any more frightened than she already was.

  “Yeah, probably,” she said quietly. “God, I hate this fear. I just wish it would go away. There’s no point to it. I’m safe here. How much safer could I be than being with you and Glenda?”

  Coop nodded in agreement, but he was sickeningly aware of how little real safety there was. “I don’t know if you’ll ever entirely shake it,” he admitted. “Look at Connie.”

  “Right,” said Glenda. “You heard her. Most of the time she forgets about it, but nearly losing Sophie...well, it still comes to mind from time to time. And now with this new incident, it must be like reliving her worst nightmare.”

  “She seems to be handling it well, though,” Kylie said.

  “She’s had more time,” Coop answered. “It’ll get easier, I promise.”

  Kylie seemed to wander off in her own thoughts for a few minutes, then shook herself and smiled. “I need to stop being such a baby. Worse things happen to people and they survive. I will, too.”

  “Of course you will,” Glenda said swiftly. “I don’t doubt it for a minute. You were always strong. That hasn’t changed.”

  Except in one important way, Coop thought but didn’t say. Later Kylie decided she wanted to try sleeping in her own bed by herself. He was sorry about that. He’d started to really like the long night hours with her head on his lap, stirring from sleep any time she moved or murmured.

  He wondered how many people looked as good as she did when they were sleeping. He doubted he looked good at all racked out with his face slack and probably snoring. Not that he snored, as far as he knew. No one had ever complained about it or mentioned it, and there’d been plenty of times when he would have been kicked awake by his buddy for making that kind of dangerous noise. No kicks had ever come his way.

  But still, he’d watched enough people sleep to know it wasn’t always pretty. But Kylie was. In sleep all the tension left her face and she looked almost like an angel. An angel he felt an increasing desire to make love to. This desire he felt for her was different, though. Women had revved him up before, made him nearly lose his mind with hunger, but this one...it was different.

  Softer. Kinder. Gentler. Growing as if it would blossom in its own time, not just kick-start. It was a new experience for him, and he decided to just enjoy it. He wanted her, no question about that, but she was far from ready for that kind of contact, and everything inside him seemed to understand that this was special somehow, and different.

  It felt good, the simmering desire, just waiting for the right time. Once or twice he thought he’d seen sexual recognition in Kylie’s gaze, but it had vanished swiftly. Too many problems on her plate right now to leave room for that.

  When the women headed upstairs, he stepped out onto the front porch to test the night. Silent. The breeze had even died away. In the distance he heard a barking dog, and nearer he heard a couple of cats holding a yowling concert. Normal sounds.

  Most importantly, there was no feeling of being watched. Stretching his senses, he sought even the slightest thing that might be wrong, and there was nothing. He’d quickly memorized this town, its usual sounds and smells, and the night was exactly as it should have been.

  That didn’t keep him from patrolling the outside of the house, checking everything out. At last he came back to the front porch, convinced the night was safe. For now, at least.

  But thinking back to his walk with Kylie, he was equally convinced he hadn’t been wrong when he told Connie he’d felt they were being stalked.

  Folding his arms and leaning against the porch railing, he watched the street with highly trained eyes, senses remaining on alert.

  Why would someone stalk either of them? In this place? Only one reason came to him and he didn’t want to admit it, but he was too well trained to ignore it.

  Kylie had survived. She hadn’t been meant to survive. Somebody might feel he had a mission to finish.

  He dropped his arms and his fists knotted briefly. Well, he wasn’t going to let that happen, was he.

  When at last he went back inside, he chose to spend the night on the couch, not in his bed upstairs. He knew how to choose his ground, and the couch was it.

  Whatever might be out there, it wasn’t going to get to the two women he’d decided to put under his protection.

  Chapter 5

  The trip to sc
hool in the morning was fun. Apparently deciding to spare Kylie any unnecessary exposure on the streets, Coop drove his rental car and all three of the children were delighted to get a ride.

  Sophie, the eldest and from Connie’s first marriage, was in her senior year and trying to appear to be above all the excitement. She looked so much like Connie it was almost heartbreaking. The younger two looked more like their father, their Native American heritage dominating their dark hair and facial structure, although it was still soft from their youth. James was six and Sara was eight, and Glenda had been right—Kylie recognized them both immediately from before and was astonished mostly by how much they’d grown and how much they had to say now. The thing was, they remembered her from visits during the years she had forgotten, and evidently no one had told them not to bring up the subject. She squirmed a little and pretended she knew what they were talking about.

  After leaving the kids safely at their schools, Coop asked if she’d like breakfast at Maude’s. Her instinct was to say no, but then she stiffened her spine. She had to get past this, and she wasn’t going to do that if she couldn’t take a few baby steps. “Sounds good,” she answered.

  At least he didn’t ask her if she was sure, because she probably would have changed her mind. Already she missed sleeping with her head on his lap, and the solitude last night had not eased her fears any. The nights with her head on Coop’s lap had given her comfort, had kept the panic at bay when she happened to wake. In fact, sleeping like that had kept her from waking much at all. Last night had been a return to the restless sleep and the haunting demons. So she was still a ’fraidy cat, feeling safe only with someone nearby. Well, she couldn’t let that extend to going out among people. It would cripple her forever.

  At the early hour, the diner was full of older men, mostly retired ranchers, but also a few people clearly on their way to work at the shops around. Everyone nodded and smiled at her, addressing her by name, but at least no one crowded in to question her.

  “Wondered if you’d get around to showing up,” was Maude’s grumpy greeting as she slapped the menus down.

  “I’m definitely home,” Kylie murmured to Coop, smothering the giggle. Maude’s temperament was as famous around here as her food, and probably as unchanging as Mount Rushmore.

  “She’s something else,” he agreed. “I’m glad Connie warned me.”

  To her surprise, she felt a real appetite for the first time since leaving the hospital, so she ordered an omelet and toast. Coop added home fries to his, and asked for bottomless coffee.

  “That’s the only kind we serve here,” Maude groused. Two mugs clattered onto the table, and moments later her daughter, Mavis, was filling them. Mavis shared her mother’s sour disposition and said nothing as she finished pouring and moved to the next table.

  “I’m surprised,” Kylie remarked. “I thought Sara and James would be shier with me...” Then she trailed off.

  “What?” Coop asked.

  “Well, I realized that even though I don’t remember the past three years, they do. I apparently visited often. Of course they’d remember me.”

  She felt her stomach sinking once again with the realization of all she’d lost.

  “Don’t,” Coop said mildly. “You don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. It won’t help a damn thing.”

  She drew a steadying breath, acknowledging that he was right. No point in feeling bad about something she had no control over. “I wonder if I should have people write down things for me. Like how often I visited. What I did with the kids. That kind of thing.”

  “Would it help?”

  She turned it around in her mind, disturbed only when their platters of breakfast were slammed down in front of them. “It might,” she said. “At the very least I’d know what people were referring to.”

  “So ask. Obviously I can’t fill in any gaps.”

  The way he winked when he said it caused her to smile again, and once more she let her tension ease. “You’re a nice man, Evan Cooper.”

  “Hey, that’s a secret. I’m a marine, remember?”

  “I thought marines were gentlemen.”

  “Only sometimes.” He wiggled his eyebrows, drawing a laugh from her. “You’re stunning when you laugh, Kylie Brewer.”

  That cost her her breath. “Oh, my,” she murmured weakly, and unexpected drizzles of hot honey seemed to pour through her veins to her very center. Well, she hadn’t lost that part of herself at least.

  He seemed to recognize it, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “You’re as safe with me as you want to be.”

  While one part of her hated to drag her attention from his face, it seemed necessary if she was ever going to breathe regularly again, or feed herself. He’d changed her mood in a flash, and all the things that had been consuming her for so long had blown away as if in the hurricane wind of the desire he’d just awakened in her.

  Not good, she told herself. Not the feelings, they were great, but this guy would be leaving in a few weeks and would probably never look back until he decided to visit his cousin again. And since she was fairly certain she’d never seen him before, it was something he evidently didn’t do often.

  “What made you decide to visit Connie?” she asked. “I don’t remember you visiting before.”

  “Connie, poor woman, is now my last living family. I haven’t seen her in years, and I got to thinking it was high time we put some kind of family back together. You remember Julia, her mother?”

  Kylie nodded. The omelet was even better than she remembered. “She was in a wheelchair. That was so hard on Connie at times.”

  “She never complained, at least not to me. But when pneumonia took her a few years ago, Connie and I were it. Julia was my father’s sister, and I was an only child, like Connie. So we started talking on the phone and here I am. Aren’t you lucky?”

  He said it jokingly, and she appreciated it because it gave her another reason to smile. “I think so,” she answered honestly. “What happened to your parents?”

  “Mom died when I was a kid. Breast cancer. Dad...well, Dad didn’t retire as early as he should have and he took one helicopter ride too many, right after we went into Afghanistan.”

  “Oh, Coop, I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Was that why you’ve stayed in the marines?”

  She watched him pause, forgetting to chew the potato he’d just popped into his mouth. He didn’t speak until after he’d swallowed. “They’re family now,” he said quietly. “My brothers and sisters, all of them. I know some of them as well as I know myself. Hell, I even grew up with some of them.”

  His honest statement touched Kylie, and her throat tightened. “That must be special.”

  “It is.” Simple answer. “I’m thirty-five now, and I’m giving some thought to retiring when I reach my twenty. I’m still not sure, though.”

  “You’ve got time.”

  His eyes creased again, but this time there seemed to be little humor. “Maybe. If there’s one thing this life has taught me, it’s that the only minute you can count on is the one you have right now. The past, the future...figments. Gone. Just right now.”

  His words struck Kylie. She returned her attention to eating because she wanted to think about that. Past and future were figments. The future part she understood, of course. But the past? Memories? Were they in their own way as ephemeral as the future people were always thinking about?

  Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. That had been bandied about so much that it was almost trite, but she remembered another one as well: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.

  Then her mind took an unexpected hop back to high school Spanish class, when their teacher had read them a fable to explain why Spanish people so often said, Si Dios quiere. If God wills it. In other words, whatever your plans, something could go wrong. It might never happen.

  Well, hadn’t she run smack up hard against those truisms? Her plans
had vanished with her memory, she felt helpless sometimes with a fear that she couldn’t control and she sat in Maude’s diner with a man she’d only recently met and wished she could just forget everything in the world except him.

  Oops. There went all her planning, such as it had been. All she’d wanted to do was get back here, feel familiarity wrapping her in its comforting grip and hope like hell enough of her memory would return so that she could pursue her dream again.

  Now this. Oops indeed.

  Feeling strangely shy, she looked at Coop once more, but he was absorbed in cleaning his plate. He’d just be a complication, she argued with herself. Even though he’d let her know he found her attractive, what did that mean? Nothing long term. Nothing that would last.

  She needed to get her own house in order before she could deal with anything else. But it still felt good. She was smiling again as she looked down at her own plate.

  Good indeed.

  *

  Glenda’s car was gone, but the rental being used by that Cooper guy was parked out in front of the house. Todd hesitated, then realized that the chance of seeing Kylie alone would probably not happen for a while. The woman was still recovering, and Glenda seemed to have made certain that someone was almost always around.

  He didn’t have a lot of options left. He might have to go on a business trip for a few days, and if he did, he needed to know if Kylie had started remembering. That would affect everything. He looked at the flowers on his seat and decided a short visit would do what he needed for now. Later he could deal with the rest of it.

  He pulled up behind Coop’s car and climbed out with the flowers. Now, he thought with some amusement, he just had to get past the current gatekeeper.

  He climbed the steps, feeling the whisper of a warmer spring day on the way, and rang the bell. He was not surprised when Coop answered the door.

  “Hi, Coop,” Todd said pleasantly, although he was not so pleasantly aware of Coop’s size and strength. A man-mountain. “I just wanted to drop in on Kylie for a second. I didn’t get much of a chance to see her the night she got home.”