Conard County Marine

by Rachel Lee

  “Let me check,” Coop said, but he left the door open and Todd could hear him talking to Kylie in the living room. Moments later Coop was waving him inside.

  Kylie gave him a small smile. “Hi, Todd.”

  “Hi, Kylie. You’re looking better.” He held out his bouquet. “Just checking in. I’ve been worried about you. The last time I saw you we met at that small park outside the hospital.”

  He watched Kylie stiffen a bit, and it pleased him. She really didn’t remember.

  “We did?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Sure,” he answered breezily, putting the flowers in her nearly limp hand. “I know you’ve forgotten a lot, but a couple of times when I was in town on business we met for coffee. For old times’ sake.”

  “Oh.” She looked down.

  Coop spoke. “I don’t think this is helping, Todd.”

  Todd wanted to glare at him, but instead maintained his best business smile, the one that oozed trustworthiness. “Maybe not. How am I supposed to know?” Without being asked, he took a chair near Kylie. “It doesn’t matter that you can’t remember. I just thought I’d mention it because we haven’t been strangers all this time, so naturally I’m concerned about you.”

  “That’s...nice to know,” Kylie answered hesitantly. “I’m sorry I don’t remember.”

  “Not to worry. It was just casual, and only a couple of times. You were always so busy with school and work. Anyway, I just want you to know I’m thinking of you. I’ll be in Saint Louis for a few days on business, but I’ll see you when I get back, okay?”

  She nodded and gave him a thin smile. “Thanks, Todd. The flowers are lovely.”

  “The best the grocery has to offer,” he said with a shrug and a laugh. “Stay well, Kylie. See you soon.” Then, with a nod to Coop, he left.

  He figured he’d handled that with a light enough touch, and paved his way for a return. He was a good planner.

  Whistling, he climbed into his car and headed out of town.

  *

  After Todd left, Kylie sat very still in her chair, staring down at the bouquet of flowers. A cheap bouquet, Coop thought, but it was indeed probably all he could find at the local grocery.

  He could tell she was disturbed by the visit. “Did Todd’s mention of meeting with you bother you?”

  She lifted her head slowly. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember the last three years, Coop. But without them, I’m kind of surprised. Todd and I kept a distance after high school. I guess if he was in town, catching up with him would be a natural thing if we happened to meet...” She trailed off, but he didn’t miss the little negative shake of her head. Then she said, “I’ve forgotten so much.”

  Coop was having a very different reaction, one he wouldn’t share. If the woman hadn’t wanted much to do with Todd before she left for school in Denver, would she have changed her mind? He supposed she might have just thought it the polite thing to do.

  But he didn’t think she’d appeared honestly happy to see him the first time or this time. Weird. It was almost as if Todd were trying to shoehorn himself back into her life.

  Which seemed crazy considering what Kylie did remember about him. “You don’t really like Todd, do you?”

  Her head raised, and he didn’t like the way she looked haunted again. They’d come so far this morning and he wanted to bring back that genuine smile.

  “I don’t hate him,” she said.

  “No, but...?”

  “But...we dated just a couple of times. I never got really comfortable with him for some reason so I called it off. After I turned him down for the prom, it was as if we went our separate ways. Polite but distant. No big deal. Meaningless.”

  “But you’re surprised you met with him a few times?”

  “We’re older now,” she said. “Maybe I got over whatever it was. I mean, I’d probably agree to meet with almost anyone I knew if I ran into them. Have coffee, whatever. No biggie.”

  Maybe. But he remained troubled, anyway. Something about Todd put her off, although maybe she was right that it was because she didn’t remember meeting him during the last few years. She might be reacting to the distant past.

  “What does he do again?”

  “He’s a financial adviser, I think.”

  And maybe oily and smooth. Then Coop caught himself. Was he judging the guy from jealousy? He had absolutely no right to be jealous over Kylie. Zip. Control yourself, man, he told himself.

  She sighed, looked at the flowers again, then rose. “I’m throwing these out. I don’t want them.”

  He watched her walk to the kitchen and thought that reaction may have spoken louder than any words.

  But it was not his problem. An old flame, an old breakup, a friendship that Todd for some reason wanted to bring back to life. Kylie was the kind of woman who could make a man feel that way.

  Look at him. He laughed silently at himself. His own reaction was enough to turn him into a jealous jerk, and he had absolutely no right whatsoever to feel that way. Of course Todd was taking another swing at it. Who wouldn’t?

  *

  Todd’s visit had the oddest effect on Kylie, but she didn’t know how to express it. He’d left her feeling down, but also something more than that. Uneasy? Why in the world would she be uneasy about Todd? Because he remembered something she had forgotten? Maybe that was all it took.

  Except she hadn’t reacted to Connie’s kids’ remembrances of her that way. It had disturbed her that she couldn’t remember those visits, but not like this.

  Maybe it was nothing except that she and Todd had had no real relationship after the prom incident. That alone was enough to make things a bit awkward, especially if she couldn’t remember patching up things with him when he happened to be in Denver. He certainly seemed to think they had.

  But as she returned to the living room after dumping the flowers, waiting for Glenda to come back from her hair appointment, she found Coop pacing. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He stopped and faced her. “Me, I guess.”

  “You? Something haunting you, as well?”

  “No.” He looked almost sheepish. “I just don’t like your friend Todd.”

  “He’s not my friend.” The statement burst out of her, and she felt its truth all the way to her heart.

  “Really? He’s trying awfully hard.” Coop’s sheepishness had vanished.

  “I know. It’s pushy.” There, she’d said it.

  At that a quiet chuckle escaped him. “I thought so, too, especially after you trashed his flowers. But I thought maybe I was overreacting.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe I am. He said we met a few times when I was in Denver. Maybe we smoothed it all over. I don’t know. That’s what bothers me—I don’t know. I just remember very clearly that for a long time we were acquaintances and not friends.” She emphasized the word deliberately. “I used to wonder sometimes if he hated me because I turned him down. Evidently not. But right now I feel like he’s trying to take advantage of the fact that I don’t remember a whole lot.”

  Coop seemed to freeze. “Wow,” he said quietly. “That’s quite a charge.”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe I’m crazy. God knows, with the brain damage, I could be. But that’s how I feel and flowers didn’t make it go away.”

  Now she was the one who paced and he gave her the floor, perching on the arm of the couch. “What do you want to do about him?”

  “Him? Nothing. He lives here. I can’t avoid him indefinitely. No real reason to, I suppose. I just... I don’t like the way he made me feel, talking about things I don’t remember, giving me flowers. Man, Coop, flowers? Am I wrong or was that over-the-top? If I were still in the hospital...”

  She didn’t complete the thought, but he followed it, anyway. The flowers were over-the-top. Her girlfriends hadn’t come rushing over with them. “Maybe he wants to strike an old flame.”

  “That’s never going to happen. We had our moment. It didn’t work.
I just... Coop, I don’t know what it was about him, but it just wasn’t right. Not for me, anyway. I’m surprised he didn’t find someone else. It’s not as if he’s unattractive. He probably even has some money, given what he does. I can’t imagine why he’d be interested in me after all this time.”

  “Maybe,” Coop said quietly, “he never really got over you.”

  She stopped pacing and stared at him. “Give me the willies, why don’t you? It’s been over ten years.”

  There was that, he admitted. Okay, so the Todd guy was a bit of a creep. He’d met the sort before. Harmless enough, stupid enough and the type that women wanted nothing to do with, although they’d never understand why. Coming on too strong, not knowing when to back off or let go... Creeps.

  Finally she sighed and sat down again, curling her jeans-clad legs beneath her. “It was fun with the kids this morning. I want to see more of them. It was fun going out to breakfast with you.” She smiled. “I didn’t know I was ready to do that.”

  “But you did.”

  “I did. And the thing is, nobody crowded me. Everyone greeted me, but nobody pestered me, and some of them probably would have liked to ask questions.”

  “Common courtesy,” Coop remarked.

  “Which Todd clearly lacks.” She ran her hand down her thigh as if smoothing something. Coop watched the movement and felt hunger stir in him again. He was getting dangerously near the creep designation, he thought with self-amusement. That woman kept pulling his thoughts in one direction. Maybe he should feel more sympathy for Todd.

  She spoke again. “Yeah, Todd lacks it. Maybe he always has. Maybe I should feel sorry for him.”

  “Whoa,” he said swiftly. “That could be dangerous.”

  At that she finally laughed. “Yeah, I don’t want to encourage him.” She arched a brow at him. “Do you know how easy it is to talk to you? I feel so comfortable.”

  Well, he was glad to hear that. Now he just had to keep her that way. “I’m happy to hear you say that.”

  “Are you really thinking about extending your leave?”

  He nodded. “I really am. I have the time, I’m enjoying Connie and her family and I’m really liking getting to know you. Unless that puts me in the Todd category.”

  She laughed then, a full-throated laugh that lightened his heart. “You could never do that, Coop. I don’t think you’re capable.”

  He wished he was as sure.

  *

  Okay, he thought later that night. Glenda was at home, her night off, with Kylie, and he’d sought the excuse to take a long run. Coop was feeling cooped up, he thought, making a groaner of a pun.

  But the simple fact was, he was used to a lot of physical activity and exercise, and he didn’t feel good when he missed it for too long. Before Kylie’s return, he’d worked off a lot of energy teaching Connie’s two youngest how to kick a soccer ball around and telling them stories about how he’d played with the Afghan children on fields made of dry dirt and with nets made out of whatever they could find that their parents could spare.

  He’d loved those times. Kids were the same the world over. Give them a ball, play with them, and the joy would bubble to the surface, no matter how bad everything else might be in their lives.

  When he thought of those children, he always felt his own heart lift. What he refused to do was think about what had probably happened to some of them after he left.

  But someday he’d tell someone about the rebel soldier who had let him live simply because he remembered playing soccer with Coop a few years earlier. Just let him go, sending him off into the night and telling him to stay away.

  He didn’t like to think about the youth of many of the people he’d had to fight. Some things were past bearing.

  He also knew that eventually he was going to deal with all that stuff he kept socked away in his emotional and mental backpack. Someday. Just not yet.

  His feet pounded the pavement in a rhythmic stride. A few people peered out to see what was going on, then waved. He’d become familiar. He liked that.

  His thoughts turned to Todd, however, a more present problem. Kylie’s reaction to him was troubling. She didn’t remember the past three years, so perhaps she didn’t remember cozying up with him, but her overall reaction said she was troubled by the man.

  Maybe it meant nothing. Or maybe it meant something. He just knew he had to keep an eye on the guy, at least while he was here. He wondered if he should put a bug in Connie’s ear, although he wasn’t sure she had room for another bug when she was so worried about a stranger approaching a little girl.

  It had been a few days, though; it might have been meaningless. Not that anyone was going to act on that yet.

  When he thought about Kylie, however, he was disturbed. She was inclined to dismiss her reaction as crazy from her head injury. He was not so inclined. Life had taught him the hard way that dismissing instincts could be fatal, even if you didn’t have a single hook to hang them on. He was not prepared to dismiss Kylie’s uneasiness at all.

  When he got back to the house, pleasantly tired, he discovered he’d been missed. Glenda needed to run to the grocery, and Kylie didn’t want to go with her.

  “It was too hard the last time,” Kylie explained.

  “I get it,” Glenda answered, “but I won’t leave you alone. So, Coop? Do you have time?”

  “All the time in the world,” he answered. “I can shower when you get back.”

  “Thanks.” Glenda buzzed out the side door, leaving the two of them alone.

  “I’m sorry,” Kylie said to him. “I’m complicating life for everyone. Why should I be afraid to go to the grocery?”

  “I don’t know, but you are and that’s enough for me. And you’re not complicating my life at all.”

  Not in any way that really mattered. His continuing desire for Kylie Brewer was something he could manage. As for the rest, being a guard dog came naturally to him, given his background. Whether he was protecting a unit or an individual made little difference.

  Protecting Kylie. The thought gave him pause as he realized that he was doing exactly that, and felt a strong need to do even more. But protecting her from what? A creepy ex-boyfriend? Or something more? He couldn’t do anything about her lost memory and how uneasy that made her feel. So what more was there? Lending an ear? At least she had said she felt comfortable talking to him.

  But he was the kind of man who wanted to do more. He knew that life couldn’t be fixed—there were no magic wands to make it all better—but he still wanted to offer more than his presence.

  But damned if he had an idea how.

  *

  Kylie made a valiant effort to pull herself out of the funk Todd’s visit had cast her into. It was ridiculous to let old feelings about him mess her up. He shouldn’t have that kind of hold on her. So she made some popcorn and pulled a DVD off Glenda’s rack, a comedy that she hoped would make her laugh.

  Coop seemed content to join her in front of the TV, and his frequent laughter made her feel good. The shadows that haunted her pulled back, receding into the night outside where they belonged, for a little while leaving her feeling almost normal and cheerful.

  God, she needed to feel happy again. She remembered the happy woman she had once been, seldom down about anything unless it was a patient she couldn’t do much to help. Everything else, though...well, she’d been a little like a cork, always bobbing up again.

  She hadn’t been like that since she woke up in the hospital and she didn’t much like this new, darker, frightened version of herself.

  The contrast to Kylie before disturbed her deeply. She wanted that person back, and hoped the new Kylie wasn’t a result of the brain damage. Because there had been brain damage.

  After the show was over and she cleaned up the popcorn bowls, she returned to sit with Coop. “I must bore you,” she said.

  His blue eyes widened a shade. “Not at all. Never.”

  “Well, I bore myself. I don’t even like mys
elf anymore. Did Glenda tell you I had brain damage?”

  “I don’t think so. You don’t seem like it.”

  “Well, it’s part of the reason I lost my memory. Now I’m wondering if I lost my personality along with it.”

  “I’m not the one to answer that, but I don’t see anything wrong with who you are now. You’re recovering from a severe trauma, but the flashes still come through of a Kylie who enjoyed life, who laughed easily. Trust yourself.”

  She sighed, propping her chin on her hand. “I guess it’s all I can do. I sure can’t change anything.”

  “For a fact.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his large hands. “I was stationed for a year in Okinawa. There was a Go master near the base and I went to him for instruction. Do you know what Go is?”

  “A game?”

  “Right. You move colored stones around the board, and the goal is to capture swaths of territory on the board. A strategy game. The details don’t matter. What matters is what my sensei said to me. I asked him if I’d made the right move at one point and he looked at me and said, ‘Right move, wrong move, all is next move.’ I thought about that for a long time, but he was right. It’s all about the next move, Kylie.”

  All is next move. The phrase glued itself to her brain, and she pondered it. She couldn’t go back in time. She couldn’t change anything that had already happened. So it made sense that what mattered was the next move.

  Grieving for a woman who was no more—and she couldn’t really be sure of that, given how recent her trauma had been—might be necessary, but it wasn’t very useful.

  In fact, trying to reach that woman only made her feel worse, and enough had happened that was bad. She didn’t need to add to it with her own resentment and self-pity.

  Bad enough that she couldn’t shake the fear that haunted her, as if the demon that had attacked her would once again emerge from the darkness to finish the job.

  Coop had already told her that it might be a while before she shook the fear. He ought to know—he’d been in a lot more deadly situations than she had.