Conard County Marine

by Rachel Lee

  “I hope so.”

  “You know Connie better than I do. What do you think?”

  She graced him with another small laugh. “She’d never let that happen.”

  “Exactly. And from what she’s told me, the whole dang sheriff’s department isn’t going to get lax, either. At most they’ll spare a little time for keeping an eye out in your direction. But no one is going to stop worrying about the children until they catch the guy.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So we’ll skip the part about you feeling guilty for coming home?”

  She twisted until her head lay in the crook of his arm and she could look up at him. “Hey, Gunny?”

  “Yo?”

  “I bet your men feel secure with you.”

  Surprise washed through him. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because you’re clearheaded and focused on what matters. Me, lately I’ve been scattered all over the place, thoughts flying like crazy birds in every direction. When I talk to you, you ground me again. I bet they appreciate that as much as I do.”

  Instead of accepting the compliment, he found himself looking at his hands and thinking of all the horrible things they’d done. She wouldn’t even want them holding her if she knew. Yeah, it was war. But war carried a price that got burned into the soul, the same as terror had been branded on her. But that was something he wasn’t prepared to share with an innocent.

  “Just don’t put me on a pedestal,” he said finally. “I’m an ordinary guy with plenty of flaws.”

  “I’m sure you are. Well, I’m not sure about the ordinary part, anyway...”

  He laughed. “Cut it out.”

  She smiled, still cradled in his arms, and he saw that the shadows had withdrawn a little. Not completely, but she was pushing them into the background. Remarkable resilience, he thought. After all she’d been through, he wouldn’t blame her for having the screaming meemies tonight. A kid shows up at the door with an envelope for her from a stranger? He wouldn’t have blamed anyone for freaking out.

  “Why did you call Connie?” she asked again.

  “Because it all felt wrong. A kid at the door with an envelope for you from a stranger? It was hardly a leap of brilliance not to take the envelope and close the door.”

  “I guess not.” She chewed her lower lip and her fingers worried a button on the front of his flannel shirt. Oh, man, the places that made his thoughts run. He yanked them back into line like an out-of-step squad. Not that it helped much with this woman’s soft curves filling his arms and lap, and her scents filling his senses.

  Ah, he hoped before all was said and done they could make love. Yeah, he had to go back to the corps, but if she’d tolerate it, that didn’t have to be a farewell.

  A frightened, traumatized woman was actually making him consider something he’d never allowed into his thoughts before: a future. Oops. Time to cool it.

  But he didn’t let go of her or move her. She seemed comfortable and she was relaxing, and he didn’t care what it cost him to make her feel that way. He’d dealt with harder things than ignoring his male urges.

  She shifted, and he could have sworn she was snuggling closer. “I wonder what Glenda’s going to think about this.”

  “I couldn’t guess. I don’t know your sister that well yet. But she seems pretty levelheaded.”

  “She’s a nurse. Of course she’s levelheaded. I was once, too.”

  That refreshed the ache he felt for her. “I’m sure you still are.”

  “Not when I’m afraid of every shadow.”

  “That’ll pass,” he said with more certainty than he felt.

  “God, I hope so. I was so close to finishing my master’s and testing to be a physician’s assistant. So close. And now I’ve forgotten all of that. I’m not competent to be a nurse any longer because no one is sure what I might have forgotten, and it’s like...that man stole my life from me, Coop, even if he didn’t kill me.”

  He tightened his hold on her and wished he had some comfort to offer. He didn’t have the expertise, and regardless, she wouldn’t believe the platitudes right now. She was wrestling with something every bit as big as the terror she’d been left with. He hadn’t really thought about that. “Isn’t there anything that can be done?”

  “When I’m better, Glenda suggested I double up with her on shifts, kind of an internship to see how well I do. So maybe I could be trusted again with patient care, but that’ll take a long time, and it can’t happen for a while. Right now they’re still a little worried about the brain injury and how it will finish healing. But no matter what happens, unless I suddenly remember those three years, I’d have to start my master’s program again.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah.” She shook her head a little. “I can’t tell you how that daunts me right now. It looks overwhelming.”

  He understood. “Maybe it’ll look less daunting after you’ve had more time to heal.”

  “Maybe. I hope so.” She paused. “So you decided not to be a lifer?”

  “I used to think I’d go for thirty. Now, like I told you, I think about just finishing my twenty. Leaving time to do something else. I just haven’t figured out what.”

  “The whole world would be open to you.”

  He shook his head a little. “My experience is a bit specialized. No, I’d need to go back to school and pick up some new tricks. But that would be okay.”

  “You’re certainly young enough.”

  By what measure, he wondered wryly, but gave her one simple fact. “I’m thirty-five.”

  “Twenty-nine,” she answered. “We’re both a long way from old.”

  Again, that depended on the measuring stick, but at least she was looking forward, and he was glad for her. As he knew all too well, looking forward could often be a very difficult thing to do. Sometimes the road ahead appeared to be a series of high brick walls. Sometimes you could swear no doorway had ever been invented.

  “Well, we’ll figure it out. I may not know Glenda well, but if you want to get back into nursing, I’d bet on her finding a way to get you there. She seems determined. You know, like you.”

  Kylie gave a little negative shake of her head. “I haven’t been very determined lately. Look at me.”

  “I’m looking and I like what I see. You’ll get it all back one way or another,” he said firmly. “You’re not the type to quit. If you were, you’d have already done it.”

  “Like I’ve been in control of much.”

  He hesitated, then said, “You were in control of whether you lived or died. Don’t question me about that—I’ve seen too much death. There’s a point where it could go either way for some people, and there’s a choice. Why do you think you were trained to tell dying patients to stay with you?”

  She drew a shaky breath. “You’re right.”

  “We have even more brutal ways, which I won’t share, of making sure guys don’t give up. Trust me, you had a choice and you made it.”

  He held her, enjoying the way she snuggled a tiny bit closer, while she thought about that. “You know,” she said presently, “I like that. The idea that I actually made the choice to live. Now admittedly, I could still argue that maybe that wasn’t wise, given what’s going on, but I like thinking it was my choice.”

  “It was,” he said firmly. He’d seen too many men return from the brink of death by being reminded of life, however painfully that reminder was delivered. He’d seen enough to know that choosing death was too often far easier than choosing life.

  “You know,” she said a while later, “when I decided to become a physician’s assistant, I also thought about going to medical school instead. I would have liked becoming a doctor, but I wasn’t ready to make the investment in time and money.”

  “Then do it,” he said. “You’ve got plenty of opportunity and reason to make a change now.”

  “Maybe I do.” She paused. “But have you thought about anything else at all? For later?”


  As if he had a whole lot of time between missions to sit around daydreaming about a future. When he wasn’t in the field, he was training constantly. Time off meant a weekend with some buddies, a little side trip to a casino or to go fishing. He didn’t leave a whole lot of room for thinking unless he went to a meeting with other combat vets, and then he was mostly focused on the past. He supposed he could have made time, but empty time left too much room for thinking.

  He sighed finally, rubbing his palm down her arm. “I guess I ought to give it some thought. Things have flitted across my mind from time to time but nothing that really grabbed me.”

  “Well, you’re pretty much engaged in a job right now. I didn’t think about doing much but medicine from the time I settled on nursing school.”

  “But now possibilities are open.”

  “I guess they are, once I can trust my brain again.”

  Conversation flagged then, and he felt the last of the tension seep out of her. Good. He’d hold her like this all night if it made her feel safe. Unfortunately, the silence was filled with his desire for her and the unwanted awareness that if he lived he needed to start thinking about a future.

  That was the part that he didn’t think about often, and certainly wouldn’t share with her, but the assignments he received...well, his life expectancy wasn’t great. He tended to look at the future, when he did, through a very short lens. Immediacy. A week from now might never happen. That didn’t encourage much long-range planning.

  Not that he lived with the constant fear of dying. In fact, he didn’t think about his personal safety very often. He had other men to be concerned about, and he put himself in the background emotionally. Just something he didn’t worry about.

  He guessed he was kind of fatalistic. When his time came, it would come, and he had no way of knowing when that might be. All he could do was be sensible.

  But Kylie had asked him, and the idea of retiring in another couple of years had been occurring to him already. So maybe he needed to put some of his fatalism aside and ponder possibilities.

  Kylie dozed finally, and the night grew amazingly peaceful. Despite everything that life threw at people, there were still good moments. There was still peace.

  He was a man with the experience to savor it whenever he could.

  *

  Peace vanished when Glenda came home from her shift at a little past seven. She sailed in the door with a bag of pastries and bagels from the bakery and immediately wanted to know, “What the hell happened last night? Everyone’s buzzing.”

  Kylie, her eyes still full of sleep, was making coffee. Coop had been checking the fridge for eggs. The bakery bag put an end to the search.

  “Nothing really,” he said at the same moment Kylie said, “Not much.”

  “Oh, cut it out,” Glenda said irritably, banging plates as she pulled some out of the cupboard. “Coop, grab some butter and some knives.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Soon they were seated at the table with a mound of food and fresh mugs of coffee. Glenda attacked a bagel, buttering it carelessly, clearly annoyed. “Something happened here last night, and I want to know what it was. Quit stalling. Cops in front of my house? Something about a child?”

  Kylie and Coop exchanged glances. Cops in front of this house? Kylie thought. Yeah, that would hit the grapevine fast.

  “A little boy came here,” Coop said. “Mikey, maybe five. A stranger had given him a letter to deliver to Kylie.”

  Glenda dropped her butter knife with a clatter, her eyes leaping from her sister to Coop. “What? What was in the envelope?”

  “Connie took it. We don’t know. She promised to let us know today.”

  Glenda looked at her sister. “You must have been scared out of your mind.”

  “Coop was here.” Which was shading the truth, but Kylie was getting awfully tired of talking about how afraid she was at times. She felt like a broken loop, around and around, even if she couldn’t help it.

  “Coop was here.” It almost sounded like a groan. Breakfast forgotten, Glenda put her chin in her hand and simply stared at her sister. “Any ideas?”

  “None,” Kylie said. “Coop and I talked about it. We don’t know what’s going on. Are the kids a diversion? Am I a diversion from the threat to the kids? What do you think?”

  “I think I’m grateful as hell Coop was here last night,” Glenda groused. “Grateful as hell you weren’t alone. What kind of sicko do we have running around this town?”

  No one had an answer, of course. Finally Glenda went back to buttering her bagel. “Sorry, I forgot the cream cheese. I was upset.”

  “I’m surprised you went to the bakery,” Kylie said. “Being worried and all.”

  “I needed food. It was a long night. Two traffic accidents and some boy found his daddy’s gun and shot himself in the leg. Everyone will survive, but we were pretty busy.”

  Food and milk began to settle her down. She eyed Kylie again. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “As okay as I can be.” Which was the truth. Nothing had been okay since she woke up from that coma, but she was firmly settled in her new normal at the moment.

  Except for wondering what had been in that envelope. Half of her wanted to know, and half of her hoped she never had to. Something or nothing...either one wouldn’t matter. Its arrival had been threatening, and she couldn’t escape that.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Glenda said. “You must have been scared out of your mind.”

  “I was for a while. But I wasn’t alone. I slept. Coop watched over me, and this morning I’m okay, all right?”

  Suddenly Glenda smiled. “It’s nice to see you getting some of your spunk back. So we’re waiting on Connie?”

  “At the moment.”

  Breakfast went better after that, calmer. Coop had a faint smile hovering around his mouth, as if something had amused him, but it was a gentle smile so Kylie didn’t ask what was so funny. Let him enjoy it. Any humor would probably leave this day suddenly and quickly when Connie showed up.

  “Okay,” Glenda said when she’d finished her bagel, “what’s the plan for the day, Coop? You going over to see Connie’s kids? When? I need to schedule my sleep.”

  “How about you go to sleep right now? The kids have school, anyway. I can spend some time with them this afternoon.”

  Glenda reached across the table and patted his forearm. “You have no idea how grateful I am to you.”

  He smiled. “No need. Once I knew the situation, wild horses couldn’t have kept me away.”

  “Probably not. Marine, through and through.”

  “Semper Fi,” he replied.

  Semper Fi. Kylie thought about that shortened phrasing of semper fidelis—always faithful. She’d heard it used a few times, almost like a verbal handshake between a couple of people, usually men. It had slid past her awareness then, but now she thought about it in light of knowing Coop. She didn’t know the entire marine corps, of course, but she’d seen enough of this one man to know that the words held real meaning for him. They weren’t just a verbal tic.

  Being a marine had probably been seared into his identity the way being a nurse had been part of her. She knew what she’d lost when she lost nursing, and she wondered if Coop would ever be able to leave the corps behind. He said he was thinking about it, but it wasn’t a decision he needed to make yet. He might not be able to do it.

  If not, she would certainly understand why. Medicine had meant everything to her. Everything. And some criminal had stolen it from her. Why would Coop relinquish his identity by choice? Unless he found something else that meant as much to him, it wasn’t likely.

  Nor was it anything she needed to be wondering about except that it wasn’t her own situation, which she’d have gladly thrown out the window never to be thought of again.

  And what he’d said last night, about how she’d made the choice to survive...well, sometimes she wondered why.

  Whatever, she told herself before gloo
m could overtake her. She must still have something left to do in this life. The problem would be figuring it out.

  After extracting a promise that Kylie would wake her if Connie brought any news, Glenda went up to bed. Coop insisted on cleaning up the breakfast mess, and Kylie sat watching him, enjoying the view. He moved so fluidly, he was so perfectly built and today’s clothes of a gray polo shirt and jeans only seemed to emphasize his manliness. A hunk. For the first time she truly let herself wallow in appreciation.

  Before that awareness had kind of skimmed through her mind, as if she wasn’t ready for the full impact of this man. Drooling, she told herself with a quiver of amusement, would be unbecoming indeed. However, she didn’t at all mind the tingling heat at her center. It made her feel good to be alive.

  But before she could fully enjoy a few minutes of being just an ordinary woman, the anxiety returned, as if it refused to give her much relief.

  “Oh, heck.” She sighed, almost under her breath.

  Coop’s attention turned immediately to her. “What?”

  “The anxiety. It comes at me out of the blue. I just wish it would go away.”

  “It’ll lessen with time.” He dried his hands on a towel and joined her at the table. “I know what you’re going through. This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.”

  “I suppose not,” she said. Impulsively she reached across the table and seized his hand. He immediately turned it over and grasped her fingers with his. His skin was warm, slightly roughened, and the pressure he returned comforted her.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’ve been in and out of war since the invasion of Afghanistan. It changes me, when I’m over there. I have to think about things in a whole new way, live with a threat that isn’t always visible, but is very present. So when I come home, all that comes with me. The tension. The extreme awareness that anything could be a threat. There’s danger around every corner, and relaxing is damn near impossible. It’s gotten easier with time to make the transition, but I still have to make it. I’m still not completely settled from my last tour, so don’t be surprised if I overreact sometimes, especially to unexpected movements or sounds. But I do relax eventually, Kylie. Trust me, you will, too.”