by Leslie North
WHAT THE HELL? Agonizing pain sliced through her chest, silencing the screams. Her panicked thoughts took on a new level of frenzy. She gaped at Harris as every doubt and pessimistic impulse in her shouted that he meant every word.
Darryl jerked to the side and the gun smashed harder into her head. “I’m not falling for that.”
Harris scratched his chest, then his sides, his T-shirt moving and inching like its lack of comfort was more important to him than the gun pointed at her head.
Oh Jesus, she silently croaked. He really didn’t care. She had been right all along.
“Then you’re stupid as fuck.” Harris shifted his weight to one leg and hardened his expression. “She purposefully got pregnant to trap me into marriage.” Cold, bitter eyes flicked to her, then turned dismissive. “Why in the hell would I be happy about that?”
No. The last shred of hope that this was all a ruse, died. The blood drained from her head and her legs gave out. Darryl lost his grip and scrambled to keep her standing just as a deafening gunshot pierced the room.
She screamed and Darryl jerked, then let go. Blood seeped from the hole in Darryl’s forehead just as he dropped to the floor in a heap.
The gorge rushed up her throat and she couldn’t stop her stomach from evicting the pretzel. Clapping a hand over her mouth the second she started dry-heaving, Rachel found Harris lowering his gun. He jammed it into the holster at the middle of his back and took a step toward her.
“No,” she wheezed, as she whipped a hand up. Her throat burned and her eyes blurred with tears, but she had to stop him. “Don’t come near me.”
“Rachel?” Harris searched her face. “Are you hurt?”
Using the bottom of her T-shirt, she wiped her mouth. “Get out,” she croaked, two seconds away from losing it.
His chin snapped back like she struck him. “What? Talk to me.”
“I mean it, Harris.” Rachel pointed toward the door, her arm shaking so bad she had to drop it. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
He blinked. “Rachel, you’re in shock.”
“Probably.” Her eyes tried to stray to Darryl, but she resolutely forced them back to Harris. “But I’m also understanding things a lot more clearly. You’re no longer welcome here.” Pangs like knives sliced through her with every word. “I doubt you care, but I can send you a notice when the baby is born. That is the only communication you can expect from me. We’re no longer your burden.” She’d raise this child on her own just like she’d figured she would. How stupid had she been to fall for his act?
“Wait, you…you believed what I said? Rachel, I was just—” He stepped forward again, but she backed away, not wanting him anywhere near her. “If you’d lis—”
“Oh, I listened,” she shot back. “I heard you loud and clear.”
His expression hardened. “I see you’ve already made another decision without discussing anything with me.” A derisive grunt fell from his tightening lips. “But why should this be different from all the other times you cut me out? It’s painfully clear, you never wanted me in our child’s life and are using this as your excuse to get back your freedom.”
How dare he say that to her when he’d just accused her of trapping him?
“From the beginning, you’ve made sure to let me know you never saw me as a part of your future. I was just the dumbass who didn’t want to believe it.”
Oh, hell no. He was the one who always had one foot out the door.
He marched into the bedroom and tossed his duffle onto the bed. “In case you care,”—drawers ripped open and clothes started flying in the air—“I found the treasure,” he bit out, shoving those clothes inside the bag. “In the nursery closet you’ll find a bundle of old letters in a hidden cache in the floorboards.”
Snatching the full duffle up, he headed for the door. “I’ll wait on the porch for the police. Once they finish questioning me, I’ll be gone as commanded.”
15
“Has something happened since we talked on Friday?”
Harris flicked his gaze to the therapist, then went back to studying the black spot on the industrial carpeting. The last twenty-four hours had been pure hell, and the last thing he felt like doing was talking about it. “How many more of these sessions do I have to attend?” he snapped. “When is my evaluation? I’m ready to return to active duty.” Liar, liar.
Shut the fuck up, he snarled to his conscience.
“Why now?” Martinez asked, ripping Harris out of the internal argument. Was he seriously arguing with himself, like a crazy person? Maybe he should be asking for more appointments.
“What?”
“Why are you so anxious to return to active duty now?” Martinez narrowed his gaze. “What’s changed? You’re so wound up, the agitation’s just rolling off you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Oh, it’s something, and we’re not even going to entertain the notion of you going back to your unit until you spill it.”
SON OF A BITCH. His knee bounced harder, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Rachel kicked me out of the house,” he blurted. Pain lanced his chest and he curled against the onslaught.
“What happened?” the therapist asked in a gentle voice.
And like a dam had burst, the entire story poured out of him. He held nothing back like he had in the last sessions. He confessed everything that had happened since he’d returned stateside to learn that his father had died. The one-night stand, how he found out he was about to become a father, his growing feelings for Rachel, her keeping him at arm’s length and not including him on important decisions, the building inspector’s list, his surprises in the nursery, the treasure lore, the sabotage attempts, the empty treasure chest, the overt attempts to kill her, the final confrontation, and how she ordered him to leave without allowing him to explain.
Martinez had nodded throughout, his pen flying over the pad of paper the whole time.
“I can’t tell you how good it felt to fix the items in the house and work on the nursery,” Harris tacked on, staring at the dying plant on the radiator. “That old plantation-style house felt more like a home than any place I’ve known since my mom got sick. And now I can never go back.”
The therapist waited, his huge frame engulfing the cheap chair and taking up too much space.
“What does everyone want from me?” Harris shouted, frustration racing through his veins. No matter what he did, it was never enough or seemed to be right.
“Better question is what do you want?”
“I want to stop these therapy sessions and be cleared for active duty,” Harris shot back, then clamped his mouth shut. Hollowness filled his chest, and the words tasted like ash on his tongue.
Harris swiped a soapy rag over the Mustang Shelby, the bubbles leaving a trail behind. His therapy appointment had been a disaster yesterday. With every fiber, he regretted opening his mouth. Pouring his heart out like that was just asking to prolong the sessions.
Son of a bitch. Swipe, swipe.
After weeks of living with Rachel in the B&B, his one-bedroom apartment felt like a soulless box, and he couldn’t stand to stay inside for long. Not really having anything to do, he decided to wash his vehicles. Before he’d absconded with his father’s car, he drove a Ford F150. Having the truck had given him freedom to escape whenever he was stateside, but he hadn’t driven it in months. He should sell the damn thing, but having the open truck bed came in handy sometimes.
He dipped his rag back in the soap bucket, then ran it along the Mustang’s white accent lines. If he was selling any vehicle, it should be this thing. His heart thumped, showing its displeasure.
“I hear you, Dad,” he muttered, using elbow grease to wash off bug guts from the hood. He couldn’t part with it, even if, for a time, he’d seriously thought about it. Rachel had made some excellent points about owning a car with all the safety features to protect a child—
Pain seized his chest, and he planted his hands against the ho
od to breathe through it. Christ, it felt like a part of him was missing, and his body just couldn’t function without it.
“Master Sergeant McCallister?”
“Yes?” Harris peered over his shoulder to find a seriously young private standing on the sidewalk. The kid was so new to the Marines, his fatigues still had fold lines. Damn, he felt old and used up.
“This is for you.” The eighteen-year-old thrust an envelope toward him.
Harris dropped the rag back into the bucket. He had to rinse the Mustang before the soap dried which would make him need to start over, but he didn’t think the kid would appreciate waiting…and yet, Harris outranked him. He snatched up the hose and blasted the car.
Private Too-Young jumped back and scowled at Harris.
“Sorry,” he tossed out insincerely because he wasn’t. His mood had been foul for days, and apparently it wasn’t getting better.
Water streamed against the metal, and the scent of the specialized soap intensified as the bubbles ran off the car. His mind flashed back to standing in the shower while another kind of soap ran down a different body. Pink dye pooled near the drain—
No. He ripped himself out of the memory of the gender reveal and back to reality. Releasing the nozzle, the water cut off and he dropped the hose. Wiping a hand on his gym shorts, he held it out for the letter.
Private Too-Young eyed Harris suspiciously for a moment, then picked his way around the water on the sidewalk.
Oh, for crying out loud. Are you kidding me? The kid was wearing combat boots. Did he think the soles would melt if they got wet? Christ. What kind of Marines were graduating boot camp these days?
Snatching the envelope, he glared at the private and felt a teensy bit better when the kid lost his smirk and hustled to the plain, government-owned car parked a few spots away.
Nothing on the envelope told Harris what he might find inside, but he just knew his future was literally in his hands. This was it. He would probably have to enjoy months’ worth of fun-filled times with First Lieutenant Greg Martinez, Ph.D.
Growling, he ripped along the top and plucked the single piece of paper out. Unfolding it, he braced himself for the news.
Scanning past all the bullshit, his eyes ground to a halt and riveted on one line: …you are hereby reinstated to active duty…
A tremor started in his feet and worked its way up. He continued skimming for details. …join your unit already deployed…for the next four months…please report to your commanding officer at eleven a.m. sharp tomorrow for a mission brief…
White noise grew louder in his head as the trembling kicked in to full-on shakes. He should be overjoyed. He had gotten his wish. Instead, he wanted to throw up.
Harris slammed the Ford F150’s door shut in the parking lot reserved for deploying Marines. He would rather have brought his father’s car (every time he climbed inside, it felt like his father was with him, and he could use support from the phantom presence today), but the truck needed to be driven after sitting for so long. He glanced at his watch. 10:49 A.M.
He figured the letter would have said if he was wheels up the same day as the mission brief, but he’d packed his duffle on the off chance he was wrong. Plucking his bag out of the truck bed, he hoisted the strap onto his shoulder. His combat boots thwumped across the asphalt as he headed toward the administration building that housed most of the commanding officers. All morning, his stomach had been tied in knots, and it pissed him the hell off. He needed to get his shit together and put his game face on.
Exiting the lot, his boots continued to eat up the pavement, and in moments he neared the Visitor’s Lot.
“Daddy!” a little girl wailed, stopping Harris in his tracks.
A marine about Harris’s age, wearing fatigues, dropped a fully packed duffle and scooped up the girl who had to be around five years old. A boy, not much older, threw himself at the marine’s legs and clung to them like a barnacle.
“You can’t go,” the little girl cried, big fat tears running down her face.
“You’re always gone for so long,” the boy accused, sounding about a second away from crying too.
“You have to let go of Daddy.” A woman—Harris guessed her to be the wife or girlfriend—tried to take the girl from the marine, but that just made the girl scream louder.
The white noise plaguing Harris since he’d gotten the letter flared even louder and the shaking re-intensified. He had gotten exactly what he asked for, but until this moment, he hadn’t realized it wasn’t what he needed.
He needed his family. Not his brothers—though, they were a huge part of him—but the family he created with Rachel.
Paper shushing in the wind caught his attention, and he glanced down at the envelope crinkling in his fist. What the fuck was he doing? It was one thing to fight in service for his country, it was another to use that service to avoid a different kind of fight.
His decision to return to combat wasn’t made with the pride of a patriot, but the unease of someone trying to escape.
Hell. No. Harris McCallister did not run or escape or avoid the battle that should be fought.
He knew exactly what had to happen as his opening salvo to the most important fight of his life, and it started in his CO’s office.
16
Sitting in her apartment’s living room, Rachel carefully slid a razor over the tape on the shipping box. It had been four days since Darryl had been shot.
Four long, miserable, soul-stealing days.
She had needed to use a sander on the hardwood floor to get the blood out, and the bare spot still had to be refinished. She couldn’t bring herself to haul out the cans of stain, so she had shifted the large rug that normally sat in the center of the room to cover it. Yes, it looked odd that her couch straddled the hardwood and the rug, but it was in her private apartment so only she saw it.
The anvil parked where her heart should be weighed heavily. Who are you fooling?
She couldn’t be bothered with the job because it reminded her too much of Harris. Not because he shot Darryl—good riddance to the bastard who held a gun to her head—but because any type of repair or home improvement was now associated with Harris. Everywhere she looked in this house, she saw him. She couldn’t even go outside without seeing his handiwork, and she always froze every time she heard a throaty engine growl, believing she’d spy Harris’s Mustang pulling in, but it was never him driving by.
Spreading the box’s flaps, she gasped. Edges of flowers and fairies peeked through the packaging, and she lost the last trace of control she had on herself. Tears spilled over her cheeks, and she dropped her head in her hands. The nursery theme items Harris had ordered had arrived.
How could he lead her to believe he was happy? She had become so wrapped up in the fairytale she saw in her head that she had stupidly fallen for him when he just wanted to be free of her.
“Rachel?”
She inhaled at the aging female voice floating up from below.
“Coming,” Rachel yelled, pushing the box off her lap. Drying her face on one of the tissues she kept stocked in her pockets—and there went another memory of Harris talking about the same thing—she pushed off the couch and hustled down the stairs.
“What can I do for you, Lorraine?” Rachel met the sixty-five-year-old former town librarian outside the den. She didn’t want to go in. All she saw was Harris surrounded by research books and guarding the new coffeemaker he had just purchased like a ferocious beast.
Lorraine stepped into the den and Rachel gritted her teeth and forced herself to follow. The three women making up the Quilt Club had spread out around the table. Two sewing machines with complicated, confusing attachments were manned on the far side by the other two members: Patsy, sixty-two, and a retired fifth grade teacher (Rachel had once been in her math class), and Marge, seventy, and a former greeting card store owner.
The Quilting Club had called at the last minute yesterday to book a one-day retreat for today and since
Rachel’s overnight couple last night wouldn’t care, Rachel had agreed. In the last hour, she should have been cleaning the used bedroom instead of opening the shipping box, but Rachel had tried to avoid interacting with the club.
And her avoidance had nothing to do with the club members, but her inability to function as a human. It was at an all-time low and was so much effort at the moment.
She just hoped her red puffy eyes and blotchy face weren’t as noticeable as she feared. At least she managed to put on clothes that matched today, unlike yesterday’s disaster. She had the husband of the couple she was checking in at the time to thank for pointing out her “imaginative and daring sense of style.”
Lorraine stopped beside the end of the table and pointed. “What do you think?”
Rachel eyed the bright, happy colors. The different-colored squares all had some kind of flower pattern or picture, and the ladies had sewn the squares together to form the top of a large quilt. The unfinished edges rippled, and a three-inch wide border in leaf green lay next to it as if waiting to be attached. She had no clue how quilting worked and wasn’t sure what her answer should be.
“Um,” Rachel replied, “It’s pretty.”
Lorraine put an arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “How are you feeling? The nausea getting better?”
“Oh, man,” Patsy interjected. “I remember those days. I couldn’t lift my head out of the bowl.”
“And swollen ankles?” Marge chimed in. “Don’t get me started on those.” Her cloudy brown eyes behind thick glasses landed on Rachel. “I think you look fabulous, dear.”
Rachel covered her snort by coughing. She looked like a train wreck had collided with a box of crayons.
“Yes.” Lorraine nodded. “You’re going to be a radiant mother.”
“And a strong one too,” Patsy announced.
“Damn straight.” Marge slapped the table. “It’s not my place to know what happened with that yummy marine who’s the father, but you’re going to be just fine. Your business is solid, and you’ve built a beautiful home for your baby girl.”