A Hero to Come Home To

by Marilyn Pappano

  Didn’t really want to see his mother, not until he had a better grip on his life and his future.

  “We-ell?”

  He knew that voice: I asked you a question and I want an answer. Though he’d blocked out everything after “baby’s due,” he knew the question hadn’t changed. It never did with Anna Mae. “I don’t know when I can get time off.”

  “Texas and Oklahoma are neighbors, you know, and we’re talking about a weekend. You can’t spare a weekend?”

  “It’s still kind of hard for me to travel.” That was true. More than a few hours on the road, and he began hurting in places that hadn’t even been injured.

  “You managed to travel from Washington, D.C., to Oklahoma just fine.”

  “Mom, I flew here on an air evac flight. There were nurses and medics on board. I could lie down if I needed to.” I could take drugs if I needed to.

  “Well, if you can’t make even one short trip to visit your mother…”

  He noticed she didn’t offer to come here to Fort Murphy. She hadn’t bothered to fly to Washington, either, beyond one two-day visit right after he’d arrived. The other months, nothing.

  “I’ve got to go, Mom.”

  “Me, too. My quilting club meets tonight, and I need to put some work in on the baby quilt. You take care of yourself.”

  That was the closest she ever came to voicing any good feelings about him. The last time he’d heard I love you from her, he’d been about twelve years old and sick with the flu.

  The last time he’d said it back to her had been at least that long ago.

  “You, too.” After sliding the phone into his pocket, he stood up, pain spasming through his leg. The stump had looked a little chafed when he’d showered—not unusual, but something that tended to freak him out since the infections that had led to the second and third procedures had started with a little chafing.

  Tired, annoyed, and more than a bit ashamed of his own cowardice, he limped toward the door. He really needed a quiet evening with Carly tonight. No confessions, no dwelling on the negative, no confusion.

  Just Carly, dinner and, if he was a lucky man, a few kisses.

  Carly heard Dane’s truck pull into the driveway, the finely tuned engine a quiet rumble before he shut it off, and she smiled. That was a sound she could become used to—someone coming home to her. Though some snotty little voice in her head warned her not to be so anxious, she opened the front door before he had a chance to knock, and her smile stretched ear to ear. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” He wore jeans as usual with a faded T-shirt that she thought had once pretty closely matched the burnt orange of her walls. He stepped inside, shut the door, then closed the distance between them and kissed her. It felt like a quick kiss that suddenly decided to linger, and she was glad it did.

  When he finally lifted his head, his expression was dazed and hers was unsteady, along with her entire body. She wanted to wrap her arms around him for a moment, just to regain her balance, but he took her hand and walked down the hall with her to the kitchen. “I was going to bring a bottle of wine, but since you’re not much of a drinker, I got this instead.”

  She hadn’t even realized he had something in his hand. “You didn’t have to—”

  Reaching inside the bag, he pulled out a tub of ice cream. Braum’s vanilla-caramel, wonderful on its own and way better on pecan pie than Cool Whip. “Ooh, thanks. My favorite.”

  He opened the freezer to put it inside, then slowly turned back, two plastic-wrapped items and an incredulous look on his face. “You froze the paint brushes?”

  Her cheeks warmed as she slipped past him to check the sweet potatoes in the oven. The marshmallows were melted and starting to brown nicely. “I sealed them in plastic wrap first,” she said in her defense.

  “That is not how you clean brushes.”

  “I read somewhere that if you seal them in plastic, it would keep the bristles from getting stiff for a while. I also read that if you froze them, the paint wouldn’t set up so you could clean them later, at your convenience. And I was tired when we finished painting. So were you. So I put them away to clean later.” She swallowed. “At my convenience.”

  He tried to wiggle the bristles. “Look how stiff they are.”

  “Well, of course. They’re frozen.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, the corners of his mouth twitching, before he gave in to the laughter. “Before we start our next paint job, I’ll buy my own brushes and you won’t be allowed to touch them.”

  Tossing her head, she sniffed. “I bet mine thaw out to be just as good as your new ones.” As he returned the brushes to the freezer, she changed the subject. “If you’d get the glasses and drinks, I’ll get the food on the table.”

  She removed a package of CaraCakes yeast rolls from the top rack of the oven and emptied them into a napkin-lined basket, then carried the sweet potato casserole to the table with silicone mitts. She unwrapped the foil from the turkey, moist from the slow cooker, then blasted it in the hot oven to brown the skin, and pulled the dish of dressing from the microwave where she’d stuck it to keep it warm.

  “One of these days, I want to remodel the kitchen, and the top thing on my list is a double oven,” she said on a trip back to the kitchen for serving utensils. “Both Mom and Mia have them. Mom’s never touched hers, but Lisa uses it when the family gets together, and Mia loves hers. She’s a big-time baker. She used to send more cookies, brownies, and candy to Jeff than his entire company could eat.”

  She turned back to the table to find Dane staring at it. The expression on his face was odd—surprised, pleased, intense with something she couldn’t recognize.

  “You made Thanksgiving dinner.”

  If she hadn’t been standing close, she might not have heard the words at all. She certainly wouldn’t have caught the tiny tremor at the end of the words.

  Her smile was shaky. “You said it was your favorite meal—turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and pecan pie. I added the bread because, well, you have to have bread with gravy or what’s the point? And it’s just a turkey breast because there are just two of us, so again, what’s the—”

  His mouth cut off her words, his arms sliding around her waist, his body hard against hers. Warmth bloomed through her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, one hand sliding up to stroke his hair. She’d almost forgotten that the best thing about a high-and-tight haircut was the velvety smoothness of the bottom part, where the hair was clipped impossibly short. She loved that feel almost as much as she loved the sensation of strong arms around her, of a strong body to lean on, almost as much as she loved the idea that she had someone to care for who cared back.

  Dane drew his hands along her spine, back up to her face, where he cradled them to her cheeks. His tongue dipped inside her mouth, and a faint whimper of need and hunger and satisfaction echoed in the air around them. It had been so long, and she had been waiting for this practically since the day she’d seen him in the cave. It made every other kiss they’d shared seem insignificant, made her want…

  Dane lifted his head, just enough to break contact, and stared at her, that intensity still in his brown eyes. “You’re amazing.”

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, she had the strangest need to cry, to curl up tight and weep—for Jeff, for Dane, for herself. She’d been so lost for so long, and though she dearly regretted Jeff wasn’t here to ground her, she was so very grateful Dane was.

  Blinking rapidly, she forced a wobbly smile. “You’d better taste everything before you say that.”

  He gave her a look that confirmed he wasn’t talking about her cooking abilities, then pulled out a chair for her at the table. She said a silent prayer that everything tasted as good as she hoped, only to get confirmation a moment later as Dane took his first bite of turkey. “Hmm,” was all he said, along with a thumbs-up, and she sighed gratefully.

  “Did you have a good day?” she asked before sliding a spoonful of crusty browned marshmal
low into her mouth.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “Wow, that’s a ringing endorsement.”

  “I talked to the first sergeant about whether or not I’m staying in the Army, then had a call from my mother. She wanted to know if I could plan a visit home around the time my ex-wife’s newest baby is due.”

  Luckily, the marshmallow and bits of sweet potato were too soft to choke her. “What fun that would be. Was she serious?”

  “Dead serious. She’s convinced she’s not getting any grandkids from me, so she’s glommed on to Sheryl’s as if they’re her own.”

  Carly cut a piece of tender turkey with her fork, dipped it in gravy, then suspended it, over the dressing. “Do you not want kids?” She hoped the question didn’t sound as serious to him as it did to her, that he would think she was asking out of simple curiosity, not any real need to know.

  His response—spooning another serving of dressing onto his plate—was as casual as she could have hoped for. “I always just figured that I’d have a couple at least. I mean, that’s what people did where I came from—grew up, got married, had children. Sheryl and I talked about it some, but it was never the right time for her. Of course, eventually I found out why. Hard to attract boyfriends when you’re obviously pregnant.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  His smile was faint and lopsided. “It happens. In the long run, it was best. She’s happier. I’m happier. And where would we be if I were still married to her?”

  “Certainly not having dinner alone.” Something fluttered in Carly’s chest—sharp and sweet and almost painfully tender. He counted her a good thing in his life. She made him grateful for his divorce.

  He cared about her.

  “So…” She cleared the huskiness from her voice. “Back to the baby question. If you always planned to have kids, why is your mother convinced it isn’t going to ever happen?”

  He set his fork down, took a long drink of pop, then reached for another roll from the basket. The sweet yeasty fragrance drifted over the table, made even more mouthwatering by the warm butter he spread over it. Finally, he looked up, not quite meeting her eyes, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she thinks I was such a lousy husband that I’ll never find anyone to marry me again. Maybe she thinks women have better choices than settling for me.”

  Carly smiled though she didn’t feel like it. How sad that his mother apparently had such a low opinion of him. Granted, he had disappointed her by going for the life he’d wanted rather than one she’d picked for him, but children did that all the time and parents got over it. Her parents loved her in spite of her lonely little degree, and if they ever thought no one would want to marry her—an idea that seemed impossible because, despite her one degree, she was still an Anderson—they had the decency to keep it to themselves.

  “Maybe your mother is just…gee, how do I say this politely? Crazy.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.” Then he sobered. “She’s…disappointed, not just in me but everything. She expected more out of life than she got.”

  “Don’t we all? But you either deal with it or you lose out completely.” She couldn’t spend the rest of her life with Jeff, but she could fall in love and grow old with another man. She couldn’t have Jeff’s children, but she could have that other man’s. She couldn’t have her happily-ever-after with Jeff, but there were millions of happily-ever-afters out there. No law said a person was limited to just one.

  She could be grateful for the time she’d had with Jeff and still live a happy, loving life without guilt.

  They talked about little things through the rest of the meal, nothing memorable or important but special for its very ordinariness. She treasured moments of pure ordinariness.

  After putting away the leftovers, Carly dished two slices of warm pie and topped each with a scoop of vanilla-caramel ice cream. They settled in the living room at opposite ends of the sofa, and she kicked off her shoes, then tucked her feet under her so she could face him. “What would you do if you got out of the Army?”

  Though he’d brought up the subject over dinner, the question seemed to surprise or maybe discomfit him. “I don’t know.” He attempted to change the topic. “This pie is good. Is it from CaraCakes or did you bake it?”

  “I baked it. It’s Dear Abby’s recipe. You remember, the advice columnist back when we were kids? Mia makes it all the time, and she gave the recipe to me in a family cookbook my first Christmas with them.” Just as easily, she switched back. “You had plans for after the Army. Teaching, coaching football, scuba diving, and hiking as torture.”

  “Yeah, but that was before…”

  He’d injured his leg. How had it happened? Had it been painful? Other than occasional stiffness or a limp, did it still bother him? She was curious, but she wouldn’t ask. Too many soldiers got questioned too avidly about their war experiences. Jeff hadn’t liked to talk about it. He hadn’t wanted to worry her about the close calls he’d survived, hadn’t wanted to relive the fear and the danger and the loss. He’d mourned for every guy or girl he’d worked with who’d been injured or killed, and chatting casually about them struck him as disrespectful.

  When Dane was ready to talk about it, he would let her know.

  “So that was then. This is now. If you got out of the Army, say, in six months, which one of those careers would you most like? Or have you thought of something else?”

  “You like tough questions, don’t you?” He finished his pie, leaned forward to set the plate on the coffee table, then sat back, his left hand dropping automatically to his leg. “Those were just possibilities, for sometime in the distant future. Things I would have to prepare for in some way—finish my degree, get more certifications, save money for the investment. I figured on making a decision and having all that stuff in place by the time I did my twenty.”

  “How close are you to the things you need?”

  His gaze settled on the wall behind her. “I’m about sixty hours from finishing my degree. For scuba, I’d need to get through the rescue diver, dive master, and instructor development courses, which with my schedule would take a couple years. And I’m pretty sure I’ve crossed ‘hiking as torture’ off my list.”

  “Aw, that’s a shame.” She stretched her legs out, socked feet resting on the coffee table. “I was thinking that could be a great adventure for the margarita club. You, me, and my six best friends.” Her grin was wicked, his expression akin to aghast. “It could be a real family thing. Therese’s step-kids could come, and of course Ilena would have to bring the baby, since she plans to nurse him. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  With a look so dry it could sear paint, he said, “I’ve spent eight days in the wilderness with people like your friends. It’s called war. I bet your group’s idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service. I can’t see any of you being happy humping a forty-pound pack for even one day.”

  “Not even me?” she teased.

  He reached forward, his strong fingers snagging the hem of both pant legs, and swung her feet onto the couch. “Imagine wearing hiking boots with these socks. Sheesh, they don’t even match.”

  She wiggled her toes to better display the socks: definitely made to be worn together, same hues but wildly different patterns. “I know better than to wear these with boots. These are for cute. Boots are for work. I know the difference.”

  Slowly he wrapped his fingers around her right ankle, circling them until his thumb and forefinger touched, then tightened his hold until his entire hand was in contact sliding down over her heel, to the arch, to her toes, then back again. Her eyes practically rolled up in her head, so she closed them and tilted her head back. Such attention to tight muscles and tired feet left her incapable of speech. A huge, relieved “Ahhhh” was all she could form.

  “You’re on your feet too much.”

  “Teachers do that.” She opened her eyes a slit to study him. “So do soldiers.”

  That
day they’d met, when she’d studied the photograph Lucy had sent of him, she’d thought his jaw was strong, his nose nice and straight, his eyes intense and his mouth sensitive. She’d thought those features had added up to a good face, but not a particularly handsome one.

  Silently she snorted. Even a blind woman could have seen how gorgeous he was. But she’d still been mourning Jeff deeply at the time. She had rarely looked at male members of the species as men, but rather mere people.

  She had also thought then that there was something haunted in his eyes. When he grinned or, better, smiled, his gaze was clear and deep, bottomless rich brown. But sometimes there was still a look…He’d been through things that had changed him. Loss of innocence, illusions, friends. Injury. Fear. Courage in spite of the fear. Was he a better man for it, damaged by it or simply different? Still good, honorable, decent, but with a different outlook on life and death and sacrifice.

  He gave her foot a last squeeze right beneath the toes, then set it aside to pick up the other one. “Did you hear me?”

  “No, I was just admiring your face.”

  “Yeah, women do that all the time.” He grinned smugly. “I asked if redoing this room had taken care of your need to paint.”

  “Oh, no. The hallways are next. I was thinking yellow. Then the dining room. I can actually move the computer out of there and use the room for its intended purpose. Then the bathrooms. One of them is Pepto-Bismol pink. Then that would leave just the bedrooms and the kitchen…oh, and the outside.”

  His fingers continued squeezing long and slow the length of her foot before he finally spoke. “Give me a pen and paper before I leave.”

  “To make a list of supplies?”

  “To make a list of my favorite foods. You’ll have plenty of chances to cook dinner again before we finish all that.”