Guardian of the Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  “Noreen was nice enough to invite me along when I had nowhere else to go.”

  “Nowhere else to go? Like some damned lost kitten?”

  “No,” Noreen came up on Xavier’s sling side—which was good or otherwise he might have reached for her without thinking and that would have been bad. “Not like some damned lost kitten. He doesn’t have a family. Well, he does, but they sound like complete shits.”

  “No family?” For some reason that stopped the big man in his tracks.

  “None worth speaking about,” Xavier managed to swallow the “sir,” but just barely. Sergeant John Wallace was just that impressive.

  Connie slipped up alongside her husband and his arm slid protectively around her shoulders. Strangest looking couple he’d ever seen, but they fit together anyway.

  He’d labeled her “little white chick” dismissively in his thoughts, but he saw that was wrong. She didn’t look pissed like Noreen’s brother. Instead she inspected him carefully as if she already knew more about him than Xavier himself did. Suddenly he wondered which of the two was more dangerous: the big angry dude or the small quiet woman.

  “So, we’re both on med leave for a couple weeks,” Noreen thankfully picked up the slack in her cheerful way as if nothing awkward was going on. “I wanted to go home. Can we borrow your car?”

  “No,” John grumbled out.

  Xavier came up on his toes. Was he going to have to have it out with this dude here and now? John could mess with Xavier, but he wasn’t going to let him take it out on Noreen.

  “But if you wait a few hours, we can fly you home in that,” John hooked a thumb at the Little Bird he’d been working on.

  “How?” Noreen waved her hand around to indicate the Little Bird helicopter they were sitting in. She and Connie were in the backseat, because there was no way either John or Xavier would fit back here. They switched both of their headsets to an isolated circuit so that they could chat.

  She felt like she should be refereeing for Xavier and John, but they were both big boys and would just have to figure it out at some point. Better here in the air than on the ground. She’d never seen anyone actually loom over her brother before, but Xavier definitely had. Her Warrior-Defender-in-a-sling. So damn cute she could melt.

  Her stupid tailbone pillow made her several inches taller than Connie and she didn’t like it. It felt all out of whack, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  “John and I have been reassigned from active duty to the Headquarters and Headquarters Company. We’re working on the next round of enhancements to the aircraft.”

  Which made perfect sense. SOAR’s top two mechanics were already responsible for most of the innovations in the Night Stalker’s customized airframes.

  “One of the bonuses they dangled was that we can use a helo to go home on the weekends—it cuts the travel time to just over two hours. Usually we do in-flight testing en route, but sometimes we just fly.”

  “But why go to the HHC now? I thought you liked the field.”

  “We do. There’s no better way to see how an aircraft performs than under actual battle conditions.” But then Connie rested a hand on her belly and her rare smile showed up warm and soft.

  “Oh my god!” Noreen knew right away. “I’m going to be an auntie!”

  She wrapped her arms around Connie. Noreen had only delivered one or two babies over the years, but she’d studied plenty and they talked about nothing else for the first hour of the flight.

  Xavier could feel the rotor’s beat pulsing against him during the long, silent flight. It was broken with only the most stilted of conversation through the western part of Tennessee.

  “Army.” Big John broke the silence with another of his one-word statement-questions as they crossed the Mississippi River and entered the airspace over the southern tip of Missouri.

  “Three tours before SOAR. Just made FMQ.” John would know that Fully Mission Qualified for the 160th meant two more years of training hell on top of his six years of prior service.

  “Gunner.”

  “Since the first day.”

  “Why CSAR?”

  “Wow! Two words. You must be warming up to me.”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  Xavier decided that was good advice, especially with John at the controls of the racing helo and Xavier having no knowledge about how to fly one. He told the story of walking into the wrong Army recruiter’s office on a dare.

  That earned him a thoughtful grunt. Oh, right. He hadn’t gone CSAR to target Noreen.

  “She isn’t some goddamned perk. I’m not a total shit. She’s an amazing woman.” Xavier confirmed that he got John’s point.

  “Damn straight.”

  That saw them out of Missouri and well over Arkansas, past the muddy farmlands and over the forests of the low rolling hills.

  “Family.”

  “Like I said, nothing worth mentioning.” Not a chance Xavier was going to be spilling about his sucky past to this guy.

  Again the grunt and another fifty miles of silence.

  Xavier wasn’t going to be helping him none.

  “You and she—” But her brother didn’t seem able to finish the sentence.

  It was the first time Xavier saw past the battle shield John had raised. John grimaced, like the question hurt him. Like…

  Xavier almost laughed. He finally got what was going on. The guy wasn’t being an asshole. He was being protective of his little sister. Xavier had no idea what that would be like. But if he’d had a little sister and she’d brought home some guy, he’d—

  No. If she’d brought home some guy—that she was screwing—he’d have a goddamn coronary.

  “No.” He and she weren’t.

  And John relaxed the most since the first moment they’d met.

  “Not yet,” Xavier couldn’t leave it alone.

  John groaned. “Did not need to hear that.”

  “Better deal with it. ’Cause we sure as hell are going to. Soon.”

  “What’s stopped you?”

  Xavier raised his slinged arm, then winced and used his other hand to ease it back down into position.

  “You invite yourself along?” He actually put a question mark on it this time.

  “No. She invited me. Surprised the shit outta me.”

  “Uh-huh,” John’s look softened further. “I did the same to Connie. She’s an Army orphan. Nowhere to go at all. Family fell in love with her on Day One. Except Nori. Nori barely let Connie in the door. Still don’t know what changed her mind about Connie. I’m thinking hypnosis or something. Two are thicker than thieves ever since. There’s all kinds of things Nori knows about my wife that I don’t.”

  “Huh.” Somehow he’d never thought that pretty little white chicks had ugly pasts. His parents might not be speaking to him, but it would be weird if they weren’t there in their happy little suburb. Like he’d somehow belong even less than he did.

  Big John had eased down in size. Somehow he looked more normal-sized as he flew the helicopter. He didn’t have the ease of a trained Night Stalker pilot, but he was better than the average mechanic. To hear Noreen tell it, John and Connie were the top two mechanics in all of SOAR. That was saying a whole lot.

  Xavier knew he was damn good himself—the unmentionable years working in a chop shop had paid off in bucking for a crew chief slot. Now he was going to have to scramble to keep up with John.

  “Did you bring Connie home out of pity?” Xavier didn’t know where the question had come from. He’d said yes to Noreen’s invitation because he’d wanted to make love to her so badly. Was that why she’d asked him home? A good fuck? Or a pity fuck? Or… He didn’t want to think about what was worse than that.

  “No,” John grumbled at him. “Maybe a little bit of feeling sorry for her. But that didn’t even last for the length of the flight. I brought her to my family’s home because I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”

  Xavier grunted out h
is own acknowledgement. Whatever else, he certainly couldn’t stop thinking about Noreen Wallace.

  “So?” Connie’s one-word question threw Noreen for a loop.

  They’d covered everything starting from the fact that Connie and John had switched to the HHC only in hopes of having a kid. Even John didn’t yet know that it had worked, so Noreen happily crossed her heart to promise secrecy—on the sole condition that Connie told him in front of the whole family so that she could be there to watch. And to heckle, though she hadn’t mentioned that part of her plan out loud.

  “That’s why I didn’t tell him when I found out two days ago. It should be with the family.”

  But she didn’t know how to answer Connie’s question. Didn’t understand the answer herself.

  “He’s the new gunner on my helo.”

  Connie just nodded.

  “He’s…different.”

  “It’s not because he’s like your brother?”

  Noreen had to laugh. “Xavier Jones is many things. Being like John in anything other than physical size isn’t one of them. He’s rude, rough, abrupt—”

  “And you care about him a great deal.”

  “And I care about him a great deal,” she sighed. She told the story of how he’d screamed out her name and rushed to her side in the middle of a battle as if she was the most important thing in the world.

  Connie nodded. “I was trying to disarm…well, that’s classified info even from you. But John was right there. I thought I loved him by then. But I didn’t understand. The real moment was when he nodded for me to make the guess on how to do it. It wasn’t just that he trusted me, but it was also that even if he could have gotten out of the possible blast radius, he wouldn’t leave as long as I was inside it.”

  Noreen could only sigh.

  It was exactly that feeling.

  “Oh shit!”

  And Connie’s smile went radiant.

  “No way!” But Noreen’s protest sounded lame even to her own ears.

  There was no way she loved Xavier Jones. It was way too soon for that.

  She’d just brought him home for a vacation.

  Just brought him to meet…the most important people in her life.

  Because she…

  Oh shit!

  Chapter 7

  Xavier had never seen anything like what lay below the helo as they came in for a landing. Arkansas rolling hills covered in thick green trees had given way to flat farmland when they crossed into Oklahoma. Everything was so far apart that he found it hard to imagine. No walking from house to house out in this country.

  John pointed out feed corn, wheat, and soybean fields as if you could actually tell such things from the air.

  “See the gold. We’ve got grain sorghum in this year. That’s a premium cattle feed. The brownish are is wheat.” After crossing the Arkansas River, John appeared to have decided he was okay and was filling him in on the local scenery—which was all crops.

  Which was nice of him, but under the lowering sun it all looked pretty much the same color of brown to him.

  Xavier had grown up in a city and flown ever since. One thing about thirty-million-dollar helicopters, they always returned to base at night. Whether training at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state or kicking ass in Iraq, the only time he saw the countryside was from the air.

  The Wallace’s farm was a massive spread defined by the two different crop colors. There was a long barn with a line of garage doors. Even as they approached, a big tractor was heading into one of the bays—he wouldn’t even try to guess at the purpose of the equipment it was dragging.

  A big garden patch, probably vegetables, but also a whole section lush with flowers wrapped around a farmhouse that looked small from the air. It didn’t look much bigger as John settled the helo into the side yard.

  Before the engine was even shut down, people were coming out to glance their way and wave. A couple of guys from the garage shed. A woman on the house porch.

  And then Noreen stepped down just as the rotors stopped turning.

  It was like someone had hit the magic-family-moment switch.

  There were cries of joy, which brought out more people. They rushed over and Noreen disappeared inside a sea of hugs. Parent-aged and brother-aged men piled right in with the women. A couple of little kids wormed their way in to embrace her knees.

  Xavier had never seen anything like it. He braced himself for another round of pissed-off-big-brother type reaction when he himself finally stepped down. And was confused when even that simple thing didn’t play out as expected.

  “Hey, I’m Larry,” a guy who was clearly John’s slightly-shorter brother shook his hand like a long-lost friend.

  Then he blinked hard and looked around without releasing Xavier’s hand.

  “Holy shit! Noreen brought home a boyfriend.” Larry’s smile grew huge. “You must really be something. She’s never done that.”

  Before Xavier could process that, an older, calmer version of Noreen gave him a light hug. “Welcome to the family.”

  Betsy—but call me Mama Bee because everyone else does—was more cautious, but still more polite than his own parents had ever been to anyone. No. Actually, his parents were perfectly polite—big-time emphasis on perfect—Mama Bee was honest and that meant so much more.

  As the jostling and greetings settled down, Xavier ended up on the outside edge of the crowd. A man came up and introduced himself.

  “I’m Noreen’s father. My name is Paul, but you better just start off with Paps.” His handshake and smile appeared genuine.

  “How—” But Xavier couldn’t figure out how to articulate it.

  “How what?”

  Xavier waved a hand at all of the people who had greeted him so warmly. Paps seemed to catch his meaning. He slapped Xavier on the shoulder, the good one mercifully.

  “So you know Noreen, but you don’t know her yet. My youngest is a force of nature. She sets her mind on something and all of us know better than to say a word. Not because we aren’t thinking them, but because she loves proving us wrong after we’ve said them. She brought you home, that speaks a whole world of things.”

  Xavier considered asking what kind of things, then thought better of it.

  Paps looked over at his daughter, who was talking a mile a minute with her mom and some woman he couldn’t recall the relationship of, as they all headed toward the house. It was easy to see the joy he took in her.

  “Son,” Paps glad-handed his shoulder again. “You’re in for a hell of a ride. Want some advice?”

  Xavier shrugged a yes because he figured he wasn’t going to get a choice anyway.

  “Hang on for all you’re worth. Noreen needs an anchor. I’m guessing some part of her knows you can be that. So be that.” The force of his last three words completely belied his unexpected welcome.

  The message was clear.

  Man up, asshole.

  Coming home with Noreen, he’d just walked into a world he couldn’t begin to understand. But now that he was here, he’d better figure it out fast.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Don’t let Mom hear you speak like that,” Noreen wondered what had amazed Xavier this time. He’d been wide-eyed ever since they’d climbed off the helicopter. He’d hardly said a word through dinner. Not able to help with cleanup one-handed, though it had earned him points with Mama for trying, he had retreated out the back door into the night. She followed as fast as she could.

  It was good—give her family a little time to talk about them. Their nerves at Xavier’s sudden presence in their midst were almost as much of a jumble as her own.

  What had she been thinking when she’d invited Sergeant Xavier Jones to Muskogee, Oklahoma? According to Connie, she’d been thinking the impossible. There was no way she’d found “the one” and there was even more no way that “the one” was Xavier Jones.

  “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

  Noreen studied his outline against the
Milky Way; he was looking up.

  “Mama Bee already offered me a bar of soap with my strawberry cobbler and ice cream. She said two Army mouths in the house were already four too many. Apparently Connie doesn’t count because she almost never speaks. I think washing my mouth out with soap was a joke. I’m hoping.”

  “You know there is something you could do.”

  “What’s that?” Xavier didn’t look down.

  “You could kiss me.”

  “I could,” he agreed amiably without turning to her.

  She considered punching his arm. The bad one.

  “But if I start, how am I supposed to ever stop?”

  Noreen wasn’t sure of the answer to that one either.

  Then an owl swooped by low enough to make Xavier duck at the hard flap of wings close by.

  “What the hell?”

  “Just a barn owl. She lives up over the harvester bay. Don’t worry, you’re too big to interest her any.” She looked back to see if anyone was watching out the windows…which was ridiculous because they were far enough into the yard for it to be pitch dark. She could see her family moving about in the kitchen. Faint laughter on the breeze that she’d take as a good sign.

  She turned back to the night and slipped an arm around Xavier’s waist. His good arm wrapped about her shoulders. They watched the stars together for a long time before he spoke again.

  “I’ve never seen family before. Seriously, these aren’t a bunch of actors you hired for my benefit?”

  “Nope. With all the good, the bad, and the weird, they’re real.”

  “So you’ve got a white sister-in-law who’s closer than your real one. One big brother ready to push me out of the helo, another that thinks whatever we do it’s going to be damned fun to watch, and a father who seriously knows how to lay down a threat.”

  “Paps threatened you? He’s never done that to anyone.”

  Xavier squeezed her shoulder more tightly. “These people love you so much they can’t help themselves. You’re the youngest, their precious little girl.”

  “I was an accident.”