The Christmas Key

by Lori Wilde

  And they were supposed to be having some major talk. His secret confession, she feared.

  Was that why she’d told him about the tattoo? She was forestalling the inevitable? Terrified that his revelation would irrevocably change things?

  “Are you going to make me guess?” he asked, his voice lowering along with his eyes, his gaze sweeping down over her breasts.

  “Not there,” she said.

  “Hmm.” His gaze flicked lower. To her belly.

  “Not there.”

  Down went his gaze.

  Lightly, she swatted his shoulder. “Mind out of the gutter.”

  “Hey,” he said. “You’re the one making me guess.”

  Feeling shy, she reached for the top button on her jeans. Undid it.

  Mark’s eyes widened, and he gulped so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed like a flag on a pole.

  Slowly, she turned her back on him. Eased her waistband down. Showed him her hip.

  He bent for a closer look. She could feel his warm breath against her cool skin. Goose bumps.

  His laughter filled the bowling alley. Big and rich. “Well, well.” His finger traced the ink on her bum. It was a small tattoo. No bigger than a quarter. “Will you look at that? A butterfly for my butterfly.”

  My butterfly.

  Her heart fluttered. Unnerved, she pulled her jeans up. Buttoned them.

  Mark got to his feet. Took her by the shoulders. Gently, turned her around to face him.

  Her backside still tingled where he’d touched her. Vibrated with energy. She was trembling again. This time from a completely different emotion than anger or grief.

  “When did you get the ink?” he asked.

  Too shaky to meet his gaze, she stared at the hollow of his throat. Noticed a blue vein pulsing there. “After Clayton died.”

  “As a symbol of resurrection?” he guessed.

  She nodded. Raised her head.

  Their eyes met.

  She reached for him. Tugged his head down toward her. Kissed him with every cell vibrating through her body.

  He didn’t kiss her back.

  She stopped. Confused. She wanted him so badly, and from the hardness of his erection pressing into her leg, he wanted her too. Determined, she caught his bottom lip between her teeth. Sucked lightly on it.

  “Naomi,” he murmured, sliding his hands around her waist. Moving her off him. “No.”

  Shame whipped through her. A whirlwind of embarrassment. Had she misread the signals? “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  “I can’t,” he rasped.

  “I want you.” She wriggled closer. He grew harder still. “I can feel how much you want me. We’re both consenting adults . . .”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” she cried, feeling peevish, and thwarted by how honorable he was being.

  “Because . . .” He hauled in a deep breath, stared her straight in the eyes. Saw everything he was about to lose.

  It was a shattering sound. The moment when he heard his heart break.

  He might be falling in love with her. But no matter how powerful the kisses, she couldn’t be falling in love with him. Not the true Mark Shepherd. Because she did not know him. How could she when he’d been so deceptive?

  Face it. Once she learned who he was, it was over. She would never forgive him. How could she? He shouldn’t have kissed her. The genie was out of the bottle.

  Too late.

  Please, Lord. He surprised himself by praying. Bargaining. Please let her forgive me. Please let this turn out all right.

  “Because what?” she asked, jamming a frustrated hand through her hair. “Why can’t we have sex?”

  “Because I’m the reason your brother is dead.”

  That stopped her. Cold.

  Naomi splayed a palm to her chest, stumbled backward. “What?”

  Shepherd saw it in her eyes. The look he’d feared. Horror. Anger. Loathing. Disgust. This was it. His moment of reckoning. The rubber meeting the road.

  “Clayton was in my platoon.” He paused. “Under my command.”

  Dead silence filled the bowling alley.

  Naomi’s eyes grew wide in disbelief, and her jaw unhinged. “How?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I was in Kandahar with Clayton. I was his commanding officer.”

  Her mouth rounded into a startled O. “You . . . you’re the one who didn’t go back for him?”

  Shepherd winced. “It wasn’t as simple as that, but yes. Your brother died because of errors in judgment. My errors.”

  Naomi pressed a palm to her forehead. Started to pace. Boots crunching over broken glass. She pivoted, came back toward him. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

  Her face drained of color. “You’re no handyman.”

  He shook his head. His stomach in knots. His heart was a ham-fisted pump. Heavy and thick. “No.”

  She moved the palm from her forehead to her mouth. Looked as if she was going to throw up. “All this time, you’ve been lying to us.”

  “It was never my intention—”

  “It doesn’t matter your intention. It’s what you’ve been doing.”

  “I tried to tell your father when he hired me. He told me he didn’t want to know about my past. I tried again the first night I came for dinner. You remember that.”

  “You didn’t try hard enough,” she said. Her voice was an iceberg. She was pacing again. Grinding the glass to sand beneath her footsteps.

  He wanted to reach out. Take her into his arms. Beg for her forgiveness. But he left her alone. She needed time to process.

  “I’ve tried to tell you several times,” he said. “But something always got in the way.”

  “If you really wanted to tell me, you would have found a way.” Her voice was icicle-cold.

  “You’re right. I didn’t want to ruin your Christmas. You were trying so hard to make everything perfect. I decided to wait until after Christmas to tell you. And that’s true. But I also had a selfish reason for not telling you.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and stared at him as if he’d disappointed her in a most fundamental way.

  “I knew if I told you, I wouldn’t stand a chance of getting to know you better. I was hoping if you got to know me that by the time you found out . . .” He trailed off. It sounded impossibly stupid now.

  “You took advantage of my ignorance.”

  “I’m not proud of myself.”

  She spun around. Put her back to him. Plowed both hands into her hair. Her shoulders jerked up and down. Was she crying?

  “Naomi?” He moved toward her.

  She ducked her head. Held up her hand behind her. A stop-sign palm. Don’t come any closer.

  Wretched, he inhaled deeply. Clenched his jaw.

  When she turned back around, her face was expressionless. But her eyes were red-rimmed. “Tell me what you came to Twilight to tell me.”

  “Let’s sit down.” He motioned to the camp chairs.

  She hesitated.

  Alarmed, he was afraid she wasn’t going to sit. He didn’t want to tell her the story while she was standing on broken glass.

  “Please.” He moved to the chairs. Pulled one out from under the table for her.

  With stiff, robotic steps, she minced her way over to the chair. Sat down. Eyes unreadable.

  Heart in his throat, Shepherd sat down across from her.

  On the table in front of them was the mosaic of her brother. Built from glass shards of her grief and anger.

  He pulled the white key strung with a Christmas ribbon from his pocket. Settled it on the table in front of her. “This was found among your brother’s things, and a note directing me to bring the key to your family in person. You could say Clayton sent me. His note said your family would know what to do with it.”

  Naomi stared at the key as if it were a poisonous snake. “I have no idea what that is about.”

  “You’ve never seen this key before?”

  S
he picked it up. Turned it around. Studied it. “No.”

  “Maybe your parents know what the key symbolizes. I just brought it.”

  She tucked the key into her coat pocket. The room was cold now. Frost puffed from her mouth when she spoke. “You came all this way. Lied about your identity. Took a job you weren’t qualified for. Stayed for two weeks. Because a dead Marine told you to?”

  Shepherd nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I owed it to him.”

  “Then why did you wait so long? Why not come right after it happened? When we needed to hear from you the most?”

  He winced. “I just received this key upon my discharge at the end of November.”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “My psychiatrist.”

  “Why did they wait to give it to you?”

  “The military didn’t think I was ready to act on Clayton’s message. They held it back from me until my health was more stable.”

  “You could have just ignored the key. Stayed away. Left us alone.”

  “I could not.”

  She stared at him. Drew the collar of her coat up to her ears. “Go on.”

  “Your brother was new to my unit,” he said. “Clayton had only been there a month.”

  Naomi reached out a finger. Touched the mosaic. Traced her brother’s face. Her pain was raw. Staggering.

  “Everyone in the platoon liked him. Me included.”

  “He had such a lovely spirit.” Her voice floated high. She touched her mouth.

  “Yes, but he was impulsive too.”

  “I know,” she said. “He decided on a whim to join the military. He was having trouble finding a job that paid enough to support his family. He’d gotten married too young. And Samantha got pregnant right away. We thought the military would help grow him up.” Her voice cracked.

  Shepherd crawled his hand toward her, but she moved away. Quickly, he dropped his hand into his lap. “Last Christmas Eve, your brother received a tin of cookies from home.”

  Bit by bit, he told her the story. How Clayton begged Shepherd to go with him to the orphanage to pass out toys and cookies. How he’d refused, even though he and Clayton both had Christmas Day off, because leaving the base was against protocol.

  How his gut was screaming at him to go. All his instincts pointing him in that direction. How if he’d just gone, Clayton wouldn’t have been AWOL. But most importantly, if he’d followed his gut and gone, Shepherd would have recognized the wounded terrorist who was hiding out in the orphanage. He’d been briefed. Had seen Ackmed Talid’s picture. Clayton had not.

  “I should have gone. It’s my fault. My instincts told me to go. If I hadn’t been such a stickler for the rules, I would have gone. I could have prevented Ackmed from taking your brother hostage.”

  “What would you have done if you’d gone?” she asked. “If you’d seen Talid?”

  “I would have neutralized him.”

  “You mean you would have killed him?”

  “I would have done whatever it took to keep your brother safe.”

  “So yes?”

  “I know it sounds ugly. Especially to a pastor’s daughter, but yes. War is an ugly business.”

  She stared at him as if he was a stranger. That look in her eyes was a bullet to his gut.

  Hauling in a deep breath, he told her the rest of the story. How he’d discovered Clayton was AWOL. How he’d taken two other Marines with him to retrieve her brother. How when they’d gotten there, they discovered Talid was holding Clayton hostage in the orphanage.

  How Talid’s confederates, who’d come to pick him up, had opened fire on them. Hitting one of Shepherd’s men in the throat. Shepherd had been torn between getting help for the man who was bleeding out, and trying to save Clayton.

  He’d taken off back to the base. But the idea of leaving a man behind tore a hole in his soul. He’d spun the Jeep around, determined to rescue Clayton. But then Shepherd had taken a bullet in the knee and another bullet had struck his helmet. He hadn’t even realized he’d been shot in the head.

  His remaining man, who was holding pressure on the wounded Marine’s throat, had said, “Gunny, we’re gonna lose him if we don’t get to medical ASAP. You gotta make a choice.”

  “In the end,” Shepherd told Naomi, “I had to decide who was going to live and who was going to die.”

  “You chose the other man over my brother.” Her voice was icy.

  “Only because trying to rescue Clayton was so tricky, and the other man was going to die if I didn’t get him help.”

  “Did he live?” Naomi asked. “The other man?”

  Shepherd nodded. “He did.”

  She said nothing. Her gaze was glued on the mosaic. Her hands knotted into fists. Knuckles white.

  “I hated having to leave him. Hated myself for not saving them both.” He cleared his throat. “For the past year, it’s all I’ve been able to think about. How I failed Clayton. How I failed your family. And then when I got here, I found out about Samantha and I knew I was indirectly responsible for her death too.”

  “That’s a heavy burden to carry.” She got up. Moved away from him.

  He rose to his feet. Grappled for his cane.

  She tucked her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans. Her face was full of sadness. “I can’t imagine life has been easy for you.”

  He barely moved his head. His neck muscles were strung tight as a tennis racket. “Please forgive me,” he said. “I know it’s asking a lot. And I understand if you can’t. But I’ve never been more sorry for anything in my life.”

  “I’m sorry,” Naomi whispered. “I can’t forgive you.”

  Her words were a sledgehammer. Delivering to Shepherd everything he’d feared. He was too broken to fix. His sins were too grave for forgiveness.

  Yes, it was harsh. A blow. If he hadn’t been holding tightly to his cane, he would have staggered. Lost his balance. Fallen.

  His heart had fallen. Fallen off the lofty perch of hope, and onto the cold, concrete ground of reality.

  Her eyes, however, were soft. Her expression filled with compassion. She looked as if her heart was breaking for him, and it was tearing her apart that she could not help him.

  “No one can forgive you,” she murmured.

  It was just as he’d suspected. He was unforgivable. Unlovable. His own parents hadn’t loved him. Not in the way all children deserve to be loved.

  No salvation.

  Not for him.

  “No one . . .” Her eyes were lasers, locked onto his. Burning hot. Twin blue flames of truth.

  Yeah, yeah, he got it. His fingers locked around the cane, and he held it tightly, feeling that if he let go he would die.

  “. . . can forgive you,” she repeated, moving toward him. “Until you forgive yourself.”

  Huh?

  “You’ve locked yourself in a prison of your own doing.” She reached up and tapped her fist gently against the side of his head as if trying to knock some sense into him. “You must forgive you. Until you do that . . .” She trailed off again, shrugged as if it was the saddest thing on earth. “Well, I can’t be with you.”

  She struck to the core of him, like the cold steel of a sharpshooter’s bullet lodging in his chest. “Don’t you see? I can’t forgive you.”

  He stood there trembling, willing himself not to react. To take it. To listen. To hide his pain from her.

  “Oh,” she went on, “I could say that I forgave you. Tell you my truth. That in my heart . . .” She laid her palm over the left side of her chest like she was saying the Pledge of Allegiance. “I feel nothing for you but deepest mercy.”

  I feel nothing for you.

  That’s what his mind heard. It was the shabby raft that his fears and self-doubt clung to. Even as he realized that raft had a hole and was sinking fast.

  I feel nothing for you.

  Why would she? How could she? Her brother was dead because of him. Not just her brother, but h
er sister-in-law too. She was the surrogate mother of an orphaned four-year-old because of him.

  “You know what I think?” she asked.

  “What’s that?” He restlessly shifted his weight, off the cane and onto this good leg. Pulled up his spine, tucked in his shoulders. His bum knee tingled. Pins of pain poking through him.

  “I think that deep down inside, you don’t want to be forgiven. That you want to be punished.”

  “What?” His voice rasped against his throat.

  “You heard me.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Is it? If no one held anything against you, if everyone accepted you for who you are, you couldn’t wallow around in this pity blanket you’ve wrapped yourself in.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for myself.” He glowered. “Quite the opposite. I don’t give a damn about myself.”

  “Really?” She sank her hands on her hips, glared right back at him. “I think you’ve gotten so used to beating yourself up. So used to being miserable. You’re afraid to be happy.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Yes, it is.”

  Anger was a noose around his neck, hot and itchy. He balled his right hand into a fist. Bit down on the inside of his cheek. Felt a dull, throbbing ache in the center of his chest.

  Her features softened, her tone growing quiet. “You’ve got to stop believing that everything is your fault. It’s time to forgive you. You had a screwed-up childhood. It messed with your head. You came out of it with some illogical ideas about the world. Believe it or not, you are not responsible for everything. You are not responsible for the grown adults in your life. You are not responsible for my impulsive brother who decided to disobey orders. Do you really think things would have turned out differently if there had been someone else in command?”

  He barked out a short, hard laugh. Heard the snap of anger in the pointed, brittle sound. “Oh, that’s rich. She who takes care of everyone. Even people who don’t appreciate her. She is telling me I’m not responsible for everything. Well, right back at ya, sweetheart.”

  Naomi’s jaw went slack. She stared at him, her eyes owlish and hurt.

  Immediately, he regretted lashing out at her. “I . . . I . . .”