As for a kiss…Aw, man, she missed kisses. In seven years, the only man who’d kissed her was Ben, and that had been disappointingly passionless. But that didn’t mean she wanted Joe to kiss her. It would be like kissing her brother. Yikes, yuck, and poo.
Then she looked at him again, too darn handsome for his own good, and thought about that sly look, and the grin she loved, and everything else about him that she loved and hated and drove her crazy, and for the first time since they’d met, she’d found herself wondering the impossible.
What would it be like to get a kiss from Joe?
Chapter 12
Thunderstorms moved in Saturday evening, bringing much-needed rain that continued to fall long after the thunder and lightning faded away. It moved the family dinner inside, where Sara’s kids tried to burn off the energy they would have depleted in the backyard in better weather. Avi had a great time with them, and she saw her mom watching them with longing. She was probably thinking how unfair it was that Patricia had three grandkids while she had none. I’m gonna work on it, Mom. Soon as I get settled in Augusta. Soon as I meet the right guy.
Soon as I get Ben out of my heart.
Good luck with that.
After dinner, the kids persuaded her father to take them out on the front porch. Seeing him through the living room windows, watching patiently while the little ones raced each other from one end of the porch to the other, she slipped out the door, dodged three giggling bullets, and sat down next to him on the old-fashioned glider.
“I see you haven’t changed,” she teased affectionately. “Still the life of the party.”
“The way I see it, a party only needs one life, and there’s at least three of them in there.” He set the glider moving with the push of a foot. “I can’t believe your month is nearly over.”
“I’ve still got almost a week left.”
“For your dad, that’s nearly over. Time passes faster for me than it does for you.” He patted her arm. “I hear you’re grown up and everything, but I hate to see you drive all the way to Fort Gordon by yourself. Why don’t you ask Ben to go with you, then fly back?”
She smiled despite the lump forming in her throat. “I suggested it. He didn’t jump at the chance.” But he hadn’t turned her down. They’d left the question hanging. Maybe he would surprise her. She wasn’t pinning her hopes on it, though.
“Let me know if I need to twist his arm a little.”
“He’s an orthopedic surgeon. He’d just untwist it.”
Neil rocked the seat for a while, absently calling to four-year-old Eli when he ventured past the first two steps. After a while, he tilted his head to study her. “This visit has been good for you.”
“It has,” she reflected. “I should have done it years ago.”
“Your mother tried to tell you.”
She had. Given Beth’s way, though, Avi would never go anywhere else on leave. Oklahoma had its allure, but so did the oceans, the mountains, and the cities. Still, this had been exactly what she needed this time. She was more relaxed than she’d been in years. She’d eaten better, slept better, and laughed more. It was exactly what the doctor would have ordered if she’d consulted one.
“I wish I had half their energy,” Neil said with a nod toward the kids. “Am I going to get any of those while I’m young enough to enjoy them?”
“There’s an awful lot to it, Dad. To start with, I have to meet a guy.” Unless she and Ben had had a condom failure in the past few weeks. Wouldn’t it be something to find out in two to four weeks that she was pregnant? That would cast everything in a different light. It would certainly keep Ben in her life.
Though not the way she wanted.
“You’re a pretty girl. Finding a guy won’t be hard. After all, all you really need is a sperm donor.” Then Neil reflected on that. “Though, as your father, I’d prefer someone who makes you happy, wants to marry you, and wants to be a father.”
“You and me both.” She’d counseled young soldiers under her command who’d found themselves pregnant after a careless night partying, with the father in the wind. Not only were they still expected to do their jobs, the same as before, but now they’d had a tiny helpless baby to care for. The usual caretakers of new babies—grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and cousins and friends—more often than not lived in another state, and Lord knows, affordable child care wasn’t easy to find in an Army town. Working a schedule of days, along with an overnight watch, then two weeks of training out of town here, another week there, switching to a night shift…Even two parents had problems when they both wore the uniform.
“You gonna be all right at Fort Gordon?”
“Sure,” she said breezily, tucking her feet beneath her, resting her arm on the back of the glider and leaning her head against her fist. “I make friends quickly.”
“I mean, about Ben. Are you going to be okay without him?”
“We knew nothing would come of this from the beginning.”
“It doesn’t matter what you knew at the beginning. Do you think I had any clue when I first met your mom how I was going to feel about her a month later?”
Avi gazed down the porch, where the kids were now seated in a circle on the floor, Lainie talking excitedly, the two boys listening as if fascinated. It was hard to imagine a time when her father didn’t love her mother. They were so perfectly suited that surely they must have been together from the beginning of time.
She sighed wistfully. “I thought it was possible we’d get too involved, but it was a risk I was willing to take. Nothing’s changed, really. I came here with the intent of returning to Augusta after a month, and that’s still on the schedule. I’ll be fine, Dad. So will Ben.”
Neil gave her a chiding look. “No offense, sweetheart, but I’m not real concerned about how he’ll be doing this time next week.” He let a moment or two pass quietly before saying, “Your mom was right, you know. You don’t have to retire from the Army. I didn’t. Your grandfather didn’t.”
“I know. But this is what I want to do with my life.” She was as sure of it now as she’d been three weeks ago, but somewhere deep inside, it sounded just a little bit hollow. Hadn’t she always wanted to get married, too, and have kids? Had the career become more important than the family? Maybe. For the moment. When she couldn’t have both.
“I know it’s all you ever really wanted. I just want you to remember that getting out is always an option. Sure, you’d lose your retirement benefits, but you marry a doctor, honey, you don’t have to worry about health care, and you won’t need that pension.”
She swatted his arm playfully. “I can’t believe my father, who brought me up to be independent and to always rely on myself, is suggesting that I get married to secure a comfortable life.”
Laughing, he dodged her second swat. “Hey, there are many ways of taking care of yourself. Marrying a rich man just happens to be one of them. Besides, you’ve got your folks to worry about. One day, your mom and I are going to reach old age. It would be easier for you to pay for our cruises, our ski chalet, our beachfront property, and our luxury lifestyle if you were married to Ben.”
She couldn’t help but snicker. Her parents might age, but they would never be old, and even if they were, it was a matter of pride to both of them that they’d provided well for their future. They would no more accept her support than she would take theirs. “I don’t think Ben is exactly rich,” she pointed out.
Her father smiled at her in that mindful way of his. “He is in the way that counts, sweetheart. He’s got you.” He patted her on the knee. “If you don’t mind keeping an eye on the kids, I believe I’ll go in and see what’s for dessert.”
“Eat double for me.”
The door had hardly closed behind him when the younger two kids approached Avi. Matthew stayed at the other end of the porch, sprawled in a wicker chair, apparently contemplating his well-worn sneakers. “I saw you at Uncle Ben’s work,” Lainie said. “You’re G.I. Joe.”
“Yes, she is. Aren’t you?”
Avi smiled. “I’m a soldier.”
“See?” Lainie fisted both hands on her hips. “G.I. Joe.”
Eli shook his head. “Joe’s a football pwayuh and a wawn mowuh.”
A lawn mower. Joe would probably get a kick out of that, Avi thought.
Swiping her hair back, Lainie climbed onto the glider. “He thinks only one person in the world can have a name.” She leaned closer and confided in a loud whisper, as if it explained everything, “He’s four. Are you gonna marry Uncle Ben?”
Longing surged deep inside Avi, but she ruthlessly pushed it down. “Uncle Ben and I are friends.”
“You’re his girlfriend,” Lainie corrected, and Eli chimed in, “Girlfwiend.”
“He kisses you.” She made kissy sounds, and Eli giggled. “Aunt Bree says what if he goes away to live with you and we never see him again. Me and my brothers—we don’t want him to go away.”
Aunt Bree should check for small children who absorbed everything they heard before she spoke, Avi thought. “I don’t think Uncle Ben’s going anywhere.”
“Aunt Bree says sometimes people do silly things. Like this.” Lainie held up her arm, still encased in an elastic bandage with a vibrant tie-dye color scheme going on. “I climbed a tree.”
“She falled,” Eli put in.
“I didn’t fall! My feet jumped, and the rest of my body had to go, too.”
Avi checked the smile trying to curve her lips. “That’s happened to me before.” When one part of her body committed, the rest of her just had to go along. Once her heart had gotten involved with Ben, her brain had had no say in the matter.
“What does a soldier do? Can you drive a tank? Do you have a big gun? Where’s your soldier costume?”
Grateful for the change of subject, Avi answered her questions. She expected the answers to prompt further questions, but they got an interruption instead, in the form of chatty Aunt Bree.
Brianne lifted Lainie, took her seat on the glider, then settled the girl on her lap. Lainie grinned at her. “It’s okay, Aunt Bree. We told her you and Mama and us don’t want her to take Uncle Ben away, and she’s not.”
Brianne’s cheeks turned pink. “We try to spell everything around her, but she’s learned to sound out most of the words. Blasted phonics.”
Eli patted his aunt’s hands to get her attention. “Can we pway in the wain, Aunt Bwee?”
“No,” she said simply. End of discussion.
Avi liked her for that alone. On one of her early visits to Tallgrass, when her grandmother had said no to something she’d wanted to do, Avi had come back with a whiny Why not? GrandMir told her for the first and only time that she was the adult, Avi was the child, and no meant no. Reasons didn’t matter. Explanations weren’t owed. At the time, Avi had thought it unfair, but she’d come to value the simplicity of it. She intended to use the same reasoning with her kids.
“You ever been married?” Brianne asked. When Avi shook her head, she replied, “Me, either. I didn’t have my first date until I had graduated from college. I was the cheery fat girl who told lots of jokes and that guys didn’t look twice at. Sara likes to say I was big-boned, but I had passed ‘big-boned’ about a hundred pounds earlier.”
“That’s hard to imagine.” Brianne was nearly as tall as Ben, maybe six foot, and there wasn’t one excess ounce on her. She was sleek and hard-muscled, a long lean body capable of working hard and efficiently, and she looked killer in her snug sapphire blue sleeveless dress. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I had the best time at my ten-year high school reunion. All the boys who could never remember my name suddenly couldn’t forget it. It was lovely.”
“If I didn’t have a job where I had to work out regularly, my—” Avi glanced at Lainie, seemingly oblivious to the conversation, then laid her hands over the girl’s ears. “My bravo-uniform-tango-tango would need a wide load sign.”
“I heard that,” Lainie said.
“Yes, but did you understand it?”
The girl shook her head.
“Good.” Avi offered her fist for a bump, and the girl who looked so much like Ben did it enthusiastically. She grinned wide, her deep brown eyes both intense and playful, then slid to her feet and ran off to the other end of the porch.
* * *
There was something disconcerting about a park after dark, when everyone had gone home and the playground equipment stood silent and empty. Or maybe the disconcerted feeling came from deep inside Ben because time was running out for him and Avi. He sat on a swing at Tallgrass’s City Park, a broad swath of heavy-duty canvas secured to the metal A-frame by lengths of steel chain. The ground beneath his feet was sandy, warm, and damp, the air scented with aromas from a grill somewhere among the nearby houses.
It was Sunday evening, and he should have been home by now. Instead, he braced his feet in the soft dirt and twisted the swing so he could watch Avi beside him. Her white dress gleamed in the night, and her hair floated free behind her as she used gentle pushes to keep her own swing in motion.
Sara had liked Avi. Brianne, always a little more passionate, adored her. You shouldn’t let her go, she’d said just before she, Sara, and the family left for Tulsa Saturday. She’s a keeper.
He couldn’t keep someone who was obligated to leave.
But he didn’t have to let go. Long-distance relationships might not be ideal, but they worked for a lot of people, and he had enough money that regular trips between Tulsa and Augusta wouldn’t be a strain financially.
But it wasn’t the life he’d imagined for himself. What was the point of being in a relationship or a marriage when you could see each other only forty-eight hours a week? How could that work when the kids came along? He didn’t want to be a part-time husband, and he damn well wouldn’t be a part-time father.
Long-distance worked for a lot of people, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t one of them. He wanted—needed—the people he loved close.
“What’cha thinkin’?” she asked in a singsong voice.
“Nothing.”
She shook her head. “‘Nothing’ doesn’t make your face scrunch up like that. ‘Nothing’ gives you kind of a blank, bland look because, well, it’s nothing.”
“Okay. I was thinking about you leaving and whether we could make things work with you halfway across the country.”
She stopped swinging, planted her feet, and twisted to face him. Her long, slender fingers gripped the chains a little tighter than two minutes ago. “And?”
Grimly, he shook his head.
“What? You don’t care enough?”
He scowled at her ridiculous question. “I care too much. I want more, Avi. I want a normal life, a wife and a home and a family, with all of us living in the same house and my wife and me sleeping in the same bed, not once every few weeks or months but every night. All the time.”
She turned in a circle, winding the chain around itself. “You want me to get out of the Army.” Her tone was flat, her words a foregone conclusion in her mind. And damn if she wasn’t right.
“Is that so much to ask?”
She did another circle. “No, of course not. After all, you’re the man and I’m the woman, so I should be the one to sacrifice.” She turned once again. “Your job is not more important than mine, Doc. And I can only be a soldier in so many places, while you can be a doctor anywhere.”
“It’s not just a job. It’s a career.”
“So is mine.” Lifting her feet into the air, she leaned back and let her head tilt, her hair flowing behind her, as the taut chain unwound itself. When it came to a stop, she stood and put her hands on her hips. “Even if I wanted to get out—which I don’t—I’ve got nearly two years left on this enlistment. What would you suggest? That you live your life and I live mine and we visit when we can and see other people when we can’t?”
At that moment, the sound of her voic
e made his head hurt. The question she was asking made his heart hurt. “No, Avi, I’m not suggesting—”
“You knew I was a soldier when you asked me to breakfast that Sunday. You knew that next weekend, I’d be kicking the dust of this town off my heels and heading to Georgia. Yet you still spent time with me, kissed me, made love with me—”
“I didn’t intend to fall in love with you!”
She drew back, blinked, then folded her arms across her middle. He’d earned that response from enough women in his life to know that nothing good ever came from it. But, as usual, Avi proved herself different. She didn’t display any anger, didn’t say anything flippant or hurtful. She breathed deeply a couple of times, then lowered her arms. “I didn’t intend to fall in love with you, either,” she admitted. “They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If that’s where we’re headed, then it’s all your fault for being so damn lovable.”
He’d never felt less like laughing, not when everything inside him was tender and sore and aching, but it happened anyway. “No one, not even my mom, has ever called me lovable. Some of the nursing staff I work with think I’m cranky, even demanding.”
“You? No.” She looked aghast, but the humor in her eyes undermined it. She offered her hand, and he took it, rising from the swing. They started a slow stroll toward the sidewalk that circled the perimeter of the park.
“I get that you always wanted to have an Army career,” he said after a while. There was defeat in his voice. “But didn’t you ever consider that something else might come along? Something maybe worth giving it up for?”
She shook her head. “Do you know how many married military members there are? I just assumed I would be one of them. Be a soldier during the day and go home and be wife and mom the rest of the time. I figured whoever I married wouldn’t have a problem with the soldier part because, hey, I would already be a soldier when we met.”
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