by Karina Bliss
Ross heard her coming and arrowed farther out into the estuary, a more direct route, but one that forced him to paddle harder to counter the current. Lungs burning with the unaccustomed effort, Claire ran out of steam. “Lewie,” she hollered between gasps. “Tag.”
Teen coolness forgotten, her son detoured toward her, arms pumping, a grin splitting his face. She high-fived and he sprinted ahead, splashing through the shallows like an exuberant dog.
Nate and Dan eased into a jog. “Win this for us, mate!”
Lewis drew level with the kayak and droplets streamed off the paddle blade as Ross dug furrows through the choppy surface. Lewis inched ahead. Her son’s hand slapped the wooden pillar seconds before the kayak shot underneath the bridge. Claire dropped to a walk, pressing a knuckle into the stitch in her side and laughing. “We rule.”
There’d been a time when these old games would have been too painful; now they seemed a celebration of everything that had been good about her life with Steve.
“Nice strategy, Langfords,” Dan approved as he and Nate reached the bridge. “Local knowledge and teamwork wins.” He walked ahead with Lewis, leaving Nate to wait for her, a deliberate move, she realized.
Claire wasn’t sure how she felt about that tacit permission.
“Oh, wow, do I need fitness,” she gasped as Nate reached out a hand to pull her up the bank. And it was there again, that electric awareness.
He released her hand. “Okay if I stay another couple of days?” he asked, and she felt a leap in her pulse. “Depending on Jo’s test results. If they’re clear, I’ll leave tomorrow night as planned. If she needs treatment…” His voice trailed off.
Claire bought a minute by wiping her sandy feet on the grass. Great that he was prepared to support their friends. She and Nate had agreed not to follow up their attraction and if there was one quality they shared, it was willpower. But that didn’t mean her feelings for him wouldn’t get stronger. The pulse leaps weren’t something she had control over. She liked having him around, but she didn’t want to need him around.
Except Dan might need him and Lewis could spend more time with his favorite. No contest.
“Of course you can stay,” she said casually.
“Come on, you guys,” Lewis bellowed. “We want to jump.”
“Coming,” she called. They started walking along the bridge.
“I thought I’d sleep on Heaven Sent now the cabin’s cleaned up. Give Lewis his space.”
“It’ll be good for security, too,” she said, relieved. “With all the deliveries we’ve had recently, I’m concerned about break-ins. I’ll pick up a padlock when I’m in town later.”
“That’s settled then.”
Yes, they understood each other perfectly. And if he stayed longer, they had a chaperone. Lewis wouldn’t let Nate out of his sight.
“Mum, you can go first,” her son said when they reached the launch spot. “That way you’re less likely to chicken out.”
“As if,” she scoffed. Claire leaned out and waved to Ross, who’d beached the kayak at the shoreline. Then clutching the railing, she climbed over and took her first look at the fast-flowing water below. Closed her eyes under the familiar surge of fear.
As a kid she’d been teased about her inability to jump, but neither taunts nor bribes, not even her own stubborn determination, had ever counted against the stark terror she always experienced at this point. She ended up clinging limpet-like to the railing and scrambling back over. “Next time,” she’d promise—to herself as much as everyone else. Defeat was not in her nature.
She hadn’t attempted the bridge leap since Steve’s death and having gone through so much, she’d sincerely believed today would be different.
So why were her fingers grabbing the handrail in a death grip?
“C’mon, Mum,” Lewis said impatiently.
Claire swallowed again. “Give me a minute.” She took another look at the estuary. It wasn’t even that far, only twelve feet. Her toes gripped the edge of the boards like another pair of hands.
“Mum.”
“Lewis,” Dan said quietly, “patience.”
She barely registered the comment. “One more minute,” she sang out in a nervous falsetto, conscious of growing frustration. She’d fought through a black cloud of grief, found a new passion in her business, rescued her son from bad company. Surely she could jump off this stupid footbridge.
“Count of three,” she croaked. “One…two…” Her knees threatened to buckle. “Two point one.” It’s not going to happen. She crawled over the railing to safety. “Next time,” she promised. “Today I’ll go in from the shore.”
The guys didn’t tease her. These tough guys, to whom this kind of thing wasn’t even a blip on their adventure radar. She loved them for it.
Her son had no such compunction. “Told ya.” Shaking his head, Lewis sprang onto the railing and balanced there with athletic ease.
“Show-off,” Claire grumbled. “Be careful around Nate. He’ll push you.”
Nate grinned. Ross’s laugh echoed from below. “Tell Lewis that story,” she encouraged. After a slight hesitation, he did, and her son listened closely to every word.
“I want to learn to parachute,” he said when Nate finished. “And I’m not scared of heights. Maybe I’ll join the SAS.”
Claire bit back her instinctive “no” as Dan threw a casual arm around her shoulder.
“What happened to game designing?” he asked.
“Well, there’s heaps of competition in tech.” Blithely Lewis dismissed SAS selection as easy. “I don’t know if I’m good enough.” A wind gust made him sway and he flung out his arms to regain balance.
“Design a battle game,” Ross called from the water. “Make some money. You don’t want a soldier’s pay.”
“Or become a farmer,” Dan replied. “You’ve got the right attitude.”
“Being a bodyguard pays well,” offered Nate, Claire suspected to provoke a disgusted snort from Ross.
“How about working in the family business with me?” she suggested, and provoked the same response from Lewis.
“You just want slave labor.”
“Enough talk, hotshot,” she said to her son. “Show me how this should be done.”
He leaped with a whoop and a boy’s fluidity. Climbing onto the railing, Nate and Dan opted for bombs. All three came up openmouthed and gasping.
“Sh…eesh, that’s cold,” Nate swam against the current to stay under the bridge. “I’m glad I’m in a wet suit.”
Lewis flipped onto his back, as graceful as a seal. “It’s too cold to hang around. Let’s go.”
“That settles it,” Claire said. “I’m not even getting wet. Ross, I’ll hitch a ride with you.” She scrambled down the bank under the bridge to join him. “Huh, I see you threw in an extra paddle.”
“Oh, I know you’ll jump,” he assured her, watching the swimmers. “It’s only a matter of when.”
Claire told herself it was only coincidence he was looking at Nate. Until he turned to grin at her.
* * *
Lewis didn’t hide his disappointment. “You don’t have to sleep in the boat,” he told Nate. “I don’t mind sharing my room.”
“It’s your snoring.” Nate baited the teen’s fishing rod. “It kept me awake all last night.”
Lewis scrutinized him. “You do look tired.” It was late morning; the guys had left three hours earlier and Claire was in town bulk-buying fishing supplies. “Forget working on the boat,” she’d said. “Go fish off the bridge with Lewis.”
Nate was still nursing a sense of grievance over that. How could he say no when the kid was right there? Handing Lewis his baited rod, he picked up his own. “I thought you hated fishing.”
“I do.” Gingerly, Lewis swung the baited end away from his body and flung it haphazardly into the estuary below. “But this might be my only chance to talk in private about the ambush.”
Shit. Crouching, Nate cut anot
her strip of soft bait and threaded it over his hook. “Your mum said she told you what happened.”
“I know Dad died instantly and everything….” Lewis made a few nervous turns of the reel, backward and forward. Nate realized he was waiting for reassurance and lifted his gaze.
“Your dad didn’t suffer.”
The boy’s shoulders relaxed. For a few minutes the only sound was the soft whir of the reel as he spun the handle. “The thing is,” Lewis ventured, “I want to know what Dad did on his last day, what he said and what he was thinking. I mean, it just seems so weird—” the words tumbled faster, one after another “—that someone can get up and eat breakfast and do the same patrol as always and end up dead at the end of it.” The line was a hopeless tangle of nylon around the reel. “I know this makes me sound weird, too,” he finished miserably.
“Give me that thing before you break it.” Rescuing Lewis’s rod, Nate swapped with his own. “Try again.”
Red-faced, Lewis recast his line.
“We’d had a good day,” Nate said, and felt the kid’s attention latch onto him like a leech. He concentrated on untangling the snarled nylon. “Between patrols we were stationed in this little village, it was one of those enclaves you see on TV, stone and mud, high fortress walls—hell, mate, how did you make such a mess of this in such a short time?”
“Dunno.” Clutching the rod, Lewis stood rooted, his gaze as hopeful as a spaniel’s.
Untwisting the last knot, Nate reset and recast the line. The sinker landed in the estuary with a solid splash and the current drifted it closer. “Breakfast was army rations, but a villager had baked naan,” Nate continued in the same curt tone. “That’s flat bread, cooked the way your dad liked it, spicy and oiled. As a last meal…” His throat closed, Nate concentrated on his line. “Getting any bites?”
“Um—” Lewis refocused on the fishing “—not anymore.”
“Check the bait.”
Lewis did as he was told. The hook broke the surface, trailing raggedy white shreds.
“Rebait it,” Nate barked.
The boy hesitated. “Can’t you do it?”
“No.”
The teenager finished reeling in. “You’re mad,” he commented nervously. “Dan said to be really careful how I asked because you had such a bad time.” He caught the swinging hook. Nate frowned at the implication he was somehow fragile.
“I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m—” Guilt-stricken, gutted, devastated. “It’s…fine you asking,” he lied. “It was dawn when we drove out.” Nate tried to take the gravel out of his tone. “The sky is an incredible blue that early. In the desert it seems to whiten out by noon. As we left, the dogs started barking—I swear those bloody Afghan mutts make better sentries than we do.”
Lewis stood riveted, the hook dangling from the rod, glinting in the sun. “Bait,” Nate prompted, and the boy crouched by the pail, wrinkling his nose as he dipped into the bucket for the slab of defrosted soft bait.
“Cut a centimeter cube,” Nate advised, and then winced as Lewis slashed at the bait with the razor-sharp knife. “Here, let me show you before you slice a tendon.” Wedging his rod in the railing, he knelt to demonstrate technique. “Either Claire’s a poor teacher,” he commented, “which I doubt, or you have trouble listening to your mother.”
Lewis scowled. “You know I do,” he said ingenuously. “Mum must have told you why we moved here.”
“I didn’t get details. Share a few.” However much he might have improved, Lewis could benefit by an attitude adjustment around his mother. Sunny enough when things were going his way, the teenager quickly turned sullen if Claire requested help with small chores—the same tasks he happily knuckled down to when asked by Nate, Ross or Dan.
“No, I don’t want to go into it.” Lewis finished baiting his hook and wiped his hands clean with a rag.
Nate didn’t press him. They resumed fishing and Lewis glanced over expectantly. “Well?” he said after a couple of minutes.
“Well, what?”
“You’re telling me about Dad.”
“No, I don’t want to go into it.”
Lewis only took a second to get with the play. “That’s blackmail,” he protested.
“Yep.” The line pulled as a fish nibbled the bait; Nate jerked the rod.
“I shoplifted,” Lewis said grudgingly.
“What did you take?”
“I took iPod earplugs at an electronics store…. They had surveillance cameras.”
“So you weren’t a very good shoplifter?”
Nate glanced at Lewis as he spoke and saw a flash of annoyance before the teen shrugged and let out more line. “Guess not.”
“So how many times did you get away with it before you were caught?”
Lewis glanced up, shocked. “What? N-n-never.”
“You know another animal you see everywhere in Afghanistan? Goats… I’ve hooked something.” Nate started winding his reel. “That morning Lee discovered one had somehow climbed high enough to steal two pairs of his underpants from the clothesline.”
Lewis laughed.
“Yeah, we all thought it was pretty funny. Not Lee though, but he’d been grumpy all tour. Your dad said—” Nate stopped. A small kahawai broke the water, its sides flashing silver as it wriggled on the hook.
“Dad said…?” Lewis prompted.
“We’ll let this baby grow a bit more, shall we?”
“Sure.”
Seizing the struggling fish, Nate freed it with one deft twist.
“So Dad said…?”
“How many times did you shoplift before you were caught?” Nate released the gasping kahawai into the water, watched it surge out of sight.
Silence. Nate rebaited his hook. Cruel to use a dead father as a negotiating tool, but he had no doubt of Steve’s blessing.
“Three,” Lewis admitted in a small voice. “A bar of chocolate from the supermarket and then a T-shirt. I bought one and wore another under my own. And a prepaid phone card. My friend distracted the teller.”
The hint of pride in his voice faded as he met Nate’s hard gaze. “I am sorry now,” he assured him hastily. “I won’t ever do it again. Don’t tell Mum.”
“I won’t.” Claire had enough on her plate. “Were you prosecuted?” Nate threaded more soft bait onto the hook.
“No. Nana knows the store owner really well. I just had to apologize and clean up around the store’s trash bins every Sunday for six weeks.”
“You’re bloody lucky Ellie had contacts.”
“That’s what she says.”
“So why’d you do it?”
“It sounds lame now.”
“That’s encouraging. “Tell me anyway.”
“The first time to prove I wasn’t a wimp.” Lewis shrugged. “A mummy’s boy. It was scary, but it was also kinda exciting after I’d got away with it and it snowballed, I guess. School and stuff seemed a bit pointless and the kids I skipped classes with were fun to hang out with. They didn’t give a sh—damn about all the school rules. But they’re not my friends now. Even if Mum let me, I don’t want to see them anymore.”
Nate recast his line. The lure of cool kids, those sullen little badasses—as he’d once been—who strutted around acting as if they had all the answers. He knew well their attraction to a boy who’d lost his way. He glanced at Lewis. Or a boy whose whole world had been turned upside down.
“You think I’m an epic fail, don’t you?” Lewis said.
“We all make mistakes. I got into worse trouble when I was your age.”
“Yeah?” The teen pricked up his ears. “What did you do?”
“Similar stuff,” Nate hedged. Fortunately, he’d never been caught, at least not doing anything serious enough to affect his army application later. But he’d been a lot street smarter than this kid.
“Tell me.”
“So your dad said to Lee—” Nate took up his story again “‘Lighten up, General Lee, it’s another be-u-ti-ful da
y.’ He was buzzed from getting a letter from you a few days earlier.”
Fortunately, Lewis was diverted. “Yeah?”
“Steve still had it in his pocket. God help us, he kept reading out the knock-knock jokes.”
“Oh, man,” Lewis groaned. “I forgot I was into those.”
“Your dad’s favorite was, knock knock, who’s there?”
Lewis covered his face with one hand. Nate grinned.
“Eve,” he answered himself.
Lewis squirmed. “Don’t—”
“Eve who?” said Nate, and waited.
“Nate.”
“Eve who me hearties!”
Lewis groaned again, trying not to laugh. “Really, his favorite?”
“Cross my heart… What’s happened to all the fish?” Nate checked the bait. Still there.
Lewis gave his line a cursory tug. “That joke scared them off. So, will you talk to Mum for me? Ever since the shoplifting and stuff, she doesn’t trust me.” He hit Nate with “help the puppy” eyes. “And I’ve been perfect at least two months.”
Nate laughed. “Kid, you’ve made so many withdrawals from the trust account you’ll be paying interest for the next six months at least. But if you want to bank brownie points, then be nicer to your mum.” He held the boy’s gaze. “Treat her with the same respect your dad did.”
The teen broke eye contact first. “I’ll try. So, what else do you remember about Dad’s last day.”
But Nate had reached his limit. “That’s it.”
“Ross said the road had only been checked for IEDs hours before.”
Unable to help himself, Nate put his hand on the boy’s thin shoulders. “We never knew what hit us,” he said honestly. “But up to that point, I promise your dad had a really good day.”
Lewis nodded. “Cool.” Then without warning his face crumbled. Dropping his rod, he buried his face in Nate’s side.
Nate wrapped a comforting arm around him, instinctively grabbing the dangling rod with the free hand holding his own. “It’s okay, mate,” he managed to say, though they both knew it wasn’t.
“I feel bad that I’m forgetting him—” Lewis’s voice was muffled against Nate’s shoulder “—but I was only eleven.”