by Caro Carson
Now, because of those nine hours, missing her was going to hurt even more.
She was taking Tom’s truck. After her week’s tour of the Texas coast, she’d leave his truck in the parking lot of the Austin airport, back where she’d picked it up, and she’d fly all the way to Brussels. That hadn’t changed. No matter how many extra hours they’d had, their vacation was over. No matter how much they might want to, they could not sustain this shipboard romance for years to come.
The workers had arrived very early, eager to be done so their Christmas holiday could begin. One of their trucks had blocked in the pickup.
Aiden waited with India for someone to come and move the truck. They looked at one another in the early morning light, spending their extra fifteen minutes standing apart, hands in their coat pockets, listening to workers shout at one another about truck keys.
That was stupid. Aiden took his hands out of his pockets and pulled India close.
“It’s going to be so hard to leave,” she said.
“Yes.” It was already hurting. Worse pain was waiting on the horizon, ready to knock him out when she drove away. Not yet, not yet.
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to spend last night together,” India said. “It only makes this worse.”
It was going to hurt anyway. Aiden held India and thought of Melissa. Not once, even in the darkest days of his grief, did he ever regret any nine hours he’d ever spent with her. His life was only better for every hour he’d had with his wife. He’d never wish he’d had less time with her. He’d never wish he’d had less time with India, either.
He kissed India’s forehead. “Don’t wish you didn’t experience happiness. Nine hours of happiness is no small thing. That’s what we had last night. Nine fewer hours of missing each other in this life.”
“Aiden. You can’t say things like that and let me go.”
Behind him, men shouted. “’Bout damn time you got out here. Move that truck so the lady can leave.”
The clock was ticking. Minutes left.
India looked devastated. Aiden didn’t know how to make it better for her. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”
“So am I.”
“You know the phrase ‘Begin as you mean to go on’? We began as a vacation romance. We’re ending as a vacation romance. It’s just...it’s harder than we thought it would be, but it’s what we decided to have. It’s what we invested ourselves in. We had ourselves one hell of a vacation romance.”
Nothing more, because I screwed it all up from the beginning. If I had it to do over again—
What would he do? Would he have handed her a beer in that garage and introduced himself as the man next door with the dead wife? Would he have showed her photos of his twins’ birthday party as she watched to see how much Tabasco he put in his Bloody Mary?
They would never have gotten this far. I’d be stealing a father from a baby. I don’t date fathers. They wouldn’t have had this week, not one hour of it.
“Then let’s make our vacation last longer,” she said. “I know you have family coming for Christmas, but after that, I’ll be at the beach. Corpus Christi. Padre Island. Come and be with me there.”
“I can’t. My family will still be here.” They will always be here, because I’m a widower and a father, and everything that turns you off. “You don’t want to get involved with another man’s family and have it be the kiss of death for yet another relationship. You won’t risk yourself like that.”
She frowned at that and tilted her head as if she wasn’t certain she’d heard him correctly. “I won’t risk it? You make me sound like I’m a coward.”
The construction truck began to back out of the drive, beeping with one of those shrill reverse alarms. He was going to have one of the most important conversations of his life while an alarm drowned him out. Perfect.
“You didn’t answer my question last night, when we were sitting on the porch,” he began. “You said it was a great cruise, but it couldn’t last forever. Do you remember that? And I said, ‘What if we wanted it to?’”
She was hanging on his every word, staring at him with those luminous eyes. He could drown in those silver-gray eyes. Happily. Forever.
“What would it take, India? What would forever look like?”
“Forever?” she repeated, as the truck shrieked its warning. “Us?”
He felt that same disappointment from yesterday. He hadn’t been expecting more, he really hadn’t, and he had no right to, but...well, part of him had hoped, he supposed. He stopped hugging her close, but he couldn’t let go of her. He kept one hand on her arm. He touched her face.
The truck had backed up all the way and fallen silent. She could go now.
Aiden managed one more smile for the only woman he’d wanted in a long, long time. The only one he could foresee himself wanting for a long, long time. “Forever would look messy. It would get complicated, very complicated, and it would involve families, from grandparents to kids. It would be everything that you’ve ever run away from before. That’s what it would take, my beautiful India. That’s what it would take, if you stayed.”
“But that’s not the woman I am. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“Am I wrong?”
She pressed her lips together. She lifted her chin—she was hurt.
“It’s okay, India. It really is. I like you just the way you are. I’m crazy about you, just as you are.”
“I’m crazy about you, too, just the way you are.”
The guilt was his. This was not just the way he was. This was Aiden Nord on a child-free vacation. She didn’t know the real him. She wouldn’t like the real him. But even now, he couldn’t explain that. Instead, he held the door open for her and she climbed into the pickup.
She rolled down the window after she started the engine. “This vacation is really over.” But she looked to him for confirmation.
“I’m afraid so. Even if we could have pulled off another week on the coast, the one thing that wouldn’t change is NATO. You’d still be needed in Brussels. We’d still only see each other for a few days each year. We’d still end up unhappy.”
“But we shouldn’t regret having been happy this week?”
“Right. A week of happiness is a gift. I’m glad we met.” It’s going to kill me later. “Drive carefully.”
Then he stepped back and watched her go.
His heart was still beating. He was still standing. Poppy and Olympia would be home soon.
He walked into the garage, up to the wall where he’d demanded with his hands that India remember him as her man, not as a little girl’s sweet bookcase-building relative.
What had he been thinking?
The bookcase wasn’t overly heavy, but it was awkwardly shaped. He hefted it onto his shoulder and started walking back to his house, Fabio at his heels. Today was Christmas Eve. He could hide the bookcase in his closet for a few hours, then put it by the tree while the girls were sleeping, a gift from Santa Claus. Their joy and excitement would be everything good about Christmas.
India would be in San Antonio. She wouldn’t know what she was missing, because he had never told her.
His vision blurred, but he took a breath and blinked until his vision cleared. No regrets. He’d had a wonderful week with a wonderful woman. Nothing to regret at all.
Aiden made it all the way to the bridge before the pain broke through, a hard hit that threatened to bring him to his knees.
He staggered home with the bookcase on his back.
* * *
She was a coward.
She was a fool.
She was in love.
She was in San Antonio.
Go back, go back. Tell him you love him.
But...he knew that. He’d practically taken it for granted that they’d fallen in love with each other. He�
��d said so, sitting in that teakwood chair, but it had been only part of what he’d said. The rest had been about other things. He wanted other things besides love. She couldn’t remember every word, yet every word had been important.
She twisted her hands on the inflexible steering wheel in anxiety. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t recall everything. She was miserable without him. She’d started crying in Round Rock and had to get off the road when the worst sobs had struck south of Austin.
You shouldn’t be in San Antonio right now.
She needed to concentrate. The navigator on her phone’s map app was trying to get her to her B&B in an impersonal, BBC-British voice. “Make a left turn on Alvarez Boulevard.”
India complied.
“In one quarter mile, make a U-turn.”
She hated directions like that. It made her feel like she’d done something wrong, when she’d only been following orders. The geography didn’t change. The app should get it right.
The geography...
She’d left with Aiden’s assurances that she had nothing to regret, because geography would have kept them apart, regardless. NATO wouldn’t move, and they’d end up being mad at the situation, mad at their careers, and eventually mad at each other for being unhappy and apart. That was what he’d said.
“In one half mile, the destination will be on your right.”
He’d been kind. He’d given her the perfect excuse: she should not feel guilty about leaving as she had planned to do since the first day, because the geography was difficult and the geography was out of her control.
But was it?
The light up ahead turned red. She slowed to a stop.
NATO headquarters might never move, but that didn’t mean she’d stay there for the rest of her career. Officers generally retired after twenty years of service. She had twelve years of service. Aiden had even more, probably fourteen. Their posts would surely change in the next six or eight years. If they were married, they’d be considered for joint domicile, and the army would try to station them together on their next assignment.
If they were married. The army didn’t move boyfriends and girlfriends around the world together.
The light turned green, but India didn’t move for a second.
Married.
Why not? They were both single, both in their thirties, both well established in their careers. They were in the perfect place in their lives to get married. At thirty-four, most people would say Aiden was a confirmed bachelor, but she was a confirmed bachelorette herself. That didn’t mean she couldn’t change. She wasn’t set in her ways or too inflexible to live with someone else. Aiden wasn’t, either.
She stepped on the accelerator, drove only a block or two, and saw the flower-laden sign for the B&B ahead on her right.
Marriage. That meant families would be involved. It would be messy, complicated, Aiden had warned her. He didn’t even know about her family, and he was worried about her willingness to meet his.
Could she handle it? She’d been evaluated and found wanting by Bernardo’s crowd. She’d been unprepared to be smothered by the grandparents and siblings surrounding the coolly academic Adolphus. So many others...she hadn’t even wanted to try to meet Gerard-Pierre’s.
But this was Aiden. Bernardo had never spent six hours, let alone six nights, being alone with her and only her, being interested in what she thought, enchanted by the way she did even the simplest things, like drinking a beer. Adolphus had never touched her so much, never held her hand just to walk through a restaurant’s parking lot, never shared a pillow when they were dreaming. Those men had been so much less than Aiden, and yet, she’d made an effort to blend in with their families. She’d met their families, at least. She’d tried.
Aiden had so generously consoled her with geography, but he’d been disappointed that she wouldn’t take the first step toward a messy and complicated forever. She wouldn’t stay for Christmas and meet his family.
“You have reached your destination.”
India parked the pickup truck and walked into the Spanish Mission home. It was historic and gorgeous, with white stucco walls on the outside and colorful Mexican tiles on the inside.
She’d never seen the inside of Aiden’s house, had she? But he’d told her she could stay with him for Christmas. He’d said that at McDonald’s. My family will arrive... I’d like you to meet them...you could stay at my house.
“Ah, you’ve made it,” her hostess said. “Feliz Navidad, and welcome.”
“Gracias,” India said, feeling a little disoriented. “But I think I must leave. Yes, I think I should. There’s somewhere else I’m supposed to be.”
Chapter Twelve
India had been less nervous in the underground tunnels of the Kremlin.
This was 489 Cedar Highway. She was petrified.
India turned into Aiden’s long driveway. Everything’s okay. It really is. That’s what Aiden would say. He was going to be surprised when she knocked on the door, but he wasn’t going to yell at her to go away or call the cops on her for trespassing. She had no reason to be so nervous. She was only going to tell a man she loved him, and crash his family Christmas.
She’d dressed for the occasion, stopping at a McDonald’s—oh, the irony—to change in the bathroom from her jeans to the one dress she’d packed. It was a jewel-toned purple wrap dress, not too dressy, not too casual in style, suitable for day or night in color. She didn’t know if Aiden’s family had a big dinner on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. They might go to a Christmas Eve church service. She was prepared for anything, for any size gathering. Really, she was.
There might be a chance Aiden was alone. He’d said he had family coming for Christmas. This was Christmas Eve day. There might be no family here until tomorrow.
Please, let there be nobody here until tomorrow. Please.
She didn’t see his truck. It was possible his big red extended-cab pickup fit in his garage, she supposed.
Please, let Aiden be home. And nobody else.
She hadn’t wanted to arrive at a family gathering empty-handed, but it was Christmas Eve afternoon and stores were closing, so she’d done some quick gift shopping at a mammoth twenty-four-hour grocery store. She’d bought wine, a bouquet of flowers and one of those blue tins filled with supposedly Danish butter cookies, probably a poor offering during the season of homemade Christmas cookies. Aiden would tell everyone she was visiting from out of the country, that she was an army officer on vacation. His family wouldn’t expect her to be Betty Crocker, would they? She hoped not, because her mother had never passed down any family cookie recipes.
It was going to be okay. She’d placed her little offerings in a bright red gift bag they’d sold in the school-supplies aisle, so she held that in one hand and gave her hair one last fluff with the other. She rang the doorbell.
The door cracked open, only as far as a security chain reached. Aiden’s face appeared in the crack. “My God. India.”
She smiled. “Surprise.”
He didn’t do anything.
“Merry Christmas.”
Still nothing.
I am not a coward. She stood tall in her dress and black pumps, slipping into the posture of an army officer in uniform. She spoke about love. “I had a lot of time to think this morning while I was driving. I thought, at first, that you were disappointed that I lived in Belgium, but that’s not true. You’re disappointed in me, for not even trying to meet your family. I don’t fit in easily with families. They intimidate me, to be honest, but if I’m going to be brave for anyone, I should be brave for you, because I love you more than I’ve loved anyone else. May I come in?”
He closed his eyes briefly, a look of—not of relief, actually. Not happiness.
“Right,” he said. “Okay.”
He shut the door. She heard the slide of the chain, and then he
opened it again, but not much wider. His body blocked her from being able to see anything inside the house. “So...how are you?”
“I’m fine.”
I think I might die.
Her military confidence fled. She was just a girl in a purple dress imposing on a man whom she’d terribly, horribly misread. “Did I come at a bad time? I could just go home—No, I couldn’t. The fumes. But I could just...go. Come back later?”
A little voice piped loudly. “I want to see!” Then a little face popped into the inch of space between the bend of Aiden’s knee and the edge of the door.
“Oh.” India couldn’t have been more surprised, which was silly, because Aiden had made a bookcase for a little girl. This must be his niece or cousin, someone who was going to be excited very soon by a cool tree bookshelf. “Hello.”
“Hi,” she said, her face so cherubic, it could be on a Christmas card. “Who are you?”
But then a second little voice preceded a second little face, although India could only see the button nose, really. “Move over. My turn. I want to see.”
Aiden sighed, an unmistakable sound of defeat. He stepped back and opened the door wider. The two girls immediately filled in the space. One had reddish hair, one had almost black, but they both had very green eyes. They had to be related. Cousins, maybe sisters.
They were cute. The strawberry-haired one wrapped her arm around Aiden’s leg and put her finger in her mouth, but she kept staring holes through India.
“Your dress is purple,” the dark-haired one said.
“Yes, it is.” India bit her lip, trying to be serious. Polite. How did you make conversation with a little girl? “You, ahh...you know your colors.”
“I know my colors,” said the clingy one, speaking around her fingers.
Aiden looked down at her and brushed his hand lightly over her hair. “Take your fingers out of your mouth.”