by Deb Kastner
“I’d like to know more about you,” she replied. She honestly wanted to know what made the silent ex-soldier tick. He had depths to him that she had yet to understand.
“No, you don’t.” He scoffed, turning his face away from her. As low and gruff as his voice had become, she barely heard the ending to his statement. “I’m not the man you think I am.”
* * *
Will didn’t know what had come over him. He had just blurted out a bunch of personal stuff he barely acknowledged himself, much less shared with another person. But there it was.
There she was.
Samantha.
Brave. Fierce.
Vulnerable.
His respect for her deepened to the point where—what? Unquestionably, he felt a deep desire to protect her, especially now that he knew the enemy she was single-handedly facing. The Howells must be feeling quite overwhelmed by now, Samantha most of all.
He desperately yearned for those qualities he knew he would never possess—certainly not the way Samantha did. Honesty and integrity came naturally to her.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and looked at him with a question in her eyes, no doubt waiting for an explanation for what he’d just blurted out.
Only he didn’t know how to give it.
“I wasn’t a very good husband,” he admitted. Regret clogged his throat, making his voice low and raspy. “And I definitely wasn’t a good father to Genevieve.”
“How can you say that? I’ve seen the way you look at her, the way you interact with her. She’s your world. And you are most definitely hers.”
“It wasn’t always that way. I was caught up in my job. I was away from my family when they needed me most.” Will sat on the ground next to her, propping one elbow on his knee.
“How is that your fault? Being away from home a lot seems like a given in your profession. Was Haley unaware that you were going to join the Army when you married her?”
“She knew. She’d always known what I was going to do with my life. We dated in high school. She knew how much I wanted to get out.”
He thought she might make him backtrack, given the open-ended statement he’d just made, but she didn’t interrupt him. He was thankful. It was hard enough to dredge up these memories without bringing his father and his home life into it.
“Actually, I was already in the service when we married,” he continued. “She believed she was ready to make the sacrifice and be an Army wife—at least, at first she did.”
Their marriage had been a great deal more complicated than he was able to explain. But he took a deep breath and plunged forward. “I didn’t give her the emotional support she needed to deal with life while I was away. As a result, she felt all alone and lonely, whether I was home or abroad. Even when I was stateside, my mind was on my next deployment.”
Add to that my bouts with PTSD and it was the prescription for a rocky relationship. Who wants to sleep next to a man who wakes up screaming in the middle of the night in a full-body sweat?
He wouldn’t have wished that on his enemy, much less the woman he had vowed to cherish until the day death parted them.
Will nearly groaned as he recalled the many knock-down, drag-out fights he and Haley had had. And how much silence had reigned between them when they weren’t at each other’s throats. “We grew apart over time, and became different people. It was awkward between us. I didn’t deal with my issues very well. I closed myself off from her and wouldn’t let her in, and in the end, it tore up my family. I tore up my family.”
“What happened?” she asked. There was more than keen interest in her voice. There was compassion—and empathy.
Two emotions he absolutely did not deserve from her. From anyone. He warranted censure, not understanding. But something about her kindness compelled him to keep going.
“Haley tried her best to reach out to me and be there for me. Far more, I am ashamed to admit, than I ever did for her. But at the end of the day, she couldn’t handle the constant struggle and loneliness of military life. She had difficulties making friends, since we had to move around so much. But I think the hardest thing for her was her inability to continue her education. She wanted to be a child psychologist. Transferring from college to college was a nightmare.”
He paused as the sharp ache of the past settled in his mind. “We’d been married for just over six years when she separated from me. Genevieve was maybe one year old at the time. She moved back to Amarillo, where her parents still live. We were both born and raised there. I think it felt safe for her to return to what she knew, and her folks helped her make a new life—without me in it.
“Safe. What a cruel joke that turned out to be.” He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against the pain clenching his gut. “My own daughter never really even knew me. Not until...” His sentence drifted off into a harsh silence.
It took him a moment to collect his thoughts. Samantha remained silent and pensive, simply watching him with compassion in her gaze.
“How did Haley die?” she gently prodded. When he did not continue, she backtracked. “I’m sorry. I’m being too pushy, aren’t I? My curiosity often gets the best of me and I ask too many questions. Forgive me.”
“No, it’s okay. I started this conversation. I don’t mind telling you.”
Actually, he did mind. He minded dreadfully. If he had his way, he would never speak of it again. Never think of it again.
Yet he didn’t blame Samantha for asking. He had directed the conversation down this path, although for the life of him he couldn’t have explained why he had done so. Hers was a legitimate question, spoken with kindness. And he knew beyond a doubt that it was her kindness that would be his undoing.
He could handle judgment, but not compassion. This was his punishment, his burden to carry—keeping fresh his knowledge of the responsibility he bore for Haley’s death, keeping it at the forefront of his mind for as long as he lived.
“She was killed in a gang-related incident.” Because of me, he thought. “I’ll never know all the details, beyond what the police were able to piece together. No one was ever charged or arrested for her murder.”
Remorse settled heavily in his chest. Without saying a word, Samantha nodded, sympathetic tears in her eyes. It was almost too much for Will to bear, but somehow, it moved him to keep going.
“They surmise that it started as a mugging, given that her purse was found in a Dumpster and her wallet had been torn through. Her driver’s license was still there, but the cash and credit cards were gone.”
He twisted his lips as he recalled the details. “She was walking home one evening from her job as a waitress at a truck stop. A waitress,” he repeated, the word feeling like chalk on his tongue. She’d wanted to be—should have been—a child psychologist working in a fancy office in a good part of town, making more than enough money. But because of him, because she’d flown from their relationship, she’d had to pinch out a living for herself and their daughter any way she could. As a waitress in a truck stop. He hadn’t wanted the separation in the first place. Even afterward, he’d wanted to support Haley and Genevieve, but Haley wouldn’t take a penny from him. She’d wanted to be independent. Instead, she was dead.
He swallowed his gall. “She was stopped by a group of gang members. As best as the police can tell, when they tried to nab her purse, Haley fought back. And she was stabbed to death for her effort.”
“Oh, Will,” Samantha said. She reached for him, covering his hand with the smooth softness of hers and rubbing the pad of her thumb across his rough skin. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” She was incredibly gracious, especially considering he didn’t deserve her sympathy. “What bothers me most is that they never caught the guys who did it.”
He pulled away from her touch and got to his feet, steppi
ng away so she wouldn’t see him clenching and unclenching his fists. His blood boiled as he mentally counted to ten. He wanted to punch something, but he didn’t want to show his anger and lack of control in front of Samantha.
“I have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life. Had it not been for me, Haley would still be alive.”
He had never before admitted that aloud to another human being. He felt like he was choking. He couldn’t pull in more than a gasp of air no matter how hard he tried. For once in his life, he simply wanted to breathe.
Despite the slight relief that grazed his heart now that he’d finally opened up to the truth, he was mortified that he’d just blurted out his culpability to his new boss, of all people. She would have every right to fire him on the spot.
Even worse than that—what must she think of him now?
“You couldn’t have known she was going to be attacked,” Samantha protested. “You were a continent away, fighting in a war.”
“Exactly.”
His heart fell. She didn’t get it. Frustration made his words a bit harsher than they otherwise would have been. “I wasn’t there for Haley. I wasn’t the man she needed me to be. If I had been, she never would have separated from me. She wouldn’t have been in that dark alley in the first place. She should never have been walking home alone at night, especially in a bad part of town. If I had stepped up—if I had been a better husband to her...”
“That sounds like a lot of ifs to me.”
“Yeah.” He blew out a breath and leaned his shoulder against the rough bark of the tree trunk, staring unseeingly into the distance. She was a softhearted, benevolent woman. She wouldn’t be able to see how he was at fault.
They remained silent for a moment, each with their own thoughts. Will was wrestling to contain the ugly guilt spreading through him, which always happened whenever he thought about Haley and relived the details of the terrible tragedy. He had no idea what Samantha was thinking, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“We got sidetracked,” he forced himself to say in a lighter tone. He should have steered this discussion back to her a long time ago. “If I’m not mistaken, we were talking about how you needed to learn how to accept help from other people.”
“And I believe I told you that I didn’t need any assistance.”
He made a sound in his throat somewhere between a cough and a chuckle. The woman was nothing if not stubborn. She refused to let him help her and her family in this fight, but what she didn’t know was that he was at least as stubborn as she was. He would help the Howells keep their store.
“And as I said, sometimes you need it. Pride can only take a person so far.”
Samantha’s gaze widened. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m prideful?”
“Of course not. I see the bigger picture.” He crossed back to her. “Look. I know how hard it is to ask for help. But you do what you have to do. I had to depend on Haley’s parents, who, despite their declining health, took care of Genevieve until I was able to be honorably discharged from the Army. I don’t know what I would have done had they not been there to keep me on my feet.” He gestured toward Samantha. “Once I arrived in Serendipity, you and your family stepped up to help a stranger in need. You’ve all shown me and Genevieve such great kindness. I can never repay you. But I do wish you’d allow me to try.”
Samantha’s cheeks shaded a deep, alluring rose. She scoffed. “I don’t know how you could call my welcome to you a kindness. It was lukewarm at best, I’m ashamed to say. Not very Christ-like at all.”
“Only because you didn’t get a heads-up that I was coming,” Will protested. He’d been around her enough to know she wasn’t usually the type of person to see the bad side of a situation or a person. She was an idealist from her head to her toes. “You’ve already done so much for Genevieve. She can’t stop talking about you. She thinks the earth revolves around Miss Samantha.”
She chuckled and her face brightened. Will heaved a great sigh of relief. Maybe the world didn’t revolve around Samantha, but it was definitely made better by her smile.
“I like her, too,” she confirmed.
Samantha’s blue eyes were shining with such sincerity and vibrancy that he was almost convinced there might be hope for his world. He didn’t pretend to understand the depth of her gaze, but it affected him to the very core of his being.
A frisson of awareness skittered across every nerve ending in his body. He wondered if she felt it, too.
Never mind that. He pulled his mental brakes and put a tight grip on his response to her—the adrenaline that coursed through him and the way his heart was beating overtime whenever their gazes met. He supposed he could write it off as that of a man just coming back from a tour in Afghanistan, but he knew it was more than that.
Samantha was special.
But whatever was between them didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going to let it. There was no way he was going to put himself in the position of caring for someone again. He was hazardous material and Samantha was too good a person for him to risk wounding her. Because no matter how hard he tried to prevent it, at the end of the day, that’s exactly what would happen if he didn’t stop this train before it started. The last thing he wanted to do was give her the wrong impression.
She had nothing to gain, and he had nothing to offer. End of subject.
He reached out a hand and helped her to her feet, careful not to touch her any more than was absolutely necessary; careful, in fact, not to stand too close to her, because he might run the risk of inhaling the sweet floral scent of her.
He didn’t doubt that he possessed the strength of will to conquer those urges, if he put his mind to it, and he had enough respect for Samantha and her family not to toy with her when he had nothing of substance to offer.
He dropped her hand as soon as he was certain she had her balance and tunneled his fingers through his hair. He’d been a loner for most of his life. It shouldn’t be difficult to maintain the facade of detachment.
So why was it that he had to continually remind himself that’s what he needed to do?
“Are we finished?” he asked abruptly.
“Finished with work, or finished with our conversation?” She sounded confused, possibly a little hurt. He’d obviously wounded her by pulling back the way he had. He was sorry about that, but in the long run, she’d thank him.
“Both.” He forced himself to meet her gaze straight on.
Her dark brows rose into high arches. She looked as if she was going to argue, and then apparently thought better of it. “Both it is, then.”
She spun on her heels and started to walk toward the shop, but she suddenly halted and turned back. Her lips twitched as she narrowed her gaze on him, watching him carefully. He squared his shoulders and met her gaze.
“Will you be coming for Sunday supper? I know my parents really enjoyed having you over last week.”
Up until that moment, Will had had every intention of spending Sunday afternoon with the Howells. Having not had much of a family life growing up, he appreciated the way Samuel and Amanda Howell drew him and Genevieve into their world. He almost felt as if they had become part of the Howells’ extended family.
And the food was incredible. He’d never experienced anything close to the sizable country banquet they spread every Sabbath. He thought Amanda must cook the entire week just to present the fixins she offered, extending from one end of their sideboard to the other.
But the way Samantha had asked the question, he had the distinct impression she didn’t want him to come. He narrowed his eyes on her, but her gaze gave away nothing.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” he said after an extended pause. “At least I was planning on it.”
There. That should give her a clear way out—if she wanted to take it. S
he could tell him to make other plans, simple as that.
But she didn’t. She just gave a clipped nod. “Well, fine, then. My parents will like that.”
He had no doubt that her parents would like it. They longed for their son, Seth, to return safely from the war. His absence was especially felt at the dinner table, where his chair remained empty. Will didn’t mind sitting in for him. And Samuel and Amanda adored Genevieve, treating her like the granddaughter they did not yet have.
“What about you?”
As much as he wanted to know the answer to that question, he hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until he heard her abrupt intake of breath. He winced. If he hadn’t previously hollowed out his own grave, he’d certainly managed to mine a wide chasm now. At the moment, burrowing into that foxhole and covering his head with his arms to protect himself from the fallout didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
She raised a brow. “What about me?”
Will’s throat worked as he searched for words, but he simply shook his head and remained silent.
Because that was a question he wasn’t sure he wanted her to answer. Because no matter what she said, it meant trouble.
Chapter Five
Well, that was weird, Samantha thought as she laid out the Sunday dinner china on her mother’s table.
Two days had gone by and Samantha still couldn’t wrap her mind around everything that had happened during her conversation with Will. Yesterday she’d been thinking of confronting him, or at least picking up where they’d left off, but Saturday was always the most hectic day of the week for Sam’s Grocery.
As if regular weekend grocery shoppers weren’t enough to keep the store hopping, the traditional Fourth of July celebration on the town green was scheduled for the coming Tuesday and folks were planning their family picnics and loading up with extra supplies, so it had been exceptionally busy in the store. Though she and Will had spent the entire day together, they’d barely spoken, and even then only about impersonal subjects having to do with the shop. By the time the day was over, they’d both been exhausted and had parted without another word to each other.