All for You

by Christi Barth

  “Seeing as how none of you will let me race, I’ve got all day.” He lifted out of the folding chair and followed Zane out the back flap of the tent. Boxes of bananas, bagels and water bottles were stacked hip high on the grass. An ambulance was parked just a few steps away. Zane walked over to it, wanting the buffer zone so nobody could hear their conversation.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  Joel let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m not talking about my medals. In fact, I refuse to confirm or deny the existence of any such medals. Did Gray send you to poke at me?”

  “What? No. And I already know all about your medals.”

  The older man’s eyes sharpened. His body drew into a taut line. “Whatever you think you know, you don’t.”

  “Come on. A top-notch chef with a mysterious past? I couldn’t resist digging into your CV.”

  “There’s not much to it besides my time at the Culinary Institute.”

  “I know. That’s what made it fun. You led me on quite the chase.” Zane snapped out his fingers to list Joel’s noteworthy achievements. Because really, the guy was about eighty steps past impressive. “Special Forces. Black ops. On loan to two different government agencies due to special skills including a stint related to your Expert Marksmanship badge. Medals include a Silver Star, a Distinguished Service Cross, and two Purple Hearts. You’re an honest-to-God hero, Joel.”

  “I’m a chef. That’s all.”

  There was a time and a place to be modest. But not when Zane was doing his best to pass on a heartfelt compliment. “I’m a big fan of your work in the kitchen. That smoked pork tenderloin you grilled up the other night with the stout barbecue sauce was fantastic. But what you did for my taste buds is nothing compared to what you did for our country.”

  Joel crowded forward, putting his face inches from Zane’s. “You want to talk about what I did for our country? I killed, Zane. Not facelessly by dropping a bomb from an airplane at thirty-three hundred feet. Not by pressing a button to fire a missile. No, I looked our enemy square in the eye. Yeah, some of them had just slaughtered my men. Others were just following orders and had no clue about the death I was about to rain on them. They were people, with mothers and brothers and dogs. People who loved their country, loved their friends, had a favorite dinner just like me.” He spread his legs wider, set his jaw. Eyes afire with the cold flame of a Bunsen burner, Joel slammed the heel of his hand against the side of the ambulance. “I defended. I wreaked vengeance. But the bottom line is that I killed. And that’s something I don’t fucking want exposed in this town, to be picked apart over donuts and coffee.”

  There was no suitable response. No pat answer, no polite words to tamp back down the massive emotional scab Joel had just picked clean off. All Zane could offer was a promise. “I won’t breathe a word about your record. Not to anyone. I swear I wasn’t planning to in the first place. I just...” A quick up and down of his shoulders. “...wanted to know.”

  “Now you do.”

  One more thing had to be said, to make things square between them. Zane squinted against the bright sun. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Joel bent down. Picked up a twig from between his feet and winged it into the trees. “For prying?”

  “For making you think about it.” God, he felt like shit. He hadn’t meant to hurt his friend. Hadn’t intended to make him relive even a second of what were undoubtedly a long ass string of the worst days of his life. Zane truly regretted putting those thoughts back in the forefront of Joel’s mind. He hadn’t stopped to think about what his glib recitation of the facts could do.

  A slow nod of acceptance. Silence hung between them for a few beats, punctuated only by the birds trilling their displeasure at the din from the marathon crowds. Then a laugh came, harsher than sandpaper. “I think about it every damn day.” Joel eased back, jammed his hands in the pockets of his black shorts. “With or without your damned sniffing around. Forgetting’s not an option.”

  Zane made a silent vow to never, ever again mention Joel’s stint in the Army. But now that the barn door was open, it was too late to put the horse back in, right? This would be his only chance to ever broach this topic. So Zane couldn’t resist just one question. Seeing as how he couldn’t make things any worse right now. He gave a quick scan of the area to be sure they were still alone.

  “Joel? How do you? Deal with it, I mean?”

  “Isn’t it obvious to a brain trust like yours?”

  Ah. Well, if he stopped and thought about it, sure. Zane made a fist to mime flipping a pancake. “You cook.”

  “No wonder you’ve got that string of fancy initials after your name.” Joel rolled his head side to side, cracking his neck. “I tease the best out of food; the best flavors, the most tenderness, the greatest combinations. That makes me happy. And then I get to turn around a person’s day by giving them amazing food. I focus on giving them life, in its most basic form, but made beautiful.”

  That was downright exquisite. “I see you’re not just a chef. You’re a poet, too.”

  “Creating a good meal is poetry. It just takes place in the kitchen, instead of on the page.”

  That reminded Zane why he’d brought Joel out here. Maybe now he could lift his friend’s spirits that he’d unintentionally dragged down. “Oh no, you’re a poet on the actual page, too.”

  A snort. Joel scrubbed his hand across his hair. “The last poetry I wrote was a blue-balled limerick on a urinal wall in Kandahar. Nobody’s writing a five-star review of There once was a woman from Reno.”

  It was a noble effort to misdirect. Zane expected no less of a man with Special Forces training. But he thought he could do some actual good here. Once they stopped tiptoeing around the truth. Because that never accomplished anything. “Joel, I know it’s you.”

  “What’s me?”

  “Not what. Who.”

  Squinting, Joel craned his neck forward like an ostrich. “What do you mean, who? I’m me.” He thumped his chest, then pointed at Zane. “You’re you. Did they lace your coffee with little red pills up at the Manor? You’re not making any sense.”

  “I know you’re the secret Romeo in the mailbox journal.” Knowing was an overstatement. Zane pegged it more as a highly educated guess. But the best way to worm the truth out of someone was to act as if you already knew it to be so.

  Joel walked around to the front of the rig and sagged against the chrome bumper. “Christ. How did you figure that out?”

  A zing, as Zane’s brain took a victory lap. There was nothing quite like the feeling of a hunch paying off. “I’ve been reading the journals—months at a time worth of entries—every day. So I was able to notice patterns. In handwriting, in language, in wording.”

  “Does this mean you matched up the anonymous entries to the signed ones? Broke through the thinner than tissue layer of secrecy?”

  “Some. As I get to know more people in town, I’ll get better at it.”

  Joel’s dark eyebrows shot up. “Don’t think anyone will be in a hurry for that to happen. Is it sometimes obvious who scribbled an embarrassing question? Or wrote an unkind response? Oh yeah. But there’s an unspoken agreement to maintain the anonymity. It’s the only way this thing works.”

  “I get that.” Not really. Letting the truth loose was always his first choice. Zane knew it was the expected response, though, to keep the conversation going.

  “Still don’t get how you identified my entries, though.”

  Oh, would he be willing to explain how he used the unbeatable combination of observation and deduction to solve a mystery? Why, yes. Always. Zane leaned back against the hood, crossing his legs at the ankles and his arms over his chest.

  “The secret love affair kind of jumped out at me. First, because of the way it started seemingly from nothing. Without either person aware of the o
ther’s identity. Second, because of how long it lasted. Third, how consistent the entries were. You guys barely skipped a week.”

  “It was sometimes the best part of my week,” murmured Joel.

  This guy had it bad. As Zane had suspected, it wasn’t just a way to participate in the town’s quirky diversion. No, Joel had gone and fallen head over heels for this woman.

  “How long before you figured out the woman writing to you was Dawn?”

  Joel’s head whipped around so fast that the birds scavenging at their feet were scared away. “How do you know that?”

  Tapping his knuckles against the side of his head, Zane said, “Brilliant, remember? I walked you through most of the steps. Put the rest of it together when I saw you leap to her defense in the tent just now.”

  “You think anyone else knows?”

  “Nah. Not even Dawn.” Or especially not Dawn, depending on how he looked at it.

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

  Huh? Zane was no yenta, eager to find the perfect other half for everyone in the world. But, just like everything else, it boomeranged right back to honesty. Joel was living a lie. That never ended well.

  “Have you lost your mind? You’ve had this unrequited, yes, I’ll say it, love thing going on for how many years?”

  “I never said I was in love with Dawn.” The half-assed attempt at a denial came out loud and fast.

  “Are you?” The hushed question came from behind them. Zane scrambled to his feet to discover Casey mere steps away. Her arms were full of shoeboxes, and her eyes were as round with surprise as those pink lips.

  “Hey, buttercup.” Zane did the windshield wiper thing with one arm in an attempt to act like nothing was going on. Not that he thought for a second Casey was anywhere close to oblivious enough to buy it. Sometimes, you just had to make an effort, no matter how pointless.

  “What are you doing out here?” Joel’s tone was harsh enough to be an accusation rather than a question.

  Casey came right up to them. “Ward and Gray are fighting over who gets stuck with the one pair of shoes with a blue and orange stripe. Something to do with not wanting to look like a Mets fan? Then Dawn said that since you don’t get to run, you should at least get first pick of the shoe colors. So I came to find out what size you wear.” She dumped the boxes in a pile on the grass. “And really, none of that matters compared to the possibility that you’re in love with my stepmother.”

  Her voice had been flat. Expressionless. Impossible to tell if she thought that was a bad thing or a good thing. But Zane liked the way she wasn’t intimidated at all by the cumulonimbus cloud of a scowl darkening Joel’s face. Casey put her hands on her hips and waited for a response.

  With a slight limp, Joel paced to the tree line, then back. Then he exhaled in a big whoosh of air. Jerked a thumb at Zane. “The professor here’s got it all figured out. Why not let him tell you?”

  “Is it that hard to give me a straight answer?”

  “Yes!” he shouted, hand fisting at his thighs. “Nobody was supposed to know. What I write in that journal is between me and Dawn.”

  Casey hooted. “You and Dawn and the whole rest of the town, along with any random tourist who comes by and reads it. Try again.”

  “I mean the feelings...what I say to her...it’s only supposed to be for Dawn. To make her feel good. To make her feel special. Other people don’t respond to our journal entries. They leave us be. Nobody interferes. Not until your boyfriend here poked around in something that’s none of his business.”

  “You’re not even the one I’m looking for,” said Zane. Why did he have to get blame thrown at him for doing his job—a lucrative and respectable job—just because Joel was embarrassed? “I didn’t go gunning for you. Figuring out the love affair was just an accident. A side effect of my search for the Lone Survivor.”

  “Yeah, well, side effects can be dangerous. Ever read the warning label on antibiotics? People can die from them.”

  “Oh my gosh, Joel, stop yelling at Zane. This isn’t his fault.”

  How great was it to watch this tiny, stubborn dynamo of a woman stand up to the big, burly special ops guy in his defense? Greater than his hooding ceremony for his PhD. Better than when he opened his first royalty check. “Thank you.”

  “Now, Joel McMurray, answer the freaking fracking question. Are you in love with Dawn?” She stabbed him in the chest with her pointer finger on every word.

  Joel didn’t even swat her away. He just stood there and took it. All the fight drained out of his eyes. “I guess there’s no point denying it. Yes. I love her. Have for a long time.”

  “Is she in love with you?” Casey countered.

  A hard jerk of his head to the left. “No.” Another jerk, back to center. “I have no idea.” And one more, dropping his chin to his chest. “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know? I’ve read the beautiful things you write to each other.”

  Joel went back to leaning on the rig, as if he couldn’t hold himself up under Casey’s barrage. “She doesn’t know she’s writing to me.”

  She shot Zane a look. They hadn’t been together long enough for him to be able to catalog all her looks, but he had a pretty good guess this one meant did you hear what I just heard? “Are you kidding? Stringing me along?”

  “No.”

  Companionably, Casey leaned next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “Why don’t you tell her?” Her voice softened. “Tell her how you feel. Tell her you love her.”

  “No.”

  Zane bent to put the lids back on the shoeboxes. Stacked them in a pile, trying to let the two old friends work through this. While still watching, of course.

  “Okay, I realize that men and women come at the world in pretty much opposite directions.” She patted Joel’s biceps. “But you’ve got to know that anyone would be thrilled to discover a wonderful man like you is in love with them.”

  “No.”

  So much for letting them work through it alone. Zane couldn’t take the monosyllabic argument any more. Or the look of sadness on Casey’s beautiful face as she kept slamming into Joel’s titanium wall of stubbornness. “You shouldn’t hide the truth. It always comes out eventually.”

  “Maybe eventually it’ll be the right time. But not now. You can’t force love. Dawn’s not ready. And she’s worth waiting for.”

  Casey threw her hands in the air and looked up at the cloudless sky. “Of course she is. About eight years past ready, if you want to put a number on it. She’s lonely. She told me so herself, just a few days ago.” A quirking at the side of her lips. “More or less. The point is, she hasn’t had a relationship since she...ah...since her divorce. Which was way before you even came to town.”

  “I know all about her divorce.”

  “So you know there’s no one else in the picture. You both have steady jobs. No children.”

  “Casey. How can you say that? Dawn loves you like a daughter every bit as much as if her blood ran through your veins.”

  “I meant no young kids, scampering underfoot and taking up all your time. You’re both still on the young side. You’d make each other so happy. You want my blessing? You’ve got it. What possible reason could you have for keeping your feelings a secret from her?”

  A beat. Another. And then Joel folded his arms across his chest. “You of all people, Acacia, should know that some truths are better left undisturbed.”

  Zane certainly didn’t know what that meant. Nor did he agree. Wait a minute—what was with the weird hippie nickname he’d called Casey?

  Speaking of whom, the color had drained from her face, making her eyes look greener than ever. “You, too? You never...you weren’t here...I mean...how...”

  “Need to buy a verb?” Zane quipped, hoping to break the weirdly obvious t
ension.

  Both of them whipped around to stare at Zane. Okay, it was a lame joke, but it didn’t deserve the barely veiled horror they were aiming his way. “What’s with the faces?”

  “I was just startled. People don’t call me Acacia very often. I’m not a fan.”

  Did that mean it was her real name? Weird. Her parents must’ve been massive tree-huggers. Or gardeners. “Duly noted. I wouldn’t want to be named after a tree, either.”

  “It’s a bush,” Joel corrected.

  Casey shook her head. “It’s both.”

  What difference did it make if it was a freaking weed? If she didn’t like it, they should move on already. “Casey, I agree with you. I think he should stop hiding.” Zane stood back up and angled himself toward Joel. “What’ve you got to lose? You guys are already tight, right? Finding out you’re the one who’s been wooing her all these years will just be gravy, and seal the deal.”

  “Trust me when I say it’s more complicated than that, Zane, and drop it. Forget all about it, while you’re at it.”

  “That’s like telling someone not to think about pizza. Now it’s in my head. And Casey’s. Now we’re supposed to help you keep this secret?”

  “I don’t want to lie to Dawn,” she said in a low, somber voice.

  Joel bracketed her chin between his thumb and finger. “You’re not lying to her. You just won’t bring it up. Have you two ever discussed what she writes in the journal to me?”

  “No.”

  “Keep doing exactly that.”

  “I really think she’s ready, Joel. Those, um, complications might be an old habit that needs to be broken. I want her to be happy. I want you to be happy.”

  They might as well be trying to topple the Great Pyramid at Giza. The guy wasn’t budging. Zane warned, “If I put the clues together, someone else might. Do you want her to discover this from some random townsperson, or from you?”

  “I want you to stop digging around in our business.”

  If Zane actually stopped every time someone asked him to, he’d never have published his first book, let alone the five that followed. “Too late,” he said with a grin. Then he pulled Casey into his side and gave her a smacking kiss. “See that? I’m going to have a gorgeous girl to kiss when I finish the race today. That could be you, Joel.”