A Marine for His Mom (Sugar Falls, Idaho)

by Christy Jeffries

  MAIL-ORDER DAD

  Can you order a dad in the mail? Hunter Walker isn’t sure, but he thinks Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Cooper might be the next best thing. The wounded warrior has been his pen pal for months, and now that he’s come to Sugar Falls to recuperate, Hunter is over the moon. His mom? Not so much.

  Maxine Walker has been acting weird ever since Cooper showed up. She seems to get mad whenever the veteran is around, which doesn’t make any sense. And now Cooper is acting weird, too. Hunter doesn’t understand why grown-ups always say things are complicated when they’re really simple. His pen pal soldier and his sassy, stubborn mom belong together. But maybe they need just a little push...

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I took a shower.”

  His comment forced her to turn and acknowledge him, but the moment she laid eyes on his damp and masculine form, she froze.

  Sweet mercy. He was wearing his shorts, thankfully, but his hair was wet, and he was still shirtless. He walked toward her—barefoot, she assumed, because she couldn’t take her eyes off the muscles rippling in his chest long enough to look. The hair on his upper body formed a soft V that angled down below his waistband.

  “Maxine?”

  She couldn’t answer. She was too mesmerized by his ripped hard abdomen.

  “Maxine?” he said again, and she had to drag her eyes upward. He stepped closer, and she leaned back against the kitchen counter to steady her shaky legs.

  “Huh?” she managed to get out.

  Cooper was now only inches away. He lifted his hand to her face, his fingers skimming her cheek and setting her skin on fire. “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m not going to be able to control myself anymore.”

  She didn’t want him to control himself. And she was sure as heck tired of controlling herself. So she raised her lips in invitation.

  And that was all it took.

  * * *

  Sugar Falls, Idaho: Your destination for true love!

  Dear Reader,

  Coming up with ideas for stories is a little like making Maxine Walker’s famous Sugar Falls Cookie recipe. I take a bit of life experience and blend in some personal observations before adding my own imagination to the mix. In A Marine for His Mom, there are several ingredients that I blended to make this romance come together.

  During law school, I interned at the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate and developed a better understanding and respect for the men and women who serve in our military. And given my history in law enforcement, having a military cop as the hero was a perfect start. I’ve also been known to shake a few pom-poms in my day and, like the heroine, I have several close girlfriends from college with whom I group text constantly. But the character I relate to most in this book is the young matchmaker determined to find the perfect guy for his single mother. I mean, come on... What kid from a divorced home wouldn’t love the opportunity to set up one of their parents?

  Like Hunter Walker, I met my future stepdad when I was ten years old. We bonded over our shared dislike of onions in our meatloaf—or any other meal. And while I can’t take credit for setting them up, I couldn’t have picked a better match for my mom.

  For more information on my pantry of life experiences, visit my website at christyjeffries.com, or chat with me on Twitter at @ChristyJeffries. You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram. I’d love to hear from you! And don’t miss Waking Up Wed, the next book in my Sugar Falls, Idaho miniseries, coming in February 2016!

  Enjoy,

  Christy Jeffries

  A Marine for His Mom

  Christy Jeffries

  Christy Jeffries graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a degree in criminology and received her Juris Doctor from California Western School of Law. But drafting court documents and working in law enforcement was merely an apprenticeship for her current career in the dynamic field of mommyhood and romance writing. She lives in Southern California with her patient husband, two energetic sons and one sassy grandmother. Follow her online at christyjeffries.com.

  To the wise and determined bestselling author, Judy Duarte. When my English teacher told you that I didn’t like to read, you handed me a Danielle Steel book and said, “Try reading a romance novel.” And when I struggled with the decision to leave a rewarding career to become a stay-at-home mom, you signed me up for a workshop and said, “Try writing a romance novel.”

  It takes a strong woman to guide an even stronger-willed daughter. But doing it with such grace, diplomacy and unconventional orchestration takes extreme love and dedication.

  I love you, Mom.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Excerpt from Three Reasons to Wed by Helen Lacey

  Prologue

  September 4

  Dear Soldier,

  My name is Hunter Walker. I’m a fifth grader in Miss Gregson’s class. I live in Sugar Falls, Idaho, which is the most boringest town you can think of. I love football and baseball, even though my mom won’t let me play. Gram says my dad was the best football player to ever come out of Sugar Falls, but he died when I was a baby and before he made the pros. Since I’m not allowed to play, I never have anything to do when my mom is busy working or with her friends.

  My mom is nice but she is way to into her girl stuff. She has a cool bakery that’s famous for cookies and her friends are always trying to find stuff for me to do. Aunt Mia had me in yoga, but I got sick of being the only boy. Aunt Kylie wanted to enter me in one of her glitz pageants last year, but when I saw the glittery pink bow tie, I said no way. Gram tries to talk mom into letting me play football, but my mom says it’ll never happen. Mom says Gram is to pushy and needs to learn to back off. I think Gram is fine except when she buys me clothes that make me feel like a big fat loser. I never get to do any cool boy things. Even though I don’t remember him, I sometimes miss my dad. It would be nice to talk to a guy once in awhile. I don’t really have anything in common with the other boys in my class and they make fun of me a lot.

  I put in a picture of me so you would know who your writing to. Can you send me a picture of you? Maybe one of you on an M1A1 tank or in a fighter plane. Any plane or Huey would be cool, but Jake Marconi says his uncle flies a Harrier jet and I saw one when I looked it up online. I think Jake is lying because I met his uncle at Jake’s 8th birthday party and he didn’t look like a fighter pilot. Can you be a fighter pilot when your 18? Do they have fighter pilots in the coast guard?

  Its ok if your not a fighter pilot. I’ll still write you back. But you are a man right? I don’t want to have to write to any girls cause I have to be around them enough already. Do you like baseball? Or UFC? I’m not allowed to watch UFC, but my mom lets me watch baseball. The Colorado Rockies are my favorite team and I know every stat about them for the last three years. Anyway, I hope your a boy and that you like baseball and that you write me back.

  Sincerely,

  Hunter Walker

  Chapter One


  Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Cooper closed his eyes and clenched the armrests as his plane touched down onto the tarmac in Boise. No matter how many times he’d flown to obscure places around the world, he never got used to the steady decline and the rough bounce of the landing. But this time, he felt as if his entire future was skidding toward the edge of the runway.

  A couple of months ago, when he’d stormed out of his commanding officer’s makeshift headquarters with Hunter Walker’s letter crumpled in his hand, he’d been mad as hell. He’d been even more pissed off at Dr. Gregson for suggesting he participate in the ridiculous pen pal program and pairing him up with some goofy kid in Nowheresville, Idaho.

  As the seat belt light dinged off, Cooper remembered thinking that a Marine Corps base in Afghanistan wasn’t any place for him to be playing nanny-by-mail to some ten-year-old kid with an overprotective mom and no friends. It wasn’t as if Cooper had been some lonely nineteen-year-old infantry grunt who needed a morale boost. He’d been a provost sergeant who’d held some of the deadliest Taliban leaders in custody in the base brig. Before that, he’d been stationed as an MP at bases all over the world. He’d broken up bar fights, investigated assaults and murder, and even gone undercover with NCIS on a few occasions. He had no business being some kid’s babysitter or even worse, male role model.

  But now that Cooper’s tour of duty, and possibly his entire military career, was at a sudden end thanks to a random suicide bomber, that same kid and the bond they’d established over emails and letters was the only glimpse of brightness in his dark, lonely future.

  As the center aisle of the aircraft filled up with people trying to reclaim their belongings from the overhead bins, Cooper fiddled with his seat belt and longed to stand and stretch out his legs. But his knee was barely being held together with pins and screws, and he would have to wait for the rest of the passengers to disembark the plane before some airline personnel would load him up on a wheelchair and push his useless body out to the baggage claim area.

  He hated being weak and was questioning his earlier decision to allow Hunter to see him like this the first time they met. He ached with stiffness, and he was completely exhausted. He’d been traveling on a commercial airline for well over thirty hours now, with layovers in both Tokyo and San Francisco. He’d taken a Vicodin in the Frisco airport an hour before he boarded the last leg of his flight, and now he wondered whether he was in any shape to meet his young pen pal face-to-face.

  Or to allow the kid’s mom to drive him to the Shadowview Military Hospital outside of Boise.

  Crap. How had he let Hunter talk him into that? Sure, he and the chatty fifth grader had built up quite the steady stream of correspondence when he’d been stationed in Afghanistan, and then later, as he’d been recuperating at the closest base hospital. And although he wasn’t what most people would consider a believer in divine intervention, Cooper had to question the alignment of fate when the doctors in Okinawa told him that the two best options he had to recover the use of his leg would be an intense orthopedic surgery at either Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland or the Shadowview Military Hospital outside of Boise.

  Cooper’s distal femur fracture would need to be repaired and healed before they could even think about a total knee replacement. He was looking at a long recovery time and, while he normally didn’t mind his loner lifestyle or the fact that he didn’t have any family to speak of, he figured that if he went to Shadowview, he’d at least be close to Hunter.

  How pathetic was that?

  He tried to comfort himself with the belief that Hunter needed him. The kid didn’t have any positive male role models, and while the boy’s mom probably loved him, it sounded like Hunter really needed a strong hand to get him in check. What the hell was wrong with the kid’s mother? Putting him in yoga classes and forbidding sports? Who does that to a boy? Guessing by her baking job, she was probably just as out of shape as the kid—if not more so—and too busy working to bother with taking care of her son.

  It had been a bone of contention between Cooper and his ex-wife, but one thing Cooper had learned early on in the foster care system was that people shouldn’t be having kids if they were too busy to raise them.

  That old familiar pang cramped inside his left rib cage, and he grabbed his backpack from under the seat just to give himself something to do. He winced as the forward movement added pressure to his leg, but the physical pain was at least better than the emotional pain that he’d almost let get the better of him.

  There seemed to be some sort of delay exiting the plane because nobody was moving forward. Cooper pulled the printout of one of his past emails from Hunter from his backpack and read it.

  To: matthewcooper@usmc.mil

  From: hunterlovestherockies@hotmail.net

  Re: Surgery

  Date: Jan 3

  Wow! I can’t believe your actually coming Idaho to have your operation. How long do you have to stay in the hospital? I’ll have my mom and my Gram bring me down every week to visit you. Maybe I can hitchhike rides down the mountain too, when my mom is working. Jake Marconi said he hitchhiked once with his cousin and they went all the way to Winnemucca.

  Are you real real worried about your knee? I’d be crazy worried if I were you. They should probably award your dog Helix a purple heart or a navy cross or something for going after that bomber and saving your life like that. Will they let you still be a marine if your knee don’t heal right?

  You can still be my pen pal even if they kick you out and you’re not a marine no more. Where will you live when you get out of the hospital?

  I went to Hawaii once with Gram. You could live there. Or even better, you could come live HERE. In Sugar Falls. It would be sooooooooo cool if we could hang out all the time. I’d be the only kid in my class to actually meet his real pen pal. I think I’m the only one now to still be getting letters and emails and stuff. Please please please think about living here after you get done at the hospital. I know I said Sugar Falls was dumb and boring, but it’s not really that way if we have each other we can hang out with. We could go fishing and everything.

  You could stay with me and my mom. You’ll meet her when we pick you up at the airport to take you to the hospital. She’ll tell you that it’ll be so awesome. Please say yes!

  Please.

  Hunter

  Cooper folded up the paper, and then looked at the standard issue class picture Hunter had sent in his original letter. He almost winced at the chubbiness of the kid’s face. The boy’s mom needed to get him off the cookies and onto a physical regimen, stat. Cooper may have had it rough growing up in a one-bedroom apartment in the slums of Detroit, but at least he’d been in shape and hadn’t taken any crap from the kids on the playground. Of course, taking crap from his stepdad was another thing.

  Don’t think about the past. Think about the next step. The old adage he’d learned from his drill instructor had helped him to get past his crappy home life and rise up in the ranks. Even after his injury, he’d repeated the mantra dozens of times and knew that no matter how jacked up his leg was, he was a fighter and would get through this.

  Once the surgeries were done, the physical therapy would be intense if Cooper wanted to regain full use of his leg. Maybe he could encourage Hunter to do some exercises with him. Heck, maybe Ms. Walker would be willing to get in shape with them.

  The past few weeks, he’d found himself wondering about the boy’s mom more frequently. And no, it had nothing to do with the fact that he’d lost his own mom at the age of twelve and had fantasized about what it would be like to have a real home. And loving parents.

  So he’d talked to Hunter to make sure that the mother was okay with their pen pal relationship. He’d never written to the woman directly, nor had Hunter ever sent a picture of her, but Cooper had her pegged all the same. As an MP, he could read between the lines.

&
nbsp; He didn’t want to overstep his boundaries or cause problems for the Walkers. But the woman’s world most likely revolved around cookies and not much else. By the time she got around to noticing he was even in her son’s life, Cooper would be long gone.

  * * *

  “Mom, can’t you make this thing go any faster? Jake Marconi’s dad got a new Porsche, and Jake said it can go like a hundred and sixty miles an hour.”

  Maxine Walker shot a glance across the seat at her impressionable son, yet her mind was focused on how quickly she and Hunter could greet his soldier friend at the airport and make it back up to Sugar Falls before dark. She could care less about Jake Marconi’s dad’s latest midlife cry for attention. Besides, they’d gotten another couple inches of snow last night, and she didn’t like this two-lane stretch of highway down the mountain, even in optimal weather.

  “Hunter, explain to me why we have to pick this guy up, again? Doesn’t the military provide him transportation to the hospital?”

  “I told you. I promised him I’d meet him in person. How would you like to be blown up in a war zone and then fly all the way around the world to some random hospital where you don’t know anybody? He’s a war hero, Mom. It’s our patriotic duty.”

  Maxine blew a blond curl out of her eye as she finally turned her SUV off the highway and toward the interstate that would take them toward the Boise Airport. She didn’t need her ten-year-old son to preach to her about patriotic duties. Maxine had grown up on Uncle Sam’s rhetoric. Both of her parents were career Army and had bounced her and her six siblings around from base to base until she finally left for Boise State at eighteen.

  “I think you’ve boosted enough troop morale for all of us these past few months, Hunter. Isn’t it enough that I let you keep writing letters to this guy, even though we don’t know anything about him?”