The Colonels' Texas Promise

by Caro Carson

  “It’s not like I’ve dated much since the divorce. Babysitters are hard to find and more expensive than you might think. But it’s been my experience that guys assume I’ll arrange a babysitter, even for a daytime date. Even for an amusement park.”

  “I’m getting a kick out of doing this with an eleven-year-old. If he wasn’t here, I would never have remembered that I used to run from ride to ride when I was his age. I would have walked right past the bumper cars and not even ridden them, like some boring adult.”

  That’s the truth, and it has nothing to do with getting into your pants.

  “That’s what you truly think?” She looked at him with something a little too close to amazement in her expression.

  It shouldn’t be so hard for her to believe. “Matthew’s definitely a plus, not a minus.”

  He hadn’t expected the full-body hug that followed, but suddenly, he had Juliet’s arms around him, her warmth pressed against his chest. She even rested her head on his shoulder, her hair—darker than college, but just as soft—brushing the underside of his jaw.

  Evan brought his arms around her and held her as he looked at the colorful slushie stand and listened to the snapping electricity and screeching rubber of the bumper cars. Life was rarely so perfect.

  “It’s so good to have a friend again,” she murmured.

  “Things will be easier now,” he said. “Serious things. Everything.”

  Her sigh was silent, but he felt it as he held her. “Marrying you won’t change anything. I’ll still have to pay Rob the same amount every month.”

  “Marrying me will change everything,” he countered, as easily as riding a bike. “You’ll have someone to curse with you every time you see that money going to him. We can chase down each payday with a shot of tequila. It’ll give us something to look forward to each month.”

  She laughed. Maybe it was more of a snort than a laugh, but he’d take it.

  It was the most natural thing in the world to kiss her. She needed kissing. She needed reassuring, but as he cupped the back of her head in his hand, as he admired her face and those eyes that were a touch too sad, just as he leaned in to place a kiss on that beloved mouth, he caught sight of Matthew out of the corner of his eye.

  Too late. He was already kissing Juliet. Her mouth was soft, willing and welcoming, and he felt that sense of rightness pass through him, as he had every kiss before.

  He kept the kiss very brief, then moved to kiss her forehead, buying himself a moment before breaking it to her. “Try not to jolt out of my arms like you’ve done anything wrong, but we’ve just been busted.”

  “What?”

  He smiled into her gold-flecked eyes, then looked past her to a child who had those same eyes. “How’d it go, Matthew? Done with the bumper cars?”

  * * *

  There’d been no line for the slushies a moment ago. Now, of course, ten people were ahead of them.

  Juliet had handled Matthew’s shocked silence after the kiss by brightly suggesting it was time for a slushie. She should have looked at the line first. Ahead of them, teenagers talked over each other nonstop. Behind them, small children spoke with treble voices and the lisp that appeared when front teeth went missing. The teens had tired parents. The little lispers had grandparents who encouraged every sentence with a delighted how about that? The contrast to her awkwardly silent party of three was intensely uncomfortable.

  She felt uncomfortable, at least. Evan looked as calm and confident as always, and Matthew... Well, if looks could kill, she’d be a goner.

  She tried to deflect his laser beam stare toward the row of slowly turning slushie machines. “Have you picked a color yet?”

  Silence.

  “Evan has never had blue. Can you believe that?”

  “I thought he was your friend,” Matthew said, as if Evan weren’t standing right there.

  “He is.” I will stay calm and factual and try not to look guilty.

  “I don’t kiss my friends.” Matthew turned his glare on Evan. “That would be disgusting.”

  One of the teenage girls looked back at them and giggled.

  Evan only shrugged. “That depends on which friend you kissed. Some would be more disgusting than others.”

  Both teenage girls looked back this time—and kept looking. At Evan.

  He’s too old for you, girls. But Evan had always had that certain something that made women look twice.

  The sun was starting to set, its golden beams slanted at an angle that made her squint. “By the time we get to order, it might be too cold for a slushie. The sun is going down fast.” She put her jacket on.

  “You’re supposed to kiss Daddy, not him. I remember you kissing Daddy.”

  So much for her attempt to change the subject. The grandma looked their way. Granny did a little double take and checked out Evan. Can’t blame me for kissing him, can you?

  “Daddy and I are divorced,” she said firmly. She kept the statement short and clear so that Matthew couldn’t misunderstand it—and maybe so any of Evan’s eavesdropping fan club wouldn’t think she was some kind of Jezebel.

  Evan shrugged into his leather bomber jacket, pulled those silvered aviator glasses out of his pocket and slid them on. The teenage girl who’d turned away was immediately elbowed by her friend. She looked back, looked at her friend, and they made OMG faces at each other. Then their mom looked to see why they’d gone so quiet. She stared, too.

  Matthew’s youthful voice wavered. “You’re divorced forever?”

  In a flash, all her focus was on Matthew. What a question! “Oh, honey. Yes, divorce is permanent. We’ve talked about it, many times.”

  “But Daddy doesn’t kiss anybody else.”

  Daddy never stopped kissing other people.

  It hurt. She didn’t love Rob at all, not anymore, but it still hurt. Her son’s blind loyalty was age-appropriate for him, but painful for her.

  “Maybe Daddy does, maybe he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter either way, because we are divorced.”

  She couldn’t look at Evan. He knew Rob too well, and he’d already guessed too much.

  Juliet smoothed down Matthew’s hair, but she only got one stroke in before he squirmed away. Apparently, a man ruffling his hair at the bumper cars was funny. A mother smoothing it was not acceptable.

  Matthew still looked both indignant and bewildered. “So, are you allowed to kiss anybody you want?”

  “I suppose I could, but I don’t go around kissing just anybody.” She put her arm around Matthew’s shoulders and gave him a little squeeze and a shake. “Come on, Matty. You know I don’t.”

  “You kissed him.” Apparently, Matthew couldn’t look at Evan, either.

  “Yes, I did.” Juliet sorted through a dozen things she could add to that short sentence, but she didn’t say any of them. Maybe it was the reminders about Rob. Maybe it was the slushie-line audience. Maybe she was just an adult who didn’t need to justify her actions to the world, not even to her eleven-year-old son, but whatever it was, she was done with the subject.

  “I did,” she repeated, then pointedly looked toward the rainbow array of churning slushie machines. “I’m getting the green slushie. What color do you want?”

  Only after the teenagers ahead of them were finished with their order did Matthew answer. “Green.”

  Evan ordered three greens and handed them out. “We can drink them on the way to the next ride.”

  “Which is...?” Juliet asked as she sucked some fluorescent green ice up the straw.

  Evan looked at Matthew and waited for a moment, but Matthew wasn’t going to contribute. He was too busy scowling at the world, including the slushie in his hand.

  Evan addressed Juliet instead, with a wry twist to his kissable mouth. “There’s Boomerang. Pandemonium. Spinsanity. I think they all sound about right, don�
�t you?”

  Juliet grinned despite the straw in her mouth. “I do.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I hate hamburgers.”

  “Matthew Grayson-Jones, that is a lie.”

  “I don’t want to go to Evan’s house.”

  At least that wasn’t a lie. Juliet headed her car toward Evan’s house. They’d gotten home from the amusement park just after midnight, as Evan had planned. Today, he’d invited them to his house, also as he’d planned. Her own plans, however, were freaking out her son more than she’d...planned.

  She tried to say something positive after a morning of negatives from Matthew. “It will be nice to have real food cooked at a house instead of eating more microwaved stuff in our hotel room.”

  “We could get McDonald’s.”

  “Honey, we’ve had McDonald’s at least twenty times this month already. Ten times on the drive from Georgia, at least.” The light ahead turned yellow. She drove through it. “Besides, maybe you’ll like Evan’s house.”

  “Who cares what his house looks like?”

  “I want to see his house, and I want to eat some homemade food.”

  “Are you going to kiss him again?”

  “I don’t know.” She hadn’t expected the sight of a man kissing her to be so traumatic for Matthew.

  “All we ever do is stuff with Evan, Evan, Evan. We see him every single day.”

  “We’ve seen him twice.”

  “And today,” Matthew whined.

  “Okay, thrice.”

  Matthew usually loved exotic words like thrice, but he refused to be cajoled in any way out of his bad mood.

  Juliet tapped the steering wheel with one finger as they waited for the next light. The whole purpose of coming to Fort Hood was to give Matthew a better life, a better family, a better male role model. She’d always liked Evan so much, she’d been certain Matthew would like him, too. Matthew usually stuck like glue to the man in any situation, whether it was her father or cousin, his coach or a teacher. She could have predicted that he’d stand near the men while he ate his cake after her promotion.

  But if Matthew didn’t like Evan, and if they didn’t get along, then there was no reason for her to force any of the three of them to go through with her plan.

  Except you would have a partner and a friend. A man who can really kiss...

  If her first marriage had taught her anything, it was that kisses could be meaningless.

  This was about family. About Matthew. And if that wasn’t going to work, then she should stop this marriage pact madness.

  * * *

  “Come on in.”

  “Hi,” Juliet said. She gave Matthew’s shoulder a quick squeeze.

  “Hi,” Matthew muttered.

  Juliet had tucked two bottles under her arm. “We brought you some drinks. This is a good red wine, but it’s not expensive. Feel free to enjoy it with a burger. Or, if you prefer, this is a very, very good beer.”

  “Yes, it is.” Evan took the bottles from her. The beer was almost as big as the wine bottle, sealed with a cork in the Trappist monk style. Any money she’d saved on the wine she must have spent on the beer.

  He approved. They made such a good couple.

  “We have a favorite nonalcoholic option, too.” She squeezed her son’s shoulder one more time.

  Matthew stuck out his lower lip as he stuck out the cardboard six-pack carrier he’d been holding. It was filled with what looked like brown beer bottles.

  Evan took that, too. “Thanks. You’re a little young to be a beer aficionado, aren’t you?”

  “It’s root beer,” he said, then mumbled, “Really good kind.”

  “Great. Come on in.”

  Damn if Evan didn’t feel nervous as they walked into his house. There wasn’t a fancy foyer, just stairs to the second story. They basically walked right into the living room. He tried to see it through their eyes. This level had wood flooring, a considerable upgrade from most post housing he’d lived in. He led them through to the kitchen, which had upgraded appliances and countertops as well. It was good to live on the same street with a general and a few brigade commanders; the houses were the army’s version of executive-level.

  He watched Juliet’s face. He could read her expressions so well, couldn’t he? Well, he could tell she was nervous, too.

  “First impression?” he asked casually, as he set the beer in the fridge.

  “This is so much nicer than our house at Benning, isn’t it, Matthew?”

  Matthew was not exactly enthusiastic about a kitchen. Evan could remember being bored out of his middle-school mind while adults discussed things like carpeting and double-paned windows.

  Matthew stayed silent. I feel you, kid.

  Evan kept up the conversation. “It’s nicer than any housing I’ve had, too. I didn’t put up much of a fight when they said this was the only one immediately available in their inventory, but I’m the only person on the street that doesn’t have kids living in his house. The school bus picks up at least a dozen kids for the middle school.” There are kids for you to play with, Matthew.

  “We saw some kids playing basketball in one of the driveways when we drove in,” Juliet said. “Matthew recognized one of them. From which class was it? Math or earth science?”

  “Earth science,” Matthew muttered.

  Evan took out one of the root beers and held up a bottle opener with a raised eyebrow at Matthew, universal guy code for do you want one?

  He opened the bottle and slid it across the counter to Matthew, Wild-West-saloon style. Matthew caught it like a pro. His smile was fleeting, but at least there’d been a smile.

  “Do you want to see the rest of the house?”

  “No.” Matthew was determined to be stubborn.

  “Juliet, do you want to see the house?”

  “Maybe in a minute?”

  That kind of wishy-washy statement was as uncharacteristic as her frequent apologies. Juliet was worried about something. Probably her son.

  Matthew lived with a mother who loved him completely, but she’d dragged him from Georgia to Texas, and then she’d kissed someone who wasn’t Daddy yesterday. Matthew was acting sullen and stubborn, but Evan guessed that was just how a sixth grader expressed anxiety.

  Juliet tried again. “Honey, wouldn’t you like to see—?”

  Matthew cut her off. “Can we leave now?”

  On the other hand, Matthew might just be acting like a jerk.

  “That was rude, and you know it.” Juliet spoke through clenched teeth.

  Evan looked between mother and son and realized the tension was between them, not with him. At some point between leaving them at the hotel last night and opening the door to them today, Juliet and Matthew had had a falling-out.

  He probably should stay out of it. He wasn’t a parent. Juliet had eleven years of experience dealing with Matthew. Evan had less than forty-eight hours.

  “Leave now to go do what?” he asked.

  He couldn’t stay out of it. No part of the past sixteen years as a leader had prepared him to stand and do nothing while problems sat in front of him, simmering. Besides, Evan had known he was going to be tested sooner rather than later.

  Matthew gave him a ferocious frown but stayed silent.

  I’m not your enemy, but let the battle begin.

  “You’ve got no homework. You already checked out a major theme park yesterday. It’s going to be time for dinner soon enough. You’ve gotta eat, and I’ve got burgers you can put on the grill and cook however you like them, but instead, you want to leave. You must have something very cool to do.”

  “No.”

  A one-word answer. Still, it was an improvement over the silent glare, so Evan stayed on that path, because if Matthew wasn’t happy, Juliet wasn’t happy. Evan would consider
this battle won when Matthew was as happy as Evan could make him. Somehow.

  “What would be cool to do?” Evan began the process of uncorking the wine to cover the awkwardness of Matthew’s silence. “When you had a Sunday free at Benning, what did you like to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ll like Fort Hood better, then. There are things to do here.”

  That earned him another frown. “I had things at Benning. I have things. Lots of things. Video games.”

  Oh, son, you are mine now. “Which video games?”

  “Minecraft. Lego Batman. Stuff.”

  “I like Minecraft. All of the Legos are good. Juliet, you want a glass?”

  “You like them?” Matthew asked.

  “I think I could use a glass.” Juliet matched his nonchalant tone, but the start of a smile touched her expression. She knew what Evan was up to.

  He made a production out of pouring two glasses as he answered Matthew. “Lego Avengers is the newest one I’ve got. Do you play Minecraft on Xbox or PlayStation?”

  Matthew just gaped at him, as if he’d never heard an adult speak those words.

  “Or do you have the PC version?” Evan asked.

  “I got an Xbox for Christmas, but it’s still with our household goods.” Matthew easily spouted military-speak like household goods, a true army brat, born and bred.

  “Since you’re not interested in seeing the house, help yourself to my Xbox. It’s in the living room. Look for a small black box to the left of the TV that lets you select which input you want. I think it’s set to PlayStation right now, so just switch it to Xbox, unless you want to try playing Minecraft on PlayStation. See if you like the controller better.”

  “You have them both?”

  “Holler if you can’t get it fired up.”

  “Cool.” Matthew grabbed his root beer and made to bolt out of the kitchen, but Juliet caught him by the sleeve.

  “Drink,” she said. As Matthew put his bottle back on the counter, Juliet explained to Evan. “Drinks stay in the kitchen.”