The Colonels' Texas Promise

by Caro Carson

  Meaningless, except to express the desperation of a child who’d been told he bore no resemblance to his father, a father who’d once spray painted his own school.

  Evan handed the list of damages back to the watch commander. “How many kids involved?”

  “Three, sir. The other two have already been released into their parents’ custody. MPs responded to a call from someone living near the school. The juveniles were caught outside the building as they painted. One tried to run.”

  Evan braced himself. Running from law enforcement never went well for the runner. They tripped, they fell, they ran into traffic. They got tackled. K-9s sent after them—no, the MPs wouldn’t send K-9s after juveniles, but damn. “Who ran?”

  “The oldest one. It was his father’s spray paint. Guess he had more reason to be scared than the rest.”

  “He was still on school property when he was apprehended?”

  “Yes, sir. He didn’t get far. Sergeant Koch ran him down. She cornered him by a fence that he couldn’t get over, and he gave up. She didn’t want to tackle anyone in front of the student body if she could help it.”

  “Outstanding.” Evan made a mental note to commend Sergeant Koch for showing good judgment—and for being a fast runner. “We could turn jurisdiction for all three of them back to the school instead of dragging them in front of a judge. This sounds like a kid’s prank. The juvenile courts have enough of a backlog for bigger crimes.”

  “Yes, sir. I thought so, too. I spoke to the principal. He’s going to call the parents now and ask them to report first thing in the morning. I could call him and let him know we’re going to defer to his judgment instead of pursuing any charges.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  That keeps my wife’s son out of court for a stupid prank.

  The principal would be deciding Matthew’s fate tomorrow. Detention, internal suspension, expulsion? Evan had no idea. He was about to find out, because he’d be going to the principal’s office with Matthew.

  The words principal’s office touched some long-buried bit of his psyche. It sounded as bad now as it had when he was a kid.

  Kids don’t scare me.

  He almost smiled. Kids? No. Being called to the principal’s office? Maybe.

  The police station, however, was his turf. He could wait until Juliet got here, then explain everything to her and ask what she wanted to do next, but he knew the legal and procedural options better than she did. There was no need to put that on her shoulders. Matthew had probably had enough of a scare to last him for the rest of his adolescence. Evan didn’t want to leave him alone any longer.

  “I’m sure they’ll be spending tomorrow finding out how much elbow grease it takes to get paint off a wall. If that’s everything, I’ll be taking custody of Matthew Grayson-Jones.”

  “Sir?” The watch commander couldn’t release a juvenile to just anybody, not even the commander of the MP battalion.

  “He’s my stepson. He didn’t tell you?”

  “No, sir. I thought you were maybe a neighbor or a friend of his parents.”

  “I married his mother a week ago, because I’m luckier than I deserve to be. He’ll get used to it sooner or later. Got any paperwork for me to sign?”

  The watch commander handed him the release papers. “He’s the last one left. I’m sorry, sir. He only asked where you were as if he wanted to make sure you weren’t here, like he was afraid you’d tell his parents about this, so I had a hunch maybe you’d know who his parents were.”

  “Good hunch. I’m glad you called me.” Evan handed him the signed paperwork.

  “You’ll find him in the first office on the right. He’s all yours now.”

  Yes, he is.

  “My wife is Lieutenant Colonel Grayson. You can send her back when she arrives. Thanks again for following your hunch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Evan paused outside the office door that the watch commander had indicated. They didn’t lock juveniles in the station’s holding cells unless they were truly violent or suspected of felonies. Matthew and his new spray-painting posse had been seated in a lineup of chairs against the wall of an empty office. Through the rectangle of the door’s reinforced glass window, Evan saw the row of chairs, all empty but one. Matthew had never looked younger or smaller. Lost.

  You’re not alone, Matthew.

  Evan opened the door and walked in.

  Matthew looked up—and gasped. “I told them to call my dad.”

  “They did. You mentioned my name, too. It’s a good thing you did. I would have gone crazy with worry when you didn’t come home from school when I expected you to. So would your mom, right?”

  “But I thought Dad would come because...because I did something just like him.”

  “You hoped he would come. No one can blame you for that, but call me, too, from now on. I will always come for you.”

  “Because you’re an MP?”

  “Because I would never leave my kid all alone at a police station.”

  “I’m not really your kid.”

  Evan rested his hands on his hips. “Yeah, Matthew, actually, you are. You’re my stepson. You, me and your mom all live together. We’re a family, like it or not. In case you wondered, I like it.”

  Matthew thought about it, looking for loopholes, no doubt. “So, am I not in trouble? Because you’re king of the MPs and all?”

  The kid was too damned clever—and wrong. “You are in serious trouble. You spray painted a school wall. You have to go see the principal tomorrow.”

  Matthew hung his head.

  Evan didn’t know if it would comfort Matthew or not, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. “I’m going to the principal with you. We’ll find out what he thinks is a fair punishment.”

  “You’ll be there,” Matthew muttered. “Instead of Dad.”

  Evan sat down. Rather than stare at the top of Matthew’s head, he turned his patrol cap in his hands and shaped the brim a little, as he’d done to ball caps since he was Matthew’s age. “You know, at the courthouse, when I married your mom, I can understand that you might have felt like I was taking your dad’s place. I didn’t. Your parents got divorced years ago.”

  “I know.”

  “Your mom and I promised that from now on, we’d be each other’s one and only, because that’s how marriage works. You can only be married to one person, right?”

  Matthew’s head bobbed a little, even with his chin in his chest.

  “But that’s not how family works.”

  Matthew looked up.

  “Here’s the thing. You can make your family as big as you want. I’ll always have my parents and my sister, but I’ve added you and your mom now, too. You didn’t replace anyone in my family. You just made my family bigger. It means there are more people in the world who care about me.”

  He resisted the urge to ruffle Matthew’s hair. “More people for me to care about, too. Maybe you’ll decide to make your family bigger. You’ve already got a dad and a fantastic mom, and you can add me as a stepfather. I’ll be married to your mother forever. I’ll be your stepfather forever.”

  Matthew looked more than sad or scared. He looked pale. His breathing was shallow.

  “Matthew...” Evan wished he could hug the poor kid, but after the last two days, he knew it would only make Matthew even more unhappy. Instead, he stood. “Are you ready to go home now?”

  Hope touched his terribly young face. “Really? You can take me home because you’re an MP?”

  “I can take you home because you’re my stepson. Because I’m an MP, I have the Vette parked right outside the station door.”

  Matthew stood, trembling like a leaf. Evan held an arm out, thinking only to steady him if his knees should give way, but Matthew threw himself across the few feet of linoleum between them and plastered hi
mself to Evan, arms around his waist, face buried somewhere in Evan’s lower ribs. The fabric of Evan’s ACU jacket muffled the boy’s sobs.

  Evan had never been more surprised in his life.

  Matthew clung to him with a grip that was shockingly fierce for someone who was barely tall enough to ride the Fireball roller coaster. Evan hugged him back just as tightly. If Matthew needed to hang on to something solid, then Evan was glad to be it.

  Eventually, Evan turned at the feeling that someone was watching him. Juliet, one of his oldest friends, now his beautiful wife, was standing outside the office. Her hands were clasped over her heart. Without saying a word, she walked up to them and joined them, one arm around Evan, one arm around her son, and they stood there in a hug for a long, long time.

  Party of three.

  When they left the station, Colonel Grayson hooked her pinkie finger with Colonel Stephens’s, and they began living the best years of their lives.

  Epilogue

  Evan watched patiently as Matthew struggled to learn a new skill.

  “Got it,” Matthew said. “That took forever.”

  “The more you do it, the faster you’ll get. It’s a good skill for a man to have.”

  Matthew looked skeptical. “Getting a stroller out of a car is a man skill?”

  “If you don’t know how, then you have to hold the baby. The first time I held you, actually, was to help your mom while she got your stroller out of her car.”

  “But I wasn’t a baby.”

  Matthew loved the story of Evan’s first impression of him at a long-ago tailgate. Evan retold it as often as Matthew hinted that he wanted to hear it.

  “Right. You were four times as big as Maggie is.” Evan patted his daughter’s diapered and ruffle-covered bottom as she slept on his shoulder. “You were a toddler who knew what he wanted. I’d already seen you steal your mom’s hamburger.” And I was reeling from the impact.

  Later that day, Juliet had needed a hand with her stroller, and since Evan had known nothing about the things back then, Juliet had plopped Matthew in his arms and dealt with the stroller herself.

  “All right, let’s go. Your mom’s plane is landing. Maggie’s asleep, so I’ll keep carrying her, because what is Rule Number One?”

  “Never wake the baby.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “You are a very wise eighth grader. I’ve got the baby. You get the stroller.”

  Juliet was returning from her latest assignment. She’d been sent out of the state, but not across the world and not to an area of conflict, thankfully. Her staff officer course had taken three long weeks, but not a year. She was returning home on a regular civilian flight, so they’d come to meet her at the airport, not at a military hangar.

  But when Juliet caught sight of her husband and her son and her baby girl, the explosion of joy was the same as they ran to each other for a group hug.

  Party of four.

  It was one of life’s perfect moments.

  * * *

  Don’t miss other amazing military romances in the American Heroes miniseries:

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  by Rochelle Alers

  The Majors’ Holiday Hideaway

  by Caro Carson

  The Captains’ Vegas Vows

  by Caro Carson

  Special Forces Father

  by Victoria Pade

  The Lieutenants’ Online Love

  by Caro Carson

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  How to Rescue a Family

  by Teri Wilson

  Chapter One

  “He’s here.”

  Amanda Sylvester looked up from the pear-and-goat-cheese puff pastry she was assembling and found Belle Ross, her head waitress, grinning at her from ear to ear.

  “You know, in case you’ve decided to take a chance and actually speak to him.” Belle lifted a brow. “Just saying.”

  “The lunch rush is in full swing. Shouldn’t you be waiting tables?” Amanda reached for a fresh rosemary sprig from the tiny garden she’d planted in the Grille’s sole kitchen window and placed it carefully on top of her creation. “Just saying.”

  Belle leaned against the door frame. “It’s three o’clock. The lunch crowd disappeared almost an hour ago. But nice try, boss.”

  “Oh.” Amanda had lost track of time—again—a common occurrence when she was experimenting with new recipes. Not that any of her new dishes ever actually turned up on the menu.

  A girl could dream, though, right?

  “He ordered a latte to go. I reminded him, yet again, that we’re not exactly a latte sort of establishment. We’re basically a diner, so our coffee offerings are pretty much limited to regular and decaf.” Belle shoved a paper cup at Amanda. “This is his coffee—regular, by the way. You’re giving it to him. I refuse to do it myself.”

  Amanda stared at the cup. “Um.”

  “Seriously, take it. This secret crush of yours is getting old.”

  Amanda’s face went hot, and she defiantly plucked the coffee from Belle’s grasp. “It’s not a secret crush. I just think he’s mysterious, that’s all.”

  Nor was he terrible to look at, but that was beside the point.

  Mostly.

  Amanda had lived in Spring Forest, North Carolina, her entire life. She’d worked at her family’s restaurant, Main Street Grille, since she was old enough to juggle more than one plate at a time. She loved it. She really did. But sometimes, it was all just a little predictable.

  Which explained her fascination with the man who’d suddenly started showing up multiple times a day, looking as if he’d just walked out of the pages of GQ rather than any of the redbrick buildings in Spring Forest’s historic downtown district. Ryan Carter, the new owner and editor-in-chief of The Spring Forest Chronicle, wasn’t exactly what people might call personable, but he was certainly different. And attractive.

  In a brooding sort of way.

  Belle grinned. “Keep telling yourself that, boss.”

  “You’re so fired,” Amanda whispered as she slipped past her, toward the dining room.

  She was kidding, obviously. Belle was a ridiculously competent waitress, as well as one of Amanda’s oldes
t friends. But she was also delusional.

  It wasn’t a crush. Amanda was a grown woman. A career woman. Twenty-nine-year-old ambitious adults didn’t have crushes.

  But when she reached the counter and Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Grumpy glanced up from the iPhone in his hand, her stomach flipped in a way that could only be described as crush-tastic.

  Get a grip on yourself. That’s not even a word.

  She squared her shoulders, smiled and offered him the cup. “Your coffee.”

  He took it. “Thank you very much.”

  No smile. No indication that he thought she, herself, was crush-tastic, despite the very good hair day she was having. Nothing.

  He gave her a distracted nod before turning to leave.

  “You’re welcome,” she said to his back.

  Rude much?

  Amanda picked up the closest dish towel and scrubbed furiously at an invisible spot on the counter. She glanced back up for another glimpse of his disappearing form as he pushed through the door and strode purposefully down Main Street. He had a lovely back. Broad and strong, as if capable of shouldering the heaviest of burdens. And were those actual muscles moving beneath the elegant weave of his suit jacket? God, they were.

  “How’d it go?” Belle asked.

  “Disastrously.” Amanda scrubbed harder at the smooth Formica countertop. “I was confident and lovely. I smiled when I said ‘Here’s your coffee,’ and I might have even thrown in a flirty hair flip.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Amanda crossed her arms and sighed. “He said ‘Thank you very much,’ and left.”

  “I see what you mean. Total disaster.” The corner of Belle’s mouth twitched into a grin. “Clearly the man is a monster.”

  “You jest, but the fact that he didn’t smile says something about him, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. It says he’s in a hurry. Or distracted. Or under-caffeinated, hence the coffee.” Belle gestured, Vanna White–style, at the coffeepot.

  “Or he has no interest in me whatsoever, which is fine.” More than fine, really. She didn’t have time for a love interest. She didn’t even have time for a dog, for crying out loud. She just wanted to do her job, post her foodie pics to Instagram and admire Ryan Carter from afar. Was that really too much to ask? “He’s married, anyway. We know that much about him.”