“Hey, Nio?” Trey called down. “I think you’d better come up here.”
The chorus blasted across the dock, triggering a flood of memories about their last days together.
“I think,” Trey pointed out, “she’s here for you.”
Nio straightened, the hair on the back of his neck rising as he pulled himself up the cabin steps to the deck. He squinted in the afternoon sun to locate the source of the music.
And then he saw her.
Becca was standing with her dog, Milo, a few feet down the pier, holding a big boom box over her head like John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler did in the movie, blasting out Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” She smiled a wavering smile when she saw him. He felt his heart jump and he couldn’t help but laugh. Spectators from other boats on the marina appeared on their decks to see what was going on.
In three steps, he was off the boat and onto the dock. Her arms were shaking as Peter Gabriel hit the chorus. A rush of emotion hit him as he reached her.
“Hey, Crazy.” He snagged the boom box from her and set it down on the dock.
“Oh…” She bent over, shaking her arms out. “Thank God you took it ’cause I was gonna drop it in a minute if you didn’t hurry up and see me. That monster’s heavier than it looks.” She swiped surreptitiously at her cheeks.
“You know,” he said, “the boom box thing didn’t exactly work for John Cusack in the movie.”
She shrugged. “I know. That’s ’cause Ione Skye didn’t give Lloyd his due for holding that thing in the air, which, in hindsight, was a regrettable error.” She shrugged. “But it was the feeling I was going for.”
“Yeah, you pretty much nailed that,” he said. “I don’t even want to ask where you found that thing.”
“Well,” she said, with a watery smile up at him as a seagull swooped past them, “my mother and I have the same problem, it seems. We hang on to things. Things that should long ago have been cleaned out, cleared up and relegated to the past. You know—boom boxes, family myths…skeletons.” She took a step closer to him as the last chorus wound down. “Then again, there are some things you should hang on to no matter what. Love. That’s one. Friends you can count on.” She smiled up at him. “You. See, you, I let go by mistake. I was still stuck on something that was never really true. And I’m so sorry.”
“Hey—” he began, but she stopped him with her hand.
“My mother admitted what you said was true—what you did for your brother and your father and what it cost you. Nio, that should never have happened and I’m so sorry it did. But I’m glad some good came out of it, for Trey at least. And for you. Look what you’ve done with your life. Look at him. So, I won’t apologize for my father, for what he did. That’s between him and God now. But his choices left us—my mother and me—stuck for a while. With the lies and the secrets between us.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You changed that. You did by coming back and opening that door. And for that I’m very grateful.”
Grateful wasn’t exactly the word he’d been hoping for.
“And I know,” she continued, “I’m not exactly who I used to be and you probably came back here hoping you’d find the old Becca again, and I’ve disappointed you.”
He opened his mouth to refute that, but she wasn’t done yet.
“I don’t trust easily, anymore…I drink more wine than is wise, and apparently—” she shook out her arms “—I need to start going to the gym again. I can work on that. I can work on the trust thing, too. But if I’m not what you want anymore, and I’d understand after what I said to you, if you don’t…then I’ll accept that. I am who I am now. A piece of that old me is gone forever. But it turns out my friend Lana was right. Something worthwhile did stick. I never really did stop loving you. Through all of it, I never did.”
He pulled her up against him and wrapped his arms around her. “Ah, Bec. I could never get you out of my blood either, even when I thought I’d lost you. I…stayed away because of the deal I made with your father and, maybe more importantly, to try to prove I was worthy of you. But I came back to Laguna because I can’t—I don’t want to—do this without you anymore. I came hoping you’d forgive me for leaving you the way I did. I still love you, too. I don’t blame you for your anger, your hurt or for hanging on to what you loved about your father. He’ll always be your dad no matter what. But maybe now we can finally put all that hurt behind us. And as for the old Becca being gone?” He brushed a piece of hair from her eyes. “I like the new one just fine. You’ll always be enough for me. Always have been, always will. The other stuff? It’ll sort itself out.”
A sob escaped her, even as she tried to contain it. So he kissed her with everything he had and everything he’d become until he felt her relax against him.
Then he pressed his lips against her forehead. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“But…now you’re leaving. You’re going back up north.”
“What? This?” He shook his head. “Didn’t you get my note?”
“Note? No, your father told me you were going home.”
“Ahh. This? This was just a little sideways jag through a riptide. If you didn’t show up, Mick and Trey and I, we were just going to go to Catalina Island, turn around and come back. See if you’d changed your mind.”
A fresh jag of tears sputtered out. “Really?”
“I’ll never lie to you,” he promised.
“And San Francisco?”
“My company will still be there when we figure this out. I made a life for myself there, but it’s only half right. I need you with me. I need us together. Come with me. Today. On the boat.”
“Yacht,” she corrected, then smiled.
He grinned back. “Yacht. We’ll go to Catalina. Get some sun. Start fresh. Remember why we never forgot each other.”
“I like that idea,” she said, tightening her fingers around his. “Except, I think I have to work tomorrow.”
“Only if you want to. I already…sort of…talked to Bob.”
“My boss? You did?”
“Theoretically speaking, he was fine with it.”
She wiped her damp cheek with a knuckle. “In my official capacity as your salesperson, you mean?”
“No.” He shrugged. “No, he asked me my intentions and I told him I planned to marry you.”
She bit her lip and laughed. “That doesn’t sound very theoretical to me.”
“Yeah. More like a promise. The theoretical part was all on you.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “And Milo, of course.” The dog wagged his tail enthusiastically against the wooden dock.
She smiled up at him through her lashes. “What if I said, let’s take our time?”
He turned over her palm and kissed her there, too. “Then I’d say take all the time you need, as long as we’re together. That’s all that matters to me, because I plan on making you very, very happy.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” she said, sliding her fingers into his dark hair, pulling him closer, “then…yes to it all.” She kissed him again with all her heart, while, behind them, a few whoops and whistles went up from the spectators on the surrounding docks, cheering them on.
“Excellent.” He pulled her toward the boat, anxious to get her on board. “Did I mention I’m thinking of buying another house here?”
“No?” She sent him an astonished look.
“There’s a sweet little place for sale not far from my father’s house, right on the water. We could live part time here, part time up north, part time…wherever the wind takes us.”
She smiled up at him as he helped her up onto deck. “That’s assuming we’ll be living together, of course.”
He turned to her, suddenly serious. “Oh. I just thought—too soon?”
She shook her head slowly, curling her fingers around his. “No, mijo. Not too soon. I’d say we are long overdue.”
Epilogue
From the balcony of their newly renovated Laguna Beach s
ummer place, a few dozen feet from the water, Nio stopped at the rail to watch his wife adjust the focus on her Nikon. The small, dark-haired child, tripoding himself up in the wet sand, got to a wobbly stand then turned to her with a broad, four-toothed smile of victory. Juan Luis’s dog Luna danced around the boy, licking his chubby calves while Milo looked on, hoping the baby would throw his ball for him.
Becca snapped the shutter with a crow of, “Look at you! What a big boy, Raphael!”
Beside the toddler, Elaine—in her subdued beach kaftan and floppy-brimmed straw hat—hovered with grandmotherly concern, arms outstretched, but she laughed at the baby clapping his hands for himself. Delighted, she clapped, too. “Did you get that, Becca? Did you get the shot?”
Juan Luis leaned forward from his beach chair and reached for the boy whose first step ever had been taken in his direction. “Ay! Por supuesto! Of course, she got it. Who could miss a shot so beautiful as that one? Ven amí! Come here to your tito, Raphael. Can you walk to me?”
Ever the competitor, Elaine countered, “Here, Raphael. You come right here to Mimi.”
But the baby sat down hard, his happy gaze shifting between his doting grandparents, before he crawled directly into Becca’s arms where his anticipation of cuddles were well met. In the next moment, Becca was searching Nio out up on the balcony with a smile as big as the sea.
An embarrassment of riches, was the first thought that came to his mind, as his heart swelled, watching them. His wife, his boy, his family, his life. Lucky, was his second thought. That she’d said yes, forgiven him and given him all of this.
Even as he stared down at her now, he could still see her walking toward him down the aisle of that church, six months after they’d reunited. The look on her face had been close to the one she was wearing now, lit by a tinge of wonder and the future.
“Did you see?” she called up to him as he started down the wooden stairway holding his phone. “He took a step!”
“I saw everything,” he assured her. Raphael left her lap and climbed into his as he settled on the beach towel beside her and attempted to flatten him to the ground. Nio laughed and brushed the sand off the boy’s cheek. “You know you’re only ten months old,” he told the boy. “You know you have a whole lifetime ahead of you to walk and run. Can’t you just be a baby a little bit longer?”
“He’s in a hurry like his father,” Becca murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of the boy’s dark head and then another to Nio’s lips. “All we can do is chase along behind him now.”
“I told you,” Elaine put in, clinking her mojito with Juan Luis’s glass, “he’s gifted. He’s a gifted child.”
“You will give him a big head,” Juan Luis warned, but his words were softened with affection. “Even if it is true.”
As the two of them argued the ins and outs of spoiling grandchildren, Nio mused about how far the two of them had come. How grateful he was that they could not only share a beach and a drink, but also enjoy each other’s company now. Somehow their relationship reminded him of an old chemistry teacher whose favorite example of parity and fluid dynamics happened when water, introduced to two randomly shaped vessels, would fill them to equal levels, given a connection. Their connection was Raphael and their vessels were equally full of love for the boy and perhaps more incredibly now, friendship with each other.
As for his new mother-in-law’s tenuous situation, he’d converted her once anonymous donation to his business to stock options based on original value and the considerable profits had allowed her to recover financially. It felt good to put a punctuation mark on the past and begin a new chapter with Becca’s family.
“Who was that who called? Work?” Becca asked him, taking an adult-sized sippy cup of water from the cooler. She handed him one then grabbed another for herself. Even in October, summer lingered warm here on the Southern California beaches.
“It was Trey,” he answered. “Said some of the guys are coming to his new place in Marietta for the Christmas holidays and he invited us to join.”
“Oh, that would be fun. But what did you say?”
“The truth. That since this is Raphael’s first real Christmas and if we didn’t have to bring half of our lives with us to the middle of Montana in the dead of winter, we’d definitely make it. But that we’d unfortunately have to pass. He wants us to see all the work he’s done on his new place up there. And, of course, the guys all want to meet the baby.”
Naturally, Becca had met them all at the wedding. That she’d fit so easily into the group surprised no one, least of all him. After the baby was born, Trey had come down from Marietta and they’d received a new gift from each of them, routinely, every few weeks since. But video conferencing with the others wasn’t quite the same as meeting Raphael in person. And Nio wanted very much to make that happen.
“And…Holly?” she asked. “Is she coming for Christmas?”
“She’ll be there.” Nio stared out at the water, rushing in and out with a slow and steady rhythm, the ebb and flow taking bits of the beach with it, then relinquishing some back onto the thirsty sand.
Raphael pressed his mouth against Nio’s nose and giggled. He smooched the boy back wondering if there was anything as delicious as the smell of a baby’s skin. “But I was thinking, next spring we can rent a house here again, big enough for all of them. They can come when the weather’s nice. Or, if not, we can go up there in the summer when we don’t have to worry about the roads and the weather. Or Christmas presents. Possibly porta-cribs.”
She lifted her camera again and focused on the two of them. “I think that’s a great idea. I happen to know a place here.” Snap. “By the way,” she said making silly faces at the baby, “I think he’s got your profile.” Snap.
Nio lifted his son in the air and the beautiful boy with his mother’s green eyes squealed with pleasure. “I think he’s got your laugh.”
“Da!” the baby blurted, but before Nio could get excited about Raphael calling out to him, the boy reached for Luna, who was wagging her tail on the beach towel beside them.
“That,” Becca explained with a grin, “was ‘dog.’”
“Don’t burst my bubble,” Nio said. “He was looking at me when he said it. Weren’t you, Boo?”
She grinned and stroked a hand down the baby’s cheek. Then she turned to Nio and did the same to his cheek. “You tell your daddy ‘all in good time,’ Rafey.” She mouthed the words, I love you. Silently, so as not to draw the attention of the grandparents who were still discussing the merits of their respective roles.
Nio mouthed the same words back to Becca.
An embarrassment of riches.
If it was true that every seven years the body recreates itself, cell by cell, then it was also true that he’d become a different person, and this moment—this sweet, simple moment—was proof. Because never in his wildest dreams could the boy who’d left this place so many years ago, thinking he’d lost it all, have imagined that his future would become this.
He’d come back for her but what he’d found was…everything.
The End
The Band of Brothers series
For the five ex-warrior Navy SEALS who call themselves the Band of Brothers, honor and loyalty are a way of life. But so is the damage each of them faces in the aftermath of the war. They’ve conquered the physical challenges of the battlefield, but now their struggle is to heal their souls and begin again. Despite the unwavering support of their brothers, each must navigate his own way toward that new beginning. And finding love might just be the key to everything.
Book 1: Unsung Hero
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Book 2: Once a Hero
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Book 3: Unexpected Hero
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Book 4: Coming soon
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Once a Hero
Barbara Ankrum
Book 2 in the Band of Brothers series
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y now!
“They’re ashes.”
The female TSA agent held the two small vials up to the overhead fluorescents and gave their clear glass a suspicious shake. “What kind of ashes?”
“The husband kind,” Holly McGuire told her. That always got a reaction. She’d been through this before. Many times. At many different airports.
Predictably, the agent blanched and lowered the vials, swabbing them nonetheless, before inserting the piece of material into the explosives residue detection machine. The woman slid a look back at her that was almost apologetic. Almost.
“We still have to check, you know,” she said.
Holly gave her a sympathetic smile. “I know.” Over this past year, she’d often thought that Tommy would have gotten a good laugh at being scanned by the TSA for explosives residue, after a career disassembling bombs. No doubt he would have charmed the ID tags off the woman, as he had every female he’d ever met.
Then, he would have turned to her and winked, as if to confirm it was just his way and none of it meant anything. Maybe it hadn’t. To him.
It took another half hour to get through security, claim her bag, and find a cab willing to take her to Marietta. It had begun to snow and no one, not even cabbies, liked the pass between Billings and Marietta in the snow, which, it turned out, wasn’t so bad. The Christmas music from the cabbie’s radio distracted her, but despite how tired she was from traveling, she couldn’t fall asleep with her head tilted back against the seat.
When the cabbie started down the mountain, she checked her phone when it dinged with a text message. It was from Mick Chester. Her pulse picked up.
Mick: Arriving tomorrow night. You sure this is what you want?
Her: Yes. You’re not backing out, are you?
A long moment later.
Mick: Just checking.
Her: I’m sure. Yes. She sent the text, then added, Thank you, Mick. Really.
Unsung Hero Page 14
