by Julie Miller
Including writing in that spiral notebook every night.
Some of the entries were horrible, angry scratches that cut through five sheets of paper. Some were just a report of his day—his successes and his failures. The fresh batches of cookies he’d volunteered to sample. The training sessions with the dogs. Working with Angelo and Albert to move some furniture and crates into the garage and finish a couple of painting projects before the Christmas party, when the house would be invaded by thirty-seven teachers and staff, along with their significant others.
His chest got tight just thinking about a crowd of noisy revelers invading Daisy’s home. If Secret Santa was one of her coworkers, would he try something that night? Or would he wait until he had a private time and place to finish whatever he had in mind for Daisy?
Tonight, those troubling thoughts about where all this was headed had morphed into a nightmare. Sitting bolt upright in a cold sweat, Harry kicked back the covers that had twisted around his legs and cursed the darkness. He flipped on the lamp beside him and focused on it, inhaling several cooling breaths. He didn’t know how long he’d been thrashing in the bed, or if he’d been swearing out loud in his sleep, but he’d been caught up in a dream long enough to have knocked a pillow, his cell phone and the notebook to the floor. He straightened the mess and picked up his pen.
14 December 3:17 a.m.
Dear Daisy,
Thought I was having a good day today. But you were right. Relapses happen and suddenly I’m in the middle of a nightmare. I know it’s just in my head. But the fear felt pretty damn real.
You were in that fire again. Only, I couldn’t get to you. I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain that it can only picture the worst. Why aren’t I dreaming about the way your blue eyes squint me into focus when you want something from me? Or the way they darkened like midnight when you flew apart all around me? Any other guy would be dreaming about the sex. And don’t think I haven’t imagined being with you again.
But no, my brain took you with me when I went back to that firefight with the IEDs going off. I had Tango in my arms that day, and I guess a lot of the blood I saw on him was my own. But it all got jumbled up and I was holding you and there was nothing but blood and fire. I couldn’t see your smile. I couldn’t hear your laugh. I couldn’t stop screaming.
The smell of burning skin is an awful, awful...
A soft metallic clinking noise turned Harry’s attention to the door. Any mild sense of alarm that he hadn’t detected the noise sooner ebbed when he identified the familiar sound of jangling dog tags and the click, click, click of paws slowly coming up the stairs. Who was making the rounds tonight? “Patch? Fur ball?”
He slept with the door open so that he’d be able to hear anything happening on the ground floor he needed to investigate. But he was unprepared for the furry gray muzzle peeking around the door frame or the Belgian Malinois panting for breath as he stared at Harry from the doorway.
“Caliban?” The dog’s dark ears pricked up with recognition. For a brief moment, Tango’s dark muzzle superimposed itself over the old dog’s face. Harry blinked and Caliban returned. But the same heart and spirit remained in those dark brown eyes. “You worried about me, buddy?” The dog cocked his head to one side as if they were having a conversation and Harry chuckled. “I would be, too.” He tossed the notebook aside. “Come here, boy. Hier.” Caliban trotted over in his rolling gait and Harry patted the top of the mattress, inviting him up beside him. “Hopp.”
When Caliban jumped up onto the quilt, Harry rewarded him with a little bit of wrestling that ended with a tummy rub and him smiling. “Good boy. I guess those sharp old ears heard me.” Caliban thrust his front paw into the air so that Harry could scratch the leg pit there. “You’re used to looking out for a partner. And now you’re looking out for me.”
The nightmare faded and some good memories of his time with Tango made his eyes gritty with tears. “Tango used to wake me up when I got to tossing and turning too much, too. You lost your partner and I lost mine. We’ll look out for each other, okay?”
Caliban rolled onto his belly, sitting up like a Sphinx and eyeing the door.
Harry swung his legs off the edge of the bed. “I hear it, too.”
A parade of dog paws rushing up the stairs, followed by the noise of creaking wood as someone slightly heavier hurried behind them. Muffy and Patch dashed in and jumped right up on the bed, jockeying for petting position beside him. “Hello, you two.”
At the last second, he remembered to shove his notebook out of sight under his pillow before rising to meet Daisy when she appeared in the doorway.
“Hello.” Her hair was tousled and sexy, she had a wrinkle on her cheek from her pillow, and she was wearing those shapeless flannel pajamas that were almost as soft as her skin. The hungry sweep of her gaze over his bare chest intensified the gut-kick of desire already rushing through his blood and threatened to undo every well-planned good intention of his recovery mission. He pushed the excited dogs away and took a step closer. “Did I wake you?” Dumb question. Clearly, she was worried about him.
“You mean the headboard banging against the wall up here?” She held up her thumb and forefinger pinched together. “Little bit.”
“Sorry.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Caliban came up to...”
“Are you all right?”
Her question topped his statement and they both fell silent.
Daisy hugged her arms beneath her breasts and nodded toward the three-legged dog. “When I woke up, I realized he was missing. This is the last place I would have looked if I hadn’t heard you. He’s never come up the stairs before. He must really like you.”
“He probably recognizes a kindred spirit.”
She wasn’t wearing her robe or those fuzzy slipper socks. As she drew invisible circles on the hardwood with her big toe, he noticed something he hadn’t before. She painted her toenails. Purple, like the highlights in her hair. It was hard to remember the way he’d first pictured Daisy—the golden angel dressed in white and bathed in sunshine. The real Daisy was meant for moonlight and bold color and ill-timed fantasies in the middle of the night.
“Do you need to talk about it? The nightmare?”
“I’m not dumping on you.”
The circles stopped. “It’s not dumping. It’s one friend listening to another.”
“No.”
“What about your therapist? Or your sister?” Her shoulders puffed up with a sigh and she kept talking. “I know you’re on some kind of healing journey. You’re afraid that you’re going to scare me or hurt me or make me worry too much. Well, I’m always going to worry about you. That’s what people who care about each other do, so you’re not doing me any favors by isolating yourself.”
“I am not dumping on you.” When her blue eyes peeked above the rims of her glasses, he put up his hands and tried to reassure her. “But I’m not bottling it all up inside, either. I’m following doctor’s orders. And Lieutenant Colonel Biro’s orders. And...your orders.”
“Mine?”
“Something you said the other night. I’ve been writing letters.”
“To me?”
“In a journal of sorts.” Muffy knocked aside his pillow to claim a spot on the bed, and revealed his secret. “Thanks for ratting me out, fur ball.” Harry picked up the pillow and set the spiral notebook on the bedside table. “I don’t know if anyone is ever going to read it. But it helps to get it out.”
“I’m proud of you, Harry. I know it can’t be easy.”
“It’s important to me that I’m in control of myself—how I react to people, how I treat you—before I let you and me go any further.” He’d already given her his heart—there wasn’t much further he could go. But he didn’t want to ruin the best thing that had ever happened to him before it had even gotten started. “Th
e dream tonight kind of rattled me. Made me think that I wasn’t the right man to protect you.”
“Harry, I don’t want—”
He pressed a finger against her lips to silence her argument. “I make no claims to be a hundred percent yet. But I’m not trusting anyone else with the job of keeping you safe.”
“Okay,” she murmured beneath his finger. “May I talk now?”
He lingered a little longer where he shouldn’t before curling his fingers into his palm and pulling away. “I needed you to understand that.”
“There’s no one I trust more to protect me. I just wish you’d let me do something for you in return.”
Maybe there was something. “Could I hold you for a while? After what I saw, I won’t be able to sleep unless I know you’re safe. And the only way I can know that when I’m dozing off is to—”
She walked straight into his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist. Her forehead found that familiar spot against his neck and she softened against him, fitting all her curves to his harder planes. “I can stay.”
Feeling the tension of his nightmare leaving his body already, Harry wound his arms around her to complete the hug and nestled his nose against her hair. “Just to sleep, honey.” He was reminding his own body’s eager response to her touch, as much as clarifying the request for her. “You’ve got school tomorrow morning.”
“I am happy to hold and be held by you anytime, Harry Lockhart.” She pressed her lips to the scar beneath his collarbone. “Do you think I’ve been getting good sleep downstairs by myself? I need you close by so I know you’re safe, too.”
They stood like that until Harry’s body began to respond in a way he hadn’t intended. Forcing himself to pull away, he led her to the bed and tucked her under the covers. After setting her glasses aside, he claimed the spot Muffy wanted, lay down on top of the quilt and pulled Daisy into his arms. As the three dogs settled in behind her and at the foot of the bed, Harry reached over and turned off the lamp.
“This is better,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Much better.”
Daisy and the dogs were all asleep when Harry heard a car door slamming outside. He gently extricated himself from the arm around his waist and went to the front and side windows to peek through the curtains. He scanned up and down the block, looking for the exhaust from a running car or any signs of movement. But there was nothing suspicious—no one in her yard or walking the street. He went across the hall and looked out the bathroom window to see if the new motion detector light he’d installed over the deck had come on. But the back of the house was dark and still. No heartbroken teenager busting up the new lights, no one throwing snowballs at the house or standing outside her bedroom window.
By the time Harry returned, Caliban had raised his head in curiosity, but wasn’t alerting to any signs of an intruder. Muffy would certainly be going off if someone was trying to break in. Harry petted the Malinois and climbed back into bed. The house was locked up tight. His gun was in arm’s reach and Daisy was tucked safely in his arms.
If the dogs weren’t worried about one lone sound in the night, he wouldn’t be, either.
* * *
EVEN IF DAISY was willing to risk a little PDA in front of the students hurrying through the front doors for a morning practice or the breakfast program, the dogs wedged between her and Harry in the front seat of his truck would have prevented it.
“You’re spoiling them,” she teased, pulling Muffy back to her lap to avoid the Shih Tzu’s marauding tongue. She was pleased to see that Caliban had claimed his spot beside Harry on the bench seat. The older dog had perked up in both energy and personality since Harry had moved into the house. Patch stood with his front paws on the dashboard, wagging his little bob of a tail and watching the students and staff walk past the truck in the circular driveway. He just wanted to be a part of what everyone else was doing. “You’ve been to the dog park every morning this week.”
Harry rubbed his hand around Caliban’s ears. “It gives me a little exercise, too. Plus, there aren’t a lot of people there this time of year.”
“Do you think you’ll ever be able to tolerate crowds again?”
“Who knows? I’m a work in progress.” He shifted his petting hand to Patch, who instantly crawled over Caliban to sit in Harry’s lap. His stiff half smile faded as he turned his attention to the people walking past. “Look at all the blue coats and yellow caps going into Central Prep. Maybe you should invite me to speak to your classes.”
“About what?”
“PTSD? My career in the military? How letter writing is a lost art and they should be glad you’re teaching it to them?”
She understood what Harry’s sudden willingness to spend the day with a bunch of hormonal teenagers was really about. “So you can keep an eye on me?”
“Too controlling?”
She reached across the seat to pull his gloved hand off Patch and squeeze it. “You aren’t Brock Jantzen.”
He squeezed back. “I’m just trying to be a better Harry Lockhart.”
“You know I’ll be waiting for you whenever you’re ready, right?”
“What if I’m never ready?”
Daisy wondered if never being Harry’s woman would be worse than being the woman he had loved and left behind because he decided he couldn’t do relationships, after all. But that was too heart-breaking a topic to discuss on this sunny winter morning when Harry was fighting like everything to find his new normal. She smiled, instead, pulling her hand away to adjust Muffy’s red sweater. “Fridays I don’t have to stay late, so be here at three-thirty.”
“Yes, ma’am. On the dot.”
Daisy dumped Muffy off her lap and looped her pink bag over her shoulder. “Have a good day, Top.”
“Be safe, Ms. G.” When she turned to assure him she would, he was already leaning in. “Come here,” he growled.
His firm lips scudded across hers in a searing kiss. His touch warmed her all the way down to the toes of her boots. Not that she’d ever complained, but he was growing more confident, less self-conscious with every kiss. Daisy touched her fingers to his jaw and would have encouraged him to explore his craft to his heart’s content, but there were suddenly cold noses and warm tongues trying to join in.
“Blecch.” Daisy flattened her hand between them to ward off the licks on her neck and chin while Harry retreated to his side of the truck, his deep chest bouncing with laughter. Daisy joined him. A genuine laugh from Harry was worth a hundred kisses.
She opened the truck door and climbed out. “Bye.”
Daisy walked through a gauntlet of “woo-hoos” and whistles, and a couple of thumbs-ups from students and staff as she headed inside and crossed through the lobby. “You people need to go study,” she admonished, hoping they’d mistake the blush on her cheeks as a sign of the cold morning air and not her happy embarrassment.
She ran into Mary Gamblin in the teachers’ lounge and poured herself a mug of coffee before walking down the hallway to their rooms together. “Are you still feeling up to that party tomorrow?” Mary asked. “With everything that’s going on, isn’t it stressing you out?”
“No,” Daisy answered honestly. “It gives me something fun and positive to focus on. You better come and help me eat all the cookies I’ve baked this week. If everybody doesn’t bring the potluck dishes they signed up for, we’re all going to be on a massive sugar high by the end of the evening.”
“It’s good to see you in a happy mood again. Does it have anything to do with that Marine you were kissing out front?”
There was no masking the blush on her cheeks this time. “Did everybody see that?”
“Enough people to start the rumor mill.”
Daisy nudged her shoulder against her friend’s, refusing to be the only fodder for
gossip today. “What about you? Are you and Eddie coming to the party together?”
“I had to drop about every hint I could.” Mary rolled her eyes and giggled. “But yeah. He asked me.”
“Awesome.” They reached their respective rooms across the hall from each other and inserted their keys into the locks. “Hey, I hung some mistletoe if you’d like to take advantage...”
“He’s a slow mover.”
“Maybe a Christmas kiss will help him move a little faster.”
“Fingers crossed.” They pushed open their doors. “Have a good day.”
“You, too.”
Once inside her room, Daisy turned on the lights and unhooked the lavender bow on her coat, unbuttoning the gift from Harry as she crossed to the front of the room to her desk. She set her coffee on the corner and pulled out her chair.
And froze.
No. Whatever she was feeling right now went beyond freezing. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t feel.
Her bag dropped to the floor beside her. She stared at the neatly-wrapped oblong box lying on the seat of her chair. Decorated with an all too familiar card emblazoned with a sparkly green tree, the present taunted her with its ominous promise.
As the feeling returned to her limbs, she leaned over to read the words typed across the face of the card.
Get rid of him! Or I will.
You belong to me.
Merry Christmas from your Secret Santa.
“Oh, my God.” A righteous anger suddenly flowed through her body, giving her the strength to move. Leaving her gloves on in case her tormentor had slipped up this time and left fingerprints, she picked up the box, finding it surprisingly heavy for its size. She dropped it onto the middle of her blotter and stooped down to dig her phone out of her purse.
Her first instinct was to call Harry. She needed him here with her. Now. Nobody else understood, nobody else cared as much, about how terrified she was of her stalker. She needed his arms. His growly comforts and complaints. His do-the-job-or-die attitude to make the terror go away.
