The Soldier's Valentine--A Clean Romance

by Pamela Tracy

  Ingenious.

  A few months ago, he’d have chased her down. A few weeks ago, he’d have dialed the number. A few days ago, even, he’d have at least entered it in his cell phone for later reference. Tonight, Gary kept the cookies but not the plate.

  Someone, Gary thought a math teacher, came over to offer a ten-minute break. Against his better judgment, Gary headed over to the side of the room where Leann stood talking to the woman selling roses.

  “Gary, have you met Heather Riley?” Leann asked him.

  “Ah, the chief’s wife.”

  Heather smiled and reached out a hand for Gary to shake. She didn’t look old enough to be Tom’s wife. For that matter, she didn’t look old enough to have a kid in elementary school. “Nice to meet you.” She introduced the little girl next to her. “This is my niece. We’re helping out.”

  “Mr. Oscar’s told us a few things about you,” the girl said.

  “None of them true,” Gary said. “You can’t believe my brother.”

  “Mr. Oscar always tells the truth.” The girl’s expression said it all. Oscar was lollipops and Gary green peas.

  “I want to hear some of these stories,” Leann joined in. “I’m with Oscar almost every day. How come he hasn’t told me the stories?”

  “Guess he’s afraid you won’t recover from the shock,” Gary teased.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be over there in the corner?” Leann pointed to his station; the math teacher waved.

  “I’m on break. And, aren’t you supposed to be dancing with your sons?”

  “I’m on break.”

  Something about looking down at the top of that glossy dark red hair and the tilt of her face made Gary wish he’d kept the number from the plate. Because if he had done that it meant he was safe. His heart was safe.

  But he’d thrown it away. Hadn’t hesitated.

  If Leann had put her number of the plate, he’d never be able to throw it away. And that scared him.

  So, Gary told his feet to move.

  They didn’t.

  He ordered his feet to move.

  They didn’t.

  His hand, however, moved. It went in his back pocket and removed his wallet. A dollar later, he was the proud owner of a single red rose that he promptly handed to Leann.

  It didn’t escape his notice that while he hadn’t hesitated to throw away a phone number, Leann hesitated to take the flower. Even now, she stared down at it as if thinking about handing it back.

  Not the reaction he was going for.

  A fairly slow song came over the speaker, the artist crooning something about girl trouble and woes. Great. Even the music knew what Gary was suffering from.

  “Who chose the music?” he asked. “This doesn’t seem like one of today’s hot picks.”

  Leann finally smelled the rose and smiled up at him. Then, she giggled, something he’d not heard her do. Maybe he’d want to hear it more.

  Acting on impulse, he reached out his hands out her, drawing her close to him, and he led Leann onto a dance floor, where people half his height moved out of the way.

  “That’s Timothy’s mom,” one of them said.

  “Cool,” came a response.

  “Gross,” one of the kids muttered.

  Leann didn’t drape her arms around his neck like he wanted her to, but she didn’t bolt out the door and head for the hills either. Instead, she swayed, looking up at him and stating the obvious. “This isn’t really the right kind of song.”

  “What would be the right kind of song?”

  “Is there a song called ‘Stop Messing with My Head’?”

  He stopped, unsure if she was serious or joking. When she smiled, he relaxed.

  “No,” he replied, “but there’s a song called ‘My Mom Embarrassed Me on the Dance Floor Because She Didn’t Really Dance.’”

  Leann rolled her eyes and stepped closer, still swaying and seeming not to care that he was holding both her hands, careful not to crush the rose. Her fingers were soft, warm, and he had the feeling that if he let go, he would spend the rest of the night trying to reclaim them. He could tell she didn’t want him to do anything but what they were doing. Standing on the dance floor, gazing at each other, touching, and with a half smile on her face.

  He got it. She was as torn as he was.

  But, she still didn’t move away from him. Maybe because they were in a sea of adolescents, maybe because she was a cop, and maybe because she wasn’t sure who he really was: friend, foe, stranger, admirer.

  Sometimes he wasn’t sure either.

  And his feet refused to leave the dance floor.

  Still she swayed, her hands in his, her eyes—ever the cop—scanning the dance floor and surroundings. Then, her eyes came back to his and stopped. She had what his mother called cat eyes: all knowing, flame green and beautiful.

  Their swaying slowed, but still he stayed right where he was, so close to her, afraid of breaking whatever spell held them together. She seemed to feel it, too, because a sudden look of doubt crossed her face. Their connection wavered and broke as she let go of him, stepped away and cleared her throat before saying, “I need to find my boys.”

  He could only nod as he returned to his corner and endured the slap on the back the math teacher gave him.

  For the rest of the dance, Leann paid no attention to him. She was focused on her two boys—sometimes dancing with one and sometimes dancing with both. The rose was nowhere in sight.

  Aaron seemed to like being near his mother. The other one, Timothy, kept drifting off and hanging with his friends. Most of them had cell phones out. All of them kept glancing around to see if any grown-ups were nearby.

  About the time Gary decided to head over, the disc jockey called last song and one of the moms swooped down, culled a child from the group and merged onto the dance floor. Like magpies came more moms until only Timothy stood there, alone: no phone.

  Leann waved to Timothy and he joined his mother and Aaron on the dance floor, so he could be considered part of the family.

  Gary wondered if he ever would.

  * * *

  “FUN TIME?” PATSY QUERIED. Gary wasn’t sure cleanup had been part of Oscar’s assignment, but somehow it had become part of his.

  “Sure. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves,” he managed, hefting a garbage bag over one shoulder and carrying a second outside. Leann followed him with two of her own.

  “Where are your boys?” he asked Leann.

  “Aaron was falling asleep, so I sent them to the car to wait for me.”

  “That’s where my son is,” Patsy joined in. She also had a garbage bag. “I told him he could either sit in the car or help, but he didn’t get to be in the way.”

  The two women laughed easily. Then, someone called Patsy’s name and she scurried off.

  “I thought you might show up at my place today,” Gary said, leaning against his truck and enjoying the way the wind sent her long hair blowing.

  “Why?”

  “Checking up on Russell.”

  Leann shook her head. “Instead I was busy checking up on his grandson. I’ve left him messages. Russell was right. There’s a flag in his file about identity theft. You think we might be looking for someone besides Jace?”

  “Didn’t the grocery store clerk recognize him?” Gary asked.

  “She did.”

  “I think you should stop by and talk to Russell,” Gary urged. “Tell him the latest.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Good.” He was tempted to ask her about her brother, but he’d loved dancing with her, and now he loved just being next to her. He didn’t want to possibly change the mood by bringing up her family.

  “Oh,” Leann said suddenly, “I talked to Lydia, too. She has a hard time believing that Jace stole Russell’s mone
y. There’s something going on... Something that I can’t put my finger on.”

  “There are too many threads,” Gary agreed.

  “What we need to do is make contact with Jace—”

  “I spent years doing reconnaissance. I’m great at finding people. Especially people who don’t want to be found.”

  “Were you military police, too?”

  “I think my brother talks too much. I started as military police. Fort Bragg. An opportunity came along that enabled me to attend ranger school. I took it.”

  She didn’t look impressed, and he definitely wanted to impress her.

  “Wow, I’m impressed,” Patsy said, joining them. “No wonder we didn’t have any trouble, not with you guarding the door. Everything went so smoothly.”

  “It was great.” Leann smiled.

  Patsy, looking from one to the other of them, finally said, “You both seem way too serious.”

  “We’re talking about Jace Blackgoat,” Leann said.

  “Russell’s grandson,” Patsy supplied, “who’s supposedly back in town and shoplifting?”

  * * *

  “DID YOU KNOW JACE?” Gary asked.

  “A little. He and my big brother were in ROTC together. I can remember Jace coming to the house a time or two because of some project he and Paul were doing. I thought Jace was cute.”

  “What?” Leann’s voice was half indignant, half intrigued. Gary recognized it. She was torn between listening as a friend and listening as a cop. “You always told me when you had a crush on someone.”

  “By the time I realized it was a crush, he was gone. And, he only came over once or twice. Clark was there, too.”

  “Clark wasn’t ROTC.”

  Patsy was saved from adding anything else when someone else said her name. She rolled her eyes, handed her bag to Gary, and said, “The cost of being in charge,” before hurrying off.

  “Clark wasn’t ROTC,” Leann repeated, but her words were no longer musing. Instead, Gary noted concern. Maybe now was the time to find out a bit more.

  “Your brother was in school the same time as Jace? Then you can ask him about Jace, right?”

  “That’s not easy. Clark’s in Los Angeles and hard to get ahold of. Believe me, I already tried.”

  Gary started to ask a second question, but Leann’s stricken look stopped him. “What?”

  “He left the day after graduation. Clark’s never been back. Not even Christmas.”

  “Like Jace?”

  “Not like Jace,” she said. “At the end, he just couldn’t stand our father. He just...”

  “Just what?”

  “Just hated everything about Sarasota Falls.”

  She left him standing there by the Dumpster. She’d gone from inquisitive to upset without taking a breath. And she’d uncovered something Jace and her brother shared more quickly than he’d expected.

  But, she hadn’t trusted him enough to explore the possibility of a connection.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HER BROTHER, CLARK, had never been one to answer phones calls, at least not when his family was trying to get in touch with him. It was Sunday morning; he should be home. Leann tried not to be irritated as she left another message and then went in to wake up her boys.

  “Aaron, up. Timothy, up!”

  “Moooom.” The protest came from Timothy.

  “Time for church.”

  That worked for Timothy. Leann had a vague idea that there was a girl in his Sunday school class whom he was starting to notice. Starting being an interesting word. Ever a cop, she observed he tended to “accidentally” fall in step next to the girl when they exited class. A few times, he’d sat beside her at a potluck or school event—always making it look random. At the dance last night, he’d stayed on the other side of the room. His avoidance of her so strategized that anyone but a twelve-year-old girl would have noticed.

  The girl was clueless.

  Timothy even more so.

  It would be interesting next year when Timothy entered both junior high and the church youth group and suddenly had the older boys to look to for example.

  Hmm, maybe Leann should lock him up in his room until he turned eighteen.

  And, if Leann did any more thinking about Gary Guzman, maybe she should lock herself up, too. She’d not stood on a dance floor with a man in almost a decade. And if she was being honest with herself, she hadn’t wanted the dance with Gary to end.

  No, no, no. Not the time to think about that. It was time to get her boys up.

  Aaron was a different story when it came to morning routine. He was her go-to-bed-at-nine, rise-at-seven boy. This morning, she understood his grumpiness a tiny bit. They’d had a late Saturday night at the dance and he’d not gotten to bed until almost eleven.

  She’d not gotten to bed until midnight and then didn’t go to sleep until almost two: she blamed Gary and the scent of some kind of woodsy aftershave that had stayed with her even after she showered and drenched herself in strawberry shampoo.

  She also blamed the single rose, slightly bent from being in her purse, and now on display on the desk in her bedroom.

  Her bedroom was much cleaner than her youngest son’s. She stepped on two pieces of Lego and a dirty sock before reaching the bed to sit next to her youngest son. He didn’t smell woodsy. He smelled of bubble gum, pizza and sweat. She snagged the covers from his sleeping form and tickled his side. He wriggled and giggled.

  Ack, sometimes he looked just like his dad.

  She’d not seen her ex-husband, Ryan Bailey, in years. Three years ago he’d caught a hop to Albuquerque and she’d seen him then, looking older and decidedly distant. The last two times the boys had seen him, Ryan’s parents had driven them to California, once for a beach vacation and then for Disneyland. It bothered her because it bothered her boys. She had very little contact, thanks to his parents, who could keep him up to date on every milestone.

  Tamara kept saying, “He needs to be here.”

  Well, he’d be here and soon. So, he must have finally listened to his mother. Leanne would believe it when she saw it. She’d put her trust in the man once. He’d broken her trust, smashed it, and she’d not trusted since. She needed to remember that.

  Should she have tossed the rose?

  “Get up,” she whispered in Aaron’s ear. “You’ve twenty minutes before I have breakfast on the table.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Peaches!” she called. The dog loped into the room, jumped on the bed and sat on Aaron. It was a routine they’d had in place since Aaron started preschool.

  “Okay, Mom,” Aaron groaned into his pillow.

  Leann didn’t attend the same church as her parents and sister. She and her kids attended another one a few blocks from the elementary school. She’d first walked through its front doors when she moved back to town and stayed with Patsy for a few months. Now, unless she had to work, Leann didn’t miss. And, when she did miss, her kids went with Patsy.

  Surprise, surprise, they were ten minutes early when they passed through the entrance. Timothy and Aaron headed off to Sunday school and Leann went to the auditorium, sitting in the back, off in the corner, and looking around. People gathered in small groups, catching up on the weekend, making plans for the afternoon.

  Luckily, an emergency had never interrupted morning services; thus, Leann felt like church was her true relax time. Not that her job was ever far away.

  Nor were the members perfect. Some folks wouldn’t look her in the eye because she’d pulled them over for speeding or had cited them for some other minor infraction.

  Yet, most of the people she knew didn’t give up, strove to improve their situations, changed.

  Even her younger sister was trying to change. There’d not been a call to the police station for over a week. Lucas had told her he�
�d seen Ray at the old train depot outside town. Leann knew there’d been an advertisement for workers. Could Ray have applied for one of the jobs? She needed to text her sister.

  Speaking of siblings, she saw Paul Keller, Patsy’s brother, enter the auditorium. She’d told herself to wait until tomorrow, visit him when he got off work, but she didn’t want to wait. She exited her pew and followed him to the pew in the front that he and his family favored. “Hey, Paul.”

  “How’s my favorite cop?” he asked, hugging her before sitting down.

  “Pretty good. I have a question for you. Patsy said you used to hang around with Jace Blackgoat.”

  He laughed. “You don’t waste any time. I heard Jace was in the area, and yes, I hung around with him some—not a lot—sixteen years ago. Haven’t seen him since he left.”

  “He ever cause any trouble at your place? Maybe take something that wasn’t his?”

  “None of us could ever get up to much even if we wanted to. My mom kept a close eye on us. She’s a worrier. Besides, Mom liked Jace.”

  Paul and Patsy’s mother believed the family who played together, stayed together. Mrs. Keller wasn’t above jumping rope or learning how to play video games just to figure out what her kids were interested in.

  Leann tried to be just like her.

  “Jace and I did ROTC stuff together,” Paul continued. “He was a team player, always did his share. We probably would have hung together more, but he lived so far out of town that he didn’t get to do much of anything else.”

  “Can you remember any of his friends, even those he just hung out with a bit?”

  “He and his sister were tight. After she graduated, he palled around with us ROTC kids. There weren’t that many. I think our unit was ten. We all thought Jace would be the first one to enlist.”