A Soldier's Secret

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Conan was used to these storm vigils. She would have thought the lightning and thunder would bother him but he seemed to relish them as much as she did.

  Her heart still pumped from the wild run to the garage as she grabbed one of the extra blankets she had brought outside and used a corner of it to dry her face and hair from the rain.

  Lightning flashed outside their protected haven and she shivered a little as she grabbed another quilt and wrapped it around her shoulders, then headed for the porch swing that had been purposely angled into a corner to shelter its occupants as much as possible from the elements.

  She had barely settled in with a sigh and rattle of the swing’s chains when thunder rumbled through the night.

  Before it had finished, Conan was on his feet, barking with excitement.

  “Settle down, bud. It’s only the storm,” she assured him.

  “And me.”

  She gasped at the male voice cutting through the night and quickly aimed her flashlight in the direction of it. The long roll of thunder must have muffled Max’s approach. He stood several feet away, looking darkly handsome in the distant flashes of lightning.

  Her heart, already racing, began to pump even faster. This had nothing to do with the storm and everything to do with Lieutenant Maxwell.

  “Is everything okay out here?” he asked, coming closer. “I saw from my window when you went out to the garage to close the door. When I didn’t hear you come back inside, I was worried you might have fallen out here or something.”

  He was worried about her? A tiny little bubble of warmth formed in her chest but she fought down the reaction. He didn’t mean anything by it. It was just simple concern of one person to another. He would have been just as conscientious if Conan had been out here in the storm.

  More so, maybe. He loved her dog, while she was just the annoying landlady who wouldn’t leave him alone, always inviting him to dinner and making him help her nail down loose shingles.

  “I’m fine,” she finally answered, unable to keep the lingering coolness from her voice after his abrupt refusal to share pasta with her earlier. “Sorry I worried you. I was just settling in to watch the storm. It’s kind of a Brambleberry House tradition.”

  “I remember,” he answered.

  She gave him a quizzical look, wondering what he meant by that, though of course he couldn’t see her expression in the dark.

  “You remember what?” she asked.

  An odd silence met her question, then he spoke quickly. “I meant, I remember doing the same thing when I visited the coast several years ago. A coastal storm is a compelling thing, isn’t it?”

  He felt the same tug and pull with the elements as she did? She wouldn’t have expected it from the distant, contained soldier.

  “It is. You’re welcome to join us.”

  In a quick flash of lightning, she saw hesitation flicker over those lean features—the same hesitation she had seen earlier when he had refused her invitation to dinner.

  Never mind, she almost said, feeling stupid and presumptuous for even thinking he might want to sit out on a cold porch swing in the middle of a rainstorm.

  But after a moment, he nodded. “Thanks. I was watching the storm from upstairs but it’s not quite the same as being out here in the thick of things, is it?”

  “I imagine that’s a good metaphor for the life of an army helicopter pilot.”

  “It could very well be.”

  “There’s room here on the swing. Or you could bring one of the rockers over from the other side of the porch, but I’m afraid they’re a little damp. This is the safest corner if you want to stay out of the rain.”

  “Says the voice of experience, obviously.”

  After another odd, tense little moment of hesitation, he sat down on the swing, which swayed slightly with his weight.

  The air temperature instantly increased a dozen degrees and she could smell him, spicy and male.

  Lightning ripped through the night again and her blood seemed to sing with it—or maybe it was the intimacy of sitting out here with Max, broken only by the two of them wrapped in a warm cocoon of darkness while the storm raged around them.

  They settled into a not uncomfortable silence, just the rain and the thunder and the occasional creak and rattle of the swing’s chains.

  “Are you warm enough?” she asked. “I only brought two blankets out and one is wet but I’ve got plenty more inside.”

  “I should be okay.”

  “Here. This one should be big enough for both of us.” She pulled the blanket from around her shoulders and with a flick of her wrists, sent it billowing over both of them.

  Stupid move, she realized instantly. Stupid and naive. It was one thing to sit out here with him, enjoying the storm. It was something else indeed to share a blanket while they did it. Though they weren’t even touching underneath it except the occasional brush of their shoulders as they moved, it all still seemed far too intimate.

  He made no move to push the blanket off, though, and she couldn’t think of a way to yank it away without looking even more foolish than she already must.

  “I imagine you’ve seen some crazy weather from the front seat of a helicopter,” she said in an effort to wrench her mind from that blasted kiss the day before.

  “A bit,” he answered. “Sandstorms in the gulf can come up out of nowhere and you have to either play it through or set down in the middle of zero visibility.”

  “Scary.”

  “It can be. But nothing gets your heart thumping more than trying to extract a wounded soldier in poor weather conditions in the midst of possible enemy machine-gun fire.”

  “You love it, don’t you?”

  He shifted on the swing, accompanied by the rattle of creaky chains. “What?”

  “Flying. What you do.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Your voice just sounds…different when you talk about it. More alive.”

  “I do love it.” He paused for a long moment as the storm howled around them. “I did, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  This time, he paused so long she wasn’t sure he would answer her. She had a feeling he wouldn’t have if not for this illusive sense of intimacy between them, together in the darkness.

  When he spoke, his voice was taut, as hard as Haystack Rock. “The damage to my shoulder is…extensive. Between the burns and the broken bones, I’ve lost about seventy percent range of motion and doctors can’t tell me whether I’ll ever get it back. Worse than that, the infection damaged some of the nerves leading to my hand. At this point, I don’t have the fine or gross motor control I need to pass the fitness test to remain a helicopter pilot in the army.”

  “I’m so sorry.” The words sounded ridiculously lame and she wished for some other way she could comfort him.

  “I’m damn lucky. I know that.”

  He spoke quietly, so softly she almost didn’t hear him over the next rumble of thunder. “The flight medic and my copilot didn’t walk away from the crash.”

  “Oh, Max,” she murmured.

  He drew in a ragged breath and then another and she couldn’t help it. She reached a hand out and squeezed his fingers. He didn’t seem in a hurry to release her hand and they sat together in the darkness, their fingers linked.

  “What were their names?” she asked, somehow sensing the words were trapped inside him and only needed the right prompting to break free.

  “Chief Warrant Officer Anthony Riani and Specialist Marybeth Shroeder. Both just kids. Marybeth had only been in country for a couple of months and Tony’s wife was pregnant with their second kid. They both took the brunt of the missile hit on that side of the Black Hawk and probably died before we even went into the free fall.”

  She couldn’t imagine what he must have seen, what he had survived. She only knew she wanted to hold him close, touched beyond measure that he would share this with her, something she instinctivel
y sensed he didn’t divulge easily.

  “The crew chief and I were able to get the wounded soldier we were transporting out before the thing exploded. We kept him stable until another Black Hawk was able to evacuate us.”

  “Was he okay? The soldier?”

  “Oh. Yeah. He was a Humvee gunner hit by an improvised explosive device. He lost a leg but he’s doing fine, home with his family in Arkansas now.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah. We were both at Walter Reed together for a while. He’s a good man.”

  He finally let go of her fingers and though she knew it was silly, she suddenly felt several degrees cooler.

  “I can’t complain, can I?” he said. “I’ve still got all my pieces and even with partial function, I should eventually be able to do almost anything I want. Except fly a helicopter in the United States Army, I guess. It’s looking like I’ll probably have to ride a desk from now on or leave the military.”

  “A tough choice. What will you do?”

  He sighed. “Beats me. You have any ideas? Flying helicopters is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I never wanted to be some hotshot fighter jet pilot or anything fancy like that. Just birds. I’m not sure I can be content to sit things out on the sidelines.”

  “What about being a civilian pilot?”

  He made a derogatory sound. “Doing traffic reports from the air or flying executives into the city who think they’re too busy and important for a limousine? I don’t think so.”

  “You could do civilian medevacs.”

  “I’ve thought about it. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know that I’m capable of flying anything at this point, civilian or military. Or if I ever will be. We’re in wait-and-see mode, according to the docs, which genuinely stinks when you’re not a very patient person.”

  The storm seemed to be passing over, she thought. The lightning flashes were slowing in frequency and even the rain seemed to be easing. She didn’t want this moment to end, though. She was intensely curious about this man who had survived things she couldn’t even imagine.

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Max. My friend Abigail used to say a bend in the road is not the end, unless you fail to make the turn. You just need to figure out which direction to turn. But you will.”

  “I’m glad one of us has a little faith.”

  She smiled. “You can borrow mine when you need it. Or Abigail’s. She carried enough faith and goodness for all of us and I’m sure some still lingers here at Brambleberry House.”

  He was again silent for a long time. Then, to her shock, he reached for her hand again and held on to it as the storm continued to simmer around them. They sat for a long time like that in the darkness, while Conan snored in the corner and the storm gradually slowed its fury.

  Anna’s thoughts were scattered but she was aware of overriding things. She was more attracted to him than any man in her entire life. To his strength and his courage and even to his sadness.

  He had been through hell and though he hadn’t directly said it, she sensed he suffered great guilt over the deaths of his crew members and she wanted to ease his pain.

  She was also, oddly, aware of the scent of freesia drifting over the earthy smell of wet leaves and the salty tang of the sea.

  If she were Sage or Julia, she might think Abigail was making her opinion known that Harry Maxwell was a good man and she approved.

  She couldn’t believe Abigail was here in spirit. Abigail had been such a wonderful person that Anna couldn’t believe she was anywhere but in heaven, probably doing her best to liven up things there.

  But at times, even she had to admit Abigail seemed closer than at others. The smell of freesia, for instance, at just the moment she needed it. She tried to convince herself Abigail had loved the scent so much it had merely soaked into the walls of the house. But that didn’t explain why it would be out here in the middle of a March rainstorm—or why she thought she caught the glitter of colorful jewels out of the corner of her gaze.

  She shivered a little, refusing to give in to the urge to turn her head. Max, sitting too close beside her to miss the movement, misinterpreted it. “You’re freezing. We should probably head in.”

  “I’m not. It’s just…” She paused, feeling silly for even bringing this up but suddenly compelled to share some of Sage and Julia’s theory with him. “I should probably confess something here. Something I should have told you before you rented the apartment.”

  He released her hand abruptly. “You’re married.”

  She laughed, though it sounded breathless even to her. “No. Heavens, no. Not even close. Why would you even think that?”

  “Not even close? Didn’t you say you were engaged once?”

  “Yes, years ago. I’m not close to being married right now.”

  “What happened to the engagement?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him it was none of his business, then she closed it again. He had shared far more with her than just the painful end to an engagement that should never have happened in the first place.

  “He decided he wanted a different kind of woman. Someone softer. Not so calculating. His words. At least that’s what he wrote in the note he sent with his sister on the morning of what was supposed to be our wedding day.”

  She knew it was ridiculous but the memory still stung, even though it seemed another lifetime ago.

  “Ouch.”

  His single, abrupt word shocked a laugh out of her. “It’s been years. I rarely even think about it anymore.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I wouldn’t have been a few hours away from marrying him if I didn’t, would I?”

  “Seems to me a hard, calculating woman like you wouldn’t need to love a man in order to marry him. My mother never did and she’s been married five times since my father died.”

  Now that revealed a wealth of information about his life, she thought. All of it heartbreaking.

  “I’m not hard or calculating! I loved Craig. With every ounce of my twenty-four-year-old heart, I loved him. That first year afterward, I was quite certain I would literally die from the pain of the rejection. I couldn’t wait to move away from my friends and family in Utah and flee to a place where no one knew me or my humiliating past.”

  “What’s humiliating about it? Seems to me you had a lucky escape. The guy sounds like a jackass. Tell me the truth. Can you imagine now what your life would have been like if you had married him?”

  She stared, stunned that he could hit right to the heart of things with the precision of a sharpshooter. “You are so right,” she exclaimed. “I would have been completely miserable. I was just too young and stupid to realize it at the time.”

  It was a marvelously liberating discovery. She supposed she had known it, somewhere deep inside, but for so long she had held on to her mortification and the shame of being jilted on her wedding day. Somehow in the process, she had lost all perspective.

  That day had seemed such a defining moment in her life, only because she had allowed it be, she realized.

  She had become fearful about trusting anyone and had learned to erect careful defenses to keep people safely on the perimeter of her life. She had focused on her career, on first making By-the-Wind successful as Abigail’s manager, then on building the company after she purchased it from her and then adding the second store to further cement her business plan.

  Though she didn’t think she had completely become what Craig called her—hard, calculating, driven—she had certainly convinced herself her strengths lay in business, not in personal relationships.

  Maybe she was wrong about that.

  “So if you’re not married, what’s your big secret?”

  She blinked at Max, too busy with her epiphany to follow the trail of conversation. “Sorry. What?”

  “You said you had some dark confession to make that you should have told me before I rented the apartment.”

  “I never said dark. Did I say d
ark?”

  “I don’t remember. I’m sure it was.”

  “No. It’s not. It’s just…well, rather silly.”

  “I could use more silly in my life right now.”

  She smiled and nudged his shoulder with hers. “All right. What’s your opinion on the paranormal?”

  “I’m not sure I know how to answer that. Are we talking alien visitations or bloodsucking vampires?”

  “Neither. I’m talking about ghosts. Or I guess ghost, singular. As in the ghost that some residents of Brambleberry House believe shares the house with us. My friend Abigail.”

  “You’re saying you think Abigail still walks the halls of Brambleberry House.”

  “I didn’t say I believed it. But Sage and Julia do. They won’t listen to reason. They’re absolutely convinced she’s still here and that Conan is her familiar, I guess you could say. She works through him to weave her Machiavellian plans. Though I don’t really know if one should use that word when all her plans seem to be more on the benevolent side.”

  The rain had slowed and a corner of the moon peeked out from behind some of the clouds, lending enough light to the scene that she could clearly see his astonished expression.

  He stared at her for an endless moment, until she was quite certain he must believe her barking mad, then his head rocked back on his neck and he began to laugh, his shoulders shaking so much the swing rocked crazily on its chains and Conan padded over to investigate.

  She had never seen Max so lighthearted. He looked years younger, his features relaxed and almost happy. She could only gaze at him, entranced by this side of him.

  The entire evening, she had been trying to ignore how attracted she was to him. But right now, while laughter rippled out of him and his eyes were bright with humor, the attraction blossomed to a hot, urgent hunger.

  She had to touch him. Just for a moment, she told herself, then she would go back inside the house and do her best to rebuild her defenses against this man who had survived horrors she couldn’t imagine but who could still find humor at the idea of a ghost and her dog.

  Her heart clicked just like the rain on the shingles she had just fixed as she drew in a sharp breath, then leaned forward and brushed her mouth against his.