Forged by Sacrifice Kindle rev 100519

by Evans, LJ

  I’d learned early in life that you never entered a sister’s room without knocking first. Not if you didn’t want to see things that would scar you for life. Almost worse than seeing your parents naked. Almost.

  “What did you tell Mom?” I asked, leaning on the doorframe.

  Dani didn’t even look up from the suitcase she was packing with so many clothes I wasn’t sure if we were going home for a long weekend or a month. “What did I tell Mom about what?”

  “Georgie.”

  “Just that we were bringing her home with us.”

  “You had to have said more than that. I just got the third degree.”

  She smirked but didn’t stop shoving things into her luggage. “I might have said something about her being stunning and you knowing it.”

  “I barely got Georgie to agree to come with us, so don’t all of you start putting pressure on her for being there with me. She’s not ready for that.”

  “Is this still about her family?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I have to admit,” Dani started. “It isn’t ideal. It would definitely give your competition some fodder to burn, but if she’s clean and you’re clean, I don’t think it’s insurmountable.”

  “Really?”

  “I think it matters more that you can show you love her. Real emotions. And like I said, that you’re both clean. You’re clean, right?”

  “You know I am.”

  “I know nothing about my brother’s dark side. I don’t want to know.”

  “If you’re going to be my campaign manager, you’ll need to know.”

  “Who said I’m going to be your campaign manager?” she tossed back.

  “You’d trust my political career to someone we don’t know?”

  “I may not be doing this that long.”

  This made me pause in my harassment of her. “What?”

  She zipped up her suitcase and stuck it on the floor by her bed. “I’m just not sure I want to continue doing this.”

  “You’re really good at it.”

  She nodded. “I am.”

  “Conceited.”

  “You said it; I just agreed.”

  I laughed. “Why do you want to leave, and what would you do instead?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe some brand imaging for a company or some celebrity.”

  It didn’t escape me that she’d skipped answering my why, but sometimes with Dani, you had to give her time to tell you what she was thinking. She would, when she was ready, but if you kept demanding answers, she’d slam you back into oblivion—sort of like Georgie.

  “Isn’t that just the same game with a different face?” I asked.

  “Without the ugly side if I work for the right person.”

  “Who would I have run my campaign?” I asked.

  “Granddad.”

  “He’s too old.”

  “He does a great job for Guy.”

  “But I need someone much more in touch with the millennials. You know they’re the largest growing demographic.”

  “Are you planning a run for office sooner than I know about?” she asked, sitting on her bed.

  “No. Not for at least two to four years.”

  “Then we have years to figure it out.” She eyed me as I didn’t respond. “You know, Rob―Mac, your whole life has been about your eventual run for office. I wonder how many things you missed out on because you were too afraid that what you did or said would someday come back to haunt you.”

  “This is about Georgie again.”

  “No. Maybe. Sometimes finding the person who completes you is more important than any job you might have.”

  “Is that really true, though, if you have a chance to change the world and don’t?”

  “After working with me for a month, you should know that changing the world isn’t going to be that easy. It isn’t going to happen in a two-year Congress term. Or even a twenty-year Senate run.”

  “That’s pretty pessimistic of you.”

  “Realistic. I’ve lived and breathed D.C. for nine years.”

  She’d been working on the Hill since she’d started college at Georgetown. She’d worked with our grandfather since she was a stick of a kid with barely any curves and braces on her teeth that she’d gotten, kicking and screaming, her senior year of high school.

  “All I’m saying,” she continued, “is that you being happy and fulfilled is just as important as anything you can do for the world.”

  I didn’t agree, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. Changing the world so future generations—so Baby Wyatt, Baby Hannah, and our niece and nephews—had a better world waiting for them…there wasn’t much more important than that. I’d give up just about anything in order to make that happen.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  When Georgie got back to the apartment on Friday, Dani and I had already loaded the car and were antsy to leave the D.C. traffic behind us. Georgie said something about wanting to change, and I looked at her cotton sundress that showed off all her curves and told her the truth.

  “You look gorgeous; you don’t need to change.”

  She dragged her hand over her ponytail. It was still smooth and straight as always, but she seemed to waffle, and for a moment, I was afraid she wouldn’t agree to go with us, so I just grabbed her suitcase and headed toward the door.

  When we got down to the garage, I led the way to the black Cadillac SUV in the spot next to Dani’s Mini.

  “Whose car is this?” Georgie asked.

  “Granddad’s. He took the train when he went home. Said we could use it,” I told her.

  Dani, who’d been ahead of us, opened the back passenger door and climbed in.

  “I can sit in the back,” Georgie said.

  “Nope. I’m planning on putting on the audiobook I’ve been waiting all summer to listen to. I have no desire to keep Mac company. I may even fall asleep.”

  I snorted, but I also wanted to hug my sister because she was giving Georgie and me exactly what we needed.

  We were quiet, NPR on the radio, while I negotiated the streets of D.C. and got us onto the freeway. Dani, true to her word, had huge headphones on, with her seat tilted back, and looked to be almost asleep before we’d been on the road for more than twenty minutes.

  “So…who all will be there this weekend?” Georgie asked, and I sensed not only curiosity but also nervousness in her voice.

  “Lord. Pretty much everyone. There’s an annual tennis tournament at the club, and our family has been playing and placing in it for as long as I can remember. We’ll all play tomorrow at the house to see who gets to represent the Whittakers at the club on Sunday.”

  “You have tennis courts at your house?”

  I nodded. “Do you play?”

  She shook her head and teased. “No. There wasn’t a tennis court in the building above the salon, sorry.”

  “You’ve never played at all?”

  “Nope.”

  My brain went directly to thoughts of teaching her to play tennis. Of being able to touch her while I did. I couldn’t let my body go very far down that road, though. Not while sitting in a car where she would be able to see, very clearly, where my brain and body had gone.

  “Well, I can definitely teach you, but they won’t let you near the courts on Sunday, then,” I told her.

  “Thank goodness.”

  We rode for a few minutes before she brought me back to her original question. “Who’s everyone?”

  “Right. Sorry. Granddad and Grandma will be at their place, which is just down the road, but they’ll, more than likely, spend most of the day with us. My oldest sister, Gabi, lives in Wilmington with her husband, Vinnie, and their two rugrats, Troy and Sam. But even though that’s hardly a fifteen-minute drive, they’ll probably camp out in the guesthouse as long as Vinnie doesn’t have to go back and take care of the restaurant.”

  “That’s right. You me
ntioned they own a restaurant.”

  “Vinnie does. Gabi works at DuPont. She’ll be at odds all weekend with Bee’s husband, Thomas. Thomas is an environmental lawyer and acts like his job is the next coming of Jesus or something. The truth is, none of us like him.”

  She laughed. “You can’t say that about your sister’s husband.”

  I smiled. “Why not? It’s the truth. There’s something not right about the guy, and Bee knows how we feel. She ignored our opinion and mothered a child with him, anyway—that’s Savanna-Rae—and she’s the light of everybody’s world. Frickin’ cute as a kitten.”

  “That’s a lot of people.”

  “That’s pretty much all that will be staying at the house, but we’ll have people in and out all weekend. Dad hosts a barbecue on Saturday, and that’ll bring in a huge gathering. Sunday, after the tennis tournament, it’ll be just the family again.”

  “Dani was right.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m going to need a gazillion outfits. I’m not sure I brought enough.”

  She’d look gorgeous in a sheath dress twenty sizes too big, but I glanced over at her and said, “You look beautiful in whatever you put on.”

  She didn’t respond, but I swore there was a flush to her cheeks. She turned to look out the window for a few minutes.

  “Do you all have nicknames?” she asked finally.

  “Huh?”

  “Robbie, Dani, Gabi, Bee…” she trailed off. I laughed because I’d never really thought about what our nicknames might sound like to someone on the outside.

  “None of us liked our full names, but Bee and I got it the worst.”

  “How’s that?” she asked.

  “Her real name is Phoebe, and I’m Macauley. Not exactly names you want to go to school with.”

  “I like Mac. And Phoebe is my favorite Friends character.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, she’s like me: quirky and true to herself.”

  “You’re not quirky.” Because she wasn’t. She was unique. Spectacular. Elegant. I could think of a hundred more words that would have suited her, but quirky was not one of them.

  “You say that now,” she responded, “when you don’t know me very well. I switch eye colors like jewelry. I think that’s fairly quirky.”

  “How did that get started?” I asked, my own curiosity springing to life.

  “After Grandma died and I went back to run the salon, my friend, Vicky, introduced me to a bunch of models. They got me a couple modeling gigs. The first one I went on wanted someone with blue eyes instead of my washed-out green, so they had me put in contacts. I liked how they went with the outfit I was wearing, and so, after that, it just became fun, changing colors with my mood, hair color, or outfit.”

  “Your eyes are not washed out. They’re like jade.”

  “Jade is bright and vibrant. My eyes are pale and almost colorless.”

  “Not all jade is deep. Some are soft and brilliant.”

  I could feel her staring at me, but I didn’t remove my eyes from the road. I was trying not to play all my cards at once, trying to keep some compliments for later, so I turned the conversation. “You didn’t want to keep the salon, so why did you after your grandma died?”

  “The lease had this huge penalty clause. If I’d tried to get out of it, I would have pretty much lost everything she’d worked for. It didn’t seem like the right way to honor her memory. Plus, I wasn’t going to go into debt to pay off some douche who already had more money than God.”

  I’d been wrong about her so many times since I’d first seen her, but I realized, now, that I wasn’t wrong about one thing: she was smart. Savvy in a way that was remarkable. Not many college students would have had the forethought to make such a wise business decision. Not many twenty-somethings would have had the bravery to stick their dreams on hold while they waited for the years to tick away on a lease they hadn’t signed and didn’t want.

  We spent the entire two-hour drive from D.C. to Greenville sharing information about our lives, and our pasts, and how we’d gotten to where we were now. The conversation flowed back and forth between us effortlessly. As we got closer to Wilmington, she asked about my naval career.

  “What did you do at the Pentagon?” she asked.

  For the first time, I found myself shutting down a little. My time at the Pentagon was classified. Top-secret stuff that I could barely breathe a word about, and then, to only a handful of people who were already in the know. My dad was pretty much on that list with not many other people.

  “I can’t really talk about a lot of it,” I told her truthfully.

  “It really was spy stuff?” she asked, humor in her voice.

  I chuckled. “Yes and no. I fielded a lot of intelligence reports and liaised with JSOC for S.E.A.L. team operations.”

  “Wow,” she breathed out, and I didn’t want her to get the wrong impression, so I added on quickly.

  “Not really. The wow are the guys who put their life on the line to make the plans happen.” Because it was true. The guys who were in the field were the impressive ones. Lives on the line day in and day out. I just sat back and helped decide which missions had the best chance of success. Which ones needed to be done. It was hardly glorious work.

  “You never wanted to be a S.E.A.L. yourself?” she asked.

  I thought about Darren and Nash and the lives they led. They were tough. Almost too tough. It was hard on Darren’s wife—the things Darren saw and did that he couldn’t talk about but came home with him anyway. Darren and Nash were both good men. I just didn’t want their life. I wasn’t afraid of giving my life for something I believed in as much as I believed in America—screwed up and all—but I didn’t want a life spent away from those I loved either. I would dedicate my life to this country in a different way.

  “No. S.E.A.L.s are almost always lifers, or at least until they can’t make the physical requirements anymore. I knew from the time I was a kid that I wanted to go into politics,” I said.

  “Your dad’s a lifer. Vice Admiral has to have come with a lot of sacrifices.”

  I nodded. It was part of the reason I hadn’t wanted to try for S.E.A.L.s or any of the more coveted positions in the Navy. Dad’s life had been a series of sacrifices. “He moved around a lot when we were younger.”

  “You didn’t go with him?”

  “He and Mom didn’t want that for us. They wanted us to grow up in the same house, and at the same schools, and just be regular American kids.” It was something my sisters and I were very grateful for, that our parents had given us a normal life instead of the life of military brats.

  “Must have been really hard on their relationship,” Georgie said.

  I’d never really thought about what it must have been like for my parents, who I knew loved each other, to be away from each other for so long. Mom had been sad when he was gone but also busy with us kids and her life at the club and her social groups. “You know, I’ve never really thought of it that way. They still live apart a lot. Dad has an apartment near the Pentagon because he’s there so much. Mostly home on the weekends.”

  “I’m not sure I could live that way with the person I’d agreed to marry,” Georgie responded.

  And before I could reconsider, I’d slipped out, “Good thing I’ve given it up then.”

  When she snorted, I winked to lessen the seriousness of my words.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Mac-Macauley.”

  “Don’t read too much into it, Georgie-Girl.”

  “You have to come up with better nicknames than that,” Dani said from the backseat, and we both jumped, having forgotten she was even with us. It had been a little bubble of time that we’d shared, getting to know each other a little more. Like a first date, but with a history already tying us together.

  Thinking about relationships and the toll the military took on them reminded me that Nash and Darren were comi
ng to the house on Saturday. I turned to Georgie. “You’ll get to meet a couple of my S.E.A.L. buddies this weekend. Darren’s wife’s family lives not far from us, and I invited them to the house for the barbecue. Nash is staying with them, so he’ll be there, too.”

  “I’ll finally get to see how the duo bested you at poker,” Dani said from the backseat.

  “They didn’t best me. They cheated to win; there’s a difference,” I said.

  “Is Georgie fully prepared for the competitive nature of our family and friends?”

  I grinned at Georgie and shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to see.”

  But I couldn’t help a secret desire for her to love everything about our family as much as I did, because my family was everything to me.

  Georgie

  MAKE ME LIKE YOU

  “I was fine before I met you,

  I was broken but fine.

  I was lost and uncertain,

  But my heart was still mine.”

  Performed by Gwen Stefani

  Written by Michaels / Tranter / Stefani

  I’d thought that the two-hour car ride with Mac and Dani would have allowed me a chance to study. My first week of classes had resulted in a workload that probably would have overwhelmed me if I hadn’t started reading ahead of time. I had no intention of falling behind. But Dani had jumped in the back, leaving me to make conversation with Mac, who’d used the time to make good on the agreement of getting to know each other better.

  During the week, I had considered telling Mac I couldn’t go for a gazillion different reasons. But every time I thought about it, I’d remember his words about forever in a kiss, and I couldn’t. Suddenly, the thought of getting to know Mac better was as tantalizing as the research I was doing for Theresa. Maybe more. Definitely more.

  My head was still screaming at me about all the reasons a relationship between Mac and me would never work.

  A relationship he’d never had.

  A relationship I was fairly certain I didn’t want.

  But my heart was already speaking a different tune than my brain. My heart and mind were out of sync, harsh notes that were colliding against each other, and I wasn’t sure how to bring them back into harmony again.