A Hero Comes Home

by Sandra Hill

  “Oh, yeah! It was Delta Force that rescued the sergeant in that series. Ask any Delta Force guys what they thought of that scenario. We all had a good laugh over it.”

  The major didn’t reply to Jake’s specific criticism, but he did look at him with some sympathy. “I do understand your concerns, Captain Dawson, but believe me, I’ve handled more complicated cases than yours.” He waved a hand toward the other sheet. “Read your instructions.”

  CAPTAIN JACOB DAWSON: Do’s and Do Not’s

  Do not accept any requests for interviews, whether local or national, whether in person, via telephone or email, without prior approval of the DOD.

  Do not discuss the events of your time in Balakistan with family or close friends. Loose lips sink ships, and even those most-trusted individuals can inadvertently disclose details that must remain secret.

  Do not, under any circumstances, mention the word torture.

  Do not voice an opinion about Nazim, in his present role or any past contact you may have had with him.

  Do not claim to have inside info on Balakistan, its history, culture, or tribes, such as the Qadir, battles, or political climate.

  Do be thankful to the president and secretary of defense for their actions in bringing you home. If you are so inclined, you can thank God, as well, though that might offend some sectors.

  Do express your continuing loyalty to the United States and its military.

  Do take advantage of medical opportunities to bring yourself back to pre-2016 physical condition, or as much as possible, including any eye and leg operations deemed necessary.

  Do meet ASAP with the psychiatrist hired to work with you at the VA hospital in Richmond, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Elliott, a specialist in military PTSD.

  Do maintain regular contact with your Army liaison during your medical leave.

  Do consider the Pentagon’s generous offer of a promotion to major and a posting in the Department of Defense’s Office of Communications.

  Do not hesitate to ask for help. Your country appreciates your service.

  Jake blinked several times after finishing his quick scan of the document. “You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t say anything about the three years I was a POW.”

  “Without getting prior approval from your contact at the DOD, that’s correct. Army Code of Conduct, Section 108, part B. From this point on, the term we will be using is MIA, not POW.”

  “Actually, I don’t mind keeping my mouth shut. Confidential intel has always remained private. But I draw the line at becoming your propaganda machine, being interviewed by the news media, parroting some political buzz words. And what’s with your assumption that I would want to talk about Nazim. Hell, I even object to the assumption that I want to go home to the Outer Banks.”

  In the end, Jake and the major arrived at a compromise.

  Neither of them was happy.

  Honey, I’m home . . .

  The phone rang at nine o’clock on the dot. Sally was sitting on her bed, the cordless phone in her hand, but she didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t.

  She’d had more than five hours to prepare herself, but her body was still frozen with shock. A small part of her clung to the idea that someone was playing a morbid joke. Or that she was lost in a dream and couldn’t wake up.

  Her father-in-law, Jake’s father, had done nothing but freeze up and go off on his boat to brood, ever since they’d gotten the news. Not unlike Sally, who’d probably scandalized both the general and the senator by not shedding a single tear. Why would she? She still didn’t believe it. Finally, the bossy general had returned to DC. If the man, with his long list of “advice,” had stayed longer, Sally might very well have knocked him over the head with one of her baking trays.

  The boys were asleep due to overexcitement, starting with the fishing expedition this morning and then the news that they actually had a father—which they could hardly understand, but recognized as something huge in their lives. To them, it was like Christmas and birthdays combined, with surely the promise of presents on their greedy horizons.

  The townsfolk didn’t know yet that their lost hero was a live hero, thanks to orders from General Advise-a-Lot, but they suspected something was up. If the pretentious vehicle parked outside wasn’t a clue, the presence of a general and a senator certainly were, not to mention two military security guards patrolling the perimeter of her property.

  Which didn’t stop some of the Bell Cove-ites. In fact, Laura Atler, editor of the local newspaper, The Bell, scooted around one of the soldiers and made a mad dash for the cottage, only to be picked up bodily by a grinning marine, then frog-marched back to her car.

  Not to be deterred, the phone, which had been set on voice mail, hadn’t stopped ringing. But the voice mail had been turned off now so that she could accept this all-important call.

  On the fifth ring, Sally picked up. “Hello.”

  “Hey, babe!”

  It’s Jake. It really is! Oh, my God! And what’s with this casual “Hey, babe!” as if he just returned from a normal three- or four-week deployment? But then she realized that he might be as nervous as she was. And so she replied in the way she would have in the old days . . . the days prior to his “death.”

  “Hey, dude!” she said, barely above a whisper, the usual response she made to his “Hey, babe.”

  They’d started that playful exchange back when she’d first met him at a Central Park concert eons ago. She had been a student at the Manhattan School of Music, waiting for her big break as a singer in a Broadway production, he a handsome soldier on leave in the big city. Her heart had literally skipped a beat on seeing the young man with blue, blue eyes in a spiffy dress uniform. More than nine years later, her heart still beat so fast she could scarcely breathe, but for different reasons now, of course.

  Over the lump in her throat, she managed to get out, “Long time no hear, sweetie.”

  “The dead don’t speak, sweetie.” He laughed.

  And, yes, she sensed nervousness from his end. “I’m sorry,” she said right off.

  “For what?”

  “The things I said before you left. That’s the one thing I regretted after we were told that you died, how I sent you out with bitter words.”

  “‘You selfish bastard!’ Are those the words you’re referring to? Yep, those were definitely not the three words you usually said before I left.”

  “You didn’t say them, either. The three usual words, I mean.”

  “You could say them now,” he noted.

  “So could you, Jacob.” Although everyone called her husband Jake, Sally had gotten a kick the first time she was introduced to his mother to hear her refer to him as Jacob. In the beginning, she’d started calling him Jacob, too, in a teasing way, but then it became her pet name for him. By using it now, she might not be saying that she still loved him, but it introduced an intimacy to their conversation. He had to be thinking of those times when he’d relished hearing her breathy sighs of “Oh, Jacob!”

  “Anyhow, I’m sorry, too,” he said. “This was no way for you to get the news that I was alive.”

  “Three months, Jacob! You should have called. You should have come home. I can understand how you might not have been physically able to at first, but . . . three months!”

  General Parker had explained that Jake had serious injuries when he was first rescued, that he was in fact unconscious for a while, but Sally knew her stubborn husband. If he’d wanted to come home, he would have, or at least found a way to contact her. With his Special Forces training, he had skills.

  The fact that Jake remained silent at her condemnation was telling. “You do want to come home, don’t you?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know,” he replied.

  The flutters in her chest turned to stone and dropped to her stomach, making her nauseated. He had to have heard her gasp.

  “Wait. Don’t hang up,” he said quickly.

  Which was precisely what she’d been about to
do.

  “I’m not the same, Sally.”

  “Well, hell’s bells, neither am I. But forget about you and me. What about your kids? Don’t you want to see them?” She’d like to remind him that he hadn’t seen much of his kids in the past, when he’d had the chance, with all the active duty crap he’d engaged in, some of it voluntary. He’d parked her in boring Small Town, USA, then gone off to his other life of excitement and adventure.

  But now was not the time for that argument. They’d had it enough before.

  “Of course I do, but . . .” He paused as if unsure what to say next, then revealed, “I don’t want them to see me like this.”

  All of this was so unlike the Jake she knew and had loved at one time. He would be tossing out swear words like bullets. Arrogant on occasion. Always sure of himself. And, yes, selfish.

  “Like what, Jacob? Do you think kids care about a limp, or an injured eye? They already have you built up into this larger-than-life Superman hero.”

  “See. That’s what I mean. I’m no hero.”

  “Tell that to the town of Bell Cove. They’ll have a marching band waiting for you at the ferry. Billboards, at the least. Yellow ribbons from every tree for miles around. A celebration to outdo their Grinch madness last Christmas, or the Independence Day wedding they put on last month, or Pirate Madness, or today’s Elvis-Comes-Back-to-Bell Cove, or the upcoming Lollypalooza.”

  He groaned.

  “Don’t you dare say that you’re not coming home,” she continued. “You are not going to humiliate me, or disappoint your boys, or break your father’s heart by staying away.”

  “Is that an order?” he asked.

  “You better believe it, soldier. As I told that General Parker today, ‘I’m a civilian, but you work for my government. Therefore, you work for me. You do not tell me how to handle my husband’s homecoming.’ What an ass he was!”

  “You gave a general his marching orders?”

  “You better believe it.”

  He chuckled.

  “One more thing, Jacob,” she added. The tears she’d been holding back all day finally let loose in a torrent. She was about to say, “I do still love you. Dammit!” But the words wouldn’t come. They might not even be true anymore. Instead, she said, “Welcome home, soldier.”

  Chapter 4

  Eye candy for the chocoholic . . .

  (New York City, nine years and one month ago)

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” Sally Fontaine said to her best friend, Melody Carter, as they left the Eugene O’Neill Theater.

  “For sure! Even if we get the parts, the pay and the hours wouldn’t be worth the effort.”

  The casting notice on Backstage.com had been misleading, to say the least. The two of them had skipped morning classes at the Manhattan School of Music to audition for supporting roles in a remake of West Side Story, which was expected to make its Broadway debut next March. It had been a cattle call for mostly chorus spots, resulting in hundreds of singers showing up, many of them with a smattering of experience, like themselves.

  Ever since her parents had discovered that Sally had singing talent when she was about ten years old, they’d been encouraging her with voice lessons and auditions, all geared toward a Broadway career. Never the popular music scene, which they considered a meat market for drugs and exploitation. But the “legitimate” theater, yes, yes, yes.

  Her parents wouldn’t have minded her skipping classes, today or any other day, despite the expensive tuition they paid out each month. It was important to keep trying, whether through auditions or agent appointments, never knowing when the “lucky break” would come for her to hit the big time. As a result, this marked Sally’s nineteenth tryout since she’d graduated from high school last year. Oh, she’d gotten numerous bit parts along the way, but none of them anywhere near the “big time,” not even the three days of playing Annie when she was eleven and the lead actress was sick with the flu.

  Mel fanned her face with a Playbill she’d picked up from the theater lobby. The temperature on the TV this morning had said eighty degrees, and they were both dressed appropriately for the weather in sundresses and flat ballet-style shoes, but eighty degrees in August in the Big Apple was comparable to about a hundred anywhere else.

  Not that Sally knew much about “anywhere else,” having grown up in the city with her parents, Max and Lola Fontaine, famous set designers who rarely left their beloved home territory near the Great White Way, except for occasional flights to LA where they worked on films, which was rare. Not for lack of opportunity. They just preferred live theater.

  “Should we go back to school or hit the summer concert series in the park?” Sally asked.

  “Definitely the concert,” Mel replied. “It’s ‘Beach Music Without Sand’ today. Eight bands, headlined by the Beach Boys.”

  “I thought they were dead.”

  “Some are, but the band is still cool. Well, their music is.” Mel began to sing “Barbara Ann,” which caused passersby on the busy street to turn and stare, then smile. She was really good. Unlike Sally, Mel and her doting family wouldn’t mind a popular singing role. In fact, she was planning to try out for next season’s American Idol.

  Sally elbowed her friend to behave, and they headed across 50th Street, taking a shortcut through the park. Within ten minutes they were at the back of the crowd which stood about or sat on blankets listening to the band. The spectators were all ages. Some seniors who would have been teens in the heyday of beach music, but also some young couples with children, and lots of teens on the loose for summer vacation.

  On stage at the moment appeared to be a Southern band called The Shakers, which was playing “Carolina Girls.” Well, actually, there were two bands on the stage . . . The Shakers and the Beach Boys. They had a sort of duel of the bands going on, with The Shakers extolling the virtues of Carolina girls, while the Beach Boys did a counterpoint with their song about West Coast girls. Back and forth they went with contradictory lyrics from their once-popular songs, and surprisingly they worked well together.

  Sally and Mel looked at each other and smiled.

  “Should we try to get closer to the stage?” Mel asked.

  “Nah. Let’s sit on that picnic table over there. That family is leaving.”

  They rushed over and were about to hop up and onto the tabletop with their feet on the bench when Sally looked to the side, then did a double take. Standing nearby were a group of six physically fit men in short-sleeved khaki uniforms with green berets covering high-and-tight military haircuts. But it wasn’t the group that caught Sally’s attention. It was one man in particular.

  He had dark hair and pale blue eyes. Broad shoulders. Small waist. Tall. Maybe six foot. But not too tall, compared to her five-five. In a pair of her favorite high heels, he would be just perfect.

  What? Why make that comparison? Am I nuts? Suddenly attracted to hunks? My parents, true-blue pacifists, would have tandem heart attacks if I ever came home with a soldier. But, holy moly, he does look good in that uniform.

  Sally was used to good-looking males in the entertainment business her parents worked in and the participants that they often brought home. Actors. Musicians. Singers. If they weren’t born handsome, they used plastic surgeons, or aesthetic dentists, or hair stylists, or physical trainers to get to that perfection ideal. Eye candy for the sugar-deprived masses.

  But this guy was different, somehow.

  And, face it, I’m no beauty prize. Sally was realistic about her own shortcomings. Plain brown hair, except for some naturally blonde highlights. A slightly crooked incisor tooth, which her parents said made Sally stand out from the too–orthodontically perfect, too-white-toothed crowd. A petite figure that was far from voluptuous.

  Men didn’t stop in their tracks when she walked by.

  Still, this guy, as he leaned against a tree, was staring, not at the stage, like his buddies, but at her. And he appeared to be equally poleaxed. Tilting his head to the
side, his compelling eyes seemed to be asking a question, the same question causing her heart to leap in her chest.

  Who are you?

  But then he smiled, a slow, lazy twitch of impossibly sexy lips.

  And Sally’s world changed forever.

  The Beach Boys launched into “Good Vibrations,” countered by “Shagging, USA” by The Shakers.

  Oh, yeah!

  Forever is a long, long time . . .

  Jake stared at the cell phone in his hand before laying it down on the bedside table. He’d just ended his awkward call to Sally and wondered, sadly, how they’d managed to land in this rocky place. Their marriage had been on shaky ground before he went MIA, too many tours, too many broken promises, and now . . . ?

  Could it even be salvaged, especially with all the problems of his “resurrection” thrown in?

  Would he really be welcome back in Bell Cove? By Sally, who’d made a new life for herself? By his kids who didn’t even know him anymore? By townsfolk who revered a dead hero, not a live nonhero?

  And how about the new boyfriend?

  How had the love that had bloomed almost instantly between him and Sally nine years ago gone so far off course?

  Lieutenant Jacob Dawson and five of his buddies had just come from a funeral for a fallen comrade when they sidetracked through Central Park on the way back to their hotel. The guys would have much preferred a bar with cold beers on tap in this heat and were griping about wanting to get out of their uniforms and into civvies.

  Jake had heard that The Shakers, a North Carolina band, were playing in a beach music–themed concert. Being from the Outer Banks, where The Shakers were well-known and where Shag dance music was still popular, he’d convinced his friends to make the detour.

  But then he saw her.

  She was average height, about five-five, but small boned, making her look kind of petite. But maybe it was the sundress she wore, held up by thin spaghetti straps that gave a guy ideas. It was peach-colored, like her skin, with big splotchy ivory flowers. Her hair, brown with gold highlights, picked up by the sun, was long and luxuriously thick, but held off her face into a high ponytail. Freckles, which were oddly attractive, dotted her nose and cheeks and upper arms. The freckles, too, gave him ideas. Can anyone say, connect the dots? Like with a marker? Or a tongue? And, hey, where else does she have freckles?