A Hero Comes Home

by Sandra Hill

  It was a running argument they’d been having since their marriage almost two years ago.

  Jake sighed. “A shotgun wedding without the shotgun,” he pointed out, not for the first time. “If our nuptials were quick and without the usual hoopla, it was because your parents were horrified to see you marry a soldier. Our wedding was a sword to their pacifist hearts.”

  “Good point, but that doesn’t alter the fact that you dropped this city girl in the boonies, so to speak, then jitterbugged . . . rather shagged your way off to more new and exciting places.”

  Shagged? Now there’s a thought. And he wasn’t picturing the dance step. “Sal, you knew I was a soldier when we hooked up.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know it was for life. Or that I wouldn’t be going with you. Other soldiers’ wives go.”

  Not Delta Force. Or at least not this one, who hasn’t been stationed in one place for more than three months at a time these past four years. And not to the places I’ve been.

  He would have continued the argument, or not, but the rain was beginning to come down now in torrents. Putting his hammer on the windowsill, he stepped down off the porch and let the cool pellets wash over him. He stretched his arms out and looked upward, eyes closed, momentarily. “This is heavenly.”

  “You’re crazy,” Sally said, smiling as she watched him.

  “C’mon. Join me,” he encouraged, holding his hands out to her, beckoning with his fingertips. “Take a ride on the crazy train.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Don’t you have a song for this . . . something about singing in the rain?”

  “Gene Kelly, Singin’ in the Rain, movie, 1952. Broadway musical, 1985.” She began to belt out the lyrics then and with a mischievous grin, she jumped off the porch and into his arms. Within seconds, she was soaked to the skin, but then her halter top was tossed aside, and he’d shrugged off his shorts. And she’d miraculously lost her shorts, as well. Her legs were wrapped around his waist.

  And she continued singing and laughing, her head thrown back with sheer joy.

  Until he kissed her.

  And then she kissed him.

  It didn’t matter that they were naked in their front yard. Everyone on their street had evacuated, or if they hadn’t, neither he nor Sally could care. But then he picked her up and made his way inside, kicking the front door shut with his foot. They landed on the sofa.

  “No, we have to dry off first.” She tried to shove him off her. “We’ll ruin the new sofa.”

  “It’s only water,” he insisted, spreading her legs with his knees and settling himself into Happy Land. “Remember what Mom said when we bought this thing. Buy the best. Quality will out. Cost almost as much as a house payment.”

  It was amazing that he could talk and make love at the same time, but he did, grunting out the words as he worked her ears with tongue and teeth and hot breaths, one of the most sensitive erotic spots on Sally’s body.

  She moaned and arched up for more.

  He rolled so that she was on top, sitting on his belly, staring down at him with caramel eyes already glazed with passion. Her hair was plastered to her head where beads of water still ran down her face. Freckles dotted her cheeks and shoulders, even her breasts, which were slightly larger now, post-childbirth. And the nipples were darker, more rose-colored than light pink.

  She should have looked like a drowned rat, or a freckle-faced mouse, but, instead, she was the picture of wholesome, sexy womanhood. And he loved every bit of her. So much it scared him sometimes.

  “Sally, do you know how much I love you?”

  His question startled her. For a moment. But then she wiggled her butt on him and said saucily, “No. Show me.”

  She’d heard experts talk about “riding out a storm” but was this what they meant? . . .

  Sally had been watching the Food Network while Jacob slept on the couch behind her. She was worried about him and wanted to stick close by. Even as he slept, he was restless and subject to sudden starts and occasional groans. But then he’d awakened and pulled her up onto the sofa, kissing her. Oh, how she had missed kissing! His kissing.

  Luckily, the oven buzzer had gone off. She wasn’t ready to dive into lovemaking with Jacob. Not yet. And she suspected he wasn’t ready, either, despite the quick start of arousal on both their parts. There was so much that needed to be cleared up between them first.

  Still, as she rose and made her way into the kitchen and the persistent buzzing, she glanced back at her husband half reclining on the sofa, up on his elbows, and wondered if he remembered how they’d christened that piece of furniture, back before their marriage hit the rocks.

  Memories . . .

  “Do you know how much I love you?”

  Sally was perched on Jacob’s stomach, with her sopping wet hair dripping water down her face, off her chin, and onto his chest. Being naked as a newborn and not looking her best, she was startled by his question for a moment. Even when her hair was blow-dried and her face made up artfully to hide her freckles, Sally knew she was no beauty.

  Yeah, she had insecurities. Yeah, she’d always been amazed that a man as hot as Jacob Dawson would be attracted to a woman who was at best average, let alone love her. Although they didn’t talk about it, she’d always been hung up on the idea that he’d “had to” marry her.

  But then, in this instance, Jacob was a man and they hadn’t done the deed since his return from a three-month deployment last night. From the moment he’d arrived, he’d been busy helping his dad secure his fishing boat and his house before their evacuation. To Jacob, love probably meant lust. She’d long stopped believing he was as madly in love with her as she was with him. Or had been. Oh, she still loved the man, but madly? Not so much.

  It was an interesting question, though. “Do you know how much I love you?” she repeated his words in her mind.

  Well, no, I don’t know that. How could I? In the twenty-three months, or seven hundred and one days, we’ve been married, we’ve been together a total of seven weeks . . . only forty-nine days. And, yes, I bothered to count, Mister I-Am-Off-to-Save-the-World.

  And yet here she was, pregnant, again, although GI Clueless didn’t know yet. A new baby meant that she was further trapped in her situation. Not trapped by children. Never that! She loved Matty and was looking forward to the new baby. But she didn’t want to be raising them alone.

  How could Jacob have reupped without consulting me first?

  How could he think his long absences would be okay with me?

  How could he claim to love me, and then leave me, again and again and again?

  On the other hand, if there was one thing she’d learned as a soldier’s wife, it was to “pick your battles.” Besides, there was nothing to do while the storm raged. Who was she kidding? She hadn’t made love in a long time, and Jacob knew how to push all her buttons, literally.

  And, so, she wiggled her butt on Jacob and teased, “No. Show me.”

  “Sassy today, are you, sweetheart? Sassy Sally?”

  “You have a problem with that, big boy?” she inquired, putting emphasis on those last two words with her voice and a backward thrust of her butt against said “big boy,” which was flush against the crease in her behind.

  “Are you kidding?” he choked out.

  She was the one who was going to make love to him then, she decided, employing all the tricks and techniques that he had taught her, the things he liked best. Sally had never had much sexual experience with anyone else before Jacob, and certainly none after. So, he’d been her teacher.

  Now, she would teach him a thing or two. Why should he be the one calling the shots about everything?

  He put his hands on her hips, about to lift her onto his erection.

  She tried to slap his hands away and said, “No. Let me.”

  But he had different ideas. “Uh-uh. You told me to show you how much I love you. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

  He succeeded now in lifting h
er up and sliding her slowly down his shaft until her pubic bone rested against his pubic bone. They both let out a long groan at the sheer, almost painful pleasure, especially as her inner muscles were already grasping at him. Not surprising was the slickness of her channel; the man could turn her on with a mere look when he wanted to.

  And he knew it.

  As he did now.

  Those blue eyes of his—like the summer skies over Bell Sound—were surely weapons in his sexual playbook. When he gazed at her with erotic intent, she was caught in his hypnotic scope, as surely as a sniper’s target, and would do anything he asked. Anything.

  His thick dark lashes lowered, then opened slowly, lazily, as he regarded her.

  Was there anything sexier than a dark-haired, blue-eyed man? Especially a blue-eyed man with wicked intentions?

  While she was studying him, he stuffed a throw pillow behind his head so he could see her better. Then he put his hands on her thighs and spread her wider so he could actually see her engorged clitoris. After that, he raised his hands up to her breasts and strummed the nipples until they stood out like sentinels of arousal, creating a direct pulsing line between her breasts and her female parts. Then, putting his hands on her elbows, he pressed her arms to her sides so that she couldn’t reach for him.

  “Look at you,” he rasped out. “My sweet Sal.” She must have appeared skeptical because he continued his observation, “Hot as summer sand on the Outer Banks, like sugar on a hungry man’s tongue.”

  Now she did arch her brows with skepticism. Since when did her husband get all poetical?

  He laughed and added, “And this man is huuuunnnngry.”

  Before she could react—heck, her lower body was reacting on its own by spasming around his cock, which she could swear was growing inside of her even as he forced her to remain still—he leaned up and took her breast into his mouth. Her whole breast! And, yes, she was a cup larger since Matty’s birth, and still he managed to take her all in. He chuckled at her gasp of surprise, even as he slowly released his suctioning hold on her breast until he reached the areola, which he sucked on hard, then soft, then hard, before flicking the nipple with his tongue until she was unable to forestall the climax which hit her suddenly.

  Bam!

  Then, bambambambambam . . .

  Even then, he didn’t stop his ministrations, just moved his mouth to her other breast.

  She tried to move on him, but still he wouldn’t let her. His hands were on her hips now, preventing any movement, except that inside of her. Slowly, she opened her eyes and glanced downward. Her breasts were wet from his laving and there were drops of moisture on their blended pubic hairs. It certainly wasn’t from his ejaculation because he was still rock-hard inside of her, still unmoving.

  “How embarrassing!” she murmured.

  “How sexy!” he disagreed.

  She looked at him then and saw the intensity of his arousal in those gorgeous blue eyes. It was a sign of his discipline, which made him a good soldier as well as a good lover, that he could be so excited and not go trigger-happy.

  “Are you convinced yet?” he asked, framing her face and pulling her down to him.

  “About what?”

  “How much I love you?”

  “Hah! That doesn’t prove anything.”

  He grinned. “Are you challenging me?”

  Was she? “Sure.”

  He kissed her then. And caressed her. And murmured wicked words of praise for her body. And thrust and thrust and thrust. Then stopped. And started all over again. Meanwhile, the wind whistled outside now and the house shivered on its foundation, but she barely noticed. By the time he released himself into her with a roar of triumph, his neck arched back over extended tendons, after she’d finally surrender with a cry of “I believe, I believe,” he’d brought her to climax two more times.

  It took a while for their heaving breaths to slow down to mere panting. He was flat on his back. She was on her side, her butt and shoulders against the back of the sofa, with her face on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

  “I do love you, Sally,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “The question is, do you love me?”

  “You know I do. Why would you even ask?”

  “You haven’t said so since I’ve been home. In fact, you’ve been in a bad mood from the get-go.” He chuckled then.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “God bless PMS,” he said irrelevantly. “I love how horny you get before your period.”

  She raised her head and glared at him. He knew how women . . . how she felt when men made remarks about women on PMS. “You are such an ass sometimes,” she said, not entirely upset with him, still basking in the afterglow of good sex.

  “Why am I an ass for liking my wife to be horny, whether due to PMS or my remarkable talents?”

  She slapped a hand on his fingers, which were toying with her breast again. “I’m not having PMS, and I’m not about to have a period, you idiot. I’m pregnant. Again.”

  He grinned. He actually had the nerve to grin. “Really?”

  Men! They viewed pregnancy as a reflection of their virility. “Oh, yeah. Three months.” The exact time since his last leave.

  He continued to grin.

  “You’re happy about this?”

  “Yeah. Aren’t you?”

  Actually, she was, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have issues related to her having babies and his being gone.

  “In fact, I have an idea. We should name this new baby Mark. Then, the ones after that could be Luke and John. We could call them the four little apostles. You know, instead of the Little Rascals . . . And, hey, maybe someday they would all play on the same NFL football team, and commentators would name them the Bible Brothers. Not that I’m religious or anything. Just a thought.”

  “Well, think about this, bozo,” she said, giving him a hard shove, which caused him to fall off the couch.

  He was laughing so hard, he didn’t even bother to get up.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Leaning over the side, she looked down at him. “You want four sons? And what if some of the babies are girls?”

  “We could have an equal number of each.”

  “Eight kids. What alternate universe are you living in?”

  He was probably kidding, but still . . .

  Once he wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes with the back of his arm, he sat up and teased, “Still love me, baby?”

  “Not so much,” she said, getting up and going off to the bathroom to see if she could get a comb through her tangled hair. But she did. Love him. And that was her downfall, and why she would probably stay in the upcoming years.

  The storm lasted for two days.

  Would she ever look at that blasted sofa in the future and not remember that this was probably the beginning of the end for them . . . or the end of something?

  Chapter 8

  Who needs internet matchmaking?

  Joe Dawson’s heart was full almost to bursting, like a big old puffer fish, as he watched his son at the barbecue that evening.

  Oh, not a heart attack approaching or anything like that. Not after what had happened to his precious Marge last year! He knew the signs now. And he kept his ticker in good shape with healthy food and regular checkups and exercise, though he didn’t need any fancy-pantsy exercise regimen with his hardworking job as a fisherman.

  No, this was joy like he’d never felt before, not even when he’d seen his son for the first time, all red faced and pruney skinned when he came into the world thirty-two years ago. And it was a sadness that only a father would recognize when he knew his son was hurting real bad and could do nothing about it.

  If only Marge had lived long enough to see her son come home! She’d been shattered when he was declared dead and lived in silent grief for two years afterward until last year when she’d died, too, thinking she would be meeting him “up there.” Well, she knew now, wherever she was “up there,” looking down on the
m.

  Joe sighed. He was sitting on a glider on his back porch with Old Mike, the two of them nursing cold bottles of beer. Mid-August on the Outer Banks could be sweltering hot, and the temp had barely dropped below ninety all day. Even now, in the early evening, it was a humid eighty. Storm coming, for sure. Which could affect their planned five a.m. start to spend the day fishing stripers about twenty miles out at his favorite spot.

  Mike had been renting a room from him ever since Marge died of that sudden heart attack. Mike had asked if he could move in because he was about to lose the lease on his trailer, but Joe suspected that Mike, good friend that he was, had just wanted to help Joe as he mourned.

  Just then, Karl Gustafson walked into the backyard with his mother, Vana, who was carrying a bowl of what must be her famous, or infamous, Norse potato salad, which was heavy on salted herring. Don’t ask!

  Gus was an impressive figure at six foot three or four, having been a professional football player at one time. Quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. He now ran a convenience store on the island known as Gus’s Gas and Goods, and seemed content enough with his noncelebrity status these days. His mother, a longtime widow, had an equally impressive figure, Joe had to admit . . . as had half the male population in Bell Cove over the age of fifty. At six feet tall, still wearing her hair long and blonde at sixty-plus years old, she had a body that could only be called statuesque, if one were being polite. Va-va-voom, if one were being less than polite.

  He and Mike exchanged a look, then sat up straighter when Vana noticed them on the porch and gave a little wave. She was wearing tight white jeans with a floaty kind of see-through top and wedge-heeled sandals that probably made her six foot three. If Joe were standing in front of her, which he had no intention of doing, his eyes would probably be planted dead center on her boobs.

  “Lordy, Lordy!” Mike muttered under his breath.

  “Yep!” Joe agreed.

  Vana took her dish over to the folding table where food was being set out by Sally and Francine Henderson, owner of Styles and Smiles, a beauty salon on the square, and immediately began an animated conversation. From the minute Jake and Sally had arrived at Joe’s cottage this evening, Jake insisted on manning the barbecue, probably so he had something to lean on to relieve the obvious pain in his leg. And Sally went over to set up the food table. A mere twenty feet apart which might as well be twenty miles, Joe observed with a sigh.