by Gail, Stacy
Pauline waved a hand. “He was still recovering then. That hardly counts.”
“And I saw him again in July when the divorce was finalized.” She’d been dying by inches ever since, but again, no one needed to know that. “Sullivan knows I live here. I know he lives here. There’s no reason why it should be weird.”
Pauline and Willard exchanged worried glances. “If you say so.”
“I do.” With a serene expression firmly in place, Lucy was certain no one could hear her screaming inside.
* * *
The remainder of Lucy’s shift was a self-induced nightmare. Her responsibilities at Pauline’s as head baker kept her locked in the back, but she could still hear the front bell sound whenever a customer pushed through the front door. Without fail, every time the chime sounded, her heart froze. She held her breath, her ears going into bionic mode, waiting to hear the male voice she still dreamed about. But it was never Sullivan. War hero. Childhood sweetheart. Center of her universe.
Ex-husband.
For a year now, she’d been without her other half. A year of half life. Or half death. Logically she knew there were many other families who had suffered the loss of so much more. If any one of those families knew her unusual circumstances, they’d probably switch with her in a minute. She should be grateful. And she was. After all, her hopes and prayers had been answered, technically speaking. The only thing she’d prayed for was for Sully to come back alive.
She should have been more specific.
More than a dozen customers—none of them Sully—had come to Pauline’s by closing time. Some actually had legitimate orders, with Christmas a little over a week away. But others had dropped by in the obvious hope of seeing her reaction now that Sully was back in Bitterthorn. She knew the type. They were the vultures who slowed to a crawl to rubberneck at a bad accident. When she was a kid with a mother who’d done a runner and a father who eventually drank himself into the grave, those same gawkers had stared as well. It was as if they knew ketchup sandwiches were the only things keeping her from starvation.
Yeah. She could spot that type a mile away.
There was only one surefire way to get rid of them. Give them nothing. Nothing to look at, nothing to cluck over in their self-righteous way. Nothing to gossip about. Boredom set in if there was no observable trauma, so that’s exactly what Lucy gave them. Nothing.
A frigid wind hit when she stepped out onto the sidewalk fronting Pauline’s, and she tightened the scarf in her favorite color—a brilliant red—around her neck. The only time it had ever snowed in the South Texas town of Bitterthorn had been before she was born. According to those who’d lived through it, a single inch of the white stuff had brought the town to a shell-shocked standstill. It definitely felt cold enough for it now, and it got her moving toward her loft apartment over Lefty’s garage a couple of blocks away, a convenient space she’d been living in since summer.
Coe Rodas ran Lefty’s now, a former stock car driver, mechanical genius and, in another lifetime, her long-ago babysitter. Lucy and Coe had managed to survive growing up on the wrong side of Bitterthorn’s tracks, and they’d looked out for each other since day one. It had been Coe who had given her away when she’d married Sully, just as it had been Coe’s shoulder she’d sobbed on when she’d made the painful decision to give Sully the divorce he’d asked for. Outside of Pauline and Willard Padgett, Coe was the closest thing she had to family.
As she rushed past the post office crammed with people trying to mail off Christmas packages, the Open sign got flipped to Closed. Lefty’s was on the corner past Mabel’s Diner, from which delicious aromas from a bustling dinner rush emanated. Through the gloom she could see Coe’s familiar form waiting on the sidewalk, shoulders hunched against the cold. She smiled, her chin lifting as she waved when a gust of wind slammed into her like an invisible wall. Her scarf smacked her in the face on its way off her neck, and with a squeak she grabbed at it. She wasn’t fast enough, and had to hurry after it as it somersaulted like a living thing down the sidewalk. A booted foot came out from the direction of Mabel’s recessed doorway, stomping on the brilliant scrap of material a scant moment before she crashed into the body that belonged to it.
“Sorry!” Horrified, she grabbed at the person before they could both fall. Her gloved hands gripped lean hips, with one almost completely cupping a firm butt cheek.
Oh, good God.
Hastily she jumped back, not sure if she should snatch up the scarf and run for it, or dive into the mortification pool and acknowledge the inappropriate grope. Maybe if she made a joke... Hey, was that as good for you as it was for me? It could work, as long as it wasn’t Father Fabian. Crap, if she’d just inadvertently copped a feel of the town’s sixty-something parish priest, she’d freaking die right there.
Breathless, Lucy looked up into evergreen eyes hooded by dark brown brows, and discovered that agony could cause sudden paralysis.
Sullivan.
* * *
Face tingling from the cold, Sully worked to get his tongue unglued from the roof of his mouth. Damn. Had that been her hand on his ass? Hell yes, it most definitely had been. He could still feel each individual finger digging into the flesh as if the nerves there were now branded. Not surprising, really. A man would have to be dead not to appreciate a good-looking woman’s hand gripping his butt cheek as if conducting a squeeze-test for ripeness.
Even if that woman was his ex-wife.
Sully’s brain shied away from the unfamiliar term. To cover the reaction, he retrieved the scarf and braced himself against the wall when the expected wave of vertigo hit. Going upside down without his cane to help keep his balance probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but he’d had it with that damn stick. He was sick of being an invalid. “I saw this slip its knot as you walked by. I had a feeling it was going to make a break for it.” He held out the bright strip of material as the last of the dizzies abated. “It’s good to see you, Lucy.”
“Hi.” Her gaze never wavered as she reclaimed her property. No doubt about it, her eyes were just about the prettiest he’d ever seen. Blue like the summer sky without so much as a fleck of gray or green to dim their clarity. They were widely spaced and framed with thick fans of black lashes, far darker than her toffee-colored hair now pulled back from a sculpted, oval face. The cold had touched her cheeks with pink, but the rest seemed as pale as winter frost.
He’d known their first meeting would be weird. That was why he’d made the decision to get it over with the moment Lucy had appeared outside the diner’s picture window. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. As she’d rushed by, she’d suddenly smiled with such brilliance it had jolted him out of the booth before he’d given it a thought. He couldn’t remember Lucy ever smiling at him like that.
Then again, that didn’t mean much.
“So.” Shit, this was awkward. Maybe there was some greeting card for a situation like this. “Heading home from work?”
“Work? You mean that madhouse that keeps me chained to an oven all day?”
Sully grinned. One thing he’d noticed about Lucy—she was never at a loss for words. “Yeah, that.”
“Pauline’s is like an acid-trippy three-ring circus during the holiday season, so I’m lucky if I can get out of there on time. I’m probably going to dream about being buried in cupcakes tonight.”
“I can think of worse dreams.”
“Believe me, so can I.” There didn’t seem to be any gas left in that conversation, so she busied herself with retying the scarf, this time tucking the ends into her jacket collar. “How about you? Any plans now that you’ve received your honorable discharge? Your dad updated me,” she added when he gave her a searching look. “Congrats, by the way. If I had confetti I’d toss it at you.”
“Thank heaven for small favors. And as of the New Year I’ll be doing what I do best
—writing code for a computer security group that my old XO started up when he went into the private sector.”
Those sky eyes lit up. “That’s great, Sullivan. Sounds like you’re not going to have any trouble settling into civilian life.”
“At the moment it doesn’t seem that easy. I just had an hour-long battle at the post office, mailing off presents to the family of my best friend who was killed in action last year. I made a promise I’d do what I could for them during the holidays, so...” He shrugged, not sure why he felt the need to share that with her. Maybe he was babbling. “The post office is crazy this time of year.”
“Two words for you next year. Gift. Cards.”
He groaned. “Why didn’t I talk to you before I acted?”
Something in her expression flinched, as if she’d been poked with something sharp. “Well, now. There’s one helluva question if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.” She touched her scarf and offered him a tight smile that looked nothing like the real McCoy. “Thanks for catching this for me. Hope I didn’t hurt you when I full-on body-tackled you.”
“A Ranger’s tougher than that.” Except for the fingerprints he could feel burned onto his ass, he’d already forgotten about it. “That’s a good color on you.”
“You know me and red—my favorite color in the universe.” Then she bit her lips together, hard enough to turn them white. “Sorry. I, uh...I like red.”
“Right.” This was a bad idea, he thought, stepping back on the excuse of not blocking the sidewalk when someone approached. But the real reason was simple—he didn’t want to be in this conversation anymore. She wasn’t a part of his life, so it was a mystery why he’d found himself running to intercept her. Maybe it had been a good idea to get their first face-to-face meeting out of the way, but forcing something that wasn’t there was worse than pointless. It was painful. He was so sick of things that were painful. Simplicity was what he needed now. And simple wasn’t Lucy...Lucy...
His hands curled into frustrated fists when he came up empty. That blankness meant failure, and that was one thing the Ranger in him couldn’t accept.
“You’re not still going by Jax, are you?”
“No.” She gave him a veiled look. “You suggested that, to put all this behind us, I should take back my maiden name. I did.”
“Ah. Good.”
As she turned away she muttered something under her breath that sounded like, nice. “I’d better be going.”
As the vision of her back filled his view, a jolt went through him. A strange, frantic feeling he couldn’t control, while the diner door opened behind him. “Wait. Now you’re Lucy...?”
“Crabtree. Good—”
“Lucy!” His father, Lowell, hustled from the diner to sweep Lucy in a hug that took her off her feet. “How’s my queen of sweets? Since you moved out I never hear from you. Where’ve you been hiding?”
Sully winced at the lack of subtlety. Apparently while he’d been deployed, Lucy had stayed in the garage apartment on his father’s property, the same apartment where Sully now lived. From the moment Sully had walked through that apartment’s door he’d suffered an intense hatred of the place, when he usually didn’t give a crap about his surroundings. It just didn’t feel like home. No place did. He wasn’t even sure what home was supposed to feel like. All he knew was that the apartment wasn’t it.
“Lowell.” Lucy’s voice was muffled against his father’s shoulder as she was dumped back on her feet. “I haven’t been hiding, I’ve been working at Pauline’s and getting the loft transformed from a dirty storage space to a shiny new home.”
“Everyone knows Lucy’s the busiest person in Bitterthorn this time of year, even without having to sink new roots.”
The unfamiliar baritone snapped Sully’s attention to the man he’d seen approaching. The guy was a rough piece of work—unshaven, silver hoops gleaming in his ears, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. The new arrival’s attention glanced off him as though he’d sized Sully up as unimportant before he bestowed a thousand-watt grin on Lucy. “If she’s not under Pauline’s whip, she’s filling Pfeffernüsse orders on the side. It’s almost embarrassing, how my garage smells like Mrs. Claus’s kitchen.”
“Oh, Pfeffernüsse.” Lowell made a sound of swoony yearning. “Lucy, is it too late for me to sneak an order in? You know I can’t resist anything you bake, but your secret recipe is something I look forward to every year.”
She patted his father’s cheek, showing a familiarity that made Sully feel more like an outsider than ever. “For you, Lowell, anything.”
“Pfeffernüsse?” That edgy sense of failure growled to life while the foreign-sounding word whispered in his head. “What’s that?”
Silence—that awkward, something’s-not-quite-right silence he should be used to by now—froze them in place before Lucy shrugged. “It’s a traditional German-Dutch cookie, usually made during the holidays. The recipe I use has been handed down from generation to generation for at least two hundred years. Not even Pauline has been able to coax the recipe out of me.”
“Sounds good. I’ve been craving cookies lately.”
The man with the ponytail glanced his way. “So, Lieutenant Jax. I hear the mayor’s made you the guest of honor at the Christmas Ball, to celebrate the return of Bitterthorn’s big Silver Star war hero.”
Sully would have to be deaf to not hear the mockery. “Who are you?”
“Coe Rodas. Name ring any bells, Lieutenant?”
“Coe.” The admonition came from Lucy, and the white-hot fire behind the tone jerked his attention back to her. Strange, she’d never shown any fire around him before now.
Funny thing about fire. He’d always had a crazy kind of thing for it.
The tough guy, Coe, seemed to recognize all that heat meant danger, and backed down like an obedient puppy. “My apologies, Luce. I didn’t mean to mess with someone who’s, you know...fragile.”
Sully’s teeth snapped together. “I went through sixty-one days of hell in Ranger School, renowned as the toughest combat training course in the world, where on average nearly half the class washes out the first week alone. I did it because I wanted to become a part of the army’s most elite infantry, just to see if I was strong enough mentally and physically to handle it. My battalion specialized in personnel extraction behind enemy lines, and we never failed in retrieving our target. We could be deployed anywhere in the world in eighteen hours flat, whether it was desert, jungle, urban or mountainous—we trained for it all. I know more ways to kill you than you can probably count, so the one thing I’m not is fragile. And I may not have everything straight in my head, but I’d be willing to bet you and I always had a real goddamn problem occupying the same area. Am I right?”
“Pretty much.” But instead of going toe to toe with him like he wanted, Coe once again looked to Lucy with those puppy-dog eyes. It took all of Sully’s strength not to rip his fucking head off. “But that’s ancient history. The present and future are all that matter now.”
The phrase sounded so much like what he’d told Lucy when he’d pushed for a divorce—a merciful act to free them from an unwanted obligation—that he glanced her way. For her part, she glared at Coe as if she believed she could fry him with a look alone.
No thought could have pleased him more.
“It’s great to see you looking so healthy, Sullivan.” With a curt nod in his direction, Lucy turned away. “Welcome home.”
Chapter Two
“RA. Retrograde amnesia. The thing Fred Flintstone got whenever his bowling ball clocked him on the head.” Irritated and shaking from what she told herself was the cold and not emotional upset, Lucy slammed her purse on the kitchen island. “Also known as fucking brain damage. Why the hell would you say ring any bells to a traumatic brain injury
victim?”
“I refuse to treat Sully with kid gloves. That selfish prick’s getting enough of that from you and everyone else in town, and it makes me want to hurl.”
Lucy’s jaw almost hit the polished wood floor as she turned on the loft’s lights. Since the divorce, the storage space above Lefty’s had become home. It was certainly better than Garden Court, the trailer park where she and Coe had grown up. After five months of working on the open space, the loft’s exposed brick walls and the recessed, massive industrial windows facing Main Street were softened by pendant lighting, comfortable red-upholstered furniture, including a feather-topped, futon-style bed on a platform, and a kitchen she’d spent a pretty penny on to meet her exacting tastes.
Until now, she’d told herself she could be happy here. But one unexpected encounter with her ex had her questioning that in a big way.
“Care to run that by me again?” Stalking back to the kitchen area, she debated whether or not to offer Coe a beer. He didn’t deserve it, but those pesky Southern hospitality rules had her reaching for a couple of longnecks. “Explain how I’ve treated Sullivan with kid gloves.”
Coe took the chilled bottles, opened them both and handed her one. “You’ve always bent over backward to accommodate Sully.”
“Bullshit.”
“When he joined the army, it was with the understanding that all he was going for was the G.I. Bill, right? He wanted to take the financial burden off his dad while still completing his bachelor’s in computer science. He was only supposed to be in for three years.”
“And he did complete his degree while serving, thanks to the continuing education courses he signed up for.” Lucy frowned at Coe, knowing full well where he was going with this. “Are you saying the plans you made in your twenties have gone exactly the way you wanted them to? Remember who you’re talking to.”
