The Unsung Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “The second article has a brief recounting of the incident in which Joe saved the division,” she told Tom. “It doesn’t say much more than what Dad told us last night. Although it does mention that Joe . . .” She moved closer to him to read over his shoulder, her arm brushing against his as she reached to point out the passage. She had to clear her throat. “Here it is. ‘Joseph Paoletti, who is currently employed as the Ashton family groundskeeper in Baldwin’s Bridge, met Charles Ashton, an officer with the Fighting Fifty-fifth, when Lieutenant Ashton was wounded in France in June 1944. Mr. Paoletti helped hide the wounded officer from the Nazis after a German counteroffensive that pushed the battle line far to the west, leaving Lieutenant Ashton stranded deep within enemy territory.’ “

  She looked up at Tom. “My father was there, too. Behind the German lines. Did you know about that?”

  He looked at her pointedly over the top of his sunglasses, and she laughed. “Dumb question,” she said. “Like either one of the silent twins would’ve told you. Sorry.”

  As she watched, Tom looked from the blurred newspaper photograph of Joe—a young Joe, but still so serious—up to the grim-faced statue.

  “It’s definitely Joe,” Kelly agreed, gazing at the statue, too. “He’s got those Paoletti eyes.”

  Tom laughed. “You mean those shifty Paoletti eyes?”

  She turned to face him, horrified. “God, no! You don’t have—”

  “Whoa,” he said. “Easy! I was just kidding.”

  She was standing close enough to see his eyes behind his sunglasses. “No, you weren’t. There may have been people in this town who didn’t like or trust you, Tom,” she said fiercely, “but I was never one of them.”

  He gave her one of his little half smiles. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I . . . always appreciated that.”

  Kelly was standing much too close but she purposely didn’t back away. Her attraction for him was mutual. It had to be. When he wasn’t around, she doubted its existence. But when she was with him . . . She wasn’t imagining this electricity that crackled between them.

  He’d apologized last night for kissing her all those years ago. But he hadn’t apologized for leaving town the next day with only the lamest of good-byes. She’d kept waiting for him to mention that, but he hadn’t. Then all of a sudden he was about to go find Joe, so she’d reached out to shake his hand.

  Way to initiate a seduction—with a brisk handshake. She knew she had to do something, and that was when—stupider and stupider—she’d kissed him.

  On the hand.

  Genius.

  In retrospect, she came up with all kinds of snappy replies to his apology. Like, “You don’t need to apologize for something I enjoyed immensely and am dying to do again.”

  Right—as if she’d ever find the nerve to say something like that to him.

  “So explain,” Tom said now, glancing up at the statue looming above them. “He’s got Paoletti eyes. I’m dying to hear what that means.”

  What was she supposed to tell him? That his version of those hazel Paoletti eyes had the power to make her melt? To make her heart rate increase? To fuel some pretty powerful fantasies, particularly when combined with the memory of a few stolen kisses in the front seat of a station wagon?

  “Well,” she said carefully, “I think it’s probably a window-to-the-soul thing. Maybe it comes from being part Italian, but neither you nor Joe are very good at hiding your emotions. Which is really wonderful,” she added when it looked as if he was about to protest. “And maybe it’s because of that, but you both always look just a little bit sad. Even when you’re smiling.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Probably comes from keeping so many secrets.”

  He laughed and dimples appeared in his cheeks. “I don’t have any secrets.”

  “Sure,” Kelly said. “Aside from the fact that you’re a Navy SEAL and everything you do is a secret, your life’s an open book. But, whoops, you don’t manage to come home to visit more than twice a year, because your career is your life.”

  She had him there.

  “And Joe,” she continued. “All these years I thought he was just a gardener—turns out he’s an international man of mystery. Every time I turn around, he’s got another secret.”

  “Only about the war,” Tom protested. “There are plenty of men who returned from Europe and didn’t say a single word about it to anyone. It’s not that hard to understand.”

  “What about his personal life?”

  “What personal life?” Tom asked.

  “See?” she countered triumphantly, smiling up at him.

  He was silent then, just gazing down at her, still standing much, much too close. Kelly felt her smile fade. Kiss me.

  She could see the sign for the bank from where she stood. Seventeen years ago, Tom had pulled into the dark bank parking lot, jammed his car into park, dragged her into his arms, and kissed her.

  Right there.

  Just a stone’s throw from where they were now standing.

  It had been, without a doubt, the hottest, most powerful sexual experience of her life. And she’d kept her clothes on the entire time.

  For him, it had been only something for which to apologize.

  He shifted slightly back, putting more space between them. Still backing away, even all these years later.

  “Why didn’t Joe ever get married?” Kelly asked. Why didn’t you ever get married? was the question she really wanted to ask, even though she already knew. He wasn’t the kind of man who would willingly settle down. And that was a good thing, she reminded herself. If she could manage to strike a match and ignite their attraction, neither of them would get hurt.

  She motioned toward the papers Tom still held, pointing at the picture of Joe. “Look at him. He was delicious. And as if looking like this isn’t enough,” she added, “he just so happens to be one of the nicest guys in the world—and a war hero with a statue made in his likeness. I’m sorry, but the women in town had to be lining up to meet him.”

  “You know, I asked Joe about that once,” Tom told her. “I wanted to know why he didn’t marry my grandmother—his brother’s widow. She’d moved to Baldwin’s Bridge a few years after Joe did. He got a job for her as a cook in your father’s house after the war. It was obvious he liked her, and I’ve seen pictures—she was gorgeous. She must’ve married my grandfather when she was seventeen. So there she was, a war widow at the ripe old age of twenty-three, with a five-year-old kid in tow—my father. Joe helped her rent a house in town, helped her get settled, but that’s as far as it went.

  “When I was about six, she married the mailman. I didn’t get it. I asked Joe why he didn’t marry her, and he told me he loved my Gram like a sister. He was glad she was getting married—glad she’d found someone to spend the rest of her life with, glad she didn’t have to be alone anymore.” He looked up at the statue. “So I asked him how come he never got married, how come he didn’t find someone so he didn’t have to be alone.”

  He laughed softly, remembering. “I was only six, I didn’t have a clue about the boundaries I was stepping over with that one.”

  “What did he say?” Kelly asked, intrigued.

  “He told me he wasn’t married because he’d met and lost his one true love during the war. I remember him saying that as if it were yesterday. His one true love.” He was silent for several long seconds. “He told me that after he met her, there was really no point in looking any further, you know? No one could ever compare. And Joe, he said he wasn’t the kind of man who was willing to settle. He’d rather be alone.”

  Kelly stared up at the statue’s grim face. “Lost,” she whispered. “Did she . . .” She looked at Tom. “Did he mean that she died?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom admitted. “Lost could mean a lot of things, couldn’t it? Maybe she married someone else.” He looked down at the papers he still had in his hands, as if surprised by the sight of them. He stepped toward her, holding them out.

  She exh
aled her disbelief as she took them from him and put them back into her bag. “God. It all seems so, I don’t know . . . So romantic.” Yet Joe had always struck her as pragmatic and down to earth. He was a gardener, a handyman. To think that he’d spent all these years carrying a torch, refusing to settle for anyone else. Who would’ve thought? . . .

  “Do you think he’s right?” she asked Tom. “That we each have only one chance at true love? Do you think there even is such a thing as true love?”

  He shook his head. “You’re asking the wrong guy. I don’t have a lot of experience with this subject. I don’t really, um, do love, you know? It doesn’t quite . . . fit with my line of work.”

  “But you have an opinion, don’t you?” she persisted. “We all have ideas and beliefs about what love should or shouldn’t be. In fact, your beliefs about love are probably behind your determination to avoid serious relationships.”

  “Well, thank you, Dr. Freud,” he said, amusement in his voice. “Has it occurred to you that I might not be in a serious relationship because I know that with the combination of my, shall we say, restless temperament and the strains of my intensely relationship-unfriendly job, the odds of any relationship working out are zip?”

  “So if your dream woman approached you—someone who fulfilled your every physical and emotional and mental expectation for what a life partner should be,” Kelly hypothesized, “and she said, ‘Tom, here I am, ready to be your friend and lover forever, ready to stand beside you through bad and good, ready to play out your every sexual fantasy,’ you’d turn her down?”

  Tom laughed. “I don’t know. You want to be more specific about those sexual fantasies?”

  Yes. This was flirting. There was definitely an underlying current of attraction beneath his words. Now what she had to do was zing one right back at him. She could do this. She looked him squarely in the eye. “You tell me. It’s your fantasies we’re talking about.”

  Now it was his turn, but instead of pressing forward, he stepped back. He laughed.

  “I’d feel kind of funny going into detail with Uncle Joe listening in,” he said lightly, glancing up at the statue.

  “I don’t think you’d turn your dream woman down.” Kelly didn’t want to laugh. She didn’t want this conversation to turn lighthearted. She wanted to get back to that place where the very air between them crackled with sexual energy. Then all she had to do was ask him to dinner. She could do this.

  Tom shook his head. “I’d have to turn her down,” he countered. “If she was that perfect . . . I wouldn’t want to hurt her.”

  “But if you were her one true love, you’d hurt her by not being with her.”

  He rubbed his forehead as if he still had a headache even as he laughed again. “Okay. Whoa. That’s enough. You can’t set up a completely fictional, no-chance-of-it-ever-happening scenario, and try to force a point of any kind with it. Let’s get real here, Ashton. No ‘dream woman’ is about to walk up to me and offer to—” He broke off, clearing his throat. “Fill in the blank—I’ll leave it to your imagination, but figure it probably involves whipped cream and black lingerie.”

  Kelly couldn’t keep from giggling. Black lingerie and . . . She took a deep breath and tried to pretend she wasn’t blushing. Whipped cream and Tom Paoletti. My God. Somebody come take her order. She wanted a double.

  “You think it’s a no-chance scenario,” she argued. “But what if Joe had actually met his dream woman? His true love?”

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe he did.” But even that was too strong an admission for him, and he tried to back away from it. “Look, Kel, all I really know for sure is whatever Joe felt, it had to be pretty powerful if it made him prefer to spend nearly sixty years of his life alone rather than settle for someone he didn’t really love. And we’re talking alone alone,” he added. “Joe didn’t have girlfriends, he didn’t have lady friends, he didn’t go out to bars and have one-night stands. He was Alone, with a capital A. No black lingerie. No whipped cream. Just Joe and his memories.”

  God, that was sad. Had Joe simply quit looking at age twenty-two? Or did he hold on to hope for years, hope that he’d find someone to replace the woman he’d loved? If so, that hope had surely died slowly, painfully.

  “In a lot of ways, I can understand his not wanting to settle,” Tom said quietly. “There’re a lot of things in my life I wouldn’t be willing to settle for.”

  Kelly’s pager went off. She’d set it on silent when she went into the library, and the shaking made her jump. She checked the number.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Tom as she dug through her purse for her cell phone. “I have to call my office.”

  She dialed the number, turning slightly away from him. “Hi, this is Dr. Ashton. I was just paged.”

  “Doctor, I’m sorry to disturb you.” It was Pat Geary. “But the McKenna test results finally came in.”

  Kelly closed her eyes. “Please tell me it’s some kind of weird anemia.”

  “No such luck. It’s about as bad as it gets,” Pat said grimly. “Brenda McKenna’s pretty anxious for the results. Should I call her back, schedule a meeting for tomorrow?”

  “No, better make it today,” Kelly decided. “And call Dr. Martin. Let’s get Betsy in to see the oncologist as soon as possible.”

  “So much for your vacation.”

  “It’s not a vacation, it’s a temporary partial leave.”

  “Well, for someone who’s taking temporary partial leave, you’re sure here nearly all the time.”

  “Schedule the meeting with the McKennas for about an hour from now,” Kelly told her assistant. “I’m on my way in.”

  She closed her phone and grabbed her keys from her purse before she realized. Her father. She swore and opened her cell phone again to call Pat back.

  But Tom was already one step ahead of her. “I was going from here to pick up some paint from Home Depot,” he told her, “but that’s a pretty low priority. If you want, I’ll stay with your father.”

  “You don’t need to change your plans,” Kelly said, “but if you wouldn’t mind checking in on him when you get home . . .”

  “No problem,” Tom said. “Think he’d be up for a game of chess?”

  “Oh, God, that would be so nice. I’m sure he’d love it.”

  “Is there a number where I can reach you? I mean, I probably won’t need it, but . . .”

  Kelly dug through her purse for her business card. “This has my office number—a direct line to my desk—and my pager, too. Please don’t hesitate to call. And don’t feel as if you need to stay with him the entire time. Just stick your head in every now and then.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Tom said. “It’s not going to be a hardship. Believe it or not, I like the guy. And maybe if I’m lucky, there’ll be a Red Sox game on, and I’ll be able to get Joe to sit in the same room with him without fighting.”

  Kelly had to hold on to herself to keep from hugging him. “If you can manage to do that, I’ll love you forever. And if you can get them to make up and be friends and stop fighting for good . . . I’ll bring home some whipped cream.”

  Oh, my God, had she really said that out loud?

  She had.

  For about a half a second, Tom looked completely surprised, but then he laughed. “Well, hey, there’s incentive.” He pointed toward the nearby marina parking lot. “Go,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

  She ran for her car.

  It was him.

  Right there in Home Depot on Route 1 in Baldwin’s Bridge.

  Tom had filled his shopping cart with cans of paint and rollers and was pushing it through the crowd toward the checkout when he saw him. The Merchant. Or at least it was the very same man he’d seen in Logan Airport by the luggage carousel. The man was pushing his own shopping cart to the exit, away from checkout number four.

  Tom got a brief but very clear look at his face before he turned the corner. It was him.

  Brown hai
r shot with gray, weak chin, slightly stooped shoulders as if he were trying to make himself shorter. It was definitely him.

  What the fuck was the Merchant doing here in Baldwin’s Bridge?

  Shopping. He had an entire cart filled with his purchases. Tom could see a roll of electrical wire sticking out of his bag.

  The hair on the back of his neck went straight up.

  The man responsible for the 1996 Paris embassy car-bombing was buying electrical wire.

  Tom left his cart right there, in the middle of an aisle, much to the displeasure of the shoppers around him. He deserted all his wayward thoughts about Kelly Ashton and whipped cream, too, as he pushed toward the same door the Merchant had used.

  He fought the throng, silently cursing the time it was taking, the precious seconds he was wasting. He broke into a run as he hit a less crowded area. Hitting the sidewalk and the glaring brightness of the day, he skidded to a stop, shielding his eyes with one hand and fighting his dizziness as he quickly scanned the parking lot.

  The Merchant was gone. The parking lot was busy, filled with cars, some pulling in, some pulling out. There were people walking to and from their vehicles, some with shopping carts, but none of them was the Merchant.

  Tom scanned the area again. Come on, come on. Stand up and show yourself. No one could have pushed his cart out to a car, loaded up the trunk, and been inside it that quickly. Unless. . .

  There were four cars heading for the entrance onto Route 1, a number of empty shopping carts left forlornly on the sidewalk outside the exit door. If the Merchant had had a car waiting for him, if he’d loaded it up right here from the sidewalk . . .

  Tom looked again at the cars at the far end of the huge parking lot, waiting for the light to change so they could pull out onto the busy main road. Two were white subcompacts, one was a boxy red minivan, the last a blue sedan—probably a Ford Taurus. They were all too far away for him to see the license plates, and as he watched, the light changed and they all pulled away.

  Shit.

  Tom went back inside through the exit doors, back to the clerk working cash register four. She was an older woman, a senior citizen, probably looking to make a few extra bucks to bolster her Social Security checks. She was currently ringing up a whole cartful of plumbing supplies, her movements quick and sure. She glanced at Tom and he made himself smile at her despite the fact that his heart was still pounding. She looked as if she’d be able to multitask, so he didn’t wait for her to finish.