The Marine Makes His Match

by Victoria Pade

  Kinsey laughed. “Actually, I’ve never seen it—when your mom heard that, she just had to remedy it.”

  “And invite Sol, too.”

  The conversation had occurred that afternoon when they were at the beer garden.

  “Think of how much better you’ll feel on Saturday nights to come,” Kinsey recommended, “when you’re back overseas and you can figure Sol is over here watching a movie with the colonel so she isn’t alone.”

  “That better be all they’re doing,” Sutter said.

  “Oh, come on, you know deep down you’d love a little brother or sister,” Kinsey goaded.

  He laughed that laugh she liked as much as she liked him. “Thank God there’s no chance of that at her age!” he said.

  Kinsey took a deep breath and sighed. “It’s late—” And she’d been up since before daylight to talk to Conor and Declan. “I should go. I’ll check on the colonel and then take off.”

  Sutter didn’t stop her from getting up and going to the colonel’s room to poke her head in.

  The older woman was sound asleep, lights and television off, her book on her nightstand.

  Downstairs once again she found Sutter waiting in the entry for her.

  “She’s sound asleep—she really was tired.”

  “Hot Veterans Day dates will do that,” he said facetiously.

  Kinsey put on her jacket and picked up her purse and satchel.

  Sutter had the door open when she got to it and he went out with her, walking her to her car.

  “Seems weird that you’re always the one leaving and I’m always the one staying,” he said.

  Only if they were dating, Kinsey thought, but she didn’t say it.

  Then she opened her car door and tossed in her bags, turning to say good-night to him.

  But he didn’t seem ready to say goodbye quite yet because he was right there, close by, and he reached his hand into her hair once again, bringing her nearer.

  His eyes caught hers and he spent a moment just looking into them before he leaned forward and kissed her again, a kiss that said they hadn’t come as far from the thick of that make-out session as it might have seemed.

  Then he ended it. But still he kept hold of her as he said “drive safe” in a voice ragged enough to let her know that kissing her affected him as much as it did her. And it rocked her whole world.

  Kinsey only nodded and said her good-night, but for another moment he kept her captive, still studying her as if he couldn’t take his eyes away.

  Then he took what looked to be a steeling breath and simultaneously let her go and stepped back so she could get behind the wheel.

  She started the engine and backed out of his driveway under his full scrutiny, wondering as she did just where this would go now that she was going to let it run its course.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Kins,” she said to herself when she’d gone far enough up his street to lose sight of him in her rearview mirror.

  She was a little afraid that she might be playing with fire when it came to her own feelings.

  Because guarding against it or not, in the middle of kissing him good-night just now, it had struck her just how much Sutter Knightlinger got to her...

  Chapter Eight

  “Breakfast and brochures?”

  Sutter chuckled at his cousin Beau Camden’s alliteration. They were at the Denver Diner predawn on Saturday morning. Open twenty-four hours a day, it was a place that could accommodate that meal for two early-rising marines.

  It had been Sutter’s suggestion that they meet. “We went to the Veterans Day thing yesterday,” he said as their waitress brought them coffee. When she left, he nodded at the stack of pamphlets he’d brought along for Beau and added, “I picked up those at the booths at the festival. I didn’t know if you knew what’s out there to help returning vets adjust to civilian life but I figured it was good information to have, maybe to put out on display when you have your own stuff going for them at the stores. Get the word out and circulated, you know? For whatever kind of help anybody might need.”

  “Good idea.”

  “It’s kind of shocked me to find out how much need there is,” Sutter said.

  “Yeah, you’d think going back to civilian life would be a breeze since every soldier lived at least eighteen years of it before enlisting. But it’s not,” Beau confessed. “Even for me with plenty waiting for me—work, the whole family. And now with Kyla back in my life. And the baby...” He shook his head. “But it’s all still just so different from what I got used to in the service.”

  Sutter nodded his understanding, feeling as if he, himself, was getting a progressively clearer view of what it was like, of how difficult it could be all the way around.

  “We met Louise Turner,” he said then, referring to the retired navy captain the Camdens’ friend Margaret had put the colonel in touch with. Sutter went on to tell Beau about the navy captain’s son’s organization to help vets financially.

  “Bryan Turner—I had lunch with him yesterday,” Beau said. “Seems like a good man. He’s thinking what you are—that the programs we set up through the stores could give information on the help he offers vets.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “Sure. He helps vets get credit when they can’t get it otherwise, I’m all for that. His mother told him about you—a marine with an economics degree. He wanted to know if you were thinking about resigning from the service anytime soon, said he’d like to talk to you about a job, if you were interested.”

  Sutter laughed. “Did you tell him I’m not resigning?”

  “I said I didn’t think there were any plans for that in the near future but I’d relay the message,” Beau said before changing the subject with a nod at Sutter’s injured shoulder. “I see you’re out of the sling already—you’ve been wearing it when you come over to work out so I didn’t think you were at that stage yet.”

  Sutter explained what he was doing to wean himself off the apparatus, to regain his strength in that arm.

  “How much longer, do you think, before you go back?” Beau inquired when he was finished.

  “Don’t know. But not too long. That’s another reason I wanted to talk to you—I’d like for you to be looking out for the colonel when I do. Just an occasional check on her, a phone call here and there?”

  “I was planning on that. GiGi and I talked about keeping closer tabs on her—seems like she’s more open to it now. Before your dad died, we’d talk to him. After that the colonel wouldn’t answer or return calls or even come to the door if any of us went over there. But now—”

  “I think—I hope—Kinsey is making headway with her, opening her eyes some to seeing that she can’t just hole up, that she needs to get out, to let people in.”

  “So as long as she’ll let that happen, GiGi and Margaret will stay on top of her with their bridge club and some other activities. And I’m happy to keep an eye on her, too, if she’ll let me. You know she got pretty mad at me when I resigned. She said to her I was AWOL and needed to get my ass back to where I belonged until I was as old as she was when she retired. But since she spoke to me at Sunday dinner last week, maybe she’s over it and will let me come around, too?”

  Sutter flinched at that reminder of the colonel berating Beau about his resignation. But Beau was right—she had talked to him at Sunday dinner.

  “I think she’s cooled down on that score,” Sutter said hopefully.

  “Is Kinsey pulling off that change in her, too?”

  Sutter laughed. “I don’t know, but Kinsey seems to be like water running over rock—she’s somehow wearing the colonel down in a lot of ways without the colonel knowing it’s happening.”

  “You realize that makes her a freaking miracle worker,” Beau joked, laughing.<
br />
  “Oh, yeah,” Sutter agreed unequivocally.

  Beau smiled slyly and, in a tone full of insinuation, asked, “Is she working any miracles on you?”

  “I don’t need any miracles worked on me. I am what I am—what needs to change?”

  Beau laughed again. “Now that sounded like the colonel. And don’t forget I know you. And I’ve seen you with the nurse. There’re things going on there.”

  Plenty. But it was actually unnerving Sutter so much he didn’t want to say anything about it and make it any more real than it already was. So he said, “You’re dreaming.”

  “Sure I am,” Beau countered facetiously, not dissuaded in the least. “I was at the academy with you—I saw you with Mandy. Four years with her and it wasn’t like this. You never looked at her the way you look at this Kinsey. You never looked the way you do when you’re with the nurse—like you don’t even know there are other people around. And there were the British war correspondents the two of us met on leave—you kept up with yours long after I parted ways with mine, and still she never got under your skin. But this one? Way, way, way under your skin...”

  The waitress brought their breakfast plates then—bacon, eggs and toast for them both—and that paused the conversation long enough for Sutter to consider whether or not to go on with the denials. His cousin wasn’t buying them, so there didn’t seem to be a point.

  When the waitress left them alone again, Beau picked up where he’d left off and repeated, “Way, waaay under your skin. Like nobody before her, if I’m not mistaken.”

  He wasn’t.

  “Maybe,” Sutter conceded, seeing Kinsey in his mind’s eye—where she seemed to have taken up residence to haunt him even when she wasn’t around.

  He was suddenly thinking about the night before, when something as guileless and insignificant as scooping frosting off his cake had aroused him more than a pole dance. He didn’t have a clue as to why he’d even noticed it.

  “But it doesn’t change anything,” he added.

  “I don’t know, man, feelings start up...they can make things veer off course.”

  “Nothing is off course,” he insisted.

  Although...

  He’d meant what he’d said when he’d told Kinsey that if he met someone who wasn’t on board with his no-marriage policy—or with anything about him, actually—he steered clear of her. It was what he’d always done after Mandy.

  But Kinsey was not on board with anything he was about and still he couldn’t seem to make himself steer clear of her.

  “And who said there were feelings starting up?” he challenged. Maybe too vehemently because that made Beau laugh, too, at the bark that would have intimidated anyone else.

  “Oh, man, it’s worse than I thought,” his cousin said knowingly.

  Sutter’s coffee mug was still half full but he raised it at the waitress to get her to top it off just to buy himself a minute to figure out his response.

  He had to acknowledge that Beau was right—he did have it pretty bad for Kinsey. And it had nothing to do with going too long without female companionship. It had begun to sink in a little last night when he’d told her that, at the end of all his relationships, it had been easy to say goodbye.

  It had been easy—past tense, because even as he’d said the words, it had struck him that saying goodbye to her might not be easy at all. And not because of Mandy-like expectations on her part. Because even saying good-night to Kinsey every night wasn’t easy for him.

  When the waitress left this time, Beau said, “Looks to me like the colonel isn’t the only one who needs to look at some things differently than she has before. You might have to do some rethinking yourself.”

  Sutter shook his head. “Nothing to rethink,” he said, believing that wholeheartedly. Believing, still, what he’d believed all along—marry the military or marry a woman, but not both. And he was married to the military.

  “Besides,” he added, “Kinsey comes from a military family and she’s about as against hooking her wagon up to a military horse as anyone I’ve ever run across.”

  But now that he thought about it, since that was the case, why wasn’t she putting the skids on things between them?

  He knew why he wasn’t—because he couldn’t. The minute he set eyes on her or heard her voice or even so much as smelled the sweet, clean scent of her, he was a goner. Everything that happened from then on had a will of its own and took him along for the ride.

  But she wasn’t pulling away, either.

  She knew who and what he was, where he was headed, what he was about—and she still kissed him like she never wanted to stop.

  So maybe she was okay with it. Maybe she was on board with the idea of a fling that she knew wouldn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t as if he’d been making out with himself last night, after all...

  And if that was the case—that she was okay with having a fling—he didn’t have to steer clear of her because he wasn’t putting her at any risk of getting hurt.

  His breakfast suddenly tasted better.

  Maybe he did need to rethink things. Just not the big-picture things. Only the here-and-now things.

  Could he really have a little here-and-now with her? he asked himself, more hopeful for that even than he was that the colonel was changing.

  Again he thought about the night before, about kissing Kinsey. About making out with her for most of an hour. There was nothing in that that said stop.

  Not even knowing full well that anything between them would have an eventual end.

  He still felt a hint of worry at the thought of that goodbye, but...

  Nah, it was crazy to even entertain the idea that he wouldn’t be able to enjoy some time with her and move on as usual.

  He was a marine.

  He could handle anything.

  “Why do you suddenly look like the cat that swallowed the canary?” his cousin asked him.

  “I was doing a little rethinking after all,” he answered.

  Just not about what Beau thought he should rethink.

  “You’re gonna go for it with the nurse,” his cousin said as if he could read it on his face.

  “But no different than it’s ever been with me,” he claimed.

  “I have a hundred dollars right now that says that’s a load of garbage and you just don’t know it yet.”

  “You’re on,” Sutter took the bet.

  * * *

  Saturday afternoon and evening seemed like one long date to Kinsey—even though she kept telling herself that wasn’t the case.

  First of all, that was how she was dressed—in another pair of reserved-for-dates jeans and an only-for-special-occasions angora sweater that was a pink mock turtleneck with wooden buttons that ran in an angle from the collar to the front of one shoulder.

  And eyeshadow. She’d actually done date-like eye makeup for work today.

  It didn’t help that Sutter also seemed slightly more dressed up than usual. His jeans were cut better than anything she’d seen him in before, riding his bum to perfection. And on top he had on a torso-hugging V-neck sweater the exact shade of his eyes.

  And then there were the events of the afternoon and evening themselves.

  They spent the afternoon at Lindie Camden’s house for the doggy playdate. Among the couples were Lindie and Sawyer, Lang and Heddy and Dane and Vonni. And while Kinsey did have the opportunity to interact with her half siblings Lindie, Lang and Dane, it had been impossible for it to not seem as if she and Sutter were just a fourth couple.

  Plus, in spite of chastising herself for it, she hadn’t seized any opportunity to leave Sutter’s side to mingle on her own with three of the very people she was there to get to know. Instead she’d done all of her socializing paired with Sutter.

  And even thou
gh the lingering insecurities from that Sunday dinner were a contributing factor, the real reason she didn’t branch off from Sutter was that it was Sutter she wanted to be with today. Sutter’s company she couldn’t make herself leave behind, even to chat with her half siblings.

  Then, at the end of the afternoon, she and Sutter had returned to the Knightlingers’ house where Kinsey had prepared dinner. With Sutter’s help and company in the kitchen and the easy banter and teasing that they were so good at, the date-like quality had continued.

  Then Sol had arrived and it was couples-time again—the colonel and Sol, Kinsey and Sutter—for dinner and then the movie afterward. Where Kinsey was reminding herself for the millionth time today that this was not a date. That she was, in fact, at work.

  But it didn’t make much difference in how she felt.

  When the movie ended, the colonel suggested that Kinsey and Sutter take the popcorn and bowls to the kitchen while she walked Sol out. Kinsey had the impression that the older woman wanted a moment alone with the neighbor. Sutter must have had the same impression because he did the chore with a scowl, all the while trying to keep the front door in sight.

  But from what Kinsey could see, the parting was nothing more than cordial. The elderly man and woman merely chatted for a short time before saying good-night without so much as a handshake.

  As Kinsey helped the colonel get to bed, she and the older woman discussed the movie, which Kinsey had found interesting. Then she got a surprise when she was just about to hand the colonel her nighttime brandy.

  Frequently Jack watched them from the doorway and—unless he did something the colonel didn’t like—the colonel ignored the puppy. But tonight she patted her mattress to invite Jack up onto the bed.

  Kinsey helped the small puppy accomplish it and reserved any comment, but she was happy to see what she considered headway. And happy to see Jack comply without any rambunctiousness, curling up on the foot of the colonel’s bed as if that was just what he’d been waiting for.

  “Behave yourself and you can stay,” the colonel warned the dog before accepting the brandy.