The Marine Makes His Match

by Victoria Pade

  “So there was no sign that she knew anything about Mitchum’s affair before this?”

  “None. And she either absolutely didn’t believe it or at least didn’t want to.”

  “Sure. You were telling her something not too nice about one of her sons. That’s bound to bring out some defensiveness.”

  “I told her I was willing to do DNA testing. That I didn’t want anything from them but...family...”

  Her voice cracked and hearing it did something extreme to him. His injured arm was in a sling, recovering from the excess use the night before, but his hand on the steering wheel became a tight fist around it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her, not giving a damn about anything but that, but her.

  She nodded again but he saw her blink back more tears as he pulled into his driveway, so he didn’t believe it.

  He turned off the engine and pivoted in her direction, reaching to the back of her neck to squeeze it. “And then what?” he repeated quietly.

  She shrugged and laughed humorlessly. “She didn’t welcome me with open arms and tell me to call her Grandma.”

  “Ah, Kinsey...”

  “She just said she would have to look into it—”

  “It being the truth of whether or not Mitchum had the affair with your mom, and whether or not you and your brothers could be her grandchildren,” he clarified.

  “I guess. And then she sort of shut down and started staring at the letter again. After a while it was like she’d forgotten I was there so I got up and said I was sorry...”

  Her voice cracked a second time and he used that hand at her neck to pull her head to his chest where he rested his chin on top of it.

  “I’m not sure what I was sorry for,” she said in a voice clogged with tears. “But I didn’t really know what else to say. And it seemed like I’d done something...bad. So I just left. And I don’t know what will happen now. Maybe nothing. Or maybe they’ll file a restraining order against me,” she joked feebly.

  And he loved her all the more for even trying to infuse humor into a situation that he knew was breaking her heart.

  “It’ll be all right,” he whispered into her hair, wondering if this was the time to tell her his own news or the time to leave her in her misery. As badly as he wanted to promise to be by her side for whatever was to come, he thought she was probably too buried in her grief to really hear anything he said right now.

  So for a while he just left things as they were and he stroked her hair and didn’t say anything.

  Then she took a deep breath, exhaled and sat up, more in control. “I know it’s dumb, but I had some fantasies about this that were a long way from how it went. My brother Conor warned me about that. But it could have been worse. She could have refused to even entertain the possibility and thrown me out of the house. Then what would I have done? As it is, there’s still hope. They just all have to live with it for a while, and maybe have the testing done, and then...we can all see from there.”

  He smiled at her, loving that spark of optimism in her, too. Just plain loving her.

  And he couldn’t hold that in any longer.

  “So you didn’t come away with a family of eleven more. But what would you say to a family of two more?”

  Her expression showed complete confusion.

  “Well, two and a half if you count Jack.”

  “You’re offering to adopt me?” she joked.

  “No, I’m actually asking you—ineptly and without the fanfare you should have for this—to marry me.”

  Confusion turned to shock of her own. “Marry you? Am I that pathetic?”

  “I’m not proposing out of pity. I’m asking you to marry me because I’m that in love with you.”

  Her eyebrows dipped together in a frown that did not seem like a good sign so he said, “I know this is rotten timing, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking—some of it without even realizing where it was leading but—”

  He went on to tell her what he’d been thinking about how the groundwork for his decision had been laid without him even being aware of it as he’d learned what vets went through when they came home. He told her what it had brought him to.

  “The thing is,” he said then, “it might be time for me to come home for good and serve those who’ve served. And if I do that—”

  “You don’t want to stop being a marine,” she said as if he was fooling himself. Or trying to fool her.

  “Once a marine, always a marine,” he said. “It’s just time for me to be a marine in a different way. Time for me to have a life I didn’t think I wanted but that now I know I do—with you.”

  “I think you’re just sleep deprived after last night—we didn’t do much of that, you know.”

  Oh, he knew. The night had been spent in much better pursuits than sleep. At least it had until she’d insisted he leave at dawn to get home before the colonel woke up. But not sleeping hadn’t mattered then and it didn’t matter now.

  “Last night didn’t deprive me of anything. It gave me something that opened my eyes and sealed the deal for me. It’s you I want, Kinsey. You and a future with you and a family I come home to at the end of every day. The same things you want.”

  She shook her head again. “No,” she said firmly. “I know what this is—my brothers do it, too. They feel bad or guilty or whatever and they start talking about how maybe they’ll come home. I used to believe it. Like I believed Trevor when he said Doctors Without Borders would only be once. Or twice. But I know not to buy into it now. So no,” she said even more forcefully. “You’re a marine and you don’t want to stop being a marine—you couldn’t have been more clear about that since the minute I met you and it hasn’t changed. I haven’t changed that.”

  That seemed to mean something to her that he didn’t understand but he said only, “Yeah, you have changed that.”

  “I don’t believe it. You’ll sleep on it tonight or talk to the colonel or go back to put your papers in and remember that serving overseas is what you want to be doing, where you belong, and I’ll just be here dangling by a string, believing I’ll get what I want if I’m only patient. Until I face the truth! And no! Not this time! Not even for you!”

  “I know that’s how it’s been for you, Kinsey. But I’m not your brothers or that other guy. Just think about it. Think about what we have. What’s between us is amazing enough for me to see everything in a new light. And unless I’m misreading the signs, you feel it, too. So give yourself the chance for your head to clear so you can look at what we could have together, and let go of what you thought before. Because you and I...things are different than either of us planned and worth making a change to have.”

  “Things aren’t different!” she insisted, sounding overwhelmed. “No matter how good things are between us, no matter what we could have—you are the same!”

  “I’m not the same as your brothers or Trevor,” he said. “And when I say I want something, when I say I’ll do something, that’s how it is.”

  He took a breath to inject some calm into what was getting heated and said, “The colonel and I can do dinner on our own. Go back to your place, take some time to sort through what happened with GiGi today. Then think about last night. Think about how it’s been with us right from the start. Think about how it can be from here on. And then tell me it isn’t what you want, too.”

  “What I don’t want is to be here, alone with a couple of kids, taking care of the colonel while you’re gone and telling me this will be the last time! And while I’m sorting through what happened today, you go in and put on your uniform, and that’ll change your mind right back again about returning overseas. And by the time I come back tonight, you can just tell me I’m right!”

  And with that she got out of the car and made a beeline for her sedan in the driveway next to his.
<
br />   Then she was gone.

  And all he could do was hope to God he wasn’t the only one of them feeling what he was feeling.

  Chapter Eleven

  “He took Jack for a walk. They both needed some air,” the colonel told Kinsey when she returned to the Knightlinger home later Monday night to help the elderly woman get to bed.

  Kinsey hadn’t asked where Sutter was as she took the colonel’s pulse, listened to her heart and checked her pacemaker. After the meeting with GiGi Camden, after the blowup with Sutter, she was doing the best she could just to be professional and to do her job without breaking down.

  But given that the colonel was more terse and cranky than she had been in a while, Kinsey assumed that Sutter had shaken things up here after shaking things up with her. And the elderly woman seemed to want to vent.

  “He’s leaving the corps,” the colonel announced then, sounding grudgingly resigned to it.

  “You didn’t talk him out of it?” Kinsey said impersonally, trying to give no clue that she was involved as she put her stethoscope away and moved on to the blood pressure cuff.

  “What can I say...he’s his mother’s son. And his own man. Apparently he’s made his decision and once that’s done, there’s no appeals court to send it to.”

  “Your blood pressure says you put up a good fight.”

  “You bet I did!”

  What Kinsey was betting was that all hell had broken loose here while she was gone. But she didn’t say that.

  They were in the older woman’s bedroom. The colonel already had on her flannel pajamas and was sitting on the edge of her bed while Kinsey set out the morning medications.

  “I’ll need one more finger of brandy tonight,” the colonel decreed.

  “Did you have dinner?”

  “Takeout from my favorite restaurant. Ordered before my son dropped the bomb—I guess he was trying to soften me up. He should know better,” she said caustically, as if there was no chance of that.

  “But you did eat.”

  “I ate just fine,” the colonel barked. Then, with some edge to her voice, she went on. “You know, when I told you to change his mind, I meant to change his mind so he’d be a marine and have a family. Not change his mind about being in the corps completely.”

  “In the first place, I didn’t try to change anything,” Kinsey said somberly. “In the second place, he hasn’t really changed his mind. He just thinks he has. Right now he’s out there with Jack, rehashing whatever you said to him—which I know had to have been a lot about him staying in the marines—and he’s probably changing his mind back as we speak.”

  It was what Kinsey truly believed.

  “You’re blind.”

  “I’ve had experience with this same thing. It’s like someone having a bad day at work—they come home swearing that they’re going to quit, that they’re going to put in their notice the next day. Then they sleep on it and the urge passes. Everything goes back to the way it has always been.”

  “It’s not a bad day at work. It’s that something else has caught his interest that he can’t pass up,” the colonel countered. “Something that means more to him than being a marine.”

  Kinsey had no idea what—or how much—Sutter had told his mother. She didn’t want to tell the colonel anything she might not already know so she didn’t respond at all.

  But the outspoken elderly woman continued without encouragement.

  “I don’t like him leaving the corps,” she said flatly. “And don’t think for a minute that I do! But he makes a good case for what he can accomplish here to help vets. For not just washing his hands of the people coming home, but taking responsibility for them the same as he’s felt responsible for them under his command.”

  “Sure,” Kinsey said noncommittally.

  “I don’t hate that he’d be here,” the colonel admitted, a half-angry confession.

  “No, that would be good for you,” Kinsey conceded.

  “So we argued back and forth—don’t think I didn’t let him know everything I think—”

  Kinsey couldn’t help smiling despite her own low spirits. And saying another, “Sure.”

  “But in the end... He was raised to think for himself. To make decisions—he couldn’t have been the decorated officer he’s been otherwise. Now he tells me he’s made this decision...” The colonel sighed heavily, disgustedly, then she said, “And if the truth be told, I’m grateful to have him at this time of my life. I don’t want him to reach my age and find himself all alone.”

  Kinsey said yet another, “Sure.”

  “But pour me that extra brandy. Tonight I need it,” the colonel concluded.

  Kinsey did pour her a small amount more of the liquor, wondering if Sutter had omitted his marriage proposal and her rejection or not. The older woman was letting her know that she’d begrudgingly accepted that he was leaving the marines but nothing else.

  If he was leaving the marines, and wasn’t already changing his mind.

  She helped the colonel with her oxygen tubes and got her situated with her drink, book and remote control as usual. Then she said good-night to the older woman.

  It was only as she reached the doorway that the colonel’s voice came again, as strong and as firm as it must have sounded handing down judgments from the bench.

  “Make him happy. He’s earned it.”

  For the second time Kinsey didn’t respond. She just went out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

  She could have—should have—left. Her work for the day was done. There was no reason to wait for Sutter. To see Sutter. She’d given him her answer. There was no more to discuss.

  But when she got downstairs she spotted the remnants of dinner still on the kitchen table.

  Meal cleanup wasn’t part of her job. But still, the kitchen was where she went and clean up was what she started doing. All the while telling herself that despite what Sutter had said to his mother, he wasn’t really going to leave the marines.

  But the colonel had to have been the hardest person on the planet for him to have told his decision. Why would he have tackled that unless he was absolutely certain, absolutely determined? Why poke the bear if there was any doubt, any possibility at all, that he might stay in the marines?

  That thought gave Kinsey some pause.

  What if he really was planning to stay home for good?

  She was so afraid to hope for that that at first she shied away from the idea.

  But it had such appeal that she couldn’t stay away from it.

  What if Sutter became a civilian?

  No deployments.

  No overseas assignments.

  No being stationed in one place after another.

  Nothing but a nine-to-five job that he came home from at the end of every day, that he had every weekend free of.

  Until that moment Kinsey honestly hadn’t entertained the faintest prospect of him going through with the plan. She’d put Sutter in the same category as her brothers, as Trevor, and denied that there was any chance that he would do anything differently.

  But the colonel was right—it was she and her son who were alike, and they weren’t the type to waver or hesitate once their minds were made up.

  Kinsey knew what her brothers were doing when they talked about possibly leaving the military and coming home. They were thinking about it in that moment when there was something tugging at them to stay—a sense of obligation and responsibility to people here
, guilt for not being able to help out.

  In that moment they were feeling the pull of ties here. But after the fact, faced again with what they’d signed on for, with their call to duty, it was still that pull to serve that won out, making them put off coming home.

  She thought that something similar had happened with Trevor. What had begun as a onetime thing he wanted to do to give back had become his calling. But when he finished one trip with Doctors Without Borders and was back with her, it had felt good to him and he’d sworn that the first trip was also his last trip. Only after a few weeks off, he’d felt that call again and couldn’t resist answering it, genuinely believing that one more time would be the end until he’d accepted that, for him, it had no end.

  So it wasn’t as if her brothers or Trevor flat out lied to appease her. They were just torn.

  But when it came to the colonel and Sutter?

  There were no signs of either of them ever having been of two minds about anything.

  Tough and stubborn and strong-willed and straightforward—those were the dominating traits of Knightlinger mother and son.

  Knowing that about the colonel, when the colonel had told her that she would continue to socialize with the Camdens, with Sol, with the other retired woman vet and the organization of ex-military women even if Sutter wasn’t around to encourage the socialization, Kinsey hadn’t doubted that she would. When the colonel began to accept Jack and said she’d keep him, Kinsey hadn’t doubted that that was the truth, either.

  Yes, these were changes from what the older woman had been doing before, but it was clear that she was too stubborn to agree to make changes unless she was resolute about seeing them through.

  Kinsey had seen the same thing in Sutter when it came to his agreement to give her more contact with the Camdens.

  He might have initially been leery of her motives, but he’d done and continued to do what he’d said he would. Even when she’d been distracted from it herself by her attraction to him, he’d persisted. He’d kept his word to her.