Here And Now (American Valor 2)

by Cheryl Etchison

  “I didn’t forget how to ride a damn bike,” Lucky countered as he lifted the wrecked bike into the bed of the truck, then climbed into the passenger’s side. But his mood brightened almost instantly as he was greeted with the heavenly scent of cinnamon and sugar. His stomach rumbled right on cue. “Cinnamon rolls?”

  Duke answered with a smile and handed over a Tupperware container filled to the brim with sticky, gooey goodness.

  God bless Brenda.

  It didn’t matter that he’d be home in a few minutes, he wasn’t going to waste any time popping the lid off and sinking his fingers into the sweet, doughy goodness. He lifted one roll to his nose, inhaled its sweet scent so as to savor the moment much like a wine aficionado would do with a full-bodied red. Then he opened his mouth wide and shoved it in, his eyes drifting shut in pure ecstasy. There might have been inappropriate noisemaking as well. No regrets.

  “Good stuff, isn’t it?” his father asked.

  Before Lucky had even finished the first, he was grabbing a second roll from the container. “Absolutely.”

  There was nothing healthy about his father’s girlfriend’s cooking. The woman put Paula Deen’s love for butter to shame. An old school kind of cook, Brenda poured off leftover bacon grease into an empty Crisco can she kept beneath the sink. Whenever a dish lacked a little flavor, out came the can and a little helping of meat fat was added. His arteries screamed at the thought of it, but damn if her cinnamon rolls weren’t a little slice of heaven worthy of a few months off his life.

  “You never said how you wrecked your bike.”

  “Had my back wheel clipped in the parking lot and it tossed me into the median,” Lucky said around of mouthful of cinnamon roll. “The front wheel is toast. Basically folded it in half.”

  “Someone hit you? Did they at least stop? Make sure you were okay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Lucky said before taking another bite. “Funny thing about it . . . the driver was Rachel Dellinger.”

  “Did she know it was you? Maybe she did it on purpose,” his dad said with a chuckle.

  Lucky shook his head. “She didn’t do it on purpose. She didn’t even recognize me at first. It wasn’t intentional, it was an accident. Nothing more.”

  “If you say so.” His father was still smiling, still amused as he pulled into the driveway and threw the truck into park. “But if I were you, I’d keep an eye out. That girl definitely does not like you.”

  As Lucky opened the passenger door, he looked back at his father. “Are you gonna come in?”

  “Sorry. Can’t today. Brenda’s cousin’s daughter is getting married this afternoon, so I gotta hurry back and get ready for that.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Not sure I’d go that far.” His father reached out and patted the back of Lucky’s shoulder. “Anyhow, I’ll see you later. Get some rest.”

  Lucky thanked his dad one last time for the ride home, then lifted his bike from the back of the truck. His dad backed out of the driveway, gave the horn a little beep and one last wave.

  After watching Duke drive away, he hefted his bike over his shoulder and made his way around to the back side of the house. He climbed the steps and promptly dropped the wrecked mess on the screened back porch. Hopefully, he’d be able to find a replacement wheel in town. Otherwise, he might have to head south across the river, maybe even drive the hour or so to McKinney in order to find one. Not that he was in any rush to find a replacement because his days of riding the damn thing to work were definitely done.

  Since his belly was full, he headed straight for the bathroom and turned on the shower, cranking the temperature as hot as it would go. As he stripped off his clothes, his body ached and creaked like that of an old man and in the mirror he caught sight of a dark purple bruise that had bloomed on his hip. He stripped off the wrappings and bandages covering his arm and climbed into the shower. The hot water stung his road rash like a son of a bitch, but eased the feeling in his muscles that he’d been hit by a Mack truck. He closed his eyes and turned into the hot spray and within an instant her face appeared beneath his lids. Those bright blue eyes. The full rose-colored lips. Rachel Dellinger was just as beautiful as he remembered.

  Lucky remembered his father’s teasing words, how she might have tried to run him over on purpose. While they both knew that wasn’t true, his dad was definitely right about one thing—she did not like him. That had not changed.

  But unlike the last time he saw her, he wasn’t leaving town the following week. And with them working not only at the same hospital but the same shifts in the same department, running into each other wasn’t just a possibility. It was a damn certainty.

  EVEN THOUGH SHE was bone tired, the last thing she wanted to do was rush home and face Curtis. She was just too tired, both emotionally and physically, to deal with any of his crap this morning. Besides, if she wasted another forty-five minutes, he’d be leaving for work and she could avoid him completely.

  So she drove to the one place where she always found peace. The gravel crunched beneath the truck’s tires as she passed under the familiar iron archway leading into the cemetery. Rachel followed the single lane road around the perimeter, finally parking beneath a large pin oak in the back corner.

  Unlike so many other times when she’d come here, there were no weed eaters or lawn mowers buzzing around, no backhoes digging another grave site. Instead, the only sounds were the wind rustling the leaves in the trees and a dog barking in the distance.

  “Hello, Ethan.”

  She ran the palm of her hand over the smooth top of curved white granite before taking a seat in the grass.

  “You won’t ever believe who I saw today. Yesterday, really,” she said while brushing away the dried leaves and grass the wind had piled against the base of his headstone. “Lucky James is back in town. He left the army last month. I’m actually working with him at the hospital.”

  Of course, if everything she was taught as a child about heaven and angels watching over us was true, he probably knew that already.

  She traced the letters of Ethan’s name carved into the stone, using her fingertip to clear away the dirt caught in the little crevices, and making a mental note to come back the following week with a bucket and brush to clean it properly.

  “I avoided him most of the night since I almost ran him over with your truck.” She winced, hoping he’d missed that little incident. “I promise, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  If she were a nicer person, she would’ve offered Lucky a ride home well before their shift ended. After all, she was partly at fault for his bike being in the condition it was. Okay, mostly at fault. And she shouldn’t have waited until she was climbing in her truck to leave work and happened to see him standing outside with his broken bicycle. She’d only just begun to consider offering him a ride when a pickup pulled up, stopped, and Lucky tossed his bike in the back.

  But giving him a ride home would have meant being in close quarters with him for the ten, fifteen minutes it would take to get him to wherever he was going. And that was a really long time, especially when one considered not just their last encounter where she damn near ran him over, but the one prior to that where she slapped him.

  She could practically hear her brother lecturing her.

  “I know, I know. I need to apologize. Not just for yesterday but for everything else. It wasn’t his fault that you died. I get that now. It’s just . . .” She paused, trying to find the right words. “You know I’ve never been very good at apologies. At least, not when it really counted.”

  With the sun now fully up and the temperature rising, she pulled off her jacket and wadded it up in a ball, using it as a pillow as she lay down on the ground. Rachel reached out with one hand and placed it flat against the cold stone.

  “I miss you. Every day,” she whispered. “So much.”

  Chapter Three
>
  RACHEL EFFECTIVELY AVOIDED him the remainder of their weekend shift. The few times their paths did cross, it was no different than when they were in school together. Nothing more than polite nods followed by one-word replies. The place where he’d felt most at home had become an emotional minefield overnight. And Lucky knew in his gut if he made one wrong move, the whole damn place would be blown to hell.

  As a matter of fact, the tension during his weekend shift had become so unbearable that by the time classes rolled around on Monday, he welcomed the loud, obnoxious coeds surrounding him. Even Brittany droning on and on to him about the latest Housewives marathon didn’t bother him.

  By the time he had his regularly scheduled Thursday morning breakfast with his dad, Lucky knew there was no two ways about it. At some point in time, he and Rachel would have to sit down like two responsible adults and hash things out between them. And when he asked his oh-so-helpful father for his advice on the situation, his old man suggested Lucky made sure their conversation did not take place in a parking lot. “Otherwise, she might just finish what she started.”

  Duke was still laughing at his own joke twenty minutes later.

  Come Friday evening Lucky arrived early to work, stood outside the hospital entrance, and waited. Fifteen minutes before their shift began, Rachel’s large pickup truck rumbled into the parking lot. When she spotted an open space at the end of the row, she jumped up and over the adjacent median as she whipped it into the empty slot.

  She really was a terrible driver. Or maybe she was just terrible at parking. Either way, it looked like his dad was right and it was a damn good thing Lucky was standing near the building instead of waiting for her out in the lot.

  He watched as she made her way across the parking lot, pulling and twisting her hair back from her face and securing it with an elastic band. Only as she crossed the service road that circled the building did she notice him standing there. Almost immediately she reverted to her avoidance ways, bowing her head and focusing her attention on her fingers as they fiddled with her car keys. As she stepped up onto the sidewalk, she raised her head just enough to offer a polite smile, much like one given to perfect strangers.

  One of his best friends from regiment had a go-to saying in situations like this. He could almost imagine what Calder “Bull” Magnusson would say to him. “The best way out is always through. Walking on eggshells doesn’t help things.”

  The best way out is always through.

  Lucky took a deep breath, and just as she was about to pass him by, he called her name, reaching out a hand toward her in the hopes she’d stop. “Can we talk a minute?”

  She glanced at her watch, at the entrance doors, and then back to him. “We only a have a few minutes before our shift begins and I’d rather not be late.”

  She took another step forward and this time he was close enough to touch her. “Then maybe we can talk afterward? Go for a coffee? Breakfast?”

  Rachel looked down where his hand rested on her forearm and then met his eyes. “I have a boyfriend.”

  As if that somehow explained everything.

  The automatic doors slid open in front of her and she hurried inside, her steps longer, faster now. But he was taller, his legs longer. Not to mention he was determined to get them both past this road bump, even if he had to drag her over it kicking and screaming. He followed her through the doors and darted past her, then turned around to face her, walking backward as he spoke.

  “Bring your boyfriend along if you like.”

  Her eyes widened and she drew to a halt. Obviously she didn’t expect that.

  “I’m not asking you out on a date,” he quickly added. “I just want to talk things out. Hopefully make it where things aren’t so tense between us. So if you’d prefer to have him there, that’s fine with me.”

  She just stood there, wide-eyed like a deer in headlights. But after a moment the wariness in her eyes disappeared and one corner of her mouth lifted just the slightest bit. “I’d rather not. Invite him, I mean.”

  “Okay, then. Great,” he said, finding it impossible not to smile. “I’ll meet you outside after our shift is over.”

  He stepped aside and gave her space to go on without him. Already a weight had lifted from his shoulders, and hopefully, by this time tomorrow, his college classes would return to the top of his list of worst places to be.

  JUST LIKE HE said, Lucky was waiting for her outside after their shift ended. Since “lunch” had consisted of a pack of peanut butter on cheese crackers and a Diet Coke from the vending machine, she jumped on his offer of breakfast. Even if the last thing she was hungry for at the moment was breakfast food.

  She followed him in her truck to an old-time diner a little over a mile away, and as they waited for a table to be cleared, he chatted with the hostess like they were old friends. They were barely seated in a booth by the windows when their waitress appeared out of nowhere with a warm smile on her face.

  “Hiya, Lucky. Brought a friend today?” She placed a glass of water in front of Rachel and a large soda and paper-wrapped straw in front of Lucky.

  “This is Rachel. We work together.”

  “So you’ve brought me another third shift vampire,” said the woman with Peggy on her name tag. “I suppose you aren’t in the mood for breakfast food either.”

  Lucky leaned on the table and spoke to Rachel in a conspiratorial whisper. “Peggy knows I’m usually not in the mood for eggs and pancakes when I get off shift. So she breaks the rules and fixes me a club sandwich with French fries.”

  “I don’t break the rules so much as bend them, darlin’,” she said with a smile. “And it’s not like there’s a whole lot of extra effort that goes into making those club sandwiches for you.” Peggy then turned to Rachel. “So what’s it gonna be for you? I can get you the breakfast menu if you’d like.”

  She’d been craving a cheeseburger for the past hour or so, but she wasn’t willing to push her luck. Anything not pancakes or eggs and toast or even a bowl of cereal was a plus in her book. “I’ll just have what he’s having. Thank you.”

  With a polite nod, Peggy was off to place their order, returning only momentarily when she brought lemon slices for Rachel’s water and deposited another large Dr. Pepper in front of Lucky. With several minutes to kill before their food was ready, there was nothing left for them to do but talk. And wasn’t that the reason he asked her to breakfast in the first place? She’d promised Ethan she would apologize, but she couldn’t dive in headfirst. She needed to ease her way into it.

  “I take it you come here often?” she asked while squeezing lemon juice into her glass.

  He smiled at her question, his face more noticeably relaxed that it had been a few seconds before.

  “It started out with me and my dad meeting here every Thursday for breakfast.”

  “You meet every week? That’s nice.”

  “To be honest, it’s a way for my dad to ease his guilt.” While he talked, Lucky fiddled with the paper wrapper from his straw, twisting and untwisting it from around his index fingers. “A week before I was due to move home I got this text message saying he was moving in with his girlfriend. Which was kind of ironic seeing as the reason I was coming home to go to college was so I could spend more time with him. Try to make up for the fact I hadn’t seen him much in the past twelve years.”

  “Well, that has to stink.”

  “It’s not so bad. I have a free place to live all by myself,” Lucky said with a shrug. Then a wicked grin spread across his face and once again he leaned across the table, narrowing the distance between them and lowering his voice so only she could hear. “At least my dad and Brenda are having sex across town instead of me hearing them go at it in the next room.”

  Rachel wrinkled her nose. “Ewww.”

  “Exactly.”

  He laughed then, a warm, rich sound contagious en
ough that soon she was laughing along with him. Which was so very welcome because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. With Curtis. With people from work. With anyone.

  “Anyhow, that’s why my dad and I started meeting here once a week.” He paused to take a quick sip of his drink. “Then when classes started, I realized it was easier to stop here to eat when I got off work on Monday mornings than go all the way home and back to campus before my first class. Then there are times when I get off work and I know there’s nothing in the fridge at home so I’ll come here.”

  “You really do come here a lot.”

  Just then Peggy returned with two large platters and a ketchup bottle that was filled to the top. “Of course he does. Not just anyone can roll in here off the street and sweet-talk his way into ordering something not on the menu. Isn’t that right, sugar?”

  It was hard to tell because that dark scruff covered so much of his face, but it looked like Peggy had actually made Lucky James blush.

  Peggy set both plates down at the same time and Rachel suddenly realized hers looked just like his, with two club sandwiches cut into triangles and a ginormous mound of fries. When she told Peggy she’d have what he was having, she didn’t realize there be so much.

  “Oh, my God. I had no idea I was ordering enough food for a small country.”

  Lucky chuckled and slid the ketchup across the table to her. “Don’t worry about it. If you can’t eat all of it, I’ll take home the leftovers. That is unless you want it?”

  “I can hardly believe you can eat this amount of food.” She poured ketchup in the one tiny space she could find and passed the bottle back to him.

  “Not only can I eat all of this, I’ll be hungry in a couple of hours.” He shoved the contents of his plate to one side and dumped out a lake-size amount of ketchup.

  Then they both dove into their food, giving them another temporary reprieve from talking about the stuff that really mattered. But three-quarters of the way through one sandwich and a dozen or so fries later, she’d reached full capacity. And a little voice was telling her it was time to get it over with.