Rescue Me

by Rachel Gibson

  The operation orders had called for the insertions of four SEALs and a seven-mile hump to the caves. Marine security covered their right and left flanks, watching for enemy snipers hiding in the cracks and crevasses. The assault took longer than expected because of the rough terrain and heat. They’d paused halfway to strip off the jackets they’d worn for the flight in, but that still left him packing water, MREs, H-gear, assorted weaponry, body armor, and ballistics helmet.

  The first thing they’d noticed as they’d neared the objective was that the bombs the flyboys had dropped earlier to soften the area missed about eighty percent of their targets. The platoon patrolled up to the entrance and entered the caves like they would a house or ship. The lights on their weapons faded in the deep caverns.

  “ ‘Little surprises around every corner,’ ” Wilson said as they rounded the mouth of one cave. Before anyone asked, he added, “Willy Wonka. The original movie. Not the fucked-up Johnny Depp remake.”

  “Shit on rye. That’s an ass-load of Gobstoppers.” Vince shone the light from his weapon on boxes of Stingers. “Looks like someone planned on playing war with us.”

  Wilson laughed. That deep staccato ha ha ha that always brought a smile to Vince’s face. The laugh he missed when he thought of his friend.

  Vince set the sledgehammer on Luraleen’s old desk, which he decided to keep for old times’ sake, and grabbed pieces of busted-up wood and counter. Thinking about Wilson usually made him smile. Dreaming about him made him shake like a baby and run into walls.

  He walked out of the office and through the back door he’d left wedged open with a brick earlier. He moved a few feet to a Dumpster and tossed the debris inside. He figured it would take a week or two to finish demolition and another three or four to renovate.

  The fading evening sun lowered in the cloudless Texas sky as a red Volkswagen pulled to a stop in the back. A trickle of sweat slid down his temple and he lifted his arm and wiped at it with his shoulder. Becca cut the engine of the Bug and waved through the windshield at Vince.

  “Sweet baby Jesus save me.” For some inexplicable reason, she still stopped by on her way home a few times a week. He’d never done anything to encourage the “friendship.”

  “Hi, Vince,” she called out as she walked toward him.

  “Hey, Becca.” He turned toward the building, then stopped and looked back. “You cut your hair.”

  “One of the girls did it at school.”

  He pointed to the left side. “It looks longer on one side.”

  “It’s supposed to.” She ran her fingers through it. “Do you like it?”

  He supposed he could lie, but that just might encourage her to stick around. “No.”

  Instead of getting all upset and leaving, she smiled. “That’s what I like about you, Vince. You don’t sugarcoat things.”

  There was a reason. Sugarcoating encouraged relationships he didn’t want. “You’re not pissed about that hair?” The women he’d known would have freaked.

  “No. I’ll get it fixed tomorrow. Do you need your hair cut? I’m getting pretty good with the clippers.”

  Pretty good? “That’s okay. I don’t want my head lopsided.”

  Again she laughed. “I’d use a number two on you ’cause you look like you like it high and tight.”

  He thought of Sadie, and not for the first time since he’d left her house. He’d thought of her several times a day since then. If there’d been anything going on beyond mindless demo work, he might be worried about how much he thought about her.

  “I need your advice on something.”

  “Me? Why?” He’d given his sister advice but she’d never listened to him. Becca wasn’t even related, so why should he suffer?

  She put her hand on his forearm. “Because I care about you, and I think you care about me. I trust you.”

  Oh no. A bad feeling pinched the back of his neck. This was one of those times that called for finesse and a precision extraction. “Becca, I’m thirty-six.” Much too old for her.

  “Oh, I thought you were older.”

  Older? What? He didn’t look old.

  “And if my dad was still alive, I think he’d listen to me like you do. I think he’d give me good advice like you do.”

  “You think of me like your . . . dad?” What the hell?

  She looked at him and her eyes rounded. “No. No, Vince. More like an older brother. Yeah, an older brother.”

  Sure. The only time he felt old was when the cold settled in his bones and cramped his hands. There’d been a time when the cold hadn’t bothered him much, but he certainly wasn’t old.

  Behind Becca’s Bug, Sadie’s Saab rolled to a stop, and he forgot about being Becca’s dad. Her running lights shut off and the door swung open. The orange sun shot golden sparks off her sunglasses and hair. She was all golden and shiny and beautiful.

  “I stopped to get some super unleaded. What’s up?” she asked.

  “I’m closed for a while.”

  She shut the car door and moved toward him, the smooth walk she’d learned in charm school with a slight bounce to her step and breasts. A smile tilting the corners of her mouth. The mouth she’d used on him a few nights ago. A hot, wet mouth he wouldn’t mind her using again. She wore a white dress he’d seen on her before. One he wouldn’t mind taking off her.

  “Hi, Becca.”

  “Hey, Sadie Jo.”

  The two gave each other hugs like the true Texans that they were. “Your hair looks good,” Becca said as she pulled back.

  “Thanks. I just got the roots touched up today.” Sadie ran her gaze over Becca’s hair. “Your hair is . . . darling.” She glanced at Vince. “Short and long at the same time. Very clever.”

  “Thanks. I’m in beauty school and we practice on each other. When I get better, you should let me color your hair.”

  Since Sadie wouldn’t be around when that happened she said, “Fabulous.”

  Becca dug her keys out of her pocket and looked at Vince. “I’ll stop by tomorrow and say hey.”

  “Fabulous.”

  Sadie turned and watched Becca scoot into her Volkswagen and drive away. “How often does she stop by to say ‘hey’?”

  “A couple times a week on her way home from school.”

  “Well, that haircut is just tragic.” She looked up at Vince through her sunglasses. “I think Becca has a crush on you.”

  “No. She doesn’t.”

  “Yes. She does.”

  “No, really. Just take it from me.”

  “As we say in Texas, ‘She’s sweet on you.’ ”

  He shook his head. “She looks at me like I’m her . . .” He paused as if he couldn’t bring himself to finish.

  “Brother?”

  “Dad.”

  “Seriously?” For several stunned seconds she simply stared at him, then her laughter started as a low chuckle. “That is hysterical.” As if to prove the point, her chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh fest.

  “It’s not that funny.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. “I’m only thirty-six. Hardly old enough to have a twenty-one-year-old daughter.”

  She clapped a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “Technically it’s possible, old man,” she managed before she burst out all over again.

  “You about done?”

  She shook her head.

  He frowned to keep from smiling and gave her his dagger stare. The one used to incite fear in the hearts and heads of hardened jihadists. It didn’t work so he kissed her to shut her up. A press of his smiling lips to quiet her laughter.

  “Come in and have a beer with me,” he said against her mouth.

  “You bored?”

  “Not now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sadie shoved her sunglasses to the top of her he
ad and followed a few feet behind Vince as he moved down the hall past a lighted office, and toward the front of the Gas and Go. Her gaze slid from his wide shoulders in his brown T-shirt, down his back to the waistband of his khaki cargo pants riding low on his hips. He looked kind of sweaty. Hot and sweaty and totally doable.

  “Are those brown T-shirts and cargo pants some sort of uniform?”

  “Nope. Just easy to keep clean in a sandstorm.”

  She supposed that made sense if a guy lived in a desert prone to sandstorms. “How long are you closed?” she asked as they walked into the store. The lights were out and the space was filled with shadow and the steady hum of the refrigeration units. The shelves of perishables were mostly empty but coolers were still well stocked.

  “Unless I run into some unknowables, two months. Out here I’m going to paint, retile the floors, and put in new counters.” He opened the door to the big cooler. “A lot of the equipment is fairly new. He grabbed a pair of Coronas. “Except the wiener roller. That thing has to go. Luraleen calls it ‘seasoned.’ ” He shut the door and screwed off the bottle tops. “I call it a lawsuit waiting to be filed.”

  The convenience store certainly needed work. It pretty much looked the same as it had for twenty years. “Who’s doing your renovations?” She took the bottle he held toward her. “I can’t tell you who to hire, but I can tell you who works on Miller time.”

  “You’re looking at the guy doing the renovations.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, me. I’m going to hire some buddies to come down and help me lay tiles.”

  She was close enough to inhale the scent of him. He smelled like man and clean sweat. The grayish light in the store darkened his five o’clock shadow to at least nine-thirty.

  In college she’d taken a mosaics class. “Are you good at laying tiles?”

  He grinned, his teeth a white flash in the variegated light, and raised the bottle to his lips. “Among other things.”

  They probably shouldn’t talk about the other things he was good at laying. “What’s Luraleen up to these days?”

  He took a drink and swallowed. “Right now she’s in Vegas spending the money I paid her for this place.” He lowered the beer. “One nickel slot and cheap shot of whiskey at a time.”

  “Not a high roller?”

  “The velvet sofa in her house is from the seventies and all her music is on cassette tapes.”

  Sadie laughed. “Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn?”

  “Yeah.” He took her hand in his, warm and hard and rough. “Right now, I’m taking care of her house for her, but I’m going to need a place to live once she gets back. If I have to hear one more ‘cheatin’ song’ while she and Alvin get it on in her bedroom, I’m going to stab my head.” He pulled her behind him down the hall and into the office. Nails and a few splinters of wood were scattered about on the floor and the paint on the walls was a different color where there had once been cabinets hanging on the walls. An olive-colored countertop, an old chipped sink, and one more cabinet still occupied the room. A pair of clear safety glasses sat on an old wooden desk; a sledgehammer rested against the leg.

  “Alvin Bandy?” She stopped in the middle of the room and her hand fell from his. “I know him. Short guy with a big mustache and ears?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Oh my God. He worked at the JH for a while when I was growing up.” She took a drink of beer and swallowed. “He’s not that old. Probably in his forties and Luraleen is what?”

  “I think she’s sixty-eight.”

  And Lily Darlington worried that she was a cougar. “Holy moly. I know women can be desperate.” She shook her head and thought of Sarah Louise Baynard-Conseco. “But I didn’t know men were really desperate, too. Dang, that’s just nasty.” She stopped short. “Oh. I’m sorry. Luraleen is your aunt.”

  He raised one dark brow up his forehead. “He isn’t her only boyfriend.”

  Sadie gasped.

  “He’s just her youngest. She has several.”

  Lordy. “Several?” She sat on the edge of the desk. “I haven’t had a boyfriend in about a year and Luraleen has several. What’s up with that?”

  He shrugged one big shoulder. “Maybe you have standards.”

  She chuckled. “You probably wouldn’t say that if you met my last boyfriend.”

  “Loser?”

  “Boring.” She shrugged. “So are you like your Aunt Luraleen? Several women on a string?”

  “No. I don’t string anyone along.”

  She believed him. The night of Founder’s Day he’d told her he wasn’t good with relationships. “Have you ever had a serious girlfriend? Ever been engaged?”

  “No.” He took a drink.

  Subject closed. She supposed she could ask why, but he didn’t look like he was in the mood to answer. “Is Luraleen your mother or father’s sister?” she asked instead.

  “Mother’s, but they were nothing alike.” He leaned his hip into the one remaining counter. “My mother was very religious. Especially after my father left.”

  At least her daddy hadn’t abandoned her. “When did your daddy leave?”

  “I was ten.” He took a drink, then lowered the bottle to his side. “My sister was five.”

  “Do you still talk to your dad?”

  He tapped the bottle against his thigh like he might not answer. His gaze moved across her face before he said, “I talked to him a few months ago. He contacted me out of the blue and wanted to suddenly see me after twenty-six years.”

  “Did you meet with him?”

  He nodded. “He’s living in northern California. I guess his latest wife left him and took the last batch of kids, so suddenly he remembered he had another son.” He pointed the beer at himself. “Me.”

  Compared to the other night, he was suddenly a font of chattiness.

  “I met with him and listened to him and his problems. At that time, I was all into thinking about forgiveness and shit, but after about an hour I’d heard enough and left.”

  “Just an hour?” That didn’t seem very much time after so many years.

  “If he’d asked about my sister or my nephew I might have given him more time.” His jaw got tight and his light green eyes narrowed, and Sadie got a glimpse of the warrior in Vince Haven. The Navy SEAL with a machine gun across his chest and a missile launcher on his shoulder. “What kind of asshole doesn’t ask about his own goddamn daughter and grandson?” He raised the bottle. “Fuck him.”

  And she thought she had issues.

  He lowered the beer and its foam bubbled up the neck. “An old buddy once told me that sometimes a person needs forgiveness so they can move on and forgive themselves. If the old man had asked about Conner, I might have given him a chance. I’m nicer than I used to be.”

  She bit the side of her cheek to keep from smiling.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Is Conner your nephew?”

  “Yeah. He just turned six. He’s really funny and smart, and he sent me a picture he drew of my truck and me. He’s big on drawing pictures.”

  And Vince missed him. He didn’t have to say it. It was in the sadness in his eyes and voice. “Does your sister know about your dad contacting you?”

  He shook his head. “And I’m never going to tell her.” He laughed without humor. “And the ironic thing is that if my father knew who she was marrying, he’d suddenly remember he had a daughter.”

  “Who’s she marrying?” Prince William was taken but Harry was still available.

  “She’s remarrying her son of a bitch ex, Sam Leclaire.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar.

  “He’s a hockey player with Seattle.”

  Sadie tapped the mouth of the bottle against her chin. “Hmm.” She went to a lot of Coyotes games and was an Ed Jovanovski fan. �
��Big guy? Even for a hockey player. Likes to instigate? Spends a lot of time in the penalty box? Blond? Hot?”

  “Sounds like him. Except for the hot part.”

  “I saw him play the Coyotes in Phoenix a few months ago.” She set the bottle next to her on the desk and, because Vince’s green eyes narrowed again and she found him even more handsome when he was all irritated, she added, “He’s smokin’ hot. Or as we say in Texas, ‘hotter than a goat’s butt in a pepper patch.’ ”

  “Jesus.”

  “And that’s really hot.” She turned her mouth upside down in a fake frown. “Don’t be bitter.”

  He frowned as he raised the bottle, but she doubted he was truly mad. She was fairly sure his ego could take the hit.

  “Don’t worry.” She shook her head and chuckled. “You’re really hot, too . . . for a guy old enough to be Becca’s dad.”

  He lowered the bottle without taking a drink. “Are you going to laugh yourself into a fit about that again?”

  “Maybe. It’s just the gift that keeps giving.” She stood and reached for the handle of the sledgehammer.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  “Worried?” She tried to lift it with one hand. It hardly budged.

  “Terrified.”

  “How much does this thing weigh?”

  “Twenty pounds.” He moved toward her and set his beer next to hers.

  She used both hands and lifted it a foot off the floor. “I could get a lot of frustrations out and do a lot of damage with this thing.”

  With one hand, he took it easily from her grasp and tossed it behind him. It hit the floor with a hard thud. “I know a better way to get your frustrations out.” His palms slid to her waist and he pulled her hips against his.

  She looked up into his face, at his eyes staring down into hers. “What did you have in mind?” she asked, even though against her pelvis she felt exactly what was on the man’s mind.