See How They Run

by Bethany Campbell

  He shook his head. Tears formed in his eyes.

  Charlie remembered their first night together here at the manor. She had seen tears in Peter’s eyes then, when he was faced with his mother’s rejection. It had been part of the reason Charlie tried so hard, part of why she immersed herself in the symphony, the art museum, the ballet. They were things she thought would please Elizabeth, make Elizabeth accept her, make Peter glad he had married her. It had taken a couple of years for Charlie to realize Elizabeth found these pursuits frivolous—business was all she respected. Instead of bringing them closer together, Charlie’s efforts had only pushed them further apart. The irony was that business was what Charlie had once wanted for herself, long before Peter had entered her life, long before Elizabeth had made her feel so inferior. But Charlie had closed the door on a career, and staying busy, frenetically busy, became her refuge—a way to pass the time, a reason to get out of the manor, away from the watchful eye of the matriarch. And, she had hoped that someday Elizabeth would come to respect her and approve of her. Like Peter, she had kept trying.

  “Your mother could not help the way she was,” Charlie said, as she reached to brush a tear from her husband’s cheek. “Any more than I can. We all do our best. It’s all we can do.”

  Peter tipped back his head as if trying to hold back more tears. “I don’t know if I can handle things without her.”

  Charlie felt the pain in his heart. Fifteen years of marriage, she reasoned, bonded one human being to another. She wondered if it had been love or the storms that had become the glue for their vows. “You’ll handle things, Peter,” she said with conviction. “Now, I think I’d better find Jenny. She doesn’t understand this the way we do.” She left her husband standing by the window and wondered if, in fact, he—or any of them—would really be able to handle things without Elizabeth Hobart.

  A pungent scent of manure and hay filled Charlie’s lungs as she walked into the stables. She swallowed quickly and made her way past the stalls, looking into each one for Jenny. She knew Jenny would be here; from a young age, the girl had seemed to relate better to animals than to people.

  At the stall marked with the purple blanket that read Bluebell, Charlie stopped. Jenny stood inside, her chocolate silk dress covered with hay, her ivory face pressed against the sleek side of the regal Morgan. She was whispering to the horse, words that Charlie could not understand.

  When had her daughter become so somber? Charlie wondered. When had the vibrance of her childhood been dulled by this dark, melancholy cloud? And worse, why hadn’t Charlie noticed? She drew in a breath. “Honey, are you all right?”

  The whispers ceased. Jenny lowered her chin and tossed back her long, dark hair. She began brushing the horse. “I’m fine, Mother. I just came out to groom Bluebell.”

  Charlie took a step into the stall. “In your silk dress?”

  Jenny kept brushing.

  Charlie reached out for her. “Honey—” She broke off as Jenny moved to the other side of the horse.

  “With all the funeral stuff going on I’ve been neglecting the horses,” Jenny said clearly, not looking at Charlie.

  “That’s why we have grooms. It’s their job to see to the horses.”

  Jenny was silent. The sounds of her gentle strokes swished through the air.

  “I thought you might be upset over Grandmother’s will,” Charlie said.

  Jenny stopped brushing. “Why? Because Darrin got the house in the Hamptons? I’ve barely been there, Mother. I spend summers with Tess, remember?”

  “I was referring to the jewelry. To the fact that she left it to Patsy.”

  “Who needs jewelry? Tess says jewelry is a waste of money because the only people who enjoy it are the people looking at you. You can’t see it to enjoy it yourself.” She started brushing again. “Besides, I got an egg. At least it’s something I can see. It’s something I get to enjoy.”

  Charlie wondered if Jenny was serious. Did Tess really feel that way? She thought of her old college friend, wrapped in long skirts and shawls, hair long and straight, face scrubbed of makeup. Yes, Charlie realized, Tess would have said that. Which was so ironic, because, unlike Charlie, Tess had been wealthy enough to have all the jewels she wanted.

  The horse snorted. Jenny reached into the pocket of her four-hundred-dollar dress and pulled out an apple. She tucked it between the horse’s large teeth. Charlie stepped back.

  “Can I pick out my egg today?” Jenny asked. “Can I take it to show Tess?”

  A vision of Jenny’s suitcase being tossed into the luggage compartment of a bus came to Charlie’s mind. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  Jenny moved to the corner of the stall and began fluffing the bed of hay. “I’ll be careful with it, Mom.”

  Charlie shook her head. “No. It’s too valuable.”

  “It’s so dumb. All those eggs do is sit in that cabinet in the drawing room. Nobody hardly looks at them anymore. Nobody hardly enjoys them.” She kept her back to Charlie, busy with her work.

  “No. And I’d appreciate it if you came inside now. You’re going to ruin that dress.”

  Jenny tossed back her hair. “Can we do something tonight? Rent a movie or something?”

  Charlie closed her eyes. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to make Jenny’s life the way Jenny wanted it. “Not tonight,” she answered. “Your father and I have a cocktail party to attend.”

  Jenny didn’t respond, but Charlie noticed a flush of pale crimson sear her daughter’s pale cheeks.

  “The party is business,” Charlie continued, though she knew it sounded weak, a halfhearted excuse. “A company from China.”

  Jenny set down the horse’s brush. “I’d better finish packing anyway. My bus leaves at seven in the morning.”

  “We’ll miss you.”

  “Sure.” Jenny whisked past her mother and headed out of the barn.

  Charlie remained standing in the stall. The horse nudged her side. She stroked its forehead. “What are we going to do with her, Bluebell?” she whispered. She ran her hand down the silky coat of the horse’s neck and thought of the tender, sensitive care that Jenny gave Bluebell. And then Charlie realized that Jenny—like the Fabergé egg she’d just inherited—was not only beautiful, but also very fragile. She wondered if, in a few years, Jenny would go to Smith. If she did, Charlie would have to insist that she not live off campus with Tess. Because whether her daughter liked it or not, the artsy, bohemian life that her old friend lived was simply not in Jenny’s genes.

  Charlie slowly left the stall and went through the barn. She thought of Tess. She thought of Marina. And then Charlie wondered if what had seemed so right so long ago, had in fact, been very, very wrong.

  Read on for an excerpt from Jessica Scott’s Because of You

  Chapter 1

  “What crawled up your ass?”

  Shane shoved his last Ziploc bag of T-shirts into his army-issued duffel bag and tried to smother his rising irritation. “What part of no don’t you understand?”

  Carponti—aka the most annoying soldier in Shane’s entire platoon—picked up Shane’s grey ACU pattern patrol cap and put it on, strutting around like he owned the place. Then he puffed out his chest and swung his arms wide, like a bad caricature of an angry gorilla. Sometimes Shane wished he didn’t let Carponti into his apartment as often as he did. But Carponti had recently turned into a permanent fixture in Shane’s after-duty life. Shane wasn’t sure what that said about the state of his affairs. As if Carponti mocking him in the empty apartment wasn’t enough of an indicator. “I’m Sarn’t Garrison. I’m too badass to relax and have a good time.”

  “Piss off.”

  “Did your wife take your sense of humor in the divorce, too?” Carponti asked, flopping into Shane’s chair. “Come on, man, it’s just a few hours and a couple of beers. The whole platoon is going to be there.”

  Shane sighed and hooked his duffel bag shut, tossing it into the corner of his apar
tment near the front door. He flinched as the sudden movement stretched the fresh stitches that were holding two tiny holes in his abdominal wall closed. Carponti didn’t know about Shane’s recent brush with death and Shane intended to keep it that way. If Carponti wanted to believe the divorce was keeping him from going out, then so be it. But the truth was that Shane had been too busy, over the past five months, to dwell on the end of his marriage. Of course, he missed feeling like he had a home, but he couldn’t lie to himself—Tatiana hadn’t made their life together a home any more than he had. She’d been familiar, though, and he missed that. At least, that’s what he told himself when he had time to think about it. So many of his guys were having problems in the lead-up to this deployment that Shane had barely seen the air mattress on the floor of the apartment they’d shared, let alone slept on it. And tomorrow he was leaving for good.

  Shane shoved his body armor into a second duffel bag, then stuffed socks and more T-shirts into the gaps. It was a pain in the ass packing for deployment. It was easier just being deployed.

  “The whole platoon being there is the problem. Makes it kind of hard to explain why the platoon sergeant is in jail with the platoon if you guys get too fired up tonight. Someone has to be around to bail your sorry asses out of Bell County tomorrow.”

  Carponti rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck, serious for one hot second. “Look, just come out with us. You’ve been a real asshole since your wife left; you need to unwind, or we might just shoot your ass when we’re in country for being such a dick.”

  Shane rested his hand over his heart and blinked rapidly. “God, I’m so touched by the depth of your concern. I can drink beer here. Alone. Quietly.”

  “Sissy.”

  Shane laughed and the feeling caught him off guard. If it had been that long since he’d laughed, maybe his wife had taken his sense of humor along with all of his furniture. He shook his head at Carponti’s relentless nagging and finally surrendered. Under duress, but still. “All right, fine. But I swear, if a single one of you miss movement tomorrow …”

  Carponti made the sign of the cross over his heart. “Promise. Let’s go. I’m picking up Nikki on the way.”

  Shane stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and grabbed the keys to his truck. At least he didn’t have to change. Killeen, Texas, didn’t exactly sport any high-class bars. The place they were headed to, Ropers, was only moderately slimy, meaning that he wasn’t likely to die of dysentery from the beer glasses and he was just fine in his T-shirt and jeans. They were clothes he didn’t care if he ruined if—scratch that, when—he had to drag one of his soldiers out of a brawl.

  Truth be told, he didn’t have any problem with the boys going out. Shane just didn’t want to watch them say good-bye to their wives and girlfriends, and it had nothing to do with his own divorce. Shane hated the knowledge that he might not be bringing everyone home to their families.

  It was 2007 and they were deploying as part of the Surge to stabilize Iraq. He knew he would probably bury some of his men this year. He’d deployed too many times to entertain the naive hope that all of his boys would come back in one piece. He’d move heaven and earth to protect them, and it looked like that would have to start tonight, instead of tomorrow. He couldn’t promise they’d all come home from the war, but they’d sure as shit make it to formation in the morning.

  That much he could guarantee.

  * * *

  “Stop touching it.”

  Jen St. James jumped and dropped her hand from the edge of her blouse. “I wasn’t.”

  She should have known Laura would catch her tugging at her clothes, which, with the addition of a triangular-shaped silicone form, now fit much better. And that was part of what made Jen uncomfortable. She wasn’t used to her blouses hanging properly anymore. But she couldn’t tell Laura that. It had been hard enough to convince her that she wanted to buy only one form and not the entire shop.

  Laura couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that Jen didn’t need to feel sexy, that she wanted to be comfortable instead.

  “Yes, you were. No one can tell and the more you play with it, the more horny GIs are going to check your boobs out.” Laura raised her glass, and then lowered it. “On second thought, keep playing with them.”

  “Boob. Singular.”

  “You still have two. Just not a full set. And honestly, no one can tell. So please quit worrying and relax. You look amazing.”

  “Except for the silicone stuck to my chest.”

  “That no one can see. Here,” Laura said, shoving a sweating green Heineken bottle into Jen’s hand. “Drink. Don’t argue. I finally got you out of the house to have a good time and damn it, I’m going to accomplish that mission if it kills me.”

  “You sound like a soldier,” Jen said with a smile.

  Laura took a pull off her drink. “I can’t help it. I spend all day every day around soldiers. I’m bound to pick things up here and there.”

  It had been a long time since Jen had been around this many people. She felt the proximity of too many bodies, too much cologne and spilled beer. The smells bombarded her and reminded her of the life she’d had once upon a time. A time when she would have danced until dawn and then closed the night out with pancakes at IHOP.

  Jen had not been inside a bar for more than two years, and she was no more comfortable today than she’d been the last time she’d been out when her ex had made a point of announcing to everyone in the bar that she had only one breast. So the fact that she was here was amazing in and of itself. The loud music, the crowd, and the GIs mingling with the wannabe cowboys was not an ambience Jen typically sought out. The smoke grated on her lungs but wasn’t nearly as smothering in the seat she’d managed to snag at the edge of the bar. Still, anything was better than the sterile smell of the hospital, and she wanted to get back to feeling normal, really she did. Whatever normal meant nowadays.

  Laura was the one saying good-bye to her husband for the fifth time in seven years. Jen was just here for moral support, so the least she could do was put her own demons to rest and have a good time. She lifted the beer to her lips.

  “I can’t believe you dragged me here,” she shouted in Laura’s ear over the din of Kenny Chesney.

  “I can’t believe I found a babysitter. Trent’s whole company is here tonight.” Laura smiled and nursed a Corona while Jen sipped on her Heineken.

  “Shouldn’t you be molesting your husband? He’s the one leaving.”

  “I don’t want to leave you hanging out here, teasing all these horny soldiers with your fake boob.”

  “Ha-ha-ha. My fake boob and I are just fine, thanks. And speak of the devil.” Strong, wide hands slipped around Laura’s waist, yanking her back. Laura tipped her face up to her husband’s for a kiss and Jen offered Trent a mock salute with the tip of her beer.

  “Will you please take your wife to dance?” Jen shouted with a smile.

  “Gladly.” Trent pulled his wife into some convoluted line dance, leaving Jen alone at the bar where she was quite content to watch everyone else and sip her beer.

  She discreetly tugged at her blouse again. In a dark corner at the other end of the bar, a sensual flare of movement caught her eye. She looked closer and saw a couple kissing intensely, so engrossed in each other she couldn’t say where one person ended and the other began, lost in the heavy scent of lust and liquor. She looked away, studying the green bottle in her hand. She wondered if she would ever again know what it felt like to have warm, rough hands move over her flesh.

  Jen had come a long way, and it had still taken all of Laura’s persuasive powers to convince her to buy the breast form. But it didn’t mean that her scars no longer bothered her. She’d hesitated for a different reason. The round shape beneath her blouse now was just false advertising. She swallowed and pushed aside a brief flicker of melancholy.

  Someone solid and heavy knocked into her and sloshed beer down the front of her blouse. A strong vise latched arou
nd her arm to steady her. She glanced up into the lightest grey eyes she’d ever seen. Grey eyes that she’d seen before but never this close. In the dimly lit bar, they looked almost silver.

  Shane Garrison. A friend of Trent’s. Jen had seen him around before, but had never actually spoken to him. He’d always seemed big, but up close he was massive. Black tribal tattoos twisted up both of his wrists, writhing up his forearms to disappear beneath the frayed edge of a green T-shirt. And who knew that bald could be so sexy in the right lighting? Had to be the rough jaw that did it.

  “Sorry. You okay?” He leaned close to her ear so he didn’t have to shout. Jen shivered as his breath brushed across her skin. He stood closer to her now than any man other than a doctor had in over a year. The heat from his body caressed her skin, and she could smell him, a mixture of spice and smoke and something entirely male. She swallowed and tried to find her voice.

  “I’m fine. Thanks. This place is crowded.” She knew better than this. She pulled her arm free and tugged the clinging blouse away from her skin, suddenly afraid that he would see the scars on her chest through the wet material.

  As the words left her lips, someone jostled her into him again. He tried to steady her but she fell against him anyway.

  Time hung suspended and she stood in this man’s embrace, feeling protected and safe and deliciously unflawed. It was impossible to miss the hard angles of his body. For one brief fantasy moment, she imagined what it would feel like if this dangerous and sexy man lowered his mouth to hers.

  But the fantasy faded as quickly as it had come and Jen stepped back into reality. A reality in which a man like the one standing oh-so-close to her was just being polite to a woman he had met in a bar. Down girl.

  He lowered his mouth to her ear again. “Since I nearly crushed you twice now, can I buy you a drink?”

  She smiled and sipped from the sweating green bottle. “I still have some of this one left. Thanks, though.”

  “Jen, right?” He retrieved his own beer. “Are you here with Laura and Trent?”