“Hell of a setting you chose,” Mark sounded pleased.
Archie could only squint against the brightness of the morning. They stood at the end of the tiny harbor’s massive breakwater. To his back was a line of huge stones that were piled a story tall above the quiet Mediterranean. It was hard to believe that it served a purpose, yet he’d seen pictures of the winter storms blowing fifty feet of spray up against its stout bulwark.
In front of him Vernazza harbor stretched only a few hundred feet from side to side. In the middle floated the thirty-foot sloop he’d rented in La Spezia and brought here two days ago. That was his honeymoon with Kee—sailing along the Ligurian and Amalfi coast while Dilya was off with his parents.
Instead of romantic, it now sounded sad. Part of their courtship had been aboard a sailboat, poking their way down this very coast. But picturing someone as vital as Kee with a husband as directionless as himself…not a good image.
Vernazza itself filled the cul-de-sac formed by the sea cliffs with four- and five-story buildings clustered so tightly together that it was hard to imagine there were cobbled streets winding among them—deep in shadow and spangled with surprising patches of sunlight. The buildings were the red and oranges of sunset, accented by the lone white bell tower of the Santa Margherita church. He could just make out the clock that said ten minutes to ten o’clock. Beyond the town, a steeply terraced vineyard masked any harsh stone with a bounty of grape vines.
At the far end of the breakwater, guarding the original entrance to the harbor against pirates before the breakwater had been built, Doria Castle commanded the town. It perched atop a high rocky bluff.
Vernazza was ancient. Solid. It dated back a thousand years and might be much unchanged for another thousand.
It made Archie feel unimportant, even ephemeral.
“I have no place here.” He knew it. No place to serve. He was about to marry a woman he could no longer serve beside. What was he doing? It wasn’t right. He should—
“Been meaning to talk to you about that,” Mark was looking at him.
Archie could only look at the twin pretender version of himself reflected back at him by the major’s sunglasses. Even the uniform felt wrong. Archie had flown beside Emily for a decade since West Point and now he wore the dress uniform as if he somehow still belonged.
“You’re back on the active duty?”
“Light duty,” Archie grunted out. “They said it will be a year before I can fly again. You know as well as I do what that does to a flier’s skills.” It would take another year after that to get his skills back up to Night Stalker standards, if he even could.
Mark turned to track a pair of stunning brunettes in European-skimpy bikinis as they headed out to lie on the rocks and do a little sunbathing. They, in turn, definitely had eyes for the two men in full American military dress uniforms.
Archie was too tired to do more than notice them, despite their coy looks and increased hip sway.
“Been missing you in operations,” Mark said without facing him.
“Great.” He must be recovering from last night’s excesses—definitely his most excessive ever—because he’d managed to rediscover sarcasm.
“Emily is the queen of tactical, but we never understood just how much you brought to the game strategically. You see the big picture far faster than anyone else in the entire company. If you hadn’t been so powerful a team—the strategic and the tactical together—you’d have had your own bird a long time ago.”
“Never cared about that. Not gonna happen now anyway, is it?” Archie tried to shake off being so morose. It was a more unfamiliar coat that the dress uniform he now wore. But the doubt still stuck to his shoulders.
Archie glanced at Mark, but he was walking away to greet the Army Chaplin who had taken the train up from Camp Darby in Pisa. Probably hadn’t even heard Archie’s complaint.
Others began arriving. Tim and Big John weren’t in formal blue mess dress uniforms, but were definitely cutting a swath in their Army service uniforms. Their passage along the breakwater had collected a small gaggle of tourist admirers, and a few locals as well. They each had an Italian beauty on their arm—ones Archie vaguely recalled from the bar last night.
There wasn’t room for chairs or aisles, but there were two rises in the concrete backing for the breakwater that were soon filled as benches. He’d been thrilled that Mark and some of the other guys had come. He was an only child and Kee had no family at all, so it was nice to have the extra people. But as more gawkers drifted their way, it became clear that they were going to have a big wedding after all.
Big John came up and slapped his back with enough cheerful bonhomie to drive the last of Archie’s hangover into the Vernazza harbor.
“Looking awesome, sir,” Tim saluted him.
“Feeling like shit, Tim,” Archie returned the gesture.
“No way,” Big John grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him in a friendly fashion that almost took Archie’s feet out from under him. “You can’t be—not with what you’re about to do. Remember what I said last night.”
Archie looked down at the storm-weathered concrete and wondered if Big John really would deliver on his threat to squish him into it if he was dumb enough to not marry Kee. So, he changed the subject.
“I’m never, ever going drinking with you two again. And that’s an order.”
“Yes, sir!” Big John saluted this time.
“Sounds like a bet,” Tim looked ready to rush off and find a six-pack in order to take up the challenge right then and there.
Archie went for another subject change, “Like the bet John made that he wasn’t going to fall for Connie.”
“Connie?” Tim turned on his friend utterly delighted. “You and the egghead mechanic? Dude, I didn’t know. When’s the wedding?”
“The twelfth of never,” Big John grumbled.
“No, seriously. She’s cute as hell. Weird in several ways, but majorly cute.”
“Fine, you can have her,” John was all magnanimity.
“Not if you already got a bet on.”
“He bet me,” Mark rejoined them, “that he wasn’t going to fall for her.”
“Oh!” Tim crowed. “This is gonna be so excellent!”
Tim and Big John began arguing about it in the way only best friends could.
The crowd was thickening. Soon, the entire breakwater would be crammed full.
Archie needed to talk to Kee, try to talk her out of it, before it was too late. But there was no way that he was going to get to talk to her before the ceremony.
The church tower clock read five minutes to ten. Five minutes to their agreed start time.
Could he do it at the altar?
Should he?
This couldn’t be happening.
Chapter 9
“There’s no way I can do this!” Kee looked down at the waterfront aghast.
A small cluster of men in full military uniforms stood at the end of the breakwater. Even at this distance, Archie and Mark stood out in their dress uniforms with wide red lapels, white shirt fronts, and blue pants with gold stripes on the side. Between her and the wedding party were hundreds of tourists. Everything from sundresses to jeans with bikini tops. Men, women, teens, baby strollers, octogenarians: an entire slice of Italian locals and tourists.
Emily offered one of her all-knowing smiles while Betty patted her arm consolingly.
Dilya clung to her hand.
The four of them had enjoyed a quiet breakfast of lattes and cornetto pastries, with Dilya drinking a cup of hot chocolate almost as big as her head.
“We’ll just forge a path for you,” Emily went to step out of the hotel entry overlooking the harbor. Kee grabbed her and pulled her back.
“It’s not the people that are freaking me out.”
Emily furrowed her brow at Kee. Betty was also looking confused.
“Look. For both of you marriage was a logical step.”
“So not,” Em
ily started. “I never—”
“But you did,” Kee cut her off. “Your parents were married. Had a kid. Raised you. All of that. It’s natural to you.”
Kee managed to drag in a breath, but any calm that she needed just wasn’t climbing aboard.
“I’m being serious here, I was born on the streets. Mom took care of me when she wasn’t too stoned to remember who I was. Marriage was something the judge did for people who somehow thought they’d last more than a year or two together. I sure never did. I can’t be someone’s wife. I can’t be someone’s mother.” She looked down at Dilya who was watching the whole tirade with worry, but probably didn’t understand one word in ten.
Kee held up their joined hands to demonstrate. “This isn’t me!”
For once Emily didn’t have some simple answer. And that was even more scary, because Emily knew everything.
“I love Archie. I’m sure of that. But being a Wife and Mother, how am I supposed to do that? I don’t even know what that means or what it’s supposed to look like. I—”
Betty rested a hand on Kee’s arm which felt as if it was all she that kept her from flying apart. “I wasn’t a good mother.”
“But,” Kee waved her hand helplessly toward the waterfront, “Archie. He’s such an amazing man. You did that.”
Betty tipped her head for a moment. “You were the one who pointed that out to me, not many miles from here—back when we first met and I didn’t know or trust you. I still find it to be a curious thought. Yes, I love my son and he has become an amazing man, despite my feeble attempts at bringing him up properly. I have given this a great deal of thought since then.”
“Please tell me you learned something?” Kee peeked out the window at the still-growing crowd and shivered.
“I learned—”
Dilya tugged on Kee’s arm, pulling until she had to kneel to face her.
“What?”
Dilya brushed her hands over Kee’s hair, then her neck and shoulders as if trying to tell her something. Then, after a sigh, reached into a pocket of her dress and pulled out two squares of tightly folded cloth.
Kee recognized them right away. It was the two scarves they had bought together in a Pakastani market a lifetime ago. Kee had forgotten about them, but apparently Dilya hadn’t.
She very carefully unfolded Kee’s scarf. The edge trim of the green of new life surrounded a field of midnight blue filled with stars—a masterpiece of weaving craft. It had been her Night Stalker scarf.
Dilya folded it point to point then rolled it like a bandana. It wouldn’t go with her hair and around her neck it would break the line of the wedding dress. But Kee decided it was best to keep her thoughts to herself.
She needn’t have worried. Dilya wrapped it several times around Kee’s wrist and tied the ends together making a Night Stalker bracelet of the beautiful cloth.
Kee took Dilya’s far simpler scarf, a field of the same green with the dark blue for trim, and tied it over Dilya’s hair as would be appropriately modest for her Muslim heritage. She took a moment to finger brush Dilya’s thick hair back over her shoulders.
Then Dilya hugged her. Not the fierce hug of greeting at the airport that had almost choked out tears along with Kee’s breath. Instead, it was simply a hug of childish love. Except there had never been anything childish about Dilya. Nothing in her hard past had allowed for something as simple as childhood. It was but one of the true bonds between them.
“That is what I learned,” Betsy whispered quietly. “I can’t picture myself being a good mother or a good wife. But I can picture a good mother or wife being me. Something in who I am made Archie. Not what I think I should have been, just in who I was. And who I am with his father, my husband. You will be an amazing mother and wife, Kee, because it is already in you.”
Kee took Dilya’s hand again as she rose back to her feet.
Emily wasn’t looking at her, but rather down at Dilya in surprise. With a look that Kee now understood. For the first time, the daunting Major Emily Beale was also realizing that she could be a mother someday—without changing the magnificent woman she was.
“Magnificent woman,” Kee said it softly. “Magnificent women,” she declared with more certainty. “The four of us are magnificent, aren’t we?”
Betty and then Emily nodded tentatively once. Then again with growing smiles.
“Let’s do this.”
And Dilya held her hand tightly as they stepped out of the hotel entry and onto the crowded street.
Chapter 10
Archie looked up as the church bell began striking ten o’clock. It echoed across the harbor and town so clearly that speech became difficult.
Then he spotted the women the instant they stepped out of the hotel door, though they were on the far side of the harbor.
“You ready, Archie?” Mark shouted above the bell as it switched from ringing the hour to playing some involved piece of music. He clamped a hand on Archie’s shoulder as if to make sure he didn’t simply dive into the harbor and swim for the sailboat…or maybe just straight out to sea.
“No!”
Mark started to laugh, but cut it off after he looked at Archie’s face.
“So help me to god, Mark. How am I supposed to saddle Kee with a husband who can’t even be with her? Who can no longer serve?” He flapped his arm and ignored the deep pinch. Who isn’t even a whole man? “Being a pilot is all I ever was. And now I’m not even that.”
“You wait until the bride is walking toward you to tell me this shit?” Mark actually shoved his sunglasses up into his hair revealing his steel-gray eyes. He squinted for a long moment. “No… Tell me you aren’t about to do something as stupid as I think you are.”
Archie could only shrug and watch the four women as they reached the waterfront and began circling around the harbor. Emily in blue, Mom in a pretty sundress, and two women wrapped in the lightest shade of gold, lit by the morning sun until they shone.
Others in the crowd began noticing the approaching processional and quieted until the only sound was the bright ringing of the church bells. A narrow aisle was slowly forming through the heart of the crowd as people pressed aside.
“Archie, you’re an idiot,” Mark’s whisper sounded fierce.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Archie kept watching Kee’s approach and wondered how he should do it. Take her aside before the ceremony could start? And Dilya. How was he supposed to tell Dilya?
Mark snarled and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to turn away. When he saw Mark’s expression, Archie almost stepped backward off the breakwater and into the waves lapping directly below. Mark didn’t look angry, he looked furious. His gray eyes had darkened until Archie wondered if he was about to be killed.
“Don’t you dare do that to these women! That’s a direct order, Captain Stevenson.”
Archie kept his thoughts about civilian versus military spheres of control to himself.
“Shit!” Mark glanced up the breakwater where Kee and Dilya had disappeared into the back of the crowd.
Only the shining blonde of Emily’s hair was high enough to show their progress through the gathered masses.
“I’ve got about thirty seconds, so just shut up and listen.”
Archie shrugged his acquiescence. Nothing was going to change his mind, no matter how much it was hurting his heart. It was going to hurt Kee and Dilya, and it was going to kill him. But it was his job to protect them, even if it was from himself.
“I told you we’ve been feeling the pinch of not having you as the team’s strategist.”
“So?”
“Told you to shut up. I was going to tell you after your honeymoon. I structured the 5th Battalion D Company without an AMC. I didn’t want some backfield, Air Mission Commander messing with my team—especially not some asshole who wasn’t good enough to fly with my team. I built this company from the ground up and it only gets the best. That includes you, asshole. You’re back in forward operations as fast as I ca
n get you there. But you’ll be flying in a command helo, well behind the line of fire, where you can direct the whole team.”
Archie could only blink as his world shifted.
“You screw this up and Big John won’t have a chance to pummel you because I’ll beat the shit out of you myself. Do you understand me, soldier?”
Archie did. Not entirely, but enough that he managed a slow nod.
“You say one word other than ‘I do’ before this is over and I’ll go from being your best man to your worst nightmare. You got that?”
“…I do,” Archie managed.
Mark barked out a laugh, then slapped him hard on his bad shoulder.
Archie didn’t flinch. It didn’t hurt as much as he’d have expected.
He turned to face the approaching wedding party.
His mom and Emily led the way.
Dilya came next, in a modest dress, with leggings beneath and her favorite scarf covering her hair. There was the child of his heart. Someday he and Kee might have a child of their own, but it would be impossible to love it more than the war orphan that they’d be adopting as part of the wedding ceremony. The Chaplin had all of the official forms already prepared.
And then he saw Kee. Saw her and understood so much that hadn’t been clear to him even moments ago.
She wore a dress of lightest gold that transformed her from the impossibly beautiful soldier to a glorious bride. It rode high up her neck, emphasizing the amazing line of her neck and strong shoulders. It hugged her generous curves proving that while she might be a warrior, she was also the embodiment of pure womanhood. A high slit in the long skirt revealed the occasional flash of her amazing legs, accenting Kee’s inherent sexiness.
But there were two things that confirmed for him that he’d never have turned from her at this altar, even without Mark’s surprising offer to rejoin the company.
On her wrist Kee wore the scarf that she and Dilya had purchased together. A connection so deep between the woman and girl. They were already family and it was breathtaking that they were letting him in.
Kee's Wedding Page 3
