THE RE-ENLISTED GROOM

by Amy J. Fetzer

  He dropped Maxie's wilting bouquet and with his white barracks cover tucked under his arm, he left the church with the measured cadence of a marine going off to war. Which was exactly what he had to do. Married or not.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, dressed in desert beige camouflage utilities, Kyle stood in formation with his platoon, his body weighted down with his pack, bedroll, ammunition and weapons. He didn't speak to anyone, too aware that his buddies knew he wasn't the married man he'd hoped to be today. He tried not to imagine Maxie's face, what she was thinking when she stood him up, what she was doing now. A woman's sob caught him off guard, and his gaze snapped to a fellow marine, his wife in his arms as she cried and told him she would miss him. Kyle's throat tightened, the pain in his chest threatening his breathing. That should be me, he thought tearing his gaze away to scan the crowd of women and children, parents and friends who'd come to see the marines off. He waited for long, dark auburn hair to catch his attention, waited to see her running toward him, begging for his forgiveness and telling him she loved him.

  She'll come, he thought. She won't let me get on this plane without saying goodbye. Kyle believed and he waited, lagging behind when his platoon filed toward the plane. Still he stalled, back-stepping, searching the mass of people. She'll come, he told himself. She might have wanted a wait to marry him, but she loved him. She did.

  A sharp command pierced his thoughts, and he faced his first sergeant.

  "Move it marine! The war won't wait."

  Kyle obeyed, the last man aboard the aircraft. Yet even as the hydraulics lifted to seal the huge troop carrier, Kyle still hoped, still looked. But as the hatch closed him in with over a hundred other marines, Kyle faced the truth.

  And inside, he died.

  * * *

  One

  « ^ »

  Grand Canyon, Arizona Seven years later

  Maxie paused, the shovel full of soiled hay halfway to the wheelbarrow when she heard the helicopter. The noise vibrated the walls of her barn, disturbing her animals as the pilot made a low-flying sweep of her place before setting down.

  "Relax, Elvis," she said to the horse tethered outside his stall. "You ought to be used to that by now." She flung the putrid pile onto the heap, shaking her head. The independent pilots the park service hired when they were shorthanded in bad weather usually had Top Gun envy and were always a little showy. Apparently the pilot she was supposed to board for the next week or two wasn't beyond hotdogging, either.

  Since it was likely one of the pilots she'd boarded before, she didn't immediately run out to greet him, estimating it would take him a few minutes to anchor the chopper and walk the hundred yards from the dirt helipad to the barn. If he thought to look for her there. Either way, she didn't want company. Usually the service put the temps up in hotels or at Mrs. Tippin's Bed and Breakfast, but with half the rescue teams out with the flu and the tourist traffic unusually high now for the lack of snow, the overflow boarded with her. The occasions were too rare for her to regret that part of the deal she'd made with the service three years ago. She just hoped this pilot didn't expect her to wait on him. She had too much work to do.

  After maneuvering the heavy wheelbarrow down the long corridor of stalls to the truck parked outside the rear entrance, she forced it up the ramp and quickly dumped its odious contents. Maxie hurriedly backtracked, bringing the wheelbarrow back for another load, then hefting the shovel.

  Movement at the far end of the barn caught her attention.

  She froze. The color drained from her face. Her gloved fingers tightened on the handle.

  Rescue me. Oh, someone please take me away from here.

  But Maxie Parrish knew no rescue would be coming.

  Her worst nightmare was walking steadily toward her.

  She would recognize him anywhere, anytime. Even with the fleece collar of his butternut suede jacket pulled up against the wind and his face shielded beneath a black cowboy hat, she knew him. By his stride, the shift of his shoulders … his sexy rocking hips.

  Seven years' worth of guilt and shame threatened to swallow her whole, and Maxie fought the overpowering urge to run.

  Instead, like a sinner anticipating penance, she waited for the moment when he would recognize her.

  A duffel slung over his shoulder, his gaze was more on where he was stepping than where he was heading. "This the Wind Dancer Ranch, ma'am?"

  "Yes, Kyle. It is."

  He stopped short. His head jerked up, his gaze narrow and piercing her straight through to the bone.

  He didn't say a word. He just kept staring, whatever he was feeling locked tightly behind an expression harder than ice. His fingers flexed on the duffel strap at his shoulder. His lips tightened. And Maxie felt the hay-strewed floor soften beneath her feet as he moved within a yard of her. His gaze roamed, and she felt heat slowly sketch her face as he searched for changes and absorbed each one. It was hard to believe those eyes still held the same intensity, dark and wicked, making her skin warm in the chilly morning, making her body talk when she wanted it to be silent.

  And unfortunately, after all this time, he knew it.

  It didn't help that he looked as good as he did when he was a marine, she thought. Oh, he was older, more mature and though there were a few lines around the corners of his eyes and a cynical tightness to his lips that hadn't been there before, he was still essentially the same. Handsome, tanned, sable haired with pebble dark eyes that had always held a glint of mischief. They didn't now, offering nothing. Apparently he didn't think his surprise arrival was any kind of blessing, either.

  Kyle was shaking inside. Seven years faded away, and he was a marine, standing on the flight deck, waiting for her, hurting like mad. He couldn't stop the sensations, wishing to God he had never set foot inside the barn, but knew he had to get control, reminding himself that she was his past not his present.

  Damn.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  It shouldn't be this hard to just look at her, Kyle thought, the agony of losing her and never knowing why clutching at his chest. Yet like a masochist searching for more pain, his gaze moved over her face, her petite features, the lush figure even a shapeless flannel shirt and down vest couldn't hide. She's cut her hair, he thought stupidly. Her auburn waves were evenly trimmed, side parted and skimming her jaw, her long drop earrings emphasizing those great bones. One thing he had to say about Maxie—she had a body that evoked wild fantasies and a face that gave a man sleepless nights.

  He ought to know. He'd had his share of them. And he didn't want any more.

  He brought his gaze back to hers. "Hello, Max."

  The sound of his voice, deep as the ocean floor, coated her, sending tremors through her bloodstream. And with it came a flood of unwanted memories, of heartache and guilt. Oh, Lord, the guilt, Maxie thought. It had never eased completely, and as she stared into his eyes now, it magnified. The last time she'd seen him, he was cramming his gear into a marine green seabag, expecting to marry her before he shipped out to Saudi Arabia. Her gaze wavered. Self-preservation steadied it. Don't panic, she thought. He doesn't know about the past seven years.

  "Why are you here?" she finally asked, trembling and trying not to show it.

  He arched a brow, his dark gaze boring into hers. "Don't have anything else to say, Max? Like 'I see you survived'? 'Any bullet holes to show for nine months in the Iraqi desert?'"

  She cringed, his bitter tone reminding her that she didn't know what had happened to him after Desert Storm. Only that he'd never wanted to see her again.

  Not that she could blame him.

  Yet she refused to rise to his bait and acted as casual as she could with him staring at her so intensely. "Hello, Kyle," she said calmly, bracing her gloved hands on the top of the shovel handle and tipping her head. "You look good. Any bullet holes?" He shook his head. "Now … why are you here?"

  "Me and my chopper are on loan to the park service."

  Disappointment shaped her
face. "Helicopters. Surprise, surprise," Maxie muttered, then hefted the shovel, scooping and dumping, relieved that her voice was steadier than her hands. "I should have known you couldn't go far from chasing danger."

  Resentment burst through Kyle, that she didn't believe he'd changed—and more so that she appeared unaffected while his heart hadn't made it back to his chest, still sitting in the pit of his stomach. "You mean instead of manning a .50-caliber machine gun in an open chopper during low-flying reconnaissance?" His biting tone grabbed her attention, and she met his gaze. "No," he said, as if mulling over how to solve world peace. "I can't say it's the same." His features sharpened, his eyes penetrating. "Hauling tourists lacks some of that killer adrenaline rush you get under live enemy fire."

  His sarcasm wasn't hard to miss, yet she paled at the image anyway. "What?" She focused on hitting the wheelbarrow and not his feet. "Not dangerous enough?"

  "Forget about my chopper—" he unzipped his jacket and tipped his hat back "—what the hell are you doing here?" He gestured to the rows of stalls.

  She scoffed and kept shoveling. "You don't think I wade in this stuff because I like the fragrance, do you?"

  Kyle's lips thinned, his impatience gone. "Look, Max, just point me in the direction of the boss, and I'm outta here."

  "I am the boss."

  "What?"

  Maxie glanced up. His disturbed look was almost amusing. If she wasn't doing her level best not to unravel all over the place, she might have smiled. Instead she held on to her frayed nerves, deposited the scoopful in the wheelbarrow, then propped the shovel against the wall. She faced him, brushing her hair off her forehead with the back of her gloved hand and said, "I own this place, Kyle."

  Briefly he glanced around, scowling, but her mutinous expression dared him to contradict her.

  They stared.

  The wind skated along the barn, searching for a spot to enter and chill them to the bone. The dropping temperature outside didn't compare to the atmosphere inside.

  "So. You've been here?" His words dripped ice. "All this time?"

  "Not all this time," she answered frostily, bending to move the wheelbarrow farther into the corridor. "And it doesn't matter now, does it?" As she spoke, she pulled a pair of wire cutters from her back pocket and snipped open a hay bale lying outside the stall.

  With his free hand, he reached out to pat the horse, anything to keep from shaking some feeling into her. Maxie had never been so … emotionless. "Not that I can see," he said, shrugging.

  "Good." She grabbed a pitchfork, quickly spreading hay in the clean stall. "At least we understand each other."

  He hitched the duffel higher, shifting his weight to one leg. "Do we?"

  Her gaze shot to his, and she shook her head, a warning in her tone. "Don't even go there, Kyle." She told him like it was. Over. "If I'd wanted you in my life, I would have shown up at the church."

  He scowled, his gaze raking over her, making her feel as if she'd been scraped raw with a knife. She tried to look away, but couldn't and Maxie told herself it didn't do any good to notice how well the heavy cable-knit sweater clung to him, how well the rich green shade showed off his eyes and dark hair. It would be wiser to notice only one thing about him … the barely checked hostility in his eyes.

  "Still heartless, eh, Max?"

  She reared back. "Go to hell, Kyle."

  A single brow arched, a dark wing over his penetrating eyes. "You're the one prepared for the trip."

  She looked down at the pitchfork in her hand. Damn him. Damn him for coming into her life again, for making her see she couldn't escape her mistakes. She was mortally ashamed of how she'd treated him all those years ago, but Maxie had more at risk now than old feelings. She knew what her decision had cost her. And she'd paid for it in more ways than he could ever imagine. But it would be just like a man to want to hear the gory details of how badly she'd suffered, too. And she wasn't about to give him more fodder to feed on.

  She met his gaze. "We haven't seen each other in seven years, so don't assume you know me anymore, because you don't." She pulled off her gloves and jammed them in her hip pocket moving toward the horse.

  He rolled the duffel off his shoulder and dumped it on the dirt floor.

  Maxie's gaze lowered to his name stenciled on the canvas, and she froze as recognition dawned. It was the same seabag he'd had when she'd last seen him. Her gaze flew to his, and something flickered in his eyes just then. The cold air between them crackled. Her skin flushed. For a moment they were alone in his barracks room, groping at each other, their wild hunger making them impatient enough not to bother taking off all their clothes.

  Kyle's heart did a quick slam in his chest at the familiar heat in her green eyes, vivid enough to create an ache in his groin. Damn. He hated and wanted her all in one breath. It wasn't natural. What was, was his need to shake her, to demand why she'd abandoned him so brutally when he'd needed her the most.

  Maxie Parrish had been his biggest heartache and his greatest humiliation.

  But he was over her now. If he wasn't, he would have looked her up long before now and certainly before this contracted deal with his chopper put him in her life. Regardless, Kyle's gaze unwillingly lowered over the long slim body he remembered in his dreams. Her faded plaid shirt shaped her torso better than silk, loose shirttail over jeans worn nearly white and fitting her like skin. Her boots were scarred and caked with dirt. The Maxie he remembered was always dressed to kill and never without makeup. This woman had muddy knees and chipped nails.

  But she was the same woman who'd deserted him without explanation, he thought as she reached out to unsnap the horse's lead.

  He caught her wrist as she passed, and their gazes clashed. "You're wrong, Max. I know you better than any man."

  She tugged on his grip. "You're dreaming. Again."

  With a jerk, he pulled her against him, hemming her in between his body and the wall as his free hand slipped smoothly inside her down vest. The cold air rushed into her lungs at the contact, then staggered as his fingers found their way beneath her shirttails, touching her bare skin.

  Lord. It was as soft as he remembered, satiny, warm, making his body throb for her.

  "Kyle, don't." She wiggled her wrist but he held tight even as his mind screamed at him to quit torturing himself, that he wasn't prepared for any involvement with her, not again, not after the way she'd humiliated him. Yet without thought he spread his hand over the small of her back, driving his palm upward, caressing, feeling. She was naked beneath the faded shirt.

  "Oh, Maxie," he hissed softly, and her eyes softened, drifting closed, her body gravitating toward him and he remembered … remembered tasting her skin, lying naked with her, being buried deep inside her soft body. His groin thickened painfully, and he pressed her into it. His face neared, his lips a breath from hers. He drank in her startled gasp as his hand swept around to enfold her bare breast, his thumb heavily circling her tight nipple. A moan escaped him, unheeded, like a long-awaited burst of freedom. That this, the passion, the desire neither could fight or understand, hadn't changed, was a complication he hadn't expected. Suddenly it made him feel unreasonably weak. And he resented it.

  Feebly Maxie wrestled against him, but the liquid heat blossoming through her body with every tiny movement of his fingers was hard to ignore. She'd hoped if this moment ever came, that her feelings would be faint like an old watercolor, yet they were more like a cattle stampede, coming from all directions with a force that defied nature. Her knees softened, and all at once she was hot and hungry, vulnerable for the caress of a man. This man. No one made her feel like she did when Kyle Hayden touched her. The passing years had done nothing to extinguish it; in fact the ache in her was blistering, just waiting to be uncapped. She gripped his jacket lapel to keep from sinking into the floor and waited for more.

  "Some things you just can't forget, eh, baby?"

  His mocking tone startled her, awakened her, and she knew in an instant he
was throwing their past in her face. She focused on his eyes and found shaded indifference, a callous man without sympathy for how the past seven years had treated her.

  She wrenched free and stepped back, furious with herself and him. "Yeah, but what we do about it is another," she snapped, embarrassed she was so spineless when he touched her. "That's all we had, Kyle." She leaned a bit closer, her voice low with hot anger. "A little wild sex. Nothing more." The lie rolled too easily off her lips. "At least I was smart enough to see that passion wasn't enough for a lifetime." She started past him.

  He caught her, swiftly pressing her up against the wall and covering her mouth with his. He kissed her and kissed her, his tongue plunging between her lips, his hands diving beneath her shirt and molding her bare breasts. His hat tumbled to the ground as she growled against his mouth, teetering on surrender.

  This is so good, she thought. He pushed his knee between her thighs, and she instinctively bore down on him, her fingers sinking into his hair and grabbing fistfuls, holding him as she paid him back touch for touch.

  Suddenly he jerked back, staring. His lungs worked violently.

  Her breath brushed his lips.

  He arched a brow. "Not enough, Max?" The malevolence in his dark eyes was enough to make her see the moment for what it was. A humiliation. A payback.

  She shifted past him, ignoring the feel of his eyes on her back as she headed out of the barn.

  Kyle remained motionless, grinding his teeth, his gaze on her as she negotiated her way around tack and hay bales. He resented the hell out of it since he couldn't even manage to move without snapping in half. And he was ashamed of himself for what he'd just done. But he'd never had much control around Maxie and knew the instant he'd seen her in the barn, he should have made an about-face and flown right out of there.

  He stared at the dirt floor, rubbing the back of his neck.

  That was one hell of a reunion, he thought. But ending their relationship years ago was her choice, not his. She'd made the decision for them, excluding him completely and running like a coward. She never gave him the courtesy of having his say in the matter. The humiliation and agony of that day flooded through him again, and he clenched his fist over and over, wishing he'd never laid eyes on her again. He didn't trust her. And the tightness crowding his jeans told him he shouldn't trust himself around her, either. Nor could he board here for the next two weeks. No way. Seeing Maxie for ten minutes was enough to make him consider subcontracting out this flight obligation. That's if he could have afforded it.