Winter Soldier (Mills & Boon Vintage Superromance)

by Marisa Carroll

  He laid his head against the back of the seat. God, why now? Why had those particular memories, the ones he had refused to acknowledge for all that time, come to him today?

  He would never set foot in an operating theater again. The past had won. He had nothing left to give to his profession. He had nothing left to give to the woman he wanted to love. It was time for him to leave Slate Hollow.

  It was also time for Brian’s bus to arrive. Adam hadn’t the slightest idea what he was going to do next in his life, except he wasn’t going to leave Brian stranded in the rain. If he focused on small things, he could get through the rest of the day and the rest of the night. Tomorrow he’d have Brian drive him to Lexington. He’d fly back to Chicago, and... But that was tomorrow.

  Adam turned the key in the ignition and drove back down the mountain toward the town that he’d hoped held his future and possibly his salvation, both of which now seemed to be rushing away from him as fast as the waning day.

  MAN, IT HAD BEEN the bus ride from hell. Twenty-two hours since he’d left Chicago, a three-hour layover in Indianapolis and two in Cincinnati, then a dozen other shorter stops at towns along the way. He was definitely going back to school. He needed an education to earn a living so he would never have to be without a set of wheels again.

  Brian grinned to himself. It was going to take a while to make that vow come true. He didn’t have a cent to his name anymore. He’d turned the check over to his dad’s accountant before he left Chicago, and told him to figure out a way for Juliet to get as much of it as humanly possible.

  He’d worry about getting himself some kind of old truck after he got to Slate Hollow. Maybe Caleb would let him borrow Carlotta again until he could find one. Then, after Juliet’s baby was born, and his dad and Leah got married... Married. He shook his head and caught sight of his grinning reflection in the bus window. Well, he was going to have to get on the stick and decide what to do with his life. He wasn’t really sure he’d meant what he said to his dad on Sunday when they got into that stupid fight He hadn’t ever really admitted to himself before then that he wanted to be a doctor, but since he’d said the words out loud the idea had taken root.

  The bus rumbled to a halt at the truck-stop entrance. Brian pulled his carry-on from the overhead rack and headed for the doors. They sighed open, letting in a blast of wind and rain that almost took his breath away. Thunder rolled along the distant ridge, and lightning flashed behind the hilltops as Brian stepped off the bus into a puddle that stretched halfway across the parking lot.

  “Bad night to be out,” the bus driver said. Brian had been the only passenger for the last two stops, and he and the driver had talked a little to pass the time.

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “There’re flash-flood warnings out for this whole part of the state. Just hope I can get this rig into Lexington without having to go through high water. This bus don’t like to get her feet wet.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Same to you.” The driver touched his finger to his hat as Brian got off the bus, ducking his head against the rain coming down in a steady sheet. He sprinted under the wide overhang of the building, but it was raining so hard it provided little shelter. No one came outside to board, and after a few seconds the driver pulled away, heading back toward the highway.

  His dad wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He’d promised to be here and he wasn’t. Brian felt like a little kid again, the way he’d felt when his dad had missed his soccer game or hadn’t been able to call him when he said he would because some emergency surgery had come up. That was something else he’d have to think about if he really wanted to be a doctor. How hard would it be to juggle a practice and a family when he had one? And how would he do a better job of it than his dad had?

  He’d just decided he was being an idiot standing in the pouring rain having philosophical arguments with himself about his future when his dad’s Cherokee pulled into the parking lot and drew up in front of him.

  He yanked open the passenger door and jumped inside, heaving his carry-on into the rear seat. “Hi, Dad. Thanks for coming to get me.” There was nothing like standing bareheaded in a monsoon to get him past the awkwardness of seeing his dad for the first time since their argument.

  “Hi, Brian.”

  “Wow! Is this some rain or what?” he asked, slamming the door shut and brushing wet hair out of his eyes. “It’s like we should be building an ark or something.”

  “A really big one.”

  Brian turned his head and tried to figure out the look on his dad’s face. It was almost dark now and there wasn’t much light coming from the dashboard. “Is something wrong, Dad? Are you still mad at me? I said I was sorry for last Sunday, and I appreciate all your help in getting the money transferred to Juliet—”

  “I’m not mad, just tired.”

  “Okay.” Brian wasn’t convinced, but he let the matter drop. “It’s good to be back. I can’t believe it, but I missed this one-horse burg. Can I bum a ride out to Aurelia’s place? I want to talk to Juliet tonight. Or how about if I give her a buzz?” He grabbed Adam’s cell phone and punched in the number.” The call didn’t register so he tried again. “Is something wrong with this thing? I can’t get through.”

  “We’ll drive back to the Hideaway, and then you can have the Cherokee to head up there by yourself.”

  “The Hideaway?”

  “I’ll take care of getting us our old rooms back while you’re visiting Juliet.”

  “I thought you’d be staying with Leah.” Brian felt his face grow hot. “But I understand if you don’t want me in the house.”

  “Leah’s been spending nights with Juliet and Aurelia. I think I told you that on the phone.”

  “I thought maybe she might be a little better...”

  “She isn’t better. She’s dying.” Brian had hoped never to hear that cold, hard tone in his dad’s voice again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  They rode in silence for a minute or two. “Why aren’t you coming with me tonight? And why are you getting us both a room at the Hideaway? What’s been going on since I went to Chicago?” He had the sinking feeling he wasn’t going to want to hear his dad’s answer.

  “I’m leaving town in the morning,” Adam said. “If you’ll drive me to Lexington to catch a plane, you can keep the Cherokee here with you in Slate Hollow.”

  “You’re leaving town?” Brian knew he sounded like a parrot repeating his dad’s words back to him.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it right now, Brian.”

  “Sure, Dad, whatever you say.” His dad had his hands wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel Brian could see his knuckles gleam white in the dash lights. What the hell had happened while he was gone? Maybe Juliet would have the answers. Yeah, Juliet would know. The sooner he got up the mountain the better.

  They turned toward the river and found the way blocked by a barricade with a big reflective sign that said HIGH WATER. The next street they tried was blocked, as well. Ahead of them were two or three big trucks painted in camouflage greens and browns. Men in uniform swarmed around them. “Hey, it’s the National Guard. Jeez, do you suppose the motel’s cut off? It’s as close to the river as anything in town.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Adam turned onto Main Street. Two more Kentucky National Guard trucks were pulled alongside the curb near the little park they walked through when they took the river path into town. Soldiers and townspeople were filling sandbags and piling them on top of the riverbank.

  Brian saw Margaret Owens and one or two other people he recognized watching the work. “Dad, pull over. There’s Mrs. Owens. She’ll tell us what’s going on.” He didn’t even wait for the Cherokee to come to a stop before he jumped out and ran over to her.

  “Brian.” Margaret gave his hand a squeeze. “Here, stand under my umbrella. So, you made it back safely. Goo
d.”

  “No, you keep it I’m already wet. What’s going on?” he asked as Adam came to stand beside him. The rain hadn’t let up at all. It was coming down so hard the drops hitting his head felt like little stones.

  “There’s a flash-flood warning. They think the river level will rise at least three feet in the next couple of hours. They sent the National Guard in to fill sandbags and try and keep it from flooding the low parts of town. The mayor’s just implemented the town disaster plan as a precaution. Caleb’s already at the hospital. I’m on my way to the school to help set up the Red Cross shelter.”

  “Where’s Leah?” Adam asked.

  “Why, with Aurelia and Juliet of course. I was hoping you’d come to tell me you’d brought them down off the mountain.”

  “I left Leah a couple of hours ago,” Adam said, “at the hospital.”

  “Then she’s up there alone with a pregnant child and a dying woman.” Margaret shielded her hand from the glare of the portable spotlights the soldiers were setting up to shine on the rushing black water of the river. “If the river’s this high, Cade Creek is surely over its banks.” Margaret’s tone was grim.

  “Leah’s not a fool. She’d get Naomi Dunn to help her bring Aurelia and Juliet down off the mountain if she thought they were at risk.”

  Brian stared at his dad. Adam’s voice was a deep, low growl he’d never heard before.

  Margaret shook her head. “Naomi’s here in town, at the hospital. She’s a volunteer. I saw her with my own eyes just a few minutes ago. Do you have a car phone? Please, call and see if they’re all right.”

  “We tried. There’s no answer,” Adam said over his shoulder. He was already halfway back to the Cherokee, and Brian had to hustle to catch up. “If you get to a phone, keep trying from this end, will you? Tell her we’re on our way.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I STILL CAN’T GET THROUGH.” Brian slammed the phone back into its case.

  “Hang on, son. We’ll be there in another five minutes.”

  Adam slowed the Cherokee to make the turn onto Aurelia’s road. It was completely dark now. The headlights barely penetrated the silvery curtain of rain. Maple trees writhed in the wind, and pines bowed low with the weight of water on their branches.

  Naomi Dunn’s place was deserted, no lights showing in the windows as they drove past. It was impossible to tell which of the puddles they splashed through were only reflective sheets of water, or which hid a drop of six inches or more where a washout had occurred. Adam shifted into four-wheel drive, but still the going was rough. He slowed down even more. He couldn’t chance sliding off the side of the road into a ditch or running headlong into a fallen tree.

  “Man, I can’t see a foot in front of the hood,” Brian fumed. “How the hell did Leah even get up here? Her Jeep’s nowhere near as big or heavy as this baby.”

  “It was daylight and not raining quite as hard,” Adam said.

  “What did you fight about, Dad? Why weren’t you with her?”

  “I haven’t got time for this.”

  “Make time, Dad,” his son said in a voice Adam had never heard from him before—a man’s voice, not a boy’s. “It wasn’t just some kind of lovers’ quarrel, was it?”

  “No.”

  “It was something bigger, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The post-traumatic stress thing.”

  “What makes you think that?” Adam kept his eyes on the road, but inside he had started to throw up the battered remains of his internal barriers.

  “You—what’s wrong with you. I’ve been trying to figure it out all winter. Then when I went to your accountant’s office the other day to get the money transferred to Juliet’s name, he asked me if I knew why you quit coming to the ’Nam vets’ meetings. Said he hoped you’d found your peace. That’s how you met him, wasn’t it? At some meeting for war vets?”

  “Yes, a long time ago.” The first time he’d tried to find his way out of the past. It hadn’t worked, and after a few months he’d stopped going.

  “I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, then I figured it out. Lots of guys who were in ’Nam had post-traumatic stress disorder. I looked up the symptoms on the Net. You’ve got some of them. But you told me once you were only there for a couple of months at the end of the war. You said you weren’t in combat. That you never had to live in a foxhole or crawl through the jungle on your belly.”

  “No, I never did.” They bounced through another big puddle, and the wheels threw sheets of water up and over the roof.

  “But there were other things that happened then, weren’t there?”

  “Yes, there were,” Adam said quietly.

  Brian stared out into the rainy darkness. His next words were hesitant but resolute. “I had plenty of time on my hands this week. I called B.J. and he told me some things.”

  “B.J. talks too much sometimes.”

  “He’s your friend, Dad. He’s worried about you. After I called B.J., I got busy and did a lot of reading about Vietnam—all that stuff with the refugees and the pullout. Stuff that started to make sense to me when I put two and two together. Like when I smashed into the mailbox and made a mess of my face—”

  “Brian, don’t.”

  “B.J. said the two of you were stationed at Than Son Nhut.”

  “Yes.” The Cherokee nosed into a washout with a drop that jarred his teeth. Brian braced both arms on the dash, but he kept right on talking as they bounced back onto level road.

  “You were there when all those refugees were trying to get out, weren’t you? I went to the library and watched some of the videos. Jeez, it was awful. Women and little kids getting trampled and beaten by a bunch of thugs who were out to save themselves. People shoving their babies onto airplanes when they didn’t even know where they were going or if they’d ever see them again. There was one plane loaded with little kids that crashed.”

  Adam didn’t answer. He just kept driving.

  “You were there when that happened, weren’t you?”

  Brian was reaching out to him, trying to understand what it was that had kept him so distant. He had missed the opportunity to unburden his soul to Leah, but it wasn’t too late to do it with his son.

  “I was there, Brian. It—”

  “Dad! Stop the car! Look out!”

  Adam had already brought the Cherokee to a halt before the words were out of Brian’s mouth. A couple of yards ahead of them the road ended in a froth of fast-moving water.

  “Shit. Where’s the bridge?” Brian asked.

  “Straight ahead of us...somewhere.” Adam could see the road rising steeply on the other side of the swollen creek, and beyond, the lights of Aurelia’s house.

  Brian turned his head. “How much water can this crate handle before she starts to float?”

  “I don’t know, but I have the feeling we’re going to find out.” Adam opened the door and stepped down into water deep enough to cover his shoes. Brian did the same, swearing as the cold water soaked his Nikes.

  “If we misjudge where the bridge is and run off the edge, we’re goners.” Brian shuffled forward a few steps. The water rose to his knees.

  “Exactly why you’re staying here and I’m taking the truck across.”

  Brian rounded on him. “Oh, no, you don’t. We’re in this together.”

  “Son, don’t argue with me.”

  “I’m not arguing—I’m just stating my position. I’m not standing out here in the pouring rain all night while you’re comfy cozy up at Aurelia’s with some of Juliet’s cold fried chicken to ward off starvation. I haven’t had dinner yet, and I’m not going to walk back to town and maybe get struck by lightning or brained by a falling tree branch. I’d sure as hell rather take my chances with you.”

  Brian was right. It was at least a mile back to the main road. He’d have to walk even farther, more than likely, before he could hitch a ride on a night like this. Thunder rumbled closer than before. Ligh
tning flickered off in the distance, adding emphasis to Brian’s argument.

  “Okay, we’ll stay together, but we’re going to need some help from Leah.” Adam leaned inside the Cherokee and pressed on the horn. A minute or two later the door of Aurelia’s cabin door opened, the lights of the house silhouetting a slicker-clad figure. A flashlight beam bobbed toward them as Leah picked her way down the muddy slope.

  Adam advanced until the water was at his knees. The current was strong, but not as strong as he’d feared. “Leah?”

  “Adam!” She stopped just shy of the white swirl of foam that marked the high point of the water on her side of the creek. “Thank God you came. I need your help. Juliet’s gone into labor and Aurelia’s very low.” Her voice almost broke on the last words, then steadied. “We’ve got to get both of them down off this mountain as quickly as possible.”

  “First we have to get to you.”

  “Don’t try it, Adam. There’s at least two feet of water over the bridge. Maybe more. Just turn around and go back to town for help. The phone line’s down and my cellular won’t work up here.”

  “We know. And we’re not going back to town for help. It’ll take too long. We’re going to try and make the crossing.”

  “Adam, no!”

  “Stop arguing.” He almost smiled at the combative tone of her voice. He could feel Brian’s excitement and apprehension as he turned toward him. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready. But what if we go over the side?”

  “If you feel us lose traction jump for it. Understand?”

  “Got it.”

  “Leah,” Adam called, “back up and shine your flashlight right down the middle of the road. I’ll use it as a guide to stay on the bridge.”

  “It’s too dangerous!”

  Lord, she was a stubborn woman—and he loved her for it. He loved her and he was going to tell her so. If she would stand by him, with time he could conquer the darkness inside. With time, and with her love.