A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel)

by Marilyn Pappano

  The store was located a few blocks south of Main on First. Though the post exchange and the commissary sold pretty much the same stuff, it was easier sometimes to stop at the supercenter. The nearest parking space she could find was miles from the entrance, of course, and by the time she reached it, her pants and feet were soaked.

  So were the shopping carts. Bypassing them, she headed inside and straight to the lingerie department. They had a more varied selection than she’d expected, and she made her choices quickly, though she didn’t opt for plain white, as Abby deserved. With a pink bra and a pale yellow one dangling from hangers, plus a half dozen pairs of bikinis in stripes and polka dots, she went to the checkout and was standing in line when the clearing of a throat—a male throat—caught her attention.

  Keegan Logan stood next to her, his black T-shirt darker where it was wet from the rain, his hair darker, too. His khaki shorts were splattered, along with his calves—nice calves—and his shoes looked even wetter than her own.

  Who would have thought looking like a drowned rat could be a good thing?

  Heat went through her as she looked at him. Not much. Just enough to send up a little steam from all her wet parts. Wet clothes. Wet skin. Not parts. That sounded…wrong.

  “Sergeant Logan.”

  “Mrs. Matheson.”

  “Therese,” she corrected him.

  He nodded. “Keegan.”

  His gaze shifted to the garments in her hands, and the heat intensified. “My stepdaughter spent spring break in California with her mother, who bought her a lot of, uh, inappropriate clothing, then encouraged her to leave everything she’d taken with her there.” TMI, she could hear Abby saying rudely. Too much information. Besides, anyone with the vaguest sense of proportion could tell the delicate bras wouldn’t fit her.

  Her cheeks burning, she laid everything on the conveyor. “I didn’t realize you were staying in Tallgrass awhile.”

  “Such beautiful weather, how could I leave?” His expression was desert-dry, then, after she’d gazed toward the gloomy scene outside the big glass doors, a slow smile curved his mouth.

  And what a smile it was. Charming, sweet, a little wicked. She loved a man with a wicked smile.

  As her purchases inched toward the checker, he reached past her for a small plastic divider bar. She caught a whiff of cologne and did her best not to breathe more deeply. It was a wonderful smell, musky and spicy and warm, and she hadn’t been close enough to a man to really smell his cologne in a long, long time.

  As he withdrew, she allowed herself another quick breath, then watched as he laid his items on the belt: a twelve-pack of bottled water, a box of protein bars, coffee, energy drinks, and an assortment of fresh fruit. No chocolate, no cookies, and no bagged popcorn—all things she bought on a regular basis.

  Which explained why she was soft and rounded and he wasn’t.

  Civilians automatically thought of everyone in the military as strong and fit. She had enough years as an Army wife to know that wasn’t the case. Not everyone in uniform had physically demanding jobs; not everyone PT’ed—short for physical training—regularly; not everyone could resist the better foods in life.

  There was no doubt that Keegan fit the popular image. She didn’t need to touch him to know that he was rock-solid…though her fingertips tingled at the idea of feeling it for themselves.

  What was up with her? She hadn’t noticed such things about any man other than Paul in years, about any man at all in nearly ten years. It must be Carly’s talk yesterday about opening herself to the possibility of getting involved with a man again. Nothing more.

  Convinced of that, she breathed and glanced his way as the checker started ringing up her stuff. For about the millionth time, things fluttered inside, but unlike the usual first sign of panic, this was a pleasant fluttering. It made her smile, though that fluttered, too. “Are you just waiting for the weather to clear, or have you decided to spend a few days?”

  “Damned if I know.” The words sounded cranky, but his easy shrug immediately dispelled that notion. “I’m on leave. I’m just taking things as they come.”

  “Must be nice.” At his look, she offered her own shrug. “When you’re a single parent, you don’t get many chances to just do what you want. Kids take planning.”

  “Do you have family around to help out?”

  The checker read out the total, and Therese swiped her debit card, then picked up her bags, shifting far enough that he could move up to the small shelf next to the screen. “No. My family’s in Montana, and Paul’s parents live in Illinois. The kids’ mother is in the Los Angeles area, and her parents alternate between Chicago and Miami.”

  “Tough,” he murmured. “But it’s got to be tough anyway, raising kids who aren’t yours.”

  This was the point where a good stepmother would say, Oh, but I love them like my own. Wishing she could say it and mean it, she smiled faintly instead. “You do what you have to do.” Fingers tightening on the plastic grip of her umbrella, she summoned a smile. “I should be go—”

  “You want to get a cup of coffee?”

  She blinked. The best-looking man she’d seen in a long time was asking her to have coffee with him. Not a big deal. Certainly not a date or anything like that, but still…Coffee. Wow.

  But because she had a ton of things to do—get home, change into dry clothing, see about dinner, face off with Abby over the underwear—and no matter what Carly said, this wasn’t a good time for interest in the opposite sex, she opened her mouth to refuse.

  Her words surprised her. “Sure, I’d like that. You want to go to McDonald’s or someplace in town?”

  His gaze traveled past her to the McDonald’s just inside the entrance, and a skeptical look crossed his face. “Doesn’t Tallgrass have a Starbucks or something?”

  “We do, out by the main gate on the east side of town, but there’s a Java Dave’s just down the street.”

  The checker called out his total, and he swiped his own card. Even if she wasn’t looking, Therese would have felt the instant his gaze left her. It was a heady thing, being the focus of a handsome man’s attention. There was something electric and flattering and hopeful about it.

  Something sweet. Bitterly so.

  “Sounds good. I’ll meet you there.”

  A lump formed in Therese’s throat, making her sound hoarse. “Turn right out of the parking lot, two blocks, on the right.” Before she could think better of her decision, she clenched both bags and umbrella tighter and walked to the exit with long strides. Just before passing through the automatic door, she glanced over her shoulder. He was talking to the clerk as he picked up his bags from the revolving rack. Charming her, too.

  But he’d asked Therese to have coffee with him. Wow.

  Chapter 5

  Therese’s response to his comment about raising her stepkids hadn’t been encouraging, but at least Keegan had learned that Paul Matheson’s parents were still alive. Mariah had grandparents in Illinois. Were they active in their grandchildren’s lives? Would they be interested in taking custody of the granddaughter they didn’t yet know existed?

  He didn’t have a clue, but talking to Therese over coffee might give him one. That was why he’d suggested it. No other reason.

  By the time he left the store, there was no sign of her or her giant umbrella. He jogged across the parking lot, though there wasn’t much left on him to keep dry, and deposited the bags in the backseat before escaping the rain himself.

  It took maybe three minutes to navigate out of the parking lot, down the street, and into a space near the coffee shop. It occupied a storefront on the ground floor of a building dating to 1926; the year was spelled out in bricks on the second-floor level. The air inside smelled warm, rich, sweet…kind of like the woman waiting at the counter. She greeted him with a polite smile that made him faintly uneasy—not the smile itself. His reaction to it. Like a pretty woman had never smiled at him before, when that was so not true. Women liked him
. Pretty women liked him a lot.

  As he joined Therese, she turned that same smile on the teenage kid behind the counter who offered her some kind of fussy drink in a clear cup, with lots of froth and whipped cream. Keegan glanced at it before ordering. “The strongest roast you’ve got.”

  “I’ll get a table,” Therese said, scooping up napkins along with her drink.

  He watched her weave between the tables to a cozy table for two next to the plate glass window and continued to watch until the kid cleared his throat. “That’ll be two and a quarter.”

  Keegan slid his card through the reader, took his foam cup, and murmured thanks before following Therese. He slid into the chair across from her, glanced out the window at the rain, sipped the steaming coffee, and nearly burned his tongue. Though she didn’t say anything, her faint smile showed she’d noticed.

  “So…you’re from Montana.” Really smooth, Logan. What are you—fifteen?

  “I grew up on a ranch outside Helena.”

  “Beautiful country.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Not even close.”

  Her brows raised, then she smiled for real. It made her look a few years younger and a lot of burdens lighter. “You’re right, though. It is breathtaking.”

  “But you decided not to go back there when…” He shifted his gaze to his coffee. He had no tact for talking to a widow. He couldn’t remember ever even meeting one, other than his fourth-grade teacher, when he’d been too young to really grasp the concept, and a few aunts whose husbands had earned gray hair and retirements before their deaths. He’d known plenty of guys who’d died—a hell of a fact, considering he was only thirty-one—but he hadn’t known their wives.

  “When Paul died.” Her voice was steady; so was her gaze. “It’s okay to say it.” She sipped her coffee, then set it down again. “No, I didn’t think about it. It would have been nice to be close to my parents and my brother, but I’d been living out of state for several years before I met Paul. Jacob and Abby had already been through so much, what with moving here, their father’s deployment, then his death. I thought it was best at the time not to move them again.

  “And it gets damn cold up there. I’m not a snow-and-ice girl. There’s nothing quite like chopping holes in six-inch-thick ice so the cattle can drink. Or digging a path from the house to the barn, taking care of the animals, then digging out the path again to get back.” She sighed. “Sun, sand, a gentle breeze…”

  “Doesn’t it get cold in Oklahoma?”

  “Yeah, sub-zero from time to time. But it’s not as if winter moves in to stay. We may go from ten below to ninety degrees within a couple of days. We do get snow and ice, but usually nothing major.” She popped the plastic top off her cup and used the straw to scoop out piles of whipped cream. “Your accent says you’re from the South. Not Georgia, I’d guess. I was teaching in Augusta when I met Paul.”

  “Louisiana. Natchitoches.”

  “How long have you been in the Army?”

  “Six years.”

  “There’s a big risk in joining the military when the country’s at war.”

  If the comment had come from anyone other than another service member—or the widow of one—his response would have been short. No shit.

  “I was already doing medical stuff and occasionally getting shot at.” At her raised brow, he shrugged. “I was a firefighter and paramedic. We did a couple runs where the guys who set the fires weren’t too happy to see us putting them out.” One was hoping a little arson would save him from bankruptcy, while the other was counting on the charring of his wife’s body to disguise the fact that he’d beaten her to death.

  She shifted in the chair, and it made the little squeaky noise he associated with rocking chairs, ancient wood floors, and home. “Why the Army? You were already being a hero.”

  Keegan hoped his snort wasn’t too obnoxious. “I was doing a job. I liked the medical aspect of it better than the running-into-a-burning-building part, and…A guy I went through the fire-training center and worked at the same station with was a reservist who got activated and sent to Kandahar Province. He didn’t come back.”

  Therese’s features softened. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I figured…when someone falls, you’ve got to have someone else to take his place, so…I enlisted. It’s been an experience.” Mostly good, but parts of it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  “Thank you.” Simple words, spoken with complete sincerity. They raised a heat on the back of his neck that crept up and around toward his jaw.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He got thank-yous from total strangers—in airports, on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and Veteran’s Day. Elderly men, veterans themselves, didn’t need a special day to shake his hand and express their gratitude. It always made him stand a little taller, feel a little prouder, but at the same time, a little self-conscious. He always remembered that there were thousands of people, like his friend Todd or Therese’s husband, Paul, who didn’t get to hear those thanks.

  All gave some. Some gave all.

  He’d given some—six years—and made some good friends and acquired some bad memories, but he was alive. He was here. Thank God.

  “How long were you and the major married?” he asked, the need to change the subject burning hot on his throat.

  “Five years.”

  Carefully he parroted her words back to her. “There’s a big risk in marrying someone in the military when the country’s at war.”

  “Oh, but when you’re young and in love, you don’t think about things like war, death, separation, ex-spouses, stepchildren. You’re so starry-eyed you only see the good possibilities.” Therese finished her coffee, crumpled her napkin, and stuffed it into the cup, then pushed it aside. “I love to indulge in that stuff, but once it’s gone, I can’t stand the smell of it.”

  He took the cup and tossed it into the trash can a few feet behind him, then waited to see if she would go on. After a moment staring out at the rain, she sighed. “My friends and I were all crazy mad for our husbands when we married them. We knew there was a war going on; we understood that they’d leave us to deploy; in our heads we knew there was a chance they wouldn’t come back, or they’d come back drastically changed. But we loved them, and we were proud of them, and we were willing to take that risk to be with them while we could. Even if it was far too short.”

  Sabrina hadn’t loved Keegan like that. She’d had so little love and commitment in her life that he didn’t think she was capable of it. She’d wanted to marry him, but it had more to do with the fact that he was Army—the whole man-in-uniform thing, the benefits she would receive as a dependent wife, the access to a mostly male population—than it did with honest feelings about him.

  “What about your friends?” he asked, rubbing his hand over the knot in his gut. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was a little jealous that Matheson had had a wife like Therese and captured Sabrina’s attention, too, but Keegan didn’t do jealousy. It was more likely too much strong coffee with too little food in his stomach. “Have they gotten their husbands back?”

  Her smile was faint and sad. “No. That’s how we became friends. We call ourselves the Tuesday Night Margarita Club and meet every week at Three Amigos for dinner and drinks. If you stay in town long enough, you’ll probably hear someone else refer to us as the Fort Murphy Widows’ Club.”

  Widows’ club. Just the sound of it made the muscles in his jaw clench, which was really a stupid response. Didn’t all clubs and groups form because of common interests or situations? And it was a sad fact that some of those interests or situations were brought about by tragedy. Parents of murdered children. Families torn apart by drunk drivers. Victims of violent crime.

  Why shouldn’t women who’d lost their husbands to war have a social group of their own? God knew, they needed the support, and who better to understand than someone who’d been through it herself?
r />   “How many?”

  She shifted again, the chair creaking again. Like Granny’s rocker, the wood worn silvery gray from decades on the front porch, its squeaks punctuating every conversation she’d ever had, every bedtime story she’d ever told, every gospel hymn she’d ever sung.

  “There are about twenty of us here in town. Seven of us never miss a Tuesday night or any of our adventures. The rest come and go as their schedules allow, or as their needs require.”

  Twenty dead soldiers. Twenty grieving widows, and at least two grieving children. War is hell, General Sherman had said.

  Damn straight.

  * * *

  With a reluctant sigh, Therese checked the watch on her left wrist. It was after five o’clock, making her an hour late in getting home. She’d told Jacob before he caught his bus this morning that she had an errand to run and had left a note on the refrigerator door to remind them. Still, it was time to go home.

  The rain hadn’t let up, falling steadily enough that it had finally overwhelmed the drains along the curbs and crept up over the sidewalk in places. The street outside was a blur of headlights and early dusk, and the people leaving work wore slickers or trench coats or huddled beneath mostly drab umbrellas.

  “I should go,” she said. Should. Didn’t want to. It had been so long since she’d sat in a quiet place and enjoyed coffee and conversation with a man, unless she counted her last visit home and her father. Though she loved her dad dearly, Keegan was a whole different kind of man.

  A handsome, charming, appealing man who could remind her she was a woman with nothing more than a look.

  She didn’t make a move to rise, and neither did he. She did pull her keys from her purse and noticed that he’d parked one space down from her. They could share her umbrella on the way out. Funny that the thought caused the sweet, unfamiliar, not-a-panic-attack fluttering. Hadn’t she just shared the umbrella with Carly a short while ago?