Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  She stared across the street to the green. Beyond the grass, barely visible above the rise at the eastern edge, stood the unoccupied elementary school building. An empty flag pole loomed over it; Paul could hear the metal flag hooks clanking hollowly against the pole.

  "I shouldn’t have bothered you," she mumbled, bowing her head.

  "You aren’t bothering me, Bonnie." In fact, he was oddly gratified that she’d come looking for him. No matter what the problem was, if he could do something to make it better he’d welcome the opportunity. He had so much to atone for when it came to her. "Why can’t you go home?" he repeated.

  "The shrine," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment.

  "The shrine?"

  "The photographs on the mantel above the fireplace. I swear, if I get too close to them I’ll smash every last one of them."

  Paul remembered the sound of shattering glass that had punctuated his departure the last time he’d seen Bonnie. He hadn’t known what she’d broken, but he’d known that her rage that evening had been directed at him. Tonight, though, it wasn’t—at least not yet. Give him long enough and he’d probably infuriate her again.

  In spite of that likelihood, he couldn’t abandon her when she was so distraught. "Would you like something to eat?" he suggested. "We could grab a bite somewhere—"

  "No," she said vehemently. "Just thinking about food makes me nauseous."

  "Are you sick? You want me to take you to a doctor?"

  "No." She sighed, then shrugged free of his clasp. "I shouldn’t have come to you, Paul. You’re a good man and this is my own problem..."

  "Make it mine," he insisted, grabbing her arm again before she could escape him. One ghastly night long ago, he’d been forced to wait helplessly in the underbrush while his friends lay mortally wounded just beyond his reach, beyond his ability to save them. He wasn’t going to stand by this time and watch someone he cared for suffer alone.

  He urged her back to him. She peered up at him, obviously struggling to come up with the right words. "My husband..." Her eyes filled with tears and she shut them.

  Her lips were trembling, and he longed to still them with a kiss. He also longed to hear the rest of her sentence. He simply held her, keeping a lid on both his passion and his impatience.

  "...Didn’t love me," she concluded.

  Paul checked the impulse to laugh. He found it ludicrous that Saint Gary of Cambridge wouldn’t love a woman like Bonnie, who had worshipped him in life and in death, who had agreed with his politics and supported him in his vocation and borne his son, who was smart and beautiful and strong.

  He slid his finger under her chin and steered her gaze to him. "What the hell gave you that idea?" he asked.

  "He was having an affair."

  If the guy were alive, Paul would volunteer to slug him for Bonnie. But having an extramarital fling, while inexcusable, didn’t prove much one way or the other about whether Gary had loved his wife. "You just found this out?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "Oh, Bonnie..." He gathered her into his arms, frustrated by the inadequacy of the language. What could he say to prove to her that, whatever the fool may have done, her husband had surely loved her? What could Paul say to reassure her that the world hadn’t come to an end?

  She hid her face against his shoulder. Her tears burst loose and her body shook, and Paul realized that for Bonnie a world had ended: the world in which she’d seen her husband as a paragon, pure and noble and above reproach, divinely inspired and utterly principled. Paul’s cynicism notwithstanding, she had viewed her late husband as a saint. Learning that he was fallible must have demolished her.

  Paul tightened his arms around her. Her tears soaked through the cotton fabric of his shirt to dampen his skin. He stroked his fingers consolingly through her hair, but she kept sobbing. Even holding her, he felt helpless.

  A couple of men leaving Max’s stopped to gape at them, and Paul realized he ought to take her somewhere more private. She hardly seemed aware of him ushering her down the sidewalk to his truck. He helped her onto the passenger seat, brushed a golden strand of hair from her tear-stained cheek, and raced around the truck to the driver’s side. Lacking a better idea, he drove to his house, accompanied by the heart-rending sound of her muffled sobs. She made no acknowledgement of the truck stopping in his driveway; she didn’t question where they were. She only huddled within the arch of his arm as he led her up the walk and inside the cozy ranch house.

  He sat her on the living room sofa, then went to the kitchen to fetch a box of tissues and a couple of beers. When he returned to the living room he found her still hunched over, shaking with sobs.

  He sat gingerly beside her on the couch and handed her a tissue. She dabbed at her eyes and glanced around. When her gaze reached him, she released a soft, tortured moan. "I’m sorry," she said in a hoarse voice.

  "Don’t be." He took the soggy tissue from her and pressed a glass into her hand. Then he poured an inch of beer into it. "Have a drink."

  She took a cautious sip and lowered the glass. When she looked around her again, it was with curiosity. "Is this your home?"

  "Yes."

  "Thank you," she murmured. "I mean, for bringing me somewhere. I must have been making a spectacle of myself."

  Paul gave her a reassuring smile, but she was gazing toward the sunset-filled windows and didn’t notice. "Are you feeling better?" he asked.

  "No. Yes." She turned back to him and her eyes, despite their shimmering layer of tears, looked clear and resolute to him. "I don’t feel any better about Gary, but I feel better being with you. You’re such a good man, Paul."

  "You said that before," he remarked, bewildered. "I don’t know what you mean."

  "You’re honest. You don’t lie, even if lying might get you what you want. You’ve always been honest with me."

  Like any human being, Paul had done his share of lying over the years. In Vietnam he’d lied about what had happened the night his comrades died, in order to save his neck. He’d lied before then and since, for the usual reasons: to spare someone’s feelings, to stave off a fight, to simplify a situation.

  But he’d never lied to Bonnie. He simply couldn’t imagine lying to her.

  "Do you want to talk about Gary?" he asked.

  She helped herself to another tissue and dried her eyes. "I’m sure this is of no interest to you—"

  "It interests me that you’re upset, Bonnie. If you want to sound off, if you want to skewer the bastard—"

  "Don’t," she cut him off. He understood that, while she was clearly incensed about her late husband, she wouldn’t permit anyone else to speak ill of him—especially Paul. "He was a great leader, and he accomplished great things."

  "Right," Paul said wearily. Even after discovering the guy’s infidelity, Bonnie couldn’t keep herself from eulogizing him.

  She glanced at Paul, abashed. "I don’t belittle what he did with his life," she clarified. "I only wish he’d loved me. Obviously—" she struggled to overcome the quiver in her tone "—he didn’t."

  "That’s not obvious at all," Paul argued. "Lots of men love their wives and cheat on them."

  "Lots of men give lip service to love," she retorted. "If you really love someone you don’t cheat on them."

  Paul felt obliged to defend the guy, if only to inject a measure of objectivity to the conversation. "Some guys think of love and sex as two separate issues. Gary might have loved you but succumbed to temptation. It happens. It’s not nice, it’s not right, but it happens."

  "To some men, perhaps. But I always thought Gary was better than that. I thought he—I thought he loved me as much as I loved him." She seemed in danger of dissolving in tears again, but she fought valiantly to remain poised. "It wasn’t just a temptation he succumbed to, Paul—it was a relationship of long standing. It started before Shane was born. They were lovers for years, and he—he died on his way to her hotel room. He wasn’t killed by a fanatic. He was killed by
a drunk driver while he was on his way to her bedroom to make love with her."

  "Bonnie—"

  "Oh, God...I don’t know what to say to Shane. After I found out about Gary, I picked him up at his friend’s house and dropped him off with my parents and bolted. I think I said something about needing a few days alone to do some extra research for the book."

  "That was a good story," he commended her.

  "No, don’t you see?" she flared. "Now I’ve lied to my own son! I’ve been lying to him all his life, letting him think his father was a great man. I’ve been telling him he should follow in his father’s footsteps, embrace his father’s values—"

  "You’ve taught him your own values, Bonnie," Paul murmured. "I’d say he’s a lucky kid."

  "But someday...someday I’ll have to tell him the truth."

  "Maybe, maybe not." Paul sandwiched one of her icy hands between his and gave it a gentle squeeze. "When he’s old enough, you can tell him what he needs to know."

  "I always told him his father had died for his beliefs, for his convictions. I thought Gary’s death had some kind of meaning, because he’d stood for something. I guess that’s the thing about myths," she said bleakly, lowering her eyes to her lap. "They aren’t true."

  "How did you find this out?" Paul asked. "From the reporter writing the book?"

  She nodded. "He examined the police report of the accident. I had never looked too closely at it. I’d simply accepted what Tom and Marcie had told me. It never occurred to me that Marcie had been sleeping with my husband and Tom knew about it. `The wife is the last to know,’" she quoted bitterly. "What a cliche."

  "They didn’t tell you because they didn’t want to hurt you," Paul hazarded.

  "Oh, great," she snapped, then sighed again and shot Paul a fleeting look of contrition. "Instead, they let me live a lie for ten years. They let me make a fool of myself."

  "You haven’t made a fool of yourself," he assured her. "You’re the one with the beliefs and the convictions. You’re the one who stands for something. And that’s not foolish, Bonnie."

  "In all the years we were married," she said in a tremulous voice, "I never looked at another man. Even after Gary died, for years I didn’t... And I made a home for him, and helped him in his work, and...oh, God." Her voice trailed off and she sucked in an erratic breath. "He didn’t love me. I was in love with a lie, and he wasn’t in love at all."

  "Bonnie—"

  "If I’d satisfied him, if I’d tried harder...I don’t know..."

  Whatever Paul’s resentment of Gary might have been based on before, it was nothing compared to what he was feeling now. The man had done more than wreck his marriage—he’d destroyed Bonnie’s self-esteem. For that alone Paul despised him.

  He grabbed Bonnie and gave her a light shake. "Listen to me," he said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice free of indignation. "What Gary did wasn’t your fault. He was a jerk, that’s all."

  "And I wasn’t enough of a woman for him."

  "You’re plenty enough woman for any man who’s got half the sense he was born with."

  "Oh?" Her eyes blazed, firing sparks of gold and green light at him. "In my whole life," she raged, "I’ve cared deeply for two men—Gary and you. And you both ran from me. Explain it, Paul. Tell me what it is about me that scares men so much. Do I turn them off? Am I too skinny? Too prim? Do I smell funny? What?"

  Her accusation slammed into him with bruising force. He’d run from her in order to protect her, and she’d twisted it all around, viewing his action as proof that she was somehow unworthy of love. He couldn’t let her think that. No matter what the danger, he had to set her straight.

  Sliding his hands up to cup her cheeks, he pulled her to himself and kissed her.

  ***

  HIS MOUTH WAS firm on hers, brooking no resistance. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but move her lips with his, accepting, allowing the warmth of his kiss to seep down through her body until it permeated every nerve and fiber. She shouldn’t want this so much. It would only end. Paul would flee as Gary had, he’d find someone better, more desirable, more... something.

  But just for now, for this heavenly instant, she would pretend that Paul returned her feelings, that his kiss was a result of love and not pity. She would let the power of his embrace obliterate her awareness of the heartache she would suffer when he came to his senses and rejected her.

  Slowly, reluctantly he pulled back, letting his hands roam into her hair and his eyes meet hers. "You smell like daisies," he whispered.

  He looked sincere—but sincerity wasn’t what she’d hoped to find in his gaze. She’d been hoping for love, rapture, an acknowledgement that they could share more than a stilted acquaintanceship. Sincerity seemed too much like pity to her. "Don’t humor me," she pleaded, dismayed by the passionate huskiness in her voice.

  "Humor you?" He let out a sharp laugh. "Bonnie..." He combed his fingers through the long, silky tresses tumbling down her back and sighed. "Bonnie, I’m so afraid of hurting you—but I can’t sit by and do nothing while you hurt yourself. You’re an incredible woman. Your husband didn’t deserve you, and I’m not sure I do, either. But I’m not going to let you think you aren’t lovable." He brushed her forehead with a kiss. "It scares me, Bonnie. It scares me to think that what happened the last time could happen again if I let down my guard with you. But, for God’s sake, don’t take that to mean I don’t love you."

  He loved her. His eyes told her, his fingers twining possessively through her hair, the heat of his body hovering so close to hers. His kiss told her. He loved her.

  "If you love me," she murmured, her gaze locked with his, "don’t be scared."

  A trace of uncertainty flickered in his eyes. Then, his smile tentative but brave, he stood and lifted her into his arms. Without a word, without allowing his gaze to break from hers, he carried her to his bed.

  He laid her down gently and then sat beside her, stroking her hair back from her cheeks, studying her. She felt a faint trembling in his fingers as they grazed her temple. She wished there was some way she could reassure him, once and for all, that the only way he could hurt her was to lie to her—or to leave her. But that was something he would have to discover for himself.

  She gathered his hand in hers and pressed his palm to her lips. Groaning, he drew his hand away and replaced it with his mouth. Rising to lie beside her, he deepened the kiss, plunging deep with his tongue, pushing past whatever barriers fear had erected in the path of his love.

  Bonnie wrapped her arms around him, savoring the rugged strength of his torso. He wasn’t a myth or a martyr; he was a man, real and solid, his emotions exposed. She had just learned that when she’d made love with Gary she’d been making love with a deceitful stranger. But she knew Paul. She knew his scars, his apprehensions, his dreams and his nightmares. She knew who he was and she loved him for it.

  With a gasp, he lifted his head and peered down at her. He ran the calloused tips of his fingers over the satin skin of her throat and down, tracing the edge of her blouse to the top button. "Are you sure you trust me?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  He gave himself a moment to let her answer sink in. "I’ll try not to let you down," he promised.

  "That’s all I’ll ever ask of you."

  His lips curved in a smile, brief but resonant, and then he popped the top button open, and the next, and the next, parting the fabric of her blouse. He bowed and touched his lips to her sternum, then nibbled over the soft mound of her breast visible above the lacy cup of her bra. She reflexively arched her back but he resisted what she offered, lifting her from the mattress in order to remove her blouse and bra first. Only then did he obey her unspoken request, sliding his lips down to the peaked red bud and sucking it hungrily into his mouth.

  She moaned at the excruciating thrill of his kiss, the sublime friction of his tongue and then his teeth playing over her sensitive flesh. She cradled his head against her, then glided
her hands down to his neck and probed the warm skin beneath his collar.

  He lifted his head. His hands joined hers at the front of his shirt, yanking the buttons open. He shed the shirt with a swift, efficient shrug of his shoulders and flung it over the side of the bed. Bonnie touched the masculine mat of hair that spread across his chest, twirling her fingers through the dark curls and exploring the supple skin underneath.

  When she reached his stomach he inhaled shakily and inched back, wavering. "Don’t," he whispered, even though he didn’t attempt to remove her hands. She sketched light circles over his abdomen, working her way down to his belt. He emitted a low groan and edged back further. "Let me love you."

  "Yes," she breathed.

  He unfastened her skirt and eased it down over her hips and away, taking her underwear with it. His hands swept up along her slender calves and then her thighs, and she briefly recalled the blunt, careless way he’d pulled her legs around him the last time they’d been together like this.

  No. They’d been together but not like this, not awash in love and tenderness. Paul hadn’t touched her with such exquisite care that time. He hadn’t bowed to kiss the smooth ovals of her knees, the sleek skin of her inner thighs. He hadn’t run his fingertips with such tenderness over the tingling flesh of her belly and hips and then below, into the downy thatch of golden hair, already damp with desire as he slid one hand down between her legs.

  She cried out at his touch, transported with a pleasure that was marred only by the knowledge that he wasn’t totally naked, as well. She groped for his belt but he eluded her, sliding back to kneel between her ankles. He kissed her thighs again, first one and then the other, then rose higher and pressed his mouth to her.

  The world erupted around her, pounding through her in blissful shock waves. She cried out once more, dazed by the glorious sensation yet not satisfied, not quite. This was rapturous, it was wonderful—but it wasn’t enough.