Holding Her Hero

by Amy Lamont

  Mandy tried to recall the conversations she’d had with her grandmother in the past. The last few years had not been the easiest for her. Had she been so wrapped up in her own problems and grief that she’d missed her grandmother’s appeals for help? Mandy’s stomach twisted. Did Mitch have a reason to be so angry?

  * * *

  “Hey, man, wanna get a beer?”

  Mitch grabbed his gym bag from his locker before turning to answer Caleb Hunt, a buddy he’d known since boot camp. After leaving Mandy behind at Miss Abigail’s house, he’d felt a restless energy he couldn’t seem to get rid of. Testing the limits of his Mustang on the way home hadn’t done the trick. An hour running and lifting in the gym hadn’t done the trick. Maybe a few beers with Cal would help him stop feeling like he was ready to crawl out of his own skin.

  “Sounds good,” Mitch said.

  Ten minutes later the two were seated at Sharky’s, a bar not far from base, with frosty bottles of beer in front of them. Mitch took a deep swig, emptying almost half before dropping the bottle back to the bar with a solid thud.

  “Problem, dude?” Cal asked, eyebrow quirked.

  Mitch couldn’t help the small chuckle that escaped him. Many a commanding officer had tried to drum all traces of surfer “dude” from the long-limbed blond man rocking the bar stool next to his. No one had completely succeeded. But behind the laid-back persona Cal showed the world, there was a tough, hard-nosed Marine, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t name anyone else he’d trust to have his back to the extent he trusted this man. Cal was the closest thing to a brother Mitch could claim.

  “A member of Miss Abigail’s family finally showed up.” He’d already filled Cal in on the details about Miss Abigail and her family. Cal was well aware of Mitch’s feelings for the group.

  “Shit.” He leaned back on his stool and gave Mitch a once-over. “Doesn’t look like he put up too much of a fight. You knock him out with one hit?”

  “Her.”

  “What?”

  “Her,” Mitch repeated. “The family member is a her. Miss Abigail’s granddaughter.”

  “Huh.” Now it was Cal’s turn to take a long pull on his beer before plunking it against the dark wood grain of the bar. He leaned back into a slouch and a slow grin broke across his face.

  Mitch sat up straighter, bracing himself when he saw Cal’s eyebrow go up again.

  “She hot?”

  Mitch’s breath left him hard and fast like he’d been punched in the gut. He tried to pull another slug from his beer before realizing it was empty. He raised the bottle toward the bartender holding up two fingers.

  “She is, isn’t she?” Cal’s grin turned into an outright laugh.

  “You’re not right, man. She’s Miss Abigail’s granddaughter. The only thing I’m interested in doing with her is getting her to see how she’s been neglecting her grandmother.”

  “Yeah, you totally want her,” Cal said with a laughing snort. “That’s why you’ve been acting like you’re riding out an adrenaline high. You want her, and you left there all hot and bothered.”

  Mitch wanted to deny it, but he’d be lying. He’d been shocked at feeling an attraction for the woman. He’d been ready to jump on her the minute she’d walked in the door for the way she and the rest of her family treated her grandmother. By the time he left the house, he wasn’t so sure about the situation with her and Miss Abigail. At least he didn’t know if she deserved all his anger. But his urge to jump on her hadn’t left him. It had simply turned into something other than anger.

  “Whatever,” Mitch said. “It’s not like I can act on it. She’s Miss Abigail’s granddaughter.”

  “Yeah, you said that already.”

  Mitch was questioning his judgment in thinking beers with Cal would help clear his mind. The other man was taking too much pleasure in this mess. “I just mean Miss Abigail’s been good to me. No way would I repay her by going after her granddaughter. I don’t think she’d approve of me having a fling with Mandy. Not to mention Mandy doesn’t really seem like the one-night stand type.”

  Cal nodded. This was something they agreed on. Being a Marine was more than a job. It required long hours, long hauls when you were away from home, and often their lives depended on being able to keep complete focus on the task at hand. None of these things were conducive to long-term relationships. They’d seen too many of their buddies’ marriages and relationships fall apart.

  Knowing this, both of them tended to spend their time with women who were clear on the way things were from the very beginning. As for the way things were—short-term and no strings summed it up perfectly.

  Mitch thought back to meeting Mandy this afternoon. She definitely didn’t seem like the type to go for a quick fling. And judging by the knots she had him tied into already, he’d be willing to bet she came with plenty of strings attached.

  “So did you talk to her about getting her family to step up to the plate with Miss Abigail?” Cal asked.

  “Yeah, I told her what I thought of them letting things go for so long.” Mitch ripped the edge of the label from his beer. “The thing is…it seemed like she really believed Miss Abigail was fine.”

  Mitch replayed Mandy’s reaction. She’d seemed surprised and horrified at the condition of the house. She was defensive at first, but then…. He didn’t know what had been going through her head, but he’d seen something like guilt flash across her face as she sat digesting all he’d told her.

  “So you don’t think she’s mistreated Miss Abigail?”

  Mitch thought of those wide brown eyes, the delicate hand that covered her full lips as she considered his accusations. There was something there. Had she known her grandmother needed help and just ignored it? He was missing a piece of the puzzle that was Mandy Palmer.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So when will you be seeing Mandy again?” Cal’s voice turned into the mocking singsong of a childhood chant when he said Mandy’s name, and his lazy, teasing grin returned.

  “I told Miss Abigail I’d be back this weekend to finish working on her pipes.”

  “You sure it’s Miss Abigail’s pipes you want to work on?”

  Mitch barely restrained himself from smacking the surfer in the back of his head. He pulled out his wallet and dropped a couple of bills on the bar. Why had he thought this would be a good idea? The restless energy was still plaguing him, and now he’d given Cal fuel for his relentless teasing. Great.

  * * *

  Just wonderful. Mandy was knee deep in dirt when Mitch turned his black, hardtop Mustang into the driveway bright and early Saturday morning.

  She used a glove-covered hand to push back the strands of hair that had escaped her messy ponytail. As she pulled her hand down, her eyes stopped on the dirt covering the gardening glove. Wondering how much of it she’d managed to deposit on her cheek, she went back to work weeding her grandmother’s flowerbeds. She took vicious pleasure in yanking them out by the roots and tossing them to the growing pile on the edge of the garden.

  “Morning, ladies.” Mitch’s deep voice came from the other side of the yard. She’d set her grandmother up at a small garden table over there. Grandma Abigail had been thrilled when Mandy placed buckets, potting soil, and a trowel there for her. Grandma quickly donned her wide-brimmed straw hat and gardening gloves and set to work preparing the pots for planting.

  Knowing she’d be spending the morning gardening, Mandy hadn’t gone to a lot of trouble with her appearance. She’d looked bad enough when she started, so she could just imagine the wreck she was now.

  And I care about this why? Her eyes strayed up from her gardening to the man talking quietly with her grandmother. He’d taken the chair opposite Grandma Abigail at the small wrought iron table, its delicate lines looking almost like a toy next to his broad build. He was dressed similarly to the way he’d been the other day, trading in the white T-shirt for a black one, and pairing it with jeans and black boots. Her gaze trac
ed over the lines of some sort of tribal tattoo peeking from under the sleeve on one arm.

  Looking up, her breath hitched when their eyes met. Her cheeks heated with the knowledge he’d caught her checking him out from head to toe. Since the blush could be attributed to the heat of the morning and her hard work, and there was little she could do to fix her appearance—not that she wanted to, she assured herself—she decided to just brazen it out.

  “Hi, Mitch,” she called out as she headed over to the table. “What brings you here so early this morning?”

  He flashed that arrogant grin. He had a dimple. She’d missed it the other night, but there it sat right on his cheek, winking at her.

  “I promised Miss Abigail I’d work on the pipes today. I have a run later this afternoon, so I thought I’d get an early start.”

  “A run?”

  “Helicopter,” he said.

  Mandy gave a mental eye roll at the one-word explanation. It was like she never left home. What was it with military men and the one-word answers? “You have to make a helicopter run?”

  “Mitch is a helicopter pilot, dear,” Grandma Abigail said, breaking into the conversation. “And a darn good one, I’d have to guess, since he’d already made Captain when we first met.”

  Mandy could hear her grandmother speaking, but the words barely registered. At the words “helicopter pilot,” Mandy’s brain pulled up a snippet of news she’d heard a while back about a helicopter full of soldiers being shot down in Afghanistan.

  Mitch might be sitting there looking just like any civilian. Well, maybe not any civilian with those shoulders and his dark good looks. But a civilian, nonetheless. With just a few words, Grandma Abigail reminded Mandy that Mitch was a Marine. And a Marine with a dangerous job.

  The thought of the handsome smiling man sitting across from her grandmother flying a helicopter through some war zone brought a lump to her throat. Her hands trembled. She had to get away from him before she embarrassed herself.

  “Um, I’m going to go take a shower,” she managed to get out through her dry mouth. “Will that be a problem with the pipes, Mitch?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ll just visit with Miss Abigail for a while.” Again he flashed that grin. And that dimple. Mandy fled in the face of that dimple.

  * * *

  The steamy shower washed away the tears as they fell from Mandy’s eyes. She stabbed her fingers through her hair and slicked it back off her face. Holding her breath under the streaming water helped stave off the sobs that were threatening to wrack her body. It had been months since she’d given in to the grief. Months since she’d last shed a tear. She’d been so proud of herself, believing she’d somehow managed to put the worst behind her.

  A laughing sob escaped her. She’d thought she was so strong, but here she was reduced to tears at the mere thought of Mitch navigating a helicopter through enemy fire. And who was Mitch? Not a family member, not even a friend. Just one of her grandmother’s strays.

  Mandy took one more shuddering breath and pushed down the tears. She refused to worry about where Mitch’s stint as a military helicopter pilot might take him. She was here to take care of her grandmother and that is where she needed to focus her energies.

  She turned off the water with a hard twist of the knob. The house needed extensive repairs, and Mandy wouldn’t leave Kismet Beach until every last one of them was taken care of.

  As she dried her hair and pulled on comfortable faded jeans and a soft pink tunic top, her thoughts drifted once again to Mitch. She might want to avoid all things military, but she knew between the state of her grandmother’s home and the state of her grandmother’s finances, a horde of contractors wasn’t in the cards. Mitch might be her only hope at getting this house in order and getting back to her life in New York.

  Yeah, some life. She sighed as she pulled her damp hair back into a high ponytail and went in search of Mitch.

  Mandy’s quick exploration of the first floor told her Mitch was not in the house. A soft peal of feminine laughter carried through one of the cottage’s front windows, swirling in on the breeze that played with the sheer white curtain. Mandy peeked outside. Her grandmother sat at the wrought iron table with a tall glass of lemonade in front of her. Mitch was half hidden behind the open trunk of his car. He was obviously headed out, so Mandy darted outside to catch him.

  “Done with the pipes already?”

  “No, looks like I’ll have to make another trip. Miss Abigail needs a new elbow pipe under the sink. I’ll have to pick one up and come back another day.”

  “Oh, that seems like so much trouble for you,” Mandy said.

  Mitch’s mouth tightened fractionally. “No trouble at all. It’s the least I can do for Miss Abigail. She doesn’t need to worry about these things.”

  Mandy opened her mouth, his tone putting her immediately on the defensive. But she didn’t get a chance to speak, as Grandma Abigail broke into the conversation. “You’re such a good man.”

  Her grandmother walked over to give Mitch a kiss on his cheek. Mitch leaned down indulgently to accept her token of affection with a small grin.

  “I’m heading in. This heat is getting to be a bit much for me.” Grandma Abigail pulled at the loose tail of her floral blouse, as if trying to stir some cool air. “Mitch, I’ll see you soon.”

  “Count on it.”

  The words sounded like a response to her grandmother’s farewell, but his gaze drilled into Mandy.

  Mandy narrowed her eyes and turned to walk back into the house. She’d be damned if….

  She stopped in her tracks. Her gaze floated over the cottage. The gardens looked slightly better for her work this morning. The weeds were gone, and the flowerbeds were ready for planting. But paint still peeled from the house. The porch still sagged. She sighed deeply and forced herself to turn around.

  She caught Mitch just before he slid into the low-slung muscle car. He paused and lifted an eyebrow. Mandy huffed out a breath and took a few steps closer, happy to have the car door between them.

  “Look, maybe we’ve gotten off to a bad start.” Mandy shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I really do appreciate all the things you’ve done for my grandmother.”

  “Okay.” Mitch’s face remained impassive.

  Peeling paint, old pipes, sagging porch. Peeling paint, old pipes, sagging porch. Instead of counting to ten to push down the impulse to flounce back into the house without another word, Mandy made a mental list of the projects that needed to be done before going on. “The last few days I’ve had a chance to take a look around the house and talk to Grandma about some of the problems she’s had. I know you weren’t exaggerating.”

  “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done here.” His eyes narrowed on her, and he waved a hand impatiently. “I thought we’d established this the other night.”

  Boy, she felt like kicking him in the shins. But she gritted her teeth into some semblance of a smile. “It’s just a lot more than I realized.”

  Mitch raised an eyebrow.

  Mandy clenched her back teeth, plopped her hands on her hips and stared at the ground for a moment. Then she realized what she was doing, and almost laughed out loud. This was her mother’s pose. The stance was the one she took up when Mandy’s younger brothers had gotten into mischief. Mandy always thought of it as her mother’s “God give me patience” pose.

  Catching herself mirroring her mother eased something in Mandy. Her grandmother thought of Mitch as family. Maybe Mandy could do the same. Okay, maybe thinking of him like a brother was stretching things just a tiny bit. But she could certainly appreciate his need to protect her grandmother. Knowing that, would it be too much of a stretch to offer him an olive branch?

  Mandy felt the tension in her shoulders ease, and it didn’t take much of an effort to offer Mitch a smile. And it was a genuine smile this time. Her mind made up, she closed the distance until she stood with just a few feet of space between them.

  “I have
a proposition for you.”

  When Mitch’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline, Mandy wanted to sink into the ground. That didn’t come out exactly as she meant it. Damn it, let’s just get this over with.

  Mandy held out her hand. “Truce?”

  Mitch stared at the hand for a long moment without moving.

  Déjà vu, anyone? His reticence in shaking her hand reminded her strongly of their original meeting. Obviously, she was going to have to lay her cards on the table. She dropped her hand.

  “Look, we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.” When Mitch remained silent, she went on. “I’ll be here for a while until we get her house straightened out. I know you come out here often to check on Grandma and help with the house. I just thought it might be easier if we could forget how we met and, I don’t know…try to be friends?” She tilted her head and offered him the teasing grin she always used to twist her dad around her little finger and waited.

  Just as Mandy felt the grin begin to wobble and had to fight the urge to plunk her hands back on her hips, he moved. He dropped his arms and stood from his casual pose against his car. And held out his hand.

  “Truce,” Mitch agreed.

  His movement closed some of the short distance between them, and she felt the heat radiating from his body. Mandy’s gaze moved down to his outstretched hand, but could she help it if the trip meant taking in his broad shoulders and muscular chest? She bit down hard on her bottom lip. Brother, she reminded herself sternly, he’s like a brother.