In My Dreams

by Muriel Jensen

  It was obvious that wasn’t the answer he’d expected.

  “Me,” he repeated.

  Her mood lightened. “Yes. I love Ben to pieces, too, but in a very different way. He was a sweet, sexy introduction to Beggar’s Bay. He’s warm and fun and it was so easy to like him.” Her mood dipped again. Her forehead wrinkled and her bottom lip trembled. “But I still won’t have children. Jack, what are we going to do?”

  A smile played at his lips. “We’ll figure it out. One thing at a time.”

  “That’s simplistic, head-in-the-sand thinking.”

  “No, it’s sane, logical, take-things-as-they-come thinking. We don’t have to decide today how we’re going to live without each other. We have to get groceries, get Ben well, get ready to catch my parents when they see Ben and freak out, then we can think about what to do about us.”

  “We do have to figure out what to tell your parents about you and me. And I have to tell Ben. When he’s home.”

  “Right. Stuff for tomorrow and the next day. Right now, let’s get groceries.” He leaned toward her and brought his mouth to hers with a confidence she found both thrilling and comforting.

  * * *

  MAYBE HE WAS RIGHT, Sarah thought, her brain mildly fuzzy under the influence of his lips. The kiss melted her resistance and erased her insecurities. He pulled back slightly, banked passion alight in his eyes.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “We’ll all be all right. Ben knows you love me.”

  “But your parents will hate us for hurting Ben.”

  “They won’t hate us,” he said. “Mom might get upset, but she always does when one of us has problems. We’ll explain and she’ll understand.”

  Sarah considered all the inexplicable, seemingly unsolvable feelings and situations surrounding her and remembered the peaceful life she’d led in her quiet apartment with her clients and a nice, undemanding man in her life. Then Jack had returned from Afghanistan, she’d had a proposal of marriage, a fire, an emotional Tilt-A-Whirl, and here she was, in hot water again.

  Jack jumped out of the truck and came around to offer her a hand.

  “Geez!” she complained, having to leap before her toe could touch ground. “This thing should come with rope and harness.”

  He caught her at the waist midjump, held her suspended for one long, delicious moment while she held his shoulders, then lowered her to her feet. The slow, easy slide down his body accelerated all the processes in hers. “It comes with me instead,” he said, and kissed her again.

  He caught her hand and pulled her with him toward the grocery-store entrance. She didn’t know how she kept up with him with no air in her lungs and her heart thundering in her chest.

  Somehow she managed to remember most of the list she’d started and now finished with Jack’s help. He did the running when she forgot a product in an area they’d already passed, reached for things too high for her.

  “Ben’s into comfort food,” Jack said when she asked him what he thought Ben would like. “When we were kids, Mom used to make the best meat loaf, lasagna, chili and giant salads with all kinds of greens in them. Pot roast with vegetables. Roasted chicken. Yum.”

  She stopped the cart in front of the meat counter, looking over the possibilities. “I could lighten the recipes, I think, so they’d be healthier and so Ben, who’ll probably be sedentary for a couple of days, won’t feel stuffed.”

  “Okay.” Jack sounded doubtful. She looked up into his worried grimace. “But no tofu, okay?”

  She laughed. The tough soldier was reduced to pleading by soybean curd. “I promise.” She bought chicken, lean hamburger, tilapia and shrimp. She looked up from organizing the contents of the cart to find Jack holding several bags of candy. “Halloween day after tomorrow,” he said. “We don’t usually get too many kids, but we should be prepared. What? Don’t give me that look. Do you want to have to face the consequences of tricks if we don’t have treats?”

  She took note of the bags he placed in the cart. “I suspect they’re all the kind of candy you prefer.”

  “That only makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s the application of experience to the iffy matter of sound purchasing.”

  “You make yourself sound so noble.”

  He grinned. “Hey, I’m a war hero. Didn’t I tell you?”

  On the way to the checkout, they passed a rack of flowers supplied by a nearby farm. “Oh.” Sarah was taken by a clutch of mums, half yellow, half burgundy. Jack pulled them out of the metal cone that displayed them.

  “My gift to you,” he said, placing them carefully in the cart. He put an arm around her and kissed her temple. “For being...”

  “What?” she asked, touched by the gesture.

  “Everything,” he said.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER they’d picked up the RAV4 and were home, unloading groceries. Sarah played back phone messages while carrying milk to the refrigerator. Helen’s voice told them she and Gary were in San Francisco and they’d be home the day after tomorrow.

  Jack set down an armload of canned goods and called his mother back.

  Sarah heard one-sided pleasantries as she climbed onto the step stool to move things around in the cupboard to make room for the new groceries.

  “I’m great,” he said, leaning back against the counter. “Making headway in the carriage house. In fact, I’ve been sleeping there to be able to work early and late without disturbing anybody.”

  Sarah turned to him to smile approvingly at his artfully phrased scenario. He playfully took a bow.

  “Yeah. Ben’s good. He’s...working today. They’d been down a couple of guys, so he’s been working extra shifts. No, he can do back-to-backs standing on his head.”

  There was more conversation and then Jack said, “Sure, she’s right here. Sarah? Mom wants to say hi.” He handed her the phone.

  Sarah greeted Helen warmly, asked after Gary, then suddenly experienced a pinch of guilt that took her completely by surprise. She was going to have to lie, and it didn’t sit well with her, even though she understood the importance of not upsetting Jack’s parents when they still had such a long drive ahead of them. And so there was a gap in the conversation while, unable to think of a thing to say, she waited for Helen to speak.

  Jack, putting apples and bananas in the fruit bowl, looked at her, eyebrows knitted in concern.

  Helen asked if Jack was telling her the truth about everything going well.

  “Yes, everything’s fine,” she fibbed. “I...I’m putting groceries away while we’re talking and...I hesitated because I almost lost my balance. I’m on the step stool.”

  “Be careful, Sarah. Jack can reach that top shelf without needing the stool.”

  “Yes, but he’s doing other things.”

  “He has a reach like Godzilla.”

  Sarah couldn’t help the giggle that erupted. “I know. And sometimes the personality to match if I make oatmeal for breakfast.”

  Helen laughed loudly. Jack’s concerned expression relaxed.

  “If you put it in a cookie,” Helen said, “those boys will eat anything. Well, I have to go. Give our love to Ben when he gets home, and thank you for taking good care of him and Jack.”

  “It’s been my pleasure.” She ignored Jack as he mouthed, “Ha, ha.” Curiously, it had been a good time, despite their personal conflicts. That was all going to change now, of course. The parents were coming home, and Ben had been shot. The rarified atmosphere of the house she’d shared with two of the world’s dearest men was over. Life was now serious. She had to figure out what she was doing. And even more critically, where she was going.

  She put the phone back on the dock and turned to find Jack right behind her.

  “Don’t look so worried.” He put his arms around her and p
ulled her close. Her arms looped around his waist as though they did that all the time. It was so easy to lean into his warm, solid chest and simply absorb his comfort. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll find a way to explain about us.”

  She loosened her grip on him to be able to look up into his face. “Can you explain it to me?”

  “Sure.” He pulled her close again and cleared his throat. “I’m attracted to you because you’re generally so sane, and though the Palmers have helped me acquire some sanity, my life had been without it until I was eight. And then there were all those years of war.” He sucked in a breath. “I have no idea why you’re attracted to me, unless it’s that I can give you a lot of what you want—love, home. Of course, you’ll have to figure out that you can’t have all that without children. I’m not sure where we go from there, but we’re two smart people. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Really.” She should move, take this conversation seriously, but it was wonderful to be in his arms as though for the moment, at least, everything would work out. “Then you have to stop trying to kill me in your sleep.”

  “Hey, every time I’ve shoved you away there was a mattress for you to fall on.”

  “Don’t tell that to your parents, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BEN WAS WATCHING one of television’s dumber reality shows when Jack walked into his hospital room after dinner. Carrying a carton of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream, Jack had to stop and stare at the screen to make sure he was seeing correctly.

  “Did you have a lobotomy when they fixed your arm?” Jack asked as he sat on the chair beside the bed and pulled the carton and a spoon from home out of the bag.

  “Funny.” Ben winced as he tried to boost himself against the pillows with one hand. Jack put the ice cream down and put his hands under Ben’s arms, careful with the wounded one, and pulled him up. He fluffed the pillows, then sat again and tore the top off the carton.

  “Thank you.” Ben looked exhausted, entirely lacking his customary invincibility. But at least his eyes lit up at the sight of the ice cream. “You even brought a spoon from home. Those plastic things never survive the desperation to get that first bite.” He propped the carton on his thigh, steadied it there with the hand on the injured arm, and spooned with his right. He took a bite and closed his eyes, making a deep sound of approval.

  He pointed the spoon at the television. “I’ve been too lazy to change it.”

  “You look a little worse for wear tonight. Lot of pain?”

  Ben indicated the tube of medication running into his arm and the very easy reach to the button so that he could dose himself. “No. This works pretty well. I’ve just been...thinking.”

  Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees. It wasn’t like Ben to analyze. It wasn’t that he was superficial; it was that he was sure of what he knew. Sometimes even what he didn’t know.

  “About what?” Jack asked.

  Ben took another bite of ice cream and gave him a look that told him he didn’t want to talk about it. “Just...stuff.”

  Okay. He was going to have to pull it out of him. “Sarah?” he asked. No point in dodging the issue. They were going to have to talk about it sooner or later. Ben’s being in bed unable to use one arm seemed like a good time.

  Ben met his gaze, clearly surprised and displeased that he’d brought her up. “No,” he finally said. “Me.”

  Ben lost control of the spoon and dropped it on the bedclothes. Jack picked it up, took it to the small sink, washed it off and brought it back.

  “And what is it about you, who made a good collar today despite the bad arm, that makes you look so gloomy?”

  “I... Jack, can we just let it go?”

  “Sure.” Jack sat back, pretty sure agitation wasn’t a good thing for someone in Ben’s condition, but worried about him and feeling guilty at the same time. “Mom and Dad should be back day after tomorrow.”

  Ben gave him a dark glance as he continued to eat. Then he sighed, stabbed the spoon into the carton of ice cream and handed it back. “I know what you feel for her is important.”

  Jack put the lid back on and placed the carton and the spoon back in the bag, just to give himself something to do. This was going to be a hard conversation. He considered the fact that Ben had opened it up a good thing. “It is important,” he said.

  “She’s a good person.”

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  Ben smiled to himself. “She’s not very big, talks quietly, gives an impression of softness. But then I remember her marching around the kitchen, checking on what we’re eating, ordering us around if we get messy. She’s like some crusty old sergeant.”

  Laughing, Jack nodded. “She is. So much for an impression of softness.” Then he remembered holding her in his arms, recalled her easy slide down his body when he’d lifted her out of the truck, and for an instant he was the one distracted. When he came back to the moment, Ben was watching him.

  “So you’re thinking about living without children because you love her that much?”

  “Maybe. She’s not going to budge.”

  “You can give up what you want to give her what she wants?”

  That took it down to its basic truth. “Again. Maybe.”

  Ben leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

  “Getting too tired to talk?” Jack almost wanted him to say yes so that they wouldn’t have to.

  Ben’s eyes remained closed. Jack was about to gather his jacket and the ice cream and leave when Ben said without preamble, “I thought I was going to die when the perp shot me and I was scared.”

  Jack sat again. At last. Something he knew a little about. A lot, actually. “Who wouldn’t be scared?” he asked.

  “For an instant,” Ben went on, “the pain was huge, like a fire all over me, and I couldn’t isolate it. It took a few seconds to realize it was just my arm. Then I saw him running away and remembered that I still had another arm and a weapon. I took him out first try.”

  “Good man. Where was Grady?”

  “We were so short of guys, we were operating solo.” Ben rolled his head on the pillow to look at him. “How did you manage to live every day of your deployments, feeling like that?”

  Jack had tried so hard to put that behind him that it took a minute to remember how it felt. “Well, you’re not terrified all the time. There are some quiet periods where you’re surrounded by your friends and you know how capable they are, so you feel safe. Then the crap hits the fan. Things are exploding, joes are going down, and it’s like the lowest level of hell. But you try to keep your head and fight back, or you die. Or somebody crouched next to you dies. A lot of it is instinct. Like when you remembered you had another good hand and a weapon and took your shooter down.”

  Ben rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I hated it.”

  “Everybody hates it. Unless you’re crazy.”

  “I’ve never felt like that before. I’ve wrestled a few perps to the ground and then swaggered around thinking I could handle myself. It was a serious takedown of my pride to know how different it is to take a bullet, and how scared I was.”

  “Fear is healthy. Keeps you sharp.”

  “It shook me to come face-to-face with myself like that.” Ben sighed and his voice went down an octave. “And to know that somebody wanted to kill me. How did you deal with that for six years?”

  Jack remembered trembling inside with that first sharp awareness that his life as a cavalry scout wasn’t about the heroic guy on the poster or the BS they told each other every day to pump themselves up. It was about blood and bone that didn’t react well to flying shrapnel and high-caliber bullets. It was about hating everything going on and trying to find that still-beating heart inside that would fight to do
the right thing. To fight without hating, and to find that nugget of fearlessness that had kept him alive as a child and let him wear it like a shield as a soldier.

  “Well, childhood was a lot like combat for me, so I was experienced.” It wasn’t funny, but he laughed. “My mother didn’t mean to neglect us or to let us wander into danger, but her need for drugs was too strong. Moments of sobriety were rare. Sometimes you have to forget how ugly it all is and remember that you’re going to somehow be better, do better. And you have to stay alive to do that. As a cop, you’re making a better environment for this community, and if you don’t stand up to the bad guy, if you don’t fear and face that fear and keep going, you won’t be here to do it.”

  Ben was silent, stretching a leg out and messing with the bed cover. Then he sighed again. “For a couple of hours this afternoon, I considered taking the post-office employment exam.” He smiled grimly.

  “Yeah, well, you’d still have to wear Kevlar. Try telling some woman her QVC order is late, or some old guy that his social security check is lost. And you won’t even get to carry a gun.”

  “I think you get pepper spray.”

  Jack snorted a laugh.

  There was another brief silence, then Ben said, “In those few seconds when I was feeling like I was on fire and too scared to move, everything came back to me. Our lives as kids, our fights with the Duffy brothers, all the things we feared and somehow survived.” He shifted his body laboriously to lean on his good elbow.

  “Careful.” Jack reached out to unkink the tubing in Ben’s arm and give it some slack.

  “I got to thinking that it’s no wonder your childhood is all tangled up in your nightmares about war. That’s kind of what happened to me. So, even though you’re a hero, you’ve got an unresolved fear somewhere. There’s something you haven’t dealt with.” He paused to just gaze at Jack, then said, “What is it?”

  It occurred to Jack that Ben was thinking pretty clearly for a man who was pumping pain medication straight into his bloodstream. “I’ve thought about it, too, but I don’t know what it is. I mean, I have all the fears everyone else has, but I’ve pretty much learned to kill them to keep going.”