Warrior's Second Chance

by Nancy Gideon

He’d told himself that at every mile marker, too. But it was Barbara who drew him like a beacon. The memory of her was a light so bright it burned into the brain. Yet, he couldn’t look away, despite the pain. Remembering her throbbed with toothache intensity clear to his soul, an insistence that may have dulled but never quite went away. It was all he could do not to moan that anguish aloud. Instead, it wailed through his spirit, a mournful banshee of regret and loss. Chased with a sharp edge of anticipation.

  Finally, he had his excuse. His reason for seeking out that one wonderful spark from his past that had kept him alive. And he couldn’t pass it up.

  A smart man would have left well enough alone. He would have crumpled up the unwelcome news and used it to flame the evening’s fire. But the spark had taken hold. And once it began to burn, it would not be contained or denied.

  He had to see her again. If for no other reason than to put the memories to rest.

  He knew time had preserved and sugarcoated his treasured recollections. He remembered the sweetness of those moments with a heart-piercing pleasure so pure, so right, he knew they couldn’t be real. The passing of years and the bitter roads he’d traveled only made them seem perfect. Still, he couldn’t let them go. Barbara had been the one good thing he looked back upon, the one slice of recall he didn’t doubt was real. He shouldn’t risk tarnishing that by opening those memories to the harshness that had transpired between that fragile then and this bleak now. He’d be snuffing out his one faint flicker of contentment.

  Maybe that’s why he was here. To grind out that relentless ember beneath his heel so he could move on.

  Move on to what?

  The only direction he’d ever wanted to take was the one Barbara D’Angelo was heading. She was his North Star and home was wherever she resided.

  Sheer foolishness, of course. But the poet’s soul that used to dwell inside him was as hard to crush as that poignant flame of hope.

  Last chance. Last chance to just walk away and head north, preserving his memories in vacuum-sealed museum quality and his emotions in their static state. The first he could continue to take out, to dust off and admire with a dreamy wistfulness, and the other he could simply continue to endure. But if he stayed and made Barbara D’Angelo’s business his own, all that would drastically alter.

  Go. Don’t be a fool. Nothing has changed.

  But then that poet’s heart and a fool’s footsteps carried him onto the plane and back into her life.

  She said something. He couldn’t hear the words over the sudden loud humming in his head that rivaled the drone of the turbine engines. The surroundings faded out into soft focus until only she existed in a sharp field of vision.

  She hadn’t changed at all.

  She was still slender, stylishly dressed in charcoal-gray slacks and a two-piece sweater of sparkly silver thread. Blond hair framed her face in a youthful cut that just brushed her shoulders. And that face…mind-stunningly beautiful. A face that launched a thousand dreams, though none of them came true.

  But of course, when she turned toward him, standing so close he could hear her sudden inhalation, he noticed the patina of age that settled over her with grace and protective care. Her eyes were a soft gray, malleable yet enduring like pewter. Her mouth was all sweet curves and wistful angles. High cheekbones and a delicate jaw lent her a classic loveliness, but all those attributes that made her gorgeous didn’t make her glow. That came from the inner beauty of Barbara D’Angelo. Her goodness shone through, transforming mere breathtaking to an ethereal perfection.

  Those gray eyes widened. Those tender lips parted in shock. She didn’t move. He didn’t think she even breathed.

  “Hello, Barbara.”

  It took her a moment to say his name. She looked so startled, he doubted she remembered her own. Then she said it in a quavery whisper and his heart rolled over.

  “Hello, Tag.”

  Her surprise bled away into a palette of emotions, all of them as bittersweet as the moment. Delight, guilt, relief, remembrance, and finally, pain. Each dawned with stunning intensity, like a spectacular new sunrise or sunset. He stood and simply marveled.

  How had he ever thought he could confront the past with a stoic demeanor? He was shaking inside like a schoolboy. She still had that effect on him. Reducing him, while at the same time making him want to be more.

  Get a grip, man.

  Thirty years had passed. This was not the same girl who’d sent him off to war with promises she couldn’t keep. This woman had been another man’s wife, the mother to his children. And he was suddenly, brutally, aware that he couldn’t reverse time, that he couldn’t return them to that golden slice of innocence where she would rush into his arms and return to him his happily-ever-after dream. That dream had died when Robert D’Angelo returned from leave wearing a grin and a wedding ring.

  He’d been a fool to come. What had he been thinking?

  His jaw tightened. Disillusionment lent a saving detachment to his outward appearance. Get tough, get through it and get out alive. His motto from Southeast Asia still served him in a crisis. He’d survived worse. He’d survive this moment with grace under fire and escape before his heart was a repeat casualty.

  “I didn’t think… I wasn’t sure… I mean, I didn’t know if you’d—” She broke off the uncharacteristic stammer to demand, “What are you doing here? Why did you come?”

  He read shades of meaning in her bewildered questions. After all these years. After abandoning our friendship. After no word for so long. Then her gaze toughened to, How dare you just show up now? Her confrontational glare helped him reinforce a wary stance.

  “I heard about Robert.”

  Anguish cut across her stare, crushing the momentary rebellion. Her right hand moved to cover her left, where she still wore a ring. She wet her lips, the gesture achingly vulnerable. Then the edge was back, a tight, honed look he’d never seen from her before.

  But then a lot had happened since the last time they were together.

  “That was over six months ago.” The accusation was unmistakable.

  “I’ve been kind of isolated.”

  “For the last thirty years?” Her gaze narrowed into an impressive demand for atonement. One he couldn’t make.

  One he shouldn’t have to make. One he sure as hell couldn’t tell her about. Even if he knew. His own gaze chilled.

  “You might say that.”

  His mild answer wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Her response crackled with raw feeling.

  “It was a nice funeral. You should have been there.”

  “I would have been there, had I known. For Robert. For you.” That last was said more softly than he’d intended.

  Anger and hurt built like thunderheads. Her glacial stare flashed lightning. Her voice rumbled thunder.

  “Thank you for the sentiment. I’ll let my family know that my husband’s best friend who fell off the face of the earth for thirty years sends his condolences. And in person, at that.”

  “Your friend, too, Barbara.”

  “My friend,” she mused as if trying to fit that concept together with the disparity of his absence.

  “I’m—”

  “Sorry?” Her voice notched up an octave. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Not about anything. You don’t have the right to be sorry.”

  “I was going to say I’m here now. Or would you rather I not be?” His cool tone had her reining in her anger.

  “Yes…no.” Clearly flustered, she stabbed her fingers back through her baby-fine hair and then fisted them. “I don’t know. It’s so…unexpected you being here. I don’t know what to think or feel.”

  “I didn’t mean to crowd you, Barb. Maybe I should go.”

  “No.”

  She took an involuntary step forward, her expression sharp with alarm.

  “Please take your seats,” the stewardess urged with a smiling forcefulness.

  Without another word, Barbara abandoned her aggressive stance to sl
ide into the window seat and fasten her seat belt. McGee settled beside her and did likewise. But what held them tighter, more constrictively, were the questions, the confusion over why they’d been brought back together.

  Chet Allen.

  Chet had arranged this meeting. Barbara fought back a surge of renewed despair. He’d brought Taggert McGee back into her life. Why? After so many years, why now? Why now, when she was just starting to get a new routine on track, would he derail it so abruptly with this ghost from her past? What kind of sadistic revenge was he manipulating her into, first by threatening her daughter and granddaughter and now by forcing her to deal with what she’d been trying to deny?

  The fact was that Tag McGee was her daughter’s father, and despite the pain, the betrayal, the emptiness of loss, she’d never loved another the way she had loved him. Perhaps Chet had no idea what he was stirring up with his cryptic invitations.

  Or perhaps he did.

  Chet’s motives would have to wait. For the moment, it took all her energy just to maintain a shred of composure.

  They began to taxi toward an unplanned destination, toward a purpose unknown to her. Much like this awkward and emotionally explosive meeting. She sat stiffly as the plane left the ground, staring out the window with a concentrated lack of focus as the plane parted the clouds in a climb toward cruising altitude. If only her thoughts would level out as easily.

  Taggert McGee. The unexpected blast from her past Chet alluded to sent her heart for a loop.

  She had imagined what she’d say to him if they ever met again. She’d imagined it a thousand times over the course of thirty years, even as the unlikelihood of that happening dimmed with the passage of time. She’d dreamed of the cathartic things she’d hurl at him, words of hurt and blame and retribution, demanding an accounting for his actions when no excuse, no reason could come close to justifying the agony he’d put her through. She’d planned the moment—what she’d wear, how she’d toss her head with indignant disdain, how she’d reduce him to shamed attrition. Her chance had come and gone with a whimper instead of a roar.

  And now she had to decide how to treat this return of the prodigal lover under less than ideal circumstances. The scripted meeting was unfolding without a hitch, but it wasn’t at her direction. This time, she had more at stake than bruised pride and shattered dreams. Lives were at stake, if a madman’s words could be believed. That was just the wake-up slap back to reality she needed to look at Taggert McGee and really see him as he was, instead of through the eyes of a needy teenager.

  He wasn’t that lean, wiry boy surrounded by shyness and a natural, easy grace. He wasn’t the all-star running back or the all-city catcher who dreamed of going to college on a sports scholarship. He wasn’t the boy with the engaging gentleness to his manner that belied his aggressive pursuits of sports, hunting and boxing. He wasn’t the same person who wooed her with his love of poetry and solitude rather than the acid rock and radical causes of the era. This wasn’t the Taggert McGee who, at eighteen, had stood with duffel bag in hand, his fair hair buzzed down to the scalp, his handsome features gaunt, his mild, deep-set blue eyes fierce with turmoil as the bus pulled in behind him. She hadn’t known then that that emotional image would have to last her for more than thirty years.

  He’d been eighteen, her first love, and he’d broken her heart like none before or after.

  This was no boy going off to war come to say his last farewells. This specter from the past, wearing loose cargo jeans and a battered brown leather bomber jacket over plaid flannel, had none of that lost look of innocence. He was all contained authority, intense confidence and unapologetic masculinity with his thinning hair and ice-blue, vise-grip gaze that told her nothing. He’d aged well, like Scotch whiskey, acquiring a mellow depth and complexity she found confusingly enticing. And beneath the controlled veneer, the casual attire, the nonthreatening receding hairline, he positively sparked with an electrifying sex appeal.

  Or was that just her hormones inappropriately indulging in one last riotous adrenaline-induced hurrah?

  What frustrated her, what made her testy, was his total imperviousness to his effect on her.

  “Can I get you something to drink?”

  She glanced up, surprised to see the beverage cart in the aisle. “Coffee, please.” With a chaser of that fine Scotch would be nice.

  She started to reach for her cup, then balked when Tag reached for it at the same time. She eased back to let him perform the perfunctory courtesy of passing the hot coffee over to her.

  Lord, he smelled delicious. Like cedar chips and spruce boughs. She forced herself not to inhale, to look straight ahead as she sipped the welcome heat that burned and calmed all at the same time.

  For heaven’s sake, she was no kid to be swept away by a sinewy smile and great bone structure. She’d been married to the same man for more than thirty years, had borne three children and was a grandmother.

  And even if she was feeling suddenly as randy as a debutante, she wouldn’t choose this man to indulge her late-life passions with. He was poison to her system, a danger to her emotional health. It took her thirty years to recover from the unsettling lurch in which he’d left her. She wouldn’t risk that loss of equilibrium again.

  And next to her, Tag was thinking much the same thing.

  Get a grip, McGee. She’s not that little pep-club president anymore. She’s a woman who’s known her share of love and loss, and she’s definitely written you off in the latter category.

  He’d sit back and enjoy the ride. He’d listen to Chet’s spiel, whatever it might be, thank him, but no thanks, wish Barbara well and be on his way by nightfall. He didn’t know what Chet was up to and didn’t want to find out. With the twisted way his friend’s mind worked, it could be anything from a simple reunion to a plunge into deadly intrigue. And he wanted no part of it. Not anymore. And not with Barbara at his side. He had the return ticket in his jacket. He could get as far as the bridge before exhaustion claimed him. He could disappear back into that safety zone of anonymity he’d made for himself. And maybe he’d sleep without dreams.

  There was nothing for him here. Like the old saying went, he couldn’t go home again.

  And he definitely couldn’t imagine going home to the palace where Barbara and Robert D’Angelo had lived.

  He took the envelope from Chet Allen out of his coat pocket and carefully unfolded it so he could remove the single clipping. It was a sparse teaser of a story concerning the suspected suicide of a popular district attorney that turned out to be murder. A complex scheme of drug trafficking involving the equally high visibility of a councilwoman running for the same political seat. The story to follow on page three had not been included. Purposefully, Tag assumed, to pique his curiosity and bring him here, to these economy class seats.

  The photo accompanying the story was of Robert and Barbara meeting and greeting in front of their home. Grimly, Tag assessed the outward trappings of the life Barbara had led. The stately elegance of the Tudor suited her. He could imagine her socializing at the door with her genuine smile and gracious manner. He could picture Rob beside her, everyone’s favorite host. The perfect couple living the all-American dream.

  So why was Rob D’Angelo dead and Barbara here beside him?

  He never would have believed suicide. Robert D’Angelo was the most focused and determined individual he’d ever known. Upper middle class striving for millionaire and all the perks that went with it. That was Rob. He’d always known exactly what he wanted and he got it all, everything…and everyone. He’d been a top student, a model citizen, a good friend, and Tag didn’t begrudge him any of it, not even Barbara. He was the one fathers wanted their daughters to date, the one people were eager to trust, the one most likely to succeed. But he hadn’t gotten to keep his fame and fortune for long.

  “Who killed him?”

  Barbara didn’t seem surprised by the sudden question. She apparently had been waiting for it, preparing for it, if her dea
dpan answer was any indication.

  “Chet Allen.”

  Tag couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d named the pope as the perpetrator.

  “Chet? Chet killed Rob?” His mind couldn’t contain that knowledge. There had to be some mistake.

  The three of them, the Three Musketeers Barbara had called them. All so different, yet held so tightly together by bonds of friendship since grade school. Since before social status mattered. He could envision them together on any number of teen escapades, from scoring illegal alcohol for a party to harmless pranks conceived by Rob and executed to perfection by Chet. The planner, the doer and the dreamer. That had been the three of them. The three of them, all in love with the same girl.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. Your friend Allen is one sick, dangerous man. Robert underestimated him and now he’s dead. He would have gotten away with it, too, except for one thing. He underestimated my daughter. And her new husband. They caught him and they brought him to justice, but justice let them down.”

  “He walked.”

  “Like a ghost. Or at least, that’s what he plans. You don’t sound surprised.”

  “Let me guess who did the paperwork with a federal seal of approval.”

  They both were silent for a moment, sharing their unspoken opinion of the various agencies that had employed Allen. And McGee.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Not as far away as I’d hoped he’d be. You know Chet. You know how he thinks, how he reacts.”

  She glanced at him and then away, the gesture furtive, compelling. Needy. Expectant. His instincts quivered on alert. His tone grew as thin and deadly as a trip wire.

  “And you want me to do what, exactly? Catch him? Kill him? I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”

  “It’s not about what I want. It’s Chet. It’s the game he’s playing.” She looked back at Tag then, her stare direct and intense. “How did he get you here?”

  Tag squirmed inwardly but kept his reply curt and concise. “He sent this clipping, and he said you needed me.”

  That was all. Barbara needed him. And it would have brought him back from hell without the necessity of explanation.