The Land Beneath Us

by Sarah Sundin

  “Charity? Is that what you think?”

  Leah shoved the books back into the gap. “I’ll see you at eleven.”

  “Leah!”

  She shoved the cart up the aisle, then down the farthest aisle from Clay, her throat tight and her chin quivering. Why was he making this difficult? Why couldn’t he see this was for the best? Why did he have to be so honorable, so generous, so . . . charitable?

  “Thalia Karahalios Paxton!” Clay’s voice boomed from the reading area.

  What on earth? Leah dashed to the end of the aisle.

  Clay stood on a table—on top of a table—legs astride and fists on his hips.

  She gripped a shelf for support. He looked so grand and noble, and yet adorably silly. What on earth was he doing?

  He stretched his hands and a grin to her. “Thalia, my muse. Leah, my wife, my—”

  “Sir!” Mrs. Sheridan marched over. “Excuse me, but I’ll have to ask you to quiet down and get off the table. This is a library.”

  “I do apologize, ma’am.” Clay turned that electrifying grin to the librarian. “But I’m not coming down until I’m finished proposing to my wife.”

  Proposing? To her? She gripped the shelf harder and pressed her free hand to her chest, to her tumbling, fluttering mess of a chest.

  “Mrs. Paxton?” Mrs. Sheridan gave her a bewildered look. “Is this your . . . ?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she whispered.

  Clay swept off his garrison cap and bowed. “Sgt. Clay Paxton at your service, ma’am.”

  Leah gave the librarian a tiny nod to let her know she was all right, although she was anything but.

  Mrs. Sheridan raised a mischievous smile and sauntered toward the office. “I’ll leave y’all be.”

  Thank goodness there were no patrons. Leah darted to the table and gripped the back of a chair. “What are you doing up there?”

  He smiled down at her. “Showing you I’m not acting out of charity.”

  In all the time she’d known him, she’d never known him not to make sense. “By standing on a table?”

  “Look around, Leah.” He gestured toward the bookshelves. “How many of these books tell of men doing heroic deeds for their ladies? I’m a Ranger. Rangers climb cliffs. You don’t have any cliffs in this here library, so I climbed this table.” He tapped the surface with his foot and grinned with satisfaction. “I didn’t even need a rope.”

  Had he suffered a head injury in Normandy? “Clay, are you all right?”

  “I will be when you agree to remain my wife.”

  Still not making sense. “I mean, are you well?”

  “Am I well?” He threw his head back and laughed. Then he raised his arms and shook them like a football player who had made the winning score. “I’m alive, Leah! Alive! I want to live. I want to live a long, long life, and I want to live it with you.”

  Did he mean it? Was he saying what she longed for beyond longing?

  His hands drifted down to his sides, and his gaze to hers. “I want to live my life with you out of love, not out of charity. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  Leah’s mouth opened, but all her words, all her beautiful words failed to come together to express the poetry in her heart. How could this man love her in return?

  “I never told you what happened in Normandy.”

  The swerve in topic threw her off balance, and she clutched the chair tighter. “Normandy?” Her voice sounded thin and breathless.

  “I needed to tell you in person.” He lowered himself to sit on the edge of the table, his legs straddling the chair Leah required to support her rubbery legs, especially with his chocolate gaze at her eye level.

  “I told you we climbed the cliffs,” he said. “We found and disabled the German guns, blocked the road, and fended off counterattacks. But by the end of the day, I was still alive and hadn’t seen a pillbox like in my dream.”

  “I—I’m glad you were wrong about the dream.”

  “I wasn’t wrong.” He let out a wry chuckle. “I woke up the next morning in a crater, just like in my dream. I looked over the top, and there was a gun casemate, exactly where I knew it would be. And I knew—I knew it was time.”

  Leah clapped one hand over her mouth.

  “I volunteered.” His eyes grew serious and his chin determined. “I ran up to that casemate just like in my dream and threw in my grenade. The Germans were firing a machine gun, closer and closer.”

  She cringed at the thought of the bullet piercing his chest.

  Clay folded his hand over hers, clasped on the chair back, and his broad fingers softened her grip and worked inside until she was clasping his hand instead, clasping it for all she was worth.

  “Leah—” His voice rasped, and he cleared his throat, his gaze delving deep into hers. “I saw the bullet, and I didn’t want it. I wanted to see you. I wanted to see Helen. The girls I love.”

  Her knees threatened to give way, and her hand fell from her mouth to grip the chair.

  “I twisted away, so the bullet hit here”—he took her hand and pressed it against his right chest—“instead of here.” And he pressed her hand over his heart.

  Leah spread her fingers wide over the hard wall of his torso, the life in him thumping against her palm. “I—I’m glad.”

  Clay lowered his chin and caressed her hand, her fingers, and her wedding band. “I finally figured out the dream. All this time I thought the dream was a premonition of my death, to help me prepare. To allow me to help you and the baby. To give me courage in the final moment.”

  Leah couldn’t look in his eyes, only at the row of colorful ribbons he’d won for that courage, at the chest still breathing and beating with life. Thank goodness, with life.

  “Leah, it wasn’t a premonition. It was a warning.”

  “A warning?” She dragged her gaze up, but his head was still lowered, his brow not far from her lips.

  “God sent the dream as a warning, so I’d recognize the moment when it came, so I could make a choice. And I chose. I chose hope and life and love. Because of you. Because I love you.” He raised his chin.

  Leah saw the truth in his eyes—the gentle strength, the vulnerable confidence, the pained joy, and the love, deep and certain. “Oh, Clay.”

  With a huff of breath, he pulled her hand from his chest and held it before him, turning her ring and frowning at it. “I know this is a lot to spring on you all at once. I made a promise to you. I promised if I survived, we’d get a divorce. And now I want to break that promise.”

  “Clay, I—” Her words clumped together and plugged her throat.

  He squeezed her hand. “However, on the day I gave you this ring, I made a higher promise. I promised before God to have and to hold you for the rest of my days.”

  Leah’s free hand floated up from the chair into the space between them, a space she wanted to close.

  “I’m asking you a favor.” He spoke to her hand. “I love you and want to stay married to you, but that isn’t what you agreed to. Could you do me the favor of holding off that divorce for a while? Maybe till I’ve finished my three months of training? If by then you know for sure you don’t want me for your husband, then I’ll go through with it. No fussing. But first, please let me try to win your heart.”

  The chair that had been her dearest help was now her most exasperating hindrance. She shoved it aside.

  Clay raised those warm, dark eyes, his brows high.

  Just when she needed words most, she had none. She stepped into the space between his knees, gripped his lapels, and pressed her face to his shoulder.

  “Hey, now.” He set his hands on her waist. “What’s all this about?”

  “You already have it,” she mumbled into the soft wool of his jacket. “My heart. You can’t win what already belongs to you.”

  His chest lifted a bit. “You don’t mean . . . ?”

  “Oh, a fine poetess I am.” She worked one arm over his shoulder, and she clutched the back of his warm ne
ck. “The most beautiful moment of my life. I should be breaking forth in a sonnet to tell you how much I love you, how very long I’ve loved you, and how very happy I am, and how I love being your wife. And that long life of yours—I want to be with you for all of it, every single day.”

  He was still, so very still. Then his arms circled her waist, and he drew her closer. “Well, darlin’. It might not rhyme, but you got your point across.”

  She had? She stood up straight, and the nearness of him stole her breath. Nearer than she’d ever seen him, except that fleeting moment at their wedding when he’d . . . Her gaze dropped to his lips—sure and smiling and so very fine.

  Those lips moved. “Reckon I should ask you out on our first date.”

  Something new floated inside her, light and playful. “After a year of marriage? A year and three days?”

  “I missed our anniversary? All the more reason to take you out.” He shrugged, making her aware of the breadth of his shoulders. “I was hoping if I took you someplace nice, I might get a good-night kiss.”

  A fog swirled inside, heady and delicious. Leah glanced to the side and raised one shoulder, hoping she looked coy. “On our first date? Really, Sergeant.”

  “Unless . . .” His thumb made circles on her lower back. “Unless I could talk you into a kiss right now.”

  “In the library?” She gazed around the unusually empty space.

  “No one’s here.” His face pressed to her cheek. “Besides, we’re married.”

  The fog settled into all her limbs, dissolving them, and she leaned into him for support. “You did just come home from war.”

  “I did.” His breath tingled on her jaw. “And that kiss I gave you yesterday? That was about the worst homecoming kiss ever. I can do better.” His mouth slid over her cheek.

  This time she was prepared and tilted her head in the right direction.

  Oh, but how unprepared she was. At the touch of his lips, everything in her fell apart then came together in a new way, one with him, melded with him, she belonging to him and he belonging to her.

  Their first kiss had given her a glimpse of what the poets wrote about, but this one was poetry they wrote together, silently singing in a meter all their own.

  “A lifetime of this,” she murmured against his lips.

  “I won’t mind getting a kiss like that every night.”

  “Starting tonight.”

  Clay’s eyes widened, and hers did too. They shared a house. As man and wife. A man and wife deeply in love with each other.

  “Um.” Clay mashed his lips together. “Maybe I should—it’ll make you more comfortable if I find someplace else to sleep while I’m in town.”

  Leah stroked his strong cheekbones and knew without a doubt where she wanted him to sleep. “In the—in the orphanage we always slept two, even three to a bed. Sleeping alone feels strange to me. Lonely.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Leah . . .”

  “I’m not saying . . . we don’t have to . . . you know.” She squirmed around the words she couldn’t say.

  “Sweetheart.” Clay leaned his forehead against hers. “I know what—that man did to you. I don’t want to hurt you, to rush things. I love you enough to wait, however long it takes.”

  “I know.” His hair was smooth and soft under her fingers. “I trust you. I trust you completely.”

  He kissed her nose. “We’ll take things slowly, I promise.”

  The nose wasn’t enough, and she kissed his lips. “Don’t go somewhere else tonight. Please? Last night I felt safe. I slept so well—knowing you were close.”

  Clay pulled back a bit and searched her face, his eyes round. “If you put it that way.”

  She bit her lip, at once shy and completely comfortable. “Will you join me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t even hesitate. Then he laughed. “Now I really need to take you someplace nice for dinner.”

  “Ahem.” Someone cleared a throat across the room.

  Leah sprang out of Clay’s arms.

  Mrs. Sheridan laughed. “No need to jump, Mrs. Paxton. However, we do have patrons outside waiting to come in.”

  “You kept them out?” Leah smoothed her hair. Oh dear—her lipstick would be a mess.

  “Sergeant, when did you come home?” the librarian asked.

  “Last night, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Sheridan pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “Y’all, get out of here. And Mrs. Paxton, I don’t want to see you for days and days.”

  Clay grinned and jumped off the table. “I’ve been in the Army long enough to know an order. Come on, Leah.” He grabbed her hand and marched toward the door.

  “But I haven’t finished . . .” She gestured to her cart—oh, where had she left it?

  “I’ll finish.” Mrs. Sheridan held out Leah’s purse. “Off with you.”

  Leah scampered after Clay, barely managing to grab her purse.

  On the sidewalk they passed a few people waiting to enter the library, and Clay kept up his brisk pace.

  Leah laughed, her hand entwined with his and her feet struggling to keep up. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “To live, my little wife. To live!” Clay spun to her, grabbed her in his arms, and lifted her off her feet. Right in downtown Tullahoma in sight of everyone.

  But Leah could only see the love in her husband’s face.

  He set her on her feet and rocked her in a circle, her first dance and the sweetest she could imagine. “It’s our time to live. Our time to laugh, our time to dance, our time to love.”

  “Our.” No finer word graced the English language. “And here I find where I belong.”

  Epilogue

  KERRVILLE, TEXAS

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1945

  Clay smoothed Mama’s embroidery on his white mariachi outfit and the extra strips of fabric Leah had sewn into the sleeves and sides to accommodate Ranger muscles.

  He hadn’t worn the outfit for four and a half years, since the day his brothers had run away. Now they were all home.

  He trotted down the stairs inside the Paxton home in Kerrville. Mariachi music drifted in from the front lawn where the clan was gathering for the annual Paxton-Ramirez Christmas Eve barbecue.

  So why did he hear male voices in Daddy’s study?

  Daddy, Wyatt, Adler, and Reginald Fairfax, Wyatt’s British father-in-law, sat chatting. Daddy smiled up at him. “Howdy, son.”

  Clay leaned against the doorjamb. “It’s Christmas Eve, the war is over, and you fellows are talking business.”

  Adler shrugged. “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate.”

  “Pull up a chair, Clay.” Daddy gestured to an empty seat. “This concerns you too.”

  “You can’t make me work at Paxton Trucking. I start at the University of Texas next month.” He gave his father a teasing look, but he sat.

  “You’re still a part owner.” Daddy grinned. “And it’s Paxton Freight Company now.”

  “Paxton Freight . . . ?” Since he’d arrived home a few days before, he’d heard an awful lot of business talk from these four—which he’d successfully avoided.

  “When I thought I’d never be able to come home—” Adler lowered his chin, and his Adam’s apple bobbed.

  Clay gripped his hands together. Even with forgiveness, regrets remained. “Go on.”

  Adler cleared his throat. “I came up with a business idea—Air Cargo Express Shipping, ACES for short.”

  “A great idea,” Daddy said. “Air shipping is the future, and the military will have a lot of surplus planes for sale.”

  Adler leaned his elbows on his knees. “After I decided to come home, I didn’t give ACES a second thought.”

  “But we did.” Wyatt lifted a clipboard. “It’s a smart way for our company to grow.”

  Clay frowned at his oldest brother. “I thought you and Dorothy were going to stay in England and work for Fairfax & Sons.”

  “It was a fine plan.”
Mr. Fairfax’s British accent sounded out of place in the Texas Hill Country. “However, Wyatt had difficulty obtaining permission to reside in England, and the new Labour government plans to nationalize many areas of commerce. My company might not be viable for long.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”

  “But America is brimming with opportunity.” Had Daddy ever looked so happy? “Dorothy is welcome in the US as a war bride, and Reg will have both family and a job, so he’ll probably be welcome too. I’ll pull some strings and make it happen.”

  Wyatt flipped a page on the clipboard. “The first of the year, we’ll set up Paxton Freight Company here in Kerrville. Daddy will be in charge and will still run the trucking business. Adler will set up ACES.”

  “We want to base ACES in Salina, Kansas, Violet’s hometown. We’ll stay in Kerrville a while to let Timmy get used to living with me and his new mama.” Adler smiled with a newlywed glow. He and Violet had gotten married in Salina at the beginning of December with the whole Paxton family in attendance.

  “Reg will be in charge of setting up branches at our hubs, starting in Salina, partnering with other regional trucking companies or buying them.” Daddy clapped Mr. Fairfax on the back.

  The Englishman stiffened but smiled. Maybe Clay ought to loan Daddy his serviceman’s guide to Britain to teach his father about English reserve.

  “A company this big will need a full-time accountant.” Wyatt raised a satisfied smile. “I’ll never have to leave my office again.”

  Adler sent Clay a mischievous look. “All we need is a company physician.”

  “Not on your life. I just want to be a small-town family doctor.” Clay stood. “Y’all should wrap this up. If Mama hears y’all talking business while there’s a party outside . . .”

  Daddy whistled. “We’d better vamoose.”

  Clay headed outside and stood on the big wraparound porch with his brothers. Dozens of family members circulated on the big lawn under the oaks and honey locusts, and the smell of Mama’s cooking and Daddy’s barbecue threaded into his lungs.

  It was good to be home.