When Fia spoke, her voice was soft, her gaze distant. Sad. “Me and my mom, we were never close. And my dad…he just came around from time to time, mostly when he was drunk and broke. I doubt he’d even recognize me if he walked in right this minute. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, didn’t really know any of my extended family, didn’t stay in one place long enough to make many friends. There’s really nothing to go back to.”
Carly regretted asking the question. She’d known leaving Tallgrass had never been a consideration for Fia after she’d buried Scott in the national cemetery on the edge of town, but she hadn’t known how lonely her friend’s life had been back home. She whispered a silent apology for the whining she’d done about her own family. Brilliant and socially stunted they might be, but they loved her and they would always welcome her back.
Their usual waitress, Miriam, brought two drinks, setting one in front of Fia and the other beside her. “Jessy’s on her way in,” she explained with a grin and a wink.
Carly and Fia both watched the redhead breeze through the lobby and toward them. “For someone so tiny, she sure does make a lot of waves when she passes, doesn’t she?” Fia murmured.
“She does.” She was pretty, bold, sometimes brash, and always blunt spoken. Toss in the red hair and green eyes, and people just automatically paid attention to her—in this case, the hostess, the waitstaff, and all the customers. Especially the males.
Jessy just accepted it as her due. She wasn’t smug or obnoxious about it. People noticed. It was part of her life. Carly rather envied her. She’d never been a troll, by any means, but she’d also never been the sort to make a man stop and take a second or third look.
Until Jeff. And maybe Dane.
Who hadn’t called or anything since Saturday night.
Jessy claimed the seat next to Fia, raised one hand to stave off conversation, and took a gulp of her margarita, tilting her head back to let it roll down her throat, licking the salt from her lips, then sighing happily. “It’s official. I have the crappiest job in the world. I hate it.”
Fia grinned at the familiar complaint. “Why don’t you come to the gym? They’re always looking for people.”
Jessy tilted her head as if weighing the option. “Working out with sweaty, half-naked men, a big plus. Having to actually work out? Uh-uh.” She maintained her only workouts were the bedroom kind. For a woman who’d been celibate a long time, she liked sex a lot.
So do you.
Shushing the voice in her head, Carly reached for a chip. “We’ll pretend we haven’t heard this before and play along. What kind of job would you want?”
“One that pays a lot and doesn’t require me to expend much energy or accept any responsibility.”
“And what kind of qualifications do you have, Ms. Lawrence?”
“Um, I have the best phony smile in the business. I can be polite even when I’m imagining my hands wrapped around your throat. And I can say dirty words in three languages.”
“I didn’t know you were multilingual,” Fia remarked.
Jessy’s smile was sultry and sexy. “I’m not. I only know the dirty words.”
“So you need a job where you get paid good money to be lazy, where you can smile and not be held responsible for anything you do or don’t do. Gee, let’s sign you up for the Senate race. I’ll be your campaign manager, Fia can be your bodyguard, and Therese can wrangle all the babies you’ll have to kiss.” Carly laughed at the distaste that curled Jessy’s mouth. Even pouting, she was beautiful.
“Thanks for making the bank job look attractive.” Jessy drained her glass and glanced around for Miriam, signaling with a nod when she saw her. Turning back, she leaned forward and asked in a singsong voice, “How was dinner with Dane?”
Warmth flowed through Carly, and she let herself pretend the leather jacket was the problem, even when the coat hung on the back of her chair and the heat hadn’t dissipated one bit. “It was Serena’s Sweets. It was delicious, of course.”
“I saw them,” Jessy murmured to Fia. “They could have been eating cardboard and not noticed. I practically had to jump up and down just to get them to see me.”
“You did not,” Carly chided. Pushing aside the margarita, she took a long drink from the glass of ice water, going so far as to consider holding it to her face. She was much too young for hot flashes, wasn’t she? Maybe she’d come down with some sort of quick-acting virus that caused her temperature to spike.
Yeah, you did. It’s called the you’ve-got-a-crush-on-Dane-and-he’s-ignoring-you syndrome.
Thankfully, she was saved from responding—to either Jessy or that smug little voice in her head—by more arrivals. Therese claimed the chair between her and Fia, while Marti, Ilena, and Lucy settled in the middle. Seven more of the semiregulars filled the last seats after dragging another table to make room.
“You’re flushed, sweetie,” Therese murmured as everyone took off their coats and stashed bags. “Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s the painting project?”
“I got the paint last night. If I can borrow Jacob for a while tomorrow evening to help me move the big stuff, I’ll get started. I’d be happy to pay him.”
“I’ll bring him over. But no paying. He needs to learn to do favors for people because it’s right, not because they offer him money.”
Therese’s jaw tightened fractionally, something Carly wouldn’t have noticed if she didn’t know her so well. More trouble with Abby, or just the never-ending stress of their household? If the tension on the ride home from church and dinner Sunday had been any indication, Carly didn’t know how Therese stood it.
Spring break was on the horizon. Maybe the kids’ mother or grandparents would bother to see them for a few days and give Therese a break.
Once everyone had their drinks, they toasted each other, then ordered their meals before getting down to serious business. They grilled Carly about her date. There were so many snorts when she protested “It wasn’t a real date” that it sounded like the hog barn at the fair. Once they’d heard every detail, the subject changed to their various jobs, family issues, health questions, then cooking, quilting, knitting, and other hobbies. Carly even got advice on her paint project from the ones who’d done it themselves.
By the time they began to leave the restaurant in twos and threes, it was eight thirty and Carly’s mood was better than it had been all day. She walked to the parking lot with Marti, laughing at a story about Marti’s mother, recently divorced from husband number three and already on the hunt for the next one down in Palm Beach. It was a nice, outrageous tale that once again made Carly appreciate her own mother.
They were only a few yards from their cars when Marti caught her breath. “Oh, my,” she murmured, then called over her shoulder. “Hey, guys, look who’s here.”
Carly was aware of her friends’ voices, cheers, even a whistle, all sounding more like the hum of annoying insects than words, but her attention was focused on the vehicle a dozen feet ahead of her. More specifically, on the man leaning against it, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against the chill. She said something appropriate, she thought, to Marti’s “good-bye,” gripped the purse strap over her shoulder with both hands, and closed the distance.
“I bet they’re a lot of fun in a strip club,” Dane said.
The image made her laugh, chasing off the butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “We’ve never been to one together, but I bet you’re right.”
“Is it too late?”
“For a strip club?”
He shrugged. “A cup of coffee. A glass of tea. A bit of dessert.”
The warmth that had so discomfited her earlier returned, but this time it was nothing but pure pleasure. “They make a caramel-vanilla-apple thing here that’s to die for.”
He smiled. “I like caramel-vanilla-apple things.”
He pushed away from the truck, and she pivoted to retrace her steps to the restaurant do
or. From somewhere behind them came a shrill whistle—Jessy or Fia, she was sure—which she acknowledged with a wave over her shoulder. There would be more talk, more teasing, from the group, but she didn’t care.
This time with Dane would be worth all the talk and teasing in the world.
The hostess greeted them, then said to Carly with an overly pleased smile, “Ah, back again,” as she led them to a small table in a dimly lit corner. “Enjoy.”
The waitress, a slim, sturdy dark-haired woman, brought chips and salsa, along with two glasses of water. “Do you need a minute?” she asked Dane.
“Nah.” He’d had a frozen dinner at home while trying to talk himself out of—or into—coming here tonight. “Just bring us the caramel-apple whatever and…iced tea?”
Carly nodded.
“All right, two iced teas and one Mexican apple pie with extra caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream. Oh, and two spoons.” She winked at Carly—winked—before leaving them alone again.
“Does everyone in this place know you?”
She smiled tightly. “Pretty much.”
They sat in silence for a moment, not the easy comfortable kind but the awkward we’re-here-now-what kind. His left leg twinged, and he massaged it. In addition to all the daily aches, he’d found out it didn’t react well to cold or damp. Or ironically enough, guilt. Right now he didn’t care why it was hurting.
The waitress brought their drinks, and Carly thanked her by name. Like him, she was the type to learn a regular waiter’s or waitress’s name. Sheryl had always been content to wave or settle for “Hey.”
“There were more of you tonight,” he said at last.
Carly’s smile looked just a little desperate with relief. “Yeah, sometimes we manage to fill that whole section. Only the seven of us at the cave come every week, barring illness or vacation, but there are between fifteen and twenty of us in all.”
“Wow.”
“Not a good thing to be impressed by, is it?” She emptied a packet of sweetener into her glass, then stirred it a little too long. “How is your week going?”
“Same stuff as always.” The voice in his head, sounding remarkably like Justin, mocked the lie. Nothing had been the same in the last months. The blast, the medevac from Afghanistan to Germany to the U.S., surgery after surgery, infection after infection, rehabbing—he hadn’t been a soldier in all that time, hadn’t had any soldierly duties. He still wore a uniform, followed orders, and called officers “ma’am” and “sir,” but the truth was, he was just a patient.
You should tell her.
Yeah, wouldn’t that be a wonderful evening? Here’s your tea, have a bite of pie, and oh, by the way, did I remember to tell you I got my leg blown off in Afghanistan?
He’d had an appointment with the psychologist yesterday. They’d talked a lot about adaptability—his relearning to do everything he could—and how increased adaptability increased self-confidence and decreased insecurity. Maybe it was too early in his recovery, but he wasn’t sure there was any self-confidence to increase.
This wasn’t what he’d signed on for.
And it damn sure wasn’t what he’d come out tonight for.
“How’s your week going?”
“The usual fun and games. Kids are great. Though there are times when they’re so restless and disruptive that I honestly wonder if my parents and brothers didn’t have the right idea.”
He looked at her, squinting a little, then shook his head. “I can’t imagine you in a research lab.”
“Thank you. So what exactly do you do? You aren’t jumping out of planes here, since Fort Murphy doesn’t have an Airborne unit.”
His nerves tightened, and his hand trembled slightly so he slid it under the table where he could clench it enough to stop the shaking. “Yeah, no. I—I tore up my leg in Afghanistan. No more jumping. I’ve got to decide whether to reclassify for another MOS.” He tried a smile. “I’ve got to decide whether I’m even staying in.”
She made an expression of sympathy, and his nerves wound tighter. The line about his leg hadn’t been an outright lie. What better example of tore up than the mangled mess he’d awakened to after the blast? If she chose to interpret it as hurt but still there, it wasn’t his fault.
You should tell her.
“What would you do if you got out? Where would you live? Back in Texas?”
The fingers he was massaging his leg with pinched hard enough to hurt. He stopped and folded both hands together, gripping tightly. “Come on, you’re a teacher. Don’t you know any hard questions to ask?”
She laughed. “Okay, how fast does the Earth rotate over a twenty-four-hour period? No, wait, that’s not hard. Can you explain the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat?”
“Never heard of it. Can you explain it?”
She made a dismissive gesture. “I’ve got at least three quantum physicists in my family. I’ve known this one since I was a kid.”
When she didn’t go on, he prodded her. “No bragging. You can’t just claim to know the answer. You have to prove it.”
“Oh, you really don’t want to hear—”
“Oh, I do. Otherwise, how will I know that you know?”
Her lips pursed, making her look prim and sour, then she leaned forward, resting her arms on the tabletop. “In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger proposed an experiment in which a cat is placed in a closed container, along with a vial of poison and a bit of radioactive material. If the material begins to decay, it triggers the breaking of the vial and the cat dies. The only way to know whether the cat is alive or dead is to look inside the box, so as long as you don’t look, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Until you look, the cat exists in all possible states. The act of looking causes the other possibilities to collapse and you’re left with only one result.”
God help him, she could even make quantum physics sound interesting, when the only interest he’d ever had in science had been playing with chemicals.
“So…” He cleared his throat. “Did the cat live?”
“Oh, Schrödinger never actually did the experiment. He was just showing that a random unpredictable event can cause one object, the cat, that is totally unrelated to another object, the poison, to change. To truly accept it, you also have to buy into the parallel universes theory, that we live in a multiverse and every possible outcome to a situation exists in other universes.”
He looked at her—the faint pink of her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the corners of her mouth twitching to smile really big—and a line from a TV show popped into his head. “Our children will be smart and beautiful.”
Swallowing half the glass of iced tea in one gulp—and finding out too late he’d forgotten to sweeten it—helped clear some of the raspiness from his throat. “Was this dinner-table conversation for your family?”
“Science in general was. Schrödinger’s cat was more like a bedtime story.”
“And did you sleep dreaming of dead cats that had been poisoned that were also alive waiting to be poisoned?”
She laughed. “Of course not. I fell asleep dreaming about fairies and princesses and magic ponies. I was just your average little girl growing up surrounded by geniuses— Ooh.”
Miriam brought the apple pie, served steaming on a hot cast-iron platter, and presented two spoons with a flourish. After refilling their glasses, she disappeared again.
Carly scooped up a spoonful of hot caramel sauce and soft ice cream, closing her eyes the instant the sweets touched her tongue, and gave a low, “Mmm.”
It was quite possibly the sexiest sound Dane had ever heard. He gulped another big drink of tea, surprised the cold liquid didn’t make steam rise from his skin as it rolled down his throat, and realized again it was bitter. Blindly setting the spoon aside, he picked up a packet of sugar and stirred it into the glass.
“Try it,” Carly encouraged when she opened her eyes. “It’s incredible.”
“I might just watch you eat it.” He hoped his voice didn
’t sound as hoarse to her as it did to him. Judging by the way her face pinked, he guessed it did.
She took the next bite almost primly, then nudged the plate a little closer to him. “How do you feel about not being able to jump anymore?”
“Paratroopers have a name for people who aren’t paratroopers: legs. It’s not said with a great deal of respect. From the time I signed on the dotted line in the recruiter’s office, I knew I didn’t want to be a legs.”
“But it’s not by choice.”
He shook his head while he carefully cut a piece of pie, staying away from the ice cream puddling on the plate, scooping up the caramel sauce. “No, but it’s still disappointing.”
“Relieving,” she disagreed. “All those jumps—or landings—are hard on your body.”
“True. I knew guys who came out of Iraq and Afghanistan without a scratch who then broke a half dozen bones in a training jump in Germany or back here in the U.S.”
“Won’t it feel strange if you get out? Being a civilian and all? I mean, just those few months I went home after Jeff died, I felt out of place, and I haven’t lived the life the way you have.”
He was glad she had felt out of place. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come back to Tallgrass, and they never would have met. “Yeah. I’d always figured I’d make a career of it. If I don’t transition out, though, I’ll have to do something else.” There was a lot he could do in the Army with just one leg, but he’d never considered any of it. He’d been happy where he was: jumping out of planes, living in combat zones, fighting for his life.
Now he was going to be support. Or out of Airborne altogether.
“But the good side is, if your leg injury keeps you from jumping, it’ll also keep you from rotating back to Afghanistan, right?”
“Not necessarily. Other am—” He faked a cough, then took a drink. “Other people with worse injuries have gone back. I’ve just got a messed-up leg. There was an Air Force pilot in Iraq who’d lost both legs and went back to flying combat missions. Manpower’s short. What’s an arm or a leg if you can do a job that needs to be done?”
A Hero to Come Home To Page 13
