A Conard County Homecoming

by Rachel Lee

  But deep inside she’d begun to have feelings she hadn’t had in many years. Excitement. Anticipation. Unspoken hope that something would happen. Like a teen in the throes of a crush.

  It had better wear off, she warned herself. Zane had his mission to work on, and she didn’t want any problems for either of them.

  “So your kids want me to bring Nell to school?”

  Surprised, she felt her jaw drop a little. Really? But what if he changed his mind? He could in an instant if he started to have problems. But that was true in any case. Pleased that he’d offered, cautious that he might not be able to do it, she expressed appreciation but was careful not to nail him down. “Would you? They’d love it. But there’ll be a lot of racket...”

  “I think I told you I like kids.” His smile was crooked. “Just no fireworks.”

  She got his meaning. “No fireworks,” she promised, trying to sound casual.

  Then he leaned forward in his chair, bringing their faces closer together. “Do you have any idea how easy it is to talk to you? It’s been a long time since I shared so much with anyone. Somehow with you it seems natural.”

  Warmth suffused her. “What a compliment.” But she wasn’t thinking about that. She was feeling his nearness, something very different indeed.

  “With you,” he said slowly, “things just spill out of me. And it’s good, because when I hear myself saying them, it’s as if stuff falls into line.”

  “Well, I’ve often found that saying something out loud makes me realize how stupid it is.”

  He cracked a surprised laugh. “That, too. But you’re special, Ashley.”

  Now she blushed, something she hadn’t done in a long time. “Not me,” she said.

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s not like I haven’t met women since this happened. Do many women want to indulge in noble self-sacrifice?”

  She drew a sharp breath, horror stealing through her. Could he really believe...? She felt as if he had just stabbed her. Wounded her. Her stomach turned over, but then anger arrived. “That’s not me,” she said sharply, pushing back from the table. “Sacrifice yourself!” Which was a terrible thing to say when she considered how much he had sacrificed for his country, but damned if she was going to wither. If he felt that way...

  “Not you,” he nearly snapped. “Sit down, damn it. And I guess you’re not always easy to talk to after all.”

  Ouch. She winced and tried to let go of the anger as she slowly settled into her seat again, reluctantly willing to give him a chance to explain.

  “Are you always so defensive?”

  Oh, man, she wanted to sink. She didn’t see herself that way, she didn’t think she was, but she had just nearly erupted because of a general remark that didn’t apply to her at all. At least not directly. She hadn’t thought of herself as someone to see a slight in everything, but now she wondered. Worse, she knew from experience that a defensive person could be almost impossible to deal with.

  It took her a moment to answer. “I never thought I was before.” The ground under her feet seemed to be shifting. Could it be true?

  “So it’s just with me?”

  That was nearly as unsettling as the idea that she might always be defensive. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’ve always had a bit of a temper, but not over just anything.”

  “Temper is fine,” he answered. “I have my share. What I was trying to get at was when I was in rehab, then later when I had my own place before everything went south, a number of women seemed interested in me. Crazy, considering I was a mess.”

  “I don’t think that’s crazy,” she said quietly.

  His gaze snapped to her face, but instead of responding to her comment, he continued. “Anyway, one of them, a volunteer at rehab, seemed to take a real shine to me. It was nice for a while. I was getting pretty good with the chair, so they started giving me passes, and we went out for lunch, occasionally for dinner. But after about two months, I discovered something, and there was no way I could argue myself out of it.”

  “What was that?” Her mouth was still dry from the horror and brief flare of anger, her heart still squeezed with pain—whether for him or herself. With one remark he’d caused her self-perception to teeter. She reached for the coffee mug to drink, to wet her mouth again. Man, this guy drew feelings out of her far too easily. Being around him seemed to put her on an emotional roller coaster.

  “I discovered that I was the cross she wanted to nail herself to.”

  She stopped breathing. Shock froze her insides. Had he just said...? “How?” she whispered.

  “I overheard her almost bragging to her friends about the sacrifices she made for me, about how glad she was to make them, and none of it was about me, but all of it was about her. Her self-created halo was almost blinding.”

  Ashley looked down. She couldn’t even speak. It was awful, just awful, to consider how that must have affected him.

  He astonished her, slamming his hand down on the table. “Sorry,” he said when she jumped. “But I don’t want to be an object of pity, and I don’t want to be someone’s path to sainthood. So I guess I’d better get it together.”

  She gathered herself, ignoring the ache he’d made her feel, the ache for all he was dealing with, the ache because there was really nothing she could do, short of finding a magic wand. In just a few minutes she’d ridden a whole host of strong reactions, and now her hands trembled a little, her fingers felt cold, her mouth as dry as sand. What was going on here? She felt out of her depth, as if she might drown at any moment. Matters were shifting rapidly, and she was no psychologist to offer help or even judge what was happening here.

  Slowly, she raised her head. “When you got here, all you wanted was to be left alone.”

  “True,” he acknowledged.

  “What changed?”

  “You think I’m blowing smoke?”

  She shook her head quickly. She was certain he was telling the truth as he saw it right now. But it seemed so sudden! “Not at all. It’s just such a big change in such a short time.”

  “It’s the guy I used to be stepping forward again.” He drummed his fingers briefly. “Enough of this crap. Feeling sorry for myself, hiding out, fearing another episode. I wasn’t built to live in fear. I wasn’t built to avoid challenges. I never used to. The only thing that’s changed is inside me, and I don’t like it.”

  That might be simplification, but she didn’t want him to suspect she didn’t believe what he was saying. It would be so easy to offer a casual response that might leave him wondering if she doubted him. Careful choice of words, she reminded herself. Very careful.

  “Give yourself some slack,” she said eventually. “Good heavens, Zane, you’ve been through a terrible amount of trauma. The war, your paralysis, your PTSD. How could you not want to hunker down for a while? How could you not need to? You’re not Superman, and even he had his Fortress of Solitude. I think your reaction was probably very normal.”

  “Maybe.” His gaze grew distant. Ashley immediately looked down at Nell, but she seemed calm and unworried. For a while, nobody spoke. Ashley felt as if an emotional whirlwind had just blown through her. The change in him seemed startling and sudden to her, but she had no idea how long he’d been approaching this moment.

  Just because he’d claimed to want to be a hermit when he first arrived didn’t mean he hadn’t been thinking about all of this for a while. Not the man he used to be? Of course he wasn’t. He’d been through hell. She suspected the can-do SEAL was rising in him, though.

  He’d said this was like a mission. He’d never turned his back on a mission, and some of them must have been terribly difficult. If seeing it in that light helped, then he should go for it.

  Maybe it was a mission. She put her chin in her hand and closed her eyes, considering it
. He was still young, with a lot of years ahead of him. If seeing himself as soldiering through—as he had so often in the past—helped him, good for him. It might actually be the most positive way for him to deal with everything.

  She had to give him points for determination. She’d been quite impressed with his attitude toward his paralysis, and now he was stretching that to cover the rest of his life. A challenge.

  She opened her eyes and found that he didn’t appear quite so far away. Okay, the guy had been a hero and had evidently become one the very hard way more than once. He had the grit and determination to pull this off, if anyone did.

  “I like the way you think,” she offered.

  His eyes trailed back to her. “I was just remembering times when I did things that initially seemed more impossible than this. I mean, what’s this except living? Everyone has to do this, and for some it’s harder. I’ll see where it goes.” Then he smiled faintly. “Does everyone in the world dump on you this way?”

  “I don’t feel dumped on. I feel honored.” True, she did. He’d been incredibly frank, offering a trust that struck her as breathtaking. He’d practically opened his soul to her.

  “Anyway,” he said. “Pumpkin. Class to meet Nell. Cadell called this afternoon and asked if I could bring her out to his place for some additional work with Mikey’s dog.”

  She almost gaped and felt a small bubble of laughter in the pit of her stomach. “You did get dragged into it.”

  “Into the world. I hope I didn’t kick and scream too much.” But he smiled faintly. “Anyway, want to come with me to see Mikey’s dog tomorrow?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Sure. I love Cadell’s dogs. If he was just handing them out, I’d take one. Maybe his wife, Dory, will be there. She’s new in town, too, but nobody sees much of her. She’s a computer geek who works odd hours, I understand. I’m told she insisted on Cadell keeping the ostriches.”

  “You mentioned that.” His brows lifted. “I still think it’s weird that he has them.”

  “So does everyone else. Join the crowd. Pumpkin?”

  He glanced at the digital clock on the microwave. “It’s dinnertime. How about we take care of that then decide about pumpkins and candy tomorrow?”

  Just like that, he’d cemented them together that evening and the next day. A long way from being a hermit. She wished she felt as confident in this extraordinary change.

  * * *

  Being a SEAL had made Zane hypersensitive to some things. The tone of a voice. The faint microexpressions that continually crossed a face. It had been necessary to his survival and worked often even when he couldn’t understand the language. Reading his fellow SEALs had become second nature.

  So he’d read Ashley and had no doubt that she was uneasy right then. She’d met a grumpy man who said he just wanted to be a hermit, and now here she was, a couple short weeks later, with a man who was busting out of his hermitage.

  Of course she wondered if something was wrong with him, if the change was only temporary. Outwardly she’d handled it well, but inwardly she was struggling, probably wondering when he’d next withdraw or grouse at her over nothing.

  But the truth was, the self-declared hermit had been the temporary him. A reaction to being evicted. A conscious decision to make sure something like that never happened again. He’d had enough. Life was difficult enough these days without accusatory neighbors. So he’d gone into an emotional crouch, and he rather despised himself for it.

  No, he didn’t want to be scaring people with his PTSD. Losing it wasn’t good for anyone, himself included. But it happened, and it would continue to happen for the rest of his life, although with less frequency, he hoped.

  When he looked at Ashley, he saw a woman who had accepted him as he was. She’d come over when Nell went to fetch her. She’d helped him get up off the floor and scolded him for refusing to ask for help. She’d had to guts to ask him to help with Mikey’s dog, and then the guts to ask him to visit her classroom.

  He was just glad she hadn’t seen him in one of his total wipeouts, cussing and swearing and trying to dodge bullets that weren’t there. He suspected she’d handle it as well as the rest, though. She’d certainly handled finding him lying on the floor because he’d been trying to dive for safety.

  Remarkable woman. Sexy woman. Still, he was too messed up and didn’t want to mess her up as well. Although she had invited herself over because she hadn’t seen him all week. Worried about him. She didn’t need that, either.

  Dinner. He’d mentioned that, hadn’t he? The question was what to do about it. He certainly didn’t want her to think he expected her to cook for him. “You said there was a pizza place somewhere?”

  She nodded. “Just east of the city limits. A popular teen hangout.” She screwed up her face a little. “I may have taught most of those kids and I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate me showing up there. But the shop does deliver.”

  He liked that idea. He didn’t want to disrupt enjoyment for a bunch of teens, either, and him showing up in a wheelchair might dampen their fun. “What do you like on your pizza?” he asked.

  “Anything except pineapple and anchovies.”

  “Ah, no pineapple pizzas for you.”

  She laughed, and he was delighted to see it reached her eyes. “I might like it with another name,” she admitted. “But that’s not at all what I think of when I think of pizza.”

  “Me neither,” he admitted. “Is this pizza good?”

  “Good enough. It might disappoint someone from New York or Chicago, but at least the crust rises. None of that cracker-type crust.”

  “I suppose the pepperoni is good everywhere. What about veggies?”

  Zane enjoyed chatting with her about something so innocuous. Comparing the relative merits of different vegetables on a pizza seemed like the safest and most comfortable place he’d been in a while. When they finally agreed on what they both wanted, she pulled out her cell phone.

  “Observe,” she said lightly. “I teach nutrition as part of my syllabus, and yet I have the pizza place on speed dial.”

  He laughed. “Pizza’s probably not as bad for anyone as some other things.”

  “Like soda pop full of sugar,” she answered drily.

  “Or the candy we’re about to hand out by the ton on Monday.”

  He watched her laugh, the sound easy and full. Dang, he liked everything about this woman. He liked the way temper sparked in her blue eyes when he annoyed her. He liked the way she kept acting as if he were perfectly normal even though he was quite sure he was not. And he liked the way she seemed to have completely moved past his disability.

  He was paralyzed, obviously. He knew that it usually disturbed people, made them uncomfortable. But from the very start, she hadn’t seemed at all uncomfortable. Just concerned. Her concern wasn’t a terrible thing, certainly nothing he minded, especially since she didn’t overdo it.

  But she was drawing him out of his self-preoccupation, too. Because of her he had other things to think about, even some things he could conceivably look forward to. He was nervous about meeting her class, because he didn’t want to have an episode in front of them. They might be scared. But there was Nell, he reminded himself, kneading the dog’s neck. She’d alert him before he completely slipped away. He’d probably have time to leave the classroom.

  Of course, if he pulled himself out of his self-imposed pit, he’d have to figure how he could be productive for the rest of his days. He’d always been productive, at least until his wounding, and he couldn’t stand the idea that he might spend the rest of his days in this wheelchair, in this house, and not do one useful thing for someone else.

  Ashley finished ordering the pizza. He’d pushed his credit card over to her, but she’d ignored it and used her own. Man, he could probably afford this pizza better than she could
on a teacher’s salary.

  “Got any super career ideas for a paralyzed vet?” The question popped out of him. He expected her to kind of shrug and say she’d have to think about it. She surprised him.

  “Sure,” she said. “A temporary one, anyway.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let my friend’s shop class come over and turn your kitchen into a project. They’d learn a lot, and you’re not the only person in this county who could use the kind of modifications you’d need. You could even show them, so they wouldn’t be guessing.”

  “Why would they want to do that? It’s a big project.”

  “Alex—that’s the teacher—has been bemoaning the fact he doesn’t have any really big projects for them. The auto shop? Sure, there’s always a car that needs working on. But cabinetry and things like that? He says he’s too limited, the things they can do are too small. And these are students who want a future working with things like this.” She hesitated. “You’d probably have to pay for the materials, though.”

  “That wouldn’t be a problem,” he admitted. He’d saved most of his pay over the years and had a steady disability income, much of which he hadn’t needed to spend during his time in the hospital and rehab.

  “So, tell you what. I’ll bring Alex over some time and you two can hash out the possibility.”

  Zane felt himself smiling faintly. This woman didn’t let the moss grow. She moved immediately. He liked that. “Still, that’s hardly a career,” he reminded her.

  “Stopgap,” she admitted. “But I’m sure there are plenty of other things. Alex might have some ideas. You need to meet Jess McGregor. He was a medic in Afghanistan and lost his leg. Now he’s a physician’s assistant running the minor emergency clinic at the hospital. He’d probably have some good ideas, too.”

  His smile grew. “You’re going to save me in spite of myself.”

  She flushed. “Sorry. You asked about careers, and my mind and mouth took off.”

  “It’s okay.” For some reason it was more than okay. She felt like an ally, which he liked, and not like a taskmaster pushing him, which he’d resent. “Maybe you just helped me get it all in focus when you asked me to help with Mikey’s dog. I like you, Ashley. It’s not just my dog that has a crush on you.”