Broken Soldier: A Novel
Page 2
He steadied the glass and slipped his hand back below the edge of the table. His other hand brushed the hair from his eyes, another defensive gesture.
“I don’t mind,” Emily said. “You don’t have to hide it from me.”
Rafa flushed as red as his wine. “I’m not--“
“You were wounded, Rafa. You don’t need to be ashamed of it.”
He shifted uncomfortably. Even then, he looked amazing. That hint of vulnerability did something to her, made her pulse flutter, her engine rev. Her heart nearly stopped from the surprise of her own reaction.
“I’m not ashamed,” he said, but she barely heard him.
Emily blinked, processing his words, and tried to remember her anger from a moment before. “I’m not here as a psychologist. I’m here as a woman. This was a blind date for me. All I knew was your name.”
He cocked his head, maybe, just maybe, believing her. Then his head started to shake. “I know you’re trying analyze me, but you don’t know me. You don’t know what this means.” He raised his right arm. “The military has been my whole life. And that’s over.”
“I know that’s how you feel right now, but give yourself time. Maybe the Army has other uses for you.”
He looked away again. His shoulders rose a fraction and fell. “I doubt it.” He met her eyes, and a smile cracked his grim expression, lighting up his whole face. “We’re both here, no? How about we talk about something else?”
“Sure.” God, anything else had to be better than digging into that pity party. No matter what he was thinking, she really didn’t want to analyze him.
“So in the Army we do a lot of sitting around and waiting. It gives a man plenty of time to read.”
It was Emily’s turn to smile. She could talk about books for days. “What do you read?”
The conversation trailed off into mysteries and thrillers and back around to speculative fiction. Dinner breezed past, and when the waiter came with their dessert, Emily realized that she’d had a better time than she could remember, at least in the last year.
“The check, senor,” Rafa told the waiter as he took the final plates.
“We can split it,” Emily said.
Rafa looked aghast. “No, no, I will handle this.”
“It’s okay, Rafa. It’s the 21st century.”
He shook his head. “I am a man of duty. Tonight, dinner is my treat. If there is a next time, perhaps we can discuss splitting it.”
A next time. “How about we get a drink somewhere then?”
He smiled again, and the icicle she called a heart melted even further. “That would be great.”
He left cash and pushed himself back from the table. Emily led the way to the front of the restaurant, digging for her valet ticket as she walked.
“Do you have anywhere in particular in mind?” Rafa asked.
“There’s a place by my office.” And not too far from her apartment, in case things got weird. Or awesome.
Emily stopped at the hostess stand and held up her ticket. The hostess eyed her with a frosty glare. “Can I help you?”
“I need to get my car.”
The hostess’s eyebrows rose. “We don’t have a valet service.”
Is this girl trying to piss me off, Emily thought. Of course you do. “Your valet took my car right out front and told me to check with you when I was ready for it.”
“Ma’am, we don’t have a valet service. Excuse me.” She turned her back on Emily to take care of a woman that had just come through the front door.
“I don’t understand,” Rafa said. “You have a valet ticket, no?”
“I don’t understand, either.” Emily looked closer at her ticket. It was a plain cream slip with a neat “13” printed on one side. She let the hostess finish with the other woman. “Miss, excuse me.”
“Ma’am, are you sure the valet wasn’t at the Hilton down the block? We don’t have a valet service.”
Emily could see that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with the hostess. Fine. “Thanks, anyway.” She jammed the ticket back into her purse and looked at Rafa. “I think my car was stolen.”
His expression darkened. “Then we should call the police. Perhaps outside, though.”
The hostess was giving them dirty looks, so Emily led the way outdoors. A chill breeze blew down from the mountains, giving the night air an edge that made her wish she’d brought a coat. She dug her phone from her purse.
“You don’t have to stay,” she told Rafa. “I don’t want to ruin your whole night.” Truth was, she didn’t really want him to stay. Drinks had sounded like fun, but she had managed to screw up the entire evening.
He looked at her a moment, then nodded. “Perhaps you are right.”
Emily watched him head across the parking lot. He only made it a dozen strides before she began to regret her decision.
Chapter 4
SWEAT dripped down Rafa’s face, splashing on the treadmill. He looked over at Paul, jogging beside him. “Stolen. I don’t know how.”
“Bro, you stayed around to comfort her, right?”
“Uh, no.”
Paul wiped his face with the hem of his t-shirt. “What? What’s wrong with you?”
Rafa held up his right arm.
“She cares about that?”
“I don’t know if she does or not, but I do.”
“I’m telling you, you don’t need to worry about it. This isn’t some college floozy. She’s been friends with Christa for years. She’s like a hotshot shrink or something.”
“Yeah, speaking of that. I wish you had told me before the date.”
“What? She get all professional on you?”
“A little bit. And you’re a dick for ambushing me with it.” The treadmill ground to a halt. Rafa leaned over it, panting.
“Ambush? It wasn’t like that, Rafa. C’mon. You’ve known me too long for that.”
“I’ve known you long enough to know that you’ll ignore me when I tell you I’m okay.”
Paul laughed. “So that’s true. But you don’t always know best, big bad warrior. She’s a nice girl. Had a rough patch last year, but...” He held up his arm in imitation of Rafa. “Who didn’t?”
“I hope you trip and that treadmill eats you.”
Paul mashed the button to stop it, and hopped off. “So anyway, did you like her?”
“She was gorgeous. And smart. And has wonderful taste in books.”
“Then why the hell did you run off?”
“Because I’m a cripple and she’s a shrink.” They made their way through the gym and toward the locker room.
“Setting aside the invasion of Iraq, that’s the most piss poor reasoning I’ve ever heard.”
Rafa shrugged.
“So call her,” Paul said.
“I don’t have her number.”
“If I get her number, will you call her?”
Rafa shrugged again.
“God damn it, Rafael, you are not a broken man. You can walk, you can talk, and I imagine, if you put your mind to it, you can fuck. So call this girl and go have a good time.”
They passed into the locker room. The smell of feet assaulted Rafa’s nose as he went toward the locker he shared with his buddy. Some people would think it was gross, but for someone that had been in and around the military for a lifetime, it smelled like home.
“I’ll think about it.”
Paul slapped him on the back. “That’s my boy.”
#
“So how was it?” Christa had her ankle up on the wooden fence that separated the trail from the parking lot. There was enough leg on display to turn every male head that jogged past them.
Emily stood beside her, one arm pulled tight across chest, stretching her tricep. “It was okay. He was gracious and smart and absolutely gorgeous.”
“Yeah? I told you that you’d have a good time.”
“It was great right up until I told him I was a psychologist. Then he got all weird on me.”
“Nothing like that.” I should be so lucky, she thought, remembering that rugged face and his sexy hair. “He just shut down. I think he thought Paul sent me to evaluate him.”
“What, professionally? You explained that you work with kids, right?”
“Sort of.”
“What’s that mean? Sort of?”
“I just told him I was a psychologist and he shut down on me. I didn’t feel comfortable going into details after that.”
Christa winced. “He’s had it rough. I talked to Paul about it some more. He was a captain in the Army. Paul says he could have been even higher up, but he was dedicated to his men and didn’t take desk jobs. He was leading a team at some outpost and they were escorting the Afghan leaders to a big meeting.”
Christa waited for a pair of women to pass them, then continued. “They were on their way to this meeting and they got attacked. It was bad. Really bad. And then they lost more men when they tried to get the wounded out.”
“That’s terrible,” Emily said. “Worse than I imagined. I didn’t really talk about what happened to him. He didn’t seem willing.”
They headed out onto the trail, their legs pumping as they built up to a comfortable jog. Emily sucked in a breath of the fresh, piney air.
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Paul said a big investigation was done after the fact, and the higher ups needed a fall guy. Rafael was the highest ranking officer directly involved.”
“They didn’t just blame him, did they?” She couldn’t believe that. No one ever said that life had to be fair, but Rafa didn’t strike her as the sort to be derelict about anything, never mind the lives of his men.
“I don’t really know. I just know that he’s on medical leave, and Paul said he’s unlikely to return to active duty.”
They jogged in silence for a few minutes. “That’s pretty heavy,” Emily said. “I can see why he’s touchy about it.”
“Yeah. So did the rest of the evening flop after you told him about your job?”
“It was okay right up until I found out my car got stolen.”
Christa stumbled. Nearly fell. “What!”
“I gave the keys to the thief and didn’t even realize it.” Emily explained about the valet and the police report. “The officer said it will either show up in the next week or so or not at all.”
“That’s insane. Your insurance is taking care of you, right?”
“Yeah, they’re footing the rental. I’m supposed to wait a week, so I figure I’ll start looking at cars next weekend.”
“Well, if you need a man to go with you to intimidate the salesmen, you should call Rafael.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Scott had helped her find her coupe, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for Rafael to step into those shoes. Not yet.
“Tell you what, I’ll talk to Paul and find out if he had a good time. If you didn’t totally scare him off, we’ll set you up again.”
“Christa, I appreciate the effort, and Lord knows he’s handsome, but I don’t think he’s interested.”
“Honey, if he spent an evening looking at you in a cocktail dress, he’s interested.”
Emily snorted. “Boobs aren’t everything.”
“No, but they’re like 90% when it comes to men. Believe me. Half those guys that went past us glanced at my legs, but they positively ogled your chest.”
“Anyway...”
“Anyway, I’ll let you know about Rafa, okay? You would see him again, right?”
“I guess.”
Christa rolled her eyes. “God save us from guessing psychologists.”
Chapter 5
RAFA double-checked his phone, making sure he was at the right place. It said “Gulliver’s Bar and Grille” over the door, but the sign was cracked and the paint was peeling. It was not the kind of place he expected Emily to frequent, but the name was right.
He peered through the windows, trying to get a feel for what kind of people were inside. It looked like a yuppie skiing crowd. His slacks and button-up shirt were a touch overdressed, but the crowd was probably safe. He entered quickly, closing the heavy door behind him to keep the bell from rattling. A susurrus of sound hit him, conversations and laughter and the clink of glasses on the long granite bar top.
Emily waved from a small table across from the bar. He passed through the crowd, eyes on her the whole way. She looked amazing. Another dress, this one navy and with sleeves. Her legs peaked out from beneath, and he could see the full shape of her calves. He sat across from her, taking care to tuck his injured right leg under the table where it wouldn’t be a tripping hazard for anyone else.
“I’m glad you could make it,” she said.
“I’m glad to be here.” It bothered him to have his back to the door. He tried to tell himself that he was in the middle of the US. Men with guns weren’t going to just burst through.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m good. Have the police found your car yet?”
“They found it Thursday night.”
That sounded ominous. He waited for her to continue.
“It was totaled. Whoever had it ran it into a telephone pole north of Denver.”
“That’s terrible. You have a rental, no?”
“I do. I’m going to look at new cars tomorrow.” A waiter--thin, maybe forty, not dangerous--came over and took their drink orders. “So that’s me,” Emily said when the waiter left. “How are you doing?”
He shrugged. “I’m good.” As good as he could be, all things considered.
“So you’ve traveled a lot, right?”
He smiled. Innocuous conversation. That was a good thing. Probably. At least it meant that she wasn’t trying to analyze him. “You could say that.”
“So what was your favorite place?”
He spent a while talking about hiking in the Pyrenees and snorkeling off the coast of Portugal. She talked about jogging in the mountains in the warm weather months, skiing in the colder ones. It made him keenly aware of his leg, but it caught his attention, too. He yearned to run in the mountains again. Say what you would about Afghanistan, but it had pretty scenery. The mountains were what had brought him to Boulder, after all. That and the VA down in Denver.
“So what are you going to do after you’re discharged?” she asked. It caught him by surprise. His eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean?” Had she just been trying to lull him?
“I talked to Christa and she said that you were probably leaving the service. You said your family had been in the service for generations. It made me wonder if there was any other family business.”
“I see. The family business has been... I guess you could say conquest. My father is a consultant at a Washington firm now that he’s retired. I could probably find something like that, but I do not think it is for me.”
She leaned forward, balancing her elbows on the edge of the table. “What is for you, Rafa?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I will write a book?” He studied his good left hand. “Though typing one-handed is not the easiest thing in the world.”
“You could dictate it,” Emily said. “Take a recorder, go out on the trails and hike. Dictate a chapter or two. It works for a lot of people.”
“Are you a writer, too?”
“I dabble when I can.”
Rafa took a sip of his beer. It was weird how all of their conversations turned into a sort of jousting match.
He loved it.
So many people were just “nice.” They abhorred conflict, content to take the easiest path through life and fall willingly into the grave. A woman like Emily, one with a real fire, a real passion, it made him feel alive in a way nothing had for six months.
He looked up, realizing that she had asked him a question. “I’m sorry?”
“I asked if you wanted another round.”
> He glanced at his glass, saw that it was empty. “Please.”
The second round was followed by a third, and then a fourth, and somewhere along the way Emily mentioned that Gulliver’s had the best scotch selection in town. By the time they had finished a flight of samples, his head was swimming.
“I think,” he blinked a couple times, trying and failing to clear his vision, “I think I should stop.”
“Me, too,” Emily said. He wasn’t sure if her eyes were unfocused, or if it was just his own eyes failing him, but they had both had a little too much.
He felt great.
Better than he had since leaving for that last shura.
Someone from the restaurant stopped by the table. “Can I call you folks a cab?”
“I think that would be a good idea,” Emily said.
Rafa nodded. He wasn’t driving home, that was for sure. “What part of the city are you in?”
“Out west, up the mountain a bit.”
“I’m out east.” He waved toward the bartender. “I’ll have him call a second cab.”
“Put your hand down,” she said.
He cocked his head. Was she inviting him to her place? “Are you... are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Rafa sucked in a deep breath. His stomach felt like it had butterflies in it, and he knew it wasn’t just the alcohol. He adjusted his right leg, feeling painfully aware of his deficiencies. How would she react if they...
No, better not to think of it. One step at a time, Rafinha.
Chapter 6
TRAFFIC was light so late in the evening, so it didn’t take long to cover the few miles to Emily’s side of town. As the cab pulled in front of her apartment block, she suddenly doubted herself. He’d been wonderful at dinner, but was she really prepared to invite him upstairs?
The cab eased to a stop and Rafa looked over. He reached across with his good left hand and set it on top of hers. “Well, have a good rest of the evening. If you need help car shopping, perhaps you could call me?”