by Geri Krotow
Winnie gave Sam the hand signal for stay and silent, then moved close and had to lean against Max to keep her balance. As she inched forward to catch a glimpse, Maeve shot out one hand and grabbed her hair.
“Owwww!” She pulled back.
Maeve’s scream of victory echoed across the path. Winnie could make out the white flash of the doe’s tail before she disappeared with her fawn into the safety of the forest.
“Way to go, Mom.” Krista sounded upset but when Winnie glanced over, she saw her smile.
“More like, ‘Way to go, Maeve.’” Winnie rubbed her crown. “Don’t pull Mommy’s hair, Maeve.”
“Why did you do that, huh?” Max reached behind him and held Maeve’s hands in his. They made a perfect circle with their arms—Maeve’s held straight in front of her, over her head, and Max’s behind him.
“Doesn’t that hurt your shoulders?” She knew his shoulders had taken the brunt of the IED blast, which had exacerbated the arthritis caused by years conducting carrier launches.
“Nah, not when it’s this munchkin.”
Winnie noted that he released Maeve’s hands and shook his arms out after he’d lowered them.
“Good dog, Sam.” She’d almost forgotten to praise him.
A two-mile walk would normally take Winnie forty minutes with Krista walking beside her and Maeve in her stroller. But the rough terrain made the journey much slower.
“Do you want a break from her?” Winnie saw Max wince a bit when he shrugged out of the carrier. They’d found a nice spot to eat their lunch, at an overpass that provided a startling view of both Mount Baker and the valley below.
“I should be okay after a little rest. Besides, she won’t be as good if you carry her.”
“True.” Whenever Winnie tried to, Maeve let out gusty howls of protest. For some reason she liked to be on Max’s back, no doubt due to the better view and the sense of a stronger carrier.
“I’m still new,” he said. “It’ll wear off.”
“Daddy.” Maeve stood in front of Max and reached for the grapes he’d pulled out of the backpack.
“Here you go, honey.” He bit the grape in two before giving her half. He even had the safety part of being a parent down pat.
Winnie studied them for a moment. She took a bite of her ham-and-cheese croissant and chewed thoughtfully.
“What’s on your mind?”
“We’ve known each other for a long time, Max. And then we didn’t see each other for years. Yet here we are, almost as though no time has passed.”
“Yeah, this reminds me of the old days.”
Winnie nodded. The four of them—she, Tom, Krista and Max—had spent afternoons a lot like this one on summer days. Something Max would bring his girlfriend of the moment… .
“Except now you two have a daughter.” Krista’s comment threw down a gauntlet in the midst of all of them. Maeve perched on Max’s thigh while she ate her lunch. Winnie crossed her legs and sipped her water. Let him deal with this one.
And he did.
“Yes, we do, Krista. But we had you long before Maeve. I may be only your godfather but I’ve always been part of your family. Consequently, you’ve always been part of mine. Even when I wasn’t with you, I never forgot you.”
Winnie watched the color creep up Krista’s neck and cheeks. She sighed. Max knew that Krista hung on his every word.
“Yup.” Krista nodded and stared at her sneakers.
Max must have felt Winnie’s observation because he looked at her over Krista’s bent head. He raised a brow as if to ask, “What do you expect me to say?”
Winnie simply smiled.
She wasn’t taking the bait, not this weekend.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LATER THAT EVENING the shadows grew long across the campsite and the bugs came out in full force. The fire kept them at bay close to the flames. It took Maeve and Krista about five minutes after their gooey roasted marshmallow, chocolate and graham cracker treats to start looking sleepy.
“Krista, why don’t you two go lie down inside?”
“Okay, Mom.”
Winnie turned to Max. “I’ll clean up these plates and get the girls ready for bed. I’ll come back out for a bit if the fire’s still going.”
“It’ll be here.” Max stoked the flames with one of the sticks they’d used to roast the marshmallows. His features seemed etched in the orange glow.
Winnie had the girls get into their pajamas and then directed them to their bunks. Maeve insisted on crawling into Krista’s.
“I don’t mind, Mom.” Krista really was tired; she usually pitched a fit if Maeve wanted to sleep with her, as Maeve’s kicking woke her up during the night.
“Okay. Thanks, honey. I’ll get her when I come in.”
Winnie finished the brief kitchen cleanup and grabbed a bottle of new wine and two plastic glasses to take out to the fire. She and Max could enjoy a glass before bedtime.
When she looked at the girls one last time, they were snuggled together, sound asleep. She bent over them and kissed their cheeks.
Max wasn’t there when she came back out; neither was Sam. She figured they’d gone for a brief walk.
She wiggled her Swiss Army knife out of her jeans pocket and flipped up the corkscrew. Once the bottle was open she set it down to breathe.
The sound of twigs breaking and a loud panting alerted her to Max and Sam as they reentered camp. She looked up to see man and dog, walking side by side as though Max, not Winnie, was the one who’d raised Sam from a pup.
“I see you’ve made good use of those acrylic wineglasses.” He sat down in the camp chair next to hers. Sam trotted up to the cabin’s small stoop and lay down.
“This is a treat for me. I don’t usually get to have a glass of wine unless I’m out with Robyn or a girlfriend.” She paused. “Or you.”
She poured the wine. “It’s not Montepulciano but I hope you’ll like it.” She was grateful for the dark so that he couldn’t see her hand tremble.
Max chuckled. He took the wine bottle from her and read the label in the firelight. “Chilean—nice. Believe it or not, I probably haven’t had much more of a chance to enjoy a decent glass than you these past months. Getting better and staying healthy has occupied my time recently. Before that, around-the-clock flying and working didn’t leave a lot of room for partying.”
“Cheers, then. To our health.”
He leaned toward her and tapped her glass with his. The plastic made a dull noise compared to crystal or glass, but it was music to Winnie’s ears.
After a sip, Max stared into the fire. “We’ve come a long way, Winnie.”
“Yes, I suppose we have. We’re not bickering every time we see each other for one thing.”
“No, but I don’t just mean over the past several months. I’m talking about how we’ve known each other since we were nothing more than kids, really. Since before you and Tom got married.”
“I didn’t know you were talking about ancient history, Max.”
“Not ancient, but shared. That’s something a lot of people don’t have anymore.”
A warning buzzer went off somewhere in her brain, and it had nothing to do with the wine. If Max started in on his theory that they should be more than friends…
“And before you go getting your panties in a wad,” he said, using an old-fashioned expression she’d heard from her parents, “I’m not talking about us as anything other than family friends—at the moment.”
“Of course.” She swallowed, then brought her glass to her lips.
You’re not disappointed, are you?
“You’re right,” she began. “We’ve known each other longer than a lot of friends, a lot of—” She cut herself off. Her face was hot and not from the fire. Max was finally seeing things her way and she was going to argue with him?
“Married couples? It’s okay to say it, Win. I know you’re not implying that we’re an old married couple or ever will be. I get it.”
; His words should have been soothing to her. She should be relieved. And, in a way…she was. Underneath his tone, she sensed amusement.
She managed to laugh. “You really do get it, don’t you?”
“I’ve been telling you this for how long now?”
She couldn’t keep the smile off her face. This was the Max she used to and could relax with. The Max who listened, offered an opinion here and there and made no judgments.
“How bad was it, Max?”
He turned to her then, looking at her before he angled back to the fire. She didn’t have to expound on “it.” She referred to what they’d never really discussed, not in any detail. His war injury and how it had happened.
“The whole experience wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. Yes, it was stressful. I spent days worrying about different crews flying different types of missions. Especially if they were going into known danger zones. Which, to be honest, includes every mission. Nothing is certain over there.
“We were in the midst of our last two weeks of a seven-month deployment on the ground, in country. It’s a notoriously tough time—and if anyone’s going to do anything stupid or careless, that’s when they do. Going home is so close you can taste it. We were all proud of what we’d accomplished, but your body—anyone’s body—can only take so much of the constant adrenaline rush.”
He gasped out a short laugh.
“You’d think I have a glamorous story to tell, something like you’ve seen in a movie. But it was as normal a day as you get in a war zone. I was walking from my barracks to the canteen. I knew most of the squadron would be there for breakfast, since we were having a safety stand-down that morning. No flights, nothing operational.
“I saw her when she was still twenty yards from the guard shack. Covered from head to toe in black, with just a small opening in her burka to see out of. She was moving slowly but very deliberately toward the base gate. On my other side I saw dozens if not hundreds of my squadron walking toward me, toward the mess tent.”
He rubbed his eyes as if the memory burned them.
“It was pure gut instinct. I didn’t see anyone else stopping her, making her wait before she went forward through the cars that were lined up at the gate. So I yelled as I rushed the gate and tried to get one of the guards’ attention—he was checking under a vehicle for explosives. Hell, she was the explosive.”
His eyes seemed to search the flames in front of them.
“I shouted at the kids walking toward me to turn and run back. They didn’t hesitate. I meant to run back in their direction, too, but she detonated herself before I was clear of the frag zone.”
He paused, shaking his head. “I don’t remember a whole lot after that. The reverberation from the blast knocked me out for twenty minutes, I’m told, but it felt like a year. When I came to in the medical unit, a doc was stitching up my thigh and my head hurt like hell. Once they’d determined that my head injury wasn’t life-threatening, they sedated me for a day or so to give my brain and body a chance to heal more effectively.”
He looked at her again. “That’s it, Winnie. That short time of about—” he glanced up at the darkening sky “—two or three minutes is what’s haunted me for the past year. It can still make my bones and muscles ache from the shrapnel that couldn’t be removed.”
“Why do you act as if it was no big deal, Max? Of course it was!”
“Sure. I’ve been through all of that with my therapist. I’m not ignoring what you said. I’m just trying to emphasize that I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t have. My aircrews, who flew through enemy fire to complete their mission, the ground crewmen who suffered through hell in order to keep the planes flying. They did the extraordinary. They never complained, never tried to back out of their commitment to complete a mission. Ever.”
“It’s hard to imagine what you were thinking through all of it. All we get here in the States is news coverage by reporters who can only guess at what you’re going through, unless they’re imbedded with your squadron.”
“We both know that’s not going to happen, not with our platform.” He meant the classified nature of the EA-6B’s mission, which involved communications and electronic surveillance.
“Mmm. Tom would’ve loved to be part of it all.” She remembered how excited Tom was before any deployment, but he always tried to hide it from her. She understood that he didn’t want to leave her or Krista but that he loved his job, protecting his country. It was his calling.
“He was part of it, Winnie, and in some ways still is. He trained so many of the men and women who were out there flying missions with me. He did all the preps for deployment. He made the squadron ready to go on a moment’s notice. Nothing he did was in vain. Nothing any of the sailors who give it their all is in vain.”
“That’s tough to prove to the families left behind.”
“I know. Despite what I did, what I’m doing, it’s been tough for me to accept losing Tom and every other service member we’ve sacrificed.”
“Max, you understand this is the biggest reason I need us to remain just friends? I can’t go through it again. And I refuse to put my girls at risk of suffering because of my choice in a life partner. I know you’re getting out of the Navy, but you’re still going to fly… .”
Max didn’t reply. Winnie waited.
Finally he said, “That’s all well and good, Winnie, and I applaud your intentions.”
“But?”
He shifted in his camp chair and she wondered if sitting so low to the ground was bothering him. He’d said he needed to move around a lot to keep the aching to a minimum.
“But you’ve already put them at risk. The day you decided to tell me about Maeve, the day you said okay to me spending time with both girls—that’s when you made your decision.”
He got up and stood there for a moment, arms stretched overhead. Winnie was relieved to be able to call it a night.
Are you, really?
Max lowered his arms and reached out to her. She hesitated, then grabbed his hand and let him haul her up out of her canvas chair.
They were inches apart and, despite all her resolve, her body wanted one thing.
“Max.” She swayed toward him. It would be so easy. Feel so right.
“I’m not done yet. You put the girls at risk because if anything happens to me, they’ll be hurt. Sad. They’ll miss me. But the deed is done, Winnie. They’re getting to know me and trust me. Like a dad.”
She breathed in sharply.
“They—the girls and I—we’re having a blast. We’re enjoying our time together.”
He leaned in and the warmth of his breath caressed her face.
“The only person who’s not having any fun here, Win, is you. You’re still trying to orchestrate everyone’s life. Do you even know what you want for yours?”
He pulled back and rubbed his upper arms. “Have a good night. I’ll wait here while you use the restroom and get settled with the girls. Then I’ll go in, too.”
Winnie stared at his retreating back. He sat down next to Sam on the stoop. Seconds later, Sam rose to curl up against him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NOT ONLY DID MAX RESPECT Winnie’s wishes that first night, the next day he appeared to enjoy every single minute with the girls and with her but never made another move to bring anything sexual into their time together.
Winnie appreciated it. Or tried to.
I’m not sulking. I’m not disappointed. This what I want.
Their second day of hiking was longer than the first. It included a ride in a motorboat Max had rented. They navigated a mountain lake to a floating lodge, where they had lunch, and came back ashore near a meadow that was ripe with spring wildflowers and early berries.
When they returned to the cabin, it was time for dinner. To Winnie’s surprise, the girls were still chatty after they’d eaten.
“Uncle Max, can you tell us a scary story?” Krista had placed her camp chair next to Max’s. She’d
been on a paranormal reading kick, so her request didn’t surprise Winnie.
“Honey, it can’t be too scary for your sister.” Maeve snuggled in Max’s lap, her head leaning back on his chest so she could watch the fire.
“I’ll keep the first story tame.” Max playfully shook Maeve’s foot. “If Miss Munchkin drifts off, I can make the second one scarier.”
He started to recite Beatrice Potter’s classic story about Peter Rabbit, one of Maeve’s favorites, from memory.
She immediately clapped.
“Yay, Daddy!” Winnie blinked back tears. Max had read the book often enough in the past couple of months to know it by heart. Since March, when he’d met Maeve, until now—only a short time but it felt as if they’d been a family forever.
Max’s eyes lit up, glistening in the firelight. Even in the darkness Winnie saw his pure love for Maeve.
Unconditional.
As he told the story, Winnie relaxed in her camp chair and watched the three of them. Maeve reveled in the story, safe in her daddy’s lap. Krista’s expression reflected her enjoyment of the tale she’d heard hundreds of times in her childhood. It didn’t seem to matter that she was thirteen.
Winnie closed her eyes and listened as Max’s voice carried across the fire and the campsite. She’d rest her eyes until Maeve fell asleep and then put the baby to bed… .
* * *
“WIN.” HIS BREATH caressed her lips, her cheeks. She wanted to wake up but it was so cozy and warm here by the fire.
The campfire.
She bolted up and banged her head on Max’s chin.
“Oww.” Max sat back on his heels.
“Sorry! I forgot where I am, was— Oh.” She looked at him. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.”
She glanced around the campsite.
“The girls are safely tucked together, just like last night. They’re already asleep.” He answered her before she’d even asked.
“Thanks. I’m sorry, Max.” And she was. As much as he wanted to participate as a parent, she never wanted him to think she was taking advantage of his good intentions.
