by Karen Rock
“Not too hard.” An irritated edge ruffled his voice.
Her long eyelashes blinked fast. “Excuse me?”
“I saw you talking to Cole.”
Now why did he sound accusing?
A line formed between her brows. “He was asking about volunteering at Fresh Start.”
Justin’s eyes flew to the full moon engulfing the purple-ink sky. “He just wants an excuse to be around you.”
She rubbed her hands together and blew on them. “He wants to help.”
“To help himself to more time with you.” He caught her hands between his and rubbed them, the sensation of her soft skin against his callused flesh a trip wire to his pulse. It rushed headlong through his veins, tumbling over itself.
“You sound jealous,” she accused, her words a bit breathy, misting the air white.
“Jealous? That’s crazy.” It took every bit of willpower to release her. Her touch banished the dry burning in his mouth, the pounding in his head. Being around her, holding her hands, settled him somehow.
“Thank you for before.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“What you did in there. Talking about the patients. I couldn’t have done it.”
“If you knew them, you could.”
She ducked her head and pushed her hands into her coat pockets.
“Besides,” Justin continued, “You came up with the plan for the fact-checking group.”
“I did,” she half groaned. “And now they’re planning to show up unannounced to look us over. What if we get a bad report?”
Between his ranching program, the group sessions, counseling and fitness and diet regimens, the patients received exactly what Brielle described, a real chance to make permanent life changes. Any committee failing to see that would be blind, stupid or just plain biased. “We won’t.”
“Let’s hope. Are you ready to go?” There was a brief catch in her voice as he tucked her loose scarf into her coat collar.
“There’s something I want to show you first.”
“Maybe another time.” She twisted a cross pinned to the lapel of her jacket. “I’ve still got work to finish and—”
Her words cut off as he laced his fingers in hers. “Work will be there in the morning. This won’t.”
An exclamation of white blew from her lips. “Why’s my seeing this important to you?”
He cupped her chin. “Don’t know, it just is. Will you come?”
Her wide eyes probed his, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. “What are you going to show me?”
“The moon.”
She peered up at the sky. “I can see it just fine.”
“Yeah. But can you touch it?”
Her lips curved as she shook her head. “You’re being silly, you know that.”
“It’s part of my charm,” he drawled, and her smile widened, her ease around him filling him with warmth. He was used to pushing people away. Brielle, however, refused to be budged. She just kept coming for him, and he liked that about her. A lot.
“Okay. Let’s go,” she said. “Must be I’m crazy, too.”
Something he couldn’t identify, light and sparkling, spun through his chest as he led her up a path through dark woods. What was he doing?
Darned if he knew.
He just didn’t want to let her go so quick. Not when a large orange moon hung low and heavy in the sky, flooding the world with magic, filling a lonely man’s heart with longing for what couldn’t be...except on a night like this.
* * *
BRIELLE’S SENSIBLE HEELS didn’t seem so practical now that she hurried along an uneven dirt path in the shadowed woods. Overhead, the moon’s rays streamed through the pine canopy, illuminating the dark. They failed to enlighten her, though. Why had she agreed to this crazy jaunt? Good girls didn’t run off, heedless, into the night with bad boys like Justin Cade...
And where was he taking her?
Her skin shivered over her bones at the brush of his arm against her shoulder. He prowled through the forest like a predatory cat, sure-footed and graceful. When her toe caught on a root, Justin snaked an arm around her waist and held her tight, guiding her forward without breaking stride.
For such a scruffy man, he sure smelled good: leather, soap and an earthy musk, a wild, masculine scent. If it was bottled, they’d name it Untamed. It howled at the part of her that had grown up following schedules, attending planned events and adhering to predetermined routines.
As a military brat, she’d been taught unquestioning respect for authority and expected discipline for infractions. As an army chaplain, she’d understood the safety provided by rules and procedures. Yet here she was, stumbling through the dark with a man who cared little for his life—who courted danger...welcomed it, even.
All her life she’d walked the straight and narrow—until she’d stumbled. Fresh Start was supposed to help her regain her bearings. Yet Justin pulled her down another path into the unknown, and something inside her thrilled at this impulsive detour, even as a voice inside whispered, run.
The path grew so steep she clawed at dirt to keep from toppling. Justin hoisted her over rocky outcroppings and loose-pebbled inclines, her breath quickening, her body warming from the exertion. An owl hooted then swooped by in a white flash. Scrub brush rustled with skittering animals fleeing their approach.
“How much farther?” she huffed as Justin lifted her over a downed tree.
He set her down gently. “Almost there. Doing okay?” The rich timbre of his voice, the note of concern deepening it, vibrated inside her.
She’d dedicated her life to helping other people, both as a chaplain and a counselor. How long had it been since she let somebody help her? “Yes.”
Fifteen minutes later, the trees thinned then ended. She and Justin glided from the forest onto a grassy plateau where the world fell from a distant edge to a shadowed valley. Overhead, the orange moon bore down on them as crickets sang dirges in the crisp fall night. The wind rustled through dry leaves, a crackling, papery sound, and the faint scent of hickory smoke carried on the breeze.
She breathed deep and drank in this glorious moment. “What is this place?”
“Miracle Point.” Justin tugged her closer to the precipice. “We race dirt bikes up here.”
She glanced back at the narrow, treacherous path. All the injuries he’d described in his intake report now made sense. “That’s insane.”
“And fun.”
“I don’t call throwing your life away fun.”
“I wouldn’t call not living life fun, either.”
“What’s that mean?” she demanded.
“Holing up in your office. Taking your meals alone. Working until after everyone’s headed to bed...that’s not living.”
“It’s working.”
“It’s hiding,” Justin insisted, his jaw jutting.
She jerked her hand away. “I didn’t come up here to be insulted.”
He gripped her shoulder, and the moonlight spun in his green-gold eyes, a kaleidoscope of shades. “It’s the truth. Not an insult.”
“Not true at all.”
“Name one fun thing you’ve done all year.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing emerged. The wind’s lonely moan carried her back to Kandahar, to a card game...
“Come on, Chaps, just one hand. We won’t play for money this round,” Private Stan Dobbins had begged her as she passed through the mess hall. Desert gusts flapped the edges of the thick canvas tent and howled through its seams.
“What’s the game?”
“Twenty-one,” piped up a newly arrived marine, his hair buzzed to the scalp. Private Kevin Maloney, according to his name tag. Peach fuzz sprouted above his upper lip. Had he even had his first shave yet? She marveled at the strange sequence of events that’d put
an assault rifle in his hands before a razor.
“Sounds like gambling to me,” she’d teased, wanting to join, but needing to put the final touches on her Easter Sunday sermon.
“Plus, guys...” Private Michael Jennings flashed the deck that was decorated with scantily clad women before he dealt them. “Don’t think Chaps wants to touch these.”
“We shouldn’t touch ’em, either, considering whatever you done with ’em in private,” mocked an older soldier, an enlisted man on his fourth and final tour of duty. He pinched his cards between his thumb and index finger and wrinkled his nose.
“Hey. Show some respect,” Jennings scolded, one side of his mouth hitching up. “They’re a family heirloom. My great-grandfather had ’em in WWII. My grandfather in ’Nam. Dad in the first Gulf War. They’re good luck.”
“Good for something, anyway,” the older soldier chuckled.
“I’m heading out tomorrow,” Private Maloney said to Brielle as he surveyed his cards, his knees pumping fast beneath the table.
“Popping his combat cherry,” a wire-thin soldier mumbled, his body taut and electric as he huddled over his cards. Puffs of smoke erupted from the cigar clamped between his teeth.
“That’s not the only cherry he needs to pop.”
A howl rose from the group at Private Jennings’s jab. She’d wandered away, laughing on the inside, until the following evening when she’d found him writhing on a gurney outside the crowded triage tent.
“Am I gonna die?” he’d asked her.
She slipped her hand in his and her heart tumbled, landed and shattered at the ice-cold feel of his flesh. “No.”
“I’m gonna die,” he gasped. A wheezing sound rattled from his red-soaked chest.
“Medic!” she hollered, panic filling her, rising along with her dread. Using her sleeve, she’d wiped the blood bubbling on his lips.
“Used to be a pretty good shortstop,” he rambled, his unblinking eyes burning into hers.
“You’re going to be all right,” she’d insisted, sending up a silent prayer, then turned and shouted, “Medic!”
Her eyes landed on a motionless, staring body a few feet away. Private Maloney. A nurse pulled a sheet over his blackened face, the one he’d never get to shave. No!
“The cards,” gasped Jennings. A tear rolled from the corner of his eye and streaked his red cheek. “Give them to my kid brother. They’re his now.”
“You’re going to be okay,” she promised then silently begged, Lord, save him.
Lord?
“I want my mom.” He coughed a red stream. “I want...my...” And then he’d stopped speaking. Stopped breathing. And she’d stumbled away, forsaken, as a nurse checked his pulse then covered him, too.
Anger burned through her, a firestorm charring her inside out. Where are You, Lord?
A hand squeeze pulled her back to Miracle Point. To Justin.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine.” Her voice, when it emerged, scraped over her tight throat, raw and gritty.
“Liar.” A rough thumb brushed the damp from her cheeks, the gesture achingly tender. Were those tears? She never cried. Never allowed herself to be vulnerable, not in private or in public, not around others.
Only...Justin didn’t feel other. His shadows called to her own.
“I haven’t had fun in a long time. I—I’m not sure I know what it feels like anymore.”
“Come on.” Justin led her to a large, flat-topped rock and helped her up. He lay on his back beside her a moment later and propped his ankle on his opposite, raised knee. “Put your hands around your eyes like this.” He circled his fingers around his eyes, cutting off his peripheral vision.
She stretched out beside him, copied his move and stared up at the enormous moon, her blood swarming, rising along with its tidal pull.
“Can you feel it?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s beautiful,” she murmured, her fears dropping from her like sandbags cut from a launched balloon.
“Beautiful,” he echoed, and she felt his eyes on her. “What were you thinking about back there?”
“Kandahar,” she admitted after a moment. The moon, this moment worked its magic and loosened her tongue.
“You never told me why you were discharged.”
Her breath evaporated in her lungs.
“You don’t have to say if you don’t want.”
Silence descended, the only sound her heartbeat knocking down her eardrums.
“It was Easter,” she murmured, wanting to speak, at last, in what felt like a safe space. “We’d lost twelve men the night before when a daisy chain of IEDs hit their caravan. One of them was just eighteen years old. I’d never seen so many soldiers at service. Some were enraged, others grieving, the rest oscillating between the two. I asked them to bow their heads and began one of the Divine Office’s morning prayers, Psalm 144. ‘Blessed be the Lord my strength which teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.’”
Her voice faltered. Justin’s hand curled protectively around hers, his warmth seeping into her chilled bones, steadying her.
“‘My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdues my people under me,’” she continued. “‘Lord, what is man, that you have taken knowledge of him! Or the son of man, that you make account of him!’”
She stopped and stared up at the glittering sky.
“What comes next?” Justin asked.
“I couldn’t remember.” She pressed her lips together to keep them from shaking.
Justin released her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
“I couldn’t say anything else.”
He tucked a loose hair strand behind her ear, his fingers grazing her sensitive lobe. “What’d you do?”
She squished her eyes shut. “I walked out. Never went back.”
“To church?”
She shook her head. “To any of it. To the army, the soldiers I’d vowed to minister to.”
His fingers skimmed her jawline, a touch so gentle it could have been a moonbeam.
“I abandoned them when I should have had their backs. It’s a morally bruising battlefield.”
“You weren’t on the battlefield with them,” Justin argued.
“Wasn’t I?” she cried and opened her eyes to meet Justin’s burning gaze. “I caused my share of casualties.”
“What do you mean?”
She bit the inside of her cheek, unable to say more, the chasm inside her yawning wide, threatening to swallow her whole. “I asked God to protect the battalions from further harm. I knew He wouldn’t. I asked him to spare the innocents caught in the cross fire. I knew He wouldn’t. I asked Him finally for grace.”
“And did you receive it?”
“Not yet. I’m still trying to find my way back.”
When he turned on his side, she angled her face and their noses brushed. He slid a finger down the side of her cheek, and the wind fluttered strands of her hair between them. “You’re here now,” he said, his voice deep.
Their eyes clung.
“Yes, I am.”
He cupped her cheek, and her heart beat hard enough to burst from her chest. His lips lowered to hers and hovered a breath away. “That’s why you avoid your patients.”
“I’ve been working,” she insisted, but her conviction evaporated in the face of raw truth.
“You don’t want to lose anyone else.”
This close, she could smell his minty, warm breath. “No,” she admitted.
“Then get to know them. Come to my ranching workshop tomorrow.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she confessed. “It’s not easy for me...like it is for you.”
His short laugh rushed across her cheek. Their eyelash
es tangled. “You think it’s easy for me? I hate talking to people.”
“What about me?”
His eyes blazed into hers. “You’re different.”
“How?” she breathed.
“Don’t know. You just are. You get me to say things.”
She stared into his gorgeous eyes, and she touched his beard. It was softer than she expected, almost silky. “Like?”
His eyes closed, and a low groan drifted from his throat. “Things I don’t want to say.”
“You never told me when you started drinking so much.”
His lids lifted, and he flattened her palm against his chest. Through the leather of his jacket, she felt the faint beat of his heart. “I’ll tell you if you promise to come to my workshop.”
“I will if you’ll consider attending Craig’s group therapy session.”
He whistled. “You don’t let up, do you?”
“It’s part of my charm,” she teased, lobbing his earlier words back at him.
He laughed. “Guess we’re a regular pair of charmers then.” He fell silent and then—“I drove straight from Jesse’s funeral to the liquor store,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “Bought a twelve-pack of beer. Finished it that night. Went back the next morning and bought another. Haven’t missed a day since.”
“How are you managing now?”
“Not sleeping much.”
“If you’d see Dr. Fulton, he could prescribe something to help.”
“I don’t need help.”
“What do you need?” she challenged, slightly breathless at his intense perusal. Oh...she should have known not to go into the forest with the big bad wolf...
“This.” He leaned closer. Then, as light as a butterfly’s wing, as imagined as fairy dust, his lips brushed hers. The brief contact drugged her senses, sapping her strength so that she melted into him, ready for more.
A twig snapped, loud as a gunshot, and they broke apart. Justin swept a protective arm around her as she scrambled to her knees. From the tree cover, an enormous creature emerged. Dark, tall and majestic.
“Moose,” she breathed in Justin’s ear.
“And baby,” he murmured as a calf peeked from the brush then trailed after its mother.
The pair gamboled into the grassy area then froze when the wind blew Brielle’s hair forward, carrying her scent. In a flash, the pair turned and bounded back into the murky forest.
