by Rachel Lee
As the traffic grew a little heavier, so did his state of wariness. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, though. Not nearly. He drew the deep breaths they’d taught him and settled down. He hardly noticed the charm, or lack of it, as they passed through the center of Conard City, because he was focused on staying calm.
Ridiculous, he told himself. There was absolutely nothing about this place that should rake up any memories or bad reactions. It had to be the closed-in feeling.
At last, Sharon turned them onto a large gravel parking lot outside a huge lumberyard. Hambley’s Lumber, for Home and Ranch, a large sign said. The sign looked weathered, and a small corner was missing. He had to make himself walk beside Sharon into the interior, but a sense of ease overcame him unexpectedly as he smelled fresh wood. It was as if the smell took him back to a good time, and he was able to relax a bit and look around, taking things in.
Sharon made a beeline, evidently knowing exactly where she wanted to go. He noted the way she smiled and said hello to everyone they passed, as if she knew them all. And maybe she did. That increased his comfort level even more.
He saw the paint counter just ahead, but before they arrived, Sharon was stopped by a tall man of about thirty-five, wearing a green bib apron over jeans and a checked shirt. The apron was stamped “Hambley’s” on the front.
“Sharon, it’s been a while.”
“Ed! How nice to see you.” She gave the man a brief hug. “I’m just here to buy paint and supplies. Lots of paint.”
“Gonna red the place up, huh?”
“That’s the plan.”
Then the man’s dark eyes tracked to Liam. “Got yourself a handyman?”
“Actually,” Sharon said, turning to Liam with a smile and extending her hand to encourage him to come closer, “this is Liam O’Connor, Chet’s army buddy. He’s been kind enough to offer to help me.”
The response was instantaneous. Ed looked at him, then looked at Sharon and there was no mistaking the shopkeeper was attracted to her. Liam’s response was equally swift. He felt a surge of protectiveness toward Sharon. Maybe even possessiveness.
The strength of the feeling took him by surprise, and he tried to rein it in, even as he reached out to shake Ed’s hand. He had no right to feel possessive or even protective about Sharon. No right at all. But as he met Ed’s smile, he recognized the competitiveness there.
Ed had his eye on Chet’s widow and didn’t like a stranger moving in, especially one with ties to Chet. Some instincts were primal enough that not even a TBI could erase them completely.
Then he stomped down on that train of thought, asking himself how he could be sure he wasn’t just imagining it all. Uncertainty was his constant companion these days.
Ed turned back to Sharon. “So what are you painting?”
“House and barn. You’ll have to help me estimate how much paint I need.”
“And you’re the teacher,” Ed said with a wink.
“There’s awfully dry wood in some places,” Sharon retorted with a laugh. “Rough, too.”
Ed put his hand on Sharon’s shoulder and guided her to the paint counter. “There are easy ways to handle this.”
Liam clamped his jaw, irritated by the familiar way Ed touched Sharon. He took another deep breath and tried to plaster a pleasant smile on his face, reminding himself he had no claim whatever on this woman.
“Pick your colors,” Ed was saying. “But you don’t want to pick up too much of it today because it’ll start separating. What I can do, though, is make a delivery every time you need more. No need for you to take it all at once, or cart it out there yourself.”
“I have help,” Sharon said, flashing a smile at Liam. “But I can see what you mean about the paint separating, and stirring it is no fun.”
Stirring paint might be just the kind of activity Liam needed, but he didn’t say so. Painting would keep him even busier.
“Well, then, which do you want to start with and what color?”
Sharon looked at Liam. “House or barn?”
She was asking him to decide? He’d gotten used to making very few decisions since his injury, but now he wondered if that was mostly because he hadn’t been allowed to or because he couldn’t. Either way, it was on him to answer, and hesitating too long might make him look stupid to Ed. “Barn,” he said decisively, though he was far from feeling decisive.
“I agree,” Sharon answered promptly. “It needs it more than the house.”
“I’d suggest staining,” Ed said, “but as I recall, there’s still some old paint on the place. The wood’s pretty weathered, though. It’s going to be thirsty.”
Gallons of primer headed the list. “This,” Sharon said, “is what I get for neglecting it for so long.”
“You could have called me. I’d have brought the boys out.”
Liam felt again that powerful surge of possessive protectiveness. God, he needed to put a damper on this. It probably qualified right alongside the anger they’d helped him work on. Unwanted, and potentially dangerous.
“Thanks, Ed,” Sharon answered, “but there was a plan in place. That kind of...changed.”
Changed? A nice way of putting Chet’s death. Liam felt the whisper of old grief, for himself and Sharon.
Once the order was placed, Liam carried several gallons of primer out to the truck while Ed followed with painting tools and a heap of rags.
Ed lingered at the truck, though. “You need help, holler,” he said. This time he addressed his words to Liam. “It’s a lot for one man.”
“Thanks,” Liam managed. He hoped he sounded pleasant.
At last, they climbed into the truck, and Ed headed back to his business.
“He’s such a nice man,” Sharon remarked.
“Yes.”
“Something wrong?”
“Not a thing.” He felt her eyes on him but refused to return her gaze. The things going on inside him weren’t for sharing. Then he wondered if they were rational. But why should they be? They were feelings.
“Hell,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Just getting tangled in my own head again. Yes, Ed seemed nice.”
“I was going to offer you lunch at Maude’s diner. But it’s small and usually crowded.”
He bridled a bit, even as he realized it might be a difficult time for him. But going to a diner? He took the bit between his teeth. “Sure, that sounds great. My treat.”
The only way he was going to emerge from this tunnel he’d been staggering his way through for so long now was to punch a hole in the side and fight his way out of it. The image pleased him enough to put a smile on his face. He could do this.
* * *
Sharon acutely sensed the ebb and flow of whatever was going on inside Liam. She couldn’t ascribe it to particular things, but she felt it, anyway—the moments of tension, the instants of irritation, the seconds of uncertainty. He was on quite a roller coaster during this trip to town, and she wondered if it was good for him to do all this or if it might give him problems.
But he was the one who said he wanted to go to the diner, and with only the merest hesitation on the doorstep, he plunged in.
She couldn’t help but wonder what it must feel like to be a man who could remember facing the most god-awful thing in the world, namely war, and then find yourself unwilling to face a crowded diner.
Why should that be? What exactly had happened to him? Or perhaps the self-doubt had crept in while he was recovering his physical skills and learning to control his temper.
Given that he had warned her he often said things he shouldn’t, she thought he’d done remarkably well at the paint store, especially with Ed acting like there was no way Liam could do this job alone. Maybe he couldn’t but that should be his decision, not Ed’s.
As it was a weekday, and still a bit early for lunch, the diner wasn’t overly crowded. It was only as they slid into a booth that Sharon realized she might have made a huge mistake. Maude had a tendency to slam things around, seem angry at her customers most of the time and speak sharply. Sharon didn’t know if Liam was ready for the full treatment.
“Maybe we shouldn’t eat here,” she said.
“Why?”
“Maude.”
“Who’s Maude?”
“She owns the place. Chet used to say she was like a drill instructor. Liam, she’s going to slam things down in front of you and be very sharp in her manner.”
“Really?” To her amazement, Liam smiled. “Forewarned is forearmed.”
Now came Sharon’s turn to tense up. She’d seen enough to know that Liam could control his temper decently, but he had never been exposed to Maude, who seemed to be anger personified. “She might not even let you order for yourself.”
“You don’t know how rarely I’ve ever been able to choose what I eat.”
She hadn’t thought about that. She guessed living off rations a lot of the time might make a person indifferent and willing to eat pretty much anything that wasn’t freeze-dried and rehydrated.
And there was Maude, bearing down on them. Stocky, getting up in years, but as vital as ever, she stomped their way with a gleam in her dark eyes. It almost reminded Sharon of a cat that had spied a bird: predatory.
But Maude had a good heart. She just had the world’s most unfortunate manner.
She reached their table and stared down at Liam. “Who’s this?”
That was Maude, straight to the point. Before Liam could answer, Sharon said, “This is Liam. He was Chet’s best buddy in the army.”
“Took you long enough to get here.”
Sharon nearly cringed. She wouldn’t have blamed Liam for giving an equally sharp response. Instead, he surprised her.
“Some roads,” he said, looking right at Maude, “are long and twisted.”
Maude peered at him. “Maybe from Afghanistan they are.” The response was monumentally unexpected from Maude, and evinced none of her usual antagonism. However, she still slapped the menus and the empty coffee mugs on the table in front of them. “Coffee?”
“Love some,” Liam answered. Sharon managed a nod.
As soon as Maude had moved away out of earshot, Sharon leaned over and said quietly, “That was something. Maude’s never that mellow.”
Liam shrugged. “All you have to do is glare back.”
How had she missed that? Had he really glared at Maude? Maybe so. Wow.
The notion made her want to giggle, and she quickly covered her mouth with her hand. She wouldn’t want Maude to think she was being laughed at. Steaks had been burned for less.
“What do you recommend?” Liam asked.
Sharon remembered then that he might have trouble reading the menu. He had said he had could only read some, and menus could be daunting if they were packed, as Maude’s was. Dang. He hadn’t even reached for it. She wondered how she could broach the subject of teaching him.
“Well, Maude is famous for her steak sandwiches and pie.”
“Then I’ll have a steak sandwich.”
By the time they were eating their sandwiches, Sharon was wondering what had gotten into Maude. Nothing got slammed in front of them at all. It was an amazing personality change, right down to a nicer tone of voice.
“You tamed the dragon,” she told Liam as they climbed back into her truck.
“Not much of a dragon,” he remarked. “I’ve met tougher ones.”
“I’m serious. I’ve never seen her like that. Attitude comes with every meal at Maude’s.”
He laughed. “Maybe I’ll see it next time.”
She put the key in the ignition, then hesitated. “Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to learn to read better? Because if you do, I can help. I am a teacher.”
He was silent a few heartbeats. “They told me I might never be able to read much again. Not a book or anything like that. They weren’t sure, but said in most cases like mine improvement might be limited. Something about where some of the damage is located.”
“Oh.” Her heart sank.
“On the other hand,” he said, “I guess there’s only one way to find out. Sure, let’s give it a shot.”
“I can go to the library and find early-reader books if you won’t feel insulted. Or we can work out a method at home.”
“Skip the library,” he said after a moment. “I can read some things. Short things. It’s not all gone.”
“Then maybe you just need to brush up.” Which was a hopeful statement indeed, she admitted to herself. Some things could never come back, depending on the degree and type of injury. She guessed they were going to explore some more of his limitations. She just hoped they didn’t bring him to despair.
* * *
And that was how he came to be high on a ladder three days later, starting the second side of the barn, turning everything white with primer.
It was an easy, soothing job, one he had remembered well enough. It stole some of the constant tension he lived with, wondering when he was going to butt up hard against all that he’d lost. He could paint. That actually opened up possibilities for work in the future.
And the constant physical exertion relieved the anxiety that never quite left him. In fact, it banished it.
Up on that ladder, he actually felt as if everything was right in the world. As he was brushing and rolling his way over the weathered wood, he wondered if he should have taken Sharon’s offer to rent the paint sprayer. He’d looked at it, decided he wasn’t ready to test himself through that, and opted instead for brushes and rollers.
Truthfully, he didn’t want this job to be easy. He needed the hard work, something sadly missing from his life for a while now, unless you counted rehab. Learning to walk and take care of himself had been labor all right. Hell, at one point getting a spoon from a bowl to his mouth had seemed overwhelming.
But things were looking up. Definitely. Now he had another tool in his pack to add to those he’d remastered.
Then there was reading. He wondered if he’d made it harder on Sharon by refusing the books, but he hadn’t known how to tell her that the prospect of facing a book, even a children’s book, had been rife with the potential for failure. The doctors had told him often enough that his reading skills might remain forever minimal, that he’d be fortunate if he could read even two pages in a book.
Sometimes he wondered if the doctors hadn’t given him too many warnings. All for the best of reasons, of course. They’d prepared him for disappointments. Unfortunately, they’d also made him reluctant to try.
Well, that was going to change. He reached for the paint can hanging from a lower rung by a wire hook, and lifted it, refilling the roller pan. Yep, he was going to try some new things, just like he was working on reading.
He still knew the alphabet, which was good, and wasn’t overwhelmed by single, common words. He recognized most of them on the flash cards Sharon had tested him with. Next was getting to sentences. Complexity. Putting words together correctly.
“Paint.” He heard himself muttering the word and was recalled to the task at hand. Twenty feet high on a ladder didn’t seem like a smart place to let his mind wander, and the muttering habit he’d developed brought him back once more.
That guy Ed had been right: this wood was soaking up paint like a desert would soak up water. He almost imagined he could hear it slurp.
He kind of liked the way some of the wood had silvered where the paint had been gone awhile, but he also remembered that wasn’t good for the long run, so he remorselessly slapped primer over it.
He realized
he had begun to spend a lot of time not thinking about Sharon. Deliberately avoiding thinking about her. He knew why, too. He’d come here carrying a letter to her from Chet, his best buddy ever, and the kinds of thoughts he kept having felt like a betrayal.
He’d reacted to his first view of her, of course. A very pretty woman, she undoubtedly drew many men’s thoughts in sexual directions. But after this amount of time, he’d gotten used to how pretty she was. What he couldn’t get used to was how strongly she attracted him. Damn, that just seemed to keep growing.
Anytime he came within a few feet of her, he smelled her, and she smelled good, especially the shampoo she used. He detected no other perfume, but she didn’t need it. Her natural scents enticed him.
It had been a long time since he was attracted to a woman, and if he came right down to it, it would be even longer till he acted on that attraction, because he was afraid of his own bumbling. There were times in life when you really couldn’t blurt out the wrong thing, or blurt something out the wrong way, and he seemed to possess an absolute genius for that these days. Keeping quiet and staying away from situations fraught with emotion seemed like the best course.
Glancing down, he saw he needed more paint. The pan was empty, the paint can hardly holding enough to fill a brush. Lifting the brush from where it dangled from another wire holder, he ran it around the inside of the paint can and swiped it against the wall repeatedly until it was nearly dry.
They were going to have to get Ed to deliver more soon. He didn’t like that, and he knew exactly why.
“Selfish,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed the can, pan, roller and brush and climbed down the ladder. “Damn fool,” he added for good measure.
He didn’t have a thing to offer a woman like Sharon, so why was some broken connection in his brain trying to put a fence around her? Sharon needed a whole man, not the dregs of one.
He had just reached the lowest rung of the ladder when he felt a prickle between his shoulder blades, the kind of prickle that had always warned him there were eyes on him.
The response was instinctive, so deeply ingrained that not even memory loss had killed it. In an instant, he crouched and began to scan the area.
