by Liz Isaacson
“So nineteen with me.”
“Nineteen with you.”
“I thought you said you do your dinners during the week.”
“We do. I’m sure my grandma Fuller will have something for lunch. Her dad is still alive, and she feeds him a lot.”
“She won’t have enough for nineteen.”
“Knowing her, she will.” Wren smiled at the thought of her silver-haired grandmother. “And we won’t have to eat with them,” she said. “But you know how the pastor stands at the door and talks with people as they leave church? My family will be like that. They’ll all want to meet you. Check you out. Size you up.”
“So you’re saying I better wear a suit.”
“Do you own a suit?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I could wear my uniform.”
Wren’s throat turned to sand. She very much wanted to see him in that uniform while never needing to have that image in her mind. She didn’t like this back-and-forth war inside her heart.
“What time’s church?” he asked.
“Ten-thirty.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.” A beat of silence went by, and then he added, “And Wren, this is a very big deal for me too, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m a little nervous.”
“Let’s just skip church then,” she said. “Deal with my family another day.”
His voice was very quiet and yet extremely powerful when he said, “I don’t want to skip church.”
“Okay.”
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve met someone’s family before.”
“Right.” The word came out without instructions from her brain, and she ended the call with an automatic “Good-bye.” She made it through showering, getting dressed, and getting ready on autopilot too.
Only when Tate knocked on her front door did she snap out of it and admit that she was going to church with a man. And everyone in town would be able to see them.
She opened the door and found him on the front steps wearing a pair of pressed black slacks that were so dark they seemed to actually be sucking in the light. In contrast, his white shirt was so bright, it looked brand new. He wore a bright blue, purple, and white paisley tie, and he’d shaved his face, his sideburns, and a lot of his hair. He was very Marine. Very attractive Marine, and she wondered if she should go down this road again. After all, she knew as her heart thudded against an old scar inside it that men in the armed forces didn’t stick around.
Tate’s retired, she told herself. He wouldn’t do what John had done—make her love him and then skip town in the dead of night instead of having a real conversation with her.
Tate reached out and put two fingers under her chin and nudged it up. “Stop staring.” He grinned at her and offered her his arm, which she gladly took. “So I guess I look okay.”
“Uh huh,” she said stupidly, still trying to get her thoughts and emotions to gel.
“Good, because you look fantastic.” He waited for her to get in his truck, and then he went around just like yesterday. Wren wanted to slide across the seat and sit thigh-to-thigh with him. So she did.
Following her instructions, he drove into town and turned down the road that led out of town, turning into the parking lot surrounding the red brick church before they got far enough to leave Brush Creek in the rear-view mirror.
He didn’t seem ruffled or worried, but Wren’s stomach felt like it had been taken out, turned inside out, and put back in upside down. She knew everyone walking into the church, and they all knew her.
Hailey Taylor shot her and Tate several looks before she stopped to hold the door for her, saying “Hi, Wren.”
“Hi, Hailey. Have you met Tate Benson? He bought the Hammond house.”
They smiled and exchanged hellos before Wren managed to slip inside. She took a seat near the back on the left, hoping maybe her family—who sat near the front and center of the chapel—wouldn’t see them.
“I didn’t buy that house,” Tate whispered to her after sliding onto the bench beside her. “It’s my grandfather’s. My mother’s father. He left it to me in his will.”
Wren stared at the side of his face, but he seemed determined to watch the proceedings at the front. “It’s been abandoned for nine years.”
“I’ve been out of the country for a lot of that time,” he said. “And my wife didn’t want to move to Utah.”
Pieces slid around in her head, clicking into place. “That’s why you came here.”
Tate looked at her, his dark eyes storming now. “I came here, because I got a job and I already had a place to live, yes. And I got that job so I could escape my life in Denver.”
“Why did—?”
“Wren?” Her mother’s voice could plainly be heard above the prelude hymn the choir was singing.
“Hey, Mom.” She tried to communicate to her mother not to make a big deal inside the walls of the church. “This is my b-boyfriend, Tate Benson.”
He stood and turned toward her parents, shaking their hands and smiling for all he was worth. As Wren suspected, they sized him up, asked him a couple of questions, and tried to sit next to them in the back. Wren managed to get them to go up front by saying, “Berlin is waving at you.” Then she collapsed back to the hard bench, utterly spent and eternally grateful for her sister.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Tate said.
“That was two of them,” she muttered.
“And you only stuttered a little on the word boyfriend.” He lifted his arm and put it over her shoulder, bringing her body close to his. She snuggled in deeper now that her parents had taken their seats. He just smelled so good, and she enjoyed the circle of warmth from his body as the pastor got up and started his sermon.
Wren didn’t hear any of it, but Tate seemed to hang on every word. He stood during the closing choir number and surprised, she went with him. They made it out of the building right behind another couple leaving early, and the summer midday heat hit her when they walked out without having to talk to anyone.
“Are we escaping?” she asked.
“If that’s what you want to call it.” He walked fast, and she had to hurry to keep up with him.
“Are you okay?”
He slowed and looked at her, an edge of anxiety in his eyes. She’d hardly ever seen his emotions broadcast so obviously, and she traced her fingers along his jawline. His eyes drifted closed again, like he was trying to memorize her touch and needed to close his eyes to do it.
“We should go,” he said, his words thick. “Maybe you’d like to go up and meet my horse?” He opened his eyes. “Or are you afraid of horses too?”
The meaningful moment between them broke, and she swatted at his chest. “I’m not afraid of horses.”
“Great, let’s go before I do something in the church parking lot you don’t want to have to explain to your mother.”
Chapter 8
Tate had managed to get Wren in the truck and get the truck on the right road up to Brush Creek Horse Farm. He hadn’t been able to figure out what he’d meant by what he’d said.
To make matters worse, Wren had just asked, “What did that mean?”
He didn’t want to be too obvious, but she had called him her boyfriend, and the reason he’d practically sprinted from the chapel was because he didn’t want to waste his afternoon meeting the other sixteen members of her family. It was a selfish move, but Wren didn’t seem to know. Or if she did, she didn’t care.
“Pastor Peters talked about taking chances,” he said, casting her a glance to see if she was willing to go with him for a few minutes. She looked perplexed. “You weren’t listening, were you?”
“You smell really good,” she said. “And you’re warm, and maybe I didn’t sleep that great last night.” She lifted her chin, practically daring him to say anything else about her inattentiveness during the sermon.
Tate chuckled. “Well, I was listening, though you smell pretty great yourself, and he said we couldn’
t wait around for God to direct our every step. That sometimes we have to take a chance, a leap of faith.”
“All right, I’m with you.”
“And I guess I want to take that chance with you. So even though I’m nervous—” Scared out of his mind was a better description, but Tate couldn’t say that out loud. “I want to take a chance.”
“What does that entail?” she asked.
He pulled to the side of the road, though they were only halfway up the hill where the horse farm sat. “When you touch me…I….” He licked his lips as he focused on her mouth. “I want to kiss you,” he whispered, his eyes flicking back to hers. “Doable?”
“Definitely doable.” She trailed her fingers along his collarbone and along the back of his head, sliding right along his hairline. Every sense heightened, and he breathed in as he lowered his head to touch his mouth to hers.
The tension between them exploded, sending sparks behind Tate’s closed eyes, and he found her lips as sweet as he’d imagined. Sweeter than the scent of oranges and sugar she seemed so fond of.
She giggled and Tate let her pull back. His pulse romped through his chest, and he didn’t even want to calm it. He listened to it beat out how he felt about this woman, and though it had always seemed impossible to him that he would ever want to kiss someone again, he definitely had the desire for Wren.
“Let’s go see your horse, cowboy,” she whispered. But she traced the tip of her forefinger over his bottom lip and kissed him again, making it so he certainly couldn’t drive.
By the time they got to the horse farm, Tate didn’t need the calming influence of his best friend’s horse. He still had the taste of Wren in his mouth, and her hand in his, and the sound of her voice telling him that she’d found another history volume in the high school memorabilia that would help him understand more about the town.
“I stayed up pretty late last night,” he admitted to her as they got out of the truck and started toward the horse barn on the south end of the farm. “I found some good stuff in a few of those books.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, good to have something to do when I can’t sleep.”
Her fingers tightened on his. “Does that happen a lot? Not sleeping?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “I have some insomnia.” He kicked a glance in her direction and found the compassion mingling with concern in her eyes. “And by some, I mean every night.”
“So you don’t sleep?”
“I sleep,” he said. “Usually about four or five hours each night is all.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I get by.” He opened the door to the horse barn and let her enter first. “Octagon is down at the end, with the other boarded horses.” They walked down the aisle, but Tate didn’t see a single horse in their stalls, including Octagon. “They must all be outside.”
“How’d you have a horse if you were overseas?” she asked.
Tate’s step faltered, and he used leaving the barn and scanning the surrounding pastures as a reason not to answer right away. “There he is. He’s the paint horse with that big octagon on his side.”
Wren joined him at the fence and waited while Octagon lumbered toward them. “Hey, boy.” Tate held out his hand for the horse to sniff, noticing that Wren did not. She held very still and straight, and while she might not be afraid of horses, she certainly didn’t like them either.
“Octagon wasn’t mine either,” he finally said when the horse went back to grazing. “I’m not a cowboy, though you probably already knew that.”
“I suspected, though the idea of a military cowboy is kinda sexy, so….” She shrugged. “I went with it.”
He smiled, his next words piling up against the back of his tongue as he indicated the horse. “He belonged to my best friend. Jeremiah grew up on a cattle ranch in Texas, and he never stopped talking about his horses and his dogs.”
“Is Sully his too?”
“No, Sully’s mine. But the boots were Jeremiah’s. The horse. He was full of life, always had a new joke. I don’t even know where he got them, seeing as how I only saw him use computers in Africa to email his family.”
Wren remained silent for a few seconds, and Tate enjoyed this more somber side of her. The side that could hear hard news and think it through before reacting.
“Was?” she asked. “Did something happen to him?”
“Yeah.” Tate sighed. “He was killed in a car accident where I was driving.” A missile of guilt hit him in the chest, making it difficult to breathe. Everything he’d dealt with—or thought he’d dealt with—exploded inside, and he felt like he was falling. Or spinning around in that car, the sensation terribly disorienting, and then white hot pain in his left ribs, and then darkness when his head hit the window and he lost consciousness.
He blinked, sure his skin would not be strong enough to hold this tidal waves of memories, thoughts, emotions.
And then Wren was there, putting her arms around Tate and effectively holding him together. “I’m so sorry, Tate.”
“He was the catalyst to my coming here,” Tate whispered, wishing he could steal comfort from Wren. “I’d been drifting after my divorce. I retired from the Marines. My dad wanted me to get a job, but I had a little money coming in so I didn’t see the point. He wanted me to come here and see the place where my mom had grown up. I—”
“Wait. Your mom grew up here?”
“Yes, of course. Right there in that house where I live now. Her name was Henrietta Hammond, but my dad tells me she went by Etta.” Dark memories swam in his mind’s eye, and as usual, whenever he tried to grasp onto one, it darted away from him.
“Etta Hammond.” Wren whipped out her phone and her thumbs started flying across the screen.
“Who are you texting?” he asked.
“My mother.” She looked at him excitedly. “Don’t you get it? They had to be close to the same age.”
“I’m seven years older than you.”
“My mom has three older sisters. Surely one of them knew your mother.”
Hope danced in his chest. While Tate had thought of trying to figure out who his mother’s friends were, he hadn’t quite known how to go about doing it. He had spent some time last night in the yearbooks and other histories he’d brought back to his place from Wren’s, but he hadn’t found his mother yet.
“I honestly didn’t come here to get to know her,” he said.
“But you could,” Wren said. “Sort of as a bonus.”
Tate slung his arm around her and said, “I thought you were the bonus.”
She giggled and stepped closer to him, her fingers flying over the screen of her phone again. “She said she didn’t know her, but she’s asking my aunt Eliza.”
“Mm.” Tate took a deep drag of her hair, a new hope on the horizon that his transfer to Brush Creek would be about more than just staring over, but continuing a family line he knew very little about.
The next morning, he showed up at the police station forty minutes before his shift was supposed to start. He’d been assigned to come in thirty minutes early to get his uniform and badge, but he hadn’t been able to sleep past three that morning. He hadn’t been able to eat, not even the last piece of cake Wren had brought over on Friday night.
Wren was everywhere in his life, and Tate had spent a lot of time stewing about that too. Her house had been spotless when she’d finally allowed him in. The couches were leather, the appliances that new black stainless steel that Tate hadn’t even seen in someone’s home yet. She had hardwood in that tiny cottage, and frilly curtains, and granite countertops.
So while the house was small, it certainly had a huge budget for the interior. He’d probably spent a good hour sharing the couch with Sully while he thought if he was the right match for Wren. He’d prayed to know, but God hadn’t indicated anything either way.
A vein of exhaustion from all the restless hours and consuming thoughts hit him. He shook them again, needing his
utmost focus for this morning. Because just like he hadn’t dated a woman in a while, he hadn’t started a new job in longer. Jitters ran through his bloodstream, and no amount of deep breathing exercises helped calm him.
“Hey, you must be Officer Benson.”
He’d never been called an officer, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he was an officer now or not, but he just nodded and smiled. “I’m Tate, yes.”
“I’m Jordan Harn.” He grinned and extended his hand for Tate to shake. “I’m going to show you around, get your uniform, and deliver you to the Chief.”
“Sounds great.” Relief ran through him that Jordan was close to his age, with regular brown hair and eyes undimmed by too much hardship. He seemed normal, and Tate hadn’t been expecting normal. Why, he wasn’t sure. Maybe because every Marine he met had something horrible hidden behind their eyes. Something they’d seen in the line of duty that had changed them.
Tate reminded himself that this was Brush Creek, Utah, and the biggest scandal he’d come across in the histories he’d been reading late at night was how the neighboring town had snuck into the livestock pen at the high school and stolen the Brush Creek Bulls’ mascot the night before the big rivalry game.
“Where’d you come from?” Jordan asked as he led Tate down a hall and into a supply room. “You look like a thirty-four, yeah?” He pulled a few pairs of pants down without waiting for Tate to confirm.
“My last assignment was in Japan,” he said.
Jordan paused and looked at him. “You were a police officer in Japan?”
“Marine,” Tate said. “I was stationed at Camp Kinser there.” He’d enjoyed his time on the island of Okinawa, mostly because there were no combat experiences to be had. Plenty of amenities, including the Internet. Jeremiah had been sent to Hawaii for drills, and the bad jokes intensified via email.
