Stryker's Wife (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  By that evening, Kurt was no further ahead than when he’d started searching. The good news was that none of the hospitals within a two-hundred-mile range had reported an accident victim who fit the description.

  The bad news was that he had run flat out of places to look. Waiting patiently was not an option. He’d run out of patience about the same time he’d checked the boat and found that Frog had taken his new boots but no schoolbooks. Two CDs, but no player. All the loose change in the box they emptied their pockets in every night, but not a single dollar of the emergency fund in the coffee can in the bait locker.

  He had also taken the last of the cinnamon buns, a jar of pickled eggs and a blanket.

  So he called Deke. There was nothing she could do, nothing to report, but he’d promised to keep her posted.

  Oh, hell, the real reason was that he felt this fierce need to reach out and touch her any old way he could.

  It took him a minute to get his brain on line when he heard her voice. He could picture her just as clearly as if he was in the same room with her, and suddenly he wanted her here. Right beside him. He’d wanted her before, which was why he’d gone baring off to Virginia on some crackpot excuse, but this was a different kind of wanting.

  However, this wasn’t the time to explore those differences. Instead, he told her what he’d done and what he was planning to do next. Which was to talk to Alex, who had a teenage daughter and who might, just might, have some clue as to how the teenage mind worked.

  “Yeah, I know—it’s a stretch, but I’m running out of ideas.”

  “Oh, Kurt, I just wish…”

  He could picture her gnawing on her lower lip. “What? What do you wish, Debranne?” He couldn’t hide his exhaustion, didn’t even try to hide the worry in his voice. A damp northeast wind was pressing against his back as he slumped against the semienclosed phone booth. Sometime during the past half hour it had started to rain. This had to be the rainiest season in years.

  “I just wish I could think of something to help, but I can’t. The last time I saw him he seemed to be angry over something—or maybe he was just worried. I thought it might be about school, or something that had happened on the trip, but maybe it was just my imagination.”

  “It wasn’t your imagination,” Kurt said, wanting desperately to share his worries but determined not to. A man who couldn’t handle his own problems had no business involving a woman. Even a willing one. “Look, I’ll handle this. He’ll turn up in the morning, wanting breakfast. Tomorrow’s Friday. We’re booked both Saturday and Sunday, and he’s not about to pass up his tips.”

  Kurt got off the phone and congratulated himself on not whining, not spilling his guts. Not begging her to get herself on down here and help him hold it together.

  But God, he needed her with him. Not that she could do anything—he simply needed her beside him.

  Deke had heard what Kurt had said as well as what he hadn’t said. She had never knowingly relied on instinct—it might’ve been better if she had—but right now every instinct she possessed was urging her to drop everything and go. Just go.

  Never mind waiting for an invitation. Never mind that she’d spent the entire time after Kurt left her working off an excess of nervous energy. She’d felt compelled to accomplish something. Anything! After watching his taillights disappear, she had gone inside and in a mood of sheer recklessness called Biddy’s and the day-care center and begged off both her jobs for a few days.

  It had helped neither her ego nor her sense of security to be told that she wasn’t really needed. “Lawsy, I’ve got the folks swarming all over the place wanting to play with the birds. You spend some time with your young man, honey, we’ll make out just fine.”

  Her young man? Mercy, did the whole town have extrasensory perception? The mind boggled!

  Word from the day-care center was more reassuring. “All those sick stomachs yesterday? It wasn’t the pudding like we thought. Half the kids are out again, so you might as well take a little vacation. Daisy and me’ll manage just fine,” Miss Hazel told her. “You sit down and write yourself another book, y’hear?”

  Oh, yes. Just like that. Take a few hours off, whistle up her muse, and the book was as good as written.

  She had tried, though. Spent hours at it. Then she’d tossed out everything she had written and started packing. Started and finished, because she really didn’t have that much to pack. That done, she called every rental listed in the Norfolk paper that sounded even faintly likely and made arrangements to look at the only two in Church Grove. Actually, one of them wasn’t even in Church Grove, it was in Suffolk County.

  So now she was bone tired again, her hair was a mess—her whole life was a mess—and she was fixing to drive all night because her highly unreliable instinct kept whispering that Kurt needed her.

  What she needed was a brain transplant.

  It took almost all her available cash to fill the tank of her car, which meant she would have to sleep either in the back seat or aboard the R&R. Heaven alone knew what she would live on once the emergency was over, never mind where. At this rate, she wouldn’t even be able to pay a security deposit, much less hire a mover.

  “Where, where, where?” she mumbled. “If I was a frightened child trying to prove something to somebody, where would I be?”

  She had hid in the attic for nearly an hour once after she’d broken a prized antique vase, but she’d come downstairs again when she’d had to go to the bathroom. Even as a rebel, she’d been a failure.

  The rain started just south of the Virginia-North Carolina state line. A drizzle, not a downpour. She switched on the windshield wipers and wished she had stopped off for coffee at that last place she’d passed. It was too late now. Everything was closed.

  Where, where, where could he have gone?

  Kurt would be sick with worry. For all he pretended to have everything under control, she knew better. Under all that sexy man-of-the-sea machismo there was one sweet, sensitive, loving man who was worrying himself sick.

  She tried singing to keep up her spirits, but it took too much energy, so she switched on the radio. The news came on. There was nothing about any runaway child, so she switched it off again. Mentally, she ran through her repertoire of quotations that occasionally served to focus her mind or settle her stomach, but none of them fit the occasion.

  “‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’” she quoted, and then, thinking of the little she knew about Frog’s earlier life, she whispered, “Oh, no!”

  But Frog wasn’t old. Besides, he’d had the advantage of living with Kurt for the past couple of years. That ought to count for something.

  It was just past midnight when she pulled into the marina. The security light cast a harsh, unreal glow over the deserted parking lot. Kurt’s was the only truck there. She peered into the office, through the salt-clouded windows. A light was burning, but there was no one there. She had half expected the place to be crawling with volunteer searchers. Didn’t they always do that when a child was missing?

  Turning away, she picked out the pale shape of the R&R moored in her regular place and saw the faint yellowish glow of a light inside the salon. Without even pausing to think, she snatched up her overnight bag, slammed out of her car and made a dash through the rain, her courage fading with every step she took. Dear God, she had done it again. Acted on sheer impulse without thinking things through.

  So now what?

  Standing on the freshly repaired wharf, Deke was torn between barging ahead and slinking off into the night. She didn’t know the protocol for uninvited guests. Did one ask permission to come aboard? She couldn’t even knock on his door without first boarding his boat. Would that make her a trespasser?

  She was still wavering, torn between abject cowardice and aggressive empowerment, when the hatch slid open to reveal Kurt silhouetted against the yellow light inside.

  “You’re here.” He didn’t even sou
nd surprised.

  “Nothing yet?” she asked, dropping her bag into the cockpit. Her awkwardness was gone. This was where she belonged.

  He shook his head, stepped forward quickly to swing her aboard, and then they simply held on to each other. Deke knew as well as she knew her own name that she loved this man with every muscle in her body, and if a soul had muscles, then those, as well.

  “I had to come,” she said simply.

  “I knew you would. I’d have asked you, but—”

  “I don’t know how I can help, but I wanted—”

  “Yeah, me, too. I almost asked you, but it didn’t seem fair.”

  “Fair has nothing to do with it.”

  “To be honest, I thought it might show weakness.”

  “Weakness?” She leaned back in his arms and stared up at his flawed and beautiful face. He wasn’t wearing his patch. His hair looked as though he’d been raking his fingers through it. There were signs of strain around his eyes, his mouth…and she loved him so much she ached with it.

  “I’ve looked everywhere I know to look. Either he hitched a ride and left town or he’s somewhere nearby, waiting for…”

  “Waiting for what?”

  Kurt shook his head. “God knows.” He ushered her into the salon, out of the cold, blowing drizzle. There was a pot of hard-boiled coffee bubbling on a gas ring, and Deke poured two mugs and fixed his the way he liked it without thinking. They sat across the table from one another. Now that she was here, it didn’t seem quite so necessary to touch him constantly. It felt as if they were touching even when they weren’t.

  “I keep thinking there’s something I’ve missed. Something obvious,” he said.

  “That girl—the one he likes? Have you talked to her?”

  “Josie? She said he was too uncool for words, but if she noticed him following her or anything, she’d send him on home.”

  Deke came to a swift boil. “That—that little twit!”

  A bleak smile flickered across Kurt’s face. “Yeah, but as Frog says, she’s got a great pair of bazongas.”

  Glancing at her own modest bazongas, Deke fought down a surge of assertiveness. Anger wasn’t going to solve anything. “Where did he like to go? Where’s he been spending his free time lately? Does he have any special friends? Have you talked to them?”

  “Answer number one, he likes to go fishing when there’s a chance of a big tip. Even when there’s not. For a kid who’d never been fishing until a couple of years ago, he took to it like a—”

  “Like a fish to water,” she finished, and they both smiled. “So I guess you’ve checked out all the other boats.”

  Kurt nodded. “He’s got a couple of boys he hangs with at school. They say he’s been real quiet ever since the night of the game.”

  “Could something have happened on the trip? Besides losing the game, I mean?”

  Kurt toyed with his mug, not meeting her eyes. Something had happened, all right. Only he wasn’t sure, even now, just how deep it went. He had a feeling there were still a few land mines in the boy’s past and evidently knowing that Kurt and Deke had spent a night together had tripped a wire.

  Abruptly, he got up and began to pace. Three strides in any one direction brought him to a halt. The small salon teemed with frustrated energy. Deke remained silent. When Kurt quietly slammed a fist into the door of a wooden locker, she rose and went to wrap her arms around him from behind.

  At least he didn’t shove her away. His hands closed over hers, and he said, “I don’t know what else to do. I just don’t know. God.”

  Deke lay her head against his back. “Sleep. You’ll need your strength for tomorrow.”

  “Today.” He glanced at a clock mounted on the bulkhead and swore.

  “Once it’s light enough, we’ll cover every road, every path—every possible place.”

  “I’ve already done that. He could be miles away.”

  “He could be close by, too. The only security he has is right here. With you. Why would he throw that away?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because he thought I was planning to throw him away. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been treated like a piece of garbage.” He swore some more.

  “Hush now,” she murmured. She wanted to say, yes, she would marry him, because her life was already so inextricably interwoven with his that a mere ceremony seemed superfluous. The fact that she had known him for only a few weeks didn’t seem to matter. Evidently, she wasn’t as sensible and levelheaded as she’d thought. Not where love was concerned. Maybe no woman was.

  But now was not the time. “Kurt, lie down for a little while. Close your eyes. Try to relax, and something will come to you, I know it will. Your unconscious mind knows a lot more than your conscious mind does.”

  He gave a bitter bark of laughter. “It could hardly know less. Ah, Deke—I’m sorry I got you involved in all this. It’s not your problem.”

  “Of course it’s my problem. I care about you and you care about him, so that makes it my problem.”

  Still holding her, he turned her in his arms and buried his face in her hair. “You make it all sound so simple.”

  “Lie down. Close your eyes and clear all the clutter from your mind. It is simple.”

  Dear Lord, it had better be, she told herself, because she was walking in no-man’s-land. For the first time in her life, she felt like a tower of strength. It didn’t make sense, but then, what in her life had ever made sense? If she’d invented her own life as a plot, it would have been rejected as being either too dull or too utterly implausible.

  Kurt made a bed on the floor—the deck, he called it—because the sleeping benches were too far apart. They held each other, and there was nothing sexual about it.

  Well…almost nothing sexual. It was there, all right—the pheromones—but they were both too tired and too worried to do much about it, so they held each other, taking comfort in the warmth of being in the arms of a loved one, and whether Kurt was ready to admit it or not, Deke knew he loved her.

  They might even have slept.

  Rain clouds were still blocking the sun, making it seem earlier than it was, when Deke sat up with a start. Kurt was gone. Her bedroom was gone. It took her a moment to bring things into focus, and by that time she heard voices outside.

  “You the guy that ordered the load of gravel? Hey, man, I can’t deliver it until that place of yours dries up. We got halfway down the road and almost sunk up to the axle.”

  Which was how they came to be, some twenty minutes or so later, on a narrow dirt road between a scrubby woodland and a muddy wetland, heading for Oyster Point.

  “It’s a long shot,” Kurt said, “but you need to see it since I’ve fixed it up.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah, well…remember when I asked you to marry me? I was fixing to tell you about what I’m doing and how I thought you might want to pick out the colors and all.”

  “I didn’t even know the house survived the storm. I thought all you had to live in was your boat.”

  “It survived. The old place is tough.” By that time they were pulling up before the gaunt old house, which was surrounded by scaffolds and piles of sand and gravel. The yard was a soggy, rutted mess, but the view was magnificent.

  And there he was.

  Kurt was out of the truck in an instant, striding across the littered expanse, his gait more uneven than ever. Deke thought, A decent bed will help that little matter, and then she thought, Oh, thank the Lord Frog’s safe, and then she thought, I’m going to twist that boy’s ear real good for scaring Kurt half to death!

  “You wanna do some explaining?” Kurt asked, his voice rough with anger and relief. Deke hung back, but she could hear him all the same over the sound of wind through the marsh grass and the squawk of feeding gulls.

  Frog shrugged his bony shoulders. He had a blanket wrapped around him, but he looked cold and pinched and hungry. But then, he always looked hungry. When he didn’t reply, Kurt tried again
.

  “Next time you want to camp out, leave a note, will you?”

  “Hey, man, chill out. What’s got you so bent outta shape, anyhow? It’s not like I took nothin’!”

  And then his eyes found Deke, and he suddenly looked as if he might cry. This time, Deke didn’t even try to think things through. She jumped down from the truck, landing in a yellow puddle of mud, and slogged her way across to where the pair of them stood on a bare, unfinished front porch.

  “Don’t you ever, ever scare us this way again, Frog Smith! Do you know what your father’s been through? Do you know what I’ve been through, picturing all sorts of awful things that could have happened to you?”

  “He ain’t my father,” Frog mumbled.

  “No, he’s not! What he is is the best friend you ever had, and I think you’re too smart to throw that away. So—the question is, why did you do it? Was it because of me? Because you don’t like me?”

  Both males tried to speak, but she sliced through the air with a small hand, cutting them off. “I don’t want to hear it. Now you listen here to me, both of you. If we’re going to make this thing work, we’ve all got to make up our minds to level with each other, right?”

  Kurt looked as if he’d gone fishing for pinfish and hooked into a blue marlin. Frog looked…well, mostly he looked hungry.

  “Right,” she repeated, hands on her hips. Without waiting for a response, she said, “In the first place, I love your—well, whatever he is to you. I love him until I can’t even do my work properly for thinking about him, but that’s beside the point.”

  “You do?” Kurt asked wonderingly.

  “Hush up, I’m not finished yet. As for you—” She drilled Frog with both barrels. “I’m prepared to be every bit as good a friend to you as Kurt is, and whether or not you know it, you’re going to be needing a woman’s advice. We women know a lot about—well, about things.”