Issued to the Bride: One Soldier

by Cora Seton

  “How long would you be gone?”

  “Months. Possibly more than a year.”

  “What about us?” He couldn’t help himself. He had to know.

  Alice turned on him. “Us?”

  “You. Me. Wedding bells. I’m supposed to marry you, remember? I’ve already sent out my save the date cards.”

  “No, you haven’t.” The corner of Alice’s mouth quirked. “At least, I hope not.”

  “All right, I didn’t send out cards. Still a bit of a let-down.” He liked to see her smile. “I was getting excited for our wedding night.”

  Alice blinked. Her mouth opened, but no words came out, and Jack laughed long and loud, until he realized she’d gone funny again. She was gazing into the distance, but he’d bet she wasn’t seeing those mountains.

  “Alice?”

  She snapped back, blinked again, took in his proximity and blushed furiously. Jack cocked his head. “What were you thinking about just now?”

  Alice turned her horse around and began to ride back the way they’d come.

  She’d never had a vision like that.

  When they overtook her, Alice saw, smelled, heard—even tasted things. They were so realistic it was jarring to come out of them and find herself back where she started.

  This time, though—

  This time her vision had been all about touch. Jack touching her. Undressing her.

  Pulling her close.

  She’d been cold, and Jack’s body had been fiery hot.

  Her body had ached with need for him. She’d wanted him inside—

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Jack called, struggling to get Button to turn around so he could come after her. “Another one of your visions? Did you get a glimpse of our wedding night or something when I mentioned it?”

  Heat flushed through her again, and she thought her cheeks must be scarlet. Of all things to guess—although she had no idea if it had been their wedding night. As usual, the vision was far from clear.

  She urged on her mount, but Jack kept pace. “You’re blushing. You did see us together!” he crowed. “I didn’t know you were that kind of clairvoyant—”

  “Shut up!” He was insufferable. He didn’t even believe in her visions, and he was mocking her.

  “Where were we? In bed? In a hotel? In a tent?” He was still laughing. “In the maze?”

  Another vision tried to catch hold of her, but Alice kept it at bay through sheer will. They had been in the maze. She didn’t know how he knew that, and she tried not to let her face confirm his suppositions, but—

  “You sure blush a lot.”

  Alice let out a sound between a groan and a cry of rage. “Leave me alone!”

  “I want to know everything. What position. How many times. Was I—”

  “Come on, Priscilla. Home.” Amelia had taught Alice to never, ever, ever insert a vision into someone else’s mind. She hoped her mother would forgive her this one time. She conjured up an image of the stable, a bucket of oats, a warm rub-down and a comfortable stall. Priscilla leaped into a gallop. Soon they’d left Jack far behind.

  “Meet you in the maze!” he called out, struggling to keep up.

  “Good luck with that!” Alice yelled back and left him in the dust.

  So she’d pictured them doing it in the maze. And then tried to pass it off as a vision.

  If she thought he was going to let her get away with pretending some higher power had sent her the image, she was wrong. Jack directed Button back the way they’d come. If she wanted him, she needed to own it. At least her thoughts were tending in a positive direction. If she saw them together in the maze, sooner or later she’d let him in, wouldn’t she?

  In both senses of the word.

  The thought tugged at him, turning him on. If Alice was thinking about being with him, she wasn’t as immune to him as she was pretending to be.

  He caught up with her at the stable and pitched in to help with the horses, watching her for clues and copying her motions.

  “So, what else have you seen us do together?”

  “Nothing.” Alice worked at the buckles of Priscilla’s saddle, turning her back to him.

  “I think you’re lying,” he pushed on. “You’re supposed to know the future. So—when’s the first time you’ll see me naked?”

  “Never, if I can help it.” She kept working.

  “We were fully dressed when you saw us on our wedding night? Interesting.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “We weren’t dressed?”

  “You are so annoying.” She got Priscilla’s saddle off and put it away. Jack followed her.

  “I was dressed but you weren’t?” he guessed.

  “Oh, my god, would you let it go? I did not see our wedding night!”

  “You’re going to be so hot for me you won’t even let me get my clothes off?” Jack persisted. A stirring beneath his belt warned him he’d better not let this go too far if he didn’t want to get uncomfortable.

  “How do you know you won’t be so hot for me you’ll be the one who can’t wait?” Alice faced him down.

  “I could see that,” he admitted.

  Alice flushed again.

  Jack couldn’t help himself. “Are we really going to do it in the maze?”

  “Seeing as you can’t get into it, I highly doubt it.”

  “Ouch,” Jack said and clapped a hand to his chest. “Direct hit.” He staggered a few paces before straightening again.

  Despite herself, Alice laughed. It would be easier to keep her distance from Jack if he wasn’t kind of fun to be around. Her body was thrumming with all this talk about sex. They’d both been partially dressed in her vision, because it looked like it was damned cold in the maze, but other flashes were seeping into her mind—other encounters—

  And Jack was naked in those.

  Naked and… gorgeous.

  There was something about a man who was as at ease in his body as Jack was. His strong shoulders strained his shirt and jacket as he moved. His grin came easily around her, although she wasn’t sure that was always the case for Jack. He was a serious man.

  Serious about trying to get in her pants, she thought wryly.

  She couldn’t write him off as a good-time guy, though. He wanted more than that, and despite herself, the idea of a long-term relationship with him was more intriguing than she’d like to admit.

  She stole a glance his way. Ran her gaze over his body. Getting close to him could be heavenly.

  But they weren’t there yet.

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to marry me,” Jack went on.

  “I’m not. You can’t even get in the maze, so there isn’t going to be any sex—or any wedding, either.” She had to keep her head about her, no matter what her body was saying.

  “Is that what it’ll take to change your mind? I need to find my way into the maze? I’m going to figure out how you’re closing the entrance, you know.”

  And there they were, back at the problem again. Alice got back to the job at hand. “I’m not doing anything. I’ve already told you—”

  “It isn’t magic. That’s not how the world works.”

  Ouch, Alice thought, but she didn’t say it out loud or stagger around to make her point. Instead she finished with the horses in silence. Jack took the hint and did the same. She’d been right all along. He wasn’t the man for her and wouldn’t ever be—not if he refused to see what was right in front of his face.

  When they were done, she headed for the door.

  “Alice—”

  She half turned. “What?”

  “When’s our first kiss?”

  The vision hit her too fast to prevent. Standing in the stable, the horses in the background, the smell of manure and wood. Jack stepping forward, cupping her chin—

  When his mouth met hers, vision and reality coalesced in a shock of sensation, and Alice, light-headed, lifted her hands to brace them on his shoulders. Jack tugged her closer,
slid his hand to the nape of her neck, and she went up on tiptoe to lean into the kiss.

  As his mouth moved over hers, Jack filled her senses. The masculine smell of him, the roughness of his jacket under her hands.

  When he finally pulled back, she was breathless.

  “Sorry,” he said huskily.

  “Sorry?” she echoed.

  “I… that wasn’t fair.”

  What did fair have to do with any of this, Alice wondered, and went up on tiptoe to kiss him again.

  Chapter Seven

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  Jack’s arms tightened around Alice, and he gave himself up to the sensations her proximity was arousing. Like parched earth opening to water, he found himself soaking in the feel of her—the wonder of her in his arms.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d thought it would be like to come to Chance Creek and meet Alice. He supposed he thought it would be like fulfilling any other mission, a matter of going through the proper sequence of steps to reach an objective.

  This was nothing like the other missions he’d run. Being with Alice was like being handed a fascinating enigma wrapped in the most stunning package he could ever have imagined. To put it mildly, Alice was his type. His body responded to hers with a desire so strong it made him struggle to control it. He’d known that would be the case from the first time he’d seen Alice’s photograph, and if he was honest, back at USSOCOM, he’d consoled himself that maybe that physical connection would get him through marrying her if they didn’t click on a deeper level.

  He’d been sorely mistaken. Jack doubted he could have agreed to a life with a woman he couldn’t love, but the glorious thing was he didn’t have to learn the answer to that.

  He could love Alice.

  He couldn’t quite explain it. Her insistence on having mystical abilities should have made it impossible for them to be together. Still, there it was. She intrigued him with her ability to take the barest hints and turn them into predictions. She was his match for that, and there was something more.

  Alice was a woman who loved her family, who had opened her heart to her sisters’ husbands, too, even if her estranged father was the one who’d sent them to Two Willows. He had seen how gentle she was with her cat—and Jo’s dogs. How often she checked in with the other inhabitants of the ranch to make sure all was well with them—even in the middle of her panic about getting her dresses done. She loved her family the way his birth mother had loved hers. Her face brightened when she saw the people she loved.

  Would she ever brighten like that for him?

  Alice broke the kiss this time, staring up at him through eyes so lovely he wanted to look into them for hours.

  “What was that for?” Jack asked her slowly, afraid to break the connection between them.

  “You’re… yummy.” She smiled, and his heart constricted.

  “Yummy?” He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but never that before.

  “Yummy in a dumb way,” she amended, her tone turning tart. “I wonder if you’ll taste better when you smarten up.” She strode away and left him standing there.

  Yummy in a dumb way?

  “I’m not dumb,” he called after her, but he didn’t bother to try to catch up. He had a feeling Alice could run rings around him.

  Alice was halfway to the house when the vision overtook her, and she staggered a few steps before sinking to her knees. Images sliced through her mind like so many knives thrown through the air, every painful snapshot of past and future intersecting mid-flight. In her mind, she ran through the maze as a child, first aware of the power of it; she walked through its passages slowly, stiffened by age; she cried out and pushed a baby into the world; she stood over her mother’s grave; she crossed a stage to receive an award; nursed Lena’s black eye after her ex-boyfriend Mark hit her; watched Jo grab a knife and stab a man; danced under the stars—

  All the visions, all the snapshot images, all coalesced into one continual thread that both led to and branched from something coming at her right now.

  No, not something.

  Someone.

  “Alice?”

  Dimly she heard someone call her name. She was panting for breath, her heart throbbing like it was being wrung out to dry.

  “Alice!”

  A touch brought her out of it, and she stared up into Cass’s frightened face. Wyoming was close behind her, eyes wide with concern. Neither of them wore jackets. They must have seen her from the kitchen and run outside.

  “What is it?” Cass hissed.

  “The General. He’s here.”

  “But—” They both turned at the sound of an engine and watched a large black car pull around the house and park between it and the carriage house, near the other vehicles.

  “No,” Cass breathed, but Alice knew she was right, even when the driver’s door opened, and a man she didn’t recognize got out. He had short-cropped dark hair and a bearing she recognized.

  Military.

  But when he took a few steps forward, he was limping.

  “Who is that?” Wyoming asked.

  Alice just shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  He looked the house up and down until an angry bellow from the interior of the vehicle had him spinning around to duck back into the car.

  Alice stiffened. Cass did, too. They’d know that voice anywhere.

  “He’s not supposed to be here yet! Why didn’t anyone warn us?” Cass asked.

  Alice was already doing the calculations. Landon was coming on Saturday. She wasn’t done with her gowns. Now the General was here—

  “Call Brian.” As usual, Wyoming was practical. “Get the men up here to help. Your sisters, too.”

  Cass scrambled to pull out her phone, and Wyoming helped Alice stand. “You okay?” she asked.

  “I guess.” But she found herself clutching Wyoming’s wrist and had to force herself to let go. “I don’t know. It’s been a long time—”

  “And now it’s time for your family to sort this out—once and for all,” Wyoming said sternly.

  Alice had no doubt if it was up to Wyoming, she’d solve all their problems in a jiffy, but it wasn’t up to Wyoming, and the Reeds were nothing if not good at prolonging a fight.

  A moment later footsteps pounded up behind them, and Brian arrived from the barn. Connor, Hunter and Jack weren’t far behind. Jo trailed after them.

  “The General’s here?” Brian asked. Cass pointed to the black car and the stranger who was straightening up again and looking around.

  Brian waved to him and led the way forward. Alice held back until Jack took her arm. “Come on; best to get it over with,” he murmured. Alice wasn’t sure if that was true, but she walked with him. Jo caught up with them, her dogs following at her heels. Sadie opened the back door and came out on the porch, hugging her arms over her chest against the cold.

  Cass twined her fingers through Alice’s free hand, and Alice knew she wasn’t the only one whose nerves were skipping and jumping inside her.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Cass whispered.

  “Me, neither.”

  “No matter what happens, we stick together. This is our house,” Cass asserted.

  “Our ranch. We have to stay strong for Lena, if nothing else,” Alice agreed. The knowledge stiffened her spine. Lena had waited years to run the cattle operation. Now that she was doing so—with the men’s help—Alice wouldn’t let the General mess with that.

  What would he be like?

  She hadn’t seen him in person since she was fourteen, since the last time she’d attended a military function. During the first year or so after her mother’s death, he’d commanded her and Cass to attend several such events, before Cass and the General had a major set-to at one of the functions and the General put an end to the exercise. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since then. She’d grown up.

  Had he?

  It struck her now, as an adult, that he’d let his grief overcome his better nature a
t her mother’s funeral, and maybe that was embarrassing, or awkward, but his refusal to come home since was downright childish, and she still found it hard to forgive him.

  Had he ever thought what it had been like for them? He’d hidden himself away from his wife’s memory. Buried himself in work. They’d stayed in Amelia’s house, on Amelia’s ranch, tending all the things Amelia loved—immersed in her memory.

  Alice thought they’d gotten the better end of the bargain. Yes, it had hurt back then to be reminded of her everywhere, but as time passed and their grief healed, her memory stayed strong.

  The chance to be reminded of Amelia’s spirit was worth the occasional pain of a wayward memory or a longing to see her again. Alice’s mother was the kind of woman who made the world special, and Alice did her best to pattern herself after her.

  She failed miserably, of course.

  “There he is,” Jo whispered, coming up behind them. Alice strained to get a glimpse of the man. Jack squeezed her other hand, let go and went to help Brian and the others who had clustered around the passenger side of the strange car.

  Brian was reaching in to help, and Alice’s breath hitched when she caught sight of the passenger’s face.

  The General.

  He looked… old.

  He shrugged Brian off, bellowed something—Alice couldn’t make out the words—and took a step. When his legs buckled under him, Brian and the stranger caught him and steadied him between them.

  “I’m not an invalid!”

  Alice understood the General’s words that time, and despite the gathering sense of dread that was tightening her stomach, she bit back an aching smile. He never changed.

  The men conferred, and a second later, Brian and Connor made a seat of their clasped hands. They picked up the General, climbed the steps and went right through the back door. Jack rushed ahead to open it as Sadie hung back. The stranger followed them past Sadie more slowly, with a pronounced limp. Alice wondered if he had been hurt in the missile strike, too.