Harlequin Special Edition July 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2: The Widow of Conard CountyA Match for the Single DadThe Medic's Homecoming

by Rachel Lee

  Now she felt the color seeping back into its place, dreams were stirring, however small, and the memory of her lovemaking with Liam, however limited it had been, curled up in her heart with warmth.

  If he called that a “taste”....

  She almost shivered at the memory of how much he had aroused her and satisfied her with so little contact. She ought to feel guilty, but no guilt arose in her.

  But there would be pain, she thought. It seemed impossible to her that waking the woman in her after all this time could have no price.

  Then another thought occurred to her, and that was when the pain pierced her. She had known what she was getting into when she married Chet. In all their years as husband and wife, she had enjoyed only a few months of time with him. Yes, duty called him, and sometimes she suspected that he went right back when he could have taken a tour stateside.

  It was never discussed; she didn’t know if her suspicions were true. They probably weren’t, but their very existence told her something. In her heart she believed that Chet had valued his duty over her. The whole time he was home, talking with her about their future together, still far down the road, she knew he was worrying about his buddies. It had slipped out at times, and while she considered it a mark of the good man he had been, she had sometimes resented it.

  Oh, God! When he was home, part of him had still been over there. Had she ever really had his full devotion? She tried to argue the ugly question away. Of course she had. As much as any person had the right to expect from another.

  But it remained that their marriage, if counted in actual time living as husband and wife, had been very short. It hadn’t seemed so bad when she had been looking forward to when he got out of the army, but looking back... Looking back, she had been cheated. They had both been cheated. Hell, Liam and Chet had spent more time together by far.

  Anger burst in her, flooding her with its acid. They’d never had a normal married life, only the pretense of one. Really. A honeymoon once every year, and gaping holes filled in by letters and Skype. She’d lived with it at the time because Chet would have retired at twenty years, and by the time he had died there had only been about six years left. Or maybe the war would end and he’d come home.

  Only he hadn’t made it home and she felt furious and cheated and even a little deluded. It had been more fantasy than reality.

  Jumping up, she climbed into jeans and a sweatshirt. She hurried downstairs, pulled on her boots and a warm jacket, and hurried out the back door, wanting to run, but smart enough even in her anger to realize the dangers of tearing across uneven ground.

  “Cheated.” She said the word aloud as she stomped her way through the chilly night, across grasses that were already yellowing despite the rain they’d had not long ago.

  “Cheated.” She said it again, as pain began to intertwine with fury into an agonizing knot. Thank God she hadn’t had a child. Chet would have missed the first tooth, the first step, the first word. He’d have missed it all, been a stranger to his own child.

  In some ways a stranger to his own wife.

  “Damn it!” She swore. She swore for all the other spouses, thousands of them, who had gone through this. For all the sacrifices made to feed the maw of war. For all the pain and loneliness, loss and suffering. And for what?

  God, she wished she had a good answer. With a price so high, shouldn’t there be an answer?

  Ripped by shattering anger and pain, she fell to her knees and pounded the cold ground with her fists. Each hammering blow felt good, releasing the unvoiced anger and perhaps some of the pain.

  Then, out of nowhere, she felt a heavy hand begin to rub her back. She gasped, jerking upright and saw Liam kneeling beside her.

  “I know,” he said. Then before she could ask what he knew, he sat cross-legged and lifted her onto his lap as if she weighed nothing.

  “Why?” she gasped as heavy tears began to fall. “Why?”

  He wrapped his arms around her and began to rock them both gently. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “Just cry all you need to.”

  “But why?”

  “It was our duty.”

  “That’s not good enough!”

  “Sometimes that’s all you have.”

  She turned her face into his shoulder and wept hard and long. She didn’t ask again, just let the last of the grief work its way through her. Somewhere deep inside she knew she was letting go of something, and the letting go felt like tearing her heart out by the roots.

  Ages later, exhaustion began to dry her tears, and the pain and anger began to ease.

  He began to talk quietly. “We had a duty. We believed in our mission, to help the local people. Sometimes it wasn’t easy, but we believed in it, anyway. Sometimes the world seemed to go mad, but we kept right on believing. If you know nothing else about Chet, know this. He never once stopped believing that we were trying to make the world a better place. Some people sneer at that, but they don’t matter. We believed, and we tried.”

  “Yes.” Her voice emerged raw and thick after all the sobbing.

  “If we were misused or misled, history will decide. But we believed.”

  “But look at the price!”

  “There’s always a price. We knew that. So did you.”

  His words sank into her heart like a stone. Yes, she had known that, but foolishly had believed that she and Chet wouldn’t pay it. She’d lived in denial, a fantasy world.

  “All we had,” she said brokenly, “all we had out of seven years were a few months together. We weren’t even together long enough to have a good fight.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know. At least you don’t have any bad memories of him.”

  That much was true, but she had memories of the aching loneliness when he was away. The dissatisfaction that she always tamped down. The need for a fuller marriage, never acknowledged.

  “I needed more.”

  “I suspect he did, too.”

  “I don’t think I even really knew him.”

  “You knew the man who loved Sharon. That part was for you and you alone.”

  A shudder passed through her, and the last of the tension inside her slipped away. She melted within the circle of Liam’s arms, exhausted.

  * * *

  A long time passed. The chilly air was beginning to penetrate him, and Liam wanted to get her back to the house. He didn’t want to disturb whatever she was working through, though.

  God, it hurt to see her like this. He knew the holes in his own heart, the loss of too many buddies, Chet foremost among them, but he couldn’t plumb the depths of loss she must feel. Or the anger.

  “We never had a real marriage.”

  The words stunned him. He had absolutely no idea how to respond.

  She struggled a bit against him and he let her go, watching her rise. He remained seated as she paced in circles in front of him. “It was a dream, Liam. It was a fantasy, castles in the air. We kept right on building them, all of them tagged with someday. Someday we’ll do this or that. When I retire, we’ll do that. Over and over again, we built those castles, cherished them, believed in them and the time never came, Liam. It never came!”

  “No.” It was the most he dared say, spoken only to let her know he was listening. His chest had grown tight, and he’d have given anything to make her feel better. But he couldn’t do that. She had to do it for herself. For once he didn’t feel savage frustration because he couldn’t do something. All he felt was sorrow.

  His arms felt empty without her. He rose, waiting patiently for whatever would come next. Life had taught him how to wait.

  “I feel cheated.” Her words shook him, but again he said nothing. He could well understand why she felt that way.

  Then she pivoted sharply to look at him. “I must sound like a whiner. I talk about being cheated, but look at what you’ve lost. You’ve been cheated, too.”

  “It happens.”

  “Yeah, it happens. And I’m not the only widow to
come out of this mess. Tens of thousands around the world right now.”

  “The problem,” he said carefully, “is that each experience is individual, and it isn’t any easier because you can point to so many others who’ve had the same losses.”

  “God, Liam, I’m so angry! I’m not even sure I’m being fair about this.”

  “Fair?”

  “To myself or Chet. To what we had. But I know one damn thing for sure. If I ever marry again, I want a real, full-time marriage. I want someone who’s there every morning when I wake up, and every night when I go to bed. No more castles in the air.”

  She started walking toward the house and he followed along.

  He spoke. “All the castles we build are in the air.”

  She stopped short and faced him. “Really? Really?” Then the hiccup of a sob escaped her.

  “Nobody can ever be sure tomorrow will come.”

  “No.” Her voice emerged as tight as a violin string, the sound drawn out. He resisted the urge to hug her, once again waiting.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Are you going to build castles in the air again?”

  “It seems important. But first I want a foundation. You and Chet had a foundation.”

  She remained silent for an eternity, then answered quietly, “Yes, we did.”

  Then she headed for the house.

  “I can’t sleep,” she said as they walked in the back door. “I want some hot chocolate. You?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  They hung up their jackets on the pegs in the mudroom and she slipped off her boots. He noted that her hands trembled as she pulled out the pan and ingredients. This was far from over.

  He understood how grief worked. Hell, they’d laid it out for him more than once during his recovery so he’d have some way of gauging his reactions and feelings. She needed the anger as much as she had needed the weeping. Nor was grief, they had warned him, something that just went away. It eased with time, but spurts of anger and pain would return for a long, long time.

  She’d had no help with these feelings. No one to talk to about them. No sounding board. In that respect, he’d been far luckier, having plenty of people at the clinic to listen to him rant about his losses, about what had happened to him. He’d had to grieve for himself as much as for Chet and the others. They’d helped him and encouraged him.

  He wished he could do the same for Sharon.

  “I feel awful for feeling cheated.”

  He looked at her back, thinking how slender and delicate she looked. He had to remind himself that she had survived a lot and was stronger than she looked.

  “You were cheated,” he agreed flatly. There it was again—his damned inability to curb his mouth—but he didn’t try to call the words back because they were true.

  She turned from the stove and looked at him. “It sounds awful.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less true. A lot of military marriages break up because duty comes ahead of everything, even family. Because, like you said, you only had a few months with Chet over a period of years. It’s a strain.”

  “On him, too.”

  “No doubt. But maybe it’s harder at home. More fear and uncertainty because you don’t know what’s going on. Regardless, your marriage got the short end of the stick. Just a simple fact.”

  Her eyes seemed to glisten again as she returned to mixing the hot chocolate. He stared at her back, feeling like a ham-fisted lug.

  “You know,” he said, “I spent most of my adult life dealing with other soldiers, men for the most part. I’m not good with women, so if I step in it, just tell me.”

  “I have before.”

  He couldn’t deny that.

  “I’m not really a different species, you know.”

  To his relief, he heard a spark in that statement that sounded as if she were edging away from her anger. Not that she wasn’t entitled to it. He’d never thought about it before, but she was right. She had been cheated. Not deliberately, not by a con, but by life. “The thing is,” he said, “it’s just life. Life isn’t fair, it cheats us, it wounds us, and then all we can do is pick up the pieces. Easy to say, hard to do.”

  “You’ve got a lot of pieces to pick up yourself.”

  “Yeah. So? It just is. I keep telling myself that. Doesn’t always work, but it’s still true. You’ve seen me get mad and frustrated more than once. I feel ham-handed, I say things I probably shouldn’t, I sometimes can’t hold a thought from one minute to the next...”

  “You seem to be doing pretty well right now.”

  “Thanks. But it’s still there, the grasshopper in the brain. Hell, the only reason I haven’t been more frustrated is that when I butt up against something I should know how to do and can’t remember, you give me just a little push in the right direction. Well, you’re helping me. What help have you had, Sharon?”

  “My friends...”

  “How much have you been seeing them? I bet you’ve stayed away more often than not because you were afraid. Kind of like I’ve been hiding from people myself. I don’t like being reminded that my head is broken. Why would you want to be reminded of what you’ve lost?”

  He saw her stiffen and pressed his lips firmly together. There he went again, saying things he shouldn’t. What did he know, anyway? They’d had a few weeks together, hardly enough to really know anything. He certainly hadn’t been able to see how she handled the months after Chet’s death.

  “Damn you, Liam. You see right through me.”

  He didn’t know how to take that. Frustration rose in a burst and he stood up. Damn it, he couldn’t even talk to another person without saying something wrong.

  “I’m taking a walk,” he said shortly.

  She whipped around from the stove. “No, you don’t. You sit right down there and talk to me.”

  “But...”

  “I don’t care how damn frustrated you’re getting. Express it here. Because, damn you, I need your help right now.”

  “What good will it do if I start yelling about things?”

  “I’m not the only one with a right to anger. Now go ahead, yell all you want, and I’ll yell right back. You have every right to your frustration and you shouldn’t have to go find a corner to hide in when you feel it. The way I did for so long. You’re sitting here suggesting I handled it all wrong, so maybe you are, too.”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “Not exactly. But you’re right. I went into hiding, for all the good it did me. I don’t give a damn if you punch a hole in a wall, but don’t walk out on me now.”

  The woman had steel in her, more than he’d guessed. He returned to his chair, sitting on the edge of it while frustration and anger of his own tingled along his nerve endings.

  A few minutes later, she brought mugs of cocoa to the table and sat facing him. “So we just have to start putting the pieces back together.”

  For a few seconds he had trouble figuring out what she meant, then he remembered what he had said earlier. “I guess so.”

  “Where do we start, Liam? Where are you going to start?”

  “Right here, I guess. If you don’t mind. Because I’m feeling better here than I have since I was wounded. I’m remembering things I can do. I’m learning other things.”

  “Good. I’m still amazed that you made your way out here all alone and facing all that ugliness from idiots. I’m touched. And I’m not sure I could have done it.”

  “You could have,” he said with certainty. “You’re tough. And you could have avoided some of the problems I had.”

  “Because I can remember how to read?”

  “And other things. I took a few wrong turns.”

  “You got lost?”

  “Yeah.” He clenched his hands and forced them to relax. “I never got lost in the mountains of Afghanistan, but I got lost on the roads at home.”

  “But you had GPS back there.”

  “Not
always. Equipment breaks. Even the hardened stuff they gave us. But yeah, I got lost and when I got lost, I got mad.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Asked people. I told you about a couple of troublemakers, but most people were nice and even helpful.”

  “I should hope so. And you have no family?”

  He didn’t want to go there. He might have accepted it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still sting. “My sister. She washed her hands of me as soon as she heard about the extent of my injuries. Can’t say I blame her, considering at the time I couldn’t remember anything and couldn’t even feed myself. Who’d want to take that on?”

  Her faced saddened. “Have you tried to get in touch with her?”

  “Why? She doesn’t need a problem like me. She’s got three little kids and a job. Can you imagine her having to explain weird Uncle Liam to young kids? I don’t think so. And what if I went ballistic? There’s always that chance when I get frustrated.”

  “You’re taking that awfully well.”

  “I didn’t at first.” Nor did he want to remember the fury he’d felt that his only living kin didn’t want him. It had taken him a while to get to acceptance. “She didn’t see any more of me than you saw of Chet, and with me it was since I was eighteen. I’d go to visit her for a week when I was on leave, but I spent the rest of the time kicking around. She didn’t really want me around for long, even back then.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Long gone thanks to a drunk driver. What about you?”

  “Only child. I avoid my parents these days. They retired to Arizona, Mom’s a nasty alcoholic and my dad is one angry man. I can take them for a couple of hours, max.”

  It was a pretty dismal picture for both of them, he thought. He missed his buddies, and he suspected she’d been missing her friends. They both lacked families, although from what he’d seen, that wasn’t always a bad thing.

  Regardless, they were two souls cast adrift by loss and they needed a way back to shore.

  “Any ideas,” she asked, “how we move forward?”

  He shook his head, the frustration surging in him again. “How the hell would I know? You’re asking the wrong guy, lady. I’m still trying to put myself back together. I can’t think much further than the next step right now. What about you?”