“Oooh” came out on a whooshed, hops-scented breath when the band started up with a line dance. They’d been sitting on a hay bale—well, she’d been sitting, perched atop the thing like a little kid, her short legs dangling—and now she clumsily clunked to the wooden floor and grabbed Levi’s hand, this time tugging him into the crowd with a smile that arrowed right to his heart. Even if it wasn’t for him.
Of course, the minute Levi got out on the floor he remembered that his feet had minds of their own. Tommy had been good at this stuff, he remembered. Not him. He could fake a two-step well enough, but this actually required some coordination. But damned if he didn’t get caught up in the music and laughter, in watching Val’s face glow in a way he hadn’t seen in...well. A very long time. Yeah, she was drunk off her cute little ass, and she was probably going to wake up with one whopper of a headache. But right now, she was having a helluva good time. And who was he to begrudge her that?
Then, like somebody’d pulled a plug, the music slowed, and she was in his arms, all soft and sweet smelling and not exactly steady on her pins. Which, after they’d been swaying for a couple of minutes, her forehead pressed into his sternum, she even admitted, with a cute little hiccup.
“I might be a little...” She burped. “Dizzy.”
Levi peered down at her, his breath teasing her hair, her scent teasing his...everything. “You gonna be sick?”
Still glued to his chest, she shook her head. Carefully. “Uh-uh. Long as I don’t look up, anyway.” She hiccupped again.
Chuckling, he slipped a hand to her waist and steered her toward the door. “Let’s get you some fresh air, wild woman.”
“’Kay.”
They’d no sooner gotten outside when they ran into Gus, who clucked at Val like an old hen. “Somebody looks like she needs to go home—”
“No!” She gave her head a sharp shake, only to grab it like it might fly off her neck before peering back at the barn. “Not yet,” she said softly, tears cresting in her eyes. “I’ll be good, I promise. Just don’t make me go home yet. Please.”
Gus snorted. “Go on up to the house, the back door’s open. Coffee’s in the cupboard to the right of the sink, right over the maker.”
However, by the time they made the short trek to the house, the chilly night air had apparently cleared her head. At least enough that she appeared sober, although Levi seriously doubted she would’ve passed a Breathalyzer test.
“Gotta pee,” she said the second they got inside, and he directed her to the hall bath right off the kitchen. Which, as he walked in, looked nearly the same as Levi remembered—dark wood cabinets, terra-cotta floors, brilliantly colored Mexican tile backsplash and counters. Off-white appliances, except for the dark blue six-burner stove. A hodge-podge of traditional New Mexican and 1990s cutting edge.
Behind him, Val’s boot heels softly clopped against the tiled floor.
“Ooh...pretty.”
He turned. “This your first time in the house?”
“Tommy never came without you, remember?”
And by an unspoken understanding, the three of them had never been together. Not here, anyway.
While Levi went about putting on a pot of coffee, Val leaned over the counter to inspect the tiles, hands fisted in her pockets. Then she straightened, looking around. “Actually, this is how I always pictured my own kitchen.”
“Outdated by thirty years?”
She laughed. “Homey. With a history. And those tiles...” She reached out to skim her fingers across the bold hand-painted pattern. “I really love these. Like, more than I love chocolate. Which says a lot, believe me.”
Levi leaned one hip against the counter edge, listening to the drip and hiss of the coffee trickling into the old-school carafe. “At least that’s one mystery solved.”
Val looked over, a slight crease between her brows. “Mystery?”
“Now I know why you’ve been dragging your feet about finishing the kitchen.”
She blew a short laugh through her nose. “Maybe. Not that all those samples you showed me aren’t pretty, but yeah. They’re not...me.”
When the pot was full, Levi poured two mugs and brought them over to the same six-foot-long pine table where he and his brothers often ended up doing their homework, usually under Gus’s supervision, once their mother started delivering babies. “So let’s rethink things,” he said, sliding onto one of the benches. “It’s not like we can’t find a place or six that sells Mexican tiles around here.”
“And—again—I can’t exactly put my personal touch on a space I’m only babysitting, can I?”
Stirring sugar into his coffee, Levi looked up to see her still staring at the tiles with a wistful expression that tore him to pieces. Because once again, she didn’t have free rein to make her own choice. Even about some stupid tiles. But before he could figure out what to say, she climbed over the bench to sit beside him, dumping three spoonsful of sugar into her own coffee.
“Thanks. And I don’t mean for this.” She jabbed her spoon toward the dark swirling liquid. “I mean for...indulging me, I suppose. Tonight. Although I may never live it down around town.”
Levi smiled. “All anyone saw—if they even noticed, it was pretty crowded in there—was a gal having fun. Hardly a hanging offense.” She snorted. “But you’re welcome. I’m glad...” He frowned at his own coffee. “I’m glad you felt you could trust me enough to do that. That I wouldn’t take advantage of you. Or something.”
She actually laughed. “Seriously, Levi? You’re surprised that I trust you?”
“Uh...yeah? I mean, considering our history and all. Right?”
She squeezed shut her eyes, then opened them again to blow out a breath. “Well, I do. Trust you.”
He took a moment. “This is a new development, I take it?”
Her mouth twisted. “New...ish. You’ve been a good friend, Levi. And I don’t have a lot of those. So thank you.”
Levi stared at his hands, curled around the steaming mug, almost incapable of processing her sincerity. “You have no idea,” he finally said, “how honored that makes me feel.”
She took a sip of her coffee, then set down the mug, going very still. “Same goes,” she said softly. “In fact... I owe you an apology.”
“Now I know you’re drunk,” he said, and she laughed. But it was a sad sound, battering his heart all over again.
“Still drunk enough to let down the wall, maybe. But not so drunk that I don’t know what I’m saying.” Her eyes lifted to his. “You probably know I blamed you all these years for Tommy’s going into the army.”
“Kinda got that impression, yeah. But—”
“No, let me finish before the caffeine kicks in and I lose my nerve. All my life, people have left. Made promises they didn’t keep. My parents, especially. Then Tommy showed up, and I thought—finally. Someone who’ll actually stick around. So when he decided to enlist, I couldn’t believe it. And I didn’t want to believe it of him. That he’d leave me, just like everybody else. So since the thought of laying the blame at his feet nearly killed me, I shifted it to you.”
“Since you already didn’t like me and all.”
One side of her mouth lifted. “You were definitely convenient. And then you came back, and...” She shrugged. “I wanted to be angry. I needed to be angry.”
Without thinking, Levi reached for her hand. Which she let him take. “Except...” She exhaled. “Hanging on to a lie doesn’t make it true. It only makes you look like an idiot.” She stared at their linked hands. “Maybe your enlisting put the idea in Tommy’s head to do the same thing, but it was his choice. A choice I doubt I’ll ever completely understand, but blaming you for it...” She lifted her eyes to his. “That was wrong. And I apologize.”
His brain locking up again, Levi let go of her hand to tug her to his side, his chest constricting when she laid her head on his shoulder. And it simply felt...right. For them, for this moment. Because he didn’t have a whole lot
of friends, either. And he could do far worse than having this woman fill that position.
“I could’ve done more, though,” he said into her hair, “to talk him out of it—”
“No, Levi. You couldn’t have. This was the dude who bought that god-awful purple car, remember? Jeez, Levi—the man gave up sex to serve his country.”
“Um... I take it the coffee hasn’t fully kicked in yet?”
“We were married, Levi. We had sex. Good sex. When he was around. Not gonna lie, I miss that.” Yeah, definitely the beer still talking. Had to be. “But it was something Tommy felt he had to do,” she went on. “And because of that choice, a lot of lives were saved.” She pulled away, taking her warmth with her. “One of those things nobody warns you about falling for an honorable dude—”
“Thought I heard voices,” said a gruff voice from the doorway, pushing both of them to their feet. A moment later Granville Blake came into the room, leaning heavily on a three-pronged cane. Levi started—the last time he’d seen his father’s old employer the man had been as fit as any of his much younger hands, tall and proud and black haired, with light-colored eyes that could—and did—pierce straight through a person. And if it hadn’t been for those eyes, Levi wouldn’t have recognized him.
“Gus told me you were here.” Stiffly, Granville walked toward them, his hand extended. “Welcome home, son.”
Levi clasped the older man’s hand, his chest constricting at how frail it felt. “Thank you, sir. I don’t think you know Valerie Lopez? She married my friend Tomas.”
“Ooh...” Granville’s gaze turned to Val. “I’m so sorry, honey. So sorry. Yes, I remember Tomas quite well. Fine young man.” Leaning heavily on the cane, he gave Val a sympathetic smile. “You getting on okay?”
“Yes. Thank you—”
“Wait. Valerie...your maiden name was Oswald, wasn’t it?”
“It was, yes.”
Granville sucked in a long breath, every line in his face deepening. “Knew your mother. Not well, but...” He cleared his throat, a slight flush sweeping across his pallid cheeks. “I was sorry to hear of her passing. Real sorry.”
Even an idiot could’ve heard the subtext screaming underneath those words. And for damn sure Val obviously did. This time her “Thank you” was mumbled before she said, “It’s getting late, I should really be getting back. But the party was great—thanks so much for hosting it...”
After a few more words with Granville, they left. The festivities were winding down, the only sounds the occasional slam of a truck door, tires bumping over dirt. A bellow of good-old-boy laughter. From a nearby barn, a horse nickered, the sound suspended in the chilled night air that cloaked them as they walked back to Levi’s truck, Val with her arms pretzeled over her ribs.
“God, I could so use another beer right now.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“He slept with my mother, Levi.” The darkness snatched at her words. Her anger.
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I?”
“Okay,” Levi said, knowing arguing would be pointless. Especially with a woman as ticked off as this one was. “But he’s been a widower for a long time—”
“And we all know what my mother was. So no big deal, right?” Then she stopped dead in her tracks to lift her face to the clear, star-pricked black sky. His hands fisted in his jacket pockets, Levi had no idea what to do, what she wanted or needed from him. If anything. Except, maybe, simply his presence. Clearly his lot in life, he thought with a slight smile.
“Val?”
A breeze plucked at her hair, silver in the moonlight. “Why should I even care? Especially since it obviously happened years ago. When I wasn’t even around. But damn...” A harsh laugh pushed from her lungs. “Sometimes I think the woman hooked up with every breathing male in a hundred-mile radius.”
Unfortunately, he couldn’t exactly refute her assumption. So instead he waited until she took his hand, then continued on to the truck. “And maybe, for a little while, she was able to offer a lonely man some solace.”
“Solace? Clearly you never knew my mother.”
“No, but I knew Granville Blake. And I remember when his wife died. How hard he took it.”
Val was quiet for a moment. “They never had any kids?”
“One. A daughter. A little younger than Josh and me. Granville sent her to DC to live with her aunt and uncle when she was fourteen, fifteen, something like that.”
“Why?” She sounded appalled.
“I have no idea. I know—it seemed crazy to us, too, that he’d send away his only child. Far as I know she hasn’t been back in years. I’m guessing what you saw tonight was a lot of regret.” He looked over at her. “So you might not want to take out your frustration on him.”
“It’s not him I’m frustrated with,” she sighed out. “Obviously. And what my mother did after I left was her business. It just kicked a lot of memories back to life. That’s all.”
“You must’ve hated her.”
On a sound that was half laugh, half sigh, Val picked her way across a network of braided cottonwood roots to plant her butt on a chewed-up swing that’d been dangling from that old tree for as long as Levi could remember. He feared for her safety, even though he doubted her weight even registered on the sturdy branch. He followed to stand in front of her, his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans.
“I’m guessing you’re still not ready to go home?”
She gave him an almost apologetic smile. “It’s funny. It’s not as if there’s anything there I’m trying to avoid. Except, maybe...” Her lips pursed. “The quiet.”
“I can understand that.”
“So you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
Tilting back her head, Val curled her fingers high on the ropes, looking up through a million heart-shaped leaves shivering in the gentle breeze, ghostly in the scant light reaching them from the house, the barns. “To answer your question...no, I didn’t hate my mother. Although sometimes I think it would’ve been easier if I had. And God knows, I wanted to. Horrible as that sounds. But what I wanted more, was to simply feel important to her. To feel—” her gaze met his again, eerily clear in the shadowed light “—like I mattered. To her, to anybody. Seeing as how my father clearly didn’t care, either.”
Oddly, he knew she wasn’t looking for pity. In fact, she probably would’ve slugged him if he’d offered it. But he still felt compelled to say, “It must’ve been hard, when he left.”
Val halfheartedly shoved off the ground; the swing wobbled, like it wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do, before settling into a gentle rocking motion. “I was only five, so I don’t remember much about it. Or him, for that matter. Except for a couple of vague impressions.”
“Good, bad...?”
She shrugged. “Neither. Although not sure what difference that makes, since he’s never tried to make contact.”
“Not even once?”
“Nope. Although since my parents weren’t married, maybe he never felt any real obligation...?”
“Plenty of men father children with women they’re not married to, Val. Has nothing to do with how they feel about their kids.”
“Not in this case. Frankly I’ve always wondered why he stuck around as long as he did. But whatever. Between that and my mother’s always looking at me like she didn’t understand why I was there...” Her fingers tightened around the ropes. “Nothing like being made to feel like a mistake nobody could figure out how to fix. So when Tommy came into my life...” She shrugged, her eyes glittering in the moonlight.
“He did make you feel like you mattered.”
She smiled. “And then some. And that took guts, you know? In a town this small, hooking up with someone like me.”
Anger spiking through him, Levi leaned against the tree’s massive trunk. “You weren’t your mother, Val.”
“Tell that to the kids—and their parents—who judged me.” Her m
outh twisted. “Or assumed I was exactly like my mother.”
Something hard and cold fisted in Levi’s chest. The sneers and snide comments had been bad enough. The close-minded judging. But something in her voice told him that hadn’t been the end of it. “Who?”
Her eyes flashed to his, startled. Then she shook her head. “Not important.”
“Like hell.”
Sighing, she leaned her temple against her hand, fisted around the rope. “It wasn’t anybody you would’ve known—he didn’t live here. And this was before Tomas. I was lucky, if you can call it that. I got away before the worst happened.”
He could barely breathe. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Good God, Val. Did Tommy know?”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because for years I was too...ashamed? Confused? I honestly don’t know. Then I guess I thought, why rehash, relive, whatever, something I wanted to forget? It was enough that Tommy’d rescued me from what he did know about.” She smiled. “That he loved me, baggage and all. And I will always love him for that. For seeing past all the stuff the other boys couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.”
Through a wad of impossibly tangled thoughts, Levi waited out a surge of something he couldn’t even define. Irritation, maybe, that he hadn’t known? “But you’re telling me now.”
A slight smile touched her lips. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because...dunno. It’s not so scary anymore?”
“The memory? Or the idea of telling someone?”
“Not sure. Both?”
“I’m so sorry—”
“For something that had nothing to do with you? Why? I never even told my mother,” she said before he could answer her question. “Can you believe it? God, if my girls ever thought they couldn’t tell me about anything...” Her eyes glittered. “It would gut me, Levi. Absolutely gut me.”
A Soldier's Promise Page 13
