The Damaged Heroes Collection [Box Set #1: The Damaged Heroes Collection] (BookStrand Publishing Mainstream)

by James, Sandy

  He hadn’t remembered much after that. The surgeries on his arm, the time in the hospital in Germany, the discharge. Those weeks were like images from a movie about someone else’s life.

  Brad’s death wasn’t his fault, but Lucas realized the guilt would probably haunt him for the rest of his life. Like a nagging arthritic joint that would inflame from time to time. He also realized it was time to move on, to start down a new path.

  “I miss you, buddy,” Lucas said as he placed his hands on the stone that was still warm from the setting autumn sun. “And I’m sorry.”

  God, he needed to hold Joy. He needed to bury his fingers in that gorgeous mane of hair and kiss her until neither of them could think. He needed her to tell him they had a future together.

  Lucas stood very still and listened for a message in the wind. Joy had said she’d heard the wind tell her she belonged with him. He wanted the wind to talk to him now, to tell him what to do about Joy.

  She’d chosen her family. She had chosen her way of life over his love.

  “No, she didn’t.” Was that his own voice?

  But I heard her words, his thoughts insisted.

  “She loves me. And I love her.”

  His thoughts stayed mercifully quiet.

  In this place surrounded by images of death, Lucas finally decided to start living again. He loved Joy, damn it, and they were going to grow old together. No matter what he’d heard her say, he wasn’t going to give up on Joy that easily. He wasn’t going to let her simply walk away. He knew he had asked so much of her, that he’d asked her to be patient while he came to terms with all that had happened to him. And she’d been so very patient and so very loving.

  I can be patient too. I’ll wait as long as I have to, but I’ll get her back.

  He would find a way to win back her love. He was sure the problem wasn’t that Joy had stopped loving him. He knew that now. Joy still loved him, just as much as he loved her. She had made her choice because she felt guilty about her father’s heart attack. Lucas said a silent prayer for Bela’s quick recovery, but he also promised himself that he would make sure Joy didn’t carry around the crippling guilt that he had borne over Brad. She hadn’t caused her father’s heart attack; he would tell her that every day if that’s what it took.

  Was it the wrong thing to do? To keep her with him even if her family didn’t approve?

  Lucas decided that he would try again to win her family over. He would be patient but insistent. He would be the annoying fly buzzing around until they either swatted him or grew accustomed to his presence. He would stick to Jozsa like glue. He’d shower her with love and kindness. And he would wear them all down until they celebrated his wedding to her the way they’d celebrated Andras’s wedding.

  Her voice haunted his thoughts. I’ll always wait for you. As long as it takes.

  And I’ll wait for you too, Joy. As long as it takes.

  How much easier it would have been if she’d just gotten pregnant. That thought had haunted him, visions of a little girl with her mother’s gorgeous eyes and dark curly hair who they had yet to create. A beautiful daughter who would have been a living, breathing symbol of all the love he felt for Joy.

  Samantha and Brian had made it seem so easy to conceive. Seth and Katie had overcome infertility with a relative ease.

  Maybe I shoot blanks.

  Lucas had always figured he and Joy would talk seriously about birth control after Joy had her period. Even though they’d been together almost eight weeks, that conversation had never occurred because she’d never had—

  His palm slapped his forehead. Hard. He might not have been the best student at math, but he could count.

  “Oh, my God.”

  He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs. He wanted to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times. He even wanted to tell the biggest gossips at the track so they could spread the news all over Hell’s half-acre.

  “She’s pregnant!”

  Lucas began to stride back toward his truck, thinking he would drive straight through the night if he could. Back to Indiana. Back to her.

  I’ll make this right, Jozsa. I’ll make this all right.

  For once in his life, Lucas was going to do all the right things. Because she was his mate, the mother of his child, the love of his life.

  For all the right reasons.

  Chapter 28

  “No way,” Brian scoffed to himself. He resisted the urge to give his head a shake to dispel the image. Lucas’s truck had pulled up next to the barn, and his wayward younger brother was crawling out of it. “Hey, Janos!”

  Janos stuck his head out of the stall he was cleaning. “Yeah?”

  “Come take a look at what the cat dragged in.”

  Janos stepped out of the stall and leaned the shovel against the wall. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s back,” Brian replied as he nodded toward Lucas coming through the entrance of the barn.

  Brian saw the change on Janos’s face when it finally registered that Lucas had the audacity to be there. “I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

  “Hear him out first,” Brian cautioned. “Then you can kill him. But you might have to get in line.”

  Brian’s new groom fisted his hands at his side and snorted through flaring nostrils.

  “Easy, Janos.”

  Janos replied in a string of Hungarian words Brian was glad he couldn’t understand but assumed were slights against anything from Lucas’s parentage to his physical endowments. “I was just kidding about killing him,” Brian cautioned. “Remember, he’s my brother.”

  “Yeah? Well, she’s my sister.”

  “But you still can’t kill him.”

  Lucas came stalking up the aisle of the barn. He had enough scruffy beard on his face, it appeared he hadn’t shaved in several days. He nodded at Brian and then his face registered surprise at seeing Janos.

  “You’ve got balls showing up now,” Brian finally said as he moved around the horse he was harnessing.

  Lucas nodded, not even trying to defend himself. “I know. I really screwed up royal this time.” He turned to Janos. “I’m sorry.” Janos just narrowed his eyes.

  “Screwed up, huh? Classic understatement,” Brian replied. “I know you’ve had trouble since you got back from Iraq, but running away wasn’t the right way to handle it.”

  “I had a good reason.” His tone was getting defensive although he still appeared contrite. From the look on Janos’s face, Brian figured there would never be an appropriate or important enough reason for Lucas to have abandoned Joy.

  Brian stopped working and looked his younger brother up and down, relieved he appeared healthy. He wanted to hug Lucas, to tell him his big brother could make everything all right. But it wasn’t that simple, and Brian needed Lucas to know what a mess he’d made this time. “I don’t see anything broken. No casts. No wheelchair. So I’m gonna have to say that I don’t think your reason’s gonna be nearly good enough.”

  “Not nearly good enough,” Janos echoed. “Don’t you even care about Jozsa? You walked out on her.”

  Lucas’s face contorted as if someone had hit him. Brian wondered if Janos just might. “Of course, I care about Jozsa. And I didn’t walk out on her, she left me.”

  Janos stared at Lucas open-mouthed.

  Realizing things were obviously not what they seemed, Brian decided to hold his own tongue to see if he could figure this whole mess out.

  “I just drove fourteen straight hours to get back to her,” Lucas said, turning to Brian. “I haven’t even been home yet. I stopped here first so you guys would quit worrying about me. I really need a shower and some sleep, then I’m going into town to see Joy, whether she wants to see me or not.” Lucas splayed his fingers through his hair in apparent frustration. “I think I’m going to hit Gypsy every night again, you know, try to win her over.” Lucas frowned at them. “You two can quit gawking at me like I’m an imbecile. I know it’s not gonna be e
asy. I was hoping she’d come back here, that she hadn’t stayed in Erie with her family. What’s wrong with you guys? She is back, isn’t she?”

  “Is that what you thought? She chose the family over you?” Janos asked, suddenly looking as surprised as Brian felt.

  “I know she did. I heard her talking to Bela at the hospital. She said she was going to marry Tamas. I’m back to try to stop that from happening,” Lucas replied in a clear, steady voice that made Brian trust in every word. Then Lucas squared his shoulders. “Look, you can both be pissed at me all you want, but I’m back. And I’m planning on staying back. I need your help. I need to make this up to Joy, to win her back.”

  Giving the harness cinch one last tug, Brian finished equipping his horse. While he was glad to know things between Lucas and Joy might not be beyond repair, he wasn’t ready to let Lucas off the hook quite that easy. Lucas needed to know what his disappearing act had reaped. It was Brian’s responsibility to help his brother grow up. “You need to make it up to Joy, huh? Well, what about me? I needed your help. Take a look around here, Lucas. See the horses? They needed a second trainer. Sam’s been doing too much as it is, and you left us high and dry.”

  “Is that why Janos is here?” Lucas asked. He turned to Janos. “Why aren’t you at the restaurant with Joy?”

  “She’s not there,” Janos replied.

  “Why not? Did she stay in Erie?”

  From the look on Janos’s face, Brian realized he wasn’t ready to clue Lucas in on Joy’s whereabouts, so he decided to end his brother’s misery. “Because she didn’t choose her family over you. She’s been at the house, waiting for you to come back.”

  Lucas appeared to be properly stunned at the news. “She’s...she’s at our house? Really?”

  Janos nodded, his gaze drilling holes through Lucas. “She’s been sitting there waiting. Just waiting. And you didn’t send her a goddamn word about where you were. She left the hospital right after you did, thinking you were waiting on her in the parking lot.”

  “But she said she was going to marry—”

  “I don’t know what you think you heard,” Janos interrupted, doing little to hide his disgust, “but she told the family she was going to leave with you.”

  “But she said... She said...” Lucas hung his head. “I left her there.”

  “Yeah, you did. When she figured out you were gone, she came back here,” Janos added. “She’s the only one who thought you’d be back.”

  “I’ve never met anyone as patient as Joy,” Brian added. He inclined his head toward his new groom. “Janos here left Erie with her and quit the restaurant. I’ve been teaching him everything I know about horses. Now that the—” Brian squelched the thought that Janos had little to do now that the “money pit” was virtually complete. Between Janos, the contractors Joy had hired, and the efforts of the Mitchells and the Remingtons, the place looked fantastic. But it was Joy’s place to tell Lucas about all the changes at the house.

  “Now that the what?” Lucas asked.

  Brian shook his head. “Never mind. You can find out for yourself.”

  Lucas breathed a weary sigh. “I’m sorry, Bro. I really am. I just... I had to lay some ghosts to rest. I’ll be back at work first thing tomorrow.”

  Ghosts? As in Brad? Brian dared to hope that maybe just maybe, Lucas had begun to heal. Keeping the tremor from his voice, Brian used the tone of a big brother scolding a wayward sibling. “You’re assuming I’ll take you back. Where in the hell were you anyway?” He hoped Lucas could at least provide some excuse that would justify his absence.

  “I went to Georgia,” Lucas replied, for once not shifting his gaze like a criminal being questioned by the cops. “I went to visit Brad’s grave.”

  Brian stopped working and stared at his brother. That was a good reason, but only if the sojourn had helped Lucas finally find some peace about what happened in Iraq. Brian had already noticed Lucas wore a short-sleeved shirt. That in and of itself spoke loudly that his brother had achieved his goal.

  “Who’s Brad?” Janos asked, clearly confused at the turn in the conversation. At least his anger seemed to be ebbing, but Brian knew there was still the possibility that if Janos didn’t get all the right answers, he would lay into Lucas. Not that Lucas didn’t deserve a good smack upside the head, but Brian would never allow Janos to hurt his brother.

  “He was my best friend. He served with me in Iraq. He died in the explosion that did this to me,” Lucas said, holding up his right arm to show the scars.

  “And what did you find in Georgia?” Brian asked.

  “I found out that I didn’t cause Brad’s death, that it wasn’t my fault.”

  Brian noted the sincerity in his brother’s voice and started to find some confidence that Lucas might have really come to terms with the horrible things that had happened to him in the war. God, he hoped so.

  “I found out that I need to move on,” Lucas continued, “to live in the present and not in the past.”

  “Bravo,” Brian said before realizing it might sound a bit condescending. He strode to his bother, gave him a bear hug, and whispered, “I’m glad you’re back, Lucas.” Lucas’s arms squeezed Brian tightly before easing away.

  Trying to get back to business, Brian grabbed a jog cart and settled it behind his horse. Janos came over to help lock it to the harness and then led the horse toward the training track as Brian walked beside and adjusted the reins. Lucas followed.

  Seth was jogging a large chestnut horse. He reined the animal to a stop next to Lucas. “Jesus Christ. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Yeah, I know. Go ahead, tell me I’m a damned idiot.”

  Knowing Seth, Brian wasn’t surprised when Seth smiled and said, “Fine. You’re a damned idiot. Do you know how hard your leaving was on everyone?”

  Lucas nodded. “I know. I just... I had to put my past behind me.”

  “And did you?” Seth asked, looking as skeptical as Brian had felt earlier.

  Lucas nodded again. “I did. Now I need your help. All of you. I promise to make up my leaving to all of you, but first, I need to make this up to Joy. Can I count on you?”

  Brian nodded, noting Janos and Seth doing the same.

  “Good. ’Cause I’ve got some interesting ideas on what we can do,” Lucas said with an enigmatic smile.

  * * * *

  Lucas walked quietly from room to room, mouth gaping open, as he took in all that Joy and his friends had done to the house. Everything was just as he had always pictured it. Just as Joy had told him it would be. The right colors, the right fixtures. A pang of guilt rolled through him as he realized how much Joy had gone through to make this place whole again, to make him whole again. She would never know how grateful he was to her for giving of herself so freely.

  He vowed to make it up to her.

  Walking slowly up the stairs, trying not to make the floorboards squeak, Lucas tried to catch her still sleeping. If he could pull this off, he would need an incredible amount of luck. Perhaps by turning off her alarm clock, he could buy some extra time.

  His gut tightened into a painful knot when he saw her. Lying in the bed, wrapped in a sheet, Joy looked like heaven. He’d missed her more than she could ever know, and his heart swelled with love just seeing her beautiful face again.

  Silencing the alarm, Lucas knelt next to the bed and stared at her. Her gorgeous hair was spread in every direction across the pillow, her face framed in a small frown. Lightly brushing his fingertips across her cheek, Lucas vowed to take that frown away. In her sleep, Joy wiggled her nose and sighed softly at his touch.

  It took every ounce of his self-control not to climb into that bed and make love to her until they both collapsed in sated exhaustion.

  Later. Now you’ve got work to do.

  With a reluctant sigh, Lucas rose and turned to leave. The rug caught his attention, the enormous Persian rug he’d managed to bring back from the Middle East. Joy had placed it exactly where Lucas
had always planned— right in the center of the gorgeous hardwood floor. His gaze wandered the bedroom. The walls were now painted in a soft, sky blue. She’d done well. Very well.

  He firmly decided to spend the rest of his life repaying her for all she had done for him. With one last look at the woman he loved with every part of his soul, Lucas smiled and went to make sure things were falling properly into place.

  * * * *

  Joy was reluctant to give up the hold sleep held over her. Lying on the bed, she slowly opened her eyes. The room had already filled with sunlight as it streamed through the big windows.

  Turning on her side to pet whichever cat had snuggled against her back, she closed her eyes again, wondering how long she could get away with simply lounging in bed. No workers were due to come to the house. Everything she could do to the place was pretty much done. There were some odds and ends she could handle without help, assuming Janos would quit shouting at her every time she lifted a hand to work on anything.

  The last time she’d tried to paint a floral stencil around the arch to the foyer, Janos had all but jerked her off the ladder. Her brother’s ridiculous rules were starting to wear on her. She was pregnant, not crippled. No climbing ladders. No paint odors. No being out in the sun too long. Like an old mother hen. But she had to smile, knowing Janos only fussed so much because he cared for her a great deal.

  When Lucas got back, he was sure to take over the vigil of protecting the expectant mother.

  “If Lucas comes back,” she whispered to Maska. The cat purred and stretched, clawing at the comforter with his front paws. Joy tried to block the negative thought, the terrifying notion that Lucas might not return to her. It was getting harder to keep the faith with each passing day.

  With a reluctant sigh, she rolled to her other side to check the clock.

  10:00.

  No way. I couldn’t have slept that late.