Get a hold of yourself, Fleming. It’s not Kira’s fault. Stop blaming her.
Ice crunched beneath his work boots. Snow fell in the western part of Wyoming from September, onward. The midafternoon sun was melting some of the white stuff but not much. The muddy tracks showed up on the road as he walked with the duffel bag to the house. His gut was a nest of writhing, frightened snakes twisting within him.
Because he’d always loved Kira, he hated himself for thinking this was her fault. It wasn’t. He had to stop this immediately. She had been wounded, too, in so many ways, just like him. He could see the suffering in her face even though he also saw her trying to hide it from him. She’d never been able to hide anything from him. But telling her how he felt about her had always been off the table.
Angry and disgusted with himself over his panic and anxiety, his worry about all that crap vomiting up from the tightly held box he kept stuffed within him, Garret knew he had to get a handle on his escaping emotions immediately. People with PTSD often projected their anger and irritation at the closest moving object, usually their spouse. Kira wasn’t his wife, but he was responsible for her now that she was living under his roof. Living alone, he didn’t have to shield his anger and irritation when it rose violently up through him. Now he would have to or else. Kira didn’t deserve his darkness. She had her own to contend with.
As he opened the back door, hefting the duffel bag into the kitchen, Garret forced himself to settle down and think. Before PTSD, he’d been calm, coolheaded and utterly focused on any task before him. Now things were never like that. Now it was like trying to get all his anxiety, which flowed in many different directions at once, corralled and then tamed into one focus. It took so much energy that by the end of a long work day, he was physically and mentally exhausted.
His boot footfalls echoed down the well-lit hallway. Kira’s door was open. His heart rolled in his chest, that damned yearning ache ratcheting up with intensity. How badly he needed her. Garret knew he could find peace in her arms. If he could bury himself in her warm, welcoming depths, he’d find calm, which was something he hadn’t felt since the ambush. Kira represented an island of healing for him and Garret didn’t even try to deny it. He halted at the door. He saw her at the dresser, some of the drawers open.
“Here you go,” he said, taking the duffel over to the queen-size bed. The ladies of the Wind River Valley Quilt Club had gifted it to him. The quilt was a simple quilt made of nine-inch-square patches of summertime flowers in bloom. It was bright and cheery. When she gave him a tentative smile, his heart burst open. For a moment he felt the gnawing in his lower body, reminding him just how much he loved her. Nothing was simple. Absolutely nothing.
“Thanks.” She walked over, opening it up. “My whole life is contained in here.”
“The Army’s still with you.”
“It always will be,” she answered softly, removing the clothes she’d carefully folded and packed, placing them in neat rows on the bed.
Garret wanted to stay to talk with her. He had hundreds of questions for her. Kira looked exhausted. Her once proud, straight shoulders were slumped. She wore a bright red sweater that showed him the pallor of her skin and emphasized her large, beautiful gray eyes. Her black hair was mussed and he itched to lift his hand to tame a few of those strands away from her high cheekbone but severely resisted the gesture. “Have you eaten recently?”
“Yes. Shay made me a late lunch. That was really kind of her.”
He fidgeted inwardly, forcing himself to appear quiet and calm, at least outwardly. Inwardly, there was a battle raging between his hormones, lust and the past rapidly rising up, engulfing his stretched, fragile emotional state. “Are you tired? Do you want to rest? Or would you like to sit with me in the kitchen and have a cup of coffee?” Garret wanted to do something—anything—to relieve the rawness he felt with Kira. It was like she was walking around without her skin to protect her. And Garret knew from long experience, with his knee-jerk reaction to a child or woman who needed shielding, he’d be there in a heartbeat to be that guard. Kira was pushing every button he had in that area right now. And she wasn’t doing it on purpose. She might be feeling pretty bad, but she didn’t whine, didn’t give it voice. She just gutted through it, silently, not asking for help or support.
Like him. Hell.
“Coffee sounds really good. Are you sure you don’t mind making us a pot, Garret?” and she searched his hard, weathered face.
“No problem. I’m happy to do it.”
“Maybe we can take a bit of time to catch up with each other. I have so many questions to ask you.”
Wincing internally, his gut clenching, Garret nodded. “Yeah, I understand. Come out when you’re ready. I’ll have coffee waiting for you.” He felt unparalleled fear; if Kira started talking about the ambush, about the deaths of their brothers, Garret knew he wouldn’t be able to handle it. Digging into her pensive features, feeling her natural warmth and openness, Garret felt like he was lost; the anchor he’d managed to create after the amnesia left had dissolved. To say he was floundering was an understatement.
And yet, looking down at Kira, how thin and small she was in comparison to himself, he saw strength in her eyes, too. Small but mighty. He’d always teased her about that. In the team, she was called Trouble. It was a nickname that had a helluva lot of love and respect for Kira behind it. And she did stir up trouble, but not the bad kind. She would see a need, bring it to everyone’s attention and something would get done to fix it.
No one on the team ever winced when she brought up a solution for the village people’s problems either. She was their secret weapon in getting actionable intel from the women, who clearly loved her, and they were grateful for her generosity to them. But now Garret knew he had another kind of trouble with Kira. And he had to shield her from himself or else. She was suffering just as much, maybe more, than he was. He’d have to find out.
About thirty minutes later, Garret heard Kira’s boots scuffing down the hallway, coming his way. He turned from the counter, seeing her enter the kitchen. “Ready for some coffee?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Please.” Kira walked slowly to the large, round maple table that had four chairs around it. “Can I help?”
“Nah. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He reached for red mugs and poured the coffee, bringing it to the table. Kira had combed her hair, he saw. And she’d changed sweaters. This one, a pale pink, clung to her, and he avoided looking at the soft slope of her breasts pillowed beneath it. She’d also changed from jeans to a pair of black wool slacks. He slid the mug in her direction. “Last time I remember you liked your coffee black.”
She managed a slight smile, taking the mug. “At least that hasn’t changed in me. This is fine. Thanks.”
Garret sat opposite her, pulling the sugar bowl in his direction from the center of the table. “My coffee taste hasn’t changed one iota either.” He lifted his mug in a toast. “Welcome to the Bar C.”
She smiled tentatively, lifting her mug and gently touching Garret’s. “I’m still in shock over seeing you here, Garret.” She sipped the coffee, holding his gaze. Setting it down between her hands, she asked huskily, “You said you had amnesia from the head wound?”
“Yeah, for six damn long months.” He leaned back in the chair, tipping up the front two legs. “Last thing I remembered was running that night. The next thing the lights went out. I woke up ten days later in Bethesda. The docs had put me into a drug-induced coma, working to stop my brain from swelling where that bullet grazed me here.” He pointed to his left temple. “I didn’t know who I was. I knew nothing.”
“God, that must have been scary.”
He gave her a dark look. “At least I didn’t know what happened to our team.” The words came out low and tight. Garret knew he’d have to cover some of the firefight, but as little as possible. He was going to manipulate Kira as much as he had to in order to stay the hell away from that subject. “The
docs told me who I was. They told me I’d been wounded in Afghanistan, but that was all.”
“Did they know whether you’d get your memory back?”
“They said it would probably download at some point. My brain was bruised and offline.” He shrugged. “I was bored as hell. I had the wound in my left calf, too One of those bones was broken and it was in bad shape. They had to put screws into it. I spent a lot of time doing physical therapy at the gym facility in the medical center. I’ve got most of my mobility back, but that’s what got me discharged from the Army with an honorable medical discharge.”
“Does your leg still bother you?”
“Around here as a wrangler? I can do anything physically asked of me. It’s not a hindrance. The Army knew my leg would never stand up to the daily stress and strain of being part of black ops, though.” He tried to stop the blossoming love for her spreading through his chest. This was so like the old Kira in the A team. She was a mother hen to the rest of the team. And to the villagers and their children as well. Garret saw that care burning in her eyes for him. It felt good, dammit, to have a woman extend herself like Kira could. Garret had had enough relationships in his life to know Kira was special. She’d always stood out as a woman among their team of males. And it was more than physiology and more than skin deep. It was her. She was a compassionate, caring human being. Garret had seen it in a hundred small ways during a day with her at the village.
“God, I’m so sorry all this happened to you. I know how much you loved the Special Forces.” She tilted her head, her voice soft with feeling. “And you were so good at what you did, Garret. The villagers loved you. The kids doted on you . . .”
He shifted uncomfortably in the chair, not wanting to go back to that time. “I’m sorry I never got in touch with you,” he said, meaning it. He saw Kira’s eyes go moist for a split second, and then the tears were gone. “Until my brain dumped everything, my shrink wasn’t about to tell me anything about that ambush. I asked the shrink if there was anyone else who’d survived the firefight.” Garret’s voice went thick. “They told me you were the only other survivor. That you’d been wounded twice. I asked him for a way to get in touch with you.” His mouth pursed as he held Kira’s softening gaze. “They told me three months after you’d been released from the hospital that you were given an honorable medical discharge. I asked them for your dad’s address because I knew you were close to him. They gave it to me, Kira, and I called Les. He said you’d stayed a month and then left for parts unknown. At the time I called, he had no idea where you were.” Garret stopped for a moment, wrestling with his emotions as they rampaged through him, mostly grief and sadness. “I didn’t know how to find you. God, I wanted to . . . but you were MIA.”
Nodding, Kira whispered unsteadily, “I was lost, Garret. I did stay with my dad for a while, but I was having PTSD nightmares nearly every night. I was waking him up. All the time. And he was so upset and worried about me. Neither of us were getting any sleep.” She pushed her hands against her face. “I had to leave. The poor guy was becoming sleep-deprived. So was I, but I’m a lot younger than he is and I guess I could handle it better.”
With a shrug, she added in a trembling tone, “I’m so glad to know you did try to locate me. When I was at Landstuhl, I tried to find out where they sent you. No one knew. And then they transferred me to Bethesda for recovery. I tried again to find out where you were. No luck.” She shrugged. “My duffel bag, or what was left of it, was in a locker in the basement. I knew I had an address book in there. When I could walk and get around, I went to find it. I called your father, Cal.”
Wincing, Garret grumbled, “You know he’s an alcoholic, Kira. A mean bastard.”
“Yes, I remember a number of talks we had about your father,” she said. “I figured he’d know where you were.” Shrugging, she drew in a ragged breath. “He was drunk when I called. Told me to go to hell.”
Garret’s hand on the table moved into a fist. He felt rage tunneling up through him, saw the devastation in Kira’s eyes. “I-I’m sorry. He shouldn’t have done that.”
“Hey, you clued me in on him long before that. I knew I was taking a risk, but I needed to find you. I had to find you, Garret,” and her voice filled with tears. She hastily wiped them away and gave him an apologetic look.
Oh God. Tears. Garret froze, unable to deal with the tears glimmering like soft diamonds in her eyes that were filled with such anguish. He heard so many emotions in her hushed voice, felt it energy-wise, as if a warm blanket briefly, lovingly surrounded him. He still loved Kira. That love he’d held for her those three years hadn’t dimmed one damned bit. It stunned Garret. “I’m sorry he treated you that way.”
“Don’t apologize for him,” she said, distress in her tone. “After he told me to go to hell, he calmed down. I asked if he heard anything to call me. I had a cell phone and gave him my number. He said he would. It was the last time I heard from him and I had no idea where you were, how you were doing or anything else.”
“I couldn’t find you either, Kira.” He gently set the legs of the chair down on the shining oak floor. Wrapping his large hands around the coffee cup, he added, “I didn’t have a cell phone. After I talked to your father, I told him I’d try to call him from time to time, in hopes you had called him.” He dropped her gaze. “When they released me, I had some money in the bank but not much. I thought it would be easy to get a job, but it wasn’t.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “My PTSD.”
“Oh . . . that,” she muttered, frowning. “I got discharged because of the PTSD, not my wounds.”
Garret bit back the question he desperately wanted to ask. No one had told him what happened that night after he’d been knocked out. How had they been saved? He wanted that information, but at the same time that would be opening up a can of worms he didn’t ever want to open. There was no one to ask but Kira. But not right now. Probably, never. “PTSD? I thought you were discharged because of your wounds.”
Shaking her head, she muttered, “I was an emotional basket case, Garret. I was wounded in the left arm,” she pointed to her upper arm, “and my right calf. I had no broken bones, thank God. But my head . . . my emotions . . . I lost it,” she admitted, shame in her voice.
Garret sat there, staring hard at her, seeing the moisture in her eyes, the shame for her behavior after the firefight. “Look,” he said gruffly, “only two people survived that hell. You and me. I remembered everything up to the moment I was struck in the head. It was hell, Kira. Don’t be ashamed of how you feel. Anyone surviving that attack was going to be permanently changed by it. I was. So were you. You don’t have to apologize to anyone for what happened to you. Okay?” He felt every protective hackle standing up on his spine and neck. Who the hell wouldn’t have PTSD after the firefight they’d survived?
“I guess,” she admitted in a low, unsteady voice, her hands gripping her cup, “I never expected post-traumatic stress disorder. Oh, I’d heard of PTSD, but I’d been in the Army since I was eighteen. And here I was twenty-six and I’d seen plenty of stress and some combat. Like a lot of other people, I thought it was all in your head,” and she gave him a wry look. “I know different, now.”
“I got a good dose of it, too,” Garret admitted thickly. “It runs me if I let it.”
“Tell me about it.” She touched her stomach. “The anxiety I feel is horrible. General Ward, who I worked under, had an employment team to put us women into jobs after we separated from the Army.” She wiped her brow and shook her head. “Five jobs, Garret. And I got fired from all of them.” Rolling her eyes, she uttered, “It’s the anxiety. If I get stressed, I start losing it. I can’t help it. I can’t control how I feel. I try, God, I try, but . . .” and her voice trailed off as she avoided his sharpened gaze.
“Did the general find this ranch?”
“Yes. Her employment team came on it and because all my other jobs were in the city, General Ward thought maybe a rural job would decrease my stress levels.
I hope it does . . .”
“It will,” Garret said firmly. “Shay and Reese are both vets. They have PTSD. There isn’t anyone around here who doesn’t, more or less. Hell, Noah and Harper have it ten times worse than I do. Noah was a dog handler in the military. He’s really good with all animals. He got discharged due to PTSD. Six months ago he wandered into Wind River Valley and Shay saw him in one of the main plazas in town, asking to do any kind of work for money for food. She brought him here and he’s been healing ever since. Now he has horses he’s training for folks in the valley.”
“That’s really hopeful,” Kira said, sitting up, her voice suddenly stronger. “What about Harper?”
“He came here five months ago. Similar situation. Shay found him sleeping on a bench on one of the plazas; dirty clothes, a beard and no bath for probably a few months. He was a Navy combat corpsman. Saw too much. Got medically discharged with PTSD. Shay got him cleaned up—a shave, haircut, new clothes—and brought him home to the Bar C. He’s a handyman and goes around the valley doing odd jobs of all kinds. But he also wants to go to college to become a paramedic, and then either work for the fire department or a hospital. He’s saving his money and he’s climbing out of his PTSD cellar a little at a time, too. I know he’ll make it.”
“And what about you?” she wondered. “How has Shay helped you?”
Garret found it easy to share that with Kira. It wasn’t traumatic compared to the ambush. “I came here a year ago. I was looking for work and went to Charlie Becker’s hay-and-feed store. He said Shay was looking for a wrangler who had heavy equipment experience. I decided to drive out to see if I could get the job. I liked her immediately. I liked her even more when she told me she was a Marine Corps vet and had PTSD. She told me she wanted to hire only people like herself, who needed a job, respect and a place to heal.”
Wind River Cowboy Page 4
