Thunder Running

by Rebecca Crowley

  “A marriage prompted by a roulette spin is still a marriage.”

  Carl snorted at his elbow, drawing Tara’s hostile stare.

  “You laughing at my legally sworn union, GI Joe? You think it’s funny that your good-for-nothing friend up and left me in the marital bed? So help me, I’ll wipe that smug smile off your face if you so much as—”

  “Whoa, calm down.” Chance took a step toward his erstwhile bride, nodding at Carl to proceed without him. His fellow NCO shot him a look that promised he’d be watching from inside, then pushed through the door of the bar.

  “Calm down,” Tara echoed mockingly. Her arms were crossed so tightly he feared for the blood supply to her fingers. “Reunited with his wife after ten months and what does he say? Calm down, like I’m some overexcited filly.”

  Chance frowned, sweeping his gaze from her feet to her face and back again, trying to collect his thoughts and put the facts in a row. Tara was here. She’d clearly worked hard to find him. And she was pissed. Why?

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Not unless you’re in the habit of poking holes in your own condoms.”

  “How do I know you aren’t?”

  Dark eyes narrowed. “Jesus, I hope they don’t put you in charge of counting how many bullets are left. What did I just say? Ten months. If you’d knocked me up back in December I’d be rocking the proof to sleep by now.”

  “What took you so long, then?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Like you said, ten months since our wedding. Fort Preston’s only a couple hours’ drive from Kansas City. Why’d you wait almost a year?”

  “I didn’t think my car would manage the drive to Afghanistan.”

  “I’ve been back for six months.”

  Her jaw slackened, offering the barest flash of soft tongue, moist pink mouth. His groin twitched unhelpfully.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I got back in April.”

  “The hell you did. You said it was a nine-month deployment.”

  “And in December I was on R&R, halfway through.”

  Her shocked silence gave his mind the space it needed to produce a new, deeply cynical thought. It was his turn to cross his arms over his chest.

  “I know why you’re here. You think you’re going to collect my combat pay while I’m gone.”

  She blinked. “Combat pay?”

  “You read it in the paper,” he accused, confidence bolstered by landing on what he was sure could be the only explanation for this high-spirited woman to go to all this trouble to find his sorry ass. “You saw the obituary for Alpha Company’s medic, knew the 13th Infantry would need someone from another company to replace him mid-tour and you figured I’d raise my hand. Well, I’ve got news for you, girl, I’ve still got a month left before I deploy so if you were hoping to catch me off-guard at the last minute, you failed.”

  A Fourth of July parade’s worth of emotions marched across Tara’s face. Surprise, bewilderment, contemplation, annoyance, then back to tight fury. She reached him in five scurrying strides and got in three hard swats on his arm before he managed to pivot out of range.

  “What the hell kind of a fool volunteers to go back to the warzone he just left?” she demanded, homegrown Arkansas accent thicker than ever. “Have you got a death wish? Or are you that crazy that six months of peace and prosperity has already given you an itchy trigger finger?”

  “Pretty much,” he replied honestly.

  “Lord, give me strength,” Tara muttered, swiping her palm over her eyes. When she met his eyes again hers were hard with resolve. “It’s not ideal, but a month is better than a week. We’ll make it work.”

  “Make what work?”

  “This marriage, Chance. Maybe you’re in the habit of swearing wedding vows you have no intention to keep, but I’m not. I don’t want your combat pay or your car or whatever other raggedy-ass belongings you consider assets. I came here to give this relationship a shot, and I’m not leaving until I’m convinced one way or the other.”

  On impulse Chance opened his mouth to protest, then closed it without a word.

  Tara Lambert had roared back into his life unannounced, unanticipated, full of demands and accusations, riding a motive about as plausible as a dragon. He had four weeks to go before shipping back out to the sandbox and she wanted to spend them getting to know each other, trying to transform their wild wedding weekend into an actual, real-life marriage. Impossible. Ridiculous. The dumbest thing he’d heard in a long time, and a career in the military meant he heard a lot of dumb shit.

  But he didn’t hate the idea. In fact he was mildly flattered that she’d worked so hard to reconnect with him, and was willing to give up so much to see if their two-night stand could be something more.

  And she looked so good. Even scowling and rigid, she was the prettiest woman ever to give him the time of day.

  Nothing about you has changed since you left her in that hotel, his conscience reminded him sternly. You’re still a violence-hungry freak who can only sit still when he’s sighting in a gun. You’ll never stop leaving her. She’ll say goodbye at civilian airports, in hangars full of soldiers, at the side of your flag-draped coffin. You’ll destroy her, and if you reckon you won’t you’re an even bigger fool than she thinks.

  Chance set his back teeth. He deserved this. He left her in that hotel room like a coward—now he had to face the consequences. Now she’d come back to remind him exactly what he was missing, exactly what he couldn’t hold on to. Then it would be her turn to leave.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “All right, then. I’ll lean inside to tell Carl I’m leaving, then you can show me where you’re parked.”

  Her eyes widened with hope. Inwardly he cringed.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Exactly what you came for, sugar. We’re going home.”

  “This is it?”

  “What were you expecting, a ten-bedroom mansion with two staircases? I’m a soldier, not a CEO.”

  “I guess I had higher hopes for the destination of my tax dollars,” Tara muttered, working hard to sound disappointed. Chance’s small farmhouse with its several scrubby acres near the fort was the nicest house she’d ever been in, and nothing like the adolescently decorated bachelor pad she’d imagined. She had to fight the urge to gawk at the hardwood floors and new furnishings as he locked the front door behind them.

  “Nice talk coming from someone who described her apartment as a shoebox so filthy even the rats avoided it. Or was that just your way to get me to pay for a hotel room?”

  He remembered! Tara bit her lower lip to keep her thrilled smile at bay. She hadn’t expected to be so sublimely happy to see him again, or so overwhelmed by his physical presence. She’d spent the twenty-minute drive to his house clenching the steering wheel, fighting to keep the car in the lane, imagining what would happen if she was pulled over.

  “I’ll pass that breathalyzer, Officer, but I have to confess to ingesting an illicit substance. It’s the scent of this man right here next to me, of muggy summer nights and cold beer in aluminum cans and laundry dried in the sun. Add that to his Gulf-Coast Mississippi accent and long legs all folded up in my little car and we’re lucky I could drive in a straight line.”

  “I believe you passed me your hotel keycard long before we discussed the size of my apartment,” she replied primly. “As I recall, you’d already paid for the room.”

  “Didn’t realize I’d still be paying for it ten months later,” he grumbled, dropping her overstuffed, imitation designer tote bag onto the couch.

  Tara’s elation dissipated as quickly as it had erupted, but she kept her expression on the irritated side of neutral. This situation wasn’t turning out at all like she expected, and it was going to take some quick thinking to keep it under control. He hadn’t fallen at her
feet in gratitude at her reappearance, he hadn’t spent those long months in Afghanistan pining for her and realizing what a horrible mistake he’d made by leaving her behind; in fact he hadn’t even apologized for disappearing from the hotel while she was sleeping off the tequila shots.

  On the flipside, she hadn’t expected her confidence to be so uncharacteristically shaken by the mere sight of him. She had no idea it would only take one glimpse of that ruffled regulation haircut, those mouth-bracketing dimples, the long-fingered medic’s hands to reduce her to a pathetic, simpering schoolgirl swooning over an out-of-her-league upperclassman.

  She was surer than ever that she wanted to be with him, or at least to give the two of them a try. But she wondered whether she’d made a mistake pursuing him, whether he’d ever really wanted her, and whether she was setting herself up for the biggest, most humiliating heartbreak of her life.

  “Do you want me to give you the grand tour?”

  “This house has, what, two bedrooms? I’m sure I can find my way around.”

  Chance shoved his hands in his pockets. “Are you hungry? I can fix dinner.”

  She was starving, but she wrinkled her nose. “Are you telling me there’s food in that refrigerator?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Tara made a show of picking her way across the room, despite its being almost immaculately tidy save for a few errant boots and camouflage helmets scattered across the floor. The adjoining, open-plan kitchen was barely five steps away, and she made a point to hold her breath as she pulled open the refrigerator door.

  “Oh.” She straightened, surveying the contents. Plain yogurt, milk, avocados, two packets of ground beef, three green apples, a hunk of Monterey Jack with a label from a local creamery. A far cry from the roll of slice-and-bake cookie dough and long-expired mustard that constituted food on-hand at her place.

  “Well.” She shut the door. “I can’t see what you could possibly make from that. It’s so…um…miscellaneous.”

  With a frown Chance moved to join her beside the fridge, reopening the door and peering inside. The sudden rush of cold air swept his scent into her face, and for a split second she had to close her eyes, reminding herself she could not touch him.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “What are you talking about? We can do fajitas, beef pasta, hamburgers, all kinds of stuff. I only went to the store two days ago.”

  “It’s all so…basic.” Tara shrugged.

  He sighed exasperatedly. “What do you want for dinner, then?”

  “Something fresh. Like sushi.” Tara only liked fish when it was breaded and preferably in stick form, so eating it raw was unthinkable, but she didn’t want to seem unsophisticated. She had to assert her position in—and above—Chance’s lifestyle no matter what it cost her.

  “Sushi?” he repeated incredulously. “You know we’re in Kansas, right? And that it’s landlocked?”

  She ignored the shame blazing in her cheeks. “I thought Meridian was supposed to be a cool town with good restaurants, because of all the army personnel from all over the country. Guess I was wrong.”

  “Meridian has six stoplights and four of them are superfluous.” He leaned farther into the fridge. “I’ve got salmon fillets, I could grill those if you want. Do you like pesto?”

  She probably would—if she knew what the hell it was. “I guess.”

  “Then I’ll get started. Can you set the table? Plates and stuff are in the right-hand cabinet above the sink.”

  Tara exhaled her irritation at being put to work, then started to lay out the napkins and cutlery, trying to remember what she’d been taught in her brief tenure as a server at Denny’s. Her dad’s version of setting the table was shoving a grease-stained fast-food bag in her direction, so utensil placement was not exactly her forte.

  Chance used paper towels to spread cooking oil over the grill rack in the oven, then placed the salmon inside and shut the door. Unsure what to do with herself now the table was set, she backed up against the counter. He straightened and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking as uncomfortable as she felt.

  After an awkward beat she offered, “Can’t remember having salmon before. I’m more of the fried catfish type.”

  “I’m trying to get into shape for deploying. No unhealthy food.”

  She stiffened. “Are you saying I don’t eat healthy?”

  “I’m saying fried catfish isn’t healthy.”

  “Didn’t realize you were such a food snob.”

  “Five minutes ago you wanted sushi, now I’m a snob for pointing out nutritional value?”

  He had a point, which yanked her defenses even higher. She crossed her arms. “Craving one thing doesn’t mean I like your attitude about another.”

  “But you—” He stopped, closed his eyes, reopened them. “The fish will take a few minutes to grill. Why don’t we put your stuff in the bedroom and I’ll show you the rest of the house?”

  She lifted one shoulder, secretly grateful for the route out of her hostility.

  Tara studied Chance’s heels as she followed him through the living room to the staircase, longing to steal a glance at his tight, denim-wrapped butt but convinced she hadn’t earned it. She was doing it again, using belligerence as armor, wrapping herself in anger until she was so tangled up she could barely breathe.

  Her dad said she was born bad-tempered, and a lifetime of report cards full of behavioral missteps seemed to agree with him. Then there were all the doors slammed behind departing lovers, usually punctuated by words like bitch and psycho. Just four days ago her boss slipped up and called her crazy, then hastily backpedaled and chose aggressive and unprofessional instead. She wasn’t offended—she understood he had to be careful about his terminology, considering he was in the middle of firing her.

  And he was right. She knew she was a crazy bitch. She just didn’t know how to be anything else.

  The wooden beams protested as they climbed the stairs to the small, slope-roofed second story. Even the house was moaning at her to leave. Maybe she should. Maybe this was the wrong decision after all, made in the heat of the argument with her father, fueled by forty-eight hours under his roof and the prospect of thousands more while she looked for a new job. Maybe it was unfair to inflict herself on Chance after all this time. He obviously hadn’t missed her—how much clearer could his signal be?

  He stepped back and gestured for her to precede him into the bedroom. With one foot over the threshold her conscience twanged its objection and she spun, the suggestion to seek an annulment already forming on her tongue.

  That was when she saw it.

  He snapped his gaze up to her face, but not quickly enough. She caught the hot shine in his eyes before they cooled, the looseness in his jaw before he tightened it, the haunted yearning sharpening his expression before he smoothed it into placidity. She knew that look. He’d worn it that night at the bar, not realizing she could see him in the mirror when she turned to pour his drink, and in the instant when she opened her eyes after their first kiss as husband and wife beside the gurgling fountain in the casino’s atrium, and in the darkened hotel room as she’d peered at him through her lashes, letting him think she was still asleep.

  She smiled. He did too.

  “Sorry about the mess.” Chance brushed past her into the bedroom, dropping her bag on the bed as he rushed to gather up various articles of camouflage clothing and dump them on an already overflowing chair in the corner.

  “There’s only one bedroom,” he explained, frowning in evaluation at a pair of army-green socks before adding them to the pile. “The room across the hall became an equipment closet and general clutter graveyard. I’ll change the sheets after dinner so you can have the bed. Couch’ll suit me just fine.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, I’ll take the couch.”

  “Now what kind of gentleman would that
make me?” He paused in shutting a drawer to shoot her a lopsided grin. Tara stabbed her thumbnail into her palm to mitigate its effect.

  “The kind who’s a foot taller than me and probably has to work in the morning.”

  “I do. Speaking of work, did you tell the bar you’d be back, or—”

  “I got fired.” She lifted her chin, daring him to judge her. Instead he nodded.

  “Was that guy with the mullet still your boss?”

  “Yep.”

  “Probably for the best, then. What happened?”

  “Customer had one too many, got lippy, tried to cop a feel when I came around to collect the empties. So I kicked the stool out from under him.”

  She waited for him to roll his eyes at her outburst or frown at her overreaction, but all he did was raise a mildly skeptical brow. “Giving a drunk-ass lecher what he deserves is a firing offense?”

  “He was an old dude, raised a stink about his bad hip, threatened to sue, blah blah blah.” She waved a dismissive hand. “I was due for a pay raise so they would’ve found a reason eventually.”

  Chance leaned against the wall behind him, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Is that why you decided to come out here and look for me? Because there was nothing holding you down in Kansas City and you didn’t want to go home to Fayetteville?”

  “Springdale,” she corrected. “And I did go home. Then I came back.”

  “Your dad hasn’t dried out, huh?”

  She managed a tight, bitter smile. “He fell off the wagon so long ago the horses could up and die and he still wouldn’t find his way back on.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  They lapsed into thoughtful silence. Tara thought back to that long conversation they’d had when her shift ended and they moved to a table at the back of the bar, hushed and hidden from the steady stream of casino patrons taking a midnight break before heading back out to the slots. That was before the alcohol really began to blur the edges, yet he was so open, explaining that he was the youngest of five kids from four fathers, he joined the army to get out of Biloxi and away from his chaotic family, but he started sending money home after Hurricane Katrina and now he couldn’t seem to stop, that even Iraq and Afghanistan hadn’t felt far enough to break the cord tethering him to his sexually voracious mother and lazy sisters and ever-expanding number of nieces and nephews.