“Definitely.” He shot her a quick, reassuring smile. “Just caught me off guard.”
“I specialize in unpredictability.”
“Tell me about it,” he grumbled, but there was humor in his tone.
They walked another few feet in silence, the light and noise of the party now so distant and the wintry blackness so complete the bonfire might as well have been in another time, on another planet. Tara liked that feeling—that they were totally alone in this field, suspended, impervious to interference.
She reached across to close her palm around Chance’s wrist, tug his hand from his pocket and lace her fingers through his. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t pull away.
She smiled into the conspiratorial nighttime. Maybe this lunatic marriage experiment was going to work out after all.
Chapter Five
Tara peered through the windshield at the low-slung stone building and the all-caps declaration COMMISSARY etched on its façade. The parking lot was busier than she would’ve expected for a Wednesday morning, but then again she supposed a lot of army personnel didn’t work nine to five so the normal rules didn’t apply.
The dashboard clock informed her she’d wasted seven whole minutes sitting in the Malibu, fretting about going inside. She huffed in self-disgust.
“It’s just a freaking grocery store. Now get out of this damn car and do this,” she coached under her breath, releasing her seat belt.
She reached for the hessian tote she’d stashed on the passenger seat, checked to see if any of the entering or exiting patrons had brought their own bags, then decided to leave hers in the car. Lord knew they’d already smell the civilian on her—she didn’t need to raise more hackles with her hippie grocery bag.
“It’s exactly like any other grocery store in America, except there’s no sales tax and it’s packed with grunts every payday. There’s a Dillons and a Walmart in Meridian if you’d rather drive into town. The prices aren’t that different.” Chance had shrugged the night before when she announced her plan to make her first solo trip on post.
But she was resolute. Although they were still sleeping separately and hadn’t kissed again, every day they were taking baby steps toward a full-fledged relationship. Chance touched her now, squeezing her knee when she joined him on the couch or leaving his hand on her back as he looked over her shoulder at her improving culinary efforts. In turn she was trying to calm her temper, to give him the benefit of the doubt, to hold open the door her self-defensive instincts longed to slam shut whenever he paid her a compliment or said something so unexpectedly tender her heart hammered in her chest.
She was going to become the supportive army wife he deserved if it killed her. And from the height of the heels on the woman preceding her into the commissary, it very well might.
Tara paused inside the door to let her eyes adjust to the fluorescent-lit interior, which was much brighter than the overcast November day outside. She took in her surroundings, noting with relief that apart from the above-average numbers of shoppers in ACUs, Chance was right. The commissary was nothing more exciting than a run-of-the-mill grocery store.
She picked up a plastic basket and unfolded her shopping list. Although Chance insisted she didn’t need to cook—and probably preferred she didn’t, to be honest—she hoped today’s trip would simultaneously relieve him of the errand and allow her to get what she needed for a recipe she knew she could handle, rather than try to mimic his ability to concoct a delicious meal out of whatever odd ingredients he had hanging around.
She started in the produce section, choosing carrots and potatoes and a bagged side salad. She moved onto meat, adding mince beef and chicken breasts to her basket, then turned into the canned goods aisle. She was constantly self-conscious, certain the women pushing carts, scolding children, smiling as they reached around her for a tin of kidney beans were judging her or at least identifying her difference. Could they tell this was her first trip to the commissary? Did they notice that her so-called wedding ring was a thirty-dollar piece of crap from a casino gift store? Would they convene at some secret army wives’ tea later that afternoon and speculate about the racially ambiguous piece of trailer trash who’d wandered onto their post? Would they whisper to their husbands that Sergeant McKinley had gone too far this time, and something had to be done?
She recalled Chance’s frown as she’d explained her theory that army wives were like a mean girls’ sorority, poised to viciously exclude anyone who didn’t measure up to their expectations.
“Don’t believe everything you see on TV,” he’d replied. “Army wives are as different from each other as soldiers. Some of them have full-time jobs, some stay home to raise their kids, hell, some are probably finishing PhDs while they PCS all over the country. And you know there are army husbands too, right? I can’t see them taking much interest in your choice of lipstick color.”
On a deep, rational level she knew he was right, but it was buried so far under layer after layer of paranoid insecurity that she struggled to see her fellow shoppers as normal people instead of members of a vast military-spouse conspiracy.
Then again, she reasoned as she selected a bag of frozen peas, she had some weird hang-ups about normal grocery stores too. For years her bartending shifts meant she tended to shop at twenty-four-hour superstores at unsociable hours, but on the rare occasions she stopped in during the day she approached the cashiers with irrational trepidation. The bleep of the scanner always brought her back to the arguments her father would have in the checkout line about what he could buy with his food stamps, usually ending in a drunken and utterly fictional claim that he was a full-blooded Native American raising a child on his own and he was going to call the American Civil Liberties Union the instant he got home to tell them about the racism and poor customer service he’d encountered.
More often than not she was left to shove their meager groceries into a bag while her father was escorted off the property by a manager. Even though the supermarket nearest her Kansas City apartment was miles away from those years-ago stores in Arkansas, she could never shake the feeling that they might know her, that news of America’s worst customer and his guilty-by-association daughter had spread through underground checkout teller channels and that when she passed over her debit card to pay for her items it would be refused and she’d be barred from the store for life.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered under her breath, squaring her shoulders and striding purposefully toward the commissary checkout. That was then and this was now. She had her groceries, she had plenty of money to pay for them, and she had Chance’s advice on tipping the baggers. She was ready. Everything would be fine.
She unloaded her basketful of items onto the conveyer belt, greeting the bored-looking cashier with a big smile.
After a moment of expectant silence and a stifled yawn the woman asked, “ID please?”
“Oh, right.” Tara slung her oversized purse on the conveyer belt, rummaging in its depths as her cheeks heated. Of course she needed her ID. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Hold on, I think it’s just—it was in this pocket. It must’ve fallen out. Sorry, give me a second.” Where had the damn thing gone? She began emptying the contents of her purse item by item, lining them up in an embarrassing potpourri of unneeded crap. Hair ties, mostly empty tubes of lip gloss, gas receipts from three years ago, but no ID card.
She froze, the humiliation becoming too much to bear. She’d had her ID to get through the post gate—was it in the car? On the ground in the parking lot? Had she lost it? What the hell was she supposed to do now?
“I’m so sorry, I think I must’ve left in the car. Do you mind if I run out real quick and check?”
By this point a middle-aged man carrying most of his weight in his belly had taken an interest. His cheap tie suggested he was a manager, and his narrowed eyes broadcast how seriously he took that responsibility. Her heart s
tarted to pound in earnest.
“Who’s your sponsor, ma’am?”
“My husband. Sergeant Chance McKinley.”
“Which unit?”
Her mind drew a panicked blank. C’mon, Tara, you know this. Wait, is a company the same as a unit?
“Alpha.”
The cashier crossed her arms as the manager raised a disapproving brow. “Alpha Company’s deployed to Afghanistan, ma’am.”
“Right, I knew that, I mean he was in Echo, but he just moved to Alpha, so I wasn’t sure what you—”
“Will you step aside, please?”
Tara realized with abject horror that a line of shoppers had formed behind her, all wearing keen gazes underlined by a hint of annoyance. She scooped everything back into her purse, and the implausibly loud sound of her hairbrush missing its target and hitting the linoleum floor was only slightly less mortifying than her fumbling attempt to kneel down and retrieve it, her hand unsteady, her knees shaking.
She joined the manager at the front of the store, forcing herself to look away from the depressing sight of the cashier ruthlessly sweeping her unclaimed groceries back into a basket and shoving it onto the floor.
“You know the commissary is only open to military members and dependents,” he scolded. “The tax breaks offered here are—”
“I swear, my husband is a soldier here. I probably dropped the ID in the parking lot, can I please—”
“No need,” he said imperiously, his voice full of the kind of threat she’d heard parents use on children telling improbable lies. “I’ll call up his unit to check. Alpha Company, you said?”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, if you’d just—”
“Who’s his commanding officer?”
“I don’t know, he’s a medic, he’s supposed to replace—”
“Great, I’ll call the clinic. Wait there.”
He disappeared into what looked like an administration office. She plopped down on the plastic chair beside the plywood door, fourteen years old again and waiting while the principal called her house to report on her poor behavior. Back then she could usually count on her dad forgetting the conversation by the time she got home. She had a feeling Chance’s memory was a lot longer.
She dropped her face into her hands. She should’ve known she couldn’t handle any kind of normal existence, especially one entwined in the intricacies of military custom. She should’ve stayed in Kansas City, tending bar and shopping at midnight and leaving poor Chance McKinley well enough alone.
“Look, can you just give me a referral slip? It’s a medical thing that needs to be seen by a doctor, I promise.”
Chance leaned back in his chair, trying to keep a straight face as he regarded the nervous private across the table. “And what reason should I put on the slip?”
“Personal problem.”
“I need more detail than that, Greene. How do I know whether to send you to a shrink or a proctologist?”
The young man shifted in his chair. “I need a doctor. This can’t be handled by the unit.”
“As much as I admire your confidence in your self-diagnosis, I think you should probably tell me exactly what medical issue we’re dealing with.”
Private Greene looked down at the floor, up at the fluorescent lamp, and finally at a point halfway across the table. “It’s my dick, sir. It burns when I piss, and there’s this discharge—”
“Okay, you don’t need a doctor.” Chance swiveled to retrieve a sterile cup from the cabinet at his back, removed the plastic packaging and handed it over. “It’s probably an STD, but I’ll need a urine sample to be sure.”
The private stared at the proffered cup like it was alien technology. Chance rolled his eyes.
“Pee in this and bring it back. Bathroom’s down the hall.”
Wordlessly the private accepted the cup and scurried out of the room, not bothering to shut the door behind him. Chance sighed heavily as he started filling out the notes on the visit, then glanced at the clock. Fifteen more minutes and his shift was over. Thank God. He hated working sick call.
“Hey, Sergeant?” The E-4 on duty with him leaned into the room. “There’s a weird call from the commissary for you. Something about your wife?”
“My wife?”
“Apparently they need you to head on over there. I told ’em I didn’t think you were married, but the guy said you need to come over in person to verify—”
“Can you do me a favor and finish up with Private Greene? He’s got the clap. I’ll relieve you fifteen minutes early when we serve range duty tomorrow.”
“Don’t even worry about that, just let me know you’ve got everything sorted out. Are you really married?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a recent thing.”
The younger man’s brow creased. “Does this mean we can’t play pool at Rock’s on ladies’ night anymore?”
“I’ll call you later.” He patted his distraught colleague on the back, edged past a bewildered Private Greene toting a full cup and jogged down the corridor to the parking lot.
It was only a five-minute drive from the clinic to the commissary, but that gave him plenty of time for worst-case speculation about what might have happened.
Tara must’ve lost her temper and made a scene—what else could it be? Someone cut ahead of her in line, or took the last loaf of bread while she was reaching for it and she went berserk. He exhaled ruefully. She’d been so much calmer since Saturday, he thought she was settling in and allowing herself to relax. Like an abandoned kitten that has to be coaxed and convinced and hand-fed until it finally relents and keeps its claws retracted while you scratch its ears.
They were still a long way from purring, but he thought Tara was slowly lowering her mile-high defenses.
Apparently not.
He spotted her Malibu in the lot and parked next to it, grateful that she hadn’t furiously rammed it into the back of someone she thought was stealing her space.
The image of short-statured Tara gunning that rust box into some oblivious soccer mom’s high-end SUV made him smile more than it should, and a chunk of his irritation dissolved as he entered the store. She was so desperate to act the good little domestic goddess, and he shouldn’t encourage her hellcat tendencies, but damn if they didn’t light his fire every time.
He saw her as soon as he stepped through the door, perched on a plastic chair way down past the last checkout lane. Whatever het-up scenario he’d imagined himself walking into vanished along with the last shreds of his exasperation the instant he saw Tara’s face. Stiff-shouldered, lower lip caught between her teeth, dinner-plate eyes shining with unshed tears—she looked terrified.
Suddenly Chance didn’t care what she’d done, who or what she’d done it to, or whether she deserved the conversation that’d cowed her so severely. He’d promised to keep her safe, and he meant it. No one had the right to put that much fear in her, and like hell would he stand by while they did.
Tara leapt up from the chair, wringing her hands, but before she could speak a man whose paunch tested the capacity of his shirt buttons swept in front of her and extended his hand.
“Thanks so much for coming—”
“What in the fiery flames of fuck is going on here?” Chance demanded, channeling the drill sergeant who’d spent ten weeks verbally abusing every last ounce of weakness out of his eighteen-year-old self.
Every head in earshot turned. He couldn’t care less.
The man—Wade, according to his nametag—visibly wavered. “We have ourselves a little situation, is all. This lady here is claiming to be your wife.”
“She is my wife.”
“Well, that solves it then.” He smiled weakly.
“It solves nothing, Wade. Now explain why you’ve called me away from my critical medical duties as a sixty-eight goddamn whiskey to
haul ass down to this store and personally verify that my wife is my wife.”
“She didn’t have ID, sir.”
“I think I left it in the car,” Tara offered, then added with growing courage, “He wouldn’t let me go look for it.”
Chance didn’t even try to fight the white-hot rage that poured through his veins. He made none of his usual temper-mitigating efforts to remind himself to look at things from all angles, to be rational, to keep his cool. He didn’t care if every customer went away whispering about psycho Sergeant McKinley flipping out in the commissary, and he didn’t care if after this he couldn’t find the moral high ground with a map and a state-of-the-art GPS.
This asshole had upset his wife. That carried a high price.
He sucked in a deep breath. He was going to enjoy this.
“Let me get this straight. My wife told you she left her ID in the car, and rather than let her leave the store to look for it, you dragged me halfway across post to confirm that I’m her sponsor?”
Wade cleared his throat. “We’ve been having some issues recently with women…people…trying to shop with their kids’ dependent IDs after they’ve split up from their military spouse. I was concerned she would vacate the post and not be caught if I let her leave.”
“Do you see any kids accompanying my wife, Wade?”
“No sir, but—”
“How about her shopping basket? You see any hot dogs in there? Chicken nuggets? Baby formula?”
“I didn’t inspect her groceries.”
“You didn’t inspect her groceries?” He moved up to the man in several quick strides, deliberately looming over him and raising his voice to the accusatory shout he used with disobedient privates. “You were so concerned that she’d breached gate security and trespassed on federal property that you prohibited her from exiting the store and summoned me away from duty and you didn’t even take a look at her motherfucking groceries? She could’ve hid a weapon in there, son!”
Wade began to stammer something unintelligible but Chance didn’t let him finish. “Now you listen up good, boy. If you ever disrespect my wife again I will ram my left boot so far up your ass that your mother will cry when she sees what I’ve done to you. I’m a very violent man, Wade. I’m paid to be that way. You copy?”
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