The Marine's Family Mission

by Victoria Pade

  When she’d come to—before she had any conception of what had happened or where she was—all she’d known was that both of her feet were trapped under a lot of weight. She’d worked to get them out, and when she had, bricks and mortar had crumbled with the movement, enclosing her even more.

  She’d been left with her knees to her chest, in a space about the size of a barrel. There was no room to move—when she tried, more debris fell on her.

  It had been pitch-black except for a speck of light that she’d been able to see above her, and that had given her hope that she’d somehow ended up near to the outside.

  She’d shouted for help, not knowing if there was aid available or if she’d be rescued by friend or foe.

  For four hours she’d been entombed, and all she’d known was that periodically her surroundings would shift, crumble and fall in, closing the space around her even more. She’d been terrified that at any moment the whole thing would collapse on top of her.

  Then her shouts brought a voice from outside and the sounds of digging in to reach her.

  When that dot of light had finally grown bigger, the first thing she’d seen had been Declan Madison’s face.

  Relief had flooded her, followed by more stress as he tried not to cause a cave-in while working at opening a space to pull her through.

  He’d been diligent, assuring her that everything was going to be okay, that he’d get her out.

  He’d barely made a two-foot gap in the wreckage when something overhead shifted more drastically. Acting quickly, he’d shoved his upper half in to grab her under the arms and had yanked her free just as a collapse did occur, dragging her out of harm’s way a split second before she would have been crushed.

  As he’d helped load her onto a gurney, then into an ambulance, she remembered thanking him—again and again and again—before she was rushed to a hospital. It was only later, after she’d been treated, after she’d been diagnosed with a concussion and had been given a bed so she could be watched overnight, that her appreciation had been eclipsed by something new and terrifying.

  Declan had shown up at the hospital, and at first she’d only heard his voice asking where she was. That alone had caused uneasiness in her, but when she’d glanced in his direction and had actually seen him, the simple sight of that face had mentally thrown her back into the dark, dusty cranny amid the crumbling rubble.

  And rather than associating Declan Madison with the relief of being freed, instead, in her mind, he instantly became a fast ride right back into the heart of her terror.

  Mandy—who had been outside the school with Topher and Declan and hadn’t been hurt—had been with her in the hospital, at her bedside. Emmy hadn’t wanted her sister to know what she was feeling. In fact, she’d been ashamed of it—children and teachers had died in the attack, others had been scarred or maimed for life, there were little kids in beds around her stoically accepting their irreversibly changed lives, while she’d suffered nothing but a headache and a few cuts and bruises. Yet she was ready to crawl out of her skin with one look at the very person who had saved her. Thankfulness should have been the only thing she’d felt, and instead she was fighting terror.

  Hiding it, she’d told her sister that she was tired and needed to rest. She’d asked Mandy to leave and take Declan with her.

  So Mandy had left without knowing about that first distress, and Emmy had kept every other incident of it to herself ever since—except for telling Carla.

  “So that’s stuck—no panic attacks when you saw him at the wedding and none yesterday either,” her friend said.

  The wedding had been six months after the bombing. By then Emmy had reset her career. She’d talked poor Carla’s ear off about her nightmares, her problem with small spaces, the flashbacks and anxiety, and she’d been doing much better. But she hadn’t been sure what would happen if she had to see Declan Madison’s face again.

  Then she had. And while it had raised some memories, it hadn’t made her hyperventilate, it hadn’t caused all-out panic. In fact, worrying about it had been worse than anything that had happened when she had actually seen him.

  Partly in order to celebrate that, and partly to control the worry that the panic still might hit, she’d had a whole lot to drink—beginning with champagne while the wedding party dressed and continuing at the reception. The more she’d had to drink, the calmer she’d felt, until she’d found the courage to approach Declan, to thank him again the way she knew she should have before leaving Afghanistan.

  “No, no panic attacks yesterday either,” Emmy confirmed.

  “No symptoms of the PTSD at all?”

  “I hate when you call it that. That isn’t what it is. I’ve taken pictures of the kinds of things that cause PTSD—they’re big and devastating and life changing, they aren’t just a few hours being scared until somebody finds them and everything is okay again.”

  “I know that’s how you see it, but—”

  “That’s how it is,” she insisted, refusing to accept her friend’s opinion. “What I have is just fallout from a bad experience, and it hardly ever even happens anymore.”

  “Okay—it hardly ever happens anymore, you’re over the Afghanistan thing and seeing Declan Madison at the wedding and again yesterday didn’t cause anything bad,” Carla repeated as if she was temporarily conceding to Emmy’s arguments. “But what about what did happen at the wedding? Do you want to be under the same roof with a guy who seemed interested in you and then spent the night with somebody else right next door to you?”

  “That’s definitely the other half of why I was hoping I might not ever have to see him again. But I guess going into this knowing I’m not his type is something,” she said facetiously.

  “So spending time with him now won’t send you out into the arms of another Bryce?” Carla pressed.

  Emmy laughed humorlessly. “There definitely won’t be another Bryce. Ever. And as for this guy? I’m a whole lot tougher and smarter than I was four years ago at the wedding. He will not get to me.”

  Not even with those incredibly blue eyes or that face that could have been carved by the gods or that hella-hot body.

  Besides, this wasn’t a Las Vegas wedding, with wine flowing and inhibitions discarded. Now there was Topher’s death. Mandy’s death. Now there was the farm and hail damage. Now there were two kids she was suddenly a single parent to, and she had so much to wade through, to get used to. She was in no mood for anything but getting some control and order back into her life.

  And unless she was mistaken, the changes she’d seen in Declan Madison made her think that he wasn’t in any mood for anything either.

  They’d just do what needed to be done and then move on in separate directions.

  “I know we have some weird history—” she said then.

  “I’d say,” Carla agreed. “All good and cheery in Afghanistan at first, then really, really not good. Then sort of good again for a while at the wedding, until you were thinking one thing was going on between the two of you and—”

  “It wasn’t. Like with Bryce...” she added derisively. “But it’s all in the past and this is now,” Emmy concluded.

  “And you think you can just do the now without any of the past poking in?”

  Emmy sighed and wished she was in any other position. But she wasn’t. “I hope so,” she answered her friend honestly. “I know I can’t do everything here on my own.”

  “Then I guess you kind of have to take him up on his offer of help,” Carla said. “At least the faster you can get the hail damage cleaned up, the faster I can hopefully find you a new leaser and the faster you can come home.”

  “Oh, that would be good...” Emmy said earnestly.

  “So that settles it.”

  “Yeah,” Emmy agreed.

  But for some reason she still didn’t feel at all settled when she thought about
letting Declan Madison anywhere near her.

  And not only because there was a bit of nervousness that being anywhere near him might bring to the surface more of that bombing backlash.

  There was also no denying that his looks were potent.

  Or that, when he tried, he could disarm her with his heady charm.

  Or that, at the wedding, he’d somehow managed to get her to let down her defenses when she shouldn’t have.

  Only for her to end up feeling like a fool...

  * * *

  “Tell Declan good-night,” Emmy encouraged her niece as she tucked the three-year-old into bed.

  Emmy had suggested that Trinity let Declan read the bedtime books she’d chosen. But Trinity had denied him that privilege. She’d granted him only permission to listen to Emmy read them.

  Dressed in combat boots, a camouflage-print shirt and pants today, he’d stood in the doorway of Trinity’s room to do that and was still leaning against the jamb.

  “Night, Decan,” the little girl said in answer to her aunt’s prompting.

  “Night, Trinity. Sleep tight. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he responded.

  “Decan’ll be here too-morrow?” Trinity asked Emmy.

  “He will. He’s staying with us. In the basement,” she explained, trying not to sound negative despite her own lack of enthusiasm for it.

  “Okay,” Trinity said, accepting it far more easily than her aunt.

  Trinity’s honey-colored hair was cut into an easy-to-care-for bob just long enough to cover her ears, with bangs that came to her eyebrows. Emmy smoothed them away from the child’s forehead so she could kiss it.

  “Goodnight, my sweet-thing,” she whispered.

  “Night, my Em,” Trinity said in a sleepy voice before tugging her stuffed monkey to her side and closing her big brown eyes.

  Emmy gave her a second kiss, then turned off the bedside lamp and headed for the doorway.

  Since Declan had arrived just after dinner tonight, they’d had the kids as a buffer between them. Trinity had been standoffish toward him the day before—she hadn’t seen him for over a year and didn’t remember him despite her grandmother pointing him out in the photograph.

  It had taken some time for the little girl to warm up to him tonight, but eventually she’d stopped hugging Emmy’s leg and glaring at him, tentatively letting him in.

  When that had happened, Emmy had had the chance to teach him how to hold Kit, heat a bottle, change a diaper and burp the baby. She’d taught the jiggle-and-walk to use when Kit was unhappy, and she’d even tutored Declan through Kit’s bath in the kitchen sink.

  Because Trinity fancied herself an expert on her brother she’d added her instructions wherever she’d thought Emmy had overlooked anything. And when it came to Emmy teaching him Trinity’s routine, the three-year-old had insisted that she could do everything herself.

  “At least she tries to,” Emmy had told Declan, humoring the little girl. “But sometimes she needs a little help,” Emmy had stated, demonstrating when it came to taking clothes off and putting on pajamas, reminding to go potty and brushing teeth.

  But now Kit was asleep and Trinity was in bed, and it was just Emmy alone with Declan Madison.

  And while no, she hadn’t had any flashbacks or anxiety, she also wasn’t comfortable being with him. Her stomach was tied in knots. Between that and their history, she knew she was not being very welcoming. But it was the best she could manage. And honestly, she didn’t think he had any right expecting anything more from her.

  And his solemn and withdrawn attitude wasn’t making things any easier.

  Not that any of it mattered. One way or another she just had to get through this. They both did.

  “Now I can finally show you the basement,” she said as she joined him in the hallway, closing Trinity’s door all but a crack, hoping he would go down there and not come up again until tomorrow.

  “I nearly grew up here. I know how to get to the basement and what’s down there—unless Mandy changed things up.”

  “Oh sure...” Emmy said, feeling stupid for having spent the evening being a bit of a tour guide throughout the house. So why hadn’t he pointed that out to her at the get-go? she thought, not appreciating what seemed misleading by omission.

  But all she said was “I wasn’t thinking about you knowing the place probably better than I do.”

  Declan didn’t say anything as he waited for her to lead the way downstairs to the main level.

  As she did, she wondered if being here was actually the reason for his somber attitude.

  “It’s gotten better, but when I first moved in after Mandy died, it was hard—to me, this was her house, her furniture, where I’ve seen her most for the last four years... But for you... I guess I wasn’t thinking about all the memories you must have of this place...of being here with Topher.”

  “Mandy redecorated. It doesn’t look anything like it did when we were kids,” he answered without any inflection.

  “Still, it’s where you grew up with Topher, and now...it can’t be easy.”

  Declan didn’t respond at all to that. It left Emmy wondering if she was right. Or not. At any rate it didn’t seem as if she’d hit on the root of whatever was going on with him.

  The silence felt awkward, though, so as they reached the entryway she felt the need to fill the gap.

  “Since they built the new garage, Mandy was turning the old one into a guesthouse. She wanted a place for me or for Mom and Dad to stay when we came. It isn’t quite finished yet and there isn’t any furniture, but you could stay out there if you wanted...”

  They were passing in front of the sofa where she’d slept for two weeks. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to sleep in Mandy’s bed until she’d rearranged the room. Seeing the couch made her remember that.

  As much as it pained her to make the offer when she really wanted Declan to vanish into the basement as often as possible, she forced herself to say, “If it will bother you to use the basement bedroom, you could sleep on the couch...”

  “I stayed in the basement bedroom the last time I was here,” he said, again flatly.

  And again he left dead air as they passed through the living room and moved on to the kitchen.

  Emmy struggled for something more to say. “Later on I’ll have the guesthouse—that’s what Mandy called it—finished, so maybe I can bring the kids for weekends or on vacations to spend some time here. I want the farm to be familiar to them, for it to seem like home as much as it can when I’ll have them living in Denver. Maybe Mandy and Topher won’t mind so much that the kids won’t grow up here if I can at least bring them for visits...”

  Declan had been a great conversationalist when they’d initially met in Afghanistan and again at the reception. Even when he wasn’t talking, he’d seemed engaged and interested in everything she had to say. But now it was like she was talking to a brick wall. It only made being with him worse. If he doesn’t want to be here, why doesn’t he leave?

  But she didn’t say that. She reminded herself that she needed his help. Damn him anyway!

  When they reached the kitchen, Emmy opted for abandoning the small talk and simply returning to instruction—maybe he saw himself as her employee. If that was the case, fine, they’d just talk business.

  “Mom and I have been trading off nights walking Kit—I know, since he’s sleeping now, it seems like he’ll just stay that way till the morning, but he won’t. He’ll wake up for a bottle somewhere between ten and eleven and after that he’ll be fussy and he won’t go back to sleep. And he won’t even be happy just being held. He has to be walked and rocked and patted and jiggled until he’s hungry enough to take another bottle—which will be somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.—and then he’ll fall asleep again.”

  “Yeah, your mom told me that. I said I thought I could take her sh
ifts so you could sleep every other night the way you were with her here.”

  He could have said that before she went into the whole spiel.

  Again, she wondered if he liked making her feel dim.

  Emmy didn’t say anything, though. She merely finished what she’d been about to tell him. “Mom took last night and let me sleep, so I can take tonight. That’ll give you tomorrow to get more used to handling him before you have him on your own.”

  “Okay.”

  One word.

  “I have to clean the kitchen, but if you want to go down and unpack and get to bed early or something—”

  “I can help.”

  “With the dishes? But you came after we’d finished—you didn’t even eat.”

  He shrugged a broad shoulder. But said nothing.

  She just wanted him to go away despite the fact that he was eye candy. But without waiting for instruction, he merely went to the kitchen table and picked up the dishes, then took them to the sink.

  Emmy tried not to sigh and gathered the rest of the silverware and glasses.

  “I do have to get Kit’s formula ready for tomorrow—I guess you could learn how to do that,” she said resignedly. She lapsed into silence of her own as she rinsed the dishes, loaded the dishwasher and then got out what she needed to mix the infant formula and fill bottles.

  She had no idea exactly how long they went without talking, but it seemed like forever before he said, “So how are you going to follow around the Red Cross to take pictures and raise two kids?”

  “I don’t do that anymore,” she said, just about as flatly as he’d answered her questions earlier. And without offering additional explanation the same way either.

  “Really? You said you loved that job—that it was better than when you were a freelance photographer taking pictures of the destruction of war or natural disasters because you got to take pictures of people trying to do good, getting things done.”

  She had said that. And it had been true. For a day and a half more after they’d had that conversation.