Returning to Eden (Acts of Valor, Book 1): Christian Military Romantic Suspense

by Rebecca Hartt

  “I can’t believe my parents made you watch that.”

  Jonah smiled ruefully. “It’s okay. Your father is a history fanatic. I get that.”

  She searched his expression for his true feelings. “Still, it had to have struck a little close to home.”

  His smile faded. “Are you worried I’m going to have bad dreams?”

  She kicked herself for misleading him into thinking that. “No, not at all—”

  “I can slip downstairs after everyone’s gone to bed,” he offered, coming up on one elbow as if ready to leave right then. “I can sleep just fine on the couch,” he added earnestly.

  His selflessness made her want him even more. “I’m not scared to share a room with you, Jonah.”

  His chest rose and fell as he held her earnest gaze.

  “You know my scent,” she added on a softer, more intimate note that brought heat into his eyes. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

  They regarded each other in silence for a long moment. The air seemed to thicken as they realized nothing stopped them from coming together as husband and wife. Eden queried her decision one last time.

  “Jonah?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you should sleep up here, with me.”

  She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he visibly swallowed. “You may not get much sleep if I’m up there with you,” he warned, his tone gruff.

  Her face heated, but she answered with a careless shrug, “Sleep is overrated, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” he said, but he stayed put.

  As Eden waited, anticipation turned into self-doubt. Didn’t he want to share a bed with her?

  “You’re so beautiful, Eden.” His murmured words, so full of conviction, banished her worries. “I love simply looking at you, talking to you. I want us to get to know each other better.”

  Returning his intense regard, Eden marveled at how such a familiar face could look so different—and not only because of the scars he’d sustained, nor the missing tooth.

  Over the lump growing in her throat, she admitted, “It’s so strange to me that you don’t remember me.” She relived her hurt feelings of how he remembered her father, yet didn’t remember her.

  Jonah frowned. “But I do,” he insisted, soothing her concerns. “I have no specific memories of us, that’s true. But I know the way you move, and the way you tilt your head.”

  She realized she was tilting her head even then and promptly straightened it.

  “I know when you’re happy and when you’re tense. And I know you want me to make love to you tonight.” His smile widened to a cocky grin.

  She gasped in protest. “Oh, you arrogant SEAL!” She snatched up the spare pillow and launched it at him.

  He caught it easily and tossed it back to her. “See, I haven’t changed that much.”

  His words sobered her, reminding her of her greatest fear—Jonah reverting to the man he was before and causing her and Miriam to relive their disillusionment.

  “You’ve changed completely,” she stated, causing his smile to disappear.

  “I hope that’s a good thing,” he said very sincerely.

  She nodded as a lump in her throat formed. “I’ve been afraid,” she admitted on a whisper.

  He regarded her intently. “Of me?”

  She licked her lips, betraying her nervousness. “That things would go back to what they were like before.”

  He grimaced. “That’s not going to happen. I’m not the same man.”

  “I know that now,” she admitted. “I’m not afraid anymore.” The old Jonah wouldn’t have stayed on the floor after being invited to join her in bed. He’d have thought of himself first, not her, not their relationship.

  “I can never be the same man,” he continued. “How’s the verse go?” His gaze rose to the ceiling as he searched his mind. “In Ephesians, I think, the Bible talks about putting off your old self, being renewed in the Spirit and putting on the new self, which is created after the likeness of God.” He looked back at her and smiled. “Not that I’ll be perfect. But I’ll try.”

  “I believe you,” she replied. The fact that he could quote scripture proved he was a new man. Now, all she had to worry about was his PTSD.

  He smiled at her with so much warmth in his eyes, she marveled at his restraint in staying on the floor.

  “Did you love me when you married me?” he asked, shortening her breath.

  She wasn’t going to lie to him. “Very much.”

  “I made you fall out of love with me, didn’t I?”

  The lump in her throat swelled, preventing her from answering. She confirmed his words by virtue of her silence.

  He nodded and, with a bittersweet smile, traced the hem of the sheet covering him, then looked up again. “I think you could love me again.”

  The words were uttered with just enough hopefulness to keep them from sounding arrogant.

  Tears pricked Eden’s eyes unexpectedly. Her heart swelled with affection to the point of bursting.

  “I think so, too,” she whispered.

  “Cool.” They grinned at each other for what might have been a minute or five. Eden had lost all sense of time. Their talk hadn’t exactly been the kind of intimacy she’d expected that night, but she wouldn’t have exchanged it for anything.

  “Guess we should get some sleep,” Jonah suggested on a regretful note.

  Watching him recline on his bedroll, Eden agreed. “We’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  Her father had insisted Jonah come to one of his lectures, then tour the Academy with him in the morning. Her mother was dying to take Eden and Miriam shopping.

  Eden reached for the light by the bed and turned it off.

  “’Night, Jonah,” she said into the darkness.

  “Goodnight, beautiful,” he replied.

  The endearment brought tears to her eyes. He had called her that before his disappearance, but only when they’d made love. Surely, he couldn’t remember that. Yet the words assured her they would be husband and wife, in every sense of the word, soon enough. Jonah, she realized, was merely waiting for her to say she loved him still.

  Do I? she queried her heart. If not for Jonah’s diagnosis and the uncertainties it presented, she might have told him that very night she still loved him. After all, God seemed to be giving her the thumbs up regarding her commitment to her marriage. On the other hand, she wasn’t as trusting as she’d been two years before. Jonah wouldn’t intentionally hurt her anymore—she was certain. But the trauma he’d sustained at the hands of his captors, paired with his memory loss, might prove too challenging for their tentative bond to withstand.

  Still, she fell asleep with optimism for the days—and years—to come.

  Sleep eluded Jonah, what with Eden sleeping so tantalizingly near to him. Listening to her steady breathing filled him with a sense of reverence and joy.

  He was plumbing the dark corners of his mind, trying to remember his short marriage, when he slipped seamlessly into unconsciousness, where he dreamed he was attending Blake LeMere’s funeral with the rest of his troop. I remember, now! he thought, nearly waking up in his excitement. He forced himself to remain in the dream.

  The Navy chaplin stood at the head of the casket, speaking words of comfort and eternity. Then it was time for Jonah and his fellow SEALs to approach LeMere’s coffin. Each and every one of them pounded a personal trident pin atop the lustrous mahogany lid. With his palm, Jonah hammered his pin alongside the others.

  Touching the coffin jolted Jonah into remembering his suspicions. The only way for LeMere to have been unconscious after leaving the plane was for Lowery to have done something to him. He raked the sea of faces around him for any sign of Lowery’s lean frame. It seemed like every man in Blue Squadron was there. Lowery, however, was conspicuously absent.

  Disappointed, Jonah got in line to offer LeMere’s widow his condolences.

  Rachel LeMere, a delicate-looking woman wit
h gray-green eyes and sandy hair, looked lost, overwrought. Recognition flickered in her bloodshot eyes as she looked up at him.

  “Jonah,” she whispered.

  “Rachel, I’m so sorry,” he said, embracing her in lieu of a handshake. LeMere’s eight-year-old son stood next to her. Jonah hugged him, too, even as he tried remembering the kid’s name. Crap, what was it? LeMere used to talk about him all the time.

  As dreams do, Jonah’s jumped to a time several months later. He was married to Eden, sitting on one of the stools at the island in his kitchen, opening mail. He’d gotten a thick padded envelope from none other than Blake’s widow, Rachel. It had been mailed nearly ten months after Blake’s death. Inside was a composition notebook and a handwritten message in lovely cursive:

  Jonah, I came across this journal of Blake’s in one of his boxes and I read it. I’d always suspected Blake’s death was not an accident. Now I am sure it wasn’t. I thought about sending this to Blake’s best friend, Saul, but you were his troop leader, and Blake spoke highly of you. Please read his last entry and tell me if you agree with me. –Sincerely, Rachel.

  Jonah opened what was clearly his teammate’s personal journal and, following Rachel’s instructions, read the final entry.

  About a week ago, Lowery sent out a group email to the squadron. I had a question I thought others might also be able to answer, so I hit Reply All. Our old version of Outlook exposes blind copied recipients that way, so when a name popped up that I didn’t recognize, I figured Lowery must have blind-copied that person in the original. The next day I asked Lowery, “Who’s Eddie Holms?” “Who?” He looked at me all nervous-like. “Eddie Holms. You blind-copied him in a group email yesterday.”

  Lowery told me Holms was a new first class about to join Alpha Troop. I was curious, so I looked the guy up, and I came across his obituary. What the heck? The man had been dead for six months. So, I went back and looked at other emails Lowery had sent out. I hit Reply All on those, too, and—guess what? He’d blind-copied a bunch of other guys I never heard of. This past week, I looked up all seven of them, and they’re all deceased SEALs. How weird is that? Tomorrow, I’m going straight to the CO to report Lowery. I have no idea why he’d be sending logistical information to SEALs who used to be in various squadrons but are dead now. Makes no sense, but then Lowery has always been a strange one.

  Shock spurred Jonah’s heartbeat. In his dream, he leapt to his feet, pacing the length of the living room and wondering what to do.

  “I knew it!” He clutched the journal, imagining what had happened. Lowery, who’d lived in terror that LeMere would report him, had figured out a way to murder LeMere while making it look like an accident. Why Lowery had been sending emails to deceased SEALs in the first place made no sense. Their email accounts had to have been disabled, which meant no one would have received those emails—or had they? What if the accounts had remained active and someone outside of Spec Ops was receiving confidential information?

  That had to be it. That was how Lowery was leaking information! Jonah pressed the journal to his pounding heart. My God! He’d found the traitor, and now he had proof!

  “Jonah!”

  Eden’s voice seemed to come from a distance. “Wake up, honey, it’s just a dream.” A tentative hand jostled his shoulder.

  The word honey brought Jonah abruptly back into the present, though the jarring time travel left him momentarily disoriented. Opening his eyes, he flinched at what seemed like a bright light but was only the single lamp by the guest bed in Eden’s parents’ house. Eden herself kneeled on the floor next to him, the very picture of concern. Her long, golden hair fell over her shoulder onto his chest.

  “Are you okay?” Her amber gaze was shadowed with concern—and not a small amount of wariness.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his gravelly voice and tried again. “I’m fine. It’s okay.”

  “Were you having a nightmare? You were breathing so hard.”

  “It wasn’t a nightmare.” His thoughts went back to the revelation in his dream. “It was a memory.”

  “Really?” Her enthusiasm was tempered with worry.

  “First a memory of Blake LeMere’s funeral. Then later after I was married to you.”

  Her eyes widened. “You remember our marriage?”

  He had to disappoint her. “Well, just one day. It had to have been a couple months after the funeral. I got something important in the mail.” He caught himself from spilling out the details. Eden didn’t believe Jimmy Lowery had it in him to betray his fellow SEALs. Jonah wasn’t going to try to convince her until he had the proof to back it up. “Something LeMere’s widow sent me—a journal.”

  Excitement had Jonah sitting up. He reached for Eden’s hands and found them cold, a little clammy. She’d clearly been afraid to waken him.

  “This is important,” he told her. “Please tell me that somewhere in the house there’s a composition notebook with a marbled blue cover. It’s only half-used.” LeMere’s death had kept him from filling out the rest. “Please tell me you didn’t throw it away.”

  Eden’s gaze darted toward their joined hands, making him realize he was gripping her too hard.

  “I don’t think I did,” she answered with obvious uncertainty.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured her—even though it wasn’t. “It’s okay if you threw it away. You couldn’t have known.”

  “Have known what?” she asked.

  He debated whether to tell her what he’d remembered, or whether he should keep it to himself. “There’s proof in that notebook that Jimmy Lowery betrayed the squadron. He may have even killed Blake LeMere.”

  The angle of Eden’s eyebrows betrayed her skepticism.

  “Never mind,” he added. “We need to go home as soon as the sun comes up. I need to find that notebook.”

  Her protest was immediate. “Jonah, we can’t go home. My parents have big plans for us.”

  “Your dad will understand,” he assured her. “He and I were talking about this very thing earlier today. That’s got to be why I dreamed about it.”

  Eden kept quiet, her disappointment palpable.

  “I’m sorry, beautiful. I really am. We’ll come back soon. Thanksgiving is just a few months away. This is important, Eden. This journal explains what might have happened to me the night of the op. I have to get home to look for it.”

  A lengthy silence followed Jonah’s declaration. Eden’s expression was distinctly torn. Desperate to retain the affection she’d shown him earlier in the evening, Jonah pressed an impulsive kiss on her unsuspecting lips.

  She blinked and gasped.

  “Trust me, honey,” he pleaded, using the same endearment she had used for him. “You have to trust me. I’m not suffering an episode. I’m not crazy. I don’t have a screw loose. There’s a reason why I went missing for a year, why the Navy thought me dead. And there’s a reason God brought me home again. I have to make this right. But to do that, I need the notebook, and I need to get to it before someone else does.”

  He listened to her draw a shaky breath and let it out again. “Okay,” she agreed with mediocre enthusiasm.

  “Thank you.” He went to kiss her again, but she averted her lips so his kiss landed on her cheek.

  “Are you okay to sleep?” she asked, even as she withdrew and rose to her feet.

  “I’m fine,” he assured her.

  She looked down at him with a doubtful expression. “I guess I’ll use the bathroom while I’m up,” she said, picking her way to the door.

  Watching her slip from the room, Jonah suffered remorse for having to cut their visit short, for making Eden suspect his anxiety was out of control. But there was no way around it. Once he found the journal—Please, Lord, don’t let Eden have thrown it away—he would prove to her his suspicions were founded. He would take the journal straight to Special Agent Elwood, who would know exactly what to do with it. Eventually, Lowery would be arrested and prosecuted, and Jonah would be utterly vindic
ated for his suspicions.

  Then Eden would have no more reason to withhold her love from him. Then she and Jonah and Miriam would finally become the family God meant for them to be.

  Chapter 16

  Leaving Annapolis at ten thirty the following morning, they drove straight into a rainstorm. Eden gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles ached.

  It felt wrong to depart her parents’ place so abruptly, especially when they’d planned so many activities. At least Jonah had kept his word in offering up their apologies. She’d overheard him say to her father with convincing urgency, “I remembered something important last night, something along the lines of what we were discussing yesterday. It was written in a friend’s journal. I need to go home today and look for it.”

  To Eden’s surprise, her father had agreed with Jonah’s need for haste and then convinced her mother they should leave right away. She, Jonah, and Miriam had piled into the car shortly after breakfast, and now they were moving with the thick traffic, passing Fredericksburg.

  Jonah, who’d seemed alert when they got up, sat with his head lolling on the headrest, eyes half closed.

  “Tired?” she asked when their eyes connected.

  He drew a sharp breath and scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “It’s my medication.” His speech was slightly slurred. “I hate the stuff.”

  “So stop taking it,” Miriam piped up from the back seat, where she was finishing To Kill a Mockingbird.

  “That’s not the answer,” Eden countered.

  “I think I should stop,” Jonah agreed with Miriam.

  Pivoting in his seat, he sent her an approving look. “You’re almost at the end.”

  “Yep.” It was apparently too gripping for Miriam to say any more.

  Glancing over at Jonah, Eden saw his gaze go out the back window and narrow. “How long has that Charger been following us?”

  She cut her attention to the mirror, considering the black sedan behind them. “I don’t know. Half an hour, maybe.”

  Looking much more awake, Jonah faced front again. Out of the corner of her eye, Eden watched him reach up under his T-shirt and pull out the pistol he’d started carrying with him. Her pulse doubled at the sight of it, and her grip on the steering wheel wobbled.