Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

“If you are,” he replied.

She grabbed her purse and keys, saying, “Let’s go then.”

“You’re sure you don’t mind?”

There it was again, a niggle. A hint. She looked at him, wishing she could just come right out and ask. But that might be a mistake, because he’d probably just get angry at her prying, and rightfully so. He hadn’t poked into her life, so she should give him the same respect.

“I don’t mind at all,” she assured him, and summoned a smile. Aware now of what might lurk in his past, she felt old lessons rising up to guide her. And the thought that she might, through her training, help this man feel a bit more comfortable made her feel better than she had in a long time. She might not be able to teach anymore, but it would be so good to help.

Always assuming, of course, that she wasn’t totally wrong about him.

The drive to the store was silent, but she was getting used to that with him, and didn’t feel as uncomfortable as she had just yesterday.

When she pulled into a parking slot, though, he spoke. “You don’t have to wait for me,” he said. “If there’s something you need to do.”

She shook her head. “Not a thing. Maybe I’ll check and see if they can give me any extra hours.”

She climbed out and locked the car. Another car pulled in nearby, and the driver, a man, appeared to be fussing through some papers. Probably lost his shopping list, Cory thought with a small sense of amusement.

Wade waited for her, then walked beside her across the parking lot, measuring his stride to hers.

“You work here?” he asked.

“Yes.” Then she volunteered, “We all had our hours cut back a couple of weeks ago.”

“That hurts. No wonder you need a roomer. How’s Marsha managing?”

“Somewhat better. She gets an alimony check.”

He paused just after they stepped through the automatic doors and looked at her. “Then her ex knows where she is.”

“Theoretically not. The court sends the checks and is supposed to keep her address private.”

He nodded. “Good thing.”

She headed for the manager’s office at the customer service desk while he got a cart and started down the aisles. Interesting that he’d expressed concern for Marsha, she thought. Apparently a real heart beat behind the stone.

The manager, Betsy Sorens, greeted her with her usual wide smile. “Sorry, Cory. No extra hours. Not yet anyway. You’re at the top of my list though when we can start adding them.”

Cory felt almost embarrassed. “Why should I be at the top of the list? That doesn’t seem right, Betsy. So many others need hours, too.”

“We all need hours, some more than the rest. You’re self-supporting. A lot of the other employees have other sources of income.”

Cory felt her cheeks color a bit. “Still...”

Betsy shook her head. “You’re a good employee. If I can do a little something for you, I will.”

A customer came then with a complaint, so Cory smiled, waved and left. Wandering around the store with nothing to buy and nothing to do felt odd. Almost without thinking, she paused occasionally to straighten the stock on the shelves.

She hated to have time hanging on her hands, and she’d certainly had too much of that in the past year. She’d once been busy almost every second of the day, between Jim and her job. Now she had endless hours of free time, and that meant too many hours to think.

Hours to think about the past, about that phone call yesterday, hours to let her fear and anxiety build when there was no real reason for it. Certainly they would have found her by now if they were going to.

She met Wade in one of the aisles and glanced into his cart. There wasn’t much there yet.

“Having trouble?” she asked.

One corner of his mouth lifted. “You might say that.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been mostly eating in mess halls or eating out of boxes for years. I know the basics about cooking, but shopping for one person isn’t as easy as I thought.”

That was a whole lot of syllables, she thought, and for some reason that made her smile. “I have an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I hate cooking just for myself. Why don’t we take turns cooking for each other?” she suggested.

“Are you sure? You could be taking an awful gamble.”

“On your cooking?”

“What else would I mean?” he asked.

“I’m willing to take it. And if it doesn’t work out, well, I could teach you to cook. Or you could just let me do it.”

He shook his head. “No way am I going to let you cook for me every night. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

She could almost see him closing down again, as if the idea that he might lean on her concerned him. “Okay then, cooking lessons if you need them.”

That seemed to satisfy him. Armed with the idea that they’d take turns cooking seemed to loosen him up though. He started tossing more items into the cart.

“I should go buy some more groceries,” she said suddenly. “I just realized, I only bought enough for myself for a couple of days.”

“Let me,” he said. “It’ll cover the cooking lessons I’ll probably need.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but then shut it. This man absolutely needed to feel as if he wasn’t a burden. That much was clear to her so she endured it as he spent money on foods she would have ignored because of the price.

But the thought of cooking some of the dishes she had once loved to cook and eat soon had her thinking of ingredients she should buy.

“I don’t know what’s needed to cook some of this stuff,” Wade said. “Grab whatever you need.” It was enough to get her going.

Along the way she saw the man from the parking lot again. He was pushing a cart and carrying a piece of paper, and nodded when he saw her. She managed to smile back. Evidently he’d found his list.

Before they even reached the checkout, two more people had smiled and nodded at her. She was used to that when she was working and in uniform, but for the first time it struck her that folks around here might be friendly as a matter of course. Maybe she ought to make a bigger effort.

By the time they left the store with another four bags of groceries, she was looking forward to dinner.

And how long had it been since she’d last felt that way? No, she wasn’t going there, not when she was actually feeling good, feeling almost normal, for the first time in a year. There was absolutely nothing wrong with feeling good, she reminded herself. Nothing at all. Jim wouldn’t have wanted her to become the woman she had been during the past year.

The shadow that hovered over all her days tried to return when she had to deal with the alarm, but she refused to let it. No more of that, she told herself, as if something as simple as a command to herself could change her entire outlook and banish the fear that never quite deserted her.

But at least she was making an effort, and when she looked over the past day, she felt glad those kids had made that stupid call. Yes, it had thrown her into a tizzy, and yes, it had upset Marsha just as much, but in the course of reacting to it, she had helped Marsha a little bit. Now she could at least help Wade learn to cook.

Little things, but more purposeful than almost anything since that awful night. Time to cherish her tiny victories.

“When do you usually like to eat dinner?” she asked as they worked together to put things away. She stopped a moment to look at her refrigerator. It hadn’t been that full while she lived here, ever. And now it held an embarrassment of riches.

He paused, a box of cornstarch in hand, and looked at her. “Ma’am, you’re talking to a SEAL. I learned to eat when the food was there.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip. “A SEAL? Really?”

“Really.”

That would explain at least some of it, she thought, how he could look so hard and dangerous at times. It might even explain his lack of expression and his disinclination to talk. Hesitantly she said, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”

“No.”

And that closed the subject. Well, it would if she let it. How much did she want to risk now that they’d found some common ground? But the silence seemed heavy in some way, no longer comfortable. With one word he’d fixed an image of himself in her mind and she didn’t know how to absorb it. Nor did she know why she wanted to cross the barrier he had set so firmly in place with that one word.

Recklessly, she didn’t take the warning. “I’ve seen programs about SEALs,” she offered.

“A lot of people have.” He started folding her cotton grocery bags neatly.

“The training looks terribly hard.”

“It is.”

Volumes of information. She almost sighed. “I saw another program about an operation where the SEALs had to board a ship at sea to remove a container of plutonium that could have been used to make a bomb.”

“Yes.”

“It’s amazing what you guys can do.”

“Most people have no idea what we do.” With that he put the folded bags in a neat stack on her counter and walked from the kitchen.

She listened to him climb the stairs, listened to the creak as he went into his room.

And with him departed the little bit of positive purpose she’d found just today.

Chapter 4

Cory felt bad. For the first time in forever, she had felt positive, felt ready to reach out, however tentatively. And she’d blown it.

She had pressed Wade, even when her instincts had warned her that might be a mistake. Apparently her skills had atrophied over the past year. There’d been a time when she would have handled that approach a whole lot better.

Or would she? How could she even know anymore? For so long she’d been curled inward in a tight ball around her own fear and pain. Maybe she would have flubbed the conversational attempt even back then. Wade, after all, was a grown man, not one of her kids. His barriers had to be even higher, even more deeply ingrained.

Regardless, she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut, because it had been surprisingly nice to do ordinary, routine tasks with someone else, even a someone she didn’t know, and could barely talk with. Just the rhythm of it had probably been one of the most soothing experiences she could remember in a while.

Worse, she was brooding about what surely had to be the most minor of trespasses. It wasn’t as if she’d demanded personal war stories or anything. Far from it.

Let it go, she told herself. Good advice except that perhaps the worst change in her over the past year was the way she could seldom just dismiss things. Like that phone call last night.

In her previous life, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Once upon a time, even if it had disturbed her, she’d have been able to shake it off in relatively short order.

Events had changed her. Worry had burrowed mole holes in her mind, ever ready to grant easy access to the next concern that showed up. The stupidest things could run in circles for hours or days, and she could no longer shake them.

But today, thanks to Marsha and then Wade, she’d managed to put that call out of her mind. To put it in its proper place.

But it was still there, ready to pounce the instant she allowed it to. If she sat here too much longer brooding, the fear would steal back in and soon she’d be like a dog gnawing at a bone, unable to let it go.

Finally she stood up, deciding the best thing in the world would be to take a walk. She’d spent too many hours hiding in this house over the past year, and that had turned her into an even worse mess.

She wondered if she had failed to heal because fear had taken over to a paralyzing degree. Which was more ridiculous when she considered the entire weight of the federal government had thrown itself behind making her disappear.

Yes, she was still grieving, but somehow grief and fear had become so intertwined she no longer knew which was which. The one was a healthy thing, the other not.

Today she seemed to have taken two successful baby steps in the right direction. It was time, she decided, to step back out into the sunlight, to start living again the way most other people lived: without the constant expectation of the terrible happening.

Nobody got a guarantee, after all.

Grabbing her keys, leaving her purse behind, she slipped into her jogging shoes then turned off the alarm. She had to turn it off, because once it was set and had been on more than forty seconds, opening and closing the door without triggering the alarm sequence became impossible. Failure to turn off the alarm within forty seconds meant that the police would be called.

So she punched in the code to turn it off, listening to the near-squeal it made. As soon as it was disarmed, she could reset it and safely leave.

But she didn’t get to the rearming part.

“Where are you going?”

She turned and saw Wade at the top of the stairs. A spark of annoyance flared, a welcome change from the steady diet of fear she’d been living with. “Out. What business is it of yours?”

“None.” His shirt was unbuttoned again, but he still wore his jeans and deck shoes. This time she noticed more than the broad expanse of his chest. She noted his flat belly, the fact that he had the coveted “six-pack” of abdominal ripples, though not overdeveloped. She had to drag her gaze away, back to his face. He started down the stairs. “I’ll go with you.”

Her jaw dropped a little, and her annoyance grew. “Why? I’m just going to walk around the block.”

“I’d like a walk.”

But he didn’t have to take it with her. She almost said so, quite sharply, and then realized something. Her fear hadn’t just dissipated on its own today. No, he had driven it back.

Now what? Would she insist she go on the walk alone? When she might well get scared again halfway around the block? Was she going to take the offered crutch?

She ought to say no, for her own good. It was high time she started conquering her fears. But then remembering how she had felt when she’d made him leave the room earlier, she decided she didn’t want to needlessly offend him again.

It was as good an excuse as any, she supposed, because now that she actually thought about it, she wasn’t sure she yet had the courage to take that walk alone. Especially after that phone call last night.

“Damn!” she swore.

He was now at the foot of the stairs, buttoning his shirt, and looked at her. “What?”

“I’m so confused I can’t stand it.”

“About what?”

She hesitated.

“You don’t have to tell me. Walking helps quite a bit.”

Giving her emotional space, but not physical space. She looked at him, and for the first time got past the sheer impact of his solidity and strength to notice that he was a handsome man. Very handsome, in a rugged, healthy way.

She sighed. Not now. Please. But it was a simple fact that the frisson he made her feel was not fear for her life, but fear of dangerous sexual attraction. With a man as closed off as Wade Kendrick, there could only be pain on that path.

But she was still young enough and healthy enough to feel those urges. Well, maybe that was a good thing. Another part of her coming back to life.

“Are we taking that walk?”

“Uh, yeah.” She punched in the codes again and together they stepped out onto the small porch. She set out purposefully in the direction of the town park, thinking it would do her some good to see kids at play again. Among the many things she had avoided in the past year was children, because they reminded her of things lost. But she might be ready to let them remind her of some of the goodness in life.

Once again he measured his pace to hers, as if it came automatically. And once again, he said nothing.

The summer afternoon was warm, the sun as brilliant as it could get this far north. And without warning she found herself talking, although she had to catch herself frequently so she didn’t reveal too much.

“I used to live in...down south. Almost in the tropics, actually. I notice the difference in the sun here.”

“It is different,” he agreed.

“The days are longer in the summer, but the sun never gets as high or bright. And the winter nights are so long here.”

“Yeah.”

“But at least I don’t burn as easily.” She managed a small laugh. “In the summer down there you can get a tan walking across a parking lot.”

It was his turn to give a small laugh, as if he, too, were trying. “I’ve been in all kinds of climates.”

Well, that was a positive step, she thought. “I imagine so.” She was careful not to question. Instead she chose to talk a little more about herself. “I’ve had a lot to adjust to, and I haven’t been doing a very good job of it.”

For a few paces he didn’t say anything. Then, “I guess it’s harder to adjust when you’re afraid.”

“It’s that obvious, huh?”

“Like I said, only to someone who would know fear.”

“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or a criticism.”

“Neither. Just an observation.”

“Do you ever get afraid?” As soon as the words were out she realized she might have trespassed too far again, but it was too late to snatch them back. She almost held her breath, wondering if he would turn and walk away.

Instead, he astonished her by answering. “I’m human.”

Sideways, but still an answer. She relaxed a bit and looked around, taking in the old trees that lined the street, their leaves rustling ceaselessly in the summer breeze. Nobody else seemed to be out and about, but that wasn’t unusual. Here, as everywhere, most couples both needed to work.

“In the evenings,” she remarked, “there will often be people sitting out on their front porches. Different from where I used to live. Most of the neighborhoods around me back home were built relatively recently, when it was important to have a privacy-fenced backyard. You’d almost never see anyone out front unless they were doing yard work.”

“In most places in the world where I’ve been, a house is where you sleep or shelter from the elements. The rest of life happens in common areas, on the street, in front of the house. Not for everyone, of course. There are always some who want to keep the unwashed masses away. And in some cultures an enclosed courtyard is considered necessary, but given that several generations of a family live together, it’s not exactly isolation.”

That was practically half an encyclopedia coming from this man. “Do you think we’re losing something with those fenced backyards?”

“Depends on what you want out of life. But once you build that fence, if you’re having a barbecue you’re not going to have a neighbor who might drop over for a chat and bring a six-pack, and wind up staying on for dinner.”

“True.” She turned that around for a few seconds. “I don’t really know how different it feels to live in a place like this,” she finally admitted. “Basically, when I come home from work I pass all these probably very nice people on their front porches and go inside and lock myself in.”

“Maybe you have good reason.”

Maybe she did. Or maybe she’d been acting like a wounded animal that wanted to be left alone in its burrow. The whole point of the Marshals moving her here had been so that she didn’t have to live this way. Another sigh escaped her.

“I thought,” she said reluctantly, “that I was breaking out of the cycle earlier today. I even told myself to go take a walk.”

“But?”

“But then I realized that I’d just been distracted. That despite everything, I’m still worried at some level because of that call last night. Oh, I can’t even explain it to myself.”

They reached the park and found a bench not far from the sidewalk. Nobody else was there, so Cory’s hope for distraction was disappointed.

Wade let the silence flow around them with the breeze for a few minutes before he spoke again. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “we get confused because we’re changing.”

That made her look at him, and for an instant she wished she hadn’t because she felt again that unexpected, unwanted attraction. What was going on with her? Why did she suddenly have the worst urge to put her head on the shoulder of a stranger? To feel his arms close around her?

She jumped up from the bench and headed home. Walking it off seemed like the only sane course available to her. “We need to start dinner,” she said, the sole explanation she could offer for her behavior. Because there was no way she could tell him that the feelings he awakened in her were nearly as frightening as that phone call had been.

Despite her sudden takeoff, he fell in step beside her before she had made two full strides. Glued to her side. Part of her wanted to resent that, and part of her was grateful for it. Confusion? She had it in spades. At least her fear and grief had been clear, so very clear. No questions there.

Now the questions were surfacing, the conflicting feelings, all the stuff she’d avoided for so long. She forced herself to slow her pace to an easier walk. She’d been running again, she realized. Had she forgotten every other mode of existence?

“Darn,” she said under her breath. All of a sudden it was as if someone had held up a mirror, and painful or not she had to look at herself. She wasn’t seeing a whole lot that she liked, either.

“Something wrong?” Wade asked mildly.

She stopped midstride and looked at him. Mistake, because the truth burst out of her and she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. What did she know about this guy after all? “Has something ever made you stop and take a good look at yourself?”

“Yes.”

“What if you don’t like what you see?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just started walking again. She didn’t expect an answer, frankly. It wasn’t the kind of question anyone else could answer.

But he surprised her. “You make up your mind to change.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Always.”

Some inner tension uncoiled just a bit. Change? Why not? After all, she’d allowed herself to be changed by life, had just rolled along like a victim. That did not make her feel proud. “Sometimes,” she said more to herself than him, “you just have to grab the rudder.” She hadn’t done that at all since the shooting. Not at all.

“Grabbing the rudder is easier to do when the seas aren’t stormy.”

She glanced at him again. Oh, there was a story there, and she wished she knew what it was, but she didn’t dare ask. This man could disappear even in plain sight, and she didn’t want him to disappear again. At least not yet.

For some reason the invader had ceased to be an invader. Maybe just his presence had reminded her that she still had a life to live. Maybe his obvious protectiveness had made her feel just a little safer. Or maybe the attraction she felt was overcoming all the walls she’d slammed into place.

Because she had slammed those walls into place. She hadn’t built them brick by brick. No, she’d put up the steel barricades almost instantly in the aftermath. Huge parts of her had simply withdrawn from life, no longer willing to take even small risks, like making a friend.

She stole another glance at Wade and wondered at herself. If ever a guy looked like a bad risk for even something as simple as friendship, he was it. Yet for some reason she was opening up to him. Not much, but enough that she could get herself into trouble if she didn’t watch her step.

She ought to be afraid of him, the way she was afraid of everything else. Instead all she could do was notice how attractive he was. Wonder if that hard line of his mouth would feel as hard if he kissed her. What that hard body would feel like against her soft curves.

Ah, she was losing her mind. For real. It had finally snapped. After a year of inability to feel anything but grief and anguish, she had finally broken. Now she was looking at a virtual stranger as a sex object.

Way to go, Cory. Very sensible. Clearly she couldn’t trust herself at all anymore.

Two cars came down the street toward them as they rounded the corner right before her house. She lifted her hand to wave, deciding it was about time to make a friendly gesture. The woman in the first car smiled and waved back. The man in the second car didn’t even glance at them.