Suddenly Home

Taylor narrowed her eyes at her uncle, then at Alex. “Just wait,” she mouthed as the pastor said his final, booming “Amen!”

“Think I’m gonna get into line,” Uncle Dave said, “before all the potato salad is gone.” Nodding, he grinned at Taylor. “You know it’s always the first thing to go.”

“Maybe this year,” she said quietly, wiggling her eyebrows and grinning, “it’ll be the second thing to go….”

Alex laughed. “Good to meet you, Mr. Griffith.”

“Dave,” he corrected. “Good meeting you, too.” And with that, he was gone.

Alex cleared his throat. “If you can tell me who the red-nailed lady was, I’ll explain, save your good name.”

Shrugging, Taylor waved his offer away. “Mrs. Abernathy is always looking for reasons to scold people. The way I see it, the three of us made her day.” Pausing, she tilted her head. “Say…I didn’t know you were a member of Resurrection parish.”

“I’m not. But my mother is.”

“Really? Who’s your mother? Maybe I know her.”

“If you didn’t know her, I’d be surprised.” He pointed at an attractive white-haired woman across the way. “She’s the president of the ladies’ auxili—”

“Helen Martin? But your name is—”

“My father passed away a long time ago, and Mom remarried.”

“Small world.” Then, tilting her head the other way, she raised one eyebrow, remembering that Mrs. Martin had joined the church just over a year ago. “Why haven’t we seen you at services before?”

He clamped his teeth together, as if suddenly something had made him angry. Very angry. “I’ve been away for a while.” Just as suddenly, the friendly smile returned. “And now I’m back.” He shrugged.

She wondered where he’d been. How long he’d been gone. Why he’d been gone. And what, exactly, had inspired his return home. The questions must have been apparent on her face, because Alex said, “It’s a long, boring story. Suffice it to say my hitch in the navy is over, and I’m grounded now, in more ways than one.”

Grounded? Did that mean he’d been a pilot? He’d been grinning when he said it, but she couldn’t help but notice the smile never quite made it to his eyes. Taylor could almost picture him in a flight suit, standing beside a sleek airplane, helmet under his arm and—

“Why don’t we join your uncle in line. I think he may be right. That potato salad seems to be goin’ mighty fast.”

He offered her his arm, and just as Taylor moved to take it, Mable Jensen grabbed her elbow. “Taylor! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Come with me, dear, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

Alex’s smile dimmed as Mable whisked her away, and he sent the same two-fingered salute he’d sent her in the airport tunnel. She looked away for only an instant, then turned back to ask him to save her a seat.

But in that instant he’d disappeared.

Chapter Two

Alex waited half an hour for Taylor to come back. He sat at the end of a long table, one arm slung over the back of the folding chair beside his own. “Sorry,” he told anyone who showed interest in the empty seat, “this one’s taken.”

Once it sank in that she wouldn’t be joining him for the meal, he wolfed down his stone-cold food. The level of his disappointment made no sense, especially considering he’d spent, what, ten minutes in her company? Maybe this was the reason he’d always been partial to tall, blue-eyed blondes…because it was less disappointing when they didn’t show up?

Maybe, except, what was this?

This was ridiculous, that’s what. To be fixated on a young woman barely bigger than a minute, well, it just wasn’t Alex’s style. He’d always been so cool, so sophisticated where women were concerned.

He wanted to go home, slump into his easy chair and find an old war movie on TV. So for the life of him, Alex didn’t understand why he stayed, why he chatted with other brunch attendants.

That wasn’t entirely true. He knew, as he nodded and smiled and talked about the weather, that the sole purpose of his participation in the banal conversations was in the hope they might lead to information about Taylor Griffith.

He was about to ask an elderly woman if she’d seen Taylor when his mother, Helen, spotted him. Smiling, she waved. There was no mistaking what that “look” meant. She seemed as happy as a mother could be, believing he’d taken her advice, finally, that he was making an attempt at getting back on track, into “the stream of things.”

Helen had been at him for months, saying he needed to socialize more, get busy building a new life. And that couldn’t start, she’d insisted, until he first started talking about the accident. “You could have died in service to your country. That’s not something to hide—it’s something to be proud of!”

It was a hot button, but out of respect for her, Alex chose not to respond. Besides, he couldn’t imagine admitting the truth aloud, not even to his own mother: The mission had been a failure because he’d taken the coward’s way out.

A thousand times he’d relived those last milliseconds of the flight, searching his mind for the one thing he might have done differently, the decision that might have saved him and the Falcon. It was humiliating, not having a clear memory to help him understand what had gone wrong. That, in itself, Alex believed, was proof of his ineptness as a pilot.

Not an easy thing to admit, when flying had been his life for nearly a decade; when, for generations, all male Van Burens before him had been fliers.

His great-grandfather had tested some of the military’s earliest bombers, his grandfather had flown during World War II, his father had served in Vietnam. And each had earned awards and commendations for their bravery. Based on the evidence, Alex could only conclude that the “good pilot” gene had skipped a generation.

And though the man hadn’t said so, Alex believed his stepfather felt the same way, too.

Rusty Martin had been a good pilot, a good substitute father. He’d never actually vocalized disapproval of how Alex had handled things that fateful day, but then, he hadn’t said he agreed with his stepson, either.

Couldn’t be easy, Alex reasoned, for a guy whose best friends—like himself—had been part of the space program for most of their military careers. Poor guy, Alex had often thought, to have a loser for a stepson.

Even the men in his mother’s family had a long, illustrious military history. Alex didn’t suppose his grandma was any too surprised when her daughter announced her plans to marry a pilot; she’d married one, herself. Nor was it a surprise to anyone, when his mom finally chose to remarry, that she picked another pilot.

Alex hadn’t expected anyone else to understand the root of his shame, his guilt. But his mother… She’d spent her whole childhood with soldiers, most of whom had been pilots. She’d spent nearly a decade married to his father, another quarter of a century with Rusty. If she couldn’t figure out why Alex preferred to keep to himself, why he’d rather not discuss what he believed to be his greatest failure, who could?

He didn’t need some shrink to tell him why he worked so hard to avoid conversations that started with “So what was it like…” Alex knew full well that a beginning like that was sure to be followed by “waiting to be rescued?” or “knowing you could die?” or “realizing it was you or the plane?”

The questions were reminders of that failure. Besides, he had no satisfactory answers for any of the questioners. More important than that, he hated being reminded what a coward he’d been during those hair-raising last seconds before the crash.

The first-ever coward in a long line of Van Buren heroes.

Leave it to me to start a whole new tradition….

He knew as well as anyone that avoiding those questions had been harder than answering them. So why was today so different?

Simply put, because Taylor was different.

She was the sole reason that today, for the first time since the accident, he’d good-naturedly answered the questions put to him by his mother’s church cronies. If talking about what had happened that day would get him close enough to ask if anyone knew where Taylor had gone, it was worth the temporary discomfort.

Turnabout is fair play, he supposed when no one had an answer for him. Not Mable Jensen, not Alex’s mother, not even Taylor’s Uncle Dave knew where she’d disappeared to. She’d been the only reason he’d agreed to stay for the luncheon, rather than just drop his mother off at the church. Now that Taylor had obviously left, there wasn’t much point in hanging around.

After making sure his mom had a safe ride home, Alex aimed himself toward the door.

These days, church activities—church people in particular—made him extremely uncomfortable. One fellow’s well-intended opinion pretty much summed up how Alex believed everyone else felt: “The Lord performed a miracle out there, or you’d have been shark food, for sure.”

What the Lord had to do with it, Alex didn’t know, though he hadn’t said so at the time. Instead, he’d nodded and smiled politely at the sentiment. He’d never admitted it aloud, but it was true nonetheless—the accident had shattered more than his confidence…it had destroyed his faith.

He hadn’t exactly turned into one of those guys who blames God for the bad things that happen in life. But the Almighty had been responsible for letting Alex survive the crash. If He was so all-knowing, wouldn’t He have known that for a man like Alex, life without flying was no life at all?

Alex said his goodbyes and headed for the parking lot, frowning. If not for the limp, he didn’t think anyone would guess what had happened to him eighteen months earlier. Then again, if not for the limp, he wouldn’t be home again, trying to build a new life in his hometown. Rather, he’d be on active duty, waiting his turn to run yet another test on yet another F-16.

As he slid behind his pickup’s steering wheel, Alex thought about how he’d spent the past hour, answering painful questions in the hope he’d get an answer to a question of his own.

Why he wanted to know where Taylor had gone was a puzzle to him.

And then he pictured her, and the mystery began to unravel.

He shook his head. There had been attractive women in his past. Yeah, he preferred blondes, but there had been a brunette and even a redhead or two. He liked ’em tall, but a few of the short ones had been fun. Taylor seemed intelligent enough, but then, he’d dated doctors and attorneys and scientists….

Key in the ignition, Alex frowned, wondering what was so special about this petite brunette. And as the motor roared to a start, he had a feeling the answer had little, if anything, to do with her pale brown eyes or her chestnut-colored hair, her curvy little body or her big bright smile. No, something told him it had more to do with the person who lived behind that big, bright smile.

She’d left him feeling the way he had back when he’d flown to that village in France. No one there had spoken a word of English, and his French began with oui…and ended with oui. The “stranger in a foreign land” impression had been uncomfortable then, so why was it accompanied by such pleasant sensations now?

Alex slid the gearshift into Reverse and backed out of the parking space, shaking his head. Too much fruit punch, he decided, grinning.

Half a dozen times, as they had stood in her foyer, as they had chatted in the church basement, he’d considered asking if she’d mind if maybe he gave her a call some time.

So why hadn’t he asked?

He drove north on Route 40, the image of her fixed in his mind’s eye. She was gorgeous, there was no denying that, but she simply wasn’t his type, he told himself again.

But if that was true, why had her voice seemed so mesmerizing? And why did he find it necessary to blink and clear his throat when he found himself thinking that, depending on how the light caught her long, curly hair, it could look like anything from mink to velvet to satin?

He adjusted the rearview mirror, a subtle reminder that, as he’d nosed into a parking space in the church lot, his mom had tilted it so she could touch up her lipstick.

Taylor didn’t wear lipstick. But then, Taylor didn’t need lipstick.

Alex ran a hand through his hair. You’re losin’ your ever-lovin’ mind, Van Buren.

He searched for a reason, something to blame for his temporary insanity.

The struggle to align himself with a world that was anything but “Navy” was obviously taking a bigger toll than he realized. Why else had he allowed himself to get all smitten by a woman he barely knew? She was everything he didn’t want—or need—especially now. So for the life of him, Alex didn’t know why he’d spent all that energy, there in the church basement, trying to track her down.

He bounced the heel of his fist on the steering wheel. He and Taylor had spent a few minutes in polite conversation, and he’d enjoyed it. Period. Besides, she obviously spent a lot of time at the church; everyone seemed to know her, and they knew her well.

So why hadn’t any of them known where she’d gone?

Makes no difference, Alex told himself. He had neither the time nor the inclination to participate in religious functions, and it was clear as the windshield in front of him that Taylor was a good, devout, church-goin’ girl. And since she seemed to spend all her free time doing good, devout, church-goin’-girl things, the chances he’d ever run into her again were slim to none.

End of discussion.

That fact alone should have given him some relief. Instead, a quiet craving grew inside him.

Put her out of your mind, he thought. He and Taylor had nothing in common. Nothing. And even if they did, he had no desire to get involved right now—romantically or otherwise.

Alex noticed that the truck’s gas gauge read Empty, and he pulled into the first filling station he came to. It was as he selected octane and began pumping that a small voice said, “Hey, mister. What happened to your leg?”

Alex glanced over his shoulder and looked into a cherubic face. Dimpled fists propped up the boy’s chin. Alex guessed him to be four or five.

“Tommy!” the child’s mother gasped. “You know better than to ask a question like that. Now, you apologize to the nice man, this instant!”

Tommy’s chubby cheeks reddened as he shot a sheepish glance Alex’s way. “Sorry,” he said grudgingly.

It wasn’t the first time Alex had been asked a question like that. At least Tommy’s interest was honest. “It’s okay, son,” he said. “I used to be a pilot, hurt my leg when my plane crashed.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Really? Did it explode in the sky, like in the movies?”

Alex grinned. “Sort of. But I was long gone by the time that happened.”

Tommy’s brow crinkled with confusion. “Gone? Where’d you go?”

That day flashed through his mind. Involuntarily, Alex clenched his jaw. “Had to bail—”

Tommy faced his mother. “Mom, did you hear that?”

His mother frowned sternly. “Yes.” She shook a finger at him. “And you heard what I said….”

The boy turned back to Alex. “Did you have a parachute and ever’thing? Did you float down from the sky and get caught in a tree?”

Alex shook his head. “Wasn’t time for the chute to open.”

The boy’s brow crinkled slightly. “Then how’d you—”

“Tommy, not another word. I mean it.” His mother rolled her eyes at Alex. “I don’t know what gets into him sometimes. Please, accept my apologies.”

“No harm done,” he said, meaning it. And winking at Tommy, he added, “Boys will be boys.”

Tommy’s mother shrugged. “I suppose,” she said, then headed into the station to pay for her gas.

“Do you have a little boy?” Tommy asked.

Alex swallowed. He might be a father by now, if he hadn’t always put the navy…and flying…ahead of everything else. “No, ’fraid not.”

“A little girl?”

“No. I don’t have any kids.”

Tommy made an “I don’t believe it” face and held out his fat little hands. “Well, what’s your wife waiting for?”

“Don’t have a wife, either,” he said, chuckling.

“Why not?”

It was a good question. Another one for his “I have no answer for that” list. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; he didn’t have a wife because, to date, Alex hadn’t met a woman he wanted to share his life with.

Not true, his conscience said as the memory of Taylor’s pretty face popped into his mind.

“Why not?” Tommy repeated.

Alex could only shrug and shake his head.

Taylor would have thought Mable Jensen’s nephew seemed like a pleasant enough fellow…if stand-up comedians had been her type.

She didn’t know, exactly, what her type was, but it certainly wasn’t an overaged hippie who thought it was cool to crack knock-knock jokes by the dozen.

Would’ve helped if Pete had been a little taller, with big brown eyes, dark shiny waves; if he’d been lean in a marathon kind of way; if he had a wounded puppy-dog expression that made her want to soothe all his troubles away.

Like Alex Van Buren? she wondered, pretending to enjoy Pete’s “what do you get when you cross a lawyer with a leech?” joke. When he said, “An agent!” Taylor smiled, even though she didn’t get it. Did the punch line miss its intended target because Mable’s nephew had laughed at his own joke? Or because she’d been distracted by images of Alex?

The latter, she decided as Pete launched into another ditty. She liked everything about Alex, from the way his dark eyes sparkled when he smiled—which, in her opinion, wasn’t nearly often enough—to the mellow tones of his vibrant voice. He’d dressed for the brunch like a man unsure what one wears to such an affair, which told Taylor two things: One, he wasn’t a regular churchgoer, and two, he didn’t believe in playing it safe.

“Safe” would have been khaki trousers and a dress shirt, loafers, but no tie. Alex, on the other hand, had worn faded jeans and a polo shirt that had seen better days. So had his sneakers. He smelled of bath soap and the barest hint of manly cologne. And he’d cut himself shaving…recently.

“And did you hear the one about…?”

Taylor was in the middle of wishing for a legitimate excuse to walk away from Pete when Trish O’Connor ran up to her, huffing and puffing. “You need to get home right away,” the church secretary said. “Your neighbor called and said your cat’s on the porch roof, meowing up a storm!”

The woman promised to let Taylor’s uncle know where she’d gone, promised to drive him home to save Taylor a trip back to the church.

Pete, Mable and even Alex were immediately forgotten as Taylor headed for her car. Every nerve end in her twitched with fear and dread, yet she resisted the urge to speed. Fast driving had killed her mother. Besides, if a cop stopped her to issue a ticket, it would only take that much longer to get home.

And the more time it took, the more likely Barney would fall off the roof. If there was any truth to the old wives’ tale about cats having nine lives, he’d be lucky to have one left, clumsy as he’d always been.

Her car came to a jerky stop when she pulled into the driveway. Sure enough, there was Barney, teetering near the roof’s edge, meowing for all he was worth. The sight of his mistress seemed to increase his angst, and he began pacing to and fro, precariously close to the rain gutter.

Taylor raced inside, taking the porch stairs two at a time, then did the same with the stairs leading to the second floor of her house.

There, on the other side of her bedroom window, sat Barney, front paws together, ears twitching, eyes glowing. Tempted by the sunshine on the other side of the window, Taylor reasoned, her curious kitty must have fiddled with the locks that held the window screen in place.

She leaned out the opening and extended her arms. “C’mere, you silly thing,” she crooned. When he stayed put, she added, “Barney…come here. I’ll give you a treat.”

He blinked and meowed…

And flicked his tail. “Come and get me” seemed to be the silent message he sent his mistress.

Pursing her lips, Taylor made kissing sounds and snapped her fingers. “Barrrr-neeeee,” she sang, “come to mah-meeeee….”

But he didn’t budge. If a squirrel or a bird should decide to perch in the branches of the tree just beyond the roof, there was no telling what the cat might do.

All her life Taylor had been afraid of heights. But what choice did she have? It was either climb out there and grab him, right now, or wait and take a chance he’d fall.

She eased her upper body through the window and, trembling, brought up her knee. When it rested on the warm, sandpapery shingles, she swallowed. Hard. “Please, God,” she prayed, “get the both of us back inside safely….”

Alex didn’t know what prompted him to do it, but instead of turning left at St. Johns Lane, he hung a right. At the first intersection he made another right, which put him on Taylor’s street. If he remembered correctly, her house was third from the corner.

If her car was in the driveway, maybe he’d stop by. Just to make sure everything was all right…since she’d disappeared so quickly from the brunch….

The red compact was there, all right. He noted the relief that coursed through him.

Movement on the roof caught his eye.

What on earth did she think she was doing up there!

He parked on the street, in the shade of the big maple in her front yard. Even from this distance he could hear her, making kissing noises. When he got closer, Alex grinned. “What’s up?” he asked as Barney maneuvered nearer the roof’s edge.

Taylor only gasped.

“Cat got your tongue?” he added.

“Funny,” Taylor said. “Real funny.”

But by the look on her face, he reasoned she hadn’t found his comment the least bit humorous. On closer inspection, he could see that she was terrified. Of losing the cat? Or of being up so high?

The latter. No, both, he decided.

“You want I should come up there? See if I can get her to come to me?”

“Him. His name is Barney.”

“Pardon me,” he said, smiling, hoping to ease her tension, “but we were never formally introduced.” Waving one arm above his head, Alex said, “Pleased to meet ya, Barn.”

He was still grinning when the cat launched itself from the roof, legs flailing, tail twitching, claws extended to get a grip on something.

Alex turned out to be that something.

Ignoring the stinging, piercing pain, he wrapped both arms around the cat and held on tight. “Is the front door open?” he asked, wincing and clenching his teeth.

Taylor nodded.

“Good. I’ll meet you inside, then.”

Thirty seconds later she was beside him, relieving him of the cat, who made a beeline for the living-room sofa.

“Oh my goodness,” Taylor gasped. “Just look at you.”

He glanced in the hall mirror. “Mmm, mmm, mmm,” he said. “Looks like I’ve been—”

“In a catfight?”

They shared a moment of nervous laughter, and then she took his hand. “Come with me,” Taylor said. “Let’s get something on those scratches. We don’t want them to get infected.”

Her hand was warm. And despite her size, she had an amazingly strong grip. Alex liked that.

For the next five minutes he sat in one of her kitchen chairs, alternately cringing and sucking air between his teeth as she swabbed his cuts with antiseptic. Taylor leaned in, brow furrowed in concentration, as if she were a skilled surgeon and Alex an unconscious patient.

His own mother hadn’t fussed over him this gently when he’d skinned his knees as a boy. She’d put Mercurochrome here, bandages there, a slap on his behind and a warning to be more careful next time. And he’d had his share of minor accidents over the years—no surprise, considering what he’d chosen as his life’s ambition. A wide variety of nurses had doled out medication, changed the dressings on his wounds. But like his mother, there had been a matter-of-factness to their ministrations.

What made Taylor’s attentions seem so…different? Maybe the way her hands shook, ever so slightly, as she touched the swabs to his cuts. Maybe it was the way her voice trembled, just a little, when she asked, “Does that hurt?” and “Am I being too rough?”