Heaven's Touch

Although something had changed about him, but she couldn’t place what. Everyone knew he’d joined the military—and not a moment too soon, lots of folks had said. Maybe it had done him good. One could only hope. “They’ve got the flames out.”

“So I see.” He reached into his shorts pocket, leaning awkwardly on one crutch as he did it. Then he shook his head, scattering short shocks of thick dark hair. “The keys are in the truck, not my pocket. Habit.”

She took one look at his dimples as he smiled more broadly, deepening them on purpose.

Right, as if he could actually charm her. She wasn’t even affected. Not in the slightest. She’d learned to be strong long ago. Ben McKaslin was no man to trust. Besides, he wasn’t here to stay. It was as plain as day he was injured on duty and so he’d probably be home for a visit for, what, a couple of weeks? Eight at the most, to heal that injured leg of his, and then he’d be racing back to wherever it was he was stationed.

Sure, Ben had always possessed great and admirable qualities, despite his flaws, but he wasn’t a stick-around kind of man.

She was beginning to think they’d stopped making men like that sometime before she was born, because she had yet to meet one man she thought would stick. One who would be responsible and honorable enough to depend on for the long haul.

Not that she had trust issues, of course, although on many occasions, her coworkers had pointed out that she did.

Okay, so maybe she did, but her trust issues had never been the only reason he’d left the day after graduation for boot camp. And never looked back.

Forgiveness, Cadence. It was sometimes the hardest part of her faith. She’d had to do so much of it throughout her life. Maybe the angels were giving her as many opportunities as she needed to get it right.

So she tried to let her resentment go. She wasn’t the head-in-the-clouds teenager she used to be. No matter how it seemed, Ben had to have matured, too. So it was with as clear a heart as she could manage that she tried one more time. “Let me take a look at your back. You can’t go home like that.”

“Sure I can. My family wouldn’t recognize me if I didn’t have something wrong.”

Where he could have said those words flippantly, he was steadier. Lines had dug their way into the corners of his eyes, and gave his face character. It was his eyes that had changed. They didn’t light up. They didn’t sparkle.

She couldn’t stop the cloying sadness that overtook her. A sense of loss overwhelmed her, and suddenly wrestling to forgive him didn’t seem like such a big problem.

By the looks of it, he’d had a tough road over the years, too.

He didn’t look at her as he made his explanations and his attempt at an escape and emotional distance. “I’ve gotta get home. Looks like they’re taking the mother to the hospital. She’s lucky. Goes to show a lot of folks don’t realize the danger when they’re filling up their tanks.”

“I guess no one really thinks about it. I don’t.” She got the clue. He didn’t want to remember old times. Neither did she. It was sad, the years that stretched empty and lost between them. As much trouble as the teenage Ben had brought into her life, he had brought laughter, too. Where once they had been close, now they couldn’t be more distant. Just two people who stopped to get gas during one summer’s night. They’d keep it polite, the type of conversation two strangers might have.

She didn’t know what more to say to him. She didn’t know how to broach the past. To ask if he’d gotten married, if he had kids, or if he’d stayed as carefree and independent as he’d always intended to be. What did he do in the military? How had he become injured?

She was so far removed from the local news. She didn’t live in the same small town any longer. She lived here in Bozeman and went home a few Sunday evenings a month to have supper at her mom’s, but her old life—including an innocent teenage romance with Ben—was so past history, it wasn’t even a shadowed blip on her radar.

“Goodbye,” she said to Ben casually, as if he’d never been special to her.

As if he’d never been the man she’d once intended to marry.

As if her heart were whole and her life as it should be, she walked to her car, climbed in and drove off without looking back.

Chapter Two

Cadence Chapman. Wow, that was someone he hadn’t thought about in too long—and on purpose. She could still tie him up in knots, that was for sure. Ben rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he eased the truck to a crawl.

The turnout from the paved county road to the driveway was hard to find in the dark. It always had been. Scrub brush, salmonberry bushes and super-tall thistles that had yet to be tamed by a Weedwacker obscured the stake marking the edge of the driveway.

The tiny red reflector still hung crooked from the stake. It had been that way since he was in second grade. One misty morning while waiting for the school bus, he’d been bored, so he’d tossed rocks at the reflector, knocking it askew until one of the bigger Thornton boys had told him to stop.

There was a reason he didn’t like remembering. It wasn’t so good coming home. His neck was a tangle of melted-together fibers, his chest a tight ball of confused hurt, which seeing Cadence had caused even after all this time.

And on top of all that, driving up the road made his guts coil up, negating the fact that he was hungry as all get-out. He had been looking forward to raiding Rachel’s refrigerator. Right now, though, until his stomach relaxed, he couldn’t eat a thing. Maybe he could stay focused in the present moment—that he was just a guy coming home from the front, like so many soldiers. He’d think about the here and now, about Rachel, and wonder if she’d stayed up to meet him.

But the past reached out to grab him like a ghost in the dark as he bumped up the gravel driveway through the cottonwoods and over the rush of the creek. Images from long ago, grown fuzzy and dim with time—of a happy boy, in the days before he’d been an orphan, wading in the water watching tadpoles and little trout and searching for deer tracks.

He slid down the windows just to hear the wind and the water gurgling and the whisper of the small green leaves in the night air. He couldn’t stay in the present. Too many memories came with the sounds of the breeze. Darker memories came, of how he’d hidden in the culvert after his parents had been killed in a car accident, and no one could find him.

No, that wasn’t such a good memory.

Ben hit the control and the windows zipped up, cutting off the night, shutting off the memories and banishing the past.

But not entirely. The past was hard to erase. It was tenacious, and it lurked behind him like the shadows. As the truck rolled and bounced up the driveway, he realized the private lane was in terrible shape. It could use a grading and a new layer of gravel. Maybe he’d help Rachel with that. He desperately latched on to any normal thought as the truck careened the last few yards to the lone house on the hill.

The house was a neat rancher built when his parents had been alive, on a five-acre tract on the good side of town and along the river on the back of the property, within sight of the elementary school and the park. But right now it was nearly pitch-black. The only light to guide him was a small spill of porch light over the front door.

Rachel had left it on for him. He warmed up at his sister’s thoughtfulness. That hadn’t changed, nor had the tall leafy maples, older than he was, which stood at attention like gigantic sentries around the yard.

Rachel knew he was coming. They were the closest in age. She was less than two years his junior and seemed to understand him, if anyone ever could. She always made him feel comfortable without judging his shortcomings. And instead of scolding him on the phone for his sudden visit, she’d sounded truly happy, and not put out that he was springing a visit on her.

“I can’t wait to see you, and, hey, you’re getting better! Last time you called from the airport.”

“See? I can be taught.”

“The door is always open. It’s your home, too.” Her voice had dipped with emotion, and he closed off his heart and memory.

How did he tell his sweet and wonderful sister that he didn’t want a home? That’s why he was more nomad than anything, and she was the one who lived in the family’s house. She clung to the past as if it were something to be treasured, not forgotten.

Well, he was more than happy to forget, but not his sisters.

Rachel was probably asleep, or possibly reading in bed, since her bedroom was on the other side of the house. Affection stretched like a rubber band in his chest. His sisters sure worked hard, and he knew that Rachel often covered the morning shifts at the family restaurant in town, so she got to bed pretty early to be on the job by six.

The clock in the truck’s dashboard told him it was well after midnight. Yeah, he thought as he pulled up to the closed double garage doors and killed the engine. She definitely had given up waiting for him.

That was okay. He was beat. He’d be lousy company anyway. It had been a long drive from Pensacola and his back hurt, but not as badly as his leg.

He gritted his teeth as he tried to move. Oh, yeah, the adrenaline was wearing off, all right. He was too tough to admit it, so he tried to ignore the streak and throb of pain that felt as if he’d been shot in the calf with a bullet. Wait—that’s exactly what had happened to him.

Talk about luck. He still had his leg, so he didn’t care how much it hurt. He’d treated lots of guys who hadn’t been as fortunate. As he climbed out of the cab and transferred weight onto his good leg, he pushed aside the pain and stiffness and breathed in the silence.

Whoa, he’d forgotten how peaceful it could be here. There was no tracer fire, no beat of chopper blades and no rat-tat-tat of machine guns. Trouble was half a world away.

God, don’t let me be here for long.

“Go home. Rest up. Go fishing or something,” his colonel had told him. “When your med leave is up, we’ll see if we need to cross train you into another job.”

No way. His guts clenched. He’d get this leg back into shape, he vowed with all his might as his feet stepped on the dependable Montana earth. Right, God?

But no answer came on the temperate warmth of the sweet summer air. Well, he wasn’t going to let that trouble him. He was determined. And he was home, for better or worse. He let the wind pummel him as he took a look around. So much wide-open space.

He’d been back for holidays when he was in the country. But that usually meant he was huddled in the house on the bitter Thanksgiving and Christmas nights while it snowed, busy catching up on the family news, eating cookies and telling tall tales. He’d always had a hundred different things on his mind when he’d been here visiting.

Besides, he avoided peace on purpose.

His M.O. always was to stay a few days, and then he was gone. Whether he was visiting here or on a quick break in his duplex at Eglin Air Force Base, he was always rushing off to strife in some part of the world, where strong men with guns kept this country safe. He was proud to be one of those men.

I’m anxious to get back, God, he prayed, studying the velvet tapestry of the night sky. Please heal me up quick.

He hauled out his crutches—he hated the dumb things—and tried to keep their clattering to a minimum. If he couldn’t go back to his work, he didn’t know what he’d do. He’d spent the last and best part of his life as a pararescue jumper, a PJ, stationed on bases around the world—Japan, Korea, Italy and, of course, the Middle East.

And since special ops was his thing, he did a lot of work beneath the night skies. Somewhere under a sky like this, his team was at work without him, pumped full of adrenaline, fast roping from a Blackhawk or checking gear in preparation for a high-altitude jump. Then they’d set up and secure a perimeter, and proceed with their mission. Often rescuing a downed pilot behind enemy lines or liberating captured American soldiers.

I miss it, he thought as he opened the club cab door. He’d been out of the field for six weeks—one in the hospital and five hanging around his duplex looking out at the Gulf of Mexico. Watching other soldiers gear up and head out, leaving him behind.

I’d give anything to be dodging bullets. His being ached with the wish, but he’d learned a long time ago wishes got you exactly nothing. Only hard work did.

And that’s why he was here. He leaned heavily on his crutches. The silent glide of an owl winging across the span of sky was awesome. He waited while the bird disappeared behind the tall maples.

He felt the change before he heard the faintest sound. Instinct had him whipping toward the front porch, where the doorknob began to rasp as it moved.

Then came a light step—a woman’s—and the scrape of the solid wood door over the threshold. The hinges gave a tiny squeal, and he knew it was Rachel before she stepped into sight. The single sconce fixture showered light over her like liquid brilliance.

It’s good to see you, little sister. She had a sweetheart’s face, big blue eyes and cheekbones that supermodels would envy. The breeze brought her faint scent of vanilla fragrance and the intake of her surprised gasp when she spotted him behind the pickup.

“Is that a no-good burglar lurking out on the driveway?” As pure as spun sugar, Rachel hurried toward him wearing her big baggy pj’s and slippers—in summer. She was always cold, it seemed.

Her long brown hair hid part of her face as she swept toward him, the shuffling of the fabric beneath her feet distinctive on the aggregate concrete walk. “Oh, wait, it’s just you. My hero of a brother!”

“That’s not me. A hero? No, you must be talking about someone else.”

“You’ll always be a hero to me.” She held out her arms, rushing toward him for a hug.

It was impossible not to adore her and, truth be told, she was his favorite sister—not that a guy was supposed to have favorites, but Rachel could steal even his heart made of stone.

He pulled her close, feeling how much he liked being her big brother. And when she bounded back to get a good look at him, shadows settled into her face and deep in her gaze.

He shivered, because Rachel had a knack for seeing too much. “You’re a lovely sight for these sore eyes, darlin’. You cut your hair since Christmas.”

“Just trimmed it a little. Look at you, all banged up.” Her words were light, but the steady appraisal she gave him was anything but. Sheer sisterly adoration lit her up.

And humbled him. “I’m not all that, little sister. I dodged left when I should have dodged right, and look at me.”

“Sporting a fashionable cast and two aluminum sticks. Are you in any pain? Let me get that bag for you—”

“Take the smaller one. Lift the rucksack and you’ll pop a disk. It’s heavy.” He could have predicted she wasn’t about to listen until she grabbed hold of the sack’s heavy-duty handles and heaved with an unladylike groan. The bag didn’t budge.

“See? I told you.”

“All right. I’ll take the smaller bag, but don’t think I’m going to let you out of this so easily. You told us that you had minor injuries. Minor injuries, my foot! Look at you!”

“These are minor injuries. Compared to the other guys.” The truth was his job was about as dangerous as it got in the military and he’d been eerily lucky to haven gotten out of that particular situation with his leg intact.

As he hefted the heavy sack from behind the seat, he took a second to silently give thanks again for what could only have been divine intervention on that mission. It had been as if an angel had nudged him the few extra inches out of harm’s way, saving his leg but also his life, his career and his sanity. What were a few weeks in Montana compared to that?

“Well, there are no bullets here, tough guy. I’m just glad you’re home.”

She led the way along the walk, glancing over her shoulder constantly to check on his progress, her sharp eyes watching for any signs of his pain. She held the door wide for him, after leaning inside to flip on the light. “I knew you were coming, so it’s no excuse, but the house is a mess. I apologize.”

“You’ve gone from not picking up your room to not picking up your house?”

“Something like that.” Eyes twinkling, she waited until he was in the entry hall before closing the door tight and throwing the bolt.

The big house seemed to echo around them, all darkness and empty-sounding rooms. She carried his bag down the hall, but he couldn’t seem to follow her. Memories threatened his well-defended perimeter, but he managed to battle them back. Rachel had made a lot of changes to their childhood home over the years, but still, he remembered.

All he had to do was to look at the fireplace of smooth gray river rock that reached for two stories toward the vaulted ceiling, and he saw the past. Once Dad’s animal trophies had been proudly displayed there. The five-point buck and the three-point elk were long gone, replaced by clear twinkle lights Rachel left up all year round. But memory was a fluid thing, and he blinked back the past.

I’m tired, that’s all, he told himself as he let the awkward rucksack slide from his shoulder and smack to the carpet. He propped his crutches against the wall of stone and dropped into the sectional. Dozens of little frilly throw pillows nearly suffocated him.

“Do you have enough of these frilly things?” He tossed a half dozen of them across the cluttered coffee table into the deep cushions of a big overstuffed chair.

“Sorry, you’re in a girl zone, remember? It might be a hardship for a big tough guy like you. It’s not camouflage or military motif, but trust me, eyelet, lace and ribbons won’t hurt you.”

“I can’t relax around this stuff.” He sent a pale pink pillow with a satin heart sailing across the room. “You’re up late. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Ah, find me the secret to time travel so I can go back to this morning and start over,” came her response from down the hall.

Yeah, she worked too hard, and he didn’t like it. She was gone a suspiciously long time for just dropping off his bag. “You’re not doing stuff for me like making up a bed, are you?”

“Oh, no, I already did that. I can’t imagine how tired you have to be. I’ve got a plate keeping warm in the oven. I thought you might be hungry.” Rachel waltzed into sight.

You are the one who looks exhausted, little sister. He hated the dark rings beneath her eyes, but she managed a real smile.

“You’re tired, Rache. Go to bed. Stop worrying over me. Stop doing things for me. You have enough to do as it is, and I can take care of myself.”

“Yes, I know, you’re a big tough Special Forces soldier. But you don’t know how worried we’ve all been. Ever since we were told you were missing in action—” The lovely soft pink in her face disappeared, and in the faint light she looked snow-white. Pain twisted across her face. “I was scared for you.”

Just like that, she got behind his steel defenses. He hated the fact that she’d been worried. “I wasn’t missing. Not in the true sense of the word. I knew exactly where I was.”

“Yes, but we didn’t, hence the ‘missing’ part. And I did miss you. I was worried to death.”

“No, I was misplaced for a while, nothing more.”

Rachel wasn’t fooled. Her eyes filled with tears and she was suddenly in his arms—his sweet little sister who’d always seemed so fragile, and here she was crying over him when he was perfectly fine. Over him, when there had been so many others who hadn’t come out of the ambush alive.

“You’re wasting your tears, you know.” He tried to be gruff.

She swiped the dampness from her cheeks and pushed away from him, leaving him with a hole the size of the state of Montana in his chest. Wishing he knew what to do or what to say. Wishing he knew how to stick. He was a horrible big brother, and he was at a loss as to how to fix it.

He’d do anything to protect and provide for his sisters, but the truth was simple: he wasn’t good at relationships. He was better at bailing out—staying away—than at being here. He liked to keep an arm’s distance from intimacy, and he never shared the real Ben McKaslin. Not with Rachel.

Not with anyone.

He kept relationships simple and on the surface. It was easy to do when he lived so far away. All he had to do was send quick letters with funny anecdotes, e-mail with jokes, that kind of thing. But here in person, when he had to relate face-to-face, that’s where he felt how closed off he’d become. He didn’t know what to do about it or how to fix it.

Maybe he didn’t want to. He liked being alone. It suited him.

Rachel, who had no such problems showing her emotions, tugged a tissue from the box on the coffee table and swiped the dampness from her eyes. “You don’t understand how scared I was for you. I thought you’d never come back.”

“Don’t you waste your tears on me.” So he wasn’t a tough guy all the time. “I do what I do in the military so you can sleep safe in your bed at night.”

“I’d like you to be safe, too.”

“I am. I’ve got my M-203.”

“I take it that’s a gun?”

“One of the best. Stop worrying, got it?”

“Yeah.” She sighed, as if in resignation, and opened her mouth as if she were going to argue, then decided against it. She sniffed, dabbing at her eyes as she trailed off in the direction of the dark kitchen.

One thing he wasn’t going to let her do was wait on him. He wasn’t that hurt—or so he kept telling himself. He leaned forward to reach for the crutches, and the springs beneath him protested.

“I hear you trying to get up and don’t you dare!” Rachel scolded from the kitchen. “Stay right where you are, okay? I’ll bring supper to you. We had a slow night at the diner, so I had time to really cook up a big plate of your favorites.”

“I told you not to go to any trouble.”

“What trouble? Now, what do you want to drink? I bought chocolate milk at the store today, since I knew you were coming. A big gallon all for you.”

“All for me? That must mean you have your own stash of chocolate milk in the fridge you’re hiding from me.”

“If I don’t, then you’ll drink every last drop, just like you do every time you stay with me. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Hey, I buy more for you.”

“You do. I couldn’t ask for a better brother.” She was back, bringing her gentle cheer and a foil-covered plate with her.

Her words touched him, and he was again at a loss to return the sentiment. Not that he didn’t feel it, just that…he couldn’t say something so vulnerable.

Pretending it was the food that mattered, he took the plate from her, hot pad and all, and tore off the foil. The mouth-watering scents of country fried chicken, gravy and buttermilk biscuits made his stomach growl. That was much easier to deal with than his feelings. “This is great. I owe you supper tomorrow.”

“It’s a deal. And if you noticed, I gave you three helpings of mashed potatoes.” She set a wrapped napkin of flatware on the coffee table along with the carton of milk.

When he leaned forward to grab the napkin, her eyes rounded. His shirt—he’d forgotten all about his back, since his leg hurt worse than a first-degree burn.

Rachel went to her knees. “Oh, what did you do? Your shirt is singed and there’s this big hole. Were you on fire?”

“Yep, but it was nothing you need to worry about.” He forked in a mound of buttery potato, so creamy and rich, and kept talking with his mouth full. Man, he was hungry. “Disaster finds me.”

“As long as it doesn’t find you anymore. Do you need a salve or something? A bandage?”

She looked dismayed, and over something so minor. It was nice to know how much she cared. The dark circles beneath her eyes seemed even darker, if that were possible, and she radiated exhaustion.

The last thing she needed to do was waste any more effort on him, when she was what really mattered. Rachel and Amy and Paige were all the family he had in this world. “You look ready to drop, little sister. Go to bed, get some sleep and have good dreams. Will you do that for me?”