21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (2 page)

The coach whistled, done with their dawdling.

“See you in an hour?”

“I’ll be right here.” She pointed at the risers. “Reading your paper.”

“Love you.” His voice dropped, not because it embarrassed him to say it or worried that someone might overhear, but because loving Rebecca was a privilege, his privilege and he sure as shit didn’t plan on sharing it with the team.

“I love you, too.” She mouthed the words, but they drove right into him and lit his insides. Her love honored him. Blowing him a kiss, she shooed him away. He jogged out to meet the team, sure she kept his heart as safe and sound as his homework.

***

“Rebecca.” He barely managed to mouth her name. Just like that, the jaunt in his step faltered, his heart stuttered and he half-turned to head back out the door. The valet probably hadn’t even parked his car yet.

That’s the coward’s way out
.

Luke Dexter wasn’t a coward.

Not anymore
.

He thought back to the all-too-knowing text message.
Life doesn’t always offer a second chance
….

Walk out the door and run away—again—or walk across the floor of the Sybarite and take his chance?

I’m through running
.

Rebecca Rainier glanced at her watch. She’d had some crazy clients over the years, but Delilah Swanson had to be the most eccentric. Becca began her event planning business in college and Rainier’s Intimate Introductions catered to the concept that people needed intimate situations to celebrate, meet, and mark special moments in their lives. She’d split her time between classes and meetings, carrying her supplies, her notes and her files around in the trunk of her car.

After graduation, Delilah made her an offer. She forwarded the financing for a storefront, let Rebecca choose her own clients, save for the once a year soiree Delilah hosted for a handpicked guest list. The ideal silent partner, she maintained a tidy investment, even after Rebecca paid off the initial stake.

For five years, she did exactly as she pleased, planning birthday parties, welcome home parties, wakes, weddings, and everything in between. This year’s grand shindig for Delilah sent Becca to the Sybarite Club in Dallas, only a few miles from where she’d grown up.

If it had been anyone else, she would have said no. But Delilah insisted that no life outside of work would impact her career more than she could imagine, so she’d let her not-so-silent partner sign her up for the 1Night Stand dating service. Delilah chose the Sybarite Club for the meeting, she knew the guys who ran it and that guaranteed her a measure of security. Instead of a huge party on some far-flung island or cruise ship, she waited for the man of the hour.

Delilah’s text had been specific: The Sybarite Club, nine PM., wear a forest green dress. She’d even sent a silver bracelet for her to wear for luck and love. The simple band shackling her wrist was heavier than most of the pieces she favored, but its weight comforted and warmed her.

A mournful melody of horn, piano and guitar tugged her back from the past—a place she rarely ventured anymore. She’d give her partner’s crazy idea another half hour. The white wine, the intimate atmosphere and the jazz were certainly worth another half hour of her time.

Maybe the guy chickened out.

Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time.

A delicious scent of woodsy vanilla stroked across her senses, locking every muscle in her body. Tension knitted a chain of knots up her spine. Trembling, she set the wine glass down before spilling it. The scent teased her, conjuring memories of high school, football and love. Tears clogged her throat, and the colorful collection of liquors on the bar back rippled as the curtain shrouding her heart ripping away.

Luke
….

***

Eleven years earlier

“I don’t understand.” She sat on the edge of the picnic table. Instead of the movies, they’d planned a quiet Saturday night together. But he’d been late and just when she thought he wouldn’t show up, he’d arrived, agitated, out of sorts and distant. “What happened?”

“September 11th happened, Becca. We’re retaliating and I plan to help.” The sweet autumn of their graduating year had turned into a nightmare a few weeks before. She’d been with him when the first reports of the terrorist attacks came in. School dismissed early, but not early enough to stop the news of the flight numbers involved. His mother and sister had been on a flight out of Dulles that morning, returning home from touring colleges on the east coast.

He’d taken the news without a glimmer of emotion. Her heart ached for him. For weeks, he pressed through funerals, obligatory family visits and bore the brunt of the hushed pity that rippled through the halls of Lowell High wherever they went.

He quit the football team.

His grades slipped.

He stopped coming to school regularly.

But Rebecca hadn’t left him. She brought his homework, bullied him to eat, cleaned up after both he and his father. After 9/11, his retired Marine, Navy reservist father informed them over dinner that he’d been activated. She held Luke’s hand through his father’s speech.

“Dad’s leaving tomorrow. He reports to Camp Pendleton. I’m going with him.” His words struck her like a body blow.

They’re moving. A hell of a long way from Lowell High School and Rockwall, Texas.

“Luke….” She squeezed his hand. The chill icing her heart suffocated the unseasonably warm Christmas air. “Wait.”

He’d avoided direct eye contact since walking up to the picnic table and he’d been stiff when she’d hugged him. He looked at her then, and it wasn’t her Luke, but a stranger, cool and remote. “I’m not sorry. And I’m not going just because Dad got called up. I enlisted in the Marines yesterday.”

I enlisted…. The words knocked around like a silver pinball caught bouncing between two objects, pinging against her soul. Enlisted in what?

“I’m eighteen. I took my GED this morning. Dad has some pull, so basic starts the week after Christmas. I don’t have to wait.”

Confusion added a second ball pinging around with the first. Luke enlisted. He joined the Marines. “When did you…?”

“Last month, after my birthday. Dad drove me down to….” His words drifted away, muted by the static in her brain. “…and that’s that. You’re great, but you’ve already gotten your acceptance letters to Brown and you’re going to school.”

“You’re breaking up with me?” She hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but shock cut off her good sense.

“Becca, America is going to retaliate. We’re already going into Afghanistan, and if I can get done with basic fast enough, I’ll be going with them. Bin Laden needs to die for what he did. Those fanatics need to understand that they attacked us. We have a duty to defend our country, to speak up for everyone who died.”

“Luke, I know. I know how you feel.”

“No.” He pulled his hand out from under hers. “You don’t know how I feel. And I don’t want you to ever know how I feel about this. A clean break is better. You’re great. Some guy is going to snap you right up and you’re going to have a great future. It’ll be easier on both of us if we make it a clean break now. I don’t want you to have to wait, to worry or to wonder.”

Nothing she said after that got through. He’d made up his mind. He’d taken her home, not even kissing her as he left her on the sidewalk in front of her house. He wasn’t home the next day.

Or the day after that.

A week later, the Dexter house had a For Sale sign in front of it.

A month later, a new family moved into it.

Rebecca didn’t know where he’d gone, so she addressed her letters to both he and his father, in care of the Marines.

She wrote him weekly.

Studying any news reports coming out of Afghanistan, she was terrified that one day they’d include a tidbit: local Rockwall boy dies overseas.

She didn’t go to Brown, sticking it out at the University of North Texas and commuting. She wanted to be where he’d left her.

So he could find her again.

A week before she graduated, an email blast from their high school graduating class’s annual newsletter caught her eye. Lieutenant Luke Dexter, former Lowell High football star, had been awarded a medal for bravery in combat. He remained on assignment in Afghanistan after a brief visit to speak at the school.

A brief visit.

He had come home.

But he hadn’t called.

She never sent him another letter.

***

Her chest squeezed unbearably tight at the scent, the woodsy vanilla as familiar to her as her own skin. She’d never forgotten how he smelled. Even now, the rich warmth of it rolled over her, carrying her back to more carefree days—breakfast at the football field, late afternoons lying in a tangle, trying to study. Long, wet, tongue-stroking kisses.

Painful cracks spider-webbed across the ancient headstone burying her heart. She’d mourned him and stopped visiting him in her heart a long time ago. The scent dragged the roots of her teenage passion, screaming and clawing, out from under the debris of years.

“Rebecca.” His voice washed over her and she closed her eyes.
It can’t be him.

Not now
.

She didn’t turn. She couldn’t. She squeezed her eyes shut, closing out the abandoned seventeen-year old girl who’d dared to hope, pray and dream that one day he would reach out to her again. Let her be there.

Instead, the twenty-eight-year old woman shook off a teenage melodramatic gasp and forced her eyes back open, glancing toward the mirror behind the bar. Hooded, hazel eyes met hers and her heart belly flopped, pain smashing through every nerve.

Luke’s chest hurt, but he braced himself against it. Shock wrinkled the line between her brows, the emotion far more brutal to him than a firefight in Kandahar or Kabul. She didn’t turn to look at him. But her reflection in the mirror didn’t soften. The familiar, flirtatious smile fled from the cool, firm line of her lips. Color drained from the face of the woman who shifted on the bar stool. Movement to his right caught his attention. A man approached, intent on her, but meeting Luke’s iron expression, the would-be interloper diverted to another table.

Satisfied, his attention returned to the girl—no, the woman—gazing at him, pain etching the softness of her lips. The memory of her lips got him through Paris Island. He’d thought about them, about her smile, every single, damn day.

“Hello, Luke.” Her voice poured over him like warm honey.

Life doesn’t always offer second chances
….

“May I join you?” He nodded to the stool next to her.

“It’s a free country.” And just like that, she turned her back and the warm honey chilled, hardening over his chest.

“Thank you, ma’am.” He tacked the ma’am on as an afterthought. But the steel wrapped in her velvety voice jabbed his kidneys. Perching on the edge of the stool, he motioned to the bartender. “Two more of whatever the lady is having.”

She watched him from the mirror. Hungriness reflected in the gold flecked, tawny brown eyes, a perfect contrast to the tight jaw and stiff fingers wrapped around her wine glass. She tossed back a third of a glass like a shot of vodka.

A shot of vodka sounded like a great idea. But he needed his wits about him. IEDs laced the battlefield in front of him and patience and procedure and about eighty-five pounds of protective gear weren’t handy. But the trick to survival was to examine what was right in front of him and to react to it. He could do that in the field, he could do that with her. It was what he did best.

After the bartender served the drinks and took his credit card, Luke shifted to sit sideways, intentionally brushing his leg against hers. She didn’t recoil—exactly—but did shift away after a few seconds. Definitely treading in dangerous waters.

“How are you?” Lame, but it beat the first thing that came to mind. Dragging her off the icy perch and kissing her until she became that soft, warm, dewy-eyed girl he remembered wouldn’t go well. He ignored that savage need.

For now.

“I was sorry to hear about your father.” The words brushed over him, smoothing away the long years stretching between them.

“He died exactly as he intended.” Luke had no illusions. Not anymore. His father had been a Marine through and through. After their family loss, he returned to the Corps with a vengeance. He stopped being Dad and simply became Sir. His work in Afghanistan and Iraq saved a lot of lives, but a roadside bomber claimed him. The old man was at peace, hopefully with Luke’s mom and Brianna.

“You didn’t go to the funeral.” Every inflection carefully measured, she cradled the wine glass and avoided looking at him directly, watching via the mirror instead—a distancing technique—the PSYOP guys would love her. The modulated tone and her expression created a cocktail of distance and intimacy that left the listener eager to bridge the empty spaces.

“I was still overseas. I wasn’t aware there was much of a funeral.” Had she gone? Had she gone hoping to see me? He could have returned for the it, but a near miss on a personal assignment left him laid up for six weeks and the doctors wouldn’t let him fly.

“Mrs. Carter hosted a wake, and half of Rockwall attended the funeral.” Irritation crept into her words. “Protestors posted that they planned to demonstrate. Bastards. So the Carters and the Phelps called home everyone who could make it.”

The town showed up to protect his dad. Something heavy shifted off Luke’s heart. Rebecca showed up to protect his dad. The armed forces defended the rights of the people including those protesting. They didn’t like the protestors, but they’d been trained to ignore them and let them exercise their God-given freedoms.

“Thank you.” Her words echoed through him. “Dad would have appreciated it.”

She nodded, clearly done with speaking. The silence stretched taut between them. He considered all the angles. A loss for words was not a familiar handicap.