21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (75 page)

“It was a tour, bunch of people listening so they weren’t that noisy. You know the crazy thing is, Jethro helps.” The dog always seemed to know when he was about to have a nutty and distracted him. It helped that he genuinely liked Jethro, an uncomplicated companion whose only demands included taking him for regular walks and scratching between his ears.

“How did you feel about it?” Apparently he wouldn’t let Matt evade a direct response.

“I didn’t like it. I kept hearing boots on the ground running, but I didn’t—I didn’t taste it in my mouth as much. Bitter, but not sickening. It seemed easier to remind myself it wasn’t real.”

James nodded slowly. “Tell me what happened in Iraq.”

“Again?” Didn't James ever get tired of asking the same questions over and over?

“Yes, again. It will get easier.”

“Soon?” Or was that too much to ask?

“Eventually.” James didn’t sugar coat it and as unwelcome as the news might be, Matt preferred the truth.

Acrid bile coated his throat and Matt swallowed. “It was the middle of the night and I was in my bunk….”

Naomi chewed the end of the pencil and stared at the blank sheet music in front of her. Her producer had called three times that week and she abandoned the cell phone in her borrowed apartment to escape outside with her guitar and her thoughts. None of the songs he sent her were right. Phil accused her of being a diva, and he might be right, but she wanted her debut album to be special—the first songs anyone would hear and they would either discover her or change the station.

Not that people really seemed to listen to radio stations anymore, but they did have Pandora and Spotify and a number of other ways to get music. Her chances of getting attention without a truly outstanding track were slim to none. She would rather miss her studio time entirely than record some half-assed piece of music that sounded like everything else out there.

Doing it well meant doing it right. She didn’t need to wait around for inspiration. Mike’s Place overflowed with powerful, compelling stories beckoning to be told. Sliding the pencil behind her ear, she unlocked the guitar case and set the Gibson in her lap. It took only a few moments to tune it. Stroking her fingertips across the chords, she concentrated on emptying her mind and played.

The music came slowly and she relaxed into it. The sun warmed her face and a light breeze tugged at her hair. Losing herself in the moment was a skill perfected over a lifetime of moves from Marine base to Marine base across the country and around the world. Being alone in her own head provided the sanity check frequent relocations and new situations demanded.

Maybe that’s why she liked Mike’s Place so much—it reminded her of all the bases she’d grown up on, but without reveille and troops of men working out.

Although there is definitely something to be said about a unit working out
…. Humor flooded through her. Her father caught her staring at a particularly green batch doing pushups one day and forbade her to go anywhere near the training fields after that. He didn’t buy that her very healthy interest in members of the opposite sex was natural or that having four older brothers discouraged potential suitors.

The music changed with her mood and took on an upbeat, almost folksy quality and she giggled. Four older brothers had been bad enough, four older Marines made it that much worse. She hadn’t gone on a real date—one that hadn’t included an older brother lurking somewhere in the vicinity—until college. She majored in music and minored in psychology. Somewhere along the way, she dropped the psych and focused on music full time.

Slowing the tempo, she found a particular chord she liked and repeated it three or four times before she wrote it down. The song crystallized and she paused to title the music sheet.

Growing Up Marine

Perfect.

It took another hour to work out all the notes, bridges, and changes. But she had her first song. She’d just shaded in the last note when the sound of a clearing throat interrupted her. A man stood in the shade a few feet away, a beautiful black Labrador sitting patiently at his side.

Oh, God. How long have they been there
?

Undeterred, she grinned. “Hello.”

“Good morning.” Blond hair, high and tight, broad shoulders stretching his Marine green shirt, and dark sweatpants hiding his legs—yeah, everything about him said
Marine
—including the perfect posture despite the respectable tree he could be leaning against. “Sorry for the intrusion.”

“I’m sitting in the middle of a park, basically next to a running trail. Not the best place for privacy if that’s what I was looking for.” She set the guitar aside and rose up on her knees. “Hello, puppy, are you friendly?”

The man chuckled. “He’s very friendly. Go on, Jethro, go say hello.”

The Labrador bounded over. His sun-warmed coat was soft beneath her fingers, and he bestowed a slurping kiss on her cheek before returning to his owner.

“What a great name for a dog—tell me you named him after Mark Harmon’s character—please….”

“Sorry ma’am, wish that I could. But he already had his name when I got him.” He shrugged his shoulders and gave her an apologetic smile. “You’re new here?”

“Well, yes and no. I’m spending a few weeks here as a favor to my brother and—for inspiration.” And maybe, just maybe, that crazy service will come through.

“Inspiration?” He nodded to her guitar.

“Guilty.” Rising, she dusted the grass off of her jeans. Her legs protested after languishing cross-wise for the last little while, but she ignored the pins and needles. “I’m recording an album in a few weeks and I’m putting together a song list.”

“Never really thought about the people who write music—just thought—well—I guess I don’t know what I thought.” A smile warmed his faint grimace. “Sorry.”

“I never knew people wrote them either. I remember listening to all these great songs on the radio when I was a kid and thinking I want to sing like they do. So I would buy their tapes and CDs and practice. I really liked the ones that came with the lyrics. Then I could see the words and sing along. I think I memorized every one and then sometime around third or fourth grade, I’m at this school in Germany, and the teacher told me if I liked music so much I should write my own. I stared at her and was like, ‘you can write music?’”

Laughing, Naomi threw her hands up. “She goes off on this German diatribe and then says, ‘where do you think music comes from silly girl?’ and I have no idea where it would have come from, but after that I wanted to write my own. Drove my father nuts until he agreed to lessons and well—now here I am.”
Babbling like an absolute idiot and this man has a deer in the headlights look. Shut. Up. But, he really has the prettiest blue eyes.

“Is it hard?”

She drew a blank. “Is what hard?”

“Writing music?” He unclipped the dog’s leash and strung it around his neck. Picking up a stick, he threw it and the dog streaked after it.

“Yes. And no. It’s hard to get the notes on the paper the way I hear it in my head. Sometimes I just have to escape away from all distractions, and play until I hear it so clearly I can write it down.”
Wow, you just can’t shut up, can you
? Chewing her lip, she scuffed a shoe against the grass. Jethro trotted over with his stick and presented it proudly. The man took it and threw it again.

“Well, if it helps, I liked what you were playing. It was—nice.”

“Thank you. I’m Naomi Sparks by the way….” She took a couple of steps forward and held out her hand.

He stared at her for a long moment before taking it in his warm, callused, strong grip—and her insides did a little shimmy.

“Matt McCall.”

Matt opened the cabinet and his gaze landed on the locked gun case. Nudging it to the side, he reached behind it for the power strip. After rewiring the television and sound system, he still had to relocate his laptop’s power strip for the job. It took a while to remember if he had a second one and where he stored it. Locking the cabinet and pocketing the keys, he looked around the apartment. Jethro watched him from his claimed corner of the new sofa.

The furniture had trickled in over the last several days. He’d talked to Lauren and James about wanting to make the apartment feel like more than a bunk, so Lauren went shopping. He wasn’t sure about the lamps or why she ordered different shades than the ones they came with, but he followed her orders to exchange them when they arrived.

The fifty-five inch flat screen he’d picked out for himself. Grabbing the laptop off the table, he set everything up on the coffee table. Grabbing a cup of coffee from the kitchen, he carried it to the sofa and turned the game on. The dog yawned, bored with his fussing and curled up to sleep. Grinning, Matt powered up the computer. He hadn’t turned it on in so long, the battery had died.

The little red light warned him he had to keep it plugged into a power source. Sipping the coffee and watching the game, he left the web browser open, but blank. Every day since he’d met Naomi, he took Jethro past the spot in the park—just to see her. Two days in a row and no sign of her.

He should have asked for her number.

But day three, the sound of her guitar floated down the path toward him and he’d quickened his pace. She sat exactly where he’d seen her the first time. Her head down, guitar in her lap, and alternately strumming the strings and slapping her hand against the wood of the instrument to create a rhythm. He motioned Jethro to sit and stood listening to her for several minutes before she chided him for hovering.

Accepting the invitation, he found a spot to sit and listened to her for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, she had to run because of an appointment, and he tried not to examine his disappointment too closely. The next several days followed the same pattern, and she was there…every single day.

He wanted to ask her out.

But every time he thought about it, the words stuck in his throat. So he hung out, she played her guitar and wrote down the mysterious notes on her sheet paper, and he threw sticks for Jethro. His favorite part of the day.

Draining half the coffee, he eyed the computer. Like so many other members of his unit, he signed up for the 1Night Stand service, but kept his profile inactive. He didn’t trust himself alone much less with some random woman. When he’d broached the subject of enlisting Madame Eve’s services with Doc, he received a cautious approval to consider the idea.

Of course, a one-night stand with a stranger is not asking Naomi out on a date
. He leaned away from the computer. One night, no strings, some fun and a trial run to see if he could survive an evening out with her. If he completely tanked it with the stranger, then no harm and no foul.

And if he didn’t screw it up and got laid, would he be able to look Naomi in the eye and ask her out? It seemed strangely disloyal to be even considering the idea.

You met her a few days ago and can’t say more than fifty words to her, so how is it disloyal
? He couldn’t answer his own question. So he continued to stare at the TV screen and let the game distract him again.

At halftime, he pulled Madame Eve’s site up and read through the agreements. He logged into his profile, but after filling in the data, he couldn’t hit enter. His heart rate picked up and his breathing grew shallow. Jethro whimpered and crawled across the sofa and pushed his way into Matt’s lap.

Hugging the dog, he chuckled. “Yeah, maybe not ready for that yet, huh?”

Jethro licked his face and they settled together to watch the game, but he didn’t close the laptop or the browser window.

He really wanted to ask Naomi out on that date.

***

Five songs written and she had a theme. She was scoring an album about Marines. And it had nothing to do with the beautiful blond who ‘happened’ along every time she sat outside composing.
Of course, I’m not going out there every day to see him either
. Unfortunately, steady rainfall trapped her inside for the day. The constant spatter against the window offered an interesting juxtaposition to the song she worked on.

Her cell phone rang and she checked the incoming caller ID. Hitting answer with one finger, she chose the speakerphone option. “Hello, Charlie, you are live with a dedicated audience of one.” She grinned at her own cleverness.

“Bratling, why aren’t you with Mom in Canada?” The second of four brothers, Charlie was the Batman to her Robin.

“Because it’s cold as hell up there, and I didn’t feel like meeting all of Aunt Josie’s eligible, but completely underwhelming, brood of possible dates.” She’d made that mistake right after college. Her mother spent six weeks with her sister every year and for the last four, Josie seemed to have made it her mission to marry Naomi off.

Charlie laughed. “I dunno, I thought the botanist had potential.”

“If I were a butterfly, he would have stuck it to me every day. Other than that, I don’t think he realized I was even alive.” She suppressed a shudder and leaned forward to add a notation to the last bridge of music.

“Nice. Brent said you were in Texas. What’s in Texas?”

“Mike’s Place—the recovery center? I came down to do a report for Congressman Lazy Bones, and it’s pretty damn inspiring. They let me take an apartment for as long as they don’t need it for a real person. I’m trying to score this album. What’s up?”

“You’re really going to do it then? Release an album?”

“No, I’m going to record one. Regina Records is fronting the studio time and a producer so I can record it.” Her stomach erupted with nerves every time she thought about it. Dreaming of getting her songs out there and being heard on the radio had long been reserved for wishful thinking. If her dream actually happened—she had no idea what she would do.

“You’re going to be great, brat, you don’t know how to be anything else.”

Pride flooded her at the encouragement. “Thanks, Charlie. Let me ask you something—”