A Hero to Come Home To (26 page)

The Princess of I Hate You had created her last disturbance.

“I wrote the letter.”

Dane felt the instant Carly’s gaze moved from the tomato plants she was inspecting to his face, though he didn’t meet her gaze. He pretended not to notice, more comfortable with looking at the pots filled with bell pepper plants instead.

After a moment, she went back to the tomato plants. “Good.” Then…“Did you mail it?”

“I did. This morning on my way to your house.”

“Good.” She picked up a large Better Girl tomato plant, started in a greenhouse and already loaded with tiny fruit, and added it to the ones already in the cart.

They were two aisles over, looking at cucumber plants, when he went on. “I just mentioned the good things about him. How he took care of everyone. How he was responsible. How he missed his kids so much. But I kept wondering if they’d think, ‘If he missed us so much, why didn’t he come home sooner?’”

“They might,” she agreed. “They’re too young to understand that sense of duty.”

He nodded as she bypassed a spindly plant for another greenhouse start, one with a few yellow blossoms already formed. “I also found all the pictures I had of him and printed those out to go with it.”

“They’ll appreciate it. I know Mia and Pop and I did.” She looked over the plants in her cart, then smiled. “Time to get down to the real shopping.”

“What? Tomatoes, cukes, and peppers aren’t real?”

“These are for just one small bed. I need flowers. Lots of them.” Grinning, she led the way to the other side of the nursery.

Also grinning, he followed. When she’d told him the margarita club had an out-of-town birthday dinner tonight, his first thought had been that this would be the first Saturday in five weeks that they hadn’t spent at least part of together. Then she’d invited him to lunch and the nursery, and he’d been happy to accept. Better than not seeing her at all, right?

The thought made him feel about twenty. It had been so long since he’d cared whether he spent time with any particular woman. Even in the last few years of his marriage, time together was a given, not a gift.

Time with Carly was definitely a gift. She made him feel normal and satisfied and hopeful. Little things, but, as Ed’s death had pointed out, so necessary when you’d already lost so much.

He’d sent flowers to the service, too, taking the advice of the clerk at Pansy’s Posies on what to send. The message on the card had been lame—
Sorry for your loss
—but hopefully the letter would make up for it.

“Do you know how to do any wiring or plumbing?”

He brought his attention back to Carly, motionless for the moment, surrounded by water fountains. “I do. I look in the Yellow Pages under
Plumbers
and
Electricians
. I’m very good at dialing numbers and scheduling appointments.”

She laughed. “Ah, a man who thinks the way I do. I like that. Jeff considered calling a professional an affront to his manhood.”

That quickly his good mood dissolved. He managed to mumble, “My manhood doesn’t reside in my ability to fix things I know nothing about.” But heat was rushing through him to the accompaniment of his snide inner voice smirking,
No, it resides in your missing leg. The blast and the amputations missed the vital organs by a good nine inches, but you can’t tell it by the way you act.

He should have told her already. It wasn’t fair to lead her on, not letting her know right up front that he was damaged goods. He’d had no right to pursue her—and that was exactly what he’d done, whether he admitted it—no right to kiss her or do anything else with her until she knew what she was signing on for.

He excused his silence:
The time’s never been right.

To which he could hear everyone else—Justin, the cadre, her friends—saying,
So make it right.

And he would. As both Justin and First Sergeant Chen had pointed out, they couldn’t
do it
without her noticing. And he really wanted to
do it
with her. Just as soon as he found the courage to tell her.

If it didn’t matter to her.

If she still wanted to bother with him.

It was scary how much he wanted her to bother.

She picked enough flowers to fill one flat cart, then sent him back to the entrance to get another. He didn’t recognize most of them, but the colors were like a bright pop of sunshine in the middle of a black night: orange, yellow, red, hot pink, white, purple, blue. By the middle of June, her yard was going to look like the lushest of oases on the Oklahoma prairie, and he had a deep need to see it for himself. To see it this June, next June, and ten Junes later.

After she’d paid the bill and they’d loaded the miniature Eden into the back of his truck, they stopped at Subway for a couple of sandwiches to go, then went home. Just carrying most of the flats and pots from the driveway to the backyard was enough to make his leg twinge. He wasn’t sure how well he would endure the bending and kneeling that came with planting, but he damn well intended to try. To show her that he could do anything a whole man could do—almost. That he might be missing a leg but he tried harder.

The reasons made him uncomfortable. They didn’t sound like a guy who was making progress at accepting the changes in his life.

While he moved the last of the flowers she’d designated for the backyard —there were still a half dozen flats plus pots for the front—she pulled two lawn chairs to flank a small iron-and-stone table where she set out their lunch and cold drinks.

“It’s a perfect day, isn’t it?” she asked after they’d made a good start on their food.

There was that word again:
perfect
. Still, he forced himself to look before responding at the sky, deep blue with hazy clouds drifting slowly. The temperature was in the mid-seventies, a light breeze was blowing from the northwest, and the air smelled clean, fresh, fragrant with mown grass and new green. As weather went, yeah, it was just about perfect.

“If you want to watch TV while I plant, you can go inside, or you can bring my laptop out if there’s anything you want to do online.”

He frowned at her. “I came to help you.” Well, to see her. To spend time with her. But planting was third on his list of reasons for being there.

She looked pleased. “Trailing after me at the nursery was the best I could expect from Jeff. He hated even the idea of getting down and dirty with flowers.”

Dane forced a smile, but Lord, it was hard. “I’m not Jeff,” he pointed out.

He half expected a flash of sadness to cross her hazel eyes, but it didn’t happen. “No, Dane,” she replied. “You’re not.”

And he would have sworn, with her sweet, warm, perfect smile, that the fact didn’t disappoint her in the least.

There were twelve for dinner, so Carly rode with Therese and Ilena, plus two of their semiregulars, Bennie Ford and Leah Black. Conversation never lagged on the drive, though she was fairly certain the others were a tad more boisterous in Marti’s Suburban.

“If this were school, they’d be the naughty girls,” Ilena said, “while we’d be the good ones.”

“They’re probably discussing sex as we speak,” Leah agreed.

“Not that we’re boring,” Bennie said. “At least five men in the world appreciated good girls.”

There was a sigh from the backseat at that, and Carly joined in. Therese didn’t. She’d hardly spoken since they’d met at The Three Amigos parking lot, other than saying hello and smiling a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. More trouble with the Bitter Princess and her faithful follower?

At Highway 97, their little caravan turned south. In the parking lot, Marti had debated taking the freeway into Tulsa, then traveling south, but had decided to save a few miles and get a more scenic drive. They drove through part of Sand Springs, then reached Sapulpa, a small town located on Route 66 whose business district, with its two- and three-story buildings and large murals painted on the walls, reminded her of Tallgrass.

A few miles south of Sapulpa, they reached Kiefer, then turned east. Soon they were parking in front of KariOkie in a small strip center. “I hope they can seat us all together,” Leah said as she got out and stretched her legs.

“I called ahead,” Lucy said. “I didn’t want to have to rearrange the dining room without permission.”

Jessy fisted one hand on her hip. “Hey, we had a reservation at that place, and they weren’t going to put us together. When Fia and I started moving tables, they got their butts in gear and managed to seat us where they should have in the beginning.”

As the others started across the parking lot, Carly linked arms with Therese. “Dane’s right. Life’s never dull with these guys.”

“Sometimes I wouldn’t mind a little dull,” Therese murmured with a grimace.

“What’s up, sweetie? The kids stirring things up at home?”

The grimace deepened, and she raised one hand to her face. “Kids? Oh, you mean the sullen boy and the self-absorbed brat?”

The response so startled Carly that she tripped over the curb and grabbed Bennie’s shoulder to catch herself. “Sorry.”

“Any time, doll.” Bennie pulled her up for a hug, not releasing her until they’d filled the small lobby. “I wish I could make it to these things more often. I miss you guys so much.”

Bennie was a nurse’s aide at a local hospital while attending nursing school part-time and taking care of her elderly grandmother, who’d raised her. Tuesday nights were class nights most weeks, but she joined them when she could.

“We miss you, too. But you’ll be graduating before long, and we’ll all be there to cheer you on.”

Bennie pulled a long face. “Before long? Doll, I’ve got another eighteen months to go. I’m gonna dance across that stage.”

Eighteen months could be an eternity…or the blink of an eye. Bennie knew that better than most. It had been eighteen months ago that J’myel died in combat, eighteen months before that when they’d gotten married.

“We’ll form a conga line with you,” Jessy offered. To demonstrate her willingness, when the waitress led the way to their tables, she hooked her hands on Bennie’s waist and danced, with Fia and Lucy joining in.

Carly fell back beside Therese again, snagging the two chairs at the end for them. If the others got noisily distracted—no bookie would offer odds against that—she wanted to probe a bit more. She hated seeing her friend look so…defeated. Down and depressed—any of them could handle that in their sleep. But defeat…that was just scary.

They’d hardly gotten settled when music started and a young man with a microphone stepped onto the stage and started singing a country tune. “Boots, jeans, and a belt buckle as big as my head.” Halfway down the long table, Fia swooned. “I love Oklahoma.”

“And a voice better than most that come out of Nashville. Happy birthday to me!” Lucy clapped delightedly.

They ordered iced teas and lemonades, laughed and talked, ordered meals and laughed and talked more. At least, all of them but Therese. She was morose—trying to hide it, but failing. Carly didn’t have a chance to talk to her until they’d eaten, enjoyed a half dozen songs from other diners, and three of their own—Fia, Jessy, and Marti—were approaching the stage for their own performance. She leaned close and whispered, “Is Abby pregnant? Did she start a live website where she talks to pervs in her underwear? Did she pierce her girl bits?”

Therese didn’t smile at any of her suggestions. As the opening bars of Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” started, she shifted her grim gaze to Carly. “She slapped me.”

“Oh.” A knot formed in Carly’s gut, pushing her back into her seat.
No.
That was wrong on so many levels. Thirteen-year-old girls just didn’t get to turn violent with their parents, no matter how unhappy or bratty they were. It simply wasn’t allowed.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, then fiercely added, “I hope you smacked her into next week.”

Therese’s voice was an unemotional drone. “You can’t respond to violence with violence. It’s a lose-lose situation.”

Carly snorted. “I beg to disagree. ‘Walk softly but carry a big stick.’ Remember that from history class? Some things can’t be tolerated, Therese, and that child getting physical with you is at the top of the list. How dare she touch you?”

Therese stared at the stage, where their friends were belting out the song on key and with practiced moves. Had they choreographed it in anticipation of tonight, or did it come naturally to them? Carly wondered vaguely while waiting for a response.

The song ended to rousing applause and great bows and waves from the singers. In the moments while the next scheduled act moved to the stage, Therese finally whispered, “I’ve tried, Carly. I’ve tried so hard. She’s Paul’s daughter, his baby, and I promised him I would take care of her and Jacob, but I can’t do it anymore. I don’t care anymore. I’m miserable and stressed out and sick of it all. I’ve survived deployments and Paul’s death and I’ve managed to live nearly three years without him, but this child has forced me to give up. I surrender. I’m done.”

“Oh, Therese,” Ilena said with a small gasp, and Carly realized the others nearby were straining to listen in.

“What did the snot do?” Jessy demanded, still standing after her triumphant performance. Her stance was aggressive, her jaw jutted forward. If Abby were present, just one look from those angry green eyes would be enough to scare her straight, at least for a while.

Therese’s face flamed. “Guys, I’m sorry. Let’s not discuss this. It’s Lucy’s birthday. We’re here to have fun with her.”

Lucy came to the end of the table to hug her. “Honey, don’t worry about me. I’ve had a great time. I’m just thrilled to be with all of you. It doesn’t matter what we do. It’s all important.
You’re
important. We take care of each other, right?”

“Go on,” Marti encouraged, and Therese sighed, then related the incident in low tones. Eleven stunned faces stared at her when she was done, all with varying degrees of other emotion.

Therese ducked her head, shielding her face with her hands. “You all told me I was being too lenient with her—”