Long Road Home (26 page)

“That’s true.”

“Do you have any lingering problems from that?”

Sawyer had two choices. He could tell the truth to a woman who wouldn’t begin to understand what he and his unit had been through. Who might not realize that no one could experience war on any level and not return home changed in some way. Or have nightmares. Which he figured the majority of civilians occasionally suffered and he’d never heard of them having to defend themselves.

Or he could lie. Not for himself but for Jack and Sophie. And Austin, whom he didn’t want to be forced to handle this guardianship deal on her own.

He folded his arms. Met the social worker’s stern gaze. “None at all.”

She nodded. “Fine. I believe we’re done here. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Have a good rest of your Sunday.”

“You, too, Ms. Grimsley.” He shook the hand she’d extended, then stood in the doorway, watching her climb into a car as gray as her personality and drive away.

Then he went back into the kitchen, popped the top on that beer she’d interrupted, turned on the TV, and channel surfed until he landed on a Giants home baseball game just as Williamson splashed a homer into McCovey Cove with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth. Which, short of a miracle, pretty much put the already-five-runs-behind Braves out of the game.

“Now what?”

He could go over to Rachel and Coop’s. But the truth was that he was exhausted from the past two days. He’d humped his butt all over some of the most dangerous, godforsaken places on earth. He’d gone as many as thirty-six hours without sleep, many times needing to stay alert enough to fight off the bad guys. During SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training, he’d suffered six long winter days in the wettest, darkest, location on the continent: Washington’s Olympic National Park rainforest.

Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this parent gig, he thought, not for the first time, as he went and got another beer from the fridge and grabbed the cardboard six-pack to save walking back and forth. Fortunately, he and Austin hadn’t discussed marriage. Which, under any other circumstances, would probably be a given. But as much as he wanted her, and he did, with every atom of his being, neither did he want to screw this up.

So, for now, until he discovered whether he could live up to what would be required of him—not just short term, like this damned depressing funeral gig, but forever—as he unscrewed another beer top and began channel-surfing again, Sawyer decided it’d be better for everyone involved if they just took things one day at a time.

30

A
S MUCH AS
she would’ve liked to be with Sawyer, Austin couldn’t deny that having Lexi back in River’s Bend lifted her spirits. It was like being back in high school, where they stayed up all night and talked about boys. The only difference was that this time the boys were men, and although Austin didn’t want to be judgmental, she thought Sawyer topped Lexi’s lounge singer by a mile on the hot boyfriend scale. She had to admit, after listening to the mix tape, that he had a nice voice, though she’d bet he didn’t look nearly as good in a pair of Wranglers.

Not that she was superficial enough to judge a male solely by his body. But when a man had a body like Sawyer Murphy’s, well . . .

She’d gotten the call from a Ms. Grimsley at precisely eight this morning. The only reason she knew the exact time was that the county social worker had told her that she’d be at the ranch at “precisely” ten. Despite both Tom and Heather listing her as Jack and Sophie’s guardian in their wills, despite Colton Kane’s recommendation to the court, despite her long relationship with the children, and her reputation for being a good and honest person who’d never even gotten a jaywalking ticket (not that Cooper would ever ticket anyone for that), as she watched the hands of the kitchen rooster clock slowly tick off the minutes, her nerves became more and more tangled.

“Go over to Sawyer’s cabin,” Lexi said finally. “Work off some of that energy before you drive us all crazy.”

“Lexi!” She tilted her head toward the marble slab part of the counter, where Winema was rolling out dough for bread. The house was run on a schedule, and Mondays had always been bread baking day.

“Don’t mind me,” the housekeeper said. “Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I don’t remember having sex. And I vote for a roll in the hay.” She punched the ball of dough down with her fist. “So to speak. Truth be told, hay is a lot pricklier than it’s portrayed to be in all those cowboy romance novels Jenna sells at her store.”

“Damn. There goes one item off my bucket list,” Lexi said.

“I may go over there,” Austin said. “But to hear how his visit with Ms. Grimsley went.” When the woman had mentioned visiting him yesterday evening, Austin had thought it strange that he hadn’t called, or at least texted her about it.

“Go,” Lexi said. “Don’t worry about me. If you don’t think Buck would mind me borrowing his truck, I’ll drive into town and see what’s changed.”

“He’d be fine with that.” Thanks to Layla, her father was practicing riding around the place in his new cruiser, which was as good off-road as advertised. Watching him out the window, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him doing donuts in the corral soon. “Would you mind running an errand for me?” An idea had occurred to Austin during the night. One she thought Sophie would enjoy.

“Sure.”

When she heard what the errand entailed, she grinned. “That is so cool. She’ll love it.”

Austin certainly hoped so. One thing she didn’t want to do was give the girl another reason to cry on what would have to be the worst day of Sophie’s young life.

*

W
HAT THE HELL
was it with people showing up all the time? The pounding on the door echoed that in his head as Sawyer pushed himself off the couch and staggered to his feet. The TV was still on, some perky blond’s voice stabbing like an ice pick into his brain.

“Coming.” He dragged himself over to the door, and
damn
. Feeling like he’d stumbled into Groundhog’s Day, there was Austin on his porch, looking pert and pretty and smelling like those piña coladas again.

“Hey.” The morning sun had turned into a blazing fireball that was scorching his eyes. He blinked and felt sandpaper behind his lids.

The smile on her face turned upside down as she gave him a hard look he wasn’t used to seeing from her. “You look like death warmed over.”

“Now there’s a coincidence,” he drawled, bracing one hand against the doorframe. “Because that’s pretty much how I feel.”

“I can’t believe you’d do this, Sawyer Murphy.” Energy, and not the good kind, radiated from her as she pushed past him into the cabin as if she owned the place. Which, matter of fact, she did. She took in the bag of chips, the empty beer bottles, and when had he gotten that Jack Daniels out, anyway? “Not now. Not today of all days.”

He dragged a hand over his hair. Ran his fuzzy tongue inside his mouth, which felt as if it had sucked up algae from a hundred-gallon stock tank. “I haven’t done anything today.” Not even peed. Or showered, which he really needed to do because even he could smell the alcohol oozing out of his pores.

“Why don’t you, uh, you know . . . sit down . . . and I’ll, uh, be back in a few.” And with that brilliant display of intelligence, after nearly tipping over when he waved an arm toward one of the leather chairs, he staggered—okay, escaped—out of the room.

Putting his hands on the edge of the counter, he leaned over the sink, squinting against the light at his face in the mirror. His eyes were as red-veined as a Modoc County roadmap and his face was the color of cement.

After taking care of ridding his body of some of the beer and whiskey he’d drunk last night and scrubbing the fuzz off his teeth and tongue, he ran some water into his hands and swallowed three vitamin Ms, which was military-speak for Motrin.

Next he took off his shirt, then, biting back a moan as his head threatened to explode, bent down and shoved his jeans down his legs. Fortunately, sometime between the baseball game and the chatty morning TV blond, he’d taken off his boots. Next he gingerly lowered himself to the closed lid of the commode, managed to pull off his socks with only the faintest of groans, then turned on the water, which—thank you God and Brody Ames for installing the on-demand water heater—took seconds to warm up to steaming.

Climbing into that tall lion-footed red tub was a lot trickier than it had been with Austin, but thankfully he managed the maneuver without breaking his neck. Turning the hand shower spray to pulsing massage to hopefully beat the toxins out of his aching body, he couldn’t help wondering if Austin would even be there when he came back out. Which might not be a good thing since he wasn’t sure he was in good enough shape to walk into a human hornets’ nest.

After deciding that trying to shave might risk slitting his throat, he braved leaving the bathroom. The bottles and chip bag were gone from the table, the couch cushions straightened. Following the rich aroma of coffee coming from the kitchen, he found Austin standing at the stove, a frying pan in her hand.

“You don’t have to cook me breakfast,” he said as his stomach roiled at the thought of food.

“Don’t flatter yourself thinking I’m doing it for you.” She pulled out a carton of eggs and some butter from the fridge. He thought she might have arched a brow at the salad stuff, but his vision was still a bit blurry and he couldn’t be certain. “I need you in good shape for the children today. The eggs are full of amino acid that will prevent liver damage and help with that headache. Fortunately, you have spinach, which is, by the way, a big surprise, which provides potassium, which will help restore your electrolytes, and some toast will raise your blood sugar.”

She ran a glass of water from the tap. “Drink this to start rehydrating. Then you can have your coffee.”

He gulped the water like a guy who’d been crawling across some Middle East desert for a month, then curled his fingers around the mug she held out to him and breathed in the fragrant steam. “I think,” he decided, “I just may live.”

“You don’t have any choice.” She waved a spatula she’d found somewhere in a drawer at him. “You have responsibilities.”

The coffee scorched whatever fuzz might be left on his tongue, but as he felt the caffeine hit his dehydrated brain, Sawyer didn’t care. “Anyone ever tell you that you can be a little bossy from time to time?” He took another drink.

“They have. And I’m proud of it. Now sit down and tell me about this Ms. Grimsley. I’m meeting with her for a home inspection at precisely ten this morning, and I need to know everything.” She suddenly paled. “Please tell me you weren’t drunk when she showed up last evening.”

“I swear.” He lifted his right hand. “I hadn’t had a thing to drink.” He didn’t see any point in adding that if the social worker had arrived three minutes later, he would’ve been caught with a beer in hand. But since prohibition had been repealed a very long time ago, that wouldn’t have been a crime.

“Okay.” She began whipping the eggs in a bowl while throwing some spinach leaves into the pan. Where they immediately began to shrivel up, but since she seemed to know what she was doing, he just drank his coffee and watched the show. “So, what’s she like?”

“Like a Dickens character.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him after putting the bread in the toaster. “Dickens wrote a lot of characters. Which one?”

“I’m talking about the name thing. She’s well named because she’s really grim.”

“Oh, dandy.” She poured the eggs onto the spinach. “What did she do?”

“She checked out all the rooms. She seemed surprised the bedrooms had been set up for the kids.”

“Surprised in a good way?”

“Well, as good as she could show, I guess. She asked if I’d bought the stuff, and I said that, no, we’d had help. Then she made a crack about it taking a village. Which kind of pissed me off, so I told her, politely, that you and I had lost our mothers, but we’d had a lot of support from people, so we’d never felt deprived or alone.”

“That’s a good comeback.”

“Thank you.” He was relieved to have done something right and hoped that meant that she might let him off the hook when it came to the drinking thing.

“Then she checked out the fridge and cupboards.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. I actually seemed to get a point for having veggies.”

“You do with me, too,” she admitted. “What else?”

“It looked like she was all done. She doesn’t give any real feedback for what she keeps writing on that damn clipboard of hers, so don’t let it make you nervous. I think it’s partly a power play on her part.” Sawyer had dealt with enough officers who got off on control games that he’d recognized the behavior right off.

“You said it looked like she was done.” She put the spinach eggs on a plate, spread butter on the toast, and put it with a fork and napkin in front of him. “But she wasn’t?”

“No.” He began shoveling it down. Hot damn, it was good. “She acted like she thought of something on the way out, but I’m pretty sure she’s just streamed too many old episodes of
Columbo
because it sure seemed like a setup to me.”

“What did she ask?”

“About my war stuff.” He talked around the bite of buttered toast he’d just taken. “And whether I had any PTSD issues.”

She’d paused in wiping crumbs off the counter. From the way her shoulders had tensed, he knew she’d caught the significance of that question, too. “And?” she asked with what he could tell was forced casualness. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her no.”

“Which isn’t exactly the truth.”

“No,” he admitted. He polished off the veggie eggs, then put down the coffee and went over and drew her into his arms. “You, your dad, and my family know I have issues. Hell, everyone who comes home has to have some problems. But I swear, I won’t let them get in the way of the kids’ happiness.”

“But last night—”

“Was an anomaly. It won’t happen again.”

She pulled away from his light embrace. Sat down at the table. Knowing they were going to have to talk about it, he decided to move the venue.