One Day in Apple Grove (15 page)

This time, he jumped out of bed and shouted, “IED! Take cover!” As she tried to make sense of what was happening, he threw himself on the floor and cried out, “Bastards, can’t they let me finish sewing this marine back together before they blow us to kingdom come?”

Tears filled her eyes as he went through the motions of stitching an invisible marine back together while a battle raged around him. She had no idea what to do, how to handle the situation. Should she interrupt him? Would he try to tackle her to the ground, thinking she was the enemy?

“Stay, Jamie.” The little dog was terrified by the closeness of the storm outside…and the one in Jack’s bedroom.

When Jack sat back on his heels, she laid a hand on his shoulder and was tossed back against the bed. Such strength seemed superhuman, but what did she know about a person’s actions and reactions while they slept? She wasn’t the medical expert—Jack was.

“God, help me help him,” she prayed. Finally the storm moved farther away and he stumbled back to bed, pulling her into his arms.

When he started to snore, she knew he was safely sleeping—and not dreaming. She slipped out of his arms and his bed and went down to the kitchen. Hands shaking, she brewed strong coffee and waited for her delayed reaction to the violence to pass.

She had no idea how to handle a situation like this.

She poured the coffee when it was finished brewing and the shot of the caffeine hit her empty stomach hard. She ignored it, needing the jolt to shake herself free from the horror Jack seemed to be suffering from.

By the time she finished the coffee, she knew one thing—she was going to help Jack Gannon whether he wanted her to or not. The tricky part would be figuring out how.

One thing was certain—she wasn’t leaving. She was sticking. The sound of the stairs creaking had her looking toward the doorway, unsure of which Jack would be walking into the kitchen—the man she’d come to know or the tortured soul still serving as a navy corpsman.

Steeling herself to face the music and the man she was falling in love with, she turned and waited.

“Caitlin?” He seemed confused and uncertain, and that more than anything went right to her heart. She’d made the right decision.

“What are you doing down here?” Noticing the cup on the table, his gaze flicked up to meet hers. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

“The storm woke me up.” Watching his eyes for a reaction, she dove in head first, saying, “It sounded like something exploded, maybe one of the oak trees off the deck.”

He closed his eyes and he swore. She knew he understood when he asked, “Did I hurt you?”

Odd that that would be the first thing he asked and that he didn’t offer an explanation for what he must know happened. “Not really.”

“Damn it, Caitlin. Don’t play semantics with me. Either I hurt you when I was…dreaming, or I didn’t. It’s a simple question and deserves a simple answer.”

“Fair enough,” she said, rubbing her arms to ward off the sudden chill. “I tried to help when I realized what you were experiencing and you tossed me off like I weighed nothing.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face and walked slowly toward her. “Show me where you hurt,” he rasped. “Let me make it better.”

Her back was sore, but where she truly hurt couldn’t be fixed with a Band-Aid—she ached for the terror and nightmarish demons Jack Gannon carried inside of him. She’d just only discovered the man beneath the white lab coat he wore, but there was so much more that she wanted to know, and if this was part of it, so be it. She needed to show him that she was strong and wouldn’t walk away from him.

When he asked a second time, she placed her hand to her heart and tapped it lightly.

Tears filled his eyes, but he didn’t blink them away. He acknowledged her words and ignored the fact that he stood there with a tear trickling over his cheek and his hands clenched at his sides. “If I’m sleeping deeply and the thunder starts, it happens…”

“What happens?” She really wanted to know, had to know so she could help him.

“I’m there again,” he whispered.

“Iraq?”

“Yes,” he said, taking a hold of her hand, staring down at it. “I’ve been handling it—until tonight.”

“Have you talked to anyone about it?”

He dropped her hand as if it burned him.
Wrong
question.

His eyes changed in a heartbeat. Cold hard blue stared down at her.

Desperate to erase that look, she held out her hand. “Don’t be angry. I want to understand and to help.”

He closed his eyes, drew in one deep breath and then another. When he opened his eyes, it was the Jack she knew and loved. Needing to get him to think about something else, anything, she blurted out, “I love the smell of rain.” He nodded and she continued, “And the smell of fresh-turned dirt.” She knew she had his attention. “I used to beg Mr. McCormack to let me have a turn riding up on the tractor with him when Peggy and I were little.”

His body language told her he was listening. Relieved that the hard, angry edge was gone, she kept talking, “If you plant flowers in the yard it doesn’t have the same smell. Why is that?”

“I’m not sure, but maybe it’s because of what’s been planted in Mr. McCormack’s fields over the years.” He paused to think about it and added, “Whenever my mom roped me in to helping her in her flower gardens, it didn’t smell the same either.”

“Maybe you’re right about what’s been planted in his fields,” she said, considering. “It smells different in the spring than it does in the fall. If I had to describe how spring smells to me, I’d say fresh, clean—hopeful—even the dirt.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I used to spend all winter waiting for it to be over so I could see that first green bud, that first tiny sign that no matter how hard the winter was, spring would surely follow.”

Hope welled up inside of her, like a spring of cool, clear water. “And in the fall, everything smells of decay, as if the ground has used up all of its resources and needs to go to sleep through the winter, so it can begin all over again come spring.”

Going with her gut, she reached for his hand. He stared at it for a moment, as if he weren’t sure he should touch her, but then finally linked fingers with her and let her draw him toward her. When he was close enough to touch, she hooked their joined hands behind her back and laid her head against his chest. The steady beat of his heart reassured her—now it was her turn to reassure him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He wrapped his other arm around her and buried his face in her hair. Standing in the semidarkness of his kitchen, she knew that she would move heaven and earth if she had to. Either way, she was going to help Jack conquer the demons inside of him.

He eased out of her arms and asked, “Is there any coffee left?”

She shook her head, glad that he seemed steadier by the moment. “I didn’t want to waste it, so I only made one cup. I can make more.”

He walked to the back door and stared out the window at the break in the clouds in the predawn sky. The eerie feeling that he wasn’t seeing what lay beyond the door into the woods bothered her, but she wouldn’t bring up the subject again…tonight. She’d have to do some research first. Jack’s peace of mind was far too precious to her to have her fumble and push him over the edge.

It would break him…and kill her.

Pressing the brew button on the coffeemaker, she asked, “Are you hungry?”

He shrugged but didn’t turn around when he answered, “I can always eat.”

“How about if I scramble up some eggs?”

“You don’t have to feed me, Cait.”

“In my house, if one of us was hungry and going to cook, we were taught to offer to make more.”

He grunted. She thought that might be an affirmative male response, but she’d heard her father grunt when he meant no too. Busying herself gathering the eggs and margarine, she asked, “Where do you keep your pots and pans?”

Instead of telling her, he walked over and opened one of the upper cabinets and pulled out a cast-iron frying pan. “I’d never think to keep a heavy pan like that up high.”

He seemed surprised. “Why?”

She smiled. “Because it’s heavy.” She heard the click of the coffeemaker as it shut off and got another mug out, filling it with coffee. “Why does that first cup always smell so good?”

Jamie lifted his head at that comment and thumped his tail on the floor. “I’d forgotten you’d followed me downstairs. Are you hungry, sweetie?” Looking around for his chow and not finding it, she finally had to ask, “Where do you keep the dog food?”

He grumbled something about people who talk too much in the middle of the night and went to a door she assumed went to the cellar. It was a walk-in pantry.

She walked over to get a good look. “Nice.”

He didn’t answer her as he scooped up chow and dumped it in the bowl he also stored in the pantry. Jamie was doing his little
feed
me
now
dance
waiting for Jack to set the bowl on the floor.

She picked up his water dish and filled that too before going back to the cabinets and opening and closing them searching for a bowl.

“What now?” he grumbled.

She looked over her shoulder and kept her tone cheerful. “I’ve got it,” she said, finding a cereal bowl to whisk the eggs in. Next she rummaged in the drawers until she found a fork. Heating the pan on the gas stove top, she was about to add a good-sized pat of margarine when he set his cup back down—from the sound of it, empty this time—and joined her at the stove. “As long as you’re making eggs, why not fry up some bacon or sausage first?”

The warmth of his body so close to her back had a shiver working its way up her spine.

“Cold?”

She wasn’t sure if telling him that every time he got close to her she had the uncontrollable urge to shiver would add to the tension still evident in the way he held his shoulders, or if it would ease it. “I just get the shivers sometimes…Pop always said it’s like someone walking over your grave.”

Damn.
Probably the wrong thing to say too. “Got that bacon ready for me?” she asked, hoping to get him moving. He finally stepped back and walked over to the fridge. The Gannon kitchen was bigger than her family’s, but it didn’t feel as cozy. She’d noticed the lack of homey touches the night they’d rescued Jamie. Was it a guy thing or because he’d only recently moved back home, or was something deeper, tied to his nightmares of Iraq?

Keeping her thoughts positive, she reasoned that not everyone liked the same things. She took the package of bacon from Jack and laid thick slices of it in the pan and made a face. She hated thick-sliced meat.
Oh
well…all the more for Jack.

Once Jamie finished his bowl of chow, he started to tease Jack, poking him in the knees, nipping his bare feet until Jack got down on the floor with him. With the dog in his arms, she realized they shared more than a love of Mr. McCormack’s fields in the spring—they had Jamie and were sliding toward love themselves.

“I’ve asked Pop for a dog every Christmas since as far back as I can remember.” Flipping the bacon, she looked over her shoulder at the two now wrestling on the floor, the auburn hair of the man a stark contrast against the black puppy fur.

“It’s hard for a kid to understand what allergic means.”

“And when you did?” Jack asked, pausing with the pup in a half nelson.

She laughed at the two of them and pulled out the first slices of bacon to drain on the paper towel–lined plate. “I’m sorry to say I wasn’t always a nice kid. I asked him if Gracie could move in with our grandparents.”

His deep chuckle was music to her ears. Feeling that they were back on track and he was acting like the man she’d come to know, she transferred more bacon to the plate, humming a song that popped into her head, one that took her back to her childhood.

Jack slowly got to his feet and she wondered if it hurt his leg to sit on the floor like that. She was about to ask when he pulled her back against him, swept the hair off her neck, and pressed his warm, firm lips against the pulse beating there.

Through a haze of desire, she heard the fork clattering to the floor. Suppressed need rushed through her. She’d wanted to wrap him in her arms from the moment he’d wakened her, shouting. If she didn’t kiss him right this moment, she’d go quietly insane. “Jack,” she whispered, spinning in his arms and wrapping hers around his waist.

When his gaze met hers, she knew he wanted what she wanted. Lifting up on her toes, she brushed her mouth across his. He grabbed her upper arms and held her there while he kissed her until her head spun.

This
, she thought, as he crushed her to him.
This
is
what
we
both
feel…need…want
. “I’m not going to change my mind, Jack.” The need to tell him she loved him filled her, but would he believe her if she told him now, or would he think she was saying it because she felt sorry for him? She should wait to tell him…tomorrow, when the terror of the night was forgotten.

***

The overwhelming need to put his fist through the glass window of his back door left him as he took the comfort Cait offered every time she lifted her lips to him. Every subtle movement of her body as she stood at his stove, making him breakfast, tightened one of the knots he desperately needed retied to keep his past where it had to be—buried deep where no one could find it. He was afraid of what might happen if he let everything he’d felt that day resurface. The storm had lifted the lid and a part of that shattered man emerged. But he’d shoved those doubts and feelings of guilt and inadequacy back and secured that lid.

The imagery had been working since the doctor had first explained what was happening to Jack. For the last year and a half, he’d been able to function normally, without fear that the lid would blow off and all of the anger, fear, and self-recrimination would seep over the sides and spill into the life he’d planned to carve out for himself in Apple Grove.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” he lied. He wanted Cait in his life so badly; he prayed she wouldn’t leave, desperate to keep a part of her goodness in his life. But he didn’t deserve happiness. How could he, when the marine he’d fought to save had died and they’d given Jack a fucking medal for his bravery under fire?

Cait pushed out of his arms and from the look on her face, her feelings had been injured. “If you don’t want me here, I can go home,” she told him. “But I made a promise to you and to Jamie,” she bit out. “I’ll still take care of him while you are at work unless and until you make other arrangements.”

“Caitlin.”

With her chin lifted and fire in her eyes, he knew he’d never love another woman they way he loved her.
Love?
Yeah, love, you idiot.
Why else would he let her into his life when he’d pushed so many others away? She was the first woman he’d wanted in his home and in his bed—where the danger of a thunderstorm could expose who and what he truly was.

He loved her. But if he told her now, would she believe him? Needing the physical contact to soothe the emotions rocketing around inside him, he reached for her. This time, she let him pull her back into his arms. His heart shouted, “I love you,” while he murmured, “Please don’t go.”

Some of the rigid tension left her as she reacted to his plea. Finally, she said, “I’m hungry.”

He let her go, but from the jerky movements, he knew she was still upset. He hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. But if he apologized, would she want to talk about it?
Women
always
want
to
talk
about
it.

“I don’t.”
Jesus, had he said that out loud?

Judging from the expression on her face, he had. The tone of her voice confirmed it. “Why don’t you put on more coffee while I make toast?”

Sensing that she needed time to mull things over, he did as she asked without speaking. By the time he’d poured more coffee and she had set a plate heaped with fluffy eggs, bacon, and toast in front of him, he realized she wasn’t like other women. He got up and held out her chair when she placed a second plate on the table…with the same amount of food on it.

The laugh surprised them both.

“What’s so funny?”

“You really are hungry.”

“I told you I was,” she grumbled, and sat down, letting him guide her chair closer.

They ate and sipped coffee while the remnants of the storm petered out and the tension swirling around them dissipated.

When he sat back, replete, she finally spoke. “I love the way the air smells like it’s been scrubbed clean after a storm.”

“It should worry me that you and I think so much alike.”

She paused with her mug halfway to her lips. “Why?”

He wanted to be honest with her about everything—everything but the part of him no one was allowed to know about. “I’m not sure.”

“Well now,” she told him, “that thought’s nearly feminine.”

He snickered into his mug, appreciating her humor almost as much as her capacity to care about a broken-down former corpsman like himself.

“There are any number of men who’d have taken offense at that comparison.”

His gaze met hers. “I’m not like other men.”

She slowly smiled. “That’s why I’m not ready to let you chase me away, Jack.” She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers, giving it a quick squeeze before letting go. “If I wanted to be with someone predictable, I would be. I want to be with someone who gets me, who understands my need to drive out past McCormack’s on a soft spring night just so I can smell the field he’s spent the day plowing.”

“You like dogs.”

Her smile broadened. “The more rascally, the better,” she told him. “But I also like chickens, horses, cows, and peeper frogs.”

He laughed, a full belly laugh this time. “You’re quite a woman, Ms. Mulcahy,” he said, rising to his feet.

“That’s what my dad tells me.”

“He’s right.” Jack held his hand out to her, palm up, waiting for her to put her trust and her hand in his. “How do you feel about turtles and snakes?”

“Box or painter turtles, yes. Snapping turtles, no—long story. It involves a gorgeous fish I’d just caught and the big old snapper that lives in the lake.”

“Understandable. Snapping turtles get greedy sometimes.”

“My dad still doesn’t believe that I caught such a big largemouth bass, even though Peggy swears it was.”

He grinned. “Ah, the one that got away with an imaginative twist.”

She was laughing with him. “I see your point, but still…”

“What about snakes?”

“You were serious?” she asked. “I thought you were trying to get a rise out of me. Who the heck likes snakes?”

“I do.”

She was silent for so long he thought it might be a deal breaker, until she asked, “Do you like them outside or in the house?”

Hugging her close, he told her, “Outside.”

“That’s all right then,” she said, tilting her head back to look up at him. “Now inside”—she let her words trail off as she brushed the tips of her fingers back and forth over his bottom lip—“would have been a deal breaker for me.”

“You’re a keeper, Cait.”

“I’m so glad you’re not tossing me back.”

He covered her mouth with his and savored the taste of her. “Mmm…” he said at last. “Bacon-flavored woman…my favorite.”

When Jamie yipped to get their attention and be let outside, Jack kept his arm around her, steering her out the door and onto the deck. Easing her back against him, he held on to her as the clouds slowly brightened and the early birds started to sing.

“Don’t give up on me, Caitlin.”

“Not a chance, Jack.”

Jamie ambled up onto the deck and jumped at the back door. “I guess he’s finished.”

“We still have an hour or so before I need to get a cleaned up. Will you come with me?”

She didn’t hesitate, following him inside. “Where?”

“I need to grab a blanket.”

“What for?”

“You’ll see,” he told her, pleased that she wanted to go with him. A few minutes later, he returned, found Jamie’s leash, and clipped it on him. “If you take him,” he said, “I’ll carry the rest.”

“Where to?”

“There’s a knoll on the edge of the property that’s higher than the rest. There’s a break in the trees perfect for—”

“Watching the sunrise,” she finished for him. “I’d love to.”

The grassy rise between a wide break in the tall pines was perfect. He laid the blanket on the ground. Even though it wasn’t as wet as he’d feared, it was damp enough that he was worried Cait’d be uncomfortable. He should have known better; she never complained. Sitting beside him with the dog on her lap, he figured she was just about perfect. Watching the sun paint the sky with reds and oranges that faded to yellow with Cait at his side, the remnants of fear tangled up in his gut finally dissipated.