One Was a Soldier (52 page)

Flynn turned to grin at Hadley, and she smiled ruefully back at him, and there was a moment—it must have been the soaring music or the dizzying smell of the flowers—when her smile ghosted away and she felt like she had a lump in her throat.

Then Reverend Clare’s matron of honor walked past and Genny squealed and Hadley snapped her attention back to the aisle. “Oh, Mommy.” Genny sounded close to swooning. “Reverend Clare looks like a
princess
.” In truth, Reverend Clare’s Christmas and Easter vestments were a lot more elaborate than her unadorned wedding dress. Her wreath of tiny cream and gold flowers was a little crownlike, though, and she did have a train, which upped the princess quotient. As she and her father walked past, Clare grinned and winked at Geneva. The little girl quivered with ecstasy. “And so it starts,” Hadley said under her breath. She could foresee a lot of dress-up games involving tablecloth trains and half-slip veils in her future.

“Dearly beloved,” Reverend Julie McPartlin began, “we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.”

Hadley thought of her own wedding. Las Vegas, during an industry convention. What a cliché. When Dylan asked her, his eyes dark and soulful and a heartbreaker smile on his lips, it had seemed reckless and romantic.

“… therefore, marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately…”

She hadn’t even been sober. They had smoked two joints beforehand and giggled through the whole thing. What did it say about your approach to marriage when you treated the start of it as an ironic joke?

“Into this holy union Russell Howard Van Alstyne and Clare Peyton Fergusson now come to be joined.”

Beside her, Harlene honked into a tissue. Hadley watched as she reached out and grabbed her husband’s hand. Mr. Lendrum was sixty-something and built as if he’d been stitched out of lumpy cotton batting, but Harlene looked at him, for a moment, in exactly the same way Clare Fergusson was looking at Russ Van Alstyne.

Was there some sort of secret everybody but Hadley knew? Or was it that some women had a clear-eyed view of the good guys, while all she had ever been able to see was users and bastards?

Then came the readings and the homily and the prayers and communion and finally it was almost over, thank heavens, because the kids were getting twitchy. The priest delivered a final prayer over the kneeling couple. “Is the chief going to become Episcopalian?” Hadley whispered to Flynn.

“I think he’s going to stay Law-Enforcementarian,” he said under his breath. She snickered.

The choir stood and the organ started up, a soft, rhythmic beat that sounded almost like the beginning of a sixties tune. “Ooo! I know this,” Hudson said. “We’re doing this with the adult choir at Christmas.”

“Tomorrow will be my dancing day,” the choir sang, and Reverend Clare and the chief walked back down the aisle, both of them looking as if they’d been lit up from inside. The music and voices soared, sharp and sweet. On every side of her, people’s eyes were wet, and Harlene was honking, and Flynn turned to Hadley and smiled.

Weddings.
It was like they put some sort of drug in with the flower arrangements.

“Do you think it’ll last?” Hadley said, determined to break the spell.

Flynn looked at her as if she had asked if he thought the sun would rise in the east tomorrow. “Are you kidding?” He leaned in so his breath was warm in her ear. “It’s true love.”

“There’s no such thing.”

He thumbed toward Hudson. “Tell him that.”

Her son was looking up at the choir, his hand keeping the irregular beat. “To call my true love to my dance,” he sang in his piping soprano, “Sing O! my love, O! my love, my love, my love; This I have done for my true love.”

Flynn smiled at her. “Let’s go dance.”

*   *   *

The reception was a blast, despite—or maybe because of—the rich Virginians and the priests. There were other kids there, nieces and nephews and the children of friends, so after they had bolted down some dinner, Hadley let Hudson and Genny join the others playing flashlight tag in the field next to the tents.

The chief and Reverend Clare kicked off the dancing to the old Beach Boys tune “God Only Knows,” and soon the floor was packed with everyone from Mrs. Marshall and Norm Madsen, sedately fox-trotting, to the youngest Ellis boy, popping and locking. Hadley danced with Nathan Andernach, the perpetual bachelor of St. Alban’s, and with Nathan Bougeron, who had left the MKPD before she arrived for a job with the state police, and with a good-looking guy from Maryland who turned out to be a priest, which kind of freaked her out. She danced with Lyle MacAuley, and with Noble Entwhistle, and with Duane Adams, one of the part-time officers.

She didn’t dance with Kevin Flynn. She had thought about it, driving over to the Stuyvesant Inn, and realized all those throat-closing, eyes-meeting moments were based on the fact that he was the only unattached guy remotely her age she saw on a regular basis. But, hey, at a wedding reception? Lots of possibilities. So she smiled at men she didn’t know and said yes to anyone who asked her, and stayed away from Flynn.

After the cake cutting, Granddad announced he was taking Hudson and Genny home. “You stay put and have a good time,” he said, when she protested she should leave, too. “’Tain’t natural for a girl pretty as you to sit home all the time.” He winked. “I’ll leave a light on for ya.”

So she stayed. She danced and chatted and laughed. She congratulated the newlyweds. “Are you Clare Van Alstyne now?” she asked the reverend.

“No, I’m Russ Fergusson,” the chief said.

Reverend Clare elbowed him. “We’re keeping our names just as they are.”

“Good idea,” Dr. Anne said, sipping a drink. “Professional identity and all that. How about you, Hadley? Is Knox your maiden name?”

Hadley shook her head. “No. It was Potts.”

Reverend Clare frowned. “Didn’t your grandfather tell me you changed your first name from Honey to Hadley?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Honey Potts,” the chief said.

“My God, that sounds like a porn star name.” Dr. Anne patted her shoulder. “You poor thing. What were your parents thinking of?”

“I suspect they were stoned when they came up with it,” Hadley said. “When do we get to do the Chicken Dance?”

“Shortly after my mother is dead and buried in the family plot,” Reverend Clare said.

Instead the guests twisted and jived and even swung to some country songs the chief had managed to sneak in past his mother-in-law. Eventually, steaming hot and out of breath, Hadley snuck out for some fresh air.

The open spaces between the inn and the tents were strung with small clear lights, giving a deceptively summerlike look to the autumn landscape. The near-freezing temperature was shocking on her bare skin, but it felt good. She tipped her head back and looked at the bright cold stars, like God’s wedding decorations. A man came out of the dance tent. Long and lean, and for a moment she couldn’t see him clearly. Then he walked toward her, and the soft light fell on his thick red hair, and she said, “Oh. Here you are.”

Here you are.
As if she’d been looking for him, not avoiding him.

Flynn held out a glass. “I thought you might like something cold.”

“I’m driving, so I’m not—”

“It’s ginger ale.”

“Oh.” She took the drink. “Thanks.”

Here you are.

She was parched, she discovered. She drained the glass dry and handed it back to him.

“We haven’t danced yet.” His jacket was gone. He had loosened his tie and rolled his shirtsleeves up.

“No,” she agreed.
No? Real swift.
She must have left her brains inside the tent.

“I figured it was because of the work thing.” He took a step closer to her. “We’re both young, we’re both single, you don’t want people to misinterpret what’s going on.”

That sounded reasonable to her. “That’s right. Nobody ever believes you when you say you’re just friends.”

From the speaker near the tent flap, Bonnie Raitt sang, “People are talking…”

“So let’s dance out here.” He rested the empty glass against the canvas.

“Here?”

He held out his hand. “Okay. A little further away.” Some force not under her conscious control lifted her hand and placed it in his. He walked backward, away from the door, away from the lights, until they were at the edge of the field, outlined in starlight and the glow from the inn.

“Could you be falling for me?” Bonnie sang.

Flynn put his hand at the small of her back and somehow her arms went around his neck and they were swaying together in time to the whisky voice and blues guitar. Dancing with Nathan Bougeron or the cute priest hadn’t felt like this. She tried keeping
younger
and
work
and
bad idea
in the front of her mind, but he was so warm, and he smelled so good, and he was touching her, and all she could think of was the night they had spent together, the way his eyes had closed and he had cried out, turning his face into her shoulder.

Her body was tightening and loosening and she knew at any moment she was going to tip her face up and slide her fingers through his hair and pull him toward her—

Here you are.

—and then they were kissing, his lips soft and dry, sweet and tender, moving lightly over her cupid’s bow, the swell of her lower lip, the corners of her mouth.

“Flynn,” she gasped.

He pulled away slightly. “What?”

“Do you remember when we slept together?”

“Hadley.” He let out a huff that was almost a laugh. “I’d have to be dead to forget that.”

“Let’s do it again.”

He breathed in. He bent to her, kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her temples. “Why?”

Her eyes flew open. “Why?” She stared at him. She knew what she looked like. She wasn’t vain, she was realistic. When she invited men into her bed, they said
Yes
or
I thought you’d never ask
or
Thank you Jesus.
Not
Why?
“Because we were good together, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had sex, and here we both are.”

“Because it’s convenient, you mean?”

She could tell from his voice she had hurt his feelings. “Not just that. I like you. I’m not dating anybody else—I don’t want to date, I don’t do it anymore—” A thought stopped her. “Are you seeing someone?”

“No.” He slid his hands along her jaw and tilted her face toward him. He kissed her again, and this time there was nothing sweet about it. It was hot and hard and deep and wet. Hadley swayed against him, moaning, her knees buckling, her hands digging into his thick hair. If his arm hadn’t been braced across her back, she would have fallen open on the ground right then and there, wedding party be damned.

When he pulled away, they were both heaving for breath. “See?” she said, when she found her voice. “Good. Together.”

“I’m not seeing anyone—” He sucked in air. “Because I want to be with you.”

“You can be with me.” She deliberately misunderstood him. “Take me back to your place.” She ran her hand up his chest. His shirt was damp with sweat.

He turned her around until her back was pressed against his chest. “I want to make love to you,” he said in her ear. She shivered. “I want to go to the movies with you.” He stroked her neck, her collarbone, her shoulders. “I want to take you and your kids skiing.” He pushed her dress and strapless bra out of the way, exposing her to the cold night air. She breathed in sharply. “I want to have you over to meet my parents.” His hands were doing unbearably erotic things to her breasts. “I vant to be,” he said in an exaggerated German accent, “your boyfriend!”

She laughed, one sharp laugh that speared painfully through her. No one had ever tried to seduce her with
Young Frankenstein
before. Kevin Flynn was a dangerous, dangerous man. She stepped away from him, tugging her bodice back into place. She wiped beneath her eyes with her fingertips. Took a deep breath. Turned around. “I’m sorry, Flynn. This is a onetime offer.”

He was very still. Finally, he said, “We are good together, Hadley. As partners. As friends. When we’re with your children. When we’re alone.” He opened his hands. “Why won’t you give us a chance?”

“You’re too young.”

“I’m twenty-six. My dad was married with two kids when he was my age.”

“We work together.”

“So we tell the chief. Get it out in the open.”

“And when we break up? Then what happens? I have to leave the best job in town and what? Waitress? Commute an hour away from my kids every day?” The heat he had roused in her leached away. She twitched with cold.

Flynn bent down and retrieved her shawl from where it had fallen in the frost-touched grass. “Do you start every relationship with an exit plan? Or is it just me?”

She took the shawl and wrapped it around herself. “When I didn’t have an escape plan, I wound up regretting it.”

“Okay, then.
If
we break up, I’ll resign. I could get a job with the staties or in the Albany force, no problem.”

She laughed shortly. “You’re crazy.”

He took a step toward her. “No, I’m not. I’m just not going to assume it won’t work out between us. Hadley—” He reached out, as if he were going to take her in his arms again, then curled his hands into fists instead. “I’m sick of trying to stuff my feelings for you into an acceptable box. I like you. I respect you. I admire you. But I also love you, and it’s killing me to see you every day and not be able to be honest about that.”

“You don’t love me. You just loved the sex.”

“Oh, Jesus, Hadley. Are you even listening to yourself? If all I wanted was a roll in the hay, we’d be headed for my apartment right now.”

She felt brittle, exposed, like the fragile, half-frozen wildflowers around them. “You can’t love me, Kevin. You don’t even know me.”

“I love what I do know.” This time, he did wrap his arms around her. “Let me in, Hadley. Let me see the rest of you.” He kissed her, lightly at first, then deeper, pulling her hard against his body. Oh, God. She wanted him. He was young and strong and ardent and more innocent than she had ever been. She wanted to crawl inside him and forget herself for a while.