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Except the patronizing look she expected
wasn’t there. The words she had intended to blast him with sputtered out in a
few syllables then fell to silence. “I’m not…I mean, you’re…”

“Come sit and tell me what this is all
about?”

The question mark weakened her knees. He’d
begun the sentence as a command and ended it with her choice. “Quiet authority”
she’d thought before now showing as proof positive. He commanded without
bullying. Nodding, she sank into the chair again, pulling the wrap tightly
around her shoulders when he lifted it into place before sitting opposite her
again.

The waiter came right over, seeing their
distress and knowing he was about to lose a good tip. Customers who fought
always forgot about their server. “Would sir and madam like to finish their
meal with a little gelato?”

Lauren nodded hesitantly to John’s
questioning look and the waiter left to get the Italian ice cream.

“Gelato’s a very dense ice cream. I think
you’ll like it.” He sat back in his chair and Lauren understood he was giving
her space to think.

She shook her head and decided to come
clean. “Look, John. I’m sure you’re a wonderful person. I like your company, I
really do. But I just can’t… I’m just not ready for…”

He leaned forward and waited until she
looked directly at him. Then he smiled and the dimple appeared in his cheek.
“Let tonight be simply dinner. Just two people working on becoming friends who
came out to enjoy a good meal. Set everything else aside.”

She relaxed barely at all. “It’s not as
easy as you think.” She glanced almost shyly at his face and still saw no
traces of the arrogance she was used to seeing in the faces of soldiers. Her
loneliness welled up and Beth’s image came to mind.

After years of dating him, Beth had finally
consented to marry her longtime boyfriend, Paul. Now they had a child and her
friend radiated contentment and happiness. Saying John McAllen would bring that
same contentment to Lauren’s life stretched the current circumstances but if
she ran away, she’d never find out. Forcing her shoulders to relax, Lauren
spread her fingers on her lap and let out her breath. When she looked up at him
again, she’d found a measure of calm. “I can do that. Just enjoy this for what
it is. I think.”

Now he chuckled outright. With a small
flourish, he put his car keys on the table between them. “If you decide to
bolt, take my car. Can’t have you walking home from here.”

Lauren couldn’t help it. His smile was
infectious. “And how will you get home if I take your car?”

He shrugged. “I’ll figure out something.”

Lauren relaxed as the waiter set the gelato
before her, realizing John had done it in spite of her best intentions. He’d
worked his charm and calmed her down even though she’d every intention of
running away from this former military man. Lifting her spoon in a silent toast,
she gave him the first round of the evening.

John fully intended to determine the reason
for her sudden panic but took a roundabout approach to lull her into relaxing
with him. Did she realize that was his intention? Probably. All night long
she’d shown a sharp wit and deflected his forays.

John liked a challenge and Lauren was
definitely that. She had a way of throwing her head back and tossing her hair
out of her face that showed both impatience and a definite sexuality he doubted
she knew she exuded. The neckline of that little black dress showed just a hint
of cleavage. The scarf worked to hide it.
A fitting metaphor for our
conversation
, he thought as she deflected his current attempt. “You said
you went to Nazareth and the University of Rochester? What did you major in?”

“I wanted to be a scientist when I was in
high school, so I got a degree in chemistry. This gelato is really good.”

“But you didn’t become a scientist?”

“Nope. Did you get your degree in American
history or in education?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

Her answering grin affirmed it. “I’m not
going to go there, soldier boy. So you might as well stop trying.”

“Soldier boy?”

For a moment, she looked flustered again,
but then recovered. “Private in the Union Army, right?”

John knew that wasn’t what she’d meant. Was
it his time in the military that gave her the fidgets? Time to hit the subject
head on.

“Yes, and former Marine captain, stationed
in Hawaii, two tours of duty in Iraq, then back to North Carolina.”

Her face went white. Bingo. John remained
calm. Why did his service so obviously throw her?

“Lauren?”

“Yes, sorry.” She took a large gulp of
water from the glass beside her plate. John put his spoon down.

“I think you’d better tell me.”

It didn’t matter that the restaurant was
thousands of miles and several years away from his time in Iraq. The look in
her eyes mirrored that of a boy he’d almost killed when his unit had stormed a
house of supposed insurgents. All they’d found were several women huddled in a
corner and an eleven-year-old boy wielding a long block of wood like a baseball
bat. Thankfully, they hadn’t shot first that time and, through a translator,
profusely apologized for the bad intelligence. He wasn’t ever sure it had made
any difference to the family they’d inadvertently terrorized.

Across the table Lauren picked up her spoon
and fiddled with her melting gelato before giving up any pretense of eating.
“This isn’t the place,” she told him, keeping her head down as she obviously
struggled with her emotions.

“Lauren.” John waited until she looked up
at him. Tears and panic glimmered in her eyes. Making a decision, he dropped
his napkin beside his plate and signaled the waiter. “Check, please.”

“Yes sir.”

With efficiency, the waiter whisked away
their bowls. Lauren and John sat in silence until he returned with the folder
containing the check. John glanced at the amount, pulled two fifties from his
wallet and left them inside. Standing, he held out a hand to Lauren. Her hand
trembled in his, then she steadied somewhat and nodded, more to herself than to
him.

The night had turned a little chilly and
Lauren shivered as they walked to the parking lot. He tucked her arm in his but
then, a block away a car backfired and Lauren immediately went down, throwing
one hand over her head, using her other to balance herself on the ground. John
doubted she’d even realized she’d cried out. If he’d had any doubt about the
haunted look in her eyes before, he realized now he had his answer.
PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—wasn’t nearly as uncommon as people wanted
to believe and the woman who’d been so competent on the field yesterday now
hunkered down in the restaurant parking lot, her entire body shaking as reality
slowly returned.

“Sorry,” she managed.

He shook his head as he bent to help her
up. “There is nothing to apologize for. Come on, I’m taking you home and we’re
going to talk.”

“Talk?” She batted away his hand as she
stood, her nerves still on edge. “There’s an entire legion of psychiatrists who
want to ‘talk’ and medicate and put me away somewhere ‘quiet’. What makes you
think I’m going to spill my guts to you?”

“I didn’t say
you
were going to
talk. I said
we
are going to talk.” He watched her brush off her knees
and knew now was not the right time to be noticing her cleavage. The scarf
trailed in the dirt and he bent to pick it up. “We are going to talk and—”

Lauren snatched the scarf out of his
fingers, effectively cutting off both his words and the view as she wrapped it
around her like armor. John dropped his hands to his sides and let down a
little of the guard he kept on his own set of issues. When he spoke, his voice
was quiet. “You’re not the only one with hard memories, you know.”

She turned her body, her chin still
defiant, her gaze on something farther away than the restaurant building before
them. “I’m sure I’m not,” she finally managed, her voice sounding strangled.

John waited. Rushing her would only drive
her away. She had to come on her own time or the friendship they’d forged in
the restaurant would die an early death. After several moments, Lauren finally
turned back to him.

“I’m trying very hard to put that part of
my life behind me. Dredging it all up again isn’t really very useful.”

“And yet it won’t go away.”

She didn’t answer, dropping her gaze before
finally shaking her head.

He pushed further. “The waking in the
middle of the night, seeing the bodies of the men you couldn’t save. Smelling
the heavy metallic odor of spilled blood. Gallons and gallons of blood that
clots and turns black before the march of feet trample it into the ground. Is
that what you see, Lauren?

“Or the sounds of a construction site, the
pneumatic hammers sounding like gunshots, the jackhammers like machine guns
that just don’t stop—ever? Asking yourself why everyone is walking around as if
there’s no one hiding around the next corner, why they’re all smiling and
pretending that life is wonderful when you know the hell that lurks in your
memories?”

His words battered her. He was being a
bastard. He knew it. But he couldn’t stop.

“It doesn’t go away by itself, Lauren. This
isn’t a cold that can be cured by some aspirin and vitamin C, it’s not even
like grief that will heal with time. What you’re feeling goes deeper than grief
because you know what you were like before. Before you went over there, before
you became a monster who dealt out life and death with split-second decisions.

“And now you’re home, a place that’s
supposed to be safe except the world has completely changed. Only it hasn’t.
You have. And that’s what you can’t deal with.”

Tears slid silently down Lauren’s cheeks. A
sob escaped and she clenched her fist to her mouth as if to push it back in.
John felt like a heel. He hadn’t intended to go so far. He’d started out to
make the case for the two of them to talk about their wartime service and
gotten caught up in his own damn memories.

“Lauren, I’m sorry. I got carried away.”

She shook her head, her entire body tense
with the effort to regain control. After a moment, she gulped down a deep
breath and opened her mouth to answer. It took a few tries, however, before she
managed an entire sentence.

“No…every…everything you said…is right. I
do have nightmares, and I obviously jump…jump at every loud noise. I sometimes
find myself shaking when I’m not cold and I can’t drive down the street without
watching every parked car for hidden IEDs.”

Her voice grew steadier as she spoke.
“People I knew before—they look at me and see the old Lauren. They expect me to
laugh and be witty and have fun the way I used to.” She shook her head and her
sigh came out a little ragged as she made her confession. “And I’m not that
girl anymore. And I miss her.”

The tears welled up again. John held out
his arms and she stepped into them. The light in the parking lot only dimly lit
this corner but he didn’t need it to feel how perfectly her body fit into his.
Her head rested on his shoulder, her arms curled up, one hand again covering
her mouth as if to silence the emotions that spilled out. He gentled her and
realized that he relaxed as she calmed. Perhaps it wasn’t she who needed him
but he who needed her.

The door of the restaurant opened, letting
out a noisy foursome. Instinctively John turned her so they would not see her
or her tears.

“I think I know exactly what you need,” he
murmured into her hair, inhaling the sweet scent of her perfume. She smelled
like a spice, not a flower and it suited her.

Taking a steadying breath, she looked up at
him, her composure slowly returning. “Oh?”

He nodded. “Yep. The night is still young
and I—”

The stricken look on her face made him
realize the enormity of the error he was about to make. Without missing a beat,
he changed his mind and headed off in an entirely different direction.
“Wouldn’t mind walking off some of that meal. Would madam care for a walk along
the lakeshore?”

That got him a tentative smile and a nod.

“Shall we?” John handed her inside the SUV
before climbing in through the driver’s door, starting up and pulling out of
the lot.

Once the playground of the city’s rich and
poor alike, only one bathhouse still remained on the sandy beaches of Lake
Ontario north of Rochester and one lonely carousel that still gave rides every
summer. On a beautiful summer’s eve like tonight, the jetty out along the
Genesee River would be teeming with people enjoying the fresh air. Abbot’s
ice-cream stand would be doing a brisk business and the Penny Arcade would have
a crowd spilling onto the sidewalks.

As expected, traffic was heavier the closer
to the lake they got. He pulled into a parking lot off to the right, finding a
spot far from the action. Lauren had gone quiet on him, so he simply got out
and went around to her side of the car.

She beat him to it this time, jumping out
of the big vehicle just as he got there. The uneven ground, however, wasn’t
meant for her heels and she stumbled. John caught her in his arms, liking how
she fit. She looked up, her face dimly lit by a lamp too far away for its light
to do more than glimmer in this corner of the lot. He couldn’t resist and bent
down to brush her lips with his.