The One Worth Waiting For (19 page)

T
he high-pitched squeal of the router cut at last through his reverie. With a start, Garret realized he was holding the tool with one hand while the table leg remained untouched in its clamp. He shook his head, frowning, and turned his attention back to cutting a mortise in the top of the table leg for the mortise-and-tenon joint. He was supposed to be finishing the table, damn it, not woolgathering.

He adjusted the goggles over his eyes and managed to make a rough mortise with the router. Then he sanded out the cut until it was smooth, forming a tight fit for the tenon. One down, three to go.

He shook his head again. He should be done with the joints by now; he just wasn’t concentrating well. His head filled too easily with scenes he didn’t want to know. Too many times he saw the destruction. Too many times he saw Zenaisa and Zlatko and the others.

But he was no closer to understanding any of it. If anything, he fought the memories. Because the dread still lingered low in his stomach, and somewhere deep inside, he understood he wouldn’t like what was to come.

Something terrible had happened. Something that had taken place outside a war-torn city and had followed him all the way to D.C. Something that had earned him a bullet in the back.

He found himself staring blankly at the router yet again and clenched his jaw in frustration.

Just focus on the table. The beautiful wood, the smell of sawdust and the buzzing hum. He cut out the second mortise.

The table was decent, but not everything he’d originally wanted it to be. He’d stuck with a simple pattern for the legs, not wanting to spend too much time at the lathe. He really wanted to finish the table today.

Finish it up, sand it down and stain it quickly with a water-based stain. After dinner, maybe he could present it to Suzanne, his small token for her generosity.

It seemed like the least he could do.

He moved on to mortise number three. He actually liked the work more than he’d expected. There was something simple and elemental about the feel of finely grained hardwood in his hand and the rich, warm scent of sawdust filling his nose. He liked watching the pieces come together. He liked the clean elegance of the design and found pleasure and satisfaction in seeing his own work develop. He was beginning to understand how his father could spend a whole life in a wood shop.

But even so, there was no adrenaline surge in making a table. No heated rush of right now at this microsecond of time in this place this act must happen or everything will fail. And exactly at the right instant, the roar in his ears, the thunder in his blood, his chute might rip open into the cloud-choked night or his MP-5 might explode with a clean burst of three shots.

Those were the moments that filled his blood with fire and sparked his dark eyes. Those were the challenges he lived for. He didn’t look for simple pleasures or quiet moments. He lived to act, to master, to combat.

And right now, just waiting was beginning to get to him.

If he could only make all the pieces of his memory come together…

If he could only stop remembering Suzanne’s pale face when he said he was leaving…

He shifted restlessly, feeling the uncertainty and doubt inexplicably swirl in his gut. He needed to get going, he thought with near savagery, forcing the last table leg into the clamp with more pressure than was necessary. Memory or not, he needed to move to figure out Step Two in his plan.

He adjusted his goggles, and resolutely blanking his mind, cut the last mortise.

When Suzanne walked out onto the back porch a little before eight, she found him on his hands and knees in front of a newly assembled table, staining a leg. For a long moment, she simply looked at his back while he brought the brush down with a smooth, steady stroke.

He’d put newspaper under the table and rigged some sheets along the open sides of the porch to enclose his work area on at least three sides.

“Looks like it’s nearly done,” she said at last, squinting at the piece in the failing light. She reached over and snapped on the bright porch light.

His brush paused, then resumed its work.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t be out for another fifteen minutes or so,” he said.

She shrugged, sticking her hands into her skirt pockets and admiring her white sandals as if she had no place else to look. “Well, I guess I can go back inside if you’d like.”

“No. I just didn’t want you to see it until it was done.”

His brush completed its last stroke. With a small grunt, he rose to tower over the small oval table. He’d used a light, red-toned varnish to complement the cherry wood, and the table, rich and glistening, gleamed under the porch light. A thin seam of black walnut circled the table in a simple but effective design.

Still, Suzanne didn’t say anything, and finally he looked at her with impatient eyes. “I know it isn’t much, but I made it for you, you know. As a thank-you.”

Her eyes widened, then slowly she nodded as she walked around the piece. Maybe he didn’t think much of it, but it looked beautiful to her. The four legs were gracefully rounded, the tabletop shiny and elegant with its black beading. Certainly it looked better than anything she currently owned. She didn’t even have chairs that would do it justice. On impulse, she reached out to touch the small treasure, then realized the varnish would still be wet. She pulled her hand back to her side.

“You must have learned a lot from your father.” Her voice sounded quiet and thick.

Garret stared at her, shifting from side to side. He looked back at the table, then at her again. Well, he knew it wasn’t a masterpiece, but hell, he’d thought it was worth more comment than that.

“I just wanted to thank you,” he grated, gesturing to the table almost in dismissal. “For putting me up and everything. You know. You don’t have to use it or anything. Hell, I don’t even have time left to make some chairs.”

She looked at him sharply. “A parting gift, then?”

He shrugged. “It’s whatever you want it to be,” he said at last. It must not have been the right thing to say, because her lips thinned into that narrow line he knew too well.

“Dinner’s ready,” she said shortly. She turned sharply, and not knowing what else to do, he followed her back into the house.

The tension remained through dinner, however. Suzanne seemed hell-bent on not saying a word, and for once, the silence bothered him. She wasn’t happy with him; he was astute enough to realize that. Maybe what he hadn’t anticipated was the fact he wasn’t happy with himself, either.

His stomach kept knotting, the uncomfortable silence building. He liked it better when she fought with him. And he definitely preferred the seducing. Now, she just seemed uptight and withdrawn.

A lot of women had looked at him like that before. A lot of women had tried sobbing or arguing or carrying on at the last minute when they realized he really was going to leave. It never bothered him, because he was a man who spelled things out in the beginning and made sure the message remained consistent. If they wanted to try to manipulate him with tears or silent treatments, that was their prerogative but he didn’t let it affect him. He always knew where he was going, and he always knew what he was doing.

So Suzanne’s behavior shouldn’t mean a thing. Except…except he couldn’t imagine her ever begging him to stay, and he couldn’t imagine her ever trying to manipulate him. Instead, it seemed as if her withdrawal worked to distance him before he even had a chance to leave.

He’d once made the assumption that she was simple and guileless; he was beginning to realize that he was wrong. In the end, she might be much better at holding things back than he was himself.

Hell, he hadn’t even realized she was a virgin.

He found himself frowning again and rose to collect the dishes instead. Suzanne never said a word.

After dinner, he followed her onto the back porch, a glass of minted iced tea in hand. She didn’t invite him, but he was feeling perverse. When she sat down on the first step and leaned back to look at the clear canopy of stars, he simply followed suit.

“Nice night,” he said at last.

She nodded, sipping from her tea. “Nights and mornings are about the only bearable times during July.” She fanned her face with one hand, the little wisps of hair framing her cheeks scattering nicely. “Even then, it’s hotter than hell.”

“Still, you’ve got to love the sound of crickets and the scent of roses in the North Carolina air.”

She looked at him sideways with speculative hazel eyes. “You ever miss home, Garret? You ever think of Maddensfield when you’re off playing your war games?”

He shrugged, examining his tea. “Sure I do. I grew up here. My family’s here.”

She nodded. “Dotti says you’re pretty good at dropping postcards.”

“Yeah, well, it seems it’s the least I can do. I don’t get much leave time.”

“That’s funny considering I heard there were some Navy training programs in the Carolinas.”

She kept looking up at the stars, but she could feel him shift uneasily beside her. “There are,” he said after a long pause. He rotated the sweating glass, then took a long sip of tea. “Training’s not the same as a break, though. And I suppose…I suppose there’s a lot more out there I’d like to do—”

“Than come home to Maddensfield,” she finished for him dryly. “I never did understand that about you, Garret.”

He stood abruptly, but she didn’t shy away. Instead, she kept her head up and her eyes challenging as he walked to the railing.

“There’s a lot out there, Suzanne. A lot I want to see, a lot I still know nothing about.” He looked up at the night, turning his glass restlessly. “You know,” he said pensively, “somewhere, in some country, right now there is a war going on. And right under these same stars, men are getting ready to fight men, and good is taking on evil, and by morning—though maybe not this morning—someone will win that war. I don’t want to read about it. I want to be there. I want to be doing something.”

“Why, Garret? It’s not your fight.”

He looked at her impatiently. “Sure it is. I’ve got ideas. I’ve got values. I can tell right from wrong. That makes it my fight. I fight for what I believe in.”

“And you have to go to another country to do that?”

He looked at her warily. “What do you mean?”

She set down her glass of tea and looked at him with a level gaze. “I never understood men’s concept of war,” she told him, standing up so she could meet him eye-to-eye. “I never understood why you had to go to some foreign country to prove you were brave. Women fight all the time and we don’t even have to leave home. We fight to balance budgets, feed our families and keep our marriages together. We fight to take back our communities from criminals and we fight to create a world worth raising our children in. The only difference is that we don’t earn medals.”

“That’s not what it’s about,” he tried to say.

“Then what’s it about, Garret? What’s so important you haven’t spent Christmas with your family for the past five years? What’s so important that your idea of quality time is dropping a postcard?”

“The challenge,” he fired back, crossing his arms and leaning against the railing, “is putting all of yourself on the line because you know you can do it and you can make a difference. I don’t expect you to understand, Suzanne. You have your roses, you have your kindergarten classes. Well, I guess I have my demolition team.”

Her lips thinned even tighter, and for one moment, her eyes burned so brightly he couldn’t tell if she was furious or hurt. Abruptly, she spun around. Just as abruptly, he caught her arm and spun her back.

“You started this. Don’t walk away now.”

Her eyes narrowed, her jaw worked, but she seemed unable to settle upon an appropriate reply.

“There is so much more here,” she protested at last, her voice low and raspy with the effort. “So much more you’ve given up because you’re running everywhere else.”

“Tell me what, Suzanne. Tell me.”

Me.
The word burned her throat so badly she had to deliberately bite her tongue to keep it back. The warm, salty taste of blood tingled forth, but it only reminded her of the taste of tears.

“People,” she returned heatedly. “Sharing. Family and friends, people who understand your victories because they know your defeats. People who really know you.”

“Trust me, Suzanne, you don’t know anyone on the face of this earth as well as you know your teammates. Hell, Austin’s like a brother to me.”

Suzanne looked at him helplessly, shaking her head. She didn’t care about his military buddies; she just wanted him to see
her,
damn it. She just wanted him to look once and really
see
her. Didn’t he realize all the things she held back? All the stories she kept from him precisely because she wanted him to know? She wanted him to understand the defeats so he could understand her victories. So he could love her.

This time when she stepped back, he didn’t try to stop her.

“It’s getting late,” she said, not looking at him anymore. She could still smell her roses in the air, but their fragrance no longer brought her any pleasure. “I’m going to bed.”

“You’re angry with me,” he said quietly, his eyes level on her face. “I’m just telling you who I am, Suzanne. You understood fifteen years ago.”

She smiled, but her eyes stung. “You’re a fool, Garret Guiness,” she said finally, her voice low and cutting. “You are a damn fool.”

“Suzanne—”

“I didn’t understand, Garret!” She whirled so suddenly her skirt whipped around and nearly tangled in her legs. She advanced forward in spite of the crinkled folds, her hazel eyes flashing golden fire. “How can you be so naive as to expect a sixteen-year-old girl to understand? I waited for you, you idiot. I waited each and every night for you to come back for me. And I woke up each and every morning all alone in the same damn house in the same damn room. I didn’t understand, Garret.”

He stilled against the railing, his dark eyes widening. She smiled at his expression, shaking her head with frustration.