21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (150 page)

Adding to his delight, she picked up one of the stuffed mushrooms and held it out in silent offering. He accepted it, letting his teeth graze her finger. Her pupils dilated at the contact and satisfaction thrummed through him. She wasn’t immune to him. He could afford to be patient.

Holding her gaze while he finished the bite, he enjoyed the flush warming her expression. In his experience, only the very young—or the very honest—still managed to blush. “Tell me about yourself….” The demand came out more of an order than he meant, but he wanted to know. “You’ll have no judgment from me.”

When she dropped her gaze and stroked her thumb against her wine glass, frustration added spice to his disappointment. He wanted to know—and he didn’t like being denied. But she wasn’t his to order around, and in his experience, women didn’t respond well to commands. So, he waited.

“What the hell.” She exhaled. “I’m really not good at this dating stuff.”

“You’re doing fine,” he soothed, barely recognizing the gentle gruffness in his voice.

“Amelia’s going to kill me,” she muttered, and then her chin came up and her shoulders straightened. She was bracing herself and he’d seen that look in many a young Marine’s eyes. She fully expected to upset him with her confession—whatever it was.

Determined to stand his ground no matter what, he reached across the table and laid his hand atop hers. “No,” he told her with a surprising sense of conviction. “She won’t. Whoever she is. I’ve asked, you can choose to tell me or not—and I’m hoping you choose to do so.”

“I was engaged to be married.” The whispered words were so low he had to strain to catch them. It was a gut check moment, but considering she spoke in the past tense, he suppressed any negative reaction.

“Okay.”

“Thirty years ago.” She looked up from beneath lowered lashes. “God, I can’t believe it’s been that long….”

He waited, letting her tell it. Catching sight of the waitress heading in their direction, Tom gave the young woman a firm shake of his head. Nodding, the woman pivoted and left them to their privacy. Returning his attention to Brenda, he was enormously satisfied to see she hadn’t noticed.

Her hand trembled beneath his and he tightened his grip, offering strength.

“I was engaged right out of high school. His name was Steve…Steven Erickson.” Her expression softened. “He was a year older than I was, and his sister was—still is—my best friend. He graduated a year ahead of us, gone to basic and boot—and then he came home for our graduation and asked me to marry him.”

“You said yes.” It wasn’t a guess, she’d said she’d been engaged.

“Without reservation.” Her expression softened, turned wistful and nostalgic. “Steve was one of those guys. Patient, unfailingly kind, dedicated—honest. If he said he was going to do something, he did it. Even when he asked me to marry him, he had a plan. I would go to college and he would continue his military service.”

She blew out a breath, a husky note in her tone. “We would meet on his leaves and spend vacations together as we could. Then when I graduated, we would discuss whether he would stay in and I’d travel to his bases with him or if he would step out and come to where I was. Every decision, he used to tell me, we would make together.”

Dread sat like a dark rock in the pit of his stomach, but he had far too much training to betray his unease. The gentle light in her eyes when she spoke about her fiancé and the nostalgia in her voice—they were for the past. Whatever had happened to Steve—happened a long time ago.

Clearing her throat, she said, “Sorry. I don’t get to talk about him that often anymore. It hurts his sister and, I think, I’ve bored my friends.”

“Not boring at all,” he replied, wanting to reassure her.

“Well, we had a plan.” She gave him a quick smile of gratitude and he gave her hand another squeeze. “So I went to school, and he deployed, and we wrote all the time. Steve had a very romantic soul, not that he let other people see it—he reserved it for me. He wrote me every week, the most wonderful letters. Playful, thoughtful, sometimes introspective, other times…other times filled with ideas for what we might do five years, ten years, twenty years down the road. Sometimes I think we lived an entire lifetime together in those letters.”

She sipped the wine, but made no move to take her hand from his.

“In October of 1983,” she began and stopped. Ice slithered through his veins. It didn’t take a leap to put together military service, grief and October of 1983. “He was on deployment in Beirut.” Dampness shimmered in her eyes.

“The Marine Barracks bombing.” Tom had lost good friends that day.

She nodded once. “Yes. He didn’t die right away, so many others lost their lives that day—but he was gravely injured. They flew him to Germany….”

“Ramstein.” He covered both of her hands with his now, cradling her fingers and stroking his thumb across her wrist. Her pulse raced, hammering against her flesh like it wanted to escape.

“He didn’t wake up, and the doctors weren’t hopeful. But they did everything they could. When he lapsed into a coma, they suggested that perhaps it was his body’s way of trying to heal his brain. I flew overseas with his family and we went to see him. We were there for two weeks, but he didn’t wake up. I had to go back—I didn’t want to, but….”

“You had school.” He supplied the words when her voice faltered.

“Yeah, and tests. Steve would have been furious if I screwed up my GPA or any of our plans because I was wringing my hands in the hospital.” She shook her head, and for a moment exasperation sparkled behind her very deep grief. “So I went home, I spoke to Amelia and her parents every day. Eventually they came home, too. Steve was still in a coma, and the doctors were guarded, but optimistic. Every day, he seemed to improve some stat or another. So perhaps—perhaps he needed a good long sleep and he would be better.”

That hadn’t been the case. She didn’t have to say that for him to recognize the danger of hope. In all likelihood, the physicians had been trying to be kind to the family. He released her long enough to pick up her water glass and hand it to her, and she rewarded him by taking a drink.

“I’m sorry.” She sighed and reached out to settle her hand on his. “Sometimes it all feels like yesterday and other times it feels so very far away.”

“Grief comes and goes, usually when we least expect it. It’s not the friendliest of companions.” He’d picked up his share of ghosts along the road.

“No, it really isn’t.” She glanced down at their joined hands, and when he cradled her palm between his again, she smiled. “On Christmas Day, Steve woke up. I was at the hospital having flown over to see him for the Christmas break. I put a lot of miles on my brand new passport that year. But I was there when his eyes opened—I can’t begin to describe the joy I felt.”

He wanted to scoop her out of her chair, sit her in his lap and shield her from whatever came next. Every instinct in him wanted to protect her, but he couldn’t stop whatever had already happened.

“It was amazing, he was laughing and talking and he was him again. Best Christmas present ever. I spent the whole week, just being with him, talking to him and living again. New Year’s Eve, they let me sleep in his hospital room and at seven a.m. that morning—it would have been midnight here—a clot broke loose and went straight to his brain. One moment he was sitting there smiling and the next moment—he died.” A tear trembled on the edge of her lashes and when it tumbled over, Tom brushed it away with his thumb.

“I’m so very sorry for your loss.” He could imagine exactly how hard that had been—or maybe he couldn’t. It really didn’t matter what he felt, it only matter that she’d been hurt. She’d loved a Marine and she’d lost him. No matter whatever else happened that evening, Tom had a mission—and that was to take care of this woman and make her smile again.

“It was thirty years ago, and most days I accept it and I’ve dealt with my grief. But New Year’s Day is the hardest.” She gave him a watery smile. “Good God, I’m such a soppy mess. You poor man, you sign up—”

“Enough. I am rather delighted with sharing this evening with you.” The statement came out hard and firm. “Finish telling me the story.”

There was more. He knew it.

“Bossy.” Humor appeared beneath the soul-deep sadness and the flash of a smile donkey-kicked him.

“Marine,” he replied.

Surprise flickered across her face. The news seemed to startle her, but her smile softened. “Really?”

“Yes.” No artifice, no ambush. She’d loved a Marine and he wouldn’t let any misunderstanding about him sneak up on her. “Lieutenant Colonel, retired.” And for the first time, that didn’t feel so bittersweet nor as lost as he had when he’d first signed his papers.

She studied him and nodded. “I see it. I noticed it from the hallway when you stood and the way you hold yourself. That’s great. Congratulations.”

“Hmm, thank you.” Though not a man given to impulse, he lifted her hand and brushed a kiss to her knuckles. “Now stop trying to distract me from the story and finish. You were engaged thirty years ago and he died in service to his country. What does that have to do with your date tonight? And why have you not let yourself be involved since then?”

Because she hadn’t—he didn’t need her to tell him that. It screamed from every part of her.

“There you go being bossy again,” she said, but he heard only affection, not annoyance in the words. “While I may not have been on that many dates in the last thirty years, even I know that talking about my fiancé is not flirtatious behavior.”

Chuckling, he picked up another piece of shrimp cocktail and fed it to her. The ease with which she accepted the offering pleased the hell out of him. “No, I simply respect loyalty, honor, and devotion. No flirting required.”

She chewed the shrimp thoughtfully and washed it down with wine, rather than water that time. “I’ve always had a tough time on New Year’s. Amelia, Steve’s sister, is still my best friend. She’s done everything over the years to encourage me to get back out there. Fixed me up, arranged dinners, but no one ever really interested me. Then we get to this time of year and I can’t help but remember it. And on New Year’s, at midnight….”

The catch in her throat had him easing his chair over to sit next to her, shoulder to shoulder. “At midnight, what happens?”

“I panic. My heart races, I can’t catch my breath, and in the last couple of years, I’ve passed out. Amelia found me the first time. She called 911, thinking I’d had a heart attack.” Her mouth twisted into a rueful grin. “I promised her it wouldn’t happen again—and then it did. Last year was the last straw—according to Amelia. She was right. It was a wake up call and the doctor told me that on the anniversary of his death, I’d get this rush of adrenaline. My pressure rose, my chest hurt, I had trouble breathing, and then I passed out. I always spent New Year’s alone, and until I went to a therapist about it, I hadn’t realized just how much I isolated myself. Every year made it worse. So, I got some help…and oh, Lord, this is embarrassing….”

Yet the strength with which she spoke, the gradual easing of the stiffness in her shoulders and the tears said much more. “I think it’s beautiful. You still care enough about him to mourn him thirty years later. No man could ask for more, but I don’t think he’d like it.” He didn’t have to know Steve, but based on what she’d said, Tom couldn’t imagine the young Marine would never have wanted this for a woman he cared about. “You had an issue, you faced it. Tonight is about being somewhere else and not in that moment.”

“Guilty.” She blew out a breath. “Amelia wants me to let it all go.”

“What do you want?” Because her would-have-been sister-in-law wasn’t the woman who interested him.

“I don’t know, not to be crying on the shoulder of a man I just met. To be flirty and playful and have that good time I signed up for—maybe laugh and dance and…and not pass out when my heart hurts.” She bit her lower lip then grinned ruefully. “Maybe get to know you a little better.”

“What do you want to know?”

Mission accepted
.

Brenda blinked at the question. Tom Baxter was not at all who she’d expected. Nor had she thought she’d bare her soul so blatantly in the first few minutes of their date, but something in the way he watched her, as if she were the solitary thing holding his attention, had wrapped her up and cocooned her in a blanket of security.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you wanted to get to know me a little better.” The gruff growl of his voice wasn’t remotely unpleasant. If anything, it had a deliciously sexy power, tempered by the sincerity of patience. “What would you like to know?”

“I’d like to know why it is when you have a million questions you’d like to ask and someone offers you the opportunity to ask them, that you go blank.” She widened her eyes then winced, and to her immense delight he laughed. It was a slow, easy sound like whiskey pouring over ice with just a hint of a crackle.

“Questions make us vulnerable—reveal our interests. One intelligence-gathering technique is to allow someone else to interrogate you. Their questions say a lot not only about what information they already have, but what they are trying to verify and what they classify as important.” He picked up a piece of the shrimp and fed her again.

Licking a drop of cocktail sauce from her lips, she considered his statement. “That’s such a cold way of looking at the world.”

“It’s practical. I’ve spent a lot of time in hot zones. Knowledge and trust are the only things that can keep you and the guy standing next to you alive.” But he didn’t shrug off her comment or make light of them. “It’s why you aren’t sure what to ask. How about we do this—you can ask me any question you like without fear of judgment or recrimination, and I am free not to answer any without any reprisal or judgment on your part?”

It wasn’t an unreasonable request, however she could do him one better. “Tit for tat.”

Amusement curved his mouth. “I’m sorry?”

“Question for question. If I can ask you, then you can ask me. Whoever doesn’t answer one first gives a pass to the other when they choose not to answer one. But as long as we’re both answering…fair?”