A Hero to Come Home To (28 page)

“Did you consider, Carly, that it’s true—it’s not you, it really is him?” Lisa paused. “Obviously, I don’t know the guy. I only know what pitiful little bit you’ve chosen to share with me.” Her voice carried a bit of a pout. “But the guy’s a soldier. He’s been to war, multiple times, I’m guessing. Maybe he’s got some sort of hang-up with that. Maybe he’s worried about competing with Jeff’s memory.”

“He
was
a paratrooper,” Carly acknowledged, “and he hurt his leg badly enough on the last deployment that he can’t jump anymore.” But what were a few scars? He was alive and healthy and whole. As far as competing with Jeff’s memory, he’d been extraordinarily understanding about Jeff. Surely he understood there wasn’t any competition going on. She’d loved Jeff, still did, always would, but he was gone. And she loved Dane, who was here.

“For whatever reason, he just needs a little time. Don’t go all insecure on yourself and think it’s somehow your fault. You remember how much trouble I had getting Roger to realize that I was even a woman? Trust me, if I hadn’t been patient and stubborn as hell, Isaac and Eleanor wouldn’t even be motes in the cosmos. And I’m talking a lot more than four or five weeks.”

She was right, Carly admitted. Roger had admired a great deal about Dr. Lisa Varner for a very long time before her gender or beauty or personality had registered. But Lisa had the advantages of being a genius, beautiful, and a perfect size four.

Not that Dane would care whether Carly was a genius. And he seemed to think she was pretty enough. And if her less-than-perfect size bothered him, it never showed.

Maybe Lisa was right: It
was
him. And all Carly had to do was be patient and stubborn.

Luckily for her, she excelled at both.

Dane couldn’t sleep.

He’d taken a long shower. He’d sworn—and regretted—a lot. He’d blamed his leg and taken pain pills. But still, there he lay, wide awake and pissed with himself, at three in the morning.

When had he become such a damn coward? When had he lost his ability to deal with a situation like a grown man?

Unfortunately, he could pinpoint it to the day, hour, and approximate minute.

He punched his pillow a time or two, rolled onto his side, then, after a moment, turned to his stomach. Bracing his arms, he rose onto his knees—make that
knee
—like he was doing a push-up. Like he was leaning over a beautiful woman. Over Carly.

His balance was shaky, his stump falling well short of the mattress. He had the upper body strength to hold the position, but it was awkward and unfamiliar and uncomfortable as hell.

With a grunt, he lay facedown, half wishing he’d fall asleep and suffocate in the pillow. Remembering Ed immediately made him regret even the thought.

So the first time he had sex, he could lie on his back. It wasn’t his favorite position, but it was doable. He wasn’t likely to fall on his face and make a fool of himself. And maybe sometime later they could try different stuff. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t adapt to, the cadre preached.

Even if he hated the idea.

Shifting back onto his side, he stared into the darkness until finally he drifted off. When he awoke again, the sun was up, his head felt like he’d been on a binge, and the first clear memory to come to mind was the hurt, stunned look on Carly’s face when he’d pushed her away.

Damn.

He should call her, but it was Sunday. She always went to church on Sunday.

He could go, too—see her there. God knew, it’d been long enough since he’d attended regularly, and a sermon might do him a world of good. But he didn’t know which church she attended, and if he went—
Sorry, God
—he wanted more than just a sermon for his efforts.

In the end, he got dressed, washed down a couple of aspirin tablets, grabbed a protein bar, and headed to his truck. Within minutes, he was on the highway heading out of town, no particular destination in mind. The windows were down, there was good music on the radio, and he wanted to just
be
. Not think, not talk, not do anything but find a little peace if he could.

He found that peace in the pasture full of palominos. Leaning against the board fence and watching the animals move took him back to his grandparents’ place and the horse he’d kept company on his visits.

Life had been easier then. He’d known he would join the Army and see the world. He’d even expected to see combat at some point, but to a little Texas kid, that had seemed like a big adventure. It had never occurred to him that he would lose so many buddies or a part of himself. He’d never dreamed that at thirty, he’d be self-conscious, scarred, and scared about what the rest of his life would hold.

Hell, back then he’d never thought about even being thirty. That had been so far away, and he’d had so much living to do first.

He’d been standing there so long and so still that three of the horses grew curious enough to approach, watching him with big somber eyes, the smallest eventually pushing close enough to nuzzle his hands.

“They’ll eat pretty much anything, but they especially like these.”

Dane startled at the voice, and the horses reacted in kind, dancing back from him. He looked up to find Dalton Smith offering him a handful of peppermint candies, the fat puffy kind. Picking up the smell, the horses immediately returned, pushing each other aside to reach him first.

Dane fed the first one to the smallest horse. “I would have stopped at Atwood’s for some treats if I’d known I was coming here.”

“There are treats in the barn. On the shelf to the right of the door.” Dalton leaned against his own section of fence. “Nice day for a drive.”

Dane grunted in agreement as the animals jockeyed for the remaining candies. It was a nice day to have so many beautiful females eating out of his hand. Too bad Carly couldn’t be placated with peppermints.

Though maybe a few boxes of sea-salt caramels would make her more forgiving.

“You change your mind about that ride?”

Dane looked at the horses and recognized the longing to be on one of them. Logic said he could ride as well as ever. On the back of a horse, there would be no worrying over his own weakness, no fears that any other rider didn’t share. They could cover a lot of ground with minimal effort on his part, and he would feel…free. Normal.

Though there was that small problem of mounting and dismounting. He used to have more confidence when he did something for the first time. He hadn’t needed anyone to talk him out the C-130 door for his first jump, hadn’t needed any urging on his first hundred-and-fifty-kilometer-per-hour ride on the Ducati. Now he wanted—needed—to know he could succeed before trying, or he didn’t want to try.

And, as last night had proven, that was too damn bad.

“Thanks, but not today,” he said, wiping his palms on his jeans.

Dalton nodded toward the barn. “I was just headed out to doctor one of the cows. Want to have a look around?”

For just a moment Dane hesitated. Spending a little time in a place that reminded him of his grandparents had its appeal, and something about Dalton Smith told him they had a lot in common. Besides, the longer he delayed returning to town, the longer he could put off facing Carly, apologizing for his behavior the night before and telling her the reason.

The longer he could put off finding out whether she wanted to see him anyway.

“Sure. I’d like that.”

They drove the long lane that ran between pastures to its end, where he parked behind a dusty Ford pickup. He followed Dalton a few hundred yards to the barn, in need of a coat of paint but looking as strong and solid as when it had been built more than a hundred years ago.

The doors stood open wide, and the sweet scents of leather and hay filled the air. Sunlight showed dust motes drifting lazily on the air, and the lone cow inside made a soft sound as Dalton approached its stall.

“You said your brother helps out on weekends. Doesn’t that still leave a lot of work for you?”

Dalton maneuvered around the cow. “It’s more hours than I’d want if I didn’t live alone, but…” He shrugged. “It gives me something to do.”

“Seems like hiring some help and sleeping once in a while would give you something better to do.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m old and retired.” Dalton finished with the cow and came out of the stall, latching the gate behind him.

“When you’ve got your own D-named kids running the show?”

“Got no kids, no wife, and no desire for either. The place will probably end up with my brother Noah, if he wants it. If not…” He shrugged again.

“It’d be a shame to let that kind of history pass out of the family.”

“I notice you’re not running your grandparents’ place down in Texas.”

Dane shook his head. “They passed when I was twelve or thirteen. No way my mother would have lived out there, and anyway, all I ever wanted to be was a soldier.”

“You making a career of it?”

Dane considered the question as they went back out into the sun. He’d never gotten around to talking to Carly about that. He was just full of omissions, wasn’t he? “I don’t know. Things have changed.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Dalton said flatly. Like his changes hadn’t been any happier than Dane’s.

They did a quick tour, checking out the Oreo-striped cattle, looking over the horses that had refused to be tempted by peppermints, glancing into the small outbuildings. The conversation was exactly what Dane needed—interesting and impersonal. He wasn’t about to pry into Dalton’s business and vice versa.

They finished at the corral on the north side of the barn. “This is my project for today. You’re welcome to hang out if you want. Maybe even pick up a hammer, or did they not teach you how to do that in the Army?”

Dalton’s gesture took in the fence, the stacks of boards and the paint on the ground. The corral had taken some hard use, the paint little more than flakes, the fence patched apparently by whatever means had been easiest at the time. Some boards were nailed crookedly across gaps. In some a few lengths of broken wire had been stapled to form a bridge. Some of the boards were just flat worn out, sagging where the nails in the ends gave way from the posts.

Dane grinned. “I’ve done more fence work than you can probably imagine. To be more technical, fence painting. Grandma believed that if a boy had time to get into mischief, then he certainly had time to make himself useful with a paintbrush.”

“Then let’s get started.”

There was something amazingly soothing to it: The sun shining; the screech of nails pulled loose from their anchor; the rhythmic pounding of the hammer, along with the occasional curse, as Dalton replaced the boards; and the familiar swipe of fresh paint over thirsty wood, a movement he’d made so many times that it came naturally, like muscle memory.

By the time they took a break, Dane’s muscles were also remembering the fatigue of that familiar back-and-forth swipe. He rested the brush across the top of the paint can, stretched both arms over his head for a resounding pop in his shoulders, then leaned against the section where Dalton was finishing up the last board.

Nails clenched between his teeth, Dalton looked at the fresh paint and grunted. “You must have gotten into a lot of mischief.”

“I did.” Idly he moved closer to steady the end of the board while Dalton pounded the nails home at the other end. When he stepped away to give Dalton room to finish, his jeans leg caught on a protruding nail down near the ground. His own forward momentum sent him stumbling until, with a sharp rip, the denim gave way and he twisted, trying to catch his balance.
Trying
being the operative word.

As he landed flat on his back with a bone-jarring thud, the thought flashed through his mind that at least he hadn’t fallen on his face. It wasn’t as much comfort as he would have expected.

A shadow fell over him as Dalton stepped up beside him. “At least you didn’t hit anything on your way down,” he said in that rough way of his. “You all right?”

“Yeah. I’m Airborne,” he said drily. “I’ve fallen much farther and landed much harder than that.”

Dalton offered his hand and pulled him to his feet with so much power that he could have heaved him over the fence into the corral with no extra effort. Dane was about to make some crack when he saw that Dalton was staring at his leg.

The rip of denim had been the left leg of his jeans, a long tear that flapped to either side of his bionic prosthesis. Heat flushed through him, turning his hands clammy, knotting his gut. He stared at Dalton, searching for some reaction, some hint of something that
he
could react to.

After a long silence, Dalton walked to the shade of a massive blackjack oak and pulled two bottles of water from a cooler there. He offered one to Dane, sat down on a boulder and asked, “You got giant springs in there so you don’t make any hard landings when you jump out of those perfectly good planes?”

Dane sat on the second boulder, breathing, taking a long drink and letting the tension ease from his shoulders. “That’s not a bad idea. But since I only have the one, I’d pull to the left.”

“I didn’t mean to stare.”

“I didn’t mean to let it show.”

Dalton tilted his head, staring deliberately now. “Why not?”

The question surprised Dane, and he stared back. “I’d had the original for twenty-nine years, until that IED went off. I was kind of attached to it.”

“Until you weren’t. But you can walk, you can work, you can drive a truck, and you’re pretty useful with a paintbrush. Figure out the mounting, and you can ride a horse again. In fact, have you found anything you
can’t
do?”

The heat returned to Dane’s face. He would rather be celibate the rest of his life than discuss his concerns with any man who wasn’t wearing a caduceus on his collar. But, totally unexpectedly, something even more important came out of his mouth.

“Yeah. I can’t find the nerve to tell my girlfriend about it.”

I
t was none of Dalton’s business. He wasn’t in the habit of giving advice or playing counselor. Truth was, he just plain didn’t give a damn about anyone’s problems when his own had damn near suffocated him. He didn’t have to change the subject smoothly or politely. No one expected much in the way of manners from him these past years.

Still, the question came out without regard for any of that. “You serious about her?”

Dane stared off in the direction of the cattle that had wandered behind the barn. “I think I want to marry her.”

Dalton stared in the same direction. “You think it’ll make a difference to her?”

“It damn sure made a difference to me. And to my mother. I’m known around my hometown as Anna Mae’s poor crippled son who’s so damaged he’ll never find a woman to want him.” The words were accompanied by a laugh, but it was bitter.

Dalton understood bitter. “I always knew they weren’t as smart down there in Texas as us Oklahomans are.”

The surly loner inside him spoke up again. This wasn’t a conversation he should be having. He hardly knew Dane Clark. Today was only the second time they’d even spoken. But he liked him. He knew Dane was a good guy, in the same tug-at-his-gut way that he knew with everyone he met. It took only a couple seconds to know, and as far as he knew, he’d never been wrong.

“You don’t give the woman much credit, do you?” He sighed heavily. It seemed the words were going to keep coming, and he feared, with chills down his back, where they would go before they stopped. Maybe getting them out would be good, and getting them out with a stranger had to be better than someone he knew. Maybe.

“She thinks I’m a normal, healthy man. She didn’t sign up for dealing with this.”

In his peripheral vision Dalton saw him gesture to his left leg, but he kept his gaze trained in the distance. “That’s because you didn’t give her a chance by telling her.”

Before Dane could respond to that, Dalton drew a breath and went on. Once he started, he was sure he would have to say it all at once or lose his nerve. “I told you I’m not married, but I was. She was in the Army. A medic. We met one week and went off to Las Vegas to get married the next. We didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t even think we’d really go through with it, but we did.

“She loved the ranch, riding the horses, working the cattle. She talked about getting out of the Army when her time was up and the two of us running this place together. She had big plans. Then, two years after we were married, she got orders to Afghanistan. About six months in, the convoy she was in got hit by a roadside bomb. She lost both legs. She was alert, awake. She knew she’d lost her legs, and she told another medic, one of her buddies, she didn’t want to live that way. They had a lot of badly wounded soldiers to transport, and somehow, between the blast site and the field hospital, she managed to loosen the tourniquet on her right leg. It took only seconds for her to bleed out. By the time they realized what she’d done, she was dead.”

Tears clogged his throat, but his eyes remained gritty and dry. “No one knows. Not her parents, her sisters, my parents, my brother. They think her injuries were just too severe for her to survive. I don’t ever plan on telling them that she chose to die. That her legs were more important to her than leaving everyone who loved her. But I know, and every day I hate her a little for it. For not believing she could handle the amputations, for believing we couldn’t love her that way. For not giving us credit.”

There. That was the first time he’d ever told the truth.

He waited to feel better. It didn’t come. He didn’t feel worse, either. Just…kind of unburdened. A little. Now someone else knew that Sandra hadn’t loved him enough to give him a chance.

“I’m sorry.” Dane’s voice was quiet, sincere in a way that a lot of people couldn’t be. Dalton didn’t doubt his neighbors and friends were sorry Sandra had died, but they didn’t understand it the way Dane did. He’d seen what Sandra had seen. Hell, he’d
experienced
what she had experienced, but had chosen to live. Sort of.

Realizing the water bottle he held was empty, Dalton crumpled it, then screwed the lid back on as he stood. He walked halfway back to the hammer atop the pile of boards, then turned again. “I lost my wife because of an IED. There’s no point in you losing your girlfriend over one.”

They worked another hour, not talking much, before Dane put the lid back on the paint can, cleaned the brush and straightened. He faced Dalton, hands shoved in his back pockets. “Carly’s part of a group in town. They’ve all lost their husbands in the war. They meet every Tuesday at six at The Three Amigos to talk and eat and just…understand. If you’re ever interested…”

Join a support group? Dalton couldn’t begin to imagine it. Before today, he’d never talked to anyone about Sandra’s death beyond a few sentences here and there with his parents and Noah.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” But it wouldn’t go any further than that.

“I’m going to clean up and…go talk to her.”

“Good luck.” Before he turned back to his work, he called, “You don’t need two legs to sit on a horse. Next time we’ll get you on one.”

If Sunday morning’s service had been less than inspiring, dinner was the epitome of unappetizing. Therese was silent and withdrawn, Abby touchy and more defensive than ever. Only Jacob seemed anywhere near his usual self, which didn’t mean he was good company.

Carly was so happy when Therese pulled into the driveway to let her out that she felt giddy—and guilty—about it. Before closing the door, she turned to the kids in the backseat and said, “You guys have a good time with your mom,” then gave Therese a tight smile.
You have a good time, too, and come out of this funk. Things will get better.

It came to pass
, it said in the Bible.
To pass.
Nothing stayed forever—not happiness, not peace, not joy, not anger, not spoiled brats. Life would go on with its ups and downs and maybe, just maybe, a few higher ups and a few shallower downs.

As she let herself into the house, her gaze fell across the couch and embarrassment flushed her cheeks. She was looking for a few higher highs and lesser lows in her life, too, and the start, she decided, was to act as if nothing had happened last night. It wasn’t unusual for her to call Dane and invite him over, and that was exactly what she intended to do today. They had to address whatever had gone wrong last night, or they’d never get anywhere, and she so wanted to get somewhere with him.

She changed from her dress and heels into a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals, put her hair up in a clip, then dialed Dane’s number. It went to voice mail, and not even the kind where she got to hear his voice. She left a cheerful message—
I’m fixing lasagna for supper. Want to come over?
—then went to the kitchen and downed a Mojo.

The next call went to voice mail, too, and so did the third and fourth. Was he avoiding her? Was whatever stopped him last night more of an obstacle than she’d thought?

Would he let whatever it was be the end of them?

After the last call, she dug around the mess on the dining table until she found Justin’s phone number. While she dialed, she practiced tones, wanting to sound just curious, maybe a little concerned, but not needy or clingy in any way. When he answered with a sleepy “Hello,” she said, “Hey, Justin, it’s Carly. Is this how you spend your Sunday afternoons, dozing your life away? You should be out with your friends, charming a few girls, maybe breaking a few hearts.”

He yawned, then said, “I’m sleeping because I was out all night, charming at least one girl. I didn’t get in until after the sun came up. Never let it be said that bad legs and crutches stand in the way of Justin Stevens’s love life.”

Her smile hurt a little. He’d told her about Sarah, who’d dumped him after his injury because she couldn’t deal with it. He was okay with it, he’d insisted, but Carly had seen the pain in his eyes. She’d wanted to smack the girl.

“Hey, I made a joke there. Bad legs and crutches? Standing in the way? The least you could do is laugh.”

She managed a chuckle before getting to the point. “I’m sorry I interrupted your recuperative nap, but I’ve been trying to get hold of Dane and he’s not answering his phone.”

“I still don’t get why you choose him over me. I’m a lot better looking. More fun, too. I wouldn’t be wasting time going shopping and painting. I’d be showing you how much more there is to life.”

When she just sniffed, he laughed. “You want me to go over and bang on his door? See if he’s home?”

“Go over?”

“He lives next door.”

Carly blinked. Neither of them had mentioned that before. Of course, it explained how they knew each other and why Dane had visited Justin at the gym that day.

With something niggling in the back of her mind, she said, “No, that’s okay. I think I’d rather go over and bang on it myself. Which barracks do you live in?”

There was a sudden stillness on Justin’s end. “Uh, I should probably…you know, he’s probably not home. Just let me go see and, uh, I can tell him to, uh, call you or something if he is there.”

The niggling got worse, and something cold seeped down her spine. “Justin, what’s the building number?”

“You know, Carly, I can’t just—”

“
Justin.
”

Reluctantly he gave her the building number, the name and Dane’s room number. She picked up a pen, poised to write it down, but there was no need. She recognized both number and name. She passed it every Tuesday on her way to the transition unit with the kids. Except for a few lucky ones with family in Tallgrass, every patient she knew at the WTU lived in the barracks just down the street.

Dane lived in the wounded warrior barracks.

“Don’t you go over there and warn him,” she said quietly.

“Carly— Man, he’ll kill me if I don’t— Just wait. Let me go see—”

She hung up on him.

He’d told her he’d torn up his leg in Afghanistan. It didn’t take a life-changing injury to bar a paratrooper from any further jumps. Those guys suffered back and knee injuries all the time and went on living a relatively normal life, no different from any hard-charging athlete. Injuries were part of the job.

But it pretty much did take a life-changing injury to end up in the wounded warrior program. He didn’t show any signs of a traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. Was his leg injury worse than he’d admitted?

But he didn’t use crutches. He limped only on occasion. He’d hiked into the falls at Turner Falls and climbed to Wagon Wheel Cave. His only limitations seemed to involve kneeling and climbing ladders, and he’d done plenty of kneeling helping her plant yesterday.

She realized with a start she was standing at the front door, her purse strap over one shoulder, her keys in her hand. By the time she’d reached Main Street, she’d managed to tamp down her curiosity and hurt into a sort of wait-and-see numbness.

She followed the familiar route onto post, pulling into the barracks parking lot and, first thing, noticing Dane’s truck off in a distant corner. After parking, she sat for a moment studying the buildings. They were modeled after Tranquility Hall at National Military Medical Center in Bethesda: small apartments that allowed the recovering soldiers to adapt to regular life. Some had extra bedrooms so family could stay, give emotional support and help when needed and practice the responsibilities they would face at home.

Her aching fingers made her realize she was gripping the steering wheel. She was delaying.

Slowly she forced her fingers loose, then opened the door. It took only moments to cross the parking lot to the building, to locate Unit 6. Her hand clenched, and instead of knocking, she banged on the door, just as she’d told Justin she would.

There was a moment’s silence, then Dane’s voice filtered out. “For God’s sake, Justin. Can’t a guy take a bath without you calling and pounding—” The lock clicked, and the door swung in, and he stood there, leaning on crutches. He wore a T-shirt and sweatpants, the left leg swaying gently from midthigh down. His right foot was bare. The left…

Wasn’t there.

The expression on his face was stark, color draining, eyes widening. His hands clenched the crutches, the muscles in his arms bunching and rippling, then his face turned a mottled red and he took an awkward step back, as if to shield himself behind the door. He wanted to
hide
. From
her
.

Carly wanted to do a dozen things. Hold him and hug him until everything was all right. Demand to know everything. Ask why he hadn’t told her. Plead to know why he hadn’t trusted her. Beat him with one of the crutches for being so…so…

Striving for a cool, even tone, she politely asked, “May I come in?”

His hesitation was so long that she thought he was actually going to tell her no. Finally, though, he stepped aside and nudged the door open wider. She walked into the apartment, her gaze taking in the institutional feel of the furnishings, the lack of personal items…and the lifelike prosthetic leg sitting on the couch. She couldn’t help but stare at it before turning her gaze back to Dane.

“This is what you call ‘tearing up’ your leg?” She gestured toward the prosthesis without taking her attention from his face, from the embarrassment that still bronzed his skin, from the mortification still in his eyes.

“It was pretty damn well torn up before the doctors cut it off.” His tone was flat, edged with dark emotion. Anger. Bitterness.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“When would have been a good time for that?”

“The first time we met. The second. The third. Or the first time we kissed, or the second or the third, or, hell, last night when we were on the couch with my blouse half undone.” Tears welling, she swallowed hard and tightened every muscle in her body to stave them off. “That day in the cave, when you told me you were stationed at Fort Murphy, it would have been so easy to add ‘at the Warrior Transition Unit.’ That second time, in the gym, when you pretended you’d just stopped by to visit Justin, you could have been honest instead.”