Meagan's Marine (Halos & Horns) (7 page)

“I’m sorry, Red. I was trying to keep an
eye on the situation. I called
Micky
immediately, but
he was busy at the door. By the time he showed up, that guy was all riled
up.  He decked poor ole Mick when his back was turned. I feel so
bad
for him!”

Red raised a hand. “This is not your
fault Meagan. Like I said, when all these cowboys gather in one crowded space,
sometimes their idea of letting off steam doesn’t jive with ours.” He gazed at
the crowd, thinning now that the excitement was over, and then turned his
attention on Meagan again. “And by the way, you did a great job tending to
Micky
. Thanks for jumping in there.”  

“Well, shoot, Red. I sure as heck
couldn’t let a co-worker bleed to death while I stood around doing nothing.”

Red gazed at the other workers, all
gathered around, their faces a study in concern.  “Let’s shut it down
early for tonight. You’ll all get paid your regular hours plus what you would
have made in tips.” He placed a friendly arm around Meagan’s shoulder and
turned her toward the bar. “And
you
, my friend, need to get cleaned up
now
,
because you’re covered in blood. I’ll throw in a little extra to replace your
jeans. Grab another work T-shirt from the stash and trash that thing you’re
wearing.”

“Thanks boss. I appreciate that.”

****

Mitch watched Meagan disappear into the
ladies’ room then propped himself up against the door to wait for her.

Red approached him scratching his chin.
“Now I’ve got to find someone to replace Mick while he’s recuperating.” He
looked around. “Who took down the cowboy after he blind-sided my bouncer with a
beer bottle?”

Mitch stepped forward. “I did.”

Red’s face stretched in a broad grin.
“Oh, yeah—this is perfect! Please tell me you need a job here. I’ll make it
worth your while.”

“It so happens I do, and I’d be glad to
work for you.”

Red reached out to shake his hand.
“Done! You’re a lifesaver, Marine. Come on into my office and we’ll discuss the
terms.”

Mitch glanced at the door of the ladies’
room, wanting to be there when Meagan exited. Something about the look on her
face told him she was running on pure adrenaline. He wanted to be around when
her supply ran dry. “Can it wait, Red? I’m not very concerned about the
details. After the way you and your family have cared for my sister and nieces,
I figure I owe you.”

Red waved off his comment. “You don’t
owe me squat, but it can sure wait.” He pulled out his wallet and handed Mitch
a business card. “Call me in the morning and I’ll get all your info. Thanks
bro, you’re a life saver.”

“No problem.”

Meagan pushed through the door several
minutes later, all traces of blood washed from her hands and arms, and covered
in a new
Red’s
T-shirt. Her blood-spattered jeans still bore the
evidence of
Micky’s
injury, and no doubt, she wanted
to get rid of them. She approached him, fidgeting as though she was about to
jump out of her own skin.

“You okay, Meagan?”

The gaze she leveled on him answered the
question…Definitely
not
okay. In fact, so far from it, she was about to
lose it. She opened her mouth to speak, but instead, grabbed her purse from
behind the bar and rushed out the back door at a run.

chapter 11

The Normalcy of Para-normalcy

He didn’t even try to stop her, but went
out the front to his own truck and followed her home, keeping an eye on her
erratic driving. That alone, told him she’d probably cried all the way home. He
pulled up behind her and caught her before she entered her home through the
side door.

“Come on in, Mitch,” she said, not even
bothering to face him, as if she’d expected him to follow her home. Once
inside, she dropped her purse and headed to her room, coming out with a handful
of clean clothes. She murmured something before disappearing into the bathroom.

He heard the distinct sounds of her
showering, suspected how taxing it had been for her to wear clothing covered in
someone else’s blood. Remembering the dozens of times he’d been in that
particular situation, he could definitely relate. 

Eyeball-deep in thoughts of missions,
sniper attacks, and IED’s, Meagan caught him somewhat by surprise with her
timely exit from the bathroom.

“Interested in a cup of decaf, Mitch?”

He nodded, wrenching himself from the
painful memories of holding Marine brothers in his arms as they spoke their
last words…took their last breaths. “But, only if I’m not keeping you from
getting some sleep. I really just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’ll live. I…I had to shower, though.
And no, I doubt I’ll be getting to sleep anytime soon.” She waved her hand at
the sofa. “Make yourself at home.”

As soon as she disappeared into the
kitchen, he quietly made his way down the hall to Buck’s room. Half expecting
to see a ‘sad man’ standing by the boy’s bed, or at least having the room
cloaked in icy temperatures, he was somewhat surprised at the normal atmosphere
of the room.

Mitch walked over to the small dresser,
picked up the portrait of the Marine in dress blues, noting its absence of
glass. Now that he’d spent a little more time with Buck, he could definitely
see some of the little boy in his dad’s features. How sad that the kid would
grow up never knowing his own father. Lots of kids lost their parents as
children, but the majority had at least something to remember them by. Buck
didn’t even have a picture of him and his dad together. Not only that, but
according to Meagan, Chris hadn’t even known of her pregnancy when he died.
That had to suck.

He placed it back on the surface, went
to adjust its position, only to have it slide quickly to the other side of the
dresser. From one second to the next the air turned icy, causing his breath to
vaporize into visible puffs of smoke. His heart pounding in his chest, he
reached out for the picture and jumped back as the damn thing flew into the
wall on the opposite side of the room.

“
Shee
…it!” he
hissed, making sure Buck hadn’t awakened. That explained the missing glass.

The instant Meagan appeared in the
doorway, he could tell that she knew what had happened. Furthermore, the blank
look on her face said she wasn’t a bit surprised.

He raised both hands. “I didn’t do it.”

She nodded and tucked the covers around
her son. “I know. Coffee’s ready.”

She turned and walked out. Just like
that, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Sweet Jesus! Now he
understood the seriousness of the situation. In the world she lived in, it was
just a typical evening.

Mitch followed her out, glad to cross the
threshold into normal temperatures. He sat on the opposite end of the couch
from her and picked up a mug of steaming coffee from the cocktail table.

“I don’t know how you do this every day,
Meagan.” He sipped from his cup and sat back on the sofa, crossing one booted
foot over his knee.

“You mean drink decaf?” She leaned back
against the arm of the sofa, facing him, and stretched out her jeaned legs on
the cushions.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking
about, smart ass.” He reached over with one hand to caress a bare foot. “Damn
girl, your feet are ice cold.” He warmed both hands on his mug then set it
aside. He reached for one of her feet, rubbing it briskly between his hands.
She rewarded him with a low groan of appreciation.

“Oh, God. You can do that all night
long, Mitch, and I wouldn’t complain…not one…little…bit.” She let her head fall
back against the padded sofa arm and closed her eyes.

Mitch leaned forward to warm his hands
on the mug again then reached for her other foot, treating it to the same warm
administrations. He smiled as she gave him an equally appreciative groan of
pleasure. “Your dogs must get pretty tired by the end of the night slinging
drinks at Red’s. That place pulls in some business.”

“That’s because it’s a nice place. My
everything
gets pretty tired by the end of every day,” she murmured. “Even when I don’t
pull a shift at Red’s.”

“I imagine so, with all the chasing
after Buck and school work.” He warmed his hands on the mug and picked up the
opposite foot again. “And that’s not taking into account the paranormal
activity going on in this place. I don’t know how you do it, Meg.”

“I try not to think about it.”

“Then I won’t make you talk about it,
unless you want to.”

Nearly a minute had passed with neither
of them speaking. He thought she’d fallen asleep when she finally broke the
silence.

“It took everything I had to keep from
screaming when Mickey got hurt. I kept imagining it was Christopher’s blood all
over me. I kept asking myself if someone had to do the same thing for him when
he got hurt.” She swallowed loudly. “Was someone there to apply pressure to his
wound to keep him from bleeding out?”

His hands stilled as she voiced the most
personal of questions.

“I’m sure his Marine brothers did
whatever they could for him, Meg.”

She shook her head. “Then I remembered
there wasn’t enough of him left to work on, so probably not.”

He froze, wondering what he could
possibly say to that. “Did they bring him home?”

She lifted her tear stained face to gaze
at him and gave him a slow nod.

“Then they did what they could for him.
I assure you, they treated Christopher with the utmost respect. It happens, and
when it does, we can’t help but think it could have been
any
of us. So,
you care for your dead brothers the same way you’d want them to care for you if
it ever happens.” He watched a tear break free to make the journey down her
cheek in a long, slow, torturous path until it dripped from her delicate chin.
God, he wanted to hold her—hug her to him until all traces of sadness were completely
gone. He settled for beginning the gentle foot massage again.

Her next words were a reverent whisper.
“Do you think they said words over him when it happened?”

“It depends on the situation,” he said,
striving for total honesty. “If they weren’t being fired upon, they probably
did say something over him. If they were, they probably waited until they were
in a more controlled environment. Did you ever get the chance to meet any of
his buddies?”

“Not while he was alive. I met a few of
them afterwards. Some were being rehabilitated at McGuire Veterans
Administration Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. I drove all the way over there
to talk with them.”

He gave her another slow nod. “I assume
you went with questions. Did you get any answers?”

She lifted one thin shoulder. “Some, but
I couldn’t bear to ask some of the questions I’d gone over there to ask. I
realized those men had already lost enough, and I didn’t want to dredge it up
for them again.”

“What did you discover, Meagan? What did
you gain by making that trip, by meeting those men?”

“Well…I met one man who wished he could
switch places with Christopher, because he’d lost his hand and couldn’t play
the guitar anymore. He said it was his life, all he’d ever been able to master
and it was a gift he’d inherited from the men in his family for the last five
generations. And then I met another who’d lost both legs and said it gave him
the perfect opportunity to build his upper body strength.” 

She wiped away her tears with the back
of her hand.  “I’d thought that I wouldn’t have minded Chris coming back
with no limbs, just as long as he came back alive. But seeing those men,
talking to them and their families…” She released a long, drawn out sigh. 
“I realized that maybe Christopher wouldn’t have handled a disability so well.
He’d hardly ever been sick, never had a broken bone or an injury, was an
excellent athlete. His grandfather came back from WWII missing an arm and he
took to drinking. His grandmother told me once that he had the strength of two
men in that one arm, and she felt it every time he hit her, which was nearly
every time he drank. Alcoholism ran rampant in his family and so did mean
drunks. That’s why Chris never drank. He knew he had the genetic tendency.”

Mitch used the thumbs of both hands to
massage the pad of her foot. “So, you think maybe if he’d survived with a
disability maybe he’d have been a mean drunk, too?”

She shrugged. “I’m saying it’s a
possibility. Maybe that’s why God took him when he did, and as suddenly as he did.
Maybe this
was
the only way I could remember all the good in him, to
tell his son what a good man he was. I’m just
sayin
’…maybe
that was God’s reason all along and I’ve been wrong for being mad at him for
almost five years.”

“I suppose it could be,” he whispered,
bothered by the thought of a bitter, angry Chris coming home to become an
abusive alcoholic. Somehow, he knew that if there were any way Chris could have
chosen to die rather than become that kind of man, he would gladly have
sacrificed himself. “Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way. Maybe God didn’t
make that choice. Maybe Chris asked to be taken rather than to have it happen
that way.”

Meagan sat up straight and stared at
him. “I guess anything’s possible, but it’d be nice to know for sure, though.”

He grinned at her. “Did that psychic
chick ever show up to check things out?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “She’s
coming tomorrow. Or rather, today,” she added, glancing at the clock.

“Maybe she can get an answer for you.”

She nodded. “I hope she can get more
than one.”

“You mind if I tag along?” The curious
cock of her head had him explaining. “You know, when she comes over to do
whatever it is she does, can I be here? Is that okay?”

“I don’t have a problem with you being
here. I guess I’m just curious as to why you’d
want
to.”

He pondered his own reasoning. “I kind
of feel as though I have the right to be here, since he’s already made his
presence known to me…twice.”

She settled back against the arm of the
sofa and yawned. “I’ll call you when she shows up, okay?”

“Thank you.” He began massaging both her
feet and again, she groaned her appreciation. He worked his magic on her for
five more minutes in complete silence before the sound of soft snoring reached
him. He gazed at her softened features, saw the worry lines on her brow
disappear, and her lips part in in her gentle state of slumber. He set her feet
down and very gently, pulled himself up from the sofa. He covered her with a
New Orleans Saints throw he found draped over the back of a chair, trying not
to wake her. As soon as he tucked it in around her, her eyes opened.

“You going?’ she said, sounding drowsy
and a little drunk, though he knew she wasn’t.

“Uh huh. You need to sleep now.”

She yawned and sat up. “I need to lock
the door behind you.”

“I guess you do.” He walked to the door
and turned to face her. “You’ve got my number. Promise me you’ll call if you
need anything.”

She nodded sleepily. “I will.”

“And you’ll let me know when that woman
gets here?”

“I will.”

He nodded, satisfied she was being
truthful, and turned away from her. He reached for the door, stopped, and
turned back. Without warning, he pulled her into his arms for a hug.

The two of them stood there for what
seemed to him much longer than it actually was. Wordlessly, he held her, his
hand rubbing gentle circles on her back, his chin resting on her head. At first
she resisted, her arms hung limply at her sides. She lifted them, eventually,
and locked them around his waist.

As badly as he wanted to kiss her, he
held himself back, sensing she needed a friend more than a lover right now.
Anything else meant to happen between them could happen later. When there was
no more ghost throwing pictures across rooms, literally.

He pulled away from her and planted a
soft kiss at her temple. “Good night Meg, and please be careful.” He felt her
nod under his lips.

“I will.” She waited until he’d stepped
onto the tiny front stoop. “Hey Mitch?”

He turned to face her again. “Yeah?”

“Feel free to come over and massage my
feet anytime.”

Her accompanying smile had him feeling
good all over. Almost better than a kiss.