The Homecoming (16 page)

“Not always,” Faith, who’d joined the celebration after her early shift at the hospital, said. “Sometimes parents just have to take a little time to weigh matters.”

He muttered something beneath his breath.

“Excuse me?” Kara asked.

“Nothin’.”

She was tempted to look down and see if her cop oxfords had suddenly morphed into black boots with long, pointy toes. Because watching the pleasure drain from her son’s face, Kara felt like the Wicked Witch of the West
. And your little dog, Toto, too.

“I said I’d take it under consideration,” she reminded him. “And you still haven’t told me what happened.”

“To your clothes,” Faith supplied when Kara’s question was met with a blank look.

“You’re soaking wet,” Kara said.

“Oh, that.” He looked down at the drenched Marine bulldog shirt. “Me and Sax were having a water-blaster war. And I won!”

“Good for you. And it’s ‘Sax and I,’ ” Kara corrected absently.

She glanced around and, sure enough, saw Sax headed toward them, his oversize dog bounding along beside him.

Her first thought, when she viewed the water blasters he was carrying in each hand, was that she didn’t want Trey playing war. G.I. Joe and all his other plastic superhero action figures were one thing. After all, Jared had bought those toys for their son over years of birthdays and Christmases. They were small and in no way resembled the real thing.

Of course, the yellow-and-green Super Soakers would never be mistaken for actual weapons, either. But, although she was a second-generation cop herself, the idea of Trey even pretending to shoot at anyone was discomfiting.

“They’re just toys,” Faith murmured as the boy went racing off toward man and dog. “You had an Annie Oakley toy pistol in a pink holster that you wore everywhere when you were his age.”

“Times were different then. I don’t recall any children shooting classmates at school when I was growing up.”

“You can’t keep him in a bubble. Besides, the other night, while you were out investigating that abuse- of-mailbox case, he created a rather inventive pistol out of LEGOs.”

“You didn’t mention that.”

“You got home late. And I didn’t feel it was a portent of some dire things to come. I have a photo of your father as a child wearing a Daniel Boone Halloween costume, complete with coonskin cap and toy rifle. You pretended you were Annie Oakley. And both of you turned out to be admirable individuals.”

“I’ll second that,” Danny Sullivan, whom Kara had forgotten was standing there, said.

Realizing he was still awaiting an answer, she said, “I’m sorry. I’m not really into dating.”

“Are you into eating?”

“Of course she is,” Faith leaped in.

“I was thinking we could have dinner at The Fish House sometime next week. Maybe check out that blues club that opened up in Cannon Beach afterward.”

“Oh, Danny.” Kara managed, just barely, to stifle a sigh. “This just isn’t a good time. I’ve got this new possible crime that’s going to demand a lot of attention, and some cold cases I need to look back through; then there’s Trey—”

“I’ll be home with Trey,” Faith volunteered way too eagerly.

“It’s just dinner,” Danny jumped in, apparently wanting her to know that he had no part in her mother’s blatant matchmaking attempt. “You have to eat, right?”

“It’d have to be an early evening . . .” She wavered.

“I’ll have you back home by ten.”

She caught a glimpse of Sax getting nearer, while Trey was bounding around him with as much enthusiasm as his dog.

Her son wasn’t the only one who’d gotten wet. The white T-shirt Sax had changed into after the parade clung to his chiseled abs in a way that caused an estrogen spike Danny Sullivan’s dimples never would.

Heaven help her, maybe she
did
have a thing for bad boys after all!

“Tuesday,” she caved. “I’ll try to wrap up by six. We can meet at the station, if that’s okay with you.” Having him pick her up at her mother’s house was definitely too high school.

“Six it is.” His grin was quick and bright and utterly harmless. With that mission successfully accomplished, he walked back over to the woodcarving booth, passing Sax on the way.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Faith murmured as they watched the two men shoot each other looks. “Seems a competition is afoot.”

“You’re reading too much into that.”

“Perhaps.” Even as Sax kept walking straight toward them, Danny gave in to impulse and shot an uncharacteristically hard parting glance back over his shoulder at the former SEAL. “Perhaps not . . . Of course, Sax Douchett is a totally inappropriate candidate. But it never hurts for a woman to have potential beaux vying for her attention.” She smiled. “It keeps them on their toes.”

“I don’t know which is worse,” Kara muttered, “hearing you use the word
beaux
, or the idea of having any.”

“Sherry Archer can be annoying at times. And I’m admittedly relieved that you don’t feel stifled by living at my house. But there’s one thing she has right.”

“And that would be?”

Her mother’s gaze moved back and forth between the two men again. “That it’s high time you moved on with your life.” Her expression, which had always turned to New England granite whenever Sax Douchett’s name had come up, softened ever so slightly as she observed the way her grandson was looking up at the former SEAL. “For yourself. And your son.”

He was getting to her. The same way she’d always gotten to him. Sax had always known that Kara’s heart belonged to Jared. He doubted, even during that one massive mistake of a kiss they’d shared, she’d ever thought of him in the way he too often had thought about her.

The night Jared, Cole, and he had gotten drunk down on the beach before the two went off to boot camp, when Jared—who, like Cole, was a year older than both Kara and Sax—had asked him to “take care of my girl for me,” Sax found himself unable to refuse.

What he hadn’t realized, his mind clouded by the six-packs they’d polished off, was that he was about to learn the meaning of the word
masochist
.

His senior year of high school would always go down in Sax’s mind as both the best and worst year of his life. The best because, thanks to Jared’s request, he’d had an excuse to pass time with Kara. To drive her to school, take her back home again, and, as corny as it sounded, carry her books.

When he’d first returned to Shelter Bay a couple weeks ago and climbed into the driver’s seat of the Camaro his father had so faithfully kept running for him, although he knew it was physically impossible, Sax could have sworn that the strawberry shampoo she’d used in those days still lingered in the car.

Old memories he’d kept at bay for all the years she’d been married had come flooding back. And while dropping into the sheriff’s office to visit an old friend would have been the most natural thing for him to do, he’d kept his distance.

But now, watching Danny Sullivan hit on her, Sax realized that giving the widow space might not be the most effective move. Especially since the ballplayer-turned-teacher was precisely the type of man Dr. Faith Blanchard would want for her daughter.

Sullivan was a nice enough guy: good-looking, respectable, and, being a teacher, he was undoubtedly good with kids. Having never gone to war, he probably didn’t have any damned annoying ghosts haunting him.

He was also the wrong man for Kara Blanchard Conway.

Of course, just because Sullivan wasn’t the right guy didn’t mean that Sax was.

In fact, if you got right down to it, there was probably one thing he and Dr. Faith Blanchard were in full agreement on—he was undoubtedly the worst guy on the planet for Kara to get mixed up with right now.

Sax knew that.

She’d always been a forever-after kind of girl. And even if he’d been an until-death-do-we-part kind of guy, like Cole was turning out to be, Kara deserved better than getting involved with anyone who brought a damn team of mouthy SEAL ghosts to bed with him.

How was it, Kara asked herself as she sat on the blanket her mother had brought, watching the fireworks explode in the sky, that being with Sax could be both familiar and strangely unsettling at the same time?

She’d always thought of him as a friend. No.
Jared’s
friend. From the day they’d first met on the playground, Jared Conway had always been at the center of all her relationships. He’d been the dazzlingly bright sun around which everyone who knew him revolved. Since Jared had never met a stranger, all of his many friends had been connected, in varying ways, because of their relationship to him.

She’d sensed that something had transpired between her fiancé and Sax the day Jared and Cole had climbed onto that Greyhound bus headed to the Marine boot camp at Parris Island.

Although she’d planned to drive Jared to the diner that doubled as a bus depot, then go home alone after she’d waved him off with a brave smile and undoubtedly some tears, Sax had shown up at her house with Cole riding shotgun and Jared already in the backseat of the Camaro.

Thinking back on it, after giving that strange, one-armed gesture that passed for a guy hug, Sax had hung back on the periphery with his parents and grandparents, leaving Jared and her to share as private a good-bye as you could possibly have when families of three other recruits were all there for the same reason.

She’d been braver than she’d thought herself capable of being. Somehow she’d managed to hold back the tears stinging her eyes, assuring Jared that she’d be fine and would write him every day. A promise she’d never failed to keep.

Afterward, when the bus had finally disappeared into mist caused by the rain that had been falling all morning, without a word Sax had ambled over to her in that lazy, loose-hipped stride that had nearly every girl in school swooning after him, taken her by the hand, and led her, as if she were a child, back to the car.

And then, instead of taking her back to her empty house, he’d started driving.

It could have been minutes, hours, or a lifetime as they traveled along the coast road, her face buried in her hands as she wept.

Once she’d finally cried herself out, he silently handed her a box of tissues from the glove compartment.

Then he drove back into town to the window at the DQ, where he ordered two hot-fudge sundaes and cherry Cokes.

He didn’t say a word until they got to her house. Which, given that both her parents were working, was empty. Taking her hand again—and again, more as if she were a child needing guidance than some girl he might be interested in—he walked her to the front door. Since nobody in Shelter Bay had ever locked their doors back then, there was no reason to wait for her to pull out a key.

Instead, he placed his hands on her shoulders and, more serious than she’d ever seen him—then or now—he’d looked down into her swollen, blotchy, tearstained face and said, “It’s going to be okay, Kara.
You’re
going to be okay.”

Now, all too aware of the former SEAL sitting on the other side of her son—who’d insisted he stay—she remembered that because it had been Sax, she’d actually believed him.

The fireworks had been synchronized to the music blaring from the flatbed speakers. When the K-Bay FM deejay coordinating the event had first stated his desire to use the antique cannon in the park, along with fifteen war reenactors firing off Civil War muskets for the finale, Kara had balked.

But like most radio personalities, he’d seemingly been born with a quick and ready tongue, and after he’d finished explaining why and how the display was going to work, she’d come to the conclusion that the staged gunfire wouldn’t be any greater risk than the fireworks themselves could be. And they did, after all, have a fire department pumper truck standing by, just in case.

“The 1812 Overture was written to celebrate the Russians’ victory over the French,” she explained to her son as the night sky lit up with blinding color that had the crowd oohing and aahing in unison. “According to what James Thompson from the radio station told me, when half a million French troops invaded Russia, the people all were told to go to church and pray for a miracle to protect their homeland and keep them safe.”

Damn
. The moment she heard herself saying those words, Kara feared her son would point out that he’d prayed every night for his father, but no higher power had opted to send a miracle their way.

“Hear that?” Sax asked, deftly cutting off any chance for Trey to bring that difficult topic up. “That’s ‘La Marseillaise, ’ the French national anthem. The first part you heard were the cellos and violas, which are kinda sad instruments, which are supposed to tell you that the people are about to be in a world of hurt.

“Now, this back-and-forth battle between a Russian folk song and the French anthem is telling about the battle.”

“The French song keeps getting louder,” Trey said.

“Sure is. Damn if you aren’t one smart kid,” Sax said approvingly. “Because the French are gaining more and more victories. Pretty soon, it’s looking like everyone in Russia’s going to be eating frog legs and French fries.”

“I like French fries.”

“Never met anyone who didn’t,” Sax agreed. “So, hear that? Where the music changes?”

Trey tilted his head and concentrated. “Yeah.”

“That’s another Russian folk dance. This is where Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer who wrote the overture, is telling how the czar—that’s like a president for life, but he’s not elected—instructed all his people to save their Rodina, which is Russian for motherland. So all over the country, people from all the villages came running out of their houses and churches and raced toward Moscow.

“This part is where Moscow’s burning, the French keep advancing, and it looks like, despite trying their best, the Russians are flat-out doomed.”