The SEAL’s Secret Lover (8 page)

Grannie had her iPad open on the table, tapping and swiping through a botany website and Rumi’s poems while Florence and Marian peered over her should from either side.

Keenan looked at his watch, then around the room. “Where’s Rose?”

“She slept in,” Grannie said. “When I left she was getting dressed.”

“She needs the sleep,” Marian said. “I don’t think she slept at all on the flight over. She bought WiFi on the plane. When I fell asleep she was on her laptop and when I woke up, she was still on her laptop!”

“She’s the youngest member of the management team at Field Energy,” Grannie said staunchly. “She has a lot of responsibility.”

“She’s always had a lot of responsibility,” Florence said. “Running herself into the ground won’t help her handle it.”

“And she’s always been able to handle it,” Grannie said. “Look, there she is.”

Everyone looked up as Rose walked into the dining room. For five seconds Keenan let himself appreciate the way she moved. She wore her staple leggings and boots, with a creamy shirt decorated with flowers at the neckline, and another swingy cardigan, this one in a shade of brown that set off her hair.

She saw them looking at her, lifted a hand, and gave a little wave. “Morning,” she said as she set her shoulder bag on an empty chair. “Can I get anyone anything from the buffet?”

The Babes had switched to Rumi, and shook their heads.

“I’ll get coffee,” Keenan said.

She lifted a brow at his full plate, remembering his sharply delineated muscles. “Must be nice”

“I went for a run this morning,” he replied.

“I can’t even,” she said.

He got coffee for her while she ladled out a bowl of the traditional lentil soup, spritzed it with lemon, then added a side of dates and pastries. “Thanks,” she said when she sat down and saw the coffee waiting for her.

“So. Konya.”

“The home of Rumi and the birthplace of Sufism,” Keenan said. “We should get to the museum when it opens. The later it gets, the more packed it will be.”

“Do we have a guide joining us?”

“Not here,” Keenan said. “According to my research the museum is well organized. I can handle the architecture.”

“How much time do we have?”

“It’s seven hours to Ephesus,” Keenan said. “I’d like to be on the road by early afternoon.”

Rose delicately sipped her soup, then looked at her grandmother. “I don’t want to rush her. Rumi is her favorite poet. This particular stop means the most to her.”

“Understood,” he said.

“Have you seen the museum?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve been based out of Istanbul for a few months, but I haven’t done much sightseeing.”

“I’m glad you could come,” she said. “It seems a shame to live so close to so much history and not visit it.”

He finished his mouthful of
su böreği
. “I’ve gotten to know Istanbul fairly well,” he said. “Plenty of history there.”

She swallowed the last mouthful of soup. “I really need to get a good recipe for that soup,” she said. “But you haven’t been to Troy?”

“No.”

“It’s just a few hours from Istanbul,” she said, her tone making the statement an interrogative.

The ancient site of Troy was close enough for a day trip, as close as his fears. “I’ve read
The Iliad
so many times I’m not sure I want to replace that with the reality of an archaeological dig,” he admitted.

Her gaze sharpened. For a moment he thought she was going to call him on his bullshit, but instead she said, “Grannie really wants to go to Troy. Is this going to be a problem? Because I can hire another driver or guide.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I’m good.”

“I started the book last night,” she said. “That’s why I was late coming down.”

His eyebrow ghosted up just a millimeter or two.

She pulled the book out of her shoulder bag and showed him the sheet of hotel stationery she was using as a bookmark. “‘Now’s the time for killing! Later, at leisure, strip the corpses up and down the plain!’ I’ve watched Jack play
Call of Duty
, but this is something else entirely.”

“It’s personal,” he said. “It’s intensely personal. It begins over a woman and ends over a best friend.”

“I couldn’t put it down,” she said quietly.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the look in her eye. The only thing he knew for sure was that, based on the shadows under them, she’d fall asleep in the Land Rover, probably ten minutes out of Konya.

“Ready?” he said with a look at his watch. The Babes were already packing up.

Rose knocked back the rest of her coffee. “Let’s go.”

The GPS navigated them right to the museum, where a few cars and smaller tour buses were lining up in the parking lot. The wind caught Rose’s door when she opened it, rocking the Land Rover. Keenan helped the Babes from the backseat, then closed and locked the car. They paused in the middle of the parking lot to lean back and peer up at the turquoise spire brilliant against the dark gray sky and the hewn blocks that comprised the walls. A smaller minaret perched delicately between the domes of the main building. Hardy evergreen trees stood fast against the desert wind.

Grannie peered over her shoulder at Rose, then pointed up. The wind carried her words, but her body language and excited smile came through loud and clear.

“I’m so glad I’m here to see this,” Rose said. Her elastic couldn’t keep her hair confined, and strands of it blew across her cheek and clung to her mouth. She tugged them free, then gave Keenan a sweet smile. “So glad.”

“Me too. We’d better catch up with them.”

They cleared the main gate and walked into the walled compound. Using the research he’d gathered before driving to Ankara he gave a quick talk on the building’s history and architecture. He looked at his watch. “Will two hours be enough?”

Grannie pointed at the gift shop. “Let’s meet there in ninety minutes,” she said. “If we need more time, we’ll decide then.”

Keenan set the timer on his watch, and the group drifted apart. Rose strolled across the marble-paved courtyard beside her grandmother to the museum entrance, an arch set into the ornate dark wood decorating the mausoleum’s main floor and the roof jutting over the entrance. A small crowd milled around while covering their shoes with incongruous blue surgical booties to protect the fine carpets inside, and show respect for the poet’s final resting place. Rose tugged the booties over her boots, then shot Keenan a smile as Grannie used her shoulder for balance to cover her Converse sneakers. They disappeared into the crowd. Keenan followed them at a discreet distance to give them privacy but also keep an eye on them.

For Jack. He told himself he was doing this because Jack asked him to, not because he couldn’t stop watching Rose. Her hair was uncovered. Some Turkish women wore the
hijab
; whether to cover your hair or not was a hot topic among women in Turkey, with modern women often opting not to cover their hair in daily life, while more ardent Muslims and older women chose to wear the
hijab
.

But even if Rose had covered her hair, even if her hair wasn’t a distinct shade of reddish brown, he would have known where she was by some interior compass that was slowly realigning itself to her as true north.

The mausoleum’s ornate interior held sarcophagi for Rumi and his immediate family, with Rumi’s resting underneath the green dome. The room wasn’t overly crowded yet. He still didn’t feel at ease in tight spaces full of people, but he stayed behind Rose and the Babes while they examined the contents of the glass cases, clothing attributed to Rumi or his family, locks of hair, and beautifully illuminated Korans. When they were in the last small room, he walked back outside and stood by the fountain in the courtyard to wait for them, watching pilgrims lean over the low white-painted fence to fill bottles from the fountain or wash their hands and feet at one of the spigots extending from marble blocks at regular intervals in the wrought iron fence.

The Babes and the Babes’ Road Manager emerged from the museum. There was a brief moment of conference as they took off their booties, then they split up, going in a different directions, Florence and Marian toward the gift shop, probably in search of tea and souvenirs, Grannie covering her head as she walked into the small mosque at the far end of the courtyard, and Rose studying the pilgrims and the architecture in the courtyard.

“What did you think?” he asked.

She paused for a second, arms crossed over her torso as she looked around. “This is going to sound really stupid, but it’s so foreign. The architecture, the writing, the language, the culture. Every sense is bombarded with something new. The food is spiced differently, the air doesn’t smell like Lancaster, or an office building. Different music, different language, different horns,” she added when someone honked from the parking lot. “The sirens are different from emergency sirens back home. The calls to prayer. Look at this,” she said, walking toward the small cells lining the fourth wall of the courtyard. She peered inside, taking in every element of the small rooms where a Sufi dervish would have studied and trained for his vocation. “Carpets, furniture, pictures. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I want to touch everything, simply because it doesn’t feel like my desk, or my steering wheel, or my clothes.”

Lips parted, she trailed her fingers over the hewn blocks that comprised the courtyard’s walls, and for a split second he wondered if she wanted to touch him like that—soft, exploratory, slow and curious, and so focused that nothing else existed.

“Home feels really far away right now,” she finished. “That’s what I think.”

He gave a low chuckle, then turned his back to the wall and waited while she took a closer look.

“What did you think?” she asked.

“It’s not as foreign to me,” he said. “I’ve spent years in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

“Does this feel like home now?” she asked, genuine curiosity in her voice.

Mentally he came up short. Yes. No. He could
survive
most places with nothing but his hands, and with the right equipment, anywhere on earth. But where he
lived
, where he called home, was a completely different thing. “I’ve only been here a few months,” he hedged.

She made that noncommittal humming noise again, then looked at her watch. “You’ve got time,” he said.

“How’s the gift shop look?”

“Packed,” Marian said from a few steps away. “There’s barely enough room to move, and only one clerk working.”

She and Florence held open their bags to show Rose their souvenirs. “We’re going to get some tea,” Florence said. “Want to join us?”

“I was going to get a copy of Rumi’s poems, but I think I’ll have a look in the mosque instead,” Rose said.

Grannie was coming out as she went in. Rose paused to point Grannie in Florence and Marian’s direction, then shook out a bright scarf to cover her hair and went inside. Keenan declined the offer of tea and shifted his position so he could keep an eye on the Babes having tea just outside the gift shop. He had to give the older ladies credit. The wind was gusting hard enough to send chairs skittering along the big granite slabs paving the tea shop, but they just sat on their purses and packages, zipped up their fleeces, and drank their tea.

When the gift shop cleared out momentarily, he ducked inside, made a beeline for the books, and snagged an anthology of Coleman Barks’ translation of Rumi’s poems, a couple of bookmarks, and a magnet. He paid, and was hunkered down on his heels by Florence’s chair when Rose walked out of the courtyard.

“Three minutes to spare,” she said, looking at her watch.

He felt his cheek crease with a smile. They walked back to the Land Rover through crowds streaming toward the entrance, the Babes in a huddle in front of them. Rose fell in beside him, and he handed her the brown paper sack from the gift shop.

“What’s this?” she asked, as she opened the bag, then, “Oh! Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Does anyone have to use the bathroom before we leave?”

The general consensus was no. He mentally prepared himself to stop at every rest stop and caravanserai between Konya and Ephesus.

*   *   *

Like most groups or teams, the Bucket List Babes had a routine: rehash the site, discuss vegetation, then a really pleasant silence would fall over the Land Rover as people read or listened to music and watched the countryside roll by. A little girl with wind-tangled hair and a pink dress tended sheep in a meadow just beginning to green into spring; a while later they watched a boy fly a kite. Keenan had expected nonstop chatter, but found to his relief they all knew how to keep their own company.

Rose flipped through Rumi’s poems, then dug
The Iliad
out of her shoulder tote. As the miles rolled by he watched her eyelids droop, then close briefly, open again, then finally shut for good. He kept an eye on her, waiting for the right moment to ease the books from her lap. Grannie worked her travel pillow between Rose’s seat and the door, holding it there while Keenan gathered the books from her unresisting hands, then gently nudged her head to the side so it rested on the pillow. A quick glance over his shoulder found Grannie smiling conspiratorially at him.

An hour later all the women were asleep, Marian and Grannie against the rear passenger doors, Florence with her head pillowed on Grannie’s shoulder. He scratched his ear and tried not to laugh. Keenan Parker, former U.S. Navy SEAL, chauffeuring three senior citizens and one jet-lagged Senior Director of Operations and Logistics through Turkey. It was almost ridiculous.

Except it felt really nice. Like he was responsible for everyday human beings doing everyday things. Almost ordinary.

They woke up in time for dinner at a roadside restaurant, a meal consumed in a friendly, companionable silence. Rose had the bleary, stunned look he saw too often in the mirror, coming down after days and days of little to no sleep, so he wasn’t surprised when she fell asleep again in the car. When they parked in front of the hotel’s entrance she didn’t even wake up. Grannie handled the room arrangements while he unloaded the baggage, then opened the passenger door.