What troubled him was, he couldn’t for the life of him think of anything he could do to help her. He was a United States Navy SEAL, doggone it, and feeling helpless didn’t sit well with him.

He cleared his throat, knowing he had to say something. “Is that the thing you’re so ashamed of?”

She looked confused for a moment, then remembered and shrugged. “Some of it.” Her voice turned bright and harsh as neon. “Hey, I bet you’re sorry you ever answered that phone, huh?”

Troy gave a little “Huh!” of surprise. Because the truth was, he didn’t know how he felt about that. There was no use denying there’d been a time or two in the past twenty hours or so when he’d had second thoughts about what he’d gotten himself mixed up in.

He looked over at Charly, and for a change she was looking back at him. She had her head tilted at a cheeky angle and a wry smile on her lips, but her eyes were clinging to his, searching and unsure. Maybe he imagined it-it was just for a moment, before he had to pull his gaze and attention back to the business of driving-but he couldn’t shake the notion that he’d seen something in the deep-woods shadows of those eyes. Something looking out at him…like a little girl in her secret hiding place, hoping against hope he was about to find her but expecting him to turn away before he did.

It gave him a strange and, for a strong man and former navy SEAL, a damn unsettling feeling. It made him feel like crying.


“So, what do you do, now that you aren’t in the navy anymore?” Charly asked between bites of her Double-Whammy Super Deluxe Cheeseburger, chasing stray globs of special sauce with a fingertip. “When you’re not bailing delinquent bridesmaids out of jail, that is.”

Since his own mouth was full, Troy couldn’t answer right away. He chewed and thought about it while his gaze rested idly on Bubba, who’d already polished off his three burgers and was sitting at attention with his jaws dripping and his eyes locked onto Troy’s dinner like heat-seeking missiles. He knew what Charly was doing, and he was inclined to let her get away with it. Hell, he’d known guys pinned down and taking heavy fire to pull their kids’ pictures out of their pockets and start exchanging stories about birthday parties.

He swallowed, wiped his mouth with his napkin and cleared his throat. “Not too much, actually. Marybell’s had me doing-”

“Marybell?”

“Yeah, you know, Mirabella.” Charly was looking so stunned, he had to smile. “She didn’t tell you, huh? That’s what Jimmy Joe calls her. Guess it’s startin’ to rub off on the rest of the family.”

She put a hand over her eyes and murmured, “Oh, my Lord.”

“Anyway,” Troy went on, “I’ve been doing some things for her-handyman stuff, you know-gettin’ things ready for the wedding, remodelin’ the house to make a nursery for Amy. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds, let me tell you. Hell, I remember boot-camp instructors who weren’t as hard to please. You know how she is-got to have everything just so.”

Charly smiled wryly. “Sounds like Bella.” She shook her head as if she’d just had her bell rung. “Jeez…Marybell.”

After a moment she gave a sort of cough and aimed a frown in Bubba’s general direction. “So, how is she?”

“Mirabella? She’s fine, I guess. Seems real happy.” Troy thought his smile must be a carbon copy of the lopsided one Charly had just been wearing; it was the way Mirabella affected people. “Sometimes it’s kind of hard to tell. She can be pretty intense.”

Charly chuckled in agreement, and there was a moment’s silence that seemed almost companionable.

The hospital with its cool corridors and beeping monitors and high drama seemed a long way off. They were the only occupants of the fast-food restaurant’s outside tables, since it hadn’t seemed fair to leave poor Bubba tethered to the Cherokee in the heat while they dined in air-conditioned comfort. The breeze Troy had had such hopes for earlier hadn’t lived up to its promise, and the day had the lazy feel of a long late afternoon not quite ready to turn itself over to evening. The insect hum and heat shimmer combined with a stomach full of cholesterol and too little sleep the night before was making Troy feel drowsy and relaxed. He wondered if they were affecting Charly the same way.

He was thinking about asking her if she wanted to go back to the motel and change her clothes, and thinking about the various possibilities of where that might lead, when she suddenly coughed and said, “Well, I hope she is.”

He said, “Pardon?” having completely lost the thread of the conversation.

She had picked up a french fry and was studying it minutely. “Bella. I hope she’s happy. She sure deserves to be.” She sounded gruff, almost angry.

“Doesn’t everybody?” Troy said cautiously.

She hitched a shoulder and popped the french fry into her mouth. “So they say.”

“I sure can’t think why she wouldn’t be happy,” he said after a moment, leaning forward on his elbows to steal one of her fries. “Seems to me she’s got it all-beautiful little baby girl, a good man who happens to think she’s the most wonderful woman ever born…”

“Oh, please.” She made a sound that was more cynicism than laughter and looked away. “Like all it takes to make a woman happy is to keep her barefoot and pregnant? That is just so…Southern.”

“Well, now,” Troy drawled, “last time I looked, women had the vote down here, too. We got women doctors, lawyers…hell, we even got women politicians.”

“Oh, Lord, don’t get insulted.” She laughed and shook back her hair, and he could see it was the physical part of an effort she was making to banish the darkness of her thoughts. “I’m just havin’ trouble picturing Bella living in the South, is all.”

“Lots of people do,” said Troy, with a little shrug to show he wasn’t arguing with her, or trying to convince her of anything. Which he wasn’t. “More an’ more all the time.”

“Well, anyway,” she said lightly, “she sure does think your brother walks on water. You ask me, the man sounds almost too good to be true.”

Troy had to look down to dilute his smile. “Well, I’m afraid he’s the genuine article. Yeah, she got herself a good man there-definitely the pick of the litter.”

“The pick of the litter?” Charly laughed, one of the first sounds of real amusement he’d heard her make, then angled a look at him from under her lashes he could have sworn was flirting. “What about you? You and your brother anything alike?”

“What? Aw, hell no.” He squirmed in the hot plastic seat, all of a sudden feeling something he’d never felt before: self-consciousness, the back of his mind clicking away like an adding machine, totaling up the pluses and minuses of his character and looking for the first time in his life as if it might come up with a deficit. Nothing like a woman, he thought ruefully, to test a man’s confidence.

“Naw,” he said, brazening it out, “Jimmy Joe’s a whole lot smarter’n I am. Sweeter, too.” He grinned at her, showing all his teeth. “But I’m cuter.”

She laughed again, but this time he couldn’t hold her eyes. She looked away, reaching abruptly for her drink.

He watched her lips close around the straw, watched her throat move with her swallow, thinking of all the things he could have said then, all the things he wanted to say…wondering what was in her mind, and if it was anything like what was in his. Because he was thinking again of making love with her, not the way he already had, but the ways he’d like to.

And it occurred to him that in a way, having sex with somebody made it even harder to get to know them. Kind of like two different radio signals trying to come in on the same frequency. Sometimes it was tough to make sense out of either one.

“So,” said Charly, taking a breath, “you don’t know what you want to do? Now that you’re out of the navy, I mean. I thought the service was supposed to train you for something.”

“Oh,” Troy said dryly, struggling to get his thoughts back under control, “they trained me for a lot of things. Most of which aren’t much use in civilian life. It’s not like I was a mechanic, or a chef, or a computer engineer or a pilot or something. SEALs…” He let it trail off.

“You never did anything else?”

“Oh yeah, sure-for the last few years I’ve been training other SEALs. And for a while I was Master-at-Arms.” She raised her eyebrows. “Law enforcement,” he explained, and waved it off with a gesture. “Look, it’s not that there’s nothing I can do. It’s more a matter of finding something I want to do.”

“And…?” She was giving him her undivided attention, her eyes sharp as sherry wine.

“Don’t know that yet.” He shrugged and shifted around in his chair, he was finding it unnerving, having all that passion and intensity focused on him for a change. “The navy-being a SEAL-that’s a tough act to follow. I don’t know how to explain it, except that there’s an edge…kind of a high you get, being in dangerous situations. You can get used to it, you know? Makes normal life seem pretty tame by comparison. Flat.” He was quiet for a moment, turning his paper iced-tea cup around and around, watching it make wet rings on the plastic tabletop. “I just don’t want to wind up like these guys you see-you know the ones I’m talkin’ about-they hit the high point of their life back in high school, making the winning touchdown in the big game, and nothing ever gets quite that good again.”

“Like Kelly Grace,” Charly said softly. “High school was undoubtedly the high point of her life. And Bobby Hanratty and Richie…”

Richie. It suddenly occurred to Troy to wonder if the handsome, strapping football player in the photograph he’d seen was the one who’d gotten Charly pregnant, all those years ago. Somehow, though, the kid hadn’t struck him as the sensitive type, definitely not the type to commit suicide. And there was something missing in Charly’s voice when she spoke of him…

He died.

He remembered now. There’d been the other one, the slender, sweet-looking boy wearing the band uniform. Colin, that was his name.

A little chill of intuition shivered down his spine.

“Anyway,” he said harshly, “I don’t want that to be me.” He got up, gathering trash. “You want to go back to the motel and change, or anything? Or you want to go straight back to the hospital?”

Charly got up, too. “I think I should get back to the hospital,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

“No problem.”

Their gazes intersected as she came around the table, held for a moment and then parted almost like old friends. Troy wondered if he was imagining it, or if there was something new between them…something warmer, maybe. A little less edgy.

When they pulled into the hospital parking lot the sun was setting behind a black pile of thunderheads. The breeze had sprung back up, too, warm and brassy with the smell of distant rain.

Charly took hold of the door handle and turned to him, her face pale and tense in the twilight. “You can just let me out here, if you want to. No need for you to wait around.”

Okay, maybe he had imagined that things had changed a little bit between them, that she was finally starting to consider him a friend instead of just a kind stranger. He was surprised by how much it pained him, having her keep shutting him out again and again. What kind of person did she think he was, for God’s sake, that he’d just drop her off on the hospital steps, when for all either of them knew the worst possible news might be waiting for her inside?

Then he remembered her eyes, and the hopeful, lost little girl he’d seen locked away inside them. For a moment his throat seized up on him. “Oh,” he said, forcing words through so they sounded scratchy as burlap, “I b’lieve I’ll come on in with you for a while, if you don’t mind. Just let me get my dog squared away.”

She nodded, and he noticed she didn’t seem inclined to argue with him anymore about facing whatever was waiting for her in that hospital all alone.

Since he didn’t have the sun and the heat to worry about, he was able to park a little closer to the hospital. He left Bubba tied to the Cherokee’s door handle and walked Charly in through the emergency entrance and down the long hallway to the CICU, one hand casually on her waist, as if it belonged there.

They found Dobrina alone in the waiting room.

“Asleep,” Charly whispered, pausing in the doorway. Troy could feel her body relax.

“That seems like a good sign,” he offered.

She nodded. “I can’t believe she’s still here.” Troy gave her a quick look but didn’t say anything. She let a breath out softly, shaking her head in wonderment. “She’s been with him since I was born, you know that? Thirty-six years. I don’t know how she’s stuck by him all these years.”