Cindy Gerard - The Way Home

While he’d said very little about himself directly, he’d revealed a lot. J.R. used to tell her about the bravery of the medical-evac crews. Because the Army and Navy air ambulance birds have a red cross painted on their sides, the Geneva Convention rules don’t allow them to arm themselves with machine guns or mini-guns. Pilots like Kelly and Ty flew into hot zones with nothing but personal weapons—M-4 rifles and handguns—for protection against RPGs and small-arms fire. This practice was supposed to ensure humanitarian treatment of wounded during war, making aircraft, ships, corpsmen, trucks, facilities, and anything else displaying red crosses off-limits to enemy fire. Big surprise, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda—like the Vietcong in Kelly’s era—were not signatories to the Geneva Convention, so they use the red crosses as targets.

“My husband held the medical crews in very high regard. He said what you did was the equivalent to tap dancing blindfolded into a minefield.”

Another throwaway lift of a shoulder. “Everybody’s got a job to do.”

He looked at her then. “Your husband…”

“J.R.,” she supplied when he hesitated. “Army. Special Forces.”

She toyed with her wineglass. Another change of subject seemed in order. “So… you weren’t a career man?”

A slow shake of his head. “Wanted to be.” Another shrug. “Didn’t work out.”

The statement begged for a follow-up, but the distant look in his eyes told her it might be best not to go there. That maybe it was a confidence he didn’t want to share and she didn’t need to hear. Not on a date that was not a date.

Clearly, though, his military career had been cut short. She wondered if he’d been injured in some way—couldn’t tell by looking, although now that she thought about it, she had detected a slight limp when he’d first gotten out of the Jeep. She’d chalked it up to a long plane ride in one of the cramped commuter jets that routinely flew in and out of the small airport in the Falls.

“So enough about me,” he said with a quick smile. “Why a general store in the middle of Nowhere, Minnesota?”

It was her turn to shrug. “I grew up here. Kabby, Lake Kabetogama,” she clarified, “it’s home. Crossroads was my mom and dad’s store. When they retired in Arizona a few years ago, it seemed like taking it over was the right thing to do at the right time.”

“Before that, what did you do?”

“I was an ER nurse. Last place I worked was Womack, the Army Medical Center near Fort Bragg—it was the last place we were stationed.”

He looked impressed, and she tried not to let it please her. “You miss it?”

“Nursing? No. At least, not yet.”

“Burn out?”

“Some, yeah,” she admitted. “But it was more than that. After J.R. died… I guess I needed to come home, you know?”

She could see in his eyes that he did know.

“Anyway, on any given day, I end up treating anything from sunburn to sunstroke to removing fish hooks embedded in… well, you can imagine some of the places those things get stuck. So I still keep my fingers in the pie, so to speak.”

“Sort of a local Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?”

She grinned. “Closest doctor is twenty, twenty-five minutes from the lake. Everyone knows I’m a nurse. So I’m going to turn them away?”

“No, I don’t imagine you would. You didn’t turn me away.”

Not that winter night. Not today. She didn’t regret what she’d done that night. She hoped she wouldn’t regret not sending him on his way today.

The waitress had brought their salads several minutes ago, and they’d both been halfheartedly working on them when he finally posed the question about something she’d been too chicken to ask.

“Why haven’t you asked me what took me so long to come back?”

She looked across the table—and saw in his eyes that the small talk was over.

TY WATCHED JESS CAREFULLY AS she set her half-eaten salad aside to make room for the steak he’d convinced her she needed to order. After several long moments, she finally answered his question.

“I didn’t figure I needed to ask.”

That’s not what her eyes said. “You weren’t surprised when you didn’t hear from me?”

She picked up her steak knife and fork, let them hover over her plate, then set them down again. “A little bit, maybe. Until I got to thinking about it. I mean, seriously. Things were a little intense that night. It was difficult to get a true read on anything but the danger. Besides… I live here. You live half a continent away. We lead very different lives. So a little time, a little distance, a lot of perspective, and you coming back didn’t look like such a good bet on paper. I chalked it up to a passing chance encounter. Hardly something to—”

He covered her hand with his and stopped her with a soft chuckle. “OK. I got it. Good points. All taken. You can stop rationalizing now.”

And protesting. Too much, maybe, judging by the sudden flush on her cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman blush. He found it endearing and pretty and sexy as hell. Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away.

“You weren’t even a little bit disappointed?” It was a shameless fishing expedition, but he didn’t feel guilty about it. He’d thought he’d get a smile out of her. Maybe an admission.

He got far from it when those big brown eyes met his. “Look, Ty. The fact that you came back… asking me to dinner… it’s all very nice. But nothing’s changed. We both know nothing’s going to come of it. And wow, didn’t that sound presumptive and sadly hopeful?”

“Whoa. Wait. Presumptive? Hello… I’m here. I think it’s safe to presume I came back for a reason. And when has hopeful ever been sad?”

Her eyes grew a little wide, a little wet. “When representatives from the Army show up at your door to inform you that your husband was killed in action, and you sadly and futilely hope there’s been a horrible, horrible mistake.”

She looked mortified, suddenly, by what had come out of her mouth. And there wasn’t even a touch of color in her cheeks now. Her face had gone deathly pale.

“Excuse me.” She shot out of her chair. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”

He stood, thought about going after her, but in the end let her go. It wasn’t as if he could follow her in there. And it wasn’t as if he knew what to say if he did.

She needed a minute to collect herself. For that matter, so did he.

Maybe this was a bad idea after all. By his calculation, it had been three and a half years since her husband was killed. Should her wounds still be this raw? Or was there something wrong with him that he was ready to move on so soon after losing Maya?

He’d poured more wine and contemplated downing the whole glass when she came back to the table, composed and apologetic.

“Sorry I went all weepy widow on you there. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t usually—”

“I know you don’t,” he interrupted, because he felt both relieved and sensitive to her embarrassment. “You hold up. And you didn’t do anything wrong.”

He was the one in the wrong. He should have realized he made her nervous. After all, the last time he’d seen her, he’d used her dead husband’s gun to kill a man.

JESS FELT BEYOND grateful that Ty had the sensitivity to let things go. At that point, she somehow marshaled the wherewithal to shift into “Board of Tourism” mode and change the subject to a lengthy and oh so educational and oh so boring history of the area and the chain of lakes. She told him all about the Boise Cascade plant that was the region’s biggest employer and about the intriguing NOvA project, the world’s most advanced neutrino experiment, which, if successful, would have profound implications for understanding the structure and evolution of the universe. She talked about anything to keep from talking about something that might lead back to a personal dialogue about her life in general and her husband in particular.

She was a coward. She knew it. Ty, apparently, accepted it and made every effort to keep her engaged in generalities. Somehow, they made it through a dinner that felt as endless as the ink-black sky that greeted them when they finally left the restaurant to drive the twenty miles back to Kabby.

She didn’t even remember what she’d babbled about on the half-hour drive; she only knew that she had babbled, and by the time they pulled into the Crossroads parking lot, she felt one-hundred-percent certain that one Tyler Brown would be on the phone first thing in the morning booking a return flight home, as relieved as a caught-and-released walleye to be getting away from the crazy, gibberish-talking widow he’d had the bad sense to think he wanted to get to know.

She was an uptight, nervous flake who hadn’t even realized until he had shown up and shaken her insulated little world that she still felt so raw and ruled by her feelings about J.R. and his death. She should have moved on by now—or at least be working on it. She hadn’t. She wasn’t. And regardless of the fact that she would not let herself even think about moving on with a man so much like her dead husband, Ty’s ability to shake things up this way proved how badly she needed to get on with the business of living.

Since embarrassment didn’t even scratch the surface of how she felt about her behavior, he’d barely rolled to a stop when she shoved open the passenger-side door. The overhead lamp wasn’t harsh, but she felt ten times more exposed for the coward she was when light flooded the front seat.

“Thanks for dinner. I’m sure you’re tired. Long flight and all that. Good night.”

“Jess.”

His soft voice stopped her from jumping out of the Jeep.

“Wait. For God’s sake, wait a second.”

He sounded frustrated yet infinitely concerned.

“Shut the door, OK? The bugs are getting in.”

Although Kayla had closed up and left only a security light on inside the store, a light burned over the giant walleye figure on one side of the road, and the lights from the fuel island burned on the other. The vapor bulbs drew mosquitoes the way the North Pole drew snow.