A Promise of Forever (25 page)

“That grunt meant ‘I’m hiding in my bed under my covers and I’m not coming out until tomorrow,’” she muttered, shoving her hair back from her face.

“Okay. You’re entitled.” Joe folded the extra pillow in half and leaned back. “Did you tell your boss yesterday?”

Her lower lip poked out. “No. I thought…”

“I’ll call. What should I say?”

She stared at the ceiling. “I don’t care.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him that you undercooked the chicken last night and ate it anyway, and now you have a stomachache and the runs.”

“I would never undercook chicken!” At least, not since she was thirteen and learning to cook from her mom and Nana.

“How about you closed down Bubba’s last night and sprained your ankle dancing on the bar?”

She scowled at him.

“Or you woke up with a gorgeous guy in your bed this morning and you’re trying to remember how he got there?” Grinning, he waggled his brows.

“I know how he got there. I made the mistake of giving him a key.”

The grin widened. “Oh, so you think I’m gorgeous.”

She didn’t mind stroking his ego this morning. “Every woman in town thinks you’re gorgeous. Why are you in my bed?”

His expression turned somber, his blue eyes darkening with sympathy. “Because today is Mike’s birthday, and you’re missing him more than usual.”

Huh. More often than not, Lucy thought of Joe as an overgrown kid, with all the maturity one would expect of  that, but he’d remembered Mike’s birthday. Even her besties didn’t do that. She was surprised and touched and once again close to tears. Groping blindly, she grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand. “How do you know that?”

“You told me.”

“When? I don’t remember doing that.”

“I’d just moved in a month or so before, and you went home to spend his birthday with your families.”

“And you just remembered it all these years?” Six years, he’d remembered. She was even more touched now.

“I’m not just a gorgeous face, you know.”

“I know,” she muttered. She punched her pillow in half, then lay on it, mimicking his position, and stared at the ceiling. “Life is so damn unfair.”

“It is,” he agreed. “You work hard, do your best, and sometimes you still lose. But it’s always been that way, and it always will, so you still work hard, you still do your best—”

“And you still lose.”

“Yeah. But sometimes you win, too. And you have the satisfaction of knowing that you didn’t give up. You always, always tried.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “You sound like some kind of damn coach.”

His only response was a faint smile.

“I’m tired of trying, Joe. I’m tired of living alone and sleeping alone and being alone and missing Mike and not knowing if it’s ever going to get better, if anything’s ever going to change. I’m a widow. My friends are all widows. I’m surrounded by broken hearts, and damn it, sometimes it’s just too much pain and sorrow and sadness and despair.” Her eyes teared up again. “I want a do-over!”

He was silent a long time. “We don’t get do-overs in real life, Luce. But we do get second chances.”

He slid his hand across the covers and clasped hers, and a tingle started in her palm and danced along her nerves into her arm. It was so unexpected that she almost jerked her hand away. She almost jumped from the bed, wrapped the sheets around her—though he’d seen her in her jammies plenty of times—and made a dash to lock herself in the bathroom until he left the room, the house, preferably the whole town.

But something stopped her. The tingle. The surprise. The warmth that traveled from him into her. And a little voice deep in her brain, saying
Stay. Don’t run. This is good, Lucy, and it’s okay.

It was a voice she hadn’t heard in an eternity, a voice she would never forget. It was Mike’s voice. And so, surprised, comforted, and curious, she stayed.

A
vi woke with a bad case of bed head, a furry body snuggled against her, and a case of morning breath bad enough to make her wince. The morning breath wasn’t hers, she was happy to realize as Sadie yawned and sent a blast of it into her face.

Ben was rustling on the other side of the bed, smelling of shower gel and expensive cologne, pulling on clothes, and Sadie snored quietly.

“You really should shave before you go to bed, Doc,” she murmured, eyes still closed, as she stroked the dog.

“You’re not fooling me. I know you know that’s your new roommate and not me.” He leaned over to nuzzle her neck, and she bent her head to make it easier. His warm kisses made all her girl parts happy and greedy for more, but she wasn’t so lucky.

When he pulled away, she rolled onto her side to face him. He was wearing faded green scrubs, his usual uniform along with a lab coat, both in the clinic and the hospital. They were a good look on him. But wasn’t everything?

“You going to have a busy day?”

“They all are,” he replied as he laced his running shoes. They looked like a totally different creature from her runners. Of course, she actually
ran
in hers. “Are you working at the nursery again?”

She groaned at the thought, and only part of the groan was melodrama. She might carry a fifty-pound ruck on her back at work sometimes, but the rest of her work activity hadn’t prepared her for all the bending and lifting of building a fountain. She was still achy. “Unless I get a better offer,” she said, giving him a hopeful look.

His answering look was sympathetic. “Sorry. My only offer would be hanging out in my office so I could sneak in to see you between patients. In fact, I’ve got to get moving, or I’ll be late.”

She sat up as he circled the bed to her side and let the sheet fall away to her waist. His gaze swept over her breasts, and his expression turned rueful. “See you this evening?”

“There’s not a place you could hide where I couldn’t find you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck as he kissed her, sweet and tempting and possessive. Reluctantly, she let him go, pulled the sheet up, and settled back in bed to watch him leave.

Once the door closed behind him, she started petting Sadie again. “Well, baby girl, do you think we should head back to Tallgrass now or sleep a little more?”

The dog thumped her tail without opening her eyes and went back to snoring.

Sleep it was. Except now that she’d been kissed, Avi couldn’t fall back to sleep. Instead, she found herself staring out the window and counting: today, tomorrow, Friday. On Saturday, she was loading up Sadie in the Mustang, heading south to I-40, then turning east toward Georgia.

The mere thought made her heart hurt. How was she going to endure this?

She would endure it because she wasn’t just Army strong, she was
woman
strong. She was committed to doing what had to be done.

And what had to be done right now was getting up, showered, and dressed. Sadie would need a walk and food, and Avi’s stomach was starting to rumble.

She was maneuvering around Sadie to get to her feet when the opening of the front door stopped her. Grabbing a sheet in case it was one of Ben’s sisters, she leaned to see through the doorway and down the hall. “Hey,” she said with relief when he came into view. “Forget something?”

“Nope, but I’ve got a better offer for you now. I was two blocks down the street when the office manager called and said the building’s without power. Something about the main distribution line failing. PSO’s working on it, but it involves digging up part of the street, so we’re taking an unscheduled holiday.”

The prospect of spending an entire day with him unexpectedly thrilled her more than it should. She knew why: She was storing up hours of memories to sustain her when she was gone. “Oh, goody. I’ll tell Mom that she’ll have to be Dad’s helper today. But first I’ve got to get Sadie out.”

Ben looked at the dog, who hadn’t roused at his return, and his lips twitched. “Yeah, she looks like she just can’t wait another second.”

Avi shook her finger at him. “We don’t know exactly how good her house-training is, and these are
your
wood floors and rugs. Being a girl, I suspect she’d prefer a rug, since there’d be less splash-back.”

“Good point. Get in the shower, gorgeous. I’ll take Sadie for a walk.”

At the sound of the magic word, Sadie’s ears perked, then she stood and stretched. Hopping off the bed, she trotted down the hall and barked impatiently from the door.

“I’m being summoned,” Ben said. “Make it quick, and I’ll take you to breakfast when we get back.”

Avi was good at quick showers. By the time Ben and Sadie returned, she was dressed, her damp hair pulled back and clipped off her neck. She’d called her mom and told her she would see her the next day and set out a bowl of food on the kitchen floor next to Sadie’s water dish.

Avi watched the dog eat, inhaling the food but guarding it, her gaze constantly darting to make sure no one intended to steal it. She hadn’t been on her own long enough to have to scrounge for food. Had she come from a home with multiple pets, where mealtime was a free-for-all, or had food been scarce there?
Never again,
Avi vowed.

“How do you feel about a fast-food breakfast where we can eat in the car?” Ben asked, coming to stand beside her. “That way Sadie can go, too.”

She slid her arm around his waist and hugged him tight. “See? You’re going to be a good dog daddy.” But what she was really thinking was
See why I love you?

When Sadie was ready, they loaded up in the Mustang—Sadie didn’t mind either the doggy seat belt Avi had picked up yesterday with the rest of the dog supplies or being in the backseat—and, with Ben behind the wheel, they headed out. After breakfast at Sonic, they went for a walk along the pedestrian bridge across the Arkansas River, an old railroad bridge that connected to running trails on both sides. They drove to Whiteside Park, the neighborhood where Ben had grown up. Another drive to the Pearl District, not far from his office, and she showed him the house she’d grown up in. Then they headed west past Sand Springs before turning north toward Prue and to the small country cemetery where his father was buried, and they talked about nothing important.

It was the best day of Avi’s life. Part of her wished for pictures to commemorate every moment. The larger part of her knew she would never forget.

As they walked across the cemetery, Ben pointed out various graves: his grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, important tribal members, and old family friends. They reached his father’s grave, three rows from the back, a simple marker like all the others, the stone engraved with the usual information.

“What language is this?” she asked, gesturing to his father’s headstone. Most of the words were in English, but others were unfamiliar.

“Osage.”

“Do you speak it?”

“No. Dad knew some, and he wanted us to learn at least the basics, but…” He shrugged as he laid his hand gently on the stone. “It didn’t seem very important when we were kids. We—I wasn’t concerned with little things like culture and heritage.”

His tone was apologetic, but she understood too well how it had been. Life seemed so very long and so very full of chances to a teenager. In a large, global sense, of course she’d understood that kids could die, but in the sense that mattered—her own intimate world—it had never happened.
She
couldn’t die. Her friends couldn’t. It had been a worst-case scenario sort of thing. She was young, and life went on forever.

And then she’d found herself living the worst-case scenario, up close and damned personal.

“It’s not too late,” she said. “To learn the culture and heritage and language. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late.”

Ben’s smile was wistful. “You sure about that?”

“Scout’s honor,” she replied, holding three fingers in the air.

“Aw, you were never a scout, were you?”

“Okay, soldier’s honor.” Lowering her hand, she looked around. The cemetery was at the end of a bumpy red-dirt road, set among oaks and red cedars, surrounded by a wire fence that sagged in places. There wasn’t a sign to identify it. The people with loved ones buried there were probably the only ones who remembered its existence. Shade from the trees kept the grass and weeds to a minimum, and birds in the branches provided music, the only sound to break the stillness besides the occasional rustle of the wind and a bark or two from Sadie, waiting beside the car.

“It’s a lovely place,” she said softly.

“It was one of my dad’s favorites.” After a moment, he asked, “Is that weird?”

“I don’t think so. It’s beautiful, quiet, peaceful. But then, I like cemeteries.” She thought of the national cemeteries, which provided the final resting places for far too many of her friends, and rephrased, “Some of them.” She had one more to visit before she left: the colonel’s gravesite at Fort Murphy National Cemetery. Every few days she’d thought about it, and every few days she decided there was still time. No longer true.

The mood changed by the time they walked out of that small square plot of land, both his and hers. Life was such a wonderful thing to consider. Death, not so much. And sadness…Seeing his father’s grave, knowing how the last of his years had gone, must have been hard on Ben. Thinking of George, whose life had become happiest when Rick Noble’s had fallen apart, made Avi blue.

She wondered if he was thinking about his father, buried there alone, without his precious Patricia there to mourn. Was he imagining his own burial, years from now, possibly alone like his father?

That wasn’t going to happen. He would fall in love and get married. It was as natural as the sun rising in the east. She would be happy for him when it happened. Really. She would smile through her tears.

He took her hand, holding it tightly on the way back to the car. After helping Sadie into her backseat harness, he waited while Avi settled, closed the door, and leaned forward, forearms resting on the window. “You ever been to Mexico?”

“No.”

“You want to go now? With me? Forty-eight hours from now we could be on a beach and you could be wearing the ittiest, bittiest bikini ever made.”

She laughed.

Ben didn’t. “Margaritas under the tropical sun with me at your side don’t tempt you?”

“Sweetie, in a little more than forty-eight hours, I’ll be in my new home. If you want to run away, run to Georgia with me.”

A frown flitted through his eyes. “I’m talking real world.”

“Georgia’s not real?”

“Not for me. It’s just a fantasy.” With a tight smile, he circled the car and got in.

He didn’t say the words, but he might as well have, because they hung in the air between them, as heavy the red dust that trailed them back to the paved road.
Fantasies don’t come true.

It was a tough couple of days. By the time Ben reached Patricia’s house late Friday afternoon, he was exhausted. Thank God, his personal life didn’t interfere with work, or he would have had to cancel his surgeries for yesterday and his appointments today. Luckily, he could turn off everything when he walked into the OR or an exam room. But there was no turning it off now. Avi’s going-away dinner was tonight—a farewell, Patricia called it—and tomorrow morning she and Sadie would drive off.

He wasn’t sure he could stand it.

The dinner was being held at the Grant house and would be just her family, Ben, and his mother. Ben would have preferred a crowd: his sisters and family, the margarita sisters and their families, Cadore’s football team, all the neighbors, and every soul who had ever bought even a single flower from the nursery. A ton of people wouldn’t make it any easier for him, but it would have been easier to hide.

Patricia had sent him out to the patio while she finished up in the kitchen. She was making snacks for Avi’s trip—three different kinds of cookies, caramel corn, and apple tartlets—to go with the pumpkin sourdough dog cookies Lucy had baked for Sadie. Now she joined him with two glasses of wine. When he shook his head, she insisted.

“I know you’re the best orthopedic surgeon in Tulsa, Ben, but if someone needs you tonight, they’ll just have to settle for the second best. Drink the wine. You look like you need it.”

As she sat beside him, he took a drink, then another. It was sweet, acidic, tart, and warmed him a little from the inside out.

“You’ve been dreading this weekend practically since Avi came home,” she remarked.

“Haven’t you?”

She raised her free hand and waggled it. “In the beginning, when George had to go away, I started missing him as soon as I found out he was leaving. It didn’t matter whether it was six days or six months, it was awful. Finally, I learned that it was better to appreciate him while he was there and make the most of it, then deal with his leaving after he was gone. I got good at it, too. I will miss Avi, but at least I know she’s out of the war zone. She’s back in the States; she’ll be teaching instead of getting shot at. I can go visit her, and she can come visit here.” She paused, then asked, “Are you going to go visit her?”

He shook his head.

She opened her mouth, closed it, then thought better of it. “Have you really considered what you’re giving up, Ben?”

This sip of wine was really more of a gulp. She was right. He did need it. Especially if they were going to have a mother–son talk about losing Avi. “We’ve discussed it. She doesn’t want to get out of the Army, and I don’t want to give up everything and move. I don’t want to be an Army spouse.”

“I didn’t, either,” Patricia declared, surprising him. Her sly look showed that she was well aware of it. “But I wanted to be George’s spouse. I would have followed him anywhere, Ben. I gave up my home and my kids and everything I knew to be with him. That’s how much I loved him.”

He shook his head again, stubbornly. “I’m not you. Giving up everything isn’t an option.”

“It’s the only option right now. Sweetie—” She paused, her gaze going distant for a moment. Thinking that this was the first time she’d called him by anything but his name in twenty years? Remembering that she’d called him and the girls that all the time when they were little? Was that why he’d used it with his patients from the beginning—because it reminded him of a time when life was good and he’d felt reassured and secure?