“What!”
“I’d only met you once,” he reminded her. Yeah, if he concentrated on Claire, it became easier. “We were both on our best behavior.”
She snorted. “I don’t remember you being on your best behavior. You checked me out, informed Steve I had a nice ass, kept choking back cusswords and spent the whole evening ignoring me.”
“I didn’t know how to talk to a pretty woman I wasn’t trying to hit on,” he admitted. “I watched, though.…how Steve treated you, how you treated him. Waiting for one of you to slip up on the lovey-dovey respectful-partnership scam.” He shrugged. “As I said—feral.”
“So that’s why you were staring?”
“Well, that, and as I’ve already mentioned, your ass,” he said. “At least until your husband told me to quit.” How had they wandered so far off track? “You have to remember, I had very basic socialization skills for the civilized world.”
Nate looked out through the patio doors to the night and refocused. Once, normal life had been as far away to him as the few lights twinkling across the estuary. He swallowed hard. “Without Steve, I’d never dreamed of applying to the SAS. For me, the army was a cheap way of learning a trade. But I found I liked it.… The camaraderie, the professionalism, the structure.” For the first time in his life, he’d had security.
“I assumed you and Steve met at selection.”
“No, six months before. We were in separate units brought in to make up numbers for an SAS training exercise.” He cleared his throat. This was getting hard again. “The pair of us had been captured, trussed up and tossed in the back of a truck. As we were jolting to base, your husband said, ‘I’m going to be SAS one day.’” Nate desperately wanted to stop, but Claire was captured now, leaning forward with a riveted expression.
“Of course, I said not to talk crazy,” Nate continued. “SAS troopers were gods, we were mere foot soldiers. Steve said, ‘You’re just afraid of failing.’ That pissed me off. I pointed out that I stood more chance of success than he did, I was a better tracker, a better shot.… One of my foster dads was a keen hunter. ‘The next selection’s in six months,’ he said. ‘My troopmate Ross’s old neighbor is ex-SAS. He says he’ll give us a training program.’”
“And you all passed.”
Nate shook his head. “The golden boy failed. Lee reapplied next intake, alongside Dan. By then we could tell them that selection was a walk in the park compared to the training cycle.” It killed him reliving these poignant memories, but he forced himself to continue. “I didn’t have the habit of study and Steve’s extra tutorials were the only thing that got me through.”
“Steve always said he’d have failed if you hadn’t sorted out his fear of heights on his initial parachute jump.” She added curiously, “What did you do?”
A reluctant smile broke through. “A simple technique, heavily reliant on the element of surprise.”
She studied his grin, then comprehension dawned. “You pushed him?”
“I had help. Ross distracted the instructor.”
“That’s terrible!” But she was trying not to laugh. Every smile Nate won was a victory for Steve. “What did my husband do after you landed? Hit you?”
“Hell, no… I had to duck a kiss, he was so grateful. Steve would have been kicked off the course if he hadn’t jumped and returned to the regulars.” And he’d still be alive.
He stood, unable to sit still. But there was nowhere to go. He put the report on the table.
“So you cured his acrophobia,” Claire marveled. She hadn’t made a similar connection.
Nate forced himself to sit down again. “Let’s just say his fear of heights paled in comparison to his fear of being pushed.”
He waited until she’d stopped laughing before he added gruffly, “The army gave me an education, but Steve gave me a role model. When I met him, I only knew who I didn’t want to be. Suddenly I was around men who’d learned how to govern their tempers, who had principles and goals. Who saw honor as a way of life and not something you won on a battlefield.”
The knife in his gut turned sharply, eviscerating him from the inside out. He’d thought he’d become one of them. “Drink?” Nate bought himself a recovery minute by going into the kitchen.
“Thanks.”
Tough it out,
he told himself as he filled the kettle,
she needs this.
“Seeing how you and Steve treated each other, I started seeing relationships differently.” He barely registered what he was saying now, random thoughts spilling into words while he struggled for composure.
Hand trembling slightly, he flicked the outlet switch. “I started wanting more than one-night stands.” Returning to the living room, Nate resettled on the couch, well away from the overhead light above the dining table. “But making a relationship work didn’t come naturally.”
“Bree got over you eventually.” Claire rose and turned up the thermostat on the convection heater, then curled up at the other end of the couch, pulling a mohair throw over her legs. “Nate, I always wondered.… Did the fact that Steve and I were going through a bad patch for a couple of years scare you off matrimony? Is that why you got cold feet?”
“Partly,” he admitted. Talking about something else calmed him. “Seeing how deployment could rock a strong marriage like yours, I figured I didn’t stand a shit-show of making one work. But there was something missing with Bree.” He shrugged. “An easiness, maybe. We both had to try too hard.”
Okay, he was in control now. Time to shut up with the confidences.
“If it’s any consolation, she’s happy now, married to a great guy.”
He’d shut up after saying one more thing. “I’m sorry it affected your friendship with her.”
“She didn’t understand SAS brotherhood,” she said. “I could hardly bar you from our house.”
That stung him into a reply. “What are you talking about? You frosted me for at least a year.”
“Well, you deserved it! Breaking off an engagement over the phone. What were you thinking, Nate?”
“That if I knew I couldn’t marry her, I should tell her right away.” He still saw nothing wrong with that. Nate waited for Claire to explain it to him.
“Hopeless,” she said, which was no help at all. “Next time you want to break someone’s heart, run tactics by me first, will you?”
He folded his arms. “There won’t be a next time. I’ve decided I’m not marriage material.”
“But you wanted a family.”
What he wanted and what he deserved had split irrevocably. Nate deflected. “What was it with you and Steve? You had a new baby, a new house.… Everything should have been terrific.”
Claire looked skeptical. “You mean he didn’t tell you?”
“Only that you were unreasonable, irrational and bossy as hell.”
She laughed. He’d always been able to make her laugh. “In those early years it felt as if Steve had four other wives, all of whom could read him better than I could. It’s easy to get insecure when you’re knee deep in nappies and your big advantage over the buddies—sex—gets jumbled in with housework and mortgages. All the exciting, adventurous stuff happened with his unit.”
“Not true. Most of our patrols were monotonous as hell.” Long days spent in a blistering-hot truck, lurching over featureless desert and everyone stinking to high heaven because they hadn’t washed in a month. Each man’s quirks magnified by weeks of living in each other’s pockets.
As the boiling kettle whistled and shut off, he said, “The only drama came if you were taking a shift as a motorcycle outrider and had to outrun an Afghan dog.… Those things are a cross between a hyena and a mule. Or an axle breaking and having to reweld it in forty-degree heat.”
“C’mon, Nate,” she challenged. “Steve said there was no rush that matched the rush after combat.”
“It’s what we were trained for, Claire. We wanted to use our skills.” He fell silent a moment. “And an IED can nullify all that. Anyone can fill a pressure cooker with fertilizer and diesel and wire it to a couple of AA batteries. They’re one of a terrorist’s most effective weapons because they pin life or death to a roulette wheel of random luck.... They’re frickin’ perfect.”
Nate became aware of Claire as she hugged her knees, and was stricken. “God, I’m sorry.” He should have quit while he was ahead.
“And you go half-crazy reimagining a different outcome,” she said quietly. “If it exploded a few meters to the left, maybe the injuries wouldn’t have been fatal. If only there’d been someone else’s truck in the lead, because in the initial grief you’re willing to sacrifice a stranger’s loved ones for your own.”
She smoothed out the mohair over her knees. “If the convoy had left earlier, or later, taken a different route. If the batteries on the IED were flat. I’ve rewritten it a thousand ways. But you can’t change history, Nate.” Her eyes met his. “You can only try to accept it.”
Except some things were beyond making peace with.
Abruptly he stood, feigning a yawn. “Jet lag’s kicking in. I’m skipping a hot drink and turning in.”
She rose to give him a hug that held way too much reassurance and Nate tried to relax his tense muscles. Why the hell had he ever thought he could be some kind of Dr. Phil for Claire when he was so screwed up himself? He’d back right off before he caused even more damage.
“Sleep well,” she said.
“You too.” He kissed her cheek, satin smooth and cool under his lips, and went to bed feeling like Judas Iscariot.
CHAPTER NINE
C
LAIRE
WOKE
TO
THE
SOUND
of Nate moving around the bach. “Turn on a light if you want to,” she called. “I’m awake.”
Rolling to the window beside the bed, she drew the curtain, startling a rabbit nibbling the dew-tipped kikuyu grass. It bolted across the shared driveway and disappeared among the sand dunes with a blur of cottontail. Though the animals were a pest here, she smiled.
Above the three Norfolk pines that bordered the communal yard, dawn streaked rain clouds pink. She undid the window latch and pushed it open to breathe in the salty sharp air, leavened with pine needles. The scent always made her think “summer holidays,” even when a glimpse of sea through the dunes was a choppy, stormy gray. Nate tapped on the doorjamb. “Coffee?”
“Wonderful.” As he pulled open the doorway curtain and appeared with a steaming mug, she sat up. “What time is it?”
“Just gone six.” Yet he was already showered, clean shaven, dressed in designer jeans and a formfitting sweater. “I want to get as much done as possible while I’m here, so I figured I’d make a start on stripping the old canopy today, keep you company while you’re sanding handrails.”
Claire accepted the mug. Assess her, he meant. “What about reading reports?”
“I’ll do that at night. There’s plenty to do on
Heaven Sent
without spending money and my help will stop you falling behind.”
“And you can tell me more stories about Steve.”
He didn’t look at her. He’d withdrawn again, “new” Nate evident in his shuttered expression. Well, she’d expected that. “I’m not sure I’m doing Steve any favors and—” his gaze met hers “—I upset you last night.”
“I think they’ll really help,” she stated.
He shifted, uncomfortable. Claire sipped her coffee. “Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll think about it.”
After he’d left, Claire settled against the pillows, thinking hard. Witnessing Nate’s distress last night had shaken her; somehow she had to get him past this self-destructive grief. And there was only one chink in the armor he used to keep her at arm’s length.
Steve.
It felt as if Nate was trying to convince her that Steve was a great guy…as if he wanted to help her forgive him. But Claire already knew her husband was a great guy. That wasn’t the problem.
Steve being dead was the problem.
Steve dragging his heels on their agreement and getting himself killed was the problem.
Steve breaking their son’s heart was the problem.
And it wasn’t going to be solved by heroic stories or a mysterious incident involving her husband nearly getting his troopmates killed.
Claire took another hit of caffeine. But she wouldn’t tell Nate that. However misguided, his attempt to find the magic words last night was deeply touching. And endearing. And, she suspected, therapeutic for him. His stories wouldn’t help her forgive Steve, but they might help Nate accept his buddies’ deaths.
And through his anecdotes she might learn, not in what he wanted to tell her, but what he didn’t.
Though it was a short walk, they drove to the boat shed after breakfast. Rain pelted down and Claire had a trunkload of gear—sanding boards, an orbital sander, extra gloves and an old vacuum cleaner. “Another couple of days and I can start cleaning up, ready for painting,” she said as she unlocked the shed and they hurriedly unloaded the gear.
The interior was cold, rain beat down on the tin roof and she switched on the lights to lift the gloom. Reaching for the coveralls she left on a hook beside the door, she cast a doubtful look at Nate’s good clothes.
“They’ll wash clean,” he said. “And if they don’t, I’ll buy replacements.” He turned to assess the canopy.
“I have a better idea. Follow me.” Claire climbed to the deck and went into the cabin, where she opened a drawer. “You left these here.” She handed him a folded pair of paint-splattered jeans and a plaid shirt, soft with wear. “I washed and stowed them for when you came back.”
It was a couple of seconds before he took them. “Thanks.”
He stripped off his sweater, and as the T-shirt under it lifted, Claire glimpsed the taut and tanned muscles of his abdomen. “I’ll get started,” she said, and left before he unbuttoned his jeans.
Idiot for getting flustered,
she told herself as she pulled on her coveralls and tied her hair back with a scrunchie.
Nothing’s changed.
When Nate emerged from the cabin, she was using the orbital sander on the last length of kauri handrail. The plaid shirt was tighter across the shoulders and he’d slashed the jeans across the thighs for a better fit. She’d already noticed he’d bulked up over the past year and a half.
“Did you turn into the Incredible Hulk in L.A.?” she teased over the buzz of the machine because it was easier making fun than gawking.
Nate shrugged. “Zander’s into weights, we do a lot of workouts together.”
He climbed the small stepladder that gave him access to the weatherworn canvas canopy, and she averted her gaze from his perfect butt and distracted herself from this uncomfortable awareness with thoughts about her son. It was 7:15 a.m. Was Lewis up mustering lambs or still in bed?
She was trying not to be a helicopter mom by phoning every day. At thirteen, he needed male role models and Dan fit the bill perfectly. But Nate was her son’s favorite. Methodically, she moved the motorized sander over the handrail, careful not to gouge the wood. Claire hadn’t given up on him seeing Lewis; she was simply biding her time.
Ninety minutes later Claire called a coffee break. Her hands still tingled from the vibration of the machine and her fingers were sweaty in the rough chamois gloves as she peeled them off, removed her dust mask and admired Nate’s handiwork as he removed the last of the rotting canopy.
“The boat feels so much bigger without it.”
“What are you replacing it with?”
“Aluminum and some kind of wonder fabric… There’s a quote and spec brochure at the bach. All they need is the go-ahead, but they need cash in advance.” She told him the figure. “It’ll have to wait until the house sale’s confirmed.”
He was silent as she poured coffee from the thermos and brought out the chocolate-banana muffins she’d taken from the freezer that morning. “Are you withholding comment in case I read it as encouragement?” she challenged.
Amusement sparked in his eyes—russet brown flecked with gold. “Being stroppy work for you very often? Just curious.”
Claire bit her lip to keep from smiling. “These muffins are cold but defrosted, I hope.” She passed one over. “Dip it in your coffee.”
Dusting the central slatted bench that doubled as seating and a storage bin with the tail of his flannel shirt, Nate sat. He’d rolled up the sleeves and with his strong tanned forearms looked like any other tradesman, except for those manicured Hollywood hands.
He caught her looking at them and grimaced. “That’s why I’m not wearing gloves.… I need a few calluses or the locals will drive me out of Stingray Bay.” Adding sugar to his coffee, he said too casually, “The place is deserted this time of year. Aren’t you going to find it lonely outside the summer influx?”
Claire bit into her chilly muffin. “I know a few locals. You’ll see more people when the weather fines up. And any peep of sun and you’re in paradise again.” Settling beside him, she looked up to the roof. “Sounds like the rain has stopped now.”
It was isolated here without the summer crowds, but settling Lewis close to his new school was paramount. They could always move again if it didn’t work out. But she wasn’t expressing any doubt to Nate. He didn’t need more grounds for questioning her decision. “About Steve,” she said, changing the agenda to hers.
He stiffened, then casually added more sugar. “Yeah?”
“What was his view on that rough patch in our marriage?” Nate said nothing. She stopped chewing. “You will talk about him, won’t you?” Just a trace of plaintive in her tone, like a berley trail used to draw a big fish closer to the bait. Speaking of bait… “He and I worked through those problems, remember?”
Nate’s frown cleared and Claire knew what he was thinking. If they’d got through tough times once…
He took the hook. “How much paternity leave did Steve have when Lewis was born?”
“Ten days before you were deployed to Timor. The next time he came home, Lewis was four months old.” How desperate she’d been to see him, how quickly things had started going wrong.
Nate bit into the muffin. “He said you and the baby had become your own little unit,” he said between chews. “You had a routine, a support group of new mums and he felt like he wasn’t needed.”
Her tongue touched a frozen spot on the muffin, and Claire paused to dig out the muffin core and threw it onto the dry dirt floor for the resident swallow, wishing she’d chosen another lead-in.
“I think we both had such high expectations of how that leave would play out, and reality just didn’t live up to it,” she admitted. “I was exhausted and Steve’s tentativeness around the baby made me so nervous I’d take over. He’d get defensive and leave me to it.”
The bird flew down from the rafters, keeping a wary eye on them as it darted forward for the frozen crumbs then flew back to its aerie. “Having a baby made me more sensitive to the dangers of deployment, but Steve dismissed my concerns.”
Talk about back to the future. Appetite gone, Claire tossed aside the rest of her muffin. “We fought the whole month he was home,” she recalled. “The only reprieve we had was when you and Brianna came to stay for that weekend.” She pulled a face, striving to make this light again. “And the two of you were so attentive to each other and so loving, while Steve and I snapped each other’s heads off.”
“We were clinging together as a survival mechanism,” Nate retorted. He threw his own frozen muffin next to Claire’s. “I was never so glad to leave in my life. I still remember Steve’s puppy-dog eyes as we drove away.”
His tone invited her to see the funny side. Claire managed a smile. “And then we had another fight when I shrilly demanded to know why he couldn’t be as nice to me as he was to Bree and he said, ‘because Bree isn’t being a bitch.’” Actually, in hindsight, it was humorous. Smiling, she shook her head. “And off we went on another round.”
“When he came back to base, we all took one look at him and steered clear,” Nate commented. “He was one mean bastard, acing every training exercise. When we drilled unarmed combat, there wasn’t one of us who wanted to step in that circle with him. He gave Dan a black eye.”
“You should have seen what I did to Lewis’s teddy bear,” Claire deadpanned.
Nate laughed. “Our first night on leave, Steve drank himself shit-faced, then started crying into his beer and saying, ‘I can unload and identify twenty-four different makes of gun, I can kick you guys into next week, but I can’t get the temperature right in a baby’s bottle or puree the frickin’ lumps out of an organic carrot, according to my ever-loving wife.’ We didn’t have the first clue what to say. In the end, Lee suggested Steve write you a letter since you couldn’t talk without arguing and we jotted notes on a cocktail napkin. But Steve was still way too fixated on the carrot thing, so the exercise never came to anything.”
“Oh, my poor Steve.” She chuckled, but there were tears in her eyes. Nate extended a comforting arm and it seemed natural to lay her head on his shoulder. “We were all so reckless with love,” she said, watching the swallow break up the lump of muffin. “You guys played the field and Steve and I treated marriage like a soap opera. Like it was a renewable resource that didn’t need nurturing and tending. And yet I miss those days of being young and heedless of consequences.”
I miss the courage to love without regretting the cost.
Wait, how had she ended up on the therapist’s couch when this was about helping Nate?
“You and Steve grew smarter,” Nate said. “I’m not so sure about the rest of us.”
Claire straightened. “You haven’t seen Dan with Jo, or Ross with Viv. Those two were such players, but they’re changed men. Nate, are you sure—”
“Positive.” He stood and stretched. “How about I start dismantling the electrics?”
Frustrated, she watched him pack up the basket, incurably neat, like all army guys. “Why won’t you see them?”
“I can’t be who they want right now.… It’ll only end in more hurt.”
“You’re okay with me.”
He was silent, replacing the lid on the muffin tin.
“I know the ambush was bad,” she said. “You wouldn’t have stayed away from us, from Dan and Ross, if it wasn’t. But there must be a vanilla version you can give Lewis.”
He went into the wheelhouse and started inspecting the circuit board.
“Or you could tell him some of the things you’re telling me. The day-to-day stuff.”
“Any chance you can pass me that toolbox?” he said.
After dumping it beside him, she settled to hand sanding the grooves in the handrail. So much for coaxing him into opening up. Mentally Claire regrouped. “The worst thing about deployment is that it puts your relationship on the back burner for months at a time,” she commented as though Nate hadn’t just shut her down. “Whatever you’ve got in the pot when you leave keeps on simmering. For both of us, it was resentment.”
The sandpaper abraded her fingers and she paused to pull on gloves, not daring to look at him. “Steve thought I was unreasonable wanting him to quit when I’d married a career soldier, and so he stopped telling me anything that might fuel my argument. That just made me more paranoid we were drifting apart and that Lewis and I sat low on his list of priorities.”
She concentrated on sanding. A couple of minutes passed.
“Steve could be a stubborn bastard,” Nate said and she breathed a sigh of relief. “It was one of his best and worst qualities. I think he hated deployment through that period as much as you did.”
“Really?” Claire glanced up. He was busy tracing the jumble of red, black and yellow wiring back to the control panel. At the time, her husband hadn’t given an inch.
“He hated missing all Lewis’s milestones. Crawling, his first steps, his first words… We watched Lewis’s first birthday party on DVD a month late and Steve grew very quiet. He said, ‘My baby doesn’t remember me when I go home.’”