Don't Call Me Hero (28 page)

“You didn’t answer your phone.”

“There’s no cell reception out here,” she responded, not turning her head away from the waterfront.

The rubber-band croak of bullfrogs echoed in the background, and I heard a random splash from a fish breaking the surface of the inland lake.

“What is this place?” I took a tentative step out onto the aged pier.

Julia pulled her legs tight to her body. “My family’s cabin.”

“Your family has two mansions
and
a cabin in town? Isn’t that a little overkill?”

“My family has money. And when you have money, you buy things,” she said with a simple shrug. She turned her head to regard me finally. “How did you find me?”

“I’m a good detective. But maybe a better question is what you’re doing out here?”

“It’s my favorite place in town.” She paused and looked back at the water. “It might be my favorite place anywhere.”

I gingerly sat down on the dock beside her. I didn’t trust that my added weight wouldn’t sink us into the lake. The boards creaked and groaned, but the old wood didn’t fail.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“No. I’m fine.”

I shrugged out of my jacket and laid it on Julia’s erect shoulders.

“I’m really fine.”

“Just take the jacket, Julia.”

She ended her protest and pulled the jacket closer and tighter around her body.

I rested my weight on my palms and looked up. “Do you know any constellations?” Far away from the light pollution of any major city, the night sky was sprayed with distant stars and galaxies.

Julia breathed out. “Just a few of the major ones: the Little Dipper, Orion’s Belt, Cassiopeia, Andromeda.”

“Andromeda? I don’t think I know that one.”

“It’s my favorite.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

Julia fluttered a small smile in my direction. “Andromeda was Cassiopeia’s daughter. She boasted that Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids. As punishment, Poseidon sent a sea monster to ravage the shoreline of the family’s kingdom. Andromeda was chained to a rock as sacrifice to appease Poseidon, but she was rescued by Perseus before she was killed.”

“
That’s
your favorite constellation? It’s … a little heavy.”

“I know. But a part of me relates to her.” She sighed. “We should talk about something less serious.” She flipped her hair away from her eyes. “Like politics or religion.”

I rubbed at my arms absently.

“Now
you’re
cold,” Julia frowned, noticing the action.

“I’m fine.” I picked at the splintering boards of the wooden pier. “The dream catcher,” I started with some trepidation, “how did you know my nightmares had been because of the war?”

“My brother, Jonathan, went to Afghanistan, too, but he never came back. He survived—bodily,” she clarified, “but the boy who returned wearing his soldier uniform wasn’t him. He’d changed. And the nightmares … I recognized it in your eyes that night when you…” She coughed delicately. “Anyway, he … he took his own life in the end.” She straightened her back. “My family was obviously grief stricken. I was living in St. Paul at the time, and I came back to Embarrass to mourn with my parents and bury my brother in the family plot. And I guess I’ve just never left.”

I knew I would never find the right way to express my regret, but I tried the obvious words anyways. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Why would you?”

“Grace told me—”

“Grace Kelly Donovan is a horrible gossip,” Julia snapped. The hard lines of her features softened as she reigned in her anger. “I know the entire town thinks I’m angry with my family—that they’re the ones keeping me on a tight leash, and that’s why I’m such a bitch.” She shook her head. “But the truth is, they’re not keeping me here. I’m doing that to myself.
Fear
is keeping me here. And if I’m angry all the time, it’s only because I’m disgusted with myself for not being braver.”

Small birds or bats, I couldn’t tell which, swooped low over the lake, picking off insects as they flew. They hovered so close to the water’s surface that their bodies actually bounced off the lake.

“I got too comfortable—too content—staying in this little bubble where there are no surprises,” she continued. “Honestly, the last time I was surprised was when I saw you at Stan’s diner that first morning.” She softly laughed at the memory. “You should be flattered. No one’s been able to surprise me in years.”

I didn’t know how to react to Julia’s soliloquy. She’d revealed so much: the death of her brother, the reason she stayed in town, the reason for her anger. It felt like a gift that I didn’t deserve. All I could offer in return was my own story.

I cleared my throat, and Julia looked up to meet my steady gaze.

“When the bomb went off, it felt like I’d been stung by a million bees.”

“The marks on your back?” she correctly guessed.

I nodded. “You take a part of that place back with you. For me, I literally did. There’s probably rocks still embedded in my skin.”

She licked the tip of her tongue to the scar at her lip. “What happened?”

“My team had received intelligence about a key
al
-
Qaeda target. I didn’t expect to find anything though—you get hundreds of leads, and maybe one pans out from the lot of them. This one panned out.
We were supposed to bring the target to a safe house in this little mountain village.
But when we got there, the house was empty and the radio was broken. We were too far behind enemy lines. Our interpreter tried to get what we needed to fix the radio or find another one, but a dirty bomb killed the target. I don’t know if they did it on purpose or if he was just collateral damage. When the bomb hit, we scattered. I didn’t know if anyone else made it out alive.”

I stopped for a moment to gather my thoughts. I hadn’t told anyone this story in what seemed like a very long time.

“It was just me, my buddy Terrance Pensacola, and this insurgent named Amir. My plan was to use him as a hostage to get us safe passage if it came to it. We sought shelter in a bombed out building that provided adequate cover from the sun and from hostiles. We were stuck there for days with minimal rations. A piece of shrapnel had bit Pensacola in the calf, and I was worried he was going to lose his leg or his mind if we stayed much longer, so I got him out of there under the cover of night. We hoofed it along a main road, but stayed out of sight if any car went by. We needed a ride to get back to base, but at night it was damn near impossible to tell the friendly cars from the bad guys.”

I took a much needed breath.

“Did Terrance make it?” she asked.

“He lost both of his legs.”

“But you saved his life,” Julia said gently.

“Yeah, I guess so.” I often thought about if I’d actually done him a favor. Pensacola had survived the ordeal, but his was the kind of injury that made me wonder if he would have rather come back to the States in a box. They’d called me a hero for saving him, but few things felt heroic about what we’d had to do to survive.

“Have you ever been in love?” Her question took me by surprise.

“I’m sure I’ve been in
like
before. But I’m not so sure about the other thing,” I said truthfully. “What about you?”

“No,” Julia answered without deliberation. She hugged herself when a cool breeze passed over the water. “Never in love.”

“There’s still time.”

She smiled a little too sadly for my liking.

I touched the side of her face. Her caramel-colored eyes fluttered close, and I could hear the barely audible sigh. Julia’s face was normally a mask—a disguise of foundation powders, crimson lipstick, and dramatic eyeliner and shadow. But with the careful contact, her emotions were laid bare for my eyes only. I became witness to the hurt and the pain that she religiously wore like a mantle, not unlike myself.

“Will you come to bed?” she asked.

“With you?” I felt ridiculous for having asked the question, but I didn’t want to assume anything—especially not with this woman.

Julia nodded. “I don’t feel like being alone tonight.”

I stood and brushed the debris from the back of my jeans. I held my hands out to her, and for once, she accepted the help.

+ + +

“It isn’t fair,” she murmured.

I lifted my head from the pillow with some difficulty. “What’s not?”

“You eat nothing but cheeseburgers and pizza.” She raked her nails down my naked torso, leaving pink, raised trails. “I so much as look at a carbohydrate, and I bloat up.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I slid my hand along the smooth expanse of her exposed thigh. “Your body is amazing.”

“Thank you.” Julia smiled softly and tucked blonde sweeps of hair behind my ear. “You never did tell me how you found me tonight.”

“I wasn’t looking for you,” I said truthfully. “I was just driving.”

“I guess that radar I implanted in your brain is working.”

“Would it be okay if we just …” I flipped the ends of her hair through my fingers. I wasn’t sure how she’d react to my question.

“If we just what, dear?”

“Slept?” It had been a tough week, and even though the investigation was going well, I still felt drained.

“Of course.” She brushed her lips on a spot just below my earlobe, causing a shiver to ripple down my spine. The simple action had me reconsidering my request.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Her chuckle vibrated against my neck.

“You’ve done this before.”

She knew what I meant. Obviously we’d had sex before, but there had been women before me.

“Yes.”

I rolled over onto my side and tucked my hands under the pillow. “Who? When? What was her name? What were
their
names?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” It was too dark in her bedroom to interpret the expression in her eyes, so I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or amused.

“It’s what makes me a good cop.”

“It was college,” she vaguely revealed. “But there was no one of consequence.”

I tried to shove down the jealousy that bubbled just under the surface from her admission. I didn’t want to think about someone else touching her skin and making her back arch off the bed. I tried not to picture an anonymous woman kissing behind her knees or in the crook of her elbows. I didn’t want to mentally see a stranger’s mouth mapping her body and traveling the distance from her breasts to her belly button and below.

“Stop stewing, Detective.”

I cleared my throat. “Am I that obvious?”

“Your face is an open book, dear.” She touched the side of my face, and she stroked the pad of her thumb across my cheekbone. “I bet you’re a terrible liar.”

I swallowed hard at the lump in my throat. Gods, I could fall hard for this woman. Even now, it was probably too late to put on the breaks. “The worst,” I croaked out.

She didn’t turn the question around to ask about my previous experiences. Maybe it didn’t matter to her, but it bothered me that she wasn’t as curious as I had been about her.

“Don’t you want to know about me?” The words felt needy and juvenile, like it was important to know I had the power to make her jealous as well.

“Not really.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“It’s your past that’s made you the woman you are today, Cassidy.” Another pass of her thumb across my cheek and I would melt into a gooey puddle. “But I’m more interested in the woman in my bed, not the girl she’d been before.”

“Good answer,” I said thickly.

She pulled her hand away, and I instantly missed the heat of her touch. “You should get some sleep.”

I wasn’t tired anymore. Every nerve ending in my body was ready for a round with this goddess. It was imperative I erase all traces of previous lovers. I slid my bottom lip out, ready to protest.

“I have an early morning.”

I tucked my lip back into place. “Okay.”

The mattress dipped and the crisp sheets rustled as she moved beside me, wiggling and shifting to get comfortable. One hand rested lightly on my thigh and the other fisted in my defiant curls. I sucked in a sharp breath when she tugged my hair at its roots and her fingers curled around the tender flesh of my inner thigh. Her words said one thing, but apparently her hands didn’t want me to fall asleep. But then the fingers twisted in my hair relaxed, and she began to stroke the top of my head as if trying to tame the chaotic mess in my brain.

There was no dream catcher hanging above us, and the last time I’d slept in Julia’s bed I’d experienced one of my worst flashbacks. Such troubled thoughts were certainly writ on my face.

“Just sleep, Cassidy.” Julia smoothed down my hair. “I’ll be right here.”

I shut my eyes.  Home is where you can sleep.

+ + +