Gifts of Honor: Starting from Scratch\Hero's Homecoming (13 page)

A small sound in front of her brought her eyes open, only to find he’d closed the gap between them, a ring box lying open in his hand. “It’s not much, just a gold band and a chip diamond, but there’s not a lot of choice when you’re on base preparing to deploy.”

With a wobbly smile she looked at it. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah?” His free hand brushed hers. “So? Is that a yes?”

“A yes to what?”

“You’ll marry me?”

Nothing in the world could have stopped her appalled recoil. “Oh...no. My God, no.”

The light that had started to glow in his eyes snuffed out, and a spasm of what looked like agony crossed his features before he straightened away, jamming the ring box into a jacket pocket as he went. “No, huh? So I killed your love for me after all?”

“That has nothing to do with it. I’m not going to hold you to a proposal you can’t even remember making, any more than I was willing to keep you trapped as my husband in the first place.”

“I’ll give you that—you let me go like you couldn’t wait to be rid of me.” Then he rubbed a hand over his face. “And I can’t even blame you for it, after the hell I’ve dragged you through.”

“Be rid of you?” A whip of fury heated her words, and she would have punched him if she’d thought it would do any good. “I let you go because I thought it was what you needed, considering you screamed every time you saw me.”

“Looking back now with a much clearer head, I think the only reason I did that was because you said you’d never forgive me if I got hurt, and I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

Great, so it was her fault. “And let’s get something straight, pal—you never
dragged
me anywhere that I wasn’t willing to go. It takes a lot of guts to be married to a soldier, I’m not going to lie. But I guarantee you I was always up for that task.”

“True enough.” The look he gave her was turbulent, but there was so much pride in it she would have had to be blind not to see it. “You could teach any Ranger about being tough. You never buckled, no matter what the vagaries of war threw at you.”

“I don’t know about that. I buckled pretty hard when you confessed you’d re-upped, but only because I loved you so much. The life I’d hoped to start with you, the family I wanted to begin—all of that vanished, and suddenly I was back in pins and needles mode, waiting for you to get returned to me in a body bag. Anyone would have been upset by that but I got over it. I didn’t lie when I put that note in your care package of cookies—I did love you.”

“
Did
. Past tense.” He paced in front of her, dragging his hands through his hair as if he wanted to tear it out. “Dammit, you keep using past tense. When you first told me you loved me, I thought it was the greatest gift I’d ever been given. I never imagined I’d be fucking stupid enough to lose it.”

It took a second for the meaning behind his words to sink in. “Sullivan.” Her heart pounded so furiously she had to take a breath.
Don’t hope.
Don’t hope
... “When did I first tell you that I’d fallen in love with you?”

“At Pauline’s. I tried to be cute by feeding you a maraschino cherry and you almost choked. I felt so bad about it, you wound up initiating our first kiss. Then you said you were falling for me, and I told you then that you should call me Sullivan instead of Sully. I wanted you to be special from everyone else, because from the first moment I saw you, this cute little freshman in high school, you were the most special person in my universe.”

“You remember me.” It was barely a whisper. The fear of having her hopes dashed yet again squeezed her throat almost completely closed. “You remember me?”

He nodded, his eyes dark with torment. “It’s not all there. I don’t know if it ever will be, but so much came flooding back when I read my letter to you. I remember how I broke your heart and gave you the worst Christmas ever last year. I remember how you cried when you saw me off at the airport, unable to even say a word. You couldn’t even stand on your own—my dad had to hold you up just so you could see me off. It’s no wonder I blocked that out of my mind. I’d been so upset about my friend’s family that I forgot to take care of my own. Even before I got RA, I forgot about
you
.”

Stunned and not at all sure what to do with the bomb he’d just dropped, she looked at the card still in her hand. Dear God, he remembered her. “I think I would have understood, if you’d told me about it. I would have tried talking you out of going for another tour, but I think I would have understood.”

“Not talking to you was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. The sense of failure and frustration I’ve been dealing with... Those feelings weren’t about not being able to remember, like I’d assumed. I failed
you
, Lucy. I failed in the most fundamental way a husband can fail a wife, by making decisions that affected both of us, only to have the consequences of that decision devastate you. And I finally realized that this is why you’ve been trying to keep your distance. You don’t trust me not to hurt you again, do you? Because you don’t believe I truly loved you in the first place.”

“That’s a big part of it.” She couldn’t lie. The sense of a rug being pulled out from under her was going to take a while to forget. “I just need to protect myself from any more pain. You’ll never know how it hurts, loving someone who doesn’t love you back, so that’s why I had to push you away tonight. I just...can’t take any more pain.”

A sudden light blazed like fire in his eyes. “There’s no need to push me away, sweetheart. Once I got back home, I’ve been falling in love with you all over again.”

Her jaw dropped while her heart leaped. “What? That’s...no—”

“
Yes
. I started falling when I saw you smile just before the wind took your scarf. I couldn’t get your beautiful face out of my mind.” He grimaced at her disbelief before slowly closing the distance between them, moving as if he expected her to bolt for the door. “I didn’t realize it at the time, of course. I just knew I had to be the one to make you smile again. And my craving for cookies is understandable now. I associate the scent of cookies with
you
. You’re my hidden hunger. You always were. You always will be.”

She wanted to believe that, so much that she’d never recover if it wasn’t true. “This...wow. This is a lot to process.”

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.” She could hear the promise in his voice even as he carefully took her hand in his. “There’s just one thing, Luce. You might want to consider that you just slipped up and told me you still love me, even when you thought I didn’t love you back.”

For a moment she froze before she looked away. “Okay, you got me. I do still love you. I’ll always love you. You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted, the only man who has my heart.” She shrugged and tried to smile. “Unfortunately that means you’re also the only man who can kill me with a word.”

“I’ve learned the hard way that being careless with you, hurting you, is the quickest way into hell,” he grated, and self-condemnation edged the words in bitterness. “But I understand. It’s okay. You’re gun-shy with me now, so I won’t push you into anything you don’t want to do, or feel. And I don’t expect all the pain to magically vanish just because I remember you now. We both went to war, and we both have battle scars that are going to take time to heal.

“But I have so much hope for the future, Lucy,” he added as he pressed her hand to his mouth, and the passion that vibrated in his tone made her throat clench. “A year from now, I hope you’ll have agreed to be my wife and we’ll be trying for our first baby. I hope a month from now you’ll trust me enough to want to live with me so that you can get used to sharing your life with me again. I hope a week from now you’ll believe me when I say I love you, instead of looking like you suspect I’m playing some kind of cruel trick on you. And I hope that by tomorrow, you’ll be able to smile at me without sadness.”

“Gee, is that all?” She half laughed even as tears fell, and when he tentatively pulled her close to kiss them away, she allowed herself to relax against his chest. “You don’t ask for much.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Mr. Low-Maintenance.”

“What about tonight? What are your hopes for tonight?”

“For you to tell me you love again, and to believe in your heart that falling in love with me isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.” He nuzzled her brow with his lips as if she was something precious. “That’s all I want for Christmas. That’s all I want in life.”

“I love you, Sullivan. And...” With a fortifying breath she framed his face with her hands so she could look into his eyes. For the first time in what seemed like forever the light of love was there for her to see. That was when it hit her—miracles really could happen. “I believe loving you is the greatest thing I’ve ever done.”

Relief washed over his face a moment before he hauled her into a crushing embrace that lifted her off the floor. “I’ve fallen in love with you twice in one lifetime, so I know we were meant to be. You’re my happiness, my most precious gift. I’ll never again forget how important you are to me.”

“You have no idea how good that sounds.” She wrapped her arms around his strong neck and suspected he wouldn’t have to wait long for all his hopes to be realized. “You know something? This Christmas is already proving to be way better than last year’s.”

“I’m making it my mission in life to make your every Christmas, your every day, better than the last. Our new life begins...
now
.”

* * * * *

Can’t get enough of Lucy and Sully?
Take a peek at what happens next in Stacy Gail’s Deleted Scenes section on her blog.

http://stacygail.blogspot.com/

Sometimes the ugly duckling can turn into a beautiful swan...
Find out how in Stacy Gail’s new novel
Ugly Ducklings Finish First,
available now!

Ugly Ducklings Finish First

Metal Mouth. Queen Geek. Dr. Payton Pruitt heard it all growing up. But she’s over it, and attending her ten-year high school reunion is the perfect way to prove it to herself. Even if there’s only one person she’s interested in seeing in Bitterthorn, Texas: Wiley Sharpe.

Now a respected lawyer, Wiley didn’t live down to the label Most Likely to Be Slapped with a Paternity Suit. But recent acts of vandalism suggest someone still sees him as a heartbreaker, and the reunion seems a likely place to find the culprit. Instead, Wiley comes face-to-face with his old pal Payton—and is wowed not only by her transformation into a ravishing swan, but by the connection they still share.

Payton is pleased the playboy she used to tutor has grown into an honorable man, but she’s too smart to fall for a guy with roots in a place she couldn’t wait to leave. But while Payton is an academic genius, Wiley is the one with the PhD in pleasure, and he intends to use it to convince her to stay...

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About the Author

A competitive figure skater from the age of eight, Stacy Gail began writing stories in between events to pass the time. By the age of fourteen, she told her parents she was either going to be a figure skating coach who was also a published romance writer, or a romance writer who was also a skating pro. Now with a day job of playing on the ice with her students, and writing everything from steampunk to cyberpunk, contemporary to paranormal at night, both dreams have come true.

Hero’s Homecoming
By Rebecca Crowley

Six months ago, being snowed in at Christmas with the amazing woman he met on R & R at Fort Riley would have been a dream come true, yet now, as a blizzard swirls outside Beth Tate’s house, Captain Chris Walker knows he shouldn’t be there. Blinded in combat and emotionally scarred, he never wanted Beth to know the man he’s become—but stranded by the storm, he had no one else to call.

Hurt and bewildered when Chris abruptly ended his faithful contact from Afghanistan, Beth tried to put him and their whirlwind romance out of her mind and prepared for a quiet holiday alone—until the phone rang. Now that he’s here, she’s more confused than ever, torn between love for the man she once knew and anger at the one who broke her heart.

A life with Beth was everything Chris wanted, but the wounds of battle are nothing compared to the agony of heartbreak. It will take more than mistletoe, but perhaps this holiday season Chris will find his way home.

33,000 words