His mind moved forward to June, when his enlistment was up and he’d be leaving the Army for good. Never had he envisioned that happening until he’d seen Callie belly dance. At that moment, his whole world had been upended in the most wonderful way. Yes, he’d chased her and proven to her that he wanted a real relationship, not just a roll in the sack, as she’d automatically thought. He couldn’t blame her for feeling that way because she was young, vibrant, and beautiful. She easily drew men’s attention precisely because of that. When he’d met her, she had been sick and tired of being stalked for sex without love or a commitment.
He smiled through the suds on his face, knowing he had the patience and resolve for the long haul with Callie. She hadn’t believed he was sincerely smitten with her at first. He had been a security detail for the Hope Charity Orphanage and had been changing babies’ diapers and washing out the diaper buckets for the four Afghan widows who worked there. When she saw him working the diaper brigade, Callie recognized that he was indeed different from the sex-hungry males she had encountered before Beau. From that moment on, she slowly let down her walls and allowed him access to her beautiful, generous heart and body. He’d already fallen in love with her that first night she belly-danced for the Thanksgiving USO show. God, he missed his woman. And it was far more than just missing her sexually. She had captured his heart and soul, too. He wanted no one else in his life but Callie.
Pushing his face beneath the spray of water, eyes closed, he allowed himself to feel his loneliness without Callie at his side. She was a bright sunbeam in everyone’s life. Or at least, she had been until that damned Taliban ambush. He and Callie had escaped with her sister, Dara and Matt Culver. The couples had split up in hopes of splitting their Taliban attackers, improving their chances of making it out of that ambush alive. Fortunately, they had all reunited in safety, but the whole nightmare had turned Callie’s life inside out.
Turning off the faucet, Beau shook his head, water droplets flying around him. He grabbed the towel sitting on the bench near the entrance. As he padded barefoot out of the shower room, his worry centered on Callie’s PTSD. When he’d been with her it had diminished a bit, and he’d talked to Graham about it, who was no stranger to PTSD, either. Callie doted on her grandparents and Beau knew if anyone could steady her in his absence, it would be Graham. She was at a turning point with the symptoms and he hated to leave her in such a vulnerable state.
Rubbing his face and hair dry, he walked to the wall of lockers and dried himself off. At this hour, no one was in the shower area and he was glad because he didn’t feel like reconnecting into the dangers of his job just yet.
Before meeting and falling in love with Callie, the Army had been his mistress and he felt complete and satisfied with his lot in life. But once Callie came on stage in that purple belly dancing outfit, the silver coins beneath her breasts and around her hips tinkling and swaying, his moorings with the Army had been torn loose. Suddenly, Beau wanted more, much more. He dreamed of marriage, a partner, and becoming a parent.
His mother, Amber, ever the wise woman, had shaken her calloused finger at him one day when he’d been living at home. He was helping her weed her garden and she told him that someday, he’d meet the woman he was going to marry. And when he did, she’d turn his world topsy-turvy. “Just like that,” she predicted, and she’d snapped her fingers, grinning at him from another row of onions she was weeding.
“Ma, that’s never gonna happen,” he said, chuckling, squatting between two rows of stringed beans.
Amber laughed. “You’re too young and you don’t know life yet, Beau,” she said, smiling over at him. “Your pa saw me when we were just kids, maybe six or seven-years-old, at the Thorn cabin. He says he fell in love with me then.”
“How can a six-year-old know he’s in love?” Beau scoffed, shaking his head.
“He knew,” Amber intoned. She always wore coveralls, the knees blackened with soil. Pushing her wide-brimmed straw hat up off her sweaty brow, she said pertly, “He knew and so did I.”
“But did you ever talk about it?”
“Never. We were too young to know what we were feeling, what was pulling us like North and South Pole magnets toward one another.”
“You married him when you were eighteen,” Beau said.
“Indeed I did. He was nineteen at the time. He’d already gone into his father’s furniture making business and was pulling in a right steady income for a hill boy that young. He brought the dowry to my folks and told them he wanted to marry me when I graduated from high school. They said yes.”
“But didn’t my grandparents talk to you first?” Beau asked, alarmed, sitting up, resting his dirty hands on the thighs of his jeans.
“Of course, but everyone on Black Mountain knew we’d eventually get hitched.”
Smiling, Beau went down on all fours, hunting for those pesky weeds. He often helped his mother, as did his younger brothers, Coy and Jackson, with the five-acre garden. “Oh, that’s good. But I’m twenty-four, Ma. Not six. I’ve never met a woman yet that cold cocked me like Pa did you.”
Throwing a bunch of weeds into her nearby, white five-gallon plastic bucket, Amber snickered. “You have the magnet gene, as Pa and I call it. When the
right
woman prances in front of you, you’ll go down like a felled ox, too, smarty pants.” She gave Beau a warm look, her mouth wide with a knowing smile.
He snickered. “Okay, Ma, I believe you. But I just don’t think it’s gonna happen to me. Maybe to Coy or Jackson. But not to me.”
“Just wait and see,” she said, waving her finger toward him. “I’m going to die laughing when it does because your head will be in the clouds and you’ll be completely flummoxed. Mark my words, young man.”
As he dressed in a dark green Army t-shirt and trousers, Beau smiled as he recalled that moment with his mother. Her words had come true.
In spades.
He closed the locker and took his damp towel to a canvas container and dropped it inside. When he checked his watch, he saw that nearly an hour had passed. He calculated that he was ten hours and thirty minutes ahead of Butte, Montana. And it was still Sunday there, right around family dinnertime at five-thirty Mountain Standard Time. They’d all be sitting down for a feast at the long trestle table in the warm, ranch house kitchen.
Beau had loved Sundays with the McKinley clan. His own family was like that, too. Everyone always looked forward to a late afternoon dinner on Sundays.
Only this time, he wasn’t seated next to Callie. Graham and his wife, Maisy, would be at either end of the table, with Callie’s parents, Connor and Stacy, sitting across from her and Beau. Rubbing his chest, he walked out of the shower area, making sure the door didn’t slam shut. Thanks to the plywood rooms, he could hear everything, since there were no real walls or insulation to stop noise. Padding silently down the corridor, he pushed open the door to his tiny, cramped room. It was about as wide as a boxcar and one-third the length. Beau didn’t mind. He and his brothers had slept in a small bedroom in their cabin, all squished together in one little room. For him, small, tight spaces were associated with comfort, warmth, and good memories of growing up.
He desperately needed to sleep. His bunk was high and narrow, with six green wool blankets placed across it. The place was barely above freezing, since the walls weren’t insulated and most of the warm air leaked out here and there. The quarters been thrown together by early Delta operators, not wanting to wait for the Navy Seabees to get to them. They already had a long, busy schedule for building accommodations for the various military groups in the area.
Lying down and drawing the thick, heavy blankets over himself, Beau settled back on the goose-down pillow he’d brought from home, and decided that tomorrow he’d Skype Callie to see how she was doing. There was usually at least a twenty-minute wait between Skype calls to family by the operators. But with so many of them gone back to the States for the holidays, Beau knew he wouldn’t have to sign up on a list and wait hours for his turn.
He had grown so used to sleeping with Callie and he acutely missed her soft, curved warmth against his body. He also missed her slender, graceful arms and those beautiful, artistic fingers of hers curving around his naked waist. He always looked forward to sleeping with her close to him, her curly red hair tickling his jaw, her cheek against his warm, hard shoulder. After thirty days together, he realized how much he’d lost by not being in love until he was twenty-seven. When he told his mother that he’d fallen in love with Callie, she’d laughed knowingly. And Beau was enough of a gentleman to admit to her that she’d been dead right: Callie McKinley owned him body, heart, and soul.
January 5
C
allie about jumped
out of her skin when her computer beeped and a Skype message popped up on the screen. Her heart pounded as she hurried to sit down in the small office off the main hallway. It was a little past ten on Monday morning. Was it Beau?
Her hand trembled as she took the mouse and moved it to open up Skype on her screen. Beau’s stubbled face appeared and she could see that he was exhausted. She calculated it was around eleven p.m. Tuesday, local Bagram time. He was wearing an old, frayed Army baseball cap and a green t-shirt showing off his impressive chest and broad shoulders. His eyes were bloodshot and he was fatigued. Jetlag, for sure.
“I was so hoping you’d Skype me,” she said breathlessly, smiling at him. Now, Callie wished she hadn’t put her long, red hair into two braids. She should have left it down because Beau loved running his fingers through its long, thick strands.
“I got lucky,” he grinned. “The guy who had this time slot got food poisoning from one of the chow halls, so he offered me his turn. Boy, you’re a sight for sore eyes, sweetheart.”
Her heart thudded fiercely with love for him. As jetlagged as Beau was, he knew how to lift her sagging spirits. Twining her fingers around one of her braids, she whispered, “I wish I looked prettier for you, maybe with my hair down . . .”
“Shucks, Callie, you’re beautiful no matter what you do or don’t do with your hair. I didn’t fall in love with your hair. I fell in love with
you
.”
She knew that all their Skype calls were taped and monitored by the CIA, so she tried to keep their conversation light. “Well, braids make me look like a kid,” she said, shrugging, and watched his gray eyes lighten with amusement.
“On the other hand,” she teased, “you’re looking kinda like a hobo who just missed his train!” She motioned toward his beard.
“Yeah, gotta go back into Muslim mode,” he joked, rubbing the side of his bristly face. “What’s the weather like where you are?”
“Clear. In fact, the sky is so blue it hurts your eyes to look at this morning, Beau. When I got up earlier, I was staring out the kitchen window wishing you were here. Oh, it would be a great day for a horseback ride on one of those trails.” She saw sadness cross his face, but he rallied quickly and said, “Don’t I wish . . .” Beau was sitting at the computer monitor, a plywood board for a desk in a small room, the door closed so they could have some modicum of privacy. How she treasured these moments.
“Think June, sweetheart,” he urged. “Every day here is a day closer to coming home to you. How are you doing?”
She forced a smile and said, “I’m doing okay, but I miss you a lot.” She wanted to add:
terribly
, but bit back on the word. Beau was missing her just as much as she was missing him.
“Good. Has Graham got any plans for you today?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice lighter. She grinned, “In fact, we’re going out to the tack room in a little while because we’ve got to clean a lot of leather. With half the wranglers gone for the winter, things like that fall on him to handle.” She held up her hand, wriggling her fingers. “He asked if I wanted to help and I said I would. It makes no sense for him to do all those saddles, bridles, and martingales alone.”
“How warm will it be in there? I know that tack room isn’t heated.”
“Probably above freezing. He went out earlier and put a big heater in there to start warming it up, so it ought to be fine. My mom is making a big pot of vegetable beef soup for lunch and dinner, and my grandma is in the kitchen making six loaves of bread. I think by the time I get done cleaning leather at noon, I’ll be more than ready to eat.”
“Good. At least at your place, no one gets food poisoning! I really wish I was there with you,” he said, smiling a little.
Callie could feel him wanting to say so much more, but black ops had top secret clearances and the CIA wanted to make sure they didn’t slip up and give away classified intel. “I wish I could pack up some of my mom’s soup, put it in dry ice, and send it to you.”
“Wish you could, too, but it would never work.”
“Grandma Maisy was talking about maybe tomorrow having me come into the kitchen and help make up about ten dozen chocolate chip cookies and send them to you. That way you could share them with your brothers.” She saw Beau perk up, since he loved desserts.
“That would be right nice. We’ve only got about half our teams here. The rest are stateside until February one. Wrap the cookies well, and I’m sure everyone will get at least two.”
“Sounds good. I’ll tell Grams.” She gave him a wicked look. “And of course, you can stash a few away for yourself in your room, can’t you, Gardner?”
He nodded. “Caught!” he grinned, and his cheeks flushed. He could be so boyish when he was alone with her and she loved that he’d let himself be vulnerable with her. That was the man she fell in love with.
“Well, I’d be tellin’ a big fib if I didn’t agree that I’d probably take a dozen and parcel ’em out for myself, one cookie a day. That way, when I eat it, I’ll close my eyes, visualize the ranch, and see you beside me.”
Her heart turned over. “I’d love that,” she said. And then, speaking more softly, she whispered, “I miss you so much, Beau.”
“I know you do. I miss you just as much, believe me. But we’ll get through this. We have our whole lives ahead of us. Speaking of which, have you and Maisy and Stacy had a chance to go into Butte, to the wedding shops? Did you look at any wedding gowns, yet?”