in her own house, the door locked and bolted behind her, did she realize tears were streaming down her cheeks.
She walked to the sink and filled a glass with water, then took a long drink, waiting for her pounding heart to slow. She tried to tell herself Ray’s outburst didn’t mean anything. Of course he was upset; he needed someone to blame and she was handy.
But his words still stung. She’d wanted this man, more than any she’d met in a long time, to like her. She’d felt the pull of attraction to him the moment he opened the door and stood, towering over her yet still vulnerable. The feeling had scared her, but she’d been determined not to run from it. Not this time. After three years, she was ready to move past the hurt. To allow herself to fall in love again. The idea was as thrilling as it was frightening.
And for a few minutes there, she’d held out hope that Ray Hughes would be the one. The man who would help her move past the fear and hurt into something wonderful.
A man who hated her now, before he even knew her. On the scale of things, most would say it was a minor loss, but it hurt all the same. She looked out the kitchen window, toward his now darkened house. Was he sitting there in the dark, brooding? Did he regret anything he’d said?
Was there any way for the two of them to reach across the misconceptions and try again?
CHAPTER TWO
RAY TOOK A LONG SWIG of coffee and stared out the windshield of the rental car, fighting the fatigue that dragged at him. He was still on Baghdad time, where it was 2:00 a.m. At 4:00 p.m. in Lincoln, southwest of Omaha, the sun sat low in a gunmetal sky. He had the heater in the car turned up full blast but he could still feel the cold radiating through the windshield glass.
He’d rented the car this morning at the Colorado Springs airport and set out for Omaha. While he’d waited for his turn at the counter, he’d thumbed through the phone book and found a furniture store and asked them to deliver a sofa, a television and a king-size bed.
“Don’t you want to come down and pick something out?” the woman on the phone had asked, incredulous.
“No. I want a brown leather sofa, a big-screen TV, and I don’t care what the bed looks like as long as the mattress is good and not too soft.” He’d given them his credit card information, told them where to find the house key, and they’d promised to deliver everything that afternoon.
Later, he’d find a car lot and buy a new truck. The fact that before shipping out he had paid off the one Tammy had stolen galled him. He’d been looking forward to having no vehicle payments.
That didn’t matter now. What mattered was that he was going to get his son, and he’d bring him home to a house that didn’t look like thieves had swept through it.
He gripped the steering wheel at the top and slid his hands down to rest at nine and three o’clock. Going to his parents’ place always tied his stomach in knots, but never more than now. Would T.J. remember him? Would he cry for his mother?
Ray didn’t want to think about Tammy, but every time he’d closed his eyes last night, she’d been there. He’d slept—or tried to sleep—in the recliner, a blanket he’d found in the closet thrown over him. But memories of his marriage played in his head like movie trailers highlighting all the best and worst scenes.
They’d met at a bar. Did single people meet anywhere else these days? The bars around Fort Carson were packed every night with men and women eyeing each other across the pool tables and dance floor.
She had been bent over a pool table when he’d walked in with a group of friends. Her dark brown hair fell like a silk shawl over her shoulders, past her waist. She’d worn a short skirt that showed off her legs, and black leather boots that ended just above her ankles. She’d glanced back and caught him staring and smiled at him, and he’d felt as if she’d landed a hook in his heart and tugged.
She’d hooked him all right. And reeled him in. He’d gone willingly, and when he’d gotten the Dear John letter he’d felt the hook rip right out. The news had hit him as hard as an enemy bullet.
She’d said she was lonely. She was tired of waiting. She was young and deserved to be out having fun. Only later had he heard from a buddy still stationed in the Springs that she’d moved in with another man.
Another soldier.
She wouldn’t have done it by herself. She’d have been fine if she’d stayed home.
At first he’d been happy she’d made a new friend. Her e-mails had been full of talk of Chrissie. Me and Chrissie went out last night to a club near the base. Me and Chrissie had a girls’night out. Me and Chrissie had a lot of fun.
But Chrissie was single and Tammy was not. Seeing her friend flirt and go out with guys probably made Tammy want those things, too. She wouldn’t have left him otherwise.
He leaned forward and snapped off the heater, warmed by a renewed surge of anger. Chrissie had fooled him at first, too. Last night, when he’d opened the door and seen her standing there, a bottle of wine in one hand, a plate of food in the other, a cloud of red curls framing her face, he’d thought for a moment he was hallucinating.
That she had reached out to him that way had touched him so much he could hardly speak. Watching her, feeling the wine slide down his throat and warm his stomach, he’d allowed himself a small flare of hope. Maybe his life wasn’t completely in the toilet.
And then he’d realized who he was talking to and that little flame was doused.
He shifted in his seat and forced his mind away from last night, to the future. He was going to see his son again. He didn’t know anything about raising a kid, but he’d figure it out. They’d do all right together. Just the two of them.
AS SOON AS the office mail was delivered and parceled out, Rita retreated to the shelf in the corner she used for charting and opened the envelope addressed to her in familiar handwriting. Paul sent his letters to her here so she’d get them earlier in the day. He started that after she told him how antsy she got when she was expecting to hear from him—how she couldn’t concentrate on her work, wondering if there was a letter waiting at home for her.
He’d told her his friends gave him a hard time about the letters. Why didn’t he just e-mail like everyone else? But he said he thought better with a piece of paper in front of him and a pen in his hand. Even as a boy, he’d kept a journal, and his grandmother had predicted he would be a great writer. For now, his letters home were his best work.
She unfolded the two sheets of paper and smoothed them out. Paul had beautiful handwriting. His third-grade teacher was also his aunt, Wilma Blue Legs, and she had made the children practice their cursive letters in an old copperplate style no one cared much about anymore.
Rita knew because she’d been in Wilma’s class, a year behind Paul. Even then she had admired the slim boy who sometimes made faces at her in the lunch room.
We have a new medic here who is from Boston. A real city boy. He found out I was Indian and he was like a little kid following me around, asking all these questions. You know the ones, all about what was life like on the reservation and all that. I told him life on the rez wasn’t that different from life in Baghdad, except that here it’s a lot hotter and they don’t have as many tourists.
She
