Читать книгу The Wedding Plan - Abby Gaines - Страница 9

CHAPTER ONE

LUCAS CALDER HAD SPENT the past eight years flying his chopper in places where no one spoke a language he recognized. But the hand signals and facial expressions of Afghani kids had been easier to understand than the scene he was witnessing now.

His father, Admiral Dwight Calder—famously rigid, gimlet-eyed and about as warm as a midnight watch on an aircraft carrier in the Arctic—blew a raspberry on the tummy of his baby daughter, Lucas’s half sister, who was lying on her changing table.

Incomprehensible. And right now, damn inconvenient.

Lucas glanced at his watch: 3:00 p.m. Ten at night in the Gulf. He should be sitting at the tiny desk in his cabin, processing the next day’s minesweeping flight plan, imprinting it on his memory.

“Who’s a smelly girl?” Dwight teased. Mia shrieked with delight, apparently undisturbed by the stench emanating from her diaper.

“Dad, can we talk?” Lucas tried again to drag his father’s attention to more serious matters. Such as Lucas’s down-the-toilet military career.

“Of course we can.” Dwight untaped the diaper.

Lucas took a hasty step backward. “Man, she stinks.”

“Don’t talk about your sister like that.” Dwight wielded a wet wipe with surprising efficiency. It went without saying that he hadn’t done any diaper changing when Lucas and his older brother, Garrett, were babies. Their father’s metamorphosis to doting dad was very new. For Mia’s sake, Lucas was pleased.

He just wished it was possible to have a conversation with his father that wasn’t about feeding or potty time.

As Dwight tossed the diaper in the trash, Mia wriggled, a flurry of pudgy arms and legs. Lucas surged forward to block the side of the changing table.

Dwight held her in place with a hand on her chest. “I wouldn’t let her fall,” he growled.

Lucas hadn’t come back to New London, Connecticut, to argue with his dad. He stepped away.

“Pass me a new diaper,” his father ordered. The return to something approaching military style was so welcome that Lucas obeyed.

When Mia was dressed again, Dwight picked her up. “Would you like to hold her?” he asked Lucas.

“Uh, no. I’m good, thanks.”

Mia nestled against Dwight’s shoulder, eyelids at half-mast.

“She’ll nod off soon,” he predicted. “Let’s talk downstairs in my study.”

As they reached the bottom of the staircase, the glass-paned front door opened. Stephanie, Lucas’s stepmom, came in and set her purse on the hall console. She gave a squeal of pleasure. “Lucas! When did you get here? Come give me a hug, you adorable boy.”

He squeezed her tightly. “I don’t need to ask how you are. You look great.”

She smacked his shoulder. “Liar. Do you know how hard it is for a woman in her mid-forties to lose baby weight? But I love you for saying it.” She pulled away to address Dwight. “Darling, you know very well Mia should be in bed.”

“She kept calling to me over the baby monitor,” he protested.

Lucas noted with some discomfort that his father sounded sheepish. Great. The country had benefited for decades from Admiral Calder’s unrelenting sense of mission, but the one time Lucas needed his dad operating at full aggression… What had happened to Admiral Cold-ass, as he’d been irreverently known to his crew?

Stephanie took the baby from Dwight. “I’ll put her to bed. Sorry, sweetie,” she crooned to Mia, “but Mean Mommy’s back.”

Mia babbled something that may or may not have been an attempt at words. Her parents cooed as if she’d just recited Shakespeare.

Lucas couldn’t help noticing that Dwight caressed his wife’s bottom as she passed. Things really had changed.

Was his dad even capable of focusing on Lucas’s problem?

Lucas reminded himself that Dwight had been a navy man far longer than he’d been a family man. If he could just recall his “pre-enlightened” state, he would understand why Lucas needed his help.

“It’s good to have you home,” Dwight said as he settled into the burgundy leather chair behind his oak desk. The desk had once graced the captain’s stateroom on a nineteenth-century sailing ship. “How’s the hand?”

“Fine,” Lucas said. “Great. Fully recovered.” Sixteen months ago, his minesweeping chopper had been shot down in the Persian Gulf. Lucas had been medevaced to the U.S.A. for treatment—on the day Mia was born, as it turned out. Getting over the concussion, broken ribs and ankle and punctured lung had proved easy. Or so he’d thought at the time.

The surgery on his shattered hand had been more complex, the rehabilitation endless. Partly because Lucas had insisted on doing it all in one long stretch, relocating to Baltimore to be closer to the rehab center.

“Shame about your eyes.” Someone must have reported the details of Lucas’s latest physical to Dwight. Shouldn’t happen, of course, but Admiral Calder had so many friends in high places, there was always someone keen to fill him in about his son. Even though Dwight would have been too honorable to ask.

“The only problem was my depth perception,” Lucas said. “Everything else was fine.” He’d had no idea that, after working so hard to restore his hand, he would fail his back-to-duty physical because of his eyesight. The doctor had attributed the change in his vision to the deep concussion he’d sustained in the crash.

The skeptical pursing of Dwight’s lips said his father wasn’t fooled by the words the only problem.

It was an insurmountable problem.

Nothing is insurmountable.

“You’ve heard they’re discharging me, as of December 31,” Lucas guessed. “I’m on leave until then.”

Dwight nodded. “I understand you turned down a desk job.”

“I want to fly.” They’d told him that couldn’t happen. He should have known better than to issue an ultimatum to the U.S. Navy. But no way did he want to sit at a desk while, out there, men risked their lives to protect others.

Thanks to his ultimatum—send me back or discharge me—he’d be out at the end of the year. A man without a mission. He couldn’t get his head around the idea.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to.

“You failed the physical, you can’t fly,” Dwight said.

Usually, Lucas considered having his father so high up in the navy to be a disadvantage. Today, he hoped that for the first time in his life, it would help.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” he said. “I need to see a different doctor, get a retest and a second opinion. I figured you’d know someone.”

Someone who would understand his need to get back out there.

“We don’t do retests,” Dwight said. “Besides, if you failed it once, you’ll fail again.”

“There are exercises I can do to improve my depth perception,” Lucas replied. He hoped what he’d read on the internet was true, not some urban myth. “If I’d known I had a problem, I would have done them already. As it is, I want to spend a month strengthening my vision, then sit the test again.”

Another pilot had been assigned to Lucas’s chopper on a temporary basis, on the assumption that he’d be back. Now that he was out, his C.O. wanted to appoint the other guy permanently. At Lucas’s request, he’d agreed to hold off for a few more weeks. Seemed he had more faith in Lucas’s ability to swing a retest than his dad did.

“I’m not sure I like the idea of you going back after what you went through,” Dwight said. “You’re lucky to be alive. You’ve done your duty to your country, and then some.”

“It’s not about duty,” Lucas said. “It’s about…” No one in my unit is better than I am at undersea mine detection and destruction. No one is better at protecting our ships and their crews. They need me. He wasn’t about to argue with his father about the numbers of lives and ships that were at stake every day over there. “This is who I am, Dad.”

“Maybe this is a time to reevaluate who you are.” Dwight’s emphasis recognized the irony of a man like himself talking such postmodern jargon. “The navy isn’t everything—I almost lost what really mattered before I figured that out.”

He and Stephanie had split up briefly before Mia’s birth. Lucas wasn’t sure what happened during their time apart, but Stephanie had said his father had come through it a changed man. His dad hadn’t seemed much different when he’d visited Lucas in Baltimore, but here at home…

Change wasn’t always a good thing.

“I’m a bit young for a midlife crisis, Dad,” Lucas said evenly. “I know who I am, and I know what matters. Will you help me or not?”

His father picked up a fat, cigar-shaped gold pen and flipped it between his fingers. “What does Merry think you should do?”

“We haven’t talked lately, and I haven’t seen her since I got into town. I came straight to you.”

Merry Wyatt was the daughter of John Wyatt, retired navy lieutenant and Dwight’s best friend. John and Dwight had served in Vietnam together, on a submarine, back when they were practically kids. John had saved Dwight’s life. Which Lucas assumed was why his unsentimental father had always shared John’s desire to see Lucas and Merry’s childhood friendship evolve into a romantic attachment.

He and Merry had humored their dads by dating once a year for the past, what, nine years? Yeah, nine, starting right after Merry graduated from high school. That first date had been a disaster, but some of the others had been…interesting. Over the years, each of them had used their on-again, off-again “romance” to their own advantage. Such as the year Lucas had claimed a back-home girlfriend as an excuse to refuse the attentions of his captain’s daughter without offending the captain.

Their last date, six months ago in Baltimore, was responsible for the recent radio silence he and Merry had been observing.

“You should ask her what she thinks,” his dad urged. “Merry’s a sensible girl.”

Sensible wasn’t the word Lucas would use. But if talking to Merry would help bring Dwight around…

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll go see her now.”

Sooner or later, they would have to meet up again. Might as well be now.

Merry was the forgiving type…wasn’t she?

She’s a romantic. An idealist. Idealists are quick to forgive.

Dwight beamed in approval of the plan. Since his father wasn’t the beaming type, Lucas found it creepy. Still, he took advantage of that approbation to push his luck. “Dad, you didn’t say if you’ll help me get a retest.”

An appeal against medical disqualification would require Dwight to pull strings. Something he had an aversion to.

Dwight steepled his fingers on his desk. “I’ll think about it. How long are you staying?”

“Until you’ve thought about it,” Lucas said.

* * *

LUCAS SLID OPEN THE double-wide, yellow-painted iron door of Wyatt Yachts’ waterfront workshop. The track needed oiling; Lucas despised the effort the movement took.

A year of rehab on his right hand and it still felt as if muscle and sinew could turn to water at any moment. Part of his rehabilitation had been schooling his expression to not show pain.

He stepped into the workshop. The familiar smells of wood, mineral oil and polyurethane overlaid with salt hit him. High above his head, light filtered through salt-crusted windows, set below the roof trusses. The scale of the building dwarfed the overturned wooden hull in the middle of the floor, and dwarfed the man who was buffing it with sandpaper even more. Not for John Wyatt the electric sander, not once he got beyond the first stages. Wyatt Yachts created handcrafted wooden yachts, and it had a waiting list a mile long—even with Merry running the admin side so that John would be free to do what he loved most.

The older man must have heard the clank and rattle of the sliding door, but he didn’t look around. He wouldn’t, until he’d finished the line he was sanding. Back in high school, Lucas used to work here over the summer, so he knew John’s methods. The place hadn’t changed a bit.

Lucas veered right, toward the end of the workshop that had been closed off to make an office and kitchen. A large window allowed people in the office to look out, and vice versa.

No sign of Merry.

Relief mingled with irritation. Now that he’d decided to clear the air, and to ask for her help, he didn’t want to delay. Of course, he might have ensured a better response if he’d called her in the past six months. Or emailed. Or texted. He should probably have told her he was coming, at least.

He’d hoped it might all blow over if they didn’t speak for a while.

At last John straightened, one hand pressed to the small of his back. “Lucas, when did you get in?” He came over and clasped Lucas’s hand in both of his. “How’re you doing? Your dad tells me you’ll be out by year-end. Must be disappointed.”

That was more like it. John knew how Lucas felt.

“I am,” he said, returning the handshake. “But how are you?” John had always had a spare build, but today he looked almost skinny, and his grip was bony.

John rubbed his back again. “My kidneys are giving me trouble. I’m on the blasted dialysis twice a day now. At least the hospital has set me up so I can do it here, or at home.” It was a cheerful grumble, the way a guy might complain when someone drinks the last of the two-percent, forcing him to pour skim milk over his cereal.

Or when he’s being pursued by an enemy aircraft, faster than him and with more firepower, and he doesn’t want his buddies to know he’s terrified.

Lucas had seen a flash of terror in John’s eyes.

“Your blood pressure still bad?” he asked. It was the older man’s hypertension that had damaged his kidneys in the first place. “You seen the doctor lately?”

“The doctor can’t do a thing to knock my BP down.” John chuckled, as if it was all a joke. “Though Merry has me on egg-white omelets.” His heavy sigh suggested his only daughter had devised a particularly cruel form of torture.

“Tell it to Amnesty International,” Merry said from behind Lucas.

When he turned around, she was crossing the workshop. She must have squeezed through the sliding door he hadn’t managed to open very far. She wore skinny jeans and a pale green T-shirt that crossed over in front, creating a deep V. With her shoulder-length, light brown hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, she looked more or less the way he remembered her at twelve years old.

She’d been eyeing her dad with loving exasperation, but when she turned to Lucas, the loving disappeared.

To be replaced with an entirely adult glitter in her gray eyes. A woman-scorned kind of glitter.

I should have called.

“Lucas, I didn’t realize you were coming home.” Which was more or less the same as you should have called, uttered in a cool, distant voice that didn’t suit her at all.

“Surprise,” he said, forcing a smile. He stepped closer.

John would think it odd if he didn’t at least kiss her cheek. No need to broadcast their rift to her dad, and therefore to his own father.

Lucas pressed his lips to Merry’s cheek.

And was startled by a rush of sensation, of memory that he’d thought he’d put behind him, provoked by the scent of her skin. It was sweet, like the wild strawberries they used to pick at the start of summer. If he moved an inch or two to his right, to her lips…and if she opened her mouth…he knew she would taste of wild strawberries, too.

No, no, no. Not going there.

Merry took a step backward, away from his lips. Her face was stony.

With disconcerting slowness, Lucas’s brain resumed normal service. That concussion must have done even more damage than the doctors knew.

John chuckled as he looked from Merry to Lucas. “Have you two had another tiff?” he said indulgently. “Why don’t you go to dinner tonight, clear the air?”

Merry transferred her full attention to him, and her face softened. “Sorry to disappoint you, Dad,” she said. “But Lucas isn’t back in town to see me.”

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. She seemed mighty sure about that. “Actually, Merry, I do want to see you,” he said.

Her father chuffed with satisfaction. “You two have your ups and downs, but you always come back to each other. One day, you’ll sort yourselves out for good.”

Not the most helpful observation, after Baltimore.

“I’m busy,” Merry said. “I have a ton of supplier payments lined up this afternoon.”

“How about I come back when you’re done, and we go for a drink?” Lucas suggested. Not as big a commitment as dinner, but still in a public place. No room for misinterpretation.

She lifted her chin. “I have a date tonight.”

Lucas felt a niggle of irritation. He wanted to apologize, for goodness’ sake.

“Not with that Patrick again,” her dad said disapprovingly. “I thought you broke up.”

“He’s been away the past week or so,” she said. “That’s all.”

Who was Patrick?

Behind Merry, a collie dog rounded the sliding door and padded across the concrete floor.

“You have a visitor,” Lucas said.

“That’s Boo. My new dog.” She snapped her fingers. “Come on, boy, come to Mommy.”

Her voice went all gooey, much the way Dwight’s had when he talked to Mia. Even if it was only about the dog, Lucas figured any sign of softening had to be good.

“You dog-napped Lassie,” he said too heartily. “Way to go, Merry.”

Pointing out the resemblance was a nod to Merry’s favorite movie, a reminder of how well Lucas knew her. But it wasn’t without risk. Merry had insisted they see Lassie on their very first date; Lucas had never been so bored in his life. She’d decried his bluntly voiced opinion as a sign of a lack of emotional depth. He’d accused her of being out of touch with reality.

And there ended Date Number One.

The dog lurched from side to side like a drunken sailor.

“Why is he walking funny?” Lucas asked.

“Shh, he’ll hear you,” she said. “Boo can’t go.”

“Can’t go where?” Lucas asked. Her irises were flecked with gold…he’d never noticed that before.

“Can’t go. He’s constipated. Big-time, long-term. I’ve tried everything.”

“She sure has,” her dad said. “Not even the animal hypnotist could convince that thing to poop.”

The dog’s rolling gait suddenly looked less drunken sailor and more accident-waiting-to-happen.

“Have you tried feeding him whatever my baby sister’s eating?” Lucas asked. “That’ll fix it.”

“Patrick thinks it’s psychological,” Merry said. “Boo’s owner, Ruby, died of a heart attack late last year.”

Boo perked up at his owner’s name, his head swiveling between Merry and Lucas.

As if Lucas cared what her boyfriend thought.

“Patrick is Boo’s vet,” Merry explained. “Boo was boarding with him while Ruby was away on a cruise. After she died, her family didn’t want him, so Patrick offered him to me. He’s the sweetest thing.”

“Boo or Patrick?” Lucas asked.

“Boo—well, both. Though I wouldn’t say Boo’s entirely accepted me as his owner.”

The collie’s long nose nudged Lucas’s knee, as if to say she’s right.

Lucas ignored the dog’s purported emotional distress and homed on the most alarming aspect. “Are you saying this animal hasn’t gone in six months?”

“Of course not.” She tsked. “He’d be dead. But he doesn’t go very often, and it’s not comfortable when he—”

Lucas held up a hand. “I get the picture.” Baby diapers and a constipated collie. Such were the challenges of life in New London.

“How long are you here for, Lucas?” John asked. “What are your plans for life after the navy?”

He glanced at Merry. Since she didn’t look surprised, she must have heard the news, too. “Actually, I have some ideas for how I might be able to get back to the Gulf.”

“Maybe your eye trouble is a message that you should stay home,” Merry said. Unlike the women he dated—the ones he dated for real—she’d never been impressed by his military career.

Sometimes it rankled.

“A message from who?” Lucas demanded. “Al Qaeda? Because that sounds like a damn good reason to go out there again.”

“My hero,” she murmured.

It wasn’t a compliment.

She’d started calling him that back when they were kids, playing war games. Sometimes just the two of them, or sometimes he’d invite her to join him and his buddies. Lucas would set up a scenario that involved rescuing Merry from dire peril, but invariably she’d screw it up. He’d explain to her that the Viet Cong had covered her in honey and staked her to a fire ant mound, but don’t worry, he would trek through the jungle to save her. Simple, right?

Wrong. You could bet that when he turned up at the “anthill,” she would clasp her hands and say, “My hero,” in gratifying tones. Then she’d inform him she’d freed herself by using a magnifying glass and the sun to set fire to the ropes that bound her, and had destroyed the ants by, say, playing music at a deadly pitch only ants could hear. In other words, she didn’t need a hero.

Back then, Lucas never had high hopes for a girl in his platoon. Merry had managed to fall short of even his modest expectations.

He couldn’t think why he’d kept asking her to play.

“You can’t blame Merry for worrying about your safety,” John said happily. He tweaked his daughter’s ponytail. “Looks like your dog wants to go, Merry-Berry.”

Boo was circling around, sniffing the ground.

“I just took him, and he didn’t do anything—but I guess I’ll try again,” she grumbled.

Lucas seized the opportunity. “I’ll come with you.”

She glanced at her father, then pressed her lips together.

“Take your time,” John said archly, as if he imagined they were headed outside for some nookie. He started back toward his work, but after a couple of steps, halted abruptly. Lucas couldn’t see his expression, but recognized the clenching of hands at the older man’s sides, and the way John deliberately loosened the fingers, one by one.

Pain.

Lucas took a step toward him.

Merry pushed past Lucas. “Dad, are you okay?”

Boo whined.

“Fine, Merry-Berry.” John’s smile was obviously forced. “Just some stomach cramping.” He paused, as if counting silently. Then his smile grew more natural; the spasm must have passed. He made a shooing motion. “Off you go.”

She hesitated.

A guy didn’t want a bunch of people nosing around when he was in pain. Lucas jerked his head, indicating Merry should follow him.

Her reluctance was evident, but she came anyway. Which could be a positive sign. On the other hand, her demeanor didn’t exactly scream forgiveness.

I should have called.