Читать книгу Navy Seal Promise - Amber Williams Leigh - Страница 11

CHAPTER TWO

THE WARPLANE HANDLED like it was the 1940s and the war was on again. Harmony strapped into the cockpit of the old bird with the giddiness of a child and took to the sky, climbing high, the nose reaching for the blue, white-peppered expanse.

“No tricks today, ace,” the voice of her radioman advised. “Just do some nice fly-bys and get the people going.”

“You’re a buzzkill, James,” she called back. “I’m just stretching the lady’s legs.”

What legs! The engine had fire and pizzazz. It was bred for dogfighting and hell-for-leather maneuvers. The idea brought gooseflesh to Harmony’s skin as she banked, coming around.

The trim airfield spread out below her, a jutting green carpet. Two lines of exhibition planes were queued on either side of the runway. Hundreds of faces from the metal bleachers were turned up to the sky, watching the fighter live again. “Hold on to your hats,” Harmony warned, going low.

A curse blew through the headset of her flying helmet as she dipped over the bleachers and climbed again, gaining airspeed. “Well. Hats are in the wind,” James observed. “You nearly ripped the blouse off the congressman’s wife.”

“Then we’re certain to make the papers.” She banked again. “Relax. Are the good people smiling?”

“They’re verklempt. Nobody ever said you don’t put on a good show.”

“Just sit back and enjoy it, why don’t you?” she suggested. “Coming in again...”

Even she whooped as she made the next sweep. This was worth all the hassle they’d gone through to get the summer show off the ground. They’d haggled for weeks with FAA regulations. With well-trained pilots, they’d managed to rustle together all the right paperwork and get the all-clear from the powers that be.

God, it felt great to be in the cockpit. No way she would ever give it up again. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t give to stay airborne.

Well, there was one thing she wouldn’t give. Harmony’s gaze strayed to the three-by-five photograph she’d taped to the control panel for luck. Her daughter smiled back at her over a ruffle-lined shoulder, curly-headed and coquettish. She was the reason Harmony couldn’t try any of her old barnstorming maneuvers, though the temptation sang. She was the reason Harmony heeded James’s warning and performed fly-bys instead of loops.

Gracie Bea, who’d lost one parent before she was born, was the general reason Harmony toed the line. Because no matter how trained she was, no matter how well-maintained the warbird might be, she couldn’t take risks. She took enough on a day-to-day basis. Aerial application wasn’t low-level aerobatics, but it still held its share of dangers.

Harmony liked being the pilot mama who taught her daughter not to slow down but to run and climb, whoop and holler. Yet she knew her limits, and she heeded them as she’d heeded few other limits in life, even gravity, because no child deserved to grow up an orphan.

It hurt enough that Bea would never know her father, Petty Officer Benjamin Zaccoe—Benji.

“Last pass,” Harmony informed James through the radio. “Ready down there?” A frown pulled at her lips when he didn’t answer. “James?” She was already going in for a dive. She pulled off the final fly-by and tapped her headset. “Tower, do you read?”

Communications must be down, she mused. Wheels down, she executed a safe, only somewhat flashy landing that brought the bird to a standstill in front of the rows of spectators who clambered to their feet and cheered her as she rose from the cockpit and waved. She’d dressed the part in a vintage flying helmet and sheep-lined leather jacket. As had been her trademark in flying days past, she wore her hair in a thick braid over one shoulder.

The warm reception brought her flight buzz to a satisfying conclusion. She stood on the wing of the fighter, gave a salute, and prepared to hop to the grass before she saw James approaching.

“Nice flying, ace.” He nodded, impressed.

She pulled off her helmet. “I lost comms.”

He reached out to grasp the wing’s edge. James was well over six feet tall and had aged well. Very well. His hair and beard were still thick, with some salt and pepper sprinkled through. His tan face only looked worn around the corners of his eyes where laughter had inscribed itself. “Sorry. It was me,” he admitted.

“Why?” she asked. “What happened?”

“I was distracted,” James told her. He turned toward the row of B.S. personnel on the ground. “You can blame that one over there.”

Harmony squinted. Well-worn T-shirt, cargo pants, battered baseball cap over hair that curled brown under the rim and bordered on unruliness. The beard was full enough to rival James’s, and the smile wove a wide path through it. Blue eyes winked at her from under the brim of the hat.

“’Ey, Carrots,” he greeted.

She nearly shuddered. “Kyle!” Hopping down to the grass, she got a running leap on him.

“Umphf!” he groaned under the impact, breaking into a low-rumbling laugh as he grabbed her up off the ground in a fierce hug.

Some hugs had the power to heal all manner of woes. Some were as vital as the bodies they brought together. Harmony tightened her hold around Kyle’s neck. For a moment—a small moment—she let all her anxiety bleed through to the surface where she never let it stray. Not when he was away. She couldn’t think about what he and her brother, Gavin, did. She couldn’t think about the risk of losing either of them where she’d already lost too much.

Ducking her head into Kyle’s shoulder, she felt her brow creasing and the muscles beneath quake with the effort to hold it back. Beating it under, she breathed deep and smelled sunshine, Zest soap and sea salt—smells that were so very Kyle.

He was back. It was her turn to feel verklempt.

“Talk about a hero’s reception,” he murmured.

Her lips curved. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Harm?”

“Hmm?” she mumbled. She felt a bit fuzzy-headed as she pulled back in his embrace. “Oh.” Loosening her grip, she let him set her on the grass. “Sorry. I just... I missed the hell out of you.”

All the fuzziness faded, and her focus sharpened, everything zeroing in on him. As a girl, she’d felt a magnetic pull toward him. He might’ve known her since she was a baby, but Harmony was a woman, damn it, and Kyle Bracken was a man, a soldier, that women noticed.

“You look the same,” he said.

She swore sometimes Kyle still saw her as his best buddy Gavin’s little sister. Did he look at her and see the four-year-old who’d wrecked her bicycle in earth-scorching fashion on the gravel outside his mother’s flower shop? Or the eighteen-year-old he’d tossed into a mud puddle in front of his navy friends? “Is that good?” she asked.

He reached up, touched her hair. Just a brush above the temple where some flyaway strays had pulled free of her braid. “Couldn’t be better.”

She ignored the missed breath and balled her hand into a fist. Throwing it into the rock slab of his shoulder, she knocked him back half a step and startled a short laugh out of him. “You don’t call. You don’t write. You just show up out of the blue to let us know you’re—” She stopped herself just short of saying alive. She licked her lips and shook her head. “You’re nearly as bad as my brother.”

“Ouch,” he said, his good humor fading by a fraction. He touched his shoulder. “You’ve been working on that jab.”

“I’m a mama now, K.Z.B.,” she reminded him. “Somebody’s got to step up their game. Since Benji can’t be here, and with you and Gavin gone more than half the time, I’m the only one left to teach Bea how to breathe fire.”

His face went solemn at the reminder of Benji, of Kyle’s own continual absence. She saw a spark of guilt there. Harmony hadn’t meant to hit him in the tenders. It was easy to forget he even had tender spots. He was built exactly as what he was—an elite fighter. He didn’t exactly wear his emotions on his sleeve. He wasn’t trained that way.

He just got back, she reminded herself. She knew better than most how long it took a soldier to settle after returning home—physically, emotionally, psychologically. And Kyle’s heart reached as wide as the warm Gulf waters. Switching gears quickly, she said, “Bea will be thrilled to bits when she sees you.”

“Not as much as me.”

“Are you staying at The Farm?” she asked, referring to the farmhouse and acres of horse pasture, fields and woods that belonged to Adrian and James. “You could come by. Though you probably want to settle in first.”

“I’ll stay at The Farm for a little while,” he acknowledged. “I’m not sure Mom would have it any other way. It’s not much of a walk from their place to yours.”

That was true. She lived on Bracken land in the mother-in-law suite. When Kyle’s grandfather, Van Carlton, passed away, he and James had built the cozy little house for his grandmother, Edith, while the Brackens moved their family of four into the farmhouse she had no longer wanted to keep up. The arrangement had lasted little more than three years before his grandmother moved to a retirement village in Florida.

When Harmony returned home after Benji’s death, she’d accepted the Brackens’ invitation to live in the empty suite. The arrangement worked for all parties. She couldn’t have very well brought a squalling newborn to the inn like her parents had wanted. They might like the idea of having their grandchild so close, but they also had an established business to run.

And Harmony liked the Bracken lands. She’d enjoyed raising Bea there with not much but honeybees and squirrels for company. The Farm was a rich place to raise a child. Bea had learned to ride in the last year. Adrian and James had even bought her her own pony. The Brackens themselves were generous landlords, understanding and unobtrusive. And it helped that Harmony’s business partner was only a hop, skip and a jump away. B.S. butted up against The Farm and Carlton Nurseries, meaning the commute to work wasn’t half bad either.

“Come by,” Harmony invited. “See Bea. I’ll make macaroni.”

Kyle hissed, reaching for his waistline. “You know my weakness for your macaroni. Just as you know a soldier’s got to watch his form.”

“A spoon or two won’t kill you,” she said, slugging him again in the stomach. Her knuckles did little more than ricochet off the abs underneath his T-shirt. The man was a machine. There were strong men. Ripped men. Then there were men like Kyle who were made of stronger stuff—concrete and rebar. “I’ll make it for Bea. You can gank a few bites off her plate if it makes you feel better. I’ll even throw in a free trim.” She motioned to his neckline. “You’re getting long in the back.” Overseas, he often let it grow out, but hair as thick as his didn’t last long at home without a trim, particularly in the summer.

He scrubbed those peeking brown curls. “It didn’t bother me ’til the humidity hit. Mavis could do it, but it’s a foolish man who asks her to take scissors to his head.”

“You’re afraid of Mavis,” Harmony noted. She shook her head. “I thought you big SEAL types were fearless.”

“Not entirely.”

“What else are you afraid of?” she asked experimentally.

He turned thoughtful. Again, his smile slipped. She wondered at the hitch before it vanished, and he responded. “Sharks.”

“It’s a good thing you’re home then,” she pointed out. She touched him, to assure herself again that he was really here. “You won’t find many of those inland.”

“I guess.” He looked over her head, saw the people watching and waiting. “I shouldn’t keep you. Your fans’ll want a piece of you, too.”

“Work, work,” she said, grinning.

He bent down, placing his lips against her cheek. “Amazing flying out there,” he told her, lingering. “I’m proud of ya.”

“The biplane’s next,” she told him, ignoring the little stir in her blood. It was little, after all. “You could tag along.”

He barked a laugh as he backed off, knowing her penchant for flat-hatting. “I live dangerously enough on your mac-and-cheese.”

“Ah, come on!” she chided.

“Not on your life, Carrots!” he shouted back. Lifting his chin to her, he disappeared into the throngs of spectators to join James, leaving her as spooled up as she had been in the cockpit of the old warplane.

* * *

DUSK FALLING ON The Farm was the essence of tranquility. As night approached, there was both a hush and a crescendo. Everything stilled. Even with the sun gone from the sky, the heat didn’t dwindle, but it banked, the air breathable once more. As the light faded, the sound of night bugs—crickets and cicadas—escalated. Amphibians struck up the tune, adding throaty backup vocals to the noise of the backcountry twang. Their combined pitch heightened to that of a diesel engine. After his time away, it was like a homecoming symphony from Mother Nature’s Philharmonic.

The mosquitos were out, but the farmhouse’s back porch screened them from feasting on flesh. Through the open window, Adrian and Mavis could be heard arguing lightly over the dish washing.

On the porch, James puffed a cigar. In his youth, he’d been a man of many vices. He was no longer controlled by substances. His weekend after-dinner Montecristos were his only remaining weakness. He tipped his head back, blowing rings into the air, looking every bit the striking, aging pirate. At fifty-four, he still cut an impressive figure, especially in the flickering light of Adrian’s tiki torches.

Kyle soaked it all in. The sweet scent of his father’s stogie. The familiar tumble of the land, rising and falling under wild grasses to the stable and pastures. A horse nickered in the distance. The animals’ slow-grazing silhouettes were fading against the inky backdrop of trees.

Some pockets of the world remained untouched. That certainty was what Kyle escaped to when the fighting was over. Change was inevitable. Cities moved forward. Small towns turned to progress. Backcountry places like this developed. People changed. Grandparents passed. Engagements broke. Teammates burned out or chose to leave the service to save their families. Some of them never saw the beauty of their final homecoming.

The Farm was rare. The way of life went on unceasing, the pace unbroken. It persisted and endured. Yet that shift in barometric pressure could be sensed here, too. The storm was gaining speed in the Gulf and hadn’t altered course. It would make a wet landing somewhere between Perdido and Pensacola. Home and business owners were already battening down in preparation for the first seasonal run-in with the tropics. Soon Kyle would help James and Adrian stable the horses, round up the litter of puppies spring had given them and board the windows.

The storm was small enough not to worry too much. The Farm would most likely remain unscathed. For now, Kyle drank an icy glass of tea and let his father smoke. “How bad is it?” he asked out of curiosity.

“What’s that?” James asked, turning his head from the view.

“The aviation industry,” Kyle indicated.

James took a final puff from his cigar, eyeing Kyle over the brown stump. Releasing a ragged stream of smoke, he leaned forward in his patio chair and stabbed it out in the tray at the center of the table. He’d take the tray out in the yard and dump it before going back inside, so the ashes didn’t get caught up in the breeze and dirty Adrian’s furnishings. Such courtesies between Kyle’s parents were simple and commonplace, performed with unspoken poignancy that was touching in the extreme. “It should be booming.”

“But it’s not,” Kyle surmised, daring his father to challenge the assumption.

James did a few more quick stabs with the Cuban before depositing it in the tray. Dragging a hand through his mop of hair, he settled back with a creak from the chair. “There’ve been some ruts in the road.”

“And?” Kyle posed the question again. “How bad is it?”

James folded his hands over his middle. “I’ve been a businessman for thirty years. I haven’t lost one entrepreneurship yet, and I’m not going to now.”

“No matter the cost?”

James hesitated. He glanced toward the window where Adrian and Mavis were talking. When he spoke again, his voice lowered to a murmur. “Those two are the chief reasons B.S. has to survive.”

Kyle frowned. “There’ll be collateral damage if it doesn’t,” he realized, trying to read James. It wasn’t easy. The man could bluff like a maverick and not just at the poker tables. “What did you mortgage? The cottage on the bay isn’t big enough. Was it the auto shop? Please tell me it wasn’t Flora or the nursery.”

“It wasn’t any of those,” James mused, no longer meeting his son’s eye. “It was a sure thing. Byron Strong went over the business plan. The best advisers on the coast took a look at the specs. The application market was ripe for new pilots. The only issue was lack of local training opportunities, but we fixed that with the teaching base of B.S.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“I don’t know, exactly. We’ve had two big contracts fall through based on minute technicalities. We’ve had farmers shy away after weeks of negotiation. Even advertising has had its windfalls.” James released an unsteady breath. “It was The Farm. I mortgaged The Farm to get B.S. off the ground.”

James might as well have pulled a WWE and hit Kyle over the head with his chair. For slow-winding seconds, he felt as if he were being choked out by one of his SEAL teammates.

Dragging oxygen into his lungs, he worked to clear the bright pinpoints in his head that told him blackout was imminent. Gripping the arms of his chair, Kyle stared at his father in something close to horror. “You...gambled The Farm?”

“Like I’ve been trying to explain to you, it wasn’t a gamble.”

Kyle pushed up from the seat. He braced his hands on his hips and walked to the far side of the porch. There were potted plants in most every variety hanging from chains, stacked on shelves and pedestals...and he couldn’t breathe. “Son of a bitch,” he hissed.

“Kyle,” James said, climbing to his feet, too. “It’ll be all right. We won’t lose. I don’t lose. The Farm is your birthright. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“Mom let you do this?” Dark gathered on the porch with only the torches to make up the distance between him and his father. “She knew what you were doing?”

“Of course she knew,” James said, insulted by the insinuation that she might not. “I’m always up-front with your mother. You know this.”

“Did you sell her the same old line of bull—that it was a sure thing? That we’d all come out smelling like roses?”

In a weary motion, James dipped his hands into his pockets. “Son. You’re angry. I get that. But there are no lies between your mom and me. There’s no subterfuge. We couldn’t be what we are if there was. It’s the same with you. Haven’t I always given you the truth, straight up?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like that in the beginning, was it?” Kyle asked. He was on the verge of furor and he went there. “All those years ago. You didn’t exactly tell her why you missed the first part of my life. Why you left her when she was seventeen, pregnant. She had to find out for herself what kind of man you were before us.”

James stared, stricken. They’d rarely spoken in heated terms. They’d never hurt one another. It had been their silent understanding from the moment James had come back into Kyle’s and Adrian’s lives, a way of making up for all those lost years.

But The Farm.

Some things were sacred.

Hurt worked in the creases of James’s face, looking for purchase. Yet he spoke levelly. “Have I ever done anything to make you question my loyalty or motives? You’re my life, Kyle. You, your mother, Mavis... You’re my whole life.”

“Then why didn’t Mav and I have a say in this?” Kyle asked. “You didn’t do this for us. You did this to satisfy your own need for thrills on a day-to-day basis, Howard Hughes.”

“I did this,” James said, placing each word with care, “for our home. Family-owned agriculture is dying. Farms like ours are breaking up and being put to auction. I needed to do something.”

“You did it for yourself,” Kyle maintained. Another thought struck him, and it brought on great big flame balls of ire. “And what about Harmony? How much does she have riding on this? She lives here, too, Dad—her and Bea. This is their home. She’s staked money, probably most of what she has to her name. Her name itself is stamped on the business. You lose B.S., what does that mean for her? You won’t be able to pay back all she bet.”

“No one’s going to take a loss,” James said, the first signs of frustration bleeding through. “No one.”

“How much have you told her? She’s your partner. Her training is your big ticket item. What does she know?”

A pronounced frown took hold of James’s tight features. “I don’t want her to worry.”

“But there’s no reason to worry, right?” Kyle said, tossing the assertion back at him. He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work.”

“Kyle,” James said as Kyle shoved through the screen door.

“I need a minute,” he said as he descended to the grass and kept walking. He had to walk. The fighter in him was taking shots, and it needed to stop before he could face either of his parents again. He felt betrayed by the one person in the world who shouldn’t have betrayed him. His father had thrown his so-called birthright against the wall like spaghetti.

If Kyle stayed, he’d say something he’d regret. Do something he’d regret.

He’d walk until the sting of his father’s actions numbed. Even if it meant walking all night. The Farm went on for miles.