Читать книгу Navy Seal Promise - Amber Williams Leigh - Страница 12
ОглавлениеSOMETIMES A GIRL needed to see the moon. Especially if that moon was a strawberry moon.
“Mama,” Bea moaned as she gazed at the rising moonscape through the paper tube of her makeshift glitter-dotted telescope. “It’s not right.”
“Not right?” Harmony said. She was on her knees in capri pants in the middle of the dusty path that led from the gate of the Brackens’ farmland to the mother-in-law suite. She peered at the horizon. Rising over the trees was a wondrous, dusky red full moon. “That’s it. Right there.”
“But it’s not a strawberry,” her four-year-old insisted, disappointment laden in her voice.
Harmony felt the urge to laugh. Bea’s seriousness kept the brevity from breaking the surface. Clearing her throat, she said in the practical tones her intuitive preschooler would appreciate most, “It’s only called a strawberry moon.”
“Why?” Bea asked, features squelched as she gazed, skeptical, at the impressive nightly specter.
Harmony pursed her lips. “Well, it’s red. Like a strawberry.”
“Tomatoes are red.”
“True.” Harmony nodded.
“And Mammy’s tulips. And puppy noses.”
“All valid points.” And Harmony did smile, because the thought of a Puppy-Nosed Moon was too amusing to resist. She loved Bea’s mind. She loved its precociousness and the great kaleidoscope of imagination that kept it from maturing too quickly. “But I think it’s called a strawberry moon because... You remember talking in day school about the first people who lived on this land, the Native Americans?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Well, those same Native Americans needed to know when their strawberries were ready for picking. So the moon would paint itself up like a strawberry to tell them.”
“Oooh.” Bea tilted her head, as if viewing the moon through a new lens. “It looks like blackberry juice.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” A heady breeze stirred the trees into a whispering frenzy. It brought the smell of salt far inland, an early herald of the storm. Shifting from one knee to another, Harmony drew the folds of her sweater close. Planes would be grounded for the next few days until the damn thing spun itself north to the Plains and petered there.
June brought pop-up thunderstorms. It was a fact of life in the low south, but that didn’t stop her from feeling restless. She’d been grounded too long before James came to her with the proposal for Bracken-Savitt Aerial Application & Training. Summer was prime running time for crop dusters with fields ripening toward harvest, and yet the seasonal weather was a nuisance and a half.
Bea shifted from one leg to another then back. Harmony picked up on the telltale impatience, identical to her own. “Have you seen enough of the moon tonight?”
“Can I have a bath?” Bea asked, swiping her small round palm over her brow. Blond curls clung, damp, to her temple. “I wanna bath.”
It took some effort not to roll her eyes and remind her daughter that she’d firmly refused bath time not two hours ago. Settling for a sigh, Harmony stood up and helped bring Bea to her feet. “Bath time sounds good.”
“With Mr. Bubble?” Bea asked, hopeful.
“With Mr. Bubble,” Harmony confirmed. Dusting the frilly skirt of Bea’s fairy outfit and the petticoat layers underneath, she took the lead to the house.
Bea’s head turned sharply at the sound of rustling in the high-climbing vegetation. “What’s that?”
“Probably an animal,” Harmony said, tugging Bea along and eyeing the bushes warily. A big animal. Creature sightings were everyday happenings on The Farm. Aside from the horses and dogs the Brackens raised, there were squirrels, raccoons, reptiles and insects in abundance.
The crashing in the undergrowth grew louder. Bea’s mouth dropped. “Mama,” she whispered. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” She stepped halfway in front of Bea to protect her.
Bobcat?
No. Bigger.
Deer?
“It’s a bear,” Bea said, eyes as round as the moon.
“It’s not a bear,” Harmony said doubtfully. Then she frowned. Is it? All of a sudden, she found herself wishing for the hot-pink high-powered stun gun her father, a former police detective, had given her for her sixteenth birthday. In case of a break-in, she kept it in her top dresser drawer under the naughty lingerie she never wore.
Bea’s hand tightened on hers as branches snapped and tossed. Harmony licked her lips and tensed. Whatever it was would have to go through her...
A swath of moonlight fell on the T-shirt-clad figure, and she breathed again. Just a SEAL.
He turned to go up the path, then stopped when he saw them, frozen and watchful.
A very surly SEAL, Harmony observed.
“Hi,” he greeted shortly.
“Hi,” she returned. She nudged Bea. “See? Not a bear.”
Kyle tilted his head to the side to get a look at the girl hiding behind Harmony’s leg. “Hey there, little wing.”
Energy zipped from the bottom of Bea’s frame to the top. She gave a short squeal, tearing off from her hiding place. She launched herself at Kyle as he went into a crouch, arms spread wide.
“‘You’ll fly like a bee!’” he shouted. Then he tossed her, giggling and kicking, into the air. “‘Up to the honey tree, see?’”
“I see!” she shrieked. “Again! Higher!”
Kyle grunted, tossing her up toward the stars.
After the third toss, again Bea cried, “Again, again!” and Kyle eyed Harmony.
She shrugged. “You brought this on yourself,” she told him.
“Yeah, but you made it,” he countered. He threw Bea up one last time.
As she came back down, Bea latched on to him around the neck, much as Harmony had earlier in the day, and didn’t let go. Nuzzling her cheek against his, the smile in her voice was clear. “I missed you!”
Any trace of the sullenness Harmony had glimpsed when Kyle had trudged out of the thicket vanished quickly. He folded his arms over Bea’s back, letting one hand stray into her vivid curls. “Missed you, too, Gracie Bea.” Turning his lips into her cheek, he closed his eyes and rocked her from side to side.
Harmony tried not to melt too much over the pair. She failed. Bea’s pink high-top sneakers dangled free, four feet from the ground. Kyle’s hard muscly arms tightened around her, his hands splayed over her slender back, soothing. Those hands were made for fighting, for pumping rounds through an M-60 machine gun. They were calloused and rough. They could put a man down in seconds. Yet they cradled the child of his buddy and his best friend’s sister, and his expression was putty. Soft, soft putty.
What chance did a mama have?
Harmony sighed a little, sliding one hand slowly into the back pockets of her capris. She gave the pair another moment, two, before stepping forward. “Bea.” Touching her other hand to her daughter’s back, she let out a laugh. “Bea. Let him breathe, baby.”
“She’s fine,” Kyle assured Harmony, meeting her gaze through a tuft of downy hair that had blown across his face.
“She’s choking you.”
“Not since I joined the navy have I been so happy to be choked out,” he admitted.
Harmony patted the ringlets just beneath the hand Kyle used to crib Bea’s head to his shoulder. “What are you doing out here?”
He shuttered, giving a slight shake of his head. “Walking.”
“Walking?” She eyed the tree line he’d been blazing a trail through. Give the man a machete and he could pave the way to town. “You were fighting kudzu. We thought you were a predator.”
“Oh, yeah? And what are the two of you doing out?”
Bea’s head lifted finally. “Me and Mama found the strawberry.”
“Strawberry?”
“Strawberry moon,” Harmony said, gesturing toward the sky. “It’s tonight.”
“It is, huh?” Kyle asked, hitching Bea on to his hip. She pointed and he nodded sagely. “How about that, little wing? They hung a strawberry in the sky just for you.”
“I can’t eat it,” she said, crestfallen. “I love strawberries.”
“Don’t we know it?” Kyle set Bea on her feet. He crouched to her level. “When you lay your head on your pillow and dream, I bet you’ll be able to reach out and grab it.”
“How will I get all the way up there?” she asked, her dark wondrous stare seizing on his.
Harmony rubbed her lips together as Kyle eyed her briefly over Bea’s head. “You could climb up on my shoulders,” he offered.
“You’ll be there?”
“If you want me to be.” He dug his fingertips into her ribs. She shrieked. “Do you? Huh?”
Bea wriggled. “Yes, yes!” She snorted and squealed as he kept tickling. When he subsided, she settled down with a smile, rubbed the hair plastered to her brow again, and asked, “Will you come home with us?”
“It’s late,” Harmony pointed out. “Kyle probably wants to go back to the farmhouse and rest. He’s been gone a long time.”
“A long time,” Bea echoed.
“What’s a few months to buddies like us?” Kyle suggested.
Bea placed her hands on his cheeks. Rubbing her palms over the soft texture of his beard, she said, “We could watch Stuffins.”
“Stuffins,” Kyle repeated, clueless.
“Doc McStuffins,” Harmony elaborated. “Disney. She’s allowed to watch one episode before bed. I’m sure Kyle would rather finish his walk and go home.”
“Actually,” he said, “Stuffins sounds perfect.”
“Really?” Harmony asked as Bea cheered his decision-making skills.
“Really. If you don’t mind.” He smirked. “Mama.”
Harmony rolled her eyes as Bea sounded off with a chorus of pleases. “I don’t have mac-and-cheese. Tonight’s leftovers.”
“Chitlins and dumplin’s,” Bea informed him very matter-of-factly.
“Chicken and dumplings, baby,” Harmony said when Kyle’s brow peaked. To him she added, “I don’t feed her pig intestines. I swear.”
“They’re not so bad.” When Harmony and Bea’s noses wrinkled in sync, Kyle grinned in a wicked sort of way that resonated from the past. “Come on. You’d try them once.”
“Only if you wolf that big strawberry down first,” Harmony suggested.
Kyle frowned at the moon. They both knew he was allergic to the fruit. It’d always puzzled Harmony—someone as strong as him, felled by a berry. “Did, ah, these leftovers come from your mom, by chance?”
Harmony ran her tongue over her teeth. He was allergic to strawberries. But unlike her mother—the culinary goddess of the south—she was allergic to cooking. “Yes. But I mashed the taters.”
“With the raw bits left in?”
“How else would they stick to your ribs?”
Bea tugged on his hand, and Kyle followed her, rising to his feet and swinging their linked fingers as he fell into step with Harmony. “Now, that sounds like a treat.”
“You didn’t eat with your family?” Harmony asked as they began to walk down the lane to the suite.
“I did,” he admitted. “Mom made her glazed Andouille-stuffed pork because she knows that’s all I think about when I’m away. But when I’m really tired of MREs, I’ve been known to think about Briar’s chicken and dumplings.”
“Anything else?”
“Your freaking macaroni and cheese,” he noted. “Though it is bound to kill me eventually.”
She smoothed her lips together, pleased to make the cut.
“And if your mother’s thinking about making a blackberry pie or her coq au vin anytime soon...”
“I’ll be sure to bring leftovers home for you.” Harmony picked up the hint.
He sent her a sly sideways smile. “Thanks.”
Bea skipped ahead, buzzing with excitement. The wind swept up her hair as it tossed through the alley of trees arcing like an awning over the narrow pathway. Honeysuckle blossoms tumbled down, a soft white rain. The sweet fragrance teased up memories of summers long ago. Summers when life was still simple, rich and undefined. “I envy her,” Harmony mused as she watched her daughter caper toward the lights of the white-framed house. Kyle turned to question her. She explained, “She gets to grow up at The Farm. Could childhood be any better?”
A frown toggled Kyle’s mouth, and he looked at the ground as they kicked honeysuckle blossoms up under their feet. “No.”
“I was so jealous of Gavin when we were kids,” she pointed out. “All those weekends he got to come here and run wild with you.”
“You came with him,” he remembered.
“Not as much as I wanted to.” They walked on, quiet together. Almost at the point of lollygagging. The night was one of those lulling complacent ones, tepid and inky, luring people outdoors like a crooking finger. “And, anyway, you boys reveled in leaving me behind.”
“Not true.” When she arched a brow, he digressed. “Not entirely true. Not on my part.”
She smiled at bit over the admission. “Have you seen him? Gavin? He hasn’t called in a while. I know he’s all right. Dad tells me. He gets emails. I know y’all are on separate teams and you take turns on the hopper, but I was hoping, in the crossover, you might’ve seen one another.”
“I haven’t seen him,” Kyle said shortly, that frown pulling at his mouth again.
Harmony licked her lips. “I know the new job in DC has kept him tied up when he’s stateside. Still, it’d be nice to have him visit.”
A line burrowed between Kyle’s brows. “Job?”
“He didn’t tell you?” Harmony crossed her arms, oddly chilled. She knew things hadn’t been the same between Kyle and Gavin since Benji’s death. Their business was their own, and, when it came to the details of service, they kept it that way. Harmony understood even as she bristled at the not knowing what had gone amiss between her brother and the friend he’d once claimed was like a brother to him.
“No, he didn’t,” Kyle stated. The frown deepened. “Harm, when was the last time you talked to him?”
“A while.”
“What’s a while?”
She thought about it. “Must be six months now. Maybe seven.”
“Seven...” He trailed off, perturbed. “Did he visit then?”
“No. He rarely does.” At Kyle’s curse, she added quickly, “There’s been the job. And I know he has a life. From the sound of it, there might have been a girl at one point...” When Kyle only shook his head, she trailed off.
“So you spoke on the phone,” he surmised. “What about?”
She crawled back into her memory. The conversation had been brief, stilted. Yawning absences did that to the tightest of siblings. “He talked about work. He asked after Bea, made sure Dad was telling him the truth and all’s well with him and Mom and the inn...”
“Nothing else?” Kyle asked.
What was he waiting for her to say? She took herself back over the conversation with Gavin but couldn’t think of anything more. “Don’t think so. Why?” she asked. Though nothing changed on the surface, she could all but hear the hum of Kyle’s indignation building. “Do you know something I don’t?”
He seemed to hesitate. His outer shell was as good as a bullet casing. He kept tight to that casing. “He should be here.”
“If you’re here,” she calculated, “then isn’t his team rotating to active?”
“The team is,” he said and nothing more.
Harmony was growing irritated, too. “He’s my brother. If you know something, tell me.”
“It’s not my place,” he said shortly. “He should be the one talking to you about this. When was the last he came home?”
Harmony sighed. “I don’t know. Last summer sometime.”
“For how long?”
“He stayed overnight at the inn and left the next evening. Mom and Dad both wanted him to stay longer. We all did.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He said he had training.”
“You believe that?”
She rolled her eyes heavenward, tired of the third degree. “I don’t know.”
“He visits once a year and is hardly around for twenty-four hours when he does. That’s bullshit, Harmony. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it.”
“Maybe it’s hard for him to be here,” Harmony suggested. “You ever think of that?”
“Why should it be?” Kyle asked, finally turning his face to hers. There was anger there, and he opened up just enough for her to see the genuine mystification behind it.
“Because it’s a reminder,” Harmony replied. “The town, the inn, The Farm... They’re all reminders of Benji. Because Bea... She’s all that’s left of her father. She looks like him. She acts like him. God, Kyle, look at her. She even walks like him. Sometimes it’s difficult to process. Even for me.”
Kyle shrugged. “I’m here. Right?”
She measured the breadth of his stance, the realness of him.
“Why shouldn’t Gavin be?” he challenged. When she kept walking, his voice gentled. “Bea’s his niece. Flesh and blood. That’s no simple matter.”
Harmony licked her lips. “No. It’s not. But since Benji died, Gavin’s driven straight back into that big tough lone wolf mentality. He always had it, deep down. But then Benji...” She shrugged. “You know he was there, don’t you? The night Benji was killed? When Benji was shot. He was there when he—” she licked her lips again and made herself say it “—when he bled out. He carried him out on his back.”
Kyle nodded, eyes forward.
“It’s hard to say,” Harmony noted, “still. It’s hard to think about. It never won’t be. But to have been there...” She let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how he carries that around with him. And part of me doesn’t blame him for being the lone wolf. I don’t even blame him for not being here. Because maybe that’s his way of coping.”
Kyle fell into thoughtful silence. The surly bent of his mouth was back.
Harmony had the absurd notion to feather her fingertips across it to soften it once more. She rolled her eyes, moving her shoulders back to loosen them. “We do appreciate it.” When he turned to her, she added, “You being here. You always show up, hard times or no. That’s big. Don’t think I don’t notice.”
He searched, eyes roving from one of hers to the next. His mouth curved at the end. Acknowledgment. Gratitude.
On the wind, a honeysuckle blossom skittered across her face. It danced into her hair and tangled. She reached up to pry it loose.
Kyle beat her to it, tugging it free.
“Thanks,” she said, tossing her hair back.
Methodical, he used ginger fingers to extract the long green stem where the nectar lived. He pinched off the petals, discarded them. “You know what honeysuckle makes me think of?”
“No,” she admitted, watching how he handled the fragile parts of the minuscule flower with infinite care.
“Springtime at Hanna’s. I knew it was spring when the honeysuckle vines burst on the trellises. You could smell them a block away.”
“I used to hide there,” she said. “Whenever I did something I shouldn’t have.”
“A frequent occurrence,” he remembered, smiling at her sideways.
“Yes,” she said with a nod. “Poor Mom. I gave her more hell than she deserved.”
“Growing up’ll do that to you.” Holding the stem up, he offered her the small bead of nectar dripping from the end in a motion that was as natural as the wordless shift from spring to summertime.
Harmony tipped her head back without thinking, accepting. It felt natural, sure. But she was very aware of his eyes on her face and the momentary brush with his laser focus. And she felt hot.
She frowned. She could blame it on June or the tropics. But she’d had these brushes with him since she was a girl. A girl with a crush so boundless and hopeless, it had nearly cracked her in two.
Before Benji, before womanhood, there had been only Kyle. Her daughter wasn’t the only young’un who’d ever been enamored with K.Z.B.
Turning her eyes to his, she closed her mouth around the drop. It was barely enough to taste. When his gaze held hers, she swallowed because her pulse began to work in double time. His beard drew her attention. “You need a shave.”
As she walked on, she breathed carefully. She was burning hot beneath the skin. It’d stopped being a problem for so long, she’d forgotten how difficult it was to cool. Go big or go home had always been her go-to phrase. It was typically her body’s response to everything, as well.
Sometimes that was nothing short of hell.
Kyle was still off-limits. Military. She could not under any circumstances love another military man like she’d loved Benjamin Zaccoe. And, frankly, she’d thought she was done with this hot mess she’d developed for Kyle. Before she’d moved out West and thrown herself into school and piloting.
It had helped that Benji had been stationed at Coronado by that point and had visited often. It helped seeing him fresh out of BUD/S. A new Benji. Hard-bodied, disciplined, with that cheeky grin peeking through, a hint of the troublemaker she’d known back home where he’d cracked jokes about her gangly build and ginger mane.
It had helped that, without Gavin around to police things between them, Benji saw her in a new light, too. No longer the petulant tagalong but an adult. You’re a frigging force of nature, he’d sized her up after watching her train without an instructor for the first time. You know that?
The only thing that had threatened to slow down the snowball of their relationship was Gavin and Kyle’s opinion on the subject. Benji had come away from a few days with them on the Gulf with bruises and five stitches in his forehead. He’d come away smiling, nonetheless, with cautious blessings from his bosom buddies.
It had helped that Kyle had been involved in a serious relationship as well, one that had gone as far as the potential of marriage. Laurel Frye had been the bane of Harmony’s existence from the moment she started tagging along behind Kyle, too. The whole fairy-tale romance had started in early high school. Kyle had been smitten with Laurel, which had made the whole affair worse for Harmony.
High school sweethearts were rarely lasting. It had seemed that Kyle and Laurel would be one of those rare exceptions...until his first tour and the frag grenade that had torn through his left leg. Laurel wasn’t the only one who’d wanted him to quit the teams after. Harmony had gone so far as to reason with him not to re-up. But Laurel’s voice had been louder. And when he did go back close to a year later, her voice was the one that had grown embittered.
Kyle and Laurel’s relationship hit the skids shortly after. By that point, Benji was dead, and it was clear that Harmony was going to have to raise a baby alone.
Not alone, Kyle had assured her. By phone. By email. He was right. A single parent she might be, but she hadn’t been alone like she thought she’d be. Not even in the delivery room. Kyle had returned just in time for the early labor. He’d driven her to the hospital, sat with her in the delivery room until her mother was there to relieve him. And he hadn’t just checked in through the years as Gavin had. There had been FaceTime between him and Bea. For the little girl, he’d been an example of what a man should be. Not a father. He couldn’t replace Benji and had no intention to. He’d been, as always, a friend. Harmony hoped she and Bea had returned the gesture in kind.
Because that’s what they were. Friends. That was what they would remain, she was sure as she mounted the small steps to the little screened porch and held the door open for him. He entered the house that smelled like dumplings and Briar Savitt’s peach pie, Bea slung comfortably over his shoulder. As he brushed past Harmony, he even turned his head and winked.
Steady, she told her insides when they started to quake. Steady as she goes, girl.
We are not wrecking through this flight path again.
