Loe raamatut: «The Soldier And The Single Mom»

Chapter One

It was 2:00 a.m. on a mild March night when Buck Armstrong saw his dead wife walking toward the town of Rescue River, Ohio, carrying their baby on one hip.

He swerved, hit the brakes and skidded onto the gravel berm. On the seat beside him, Crater—his chosen companion for the night—let out a yip.

Buck passed his hand over his eyes. It wasn’t real—couldn’t be. He’d made similar mistakes before, when he was tired, when the war memories came back too strong. Tonight, driving home from assisting in an emergency surgery out at the dog rescue, he wanted nothing more than to keep driving past the turnoff to the liquor store, lock himself in his room and shut it all off until morning.

He looked again, squinting through the moonlit fog.

They were still there. But they were running away from him, or rather, his wife was. Baby Mia was gone.

Where was the baby? He scrambled out of the truck, leaving the door ajar. “Stay!” he ordered the dog automatically as he took off toward his wife. “Ivana! Wait!”

She ran faster, but Buck had gotten back into military shape since he’d quit drinking, and he caught up easily. Was relieved to see that the baby was now in front of her, in some sort of sling.

His hand brushed against her soft hair.

She screamed, spun away from him, and he saw her face.

It wasn’t his wife, but someone else. A complete stranger.

He stopped, his heart pounding triple time. Sweat formed on his forehead as he tried to catch his breath. “I’m sorry. I thought you were—”

“Leave us alone,” she ordered, stepping away, one arm cradled protectively at the back of the baby’s head, the other going to her oversize bag. “I have a gun.”

“Whoa.” He took a couple of steps back, hands lifting to shoulder height, palms out. A giant stone of disappointment pressed down on him. “I don’t mean you any harm. I thought you were... Never mind.”

A breeze rattled the leaves of a tall oak tree beside the road. He caught the rich scent of newly turned earth, plowed dirt, fields ready for planting. Up ahead, a spotlight illuminated the town’s well-known sign, kept up and repainted yearly since Civil War days: Rescue River, Ohio. All Are Welcome, All Are Safe.

Ivana had been so proud of their hometown’s history as a station on the Underground Railroad, its reputation for embracing outsiders of all types, races and creeds.

The good people of Rescue River had even put up with the damaged man he’d been when he’d returned from war, until he’d repeatedly broken their trust.

“Go back to your truck,” the woman ordered, hand still in her bag. Now that he could see her better, he realized she was sturdier than Ivana had been, with square shoulders and a determined set to her chin. Same long tawny hair, but fuller lips and big gray-blue eyes that were now glaring at him. “Do it. Back in the truck, now.”

He should do what she said, should turn around right now and get on home before the memories that were chasing him caught up.

Should, but when had he ever done what he should? “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night, ma’am? Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

She laughed without humor, shaking her head. “No way, buddy. Just drive away. We’ll all be better off.”

He had to admire her courage if not her common sense. There was no good reason for a woman with a baby to be wandering the countryside, but she was acting as if she owned the whole state.

“Sure you don’t want me to call someone?” Truth was, he felt relieved. He could go home and crash and try to forget that, just for a minute, he’d gotten the crazy hope that Ivana and the baby were still alive, that he’d get a second chance to love them the way they deserved.

“We’re fine.” She ran a hand through her hair and patted the baby who, somehow, still slept against her chest. He caught sight of wispy hair, heard that sweet, nestling-in sigh of a contented little one.

Pain stabbed his heart.

She did seem fine, perfectly able to defend herself, he argued against the faint whisper of chivalry that said he shouldn’t let a woman and child stay out here in the middle of the night. After all, he wasn’t much of a protector. He’d lost as many people as he’d saved in Afghanistan. And as for Ivana and Mia...

The sound of a mournful howl silenced his thoughts. Crater. “It’s okay, buddy,” he called, and the scarred rottweiler bounded out of the truck’s cab. As Crater jumped up on him, Buck rubbed the dog’s sides and let him lick his face and, for the first time since seeing the woman, he felt his heart rate settle.

“Let’s go home,” he said to the dog. But Crater had different ideas, and he lunged playfully toward the woman and baby. Buck snapped his fingers and the dog sank into a sitting position, looking back toward him. The deep scar on the dog’s back, for which they’d named him out at the rescue, shone pale in the moonlight.

“That’s a well-trained dog.” The woman cocked her head to one side.

“He’s a sweetheart. Come on, boy.”

The dog trotted to his side, and as they started back to his truck, Buck felt his heart rate calm a little more. Yeah, his shrink was right: he was a prime candidate for a service dog. Except he couldn’t make the commitment. As soon as he’d paid off his debts and made amends where he could, he was out of here, and who knew whether he’d end up in a dog-friendly place?

“Hey, hold on a minute.” The woman’s voice was the slightest bit husky.

He turned but didn’t walk back toward her. Didn’t look at her. It hurt too much. She was still a reminder of Ivana and all he’d lost. “What?”

“Maybe you could give us a hand. Or a ride.”

Buck drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, sure,” he said, trying not to show his reluctance to be in her company a moment longer. After all, he’d made the offer, so courtesy dictated he should follow through. “Where are you headed?”

“That’s a good question,” she said, lifting the baby a little to take the weight off her chest.

He remembered Ivana doing that very same thing with Mia. He swallowed.

“What kind of a town is Rescue River?”

“It’s a real nice town.” It was, too. He’d consider staying on there himself if he hadn’t burned so many bridges.

“Think I could find a cheap room? Like, really cheap?”

He cocked his head to one side. “The only motel had no vacancy, last I saw. My sister’s renovating what’s going to be a guesthouse, but it’s not open for another few months...”

“Does she have a room that’s done, or mostly done? We don’t need much.”

Buck wanted to lie, would have lied, except he seemed to hear Ivana’s voice in his head. Quoting Scripture, trying to coax him along the path to believing. Something about helping widows and orphans in their distress.

This woman might or might not be a widow, but to be out walking the rural Ohio roads in the wee hours surely indicated some kind of distress.

“She’s got a couple of rooms close to done,” he admitted.

“Do you think she’d let me rent one?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. Lacey’s not the most trusting person in the world. A late-night guest she isn’t expecting won’t sit well with her.”

The comment hung between them for an awkward moment. It was the simple truth, though. Or maybe not so simple. The fact that the pretty stranger had a baby would disturb Lacey. A lot.

The woman gave him a skeptical look, then straightened and turned away. “Okay. Thanks.”

Squeezing his eyes shut for just a second, he turned and tried to head back toward his truck. She wasn’t his responsibility. He had enough on his plate just to keep himself together.

Nope. Like a fool, he turned around. “Hey, wait. Come on. We’ll try to talk Lacey into letting you stay. At least for the night.”

“That would be wonderful,” she said, a relieved smile breaking out on her face.

Wonderful for her, maybe. Not for him. The last thing he needed was an Ivana look-alike, with a baby no less, staying one thin wall away from him.

“My name’s Gina, by the way.” She shifted the diaper bag and held out a hand.

“Buck Armstrong.” He reached out, wrapped his oversize hand around her soft, delicate fingers and wished he’d driven home another way.

* * *

Gina Patterson climbed into the backseat of the handsome stranger’s extended-cab pickup, her heart thudding. Please, Lord, keep us safe. Watch over us.

Don’t let him be a serial killer.

But a dog wouldn’t be that friendly with a serial killer, and a serial killer wouldn’t act that loving with a dog. Would they?

“Air bags,” she explained when he looked over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. “Can’t sit in front.” Technically, she shouldn’t even bring Bobby into the truck, not without a car seat, only she couldn’t figure out what else to do. She couldn’t give Buck the keys to get her car seat from her out-of-gas SUV, and she certainly couldn’t leave Bobby with him while she walked the three miles back to her vehicle.

They were safer in the backseat, she figured, safe from him as well as from any kind of car accident. If he tried to kidnap them, she could at least hit him in the back of the head with her shoe.

She was ready to drop with fatigue after three long days of driving, and it was getting colder by the minute. Buck’s arrival had to be the blessing she’d prayed for. Although he seemed pretty gruff for a rescuer.

“Right, I knew that. It’s less than a mile,” he said, and his dog panted back over the seat at her, smiling in the way happy dogs did. It made her miss her poodles, but she knew her best friend back home would take care of them.

She scratched the dog’s ears for a minute and then let her head sag back against the seat, thanking God again for keeping her and Bobby safe during their journey.

Well, mostly safe. She’d been foolish to leave her bag on the sink while she’d changed Bobby’s diaper. Who’d have thought there’d be a purse thief in a rest area in rural Indiana? Fortunately, she’d filled her tank just before the theft—with cash—so she’d kept going as far as she could, leaving the interstate so there’d be less of a trail.

The debit card she’d kept in her jacket pocket might help in the future, once things back home cooled down, but she didn’t dare use it now.

After the theft, she’d gotten scared and timed things all wrong. She’d thought she could make it to a hotel she’d seen advertised in a larger town up ahead, but the SUV was a gas hog and had sputtered to a stop a few miles back.

At which point she’d realized she didn’t have enough cash for a hotel, anyway.

“All set?” Buck looked back at her and Bobby, brows raised over eyes the color of the ocean on a cloudy day.

Man, those were some haunted eyes. “We’re set. Thank you for helping us.”

She studied the back of him as he put the truck into gear and drove into the town. Broad shoulders, longish hair and stubble that made him look like a bad boy.

What had he been doing out at 2:00 a.m.? The question only now occurred to her, now that she and Bobby were safe, or seemed to be. “Excuse me,” she said, leaning forward, “but you haven’t been drinking or...partying, have you?”

His shoulders stiffened. “No. Why?”

Whew. She hadn’t smelled alcohol on him, but alcohol wasn’t the only thing that could mess you up. Her husband had been an old hand at covering his addiction to cocaine, right up until he’d lost control on a California mountain and skied headlong into a tree. The drugs had shown up in the autopsy blood work, but when he’d left the ski chalet an hour earlier, she hadn’t even known he was impaired. Yet another mistake her in-laws had laid at her feet.

Her throat tightened and she crammed the memories back down. “Just wondering.”

So maybe she’d done the right thing after all. When Bobby had started to cry, she’d decided it was better to risk walking than to stay with her vehicle. She’d scraped together change from the floor and found her emergency twenty in the bin between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. So at least she could get Bobby some food. At ten months, he needed way more than mother’s milk.

Hopefully, she could find a church that would take her in, because calling in her lost wallet might put the police on her trail. She chewed on her lower lip.

How had she ever gotten into this situation? She tried to tell herself it wasn’t her fault. While she’d committed to stay with her husband, she hadn’t married her in-laws. Once he was gone, so was her obligation to them. When Bobby was old enough to know the whole story, he could choose to reconnect in a safe way if he wanted to.

“Guesthouse is right up there.” Buck waved a hand, causing Gina to look around and realize that Rescue River was a cute little town, the kind with sidewalks and shops and glowing streetlamps, a moonlit church on one corner and a library on the other. The kind of safe haven where she might be able to breathe for a little while and figure out her options.

Except that, without ID and with just a twenty and change, her options seemed very limited. Worry cramped her belly.

The stranger pulled up in front of a rambling brick home. The outdoor light was on, revealing a porch swing and a front-door wreath made of flowers and pretty branches.

“I’ll have to wake up my sister. You can wait here in the truck or out front.” He gestured toward the house.

Well, okay, then. No excess of manners.

Except that, actually, she was the stranger and he was doing her a service. “I’ll wait on the porch. Thanks.”

He seemed able to read her mind as he came around to open the truck door for her. “Sorry to leave you outside, but my sister is sort of touchy,” he said as they walked up the narrow brick walkway. “I can’t bring a stranger in to set up shop without asking permission. It’s her place.” He paused. “It’s a very safe town, but I’ll leave Crater out here if that will make you more comfortable.”

“It will, thanks.” It had been the dog, and the stranger’s reaction to the dog, that had made her decide he was a reliable person to help her.

That, and the fact that she was desperate.

In her worst moments she wondered if she’d done the right thing, taking Bobby away from her in-laws’ wealth and security. But no way. They’d become more and more possessive of him, trying to push her out of the picture and care for him themselves. And she kept coming back to what she’d seen: her mother-in-law holding Bobby out for her father-in-law to hit, hard, causing the baby to wail in pain. Her father-in-law had started to shake Bobby, she was sure of it, despite their vigorous denials and efforts to turn the criticism back on her.

Once she knew for sure, she couldn’t in good conscience stay herself, or leave Bobby in his grandparents’ care.

When she’d first driven away from the mansion that had felt increasingly like a prison, relief had made her giddy. She’d not known how oppressed she had felt, living there, until she’d started driving across the country with no forwarding address. Realizations about her dead husband’s problems had stacked up, one on top of the other, until she was overwhelmed with gratitude to God for helping her escape the same awful consequences for herself and Bobby.

As she’d crossed state lines, though, doubts had set in, so that now her dominant, gnawing emotion was fear. How would she make a living? What job could she get without references and with few marketable skills? And while she worked, who would watch Bobby? She wouldn’t leave her precious baby with just anyone. She had to be able to trust them. To know they’d love and care for him in her absence.

Inside the house, a door slammed. “I’ve about had it, Buck!”

She heard Buck’s voice, lower, soothing, though she couldn’t make out the words.

“You’ve got to be kidding. She has a baby with her?”

More quiet male talk.

The door to the guesthouse burst open, and a woman about her age, in a dark silk robe, stood, hands on hips. “Okay, spill it. What’s your story?”

The woman’s tone raised Gina’s hackles, whooshing her back to her in-laws and their demanding glares. The instinct to walk away was strong, but she had Bobby to consider. She drew in a breath and let it out slowly, a calming technique from her yoga days. “Long version or short?”

“I work all day and then come home and try to renovate this place. I’m tired.”

“Short, then. My purse was stolen, I’m out of gas and I need a place to stay.”

The woman frowned. “For how long?”

“I...don’t know. A couple of days.”

“Why can’t you call someone?”

That was the key question. How did she explain how she’d gotten so isolated from her childhood friends, how she’d needed to go to a part of the country where she didn’t know anyone, both to make a fresh start and so that her in-laws didn’t find her? “That’s in the long version.”

“So...” The woman cocked her head to one side, studying her with skepticism in every angle of her too-thin frame. “Are you part of some scam?”

“Lacey.” Buck put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “If you’re opening a guesthouse, you need to be able to welcome people.”

“If you’re serious about recovery from your drinking problem, you need to stop pulling stunts like this.”

Buck winced.

Gina reached up to rub her aching shoulder. Great. Another addict.

The woman drew in a breath, visibly trying to remain calm. “I’m sorry. But you’re blinded by how she looks like Ivana. Stuff like this happens all the time in big cities. We have to be careful.”

Bobby stirred and let out a little cry, and as Gina swayed to calm him, something inside her hardened. She was tired of explaining herself to other people. If she weren’t in such dire straits, she’d walk right down those pretty, welcoming porch steps and off into the night. “You can search me. All I’ve got is this diaper bag.” She shifted and held it out to the woman. “It’s hard to run a scam with an infant tagging along.”

Buck raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment, and scarily enough, she could read what he was thinking. So you don’t have a gun in there.

Of course she didn’t.

The woman, Lacey, took it, set it down on the table and pawed through.

Gina’s stomach tightened.

Bobby started to cry in earnest. “Shh,” she soothed. He needed a diaper change, a feeding and bed. She could only hope the trauma and changes of the past few days wouldn’t damage him, that her own love and commitment and consistency would be enough.

“Look, you can stay tonight and we’ll talk in the morning.” With a noisy sigh, the woman turned away, but not before Gina saw a pained expression on her face. “You settle her in,” she said to Buck. “Put her in the Escher.” She stormed inside, letting the screen door bang behind her.

* * *

Buck felt tired, inescapably tired, but also keyed up to where he knew he wasn’t going to sleep. “Come on,” he said to the beautiful stranger.

But she didn’t follow. “This isn’t going to work out. I’ll find something else.”

“There’s no place else.” He picked up her bag and beckoned her inside, with Crater padding behind him. “Don’t worry, Lacey will be more hospitable in the morning.” Maybe. He knew what else had bothered Lacey, besides the fact that she’d rescued him one too many times from some late-night escapade: Gina’s little boy. Just last year, Lacey had miscarried the baby who was all she had left of her soldier husband. Seeing someone who apparently wasn’t taking good care of her own child had to infuriate her.

He wasn’t sure his sister’s judgment was fair; Gina might be doing the best she could for her baby, might be on the run from some danger worse than whatever she’d be likely to face on an Ohio country road.

He led her through the vinyl sheeting and raw boards that were the future breakfast room, up the stairs and into the hallway that housed the guest rooms. “Here’s the only other finished one, besides mine,” he said, stopping at the room called the Escher. He opened the door and let her enter before him, ordering Crater to lie down just inside the door.

Gina looked around, laughing with apparent delight. “This is amazing!”

The bed appeared to float and the walls held prints by a modern artist Buck had only recently learned about. The nightstand was made to look like it was on its side, and the rug created an optical illusion of a spiraling series of stair steps.

“Lacey was an art history major in college,” he explained. “She’s hoping to coordinate with the new art museum to attract guests.”

“That’s so cool!” Gina walked from picture to picture, joggling the baby so he wouldn’t fuss. “I love Escher.”

He felt a reluctant flash of liking for this woman who could spare the energy for art appreciation at a time like this. He also noticed that she knew who Escher was, which was more than he had, until Lacey had educated him.

His curiosity about Gina kicked up a notch. She appeared to be destitute and basically homeless, but she was obviously educated. He scanned her slim-fitting trousers and crisp shirt: definitely expensive. Those diamond studs in her ears looked real.

So why’d she been walking along a country road at night?

She put the baby down on the bed and pulled out a diaper pad. “Sorry, he needs a change.”

“Sheets and towels here,” he said, tapping a cabinet. “There might even be soap. Gina already let one couple stay here for a honeymoon visit.”

She turned to him, one hand on the baby’s chest. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“No problem.” Though it was. “I’ll be right next door if you need anything.”

She swallowed visibly. “Okay.”

Unwanted compassion hit him. She was alone and scared in a strange place. “Look, Lacey is a real light sleeper. She’ll wake up if there’s any disturbance. And... I can leave Crater here if you want a guard dog.”

“Thank you. That would be wonderful.” She put a hand on his arm. “You’ve been amazing.”

He didn’t need her touching him. He backed away so quickly he bumped against the open door. “Stay, boy,” he ordered Crater and then let himself out.

And stood in the hallway, listening to her cooing to her baby while a battle waged inside him. He wanted a drink in the worst way.

He reached down, but of course, Crater wasn’t there to calm him. He took one step toward the front door. Stopped. Tried to picture his recovery mentor.

Wondered whether the bar out by the highway was still open.

Ten minutes later, after a phone call to his mentor, he tossed restlessly in his bed. It was going to be a long night.