Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover. Merline Lovelace
“That does sound good.” It sounded like heaven, in fact. “I’m sure I’ve never had anything like it.”
She flashed a grin and cut him a generous portion of the pie. “It’s not as high in sugar or fat as you’d expect, not with all the strawberries. And she’s gentle with the whipped cream.”
Given the life he’d been living, such concerns were pretty much foreign to him. Flavor was everything, and he’d had little enough of that for a while. A surprising number of soldiers in the field had to be reminded to eat, despite their heightened need for calories. Even so, most lost twenty or thirty pounds on a tour.
When he sank his teeth into his first bite of pie, he closed his eyes in sheer bliss, shutting out anything that might distract him from the taste. Fresh strawberries, perfectly balancing the sweetness all around them. When he finally allowed himself to swallow, he said, “Tell Julia I want to marry her.”
“You can tell her yourself. But,” she added coquettishly, “I know how to make this, too.”
“Then I’ll marry both of you. You have no idea how long it’s been since I tasted something like this.”
“I can guess. And there’s plenty more.”
He smiled and raised another forkful to his mouth. “Over there,” he said before he put it in his mouth, “we don’t get anything even a tenth as tasty as this. MREs, of course. Food we cook at our firebase, but none of us is a great chef, including the chef.”
She giggled a little at that.
“Well, he doesn’t have a lot to work with. We have to bring in all the food, so everything’s pretty much dried or canned. Eating is more a duty than a pleasure most of the time.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Most of the world is in the same straits. In fact, we’re better off than most, even if it’s all in cans and boxes. More variety.”
She nodded. “I can’t imagine the hardship those people suffer.”
“Most people can’t. It’s beyond imagining. You have to see it, live it. Yet the wonderful thing, the truly wonderful thing, is how few of them feel they’re living in hardship, except in terms of the war.” He paused, then shook his head.
“They must consider you a striking figure,” she remarked.
At that his mouth twisted wryly. “I’ve been mistaken for bin Laden a few times. Despite my uniform.”
“Oh, that must be something.”
“Oh, yeah. Never for more than a few seconds. We favor different headwear, of course, and we really don’t look alike. In all honesty, I don’t know why it happened.”
“I don’t see a resemblance. Maybe some people have never seen his photo, just heard how tall he is.”
“That’s the only thing that would explain it.”
He savored another mouthful of pie. “Damn, this is good.”
She pulled the pie pan closer and sliced another piece, sliding it onto his plate.
“Whoa,” he said.
She shook her head. “My guess is you’re beneath your fighting weight, and anyway, Julia will be thrilled you like it. The best compliment to the cook is eating.”
She turned her head, a mistake, because all of a sudden she became uneasily aware of the lurking night, held at bay only by the thin glass of the windows. Ordinarily she loved the night, but not now. Not when a threat was hovering over her daughter.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I need to check on Sophie.”
He nodded, his gaze following her as she went to the phone and dialed.
“Hi, Enid, it’s Connie.”
“Hi, kiddo. Well, we’re into Cinderella, the girls ate all the brownies, if you can believe it, and now there are rumblings about popcorn. It’s all good, Connie. Honestly.”
“Thanks, Enid. Is it okay if I check again later?”
“Any time, Connie. Like I said, this is going to be an all-nighter. The later it gets, the more awake they seem.”
Connie replaced the receiver and found Ethan watching her. “Everything’s all right.”
He nodded, saying nothing, returning his attention to his plate as if wishing to give her a moment of privacy, one she seemed to need.
Looking at her hands, she realized she was shaking. Not good. She stuffed them in the pockets of her robe and returned to the table, trying to act as if everything hadn’t all just come crashing back.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
She bit her lip. “I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“Leo made me feel as if I needed to apologize for everything. I’m still doing it.”
He nodded, pushing his plate to one side. Hardly a crumb remained. “That’s a damn shame, because I can’t see anything you need to apologize for. Not one thing.”
“I’ve been working on that,” she admitted. “My mother hates it when I keep on apologizing.”
“I don’t hate it,” he replied, “but I think it’s sad you feel that way.”
“Maybe it’s more habit than anything.”
“Maybe.”
She watched as he rose and took care of the dishes, washing them and putting them in the rack. Then he put the pie away and wiped the table down. She supposed it was his military training, but she liked it. Leo had never done anything like that in the whole time she’d lived with him.
Together they climbed the stairs and returned to her bedroom, where they lay in the dark, embracing. The sexual fever had passed for now, replaced by an equally urgent need for comfort and closeness.
“I’ve been alone for too long,” he said quietly. She could feel his voice rumble deep in his chest.
“Even with your buddies?”
“That’s different. That’s an intense community. We depend on each other for our very lives. But it’s different.”
She gave him a little squeeze and waited for him to continue.
“There’s a special bond,” he continued slowly, then cleared his throat, as if he were finding it difficult to speak. “You know your buddies always have your back. You know you always have theirs. I don’t know if I can really explain it. But it’s like many have said, when you’re in the foxhole, you’re not fighting for principles, country or any such abstract thing, you’re fighting for the guy next to you.”
“I can understand that,” she murmured.
“But there’s something more. We were dedicated to something, Connie. Something bigger than us. Something we were willing to die for. And it wasn’t just the guy beside us who depended on us. It was—this is going to sound nuts, given all that’s happened—we were dedicated to helping those people in every way we could. We didn’t want to abandon them to the darkness again. We wanted to save lives, improve lives, make sure little girls could go to school, and that babies didn’t die needlessly of treatable diseases. We wanted to get rid of all the threats.”
“Yes.”
“The horrible thing about it is, no matter how much good you try to do, you create more ugliness at the same time.”
“That must be awful.”
“It is. It was better in Afghanistan, actually. In Iraq, everything was all blurred. But when I