The Way Home (5 page)

Except that the man watching her with compelling and inquisitive eyes made that next to impossible. He really did look pretty. She’d told him to dress casual—everything in the summer in northern Minnesota was casual—and he’d taken her at her word. He’d traded his white T-shirt, jeans, and deck shoes for a soft butter-yellow T-shirt, olive-drab cargo shorts, and brown leather sandals. When he’d pulled up, he’d been wearing aviator shades that hid his eyes—eyes that had latched on to her from behind those dark glasses for several long, humming seconds that started up that muscle clenching she didn’t seem to have much control over when he was around.

He was tan and buff and self-assured, and if that wasn’t enough, every time he smiled, something inside her melted a little bit more and reminded her, again, that while Bear had taken away some of the sting of being alone, a snuggly puppy was no substitute for a man.

However, a man like Ty—so much like J.R.—was fine for dinner and conversation, but beyond that, he was way too risky.

He’d ordered a bottle of red wine, and she reached for her glass. “I meant to ask earlier. How are your friends? And your brother? Mike, right?”

A smile came over his face that conveyed how much he loved
his brother. “Joe and Stephanie are fine. And Mike—well, Mike is Mike. There’s not a lot more to say . . . except that he’s living in the States again, so I get to see him a little more often.”

“What is it that he does, exactly?”

Another fond smile. “Let’s leave it at Mike has one of those jobs where if I told you what he does, he’d have to kill
me.
”

“You two don’t work together?”

“As a rule? No.”

She didn’t miss the implication. All Mike had to do was call, and no matter what he needed, Ty would be there. Yup. Way too risky. Been there, done that. Had the condolences of the U.S. military to prove it.

Time for a new topic. “Did Shelley get you settled at the resort?”

He lifted his wine, too, and something about the way his strong, lean fingers wrapped around the delicate stem of the glass captivated her.

“She did. Nice lady. Very nice resort.”

“Shelley and Darrin—her husband—run a tidy ship.” The Whispering Pines boasted twelve rustic log cabins with varying numbers of bedrooms, all charmingly furnished with an eclectic mix of new and antique furniture and art that Shelley had collected locally over the years, and all with gorgeous lake views.

“Been a long time since I breathed deep and all I smelled was pine. Makes me think of home.”

She stopped with the wine almost to her lips. “Florida’s not home?”

“It is now, yeah. Key West. But I grew up in Colorado. Very rural. Our log house was a lot like the main lodge at the resort. Huge native stone fireplace, open beams, big wraparound porch.”

The wistfulness in his voice and the soft smile on his lips told her that home for him was a very fond memory. “You miss it.”

He shrugged. “Like I said. Been a long time since I’ve smelled air this fresh. Substitute horses for motorboats, and I’m almost back there.”

“Are your parents still there?”

“Yeah. Saw them last month. They’re doing great.”

“So why Key West?”

He settled back in his chair, looking very male and very comfortable with himself. “That’s where my business is. Air cargo.”

It had taken several months for the full story to emerge about the events of the night Ty and his brother and Joe and Stephanie Green had rescued Stephanie’s parents—her mother was now secretary of State—from would-be assassins. “We can’t comment for reasons of national security,” had been the answer most given when reporters had knocked on doors attempting to ferret out the facts. But a local reporter had been dogged about digging up all the details he could. Airport personnel had confirmed that Mike Brown had indeed successfully landed a small private jet at the International Falls airport in the midst of a blizzard and that Ty had been his copilot.

“You were military.” She’d known the first time she’d met him that he was or had been in the service. All it had taken was a look. J.R. had been Special Forces. All those guys had a look about them. Edgy, intense, focused.

“Right. Navy.”

“Navy what?” Every man in uniform was a special man, but again, she had recognized him from the beginning as something more.

He looked out over the lake, then back at her. “HSC-23. Wildcards.”

She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not familiar.”

“Air ambulance. We choppered casualties in and out of combat zones in southern and western Iraq to supplement the Army’s Dustoff operations.”

Because she’d been married to a Green Beret, she was semiliterate in spec-ops speak, but this was a new term for her. “Dustoff  ?”

“A credo attributed to a guy named Kelly—Major Charles L. Kelly. Back in the Vietnam era.” He stopped. Shook his head. “But you don’t want to hear this.”

“Actually, I do. Tell me about Kelly and Dustoff.”

He shrugged. “Kelly—Combat Kelly—was commander of the 57th Medical Detachment, helicopter ambulance. He was some kind of man. ‘Dustoff’ was his call sign. When there were wounded, in came Kelly, no matter what. July sixty-four, Vietnam, he approached a hot area to pick up wounded, as usual, and started taking fire. The red cross on the bird’s fuselage made a nice bull’s-eye,” he added, with the insight of one who knows and has been under fire himself.

“Anyway, ground support called him off over and over, but he didn’t listen. ‘When I have your wounded,’ he told them. Not long after, he was killed by a single bullet.”

Ty became quiet and reflective for a moment. “Anyway, Kelly’s gone, but ‘Dustoff’ became the call sign for all aero-medical missions in Vietnam. And since then, ‘When I have your wounded’ has become the personal and collective credo of all Dustoff pilots who followed him.”

While he’d said very little about himself directly, he’d revealed a lot. J.R. used to tell her about the bravery of the medical-evac
crews. Because the Army and Navy air ambulance birds have a red cross painted on their sides, the Geneva Convention rules don’t allow them to arm themselves with machine guns or mini-guns. Pilots like Kelly and Ty flew into hot zones with nothing but personal weapons—M-4 rifles and handguns—for protection against RPGs and small-arms fire. This practice was supposed to ensure humanitarian treatment of wounded during war, making aircraft, ships, corpsmen, trucks, facilities, and anything else displaying red crosses off-limits to enemy fire. Big surprise, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda—like the Vietcong in Kelly’s era—were not signatories to the Geneva Convention, so they use the red crosses as targets.

“My husband held the medical crews in very high regard. He said what you did was the equivalent to tap dancing blindfolded into a minefield.”

Another throwaway lift of a shoulder. “Everybody’s got a job to do.”

He looked at her then. “Your husband . . .”

“J.R.,” she supplied when he hesitated. “Army. Special Forces.”

She toyed with her wineglass. Another change of subject seemed in order. “So . . . you weren’t a career man?”

A slow shake of his head. “Wanted to be.” Another shrug. “Didn’t work out.”

The statement begged for a follow-up, but the distant look in his eyes told her it might be best not to go there. That maybe it was a confidence he didn’t want to share and she didn’t need to hear. Not on a date that was not a date.

Clearly, though, his military career had been cut short. She wondered if he’d been injured in some way—couldn’t tell by looking, although now that she thought about it, she had
detected a slight limp when he’d first gotten out of the Jeep. She’d chalked it up to a long plane ride in one of the cramped commuter jets that routinely flew in and out of the small airport in the Falls.

“So enough about me,” he said with a quick smile. “Why a general store in the middle of Nowhere, Minnesota?”

It was her turn to shrug. “I grew up here. Kabby, Lake Kabetogama,” she clarified, “it’s home. Crossroads was my mom and dad’s store. When they retired in Arizona a few years ago, it seemed like taking it over was the right thing to do at the right time.”

“Before that, what did you do?”

“I was an ER nurse. Last place I worked was Womack, the Army Medical Center near Fort Bragg—it was the last place we were stationed.”

He looked impressed, and she tried not to let it please her. “You miss it?”

“Nursing? No. At least, not yet.”

“Burn out?”

“Some, yeah,” she admitted. “But it was more than that. After J.R. died . . . I guess I needed to come home, you know?”

She could see in his eyes that he did know.

“Anyway, on any given day, I end up treating anything from sunburn to sunstroke to removing fish hooks embedded in . . . well, you can imagine some of the places those things get stuck. So I still keep my fingers in the pie, so to speak.”

“Sort of a local Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?”

She grinned. “Closest doctor is twenty, twenty-five minutes from the lake. Everyone knows I’m a nurse. So I’m going to turn them away?”

“No, I don’t imagine you would. You didn’t turn me away.”

Not that winter night. Not today. She didn’t regret what she’d done that night. She hoped she wouldn’t regret not sending him on his way today.

The waitress had brought their salads several minutes ago, and they’d both been halfheartedly working on them when he finally posed the question about something she’d been too chicken to ask.

“Why haven’t you asked me what took me so long to come back?”

She looked across the table—and saw in his eyes that the small talk was over.

T
y watched Jess carefully as
she set her half-eaten salad aside to make room for the steak he’d convinced her she needed to order. After several long moments, she finally answered his question.

“I didn’t figure I needed to ask.”

That’s not what her eyes said. “You weren’t surprised when you didn’t hear from me?”

She picked up her steak knife and fork, let them hover over her plate, then set them down again. “A little bit, maybe. Until I got to thinking about it. I mean, seriously. Things were a little intense that night. It was difficult to get a true read on anything but the danger. Besides . . . I live here. You live half a continent away. We lead very different lives. So a little time, a little distance, a lot of perspective, and you coming back didn’t look like such a good bet on paper. I chalked it up to a passing chance encounter. Hardly something to—”

He covered her hand with his and stopped her with a soft
chuckle. “OK. I got it. Good points. All taken. You can stop rationalizing now.”

And protesting. Too much, maybe, judging by the sudden flush on her cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman blush. He found it endearing and pretty and sexy as hell. Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away.

“You weren’t even a little bit disappointed?” It was a shameless fishing expedition, but he didn’t feel guilty about it. He’d thought he’d get a smile out of her. Maybe an admission.

He got far from it when those big brown eyes met his. “Look, Ty. The fact that you came back . . . asking me to dinner . . . it’s all very nice. But nothing’s changed. We both know nothing’s going to come of it. And wow, didn’t that sound presumptive and sadly hopeful?”

“Whoa. Wait. Presumptive? Hello . . . I’m here. I think it’s safe to
presume
I came back for a reason. And when has
hopeful
ever been sad?”

Her eyes grew a little wide, a little wet. “When representatives from the Army show up at your door to inform you that your husband was killed in action, and you sadly and futilely hope there’s been a horrible, horrible mistake.”

She looked mortified, suddenly, by what had come out of her mouth. And there wasn’t even a touch of color in her cheeks now. Her face had gone deathly pale.

“Excuse me.” She shot out of her chair. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”

He stood, thought about going after her, but in the end let her go. It wasn’t as if he could follow her in there. And it wasn’t as if he knew what to say if he did.

She needed a minute to collect herself. For that matter, so did he.

Maybe this was a bad idea after all. By his calculation, it had been three and a half years since her husband was killed. Should her wounds still be this raw? Or was there something wrong with him that he was ready to move on so soon after losing Maya?

He’d poured more wine and contemplated downing the whole glass when she came back to the table, composed and apologetic.

“Sorry I went all weepy widow on you there. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t usually—”

“I know you don’t,” he interrupted, because he felt both relieved and sensitive to her embarrassment. “You hold up. And you didn’t do anything wrong.”

He was the one in the wrong. He should have realized he made her nervous. After all, the last time he’d seen her, he’d used her dead husband’s gun to kill a man.