A Promise of Forever (16 page)

“That was a cowboy truck,” Lainie said as she leaped into his arms, not favoring her sprained wrist in the least. A testament to her determination, the elastic bandage she wore was bright purple, no doubt thanks to her mom and a bottle of fabric dye. “Is she a cowboy?”

“Nope, sweetie, she’s a soldier.”

Lainie’s eyes widened. “Like G.I. Joe?”

“Yeah, sort of.” He looked from her to his sisters, focusing on Brianne. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“Because I’m on vacation. Why aren’t you in surgery? Oh, yeah, ’cause you had to take a break and neck with your girlfriend.” Brianne looked like him and Sara—dark hair, eyes, and skin—but was more muscular than both of them. She’d fought her weight all through school, but that war had been won after she graduated from college, when she’d discovered that working out and eating healthy were her friends. She was gorgeous and strong enough to kick ass but so sweet she never wanted to.

Sara was just as pretty and mean enough to kick ass. She saw her job as protector and took it seriously.

“Invite us inside,” Sara demanded. “I’m melting.”

“What brings you by on surgery day?”

“Lainie has a follow-up on her wrist with your physician’s assistant.”

Holding the door open, he made a sweeping gesture for them to precede him into the lobby. Sara’s killer heels clicked on the tile floor, a counterpoint to the flip of Brianne’s thongs and the whoosh of Ben’s sneakers.

“So what was—what’s her name? Avi?” Brianne considered the name. “Aunt Avi. My kids are going to like that.”

“You don’t have kids.”

“But I intend to, once I meet the right guy to father them. Anyway, what is Avi doing in town?”

“Running an errand for her parents’ nursery.”

“And preparing to make a little whoopee,” Sara added.

Brianne gave their sister a brows-raised look. “Sheesh, who says ‘whoopee’ these days?”

“Someone who has a small c-h-i-l-d who repeats everything she hears.”

Still in his arms, Lainie grinned ear to ear. “C-h-i-l-d means me.” Precociously, she added, “I’m l-a-i-n-i-e, too, and k-i-d-s.”

“And too s-m-a-r-t for your own good,” Ben said as he nuzzled her neck.

In deference to Sara’s heels, they took the elevator. Stepping inside, Brianne bumped shoulders with Ben. “Are you going to run off to wherever the Army sends Avi and leave us behind like Mom did?”

Surprise tightened his gut as Sara scowled and swatted Bree. “If he did, it wouldn’t be like Mom,” she chastened. “He would e-mail and call and Skype us.”

“Yes, but that’s not the same as being in the same city and seeing each other face-to-face.”

Ben gazed over their heads as the numbers lit up. Run off with Avi? He couldn’t deny that a part of him wanted her around longer than her leave allowed, or that she’d become ridiculously important to him in such a short time. But run off? Leave his family? Never. Who would he be if he wasn’t full-time brother and uncle to Sara, Brianne, and the kids?

“Well?” Brianne prompted, and he found both sisters watching him.

“I’m not going anywhere, guys. This thing with Avi and me…” With an awkward shrug, he said, “She’s leaving in a couple weeks.” He hadn’t asked for an exact date yet. Part of him didn’t want to know. Part of him would start counting the days, then the hours, and that would take away so much of the pleasure of being with her.

“I know she’s leaving,” Brianne said. “I just want to know if you’re thinking about going with her.”

He tried to imagine it: giving up his practice, renting or selling his loft, saying good-bye to his family, and moving halfway across the country. Not knowing his way around town, or anyone in town besides Avi. Having to build his practice again from scratch, finding new restaurants and places to shop, meeting new people, missing home.

The images just wouldn’t form.

No matter how much he would miss Avi.

“No,” he said shortly. “Like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”

“We’re all like Daddy,” Sara said with a sigh that held its share of relief. “Remember when he used to say ‘If God had wanted me to travel, He wouldn’t have put me in Oklahoma’?”

Ben smiled faintly. His father had believed Oklahoma was the best place in the world, and Ben agreed with him. It was partly that belief that had made it so hard for Rick to understand Patricia’s desire to travel. What could anyplace else have to compete?

Could a person be competition enough?

Theoretically, sure. But theoretical didn’t have a lot in common with the reality of his life. His reality was here, would always be here. No matter where Avi went.

He would meet someone else. So would she. They’d both be happy.

Maybe. Conceivably. Someday.

On the fourth floor, while Sara got Lainie checked in, Brianne walked down the treatment room corridor with Ben. Working her fingers together nervously, she asked in little more than a murmur, “Ben, what if you fall in love with her?”

She’d asked him variations of the love question regarding other women, but he hadn’t come close to loving anyone before Lucy so they’d been easy to brush off. Now…If he were a better liar, he’d give her a brash grin and a confident
Ain’t gonna happen
. But he wasn’t a good liar, and he had zero confidence of not falling in love.

“Bree, I’m really not going to move away, no more than Dad would have.”

Her bottom lip poked out. “I know it’s selfish of me, but I just can’t bear the idea of you living anywhere else. You and Sara—you’re my family. I mean, Mom, too, and all the Nobles scattered around, but you and Sara are the main ones. I know you’d visit, but seeing you three or four times a year just wouldn’t cut it.”

“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. Listen, why don’t you wait in my office? I’ll tell the front desk to send Sara and Lainie back when they’re checked in, and as long as I’m here, I’ll do her exam.”

“Okay.” She turned away, then pivoted back. “Nigel’s been picked up by Chicago, and he asked me to go with him.”

Ben’s brows arched. Nigel was her on-again, off-again boyfriend who played hockey for the Tulsa Oilers. Ben had always thought—maybe that should have been
hoped
—that all Bree and Nigel had in common was their dedication to fitness. He was no more eager to have a wandering Canadian enforcer in the family than a small-town Alaskan football coach.

You’re not going?
That was what he wanted to say, but he kept the words in. If she’d decided Nigel was on-again in a permanent sense, if she loved him enough to leave her home, Ben would be happy for her. He would also be damn sorry for Sara and himself.

“Are you going?”

“Nigel’s great fun, but…” She shook her head. “I’d resent him for making me leave. I mean, he’s got options. He could retire. He could coach. He could put that environmental degree to work. If he really loved me, he would at least consider it.”

Avi didn’t have options, not at the moment. She was under contract to the United States Army and pretty much at their mercy. They could send her anywhere in the world, and all she could do was go.

From the end of the corridor, his medical assistant beckoned, mimicking a telephone receiver to her ear. “I’ve got to take a call, Bree. I’ll see you when it’s Lainie’s turn.”

After a shower, Avi dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, then wandered through Ben’s apartment, trying to picture herself living there. The image wouldn’t form. She had called home barracks, tents, and apartments the last twelve years, perfect for the temporary nature of her stays. But when she imagined settling down, really making a home, it was always a house that occupied place of pride. A place she could paint and remodel and landscape the way she wanted. A place her kids could come back to when they were grown, that they could bring their own kids to. Who ever said
Let’s go over to Grandma’s loft and play hide-and-seek in the street?

If she didn’t leave, if she and Ben let nature take its course, the loft wouldn’t be a sticking point. He liked it, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t balk at giving it up, especially when the payoff for buying a house was kids to fill the extra bedrooms.

If she didn’t leave…She had to, for a while, of course. She had nearly two years left on this enlistment. Until then, she was the Army’s to do with as they wanted. But two years wasn’t so long to ask someone to wait.

That would put her at fourteen years. Nearly three-quarters of the way to retirement. She would lose the medical care and the pension she’d spent sixty-three months in combat zones to earn. She would be giving up goals she’d had since she was ten—too young to know better then, but goals she’d still embraced when she was eighteen, twenty-four, thirty. She
wanted
this career. Wanted to serve every single day for twenty years. Wanted to stand proud at her retirement ceremony, to say with pride that she wasn’t just a veteran but was U.S. Army, Retired.

Eight years was too long to ask someone to wait.

Heaving a sigh, she plopped on the couch, lay down, and propped her feet on the back cushions. Pulling out her phone, she scrolled through the contacts until she located the number she wanted. It took more than a few rings for her friend to answer, and Avi knew it was a simple reason: She was singing along with Avi’s ring tone,
Born in the USA
.

“Hey, Jolie
blon
,” she greeted.

“Avi! Kids, it’s Avi!”

A chorus of childish
hello
s rang through the phone, as enthusiastic as if they actually knew her. Avi grinned. “Give them all hugs for me. How are you?”

“Getting by. You take it one day at a time, you know.” There was a moment’s silence, tinged with regret, then Jolie asked, “How are you? You’re back in Oklahoma, right?”

“Yeah, for a couple more weeks.” For nine more days, not counting today and the Friday when she would fly out before noon, but she pretended not to realize that.

“Going back to Fort Gordon. Man, we had some good times there.”

“Didn’t we?” She had met Jolie at Signal school, along with Rosemary, Kerry, and Paulette. They’d helped each other through their classes, lusted after fellow male students and every other available man around, and partied in town every chance they got. They’d been awfully young then, not one of them over twenty, not at all sure what life held for them but certain it was going to be great.

They’d had no clue Paulette would die before she reached twenty-five. Only Rosemary had been able to attend her funeral; the others had been out of the country. Avi had gone to Arlington to visit her grave between deployments. It hadn’t been a very satisfactory good-bye.

“How’s Mom and Dad?” Jolie asked.

“Better than ever. Are the kids okay?”

“Yeah. They’re kids, you know. They see their dad every other weekend…when it doesn’t interfere with his schedule. He cancelled last time for a date and the time before that for a guys’ weekend in New Orleans. Like he hasn’t been there a hundred times before.” Jolie blew out a frustrated breath. “Sorry. My new mantra is ‘Say no evil.’ I won’t be that parent who badmouths the ex to their kids. He’s my problem, not theirs.”

“I’m so sorry about the divorce.” When it came to romance, all they’d ever wanted, all five of them, was someone who loved them and took that whole
’til death do us part
business seriously. Kerry had thought she’d found it, but getting served with divorce papers three days after she deployed to Anbar Province had cleared up that misconception. Rosemary thought she’d found it three, or was it four, times, but the placing of the engagement ring on her finger had been the beginning of the end every time.

Paulette hadn’t had a chance, so the rest of them had celebrated wildly when Jolie fell in love with and married a handsome Cajun while she was stationed at Fort Polk. They’d had their first child, and she was pregnant with the second when Alec finally thought to inform her that he had no intention of being married to a soldier. Jolie had given up the Army, and three tumultuous years and a third child later, Alec had given up the marriage.

“Eh,” Jolie said, likely accompanied by a familiar shrug. “I thought I’d found Prince Charming, and he turned out to be king of the rat bastards instead. It happens.”

“If you’d known…” Avi hesitated, then asked, “Would you have married him if you’d known he was dead set on turning you into a civilian?”

After a long silence, Jolie replied, “Probably not. But I don’t regret it. Yeah, I’m raising three kids pretty much alone, and I had to find a new career, but hey, I’m nothing if not adaptable. Besides, without him, I wouldn’t have my babies, and they more than make up for everything else.”

After a moment, Jolie asked, “Why the interest? Avery Grant, have you met someone?”

“Yeah. Just a guy. I mean, nothing’s going to come of it. He lives here, his family is here, and…it’s complicated.”

“
Cher
, the good ones always are.” Then Jolie laughed. “Sadly, so are the bad ones.”

Deliberately Avi changed the subject, and they talked for another fifteen minutes, trading stories of old friends, sharing the fun times of kids and dogs, before a piercing shriek from one of the kids called Jolie away. After promising to call again as soon as she settled in Augusta, Avi hung up, turned on the television, and curled onto her side.

She didn’t watch TV very often, and she wasn’t really watching it now. She didn’t even bother to change the channel from the local early news show, though it caught her attention when the logo for the Tulsa Drillers went up on the screen.

“. . . playing Arkansas tonight at ONEOK Field,” the anchor was saying. “The game starts at seven, and we’ll have the results tonight at ten.”

I don’t like baseball,
she’d told Ben,
but I could be persuaded to attend a game with a hot dog, a cold beer, and something fun to do afterward.

She’d said she would take care of dinner tonight. Hot dog, cold beer, done. And she already knew the something fun. All that was left was the game.

Yep, she, Avi Grant, who didn’t like baseball even more than she didn’t like soccer, was going to a baseball game. For a man.