A Promise of Forever (9 page)

“I like this,” Avi said. “Lots of space.”

“I have to resist the temptation to fill it with stuff. You should have seen the apartment I lived in before this. Sara threatened to call that TV show for hoarders.”

She crossed the old wood floor to the relatively new rug, white geometrics on a red background. The red was the only real color in the room, with a coffeemaker to match on the kitchen counter. Everything else was subdued. Calming, the designer said. Boring, Brianne said. Unimportant, he thought. As long as the furniture was comfortable, the television was visible, and the space was livable, he didn’t care about the rest of it.

“Would you like a tour?”

Smiling, she dropped her bag on the couch and clasped her hands behind her back as he joined her in the center of the red rug. “This is the living room, where I watch TV and take unscheduled naps.” Taking her arm, the skin as soft as he’d imagined, silky enough that he could marvel at the texture for an hour or two, he led her a dozen feet ahead. “And this is the dining room, where I eat a meal maybe once a year, but the table looks nice, doesn’t it?”

Avi’s eyes were lit by the smile that still curved her mouth. “Beautiful. I love oak.”

He gestured to one hand. “The kitchen. Comes with a microwave and coffeemaker.”

“Vital for survival,” she agreed.

Still holding onto her, he stopped at the first doorway in the long hall, sliding his fingers along her arm to her shoulder. “My office. Small children and their toys have been known to get lost inside, so if you go in, you might want to leave a trail I could follow.”

He walked beside her to the other doorway at the end of the hall. “And my bedroom.” What would she think? That it was too minimalist? Too boring? Maybe her least favorite room of the condo? It was definitely the messiest room in the house. Did women get turned off by that stuff or—forget women—would
Avi
get turned off?

She slipped free and walked into the room. He didn’t watch her but rather the reflection of her in the dresser mirror. Everything about her had a
wow
factor: the way she looked, the way she moved, the way she stood still. Her body was long, lean, nicely muscled, her clothes and flip-flops so girly, her confidence strong. Just looking at her made his chest tighten and sent heat seeping along his nerves. Sara was right that he’d spent too many nights alone. He’d figured that out for himself the first hour after he and Avi had met.

She was amazing, and he really needed to be amazed.

Her gaze swept across the unmade bed, the crumpled pillows, the piles of clothing on the chairs, the bottles of cologne lined up on the dresser. She nudged a protruding drawer shut, then turned to face him, wearing a sweet, amused, knowing, promising, sensuous smile.

How could one look say so much? He cleared his throat. “Give me ten minutes to shower, and, uh, we can, uh, go.”

She strolled back, passing him in the doorway, enveloping him in a cloud of cologne and heat and need. Again, he watched her until she was out of sight in the living room, then he heaved a great sigh as he shucked off his scrubs and he went into the bathroom.

His shower was quick. There was something about knowing Avi was waiting out for him, even fully dressed, that made his muscles quiver with every touch. By the time he’d dried off and dressed, the skin all over his body tingled, and he was hotter than when he’d stood under the hot water.

Avi sat on the couch, the tablet out again, long gorgeous legs crossed, absorbed in reading. When she heard his approach, she glanced up, her gaze sliding over him, before a small smile curved her lips. Sliding the tablet into her purse, she stood and swung the strap over her shoulder.

“You look great.” He liked the dresses he’d seen her wearing the two days before, very pretty and feminine and covering far more skin. This snug top and tiny skirt were pretty and feminine and damn sexy. These clothes were going to make it damn hard to concentrate through dinner…though he was pretty sure he’d have trouble concentrating if she wore burlap from neck to toe.

“Are you hungry for anything in particular?” he asked as they headed for the door.

“I would kill for a hamburger.”

“When I say ‘I would kill,’ it’s just a figure of speech. When a woman who’s accustomed to carrying weapons says it…” he teased her with a grin. “Lucky for you, no deaths are necessary. Fat Guy’s has great burgers, and it’s just the other side of ONEOK Field. That’s where the Drillers play.”

At the foot of the stairs, he paused. There were two doors in the lobby, one leading out onto the street, the other into the alley. “Walk or drive?”

For answer, she turned toward the street door. The first minute or two passed in silence, until they reached the intersection. “Do anything interesting today?” he asked while they waited for the light to change.

“No, and it was incredible. I slept in, played with Sundance, visited with your—Patricia, and talked to Mom and Dad for a few minutes. They’re having a fabulous time on their cruise, and Dad’s threatening to sell everything and buy a boat. Mom says a boat can’t have two captains and no way is she going to be first mate to his captain. You give a man a little power, and it goes to his head.”

He laughed. “You don’t get many days to do nothing, do you?”

“Not as many as I would like.” The light changed, and they stepped off the curb. Subtly, he thought, he reached for her hand, clasping it lightly in his. In his peripheral vision, he caught the tiny, satisfied smile that curved her lips. “What about you? Did you do anything interesting today?”

“I stuck needles in some joints, decided on surgery with a half dozen patients, set a broken leg, and treated my niece’s sprained wrist.”

“Patricia said she had an owie.”

When he’d first begun seeing Lucy, it had seemed strange to hear her talk about his mother in casual conversation. None of his friends and certainly none of the women he’d dated even knew Patricia existed, and up to that point, he and his sisters had never talked about her. Now it seemed practically normal. “Yeah, Lainie took a tumble. She’s prone to that. She’s more adventurous than her two brothers put together.”

“Girl power,” Avi said with a smirk.

“I bet you were a wild little girl.”

Her slender shoulders shrugged as a grin tugged at her mouth. “I had fun. I only broke my nose, needed stitches only three times, and had only one concussion.”

He was pretty sure she hadn’t grown out of her tomboy ways, and yet she was still such a
girl
. In a twist on the old motto,
No pain, no gain
, his personal motto was
No pain, no pain
. But he liked the combination in her.

A lot.

When he had to release her hand at the restaurant, he missed the contact, then put it out of his mind while they ordered their meals, then found a table near the front window. As she slipped the paper from her drinking straw, he asked, “What do you plan to do after you retire?”

“That’s eight years from now. Who looks that far ahead?” Immediately she answered herself. “Smart little boys who want to grow up to be a bone doctor. Good grades in high school, four years of college, four years of medical school, and…?”

“A year of surgical residency and four years in an orthopedic residency.”

She folded her arms on the tabletop and leaned forward, not much, just enough to wrap them in an air of intimacy. “Actually, I plan to come back to Oklahoma, be a mom and hopefully a wife and have a second career. Being Signal, I have mad job skills, so I could do just about anything in the communications field.”

“So a smart little girl grew up and said, ‘My dream is to do communications in the Army’?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t really think much beyond being a soldier. When you join the service, you take an aptitude test, and that was one of the available fields that sounded cool. I like to communicate, right? My mom and dad say I’ve communicated with the best of them since I was eight months old.”

He could easily imagine that. Shy and quiet, she was not. “That was just after 9/11, wasn’t it? Didn’t you realize that a job like that meant a good chance of being sent to war?”

Slowly she settled back in her chair, folding her arms over her middle. “I wanted that. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that only men are qualified to be in combat, that the women have to be kept safe at the rear or, better yet, back home in the States. Not every woman is cut out for combat, but neither is every man. Women can be heroes just as easily as men.”

He liked the serious look in her eyes, the furrowing of her brows, the way she managed to look relaxed while tension simmered faintly around her. He liked that she was passionate about the subject, no matter that her tone was conversational, her expression still pleasant.

“But not everyone agrees with you, do they?”

“No. Life isn’t easy for women in the military. A lot of men in the service are accepting. A lot are macho bigots. There’s a lot of discrimination, harassment, sexual assaults, and I honestly don’t know if that sort of stuff will ever go away because it’s not just an Army issue. It’s a social issue. But you don’t make issues better by packing up your bags and going home. If women quit serving, if they say ‘Okay, the bastards don’t want me here so I’ll go away,’ we lose, the service loses, and the ignorant jerks win. That can’t happen.”

Abruptly an abashed look came over her face. “Sorry. I tend to get on my soapbox when the question of women in the military comes up. Simple answer to your simple question: I joined the Army to defend our country in any way I could, and if that means picking up a gun, then I’m happy to do it. I’m strong, I’m tough, I’m as good a shot as any man I know, and I’m twice as smart as most of them. I’ve never traded on sex to curry favor or avoid responsibility. I’ve earned what I’ve gotten.”

To lighten the moment, Ben said, “You’ve never traded sex? Damn. And here I was hoping…”

As he’d intended, she laughed. “Gender, okay? I’ve never traded on gender to get anything. Trading sex is another proposition altogether…but I’ve got to tell you, it takes a lot more than a hamburger, unless it’s the best hamburger in town.”

Ben gestured to the burgers a teenage girl delivered to their table. “Let’s see what you think.”

T
he sun went down, but the temperature didn’t. As they strolled along the sidewalk heading back to Ben’s condo, Avi remembered again why so many Oklahomans were happy to see the end of summer. The dog days, they called it: hot and muggy, occasionally still but usually with a breeze blowing off to the east, setting up perfect conditions for thunderstorms and tornados. Then, suddenly, one day it was cooler, just a few degrees, and the slide continued through fall until winter arrived sometime between October and January, and people began hoping for summer to roll around again.

“You said you went to OSU’s medical school,” she remarked. “So you’re a doctor of osteopathy. Was that a deliberate choice?”

He nodded. “It’s more fun to say than ‘doctor of medicine,’ don’t you think? Osteopathy just kind of rolls off the tongue.”

She rolled her eyes. She hadn’t met a lot of doctors who had a sense of humor. Maybe it was just that most of the doctors she’d met the past few years had been assigned to combat hospitals, trying to save lives and limbs under difficult circumstances. They’d had a lot of success, but anything less than a hundred percent had been hard for some of them to take. When they’d known the soldier, it had been even harder. George’s death had caused shock and sorrow that had lasted for weeks.

“OSU was my first choice because it was here in Tulsa,” Ben said. “I could live at home, keep my expenses down, and keep an eye on the girls and my dad. I was in my third year when he died.”

“What happened?”

His shoulders tensed, and his voice became edged with bitterness. “Heart attack. Truth was, he never got over Patricia leaving. She broke his heart. Broke him. I think he was just waiting for Sara to finish high school. He wasn’t sick, wasn’t having any problems. He just went to sleep one night and never woke up.”

“I’m sorry.” Avi believed in true love and broken hearts. She knew of too many instances, especially with an older couple, where one died and the other didn’t want to live without the spouse. But Rick Noble had been a young man, and he’d been divorced ten years. That was a long time to mourn his ex-wife falling out of love with him. It was an awfully young age to give up on hope and love and the future. Hell, the war had widowed a lot of young women and some men. Just this year alone, Patricia had told her, three margarita club members had fallen in love again, one of them with a man widowed by the war himself. Giving up wasn’t an option.

But, though Avi couldn’t imagine it, it must have seemed the only option to Ben’s father.

“What was he like?”

They reached his building, just across the street, but he kept walking, so she did, too.

“He was a good guy,” he said after a while. “The oldest of three kids, close to his family, made the All-State baseball team two years running. After two years in college, he went to work out at American Airlines. He used to say he only planned to work there a year or two, but every time he got ready to quit, they’d promote him. He wound up staying more than twenty years. He took us to the Drillers games every chance he got. Sara used to tell people that we lived at the old stadium out by the fairgrounds during baseball season.”

Avi smiled. Patricia had mentioned inviting the girls to lunch one weekend soon so she could meet them. She hoped it fit into their schedules because even without meeting them, she already liked them.

“He was a great dad. He had a lot of friends, but his first priority was his family. And he loved to go camping. Stick us in a tent at Keystone Lake with a baseball game on the car radio, and he was happier than any man had a right to be.”

“Camping. Hm. I think I’ve spent way too many nights in a tent to see the allure in it,” Avi teased.

Ben’s smile was faint. “I have to admit, I haven’t been since our last time as a family. That was probably a month or so before Patricia left.” The smile faded. “She didn’t like camping. But that was the only way Dad wanted to spend his time off.”

So she went and made the best of it, until she was gone. Avi was pretty sure George had never asked her to sleep in a tent, use a latrine, or cook over an open fire. For him, she would have done it, just as she’d done it for Rick all those years. For George, she might even have enjoyed it.

“I bet he was proud of you.”

“Yeah. Patricia never threatened us with spankings when we misbehaved. It was always ‘Wait until your father finds out,’ and we stopped immediately. The idea of disappointing him was a hell of a lot scarier than anything else that could happen.”

“Oh, not me. I mean, I hated disappointing my parents or GrandMir and Popi, but I was a hardheaded child, if you can believe it. I got swatted and switched so many times, it’s a wonder I can walk past a tree or a bush without suffering a meltdown.”

“I can believe it,” he retorted. The melancholy stirred by talk of his dad disappeared, and amusement lit his eyes instead. “The surprise is that after all that discipline, you signed up for twenty more years of it.”

“I had a lot of authoritarian figures when I was first in the Army, but now I
am
an authoritarian figure.” She smiled smugly. “And I like it.”

They walked another moment in silence before she asked, “Do you know home’s back there a few blocks?”

He glanced around, then over his shoulder. “I’d race you back, but I’d have the advantage because my legs are longer than yours and you’re wearing—”

Avi spun around and darted across the street, his last words—
flip-flops…hey!
—not even an echo in her head. His legs might be longer, and her shoes might be flimsier, but she was a runner and he wasn’t. She was competitive as hell, plus she’d learned in Iraq and Afghanistan that when she needed to run, little things like shoes didn’t matter.

She reached the lobby door a good thirty seconds ahead of him, then gave him a triumphant smile. “And Avi Grant wins by a mile!” she declared, doing a few victory twirls that left her dizzy and tumbled her into his arms. Or had it been tumbling into his arms that made her dizzy?

For a long moment, they stared at each other, mere inches separating them. Her breath caught in her chest, and every nerve ending in her body tingled. The look he gave her damn near smoldered, her heart thudded, and her knees went weak. If he didn’t kiss her soon, she was going to collapse into a puddle at his feet, and if he did, she was pretty sure her hair would catch fire.

He shifted toward her a tiny bit, and she closed the distance between them, but he was the one who initiated the kiss. His hands slid from her arms, where he’d caught her to steady her, up to her shoulders, and his mouth covered hers. Arousal flowed through her, nipping and searing and making her tremble, and she was delighted to feel it. For a year, all her energy had been focused on doing her job, staying alive; for the past few months, she’d added grieving for George, along with other friends she’d lost. Now her sexual side, turned off too long, was flaring back to life with sweet, familiar need, and she couldn’t think of any man she’d rather stir it—and satisfy it—besides Ben.

There was nothing sweet or gentle or tender about this kiss. It was hungry and demanding and fierce, exactly what she wanted. What she needed. Bringing her hands to his body, she tugged his shirt loose from his trousers, undid the bottom button, then the next two, and slid her hands beneath the fabric. His skin was warm, silken, taut over muscle and bone. She knew he was that same pretty brown shade all over—Patricia had mentioned that Rick was Osage—and she loved pretty brown skin.

Ben ended the kiss abruptly, dug out his keys, and unlocked the lobby door. The look on his face as fierce as his kiss had been, he took her hand and pulled her inside, up the stairs, and into his loft. As soon as the door closed behind them, he kissed her again, pinning her against the cool surface of the door, pulling the band from her hair, stabbing his fingers into it as it tumbled around her shoulders.

She was lost in the kiss, in the hunger and the been-so-long need, her mind processing feelings instead of words. At some point she realized her feet were moving, that Ben was guiding her across the room without breaking the kiss. She lost one shoe on the way, kicked off the other near the end of the couch. Her purse slid to the floor in the hall, and fingers were curling around the hem of her top by the time they reached the bed—his, hers, fumbling together, getting in each other’s way trying to pull the top over her head. Finally, choking out a laugh, he pushed her hands away and whisked the top off, tossing it toward the dresser behind him.

Hoping to find herself in exactly this position, she’d chosen her prettiest lingerie: a bra that revealed more than it concealed, its color a deep, vibrant coral, its construction all satin, ribbons, and lace; and panties in the same shade that concealed just barely enough. They were gorgeous and sexy and made her forget that she spent most of her life in combat boots.

She couldn’t put an entire sentence together, but somehow, despite the burning lack of oxygen in her lungs, she managed to ask “Condoms?”

“Drawer.”

The zipper on her skirt made a loud, raspy noise as he opened it. An instant later, the skirt began sliding from her waist, and she gave it a shimmy to help it along. It landed on the floor with a soft rustle, and she stepped out of it, then nudged it away with her toes. His shirt came off next. She’d intended to turn her attention immediately to removing his pants, but the sight of all that smooth skin distracted her. Her hands lingered, her palms flattened against his rib cage, absorbing warmth, making tiny strokes, bringing a low growl of pleasure from him.

He made quick work of his remaining clothing before kissing along her jaw, down her throat, to the sensitive curve of her breasts. Turning so he sat on the bed, he laved the skin between her breasts while his hands stroked lightly, gently, across her middle, over her waist, gliding across her hips. Vaguely she registered the slide of her bra away from her body, the tugging sensation of her panties gliding down her legs, the tickle of his hair as he bent his head closer, the sudden jolt of a hot, wet, greedy kiss to her hip.

When she groaned, he rolled back on the bed, pulling her with him, tumbling her down onto a soft cushion of gray linens. As she clung to him, pulled him to her, greedily tried to wriggle into place beneath him, she found her voice to once more whisper, “Condoms.”

He pulled away for a moment that lasted an eternity, bracing himself on one arm, reaching into the night table drawer, then came back, pressing a small plastic packet into her hand, his mouth finding hers again, his tongue plunging inside. She ripped the package open, reaching blindly, unrolling the latex sheath over his erection, then tugged at his hips, and finally,
finally,
he slid inside her, exactly where she needed him.

Exactly where she wanted him.

Light shone dimly down the hall from the living room, a sort of night light for grown-ups, not bright enough to intrude but enough to keep darkness at bay. Ben lay on his back, Avi at his side, her hair falling over his shoulder and arm like cool silk. Her breathing had been as slow as his to settle, their sweat gradually drying, their heart rates eventually returning to normal. Her delicate hand was splayed across his chest, a source of warmth, a reassuring touch.

Neither of them had spoken since he’d retrieved a condom from the table, except for a few breathless
Oh
s from her. Now he turned onto his side, gathering her close against him, and said, “I guess that was a damn good burger.”

She laughed, the sound surprised from her but no less amused. “Well,” she said, “you bought me breakfast
and
dinner. If I’d said no, you might have decided I was playing hard to get.” Then she shook a finger at him. “Which, for the record, I am. I don’t have sex with just any guy who asks.”

“I never thought you did.”

She gazed at him a moment. “What about you?”

“I don’t have sex with just any guy who asks, either.” When she poked him with that pointing finger, he said, “Ow. On the other hand, I’m a guy. If a woman asks, I’m honor-bound by my gender to say yes.”

Mouth pursed, she made a
pfft
sound. “Why aren’t you married, Doc?”

He remembered a time when a woman saying the
m
word in any context would have stirred his self-preservation instinct. A woman saying it in bed after great sex would have freaked him out. Was it age, security, and the desire to get married that changed things? Or was it
this
woman? “Work. Twelve-hour days, surgery, Saturday clinics. No time to meet anyone.”

“And yet you met me.” She preened, fluttering her lashes, doing a good job of playing coy, at least until her smile destroyed the illusion.

“I’m glad I did. And for the record, I was glad before this.” He gestured to the two of them and the bed. “Now I’m ecstatic.”

“Wow, I don’t know that I’ve ever made anyone ecstatic before.”

Lifting his hand, he stroked through her hair, curling the strands, letting it go. “Why aren’t you married?”

“War. Twelve-month tours in the desert. Frankly, if I never see desert again—any desert—I’ll be ecstatic.”

“Lucky for you, then, that Georgia’s not desert.”

“Nope. It encompasses the best of the South. Mild winters, hot summers, high humidity, biscuits as an art form, collard greens, and mustard-and-vinegar barbecue sauces.”

And an Army post filled with soldiers who had interests and a career in common. Guys who’d experienced the frequent moves and appreciated the nomadic nature of the lives they’d chosen. Surely she’d find one of them suitable for marriage and fathering her kids. He hoped she did. Really. It wasn’t like
he
would ever put himself in the running. His career, his life, and his home were here in Tulsa. Always had been, always would be.

He focused his thoughts on the least important part of her statement. “You like collard greens?”

Eyes narrowing, she scowled at the incredulity in his voice. “Collard greens, when prepared right, are a gift from the gods. Popi loved them, so GrandMir cooked them two or times a week when they were in season.”