Homecoming Hero (5 page)

For a moment, she could do nothing but stare. He didn't seem to mind, so she took her time studying him.

His ensemble was simple. Jeans, a light blue polo shirt and a chocolate-brown leather jacket. His clean-shaven jaw and chiseled features made him look as if he'd just walked off a Hollywood movie set. But the pain-filled eyes made him look lonely. And maybe just a little bit lost. Wounded, even.

Yes, there was a reason why she'd searched Google for terms like
battle fatigue
and
survivor's guilt.

Somewhere during her research she'd had a revelation. The Lord hadn't brought this man to her doorstep to help Hailey with her grief. But the other way around.

She
was supposed to help
him.
But first she had to get her mouth working properly.

He broke the silence for her. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.” Oh, brilliant response. And wasn't she using all three of her degrees to their fullest?

Of course, he wasn't helping matters with his intense eyes and stiff shoulders.

Finding it hard to catch her breath, she lowered her gaze to the colorful array of wildflowers he held in his hand. “Are those for me?”

“They are.”

What a sweet gesture.
And an insight into his true nature. Wolf was a good guy, both considerate and thoughtful.

He gave her a lopsided grin. The man really was hazardous when he looked at her like that. And she couldn't stop staring at him. She was suddenly thinking of fairy-tale endings and Prince Charming on a white horse and…

What was wrong with her?

Hailey considered herself an academic, a thinker rather than a feeler. She was not the fanciful sort. She had a plan for her life, one that had no room for an active-duty soldier with a killer smile.

He thrust the flowers awkwardly toward her.

“Oh, uh, thanks.”

She took the bouquet from him with a slight tremble. Their fingers touched. It was just a brush of knuckles, a mere whisper really, but her heart fluttered against her ribs.

“Please, come in.” Holding on to a sigh—barely—she stepped aside for him to pass. “Dinner is almost ready.”

The pleasant scent of sandalwood and spices followed him as he swept into the foyer. The heels of his combat boots skimmed across the hardwood floors. For a big man, he was exceptionally light on his feet.

But then he stopped abruptly and she nearly collided into him. “Oh.”

She lost her balance.

“Careful.” His hands gripped her shoulders gently, holding her until she was steady again.

“So.” He lifted a single eyebrow. “Where, exactly, am I going?”

This time she did sigh. She'd forgotten he didn't know
the house. He seemed so at home. Maybe it was that confident stride of his, or that take-charge attitude. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. “Follow me.”

Resisting the urge to look over her shoulder, she led him into the kitchen. She'd set two places on the antique table in the bay window alcove.

He eyed the settings with obvious misgivings. “Fancy.”

“It's the O'Brien family china and crystal. I always bring it out for special occasions.” She smiled up at him. “I thought this qualified.”

“That's, uh, nice.”

She'd lost him. He'd put up that invisible barrier between them, the one that communicated things like “keep your distance” and “back off” and, her least favorite, “not interested.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Or we could eat out on the deck. Paper plates. Plastic cups. At this time of year we might have to contend with the cold, but there won't be any bugs.”

“I don't mind cold.”

“The porch it is.”

Within moments, she had them settled at the table on the deck. The outdoor lights provided plenty of light. The sounds of traffic and laughing filled the air.

They ate in silence, which wasn't as bad as Hailey would have predicted. She liked looking at Wolf. Despite his fidgeting, a sense of peace filled her when she was in his presence.

As she'd warned, the temperature had dropped below fifty, which translated to bone-chilling cold to Hailey's way of thinking. Wolf didn't seem to notice, so she huddled inside her sweater and endured. He took his time eating, seeming to savor each bite.

Yet the tight angle of his shoulders told her he wasn't completely relaxed. Every few minutes he would run his gaze from left to right, right to left, instinctively checking for danger.

“How's the food?” she asked.

“Awesome.” He shut his eyes and breathed deeply. “It's been a long time since anyone cooked for me.”

Guilt, that's what made her set her own fork down. “I didn't make dinner.”

He lifted his eyes to meet hers and she could see the barrier going up again. And just when they were making progress.

“You have your own chef.” It wasn't a question, rather an accusation, as though he didn't have much use for pampered women.

She bristled. “Of course not. I don't have servants waiting on me hand and foot, if that's what you're implying.”

His skepticism radiated in the air between them. “You clean this place all by yourself?”

From the disbelieving look on his face, she knew he wouldn't understand why she employed Mama Dee. Aside from the fact that Hailey allowed the historical society to use O'Brien House for special events and tours—and thus each room had to be spotless at all times—Mama Dee needed the money. She was a single mother with five kids under the age of fifteen.

“I know what you're thinking, Wolf, but I don't order out every evening. Tonight, well—” she lifted a shoulder “—I wanted to make sure you had something special to eat.”

Shock, disbelief, wariness, they were all there in his gaze. “You wanted me to have something special to eat?”

“I did.” She twisted her napkin in her hands. “My cooking skills aren't at a level where I could have pulled that off.”

“I don't know what to say.” Now he just looked shocked.

And she felt awkward.

Determined to lighten the mood, Hailey closed her hand over his. “You don't have to say anything.”

“Yes, I do.” He rotated his wrist until their palms met. He squeezed, held tight for a moment too long then released her hand. “Thank you for going to so much trouble. I'm grateful. But, Hailey, I'm a simple guy with simple tastes. I'd have eaten a PB and J with equal enthusiasm.”

Happy the tension had lifted, she spoke without considering her words. “I'll keep that in mind next time.”

“Next time.” He smiled. “I like the sound of that.”

“Me, too.”

They stared at each other, neither speaking, neither moving. The way he looked at her with all that intensity and raw emotion in his gaze nearly did her in. “Tell me what your dream meal would entail.”

He leaned back in his chair and, oh, yes,
finally,
his shoulders relaxed. “You promise you won't laugh?”

“Of course I won't.”

“Pizza. The greasier the better. There aren't a lot of Italian restaurants in Iraq.”

“No.” She let out a short laugh. “I don't suppose—”

The squeal of tires sent Wolf jumping out of his chair. He spun around, looking frantically around him. Right to left. Left to right. He flexed his fingers then made a tight fist. His eyes had a wild look in them, yet he was very, very aware. Ultra-alert. Only after he took a few
deep breaths, and then several more, did he start pacing the length of the deck.

Back and forth. Back and forth. When he started on a third pass, Hailey took charge. “Let's go inside. You can tell me about Clay over dessert.”

S
hadows chased one another around in the kitchen, layering an eerie, desolate mood over what had started out as a promising evening. Despite the many deep breaths he took, Wolf's pulse refused to slow to a normal rate. Unease from the squealing tires still nagged at him. He drummed his fingers against his thigh and waited for Hailey to speak. To smile. To do…something.

She could at least turn on a light. But instead of reaching for the switch, she moved through the room, igniting candles along the way. The golden glow cast a romantic mood.

Had she done that on purpose?

Or was she trying to calm him with the soft lighting?

Either way, a strange, sweet feeling melted through him, permeating the steely place deep in his core no one had ever breached. Wolf had been alone so long he thought he'd gotten used to the solitude, maybe even craved it on some deep, unhealthy level.

But something in him had shifted. And now he wanted more out of life than merely existing from one
day to the next. He sensed Hailey was the key to this change.

Which was too bad for him.

She was Clay's sister, aka off-limits.

It didn't matter that her presence soothed Wolf in a way nothing had since that day on the Iraqi roadside. It didn't matter that she'd known exactly what he needed when that car had startled him. What
mattered
was why he had come here tonight. Because of his promise to Clay.

He could almost hear his friend saying,
This is not a date, Wolf-man. Not. A. Date.

Struggling to keep his mind on his real task, Wolf looked everywhere but at the beautiful woman in the kitchen with him. He was making a considerable dent in cataloging the items in the room—antique table, china, fancy stoneware, various pots and pans—when Hailey finished lighting the candles and turned to face him directly.

Their gazes locked and the air clogged in his throat.

He forced out a slow, careful breath.

Hailey O'Brien was a stunning woman, even in a simple pair of jeans and a sweater. Wolf knew he would find an expensive designer label somewhere near the waistband of those perfect-fitting jeans. And that pretty blue sweater had definitely cost more than he made in a month.

The woman had style, with the expensive taste to match, which only managed to punctuate all the reasons why she couldn't go to the Middle East as a missionary.

Feeling restless again, Wolf looked away from those mesmerizing green eyes locked with his. His gaze landed
on a photograph secured to the refrigerator by two heart-shaped magnets. He squinted through the threads of golden candlelight. A man and woman stood arm in arm in front of a Christmas tree. Wolf stepped closer and realized he was staring at a relatively recent snapshot of Hailey and Clay.

They were both dressed in formal black, wearing their perfect smiles and classic good looks as comfortably as Wolf wore his BDUs.

“That's from two Christmases ago,” Hailey said in a soft voice from behind him. “Right before his first deployment.”

Wolf nodded, but remained silent. What could he say, anyway? I'm sorry? Did you have a good time that night?

“We used to throw a Christmas party every year,” she continued. “It was a family tradition my parents started before either of us were born.”

Family tradition.
Those two words were everything Hailey stood for and Wolf did not. Consequently, his mind spun around one unrelenting realization.

The Lord had taken the wrong man that day.

Clay had had a reason to live, a purpose outside the Army. Wolf had neither. No family. No wife. Not even a girlfriend. And he certainly didn't have a sister determined to head into a dangerous war zone for her pie-in-the-sky ideals.

Which reminded him…

Hailey wanted to talk about her brother. Wolf wanted to talk about the Middle East. He'd do both with one conversation.

But not in this house. There were too many reminders of Clay surrounding them.

“It's still early.” He faced Hailey straight on. He told
himself he needed to be able to see her expression, to read what was going on inside that beautiful head of hers, but the real reason was he couldn't look at Clay anymore. Not even in a photograph from two Christmases ago. “Let's go for a ride.”

“A ride?” She took two deliberate steps away from him. “On…on your motorcycle?”

Her voice shook just enough to make Wolf forget about important conversations and painful memories and well,
everything,
except calming her concern. “No, Hailey,” he said in a soothing tone. “I drove my car.”

“You did?” Was that disappointment in her voice?

Interesting.

“You want to ride on my bike?” Wolf couldn't have been more surprised.

Or more pleased.

The idea of Hailey sitting behind him, hanging on to his waist, trusting him to keep her safe around hairpin turns, brought forth all sorts of warm, fuzzy feelings. Disconcerting for a guy who didn't do warm or fuzzy. Ever.

Not. A. Date.
Why couldn't he remember that?

“Well, actually…” A line of concentration dug a groove across her forehead. “I do.”

She had a million doubts in her eyes, but she didn't back down.

Brave girl.

“You're sure about that?”

She gave him a careless lift of her shoulder. “A short spin around the block might be fun.”

Oh, yeah, it'd be fun. He'd make sure of it. “How about next time? When we go for pizza?”

At the suggestion, everything about her seemed to relax. “That works for me.”

Worked for him, too. And if he had his way, he would ignore his misgivings and make sure their “short spin around the block”
was
a date.

But tonight, he had a more pressing matter to address. One he wanted finished between them. Tonight. “Let's get out of here.”

“Okay. I just need to get my coat and then we can go.” She hurried out of the room.

“I'll take care of the candles and meet you on the front porch,” he called after her.

“Sounds good,” she tossed over her shoulder.

Wolf couldn't stop a grin from forming. The night was suddenly looking up. But then he remembered what lay ahead and his smile vanished. Flattening his lips into a grim line, he snuffed out the candles. With each puff of air he mentally clicked off the reasons Hailey couldn't go to the Middle East. Insurgents.

Unstable governments.

IEDs.

Roadside bombs.

He no longer needed to remind himself this wasn't a date.

 

Curious as to where Wolf had parked his car, Hailey let him lead her down the front steps of O'Brien House. A cool breeze blew across her face. She could smell the damp in the air.

Night had completely blanketed the city with its inky stillness, but that didn't pose a problem in this part of town. Since Savannah was best seen on foot, street-lamps had been erected at close intervals along all the sidewalks in the historic district, giving tourists enough light to see the city's famous architecture.

There was so much illumination on Hailey's street she could practically count the leaves on the azalea bushes.

Unfortunately, the lighting didn't provide any relief from the cold. She shivered.

And then Wolf halted beside a car parked directly in front of her house and she shivered again.

Shock slithered slowly down her spine, skidding to a stop at the soles of her feet.

What had she gotten herself into?

Unable to speak, her eyes tracked over what had to be the saddest excuse for a muscle car she'd ever seen.

“This is yours?” she managed to croak past the tightness in her throat, trying not to let her dismay show.

Grinning like a proud papa, Wolf ran his hand lovingly over the roof. “Hailey, meet Stella.”

It was years of training from her mother that kept her mouth from hanging open. “You named your car?”

“You bet I did.” He gave the hunk of metal an affectionate pat. “This little beauty has been my only constant for the last ten years.” He grinned broadly. “Isn't she great?”

“Sure…”

The car Wolf adoringly referred to as
Stella
looked ready for a permanent trip to the junkyard. Hailey squinted. Were those large, dark-colored patches splattered over the hood rust marks? Dirt? A combination of the two?

“Are you sure that thing…er, Stella…is safe?”

“Have a little faith.” Wolf leaned in close enough for her to smell his spicy, masculine scent and tapped her lightly on the nose. “Stella might be in desperate need of a paint job, but the old girl is in her prime.”

Hailey slid a skeptical glance over the car—hood to tail, tail to hood. “I'll have to take your word on that.”

“Come on, sweetheart, where's your sense of adventure?”

“I think I left it in the house.” She deliberately turned her back on the car. “Maybe I'll just head inside for a moment and look for it.”

Chuckling, Wolf swung her back around with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “No way are you bailing on me now. You've come this far. Might as well go the distance.” He opened the car door for her. “Go on. Climb in. Stella doesn't bite.”

“I'm going to hold you to that.” Heaving a dramatic sigh, she lowered herself into the passenger's seat.

The crisp smell of lemon and new-car scent surrounded her. A single glance at the car's interior and Hailey took back every negative thought she'd had about Stella.

Delighted, she rubbed her hand across the butter-soft, blue leather seats and then eyed the shiny, chrome-plated dials.

Wow!

Wolf had clearly spent considerable time and money on restoring Miss Stella's interior. Afraid to touch anything, Hailey perched on the edge of her seat, folded her hands in her lap and waited for Wolf to walk around to his side of the car.

Now that her initial Stella-shock was wearing off, something Wolf had said earlier came back to mind. The moment he settled in behind the steering wheel, she addressed the issue head-on. “You mentioned that Stella has been your only constant for the last ten years. Does that mean you don't have any family?”

“That's right.” Staring straight ahead, he placed his hands on the wheel at the ten-and-two position.

The tone of his voice told her not to press the subject. She did anyway. “Not even a distant cousin?”

“No, Hailey.” His hands clutched the wheel tighter. “No one. The Army's all I've got.”

She recognized the emptiness in his voice, understood the bleakness it represented. The emotion was so similar to what she felt herself that her heart skipped a beat. Yet even as she empathized with Wolf, she sensed his loneliness wasn't as straightforward as hers. She feared his past held something dark, something she could never truly understand.

Should she quote Scripture to him at this point, or maybe recite words filled with God's truth about His unfailing love?

No. Something in the way Wolf held his body slightly away from her, almost isolated, didn't inspire her to introduce the fundamentals of God's love into the conversation. Except…

What if she started by addressing the one thing they had in common? “I guess we're both alone in this world.”

He made a noncommittal sound in his throat, one that clearly said the topic was closed. Without looking at her, he turned the key in the ignition and Stella roared to life.

Hailey gasped as a succession of grinding metal, snarls and rumbles whipped through the air.

Wolf pressed down on the accelerator. Stella responded with a loud, menacing growl.

Gasping again, Hailey braced her hands on the dashboard and hung on for dear life.

Stella wasn't through. She shook. She shimmied. Until, finally, “the old girl” descended into a vibrating rumble.

Needing a moment to collect herself, Hailey shut her eyes. She couldn't think past the blood rushing in her ears. Or was that terrible noise coming solely from the car?

“Ready for a sweet ride?” Wolf asked.

No!
She slowly opened her eyes.
Be brave, Hailey, be brave.
“Sure.”

He put Stella into gear and pressed on the gas pedal. Surprisingly, the car's engine settled into a low-pitched purr as she slid away from the curb.

After several blocks of pitch-perfect propulsion, Hailey grudgingly admitted that Miss Stella did indeed give one sweet ride.

Relaxing enough to unclench her fingers, Hailey settled back against the soft leather of the comfortable bucket seat. “Where are we going?”

“I thought we'd head out to Tybee Island.”

He wanted to go to the beach? So soon after returning home? “I would think you'd be sick of sand by now.”

Clay had avoided Tybee for months after his first deployment.

“I am.” A grim look crossed his face. “But I haven't had nearly enough water.”

Of course. “That makes sense.”

“Besides.” His expression lightened and he hooked his wrist over the top of the steering wheel. “It's a pretty drive.”

“You think so?” She couldn't say she particularly agreed. “The road is nothing more than a causeway that cuts through the marshes.”

“Exactly.”

She narrowed her eyes, confusion gathering inside her. “I don't follow.”

“There isn't a lot of marshland in the desert.”

“No. I suppose not.” She should have realized that on her own.

After several moments of Wolf concentrating on the streets and Hailey watching him out of the corner of her eye, they broke free of Savannah.

For the next five or so miles, Hailey tried to look at the familiar scenery from Wolf's perspective. Not an easy thing to do. The marshes were just plain spooky under the silver light of the full moon. Even with the windows rolled up against the cold, the tall grasses were ripe with the smells of mold, mud and rotting fish. It was a perfect hunting ground for gators and snakes.