Protector for Hire (21 page)

“Huh,” Schwartz said, gripping his fork a little tighter as he tried to decide whether it was worth mentioning his own brother was there. “Nice area.”

“So where’d you serve?”

Schwartz blinked, not sure what to say. There was something in Gordy’s eyes that made it clear he wasn’t talking about serving dinner or jail time. Schwartz knew exactly what he was asking, and something about the sincerity in the man’s eyes made him want to answer honestly.

“Iraq,” he said. “Anbar Province.”

Gordy nodded. “Lotta marines there.”

“Yep.”

“But you’re army
.
”

“I was army,” Schwartz replied, not bothering to ask how he knew.

“Pretty dangerous territory. You pick up a Purple Heart for that limp you brought back?”

Schwartz nodded tightly, trying to figure out what was going on here. Gordy didn’t look judgmental. He didn’t look meddlesome. He actually looked a little reverent.

“Tough place to be,” Gordy said. “Lotta guys didn’t make it back. I had a brother over there. Said it was one of the worst places he’s ever seen in his life.”

Beside him, Janelle had stopped eating. Schwartz set his fork down, wishing for his own glass of moonshine. Perhaps sensing he needed it, Janelle shoved her glass toward him. Schwartz didn’t drink any of it, though. Instead, he answered Gordy.

“It was. It was a terrible place to be. A lot of good men and women lost their lives over there. Good soldiers who should have come home to their families.”

Gordy nodded. “A lot of good men came home, too. Problem was, some of ’em just stopped believing they were good men.”

Schwartz stared at him, a faint buzzing in the back of his brain. He half expected someone to jump out from behind the woodstove and tell him he was on
Candid Camera
.

But there was no film crew. It was just Laverne and Janelle and a surprisingly perceptive Gordy, who was digging at his back molar with a toothpick.

“How do you know?” Schwartz asked.

He wasn’t sure what he was asking, exactly, but Gordy seemed to.

“I know because my brother made it out, but he thought he didn’t deserve to. Donny thought he should have died there with the buddy he tried to save.”

“So awful,” Laverne murmured, dabbing the corner of her eye with a tissue.

“Three years after Donny came home, he shot himself in the head.”

Schwartz felt like someone had just slugged him in the gut.

Janelle gave a startled cry and put her hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “So, so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Gordy answered, his eyes not leaving Schwartz. “The thing is, I always wished I got the chance to tell him it wasn’t his fault. What happened over there, he did the best he could. That’s pretty much all anyone could do. Those men and women—they knew what they were getting into when they chose to go. Some soldiers come home and some don’t, but every single one of ’em is strong and courageous and honorable just for going in the first place.”

Schwartz opened his mouth to say something, but realized he didn’t have any words at all. He closed his mouth and looked at Janelle. Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears, and she was looking at him with an expression that was somewhere between love and a fear he was going to get up and walk out and never come back.

He slid his hand to her knee, not squeezing, not tickling, just resting it there. Then he picked up her glass and drained it in one gulp.

…

As Schwartz walked back to the truck after dinner, it occurred to him that one upside of his size was the fact that it took a whole lot of liquor to get him drunk.

He was nowhere near drunk—not even a little tipsy, really—but he still had one hard and fast rule when it came to alcohol.

“I don’t drive if I’ve had more than one drink,” he said, turning to look at Janelle.

She’d been walking close beside him, but the distance between them seemed like miles and miles. She stopped walking to look up at him. “Okay.”

He started moving again, wishing he could reach out and take her arm. Maybe he could pretend it was an effort to help with balance, but she didn’t seem wobbly at all. She just seemed quiet. He wanted ask what she was thinking. He also wanted to run far, far away from Janelle and from every other good thing in his life that he damn well didn’t deserve.

Unfortunately, they’d reached the truck.

Stopping beside the passenger door, he pulled the keys from his pocket. “I also don’t ride in a vehicle with anyone behind the wheel who’s been drinking, so that pretty much rules out the possibility of us getting home tonight.”

Janelle bit her lip. “You mentioned a B and B? The place you were staying when you found Sherman?”

“Yeah. Good thing we have him with us.”

Hearing his name, Sherman sat up on the seat and smeared his nose against the glass. Schwartz had put him in there earlier so he wouldn’t get snowed on if the storm came early. He leaned past Janelle to pull open the door, and she buried her fingers in the fur around Sherman’s neck, scratching until the dog moaned.

Schwartz tried not to feel envious. He moved away from her and leaned into the truck to pop open the glove box. He was all business now, wanting her to understand this was a necessary arrangement and not some fucking romantic night in a cozy B and B. Grabbing a couple toothbrushes from the stash he kept there for this sort of situation, he moved back and handed one to Janelle.

“Here you go. They should have soap and shampoo and stuff at the B and B.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “Can I give Sherman my leftover meat loaf for dinner?”

“He’ll love you forever.”

“He already does love me forever.” She planted a kiss on the dog’s furry forehead. Schwartz felt a tightness in his chest, and tried to convince himself it was just the effect of a big dinner.

“Come on, boy,” he called, and Sherman bounded out. Janelle stepped back as Sherman trotted ahead of them, making his way past the closed storefronts to the little two-story house just a few hundred feet down the street.

“Looks like he knows where he’s going,” Janelle said.

“We’ve been here a time or two.”

Schwartz turned and started after him, grateful when Janelle fell into step beside him. At least she wasn’t walking ten paces ahead of him. That had to be a good sign, right? At least she didn’t hate him.

Maybe that would be easier.

Even if the physical distance between them wasn’t huge, the unseen chasm was pretty fucking massive. He wasn’t the only one putting it there, either. Yeah, he’d been a dick since they left the cabin. He damn sure didn’t deserve to bask in some fucking postcoital glow when that’s exactly what could have gotten them both killed.

But Janelle was keeping her distance, too. They’d sat at the café long enough that the moonshine had mostly worn off, so it wasn’t that. Something was bothering her. He should probably come up with something sensitive and insightful to say, but that was hardly his forte. He decided to wait until they got checked into the room.

By the time he opened the door to their cozy little fireplace suite, it was after nine o’clock. Janelle sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around the room. She hadn’t taken her coat off yet, and Schwartz wondered if he should start a fire.

“It’s cute here,” she said. “Very cozy.”

“Yeah. Not exactly the Ritz-Carlton.”

She met his gaze. “You think I need the Ritz-Carlton?”

“I’m not sure I know what you need.” There. That was an entrée to conversation, wasn’t it?

Janelle pressed her lips together, seeming to consider something. “Tell me something, Schwartz,” she said at last. “When you walked in back at the Elk Horn, I said something to you. Did you hear what it was?”

He thought about lying. Maybe she was looking for an out. She’d had all that moonshine before the three words came tumbling from those perfect pink lips, so maybe she hadn’t meant to say it. Maybe she wanted to pretend the whole thing never happened.

But something in her eyes made it impossible for him to lie. To pretend those words weren’t ringing in his ears even now.

“Yes,” he said. “I heard you.”

“What did I say, Schwartz?”

He hesitated, letting his gaze slide to the edge of the rug where Sherman had curled up into a tight doughnut shape. Then he looked back at Janelle, forcing himself to hold her gaze. “You told me you love me.”

The words floated there between them for a moment, like dust motes he could reach out and grab. “You can take it back if you want,” he added. “Moonshine makes folks say things they don’t mean.”

She shook her head, hair moving against her cheek. “That’s the thing, though—I meant exactly what I said.”

“What?”

“I
do
mean it, Schwartz. I love you. Despite the fact that you’ve been doing your damnedest to be cold and distant and impersonal from the second we left the cabin,
I fucking love you
!”

“You can’t.”

Her sharp bark of laughter made him jump. Sherman pricked his ears, but didn’t move from the rug.

“I
can’t
?” She shook her head, eyeing him in disbelief. “Is that a command, or a declaration of impossibility?”

Schwartz raked his hands through his hair, wanting desperately to reach for her, but knowing that would only make things worse. “You can’t be in love with me. You don’t know me. You don’t know what kind of man I am.”

“Are you kidding me?” She leaped up from the edge of the bed, hands balled into fists at her sides. “I know
exactly
what kind of man you are! You’re the kind of man who rescues a crippled wolf pup. You’re the kind of man who sends flowers for Mother’s Day and gifts to nephews you’ve never met. You’re the kind of man who’ll do anything to protect a woman from drug lords and wildlife and holey condoms. You’re the kind of man any woman in her right fucking mind would fall in love with, even if she does have a track record of making some pretty piss-poor decisions about men.”

Her eyes were blazing now, fists clenched so tight her knuckles were white. Schwartz’s chest ached with the force of her words, with the realization that she really, truly believed them.

But most of all, it ached with the knowledge that he wasn’t the man she thought he was. Not by a long shot.

“I’m also the kind of man who reads a fucking map wrong and leads his entire unit into a death zone,” he said softly. “That’s the kind of man I am.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It was my mistake. My fault those men died over there in Iraq ten years ago. We were supposed to be on a different road entirely. They should have gone home to their goddamn families instead of being blown to pieces out there in the middle of nowhere.”

He’d never spoken the words aloud before, but now that he’d said them, there was no holding them back. No chance of unseeing the look of horror on Janelle’s face.

“Don’t you see?” He raked his hands through his hair again, feeling a zap of static electricity coursing through his fingers. “I didn’t just devastate the lives of those nine men. I devastated their families. I devastated
my
family—a legacy of Patton honor and pride and valor. My one stupid screwup ruined all of that for everyone.”

Tears were slipping silently down Janelle’s cheeks now, and Schwartz realized he wasn’t so far from losing it, too. He turned away, not wanting her to see him. He took a deep breath, then another, trying to regain control.

When he felt her hand on his back, he didn’t turn to face her.

“You are a good man, Schwartz Patton.”

He didn’t say anything, but the words sounded hollow and foreign. Her hand was warm and solid on his back, but he didn’t turn.

“Your character isn’t defined by the mistakes you may or may not have made a decade ago,” she said. “What happened is terrible and sad and tragic, but it’s not the defining moment of your life.”

“It is.”

“What about what Gordy said at the restaurant?” she murmured. “That everyone over there knew what they were getting into and just did the best they could. That some soldiers came home and some didn’t, but all of them were strong and courageous and honorable just for going in the first place.”

“It’s not enough,” Schwartz said, squeezing his eyes closed tight and fighting with every ounce of strength he had not to turn around and take her in his arms.

Her words were so soft he almost missed them. “Or
I’m
not enough?”

“What?”

“That’s what you’re saying. That the possibility of finding love and happiness isn’t worth the pain of finding a way to forgive yourself. And that’s what this comes down to, Schwartz. You need to forgive yourself.”

“No.”

“It’s true. Isn’t ten years long enough to punish yourself?”

He shook his head, but didn’t say anything. Ten
million
years wouldn’t be long enough. Couldn’t she see that?

“You don’t understand. I screwed up again today. When we were in the kitchen?” He swallowed the lump in his throat, willing her to understand. “I’m supposed to be protecting you, and I left my goddamn phone in the bedroom so I could nail you in the kitchen.”

He felt her flinch, but she didn’t take her hand off his back. “We weren’t in any danger,” she whispered.

“We could have been!” Schwartz snapped. “Grant could have been trying to reach me with bad news. To tell me Jacques had figured out our location and was coming after you. My mistake could have gotten us killed.”

“But we were fine.”

“That’s not the point! I let my guard down and put us in danger. Don’t you see?”

“No!” she snapped. “You’re the one who doesn’t see.” She took her hand off his back, and he felt an instant chill as she stepped away from him. “There will always be missed calls and wrong turns and bad mistakes,” she said. “We all make them, Schwartz. All of us. But you still deserve love. A helluva lot of it. And I hope you figure that out someday. I just wish—” Her voice broke a little there, and he felt himself stiffen, waiting for the rest of her sentence.

Dreading the wish he knew he could never grant her.