SEAL Of My Heart (6 page)

The Gremlin seemed to lose most of its power on the last long climb to the top of the knoll where Gretchen’s house stood. When Kenny turned off the ignition, a cloud of smoke burped from the rear, drifting over the top of the vehicle and out into the crisp afternoon air.

The house was just as Kate had remembered from her last visit some three years ago. And true to form, there was a bike thrown onto a hedge by the front door and several bright plastic buckets scattered on the porch. Chalk designs made by little hands decorated the risers of the concrete stairs, holding fast despite the rain. The colorful artwork told the world that the kids were the center of this household.

Tyler turned in his seat as they stopped. “Looks just like my sister’s house. Stuff every—”

He’d stopped himself as a plea formed on his face.

“She does the best she can,” Kate said with a smile. “I admire her. The kids are happy, even though I know it’s tough on her.”

“My sister’s the same,” Tyler nodded. “Except she has a do-nothing ex-husband. But they don’t seem to mind.” He frowned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply your sister…”

“No worries. Sounds like your sister has her priorities straight, like mine does. Except mine doesn’t write smutty books.”

Tyler nodded, got out, and pulled the front seat forward so she could squeeze out of the back. He’d taken her hand and kept holding it while he walked to the rear of the dirty green Gremlin. They stood close again. Tyler pulled her up against his chest.

She wiggled her way out of his attempted embrace and frowned. She’d decided it would be best for her to forget the kiss, and the second kiss, and all the fantasies about what could come next, and the way her body felt. She wrestled herself back to feeling a proper blushing bride, even though the face of the groom in her fantasy was now hazy.

Which bothered her.

She heard a muffled “I’m sorry” at her back as she lifted the hatch and began hauling out her bag. Kenny appeared and brushed her hands away. He struggled, but got the big red suitcase out and walked up the stairs with it, Kate and Tyler following.

At the top, Kenny dusted his palms together and grumbled something as he skipped back down the stairs to his waiting car. Tyler stood right behind Kate.

It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, to turn, which she did, take his hand in hers, and thank him sincerely for the ride. And nothing else. What remained unspoken as they gazed at each other was the longing no doubt they both felt…that chemical attraction formed long before their first kiss. Something had sprouted inside her heart, wanting desperately to grow. Along with that was the ache at knowing she was going to force it to wither.

Because that was the right thing to do. Kate always did the right thing.

“Well,” he said as he turned to the side and stared off at the river. “I hope you have a beautiful wedding and a wonderful life, Kate.” He looked down. His face was in line with hers, and if she wanted to, she could lean forward and their lips would meet, since he was one step below her. “It was very nice to meet you,” he finished.

“Nice to meet you, Tyler. Good luck on your next tour. And thank you. Thank you for doing what you’re doing for all of us. Just know that I for one appreciate it.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Well at least that’s something I can go away with, then.” He looked at the door. “Is your sister home?”

“Five minutes,” Kate said, holding up her phone. “She just texted me.”

“Good. Take care, Kate.”

With that he turned and started down the steps. Kate watched his muscular body descend, and her heart felt like it was being stabbed with a dull pencil. “Tyler,” she blurted, before she even knew what she wanted to say.

He looked up at her, hands on his hips, one foot on the step above the other.

“We could write. I could write you while you’re overseas.”

Tyler examined his shoes again. “We could do that,” he said as his blue eyes swept up to take in her face. “Don’t want to go where I don’t belong though.”

It was a dangerous thing to say, but it was the truth of their situation. Where did he belong in her life? A man whose service she was grateful for. A warrior called to do his duty. An honorable man not willing to encroach on another man’s girl. That made him even more attractive than the moment she’d kissed him. He wasn’t going to complain or try to talk her into anything she wasn’t going to be a full participant in, and she liked him all the more for it.

“I’d like to write you letters. I’d like to hear about what it’s like being over there. Whatever you can share.”

“More like what’s going on here,” he said as he pointed to his chest. “And here,” he pointed to his head.

“Then I’ll take that. Whatever you want to tell me. I’ll listen. We’ll be friends through our letters, Tyler.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said. He got out a notebook he kept in his jacket pocket and scribbled down something, then jogged up the four steps until he was just below Kate again, handing her the paper. “Use this address.”

She took the notebook and his pen, her fingers grazing his. He stood too close, so close that she could feel his body heat and hear the deep, satisfying sound of his breathing while she wrote her address and handed him back the notebook and pen.

“Here’s mine.”

“Good. I’ll write first,” he said. His clear blue eyes searched her face and landed on her mouth again. She thought he was going to cover her lips with his, but he leaned in, angled, and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. “Bye, Kate.”

He didn’t look back at her as he rounded the Gremlin. Kenny waved to her, and she waved back. But Tyler got in the passenger seat and didn’t turn in her direction as the little green monster sputtered off down the wet blacktop.

Like one of the little monsters glued to Kenny’s dash, a tiny piece of her heart was embedded there, staring at Tyler’s face, begging him to turn around and come back.

But it was not to be.

‡

K
enny shut off
the music, which was the first sign, and gave him one of those
what-the-fuck-were-you-thinkin’
looks, just like when they were in community college. It usually involved a girl, but it was the same look he’d given Tyler when he announced he was going into the Navy and the SEAL brotherhood was going to be his career path. And it closely approximated the look his mother had given him later that day when he told her he’d already enlisted and was shipping out the next week.

“So, Tyler, I gotta ask you. Are we coming or going, here?”

It was a very good question and deserved an honest answer.

“I have no idea, but one of the two of them. Not going to stay the same, that’s for sure,” Tyler found himself mumbling.

“Well, all I gotta say is wow. She’s a looker.”

That lightened his heart. He grinned. Yup, she certainly was that. He knew he’d be thinking about her all night long. He wasn’t too displeased either. He thought about her long legs and smooth skin, silky brown hair that felt wonderful spilling between his fingers when he’d held her head as they kissed. He even loved the way she sighed and how she shook. Everything she did was a major fuckin’ turn-on. Just watching her trying to pick up her red suitcase had been fun, even though Kenny had tried to save her from it. She was
just fine
. That was all there was to it.

And she was going to be okay with writing each other, so he wouldn’t have to bury her memory. Now that was something he could do. She didn’t know he’d won that poetry contest in high school. The star soccer player who could write love poems. Half the girls asked him out after that one little stint. Nope, didn’t mind it much then, and he certainly didn’t mind it now.

Then he had the fleeting thought that perhaps she’d given him a fake address. Nah, he didn’t think so. That’s how he read her character. He could hardly wait. In fact, perhaps he’d work on the first letter tonight. He could post it and perhaps even get a response before he left, if she wrote him right back. That would be a very good sign, right?

The clicking of Kenny’s thumb and first two fingers in front of his eyes brought him back to the reality of Kenny’s Gremlin. The red Yoda figurine on the dash seemed to be grinning right at him. The hula girl vied for his attention. The yellow dinosaur with the tiger stripes stopped chomping on the green plastic tree branch and stared him down. They were all asking about his next move.

“What’s it gonna be, Tyler?” they cheered.

He scanned the audience before him on the dash.
None of your fuckin’ business, guys,
he told them mentally. All he heard back was laughter.

“You okay, Ty? I mean, you are
way
more distracted than I’m used to. Like, you’re usually ready for World War III, which means I don’t have to worry about it. But today, you’d probably walk into a fuckin’ Afghani tank and hit your head before you woke up. You can
wake up
, can’t you?”

“So I’m thinking about that woman, Kenny. No harm in that.”

Kenny nodded. “No. No harm in that. As long as you don’t step out in traffic or forget you’re driving or something.”

Yeah. Thinking about her was kind of addictive. Made him want to take a nap and dream about her. He needed to be alone with his private thoughts about her. Kenny must have realized he was going there and nothing would disturb his daydreams, because eventually his friend’s incessant banter petered out. When the green monster car pulled up to Tyler’s mother’s salmon-pink-with-turquoise-trim two-story shingled home, he realized he’d been stuck thinking about what she felt like while she shivered against his chest there in the donut shop.

His mom ran out the front door to greet him, her hands buried in a paint-smeared towel. Her lined face was still beautiful, and her long grey hair hadn’t been cut in twenty years. She’d just taken it out of the clip she usually wore when she was painting.

“Oh, sweetie. Thank God you’re home.” She engulfed him in one of those mom hugs that had smothered him and made him sneeze when he was five or six. He felt how slight she’d become, and for the first time felt, as well as saw, her age.

“You’re getting too skinny, Mom,” he whispered into her hair.

“Oh stop it, Ty. You know your dad likes me at my dance weight. And you’ll see every pound I’ve lost has gone right to his waistline.”

Nope, Tyler thought, that would be your blackberry cobblers and homemade vanilla ice cream.

“Hey, Kenny,” she said as she rubbed her fingers through Kenny’s hair like she was rubbing a charcoal stain from one of her sketches. “How are the folks?”

Tyler and Kenny’s parents had tried to be friends since the boys were in grammar school, but it never took.

Kenny shrugged. “Fighting like cats and dogs, making up like rabbits.”

Tyler saw his mom’s eyes sparkle. “Well, at least they make up.”

“I think it’s why they fight,” Kenny quipped.

She hugged Kenny as he said his goodbyes and they made a plan to get together the next day for coffee. The Gremlin took off down the hill in a belch of smoke like its namesake.

Tyler put his arm around his mom and pulled his wheeling duffel along with the other hand. They walked across the old creaking porch to the front door and into the “cave of bright and light” as he’d once described it to a couple of his friends.

Funny how he thought about that just now. One time during the BUD/S training he’d been between Jones on one side and Rory on the other, locked arm in arm. The three amigos all graduated in a class that had been another near-washout. They were lying in the surf on the beach in San Diego, their clothes on, including their combat boots, wet and cold as hell. Shivering and talking about stuff just to stay awake, because sure as shit the water wasn’t doing it for them after only ten minutes of sleep in the last three days of training. Someone had started to snore and he and the guys on either side of him had to run five miles while the others lay back and got wet and sandy.

They’d contemplated pretending to fall asleep, because then at least they could get warm during the run. But a five-mile run at midnight, completely soaked through, with the boots? And besides, the spot between his legs where his wetsuit had chafed would hurt even more. If he took off his clothes—and it would be a full forty-eight hours before he would be able to lose the clothes and take a hot shower—he’d known he’d see blisters the size of his fist, probably good and bloody too.

So they talked about stuff just to keep each other awake. He described his mother’s house in great detail, with all the huge, colorful, abstract paintings, the way the rain pattered against the stained glass windows his folks had bought from some abbey in France on their honeymoon, the smells of strong coffee and sounds of Joni Mitchell in the background, brightening everything, including his soul…that’s what he talked about. The guys gave him hell for the Joni Mitchell comment, which was well-deserved. He couldn’t understand her much or the words, but he liked her tone and spirit. And the guys hadn’t believed a word of that either.

He’d have to say his mother was a nester. The opposite of Tyler’s simple life with a definite lack of things to clutter it up. He liked her color and her free spirit, her warmth. It reminded him, every time he walked through the door of this battered eclectic home, why he did what he did. He was fighting to protect this for all the people like his mother, and for Kenny and his donut love, and all the other people who didn’t have to know about the evils out there and the things he and his Team had to do. And because they were so removed from his arena, he hoped they never thought about it either. That was the way it was supposed to be. Make it so safe, people never had to worry about the safety of their ordinary lives.