The Officer Says "I Do" (19 page)

Silence.

He jogged up the stairs calling her name. Then he had a thought and peeked through the window at the top landing to the street. Her car was gone. How had he missed that when he first pulled up? Must have been on autopilot, too intent on getting inside to notice.

But even as he started back down the stairs, he heard a car pull up. He opened the front door just in time to see Skye struggling with a handful of massive shopping bags.

“Good timing.” She thrust one handful at him and waddled around until she could drop the lot in a pile next to the couch, then sank down to the cushions herself.

“Busy day?”

“Whew. Shopping has never been so difficult,” she said with exaggerated exhaustion.

Tim surveyed the haul. “Did you leave anything for the rest of the city?”

“A few things. The very ugly things. Including a lovely brown sweater that will go well with a cat,” she said with a laugh. “Madison says hi, by the way.”

“Oh.” That was new. He’d never had any of his previous girlfriends spend quality time with his sister before. “So she was your partner in crime for the shopping spree. She didn’t encourage you to wipe us out, did she?”

“Nope. It only cost me a giant ice cream cone as payment. She wasn’t too excited to be dragged out after her shift, but I wanted to beat you home.” She blew out a breath, shifting a curl that draped over her cheek. “Not that it worked out. Come help me drag these upstairs?” She pushed herself up with a delicate grunt and headed for the stairs.

“Yeah. Sure.” As he followed Skye up, he made the split-second decision to ask, “Do you want to go out tonight for dinner?”

Skye paused at the top and shot him a grateful smile. “Bless you, child. Yes. The thought of having someone else cook for my tired butt is vastly appealing. I can try on a new outfit too,” she mused as she headed for the bedroom.

Tim wondered if any of the sacks contained something sexy for her to wear later that night. Maybe lace, sheer, even completely transparent… The thought had him hard in an instant, and he shook it away the best he could. Now wasn’t the time.

Or was it?

Skye dropped the sacks on the bed—the made up bed, surprisingly—and stripped her tank off in one smooth motion. The creamy skin of her belly had his muscles tightening, coiled, and ready to pounce. He started to reach out for her. But she barely even registered his presence as she dug into one sack, then another, looking for something. She glanced up and asked, “You’re not wearing that, obviously. Change.”

He looked down at his cammies and boots and laughed at himself. He hadn’t even taken the time to change after he got home. Too blown away by the state of cleanliness.

Rifling through one of the drawers he wondered what plethora of colorful concoctions Skye had come home with this time. What sunburst of design would she grace the world with that evening?

“Where did all your stuff go that was on the fireplace mantel?” he asked as he folded his uniform. “The incense and the statues.”

“Oh, I put them in the guest room for now. I promised Beth I’d host the spouse coffee on Saturday for her. I should have asked you first, but she absolutely panicked so I just said yes. And I figured I would put that stuff away for now. After Saturday I can put it back out.”

The plan made sense. Though he wasn’t pleased with her feeling like she had to hide the stuff. But maybe it was just easier to host with less things around. He turned to ask her but stopped with his mouth open.

Skye stood with her back to him, fiddling with something in another bag. She wore a lightweight sweater in pale green, the sleeves hitting just below her elbows. A pair of crisp khakis elongated the line of her legs. And on her feet were a pair of simple flat shoes in the same color as her pants.

She glanced up at him as she fixed an earring. A tiny earring that he could barely see across the room. A very un-Skye-like earring.

The dazzling smile she sent him took his breath away. “Do you like?” She spun around with her arms out, showing off the conservative outfit.

The slacks showed off how long her legs were, the sweater skimmed the top of her breasts, the color was nice against her mahogany hair.

But, much like the ever-dreaded question of
does
this
make
me
look
fat?
there was no right answer here.

“It’s nice.” And it was. It just wasn’t Skye. It wasn’t the woman he had grown accustomed to. The wife he’d come to desire. It was like a peacock covering its plumage. “Is there more in the bags?”

“Oh, yeah. Took me forever to decide. But I figured I could splurge a little bit.”

Skye’s idea of a splurge was to tone down her look? Huh. Women truly were an odd species. “Ready for dinner?”

She smiled so brightly he knew he would rather cut off his arm than admit he wished she changed back. So he held out his hand and took his wife to dinner.

***

“Hello?”

“Tim. Man. Why the hell do you sound so tired?”

He checked his bedside clock. O-fucking-two-hundred on a Thursday night. No, Friday morning. Either way, he had work the next day. “Because it’s the middle of the night, dipshit. I’m sleeping. This better be important. Like,
near-death or profusely bleeding
important.”

Dwayne chuckled. “Never used to need so much sleep, old man.”

Beside him, Skye shifted. Her soft breasts pressed into his back as her arm slid around his waist. “Never really had much of a reason to head to bed early before, did I?”

Skye’s arm tightened in silent response.

“Point taken. Sorry, totally forgot you weren’t alone, or I would have waited. Just wanted to tell you that I finally got the call.”

Tim sat up, sorry for disturbing Skye… but still. He needed to be upright. “When?”

Dwayne understood the question wasn’t when he got the call, but when he’d leave. “Seventy-two hours. Well, that was a few hours ago. So about sixty-six now.”

Leave it to D to joke about a deployment. “You, me, and Jer. Tomorrow night. I have to be out of the house anyway.”

“Right. Last guys’ night.” Dwayne blew out a breath. “Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Tim hung up the phone, then stared into the darkness for another minute.

That was his deployment. His missed opportunity. Though not always fun, deployments and extended training missions were how he honed his skills. It’s what the practice was for. He’d been resentful before about being left behind. Jealous about the things, the experiences, he would lose out on. Work was his number one. His driving force. Anything necessary to climb the next step.

“You okay?” Skye’s voice was soft in the night, as if she didn’t want to bother him. With a gentle touch, she rubbed slow circles on his back.

Hearing her, feeling the warmth of her body next to his, knowing it would be there again tomorrow night, and the night after… he couldn’t quite force himself to feel bad about staying back. Not now. Now when he had things to accomplish at home.

There was a new number one goal. Family.

“Yeah. I’m great.”

Skye sank down on the couch and ran a hand over her completely frizzed hair. Defeated. She was completely defeated… by an appliance. How pathetic. The thick, choking smoke from the last batch of ruined cookies still filled the air, despite having opened all the downstairs windows and fanning the air with a clean cookie sheet. The only clean sheet left.

On the upside, she now knew how to turn off the smoke detector.

This should not be so hard. Women made cookies from scratch every day. Hell,
children
made cookies. How could someone with a college education who had worked in restaurants since she was eighteen not be able to make a freaking cookie? This wasn’t rocket science.

She sat back and brushed hair out of her face, then picked up the discarded hair clip and pinned her frizzed out curls up, fighting back tears.

The outfit she’d put on was already wet with perspiration, thanks to standing in the hot-as-Hades kitchen all day. The house wasn’t even remotely clean yet. She’d burned or ruined every batch of treats so far. And her own stubborn self hadn’t bothered to buy pre-made food since she was determined to get it right from scratch. Because, hey, anybody can read directions and follow them, right? But Betty Crocker, she was not. More like Betty Full of Crock. If there was time to run to the store and still get everything finished that she needed to, she would have.

This coffee was turning into an utter disaster, and it was still two hours before showtime. At this point, all she had to offer the ladies was, literally, coffee.

Skye eyed her cell with renewed hope, wondering if she could beg Tim to buy some cookies and bring them back so she could finish cleaning before the women arrived. Somehow, that felt like cheating.

Visions of a dozen women standing in her living room nibbling on black cookies and grimacing filled her mind.

Oh, to hell with cheating. She picked up the phone and called his cell, only to reach voice mail.

Skye was debating whether it was better to have food, but a disgusting kitchen, or a squeaky-clean kitchen and no food when the front door opened.

“What the hell is—is that smoke? Skye! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m on the couch.” Why was her husband home? She’d banished him hours ago to Dwayne’s apartment—who was set to leave the next day—to have a guys’ night.

“Did something burn? Was there a fire?” He rounded the corner at a jog and spotted her on the couch, stopping in his tracks when there were no flames to battle or damsels to save.

“Oh. Something burned. Repeatedly.” Admitting failure was not one of her best qualities, but she sucked it up in the name of the coffee. “Tim, could you run out and grab a few dozen cookies? I seem to have ruined every batch I made… along with a few cookie sheets.”

“Hmm. I wondered how this would go when you said you don’t bake very much but insisted to do it all from scratch. I’ll be right back.” He turned around and left.

Yeah. She didn’t bake. It was the twenty-first century, for the love of feminism. Prepackaged food and supermarkets existed for a reason. Betty Crocker was a masochist.

It occurred to her she hadn’t told him what kind of cookies to get, but at this point it didn’t matter. Having something—anything—edible was better than an empty table and smoky air to breathe.

Tim came back two minutes later holding two bags. He let one bag drop gently into her lap, the sound of crunching plastic piquing her curiosity. She looked in and found what appeared to be several containers of fresh-baked cookies from a local bakery.

She snuck a look at him out the corner of her eye. “You don’t by any chance have little elves that live in your car and make baked goodies all day, do you? ’Cause I thought they lived in trees in the woods and only came out to make commercials.”

Tim shrugged. “I figured they’d be good for the guys and me to gorge on tonight. And in the event that you needed some backup,” he added with a kiss on the top of her head, “as even the best of chefs do, they would come in handy. Just arrange them on a plate and say they’re a family specialty. My mom pulled this trick once or twice when she ran out of time and had unexpected guests. That’s where I got the idea.”

“This is great. Thank you.” She fought back grateful tears and gave him a rueful smile. “But what do I do with the smell? The worst of the smoke will die down soon, of course, but it might linger.”

“Ah. Now this one, I’m taking credit for.” He handed her the other bag, much heavier than the first. She reached in and pulled out two candles.

“Cookie-scented candles?” she asked with a laugh.

“Yup. I’ll bring the fans down here, get some of the smoke moving out, and then light those suckers about an hour before people get here.” He looked pleased with himself, as well he should be.

Skye set everything on the table and stood up, launching herself into his arms. He caught her, like she knew he would, and squeezed tight.

“Thank you,” she murmured into his neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Anytime,” he replied, and she burst into tears.

“Hey, hey. What’s this?” Scooting to the couch, he pulled her down into his lap. One hand smoothed her hair while the other rubbed up and down her arm.

“I just… I can’t… and I couldn’t… and I hate it… stupid cookies!” she wailed.

Tim chuckled, the sound a rumble in his chest. “I’m going to pretend I understood that. It’s okay. We all need some help every so often.” He rocked her a little, the gentle nonsense murmurs he whispered going a long way to calming her down.

Skye gave a watery laugh. “I can’t believe how worked up I got over cookies.”

“It happens.” Tim pressed a kiss to her temple. “You just got too fixated on one thing and let it consume you. Step back and do the big picture thing for a while. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m not a perfect hostess.”

“No. But you’re a perfect Skye. And people like you, they enjoy being around you. So just let it go. Put out the cookies, light the candles, and try to have fun. Everyone else will follow your lead. And if they don’t, then they don’t know what they’re missing.”

“You’re good for my ego, Timothy O’Shay.” She tilted her face up for a sweet kiss.

“You’re good for me, Skye McDermott.”

The words warmed her from the inside and lodged a not-so-small lump in her throat. Standing, she made a good show of straightening the outfit she would have to change out of anyway and cleared her throat. “You should go. Jeremy and Dwayne must be waiting for you.”

He gave her an assessing glance but said nothing as he stood and walked to the door. “Call me if you need anything else. I’ll be here for you.”

“Yes, you would,” Skye whispered as Tim shut the door. “That’s what you do.”

***

“So how goes the marital bliss?” Jeremy asked as Tim sat down in the recliner.

“Great. Fantastic. Couldn’t be happier.” Tim shot him a
shut
the
hell
up
look and took the beer Dwayne passed him. “You might try it sometime.”

Jeremy scoffed. “Being married?”

“Being happy,” Tim shot back. “You’ve been moping like a girl dumped the day before prom for weeks now. What the hell is your problem these days?”

“How about you mind your own problems?” Jeremy growled.

“Ladies, ladies. How about you both shut the fuck up?” Dwayne paused the movie. “Not to be all
look
at
me
here, but damn. We’re supposed to be having a last guys’ night before I take off. Can you just stop bitching at each other? Save it for when I’m gone.” His speech concluded, he hit play.

There was silence for a moment while they watched Optimus Prime and Megatron battle.

“Where’s the food?” Jeremy asked finally.

“I had a small delay at home,” Tim said. “So I asked Madison to bring it over in exchange for some handyman work around her place and a few slices of pizza.”

“Good idea. Let her stay for a bit,” Dwayne said. “I’ll miss the rugrat, and with her work schedule I don’t know if I’ll get to say good-bye again.”

“It’s guys’ night.” Jeremy shifted in his seat and scowled.

“Dude. It’s just Madison. I’m not inviting a harem up here.” Dwayne gave him a quizzical look.

Jeremy grumbled about the sacred theory of male bonding and how women were the ruin of all things good. But the moment the doorbell rang, he jumped up. “I’ll go get it.”

Tim settled further back in his armchair. “What crawled up his ass and died?”

Dwayne shook his head. “It’s Jeremy. You know he broods sometimes. He gets all… introverted and shit. Dude spends too much time in his own head.” D used air quotes around the word
introverted
and grinned.

“I know he broods, but damn.” He waited to hear Madison’s voice coming down the hall but heard nothing. “Must not have been the squirt. Our ears would be bleeding by now with all her chatter.”

“Might be the hot piece across the hall. I caught a glimpse of her earlier,” Dwayne said with a smile.

“You leave in a day,” Tim reminded him.

“Always good to remember there are things worth fighting for.”

***

“Delivery, fresh from the ov—oh. Jeremy.” Madison lowered the pizza boxes, the smile sliding off her face. With his body rigid and his face an impassive mask, Jeremy was giving off the most intense
Leave. Now.
vibe she’d ever felt. Definitely not happy to see her. And here she thought that the promise of food might at least make him crack a smile.

“Tim says thanks and he owes you one.” Jeremy held his hands out, his body blocking the door.

She glanced around, but there was no way to get through the door without him moving. And he definitely wouldn’t budge. The message was clear… she wasn’t welcome inside. But why? “Is that all Tim wanted to tell me?”

“Yup. Hand ’em over. Do we owe you cash?”

Madison narrowed her eyes. “So if I yell for Tim to come out here, he’ll tell me thanks for the pizzas, now beat it?”

“All said with brotherly love, I’m sure.”

Madison bent over to set the pizzas down and took a deep breath. But she didn’t even get the first part of a squeak out before Jeremy’s hand clamped over her mouth. He whirled her around until her back hit the outside wall of the apartment by the door.

“Well, this is a new spin on an old dance,” she mumbled into his hand.

“Madison. I’m asking you to go.” His eyes were fierce, his body tight and ready for a fight.

She reached up with both hands and gently tugged his hand away. It fell without resisting. “Why, Jeremy?” When he said nothing, she added, “Tell me why, and I’ll go.”

“Because I can’t be around you. Not right now.”

Madison watched his lips thin into a straight line, his jaw clench in stubborn determination. God, why did he always shut her out? Why?

“It was a kiss. We’re adults; we can forget it happened,” she said softly.

“Can we?”

No. She couldn’t. Madison had been waiting almost ten years to know what kissing Jeremy would feel like. And the moment she got a taste, he ripped it away from her. But if it took playing it cool to be near him, even a little bit, she could act the part. “Yeah. Sure. No biggie. People kiss, they move on.”

She patted his cheek in a smartass gesture, but his hand snatched hers before she could take it away. He pressed her palm to his skin. His eyes closed, as if he was creating a memory file of the moment to store away and take out later when he had more time to linger.

“Jeremy,” she whispered.

He leaned in, body brushing hers, lips a breath apart when he snapped back. Snapped out of reach. Physically and emotionally.

The wall was back up. His eyes were blank, as if desire hadn’t just been there. As if he wasn’t fighting the same demons she was.

“Thanks for the pizza. I’ll tell Tim you had things to do.” He picked up the boxes and stood by the door.

She’d been dismissed. Wrapping as much dignity as she could around her like a suit of armor, she walked down the building stairs without saying good-bye.

He didn’t deserve anything from her.

***

Skye opened the door, smile plastered on her face, ready to greet the next woman who would walk through and join the coffee. The smile froze when she saw the CO’s wife, Patricia Blackwater, standing on her porch holding a platter of what looked like brownies.

“Mrs. O’Shay.” She nodded once.

“Mrs. Blackwater, hi. I didn’t realize you would be coming.” Skye stepped aside and let her through the doorway, grabbing the platter as the older woman thrust it toward her. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

Did that sound sincere? Well, it was her best effort, so here’s hoping.

Mrs. Blackwater stood in the entryway, not-so-subtly observing—and judging—the home. “It’s nice, for a townhouse, Mrs. O’Shay.”

“Please, call me Skye. Tha—”

“I prefer more space, naturally. Townhouses always just feel so… incomplete. Does that make sense?” And with that, the woman brushed past Skye and farther into the home.

“Gee, thanks for the treats. Please, join us in the living room,” Skye muttered after the woman was out of earshot. Then she steeled herself against any negativity. It could only hurt the cause to get bitchy at this point. She had followed Beth’s instructions to a tee, so there should be nothing to worry about.

At least now, thanks to Tim and his lifesaving cookies.

Skye followed Mrs. Blackwater into the living room to see that the social temperature had dropped about fifteen degrees. Where women had been laughing and chatting before, completely comfortable and making Skye relax with a feeling of accomplishment, the older woman’s presence suddenly changed the tempo. People’s conversations were quieter, or nonexistent. A few shifted uncomfortably in their seats, like they were mentally looking for an excuse to leave the room.

Skye was pretty sure that the discomfort had nothing to do with Mrs. Blackwater being the CO’s wife and everything to do with Mrs. Blackwater just being herself, period.

“Ladies, gather around,” Patricia called, clapping her hands together briskly like she was getting the attention of a group of ADHD kindergarteners. She took the large armchair for herself, like a queen sitting on her rightful throne. She sat down on the edge, with as little of her body actually touching the seat as possible. Then she pulled out a thick binder and a pen and waited, an annoyed, expectant look on her face. Women slowly sat down on the couch and in the folding chairs and kitchen chairs placed around the room. A few even sat on the floor.