Thunder Running (4 page)

Her morning hadn't been quite as productive as she'd hoped. After staring blankly into the refrigerator and failing to puzzle the contents into a viable recipe, she decided to drive to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for the one meal her grandmother taught her to make way back when she was young—meatloaf. Only by the time she drove the twenty minutes into Meridian, spent another twenty finding what she needed and made the journey back did she realized it was already too late to peel, boil and mash the potatoes she'd bought as a side dish. Deciding to steam some of the vegetables in the fridge instead, she searched for
30-minute meatloaf
on the Internet and started chopping an onion.

When she finally slid the misshapen, lumpy loaf into the oven it was noon, the kitchen looked like a bombsite, she had egg in her hair and she'd vowed never to cook anything ever again. She stepped out of the shower just in time to see Chance's text that he was on his way, and she scrambled into her clothes and wrapped a towel around her head while she searched his house for a hairdryer.

“Not that a soldier with a crew cut is likely to need one,” she muttered, yanking open drawer after drawer in his bedroom dresser, rifling through the socks and T-shirts she found inside and then slamming them shut.

She sprinted back to the spare room, belatedly thinking to check the small drawer in what looked like a discarded bedside table. She pulled it out to find a pile of envelopes and folded pieces of paper, and exhaled in frustration. The force with which she shoved the drawer back into place disturbed the pile, and in the second before it closed she caught sight of what looked like a photograph of a woman. She tugged on the handle and scooped up the contents, briefly examining the smiling blonde in the photo before checking the date on the postmark.

Two weeks ago.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, slipped two pieces of notebook paper from the topmost envelope and unfolded them. The handwriting was bubbly, the lines punctuated with hearts and smiley faces.

By the third letter, Tara was gripping the paper so hard she left thumbprints.

And the whole time I was dancing with him I was dreaming it was you, my brave soldier, proudly serving our country and protecting our freedom—

“Tara? You home?”

At the sound of Chance's voice she bolted up from her seat, two years' worth of letters clutched messily in her fist.

She'd suspected he might be a lot of awful things—a gambling addict, an alcoholic, an incurable commitment-phobe—but she'd never guessed Chance was the two-timing type. She'd known so many of them and he seemed so different, but she supposed life had a way of keeping you in check, making sure you were wrong every once in a while. She just wished she could've been wrong about something else.

She stomped to the top of the stairs and froze. His broad smile, the slightly crushed bouquet in his hand, the incredible cut of his body in those ACUs nearly melted her fury into anguish.

Then he opened his big, dumb mouth.

“Is something burning?”

“You bet it is, you cheating sack of shit,” she hissed, racing to the bottom of the stairs and flapping the letters in his face. “Did you really think I wouldn't find out about your little piece on the side? Then again, since she's been writing you love letters for years, maybe
I'm
the other woman, huh? Is our marriage even legal, Chance? Have you got another license from another state tucked in with these letters? What are you, a freaky bigamist?”

She could hear the hysteria rising in her voice but couldn't stop it, couldn't seem to do anything except step closer and closer until his back was against the door, his hands were on her upper arms and the flowers were forgotten on the floor. Too late she realized she still had a towel wrapped turban-like around her head, too late she wondered whether she should've read all the letters before reacting, too late she saw the warmth drain from Chance's expression until he stared at her like she was a crazy woman accosting him on the street.

Too late. Way too late.

“Slow down. What love letters? What are you talking about?”

“These.” She thrust them against his chest and spun away, leaving him hustling to keep the papers from scattering across the floor. “Two years of love and devotion from Jessica in McCordsville, Indiana. Or have you forgotten about her already?”

He frowned, tilted his head, and then—to her utter indignation—he rocked back on his heels and laughed.

She crossed her arms tightly across her chest. “What's so funny?”

He laughed even harder, angling down to prop one hand on his thigh. She scowled, really wishing she'd remembered to take the towel off her head.

“I'm glad all this two-timing amuses you,” she managed around gritted teeth. “Because I'm fixing to walk out that door and never look back if I don't get an explanation in the next thirty seconds.”

“You got the wrong end of the stick, sugar.” He straightened, still grinning as he held up the bunched envelopes. “Jessica's in high school. She's sixteen years old.”

“You pervert,” Tara gasped, sending him into another fit of laughter.

“Go on and untwist yourself, don't look so cross,” he cajoled. “Jessica and I have never met, and we never will. She started writing to me years ago when her church youth group signed up to the Adopt-a-Soldier Program. She pulled my name out of a hat, that's all.”

“But those are love letters, Chance. She says so herself, they're all full of dreams and handsome this and brave that and fighting for our country, blah blah vomit.” She rolled her eyes.

“Girl's a romantic. She's homeschooled, and I think her parents are serious lockdown religious types. I haven't replied to her in months, but she keeps writing. Maybe I should've stopped it, but the content is pretty wholesome and I haven't encouraged her. It seems like an outlet she enjoys and she's not bothering me, so I left it.”

“Why should I believe you?” she asked, but the words had no bite. She already knew the answer.

“You're welcome to read every last one if it'll reassure you. They're the innocent fantasies of a sheltered teenage girl, written to a fairy-tale soldier prince she's dreaming will turn up on her doorstep and whisk her away from her overbearing parents. I'm just his stand-in. She's never even seen my picture—she wouldn't know me if she fell over me in the street.”

“Oh.” Sheepishness froze her in place, her elbows pinned tight to her sides. She glanced at the discarded bouquet with a deep pang of regret. “I probably should've guessed she hadn't met you. No one who had would write sappy stuff like she does.”

His lopsided smile was full of forgiveness she didn't deserve. “Guess I shouldn't expect any lovey-dovey letters from my wife when I deploy next month, huh?”

“How about I cross out Jessica's signature and write my name underneath?”

“Topless photos would be better. No writing necessary.”

Her breath caught in her throat. That was the most overt reference either of them had made to the ferocious sexual attraction that had pulled them together and held them there when they first met, and it punctured the uncomfortably polite wall standing between them.

It was only a bullet-size hole—not a window, or even the jagged opening left by a fist—but it was enough to let a little light shine through.

For the first time all day, Tara smiled.

Chance scooped up the bedraggled bouquet and handed it to her. “Feels kind of obvious to say these are for you, since you've probably guessed I'm not in the habit of buying myself flowers.”

“I figured. But thank you, they're beautiful.” And they were, all yellow and orange blossoms and dark green leaves. She thought some of them might be marigolds—she knew zilch about flowers. After running the pad of her thumb across a couple of silky petals she leaned in to sniff them, but came up frowning.

“Do these smell kind of…burnt?”

“I think that's coming from the kitchen.”

She smacked her palm against her forehead, then pivoted so fast her bare feet squeaked on the floorboards. “The damn meatloaf's burning.”

“It can't be that bad.” Chance was on her heels as she hurried into the kitchen. “The smoke alarm hasn't gone off.”

“I took the batteries out.”

“Uh, why?”

“Call it a hunch.”

She dumped the flowers on the kitchen table and wrenched open the oven, unleashing a billowing cloud of smoke. Immediately her throat itched and her eyes burned and she instinctively jerked backward, slamming against the hard wall of Chance's chest. He wrapped one arm around her waist and stretched the other to shut the oven door, then turn off the thermostat.

He felt solid and still against the spluttering, wheezing coughs juddering through her ribs, his touch both comfortingly familiar and exhilaratingly new. He turned her to face him and put his hands on her cheeks, his grassy green eyes fixed on hers.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded, the hint of detachment in his tone reminding her that he was a medic. These palms against her face, so dry and warm, were his clinical tools, nothing more. She'd do well to remember that.

“I'm fine, unless you have a different diagnosis.”

“Minor smoke inhalation, no burns. I declare you fit to return to duty.” He dropped his hands and indicated the oven. “What was that, anyway?”

“Meatloaf.”

“For lunch?”

“Maybe it was a little ambitious.”

He smiled down at her, his eyes bright with amusement. “Hamburgers are known to do wonders for smoke inhalation. Especially when obtained from a drive-through window.”

“Is that how combat medicine works? The healing power of fast food?”

“It's in the manual.”

She turned to cast a final, forlorn look at her charred meatloaf but he grabbed her arm, then slid his hand down until his fingers interlocked with hers. She looked up at him with wide eyes, and if her heart hadn't floated right up into her throat it probably would've been beating double-time.

Kiss me, goddammit. Put your head down here and kiss me like I know you can. Like I know you want to.

Instead he squeezed her hand once, gently, and dropped it. “Don't worry about all that, we'll clean it up tonight. Let's go grab some burgers before I have to get back to work. How does that sound?”

She brushed away one of the wet locks of hair that had escaped the towel in her dash to the kitchen. She wanted his lunch hour to end in rumpled sheets and bare skin, not ketchup packets and a grease-stained paper bag. Instead she'd flipped out over some stupid letters and left all that effort and grocery money to char in the oven.

Goddamn, she pissed herself off sometimes.

She managed a weak smile. “Perfect,” she lied.

Chapter Four

“You sure you're going to be warm enough?”

“I've got thick skin.”

Chance kept the flashlight trained on the ground ahead of them, but he had to smile at Tara's assertion. He didn't believe it for a second.

“Credit goes to my daddy for blowing the electricity money on whiskey. No better way to learn how to withstand low temperatures in skimpy outfits. Spending your high-school years living in an unheated trailer is such an important part of girlhood.”

“Man's got to have priorities.” He climbed atop the wooden pasture fence, extended his arm to tug her over, then slid down behind her.

“I think he figured radiators and liquor had the same warming effect, only one was better at helping him sleep. What does your mama drink?”

“Depends on who's buying. If a man's hitting on her at the bar she'll order something she thinks is classy, like a glass of chardonnay. But if she's on her own at the store it's bottom-shelf gin every time.”

“Guess we're both lucky we're just garden-variety fuckups as opposed to the raging alcoholic kind.” She frowned at the long prairie grass, needlessly lifting the hem of her already short skirt. “Here I was worried about needing thicker tights, but I reckon a snakebite's a bigger threat than hypothermia.”

“I'm not sure Kansas is known for its abundance of poisonous snakes. It's not much farther now. See that barn over there? Bonfire should be just the other side of it.”

Sure enough, after another couple of steps the glow of firelight reflected on the sagging wooden structure. His pulse quickened as a chilly breeze carried the sound of laughter. He hoped he was doing the right thing.

The end of the week had seen his relationship with Tara progress from the stiff politeness of an unfamiliar houseguest to the tentative camaraderie of two friends reconnecting after years apart. It was a step in the right direction, but it was still worlds away from a marriage, especially one about to be tested by a six-month deployment.

Now that he'd admitted to himself that she was way more than a one-night stand, he hoped bringing Tara to this party might accelerate things between them. The host was one of his civilian buddies, the only local mechanic he trusted to touch the Challenger, but there would be a few soldiers in attendance too. His plan was to start introducing Tara to a network of people she could lean on while he was away, show her there was more to him than wild nights and fast cars, pray it was enough for her to wait for until he got back. As the number of days before deployment ticked lower, the stakes felt higher and higher, and he hoped presenting themselves as married in public might help them act that way in private.

Not that he'd contributed much on that front, he thought ruefully, recalling the previous night's conversation in which he'd insisted she take the bed since the next day was Saturday and he didn't have to work. He could've sworn he saw a flash of disappointment in Tara's face before she recovered her default expression of slightly defiant indifference, then convinced himself he'd imagined it. After all, he didn't want to make the first move and suffer her rejection. Better to let her dictate the tempo.

Bullshit
, a voice accused in his mind.
She put in all the effort to find you, to turn up out of the blue and pray you didn't slam the door in her face. You're not afraid of offending her—you're afraid you won't measure up to her rose-tinted memories.

“You've gone awful quiet over there. Thinking deep thoughts?” Tara peered at him through the darkness.

“Just wondering if we should've brought a second bottle of tequila. It sounds like there are a lot of people here.”

“You were planning on sharing that? I figured it was just for us, and even then it seemed a little stingy.”

He caught the teasingly sulky note in her voice and grinned. “I'm driving home so you can have the whole bottle to yourself, how about that?”

“Sounds like a quiet night at the library, but I'll take it.”

They were rounding the barn, and as a handful of people standing on the periphery of the party came into view Chance slung his arm across Tara's shoulders, pulling her into his side on an impulse borne of unexpected pride.

He hadn't used the word
girlfriend
in relation to a woman he was sleeping with since high school. Just the idea of that much emotional attachment and the weight of another person's expectations was enough to make him restless and uncomfortable. He knew he was one of those guys women hated, who say all the right things and flatter and charm and then disappear, ignoring calls, deleting texts. He hated himself for it, but that didn't stop the fidgety, prickly itch that spread through him whenever anything in his life started going well. One minute he'd be smiling as he drove to a woman's house, looking forward to spending the evening with her, and the next he was frantically U-turning, gravel flinging up from the back wheels as he floored the accelerator, desperate to escape the panicked sensation of entrapment closing in.

One by one he'd left women in the lurch, his guilt at their pain obscuring the relief of separation. Eventually he quit dating altogether, deciding the mutual insignificance of mostly anonymous one-night stands was the only way for him to be with a woman without hurting her.

When Tara first returned his smile that night in the bar he assumed they were agreeing on exactly that. He never imagined two days later he'd find himself sneaking out of a hotel room while she slept, for once not to relieve himself of the chafing bonds of commitment, but to protect her from him, from his insatiable hunger for mayhem, from the tumult and pain that followed him like twilight shadows.

She hadn't pulled away, and as a few people recognized him and lifted their hands in greeting he squeezed her more tightly. He was excited to introduce her as his wife, proud to have won over this unwinnable woman, already imagining his friends' impressed murmuring that crazy-ass Chance McKinley had managed to hang onto someone so sharp and sexy.

“Hey, guys, how you doing?” He shook hands with Brian and Tyler, two farm laborers he knew through Trey, the party's host. Following the direction of their stares he added, “This is my wife, Tara.”

“Very nice to meet you, ma'am,” Brian said, emphasizing the first word.

“I guess my wedding invitation was lost in the mail.” Tyler arched an inquisitive brow. Brian never took his eyes off Tara.

“It was a real small ceremony,” she explained, smiling graciously. Chance watched Brian's gaze wander to her lips, then her breasts, and he released her shoulders to take her by the hand.

“We've got a lot of people for Tara to meet, so I'll catch y'all later.” He tugged her toward the row of cooler-laden card tables serving as a makeshift bar, stepping up the pace when he heard Brian's hollered farewell.

“They seemed nice,” she offered. He pulled a bottle of beer from one of the ice-filled coolers, slammed it against the edge of the table to send the cap flying and drained half of it in one long gulp.

He lowered the bottle to find her frowning up at him. “Everything okay?”

Like hell it is. Didn't you see the way that scumbag was eyeing you up?
“Fine. Thirsty?”

“Yeah, do you see any—?”

“Hey, McKinley, what's this crap I hear about you getting hitched to—oh, hi there.” Trey Smith stopped short in his approach, pressing his beer can to his lips like it might seal in any further embarrassing outbursts.

“Tara, meet Trey Smith, the owner of this godforsaken piece of scrub. Trey, this is Tara.”

She shook his hand with a warm smile. “Great party, thanks for inviting us.”

Trey nodded, looking unsure. “My pleasure. And you are—”

“My wife.”

“We got married in December,” she added. “I stayed in Kansas City while he was in Afghanistan, then it took us a little while to coordinate for me to come out here.”

“Cool,” Trey replied, blatantly unconvinced. “So did I tell you I finally found vintage side moldings for the Impala? I need to hammer a few dings out of them, otherwise they're perfect.”

They talked cars for a few minutes until Tara excused herself to get a drink, batting away Chance's apology as she insisted she didn't want to interrupt their conversation. He watched her walk back to the card tables stacked with booze, admiring the swing of her hips, her unexpectedly easy manner with his friends, and her needless effort to fancy up her down-home accent. Too bad these hayseeds wouldn't know Boston from the bayou.

“So?” He turned to find Trey's eyes wide and full of irritation. “You're married?”

“Sure am.”

“And what, you thought you'd just stroll on in here having mysteriously acquired a wife since I saw you last week without any details?”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Come on, you've gotta give me something. Who is she? How'd you meet? Why on earth did you decide to marry her?”

His shoulders stiffened. “Why wouldn't I? She's a beautiful girl.”

“She surely is.” Trey held up a placatory palm. “And I know you like to do things spur of the moment, but—”

“But you think this is like that time I got drunk and decided to collect up all the traffic cones I could find and hold them hostage until the city paid a ransom for their return.”

“More like that time you bet Brian fifty dollars you could jump off the roof of Rock's and land without breaking your leg.”

“Which I did. Anyway, I was drunk then too.”

“Are you telling me you walked down the aisle stone-cold sober?”

“Not exactly,” Chance admitted. “But this is different. I'm serious about this. I'm serious about her.”

Trey tugged the zipper on his jacket a little higher, then looked at the ground as he spoke. “Is this about Afghanistan? I didn't want to say anything, but I couldn't believe it when you said you were going back. After all that shit that happened last time, all those guys that didn't come back—hell, we all read the obituaries in the paper, McKinley. Echo Company barely staggered back in one piece and then you put up your hand to return. I don't want to offend you, bro, but it just seems—”

“Crazy?”

“Reckless,” Trey corrected.

Over Trey's shoulder Chance saw Tara move up to a group of people standing by the bonfire, their handshakes and introductory gestures silhouetted against the flames.

Chance let his eyes defocus as he squinted into that roiling red heat, logs cracking and shifting at its core, unearthly wisps of smoke escaping from its tips and disappearing into the night air. He'd always loved fire, from the ace-of-spades-engraved lighter he'd stolen from one of his mother's boyfriends to the throbbing glow of a city lit up by heavy artillery.

The army's psych geeks would probably have a field day if he ever mentioned that, writing phrases like
latent pyromaniac
and
combat addiction
in what he imagined was already a thick personnel file. But it wasn't the destructive power of fire that attracted him, it was its wildness, its freedom, and the unquenchable thirst with which it consumed everything in its path until it burned itself out.

“It's hard to explain,” he said finally, returning his attention to Trey. “I'm a soldier, and I knew exactly what that meant when I signed my first contract. I'm not going back to Afghanistan because I'm suicidal, or I can't function in civilian society, or any of that Hollywood crap. I'm going because it's my job.”

Trey frowned, shoved his hands in his pockets, studied the dry grass beneath his feet. Chance glanced back to the fire.

How many times had he seen that look on someone's face? That frustrated, searching attempt to make sense of choices that to him seemed perfectly reasonable. When he was late to pick up his prom date because he couldn't resist gunning his car down the abandoned airfield near her house, when he eagerly rolled up his sleeve to show his sisters his new tattoo of the combat medic insignia beneath the words
cry
havoc
, when he insisted to his commanding officer that he was ready to accompany the departing patrol unit despite having just returned from the heavy fighting that befell its predecessor. It seemed his only access to self-doubt was through the disapproving expressions of other people, by which point it was usually too late anyway.

Tara was the exception. Sure, she rolled her eyes and arched her brows and scowled at him plenty, but that's because she was a tough, shrewd woman who was making him re-earn her trust. He respected that, expected it. Sure, she hadn't been thrilled at the news he was deploying again so soon, but she was still here—she hadn't left him. He'd seen her annoyance and exasperation, but never felt her incredulity or concern about who he was and what he wanted to do.

Then again, maybe she just hadn't had the chance yet. Maybe it was only a matter of time until she was giving him that look too.

“Well, if the local news channel calls me for comment on your heroic death, don't expect me to lie. I'll tell them straight up you were a psycho son of a bitch who never should've been given a gun.” Trey managed an unconvincing smile.

“As long as you promise to turn up to my Viking funeral.” He slapped Trey on the shoulder, ready to move on from the solemn turn this conversation had taken. “Now if you'll excuse me, I've misplaced my wife.”

“She's over there, with Rob Terry.”

Chance followed the direction of Trey's pointed finger and stiffened as he found its target. Rob, the sexually prolific owner of Rock's, had one arm propped against the wall of the barn. Tara lounged against the weathered boards, smiling up at him.

Hot, irrational anger surged through him with ferocity identical to the bonfire reaching ever higher into the sky. Without so much as a parting word to Trey, he stalked across the hard ground toward his bride.