Thunder Running (6 page)

Suddenly Chance didn't care what she'd done, who or what she'd done it to, or whether she deserved the conversation that'd cowed her so severely. He'd promised to keep her safe, and he meant it. No one had the right to put that much fear in her, and like hell would he stand by while they did.

Tara leapt up from the chair, wringing her hands, but before she could speak a man whose paunch tested the capacity of his shirt buttons swept in front of her and extended his hand.

“Thanks so much for coming—”

“What in the fiery flames of fuck is going on here?” Chance demanded, channeling the drill sergeant who'd spent ten weeks verbally abusing every last ounce of weakness out of his eighteen-year-old self.

Every head in earshot turned. He couldn't care less.

The man—Wade, according to his nametag—visibly wavered. “We have ourselves a little situation, is all. This lady here is claiming to be your wife.”

“She is my wife.”

“Well, that solves it then.” He smiled weakly.

“It solves nothing, Wade. Now explain why you've called me away from my critical medical duties as a sixty-eight goddamn whiskey to haul ass down to this store and personally verify that my wife is my wife.”

“She didn't have ID, sir.”

“I think I left it in the car,” Tara offered, then added with growing courage, “He wouldn't let me go look for it.”

Chance didn't even try to fight the white-hot rage that poured through his veins. He made none of his usual temper-mitigating efforts to remind himself to look at things from all angles, to be rational, to keep his cool. He didn't care if every customer went away whispering about psycho Sergeant McKinley flipping out in the commissary, and he didn't care if after this he couldn't find the moral high ground with a map and a state-of-the-art GPS.

This asshole had upset his wife. That carried a high price.

He sucked in a deep breath. He was going to enjoy this.

“Let me get this straight. My wife told you she left her ID in the car, and rather than let her leave the store to look for it, you dragged me halfway across post to confirm that I'm her sponsor?”

Wade cleared his throat. “We've been having some issues recently with women…
people
…trying to shop with their kids' dependent IDs after they've split up from their military spouse. I was concerned she would vacate the post and not be caught if I let her leave.”

“Do you see any kids accompanying my wife, Wade?”

“No sir, but—”

“How about her shopping basket? You see any hot dogs in there? Chicken nuggets? Baby formula?”

“I didn't inspect her groceries.”

“You didn't inspect her groceries?” He moved up to the man in several quick strides, deliberately looming over him and raising his voice to the accusatory shout he used with disobedient privates. “You were so concerned that she'd breached gate security and trespassed on federal property that you prohibited her from exiting the store and summoned me away from duty and you didn't even take a look at her motherfucking groceries? She could've hid a weapon in there, son!”

Wade began to stammer something unintelligible but Chance didn't let him finish. “Now you listen up good, boy. If you ever disrespect my wife again I will ram my left boot so far up your ass that your mother will cry when she sees what I've done to you. I'm a very violent man, Wade. I'm paid to be that way. You copy?”

Wade rolled conspiratorial eyes toward the nearest attentive cashier as if to say,
Let's give this nutcase what he wants and get him out of here
, but Chance read the underlying fear tensing the man's soggy body. He'd seen it before, so many times, on Iraqi roadsides and in Afghan huts and on the faces of NCOs when he handed in his marksmanship scores. It was that poorly concealed concern that he seemed different from the other soldiers, like reason and remorse had abandoned him long ago and danger had crept in to take their places. Like he could be capable of anything.

“I appreciate you're upset,” Wade began, but Chance had a sudden, overwhelming wave of boredom and he raised his hand to shut him up. He was tired of this, now—weary of people looking at him like he was a loose cannon and sick of proving them right.

He plucked his military ID from his pocket and slammed it on the nearest conveyer belt. “Ring up the damn groceries. I'll pay for them.”

As the cashier hurried to retrieve Tara's basket and Wade kept a watchful eye over the proceedings, Chance's attention shifted to his wife. Stoicism had replaced the fear in her expression, and his stomach lurched as he wondered whether he'd gone too far. Would she be scared of him now? Would she tuck away her fiery energy and tiptoe around his temper? Would he wake up one morning to find no trace of her, then receive divorce papers two weeks later?

He shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the dirty linoleum floor. This was exactly what he'd wanted to protect her from when he decided to shove his belongings back into his bag and hightail it out of that hotel room before he could change his mind. She needed the stability she'd never had, a guy who would finally treat her right and give her the life she deserved. Not some hair-trigger grunt who only felt normal when he was treating a chest wound in the middle of a firefight.

Tara didn't speak as he paid the cashier, took the bags from her hands and followed her out into the parking lot. She popped the trunk on the Malibu and they loaded the groceries in silence. She jangled her car key, and he hesitated, searching his brain for a phrase that would reassure her, that would erase his hotheaded outburst and get them back to where they'd been.

He was drawing the oxygen he'd need to fuel some bland excuse when she spoke.

“Chance?”

“Yeah?”

“No one's ever stood up for me like that.”

He gritted his teeth, bracing himself against her oncoming judgment. “I admit I got a little overheated, but I can work on—”

“No, I mean no one's ever stood up for me, period. Not my dad, not my teachers, not even Child Protective Services. I know we're talking groceries, not a state custody case, but still.” She shrugged. “It means a lot.”

They stood in silence for another few seconds, looking past each other, listening to the wind rustle the last few dry leaves clinging to the branches of the trees bordering the parking lot. Chance thought about what she'd said, replayed the scene in the commissary. He found it hard to believe she wasn't even a little bit annoyed, but when he mustered the courage to lift his gaze to hers, she smiled.

He opened his arms. “Come here.”

She slammed into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and burrowing her face into his chest. Her gripped her as tightly as he dared, lowering his head to catch her blackberries-and-vanilla scent, savoring the softness and warmth of this woman, so much smaller than him yet twice as fierce.

“I'm sorry about this,” she mumbled against the staff sergeant's insignia on his sternum. “I asked them not to call you, but—”

“Forget it. Just some asshole on a power trip.”

“I don't want to get you in trouble. He can't call your boss or anything, can he?”

“My ability to express myself in an inside voice without using profanity is so far down my boss's list of priorities you could dig halfway to China before you found it. What's important is that you don't worry about coming back here while I'm away. You've got every right to be in this store, so don't let that douchebag intimidate you.”

Her hands fisted in the synthetic material of his ACUs. She leaned back in his embrace to stare up at him, eyes dark and heavy with an emotion he recognized instantly, something too nascent to have a name yet too potent to ignore.

They stood like that for a moment, silently acknowledging the change happening between them. Tara moved first, slipping out of his grasp and backing toward her car.

“You should get back to work. I think I've disrupted your morning enough.”

He almost threw it away, almost gave in to the temptation to toss her a flippant, flirty comment about being welcome to disrupt him anytime. Instead he forced himself to push past the discomfort and stay sincere, no matter how hard it was.

“You need me, you just call. Otherwise I'll see you tonight.”

She nodded. “I will.”

He lingered while she started the car, pulled out of the space and drove off, telling himself he wanted to make sure the Malibu's spluttering engine turned over. He should open the hood that weekend and take a look, see if he couldn't stay that old wreck's execution a little longer. And he should show her how to turn on the Challenger and let the engine run so the battery wouldn't die while he was deployed, and how to jump it if it did. He cringed at the idea of handing over the keys. He wasn't sure he could cope with her actually driving it anywhere, even if she was his wife.

His wife.

He got in his car, turned the key in the ignition and grinned all the way back to the clinic.

Chapter Six

“Good morning, my name is Shelley, please may I have your account number?”

“Oh, sure.” Tara leafed through the stack of papers on the kitchen table for Chance's latest statement from his military-specialist bank. She read out the number, then added, “It's my husband's account. I'm calling to be added to it.”

“Unfortunately that's something he'll need to do himself.” The voice on the other end of the phone was sympathetic. “Only the primary account holder can authorize additional holders, but if you have him call us back we can get that all set up for you.”

“That's fine. Can I ask how long it'll take to add me to the account? It's just that he's deploying in a little under two weeks, so if he needs to sign anything we'd have to get that done pretty soon.”

“We should be able to get everything done in that one phone call, don't worry about that. Where's he off to?”

“Afghanistan.”

The faint sound of typing filled the line. “Okay, I've noted that on our system so when he calls about the bank account, we can also review his life insurance cover and make sure that's all up to date.”

“Great. Thanks.” Tara tapped the screen to end the call without waiting to hear Shelley's cheerful offer of further assistance or pleasant goodbye. She put the phone on the table and stared unseeingly at the chilly gray morning beyond the window.

The four days since Chance rode to her rescue in the commissary had been great. Amazing, even. They were like an eager, newly dating couple full of brazen optimism for the relationship's future, yet acting under a tacit agreement to slow each other down so they didn't move too fast and ruin all this potential.

On Friday night he made the first move, reaching across the Challenger's gearshift in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant to touch her hand, then leaning over and kissing her, his lips still salty from the rim of the margarita glass. On Saturday night it was her turn, playfully scooting into his lap while they watched TV, mussing his short hair and straightening his T-shirt and urging his tongue inside her mouth to the soundtrack of the angsty political drama flickering on the screen.

Last night they'd finally shared the bed, although he hadn't dared more than a fleeting touch of her breast through her shirt and she'd allowed herself only one indulgent press of her pelvis against his erection. It felt right—it was the pace they needed.

He had an early-morning PT session and the alarm went off at four o'clock. She dozed while he dressed in the dark, rolling onto his side of the bed, savoring the lingering scents and warmth left by his sleeping body. She woke up just enough to register him leaning over her, to smell his clean cotton T-shirt, to enjoy the gentle sweep of his thumb as he brushed her hair off her temple and kissed her forehead.

That kiss was more intimate than anything they'd done in the hotel room in Kansas City, more significant than their marriage license or her spousal ID card or his suggestion to add her name to his bank account. It was a husband saying goodbye to his wife, a man assuring his woman he'd be home soon, a quiet assertion that they belonged together and would be again.

It was the sincerest expression of affection she'd ever received. She thought she just might love him for it.

A wave of nauseating fear shuddered through her and she gripped the edge of her chair. Sure, in her abstract fantasies she'd imagined falling in love with Chance McKinley, finding an everlasting, eccentric accord with the only man who seemed to be as much an outsider as she was. That didn't mean she
actually
thought it would be possible, that it could happen so quickly, or that he would seem so suddenly essential to her ability to breathe that she genuinely worried she might die without him.

And she sure as hell hadn't expected she'd only have a couple of weeks to deal with it before he hopped on a plane to a warzone.

Her conversation with the bank's customer service rep came back to her with chilling clarity. Life insurance paid out when someone died. Chance was going to Afghanistan. He might die.

The Challenger's trademark growl rose outside, then the front door slammed. In less than two minutes he was behind her, leaning down to kiss the top of her head.

“I'll get changed, then we can run out to Walmart.” He was referring to the plan they'd made the night before, that half-remembered list of errands they'd discussed when they still hadn't slept in the same bed, when his deployment was a vague concept and she assumed he'd live forever. Tara resisted the urge to shake her head at that much younger, much more naïve version of herself. Could so much really change overnight?

He shifted the papers on the table. “Did you call the bank?”

“Yeah, they said you have to call to add me to the account.”

“All right, I'll call 'em tomorrow morning.”

She drew a tight breath. “They said you should update your life insurance policy too.”

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

She flexed her fingers where they lay on the table, flattening and arching her knuckles.

“I don't want your life insurance,” she informed her fingertips.

“What was that?” Chance was already halfway out of the kitchen.

“I don't want your life insurance,” she repeated more clearly, turning in her chair to face him. “In case you were worried about that. Leave the payout however it is. I don't want the money.”

An emotion moved across his face, but it wasn't one she recognized. Uncertainty, maybe? Indecision? It was gone too fast for her to tell.

“Right now it all goes to my youngest sister. She doesn't know that, though. I'd be worried about her leaking my location to the Taliban to speed up the process if she did.”

Tara didn't bother to chidingly disagree. If her dad ever got a lump-sum payout from her demise, she had no doubt he'd shove her in a cardboard casket and spend the rest in the liquor store.

“I thought about giving it all to my oldest nephew,” he continued. “For college and stuff. But I figured my sister would find a way to get her hands on it somehow, blow it on a motorcycle for her boyfriend of the month.” His eyes found hers, squarely, thoughtfully. “Maybe you should get it. Spend it on my nieces and nephews like my sisters won't. Buy your own bar, donate the rest to the VFW.”

Her breath stilled in her lungs.
I'm not having this conversation,
she wanted to say, turning away decisively.
You're not going to die, you're going to come home and be the same untethered charmer I fell in love with the first time we met, and we're going to do tequila shots and stay up too late and have sloppy drunk sex and buy a big house and fill it with babies and love each other until we're old and gray and your damn life insurance is worth ten thousand times what it is now, and I still won't want it.

But all she could manage was, “It's up to you, I guess. It's your money.”

His gaze dropped to the floor, and she felt for all the world like she'd just failed the biggest test of her life.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Anyway, I'll get my jeans on and we can go.”

Although the registers were busy, the sheer size of the store meant they were alone in most of the aisles they perused. The atmosphere between them had been subdued since they left the house, but Tara couldn't seem to muster even a shred of cheerfulness to fix it. She was buried in her thoughts as she followed him through the store, barely registering where they stopped or what he tossed in the cart.

The reality of Chance's deployment had struck her like one of her father's unprovoked slaps, and no matter how hard she tried to dig her heels into the ground she was still reeling.

It shouldn't be this hard. They'd already spent ten months apart—what were six more? And although he'd actually been back in Kansas for a big chunk of that time, she hadn't known that. As far as her imagination was concerned, he'd spent most of those ten months in Kunar Province, getting shot at on a daily basis. Even then it had been such an abstract concept she'd barely spared a second to fret about him, focusing instead on dissecting her memories of their brief time together and storing up every little sign that someday it might just work out for them.

At least this time he'd be able to update her on when he was safe at a post, when he was leaving for dangerous offensive missions, so her worry could be compartmentalized, saved up for when it was truly merited.

She sighed heavily, knowing full well she was lying to herself. Of course these six months would be harder than the last ten. She knew him for real now, knew how they were together, knew exactly what she was missing. And instead of wasting all that energy wondering whether he even remembered she existed, this time she knew he'd be missing her too.

At least, she hoped he would.

“You okay?” His soft inquiry brought her back to the present.

“Yeah, fine.” She shoved her mouth into a smile, but she could see Chance wasn't convinced. She focused on their surroundings, mildly surprised to find herself in the men's underwear aisle.

“Did you want me to pick something out for you? This beer can pattern is pretty sexy.” She held up a pair of novelty boxers, hoping they'd distract him from her feeble grin.

She appreciated his encouraging smile. “Save 'em for my birthday.”

Her heart sank with another realization. “You'll be deployed still.”

“You remember when my birthday is?”

Of course. I spent ten months committing every handwritten letter on that marriage license to memory, like those personal details were a talisman that would draw you back to me one day.
“Sure. January twenty-sixth. I card so many people, I've gotten good at remembering birthdays.”

His gaze held hers for a moment, then dropped to the shopping cart. “You can send them to me in a care package. They have these flat-rate boxes, and you send them to an APO address—I'll show you later.”

“Cool,” she agreed, although celebrating his birthday via a cardboard box was about the least cool thing she could think of.

He chucked several multipacks of cheap boxers and undershirts into the cart, then tested various pairs of socks for their thickness before adding them on top. He paused to read the back of a package, and she picked up one of the sets of thin, white boxers.

“These are crappy compared to the ones you have at home,” she remarked, having noticed just yesterday when she did the laundry that Chance had a surprising penchant for designer-label woven boxers.

“This outpost where I'm headed is pretty grubby. I'd rather throw things out than try to wash them.”

“Like camping grubby? Not that I've ever been camping. My dad wasn't really the vacation type.”

“I hear you. My mom's idea of a family outing was to give us each ten dollars in quarters and leaving us in the casino arcade.” They shared a quick smile, a momentary connection. “But no, unless they've made major improvements to this place I'm expecting intermittent running water and burn-out latrines. And dust. Lots and lots of dust.”

“Do you sleep in tents?”

“Sort of. All of the buildings are temporary constructions, so some have plywood walls and corrugated iron ceilings, but some are like heavy-duty tents reinforced by chain-link panels. But we have real beds, with mattresses and sheets. That's a lot better than sleeping in a hole in the ground.”

“You've done that?”

“Almost every night I was in Iraq.”

She chewed her lower lip as they moved toward the grocery section. “How many times have you been deployed?”

“This'll be number six.” He held up a box of plastic zip-top sandwich bags. “I use these to hold my phone, iPad, anything else dust can get into.”

But she wasn't listening to his deployment top tip. “Six deployments? Can they really do that?”

“I've been in the army more than ten years.” He lifted a shoulder. “They do try to give you at least a year off in between, but a couple times I volunteered.”

“Like this time.”

“Yeah.”

She threaded her fingers through the holes in the shopping cart, biting back an irrational wave of anger at his nonchalance. “Why did you do that?”

He studied her in inscrutable silence for a moment, then started pushing the cart toward the center of the store.

“It's a myth that all soldiers hate deploying and spend the whole time longing to come home,” he explained evenly, keeping his gaze trained forward. “No one signs up for the army expecting to spend their career pushing a broom on post. The ugly truth your average American doesn't want to acknowledge is that combat is a total rush. A lot of grunts couldn't care less about good guys and bad guys and oil reserves and Islam. They love the chaos, the danger, the destruction. They're chasing a high. Simple as that.”

“Is that why you go?”

“Of course. You think I give a shit whether some goat farmers in Kunar Province have free and fair elections? If I was a humanitarian I would've joined the Peace Corps. I joined the army to shoot guns, detonate explosives and patch up my brothers in arms when they take a hit. I have the best job in the world. Sometimes I can't believe I get paid for it.”

“But you could get killed,” she said softly.

He waved a dismissive hand. “Old age is overrated.”

She watched him as he stopped by the jewelry counter, picked up the cheapest analog watch and tried it on. Unlike a lot of the big, bulky soldiers she'd seen at Fort Preston, Chance sat on the skinny side of average. He was tall and wiry. He didn't have meaty forearms whose muscles flexed as he held out the watch—the wrist around which it was strapped was unremarkable, lightly topped with brown hair on one side, lined with faintly visible blue veins on the other.

The vulnerability of it, of his skin, his blood, his body, suddenly clutched at her heart like a greedy fist and squeezed. Without thinking she grabbed the belt loop on his jeans and held it. If she could just keep him by her side, hold him here until he realized he couldn't leave her…