True Devotion (16 page)

“Why the question? Is there something I should know? Like why you’re wading through sewer tunnels for the fun of it?”

“Not that I could tell you, but no. We’ve probably been tapped to play the urban terrorists for the citywide drill later this summer. That’s Cougar’s guess anyway.”

Kelly scanned the sky again. “I decided a long time ago that your job was at least safer than a police officer’s. You are a whole lot better trained and you’ve got fifteen other guys covering your back. If something happens, I’ll deal with it, but I’m not borrowing trouble by wondering about it. I’ve watched the other wives, seen them torn apart by worry when you guys get paged, and I’m not going to do that. So I really don’t know how I would react if something happened. Get mad at you probably.”

“You would.” He shifted the jacket folded under his head. “I’ve never figured out how you do that—simply decide not to worry. I worry about you being a lifeguard.”

“Do you? Why?”

“The crowds. Your having to deal with more and more parties that get out of control at the beach, guys that don’t have any respect for your job.”

“Did you or did you not teach me how to put even you on the ground?” Kelly protested.

“You’re too much of a lady to get mean early, take the other guy by surprise.”

“If I had to I could. Besides, you know there would just happen to be a SEAL or a SEAL trainee on the beach to help me out. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you put the word out. Compliments of you, I’ve now even got SEAL groupies on my beach, asking me to make introductions.”

“The guys have been impressed too. Cougar likes Alisha so much he’s taking her home to meet his mom.”

“Matchmaking is serious business, and Cougar definitely needs to settle down.”

“He’s young,” Nick replied.

“That he is. He can certainly swim. I clocked him to Point Loma and wondered if my stopwatch was broken.”

“He’ll settle down once he’s been shot at a few times,” Nick said matter-of-factly.

Kelly reached over and squeezed his hand. She didn’t have to ask to know the date of the first mission when Nick had come under live fire. He had returned after twelve days away, and he had been different. More intense in his training, a little more quiet. Much more focused on her. His confidence when he walked out the door for a page after that was the confidence of a warrior already proven and comfortable with what he could do. It was one case where she wished he could tell her what had happened.

It wasn’t fair to tell Joe yes if she was saying it for the wrong reasons.

She didn’t want to be lonely anymore. She had been married, had tasted being single, and she knew how badly she was handling being single. The lack of interaction with someone left her dull. In dozens of ways being married had been the best thing for her. She didn’t have ambitions to make her mark in a career; instead she wanted a home, husband, and children. She hated the fact she had delayed having children with Nick, that she had let caution rob her of that joy. She wanted children.

And when she thought about those things, there was one definite name that came to mind. Joe. But did he want those same things in his future?

Joe, what am I supposed to say?

If she said no and he didn’t ask her again . . .

* * *

“You really like to throw my life into chaos, don’t you?”

Joe had to smile at Kelly’s comment. It came out of the blue and she sounded truly annoyed. He fed Misha another part of the sugar cookie he was eating for dessert and watched Kelly finish her peach. She was stretched out on her back on the bench cushions, having finished lunch. He had been wondering how long her silence would last. “Because I said I wanted us to date?”

She nodded. “Do you have any idea what our friends would think?”

“Sure. They’d ask how come I waited this long.”

She snorted. “Right. Everyone at church would be talking about us.”

He tucked another cushion behind his back, glad they had such a gorgeous day to be out on the water. He had a feeling this was not going to be a short conversation. “Your friends want to see you happy,” he corrected gently. “It wouldn’t be gossip; it would be genuine interest.”

“They feel sorry for me.”

“Some of them do. You represent what they fear most.” As the first military widow in a decade in a church full of military families, there was no way for her to escape that pressure. He knew how isolated she felt at church, a nomad between couples and friends who increasingly didn’t know how to relate and the much younger singles who had never been married. He had watched friends drift away, and he had hurt for her.

“If it didn’t work out—I don’t think I could stand the pity.”

He couldn’t promise her the future. He knew this idea was risky. “Do they have to know?”

“What?”

“We don’t have to tell people right away.” It would be hard to pull off, but they could do it for a while if it would help Kelly be more comfortable with the idea of dating him.

“If we’re dating, I don’t want to be sneaking around pretending we’re not. The ladies are too thick around you. They need to be swatted off—I don’t share.”

He laughed at the image of a mosquito storm that didn’t exist. “Kelly, when was the last time I went on a date?”

“Five months ago. You took Boomer’s cousin from the naval personnel department to the symphony.”

His annoyance was sudden and intense. “I bought the two tickets so I could take you, remember? You said you didn’t want to go. In fact, as I recall, you turned me down so fast you didn’t even bother to give me an explanation.”

Emotions flickered across her face he wasn’t expecting, and he softened his voice. “Do you want to tell me now what you didn’t tell me then?”

She swallowed and didn’t look over at him. “It was the anniversary of Nick getting pinned with his Trident. I went out to Sunset Park, found our favorite place, and cried my eyes out.”

Joe dropped his gaze to the napkin he had just shredded, wishing he could take back months of simmering irritation with her over that memory. He realized now he had been flirting with asking her to be more than a friend for some months. He looked up. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded, her focus still on the furled sails overhead, and frowned slightly. “Every anniversary, the loss just gets sharper. I should have told you. But frankly—” she turned her head to glance over at him—“I haven’t been telling anybody about those kind of secrets.”

He narrowed his gaze slightly, studying her eyes. “That’s dangerous.”

“I know.” She sighed and looked back toward the sky. “Grief is a funny beast; it has tentacles all over the place.”

“Where else does it show up?”

“Old movies. Some sunrises. Last month it was fireworks at a baseball game.”

Joe began to wonder just what else he had missed. She was having crying jags he had no idea about. He had figured out Thursday morning that she had managed to snow him and hide an insomnia problem. That glimpse of her life when he packed for her had been enlightening. What else was going wrong that he had been oblivious to?

“Did you and Nick ever talk about what it would be like if he died?” He had avoided asking her that question in the past. His own emotions concerning Nick’s death were complex, tinged as they were with his own grief, frustration, helplessness, and guilt.

“We talked about death occasionally,” she finally replied.

Her tone of voice suggested it was a private memory. Joe accepted that and changed the subject. “If we did date, could you handle the fact I’m on an operational team?”

She fluttered her hand. “I worry now, Joe.”

“I know you do. Is it too big an obstacle?”

He knew how much he was asking her to accept. While Nick had borne the weight of being one of the members of an operational platoon, Joe bore the weight of leading that platoon: Fifteen men depended on him. The stress on Kelly would be greater. He didn’t leave his work at the office; that leadership weighed on him twenty-four hours a day. He was often quiet, distant, repeatedly thinking through plans and contingencies for missions the men had not yet even been briefed on. She had accepted that as his friend, but since Nick’s death—he knew the worry that shadowed her eyes every time his pager went off.

“You’ll be an active SEAL as long as you physically can do the job. I know that.”

It wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, but it was apparently all she was going to say.

“Joe, what if something goes wrong? What if we have a big fight or something? I don’t want to lose your friendship.”

“Worried about my temper?”

“You have the handle Bear for a reason,” she pointed out. “But no, you growl more than explode. I was thinking more about your stubbornness.”

“
My
stubbornness? You could teach lessons in tenacity.”

“Exactly. We’re going to clash. And hurt feelings can quickly destroy a friendship.”

“Don’t borrow trouble. You’ve been my friend for six years. I’m going to protect that at all costs.”

“It’s still risky.”

He wished he could take away this worry. She’d developed that trait in the last few years rather than praying about a problem, and he wished he’d spotted it earlier before the worry had become ingrained. “Relax. I bet you didn’t do all this introspection when Nick asked you out the first time.”

“I was sixteen, and I had no idea what I was getting into.”

“Then why don’t you half close your eyes and just enjoy it again? Dating isn’t going to destroy our friendship.”

“Joe.” She met his eyes and swallowed hard. “I’m not looking to replace Nick.”

He was puzzled by her remark. “Good, because in many ways we are as different as night and day.”

“Exactly. But I just want to warn you that it’s going to take me a while to realize how many ways I may be doing it subconsciously.”

He felt the hit from that answer. He had known he would be competing with the memory of his friend, but he didn’t have to like it. He knew better than anyone just how short he fell in that one-on-one comparison. Nick had been a good husband, a solid SEAL, and a Christian since his teens—he would be a hard act to follow. “Kelly, you’ll do that comparison with anyone you date. It’s not unique to going out with me. The best way to deal with it is to accept it will happen and move on.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“The only way you’re going to hurt me at the moment is if you turn me down.”

She considered it for a long time. “Then I guess I’ve really got only one question.”

“What’s that?”

She smiled. “What do you want to do for our first date?”

Fourteen

* * *

D
inner and a movie. Tonight. Joe glanced at his watch and smiled. Kelly thought by limiting how much time he had to plan their first date, it would limit what he could arrange. He had seen that smile on her face, and her excuse that she was busy tomorrow evening had been pretty lame.

He was determined to make it a memorable first date. She had forgotten what a SEAL could do in three hours. He nudged Misha aside; the dog had joined him in the front of the Jeep after they dropped off Kelly. He picked up his cell phone and dialed a number from memory.

His second-in-command answered on the first ring. Boomer had a baseball game on TV; Joe could hear it in the background.

“Boomer, buddy, I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

“I need to borrow your car.” A Jeep did not fit what he wanted to arrange for tonight.

The silence covered two seconds before Boomer laughed. “Sure. Who’s the lucky lady?”

Joe smiled. “I’m taking the fifth. Can I swing over and trade vehicles? Say in about an hour?”

“Not a problem. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it. Is your wife around? I need to talk to her a minute.”

“She’s in the kitchen, hold on.” Joe heard him muffle the phone. “Christi, can you get the phone? Bear needs to talk to you.”

“Coming!”

Joe heard another extension pick up. “Hi, Joe.” Christi sounded breathless.

“Sorry to interrupt—”

“I was just fixing iced tea. I’m breathless because Junior is kicking up a storm at the moment.” Christi was seven months pregnant but looked more like nine months plus. The doctor swore it wasn’t twins, but on petite Christi, it sure looked like twins.

“Eight more weeks,” Joe said. As godfather to the infant he kept track of such important facts.

“The day won’t get here fast enough. What’s up?”

“What’s your favorite restaurant when you want a classy night out?”

“You’ve got a date?” She sounded surprised, and more than a little thrilled.

“In less than three hours. And it’s got to make an impression.”

She lapsed into French for a moment as the time frame registered. Joe interrupted her. “I know it’s short notice. Why do you think I’m appealing to you for help? Come on, I need some ideas.”

“
Really
romantic, or
fun
romantic?”

Joe hesitated. How sharp did he want to make the transition from friendship to something more? He wasn’t taking anything about Kelly for granted. Better if he made a statement with tonight and erred on the side of how special she was. “The best Coronado has. I’d prefer not to go into San Diego.”

“Prince of Wales Grill,” Christi replied immediately. “But you’ll never get reservations for tonight.”

“Sure I will.” He didn’t believe in the word
impossible
. “Flowers—it’s been a while. Is Marsha still the best?” Marsha, now in her fifties, was the owner of Roses and Lilies. She coordinated the annual flower show and qualified as a town treasure. There was no way he could compete with six dozen roses, but he was not going to abandon that to Charles either.