Man, Nurse Meehan cleaned up good.

In all his years in the army, Cal had never gotten used to the way some women could pull that off—looking one way all the time until you more or less forgot they were even female—and then doing whatever it was they did to end up looking like this.

Meehan was wearing a dress. He’d never seen her in a dress. It was colorful, flowery, kind of floaty and thin.

Her shoulders were bare, except for the little straps, and soft looking, smooth, touchable. He could imagine how good they’d feel if he ran his hands over them.

Don’t go there! he thought.

One of the little straps dropped off her shoulder.

Take it easy, Cal!

This was Nurse Meehan here—and he was acting as if she was a real woman or something….

Dear Reader,

Instead of writing your resolutions, I have the perfect way to begin the new year—read this month’s spectacular selection of Silhouette Special Edition romances! These exciting books will put a song in your heart, starting with another installment of our very popular MONTANA MAVERICKS series—In Love With Her Boss by the stellar Christie Ridgway. Christie vows this year to “appreciate the time I have with my husband and sons and appreciate them for the unique people they are.”

Lindsay McKenna brings us a thrilling story from her MORGAN’S MERCENARIES: DESTINY’S WOMEN series with Woman of Innocence, in which an adventure-seeking beauty meets up with the legendary—and breathtaking—mercenary of her dreams! The excitement continues with Victoria Pade’s next tale, On Pins and Needles, in her A RANCHING FAMILY series. Here, a skeptical sheriff falls for a lovely acupuncturist who finds the wonder cure for all his doubts—her love!

And what does a small-town schoolteacher do when she finds a baby on her doorstep? Find out in Nikki Benjamin’s heartwarming reunion romance Rookie Cop. A love story you’re sure to savor is The Older Woman by Cheryl Reavis, in which a paratrooper captain falls head over heels for the tough-talking nurse living next door. This year, Cheryl wants to “stop and smell the roses.” I also recommend Lisette Belisle’s latest marriage-of-convenience story, The Wedding Bargain, in which an inheritance—and two hearts—are at stake! Lisette believes that the new year means “a fresh start, and vows to meet each new day with renewed faith, energy and a sense of humor.”

I’m pleased to celebrate with you the beginning of a brand-new year. May you also stop to smell the roses, and find many treasures in Silhouette Special Edition the whole year through!

Enjoy!

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

The Older Woman
Cheryl Reavis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In memory of Milly, the only pogo cello player I’ve ever known and the best, one-nurse sales force a romance writer ever had. Miss you, girl!

CHERYL REAVIS,

award-winning short-story author and romance novelist who also writes under the name of Cinda Richards, describes herself as a “late bloomer” who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. “We had to line up by height—I was the third smallest kid,” she says. “After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart’s desire—to write.” Her Silhouette Special Edition novel A Crime of the Heart reached millions of readers in Good Housekeeping magazine. Both A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher’s Widow won the Romance Writers of America’s coveted RITA Award for Best Contemporary Series Romance the year they were published. One of Our Own received the Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from Romantic Times Magazine. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.

Dear Reader,

Writers are often asked where they get their ideas. The best answer I’ve heard to this question is that we don’t get ideas—ideas get us. That was very much the case regarding The Older Woman.

Naturally, as a romance writer, I was already interested in creating stories about love conquering all, but this time I wanted a somewhat different approach. I wanted to do a “hero’s journey.” I have long since learned that heroes are where you find them—sometimes in the most unlikely places and often in a supporting role in a previous book. They are “ideas” that appear from out of nowhere, plant themselves firmly in a writer’s creative process and refuse to go away.

I knew early on that Calvin “Bugs” Doyle had the makings of the kind of hero I wanted to write about. I also knew that just any woman wouldn’t do for him. If his journey was to be truly arduous, then there had to be serious obstacles to their relationship. It wasn’t enough for her to be “unattainable” because of the difference in their ages. She had to be as heroic as he was. She had to have made her own journey, so that she could understand his fears on a very personal level. She had to be every bit the survivor that he was.

I admire survivors. I believe in love. And I’m happiest when I’m telling the story of two people who couldn’t be more mismatched, but who find in each other more than they ever dared hope.

My hope is that you will enjoy The Older Woman.

Sincerely,

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Chapter One

“H appy is the bride the sun shines on.”

Specialist 4 Calvin “Bugs” Doyle sat staring out the second-story window. There had been no sun today, and it was still raining, a relentless kind of drumming on the roof that left him no room for anything but feeling sorry for himself.

The melancholy had come down on him all at once and without warning. He hadn’t expected it. He’d been significantly discouraged for weeks, of course. Months, even—but it was nothing compared to the sadness he was feeling now. Man, did he want to go somewhere and cry in his beer. If he’d been able, he would have been in some off-limits dive right this minute, knocking back a few and wallowing in the whiny lyrics of a good old country-western song. And when he had enough of a buzz on, no doubt he would have joined right in, singing his sorry heart out—probably over the very vocal protests of his fellow patrons until he eventually got tossed out the door.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the wedding was going to happen. What with the bride’s misgivings and the groom’s perpetual physical rehabilitation, the actual ceremony had been a long time coming. So long that he’d been recruited to help plan the damned thing. The problem here wasn’t that he was uninformed. The problem was did he or didn’t he still have it bad for Rita Warren?

He must, he finally decided, because he’d made the considerable effort it took to get himself to the church, just so he could watch her get married to another man. He must, because he’d made a point of not saying or doing anything stupid the whole time he was there. He must, because the bottom line here was that he really did want her to be happy. And wasn’t that a hell of a note? He’d seen Rita through thick and thin—mostly thin. If anybody deserved a little sunshine on her back door, it was Rita. Even he realized that.

He smiled slightly to himself.

Rita, Rita, he thought, shaking his head. There is nobody like you, girl.

He had at least managed to give her a chaste goodbye-and-good-luck kiss—albeit under the watchful eye of his superior officer and, as it happened, her new husband. Lieutenant McGraw was one more lucky bastard. He’d survived a Black Hawk helicopter crash and he’d gotten the girl, while he, Calvin “Bugs” Doyle, the only other survivor of the same crash, remained, simply and always, said girl’s “friend.”

He took a quiet breath.

Get yourself together here, Doyle.

He had always known the rules of engagement. There was absolutely no reason for him to feel so down about this thing. He understood the situation. Rita had never for one minute led him on. She had always been straight with him, even when she’d been so abandoned and penniless she’d had to move in with him for a while. She had lived with him—on her terms—and she had been grateful for his help. But she didn’t love him, not like that, not the way he had wanted.

Just friends.

No. Best friends. He knew everything there was to know about Rita Warren. Everything. The good and the bad, and it hadn’t mattered to him. Unfortunately, what he knew hadn’t mattered to her, either. It was the lieutenant’s knowing she’d worried about.

But it had turned out all right for her, and he supposed, when everything was said and done, being a friend was better than nothing.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about how beautiful Rita had looked today. He didn’t want to think about the honeymoon, either. He was so tired, and his legs were beginning to hurt. If he didn’t get up and walk around soon, he’d regret it. He had mistakenly believed that finally getting both of the leg casts off would make the pain situation better. Wrong. No casts just meant that the muscles in his legs had to work harder. Which meant more pain.

The wind shifted, and the rain beat against the windows.

“Happy is the bride the sun shines on.”

The truth was this bride had been happy without the sun—without much of anything, if you got right down to it. The groom’s parents hadn’t exactly given their blessing, and Rita didn’t get much in the way of a family send-off—unless you counted her little girl, Olivia. Olivia had a ball getting all dressed up and blowing kisses and scattering rose petals. Except for Olivia, Rita didn’t have any relatives she or anybody else would want to claim. The closest thing to a bona fide well-wisher she had was good old “Bugs” Doyle—and he could have gone either way. Even so, he had still dragged himself to the wedding.

Just for her.

A sudden sharp pain made him jerk his legs to try to get away from it. The cane he needed for walking slid off the nearby straight chair and clattered to the floor. He swore under his breath, but he made no effort to get it. He stared out the window again, breathing deeply they way he’d been taught, trying to fight down the intense burning ache before it got the best of him.

But the pain wasn’t going away. He had to get up and shuffle around, and he had to do it now. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him that the way to make the hurting less was to do everything he could to make it hurt more, but that seemed to be the way of things. He was walking again—and what were the odds of that, given the degree of his injuries and the ups and downs of his prolonged recovery? He was a work in progress, all right. His only comfort was the fact that Lieutenant McGraw had made it all the way back—pain or no pain. And so would “Bugs” Doyle.

He couldn’t see the cane, much less reach it. He was too tall to be comfortable in a chair low enough to pick up anything he dropped on the floor, anyway. He was going to have to get up—and then get down. And then get back up again. Deep knee bends on legs that had already had one hell of a workout today. If he was lucky, he might finish with this little project by sundown.

It was going to be struggle enough just to push himself out of the chair, but he wasn’t even tempted by the option of yelling for his landlady. The word can’t had been weeded out of his vocabulary years ago in basic training. He had no doubt that little old Mrs. Bee would come help him out here—if he asked—except she probably wasn’t any better at deep knee bends than he was.

Nice old lady, Mrs. Bee. Kate Meehan, one of the nurses at the hospital had arranged for him to move into an upstairs apartment in Mrs. Bee’s house after the doctors finally promoted him to an outpatient. He had no place else he wanted to go. He’d given up the trailer he had shared briefly with Rita, even before he and the lieutenant had ridden the Black Hawk into the ground, and he just wasn’t up to living with a bunch of other soldiers who would feel sorry for him whether they said so or not. He knew the army would keep him on if he wanted, make room for him somewhere—if he could come back far enough. But he didn’t want an audience of his peers on hand for the trip, and he figured somehow Meehan knew that.

The apartment was fairly close to the post hospital, and it was cheap enough for an enlisted man to afford. Meehan had warned him up front that Mrs. Bee’s house was smoke and alcohol free, and that he would absolutely have to promise he’d “behave,” if he wanted her to vouch for him.

Like he could do anything else. His days of dancing naked with a rose in his teeth were pretty much behind him. His hands were more or less working again and didn’t look too bad, but he couldn’t half get around. Regardless of what his old drill sergeant always said, it wasn’t entirely true that where there was a will there was a way. Actually, he would have liked to have raised a little hell, even before the incentive of Rita’s wedding, but the best he could do for recreation these days was to eat, sleep and, with a great deal of effort, strum a little guitar.

Behave? No problem. Too easy.

So now he had a combination living room, dining room, kitchenette and one bedroom on the back side of the second floor of Mrs. Bee’s big Victorian house. No cigarettes. No whiskey. No wild women. Oh, and it would be really good if he didn’t swear.

So far, he and Mrs. Bee were getting along. She didn’t seem to mind his so-called music, and he didn’t cuss where she could hear him. Of course, he was pretty far away from her part of the house, and her hearing wasn’t what it used to be.

He had his own backstairs entrance, but he was welcome to use the front door if he wanted. He’d once made the mistake of coming in the front way when Mrs. Bee and the church ladies were meeting. Talk about getting pounced on. He’d never been so clucked over in his life. One minute he was minding his own business, struggling purposefully toward the stairs, and the next minute he was sitting in the parlor with his feet up, having chocolate cake, salty peanuts, bread-and-butter pickles and some kind of cherry-cola-and-pineapple-juice punch with the “girls.” It was kind of a hoot, really. He even remembered to say “please” and “thank you” and make Mrs. Bee proud. Nice old ladies—except for the one who thought anybody in the military was trash and didn’t do much to hide it when Mrs. Bee was out of the room. Man, could they bake, though, even the snooty one.

But, no matter which way he came or went, he still had to drag himself up and down all kind of steps every day—the prospect of which had made his various surgeons positively beam with approval. Just what the doctors ordered, every one of them. He was okay with the on-going challenge of getting in and out of Mrs. Bee’s house, and he was okay with the self-imposed “behaving.” He had to be if he was ever going to make it back to where he was before the Black Hawk went down.

But first, he had to pick up the damned cane.

He managed to make it to his feet on the first try.

“Not bad,” he said aloud—if he focused on the end result and not the process.

And now that he was more or less vertical, he could see into the backyard of the house next door— Meehan’s house. Sometimes he could see her, too, mostly when she left for work in the mornings. Sometimes she had breakfast outside on the patio—here lately with some guy Doyle assumed was a new boyfriend, a “suit,” who would arrive with a little white bag of bagels and coffee, chat her up for a little while, make her laugh, then go.

Sometimes, on her days off, Meehan fiddled around out there with plants and hanging baskets and clay pots. She apparently liked growing things—there were flowers all over the place. And wind chimes. The woman liked her wind chimes. He could hear them at night if he cut off the air conditioner and left the windows open.

Occasionally Meehan just sat on a lounge chair by herself and read. She definitely had nice legs, nice enough that it was no hardship for him to pay attention to her comings and goings. She always waved if she happened to see him in the window, but she didn’t bother him. As far as he knew, she’d never checked up on him or anything like that. Apparently, his word that he’d wouldn’t upset old Mrs. Bee had been good enough for her, and he appreciated that.

He hadn’t seen her much the past few days, though. It kind of surprised him that she hadn’t come to Rita’s wedding. He knew she’d been invited, and he knew she liked Rita and Lieutenant McGraw both. In fact, Meehan was one of the few people who had openly approved of the big Warren-McGraw romance—besides him. And he did ultimately approve, regardless of the current ache in his gut. He was nothing if not a realist.

A woman either loves you or she doesn’t. Period.

Doyle shifted his weight and kept watching out the window, mostly because Meehan and the boyfriend had just come out of the house. She was standing in the gravel driveway with her arms folded. She was standing—and the guy was pacing. And talking. Every now and then he gestured with both hands—a “What do you want from me?” kind of thing.

Apparently nothing, Doyle decided, because it didn’t look as if Meehan answered him. She wasn’t even looking at him. She just stood there with the rain beating down on her.

The boyfriend was talking again, waving his hands around a little too much, Doyle thought.

Threatening?

No. Not threatening. Or if he was, he wasn’t making much of an impression. Meehan didn’t seem to be intimidated by him. Still, this was not the Meehan he knew. He’d been a patient on her ward for months. She had a mouth on her. She was tough—tough enough to hand it out and then some if the situation called for it. And it sure looked to him as if this one required at least some kind of comeback on her part.

The boyfriend said something else, then turned and walked to his car.

Meehan stared after him, but she didn’t try to stop him. He slammed the car door and drove away, accelerating too much for the weather conditions in the process and slinging mud and gravel all the way to the street.

Meehan stood for a moment after he’d gone. Doyle thought she was about to go into the house, but she didn’t. Rain or no rain, she abruptly sat down on a nearby stone bench.

Was she crying?

Nah, she wasn’t crying.

Well, hell, maybe she was…

Doyle abruptly pushed himself away from the window. Either way, it was all over now. The boyfriend had gone his merry way, and Meehan’s current emotional state was none of his business. He had enough troubles of his own.

He held on to the furniture to maneuver to where he could get the cane. It hadn’t entirely hit the floor after all. It had caught in the chair rung, and he managed to retrieve it without too much difficulty.

He stood leaning on the cane, out of breath but more than a little pleased that the retrieval hadn’t turned into some kind of major production. He suddenly remembered the drama in the backyard next door and lurched over to the window again. Meehan was exactly where he’d left her.

“Damn, Meehan,” he said. “How long are you going to sit there like that?”

He felt like rapping on the window pane until he got her attention, and then yelling at her to get in out of the rain—as if she was a little kid who refused to take note of the weather until somebody of authority insisted.

But he didn’t rap, and he didn’t yell. He moved back to the chair, fully intending to sit down. He’d had enough of the “damsel in distress” thing with Rita. As knights in shining armor went, he was pretty dented up these days. He felt no need whatsoever to go riding to the rescue. All he felt was…aggravation. He was fully aware that he owed Meehan—for telling him about the apartment in the first place and for vouching for him with Mrs. Bee so he could move in. But, damn it all, he was tired. His day had already been hell, and it wasn’t even dark yet.

He sighed and looked around the room, then at the clock. It was time for Mrs. Bee’s regular Sunday ritual. No matter what, Sunday afternoons were iced tea and cake time.

Well, what the hell.

He needed the exercise. He could just make a trip downstairs—and more than likely, by the time he got to the front hall, Meehan would have come to and gone inside. And then he wouldn’t have to worry about it. He could stop in the kitchen and shoot the breeze with Mrs. Bee instead, hopefully talk her out of a piece of that cake with the pineapple-and-coconut-cream icing he liked so much.

He’d kill two birds with one stone—three if you counted keeping himself occupied so he wouldn’t think so much about the disconcerting state of his health—four, if you threw in Rita.

Sounded like a plan to him.

It took him a while to get down the staircase. The effort made his legs hurt a lot more than he anticipated, and he kept having to stop and get over it. He didn’t see Mrs. Bee anywhere. The front door was wide open, but the screen was latched. She hadn’t gone out on the porch.

He could hear the rain beating down on the granite steps outside. Mrs. Bee didn’t like air-conditioning in her part of the house, and it was hot in the front hallway. An old brass-and-wood ceiling fan wobbled overhead, but it was way too muggy and humid for it to help much.

He stood for a moment at the kitchen door, then hobbled inside to the far window. The toe of his left shoe kept dragging on the red and white linoleum tiles. Not a good sign. He was a lot more tired than he thought. He finally got himself situated in front of the window and moved the fruit-print curtain aside so he could see out.

“Is Katie still out there?” Mrs. Bee asked behind him.

“Yeah,” he said, relieved that a little old lady creeping up on him like that hadn’t made him jump.

“It’s none of our business if she wants to sit in the rain,” Mrs. Bee said, peering past his elbow.

“Right,” he agreed without hesitation. His opinion exactly.

“But…”

He could feel Mrs. Bee looking at him, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might have been watching out the window, too, and no way in hell was he going to walk into a loaded opening like that.

“Calvin?” Mrs. Bee said after a moment. She sounded every bit the schoolteacher she used to be. Class was in session, and he had just been called on.

“No way, Mrs. Bee,” he said, trying to stay ahead of her.

“Somebody really ought to do something.”

“You don’t mean ‘somebody,’ Mrs. Bee. You mean me.”

“Yes, Calvin, I do. I can’t go. It will look as if I’m meddling. If you go, it’ll just look as if you don’t know any better.”

He glanced at her.

“Well, it will,” she said. “Men don’t know about these things—especially soldiers. It’s all that hunt the hill, get the hill, way of doing things. She knows you, Calvin. She likes you. She’s not going to be offended if you go.”

He didn’t know about any of that. All he knew was that he’d had more than one occasion to see Meehan when she was “offended,” and it wasn’t something he cared to repeat.

“Mrs. Bee—”

“It’s just so…worrisome,” she interrupted. “Katie sitting out there in the rain like that. She had that bad spell of pneumonia last winter. She ought not be out there in the wet.”

“It’s July, Mrs. Bee. I think she’ll be all right.”

“Maybe,” Mrs. Bee said. “Maybe not. Couldn’t you go and shoo her back inside or something? It might be, if she saw you coming, she’d just get up and go in by herself, anyway—and you wouldn’t have to do anything. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

No, he didn’t think, but he didn’t say so. His legs hurt. He was tired. And pineapple-coconut-cream-cake hungry. He looked out the window. It was raining as hard as ever, and Meehan was still sitting there. He drew a quiet breath and glanced at Mrs. Bee. Her whole frail little body was saying one thing and one thing only—Please!

Ah, damn it.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go shoo her. She’s not going to like it—I’m going to catch hell for it. But I’ll go.”

“I’ll get the umbrella,” Mrs. Bee said, scurrying away.

He peered through the window again, hoping that Meehan would be gone. She wasn’t.

Mrs. Bee came back with a big multicolored golf umbrella. He took it and hobbled toward the back door.

“You’re a good boy, Calvin,” she said as he stepped out into the rain.

Doyle opened the umbrella. He could feel Mrs. Bee’s eyes on him all the way across the backyard. Which was just as well, because he probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

It was hard walking on the rough, wet ground, but he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to get this over with. Which he did. It would take him too long to hobble down Mrs. Bee’s driveway to the sidewalk and then around the hedge and back up Meehan’s drive to where she was still sitting on the bench—the key word here being “still.”

Oh, he had the “hunt the hill, get the hill” mind-set, all right.

And what the hell was wrong with Meehan that she would be sitting out in the rain like this?

He’d find out soon enough, he guessed, if he kept going. He could see her plainly through the hedge. She seemed to be completely lost in thought. He could have yelled at her at any point, but he didn’t. He just kept slogging along, pulling the cane out of the mud with every step. She didn’t even notice him until he was right on her and held the umbrella over her head. Nice touch, the umbrella, he thought. Gave the trip—ill-advised though it may be—a purpose.

Meehan looked up at him. She didn’t say anything; neither did he. And she wasn’t bawling. That was a plus.

With some effort, he continued to stand and hold the umbrella over them both—a futile gesture at this point in her case. She was wet to the skin.

She frowned. Just enough of one to let him know he was on dangerous ground here. Not exactly news.

Hunt the hill, get the hill.

“So,” he said pleasantly. “What’s new?”

She gave a sharp sigh. “Bugs, what are you doing here?”

“Holding the umbrella,” he said reasonably.

“What do you want?”

“What do I want? Well, let’s see. I want a cold beer, for one thing. And I want somebody to drive me to some loud, smoky, possibly sleazy place where I can get one. Maybe a big thick steak with a pile of fried onions, too, while I’m at it. Since that’s not going to happen, I guess I want to stand right here—until I can shoo you back into the house.”

“I don’t want to be ‘shooed,’” she assured him. “And you can mind your own damn business.”

“Oh, I know that. I tried to mind it, believe me. It didn’t work, though. See, you’re not exactly what I would call behaving here—or does the ‘behave and don’t upset Mrs. Bee’ thing just go for me?”

“What are you talking about!”

“Mrs. Bee! She’s all worried about you sitting out here in the rain like this.”

“She doesn’t have to worry.”

“Yeah, well, maybe so. But you know how she is. And I hate to say it, but I was getting a little uneasy about you myself. This is not like you.”

“What did you and Mrs. Bee do, watch everything out the window?”

“Pretty much,” he said. Personally, he’d always found it a lot easier to just tell the truth in most situations—unless it involved some gung-ho officer. It was too much trouble keeping stories straight. He suspected that Meehan was the same way, especially when she was working. He had always believed whatever she said, anyway. The whole time he was in the hospital, whenever he needed to know what was what with the pain in his legs or the burns on his hands or why he was running yet another fever, she was the one he always wanted to ask, because he knew she’d tell him straight.

He kept looking at her. She was upset, all right, and once again he was glad she wasn’t bawling. He didn’t know what to do when women cried—strong women, that is. Women like Rita. Or Specialist 4 Santos. Santos was a damned good soldier, but she always bawled when she had to make a jump. He didn’t know why, and he wasn’t sure she did, either. She would cry like she wasn’t crying, and nobody knew what was up with that. The jumpmasters certainly weren’t crazy about it. But, she always lined up like everybody else and hopped right out the door when she was supposed to. It was just…damned unsettling.

Tears weren’t a big deal with most women. But Rita and Santos—and Meehan, if she happened to break down—were an altogether different situation.

He kept checking Meehan out, just in case. She caught him at it, and she started to say something but didn’t. She looked away, down the driveway in the direction lover boy had gone.

He waited.

And waited.

The rain beat down on the umbrella. A car went down the street, its heavy bass speakers pounding. Somebody somewhere threw something heavy into a metal trash can.

“So did you get dumped or what?” he asked finally—and that got her attention.

She stared at him a long time before she answered. “Yes,” she said finally.

“Yeah, well, it’s been that kind of a day,” he said with the assurance of a man who’d been there.

He maneuvered the cane so that he could press one hand into his thigh. Both legs were beginning to hurt like hell. He tried to shift his weight a little. It didn’t help a bit. When he looked up again, Meehan wasn’t frowning anymore. It occurred to him that she was a lot nicer looking when she didn’t frown.

“Did you go to the wedding?” she asked.

“I went,” he admitted.

“Everybody was all dressed up, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me. I looked so good it’s a wonder the ceremony even took place.”

She gave a slight smile. It faded almost immediately.

“So how was it?” she asked a little too gently for him to maintain his bravado.

“It was—” he stopped and took a breath “—it was hell. Mostly.”

“Poor old Bugs,” she said.

He grinned. “At least I ain’t sitting out in the rain over it.”

To his surprise she laughed. She had a nice laugh. Definitely she should laugh a lot more than she did.

“I allow myself to do one really stupid thing at least once a year,” she said after a moment.

“And this is it, huh?”

“This is it. I wish I could think of some really cool way to get out of it.” She was still smiling a little, and she made an attempt to stand up. He tried to move out of her way. The pain in his legs intensified, and he couldn’t keep from bending forward.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, dodging the umbrella before he clunked her in the head with it.

“Hurts,” was all he could manage.

“Well, no wonder. Coming out in the rain like this.”

“Yeah, and who’s fault…would that be? If you don’t mind me…pointing that…out.”

“Okay, okay. Do you want me to help you?” she asked, he guessed because she’d been around enough banged-up soldiers to know that assistance wasn’t always welcome.

“No.”

“How long has it been since you took something for pain?”

“About three…weeks…” he said through gritted teeth.

“You’re not taking the prescription the doctor ordered for you?”

“Can’t stay awake. You know…me. Don’t want to…miss anything.”

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“I’m hurting…not…hungry,” he said. Which wasn’t precisely the truth. Not a lie exactly, more a matter of priorities. He’d planned on eating. He’d been about to zero in on Mrs. Bee’s cake with the pineapple-and-coconut-cream icing—but he got sucked into coming over here. And that fact just added to his current aggravation.

“You’re exhausted, is what you are. You’ve done too much today, and you’ve probably been feeling too sorry for yourself to eat—”

“I ate, I ate!”

He tried to take a step or two and was pitiful at it. “Okay,” she said. “That’s enough. You’re getting the shakes. Just stand here a second and then we’ll hobble that way.” She pointed toward her back door.

“No…thanks,” he managed to say.

“You should have taken a pain pill—especially today.”

“I don’t take them, Meehan, unless I have to. Just special occasions. When it hurts…really bad.”

“Well, what do you call this?”

“A minor setback…brought on by people not…behaving.”

“Very funny. Now go that way.”

“I’ll be okay in a…minute.”

“I said go. It’s closer than trying to get back to Mrs. Bee’s. You’re going to fall on your face. You’ve let the muscles in your legs go into spasm—”

“Right,” he said. “I…let them. Just for the…hell of it.”

“Oh, quit whining and let’s go. You can get off your feet for a little while and then you can run along home and give Mrs. Bee your report.”

She wouldn’t take no for an answer. He hobbled in the direction she was pushing him—but he didn’t like it.

“Take the…umbrella,” he said at one point.

She took it, but his not carrying the umbrella didn’t help him walk much better. She had to hold it way up in the air to keep him covered.

“Try putting your hand on my shoulder,” she said.

“It won’t…help.”

“Do it.”

He did as she ordered, bearing down hard with his next step. “This is all your—”

“Fault,” she finished with him. “I got that part.”

“So how come he…dumped you?” Doyle asked bluntly. The question was entirely inappropriate, but pain apparently made him reckless. Besides that, he actually wanted to know, and this seemed like as good a time as any to ask.

“It’s none of your damned business,” she said for the second time.

“Right. But since I’ve gone to all this trouble, I ought to at least be able to…give Mrs. Bee the details. We live for drama and pathos.”

“You and Mrs. Bee need to get out more.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said, glancing at her. He’d made her smile again. Maybe the bust-up with the boyfriend wasn’t as serious as it looked out the window.

Still, she’d been sitting out in the rain all that time.

“Maybe you can work it out,” he said.

“Work what out?”

“The thing with the boyfriend.”

“Don’t think so,” she said, catching the back of his shirt when he began to list.

They finally reached the patio. She managed to open her back door and hold it with one foot while she closed the umbrella. He shuffled dutifully inside. The house obviously had central air, because the room was cool and quiet. There was a television, an easy chair, a whole row of plants under a big window, and a couch with a startled white cat on it. He didn’t like cats, or so he assumed. He’d never been around any, except the wild “barn” cats that used to live on his grandfather’s farm when he was a little boy. That relationship had been very one-sided. Every day, he’d toss them the table scraps his grandmother allotted them, and every day they hissed and spat and ran like hell.

The cat jumped down from the couch and disappeared.

“Sit down,” Meehan said unnecessarily. He couldn’t have made it any farther if he’d wanted to. He plopped down heavily on the couch where the cat had been.

The pain was less now that he was off his feet, but not much. He leaned back and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Meehan had gone someplace, and the cat was sitting on the couch arm.

“Take a hike,” he said to it.

It continued to sit there, giving him its rapt attention. It was kind of unnerving. He’d never had an animal stare at him like that—or at least not one that was up to any good.

Meehan came back with a towel around her neck and one of those small electric blankets for couch potatoes in her hands. He sat there awkwardly, because he wasn’t sure what she planned to do with it and because he was in her house more or less against his will.

“I didn’t know you had a cat,” he said in an inane attempt at making conversation. She bent down, plugged the blanket into a nearby outlet. She was wearing shorts, and he appreciated it.

The cat gave an inquisitive, rolling chirp and looked at Meehan expectantly.

“No, he doesn’t,” Meehan said to the cat. “But he would, if he had to.”

She was smiling slightly. He got it right off the bat. She was giving him the business here, and enjoying it. The big tough soldier wasn’t sure what to do about the cat, much less her talking to it.

But she had no idea she was dealing with Doyle, the Supercool. Two could play this game.

“Doesn’t what?” he asked to put her on the spot.

She dropped the blanket over his bare legs.

“Barbecue cats,” she said without missing a beat. “She’s the only survivor of a coyote attack on her and her litter mates. She’s very concerned about whether or not she’s in someone’s food chain.”

“Don’t blame her. Where did she run into a coyote?”

“A friend’s place in the mountains. She was just a kitten, and she took up residence in my shirt pocket while I was there—so I brought her home. She doesn’t get out much, either. Of course, in her case, it’s by choice—I couldn’t get her out the door with a crowbar. I don’t know about you and Mrs. Bee.”

“Well, it’s not by choice with me,” he said. But the real truth was that the two guys he had called friends had been killed in the same helicopter crash. He missed the sorry sons-of-bitches more than he cared to admit, and thus far he hadn’t gone looking for replacements.

Meehan was busy drying her hair with the towel.

“So tell me,” she said out from under it. “Why do they call you ‘Bugs’?”

He glanced at the cat. “I went outside my food chain,” he said. “The survival-training thing.”

“You weren’t the only one to do that, were you?”

“I was the only one to throw up,” he said, and she laughed again. Easily. Pleasantly. He hadn’t been trying to be cute. He’d been telling the truth again—but he was beginning to feel pretty damned witty here.

He stretched his legs out in front of him. He wouldn’t have thought the blanket would help, especially in July, but the pain was already beginning to lessen. “I’m going to have to get me one of these,” he said.

“You can have that one,” she said.

“No, I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t. I have another. Actually, I have two others. My sisters seem to think I have no other way to keep warm. Take it.”

He looked at her. She meant it.

“Well, okay. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

She disappeared again, and when she came back she had an apple in her hand. “Eat that,” she said, throwing it to him. “Put your feet up.”

She left him sitting there—with the cat. After a moment he maneuvered both legs onto a nearby ottoman. Then, he occupied himself eating the apple and looking around the room. Nice place. Neat. Clean. He could see several framed photographs on a table—little kids mostly. Or maybe the same two kids—a boy and a girl—at different ages.

Hers?

He didn’t think so. At least, he’d never heard anyone mention that she had kids.

The cat finally made her move, stepping carefully onto the blanket on his lap and then standing a moment before cautiously lying down. He sat there stiffly, trying to decide how badly he minded. The cat wasn’t hurting anything, he supposed, not even his bare legs under the blanket. After a moment he tentatively let his hand rest on its fur. It began to purr immediately. He couldn’t hear it, though. He could feel it with his fingertips.

“Just as long as nobody sees me,” he told the little beast before it got too comfortable.

He took a quiet breath. He was so tired. After a while, the cat stretched out across his knees. The added warmth was not…unpleasant.

He closed his eyes. He heard a telephone ringing somewhere and Meehan answer it. The conversation was brief, and, as far as he could tell, nonhostile.

Must not be the boyfriend.

He heard the rain, and a strong gust of wind against the house. And then he heard nothing.

Chapter Two

S omething’s wrong with my hand.

The realization penetrated his sleep and wouldn’t leave. His hand was tingling. No…not tingling. Vibrating.

He opened his eyes.

The cat.

It was purring. It had moved off his legs and was sharing half—more than half—of the heated throw. His hand rested heavily on its back.

“What time is it?” Doyle said out loud, in spite of the fact that he didn’t hear Meehan anywhere.

The cat rolled into a ball and hid its face in its paws. He looked around the room. It was still daylight.

Wrong, he thought immediately. It wasn’t “still” anything. The sun was shining, and it was on the morning side of the house. He attempted to move his legs off the ottoman—and regretted it immediately. He rarely slept the whole night through, but apparently he’d done just that, and he was paying dearly for the inactivity.

His cane was propped against the couch. It had a note taped to the handle, one direct and to the point: “Latrine—doorway straight ahead. Kitchen—doorway to left. Coffeepot comes on at five-thirty.”

He could smell coffee, come to think of it, but first things first. With considerable effort he managed to get to his feet and then make it to the latrine and back, closely supervised by a meowing cat all the way. It ran along in front of him into the kitchen and pointedly sat down facing a base cabinet door.

“What?” Doyle said in response to yet another of its inquisitive chirps and in spite of his determination not to talk to it. The cat immediately stood, did a kind of four-pawed, feline ballet pivot and sat down again. And stared at him.

“Can’t help you,” he said. “Just passing through.”

And he intended to do just that, but the coffee-maker gurgled. He looked in that direction. There was another note taped to it. He hobbled over to read it:

“Cups in cabinet in front of you. Unplug pot when you leave.”

The coffee smelled great, and he was never one to pass up an invitation. He reached up and opened the cabinet door and took out a shiny black coffee mug. He poured some coffee into it while the cat did figure eights at his feet.

“Nine point six,” he said, looking down. “Maybe seven.”

The cat ran to the base cabinet door again and meowed loudly.

“Okay, okay. I get it. That’s the chow door and the MRE’s are in there, right?”

He hobbled over and opened the door. A small box full of pouches of cat food sat on the bottom shelf—the feline version of Meals Ready to Eat. With some difficulty, he got one of them out.

“See?” he said to the cat. “I’m not as dumb as I look.” He might not speak the language, but he’d had plenty of practice muddling through, anyway, in his time. In the Balkans. In Haiti. In Korea.

He shook off the feeling of loss the memory of a healthier and more useful time gave him and glanced around for something to commandeer for a cat food dish. He saw nothing particularly appropriate, so he tore the pouch open and down one side and placed—dropped—it on a paper towel on the floor. The cat didn’t mind roughing it in the least.

He walked painfully back to his coffee. It was really good, and he took the cup to the table and eventually maneuvered himself into a chair. He stretched both arms over his head and yawned noisily, wondering idly where his hostess had gotten to. Maybe the boyfriend had had second thoughts about the situation. Maybe he’d regrouped and come back here last night with his hat in his hand—or his bag of bagels—and Meehan, overwhelmed by his generosity and not wanting to explain what the gimp was doing snoozing on her couch, had trotted off with him to his place.

Doyle picked up the coffee cup and immediately put it down again. He didn’t much care for that scenario. It didn’t fit his idea of what Kate Meehan was like, for one thing. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would let a man jerk her around, especially one who had done his dead level best to make her cry. She was the kind who would—

He gave a sharp exhalation of breath and repositioned his aching legs. What the hell did he know about Meehan and her situation?

Nothing.

Still, he was kind of surprised that she would go off and just leave him alone in her house. On the other hand, she’d trusted him enough to inflict him on Mrs. Bee. It looked as if she trusted him enough to leave him all alone with the Meehan family silver, too.

The doorbell abruptly rang—way too early for callers in Doyle’s opinion. He toyed with the idea of ignoring it, then decided that it might be Meehan with her arms full, and the least he could do was let her into her own house.

He struggled to his feet and then to the door—the wrong door. The doorbell rang again, and he hobbled in the opposite direction, this time with a cat escort.

The boyfriend stood on the patio with his little white bag and a cardboard coffee cup holder holding two cups.

“This ought to be good,” Doyle said to the cat. He opened the door wide and stood waiting, enjoying the man’s startled look much more than he should have. But—as he’d told Meehan—he didn’t get out much. He had to find his entertainments where and when he could.

“I’m…looking for Katherine,” the boyfriend said warily.

“Katie’s not here,” Doyle said, using Mrs. Bee’s version of Meehan’s given name for no other purpose than to annoy the man who had taken off and left her standing in the rain.

If at all possible.

The man frowned.

Definitely possible, Doyle decided.

“Where is she?” the boyfriend asked pointedly. He was not happy about this situation at all. Meehan was supposed to be exactly where he’d left her, no doubt. And she certainly wasn’t supposed to be entertaining another man.

“Don’t know,” Doyle said.

“When will she be back?”

“Don’t know,” Doyle said, continuing his effort to be helpful.

“What are you doing in her house?” the man asked next, his Mr. Rich and Cool image getting away from him.

“Not much. Sleeping. Drinking coffee. Feeding the cat. You want me to take that?” Doyle asked of the little white bag and the plastic cups in the cardboard holder.

“No, I don’t,” the man snapped. He stalked away and dumped the white bag and the coffee in the roll-out trash can as he passed it.

“Want me to tell her you came by?” Doyle called. And made a fool of yourself?

The boyfriend didn’t answer. He hopped into his very nice silver car and backed noisily out the drive.

The cat chirped at Doyle’s feet. “Why didn’t you stop me?” he asked it. “Now he’s really vexed.”

The cat made a different kind of noise and executed another one of its four-pawed dance turns.

“Nice dresser, though,” Doyle said. He closed the door and hobbled back into the kitchen.

He finished the rest of his coffee standing up and put the empty cup on the top rack of the dishwasher. It was a lot harder to get the make-do cat food dish off the floor than to put it down there, but he eventually managed. There was nothing to do now but attempt the long walk across the yard to Mrs. Bee’s. He was halfway to the back door when he remembered that he was supposed to unplug the coffee-maker.

As was its custom, the cat accompanied him in both directions, and when he opened the back door again, it sniffed the air but made no attempt to go outside.

“Stay alert,” he said as he hobbled through. “Coyotes are sneaky bastards.”

Doyle pulled the door closed after him and paused for a moment on the patio. The morning was cool, washed clean by yesterday’s rain. Meehan’s array of wind chimes tinkled softly in the breeze—glass, melodic chrome tubes and tiny brass bells, and, every now and then, a dull and hollow clunk of bamboo. Flowers grew in numerous pots and hanging baskets, most of which he couldn’t identify. He recognized the red and purple petunias, but he had no idea whatsoever about the green thing that smelled like lemons. His knowledge of plants was limited to farm crops and survival-training edibles. His knowledge of Kate Meehan was limited, as well. Who would have thought she liked these kinds of things?

An assortment of birds flew back and forth to the fancy blue-and-gray ceramic bird feeder, all of them vying for a perch. He stood and watched the no-guts-no-glory chickadees out maneuver the larger birds for more than their fair share of the sunflower seeds. What they lacked in size they made up for in speed and audacity. There was a lot to be said for both qualities, and he longed for the time when he might regain at least one of them.

Look and learn, he thought, his mind immediately going to his grandfather. The old man used to say that all the time.

Look and learn.

Listen and learn.

Live and learn.

Pop Doyle had believed that life’s lessons were everywhere if a man had enough sense to stop and pay attention—which had amused his grandson in a way that only a smartass punk kid could be amused. Doyle knew the truth of it now, though. Now when the old man was long gone, and he couldn’t tell him so.

Doyle had stood in one place too long, and he maneuvered himself slowly down the brick patio steps. He definitely could have used Meehan’s shoulder to hold on to.

In spite of the pain, he opted for the long way around the hedge and headed down Meehan’s driveway to the street. It was slow going, his progress accomplished in fits and starts and nothing like the days when he went running at six-thirty in the morning no matter what.

He missed it, damn it! He once had a sense of accomplishment, and he had taken such pride in being one of the best. It was so hard to give it all up.

No. It was so hard to have it all taken away.

A passing car honked, and he caught a glimpse of a rolled-up, OD camouflage sleeve waving out the open window as it disappeared around the corner. Somebody who knew him, Doyle guessed. Or knew of him. Somebody who still had legs that worked like they were supposed to and who was lucky enough to have somewhere to go and something to do.

He took a deep breath and fought down the self-pity that threatened to overwhelm him. One foot in front of the other, that’s all it took. Pop Doyle and his drill sergeant said so.

Doyle had worked up a sweat by the time he reached Mrs. Bee’s back door. He expected it to be locked, but it wasn’t. Mrs. Bee was awake and busily ironing pillowcases in the still-cool, wide central hallway. He expected the third degree, too, but she only smiled and kept ironing.

“You’re a good boy, Calvin,” she said when he was halfway up the stairs.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said dutifully. “That would be me.”

Mrs. Bee still didn’t ask him anything about his mission of mercy, so he kept going. Not that he had much to report. Meehan had been dumped—which Mrs. Bee likely already realized if she’d witnessed even half as much of the scene next door as he had. He’d have to hand it to his landlady, though. She said she only wanted Meehan in out of the rain, and that accomplished, she apparently didn’t need to know whatever sordid details he might have uncovered or why he was just now reporting in.

He made it to his quarters eventually. Unlike the downstairs hall, the apartment was hot and stuffy. He switched the air conditioner to high and stood in front of the cold blast of air, staring at nothing. The morning stretched endlessly before him, as did the afternoon, the week, the rest of his life.

He fried some bacon, then didn’t eat it. He maneuvered painfully to the floor instead and did an altogether impressive number of stretches and “ab crunches” just to keep the physical therapist happy. Then he showered and dressed in the uniform of the day—PT-gray running shorts and T-shirt—and running shoes that were hell to get tied.

As a reward he picked up his guitar and managed to strum what might pass for an actual melody. Then he refined it. Embellished it. Sang along.

And didn’t let his mind go anywhere near Rita Warren.

He was getting better at playing the guitar, helicopter crash or no helicopter crash. He had never had much of a singing voice, but he didn’t let that stop him. If he felt like singing, he sang. The residual huskiness from the fire and who knew how many hospital breathing tubes didn’t particularly concern him. The good news was that his fingers were much more inclined to do what he wanted them to do of late. They still hurt, of course, but what else was new?

Just to break the monotony, he hobbled to the window a couple of times to look out at Meehan’s house. Absolutely nothing was going on there. She hadn’t come home yet, and the boyfriend hadn’t returned with another little white bagel bag.

It took considerable willpower on his part not to make a third trip to the window.

“I have got to get out of here,” he said to no one in particular. He was becoming way too interested in the neighbors—sort of like the guy with the broken leg in the Hitchcock movie he’d stayed up late watching the other night. Of course, that guy had had all kinds of people to spy on. Doyle only had Meehan and the boyfriend—and it suddenly occurred to him that he wasn’t all that interested in the boyfriend. He was interested in Meehan, and he was letting himself get all concerned about her just like he did with Rita. He needed to go somewhere, do something, anything to take his mind off his troubles—and hers.

He looked at the noisy, battery-operated clock on the wall and sighed.

Oh-nine-thirty.

He could call Sergeant Beltran. Beltran would have transportation here in a heartbeat. Doyle could go to the grocery store—except that he didn’t need groceries. Or to the barber shop—except that he didn’t need a haircut, either. And he had way too much pride to let it be known that he just needed company—somebody to baby-sit.

He ate the bacon after all and read yesterday’s newspaper. His dress uniform hung on a hanger on the half-open closet door, and he hobbled over to put it away. He smiled slightly to himself as he hung it in the closet. He hadn’t exaggerated too much when he’d told Meehan he had looked good at Rita’s wedding. At least he’d regained enough weight so that he wore the uniform instead of the other way around. Except for the fact that he couldn’t half walk, he was a lean, mean fighting machine.

Hoo-ah!

“There it is,” he said out loud. His audacity. It was back after all. And as long as he was up and moving, he got a can of cola out of the refrigerator and hunted up an empty plastic grocery bag. Then he took himself out into the summer heat of the upstairs hallway, hesitating for a moment to secure the can in the bag before he tackled the back stairs. He had no real plan other than to get himself and the can down the numerous steps in one piece. Once he accomplished that, then he’d decide what to do. No problem there. Given his physical limitations, the list of possibilities was very short.

He ultimately ended up sprawled on the cushions on the wicker swing on the shady front porch. It was hot, though—shade or no shade—but he could put up with the heat for the prospect of a little entertainment. Something was bound to happen—mail delivery, garbage pick up, a dog fight.

Something.

Anything.

“There you are,” someone said behind him, making him jump. He turned in the swing to see Meehan standing with the throw she’d said he could have over her arm. She must have come down the back stairs after he had. She was wearing her nurse clothes and she looked sleep deprived and tired.

“For a man who can’t get around you’re hard to track down,” she said. “You forgot this.” She draped the throw over the back of the swing.

“No—hey—I don’t want to put you out.”

“I told you I have three. I can spare one. Use it when you get the muscle spasms in your legs. If you’re not going to take your pain med, it’ll help as much as anything.”

“You really don’t have to—”

“I know that, Doyle. Just take it, okay? I’ve had a very rough night. Don’t make me hurt you.”

He couldn’t keep from smiling, because it was nice of her to go to all this trouble and because she was being—and looking—more than a little cute here, in spite of the obviously rough night.

Cute.

She’d twisted her hair up and fastened it with some kind of clasp thing—but some strands had come loose and fell around her face, making her look kind of soft and rumpled and just out of bed. He tried not to stare at her. There was absolutely no doubt about it—and Meehan cute was even more jarring than Meehan with wind chimes and lemonscented flowers. He wondered idly why he hadn’t noticed it before. No, he must have noticed. He paid attention to things like that—half-dead or not.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “But there’s one condition.”

“What kind of condition?”

“You let me buy you a steak in appreciation. A really big one—with fried onions and a cold beer. Today. Anywhere you say.”

She was watching him closely, and he tried not to look as needy as he felt.

“Today,” she said after a long moment.

“Right.”

“In appreciation for the throw.”

“Right.”

“Are you that desperate to get out?”

“Yeah,” he said truthfully, and she laughed.

“I’m desperate,” he said. “And I want to say thanks. You helped me out yesterday.”

“I think maybe the help was mutual.”

“Yeah, but I had Mrs. Bee’s foot in my back. You didn’t. Maybe we could just kill two birds with one dinner and call it even. Simple as that.”

She was still watching him, and he let himself look into her eyes. Interesting eyes. Hazel blue. Nice.

“Don’t you—?” she started to ask, then abruptly broke off. He had no problem guessing the direction she’d been about to take. She wanted to know why he was bothering her when he could be going out with his buddies—until she suddenly remembered that he didn’t have any buddies…and why.

“So?” he persisted. At this point he’d take whatever he could get—even a pity outing.

“Thanks, but I can’t. I just got off work and I still have some things to do. I have to sleep at some point. Besides, it’s really not necessary for you—”

“Okay,” he interrupted. “Just a thought.”

She began to walk away from him toward the porch steps, but she stopped before she got there and looked back. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he. He could almost feel her trying to make up her mind.

He waited. She definitely had questions, but for some reason she wasn’t quite comfortable asking them.

“It would have to be late,” she said finally.

“No problem—fine with me. Did I say you get to drive?”

“I guessed as much.”

“Around nineteen hundred then? Or whenever. I’ll be here.”

She was still looking at him, still sitting on the fence about it. “Okay. I’ll see you when I wake up. I get to pick the place, right?”

“Right,” he said.

She was smiling again—this smile a kind of spider-to-the-fly one that challenged him—and made him a little leery about her expectations. And he’d seen the boyfriend up close. There was money there and a lot of it. He, on the other hand…

“Maybe you should bring along some plastic,” he said. “Just in case.”

“Plastic,” she said as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

“Correct. Hey, you always got to have a contingency plan, Meehan.”

“Right. And you military guys are all alike,” she said, the smile broadening. “See you later, Specialist.”

She turned and ran lightly down the steps.

“Outstanding,” he said under his breath—and he didn’t mean just her capitulation. He watched her as long as he could, infinitely pleased with himself, because he thought she was as surprised that she’d accepted his offer as he was. In any event he was actually going to get that steak and beer, and the company wasn’t half-bad, either. Meehan was used to men who had to hobble, and she knew all about Rita. He wouldn’t have to put up a macho front if he didn’t want to. He could just kick back and be his miserable self.

He took a deep breath, fully aware of how little he had been thinking of Rita just now. And there was the other thing. He had just had a stellar opportunity to tell Meehan that the boyfriend had made a reconnaissance bright and early this morning—and, for whatever reason, he hadn’t taken it.

Chapter Three

S he is going to bail.

It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. She was late by anyone’s calculation, even with parameters as loosely defined as these had been. And she didn’t look as if she was planning anything so ordinary as a steak and a beer with a broken-down army specialist. And, on top of that, she’d caught him waiting on the front porch swing like the last puppy at the pound.

The boyfriend’s back, Doyle suddenly thought as she stepped up on the porch. And the mission had been scrubbed. He sat looking at her, wondering what to say.

Nothing, he decided. She was the one bailing. He’d let her do the talking. She could talk, and he would just look.

Man, she cleaned up good. In all his years in the army, he’d never gotten used to the way some women could pull that off—looking one way all the time until you more or less forgot they were even female—and then doing whatever it was they did to end up looking like this.

Meehan was wearing a dress. He’d never seen her in a dress. It was colorful—really flowery. It made him think of watercolors—and it was kind of floaty and thin.

Thin.

He couldn’t see through it—but he kept expecting to. It wasn’t an all-tarted-up kind of dress or anything like that. It was just…attention getting. Her shoulders were bare, except for little string straps, and soft looking, even in this light. Smooth. Touchable. He could easily imagine how good they would feel if he ran his hands over them, how good they would smell…

Don’t go there! he thought, but it didn’t keep him from wondering.

Like what? Flowers? Roses—or something citrus maybe. But nice.

One of the little string straps dropped off her shoulder.

Very nice…

Take it easy, Doyle!

This was Meehan here—and he was acting like she was a real woman or something.

“Bugs, are you listening to me?” she said.

“Sure. It’s too late to go out.”

“You think so.”

He frowned. “I thought that was what you said.”

“It was a question, Doyle. Is it too late to go out?”

“With me, you mean.”

She tried to look into his eyes. “You took a pain pill, didn’t you?”

“No,” he said, grinning. “But I think we need to start over here. You asked me if it’s too late to go.”

“Right. Is it?”

“No way. I’m starving.”

“Can you wait a half hour or so?”

He didn’t think he could wait five minutes, so he didn’t answer her, for no other reason than the way she looked. That alone was worth the delay.

“I didn’t mean to be this late—but I just woke up. I got hung up with a family thing after I left here, and I still need to make a phone call or two.”

“A family thing,” he repeated, because he’d been expecting her to say she was sorry, but she had to run along now, with the bagel guy.

“Right. I’ve got three sisters—two older, one younger. Unfortunately, they think up things for me to do for entertainment.”

“I hear that,” he said. “I’ve got one of those myself. So what are you fixing?”

“My uncle Patrick.”

“And your job would be…?”

“He’s a widower. He’s not taking care of himself. I get to call him up and yell at him.”

“Poor Uncle Patrick,” he said, trying not to grin.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ve been there.”

“I’ve never yelled at you,” she said, clearly believing it.

“Sure you have.”

“I have not.”

“Oh, then that must have been somebody in leg casts who just looked like me.”

A smile was just about to get away from her. “Why did I yell at you?”

“No reason whatsoever. I was totally innocent. I guarantee it.”

“That’ll be the day—so are we on for tonight or not?”

“On,” he said. “Definitely on.” Things were getting better and better here.

“Then I’ll be back,” she said.

He expected her to go home, but she went inside Mrs. Bee’s house instead. She didn’t stay long. If she’d used Mrs. Bee’s phone to yell at Uncle Patrick, she’d made it short and sweet.

“That was fast,” he said as she stepped out onto the porch again.

“I delegated the situation to Mrs. Bee—well, actually she volunteered. She knows Uncle Patrick, and she’s a lot more tactful than I am. So let’s go. She wants us to take Thelma and Louise,” Meehan added as he heaved himself up off the swing.

“The more, the merrier,” he said, because he still couldn’t believe that she had actually shown up. At this point he didn’t care who went along, and he was only mildly concerned about the possibility that he might have to swing feeding two more people.

“What?” he said, because of the look Meehan was giving him.

“Well, I expected you to be a little happier about it.”

“About what?”

“Thelma and Louise. Will you pay attention?”

“I’m happy. I don’t think I know who they are, though—or maybe I do. Church ladies, right?”

“No,” Meehan said, laughing. “Thelma and Louise is a car.” She held up a set of keys and dangled them.

“Okay,” he said, still not getting it.

“A 1966 Thunderbird convertible.”

“You are kidding me. Like the one in the movie, you mean?”

“Except this one is red. Leather seats. Mint condition.”

“You are kidding me,” he said again.

“Nope. The late Mr. Bee gave it to her, brand-new, for her fiftieth birthday. She’s called it Thelma and Louise ever since she saw the movie. He didn’t want her to be depressed about hitting the half-century mark.”

“Did it work?”

“Well, driving it certainly cheers me up. She wants me to blow it out on the interstate.”

“You know how to do that, I guess,” he said, trying not to smile.

“You just hold on to your hat, soldier.”

She led the way down the steps, and she didn’t offer to help him. He liked that about her—that she didn’t act as if she even noticed that he was incapacitated. Unless he was about to fall on his face.

Everything was working pretty well at the moment, though. Some pain. Not too bad. He wished he’d dressed up a little. He’d traded the PT outfit for civilian cargo shorts and a blue golf shirt, but no way was he in any kind of league with that dress.

The car was carefully locked away in a wooden building in the backyard, one Doyle had seen a million times and never wondered about.

He followed Meehan in that direction, then abruptly stopped.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, looking back at him.

“Before we get too far along here, I better tell you the boyfriend came by this morning—in case you want to do something about it.”

“Oh, I know,” she said.

“You know? What did he do? Call to report someone had broken into your house?”

“Something like that,” she said.

He started walking again. “And you said?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I don’t have to explain what you were doing in my house to anyone—except maybe my sisters. Those three would definitely have to have an explanation.”

He grinned and continued walking to the edge of the driveway, waiting well out of the way while Meehan unlocked the padlock on the door of the outbuilding.

“Damn,” he said under his breath as she eased the shiny red car out of the shed and into what was left of daylight. The vehicle was nothing short of spectacular. How had he missed knowing about this? The car was so fine it would be a privilege just to wash it. Mrs. Bee was full of surprises.

“How do you like it?” Meehan said through the open window.

“Damn,” he said again.

“Exactly,” Meehan said.

“So will the top go down?”

“No problem.”

“Outstanding!” he said with every bit of the enthusiasm he felt.

He hobbled around to the other side. She had the top moving before he reached the passenger-side door. It took some doing for him to get himself inside, but he managed. He sat there for a moment, admiring everything—the seats, the dash—Meehan’s legs. The radio worked, but it wasn’t original. Mrs. Bee apparently liked her sounds. This one had FM bass-expander stereo.

He was beginning to feel like a kid on Christmas morning. Or the cowboy in the Thelma and Louise movie.

“So where are we going?” he asked when he’d finished appreciating everything.

“I’ll leave that to you.”

“No—you pick. Anywhere you want.”

She looked at him for a moment in a way he couldn’t quite figure out. Like she wasn’t sure he meant it—and if he did, why.

But he did mean it. He didn’t care where they went—of course, his ensemble limited the options.

She picked a place near the mall—the same one he would have picked actually.

“Parking lot is pretty crowded,” she said as she pulled the car into a space.

“No, this is fine. They have great food.”

“And beer,” she said helpfully.

“And beer,” he agreed.

“You might see someone you know here.”

“You, too,” he countered.

“I don’t care.”

“Well, me, neither,” he assured her.

“This might work out then,” she said.

“Damn straight.”

“Can you walk that far? I can pull up to the door and let you out.”

“No, I can make it.” He opened the car door. He didn’t want to be let out. He wanted to hobble across the parking lot in plain view—with her—so all those people neither one of them cared about could see them together and eat their sorry hearts out.

It was hard work, though. He had to stop once to rest before he could make it all the way to the door. There was a line, but the bench full of paratroopers in the crowded waiting area immediately cleared a place for him to sit down. His legs hurt badly enough for him to forego the macho stuff and take it. They even made room for Meehan—which was clearly not a hardship. He didn’t miss the fact that they all appreciated her nonseethrough little dress as much as he did.

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