Conard County Witness Read online

  If there was something he needed to know, she suspected it would work its way to the surface again, maybe this time without throwing him into another flashback. And if she was the source of the possible trouble, she might not protect him just by leaving. Whoever might be after her could consider him a threat, too. What might she have told him?

  Damn, she wanted to bang her head on the wall. This just kept getting more convoluted.

  Instead, she walked over to him as he leaned against the counter and slipped an arm around his waist. Intimate, but not too intimate. After a moment, he draped his arm around her shoulders, accepting the contact.

  The relief that filled her was nearly heady. She knew she wanted him; desire kept flaring in her like a blossom that couldn’t quite make it, mainly because she wouldn’t let it. Sara, long gone, remained both an invisible link and an invisible wall between them. Looking at this man as Sara’s husband was both important and necessary to her peace of mind.

  But this, this moment of shared comfort and closeness, seemed even more important right now.

  “Forgive me?” he asked.

  “Yeah. You’re not a number.”

  She felt him tense, then was amazed to hear laughter roll out of him.

  “No,” he agreed, “I’m not a number.”

  Then, depriving her of breath, he turned until he could brush a soft kiss on her lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, Lacy. Sure you don’t want to run?”

  She met his gaze and realized that he looked more unguarded and youthful in that instant than he had since she’d first met him. Nothing could have hidden her smile. “Absolutely not, Jess. Absolutely not.”

  * * *

  Night fell quickly with the shortening days. She and Jess had whiled away some hours playing cards, then they had cooked a meal of chicken scampi. Afterward, it was back to the living room, where he started pacing.

  She could hear the wind had picked up again, and the TV in the corner was warning people to stay home. Windchills could kill in a matter of minutes.

  “I’m not used to this,” Jess announced as he limped back and forth. “I work about fifty hours a week. Then I come home exhausted enough to fall asleep in front of the TV. I spend weekends working around the house if I don’t have something planned with friends.”

  “Cabin fever?” she asked wryly. “I’m not used to this, either. Not even those months in protection got rid of a sense of claustrophobia.”

  He glanced at her, and some warmth seemed to dance through his gaze. “Prisoners under our own house arrest. We could risk a run to the movies. Or we could hit a roadhouse. I couldn’t dance with you, but I’m sure plenty of others would be more than willing.”

  Two things struck her, the first that he said he couldn’t dance with her, the other that he was willing to go out into the world and face whatever risks might be lurking.

  Maybe nothing was lurking, but in that moment she caught a glimpse of the man who had repeatedly gone off to war. Jess wasn’t afraid. Oh, he might get afraid when things started popping, but he didn’t live his life in fear. Maybe she should follow his example, if she could. Maybe she needed to stop being afraid as a matter of course. Once, she hadn’t been this bad. Once, her main misery had been fear of meeting new people. She’d even managed to get that under control.

  “Got any friends you could invite over for a card game?” she asked.

  He glanced at the clock. “Weeknight. School. Kids. Wives. Nah.”

  She almost laughed. “That was succinct.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Well rehearsed.”

  So he was a lonely man a lot of the time. She felt stupid for not having considered that, but why wouldn’t he be? He’d lost Sara. Nothing could ever fill that hole in his life.

  “I think I’m going to take a walk around outside before it gets any colder,” he announced.

  “But the windchill...” She let her objection trail off. He was used to this. If he thought it was safe... “I’ll come with you unless you’d rather be alone.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “Wanna try out the new pants and boots?”

  “Yes.” It was as good an excuse as any, and truthfully, she was having her own touch of cabin fever. She wanted to be outside, to get cold enough to be glad to be inside again. To look at the heavens and see stars if she could. In a city you saw only a few, but she’d discovered a place like this revealed more stars than you could count, unless there was cloud cover. She glanced at the TV again, but they said nothing about cloudiness, just extreme cold.

  So she hurried to put on all the outer gear he’d bought for her, including the lace-up boots with a felt liner. By the time she finished, she was getting hot.

  Jess was grinning, standing by the door, all ready to go.

  “Sorry,” she said through the snorkel as she zipped it the rest of the way.

  “It’s new to you. Let’s go before you melt. I know I’m ready for some cold.”

  She bet he was.

  They stepped out the side door onto a small porch. Lacy felt so hot that she barely noticed a bit of cold air making it to her nose, and that went away as soon she exhaled. The genius of the snorkel hood came home to her.

  Jess held out a gloved hand and together they descended two steps. The wind had kept them swept clean, although some snow had gathered in the corners of the porch against the wall.

  The air was so dry that the snow whispered beneath her feet. With each step she kicked up powdery clouds that blew away on the strengthening breeze. When she looked back, she realized the wind had erased their footprints. As if they had never come this way.

  It was an amazingly dark night. The snow seemed to glow a little as if catching light from somewhere, but everything else disappeared into the inkiness. They were halfway around the house before she caught sight of a pinpoint of light in the distance.

  “That’d be the Halko place,” Jess said. “They have a security light they keep on all the time.”

  “Security for what?”

  “Not getting lost.”

  Made sense, she thought. The light from Jess’s house was totally damped by the heavy curtains he’d put up. Barely a sliver escaped anywhere.

  But the stars she had been hoping for never materialized. Apparently there were clouds up there, riding the seas of night. It felt good to be out and walking, though, and she was tempted to ask if there was anywhere they could safely walk to, just to lengthen the time out, but even she could see that might be dangerous. A gust of wind caught her unexpectedly and she staggered. Jess steadied her quickly.

  “That’s the shed,” he said, gesturing. “Wait here while I make sure the heater is still working?”

  “Can’t I come?”

  “Stay against the house. The wind is already enough to almost blow you away.”

  She wished she could argue, but instead she stood alone at the side of the house and watched him nearly disappear into the night.

  All alone in the dark, everything else seemed to sweep away. All alone, unable to betray herself to anyone else, she could confront a wish that Jess hadn’t belonged to Sara. That her best friend hadn’t met him first—not that he’d have probably noticed her—and face the fact that even if they’d met, Jess wasn’t for her. He’d been meant for Sara.

  But that didn’t stop the longings he awoke in her. She wondered if she had been hiding from them all along, or if they were of a more recent vintage. Had she somehow been betraying Sara in her heart all these years?

  The thought made her shudder. It wasn’t an ugliness she wanted to find in herself. No, she argued, this had just started, just since she got here. It was simply sexual attraction to a very appealing man. Nothing she hadn’t felt before, but nothing she could act on because of Sara.

  But it hadn’t been there before, when Jess
and Sara were married. No way, because she wasn’t that kind of person. It was like dealing with money, sometimes huge sums. The money in her bank account was real, because it belonged to her. The millions that floated through her computer accounting, the stacks of cash that had occasionally landed on her desk, they had never seemed real because they weren’t hers.

  Tainted money, someone had once called it. “’Tain’t mine.”

  Well, she felt that way about men, too. No attraction she had ever felt had survived discovering a man was dating, engaged or married. Like flipping an internal switch. “’Tain’t mine.”

  So no, she was sure she hadn’t had these feelings when Sara was alive. And she shouldn’t be having them now, because of Sara. Sara’s death hadn’t erased her loyalty to her friend, and she was sure it hadn’t erased Jess’s love for her.

  Foolish thoughts, standing there in the bitter cold, and she was glad to be freed of them by the sound of Jess’s returning steps.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Still forty degrees in there. Listen, if you want a walk, I can get a flashlight and we can try to walk down the drive to the road.”

  Belatedly, she thought of his leg. As he drew closer she could hear the unevenness of his step. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m starting to feel the cold a bit.”

  Which wasn’t exactly a lie. However overheated she’d become getting dressed in all this stuff, it was gone. When she moved, she could tell her outerwear was getting colder.

  “Okay.” He took her hand again and they made their way alongside the house to the front porch.

  Then everything inside her froze, even her breath. “Someone’s parked out there.”

  He looked as she lifted an arm and pointed. Fear pierced her, but it didn’t strike him the same way. “Maybe I should drive out there and see if someone’s in trouble.”

  She hadn’t even thought of that. A much more likely possibility, right?

  The car was parked along the road. It could be someone having a breakdown. Getting cold, hoping for help. She felt small right then.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  They quickened their pace, but as they rounded the corner to the porch steps, the car pulled away, driving off east into the night.

  “Guess not,” Jess said. “Maybe someone pulled over to answer a phone call, or make one before he got out of cell range.”

  “Yeah.” But she didn’t believe it. Damn, sometimes she hated the mouse she had become. Absolutely hated it.

  Bad enough to be naturally shy. Worse to be jumpy over everything.

  Jess stood with her on the porch for a few minutes, but the wind started blowing harder, gusting stronger.

  “A good night,” he said, “for all wise mortals to be indoors.”

  * * *

  Once inside, Jess watched with mild amusement as Lacy struggled out of her gear. For his own part, he was more interested in warming his leg again. He dumped his parka and gloves in the hallway and hobbled into the living room. The fire in the stove still burned brightly and after he stripped his snow pants he plopped into the rocking chair, waiting for the heat to hit his leg. Layers of clothing weren’t total protection against cold like this, and there was no blood circulating through his lower leg to bring it warmth. He’d felt the joint stiffening a bit, too, defying the directions from the microprocessor that helped manage his leg’s movements.

  He shouldn’t have gone out, except that he’d needed to, and he hated cutting himself unnecessary slack just because of his leg. Taking a walk had been essential to beat off the cabin fever, although you’d think being housebound with a gorgeous woman would fend that off well enough.

  Except this was Sara’s best friend. Off-limits. Don’t even go there.

  Finally she wrestled her way out of the unaccustomed winter gear and toppled into the sofa facing him. “What about you?” she asked bluntly before he could ask her.

  “What about me?”

  “I heard you limping. What’s going on with your leg?”

  “It’s cold. Getting a little sticky, so the microprocessor isn’t working as well. No big deal.”

  He watched her eyes widen and almost smiled.

  “Microprocessor?” she repeated. “Really?”

  “Really. It makes minor corrections, helps stabilize me when I walk. We’ve come a long way from the peg leg.”

  “I guess so! How does it work? How does it stay on? How do you keep from getting sore?”

  Then he did smile as he watched her cheeks redden.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to pry.”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay. I have a vacuum socket, which means when I stand on it, it pumps out excess air. It’ll adjust throughout the day if necessary, and if it should get too tight for some reason, I can let air in.”

  “And padding? It has padding?”

  “I wear a silicone sock over the stump, which also creates the vacuum seal. It has some cushioning, and then I have a little extra in the socket because my leg has shrunk some. I can’t explain how every part of it works, but I walk without problems most of the time. Next best thing to a real one.”

  “Sounds like it.” But she caught on what was missing. “But no running?”

  “I’d probably face-plant. In theory I could, but not very fast, and it’s fatiguing because the leg is so heavy. I know amputees who have more than one leg for various purposes. I sometimes think about getting one for running because it would reduce the effort and fatigue by adding more spring to my step.”

  “You should.”

  “More money than I have right now. Nope.” He patted the leg on the thigh socket. “I’m mostly content. This is a great leg.” But nothing would make it sound or feel like the real thing. Or, come to that, behave like it.

  She leaned forward, clasping her hands. “It must have been hard to learn to walk on it.”

  He nodded. “Different muscles need to be used, and even different motions. It took a while to get the hang of it and build them up. And since I was doing all this post-op, it took longer. No advance preparation.”

  She fell silent, apparently absorbing all that he’d said. Then he saw a new question occur to her and he waited for it.

  “Microprocessor? So you have to plug your leg in?”

  “Every couple of days.”

  “Wow,” she breathed. “I know you must hate needing it, but it sounds like a marvel.”

  He looked toward the fire, not sure how much of the love-hate relationship he felt toward his mechanical leg he wanted to share. Yes, he hated needing it, but he was eternally grateful to everyone who’d made it possible, from the company that had designed it down to the physical therapist who had so patiently worked with him for six months, ignoring his occasional outbursts, his frustration, his anger and always reminding him he would walk again.

  “I’m lucky,” he said finally. “And grateful.”

  “Lucky?” She repeated the word dubiously, but didn’t press him.

  He wondered if she was thinking about Sara, whose loss had gutted him so much that at times after he’d been shipped home he just wished the damn explosion had ripped his head off instead of his leg. When he’d left for Afghanistan again after her funeral, he hadn’t expected to come back. He hadn’t wanted to come back. Of course, the Navy and the Marines had considered that possibility and had run him past a psychologist until they were sure he wouldn’t be a fool out there.

  Well, of course he wouldn’t. He might not want to come back, but he never, ever would have done a thing that might have caused harm to anyone in his unit. That was a whole different matter.

  Never. No matter what.

  He closed his eyes, remembering that day of his wounding again, but this time without the grip of a flashback. This t
ime as if he were watching it rather than living it.

  “Jess?”

  “I’m still here, just thinking.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I stirred things up.”

  He shook his head. “They never go entirely to sleep. It’s okay.” He popped his eyes open and looked at her again. He felt the unmistakable tug of desire for her, and wished she were any woman on the planet except his late wife’s best friend, because right now he’d have loved to bury himself in that beautiful body and forget every other thing in the world. Sara was well past being hurt, but Lacy wasn’t. He had no idea how she’d react given that they shared a past that included Sara.

  But something else lay between them: his leg. Even without Sara’s ghost in the room, he’d have been reluctant to show her that stump. How much less sexy could you get? A missing leg sewn together by docs who were more interested in saving his life than in cosmetics, then several more surgeries to get it in shape so that he could wear an artificial leg, and it was not a pretty patchwork. The years hadn’t removed all the redness from the scars yet; the marks from the hundreds of stitches made him look like a movie version of Frankenstein. Sure, that would turn a woman on. Right.

  Instant mood killer.

  Crap, this whole situation was nuts. It had been quick and easy to say, “Come stay with me” when all he’d been concerned about was giving her a break from her constant edginess. A breather. He hadn’t expected all these complications to get off the bus with her. A beautiful woman, being locked away together in a house with Sara’s memory hanging around, and maybe some worse kind of threat right outside his door.

  Why the hell would anyone be after him? Yeah, the CO had gotten a reprimand for going outside his orders and walking them straight into an ambush, but it wasn’t as if anyone had reported him. Not as if the brass couldn’t tell that orders hadn’t been followed by the location they were at when they were attacked.