Shadow target shadow tea.., p.10
Shadow Target (Shadow Team Book 6), page 10
“Wat is a country-wide stew that is served nearly every day in families here. Good thing you like it because you’ll eat a lot of it over the coming year.”
“You made this?”
“Yes. Will miracles never cease?” and she gave him a wolfish grin. Her heart hammered briefly when he sent back that yearning, heated look of his. Shep never could hide how he felt about her, and Willow was glad for that. The guy might be the world’s toughest safe to crack emotionally, but when it came to enjoyment, to wanting her sexually, it was always right there in his eyes. In his beautiful, sharpened azure eyes that missed nothing.
He said, “I think this is going to work out well between us. You gave a great talk at the briefing.”
“These people need to be brought up to speed about Ethiopia, its culture and people. And the people here… are wonderful. They’re hard-working, love their families, and all they want is to be able to work, till their fields, and survive.”
“Just like in every other country in this world. Right?” Shep replied.
She nodded between bites. Waving the injera bread around, she said, “Yes, but this country is far more stable than most other African countries, which is good.”
“So far,” he murmured, soaking his own bread in the fragrant, reddish-colored stew. “I worry about this Tefere David, though. He sounds like a really sick bastard. Turns my stomach to hear he’s stealing children to sell them to sex traffickers in Europe and who even knows where else. The parents have to be torn up completely.”
“They are,” she said grimly. “We fly into those villages monthly, sometimes more often. If there’s a medical emergency, we’ll fly in day or night, and take the child or adult to the hospital in Addis Ababa for treatment.”
“Do you ever get a vacation?” he wondered.
Laughing a little, Willow shook her head. “Not really. There’s just Dev and me for the upper one-third of Ethiopia where Delos has their charities. We kind of get thrown a bit of slack from time to time, for a week maybe, at most. And even when we do, we can’t leave the country and go home to visit our family. Well, I should amend that because Dev never wants to go home to be with her family anyway; it’s so dysfunctional.”
“What about you?”
She liked that he was now asking personal questions. And that they seemed sincere ones. That was a nice change in Shep that she’d desperately needed. “Oh, I’d love to visit my mom and dad.”
“How are they?”
“Retired. Enjoying life on their five-acre farm outside of Seattle, Washington. My Dad, ex-fighter jock that he is, is now working part time for Boeing in their drone department.”
“What about your mom, Ruth?”
She was amazed he’d remembered her name. Swallowing her surprise, she said, “My mother has her own nutrition business. That way she can stay home, weed her huge garden, canning in the late summer and into the fall, and then grow veggies during the winter in her greenhouse. She’s happy.”
“Are you happy, Willow?” Shep asked, holding her surprised stare.
Taken off guard, she blinked a few times before replying, “Yes, I am. I like being of service. I’d rather drop supplies; food, medicine and clothing, to villages, than drop bombs. There was a hidden part of me; while I loved the adrenaline charge of flying an F-16, I never liked killing. I knew the bombs had to be dropped, but I never gloried in it like other pilots did. People died. Bad people, for sure, but it’s still killing, and I longed for a more peaceful world. At least for me personally, I found one here in Ethiopia… to a degree.”
“I always knew you were a softy beneath that tough, brash jet jockey exterior you walked and talked.” He saw her grimace.
“I think everyone has more than one side to themselves, don’t you, Shep?” Just to be able to talk like this was refreshing to Willow. She’d never been able to entice him into this kind of philosophical discussion before. He seemed relaxed and almost eager to talk with her, which was also new. Her heart warmed. She saw he was honestly trying to invoke those changes he said he’d made.
“Well,” he said, holding her gaze, “you’re right. I’ve had three years of kicking around in South America to look at our failed marriage. If nothing else? I wanted to learn from it because I never wanted to repeat it.”
“Because you want to get married again?” Willow had to ask.
“No, not necessarily. I’m a construction bum, Willow. My life is a tumbleweed. I go where the construction is at. You can’t drag a wife and kids around like that.”
Shrugging, Willow said, “My dad was in the Air Force for twenty years. All I knew growing up was a new base in a new country every two to three years. It didn’t harm me. I think moving around made me a more globally minded person than I would have been. Because of the moves, I was in different cultures, belief systems, and a different language every time. I consider it time well spent and never minded those moves because, rock bottom, they were highly educational.”
“I never thought about it like that,” Shep agreed. “I always assumed a woman wanted to stay in one place to raise a family.”
Willow knew she was stepping into forbidden territory with Shep. He’d never discussed his family with her. Would he now? “I don’t like the patriarchy’s job description for women: barefoot, pregnant, and house fraus? Forget it. I liked that I had so many new adventures with each move. I always looked forward to them, and I did learn a lot, made new friends, and never thought it harmed me. Was that what happened to you? That you grew up in one place?” She held her breath for a moment, seeing a lot of emotions cloud his eyes. And then, those shades of feelings were gone, and he frowned, looked away for a moment, as if making an internal decision about something. Finally, he looked back at her.
“This is an area where you and I had a lot of fights.”
“That’s an understatement,” she droned in a bored tone, eyebrows raised sardonically, mopping up the last of the stew in her near-empty bowl with the last of the bread.
“Yeah, well, no excuses.” He pushed his bowl aside and took a drink of his iced tea. Setting it down, he said, “My dad, Al, owned a construction company. He was a civil engineer. He created a company, so we didn’t move around at all. I grew up with the Pacific Ocean and surfing was my thing.”
“How about your mom?” Willow saw pain come to his eyes, watched him wrestling with a rush of sudden feelings. She had a bad sense about his mother. What had happened?
“My mother,” he said, sitting back, his voice low. He fought himself and forced out, “My dad divorced her when I was thirteen.”
Willow could still see the injury from that time in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Shep.”
Shrugging, he said, “People get divorced all the time.”
She smarted beneath his statement but realized it wasn’t aimed at her. The faraway look in Shep’s eyes spoke of memories she was sure had deluged him through just this brief sharing moment. Wanting to tread gently, she asked, “So from thirteen on until you were eighteen it was you and your mom?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, shaking his head. “It wasn’t a good time, Willow. Damned painful for her.”
“And for you,” she said gently, holding his stormy gaze. His mouth was thinned, and she could feel him struggling with a lot of hidden emotions.
“I was collateral damage,” he groused. “My mother… Well, it devastated her. She really loved my dad. He had an affair, fell in love with a woman in his office, and then came home one day and announced he wanted a divorce from my mom.”
Wincing, she said, “That’s so shattering.” And she could see the effects the whole ordeal had had on him in his expression. Shep was trying to keep that game face of his in place, but it wasn’t working right now. Her heart went out to him, and she had to stop herself from reaching out and touching his hand on the table.
“Yeah, it was like a bomb going off in the house,” he admitted in a growling tone.
“How did your mom handle it?”
“Not well.”
“What do you mean?” Willow wanted to understand how the divorce had affected Shep as a child. She saw him hesitate, his hand curling into a fist for moment and then relaxing.
“I knew this would happen,” he muttered, staring at her darkly.
“What?”
“For two and a half years you asked about my family and I refused to discuss them with you, Willow. And I knew, coming back here, we’d get into some kind of discussion about them sooner or later.”
Sitting back, she felt him resisting her again. Always! “Well, I’m not apologizing for it, Shep. It’s normal and natural to talk about one’s family. I know how you feel about that, but if you really want to communicate with me, this is an area where it will happen.”
He rubbed his stubbled jaw. “I’ve said enough, Willow. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. At least, not right now. All right?” and he leveled a warning stare at her.
“Fine. But I do appreciate you opening up about it.” And she did. “I can see you’re trying, and that means a lot to me, Shep.”
His mouth thinned and hitched. “Yeah, well, whatever…”
Withholding a smile, Willow didn’t cross her arms, as she might have in the past at the word ‘whatever’, but kept her hands resting on the table, instead. Clearly, Shep was in pain and he was uncomfortable as hell. There was much more to this story, but she wasn’t going to press for more right now.
“I do appreciate it.” She wanted to ask why he was trying to open up to her, but figured that was a question for another time, too. “Would you like some dessert?” She saw him brighten a little. The old chestnut ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ had never been truer than with Shep. He liked his sweets.
“Sure.”
Rising, she said, “Normally, Ethiopians do not have dessert after a meal. They like the flavors of the main meal to stay with them. Before the 1960s, they’d never even used sugar in desserts; always honey.” She walked to the kitchen and opened the freezer. “I love my ice cream.” She turned to him. “Are you game? Would you like some? We get this flown in from the capital. Dev knows the chef from British Airways there and he’s sweet on her. He’ll give her ice cream and she’ll put it in our dry ice chest and fly it back here. We get all kinds of flavors.” She looked at the container. “Tonight, it’s chocolate with almonds.”
“Sounds good,” he said.
“Great.” Willow felt relief flowing through her. Shep had FINALLY opened up to her about his family. Granted, it wasn’t much of a step inside his young life, but it was better than nothing. She placed two scoops into each bowl and carried them to the table, a spoon in both. The glee in his eyes reminded her of a little boy being given some nice, big surprise and she smiled as she sat down.
“No secret to you, Porter,” and she gestured to his bowl.
“Oh, I don’t know. You always accused me of holding secrets, Willow.”
She dug into her ice cream. “You still carry secrets.”
“It always made me uncomfortable to talk about them.”
“It still does,” she agreed softly, not wanting to compound the pain he already felt.
“Yes. But I’ve learned the hard way that keeping secrets about my past doesn’t work very well.” Shep replied, enjoying the dessert.
“Were you uncomfortable when Luke read your entire personal history? He must have because he’s the head of security and he has to know the people he’s protecting.”
“I got that,” he admitted sourly, scooping his spoon around the melting edges of the ice cream. “It made me rethink my hiding from my early years because I saw that Luke didn’t treat me any different than before he knew about my family.” He slid her a glance. “Looking back on it? I was ashamed of what happened in my family. It wasn’t whole, like yours was. And the naked truth was that I wanted you to think well of me. Not that I came out of a busted household.”
Willow hesitated. His admittance was something she thought she’d never hear from him. Setting her spoon down, she held his gaze fraught with raw emotions. Gently, she said, “No family is perfect, Shep. I think you know that by now? Look at my own family, Ben, my older brother by two years? He was always in trouble, unable to sit still, always restless and moving around. Eventually, he was diagnosed with ADHD, put on meds which he took until he was sixteen, and then threw them away, saying they made him feel horrible. From then on, he was in trouble as a juvenile with the police. He started smoking marijuana, and then started selling it on the side.” She shook her head. “He was a mess. And my parents were stressed to the max, like I was. I love Ben with all my heart. We had been close growing up, but I could never help him, Shep. He was very independent of the family by the time he turned eighteen.”
Becoming somber, Shep said, “I remember. I was an only child, so I didn’t have the issues you had in your family.”
Willow nodded and whispered, “What I didn’t tell you, Shep? Talk about holding secrets, eh?” and she gave him an apologetic look. “My sister, Ella, died of leukemia when she was ten years old. I was twelve. Ben was fourteen. That’s when our family more or less imploded. Ben revolted when my mother left for the States to get Ella to a children’s hospital for help. I was caught in the middle between my brother and trying to keep the household going in my mother’s absence.” She saw his face fall, emotion clearly visible in his expression.
“Damn, Willow, I’m sorry.” He reached out, briefly touching her lower arm. “You never told me about this. That had to be devastating.”
Her heart swelled with so many feelings for him that she had to stop herself from throwing herself into his arms. Shep was a consummate lover. He knew how to hold a woman, love her, caress her, and then care for her. She didn’t know where he’d gotten that skill and understanding from. There was so much more to him than she’d ever realized, but their three years apart had given her distance and a new slant on their marriage.
Willow took a deep breath that came back out as a sigh and went on, “It was devastating. It tore our whole family apart. My father was in Turkey at the time with us, living on the U.S. air base. My mother had flown back to one of the premier children’s hospitals in the USA, living near it, hoping that Ella would survive. I was in Turkey with my dad and brother. Ben was running the streets of Istanbul with a gang, and I never knew if he was going to come home or not at night. I took the place of my mother by cooking, cleaning and trying to keep some kind of normality in our family.”
“And this went on for how many years?” Shep asked.
Willow looked him right in the eye and said, “Ella died a year later. Mom came back to live with us in Turkey after the funeral. My father had to keep flying with his squadron. He couldn’t just get up and leave the Air Force. But all that time before, when mom had been stateside, we’d had what I guess they term a broken home of sorts. Without my mom there, Ben revolted and took off on his own. My father wouldn’t be home for days at a time because of the duties he was responsible for. I was keeping the household stitched together the best I could, although it wasn’t good enough.”
“You were only twelve. How could you?” Shep asked.
She nodded sadly, remembering that time. “If Ben had been well, it might have worked. He was the firstborn, and should have taken over and been responsible, but he wasn’t. My father was at his wit’s ends and didn’t know what to do with him. We all loved Ben, but he divorced himself from our family in a way, with his choices. He’d rarely showed up at the English school in Istanbul, maybe attending classes once a week. I never knew if he’d be home for any meals. I was going to school. I made breakfast for us, made sack lunches, and then cooked our dinners at night. Sometimes, my father and my brother didn’t show up at all.”
“How did that affect you?” Shep allowed himself to wonder out loud to his ex-wife, even surprising himself in the moment.
Willow finished her ice cream and put the bowl aside. “At twelve I was just entering puberty, I had my own hormonal hell I was going through, weepy, crying at the drop of a hat.”
“And you didn’t have your mother there to help you at that time when you needed her the most?”
Stunned by his unexpected insight, she stared at him. A lump formed in her throat for a moment and she swallowed. “Yeah, I was an emotional mess with all those hormones coming online. I started my first period and she wasn’t there to explain to me what was going on. It scared me to death. I thought I was bleeding to death. My father had gone on an assignment for a week. Ben was off with his gang. I remember sitting there on the toilet, blood dripping out of me and crying. I thought I was going to die.”
Shaking his head, Shep muttered, “My parent never talked to me about such things.”
“Mine either,” she said darkly. “I went next door in our apartment building and talked to another American woman who was married to a pilot in my dad’s squadron. She was so kind and convinced me I wasn’t bleeding to death, that I was just having my first menstrual period. If she hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I’d have done, Shep. I was so scared and confused. She took the time to explain what was happening to me, and I stopped being fearful about it.”
“And your father was gone and couldn’t be there for you, either.”
“Men know NOTHING about a woman’s reproductive system at all, much less their menstrual period. He’d not have been any help and would probably have gone to the woman I went to in the apartment complex, for help.” She frowned. “It was probably one of my darkest days, other than Ella dying.”
There was silence for a moment and Shep finally said, “I’m sorry, Willow.”
There were no words for how she felt, so instead, she just nodded toward him.
Giving her a wry look, he said, “Do you remember when you called me a dumb box of rocks?”
Groaning, Willow said, “Yes, and it was stupid of me to lower myself to that level with you. I’m sorry I said it, Shep. I really am.”
He held up his hands. “I had it coming, looking back on it. Sitting here and hearing the rest of your family’s trials, it helps me to see how it’s shaped you in some ways.”
