“Can’t you go bother Janice?”

  “Oh, like I’m so close to her.” Which was true. Of the four siblings, Janice and Noreen had never been close…at all. “But even she’d handle Connie better than you would.”

  “If I weren’t still mostly naked, I’d whup your butt, Nori.”

  “I dare you to try. I double dare you.”

  John pushed off the bed to lunge at her, but she was too fast. Between one breath and the next she was gone out of the room.

  When he turned to face the chair, he saw that his shirt and pants had gone with her. At least she’d left his other sock.

  Chapter 5

  “He’s gonna kill you.” If John saw Connie leaning into the engine compartment of his pet GTO and tinkering, he just might. Even if they were engaged. He and Paps had kept it out in the barn and worked on it only when they were together. It had been one of their rituals since she was a little girl. It was never going to get done.

  “Noreen!” Connie’s look of delight was too big to fit on her face. And in the next instant, it disappeared back behind that ever-so-careful Connie wall.

  “Hello! Happy to see you too.”

  “You really are?” Meek Connie asked carefully.

  Noreen just laughed and hugged her. The fierceness of the return hug was shocking. It was very un-Connie-like. By the end of it, Noreen was discovering that she was feeling sniffly. Connie didn’t hug her like her fiancée’s sister; she hugged Noreen like they were sisters. Like twin sisters who had been apart for far too long, rather than two women most of a decade apart in age and who had met for three days. Three days that had ended in a funeral.

  “I was so afraid that you’d be angry. I missed you so much,” Connie mumbled.

  “Me too.” No matter how ridiculous, it was true.

  Connie stepped back and leaned on John’s precious car, shifting most of the way back into her usual self, though not all the way. No tears had run, but her eyes weren’t any drier than Noreen’s. There was a long silence as Connie gathered her thoughts, which Noreen had learned to wait through.

  “And you’ve forgiven me for…you know?”

  “Running out of here like a demon was chasing your ass?”

  “Yes, that would be an accurate description. In several ways.”

  “Nothing to forgive. You’re the one who finally convinced me I was doing something important and to hell with what anyone else thought.” She tapped her collar where her lieutenant’s bar would be if she was wearing her uniform. “I spend most of my days trying to figure out how to live up to your standard.”

  “My standard? I’ve spent the last six months trying to live up to yours.”

  Which set them both to laughing. Noreen knew so much about her, and also so little. It was awfully confusing. Which in Connie’s neatly ordered world must be times a hundred.

  So, Noreen sat down on an old milk crate in the corner.

  “No! Don’t!”

  Noreen leapt to her feet and stared down at the crate to see if there was a giant milk snake or something.

  “Sorry. I—” Connie studied the thin layer of straw on the barn floor.

  “What?”

  Connie just shook her head.

  “Give, sis.”

  Connie eyed her carefully, “Promise you won’t laugh.”

  Noreen crisscrossed her chest and held up a Girl Scout sign.

  “When I rebuilt Grumps’ tractor last Christmas, he would sit on that crate and watch me. I… It feels as if he’s here with me if that crate is sitting there.”

  Noreen wasn’t able to blink away the tears this time and soon they were both sniffling.

  “He opened a hole in my world.”

  “Dying will do that. He loved you a lot, Connie. We all did. So fast.”

  “No, it wasn’t his dying.” Connie went over and straightened the crate so that it was angled just so.

  Noreen could almost see him there—a big man that even age couldn’t waste wholly away. His sparse tightly curled hair gone long past gray and into white. That easy smile that could welcome her home from a day at school as if she’d been away for a year or put her in her place with equal ease.

  “It was his living that did it. He’s the closest to family I’ve had since I was twelve.”

  “You’re going to have a whole lot more tomorrow.”

  Connie offered a quirky smile, which was a new one on her.

  “Maybe if I get this GTO running, I’ll race out of here.”

  The car was in a kajillion pieces. The frame was there and most of the shiny black metal was back in place. And the engine was under the hood. But the hood was propped up against the barn wall and nothing was attached to the engine. Wires seemed to sprout everywhere. A stack of red leather interior panels were laid on a pair of sawhorses. The car itself was up on blocks with the tires sitting in the corner and no brakes or anything on the axles.

  But if anyone could do it in the next twenty-four hours, it was her future sister-in-law.

  “If you do decide to bolt, you’ve got to make me a promise.”

  “What?”

  “Take me with you. Either that or I have to face a summer studying human anatomy.”

  “Deal!” They shook on it. “Can you give me a hand?”

  And Noreen leaned in to work on the engine with the kind of sister she’d never had but always dreamed of. She didn’t know a thing about engines, but she knew she was happier being close to Connie.

  Chapter 6

  His plans to track down Connie—no matter what Noreen said—kept getting sidetracked.

  Tim had been chowing down in the kitchen, which had turned into a long and friendly meal with Mama teasing them for being sleepyheads, the last awake. They’d all caught up with each other in ways they hadn’t had time for last night.

  As he finished washing the fry pan, Mama had given them a list for the grocery store, about a half million items long. So off to the local Homeland.

  “It’s weird buying groceries.” John stared down the next aisle with some trepidation.

  “How long since the last time you did this, man?” Tim asked as he stared wild-eyed at the cereal aisle. In an Army mess there were about five choices. At the normal forward operating base they were lucky to have a choice of one.

  “A while,” John glared at the list. Milk wasn’t just milk, it was “two percent organic.” Did that mean that only two percent of it was organic or… “Shit, man! It’s been a long while.”

  “The Army provides.”

  It was strange. He hadn’t had an apartment—ever. He’d gone from home to enlisted. Meals were dealt with. All kinds of civilian things were dealt with: no electric or water bills, no decisions about meals except whether to take the lasagna or the meat loaf. No question of even shopping at the PX for anything other than munchies, because no real point in keeping food around when you could be deployed on a moment’s notice.

  Connie had it even worse than he did, growing up as an Army brat. At least he could take care of this so that she didn’t have to.

  That didn’t stop him from wishing she was the one stuck with this when they hit a produce aisle longer than the cargo bay of a C-17 Globemaster III jet transport.

  “It’s an issue, man,” Tim agreed as they nosed their two carts into the vast array of greenery. “Feels like I’m doing an infiltration.”

  “It is an issue. How am I supposed to be the man of the family when I don’t even know how to buy groceries?” Grumps had taken care of the farm into his eighties. Now Paps had taken up the reins and Larry would follow in his footsteps. Whereas he—

  “Don’t worry so much, bro. Connie is enough of a man for both of you.”

  He considered rearranging the lettuce display with Tim’s head. She was certainly more woman than he knew how to deal with.

  “At least she’s not some weenie like you, Tim.”

  “Lame,” Tim rated his comeback as they both stared at the carrots in dismay. The list said “carrots” but there was mini-peeled in a bag, full carrots in a bag, and a stack of loose ones two feet deep arranged in a neat stacked semi-circle with carrot butts facing them.

  It was a lame response, but it was the best he had.

  Tim pointed down the aisle to where there were more carrots still with their green tops and a sign above them that said organic. They finally took one of each kind of bag and a fistful each of the loose ones.

  That’s what they’d both always done: scooped up all kinds of willing ladies, had a great time, and let them go. Nobody pinned down Tim Maloney and Big John Wallace when they were in a target-rich environment.

  “What the hell happened to me?” John stared at the eighty types of lettuce: head, bag, little plastic boxes marked spinach, or arugula. There were mixes, blends, hearts, and who knew what all. Even figuring out and eliminating the cabbages and cauliflowers (which took some doing) didn’t narrow the target selection near enough.

  “You stepped on the landmine of luv.” Tim drew out the last word like some British comedian.

  He left the lettuce to Tim and moved down to potatoes. John had worked the farm as a kid, he understood potatoes. Russet, golden, red, mini, heritage…Shit!

  The landmine of luv was about right. Every time he looked at Connie, it was impossible to look anywhere else. And when he touched her—

  A hand rested on his arm. Long, fine fingers. He scanned up the tall, lean body into Jennifer’s lovely face and even darker eyes.

  “Johnnie,” her soft voice evoking a thousand memories. They’d hooked up a number of times since their first real fling the night he’d quarterbacked the Muskogee High School Roughers to third in the state championship. If he was home on leave and she was between boyfriends, they’d heat up the dance floor at Clary’s and then scorch the sheets.

  “Hey, Jen.”

  “Didn’t know you were back in town.” Her hand still rested on his arm. He knew full well how crazy she could drive him with those lovely fingers.

  “Just a couple days.”

  “You know my number.”

  He could only nod. The words just wouldn’t come out.

  She sashayed away, picked up an apple and bit down on it with her perfect white teeth that could nibble at him until he was sure he’d died and gone to heaven. Sex with Jen had always been amaz—

  Tim slapped him hard on the back of the head.

  “What?”

  “You did not just look at that.” Tim’s eyes weren’t following Jen’s walk around the end of the aisle, instead he was glaring at John.

  “Some history there, man. Good history.”

  Tim smacked him again, and this time he looked pissed. “What the hell is wrong with you, man? Do I even know you? Marrying Connie Davis tomorrow. Sound familiar?”

  John covered his face, trying to scrub the image of Jen out of his mind. She’d been gunning for him on and off for over a decade. He’d been looking for something different—never once imagining it was a short, quiet, white chick like Connie.

  “Why is she scaring the shit out of me?”

  “Jen? ’Cause she’s the finest land shark swimming.” When Tim had visited, they’d often double-dated with one of Jen’s nearly-as-sultry friends.

  “No, Connie.” Jen had always offered an easy laugh and awesome sex. Connie had blown up his world and stolen his heart.

  “Because you aren’t stupid.”

  “You saying I’m stupid to marry Connie?” Normally those would be fighting words, but now he didn’t even know.

  “No, asshole. Smartest damn thing you ever did other than teaming up with me. I’m saying Connie is scary as hell. She looked at you with those big golden-browns and, Bang!, you were off the market. No woman should have that kind of power over a man.”

  But she did. She totally did.

  “You’re next, buddy,” he thumped Tim on the shoulder.

  “No way in hell is some dame gonna pin down this boy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “No. Way.”

  “Got a fifty on that?”

  “Done!” They shook on it. He should have made it a hundred. “Double if it’s inside six months.”

  “Yes! Easy money.”

  Then they turned together to face the question of onions: sweet, white, yellow, red, shallot… Shit!

  Chapter 7

  Connie had most of the grease cleaned off in the shower. It would only take another couple hours to finish the GTO. She wanted to keep working on it, but Noreen had insisted that they had to stop.

  “Reception dinner tonight.”

  “I don’t have to go, do I?”

  “It’s for your wedding, sis-to-be.” Noreen’s smile had been merciless.

  “But it is going to be small? Your mom promised.”

  “Small by Wallace standards. It’s a farm wedding, been a long time since we had one of those, sis-to-be. Deal with it.”

  So, Connie scrubbed and worried. She wasn’t good with people, but they seemed to like her anyway…eventually. And John loved her which was the only thing in her life that made sense. Why couldn’t it be just her and John? They’d go back to his friend’s steak house for dinner and make love in the USS Batfish submarine museum just as they had last winter. Then they’d—

  “Now that’s a sight I’ve been looking for all day.” John swept open the plastic curtain around the tub.

  He was so magnificent she couldn’t speak. Stripped down, John was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Broad chest, powerful legs, and a smile that was all for her. She set aside the soap as he stepped in to join her. She wrapped herself around him as he closed the curtain and folded her against that lovely chest.

  Here.

  Here was where Connie the woman made sense—the only place. Her was where she came to life and the fears slipped away. She’d learned she could rely on that like her favorite 9 mm box-end wrench. John was her place of safety and security. A security she’d never known. Of all the people she knew, only John was even more reliable than a Black Hawk’s T700 turbine, and even those needed care and maintenance.

  Perhaps people were like that too. It was a reasonable hypothesis. She had spent much of the day with Noreen. Had she been teaching Noreen about electrical systems as they’d pulled new wiring through the GTO’s frame together? Or had she been maintaining, even cementing their future sister-in-law relationship? Perhaps both?

  She looked up to study John’s face before she spoke.

  “I love you, John.” That she didn’t say it often didn’t make it any less true.

  His smile bloomed as his eyes squeezed even more tightly shut. She now had a better understanding of his happy sigh that followed. She’d have to remember to say it more often.

  She buried her face once more into his chest to reinforce her own happy sigh.

  Chapter 8

  Five a.m.

  No one in their right mind got out of bed at five a.m. Actually, that was usually around the time that a Night Stalker went to bed.

  The house was silent. John knew Paps and Larry would be waking up soon, but they were working a farm. Even on a wedding day, the farm didn’t wholly rest. They only kept a few dozen head of cattle for milk and beef, so the chores wouldn’t last long. He wondered if he should wake Connie. Last night something had shifted.

  They’d made love—a happy ritual they both enjoyed. Huh! He hadn’t even thought once about Jen since she’d swayed away. Just thinking about Connie erased any other woman from even consideration. Being in her presence made it hard to think of anything else—like how comfortable his old bed was and how nice going back to sleep sounded.

  Wasn’t that a surprise? That a quiet, self-possessed woman could do that to him. Be funny to watch Tim when that caught up with him. John made a mental note to not give him the least bit of a break when it happened—and to collect his hundred bucks when some woman took Tim down for the now-and-forever dance.

  But what was it that had shifted with Connie last night?

  The sex had always been amazing. The contrast of such a careful woman who was so uninhibited in his arms was a constant wonder and being in the family bathroom hadn’t changed that at all. He wasn’t even sure who had taken who. Connie didn’t play power dynamics—no question who was in control when he’d been with Jen. Jen had always made him feel like a man. Instead, Connie made him feel like he belonged exactly where he was.

  Last night, after the dinner so rich with family and laughter, she’d simply held him as they lay together. She’d held him so tightly that it was impossible to imagine her wanting to be anywhere else. They didn’t make pre-wedding love, they’d simply held each other in perfect, silent contentment.

  Any worries that she’d run away again were simply gone.

  He twisted around to look at her in the first hint of pre-dawn light that trickled around the curtains…except she wasn’t there. Her pillow was smoothed and her side of the bed was tucked in.

  He turned on a light and managed to blink through the glare enough to finally see that her gear bag was still in place beside the dresser. Then where the hell was she? She’d eluded him all yesterday—not that he’d ever really had a chance to go find her.

  A low rumble kicked to life somewhere out in the night.

  A rumble that he’d imagined any number of times, but hadn’t heard in forever.

  It was a triple-carbed Pontiac 389 V8.

  It was his triple-carbed Pontiac 389 V8.

  John scrambled out of bed. The woman was working on his GTO.

  In moments he was dressed and standing at the open barn door. He’d arrived just steps behind Paps and could only stare aghast.

  Connie and Noreen were sitting in the front buckets.

  “Good morning. We were just headed out to the airport. Mark and Emily are coming in on an early flight.” Connie dropped it into gear and rolled it out of the barn—the first time it had moved since he and Paps had pushed the aging rust bucket into the barn a decade ago. Now it was a black beast of a machine that shone with its perfection. He and Paps had hoped to finish it over the next couple times he had leave, but there hadn’t been time to get near it this trip.

 

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