Heather Graham (5 page)

The kids loved Sloppy Joes.

Dad’s first night home? This wasn’t this overpowering stranger’s home anymore, her mind railed. It was her home. She had survived in it; she had kept it up; she had reared two children in it. It was her home.

Oh, God, she felt as if she were drowning. No one, not even under these extraordinary circumstances, could walk in off the street after twelve years and think that this was his home.

“Josh”—her tone was much more strident than she meant it to be, but talking itself was still a great difficulty—“hamburger meat is all that I have defrosted.”

“Sloppy Joes are great,” Brian said softly, and Joshua smiled up at him adoringly.

Absurdly Kim wanted to lash out. She wanted to scream,
Don’t! Don’t smooth things over between me and
my
son. I will discipline them, and they will listen to me.

She stood up, and it seemed as if a million questions hammered in her mind, but they were in such a cacophony that she couldn’t even sort them out.
I’m really a mess,
she thought distractedly, brushing back a lock of hair,
while Brian looks wonderful.
He should have been insane, a physical and mental basket case, because she would have been after all he had gone through. Instead, he had grown stronger.

Sloppy Joes, Sloppy Joes…Like an automaton, she followed their path to the kitchen. She could see them through the glass windows and the overpass. Josh was pointing out the little waterfall that fell from the begonias. Jake was tugging his hand and pointing to the Chattahoochee tile. Brian was trying to pay attention to them both.

Damn, he did look wonderful—but different, so much older, lean, hard, wise, and as sharp as a whip. There was a dangerous quality to his eyes now, to the way he stood, as if he could turn in a flash and pounce like a tiger.

Kim shook herself. My dear God, he was a POW for how many years? Sloppy Joes
didn’t
seem right.

Feverish now, she dug into the freezer for a box of frozen broccoli. She was sure she had cheese and crackers for a casserole.

The art of functioning took over and she began to move quickly, melting the cheese, boiling the broccoli, frying the meat. The refrigerator was crammed with salad makings, and there were bacon bits because Josh liked them and croutons because Jake hated lettuce without something to spice it up.

She set the table quickly, then combined the broccoli, melted cheese, and crackers and set the dish into the oven. She added tomato paste and seasonings to the cooking hamburger and covered the pan with its lid. Then she started with the salad and realized that although he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t made a sound, Brian was in the kitchen, leaning against the wall, watching her.

She dropped the tomato she had been slicing and spun around to stare at him. Neither spoke for a minute. There was the hint of a smile about his mouth, a touch of something in the eyes that now seemed so dangerous.

“You need a haircut,” she heard herself saying stupidly.

He grimaced, and his shoulders shifted against the wall. His hands were in the pockets of his trousers and he appeared completely at ease.

No, she corrected herself. Not completely. What she had seen earlier was still there: that sense that he could see behind himself, that he saw everything, that he heard what she could not, that he could pounce at a moment’s notice.

Why hadn’t she remembered how tall he was, and dear God, where had he acquired that striking, chilling breadth of shoulders? So lean, yet she could see the delineation of sinewed muscle even in his lower arms.

“I suppose I do.” He shrugged.

She had forgotten her own words, and then she couldn’t talk again. She opened her mouth and circled out her previous questions: “How? Where?”

He shrugged, still against the wall.

This is terrible,
Kim thought vaguely.
Time has cost us everything. We are like wary contestants, meeting each other in an arena.

“I wasn’t exactly a prisoner of war. I was taken by a lunatic named Chou Lang, who kept a few of us up in the hills.”

“But your tags—the—” Her voice was trembling so badly she was whispering again. “The body—”

“I told you, Chou Lang was a lunatic. He delighted in mental torture. He turned in the body of my copilot years after we crashed, with, my ID. And he spent the next month telling me I was dead.”

“Butttt…hhow…”

“I think you need a drink. Have you got anything?”

Kim nodded sickly. She inclined her head toward the far left cabinet. Hanging onto the counter, she watched him as he moved across the kitchen.

He moved so silently, so powerfully, so lithely. So certainly…Brian had always had complete assurance….

“Brandy?”

She nodded. It didn’t make any difference.

A second later he handed her a small glass of double brandy. He gripped her upper arm, leading her to the small kitchen table.
He feels like fire,
she thought, but that was only because she was cold, so cold.

She was sitting; he was sitting across from her. Heat seemed to radiate from him, but it didn’t warm her. She was suddenly aware of a sensation she had forgotten, one that came back to her in a giant wave. The special scent that was Brian’s came to her with shocking poignancy, a pleasant scent, so pleasant: light aftershave with something very subtle but overwhelmingly masculine….

“I was actually Chou Lang’s prisoner for ten years. When I managed to escape him, I was lost, and I crossed Nam and Laos, on foot mostly. And then I made it into Thailand, where I could get help.” He grimaced, and there was only a touch of bitterness to his eyes. “Things get very complicated when you’re supposedly dead. The Thai authorities were confused as hell, so I wound up in France. Finally I got it through to the military that I was Brian Trent and that I was alive. And then”—he shrugged—“I went to Arizona, to my folks. And I went through the courts to have myself declared alive.”

“Why…” She still couldn’t talk. He was right in front of her, a furnace of life and vibrancy. But she didn’t know him anymore, not at all.

She reached across the table for a cigarette. Her fingers were trembling so badly she couldn’t flick a flame out of the lighter. He took the lighter from her, and she leaned forward to draw the flame, the cigarette bouncing about in her mouth.

“Picked up smoking again, I see.” She could hear the disapproval in his voice but nodded jerkily, absently registering the complaint. She inhaled deeply, then drained half the brandy. Her voice was still a whisper. “Why wasn’t I informed?”

“You are informed. I’m here.”

“I mean as soon as you—as soon as…”

Something veiled his eyes. They appeared very dark, indigo again. He leaned back, and as he did, there was a certain withdrawal. He spoke softly; he had always been able to speak softly yet get so much across. “Kim, try to imagine ten years as a prisoner. A decade. Knowing absolutely nothing of what was happening in the world. And knowing that as far as that world went, you no longer existed. They were going to inform you. I requested that they not—not until I could come myself with my personal problems solved.”

“You went to your parents? But…how long were you there?”

Her voice was stronger now, but she was shaking. She had spoken with Brian’s mother just a month ago. She had always kept in close contact, even though it had hurt terribly at first. But even when the Trents moved back to Arizona, she had spoken with them at least once a month. And for the last two years she had sent the twins out to spend several summer weeks with them.

Why hadn’t they told her? Why had everyone decided she should be left in the dark?

He smiled with another shrug. “I guess I was there about four months. I—I knew my folks would be glad to see me.”

“What do you mean?” Kim gasped, knowing exactly what he meant and feeling something harsh grow within her. “You should have come straight here! No matter what I had been doing, Brian, I would have been happy to see you! You’re the father of my sons—”

“And that’s about all now, isn’t it?” he interrupted softly.

“I—I—” Why the hell was she stuttering so? She had nothing to feel guilty for, but she was feeling guilty, and it made her ridiculously angry.

“Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, Brian!” she snapped. “I did everything that could be done. I went to Washington, I attended meetings, protests, and I wrote letters until my arms almost dropped off. But then they sent you home, or so they told me. And I had the twins, Brian. Little boys, babies. Not nice-size twelve-year-olds who entertain themselves on command! I had to get back to living.”

He started laughing and reached across the table to grip her chin between his thumb and forefinger. She felt the touch like fire, and she stared into the blue eyes that sizzled into hers, feeling torn between a fierce desire to scream and cry and forget the world and envelop him in her arms and a fear every bit as intense: a fear that they had gone too far, that he no longer wanted her, that time had changed them irrevocably, that she would discover that she didn’t love him, hadn’t loved him, that he didn’t love her, that memory had played them both false….

“Oh, Kim, you really haven’t changed! That temper of yours is every bit as quick as ever.”

She blinked, feeling tears rise to her lids. What was the matter with her? He had lived through a hell he dismissed with a few words, a hell she could only begin to imagine, and she was yelling like a harpy.

She closed her eyes tensely. “Oh, Brian, I’m so sorry. I really am. I know what it must have been for you, except there are many, many ways to be in hell.”

He released her chin, and she opened her eyes, surprised to see a softness in his eyes and. his smile. “It was nice to see you hadn’t changed,” he said softly, and again her mind began screaming.

This was Brian. She was sitting at the table talking to Brian, and more than a decade stretched between them, yet the time could disappear with the memory of a scent, with a softly spoken word.

No, time was still between them. They both were different. He was. That tension was with him. If she moved the wrong way, he would pounce, and he could be dangerous….She had to stop the way she was thinking. He had been a prisoner for ten years, and it was a miracle that he was sane.

“I believe that something is burning,” he said with a polite quirk of a smile twisting his lips, his eyes growing light with amusement.

“The broccoli!” she yelled, springing up and moving toward the oven.

“Ah, Mom! You didn’t burn it again!”

Jacob and Joshua had evidently been “entertaining themselves” quite near the smoked glass doors that led from the kitchen-breakfast room to the patio. Kim looked at Josh with warning daggers shooting from her eyes, but he had already turned to talk to Brian.

“This stuff is really delicious, Dad, except when she burns it.”

“I think you two had better get dressed for dinner,” Kim said sharply.

Joshua grimaced, then exchanged a look with Brian before shouting for Jake (he didn’t need to shout; Jacob, not about to miss anything, was right behind him) and turning to head out for the living room and bolt up the stairway; his cohort followed on his heels.

After ascertaining that the broccoli casserole could be classified as very crisp rather than burned, she glanced covertly back at Brian. His eyes followed the path the twins had just taken.

“They’re very much alike, aren’t they?” he asked huskily.

Kim shrugged. “Not really. Not when you get to know them.” She winced slightly at her choice of words. It was hardly Brian’s fault he didn’t know his sons. “Josh is a little thinner, and his hair is a shade darker, and he has a tiny mole on his left cheek. He’s more mischievous. Jake does much better in school.” A little grin touched her lips. “Like you,” she said softly. “Jake has the Midas touch. He’s straight A’s all the way and still gets along great with his classmates. But Josh beats him out in the sports department. He’s into everything—tennis, wrestling, basketball.”

She suddenly dropped her nervous chatter. “Brian.” She swallowed. “Are you all right? I mean, really all right. You look wonderful, but—”

He grimaced dryly. “But I’ve been a corpse for so long that I should really be a raving lunatic, right?”

Kim blushed uncomfortably. There was a lot of bitterness in his voice; she couldn’t blame him, but it scared her. It reminded her that not only years but a wealth of difference in experiences lay between them.

She could have taken offense at his tone, but she didn’t. “I know,” she said very quietly, “that men who were never captured, men who were simply there, had very bad times adjusting to civilian life. I don’t think I’ve really comprehended all this, Brian. I opened the door, and you were there. And I don’t know what to say, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Say what you feel like, saying,” he said a little harshly, “and do whatever you usually do. Don’t dance around me, and don’t patronize or humor me. I assure you, I’m not a lunatic.” He paused for a moment. “Kim, I didn’t want to see you until I was a bit adjusted, and I didn’t want to see you until I heard from my parents what you were doing.”

She turned away from him, feigning a great interest in stirring the meat and tomato paste mixture in the frying pan, as she digested his words.

He was fully rational and had realized that twelve years was a long time. He probably suspected that she might have easily remarried. Dear God, where did, she stand now? She had been a widow for eight years, but Brian was alive, “legally alive.”

Were they still married? Did he still want to be married? Did she want to be married to a perfect stranger?

And there was Keith. She knew Keith; she didn’t know Brian. Was he still interested in her? They had discussed the children and very briefly what had happened to them, but they had barely touched, much less fallen into each other’s arms.

How did he feel? Was he stopping in to say, “Hi, I’m alive. I want my sons, I’m sure we can work something out”? Or what? What did he want?

What did she want?

Oh, God, if he had only walked in that door eight years ago…