A Chance of a Lifetime (26 page)

“You try to kill yourself one time,” he said dryly, “and every time you're late, people start to worry.” It wasn't a comment he could have made to just anyone. The guys at WTU maybe. Dane Clark. Definitely not to his parents or Gran or Bennie.

“You made your bed, now you lay in it.” Underneath Diez's flippancy was some sympathy. Calvin wondered if the kid was feeling responsible for him—
save a life, it's yours forever
—or if Calvin feeling responsible for
him
would be enough.

“You've been listening to Gran.”

“I told her of course I'm gonna lay in my bed if I make it. She just laughed.” Diez's gaze went to the door. “Either Mama or Bennie own a gun?”

“No, but Mama swings a mean cast-iron skillet, and Bennie can flip a wet towel and make it burn like fire. She pinches, too. And she'll pretend to be all sweet and apologetic to get you off guard, then grind your face into the dirt.”

“I was just wondering 'cause you sitting out here like some kind of stalker might freak 'em out.”

“Nah, they'd just kick my butt and tell my mom.” Calvin smiled. “Do me a favor. Tell Mom I'm over here and I'll come in and say good night before I head home.”

“Yeah, I don't do favors without getting something in return.”

“Like what?”

“Talk to the girl instead of hiding in the dark.” Diez took two long strides forward, pressed the doorbell, then leaped, clearing the porch, steps, and a good portion of the sidewalk before disappearing into the shadows again.

Calvin had long legs and had learned to move damn fast when the situation called for it. He could dive over the swing and take cover in the bushes that grew between the porch and the driveway. He could run like Diez had and disappear into the shadows. He didn't do either. He stayed where he was, palms growing damp, chest tightening, waiting for the porch light to come on, for the click of the lock being undone, for Bennie's sweet face to appear in the doorway.

It didn't take long. The light fixture beside the door cast pale light across the porch, and the lock sounded, and then she stood there, hugging herself, smiling as if she'd been waiting for him. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“You want to come in?”

“Is it too cold for you to come out?”

“Just a minute.” She closed the door, then returned almost immediately, a heavy quilt bundled in her arms. “We'll have to sit close. Stand up.”

He obeyed, and she wrapped the quilt around their shoulders. With her fingers clutching the left side and his gripping the right side, they sat down again and pulled the extra fabric across to cocoon them. Its scent took him back fifteen years, as if it had come straight from the clothesline on a sunny spring day.

Her scent took him back, too, to better times. Innocent times. Though his innocence was long lost and never to be regained,
better
was a possibility. It was within his reach.

It was cuddling under the blanket with him.

“How was your day?” she asked after a while.

“Noisy. How about yours?”

“The same. I'd ask if you knew how much noise five kids under the age of six can make, but I figure you experienced probably double that today.” She pushed with her feet to put the swing in motion, giving him a glimpse of her house shoes. When she caught his smirk, she extended both legs to admire them. “What do you think?”

They were soft, shearling-lined fabric, sewn in the style of cowboy boots: light green with elaborate yellow and turquoise flowers stitched on. “They're exactly what I'd expect.”

“When the margarita girls did an overnight trip, I won the prize for best house shoes,” she bragged. “My jammies were unbearably cute, too, but Ilena beat me there.”

Calvin had seen her in her jammies dozens of times at sleepovers or lazy Saturday breakfasts. He would give an awful lot to see her in them again.

Even more to see her out of them.

Another silence settled for a few minutes, and again it was Bennie who broke it. “How did Diez do with your family?”

“They welcomed him like he was their own. He's still recovering. I heard Mom tell Auntie Sarah that she and Dad have an appointment with a lawyer about him next week.”

“They want to keep him.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay with that?”

He considered it for a moment, though he didn't really need to. His parents were responsible adults. If they wanted to take on the challenges of a fourteen-year-old runaway, they didn't need Calvin's permission. “Yeah, I am. God knows, he can use a family who cares enough to have him.”

“Don't they all.”

Her sigh was fervent, bringing to mind her comment about working with kids when she finished her degree. What kinds of things would she see? What had she already seen?

“In a perfect world,” she went on, “all kids would be treasured, all adults would be responsible, and all war would end.”

Amen to that.
“But it's not a perfect world.”

She cocked her head to one side, gazing up at him. “Would you change any of it? Your life, I mean. If you could go back to eighteen, would you do anything differently?”

To give himself a moment before answering, he chuckled. “Leave it to you to ask the hard questions.”

“I like hard questions. They make you think.”

“Just the other day, you said life is too short to think too hard.”

She shrugged off the reminder, her action pulling the quilt tighter around them. “That was the other day. Tonight I'm feeling thoughtful. So…would you?”

He'd called it a hard question, but it wasn't. Joining the Army had been a lifelong dream. He'd known he would go to war, and though he'd thought he was prepared for it, he hadn't had a clue. But it was something he'd needed to do. It had given him a chance to grow up, to grow strong, and to learn what sacrifice and service truly meant.

Had
he
sacrificed? Hell, yes. He'd learned he wasn't as strong as he'd thought, and for too long he'd seen that as a failure in his character. Sometimes he still did. But as long as he breathed, growing stronger, getting strong enough, was an option.

He'd lost friends, including the most important one of all, and then he'd lost himself. But he was finding himself again. And the friends…he was richer for having had them. He would never forget them, never forget all that
they
had lost. He would do his best to live a life that would honor them.

“If it's too hard, you don't have to answer,” Bennie said, her voice quiet in the night, the bump of her shoulder against his gentle and reassuring.

“No,” he answered just as quietly. “I'm learning to like hard questions.” He took a deep breath. “There are things I would change if it was in my power. J'Myel wouldn't have died. Nobody would have suffered or died, not Americans, coalition forces, insurgents, civilians.” And he would have wished that his own lessons hadn't been so difficult.

“But would I still have enlisted? Yes. Would I have fought as hard? Yes. Would I do it all again?” He stared down at her, her face still tilted up to his, her eyes dark, her lips parted just a bit. “Pretty much, yeah.”

Then, as a reward for answering the question, he closed the distance between them and kissed her. Her mouth opened as naturally as if they'd done this a hundred times, and he slid his tongue inside. What had he been thinking when he was fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, spending all day and every weekend with Bennie without once doing this? He'd seen the guys at school and the younger soldiers in town look at her like they were aching to get a chance alone with her, and he'd never once thought he should feel that way, too. It had taken him way too long to realize that his best bud was the prettiest girl in town.

Her cool fingers slid up his neck, stroking his jaw, heating his skin to simmering. She maneuvered around until she sat astride his lap, leaving him to hold on to the quilt edges so she could twine her arms around his neck. Every cell in his body went on alert, warming his blood, spreading heat through him, making tension crackle, his breathing get shallow, his erection get hard.

His nerves went on alert, too. The natural progression of what they were doing was pretty obvious: kisses leading to touches leading to an invitation inside or a request to go to his apartment leading to sex leading to…

She ended the kiss halfheartedly—pulling back, nipping his lower lip, withdrawing again, brushing her mouth across his—then finally broke contact, at least, with his mouth. Her breasts were still pressed against his chest, her hips spread wide to cradle his. He wished they could stay like that forever, snuggled warm inside their blanket, taking their time and exploring every way to kiss, every way to touch, everything a man and a woman could do without actually doing everything.

Not that that was any better an idea than having sex with her. Not until he told her everything.

“Wow.” Moving carefully, Bennie lifted herself off his lap and sat on the bench beside him again, reclaiming her share of the quilt. “Since our privacy issues remain unresolved and it's far too cold to for public exposure, that kiss is all you're gonna get tonight, Squeaky, unless you have a better idea.”

Though her voice sounded normal, there was hope in her eyes. Hell, there was hope in him, and he knew better.

When he didn't answer, she shifted onto her right hip to face him. “I was going to ask if you
wanted
to have sex with me, but considering what I was, um, sitting on, I'd say the answer's a firm yes.”

His face flushed. “Of course I do. It's just…”

When he shook his head without finishing, she bent forward to squeeze both of his calves, muttering, “Okay.” The action would have puzzled him before hearing Dane Clark's story about hiding his amputated leg from his girlfriend.

“Bennie…”

She waved one hand dismissively. “I'm a patient woman, Calvin,” she said, and the anxiety in him eased a little of its grip.

Then she softly finished with a teasing smile and an admonishing finger. “To a point.” She leaned close enough that her mouth brushed his ear, sending shivers through him. “Consider yourself warned.”

When a margarita call went out for assistance at Prairie Harts on Saturday morning, Bennie was happy to volunteer. She dressed in her comfiest jeans—a pair with plenty of stretch fibers to make up for the sins of Thanksgiving—plus a T-shirt and the thick-soled shoes she wore at work. The others included Patricia, in charge since she knew the kitchen better
and
could bake; Therese, Ilena, and Jessy, wearing a crisp white T-shirt that showed a voluptuous cartoon blonde holding a tray of tiny baked pies. It was captioned “Queen of Tarts.”

“Where are our T-shirts?” Therese asked, feigning a pout as she picked up a heart-shaped cookie cutter. “I want one that says ‘Queen of Hearts.' Patricia can have one that says ‘Queen Mother.'”

“Mine would be ‘Queen of the Beasts,'” Ilena said before mimicking a fearsome lion's roar…if lions were kittens.

Bennie leaned one hip against the counter. “I want one that says ‘Queen of Everything.'”

After a chuckle, Jessy asked Patricia, “How is Lucy?”

“She's fine. She starts cardiac rehab in another week or two, and that'll last three months.” Patricia studied the order sheet Lucy had given her. “You know, her mother, Robbie, is a lovely woman, but somewhere she got this idea that Lucy is hers to cuddle and fuss over.”

“Silly woman. Lucy belongs to us, too,” Therese said.

“I think we've all slipped a rung on the ladder of her priorities,” Bennie said. “We've been displaced by a gorgeous, sweet, hot-damn football coach.”

Patricia began instructing them on their projects and the supplies they needed. As Jessy hefted a twenty-five-pound bag of flour past Bennie, she elbowed her. “I don't think Lucy's the only one doing some displacement.”

“Ooh, tell us about Calvin,” Therese invited in a singsong voice.

Bennie made a point of keeping her back to the others as she gathered a bowl filled with eggs and pounds of butter from the refrigerator. “He's an old friend. I've known him forever.”

When she turned back, they were all looking at her. “Isn't that cute?” Ilena said. “She thinks we'll be satisfied with that answer.”

Bennie gave them a longer version, knowing it wouldn't be enough, either. Maybe because they'd shared such sorrow, when one of them found herself in a new relationship, they wanted to share in the joy—and the details. She couldn't even tell them to mind their own business because she'd been right there with them, questioning Carly, Therese, and Jessy.

“His smile is awfully sweet,” Ilena said, “and he looks pretty capable.”

“I bet he's a great kisser.” That came from Jessy, followed by Therese's retort. “When you haven't been kissed in way too long, they're all great kissers, at least the first time.”

Oh, yeah, Calvin was good at that, Bennie thought, measuring her ingredients as they continued to debate kisses. She'd been assigned cupcakes since they were as close to a baked specialty as she got. While Calvin was the topic of conversation, she had to pay attention that she didn't put a cup of salt into the batter instead of sugar.

Finished, she double-checked the recipe before she started cracking eggs into the mixer bowl. She was about to flip on the switch when Jessy's small hand stopped her. “So?”

Bennie pretended innocence, shifting her expression to puzzled.

“You and Calvin,” Ilena prodded. “Is it serious? Did absence make your heart grow fonder? Have you gotten physical?”

“You guys get your jollies someplace else,” Bennie teased. “Therese, you've got Keegan. Jessy has Dalton.”

“And Ilena and I are living vicariously through you and Lucy.” Patricia flashed a smile. “We might be persuaded to delay our questioning if you promise to tell all later.”