Jenna's Cowboy (10 page)

He straightened with a smile, though it looked strained. “Gettin’ a little corny, aren’t you?”

She gave him a cheeky grin and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Being true to my roots.”

They walked around to the passenger side of the truck. Nate paused and made a show of studying her ear.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for corn silk.”

“No silk. And my ears aren’t long, green, and pointed, either.”

“Are you sure?”

She made a face. Nate smiled, thankful that she was still speaking to him. He’d heard guys talk about flashbacks, but he’d never experienced one before. At least not one when he was awake. Dreams were another matter. Opening the back door, he waited as she tucked her tiny purse in the backseat pocket.

Ka-boom!

“Incoming!” Nate grabbed Jenna and dove for the pavement, holding her so he absorbed part of the impact. He instantly rolled, covering her body with his, shielding her.

“Nate!”

He flinched as Jenna’s shout rang in his ear. Smoke lingered in the air, but he hadn’t seen where the bomb landed.

“Stay down. There might be another rocket.”

“Rocket? What are you talking about? Get off me.” Jenna tugged her arms out from between them and shoved against his shoulders. Not that a pipsqueak like her could move him an inch.

“Stay still.” His order, spoken in his most commanding sergeant’s voice, quieted her for all of two seconds.

“Nate, let me up.”

Nate tipped his head, searching the darkness. Where had it come from? He noted Chance standing about five feet away. Beyond him, since his line of sight was at ground level, were two other pairs of boots along with several tennis shoes and a pair of purple flip-flops.

“Uh, amigo, a car backfired.” Chance spoke cautiously, as if he wasn’t sure what Nate might do next.

There was no debris. No rocket-propelled grenade. Nothing had blown up. The smoke was from the bonfire. He was on Walnut Street in Callahan Crossing.

And he had thrown Jenna to the ground. In front of who knew how many people.

He pushed up on his hands, rolled off her, and sprang to his feet. “Jenna, I’m sorry.” He held out his hand to help her up, but she ignored it. When she sat up, he reached down to take her arm, but she shifted away.

“Wait a minute.” She ran her fingers over the back of her head.

“Did I hurt you?” Was she just stunned or had he given her a concussion? “Is your head okay?”

“I bumped it, but there’s no knot.” She twisted her arm around and tried to see her elbow in the dim light. “I scraped my arm.”

Nate’s gut twisted. “Can you stand up?”

She nodded, then winced. He squatted, putting his arm around her, and helped her up.

“I’m all right.” With a wary glance in his direction, she moved a few steps away. “Just a little shaken.”

So was he. Only “a little” was an understatement.

He stood close by in case she needed assistance climbing into the truck, but she carefully avoided touching him. Her message was clear. She didn’t want anything to do with him.

His face flaming in embarrassment, Nate glanced around. His gaze landed on Charlie Smith, a cowboy about the same age as his father.

“I thought that was you, Nate.” Charlie stepped over and held out his hand. Nate absently shook hands with him. “Looks like you got a good case of battle rattle.”

“Something like that.” He nodded a curt greeting to another couple and their kids, who watched him curiously. He wished they’d go find their car and leave him alone.

Charlie leaned closer. Nate smelled liquor on his breath and remembered his dad saying that when Charlie came home from Nam, he’d been a drunk. “You make friends with ol’ Jack Daniels, son. A couple of shots of whiskey will calm those nerves right down.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.” As something not to do. “Good to see you.” He sent Will a let’s-get-out-of-here look and opened the front passenger door of the truck. Chance had already joined Jenna in the backseat.

“We’d better get goin’,” said Will, climbing into the pickup. “Take it easy, Charlie.”

“Tell your dad hello for me.” The older cowboy spit tobacco juice onto the pavement, splattering his boots.

“I’ll do that. See you Sunday at church.”

“I’ll be there.”

Nate climbed in the pickup and shut the door as Will started the engine. “So he’s still coming to church with a hangover?”

“Most every Sunday. But at least he comes.” Will carefully backed out. People were beginning to stream away from the bonfire, but they would beat the crowd.

Nobody said a thing all the way back to Chance’s office. When Will pulled up in front of the redbrick building, Nate had the pickup door open before he stopped. He couldn’t bail out of there fast enough. “I’ll go with Chance. Thanks for the ride, Will.”

“Sure thing.”

Jenna opened her door, almost bumping him, and hopped out. He stepped back, but when she looked up at him with a perplexed frown, he was tempted to put his arms around her and hold her close. He clasped his hands behind him and apologized again instead. “I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “That backfire sounded like an RPG going off.”

Her frown deepened. “What’s that?”

“A rocket-propelled grenade. They blow things up. I hit the ground automatically.”

“And took me with you.” She didn’t sound quite as upset as she had earlier.

“I was trying to protect you.” He shrugged. “That was automatic too.”

“Do you dive for the ground a lot?”

He shook his head. “Most of the time I just duck.” That was true. He’d only hit the deck twice since he came back to the States. “But it’s pretty ingrained when you’re in a war zone. Takes awhile to shift gears.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

And keep her distance. She didn’t say it, but Nate figured that was what she was thinking. He didn’t blame her. She thought he was nuts. Anybody would who witnessed his crazy behavior. And he’d had an audience, he thought grimly, both at the bonfire and in the street.

Maybe he
was
loco. Or heading that way fast. He hadn’t merely remembered what happened in Iraq; he’d relived it. The sights, sounds, smells, tastes—the fear and the pain— had been as real as the day the suicide bomber almost killed them. His reaction to the car backfiring had been much the same, only briefer.

As he watched Jenna and Will drive away, he tried to piece together what happened between the bonfire blazing to life and standing in front of Will’s truck, breathing hard. He’d obviously run down the street. Going by what Jenna said, he’d shoved people out of the way. He could picture that well enough—plowing through the crowd, knocking people left and right. But he couldn’t remember it.

And that scared him as much as the flashback.

9

“Ouch!” Sue paused in pinning Jenna’s mum on her silky gold blouse and sucked the spot on her index finger that she had poked.

“Do you want me to try it? You’ve already jabbed yourself twice.” Jenna watched a tiny drop of blood seep from the skin as her mom checked her finger.

“No, I’ll get it. It’s hard to see what I’m doing with this nice big flower.” She smiled at Dub and touched the one she was wearing. “They’re beautiful as usual.”

Jenna’s dad leaned against the kitchen counter. “But a pain to pin on.” He looked down at his thumb. “There ought to be a better way of fastening those things. Whoever came up with the idea of wearing mums to homecoming, anyway?”

“An ingenious florist, no doubt.” Jenna’s mom went back to work, finally getting the second long corsage pin to go through both the material and the flower.

Jenna glanced at the clock. Nate was due to arrive any minute. If he came. She should have called him to confirm the time he was picking her up. Any excuse to subtly let him know she still wanted to go with him. For a while, she hadn’t been so certain about that. Being thrown to the ground had been unnerving and painful. In retrospect, she realized he had tried to take the brunt of the fall on himself, but she had still landed hard. Her skinned elbow and a bruise on her shoulder proved it.

She’d had a long talk with her mother, who told her that Nate’s response to the backfire wasn’t unusual. She shared how Dub had reacted when a plane went over their motel the first night he was home from Viet Nam. He’d dived off the mattress, lifted the whole bed up, and slid under it, even though there wasn’t room for him.

Her mom emphasized that Nate had been trying to protect her. That spoke highly of his character despite the threat being false. She was more concerned about how he had reacted to the fire. He had gone through a great deal during the war— probably much more emotional and physical distress and pain than any of them realized.

“If you don’t want to go with him, I’ll tell him,” said Dub quietly.

“No, Daddy. It’s okay. I don’t think anything like that will happen again.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

Jenna smiled at her dad, hoping to put him at ease. “I’ll be on the alert from now on. If I hear a boom, I’ll jump out of the way.”

“You goin’ to jump every time our team makes a touchdown tonight, and they shoot off the cannon?” Dub crossed his arms.

“He’ll expect that noise, so he won’t react the same way.”

“Maybe.” Her father looked so disgruntled that she wondered if he knew something about Nate that she didn’t.

“Dad, is there some other reason you don’t want me to go out with him?”

Dub looked down at the floor, then sighed and raised his head. “I don’t have anything personal against him. I don’t want you hurt, baby.”

“I know.” She walked over and gave him as much of a hug as the big flower would allow. “And I love you for it. But I can’t stay scared forever.” Stretching up on tiptoe, she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for the mum. It’s beautiful.”

“Boo-ti-ful,” called Zach, banging on the side of his booster seat with his sippy cup.

“Can’t have my girls going to the game without one.”

“Looks like Jenna’s going to have two.” Will strolled into the kitchen. “Nate’s coming up the sidewalk, and he’s carrying a big ol’ flower box.”

“Oh, good grief!” Sue grabbed Jenna by the arm and swung her around. Quicker than a barn swallow after a mosquito, she jerked out the pins she had worked so hard to fasten moments before and tossed the lovely creation at her husband. “Hide that somewhere.”

He caught it, frowned at his wife and then at Will, who was trying hard not to laugh. “Now, hold on, woman. I spent good money to buy a flower for my daughter.”

“So did that boy walking up to the porch. And you have a lot more of it than he does.” Sue waved her hands, shooing him away. “Don’t start with me, Dub Callahan. Go.”

Dub shook his head and disappeared into the big pantry, muttering about bossy women. The doorbell rang, and Will started for the living room.

His mom shot around in front of him, blocking his path with a hand firmly planted in the middle of his chest. “Stay right where you are and let Jenna answer the door. Nate is her date, not yours.”

Will laughed and draped his arms over his mother’s shoulders. “I know that. Though Jenna keeps saying it isn’t a date. Reckon she’s trying to convince us or herself?”

“It isn’t,” muttered Jenna as she walked past them. Then why was she so nervous? It was only Nate. Gorgeous, slightly messed-up Nate. Vulnerable Nate. That stopped her. She pretended to check her hair in the hall tree mirror near the door as she processed the thought. After what happened last night, he probably wasn’t feeling real sure of himself. The truth was, neither was she.

Sheesh, we’re a pair.
The doorbell rang again, and she hurried to answer it. She couldn’t let the poor man think they’d already left. Throwing open the door, she pasted on a smile, which instantly turned into one of admiration at the sight of Nate in a purple Western shirt threaded with metallic silver stripes.
Oh, my.
“Sorry, we were in the kitchen, uh, watching Zach eat his snack.”

“Takes all of you to supervise?”

“He’s entertaining.” She stepped back so he could come in. That wasn’t a lie. Her kid was fun to watch. She never knew what he’d come up with.

Nate walked into the room, and she shut the door. When Jenna turned around, she half expected to see her parents and brother peeking around the kitchen doorway. Thankfully, they’d restrained themselves from watching if not from listening. Absolutely no sound came from the kitchen.

Nate kept a small multicolored flowered gift bag hooked on one finger and handed her the long white box. “Mom said mums were still a tradition, and you’d be embarrassed if you didn’t get one.”

“Oh.” So much for her
friend
wanting to give her something special.

He wrinkled his face. “She brought it up, but I was going to ask her about it.”

“You didn’t want me to be embarrassed too?” Jenna cringed when she heard the note of sarcasm in her voice.
Don’t make
a big deal out of this.

“No.” He stopped and looked away, took a big breath and blew it out in a poof. When he met her gaze, his eyes were intense and serious. “That was part of it, I guess. But I got it because I wanted to.” He took a step closer. “I wanted to give you something nice and . . . well, to let everybody at the game know that you’re with me.” His voice grew softer. “That you mean a lot to me.”

Okay, so it was a big deal. Much bigger than it should be.
Don’t you dare cry, Jenna Callahan Colby.
“Thank you.”

She walked around one of the two red leather sofas and laid the box on the massive, square, dark brown leather and oak coffee table. Sliding off the top of the flower box, she set it aside and tried to ignore the rapid
ka-thump
of her heart. She hadn’t had this many butterflies since her first date with Jimmy Don, which had also been to a homecoming game.

Don’t go there. Don’t think about him.
She would not let him ruin tonight.

Nate followed her and set the gift bag on the table.

Carefully lifting the lavender tissue paper, she gasped. It was the biggest, tackiest, most beautiful mum she had ever seen. A white teddy bear wearing a cute little black cowboy hat and a purple T-shirt with the number ten—Nate’s old number—was tucked right in the middle of the huge silk chrysanthemum. Two white ribbons, one with her name and the other with Nate’s in gold letters, were prominently displayed among at least twenty purple and gold ones. Another white and gold one declared that it was homecoming and the year.