The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel) (12 page)

Olivia nodded. Stayed where she was.

Okay. Clearly, another owner reluctant to say good-bye, to trust her furry baby to strangers. Diana bent over to scoop up the dog. She turned toward the door that led to the surgery behind the exam rooms and reached for the handle.

“Diana?”

She pivoted back at the sound of Olivia’s voice. Weird for a customer to call her by her first name. “Did you have a question, Miss Linscott?”

Olivia swallowed. She had taken a hold of the exam table, and her knuckles whitened with her grip. Was she that worried about the dog?

“Can I ask you something?” Olivia said, her gaze on the exam table.

“Uh, sure.” Maybe Olivia had gotten really attached to this stray. Diana did a little mental prep of her usual speech about the dogs in her care, and how Chance would be fine in the kennels for a couple of days while he recuperated.

“Did you . . .” Olivia paused, took in a breath, released it, then raised her gaze to Diana’s. “Did you know Bridget Tuttle?”

The question hit Diana like a left hook. She backed up a step, until the doorknob poked her in the hip. “She’s my mother. Well, she was my mother. She . . . passed away.”

“I know.”

Diana looked at Olivia—really looked at her, seeing her for the first time as more than the owner of a patient, and in that instant, Diana made the connection. It was in Olivia’s green eyes, a green like her own, like her mother’s, a dark, forest green unique to the Tuttle girls.

Before Olivia opened her mouth, Diana knew what Olivia was going to say. Knew why the name had rung a bell. For a second, Diana wanted to tell her to stop, not to speak the words out loud, not to turn Diana’s life upside down.

But Olivia didn’t hear that mental plea. She gave Diana a tentative smile, then exhaled a deep breath and said, “I’m your sister.”

Seven

Three days.

Luke stayed in his house, staying away from the windows, telling himself he didn’t need to get involved. He’d done his good deed for the week by bringing Olivia to the dog. She’d taken it to the vet, and probably gotten it medicated and bandaged.

The dog was fine, just fine. Then why did he keep on waiting for the familiar scratching at his door? Why did he worry about an animal that wasn’t even his?

And why did he keep thinking about a woman who had brought nothing but trouble to his life? Yet think about her he did. All the time. When he rolled out of bed, he wondered if she was next door, brewing coffee. When she came home at night, he wondered if she ate alone like he did, in a chair in front of a TV playing something inane. And when he went to bed, he wondered whether she was doing the same—and what exactly she was wearing, or not wearing, when she climbed between the sheets.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered to himself, and headed down the hall, away from the kitchen, where it was all too easy to walk outside and show he cared.

As he did, he passed the dining room. His step faltered. His hand automatically went to the wall for the light switch. He flicked it on, then off almost as fast. The brightness was too much, too . . . bright. He preferred the dim light filtering past the blinds, just enough to outline the shapes in the room.

His gaze caught on the bright white squares a few feet away. The medals, still packed in their cardboard boxes. Medals he never wanted, never earned or deserved. Medals he would give back in a second if it would change anything.

“Damn you. Just . . . damn you.” He backhanded the stack of boxes and sent them clattering to the floor. He heaved a breath, but it didn’t ease the tight, sharp pain in his chest.

Against the wall he could make out the slim frame of his bike. For an instant, he could feel the wind riffling down his back, hear the
swish-swish
of the tires against the road, feel the rush of exhilaration as he raced down a long, sloping hill . . .

His hand skimmed over the hard rubber wheel. The tire spun with soft, almost silent clicks, spinning easily beneath his touch, whispering a tempting song in the quiet.
Feel the wind against your skin, the pavement beneath your seat. Get outside, enjoy the world again. Ride . . .

Luke jerked the wheel to a stop. He wouldn’t be riding this or any bike, not now, maybe not ever. Or jogging again, or doing anything that required vision. He missed the adrenaline rush of a good workout, the mindless pounding of his body, the sweaty exhilaration at the end. He missed doing something that forced his lungs to expand, his body to work harder, faster. He wasn’t the kind of man who sat around all day—

And yet that was what he had done for months.

The urge, no, need to do
something
gnawed at him like a rat. It was Saturday morning, and for ten years, he’d spent his Saturdays running or biking, something that got him outside, worked up a sweat, pounded out the week’s stresses, and got him as close to flying as he could be on the ground.

He closed his eyes, and in his head, he was out there again, hitting the pavement, while birds dipped into the glistening waters of the ocean and the soft caress of a spring breeze rippled down his skin. He inhaled the sweet tang of the ocean, mingled with the crisp scent of fresh-cut—

Those days had passed. He needed to quit thinking about what used to be. But as he turned away, he misjudged the turn and elbowed the bike, sending the Cannondale crashing to the floor. Luke cursed and bent to pick the bike up again.

He jerked the carbon frame back into place. As he did, his knee collided with the footlocker beside the bike. Pain shot up his leg. A fast string of cursing didn’t ease the pain but sure made him feel better.

He started to turn away, to limp back to the sofa. To retreat, as he had done so many times before. As his hand left the bike’s frame, a sudden fierce yearning for the life he used to have, the man he used to be, rose in his chest. He paused in the dim light, the dust tickling his nostrils.

“Goddammit,” he said again, but the curse had become a sob, a tear in his throat. He dropped to his knees beside the footlocker, his hands reaching along the sharp, hard corners, the smooth metal hinges, then back to the hasp at the center. The open lock sat heavy in his palm.

In his mind, he could see what wasn’t much more than a shadowed rectangle in the dim light. He knew every inch of the black footlocker, its sturdy body, its brass hardware, the silver lock on the front. A gift from his grandmother on the day he signed up for the Coast Guard.
So you have somewhere to put all those medals they’re going to give you
, she’d said.

If she only knew.

He turned, shifted onto the floor, and lifted the lid. His hand snaked beneath the folded uniforms, the leather shoe-polishing kit, the pristine white T-shirts. He stopped when he brushed against a thick folded paper, then the glossy surface of a photograph.

Joe.

Like an electric spark, the memory slammed into Luke, vivid, real, as if he were back there, two months ago, taking the helo up. The SAR alarm blaring in the station, the booming of the ops watchstander’s voice. Fishing vessel taking on water, five souls on board. Weather is a bitch, snow mixed with rain, wind gusting up to forty knots, swells up to twenty feet in frigid waters off Alaska’s coast.

“Jesus Christ, Ace. My mother could do a better job with that takeoff,” Joe said, as he settled his helmet on his head, his smile bright in the darkened interior of the helo.

“You going to be a backseat driver again?” It was a familiar argument, one that had been raging since flight school. Every mission, the two of them debated who had the better helo skills. Neither wanted to concede or admit to a draw. Instead, they teased each other like brothers every time they were in the air.

“Hey, if you get all tuckered out, I’ll be glad to take over the stick,” Joe said, his voice a slightly muffled staccato in Luke’s helmet. “You might need your energy for tonight when we hit the bar and score some pretty ladies to take home. That is, if you ever find a woman who meets your high dating standards.”

“Hey, I’m just waiting for your little sister to come on the market again.”

“My sister has taste, dude. She’d never go for a slacker like you.”

“If she has taste, then why is she related to you?”

Joe grinned and flattened a hand against his chest. “Because I’m irresistible.”

That last smile hung in Luke’s memory. Heartbreaking. Bittersweet. One quick smile, and in the next moment, the shit hit the fan and Joe had never smiled again.

Luke stumbled to his feet, clutching the paper and the photograph. The last photo he had of Joe, taken in some seedy bar near AIRSTA Kodiak, the two of them celebrating after a mission. One dark hair, one blond, raising beers to the camera, arms around each other’s shoulders, goofy grins on their faces. Mike had taken the picture, taken it a month before—

Before Luke’s mistakes had killed his best friend.

His fingers skimmed over the paper, thick bond paper, folded three times, then in half again, creased from being in Joe’s locker ever since they’d landed at Kodiak and realized the danger they’d be facing.

The letter. The one almost every guy in the military wrote and hoped like hell would never get sent. Then came that day—

The helo pitched and rolled in the violent Alaska storm, as if Mother Nature were getting revenge on the humans who had soiled her beautiful land. The rescue swimmer’s cable whipped up and down in the powerful wind, making the thick steel seem as light as dental floss. Joe turned in the co-pilot’s seat, the ending already written on his face. “Promise me, Luke. If anything happens to me—”

“Don’t say that shit.” Luke held his death grip on the controls and issued a silent prayer. “Let’s get this mission done, get back to town, and get drunk like we always do.”

But Joe had known. Damn it, he had known. Joe cursed a prayer as the winds tossed the helo like a stuffed animal in a dryer, and the cable jerked, and the bottom fell out of Luke’s stomach.

Joe’s eyes gleamed bright in the darkness and his voice rose above the whine of the engine. “Promise me, Luke. Please.”

He’d held Joe’s gaze for one long second while time stood still and a glimmer of hope remained in Luke’s chest. “I promise.”

Sharp, agonizing pain shot through Luke’s heart, cut off his airway. Hot tears rushed to his eyes, and this time he didn’t stop them. He let them fall, until the tears became sobs that threatened to tear him in two. He collapsed to the dining room floor and rocked like a child, clutching the photograph, and hating himself.

Promise me.

Joe had asked one thing of him, one simple thing, and Luke had sat here in the dark and let Joe down. Again.

Luke sucked in a deep breath, then shoved off from the footlocker and got to his feet. No more of this shit. He’d been living in the dark too damned long. It was time to face what lurked in the shadows he’d been avoiding.

He retrieved an envelope and a stamp from the hutch drawer, scrawled an address he knew by heart onto the front, and slid the letter into the envelope. He added a second piece of paper, writing
Joe wanted you to have this
, then sealed the envelope. Before he could think twice, he crossed to the front door. He snagged his sunglasses, then stepped out into the bright Florida sunshine.

Three feet down the walkway, he stopped, the envelope a heavy brick in his hand. Everything in him wanted to turn back, to shove all of this crap deep into the footlocker again.

To take the coward’s way out.

He heard a rustling, then spied a familiar golden body heading his way. The dog sauntered over to him from Olivia’s yard, its movements slow, its tail glinting gold in the sunlight as it wagged back and forth at a furious pace. The golden sidled up to Luke and pressed his cold nose against Luke’s bare leg. As if the dog knew, understood.

A friend, when Luke needed one most. Luke hesitated only a second, then reached down and buried his hand in the dog’s soft fur. “Hey, buddy. Glad to see you up and about.”