A Soldier's Heart
Kathleen Korbel

Silhouette Intimate Moments #602
October 1, 1994
ISBN: 0373076029

Prologue

The choppers appeared just after the sun. The staff at the Ninety-first Evac Hospital at Chu Lai had been expecting the one, hadn't hoped to see the other. After all, it was monsoon season, and the rains simply didn't stop. They poured in the windows and shorted out the power supply. They turned the Vietnamese dirt to a river of mud that seeped through sandbags and slid in under doors and caked onto everything they touched. They pummeled the trees and swamped the roads and overwhelmed the senses.

It was the monsoons, and by rights things should have been slow. The NVA never quite saw it that way. And so the choppers still came.

This dawn brought them in flocks, stuttering their way in from the north, from the west and from the south. The sun, breaking through the clouds over the China Sea, glinted gold and crimson on their shivering blades.

On the ground, triage teams waited inside the doors labeled Emergency as long as they could, huddled against the threat of a new downpour, bent with the weight of more casualties. The Quonset huts that lined up behind them on the barren base on the cliffs at the edge of the ocean were already full. Pre-op was full, and the OR was full. The ICUs were standing-room only, and the choppers to take the transfers out that would make room were late.

It was the monsoons, and nothing went right in the monsoons.

At the same moment the first dust-off chopper landed, a team ran from the protection of the doors, crouched beneath the blades, their clothing and hair flattened in the rotor wash. Medics and nurses and doctors helped pull litters off the Hueys and settled them onto gurneys for their ride through the maze of evac medicine.

Some of the men were conscious, their faces pinched and small with pain. Some, blood-soaked dressings cocooning heads, lay silent and ominous. None cried out or whimpered as they were moved. One, however, talked. He grabbed the nurse who was checking him and begged for her help.

"My radioman," he pleaded in a voice that was husky from the wounds to his chest and abdomen and leg. "Get my radioman. I can wait. Get him... he was next to me... please. He's hurt bad. You get Smitty."

The nurse gently pried the man's fingers from her arm and held them in her hand as she assessed his wounds. He was a Marine, she thought, although it made no difference. "It's okay, Sergeant. Somebody's taking care of him."

"No," he demanded, his voice rising even as the blood soaked the gurney beneath him. "You can save him."

As she helped roll the gurney into the receiving area, she lifted the soaked, dirty dressing on the soldier's chest and winced. "How long were you swimming in that rice paddy, Sergeant?" she asked, her voice as gentle as her blue eyes. The soldier never saw the brief flash of horror in her expression at the extent of his injuries. His eyes were bandaged, as well.

"All night," he answered, his voice dying a little. "We got caught, but I held on to him. Don't worry about me. Check Smitty. Please...check Smitty for me. I'm not gonna...I'm not gonna make it. You get him."

The nurse looked up to catch the eye of a medic across the room. He was wheeling another gurney behind the yellow partition. On the gurney lay the sergeant's friend. The one he'd spent the night protecting in the rice paddy. The friend who was being isolated because he was going to die and there was nothing they could do to help him.

"Is he okay?" the sergeant asked.

The nurse noticed that the sergeant was a big man. Well built, probably an athlete. He had a clean, strong jaw beneath that field bandage, a voice that would probably command men well. A young voice. A voice too young to die.

But then, she imagined, so did the radioman named Smitty who had just disappeared behind the screen that hid those labeled Expectant.

"I can't see him," she lied, and turned to her medic, who was in the process of cutting the sergeant's uniform away. "Hey, Humbug, toss me the blood-drawing equipment. I need another IV in him. And tell Doc Schaeffer he's gonna need a couple of chest tubes and big antibiotics before we can risk OR."

The sergeant would lose some of his intestines. He would probably lose his spleen, maybe part of his liver. If he was lucky, he'd end up with both lungs intact after they drained all the blood and air and pus off them from the pseudomonas infection he'd been breeding in his injuries during the night he'd lain in the paddy water with his friend. If he was lucky, he'd keep his leg, which was already swollen and dark.

That was if he lived. The nurse hadn't even had a chance to assess his head yet. For some reason, she couldn't bear to lift that dressing and see what had happened to the rest of that handsome face.

He was wearing a religious medal of some kind on his dog tag chain. Maybe that would help him. She wasn't sure she could.

"Sergeant?"

His grip was loosening from hers. She let go and grabbed a stethoscope to get his pressure.

"Damn it, Sergeant, don't do this to me!"

He was a strong man. But then, they'd all been strong men when they'd come to this war.

"I'm not... gonna... make it…"

"Oh yes, you are," she disagreed even when she got a reading of fifty over thirty. "Humbug, get me that IV!" she yelled, snapping a tourniquet around his arm. "Pump in the fluids and get me a couple of units of O neg. And get Schaeffer down here with those chest tubes!"

"It's... okay, Lieutenant…"

His voice was fading, just like his blood pressure.

She hit him. Right on the jaw. Just to get his attention. "No, it is not okay, Sergeant. You stay with me, you hear?"

"I… can't…I… "

"You're not dying on me, mister. You hear that? I forfeit points if I lose a sergeant, and I'm behind too many points today as it is."

He grinned. He actually grinned. "Sorry to...disappoint you... I'm just... tired…."

"You are not dying on me." She didn't know why this one mattered suddenly. After all, she'd already been on duty for fourteen hours. She didn't foresee introducing herself to a bed anytime soon. It was monsoon season, and today that meant mass casualties. She'd been handling one patient after another as long as she could remember, blasted, bleeding bodies that had once been strong and healthy and alive. Silent ghosts that disappeared behind the yellow partition and never came out.

So she couldn't say why this one fired her up, but he did. "You are not dying on me," she said even as his blood dripped steadily to the floor, as his fever skyrocketed, as they inserted tube after tube into him and flushed him with antibiotics and more than thirty units of blood. Even after they lost him and brought him back four different times in the OR.

"You hear me?" she demanded to his silent, swathed form as it lay in ICU three days later, racked with the fevers of massive infection. As he woke later to find the extent of his injuries and tried to pull out all those tubes himself in his delirium.

Every day for two weeks, while he tried to slip silently away, she cuffed him on the shoulder, she patted his cheek, she argued with him and pleaded with him and laughed with him. And she kept saying, "You are not going to die on me today, Sergeant."

And for those two weeks, the sergeant did not die. But then, as the next wave of mass casualties filled the Quonset huts to overflowing and the nurse was taping chest-tube bottles and starting IVs and trying to stay awake into her twentieth hour on duty, the sergeant was rotated out to Japan, and the nurse never knew whether he listened to her or not.

Chapter 1

Are you sure you're okay, Dad?"

Tony Riordan shifted the cellular phone to his other ear and stretched out the kinks he'd accumulated over the past five hundred miles. "I'm fine, honey. I told you. I just wanted to check in with you now that I'm here."

"Do you know how long you're going to be?"

His attention briefly strayed to the old brick house that stood alone at the edge of town. "As long as it takes, I guess. I'll know better soon."

There was a brief pause, during which Tony could envision his seventeen-year-old daughter staring at the pond out their kitchen window. She'd be twisting that strand of dark brown hair in one hand as she talked and chewing her bottom lip. A dead giveaway that she was worried. He couldn't blame her. He guessed there should have been a better way to explain this than, "I'm not sure why I have to go, but I do." But then, maybe some day somebody would teach fathers better ways to deal with overprotective daughters.

"No wild parties while I'm gone," he teased, knowing just how she'd react.

"Oh, Dad."

He grinned. Right in one. "I love you, punkin. Tell Gram where I am and that I'll call you tomorrow."

"Call me tonight."

"I'll call you tonight."

An overprotective, overcurious daughter. He pitied the poor guy who ended up falling in love with her.

"I love you, too, Daddy. You be careful."

Tony fought the urge to laugh. That could be taken so many ways, especially from Gina Marie Riordan. "I will. Bye, sweetie."

He closed up the phone and turned again to consider the building he'd spent the afternoon searching for. An old plantation home, narrow and brick with a wraparound porch and a bouquet of chimneys, it commanded the forefront of a bucolic setting of huge old pecans, oaks and willows, lush grass and three smaller outbuildings spread behind like children under the wings of a prim mother. Tony liked it, all grace and simple lines with big windows and an abundance of flowers along the walks and a swing in one of the trees. The sign out front read The James River Inn. Luncheon And High Tea, B And B Opening Late Summer.

On the car radio, the news anchor was giving an update on the escalating situation in North Africa, where UN troops were preparing to intervene in a bloody invasion. U.S. carriers and ships were massing in surrounding seas, cargo planes lifting off from bases on the East Coast, and every spare minute of CNN's time filled with footage of bristling armament. Here in this somnolent afternoon, though, the James River Inn stood like a testament to tranquility and history. Here the troubles of the world didn't seem to invade.

Tony checked his watch. He was a lot closer to high tea than lunch. He could just imagine how well he'd blend in with all those ladies lifting their Wedgwood china. It didn't really matter. He'd come too far to turn away now. He'd risked too much to wait any longer to close this particular book.

It had been fall when he'd stood with his hand up to the warm, black granite. Fall when he'd sought out Smitty's name, standing there in fatigues he hadn't worn in years, bracketed by men he'd sought out of his past like old dreams half-remembered.

It had been fall, and he'd finally had enough of the nightmares and the shakes and the sudden, unexplained rages. He had gained so much in his life—a successful business, a secure life, a daughter who kept him on his toes and broke his heart at regular intervals. Yet he hadn't enjoyed it anymore. And so he'd begun his pilgrimage to put old ghosts to rest. To complete a very long circle and get on with his life.

It had been the fall, and now the summer was breathing down his neck. The Virginia woods were thick and heavy, the crops coming up, the skies tumescent with rain clouds. It had taken him this long to find this place, the last of his tasks.

He should have jumped right out of the car and headed up the walk. It should be so simple. An introduction. An explanation. A message and then home.

It took him ten full minutes to gather the courage to simply open the door.

Around him other cars were pulling into the little gravel lot at the side of the restaurant. Women filtered by in ones and twos, laughing, their heads together, their dresses pastel and gauzy so the breeze could tease them. There was a lot of laughter around the restaurant. Tony took a deep breath and decided there wasn't anything else he could do but go on in.

Climbing on out of his sports car, he took a minute to give his left leg one last stretch before heading on up the porch.

He hoped the dress code for the restaurant included khakis and a blue gabardine shirt. Otherwise he'd have to hunt up something flowery and flowing to go with his tea.

The porch was wooden and creaked pleasantly under his weight. The front door, behind which all those brightly dressed women had disappeared, was vintage, heavy and ornate. Tony opened it and stepped inside.

"Oh, hi. Can I help you?"

For a minute, he thought Gina had somehow beaten him here. Then he let his eyes adjust to the interior light and saw that this daughter was younger and fairer. A pixie with red hair and pale eyes, she stood at the front desk with a startled expression and tentative smile, her own outfit decidedly darker and punker than those of her guests.

Tony gave her a bright smile and saw hers widen perceptibly. "This is a great-looking place. Do you serve food with your tea?"

Her giggle was disarming. Especially on a child who wore nothing but black. "Of course. That's the most important part. Would you like, uh, tea?"

"I'd love some."

She looked a little bemused but waved a hand in the direction of what had obviously once been the parlor. A scattering of tables took up the floor space there and spilled over into the dining room beyond.

The walls were high and white, hung with old sepia photos of the area and framed artifacts. A fan here, a shawl there, a pair of kid gloves laid across a tasseled dance card, collected in a deliberately haphazard way. A sketch or two of inconsequential things that drew Tony's eye with their simple elegance.

The tables were just as mismatched and set on a glossy hardwood floor that had been laid with very nice old Oriental rugs. The music being piped in was Debussy, and the windows were hung in swaths of burgundy paisley. Tony took his seat at a table against the wall. He sat facing the room, just as he always did, and noted that there wasn't an ashtray in sight. Just as well. It was something he'd been promising Gina for about five years now.

"Would you like to see the menu?" his hostess asked.

"I guess I'd better. I have a feeling hamburgers aren't on it."

He got another giggle and a vellum card that listed about fifteen different types of tea and an assortment of salads, finger foods and desserts. At least it would be enough until he could get up to Richmond and real food.

But when he looked back up to place his order, the punk fairy was gone. Across the room, a table of older women was watching him with undisguised curiosity. He smiled and went back to perusing the menu, as if his decision would change appreciably.

"Uh-oh," he heard from the foyer. His little friend. He recognized that tone of voice. She'd been caught. At what, he wasn't sure.

And then he heard it and lost all track of the place, the time and his purpose.

"Yeah, I thought that was child services on the phone just now asking what a thirteen-year-old was doing waiting tables," the answering voice said with wry amusement.

Her voice.

He would have recognized it anywhere. He didn't know what she looked like. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her. But he'd remember her voice until the day he died. Soft, a little smoky, with equal parts grit and humor and a heavy dollop of compassion.

He knew that voice. He'd been hunting for it for over twenty years.

"Well, you're the one who let Marissa have the week off, Mom. And Bea had to be sick. Can I help it if she's pregnant?"

"I'm sure you can't, Jess. I'm here now, though, so you can get back to homework."

"But Mom—"

"Now, young lady."

"No, Mom, really. I have to tell you."

Tony couldn't see them. He imagined they were standing, mother and daughter, in the doorway that led to the back rooms, the woman smiling at all that barely controlled enthusiasm. He barely heard the girl for the memories that flashed from the sound of that older voice. Smells and sounds so strong they took his balance. Emotions that made his hands sweat and his head spin. He held still and waited for it to pass, just as it always did.

"Tell me what?" she was asking.

There was a pause—a dramatic one, if Tony was any judge of prepubescent girls—and then a stage whisper that could easily be heard out in the driveway. "There's a man in there."

And then her voice again. Even more highly amused than before, light, companionable, conspiratorial, whispering just as loudly. "A man? Oh no, and I almost had that No Men Allowed Here sign finished. You think if I grabbed it and waved it in his face he'd leave?"

"Mom."

Tony couldn't help but smile. The ladies at the other table smiled. The young lady who'd seated him sounded quite disgusted.

"We could sic Peaches on him," the mother said.

"Mom, I'm serious. What do you think he wants here?"

"I don't know, Jess. You don't think he could want some tea, do you?"

"He didn't look like the tea kind of guy to me."

"Well, then, I guess I'll just have to go ask, won't I?"

"You want me to get Peaches?"

Then a laugh. The laugh. The laugh Tony had carried with him like a talisman through the worst times.

"No, honey, I don't think I need Peaches. But why don't you wait here, okay?"

The rustling of a dress. A sudden gasp. "Oh, no," the girl said. "Mom, I think he heard us."

"Yes, Jess, I think he did. Now how 'bout you let me go so I can go find out what he really wants here, since it obviously can't be tea?"

"Oh, my Go-o-o-d..."

Jess's voice trailed off, a muffled wail of humiliation that made Tony smile all over again. Boy, did he know that particular tone of voice. Usually he heard it preceded by "Oh, Daddy..."

He climbed to his feet to meet her. He didn't allow himself to notice the fact that his knees felt weak. He didn't know what he was going to say or do or ask. He just knew he had to be here.

And then, when he saw her, everything changed again.

She had eyes to go with that voice. Smiling blue eyes, softened and tempered by the years, punctuated by the same kind of crow's-feet he saw in his own mirror. Red hair. No, more strawberry blond, with the late afternoon sun setting it on fire. Full, curly in that way that probably lightened up in the rain and made a man itch to lose himself in its depths. Tony had darker hair, brown. He had a lot more salt than pepper in it these days, especially his mustache, but her hair was a pure color that hadn't been enhanced or restored. It framed a face devoid of age. An oval face of milky skin and blond freckles. Generous mouth and the kind of willowy figure that begged for those flowery, flowing dresses that were uniform at teas. She wore one now, and it shifted and flowed around her calves in pastel waves.

Tony saw her, put a face to the memories and found himself speechless.

"Hi," she greeted him, that humor still deepening her voice, her smile inciting twin dimples. "My daughter says that you've snuck in the restaurant without warning, obviously with something more nefarious in mind than sustenance. Can I help you?"

She was smiling, and Tony couldn't speak.

He just stood there, knowing that he had so much to say and knowing he couldn't possibly manage to say it. Knowing that something else had just happened to him that had nothing to do with what he'd come for, and wishing to hell he knew what.

Standing there.

She lost a little of that smile. "Jess didn't mean what she said," she apologized with a halfhearted wave of her hand. "It's just that she has a real flair for the dramatic."

Tony nodded. He rubbed at his chin and thought how very small she looked for a woman with that much strength. He thought how what he'd come to say suddenly seemed so inadequate.

"I, uh..." He laughed at his own discomfort, but even the laugh sounded choked. He shook his head, trying to clear the words. "I'm afraid Jess is right. I didn't come for tea."

That just about took the rest of the smile. "Before you say anything more, you might like to know that my pastry chef is a graduate of Raiford State Penitentiary. With a degree in manslaughter."

Tony laughed again, and this time managed to get it out without sounding as if his engine were backfiring. "The last thing I want to do is hurt anybody. I, uh, need to talk to you if I could."

Both her hands went up now. "I'm not buying, whatever it is."

"No." He never had trouble communicating. He couldn't believe he was now. And he had the complete attention of the women by the window, not to mention a new waitress who'd shown up in the doorway, garbed in traditional muslin and starched linen. He hadn't anticipated this. So he just jumped in. "You're Claire Henderson?" he asked, never letting his attention stray from his intended target.

She went still. "You're not a process server, are you?"

"No, ma'am, I'm not. I promise. Your maiden name was Maguire?"

Now an eyebrow crooked, and she rested her weight on one hip. "Depends. What does it get me?"

Tony smiled. Lifted a hand. Figured there wasn't any more smooth way of doing this. "My thanks," he allowed. "You took care of me at Chu Lai."

For a minute, he thought he'd made a mistake. Her face fell blank. She went still, as if his very words had frozen her in place. Tony saw the light go out of her eyes and then return more brightly. Her suddenly restless hands took to straightening her skirt as she looked away.

"Claire?" the woman behind her spoke up.

She whirled on the woman as if she'd just jumped out of a closet. "Oh, Bea, you're back." Her voice sounded breathless. "Uh, could you watch the place for me? I need to talk to, uh—" She turned back to Tony.

"Tony Riordan."

"—Tony for a second. Okay?"

"Sure. You okay?"

She smiled, a bright open smile that obviously relieved her co-worker. "I'm fine. Tony just surprised me."

When she turned back to Tony, that smile was firmly in place.

"I'm sorry," Tony apologized. "I didn't know how else to find you."

She stepped up and took him by the arm. "No problem," she assured him. "Why don't we go on to the back room? That way you can have that beer you really want."

Tony went with her. "You have a smart daughter."

She rolled her eyes. "Please. Don't encourage her."

"Don't worry. I have one, too."

"Then, Mr. Riordan, you have my deepest apologies."

"I thought you'd still be a nurse."

They were seated in a small office at the back that reminded Tony of a too-full suitcase. The same classy look as out front, the same precise order. But the neatly stacked piles were threatening to topple, the file drawers barely able to close. Papers and contracts and menus filled her desk, cookbooks and health codes and local history books the shelves. There was a corkboard over her desk with calendars and fabric swatches and a nest of snapshots of Claire and her daughter and a teenage boy who looked like them and like somebody else, and a brace of chairs that held rolls of blueprints and one very overweight tabby. Tony got the cat's chair, and the cat escaped to the top of the cabinet.

Claire had been as good as her word about the beer. Tony took his first full gulp and settled back into the armchair that was obviously the most comfortable piece of furniture in the place, considering the look he was getting from the cat.

"I am still a nurse," Claire admitted, curling up into the other armchair with a cup of tea in her hand. "Part-time, anyway. I just decided it was about time to start working for myself."

Tony nodded and took another long drink. "It's a nice place."

"Thank you." She sipped at her tea as if they were at a state function. "It'll be a lot better when we finish settling in. For one, my office will be clean. And we're going to offer bed and breakfast. How did you find me?"

He'd prepared a thousand different answers for this one, and ended up giving her the truth. "I cheated."

She was tucked into her chair like a girl in a Victorian novel. Even so, she was on alert. Tony could smell it.

So he shrugged. "You were tough to track down. You're not in any of the regular vet sources. Fortunately I have a friend in the FBI. He got me this address. You live here, too?"

He wasn't sure whether he was helping or hurting his cause. It was tough to get past the polite smile in those eyes.

"Out back in the old carriage house," she admitted. "With my two children and Peaches, who is…"

"The ex-con from Raiford. Yeah, I get the message. You don't have to worry about me. I just wanted to meet you and go home. I promise. Nothing weird."

"Why didn't you just call?"

There had been phone calls. Dozens of them, every one disconnected before he'd heard that first ring. He should have warned her. Should have asked if it was okay to see her. In the end, he couldn't take the chance that what he wanted to say wouldn't be said in person. It was too important to him.

"I needed to see you," he finally said. "I never did when I came in."

She shrugged, seemingly bemused. "But why?"

"You've been to The Wall?" he asked.

She nodded and sipped at her tea.

He nodded back. "I was there last Memorial Day, and I decided that I needed to put some things to rest. I looked up the guys in my old unit, said goodbye to the ones who didn't come home and promised myself that I'd find you."

"Why?"

"To say thank-you. Just like I said." He shifted, uncomfortable before her noncommittal consideration. "You probably don't even remember me," he said. "Chu Lai was a hoppin' place back in '69. I was brought in on November 15 from up near An Dien."

"You were with Americal division?"

He shook his head. "First Marines. Not a whole lot of us left down there by then. We were with a CAG unit." She nodded at that, and he went on, needing to tell her. Needing it for years now. "We'd been out on recon and had picked up a prisoner a couple of klicks out who had info on a big operation that was being planned. On the way back, five of us got caught out in the middle of a paddy. I sent the rest of the platoon on with the prisoner, but I was stuck. Three of my men were dead, and Smitty—my radioman—was unconscious. And, uh, I couldn't get very far, either. So I tried to wait it out until the weather cleared enough to call in support. The dust-off brought me to the Ninety-first. You took care of me."

"But I took care of a lot of guys, Mr. Riordan."

"Tony, please."

She inclined her head a little, her smile soft. "Tony."

He cast a look down at his hands and sought the words that would convey what she had given him.

"I tried to die," he said. "I wanted to. I was responsible for those three men, and I knew Smitty wasn't going to make it. I'd made up my mind that I was going home in a bag." He looked up to catch a sheen in her eyes that hadn't been there before. "You wouldn't let me. I don't remember much about that time. I don't really remember participating until I was in Japan. But I remember you. I remember you held my hand and you yelled at me and you clobbered me on the jaw and you told me that I wasn't going to die on you. I had to come back and tell you that it worked. I didn't die."

Her hands fluttered, and Tony noticed that the only ring they carried was an old opal on her right hand. She looked away for a second, down at the delicate china in her lap, at the eddies she created in her tea with her distracted movement. Tony waited, not sure what he wanted, knowing he'd made her terribly uncomfortable. Suddenly beset by the overwhelming feeling of dislocation.

This shouldn't have been happening here in this civilized place. It should have happened at The Wall, when the wind was so cold it chapped your skin and the skies were heavy and gray. It should have happened in the shadow of the statue, those men he knew so well and had left lying in a deadly swamp in the middle of nowhere.

Not here.

And yet, when she lifted her face again, her eyes were full with the kind of gentleness he thought she might have bestowed on him all those long years ago when he hadn't been able to see her.

"Thank you," she said simply. "It's been a long time since I've even thought about it. I'm glad I did somebody some good."

"Oh, you did," he told her. "You did."

Tony had the night to think about it as he drove back to Atlanta. He thought about it as he sat outside his house when he pulled up and when he sat alone in his kitchen overlooking the pond before Gina woke up. He thought about it as he told her what had happened and later as he told his friends.

He thought about it and he realized that maybe Gina had been right when she'd said you can't go back to the block. It was more than wearing the boonie hats and sharing old stories and remembering all the good times, as well as the moments that still woke you up sweating. It was more than celebrating the ones who came away, as well as the ones left behind.

Claire Maguire Henderson had been hospitable to him. She'd recovered from the shock to share some stories and hear about the man who had come into that hospital with him and then been shipped home in a metal box. She'd laughed that old laugh and then brought him out of that office to introduce him to the pixie in the black, who had apologized for her impetuous drama. She'd introduced him to a behemoth of a human in an apron and gold earring who was, indeed, named Peaches, and to the teenage boy in the picture, whose name was Johnny and who lost interest in Tony the minute he found out Tony hadn't been a pilot. She'd acquiesced to his request for a tour of the entire inn, and she'd heard about Gina and the life Tony led in Atlanta, where he ran the construction company his father had left him.

When he made it home and Gina appeared in the kitchen in her robe to brew them some coffee and bestow daughter's kisses, Tony found himself telling her all this with an expression of bemusement. He looked out onto the still, deep pond at the back of his house and thought about peace and knew he still hadn't found it.

And so it was that two days later, instead of pulling out the barbecue pit like everybody else in Atlanta and toasting the advent of summer, or closeting himself in front of CNN like the other half to watch the misunderstanding that was escalating to war, he got back in his sports car and headed back to Virginia.

He couldn't say why. He couldn't explain it to Gina or the guys who called from the vet center or his brother Pauly, whom he'd left in charge of the company. He just knew he had to get back to that comfortable old inn near the banks of the James River.

By the time he pulled up, he'd driven through a hell of a thunderstorm. Tony liked thunderstorms, but he only liked them when he was outside, when he could see that it was a storm. His brain told him he was driving through the hills of Virginia, just as his radio and his map told him. But every once in a while, instincts bred a lifetime ago caught him wondering just what was hiding beneath that dense, green canopy of trees. And thunderstorms, with the sudden noise and shattering light, only made it worse.

The sun had long since set by the time he found the inn. The building was dark and silent, with only a couple of lights on in the old brick carriage house that sat tucked away in the trees behind the parking lot. He had no business coming back here. He'd already harassed this woman enough. He'd accomplished what he'd set out to do. Even so, he shut off his motor and opened the door onto the sound of crickets and early night birds and the rumble of distant thunder that still lit up the horizon in sporadic fingers of light. He limped up the walk lined in freshly planted impatiens and pansies, and he knocked on the heavy green carriage house door.

There was no answer. Tony looked around to see a hot red little car tucked away to the back by what looked like a garage. That probably meant there was a back door that was used more than the front. He stepped off the porch and walked around back. Somewhere a cat mewed. Deeper into town, a dog or two noticed the scrunch of his feet on gravel and barked, but here only the crickets broke the silence.

It was so quiet here. So isolated and green.

Tony stepped up onto the narrow porch that spanned the back of the house and tapped on the kitchen door. Through the window to his right, he could see herbs hanging in bunches over the sink and the glint of copper pots farther along the wall. He saw the flicker of light from a TV screen in the darkened room and heard the stutter of gunfire and on-the-scene commentating. He saw the shape of a bottle on the counter, and another lying empty next to it.

It was the TV that betrayed her. Its light fell on her like a faulty spotlight.

Tony didn't think anything about opening the door. Before he had a chance to admit to himself that he was breaking and entering, that he had no business being in this woman's house, he was all the way across the pristine white kitchen floor to where she was crouched against the wall.

Crouched. With her back wedged into a corner and her hands at her ears. Shaking. Staring.

Oh, God. That was what had been wrong. That had been what he'd sensed all along.

Tony came just so close and no closer. He saw the ghost of televised light sap the color from her skin and turned to flip off the Technicolor destruction she'd been facing. Then he hunkered down himself so he could be at eye level and no higher. He didn't even realize that his heart had begun to thunder in his chest.

"Claire?" he said, his voice nothing more than a murmur.

She was wearing scrubs. He noticed now. Her hair was pulled back, only one or two strands hanging loose about her face, and there was an empty tumbler lying on its side by her bare feet on the floor.

"Lieutenant Maguire? It's all clear now, ma'am. You're okay."

Finally she lifted her gaze to him, fixed him with those sweet, soft blue eyes he'd searched for for twenty years or more. Only now those eyes were a wasteland Tony recognized with dreadful certainty.

"You bastard," she sobbed, broken and shaking. "This is all your fault."

Chapter 2

Claire wasn't sure. That was the worst part. She just wasn't sure what was happening.

Please, she thought with sudden clarity. Just tell me where I am.

"You're okay," he murmured to her, his hand out. "You're in Virginia. At your house where you live with Johnny and Jessie and Peaches."

She tried to take a breath and ended up sobbing again. God, how she hated to sob. She hated the weight that kept building up on her chest and the sounds that injected themselves into her house.

Mortars. She'd sworn it was mortars. Maybe rockets. Lighting up the sky and thumping into the ground so hard the windows rattled. She'd spent fifteen minutes just looking for her helmet, and she knew darn well she'd scared the cat to death when she'd thrown herself on the floor so the shrapnel couldn't hit her.

She was scaring herself to death, and she couldn't make it stop.

"Claire," he asked, "where are the kids?"

She squeezed her eyes shut just to make sure. Opened them again. But he was still there.

Not one of the young ones. Not Jimmy. This one was older. A big man. A strong man with broad shoulders and a jaw that would have made Gregory Peck cry.

And his eyes. Claire thought she'd never seen sweeter eyes in her life. Green, she thought in the dim light in the corner, green the color of the Caribbean in the morning.

He was reaching out to her, and that made her cry all over again.

"Come on, Claire," he crooned, taking hold of her. "It was a storm, but it's over. It's okay now."

He kept talking to her, reminding her, his hands on her arms so she knew he was really there, somebody was there, so she wasn't alone, and he waited with her as she shook and sobbed and tried so desperately to fend off the worst of it.

It hurt. It hurt so badly. Claire wrapped her arms around herself, held herself tight, as if that would be all it took to keep the pain in. Keep it deep where it couldn't hurt her anymore. It didn't do any good.

"I didn't remember you," she blurted out, finally facing him, thinking how he should have looked older. He just looked wiser, tempered and hardened by the years that were betrayed in the silver that threaded through his mustache and rich brown hair.

And the laugh lines. Everywhere. Bracketing his eyes and his mouth, deepening into dimples when he smiled. Claire loved dimples. They were a symbol of whimsy, and Claire loved whimsy.

She needed whimsy.

"I don't remember ever having said that to you, or what you looked like when you came in or what your injuries were."

"I know," he said, and smiled all over again. Never moving. Never backing away or coming too close. Just waiting there with her until the shakes eased, his hands gentle on her so she knew he was there for her. "I didn't really expect you to. Like you said, you took care of a lot of guys."

Claire went back to rubbing at her eyes, scrubbing away memories that didn't belong in this house, fighting to hold in the sobs. "Why did you come back?"

For a minute, there was just the silence. Out in the front hallway, her regulator clock ticked off the seconds, and somewhere over the river the thunder still rolled on endlessly, making her wonder just for a second again. It sounded so familiar, like the snatch of a dream you couldn't quite forget.

Or want to remember.

It sounded like gunfire.

"I decided I wanted tea after all."

Claire pulled her hands away from her eyes and was astonished to see those dimples. All those laugh lines that transformed that structured, craggy face into gentle comfort.

And for that moment, she couldn't so much as answer him. She sucked in another deep breath, as if oxygen could wash out the terrors. As if the mere act of breathing reestablished her control over herself.

"Give me a second," she managed, as if this were simply a subject of tea.

"You're all right," he assured her, and she knew he meant it.

She tried to smile for him. It didn't work very well. She was still shaking, still frightened and uncertain and ashamed. Even so, she tried hard to pull herself together, because that was what was important.

"What did you ask before?" she asked, trying so hard to sound sane as she huddled in the corner snaking.

Tony never moved, as if that were the most comfortable position to be in. He was so close, Claire knew he'd wrap his arms around her if she just asked him. She couldn't. If she did that, she'd give in to the shakes all over again, and she couldn't afford that at all.

The kids. He'd asked about the kids.

"Oh, God..."

She had to get to her feet. John and Jess were due home, and she had to be pulled together for them. As Claire struggled with her balance, Tony straightened to his feet with the grace of an athlete and held out a hand.

"The kids aren't home, then?" he asked easily.

She looked up at him. A hand she could take. A hand wouldn't be too much.

"No... no, any minute."

She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, where she swayed for just a second. She looked around, reacquainted herself with the kitchen of her little home. Pots, pans, white countertops and glass-fronted white cabinets. Herbs and baskets full of eggs and tin molds decorating the walls.

Every single item she had bought. Every single slap of paint she'd applied, along with the tree-of-life border she and Jess had painstakingly glued on along the ceiling. A labor of love, of hope and progression. For just a split second, Claire couldn't remember any of it.

The panic bubbled hot in her chest. Her throat ached with it. Her heart still thundered. She waited there, no more than three feet from Tony Riordan, and didn't even see him. She saw her home. The report cards on the refrigerator alongside Johnny's latest airplane sketch. The ceramic cat dish by the stove Jess had fired in class. The soft Virginia darkness out her window, and beyond that the light from Peaches's cottage.

Safety. Sanity.

As if Tony Riordan standing in her kitchen were a sane thing. Claire turned her attention to the refrigerator, rather than noticing that Tony knew just how much room to give her when no one else in her life ever had.

"I'm sorry," she told him, her voice as shaky as her hands as she wiped more tears from her cheeks. "That doesn't ever... I don't know what happened."

He flipped on the fluorescent lights and waited as Claire blinked in the sudden glare.

"No," he said. "I'm the one who should apologize. I didn't realize..." He shrugged, his sentiment implicit in his expression.

Claire saw the uncertainty, the chagrin, the regret. She wanted to touch him, just as she would anyone. She couldn't. She was still too close to the door into that room where nightmares lived.

The light helped, though. Shadows fled, and with them her own uncertainty. White corners in a white room in the house she'd bought and restored and painted. Bright and clean and new. The world slipped back into place, and Claire found she belonged there.

"Nobody realized" was all she could finally admit to this man. All she'd admit to anybody these days. Then she took a deep breath, because even that brought it too close right now.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

Simply. Sincerely. Claire fought the urge to hide in this man's arms and instead opened the refrigerator door. "It doesn't matter. Want a beer?"

"Thanks. That'd be great."

She had just turned to hand it to him when the back door slammed open. Tony jumped. Claire jumped higher, dropping the can. Beer exploded in an arc as it hit the tile.

In the door stood a six-foot-two Mr. Clean replica in shining mahogany, and his scowl was more formidable than thunder. Claire shut her eyes for a second and willed her heart to slow back down a second time. She just wasn't taking those little surprises well tonight.

"Peaches..." she all but growled.

"You okay?" he demanded, as if whatever he was guarding her against was all her fault.

"I'm fine."

"You been cryin'," he accused, and Claire got her eyes open to see that Peaches was focused on Tony like a bull elephant on a Volkswagen.

"It's not his fault," she told her friend.

That got a laugh. "'S what they all say, ain't it?"

Claire forced herself to action. Locked away the truth and got down to business, just as she always did.

"Peaches, please. Mr. Riordan...uh..."

"Tony," he interjected easily.

Claire almost surprised herself with a smile. "Tony. Tony told me he was coming back to visit tonight. I just forgot. I had a tough shift."

Peaches's scowl grew geometrically until it took up most of his face. "You sure, girl?"

And Claire found she could smile, because whatever else had happened in her life, she could always depend on this formidable miracle of a human who had found his way to her home. She walked on over and patted his arm.

"I promise. Everything's fine. Go on back to bed. You have to start baking early tomorrow."

Peaches took one last look over at Tony, his warning more than implicit in his expression, and nodded. "You say so," he allowed. And then he just left.

Claire managed an amazed little chuckle. But then, Peaches always did that to her.

For a second, Tony just stared at the screen door. Then he shook his head. That was when Claire saw the scar she'd missed. Old, puckering alongside his left eye, it tracked down along the edge of his mustache. Worn by time, maybe by good surgeons. She didn't ask. She just grabbed a rag and bent to clean up the beer.

"He always that protective?" Tony asked from where he'd stayed by the counter.

"You should see him with the kids."

Her hands were still shaking, but Claire didn't notice anymore. She willed herself instead to focus on the easy baritone of Tony's voice, the smell of beer and the sounds of crickets in the yard. The owl that roosted in the pine tree by her bedroom window. She willed herself to the present, where it was safe and nothing could hurt her.

"You said manslaughter," Tony said as if they had just met at a bar. "How'd he find his way to pastry chef at a women's restaurant?"

Claire smiled as she regained her feet and tossed the rag in the sink. "My very good luck."

"How'd he get a name like 'Peaches'?"

"He's from Georgia."

Peaches had explained it that way, and after meeting him, Claire hadn't thought to question him. Heading back for the refrigerator, she pulled out her last beer, figuring by now Tony couldn't possibly turn her down. If she were he, she'd want a beer. She was she, and she wanted a beer. She wanted something to settle the panic that crowded her throat. But she knew better. Johnny and Jess were due home any minute.

They were due home, and if Tony Riordan hadn't shown up, they would have found her crouched in the corner.

Claire fought a terrible urge to yank open her liquor cabinet and pour a full tumbler of Scotch. Instead, she just handed off the beer.

"Better?" Tony asked, and Claire looked up to see a wealth of understanding in his expression.

She hesitated. There was so much suddenly she wanted to say.

"Yes," she said instead. "Thank you."

Tony nodded and popped the can. Leaned his hip against the counter as if he belonged here and enjoyed his first drink. Claire needed to move. She looked around her kitchen for something to do, something else to clean. Cleaning was safe. It was hard and time-consuming and it took some concentration. Just like nursing and decorating and restoring an old house.

Just like children.

Her heart stumbled all over again.

"You won't say anything to John and Jess," she said. Pleaded. Her heart was hammering again, and it had nothing to do with sudden noises. She was afraid of what this man with his sweet, soft voice and gentle hands could do to her.

He considered her for a second. "They don't know?"

"Know what?" she countered anxiously. "This has never happened before. I told you. I had a bad night at work, and you'd been here, and... well, I don't know…."

He settled his gaze right on her, and Claire stilled before it, trapped. "Claire, I didn't come here to hurt you…."

Outside, gravel crunched on the driveway, and Claire knew she'd run out of time. "Please," she repeated, and this time there was no question but that she was begging. "This isn't something that affects them. I don't want them to be worried. You understand. You have a daughter. It would scare them for no reason at all."

The car stopped and voices rose. Bickering voices that carried that challenge of humor all siblings employ.

"No reason?" Tony asked. "You're sure?"

Claire fought to keep her hands still. "I told you, damn it. If you hadn't shown up the other day, I wouldn't even have thought about it. I can hardly remember anything that happened over there anymore. I put that behind me a long time ago."

Her heart. It was just going to tumble out on the floor. Her hands were sweating, and she couldn't get in enough air. Johnny and Jess were mere feet from the back door, and this man who had invaded her life and her house wasn't going to be decent enough to give her some simple support when she needed it.

This man who had known just what to do when he'd found her cowering in the corner like a beaten child.

He nodded. Motioned to the counter by the window. "You might want to get rid of the wine bottles" was all he said.

Claire spun around as if her life depended on it. Oh God, she'd forgotten. She'd just left them there where she'd dropped them.

Luckily the kids were in the middle of an argument when they walked in, or they might have heard the clatter of glass as Claire dropped both bottles in the trash. As it was, she barely got the chance to wipe the tears away with the beer-soaked rag. She almost choked.

Behind her, there was a sudden silence.

"Mom?"

Claire turned to find a tableau of three posed in her doorway. John and Jess stood side by side, their attention riveted on Tony, their features frozen in different shades of astonishment. Behind them, a stocky blond boy shifted uncomfortably, his gaze on the pristine white tile at his feet.

She'd deal with him later. Her first instinct, as always, was to hold her children. To reassure herself with the solid feel of them safe in her arms.

"Hi," she greeted them both, giving Jess a big hug because she'd still let her. "How was the dance?"

"Fine," Jess assured her, favoring her with an open, genuine smile Claire cherished like sunlight before passing a slightly amended version to their guest.

Johnny wasn't nearly as sanguine when Claire stretched up to kiss him. His attention was all on Tony, and it wasn't pleased.

"You remember Mr. Riordan, don't you?" Claire asked. "He was here the other day. Is that you standing there, Pete Winston?"

"Yes, ma'am." The sturdy blond boy nodded behind Johnny. "Evenin'."

Good manners. Terrible home life. A too-bright, not too talented child with the kind of wild humor that hid a wealth of insecurities, Pete usually ended up at Claire's when his mother was "entertaining," as Claire's friend Nadine put it. Pete's mom entertained a lot when Pete's dad, a naval lieutenant, was out to sea. By the look on his son's face, Pete's dad was obviously out now.

"Why don't you all come in so I don't get bugs?" she offered.

Johnny still didn't move. "What's he doing back?"

Claire sighed, suddenly exhausted. "It's all right. Peaches already checked him out."

"How come you came back to see us, Mr. Riordan?" Jess chirped, bouncing on over to him, her eyes brighter than usual.

Claire froze, realizing too late that she didn't have a handy excuse. Knowing damn well she couldn't think straight enough to come up with one.

She needn't have worried. Tony was already smiling.

"Didn't your mom tell you?" he asked easily. "I've been doing some work in the area. That's why I was here in the first place. I left my pictures in your mom's office the other day when I was here, so she said I could pick them up when she got off work."

Claire found herself staring at him, too. How could he look so at ease? So at home, when she just wanted to run?

He had such a generous smile. Such strong arms. He scared her to death.

"Did you get your pictures?" Johnny asked, not moving an inch, his expression equal parts truculence and distrust. Behind him, Pete just watched with hooded eyes.

"Oh, Johnny, really," Jess objected before Claire even got the chance to.

"Yeah, I did," Tony answered equably as if he didn't hear all the subtext in the seventeen-year-old's voice. "I could have lost a lot of things, but not those. One was a picture of the guys I served with in the CAG unit over in Nam. The other is of my daughter. After all the trouble she went to to get it taken, she'd kill me if I lost it."

"Pete," Claire tried again. "Close the door, honey. I'm getting moths."

That seemed to startle both the boys into action. Johnny pulled his attention from the interloper, who was by now fielding fast and furious questions from Jess, and approached Claire, Pete trailing diffidently behind.

"Did you boys have a good dance?" Claire asked, lifting a hand to brush back the unruly lock of hair from her son's forehead.

Johnny's grin was fleeting and crooked. "Okay. Pete and I are gonna go up and play flight simulator, okay?"

"Sure, honey. How ya doin', Pete?"

"I'm great," he assured her, his flat hazel eyes lighting with an almost inappropriate enthusiasm. "My dad's headed over to kick some butt in North Africa. They shipped yesterday. Did you see it on CNN? Everybody says we're gonna just wipe up, ya know? Man, I'd like to be there to see it happen." Laughing, he gave Johnny a nudge in the ribs. "It'll be our turn soon, though, huh, man?"

Johnny straightened like a shot. Claire thought of the news footage she'd seen that evening, of the children she'd seen walking up those gangways, climbing into those cockpits, and she fought the terrible urge to scream.

"Upstairs, Pete," Johnny snapped, already too well acquainted with his mother's thoughts on the subject of this little armed action. "I'll be there in a minute."

Pete eased past Johnny without another word. Across the room Tony was answering Jess's quick-fire questions about his own life, his daughter, work, his life in Atlanta. Claire should interrupt. She should save the poor man from the attentions of a dramatic thirteen-year-old.

Not yet. Not while she was still recovering from Pete's innocent enthusiasm.

"Mom?"

Startled, she looked up at her almost-six-foot-tall son to realize that he was still frowning at her, his chocolate brown eyes cautious. He wanted to go. He wanted to be in on that great circus five thousand miles away. He wanted to climb into those cockpits himself, and Claire couldn't let him.

She wouldn't let him. She'd die before she'd let him throw his life away that easily.

"Yes, honey?" she asked, smiling so he didn't know.

"Is he bothering you?"

Claire caught her breath. Leave it to John to ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Was Tony bothering her? Oh God, she wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry again, and that wouldn't get her anywhere. So she smiled, just as she always did. She stroked that cheek that was finally beginning to betray the first hint of dark stubble, and she prayed he wouldn't see through her.

"If he did, I never would have let him in the house," she promised her son, who had his father's sad, dark eyes and curly black hair and lanky frame. Her son who worried too much. But that was because Johnny was old enough to remember the father he resembled so closely.

"You sure?"

"Peaches asked me the same thing. I'm fine, honey. I just had a bad shift at work. Poor Mr. Riordan walked in right in the middle of one of my diatribes."

Finally Johnny smiled back, and Claire hoped it would be all right now. "Poor guy. What was it, inept administration or stupid doctors?"

"Both."

"Well, then, I guess he deserved a beer."

"Then Peaches stormed in and demanded to know what was wrong."

Johnny laughed. "Two beers."

Claire nodded, slid an arm around her son's waist and thought again how she used to hold him in her hands. Her baby. Her life. Soon he'd be gone, then Jess, and she'd be left with echoing rooms.

But not yet. For at least a while, he still depended on her. He still needed her stability and her sense and her support. For at least that long, Claire had her babies to keep her going.

"Say yes, Mom," Jess suddenly called out. "Please, say yes."

Claire turned to find an unholy excitement in Jess's eyes that portended disaster. Tony still lounged comfortably against the counter, beer in hand. Claire's heart did a slow roll just at the sight of him.

"Say yes to what?" she asked, just as she always did when Jess looked this impassioned.

"Well, it is late," her daughter insisted as if Claire hadn't thought of it.

Claire nodded. "Yes. It's late."

"And Mr. Riordan didn't realize he'd be here so long."

Johnny didn't have nearly the patience Claire did with his little sister. "Spit it out, Jess."

Jess started to squirm. "Well, he's not really staying as close as he thought. And I just figured, maybe we could offer him one of the spare rooms. We have two, ya know, and maybe he could just stay over. Tonight, ya know?"

Claire couldn't offer a better reaction than a blank stare.

Johnny, of course, wasn't nearly so hesitant. "Don't be stupid," he snapped.

"I'm not sure Mr. Riordan really wants to camp over," Claire demurred, venturing a look his way.

He could have at least looked uncomfortable. Even a little abashed. Instead, he was finishing up that beer, his gaze on her, his attitude easy.

"It's just one night," Jess argued. "Can't he stay?"

Stay? Claire found suddenly she couldn't pull her gaze away from Tony's. Calm, quiet green. Soothing, sensual, deceptively tranquil.

She felt the connection to her toes. She felt it down to the very core of those old ghosts that never let her sleep.

He had brought the pain back to her house.

He'd defused it with nothing more than a soft voice and sincere eyes.

She couldn't chance another episode.

She didn't want to face the rest of the night alone. In the dark. In the silence. In a house where no one understood just what she heard in her head while they slept.

Jimmy would be there tonight in her nightmares, and she didn't want to see him.

Claire looked at her children, the one bright and anxious and excited, the other almost belligerent in his opposition, and she thought suddenly that she wasn't quite ready to handle them all alone.

She wasn't ready to handle herself alone.

And so she surprised herself even more than both her children when she nodded her head in agreement. "What do you say, Mr. Riordan? Would you like to stay the night?"

Chapter 3

Johnny reacted first. "Mom, are you nuts?"

Jessie whooped in delight.

Tony Riordan merely smiled. "Thanks. I appreciate the offer."

What had she done? Claire fought down the urge to get another glass of wine and held on to the counter instead. She'd just invited a strange man into her life. A man who had every capability of ruining her. Of forcing open doors that were far better left closed.

Of making her admit the truth.

But Claire couldn't afford to be alone just yet. She needed somebody who would talk to her about inconsequential things, and she couldn't ask her children to understand that.

"Mom, what's the matter with you?" Johnny protested, arm thrown out, posture straightened just a little so he could impress the competing male with his five feet eleven inches. "You don't even know him."

Claire didn't say anything. She looked over at Tony Riordan with his ancient, smiling eyes and thought, Oh yes, I do. She'd seen him in her nightmares a thousand times, startled at the sight of his eyes on old newsreel footage and burned-out cops. She knew him, all right.

"There are some things Mr. Riordan and I need to talk about," she said, finally facing her outraged son. "And I don't think you have the right to insult a guest in this house. Please apologize."

Johnny's expression said it all. Nobody breached the walls of their home without everyone's say-so. That was how it was. How it had been since Sam walked out. But Claire didn't have the time or energy to explain. Her head was beginning to throb. Her stomach roiled.

"I can head on back tonight, if you'd rather," Tony offered.

Claire's answer was too quick and too strident. "No!" She drew a breath to quell the sudden anxiety and faced her son. "Johnny, honey, I'm not going to ask again."

"I'm sorry," he snapped, never taking his attention from his mother.

It hurt her. She wanted to explain. To make her too-adult, too-sensitive child understand why she needed Tony Riordan to stay. But she'd never been able to tell either of her children what it was she was so afraid of.

"If you don't mind, though," Tony said, "I'd rather not intrude in your house. I saw that half-finished room you have over in the inn. There's a shower and a cot there."

"But that's…"

"Plenty." He smiled again at her, and Claire found the battle lost. "I've certainly lived in worse conditions than that."

He didn't even bother to look over at Johnny. Even so, Claire saw Johnny's shoulders easing a little. The best concession she was going to get.

"Now, why don't you go on upstairs?" she asked her son as gently as she could. "I'm sure Pete's waiting, and he is your guest. Besides, if you don't get some sleep tonight, there's no flying in the morning. And Jess, you have practice early tomorrow. You go on to bed."

Jess went right on point. "But, Mom—"

Claire forced herself to walk past Tony Riordan so she could get to her daughter. Planting a big kiss on Jess's forehead, she whirled her for the door. "Say good-night to our guest."

Jess waved back over her shoulder even as her mother was propelling her the other way. "See you in the morning, Tony."

"Mr. Riordan," Claire instinctively retorted.

Jess scowled. "See you in the morning, Mr. Riordan."

"I'll be here," he said with a grin. "Good night."

Johnny hadn't budged yet. Claire had no choice but to walk up to her almost-grown son and pat him on the cheeks with both hands. "I promise," she said, wishing with all her heart that those beautiful brown eyes would sparkle for her. "If Mr. Riordan goes for my throat with a butter knife, I'll scream. Now, say good-night."

Still he hesitated, too long her protector to give in now. Claire smiled for him. Willed him to move with only her mother's resolve. He shot Tony a look of pure suspicion, but he relented. Claire accepted his kiss with more relief than she could say.

"Good night, Mom. Good night... Mr. Riordan."

For the first time, Tony addressed Johnny directly. "'Night, John. Thank you."

Another heartbeat, and then Johnny finally followed Jess out the swinging door. Claire just watched, her heart as torn as it had ever been, her head reeling with memories, with all the leftover emotions from the years they'd struggled together just to make it to this place where the three of them could be safe.

And in the end, they weren't safe at all. But only Claire knew that. Claire and the stranger in her kitchen.

"You're sure it's okay?" Tony said, bringing Claire sharply to attention.

When she realized that they were the only two left behind with the clock edging its way toward midnight, she flushed uncomfortably.

He was such a handsome man. He was a man who could easily have set her nerve endings to dancing, if she only let him.

She wouldn't.

She smiled, but her heart wasn't anywhere in the vicinity of it. "I'd offer you another beer, but you just had the last one. Coffee?"

"Coffee'd be great. They're good kids."

Coffeepot already in hand, Claire sighed. "We're used to watching out for each other. It's a hard habit to break."

"You shouldn't have to. You've done a good job with them."

"Thanks."

"They know you served."

The water splashed in the sink. Claire watched that rather than face the man leaning against the counter to her right. "Of course."

"But they don't know you've been having problems."

Claire shrugged. "It's nothing I haven't been able to handle. I guess you just surprised me."

"Does anybody know?"

This time Claire didn't even answer. She just walked over and poured the water into the coffeemaker.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, his voice impossibly gentle.

Claire hesitated no more than a second. A heart-stopping second of anguish that threatened to crush her on the spot. Then, as purposefully as she did anything in her life, she flipped on the coffee to brew and turned off the water.

"So," she said, her voice so calm she was proud of herself as she turned back to him, "you say you work in construction. What kind was it again?"

Rigid. Tony took another look around the little room Peaches had once occupied while his cottage was being finished and came up with the same impression. Whoever had constructed it, restored it and begun to decorate it, had done so with rigid attention to detail. Absolutely precise, with the counted cross-stitch alphabet sampler perfectly square with the beveled mirror and the pink-and-green tulip stenciling that marched across one and a half of the walls so parallel it would have passed scientific measurements.

The house and inn had both struck him that way. Beautifully put together, but assembled so carefully that they betrayed the extraordinary effort that had gone into every decision, every move, every result.

The same kind of deliberate attention he'd noticed during the conversation he'd shared with Claire when they'd sat down at the kitchen table for four hours.

He'd spent all night in Claire Henderson's kitchen wanting to talk about what was terrifying her, and found himself carefully guided into a discussion on housing codes and architectural tastes instead. Not that he was surprised. He'd found himself in more than one marathon in the past few years, some he'd initiated, some he'd merely participated in. Long, rambling conversations with no more purpose than pushing back the dark.

But somehow it seemed a far less acceptable thing on Claire. Maybe because he still heard that voice, soft and insistent and sure, soaking its way right through the pain and confusion and terror to tell him it was going to be all right. Maybe because he realized now the luminous beauty he'd only imagined before, saw the girl she'd been and the woman she'd become in the softening in her eyes when she turned to her children. In the way she adopted strays and made them feel welcome in her home.

Whatever else Claire Henderson was, to him or anyone else, she was a good heart. She deserved brighter smiles and the kind of peace of mind that let her sleep at night.

She deserved better than what she had.

And so, as the sun cleared the old pecans that fronted the house, instead of catching up on the sleep he'd missed the night before, Tony found himself making a collect phone call.

"Tony?"

Tony stretched out on the narrow old bed with its candlewick bedspread and closed his eyes, his attention five hundred miles away. "Hey, Andy. Semper fi."

"Semper fi, Tony," Andrew Jackson Spellman countered on the other end of the line. "What's up?"

Tony rubbed at the tension in his temples. "I think I did something stupid, man."

"Of course you did. You joined the Marines."

Tony grinned. Leave it to Andy. "No, I mean it. I need a woman, Andy."

"Whoa, man. This is a vet center. Not the Adam and Eve Massage Parlor."

"A vet."

"I think that violates a few federal codes."

"Shut up and listen."

"I'm all ears." Andy's pauses were therapeutic. He bestowed one on Tony now, which somehow eased the feeling of desperation he'd carried away from that kitchen with him. "What did you do?"

"I went to see my nurse."

Another pause, this one not quite so sanguine. Andy had been sitting in Tony's living room sharing a round of old John Wayne movies when Tony had decided once and for all to take this step. "Not a resounding success, I take it?"

"For me, yeah. Amazing, ya know?"

"Yeah. I know."

Tony nodded instinctively. Rubbed at the tightness that was building alongside his left eye where the old scars still nagged him on bad days. "But I think she's so far back in the closet she can't even see the light when the door's open."

Andy's answer was a curse even the Marines had forbidden their DI's to use. "Oh, damn, that's my fault, Tony. I should have warned you."

"Warned me?"

"Yeah. I've been getting memos for months, man. There's been a big push on to get counselors who can focus on the women. Seems we're finally figuring out that PTSD isn't just a male prerogative, ya know?"

PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The diagnosis for the nineties. Fancy name for surviving hell. Never acknowledged as a legitimate problem until some kids who survived kidnapping and disaster exhibited the same symptomology as returning vets. Subtle as a snake sometimes, insinuating itself into the edges of your dreams and turning them into catastrophe. Devastating enough that it could propel a man into a mindless, hopeless existence on the streets or so far back into the woods nobody could find him but his ghosts.

So pervasive that even more than twenty years later, men like Tony who had come home to get on with their lives were still forced to step back into those fetid, teeming jungles that had changed them utterly.

Men.

He'd somehow always thought of the victims as men. The men had suffered, while the women had soothed. The women had always appeared like a gift in Nam, bright-eyed and brash and smelling like Dove soap. A reward for having survived the time back in the boonies, a reminder that somewhere in the world there was still grace and compassion.

He hadn't considered, all these years, that the women had brought their own nightmares home.

Well, he thought it now.

Tony sighed, wished he were a lot smarter. A lot.

"We're stupid, aren't we?" he finally countered, seeing again the soft smile in Claire's eyes when she'd cupped her grown son's face in her mother's hands, hearing again the terrible desperation in her voice when he'd found her. "I really screwed it up, man. Tell me what to do."

"I think you need a woman."

"I think that's where this all started. What do I do in the meantime?"

"Same thing you do with any of the guys you've run across. Just be there until I can get you extra help."

Tony thought of the responsibilities he'd left back home, of the daughter who would even now be worried that she hadn't heard from him the night before. Then he thought of the way Claire Maguire Henderson had wrapped her hands around her mug in that starkly bright kitchen, the instinctive action of somebody who'd once had nothing else with which to warm herself when it got cold. And it could get cold in Nam. It could get real cold. Tony thought of the way her gaze couldn't seem to rest any more than those hands, the hands that had held him through those long, terrible days.

He thought of the sadness he'd finally recognized at the depths of her eyes. The untouchable melancholy, a friend of his had called it. The uniform Claire had worn home from the war and never been able to take off since.

"Tony?"

"Yeah, I know. I just wish I were a lot smarter. I don't want to hurt her any worse, Andy. She's hurting a big load right now, and it's all my fault."

"No, it's not. You keep forgetting."

"But she was doing okay. She was maintaining, ya know? Kids, a career. Hell, she even has her own business. And then I have to come along, and two days later she's wading around in a major flashback."

"If it hadn't been you, it would have been something else. She's just a lucky lady you were the one there to catch her when she fell."

"I wish I could be sure, Andy. I just wish I could be sure."

"I am. PTSD isn't something that just goes away, man. You know that. It burrows in like a big, nasty mole and then pops up the worst possible moment it can. You've seen it, I've seen it. We can help her. We'll just have to find somebody who shared her experiences to talk to."

"From what I found out, she was at the Ninety-first Evac in Chu Lai, '69 to '70. Can you see if anybody's around from that time?"

"I'm on it. In the meantime, cut a little slack for yourself. Everything'll be fine."

"Yeah, right. Everything'll be fine."

Tony thought of his own time spent walking back through the memories, the heart-stopping flashes of rage and fear and crippling grief that, once released, had damn near controlled him for months. He thought of the fragile balance Claire kept, of the children she protected from her demons, and he prayed Andy was right. Because PTSD wasn't a mole. It was a monster.

Claire refused to be upset. "It's not a disaster, Nadine." 

The broad black woman who stood before her did so with hands firmly on hips, eyes flashing fire. "You're gonna fire her this time, aren't you?"

Claire turned away rather than hit this head-on. Besides, she needed some aspirin. "Not my decision to make. I'm just supposed to let the real boss know when she gets back tomorrow. In the meantime, since Barbara decided once again to stay home without explanation, until I can get some help up here, I'll take her patients."

"You already have two of your own," her co-worker countered.

Claire got her aspirin from the med prep and washed them down with cold coffee. "And you have three. So does everybody else. We'll figure something out. We always do."

Nadine harrumphed and yanked her stethoscope from around her neck. "Well, I'm glad they're paying you the big bucks and not me, girlfriend."

Claire's laugh was as dry as dust. "Oh, yeah. Me, too. Part-time supervisor's so much more fun than the full-time kind."

Nadine was all set to head back for the rest of her report when she stopped. Claire could sense it even as she pulled out a paper towel to clean off the already-clean counter area.

"Honey?" Nadine asked, her voice low enough that the other people who bustled through the busy intensive-care unit didn't hear. "You okay?"

Claire didn't so much as sigh. She just turned around to give her friend a smile. "I'm just tired. Late night with the restaurant."

Nadine wasn't pleased. "You quittin' here soon?"

"You that anxious to get rid of me?"

"I'm that anxious for you to stop looking so damn tired and pale all the time."

Claire mugged for her friend. "And miss all this? Don't be silly. I'd be bored to tears."

Nadine rolled her expressive eyes. "Well, God knows we wouldn't want you to be bored."

"Exactly. Now, if memory serves me, we have guests at this party who haven't been introduced yet."

Nadine took the hint and went to see her patients. Claire didn't. Not quite yet. She had to call down to the house supervisor to try to wheedle for a little extra help, and she didn't want anyone to see that her hand was shaking as she picked up the telephone.

"Hello, Marianne?" she answered the terse greeting on the other end. "This is Claire up in ICU. One of my nurses didn't show up today, and there's a full house. Could we borrow one of the techs from over in surgical?"

Claire knew she was in trouble when the supervisor sighed. The supervisor always sighed when she considered one of her nurses to be taking advantage of her. Claire found herself biting back an expression of frustration even before she heard the verdict.

"You know better than this," Marianne Parkinson chastised with that long-suffering tone that so endeared her to her charges. "If you want extra help, you have to notify me before seven."

Claire sucked in a breath. Turned from the room so no one could see the color mount on her face. "I didn't know she wasn't going to show up until seven-thirty—when she didn't show up."

"That isn't my problem," the administrator snapped. "I have twenty-nine divisions to take care of. You know what kind of chaos there would be if we didn't follow some basic rules here. And you know the rules as well as anyone, Claire."

Claire squeezed her eyes shut. She held her breath against the sudden, blinding fury that had just exploded in her. Keep calm, she commanded herself. You can't do any good if you don't keep calm. Even so, she heard the tremble in her voice when she answered.

"But I know that surgical isn't full. It's just a tech, Marianne, not a neurosurgeon."

"Claire, if you want to hold a supervisory position, you're just going to have to handle these problems better."

And then, without warning or goodbye, the supervisor hung up, and Claire was left holding the phone and listening to the maddening buzz of failure.

She shook. She backed against the wall so nobody would see her. She let go with a stream of obscenities no one in Center Memorial had ever heard from her, repeated, vile, foul. Spit them out like a terrible litany, aimed them at the brainless, spineless squid-for-guts supervisor. At all the brainless, spineless, squid-for-guts supervisors who had ever made stupid decisions that jeopardized patients' lives.

Claire couldn't hold still. She couldn't breathe past the sudden, stunning rage. A rage that swamped her so that she couldn't think past the four-letter words that poured out her mouth without stop.

"Claire?"

It was Nadine. Claire heard the hesitant worry in her voice and struggled to regain control. It took her too long, and that scared her more than the unreasoning rage itself.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

Claire almost couldn't stop cursing, her voice low and harsh and furious. She did, though. She opened her eyes, hung up the phone. Did her best to face her friend, when all she wanted to do was wrap her hands around Marianne Parkinson's throat.

It scared her. She hadn't done this in so long.

She deliberately turned to the other nurse, whose eyes were blank with shock at Claire's vocabulary.

"Do me a favor," Claire asked, struggling hard to keep her voice neutral even as the rage built up like thick steam in her chest. "Have Theresa stay overtime just a little while longer. I'll okay it. I have to go beg a tech from surgical. I have to, uh, I have to..."

She had to get out of there. She had to find fresh air and sunshine and space.

Nadine didn't understand, but she cared. She patted Claire carefully on the shoulder and shooed her out the door. "You go right ahead, honey. We'll be okay."

Claire wanted to thank her. She wanted to drop her head on her friend's shoulder and sob and scream. She simply nodded and walked stiff legged and silent from the unit. She ignored greetings from co-workers as she walked through the hallways and rode the elevator. By the time she reached the lobby of the impressive white six-story hospital with its flourishing planters of chrysanthemums and dieffenbachia and the walls with signs about caring and commitment, she was almost running.

The sun was out. Claire could see it through the high glass doors. She could almost feel it on her face. She hurried through the doors and just came to a sick halt because she simply couldn't go any farther.

Her heart was galloping so hard, it hurt. Her palms were sweating. She had a wad of anxiety stuck right behind her sternum where it hurt like ground glass, and she couldn't get rid of it.

She was so afraid. So very frightened that she'd simply splinter apart right here at work where she couldn't hide. She was afraid to talk to anyone and afraid to go home to the silence, and she was afraid to stand there in the corner where she prayed nobody could see her.

Damn him. Damn Tony Riordan with his strong jaw and father's hands and ancient eyes for doing this to her.

For just a moment, Claire had been attracted to him. She'd turned from laughing with Jess to find a man gathering himself to his feet at her table with all the comfort of a bear at a picnic, A big man, all shoulders and chest and jawline, the wild thick brown of his hair tamed just a little by the gray. She'd seen those eyes, so pale it seemed as if they hadn't been real in his ruddy, well-used face. She remembered that she'd reached down to iron her skirt with her palms, the instinctive gesture of a girl greeting a gentleman caller, her first reaction to his tentative smile the hope that he wasn't really there for tea after all.

Well, he wasn't. Somehow, in that moment when he announced he'd come to thank her, he'd betrayed her. He'd breached her refuge with his heartfelt thanks and assailed her with barely suppressed memories.

And yet, as she stood with her back to the hospital wall praying to get through to the end of the day, she found herself wanting to call Tony. To talk to him. To salve herself with the gentle green of his eyes.

She wanted to hide in his arms and let him tell her she was all right.

And that was stupid.

She'd gotten through before without him. She could certainly do it again. So it had been getting harder to do lately. It wasn't any surprise with the way things were going. She had a lot of stress. A business still struggling to take wing. Children who were attacking their teens like dedicated warriors. A world around her that seemed intent on self-destruction, whether she watched it on the news or not.

She could manage if she could just get through the night tonight, even if tonight Tony Riordan wouldn't be there with his sudden laugh and his harmless anecdotes.

He wouldn't be there with his old eyes, either.

She'd get through just fine.

Claire made it back upstairs and she made it through her shift, her hands trembling and her voice tentative. She lost conversations and fought as hard as she had in her life to keep her temper under control when she usually didn't have a temper at all, and she made it all the way home by keeping her attention on the way her little red sports car handled in tight curves on the back roads, on the Mozart that played on the local classic station and the state of the weather.

It had turned out to be a beautiful day, the promise of spring borne out in heavy, swaying trees and cloud-dappled skies and a breeze that winnowed the grass on the hillsides. Claire thought about that. She thought about the whine of the engine, the blur of the scenery as it sped past. She thought of how beautiful her children had looked the night before when she'd tiptoed in to check on them, and she thought of the work she still had to do on the inn. She focused on these things like a mantra, because that was what got her through the days. It was what would get her through again now that Tony Riordan had taken his old ghosts home with him. Now that she wouldn't see him in her kitchen and hear him in her dreams. She'd snuck out that morning rather than face him. Now she was glad.

She thought.

"... the United Nations is meeting in emergency session this evening as the situation in Somalia escalates. The president, in an appearance before Congress, has committed extra troops to the war-torn—"

Claire flipped off the switch before the announcer could finish. She couldn't listen to that. It just made her want to drive to the nearest beach and sit, and she was too busy for that. She had an inn to plan and children to raise.

She ended up focusing so hard on the things she wanted that she didn't notice the things she approached. Jess's bike in the driveway where it didn't belong. The back door ajar and the smell of oregano and garlic drifting out on the late-afternoon breeze. An extra car still in the inn parking lot when the restaurant hours were over.

Nursing bag and purse in hand, she backed in the kitchen door. The countertop TV was turned to the news. Jess was laughing. The kitchen fan was running, and Claire finally noticed that there were bubbling sounds coming from her stove.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

He was wearing an apron and wielding a spoon.

Jess turned, her eyes diamond bright. "Guess what, Mom?" she announced, moving a little closer to where Tony Riordan was stirring sauce on the stove. "Mr. Riordan wants to stay and help us finish the inn. What do you think of that?"

Chapter 4

What did she think? She thought she was going to be sick. Before she had the chance to know what was going on, Claire turned to the flickering scenes of gunships and mayhem on the television and flicked it off. Then she turned to Tony, her heart already thundering.

"What are you still doing here?" she asked baldly.

Jess's face fell, and for the first time Claire could see the apprehension beneath the girl's enthusiasm. "Mom?"

Tony faced Claire without flinching. "Jess and I got to talking. She said that you're behind on the work on the inn. I'm licensed to do plumbing and electricity. I thought if you didn't mind, I'd take a crack at those rooms you need renovated. It's something I've always wanted to expand the business into."

"He wants to do it for the cost of the materials," Jess offered, as if that were the question.

Claire couldn't answer. She couldn't imagine what possessed either of them to think she'd be happy to have Tony Riordan in her face. She couldn't imagine why she was so relieved to see him.

"A business proposition," Claire said, trying to rein in her warring emotions. Thinking that no man should look that good in her blue gingham apron, even if he was wearing it over a cream cotton T-shirt and pleated charcoal slacks.

Tony nodded, his smile crooked and whimsical. "Like I told you last night, I've always been itching to do rehab. You know, preserve what's there instead of replacing it with what's not as nice. This would give me a great excuse to get 'hands-on.'"

He had told her. Claire hadn't really listened, more interested in escaping the midnight terrors of her room than the nuts and bolts of the work she'd been doing. She remembered the light in his eyes, though. They had glittered, the way they might in a young man in love discussing his intended. She couldn't imagine having that kind of passion anymore.

"Mom?" Jess said. "He can cook."

Claire was so tired. She didn't think she could deal with any more today. Any more ever. She just wanted to rest.

She turned to find her daughter openly worried. Uncertain. She could imagine Jess's excitement as she'd made her clandestine plans with Tony. She could hear the questions she must have peppered him with, the assumptions and impressions. She could well imagine the laserlike focus of Jessie's assault on Tony Riordan. What she couldn't imagine was why.

Claire turned her attention to her surprise houseguest. He was a dangerously good-looking man, filling out that apron and T-shirt with disconcerting effect. Well-honed muscles and long, lean lines. The glint of a well-worn old chain and medal around his neck, worn for purpose rather than decoration, betraying his lack of pretension. The kind of man any sane woman would want in her kitchen cooking her pasta.

"You can cook, huh?" she responded, desperate to have her voice sound normal in front of her suddenly tentative daughter. "That could be a dangerous admission in this house."

She smelled it now, basil and garlic and oregano. Mouthwatering temptation of the first order.

"You don't cook?" he countered.

Jessie did all the answering that was necessary with one laugh.

Claire managed a weak smile. "I eat," she acknowledged. "Uh, Jess, where are Johnny and Peaches?"

How had they let this man breach the defenses?

"Johnny had to stay after school for a project of some kind, and Peaches just went to get him."

Claire nodded. She realized a bit belatedly that she still clutched at her purse as if it were a shield. She stood in her own kitchen door as if she were the one trespassing. She couldn't seem to move, though, couldn't close the space between herself and this man who had undermined her control so badly that she'd ended up having to walk away from her patients.

"I need to talk to you a second, Jess," she said, deliberately turning from him. "In the living room."

Jess suddenly looked abashed. Claire wanted to hold her, this little girl masquerading as a teen. She wanted to soothe the worry that creased that young brow that should never have been creased. Instead, she silently followed her daughter out into the relative quiet of the living room where Mr. Riordan couldn't hear them.

More than any other place in the two houses she'd been struggling to restore, Claire loved this room best. It was simple and comfortable and old, the wood floors glossy with hours of hand polishing, the furniture rich with craftsmanship and use. Claire had picked every piece at flea markets and estate sales, sleek early Victorian pieces of rich, dark wood and delicate petit point cushions. A piano in the front bay window where Jess practiced and watercolors of the beach Johnny had given her as Christmas gifts over the years. A carved mahogany mantel over which hung a beveled mirror that reflected the scene out the front window like an old Constable painting.

Claire found comfort in the order, in the whispers of time that wafted from the pieces other people had bandied and loved. She felt cool and composed in this room. It was why she followed Jess here to ask her the most-important questions.

But this day she couldn't feel the comfort. She felt hot and impatient and frightened. Anxious to be back in that kitchen and yet anxious to be far away, speeding through the hills in her car until the dust she kicked up blinded her and the wind tore at her hair.

"What are you up to, young lady?" she asked quietly, hoping with all her heart that she didn't sound accusing.

Jess heard the accusation nonetheless. "Are you mad?" she asked, sinking onto the rose-and-cream love seat, her attire making her look like a woman in mourning, her mass of red-gold hair a joyous counterpoint.

Claire settled onto a chair and faced her daughter, her purse left on the floor, her own hands clasped against flight. "No, baby. I'm not mad. I'm...confused. This isn't like you."

Without warning, Jess teared up. Straightened, as if her mother had screamed instead of murmured. "I didn't do anything wrong."

This time Claire found she could smile. "Honey, I'm not worried about that. Not with Peaches anywhere in the state. I just... I just need to know why you've made it a point to invite this man over twice without so much as asking me. You have to admit that's a little unusual, even for this household."

Jess didn't relax an inch. Claire saw the struggle in the girl and ached. God, she just wanted to hug her. To hold her until she looked brave and certain and excited. Claire couldn't bear to see her babies hurting.

"I thought... I thought you'd be happy," Jess insisted, her hands intertwined like wrestlers.

"Why? You think I need a date?"

Claire had hoped for a giggle. She got a stiff shake of the head.

"I can make my own dates, honey," she admonished as gently as she could. "At least, I always have."

"It's not that," Jess insisted, sounding even more miserable. "It's... you talk to him."

Claire waited for more. Jess evidently wasn't going to give it. "I talk to you, too."

"Not about grown-up stuff. Not about...about the house and stuff. Peaches doesn't really understand, and we're just kids, and I thought maybe he could help us, and you'd have somebody... you know, your own age to be with, because Johnny and I just aren't here all the time like we used to be."

"Whoa tiger, slow down. I get it. I appreciate it, too, but I don't need anybody else to talk to. I'm happy talking to you guys and Peaches. And don't forget Bea and Marissa and Nadine—"

Jess fidgeted. "Does this mean you're going to make him go away?"

"Well, honey, I think we're probably imposing on him to ask him to use his vacation to do our plumbing, don't you think?"

Jess almost came right off the couch. "He said he'd love to see Virginia. And he was thinking of bringing his daughter up, her name's Gina, and he says I remind him a lot of her. I told him she could stay with me, I have an extra bed and I'd really—"

Claire stopped her with nothing more than a raised hand. She was glad Jess couldn't hear the stutter of her own heart or feel the sudden dampness on her palms. She was glad ambivalence didn't make its own sound, or else it would have deafened them both.

"This isn't an overnight," she objected, keeping her hand up as Jess fought to respond. "I'll think about it. It's all I can promise."

"I think it'd be good for you," Jess blurted out.

Claire's heart stumbled all over again. "What do you mean?"

Her daughter blushed. Squirmed. Faced Claire with more bravado than Claire had ever had at that age. "He cooks, Mom. Don't forget that."

"Peaches cooks."

"Peaches cooks muffins and stollens and things. Did you taste Tony's pasta sauce?"

"Mr. Riordan."

"Okay, did you taste Mr. Riordan's pasta sauce? C'mon, Mom, please. I could even learn how to make it, and then we'd always be able to have spaghetti."

Claire gave in to a grin. "We'll see," she said, and got back to her feet.

Her shaky feet. Her weak, trembly legs. Her daughter was giving her a playmate. What she wanted her to give her was silence. Emptiness, really, a place it was safe to give voice to all the old emotions. But there wasn't anybody out there who could give her a gift like that. And even if there were, she couldn't afford it anymore, when she had Jess and John to think of.

"Come here," she commanded, and her daughter approached.

Claire did what she'd been wanting to do since she'd walked into the house. She folded her little girl into her arms, close to her heart. She smelted the fresh shampoo in her thick strawberry blond hair and sated herself on the untested softness of her skin, and she thought of those rare moments of peace when she'd held Jess in her arms when she'd been a baby. Those long, dark hours of the night that had been held so at bay by the mere sight of wide blue eyes searching out her own.

That had been when she'd known. When she'd written her own creed. As long as my children are all right, I'll be all right. In all these years, it had held true.

"Thank you," she said even as her heart continued to hammer with dread. "You're an awfully thoughtful kid."

"That's what I keep trying to tell you," Jess retorted with just the slyest hint of humor.

Even so, Jess held on as tightly as Claire, a nestling prepared for flight, still caught between freedom and security. Between the lure of the world and the safety of the mother who had always held her close.

And Claire, who had numbered her own days from the moment her two little fledglings had come into her life, knew every mother's fear that they would soon be gone. Knew the added dread of seeing her days through alone.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to hope for, except that whatever happened, her children would be safe and whole and happy.

It was all she'd ever wanted. All she'd lived for. The single thing in this life that kept her sane.

"It'll be okay," she promised, although she wasn't sure whom she addressed. "I promise."

As if that would be enough.

Tony didn't know just what to hope for. If he were a lot stronger and wiser, he'd hope Claire would take him up on his offer so he could be there for her. If he were more sure of himself, he'd confront her with the circles beneath her eyes and the tremble in her hand. If he were honest, he'd admit that every time she walked into the room he had a less than altruistic response. He smelled her coming like a soft rain and wanted to bury his face in her hair. He wanted the gift of her smile, a real smite, just for him. He wanted to see her laugh, just for herself. He wanted to wipe out the sadness that colored her brightest smiles.

But Tony just wasn't sure how strong he was. For the briefest of moments when he really was honest with himself, he half hoped she'd pick him up by the belt and soup ladle and heave him back out the door.

He wasn't trained to handle this. He wasn't the person who should catch her, no matter what Andy said, and the very last thing Tony wanted in this life was to hurt this woman any further.

But he wasn't going to have the choice.

So he stood alone in the sparkling white kitchen stirring his bubbling sauce and trying his best to pick words out of the hum of conversation in the living room and a direction from the tones. He thought about what he should do next and he practiced Andy's rules of priority.

First you remember to breathe. Everything else falls into place after that.

"You and I need to talk."

She didn't really surprise him. He'd smelted the soft spring of her as she approached. He recorded the fact that his heart rate jumped and his hands went damp. Fear. Attraction. Trepidation the likes of which he'd never known the entire time he'd carted around an 
M-16.

He turned to her anyway, doing his damnedest to appear nonchalant about the most important discussion he thought he'd ever have. He set down his ladle and he smiled.

"I know."

She stood there in the doorway to the dining room, clad in a soft cashmere sweater and softer skirt sprinkled with flowers the color of her hair. Her skin was too pale, though, her posture too rigid. Tony fought an unholy urge to walk right up to her and pull her into his arms.

"I did some shopping today," he said. "Can I offer you a beer?"

She actually smiled, breaking his heart on the spot. "Yeah," she sighed. "I think so."

It was Tony who pulled two cans from the refrigerator and handed hers over. "Where's the great negotiator?"

"Beating a strategic retreat. Thank you."

"Never say retreat," he advised, popping the top on his can to hear the satisfying hiss. "Regrouping. Sounds better."

Claire just shook her head. "Whose idea was it?"

For a minute, Tony thought of fudging things a little. In the end, he knew better. She'd find out, and then he'd have nothing to barter with when the time came. So he motioned to the trestle table that took up the corner of the kitchen and joined her there.

"Your daughter and I make a great team of conspirators. She came up with the idea, and I thought of the application."

"Good contractor that you are."

"She's a great kid. You should be proud of her."

He saw her almost bristle. "I am proud of her. But there are certain limits in every household, like whose responsibility it is to invite men over for a week or two."

"It's not exactly like that—"

"I don't need anybody here holding my hand. As a matter of fact, I'd like to say that I very much don't want anybody here waiting like a vulture to pick my psychological bones clean."

She must have realized that her voice was beginning to crescendo, because abruptly she stopped. Glared. Took a good drink of beer, which looked so incongruous with the delicate picture she presented with her soft skirt swirl on the bench and her hair dancing just a little with the whisper of air from the fan.

Tony tried not to notice. "I'm only here if you want to talk about it," he assured her.

"Talk about it?" she retorted, new color in those terribly sallow cheeks. "I have talked about it. I talked until I was hoarse. I screamed and chased people and insulted total strangers. Did me a lot of good. It was, if you ask me, one of the most dramatically selfish things I ever did, and I don't plan to do it again."

It took Tony a second to answer that one. "Selfish?" he asked.

She stared him down as if he were a prosecutor and she the innocent defendant. Tony could see the pulse throb at her jaw, could hear the strident edge of control in her voice. He recognized the low flash point and wondered how long she'd functioned like this.

"Actually," she said very carefully, "I don't think it's a good idea for you to stay. I don't want to take up your vacation, and I can get a contractor to finish the work—"

Tony held up a hand. "I don't think you know what I had in mind," he said, praying hard that his answer was the right one. He was walking blind through the kind of minefield he wasn't trained to defuse. "I'd spend most of my time over in the inn. I guarantee my work, and my behavior... which I'm sure Peaches would be more than happy to supervise. I know that I set some... things in motion by coming back here, and I thought if I could help in any way, I would."

"I don't need—"

"That could mean anything from talking to simply having company late at night when you can't sleep. I know how hard that is to explain to people who haven't lived a life worth having nightmares over."

"You think I have nightmares?"

"You wouldn't be normal if you didn't."

For just a second, he thought she'd break. He saw her eyes widen, her body go so rigid she should have shattered like stressed glass. The beer can creaked in her grasp, and her mouth opened just a little.

"Breathe," Tony commanded.

She started like a slapped sleepwalker. "What?"

He smiled when he hadn't felt less like smiling in years. "You weren't breathing. Tough to make those hard decisions when you're not getting any oxygen to the brain."

She shook her head. "No."

He held up both hands this time, the classic pose of acquiescence. "Okay. But could I wait to go until after I eat? I've been working on that sauce all afternoon."

He actually got a smile out of her. Not a big one, but at least an honest softening of her features. "I've never once been accused of withholding nourishment from a starving man. Besides, Jess would skewer me on the spot."

Tony nodded and finished his beer. "In that case, I need to wash up. As soon as Peaches and your son show up, we can eat."

He didn't walk out of the room. He escaped. He got his butt out of there before he ended up reaching over to finger her hair, to run his thumb along her cheek. To pull her into his arms and let her be safe for just a minute.

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. He was supposed to say thank-you to the woman who had saved him, to complete the task he'd set himself on Memorial Day, to leave. He was supposed to get back on with his life, just as he'd been planning to do all along.

Instead, he found himself wanting to stay. Not just because he felt obliged to this woman. Not because she'd held his hand and seen him through hell.

Because she was soft and gentle. Because she had eyes the color of rain. Because, somewhere deep in those unexpected places where a man leaves the tiniest part of his heart exposed, she'd pierced it through the moment she'd turned to him and smiled.

"Idiot," he muttered to the reflection in the old beveled bathroom mirror. The reflection didn't illuminate him any. It simply scowled, knowing perfectly well what he'd gotten himself into—even before he laid out the rest of his plan or called Gina to make sure it was all right with her.

"Idiot."

He heard the raised voices before he even set foot out of the bathroom. He identified them the minute he opened the door.

Johnny was home.

Tony saw him poised against the door, as if caught between places. Pinned to the floor by his mother's reaction, poised for flight by his own indignation. The only thing keeping him in the house was the mass of humanity standing stolidly between him and escape.

Peaches. Scowling and silent as ever, his eyes turning with unerring instinct to the interloper who was approaching from the front rooms.

"But it's an opportunity I can't pass up!" Johnny protested. "You won't let me go to any of the academies, and this would get me into ROTC. With my license and hours, it would make me a shoo-in for OCS and wings."

"No."

The word was simple, certain. Final. Tony caught the undercurrent with his own sense of perfect radar and came to a stop before he got near the bright light that spilled out of the kitchen along with the echoes of Johnny's outrage.

"I want to fly," the boy said with every ounce of yearning in his young heart.

"You do fly," she said, walking into view, her posture betraying her struggle, her hand up in a futile gesture of comfort. "Honey, you've put in more time in the air than most adults. You'll keep flying, I promise. We can look into a college program that could help you toward an airline—"

"I want to fly fighters."

She looked over to Peaches, looked to her son. Straightened against some terrible weight and shook her head. "We'll talk about it later, Johnny. We have company for dinner."

"But you don't understand! You just won't listen!"

"We'll talk when we have the house to ourselves."

"Mom—"

"Later."

Tony knew that tone of voice. His mother had used it every time she meant "not in your lifetime."

Evidently Johnny recognized it, too. He spun on his heel and stalked away from her, his eyes glittering with all the anticipation that had just disintegrated before him. Tony hurt for the kid. He knew what it meant to have a dream like that. He knew what those kind of dreams cost, what they did to a person, to his family.

Johnny wasn't going to want to hear it from him, though. "What are you doing here?" the boy demanded, finding Tony standing just inside the dining room.

"Johnny!" Claire protested instinctively.

Tony just smiled. "A little respect, please. I cooked the dinner you're going to eat tonight."

Johnny shot an accusing look back toward the kitchen, another at Tony, his frustration too close to boiling over for Tony's comfort. It might have, too, if Jess hadn't leaned her head around the banister of the stairs behind him.

"Shut up," she hissed with all the disdain of a sister. "You're just making it worse."

Johnny looked up at his sister, and his expression melted just a little.

"I'll tell you what's going on," she assured him. "But only if you shut up and get up here."

And, amazingly enough, he did.

Tony waited but couldn't hear anything from the two co-conspirators, so he did his best to look unaffected as he walked on into the kitchen.

The first thing he noticed was that Peaches wasn't paying attention to him anymore. The second was that Claire was actually trembling, her hands clenched to her sides, her eyes damn near glassy. She didn't see Peaches in her kitchen anymore, didn't know that Tony had walked in. She was fighting a battle that took up all her energy, and Tony wasn't sure she was going to win.

Tony faltered to a halt. He knew exactly what was happening. He'd seen it too many times not to. He knew what to do about it, too.

If Claire had been one of the guys, Tony would have just slipped his arm around her and walked her out into the backyard, away from prying eyes, away from inconsiderate questions and unknowing demands. He'd walk her and talk to her, his voice quiet and steady and easy, a drone of comfort that would finally worm its way through the storm that raged inside her to let her know she was safe. To let her know that whatever she did, Tony would understand, because he'd been there. He'd walked the halls at night. He'd startled at the noises, done his damnedest to drown out the rage and the guilt, screamed himself awake when the old ghosts had crept too close.

He'd been there, and he knew what she felt.

But she wasn't one of the guys. She didn't know the rules, because she hadn't participated. She didn't realize that she wasn't the only one facing this.

She wouldn't let him close or let him talk or let him physically push her away from the demons.

But even as he thought those things, Tony found himself walking over to her and slipping his arm around her shoulder.

"We'll be back in a few minutes, Peaches," he said, his voice already soft and non-threatening as he turned her toward the back door. "Let the kids eat when they're ready, okay?"

And Peaches, with his glowering distrust and his massively protective arms, simply held the back door open as Tony guided Claire through.

Chapter 5

"What does he think he's doing?" she demanded, walking blindly past the garage, past Peaches's cottage and the little outbuilding beyond it. "Doesn't he understand? Doesn't he see what's going on? My God, I didn't...I didn't walk him and cry with him and hold him in my arms so that... so that he could... do this to me. So he could..."

For twenty minutes Tony just walked her, just listened to her spew out nonsense in a voice any mother would understand. He felt her shake and he heard her curse about everything and nothing in particular. He felt her come apart, there within the protection of his arm, and then pull herself together again, all without her even knowing that he was the one walking her around in the gathering dusk where the cicadas thrummed and the birds settled to sleep in the trees. He walked her across the meadow to the big woods behind the houses and along the edge of the big woods, but he didn't go into the big woods. Not anymore. Not when darkness was falling as thickly as it did here in the South on this sultry summer night.

But he listened and he murmured and he waited for her to defuse enough to go back in to face her family without breaking. He walked and he fought to keep the distance he needed, because what he really wanted to do was kiss her. Quiet her with his hands. Gather her to his heart.

But he didn't kiss her. He walked. Just as he would with one of the guys, arm around her shoulder, heads close together, eyes never still, voices hushed and urgent and frightened.

It took a good twenty minutes, but finally, just as Tony had hoped, Claire began to slow a little. She sucked in shaky, settling breaths and rubbed weary hands over her face as if washing away the pressure that had forced her from her house. She walked instead of fled, her hands quieter and her posture easing.

"He just doesn't understand," she finally said, and it was more than a statement. It was a prayer. Tony heard it, just as he'd heard it a hundred times before, and his heart broke for her all over again.

"Then tell him," he said, the first real statement he'd made to her since he'd guided her out that creaky screen door.

That brought her to a dead stop near the little white frame building Peaches occupied when he wasn't working full-time on the inn. The nearby river had sent a mist up through the trees, and it diffused the remaining light into pearly mauve. The wind was still, and the world beyond them silent. If Tony tried, he could pretend Claire was a sprite he'd found in enchanted woods, her hair the color of sunset, her skin created from old mother-of-pearl. But no sprite could have carried the sadness in those great, soft eyes, and that was what confined her to the real world.

She didn't answer his statement. She came awake. Suddenly realized what she'd done, who had helped her do it. "Oh, God," she said, eyes stark, hand to chest, posture threatening escape. "I'm sorry."

Tony smiled for her. "For what?" he asked. "Being human?"

Claire gave her head an agitated shake, looked over to where light spilled from her windows onto the dewy grass. "Why did you let me do this? They're never going to...what am I going to tell Johnny?"

"I told you. Tell him the truth."

"Not again," was all she'd say, her attention still back in that house. "Not again."

Tony wished with all his heart he knew how to ask for an explanation. He wished he had the insight to simply understand. Andy would have been able to do it, to simply touch Claire on the arm and pluck out all her secrets. But then, Andy had been one of the first storefront counselors to ever serve in the vet centers, one of the last left now that the establishment had taken over. He'd defused a thousand vets from their violent dreams and deadly reflexes. Andy had seen the worst, knew it just by the smell of a man's sweat.

Tony was only a contractor who had stepped in too far over his head. A lousy builder with a hammer and a degree in architecture who found himself getting far more involved with this one person than Andy had with his hundreds.

"Would you... would you mind staying till tomorrow?" she asked, her voice hushed with guilt.

"I'd be happy to," he answered simply. "Besides, after you taste that pasta sauce, you're either gonna want the recipe or you're gonna come lookin' for me about three in the morning when you still can't get to sleep."

Claire didn't say anything. She didn't even look at him. She just nodded and turned back to the house where her children and her friend waited. And Tony, feeling about as useful as whiskers on an eel, followed right behind.

They'd gotten to the door when she stopped. "Thank you," she said.

Still she didn't turn. Tony didn't mind. He understood what it felt like to feel exposed. He couldn't imagine being so vulnerable in front of someone you really didn't know. He couldn't imagine having to walk back in to face your children afterward.

So he waited with her as she gathered her composure, and in the gathering dark, he smiled to that fall of strawberry blond hair. "My pleasure," he answered, and meant it.

Dinner was quiet. Tony noticed that Johnny fidgeted, that he didn't exactly face Tony at any time when they talked, but at least he didn't bring up the subject of ROTC again. Jess bubbled and giggled and chattered as if it were solely up to her to fill in the spaces in the conversation. Claire, still pale and stretched, smiled at her daughter and joined in as if she hadn't just been inches away from screaming.

They talked about school and they talked about what it took to rebuild a historic house, and they talked sports. Over at his edge of the table, Peaches watched them all in near silence, his contribution a series of worried glances half-disguised as glares, and a few monosyllabic answers when pressed. He ate, though. He finished what everyone else couldn't and wiped his plate clean with his bread before he shoved his chair back from the table.

"It'll do," he pronounced.

He never once spoke to Tony. Never said a word. He just walked on out the back door as if that was all that needed to be said. So later, after dishes were done and the kids were in working over some kind of scheduling problem with their mother, Tony walked out into the misty, thick night and knocked on Peaches's door.

Tony was by no means a small man. Nevertheless, he felt dwarfed by the man who came to answer the door.

"We need to talk," he said.

Evidently it was all he needed to say. Peaches pushed open the screen door and stepped back to allow Tony past.

Again Tony was surprised. He wasn't sure what he'd expected to find in the two-room house of a man who had spent a good portion of his adult life in prison. It wasn't the soft comfort of this room. Bright blue couch and curtains and a vase of handpicked spring flowers on the mantel over the old fireplace. A Bible on the one chair and a small radio on a shelf. On the wall, watercolor prints and one or two sketches, framed at the local Wal-Mart.

Tony took note of one in particular, a spare, strong sketch of Peaches himself, all the power of the man communicated in a series of broad charcoal strokes on a sketch-pad page. Simple, startling, compelling.

Tony pointed. "Who did this?"

"The boy."

Tony turned at the hint of pride in the raspy voice. "Johnny?"

Peaches didn't so much as nod. "You got a problem with that?"

Tony looked back again. "He did the ones in the house, as well?"

"He did."

Tony nodded. "I envy you."

Again Peaches seemed to understand. Tony wasn't at all confused by Peaches's attitude. He had guys like him on more than one of his crews. Silent SOBs who judged hard and fought harder for what was important. Tough and reticent, but implacable in their loyalty. Tony thought he knew how to enlist his aid.

"I can help her," he said without preamble, because he knew Peaches would never respect small talk.

"Who says?"

They stood off in that small room like adversaries, testing, gauging, the battle fought with eyes and postures and size.

"She told me you were in Raiford." Tony didn't wait for an answer. "You do time with vets?"

"Why?"

"You heard 'em screamin' at night. Saw them hide in corners and fly off without warning. You saw them all cluster together and tell you you didn't know nothin' because you hadn't seen it."

Only Peaches's eyes gave away his response.

Tony nodded. "Has she told you she was there?"

Peaches shrugged. "Said she was a nurse. It was different. Didn't need talkin' about."

Tony shook his head. "She still wakes up screaming, though."

Peaches knew. Peaches, who was too loyal to admit it.

Tony didn't bother to nod this time. "Me, too. I know what she's going through and I want to help her."

"Why?"

"Because she saved my life."

Tony saw Peaches's distrust. He didn't mind. Those words were too easily given these days, too quickly devalued. To illustrate exactly what his were worth, Tony pulled his shirt from his jeans and unbuttoned it. He opened it to expose his stomach and his chest. "She saved my life," he said again, and Peaches, who had seen more than any man should in that penitentiary, was impressed.

"I'm going to try and hang around," Tony said, rebuttoning his shirt over the scars he'd long since grown used to. "I've already talked to some friends who might be able to offer better help than I can, if she'll let me. Any help I can get here, though, I'll take."

"Has she asked?"

Tony actually sighed. "It's a tough thing to admit. Not many people really understand what she's going through. The popular belief is that people having trouble like she is are cowards, sissies, crybabies. You know, get on with your life. Forget what happened. Well, it doesn't work that way."

Peaches relented with a ghost of a smile, a very dark smile of memory. "Yeah."

"Besides," Tony admitted, "it's hard. Especially if you've been trying to pretend for twenty years that it hasn't affected you."

"What do you want from me?"

"That you understand. You're her friend. Just be here."

For a moment, there was only silence. Outside, the night hummed and chirruped, and the wind rustled through the trees like an impatient child. In this bright white room with its soft furniture visitors evidently weren't invited onto, Peaches held his confidence to himself, his face impassive and hard as ever.

"Her kids," he finally said. Tony waited, knowing he'd finish in his own time. "She sets all her store by those two. Can't do nothin' that'd hurt 'em."

"I have a little girl of my own," Tony said.

And Peaches nodded. His answer. His bond. His promise.

Ten minutes later, Tony walked back out into the night. The trees whispered, and the stars dusted the sky out beyond the humidity. Tony could hear voices from the house, bright, sharp voices. The voices of people who were pretending hard. Tony took a deep breath and ached for a cigarette. It was going to be a long night. It was going to be a long few weeks.

He didn't care. Claire Henderson was walking along a terrible brink, and he'd helped bring her to it. The least he could do was show her the way back. Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, he limped on up the steps toward the lights.

They came in the night, just as she knew they would. All of them, with their too-soft faces and their too-young eyes and their voices that had the power to steal sleep and shatter a person's hope.

Not Jimmy. Worse than Jimmy tonight.

She was standing in the coronary-care section of the ICU where she worked, those fourteen rooms where old men came with their illnesses of genetics and hard living and bad choices. She was waiting there, where illness and death made sense, where it didn't encroach on her. She stood at the door waiting for the new admission, her scrubs on, her stethoscope in her hand, the world around her a chorus of hushed impatience. She was laughing at something somebody said and thinking that admissions always came at change of shift.

She heard it first. A thumping, a steady, deadly rhythm that seemed to fill the air. It surprised her, out of place here in this pristine place. She smelled it, the coppery tang of blood, the thick roux of mud and smoke. The stench of disaster. She felt it crawl like insects over her skin.

"No..."

The doors swung open, but it wasn't the emergency-room cart that wheeled through her door. It was a litter. It was a young boy, eyes glassy, mouth wide, hands clutching his stomach.

Claire ran to him, pulled his hands away, saw the blood. Saw the destruction, went into action. She looked up for help and saw another boy, his head bandaged, his hands outstretched to her. She ran to him, calling for assistance, but there was no one there.

She looked around her, reached instinctively for the equipment that was kept by the doors in her ICU. But she didn't see an ICU. She saw a Quonset hut. She saw daylight—bright, blinding daylight—through the doors where more boys were reaching out to her. More boys, their strong, healthy young bodies falling and bleeding, their eyes, those eyes that photographers seemed to steal right from them, suddenly ancient and sorrowful.

Boys who were silent, because they didn't scream or moan. They asked. They begged. "Help my buddy. Find my brother. Is the sarge on that chopper? Please, Nurse, please..."

Multiplying right before her, first ten, then twenty and then a hundred, crowded around, piling up, dying in her arms because she couldn't get to them. She looked down to find that she wasn't wearing scrubs anymore. She wore her fatigues, her heavy boots that weighted her to the floor, her chittering, clinking dog tags that never let her forget who she was.

There was blood on her boots, blood on her hands, and the boys kept looking at her to help, and she couldn't breathe, she couldn't move, she couldn't...

"Stop!"

Claire found herself on her feet, sweating and panting and terrified. Her eyes were open to the spill of faint moonlight through her window, but she kept expecting to see those boys, all those boys who looked just like Johnny. She heard the swish of branches in the breeze and still heard the choppers. She smelted the sweet tang of spring flowers in the air and thought it smelled like blood and infection and death.

Her nightgown was soaked. Her knees shook so badly she had to steady herself on her bedpost. Her mattress was pulled halfway on to the floor as she'd fought to get to all those boys.

The pain swamped her, sharp and suffocating, as if her heart itself were dying like those old men in her unit. She couldn't breathe past it, couldn't move, couldn't think. Instinctively she lifted her hand to it, as if she could hold it there, hold it in.

Please, God, she prayed, her eyes squeezed shut against the tide of grief. Make it stop. Make it stop....

Make them go away.

She didn't hear her own sobs, didn't notice that her face was wet with tears and that her nails were broken from where she'd struggled against her own inertia to help. She just knew she had to escape. She had to get out of this terrible, suffocating place.

She ran. Barefoot and nightgowned, her soles padding along the hardwood floors, hands scrabbling at the banister and then the walls that seemed to shift and move in the dim night she always held off with the light.

She'd tried to stave it off. She'd had a half a bottle of wine and stayed up until she couldn't keep her eyes open any more, talking to Tony Riordan about something inconsequential. She'd been so afraid she'd see Jimmy again that she'd put off bed until she thought she was too drunk to see him.

She hadn't. It didn't matter.

The night air swept across her tear-chilled face and brought her to a stop twenty paces out into the yard. Behind her, the screen door slammed shut, and down the road a dog barked. Claire stumbled out onto the grass just to feel the dew against her feet. She lifted her face to find the sky, the dark Virginia sky that looked nothing like the spectacular nights over Vietnam. She sucked in a lungful of air, searching for the scent of pine and molding leaves and caught a whiff of tobacco.

Claire came to a dead stop.

"What are you doing out here?" she demanded, even as she heard the relief in her own voice.

Tony detached himself from the shadows and approached, the cigarette still glowing in his fingers. "Sometimes nothing works but a good self-destructive habit. I needed a cigarette."

So did she. She hadn't smoked since she'd given birth to Johnny. But God, she needed a cigarette now. She needed something to settle her.

She was still trying to figure out how to ask Tony when she saw the pack extended before her. Claire accepted without thinking. She knew it was stupid. It wouldn't solve anything. Even so, she thanked Tony for lighting it for her when her own hands shook too badly.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" he asked quietly.

Claire laughed, sucking in that smoke like fresh air. Then she coughed, because her lungs evidently didn't see the same need she did. "No," she finally managed. "You didn't wake me."

Tony nodded, standing there in his jeans and white T-shirt and bare feet as if he'd needed the feeling of real grass beneath his feet, too. Claire saw how the frail light from the kitchen picked out the curve and line of his muscles, how his face was defined in solid slashes of shadow. She saw that his legs were long and lean and as solid as steel. She fought the urge to walk up and let him hold her, just as he had the evening before.

She was so frightened. So tired. She just wanted it all to end, and she couldn't imagine how it could. Tony said he'd had help, and he was still out here at four in the morning.

He seemed to be considering the tops of the trees at the edge of the meadow. "I wish it were already October," he admitted softly, and Claire thought how he seemed to be sharing the surprise with her. "Most people like spring. I need the fall. The colors, the smells, the clouds."

"The lack of a monsoon," Claire added before she thought about it.

Tony's chuckle was easy and rich, a dark music on this soft night. "And no monsoon. I think that's one reason I'd like to renovate all the old buildings," he admitted. "So I can get rid of all the mold and mildew in the world. God, I hate the smell of mildew."

It was Claire's turn to laugh, and it surprised her even more. "Flies," she said, ignoring the tremor in her voice. "The kids call me 'the Terminator.' I spend all summer with a swatter in my hand. I hate flies."

Her chest didn't hurt so badly. She didn't need to run so fast. She looked over to see that Tony understood just what the sight of flies did to her without her having to explain it to him. Without having to explain why.

Why. She'd tried to explain why once. No one had wanted to hear. She'd tried to tell them all when they'd asked her about it, to make them understand why she couldn't talk to them anymore, why she was so suddenly different, why they didn't really know what was happening ten thousand miles away. She tried to tell them. They stopped asking her.

"To this day," Tony said, his voice easy and friendly, "I can't even go in a restaurant where I might see a fish head. We lived with the villagers. Ate what they ate. I'd rather eat rats than fish heads."

Claire didn't have anything to say about that. She'd eaten well. She inhaled another pull of smoke and thought that tobacco wasn't what she'd needed after all. She'd needed this man's voice, his strong silhouette in the dim hours of the morning.

He wasn't young. Untested, immortal. He wasn't vulnerable, with his just-shaggy hair and his lush mustache and his laugh lines. The years had etched their path across his handsome face, leaving behind wisdom and patience. Humor. Tony Riordan made Claire want to smile. He made her feel as if she'd just come home, and she couldn't imagine it. She hadn't wanted to go home for years.

"You want to talk about it?" he asked simply, his voice rich and quiet.

Claire's laugh was harsh. "I told you. I talked about it. That didn't work."

"With vets?"

"With everybody but the goats at the petting zoo... no, come to think about it, I told them, too. They suggested I try more metal in my diet."

"Have you tried lately?"

"I don't have time anymore," she said. "I haven't had time since Jessie was a baby. Besides, what am I going to talk about? Bad food? Terrible living conditions? Sacrifice and deprivation? I was there a year. I never went without anything except lipstick and Tampax. I ate steak and had a roof and flush toilets that worked sometimes. I could go swimming on the quiet days, and I had enough of those. After all, the VC only really made noise once every two weeks or so. The rest of the time I worked my twelve and then played ball. So I have nightmares. It's nothing compared to what other people brought home."

Even as she made her big speech, Claire wrapped her hands together to keep them from shaking. She did her best to glare at Tony when all she wanted to do was cry.

All she'd wanted to do for a long time was cry, but that wasn't going to do her any good.

"So you only worked twelve hours a day."

"Most of the time."

"Six days a week."

"Sure."

"And it was quiet?"

She stumbled over the truth. "I got off my shift on time."

"But was it quiet?"

All those boys with their hands out to her. Claire squeezed her eyes shut. "It was my job."

For a second, there was no answer. Just the breeze winnowing her hair. Just the owl in the tree by her bedroom window. Just the past.

"Maybe you don't think you had as bad an experience as some other people did," Tony offered quietly. "Maybe it wasn't the worst experience in the history of man. But I think it was the worst experience you ever had. And that's what makes it traumatic."

Claire stiffened, frightened of this man's logic. "Don't be silly. I went over to do the job I was trained to do. It wasn't like the boys. They were isolated, attacked, forced to watch their friends die one after another. There's the difference."

"You were prepared to take care of that kind of trauma?"

Her answer was instinctive, more vehement than she realized. "No one was prepared to take care of that kind of trauma." No one had ever seen men with that kind of trauma survive before. But she didn't want to think about that. Ever. "I wasn't any different than any other nurse or doctor or medic who was there."

But Tony shook his head. "You were trained to operate under mortar attack?"

"After the first few weeks, I hardly noticed 'em anymore."

"You still can't stand sudden loud noises, though, can you? What do you do on the Fourth?"

She hid. Like a little girl, her fingers in her ears so she couldn't be startled. Couldn't be frightened and go searching for her helmet and her jacket.

"I watch the fireworks."

Tony's response was succinct and obscene. And he never raised his voice.

"I spent most of my time over there waiting, Claire. You dealt with the carnage twelve hours a day, six days a week. When you got to go off duty on time." He considered her, his eyes shadowed and sad. "You need to do something about this, Claire."

"No, I don't," she retorted. "I need to get my inn in good shape so I can support my children, because I'm all they have. They're all I have."

Even in the dark, Claire could sense his frustration. It didn't matter. She simply couldn't afford this kind of luxury anymore. She couldn't.

It would be easier to convince herself if she could only sleep.

"I have been there," he reminded her gently. "I know what you're going through."

Claire tried to shut her eyes, but she just saw those faces again. "You still have nightmares, though."

"I still have nightmares."

"Do you remember them?"

She tried to sound so unconcerned. She knew she didn't.

"Sometimes," he admitted, and his voice was dark with the memories.

Claire nodded, opening her eyes again to focus on her cigarette, the ash swimming and shifting before her as she sought to concentrate on it past the tears that swelled again to choke her. It wasn't going to help after all. She ended up flipping it into the wet grass, where it hissed and blinked out.

"How 'bout you?" Tony asked quietly. "Do you remember yours?"

And Claire thought of those faces, those too-young, terrified faces reaching out to her through twenty years, and she began to shudder. "Sometimes."

She didn't know how it happened. She realized as she closed her eyes, she didn't care. Suddenly she was wrapped in Tony's arms. She was pulled tight against his chest where she could hear the steady thrum of his heart. She was cushioned by his quiet strength and his quiet humor and his quiet courage. The tears that had followed her from her sleep slid down her cheeks unheeded. The pain gurgled up from that deep, terrible place where she hid it, and she opened her mouth, desperate to set it loose. More terrified of it than anything she'd faced in her life.

"Shh," he soothed, his hand in her hair, his chest as solid as a foundation. "It's all right. It's all right."

"No," she sobbed, fighting against the terrible, tearing pain. "It's not."

"I know, Claire. I know."

He did. He did know, and it should have made it better. It frightened Claire all the more, because she wasn't sure she wanted him to. She wasn't sure she wanted him to have her secrets, to know every nightmare she remembered. She was sure she didn't want him to have the whole truth, and that was what hurt most of all, because suddenly she wanted very much to be the woman Tony Riordan remembered.

"I'm sorry," she managed, her hands around his back, where she could feel the scars even through the cotton of his shirt. She could feel them against her breasts, horrible scars she should have remembered. Scars that should have changed a man. Should have broken him. Somehow they seemed to only have made Tony Riordan all the stronger, and that made her more ashamed.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, Claire," he said with that voice that flavored its common sense in such rich compassion. "You have nothing to be sorry about."

She wanted to laugh. She couldn't. She wanted to scream and run and hide and curl up into a tiny little ball, but beyond the security of Tony's arms, the rest of the world waited. Johnny and Jess and Peaches and Nadine, everyone at work who still didn't even know that Claire had ever been in the army, much less served in Vietnam. Everyone who would pity and question and wonder without ever really understanding. Everyone who would want more than she could ever give.

And so, for these brief moments, she rested. She hid where it was safe and quiet and sweet, and she took the time to force the pain away again, because it tore chunks out of her every time she had to face it. She closed her eyes and she rested on the rhythm of Tony Riordan's heart and gave herself up to the strength of his arms. And for that moment, because he knew and didn't demand, because he cared and didn't intrude, because of reasons Claire didn't even want to name yet, she felt safe. There in the dark, she could almost believe that she could face the dawn without fear.

"What would you say to an all-expenses-paid working vacation?" she asked, her voice unforgivably small, her heart pounding like a marching band.

Tony's hand faltered a moment. His hold never eased or tightened. She thought he smiled. "I'd love to see Virginia in the summer."

And that was that.

Some time later, when Claire was feeling strong enough to go back in her house alone, she took a moment to consider what was happening. She shook her head and fought for a smile. "You're sure you want to put up with all this."

He smiled, and there in the dark, halfway between the nightmares and the comfort of a well-lit house, Claire allowed herself to be enchanted. She allowed her heart to quicken, her breathing to slow, because his smile made her feel, just for a moment, like a bright young girl again.

"I'm very sure," he said, and held out his hand.

Claire took it. She tempted herself with the rasp of calluses against her palm. She imperiled herself with the warmth that wrapped her with that simple gesture. Again she smiled, but its color was more tentative, more anxious. "It really hasn't ever been this bad," she protested.

And then she went along with Tony into the house, feeling better and worse by degrees about what had happened, because it meant that now Tony Riordan wouldn't have to leave.

Chapter 6

"It probably hasn't been this bad before," Andy agreed the next morning.

Tony sat on the edge of the bed, his attention out the window to where Claire was planting impatiens and pansies beneath the trees. She looked drained this morning, her eyes huge and dark, her hair pulled haphazardly out of the way into a ponytail. She was wearing jean shorts and a black cotton T-shirt to work in, and all Tony could think of was that for a woman with two children and a twenty-year reunion from Nam, she looked awfully damn good.

"...I'm surprised we haven't had more, what with what's been going on."

With a start, Tony came back to attention. "What are you talking about?"

"The buildup in North Africa," Andy said, "The U.S. took its first casualties this morning. Every time something like this happens, I get an increase in PTSD business. Too much like old times, ya know? During the Gulf War it was standing-room only."

Tony found himself nodding. "And she has a seventeen-year-old son who evidently has been pushing her to allow him to join the Air Force."

Andy actually groaned. "Well, it's safe to say you don't have to take all the blame for her troubles, pard. She had her hands full before you even walked in the door."

"I'm sure that makes me feel much better. Have you found me any nurses?"

"Always a one-track mind."

"I'm not in the mood today, Andy."

Andy understood. "Actually you're in luck. I'm surprised your lady hasn't had a better response locally. The vet center in Richmond is a good one. They have a women's group. Want the number?"

"And the address. I'll stop by as soon as I can."

For a moment, there was just silence on the line. Even with his attention divided between the phone call and the woman out his window, Tony heard the caution it implied.

"Are you sure it's a good idea to get this involved?" Andy finally asked.

"Of course I'm not sure," Tony snapped, rubbing at his left temple. "If I were sure of everything, I'd be a counselor at a vet center. Just give me the damn number, all right?"

"All right, bud. But it might just be about the time to do the big di-di mau, get me?"

Di-di mau. Bug out. Get your butt moving. Tony understood just fine.

"The number," he said again, trying to keep his temper.

Andy gave him the number. He gave him the name of the counselor he'd already contacted, and the women's therapist. Tony was writing the information down when he caught a snatch of laughter out the window. When he turned again, it was to see Johnny Henderson crouched before his mother, a motley bouquet of wildflowers in his hand. Claire and her son laughed, and she kissed him. Even from this far away, Tony could see the pride in her eyes, the gentle possessiveness of maternal affection. Johnny reached over and touched her face, and Tony felt almost jealous. Excluded from the ring of comfort Claire seemed to offer. He wanted her to touch him like that, to smile for him without hesitation. To open up to him without fear.

She wouldn't. It wasn't what he was here for. All the same, it hurt in ways Tony hadn't anticipated.

"Tony?"

Tony yanked his attention back to his friend. He'd lost his way again, and that wasn't good.

"Yeah. Thanks, Andy, I'll make the calls."

Andy answered with a small sigh. "Well, listen. You know where I am. Call if you need me. Anytime."

"I know. Thanks."

After hanging up, Tony kept on watching out the window. He had one more phone call to make to set this all into motion. He had to call Gina to see if she'd like to join him for a few weeks. And then, if he was going to make good any part of his promise, he was going to have to get over to the inn and begin examining those unfinished rooms. But for right now, he couldn't seem to move away from where he was watching Claire Henderson.

"What's her name?" Claire asked her son.

Crouched down before her, Johnny gave her a great scowl. "Mom."

Claire chuckled. "The only other reason for you to want to go to the library is to check out a book," she goaded. "And I know better than that. You've already read their entire section on the joys of flight."

His scowl grew in proportion to the blush that was creeping up his neck. If only he knew, Claire thought, how very callow he looked. Scrubbed and serious and just a little too mature with his thick black hair and his sleepy brown eyes. Little girls had been calling her house begging for Johnny's attention since he'd been in the third grade. Thank God for Claire that Johnny was too shy to respond in kind.

But shy only lasted so long. She had a good-looking boy on her hands. A good-looking, sweet boy with incredible talent. She was going to lose him to one of these little girls, and she didn't think she'd handle that well at all.

"Is it such a problem that I'd want to get started on my summer reading list?"

"School's not even officially out yet," she reminded him, then lifted the wilting clump of sweet william he'd just given her. "Besides, when it comes to schoolwork, I'm usually the one doing the bribing."

He huffed in indignation. "Cindy," he all but snarled. "Okay? Her name is Cindy, and she's an honor-roll student."

"So are you."

He flashed her a melting smile. "Yeah, but I don't have dimples and blond hair."

Claire shooed him away. "Go. Attend the hormone festival. Just be careful, and bring the truck back in one piece."

He kissed her on the forehead. "Don't have to. Pat's coming by with his new Beretta."

Claire fought the urge to grab hold of her son and keep him away from fast cars and teenage bravado. He wasn't fooled in the least by her restraint.

"Pat's a safe driver," he promised her. "And it's not really a very hot car, so I don't think we'll take it up over ninety in the curves."

She just shook her finger at him, the rest of the speech long since memorized by both of her children. Be careful. Don't talk to strangers. Don't chase balls into the street or ride a bike without a helmet. Don't do anything a normal child would do that could take you away from me.

As long as they're all right...

"I know," Johnny said, straightening, his grin impish. "If I fall out of that tree and break both my legs, don't come running to you."

Claire fought the choking fear that always accompanied the thought of how capricious children could be with their lives. "Exactly."

"Besides," he said, "I think the alternator's bad on the truck. You might want to check it."

Claire sighed. The alternator. It would go right on the list after the new plumbing in the inn, the increased property taxes, the loan she was still paying off on the new kitchen equipment that satisfied the board of health. Salaries and Social Security and tutoring for Jess and Johnny's tuition at that fancy advanced school that kept his impatient mind occupied.

"Mom?"

"Yes, honey."

"I'm sorry about last night."

Claire looked up to see the sun limning her son's hair and smiled. "It's okay. We'll talk about it soon. I promise. Okay?"

He hesitated, but he nodded and Claire felt herself relax minimally. "Okay."

"Uh, there's one more thing," she said, risking that sense of well-being all over again. "Tony's agreed to stay and finish the guest rooms for me."

Johnny's features tightened right into distrust, which just threatened Claire's fragile morning all over again.

"He's going to do the work for cost," she explained. "I just can't pass up a deal like that."

Johnny's jaw worked, just as his dad's had before he'd break something. But Johnny didn't break things, except his own heart.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked very quietly, the question as adult, suddenly, as the light in his eyes.

Claire forced a smile past the urge to apologize. "I checked him out this morning while the rest of you were still asleep," she assured him. "Tony's accredited, he's won awards, and he was serious about wanting to branch out into historic renovation. Besides," she offered with an offhand shrug she prayed looked real, "if he tries anything, we always have Peaches on our side."

Johnny wasn't convinced. Claire couldn't help it. She couldn't explain, either. Johnny slept at night, as any innocent should. He didn't suffer sudden rages or find himself searching out a helmet he hadn't worn in almost a quarter of a century. He didn't know how very hard it was to go on alone because no one really knew how bad it was.

All the same, Johnny smiled back. A tentative smile that broke Claire's heart all over again, but a smile nonetheless. "As badly as you want that inn finished, you'd probably offer room and board to Jack the Ripper, as long as he knew how to work a hammer."

Claire reached up and ruffled her son's hair. "That's because he wouldn't stand a chance against Peaches."

Beyond them, Claire could hear the scrunch of gravel as a car spun too quickly into the driveway. Johnny's attention immediately lagged.

"Go on," she said with another pat to his arm. "Just don't forget that you have chauffeur duty for your sister this afternoon."

Johnny gave her one last quick kiss and straightened.

"I love you, baby," she said, as she always did.

Johnny grinned. "Me too, Mom. See ya."

The Beretta might not have been hot, but it was red with a Guns 'N Roses bumper sticker on the back. Claire was not encouraged. Even so, she waved as if she trusted Pat implicitly and did her best to finish her gardening before the first guest showed up for lunch.

"He's quite an artist."

Claire wasn't sure whether the statement or the voice startled her more. Even so, she found herself forgetting her impatiens all over again as she saw that Tony Riordan had taken Johnny's place.

She looked up, a hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun. Her chest tightened all over again. She felt the oddest little flutters in her stomach, little ripples of something that bore a resemblance to excitement. Considering what she and Tony had said to each other the last time they'd talked, Claire thought that was highly inappropriate. Even so, she found herself pushing her hair back into some order when he smiled.

"Good morning," she greeted him, as if she did it every day. She was glad to see him. She hadn't expected that.

"I didn't realize that the sketches in the inn were Johnny's," he said, hunkering down before her. "He's really good."

He was back in a T-shirt and jeans, looking far too rested for having spent the night up with her. Claire noticed the glisten of perspiration on his forehead, saw it on his throat where that old chain glinted in the sunlight. She found herself wondering what it looked like on his chest and pulled her gaze away, suddenly unsettled. Uncertain. It seemed that it wasn't only young males who were susceptible to hormones this fine summer morning.

"I'm really proud of Johnny," she said, sinking her trowel into the soft earth. "For a while, he talked about it as a career."

"Art?"

She nodded, picked a variegated plant from the box and settled it into place. "That was until he heard about van Gogh. Johnny is not the type to starve for anything."

"Now he wants to fly?"

Claire stopped. Straightened. Kept her attention solidly on her flowers. "Next week it will be law school or theater."

"Probably."

But Claire heard the hesitation. She knew what Tony Riordan thought.

She didn't care. She couldn't think about it. She'd meant what she'd said. She hadn't suffered these years just to lose him like that for a whim.

Besides, it was a bright summer morning, and a handsome man was sharing the sun with her. Not just a handsome man. Tony Riordan, who could make her smile even when she didn't want to. She wanted to smile now. She wanted to see him smile, so she could save his smiles up for the hours when there was no sun and no warmth and no smiles of her own.

"What can I do for you this fine morning, Mr. Riordan?" she asked in a too-bright voice as she patted the dark, rich earth around her plant with just a little too much enthusiasm.

"Go to the Eastern Shore with me."

Claire looked up, surprised. Even more surprised when she realized that Tony Riordan was just as shocked as she was. Claire couldn't help it. Even as she battled the sharp pull of ambivalence, .the look on his face made her laugh.

"Oh God," she retorted, head back, hands in her lap, not nearly as composed as she sounded. "Is that a proposition?"

Tony actually looked bemused. "I don't know," he admitted, his eyes dancing and those dimples appearing. "It's been so long since I've made one."

Claire felt more like laughing by the minute. "I think it's been even longer since I've heard one. I'm not sure anymore. Is it politically correct for me to take off with you or slap you until your eyes water?"

For that she got a companionable chuckle. "My opinion probably wouldn't count for much. I hate to have my eyes water."

She nodded and attacked a new section of the tilled earth. "And I don't have time to take off with you." She sighed, only half joking. "So I guess it wouldn't do me much good to get propositioned after all."

"Oh, I don't know. I could always try again later."

Claire looked up, her hands suddenly still, her heart suddenly stumbling, to realize that he was only half joking, as well. Oh, it had been a long time. She didn't know what to say, what to do. How to laugh off the fact that at the same moment she could think of nothing she wanted more, yet wanted less.

Just the invitation in those soft green eyes sent unexpected chills through her. She wanted to lift her hand to his face. She wanted to stroke his cheek and trace his crow's-feet and feel the tickle of his mustache.

She wanted to say yes. Dear God, she wanted to say yes.

She didn't know how.

"I don't know," she finally said. "I'll, uh, have to think about it."

Tony just nodded. He couldn't seem to look away from her hair, and Claire saw that his hands were restless against his knees. Uncertain, she realized in real surprise. As out of practice with the steps of this dance as her. She thought it was a silly reason to feel her heart stumble. Her heart stumbled anyway, and she found she had to look away so he didn't seem quite so close.

This was all too complicated, she thought as she focused on her work. Especially when she'd spent the early-morning hours vacillating between tears and anxiety. It was too sudden. Until this man had turned to greet her in the slanting afternoon light of her tearoom, she hadn't wasted her wishes for a man in her life again. It was too improbable, when she thought about what waited for the two of them in the dark.

"I thought you might like to check the rooms with me," he said, the easy posture of his body belied by his rubbing at the old scar across his temple with the heel of his hand. "Tell me what you want done."

Relieved, Claire turned her attention to her plants. Soothed herself with the feel of the velvety petals of the pansies. Warm, dark earth and green leaves. Color, scent, order. Beauty brought to a world that was too often ugly. Order in a life that seemed too often to ricochet from one crisis to another.

Tony Riordan was a crisis. Claire had known that the moment he'd identified himself. She certainly knew it now. But here with the sun beating down on them and the rich wine of flower petals beneath her fingertips, she couldn't really believe it.

She didn't want to believe it.

She could smell him, soap and sweat and male musk. Enticing smells. Unnerving smells that conjured up needs like dark smoke where she'd had nothing but sterile emptiness for so long. She could hear him, no matter how still he kept. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, well honed and hard and strong, an imposing presence in any woman's life. A gentle heart, with eyes the color of old pain and new hope.

She remembered him, deep in the night when he'd wrapped those arms around her and held her against him. And she wanted him to hold her again. She wanted him to soothe her, to stir her, to turn her around so she didn't know what to expect next. She wanted from him what she hadn't allowed herself from any man since Sam, and she knew better.

God, she knew better.

"Claire?"

"One more plant," she said, stabbing the ground deep with her sharp trowel.

"Okay." He didn't move. Didn't seem to feel the need to retreat as Claire did. Forearms resting on bent legs, he just watched her work. "Where's Jessie? I wanted to tell her that Gina's coming after all."

Claire wanted to look up to answer him. She wanted to get another fill of those crystalline eyes. She kept her attention on the ground. "Finishing her exams. She'll be home for lunch."

He nodded. "I think she and Gina'd get along great. They can compare notes about how tough it is to keep an eye on their parents."

This time Claire did face him. "Gina does that, too?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "Ever since I've been divorced."

"How long?"

"Six years. You?"

Claire sighed. "Well, it's a toss-up whether I'm divorced or widowed. My husband Sam died about a week before the papers were finalized. Eleven years and counting."

"I'm sorry."

She faced him, wanting suddenly to tell him. To talk to someone who might understand. No one else did. No one else knew why Sam had driven into that bridge abutment but Claire.

"Yeah," she said simply. "So am I."

"He was a vet, too?"

Claire fought to keep still. She focused on her plants instead of the old recriminations just the question incited. She battled the terrifying urge to tell Tony everything, when she hadn't ever told anyone.

"He was a vet," she said, and tamped down the earth around her last plant with care, even though her hands had begun to tremble.

It didn't take much, she thought miserably. She'd felt so good for a few minutes. So carefree, and now he was going to force her back down that damn tunnel.

Once again, Tony surprised her. She expected him to pry, to placidly demand explanations she didn't want to offer.

Instead, he merely nodded and took a second to look up at the sun.

"It's gonna be a nice day."

Claire's heart stuttered in relief, and she fought another urge to weep. She wanted to thank him. She wanted to reach up and touch his hand so he knew that his gift was understood. It was too soon, though. It was too soon.

"Yes," she admitted, never noticing the sun that dappled her or the breeze that turned the leaves. "It's going to be a very nice day."

He lowered his gaze to her, wrapped her in the soft green of his eyes, and smiled. And Claire, who had kept her wits through twenty-three years of trauma, lost her way. She tumbled into the depths of those eyes like a diver discovering the wonders of the ocean. She sought comfort and stumbled over an unexpected joy.

Joy. Dear God, it had been so long since she'd felt anything like that. Since she'd felt anything that wasn't wrapped in a layer of guilt or frustration or disappointment.

But here beneath her tree, with her nightmares only hours away, she suddenly stumbled onto delight. She even toyed with the narcotic of anticipation.

She knew it couldn't last. It never did. She got moments with the kids, flashes with the inn, nudges with her friends. At the corners of night, though, the truth always waited. Jimmy was always there to remind her.

And yet it wasn't night. It was daylight, and a handsome man was smiling at her. A man who could brighten her days and ease her nights. A man who knew her so well he knew just what not to say if she needed. For just this moment at least, she chose to hold on to the joy and ignore the pain.

"As you can see," Claire was saying as she opened another door, "we had to take it all the way down to studs in some places."

He wanted to reach out and finger her hair. It glowed in the dusty, half-lit rooms, a self-contained fire in the shadows. Gold and red and subtle, shifting amber. Fragile hues painted with precious gems, and Tony wanted to finger through it like a cascade of old treasure.

He wanted to make her laugh.

"How many bathrooms did you want in?" was all he could think of to say.

Claire shoved her hands into her jeans pockets and considered the old wooden skeleton that made up most of the second floor of the James River Inn. "I don't know, maybe three. Maybe five bedrooms, with one en suite and the rest sharing. Is it possible?"

"Anything's possible," he assured her, his hands itching for the tape measure Gina was bringing him from home. He could see old rooms rearranged, new rooms taking shape from the ruins of the old house. He could see Claire's eyes light with discovery as the design materialized around her. "I'll really dig into the structure after all your lunch guests have left. You still have the plans from when you did the downstairs?"

She nodded, her eyes soft and dreamy as she surveyed the plastic drop sheets and shaded windows. "I even drew up some preliminary sketches of my own."

"Do you know what a load-bearing wall is?"

Claire turned on him, and Tony lost even more ground before the surprising glitter of humor in those blue eyes. "Of course I know what a load-bearing wall is."

He grinned back at her. "In that case, I'd be happy to look at your sketches."

She huffed at him and shut the door again. "Just a wee bit patronizing, aren't you?"

"Just proving my worth." He wanted to kiss her. He had since he'd seen her lift her face out in that yard so the sun sank into the sweet depths of those eyes. Since he'd seen her smile at her son and lost his heart. "You wouldn't want a careless contractor, would you?"

Claire preceded him down the stairs that separated the foyer from the tearooms. "My son assures me I'll accept anybody with a T square and a deal."

"Not if the rest of these buildings are any indication."

Claire looked back up at him and smiled. "Thank you."

Tony saw the pride in her expression, the proprietary delight, as if it were one of her children they were talking about. He saw again the sadness that never left the depths of her eyes, as if nothing could touch it, nothing could erase it, and he ached for it.

I'll make you sing, Claire, he wanted to say. "I'll make you the best darn B and B in the state," he promised instead.

I'll show you that sadness is something to be shared.

"Just make me the most profitable," she teased, the corners of those gentle eyes crinkling with good humor. "I have a lot of tuition bills to pay."

Tony smiled back, when what he wanted was to run his fingers along her cheek. "It's a deal."

"I'm glad," she said. "I'm glad you stayed."

Tony meant to answer. He meant to reassure her that it was nothing, that he was doing it all for selfish purposes, that he'd be out of her hair before she knew it, that he'd keep his distance in the meantime. Somehow, instead, he reached out to her. Somehow he found himself testing the petal-soft skin of her cheek with his finger, just as he'd wanted. Somehow he found himself out of breath and out of reasons and lifting his gaze to find the same shock in hers.

Blue. Deep, winter blue, so pristine a painter would spend his life searching for the right color. Wide, gentle eyes that carried so many emotions in them that a man would have to be a stone to not be struck. A man would have to be dead to not realize that in those eyes where compassion and sadness lived, suddenly there was a spark of something he hadn't seen before.

Claire stopped, as still as a trapped bird. Tony stopped, his hand up to her, his heart in his throat, thinking that this shouldn't be happening.

Dust motes danced in the early-morning light that poured in the front windows. Somewhere a wind chime skittered, and a car engine growled. The air thickened with the scent of baking bread, and a floor up, old boards creaked back into position.

But here on the stairs, the air was still. Neither person moved. Neither breathed. Tony thought of all the things he should say, and yet he said nothing. Claire's eyes grew wide, and her posture straightened, as if she were fighting. Never taking her gaze from Tony, she ran her tongue over her lips, as if fortifying herself.

Tony found himself wanting to do the same. He found himself struck dumb. Stunned to silence by lightning.

Something happened there that had never happened in Tony's life. Something primal and vital. Something magic that passed between two scarred souls, and Tony didn't know how to answer to it.

"You gonna stand there or you gonna get work done?"

Tony all but fell down the last steps. His heart must have stopped, because the abrupt thunder of Peaches's demand started it again with a thud. His limbs moved without his permission, propelling his hands to his pockets, where they would be safe from Claire. Where she would be safe from him, when he knew this wasn't what she needed right now.

It didn't matter. His heart still stuttered like a drunk doing the alphabet, and his palms had begun to sweat.

Peaches obviously wasn't impressed. He informed Tony of that with a glare that should have shook the foundation as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his apron disheveled and his flour-dusted arms crossed.

It took Claire a moment to manage an answer, and when she did, it sounded deceptively calm. "What's the problem, Peaches?" she asked, patting at her hair with trembling hands as she stepped down the remaining stairs with the poise of a debutante.

The chef wasn't in the least deceived. "Bea," he snapped, still scowling. "The doctor's. You takin' her place?"

Tony turned away completely rather than watch Claire pull herself back together. Besides, he had to do the same thing. His breathing was suddenly as ragged as his heart rate, and it had been so long since that had happened, he'd forgotten how to hide it.

"Bea's doctor's appointment's today?" Claire asked.

"It is."

Claire looked around, as if searching for some proof.

"She needs a ride," Peaches said, his attention still all on Tony. "Her car's down again."

"Tony..."

Tony didn't get to hear the rest. Just then the front door slammed open.

"Well, there you are."

Tony turned to find a thick-waisted, cream-colored African-American woman with sharp eyes, a buzz cut and a nursing uniform standing in the front door of the inn as if she'd just discovered a delinquent hiding inside.

"Nadine?" Claire asked behind him with some astonishment.

"I'm just real glad to see you, too," the nurse retorted, walking on in and closing the door behind her.

One look at the new company had Peaches whirling around for the kitchen door.

"And don't you move an inch, Mr. Georgia," Nadine demanded in her best gospel-raised voice, her finger pointing with unerring accuracy at the chef.

Peaches slammed to a halt inches away from escape. If Tony didn't know better, he would have sworn the man was blushing. He didn't mind in the least. It was better than having people realize that Tony was blushing, too, and on a white man it was a heck of a lot mote obvious.

"Everybody take a number," Claire suggested in a tolerant voice as she took hold of Nadine's arm. To keep her physically away from Peaches, Tony thought.

Tony watched in amazement. Claire wasn't even breathing hard. Had he imagined that moment of contact on the stairs? Had he been a victim of wishful thinking?

"And what number are you?" Nadine demanded of Tony with a saucy grin.

"She's already past my number," Tony assured her. "I was just heading out. My daughter's due in at the airport."

That quickly, Claire was on alert. "Oh, Nadine, this is Tony. He's... he's my contractor for the upstairs rooms."

Tony didn't miss Claire's intense look his way. He didn't misunderstand her plea in the least. Nadine didn't know, and Claire didn't want her to. It was a request Tony had made on occasion. One he could respect without trouble.

"Nadine works with me at the hospital," Claire finished, her attitude as careful as her posture.

Nadine caught the undercurrent but misrepresented it. Her smile reminded Tony of a satisfied cat. "The contractor, huh? Well, Miss Claire, you sure do have good taste."

Tony offered Nadine a grin. "Nice to meet you, too."

"Would you mind dropping Bea off at the doctor's?" Claire asked, letting go of Nadine long enough to take some kind of list from Peaches, who resolutely refused to acknowledge the latest newcomer in his restaurant. "It's right on the way to the airport."

Tony fought the urge to look around. "Bea?" he asked.

Claire flashed him a smile. "My waitress. She's pregnant."

Tony couldn't think of anything to do but nod. "Oh."

That quickly, Claire was quietly in charge. Consulting with Peaches, taking over the inn, heading off Nadine, who evidently had come to elicit help about some problem at work.

"You tell me I should lose three days pay because I called that jackass a jackass," she challenged Claire, hands on hips.

Claire just shrugged as she gathered a waitress uniform in her arms. "Not my decision. Remember, I'm only the part-time help."

Finally out of the direct line of fire, Peaches made a successful escape, leaving Nadine in an even worse mood.

"And just where does he think he's going?" she demanded.

"Someplace safe," Claire said. "Come on back to the house. We'll talk while I'm changing. Bea's in the back, Tony. Is it all right?"

"Sure." Distance wasn't a bad idea right now. Especially since he was still trying to figure out just what had happened. What was still happening, come to think of it. "I'll bring Gina back for tea."

Claire had just turned Nadine for the door, and Tony had just turned for the kitchen. Before they could make their respective getaways, the front door slammed open a second time.

"Mom!" Jessie sobbed. "I think I flunked!"

And Tony, who had had his share of upsets and discoveries for one day, fled through the same door as Peaches.

Chapter 7

"I can only stay two weeks, Dad."

Halfway up the porch steps, Tony almost faltered to a complete halt. "But I thought we were going to see Virginia together," he protested, trying his best not to sound too disappointed.

His daughter flashed him the kind of smile that was giving him gray hair at an alarming rate. "I got a job at the mall. I mean, you're the one who told me I should find a way to support my own wardrobe in the style to which I'd like to be accustomed. It was either that or a rich, snotty boyfriend with a foreign car. And I know how you'd feel about that, especially since Mom married a rich, snotty guy with a foreign car. Anyway, I told them it was a family emergency—it is, isn't it?"

Tony didn't bother to answer that one. He just reached past his daughter to open the front door of the James River Inn.

It was another busy afternoon, with the bright music of women's laughter cascading through the rooms and the smells of yeast and cinnamon saturating the air.

"Wait'll you meet the pastry chef," he promised.

Gina barely heard him. She was too busy craning her head in any and all directions to see everything at once. She wore something short and gauzy to impress her father with how grown-up she was, even though in the airport she'd thrown herself in his arms with a shrill "Daddy!" That still didn't help when Tony realized that after only a few days she seemed older, her features maturing into an almost-exotic beauty, with her thick black hair and hazel eyes. She was already too old for her daddy. He just didn't want to admit it yet.

"Not bad," she judged with a slow nod of the head. "What's there for you to do?"

"The second floor. Now that you brought my toolbox, I can get started."

Gina harrumphed in disgust. "Oh yeah, I looked great sending that thing through at the airport. Poor Grampy almost got a hernia dragging it in for me."

"And don't think I don't appreciate it. Now, say hello to our hostess."

Tony did his best not to laugh as Claire showed up from the back room clad in gray serge, apron and mobcap. Her hair was in disarray, even in the bun into which she'd tried to train it, and there was a liberal smudge of flour along her left cheek. She was humming, her hands full with plates of little sandwiches and fresh fruit.

"Is that her?" Gina demanded sotto voce.

"You don't have to whisper," Tony retorted dryly. "She knows who she is."

Gina giggled. "She sure doesn't look much like your other Nam friends."

No, Tony thought with a fresh surge of delight. She didn't.

The minute Claire saw them, her attention zeroed in on Gina, and her smile grew brilliant.

"He's right," she said in greeting as she paused mid-trip. "He said you were beautiful. Hi, Gina. I'm Claire."

"He's my father," Gina protested. "He's supposed to say things like that." Even so, she was grinning, her hands suddenly taking flight. "This is a great place. Did you do it all yourself?"

"Come sit and I can tell you all about it."

They followed Claire to the linen-covered table in the front window with a hand-lettered 'Reserved' sign in front of the flowers. Their view consisted of clusters of chattering women on one side and a flowerbed shaded by a clump of birch on the other. Tony settled Gina into her seat and then pulled out his own, glad that he'd changed into his knit shirt and slacks before returning. This just wasn't a jeans kind of place during business hours.

"Yes." Gina was nodding. "Very cool. I could get used to this."

"Too bad you have to get back to work."

He got quite a face for that one. "By the way, you're in trouble at home."

"Your mother?"

"Your brothers. What did you say to Uncle Mike? He's going nuts."

"I told him he and Pauly can handle the business perfectly well without me, and it had been five years since I'd taken a vacation, so I was taking one now."

Gina nodded, her eyes twinkling with mischief. "And then Gram called and wanted to know what this meant that Uncle Dave said you weren't coming to Fourth of July...are you realty going to miss the Fourth of July?"

Claire showed up to catch the tail end of Gina's diatribe. "Is the Fourth a special holiday for your family?" she asked in all innocence.

Tony scowled. "All holidays are special in my family. I missed Easter last year because of airport delays, and I'm still hearing about it."

Gina nodded with great delight. "Grampy says that's what happens when you become a big shot. Uncle Dave says you probably were having too much fun, and Uncle Frank says—"

"That's enough," Tony warned.

"How many uncles do you have?" Claire asked Gina, sinking herself into one of the extra chairs.

"Six," Gina answered. "And two aunts...that aren't married to the uncles, that is. I keep telling my dad that I'm deprived being an only child. I'm all alone, you know."

Claire didn't bother to hide her grin as she turned to Tony. "You're right. You're in bigger trouble than I am."

"You have no idea."

"See, we all get together for every holiday," Gina instructed Claire, as if it were really important. "That way all the aunts and uncles can tell each other what they're doing wrong with their lives, and all us kids can fight over who gets to sit at the big table, and then we all throw pies."

Claire blinked politely. "Throw pies."

Tony nodded. "Only after we've had all we want, of course. It's a time-honored tradition."

"You mean your family doesn't throw pies?" Gina asked with transparent sincerity.

For just a moment, Claire's smile faltered. She seemed to draw back a little, as if someone had stepped too close to her.

"No," she said, climbing back to her feet. "I'm afraid I've missed that honor. How about some tea and a few of Peaches's specialties?"

Tony found himself wanting to reach out again, and he didn't know why. He wondered if he'd ever find out.

"Peaches?" Gina countered.

Both Claire and Tony managed a smile this time.

"Trust me," Tony promised. "It'll be fun."

It was fun, Claire thought later that evening as she listened to the kids destroy her kitchen. She'd always dreamed of having a full house, the kind of joyous riot she'd watched on "The Waltons" week after week, everybody in the house calling their good-nights and elbowing for room at the kitchen table.

Well, it looked as though that was what she was going to get tonight, at least. Gina had blown into her house like a bright breeze and immediately mesmerized Jess, who tagged after her like a puppy. Johnny had taken one look at the addition to the household and promptly forgotten just why he was so against having Tony stay in the first place, and Pete went right to gymnastics and nonsense verse to claim her attention.

The four of them were allegedly cleaning the dishes they'd filled with Tony's lasagna, although with the constant laughter and regular outbursts of "Oh, no!" Claire figured she was going to be the one cleaning after they were through.

"It's something to get used to," she apologized to Tony as they pored over his preliminary drawings on the old cherrywood dining room table.

When Tony looked up in some confusion, Claire realized he hadn't even noticed the commotion.

His grin was bright and easy. "Wait'll they get wound up."

Claire couldn't imagine. Her parents' house had been so quiet. So proper.

"You don't have a big family, do you?" he asked, still amused.

"No." It was a simple answer that made her jealous of him. "One brother, but he's a lot older."

Tony nodded, his eyes contemplative. Claire thought how beautiful they were. How healing.

"Takes a lot of the fun out of pie throwing."

"I imagine."

Tony's attention strayed to where shrieks echoed through the high-ceilinged kitchen, but his reaction was unconcerned. "We joke about it all the time," he admitted, "but I don't know what I would have done without them." Claire could have told him. She didn't. "Jess is sure in hog heaven out there," she said instead. "Three seventeen-year-olds and her. I can't wait to hear the version she tells her friends."

Taking a sip of the coffee that had been weighing down a corner of the blueprints, Tony chuckled. "I imagine it'll change the minute the three of them take off in a car without her. She wasn't serious about flunking this afternoon, was she?"

Claire sighed. Sipped at her own coffee. "I'm afraid so. Jess is my athlete, but she's had the devil's own time in school. She has dyslexia."

Immediately Tony's features clouded over. "Oh, I didn't know. Is there anything—"

Claire almost smiled. "She's in special classes for it, and she has two wonderful tutors. Like anybody else, she just needs to know that nobody pities her."

Tony's smile, with all its memory and understanding, was answer enough.

"Hey!" Pete suddenly called out. "That's the Yorktown! Hey, you guys, come look! It's dad's carrier! Looks like it's time to kick some butt! The real military, right, John?"

Just the words lodged in Claire's chest like ground glass.

"Mrs. Henderson, you have to come see!" Pete insisted, his voice rising.

"Oh, God," Johnny was breathing out in the kitchen as the room filled with the unmistakable whine of jet engines. "Look at that Tomcat climb."

Claire squeezed her eyes shut. Pete needed the reinforcement. He only really had his dad, who wasn't around enough. He only had the image of a man he adored and the fantasies of any seventeen-year-old boy who still found war exciting.

She climbed to her feet. She was working up the courage to walk into the kitchen when she felt a hand on hers. Tony. She opened her eyes to find that he hadn't moved, hadn't changed his expression. He'd simply laid a hand over hers to let her know it was okay. Claire wanted to cry. She smiled instead. "Hurry, Mom!" Jess cried. "You're gonna miss it! Isn't that him there, Pete?"

With the feel of Tony's hand still against hers, she walked on into the kitchen to find the four children glued to the small black-and-white she'd set up on the counter in the time before the news had been filled with war.

"Go get 'em!" Johnny crowed as one of the tiny planes shot off the end of the carrier and sought the sky.

Claire saw the scene, heard the same banshee screams that had so often awakened her all those years ago and fought the urge to run and hide.

I know what they look like when they crash, she wanted to say. I know how the pilots bleed and moan. I know how a country forgets them when the job is over and they come home twisted and empty. I know how young they are.

"Oh, man," Pete moaned dramatically, his eyes as wide as moons. "If I were a year older, I'd be invited to that party. My luck, I'll get in and there won't be any fighting going anywhere."

"There's always a need for pilots," Johnny said as if he were reciting a long-practiced prayer. Claire wanted to vomit.

"It's a fantastic ship, Pete," she managed, her voice calm. "Your dad should be proud of her."

"You bet he is," Pete assured her, never taking his eyes away from the screen.

The visit to the Yorktown ended, the news anchor came back on to hoots and jeers from the assembled teens, and the cleanup continued. Claire escaped before Johnny could beg her another time to reconsider her decision about flying warplanes.

"It's always a surprise that nobody seems to have learned any lessons," Tony said as Claire sat down again.

"There will always be wars," Claire answered bleakly. "There will always be young men drawn to the lure of the battle."

"I'll tell you one thing," Pete was saying as the clatter of dishes replaced the sounds of war. "This time we don't have to worry about wading through antiwar protesters to get the job done. My dad says that if the press hadn't been in Nam, there wouldn't have been any problems."

Claire and Tony shared the same smile, the same feeling of futility.

For the first time in her life, Claire felt as if she had someone else who didn't mind sharing her burden. She just wished she knew whether that made her feel better or not.

The following days passed much the same for Claire. At the hospital she fought for her patients and her staff against the twin specters of death and bureaucracy. At home she fought to get Jess into a summer session to make up for the two classes she had indeed flunked. She kept score at softball games and scraped together enough money to fix the truck so Johnny could get to his new job. She worked on the plans with Tony and the architect they'd chosen and worked around Bea's fragile health and Peaches's temper to run a smooth, satisfying restaurant. And at night, every night, she sat in her kitchen talking kids and cars and historic renovations with Tony Riordan over beer and wine.

She got by, just as she always did, except for the fact that for the first time in twenty years, she didn't face that night alone.

It should have made her feel better.

It didn't.

In a perfect world, she would have enjoyed the fact that she and Tony had taken to talking and laughing and bickering like old friends. She'd note the fact that she'd started dressing with a particular man in mind, that she instinctively knew when he approached and began to smile. That she anticipated him and missed him and wanted him.

Wanted him. It had been so long since she'd even had time for dating, much less the inclination. Since she'd considered herself pretty enough to attract a man.

She had in Nam, at least during the first months. She'd had suitors at the base and the enthusiastic attention of every conscious soldier who passed her way. It had taken her a while to realize that what they'd wanted had been more than she'd been able to offer.

She'd taken even longer to realize the same about Sam. Dear Sam. Hurting, angry, frightened Sam, whom she'd only wanted to help.

She hadn't helped anything.

So it had been a very long time.

In a perfect world, none of that would matter anymore. She could dress up and flirt and pretend that the shadows that lurked in Tony's eyes didn't mean anything. She could look forward without having to look back.

In a perfect world, Tony wouldn't have felt the need to be there in the first place. So Claire went to work and helped her children and did her best to balance what she wanted with what she needed with what she feared.

Tony met the woman in a Denny's on the outskirts of Richmond. Mary Louise Bethany, short, squat and squared off down to her haircut and sensible shoes. One of the women at the Richmond vet center, she had agreed to talk to him about Claire.

"Can you get her to come in?" Mary Louise asked, taking a drag from her cigarette.

Tony shook his head. "I can't even get her to talk about her time. She's got a lot of pressure right now."

Mary Louise nodded. "I can bet. I got a peek at her records. I think we might have somebody who served with her in the area. I'm not sure if she's willing to talk, though. A lot of women aren't yet."

Tony rubbed at his temple in frustration. "Were you Vietnam era or in country?" he asked.

"In country. Twelfth Evac at Cu Chi in '68. I know what she's going through, Mr. Riordan. I attempted suicide four times before somebody had the guts to haul me in for help." She smiled then, and it held a wealth of understanding. "We women aren't as likely as men to admit PTSD. And even if we are, until recently the only services set up were geared for men. Women had different experiences. They react differently."

"How?" Tony asked. "I know PTSD. I just don't know what to do for her."

Mary Louise considered him from behind a curl of smoke, her bright brown eyes wise and weary. "We internalize it," she said. "Men act out, women self-destruct. We assume a bigger and bigger load of people to help, as if that's going to make us feel better. We have the same rages and urges to self-medicate, but we blame ourselves."

Tony nodded. "Sounds about right."

"The only problem I can see you having is that you just didn't suffer the same traumas she did, and that's a big part of it. She doesn't feel as if she has the right to complain to you when she could get drunk at the end of her shift, and you had no end of shift."

"I had plenty of time off," he said. "I probably had more time off than any of you guys did."

For the first time, Mary Louise smiled. "Precisely. But try and convince her of that. Sounds like she's walking that big brink right now, Mr. Riordan. I'd be happy to come out there, if you think it'd help."

Tony stared into the depths of his coffee as if it held magic answers. He thought about what he'd brought to Claire's house and what he still had to do.

He thought about what he wanted.

"Tell you what," he said, lifting his attention back to the woman who wore her Vietnam ribbon as a jacket pin. "I'll call you on it."

Mary Louise nodded. Stabbed out her cigarette in her saucer and faced Tony with aggressive candor. "You need to convince her to get help. It's the only way she's going to make it through."

That night Tony ended up working on the inn till well after dinner. By the time he walked through the kitchen screen door, the truck was gone and so were three of the four kids, which made him briefly wonder why he'd thought it so important to have Gina come out to stay with him in the first place.

Gina wasn't his problem, though. Still dressed in the scrub suit she tended to wear home from work, Claire was sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes glued to the TV. There were helicopters on the screen and tears on her face.

After Tony had spent the afternoon learning how inadequate he was for the job at hand, he hesitated on the threshold. After that brief moment on the staircase, he knew he couldn't be anywhere else.

"It's like watching a tornado come at you," Claire admitted without looking away. "You can't stop watching, no matter how horrible it is."

Tony checked the screen to see plumes of black smoke and crumbled buildings. After all these years, he still expected to see a young Dan Rather in a flak jacket standing in front of the destruction.

"What's happened now?" he asked.

She shrugged. "The UN forces have bombed the capital. God, what is wrong with this country? Can't it simply leave one challenge alone?"

"It's not necessarily a bad fight every time," Tony said to her, and headed straight to the refrigerator, where he'd begun to stock his own beer. He was sweaty and stale and tired. What he really was was nervous.

He set one of the beers down before Claire.

"What I object to is the enthusiasm," she said, wiping her face with a towel. "This isn't a soccer game."

She sounded so calm. So matter-of-fact, as if all news reports demanded tears. As if the mere sight of carnage didn't awaken old memories that ate away peace of mind like termites.

Tony had gone through this phase. During the Gulf War, he'd practically let the company go under in his attempt to catch every second of CNN's coverage. Gorging himself on it, torturing himself with the familiarity of the scene. Railing at the country's short memories, at the frivolous loss of life, at the lessons unlearned.

Seeing his friends every time the face of a killed soldier was shown on the air.

Now he just wanted to turn away. He'd had enough.

Without realizing he was doing it, he found himself reaching out to her. She looked so lost sitting there, so very fragile. He brushed his knuckles along her cheek, just to let her know someone was there.

To let her know he was there.

She leaned against his hand as if it were the only source of heat in the room, and Tony felt his heart stumble. He let his hand rest on her shoulder, unwilling to break contact, uncertain how much she could take.

He wanted to kiss her. To soak up those tears and soothe her fears. He wanted to wind his fingers through hers and pull her away from the nightmares.

He didn't know how, so he stood where he was and did what he could.

Her hand still caught in his, Claire slowly shook her head. She wasn't watching the screen anymore. Tony could see the distance in her eyes as she looked back at other carnage.

"It was the most beautiful place I've ever seen," she said, her voice soft with a kind of surprised wonder.

Tony wasn't sure he could breathe. God, he didn't want to give the wrong answer. He didn't want to hurt her anymore.

"I know," he answered. "I forget sometimes."

Somehow she chuckled. An almost-easy sound, companionable, as if they were talking about Virginia instead of Vietnam. "Me, too. I remember flying up to Chu Lai in a supply chopper that first day and not being able to stay out of the door of the ship. The crew thought I was nuts. Their last door gunner had been killed two days before. But I couldn't stop looking. It was so green, so exotic. So lush. Sure as heck different from Kansas City. I hopped a lift every time I had a couple of spare hours off, just so I could look at the countryside."

"Sunrises," he said with a contemplative sip of beer. "I've never seen colors like that again in my life."

She nodded with a sad little smile. "Sunsets. We used to toast them. Called it the Sunset Club. We'd all meet at the corner table of the OC just in time and sing as the sun went down. The mama san in our hooch couldn't understand what we thought was so interesting."

"Probably because she had to wade around in all that slop instead of just look at it."

"She did that. She cleaned our sheets in paddy water. God, what an awful smell."

"As bad as mildew?"

"As bad as napalm."

That quickly, her easy smile died, and Tony knew she'd taken a step too far.

"No," she admitted quietly, "not napalm. Nothing smells as bad as napalm."

Tony wanted to pull her back, to have the chance to know where the land mines were before he walked this way again.

He knew what napalm smelled like, too. Especially on a human. Sometimes when he dreamed, he could still smell it. He bet she could, too.

"Where are the kids tonight?" he asked, his voice deliberately easy, his grip stronger.

"Movies," she all but whispered, straightening with the control she exerted over her past. "Jess is upstairs sulking. She's had her first brush with teen reality."

"Ah, exclusion by age, huh? Well, why don't we take her somewhere?"

Claire turned away from the news finally, her features composed, a hint of humor in her eyes. "Where?" she asked. "If we show up at the movies, my son won't speak to me for the rest of his life."

Tony shrugged. "Have you eaten?"

She shook her head so that her hair whispered with its quiet fire. "Don't be silly. Peaches is over cooking for his church chicken dinner."

Tony gave her hand another squeeze. "Then let's go. I haven't eaten, either."

"Good," she acknowledged. "I didn't want to go to the movies anyway. I'm not sure if I want to know what my son had in mind with your daughter."

Tony groaned with real outrage. "I don't suppose Pete can be counted on to chaperon."

"Not if Johnny's bribed him enough. And Johnny just got his paycheck today."

"Come on," Tony insisted, pulling Claire to her feet. "If I'm gonna have to beat him up, I'd rather have the energy to do it."

Claire laughed. For the first time since she'd turned to see him standing there in the restaurant, laughed, her eyes delighted, her attention far away from the bloodshed on the screen.

Tony hadn't realized how it would affect him. He'd hoped for it, worked for it. Even such a small laugh.

It sank into him like sunlight. Spread through him to curl like smoke in his chest, where it lay quiet and sweet.

A laugh. He hadn't realized just how much he'd wanted this until he'd heard it again and realized how very much he'd missed it.

"Do it again," he begged, realizing with a start that he still held her hand. That she stood there before him bemused and quiet, her eyes wide and her lips parted.

"Do what again?"

"Laugh. It sounds so good, Claire. You need to laugh more."

She stilled, the blue of her eyes deepening with her surprise, her skin flushing a rosy tint.

"I have to have a good reason," she admitted.

"All right. How's this? I want to make love to you."

Claire didn't laugh. She didn't even manage much of a smile. She couldn't remember having used up so many emotions in so few minutes, anger and anguish and fury and fear. Melancholy and, for the first time in so long, a yearning that had no place in her memories. Surprise and then this.

This what?

Anticipation. God, she was excited, and she didn't know what to do about it.

"Before or after dinner?" she asked, the glitter of temptation already spilling through her.

Tony's grin was telling. Again he'd surprised himself, as well, it seemed.

"Don't I have to beat up your son after dinner?"

She nodded. "Yes. But before dinner you have to help me reassure my daughter that she isn't a geek—or worse, a baby."

Tony winced. "Johnny said that?"

"While he was spraying his hair into place for your daughter."

"I will have to beat him up," he said. "Then I have to beat up my daughter for letting him get away with it."

Claire was already waving aside the protestation. "She didn't know. Now then, back to the issue at hand."

He should have looked more discomfited. More ill at ease. He should have looked as if his heart was thundering and his knees were weak. Claire was sure that was how she looked.

This was so crazy. It was too fast. It was the most terrifying moment Claire had ever spent, and she'd spent more than her share of time under mortar attack.

"This is silly," she objected before he could even answer.

She tried to pull her hand away. He wouldn't let her.

"Is it?" he asked.

"Yes! We don't even know each other!"

"You're right," he said, and pulled her closer so that he had to look down at her, so she felt dwarfed by his size.

She could smell wood shavings on him, sweat and the yeasty tang of beer. She could hear the surprising rasp of his breathing. She couldn't move to break away. Her skin seemed to be alive, her knees suddenly unpredictable when she'd never had cause to doubt them before. She couldn't breathe and she couldn't stop smiling, no matter what she said.

"It is too soon. But Claire," he said, lifting her hand and turning it over, "it's not silly."

He kissed her palm without ever taking his gaze from her. Chills shot up her arm from the brief caress of his lips.

"It's not silly at all."

Claire met his gaze with what she prayed was assurance. Surely she was going to object, to escape, to regain her common sense. It had gotten lost somehow, and Claire didn't know where to find it. She didn't know how, especially when Tony turned those seawater eyes on her.

Not when he bent down, his arm slipping around her, his thumb at her jaw. Not when he kissed her.

His mustache tickled. It had been so long since Claire had kissed a man with a mustache. She wanted to tell him that. She wanted to tell him that she wasn't at all impressed with how soft his lips were, with the way he wrapped his arms around her so that she couldn't get away. She wanted to tell him that she couldn't have cared less that something sharp and impatient lodged itself in her chest.

It was just a kiss.

It was a kiss that made Claire want to laugh again, and she couldn't think of a thing funny about it at all.

Chapter 8

"You wanna tell me what's goin' on?"

Tony decided that Peaches had wasted his time hunting him down in the unfinished rooms to take this call. He didn't want to find out who wanted to talk to him after all.

"Hi, Vince," he greeted his youngest brother with patience and foreboding. "Who made you call?"

Tony could almost see his stocky, much-too-serious brother straighten in protest. "Nobody made me call."

"Who've you been talking to?" Tony asked anyway, his attention half on his family and half on the ordered clutter around him in Claire's office as he settled a hip on the corner of her desk. "It was Mom, right? She called and said that she hadn't heard from me and she was worried. And then maybe Victoria called and said that she'd talked to Mom and Mom was worried. And then Dad called—"

"So what? They're worried about you."

Guilt by committee. The Riordan way. Tony had to smile. He could just imagine all the time wasted on those clandestine phone calls so somebody'd call Tony and find out what was going on up in Richmond.

"Tell them all I'm fine. I've joined an order of Cistercians, and they're teaching me how to make brandy."

Vince struggled to keep the humor from his voice. "That's the Benedictines."

"Oh. Yeah. The Benedictines. The Cistercians make wells or something. I forgot."

"Gina says she's pretty."

"Gina's beautiful. That's why I'm hiding her out with a bunch of celibate monks."

Vince's huff of frustration was very real. At this very moment, he was probably rubbing a hand through thinning hair. Tony didn't care. He had better things to do than defuse the family. He'd just noticed a drawing on Claire's bulletin board. A jet, drawn with the kind of precision that betrayed obsession. It was signed "John Michael Henderson, Third Grade." Awfully old for a new whim. But then, Tony wasn't surprised. Kids with passing fancies didn't get their pilot's licenses at sixteen and then spend the majority of their weekends racking up hours in the air. It was a problem Claire wasn't going to be able to avoid just because she wanted to. Tony was afraid for her. Afraid for Johnny, who only wanted to soar.

Tony was afraid for himself, because he didn't know whether he was helping or hurting.

He wasn't doing anything as long as he had his brother on the phone, so he brought his attention back to the business at hand.

"I have the time, she has the historic house," he explained evenly. "And it isn't like I've never expressed a desire to do this in my life."

"Do this? Do this? Just what is this, Tony?"

Tony struggled to hold on to his temper. "You're beginning to sound like Dad, Vince. I'm building bathrooms. Are you happy?"

"Tony, this is nuts. I mean, Gina told us you were going and all, but we didn't think you'd make this woman your lifework."

Vince was fifteen years too young to remember Vietnam. He'd been dragged along to the VA to visit Tony once during his rehab days, but one look at conditions had convinced their mother it was no place for a five-year-old boy. Until now, it hadn't mattered.

But Vince, like all the Riordans, only bulldozed his way through his siblings' lives because he cared. Tony turned his back on Claire's problem and dealt with his own.

"Actually," he said, just to annoy his baby brother, "I'm late for an appointment at a historic-fixtures store. You'd probably get a kick out of it."

Vince's answer was succinct and unmistakable. But then, Vince was a here-and-now kind of guy.

"What am I gonna tell Ma and Dad?" he demanded.

Tony didn't bat an eye. "Tell them to send me books on Colonial brick houses. I'm gonna need all the help I can get."

"Maybe we should come down there and check this out."

"Come up here, Vince. It's north of you, remember?"

"But I thought you were going to talk to a nurse."

"It's her house."

"But why?"

Tony didn't know how to answer his brother. He wasn't sure yet he had an answer for himself, much less the rest of the Riordans.

The truth? He had come for one purpose and stayed for another. And now, all alone in Claire's office, where the demands threatened to spill past the legendary order, he knew he would fight for a third.

He was falling in love with her.

He should have been a lot more surprised by the realization. Outraged, terrified. Appalled. He had no business falling in love with this woman. It certainly couldn't help her. In truth, it could do nothing but hurt her. Claire needed Tony's sense, his compassion, his support. She needed a friend, and he wanted to be her lover.

He stared at the cluster of snapshots on the bulletin board without really seeing them. He saw instead Claire as she'd been the night before. Open, anxious, trembling like a bud on the brink of opening. And he found for one unforgivable moment he wished he would have refused to let her back away.

"What do I tell them, Tony?"

It was Tony's turn to sigh. If he'd been paying attention, he would have realized that he ran his hand through his much-longer hair in an almost-identical gesture to his brother. "Tell them I'll fill them all in on the Fourth."

And then, as Gina had put it so well, they can all tell me what I'm doing wrong. Even though I already know.

"What's wrong?" Claire asked fifteen minutes later when she walked into her own office to find Tony scowling at the phone.

Everybody seemed to be in an off mood today. Peaches had scowled at her on her way by the kitchen, muttering nasty warnings about people who thought surprises were acceptable in his life. Claire had ignored him. He'd almost had a heart attack when Tony and Jess and she had walked into his little church hall with its peeling paint and rickety card tables the night before, the only white customers in the all-black church.

He'd fussed and fidgeted and scowled. Claire wasn't sure whether it was because he didn't trust Tony, he was afraid the preacher was going to embarrass him by praising his recovery or he thought Claire might be uncomfortable in his poor church.

It had been Tony who had defused the situation by wisely letting Jess be the front man. All the little grandmas had cooed over her, the little old men praised her, and the preacher encouraged her to play their piano. And Peaches, as huge and threatening as a storm cloud, had preened like a parent.

"Tony, is something wrong?" she asked now, thinking how he'd sung heartily along as Jess had played, blithely disregarding the fact that he had absolutely no sense of pitch or rhythm, which in that church had earned him more than one raised eyebrow.

He looked up at her, dragging his hand through his hair for the second time in as many minutes, his eyes distant.

He'd kissed her last night. She could still feel it, as if he'd left part of himself behind with her, a warmth, a slow, seeping light that threatened to dispel some of the chill she always carried with her. It made her want to smile.

It made her want to run.

He finally heard her and straightened away from the phone he'd been considering and offered her a chagrined shrug. "I've been found. I have to wake up Gina and ground her until she's twenty for ratting on me."

Claire frowned. "You make it sound like the Mafia's after you."

"Worse." He grinned again, brash and crooked. "My mother. She's worried, so she's called every one of my siblings so they'll in turn call me and yell at me for her."

Claire didn't like the sound of this at all. "Worried?" she asked. "About what?"

But Tony was already waving her off. "It's my own dumb fault. I didn't call her. And you know how mothers are."

"I thought it was just me."

He looked truly surprised. "Your mom never sent you get-well cards when you missed a holiday because she knew that was the only reason you wouldn't show up?"

Claire had to grin, even as she shook her head. Even as she ached in a way she hadn't allowed herself in years. "Nope. My parents always felt that polite disdain was a much better method of discipline."

Tony's easy humor faltered a little. "Oh, they're gone? I'm sorry."

"No." Claire admitted her surprise at his assumption. At her own dismissal. "They're still, urm, alive. In Kansas City."

His hesitation was only worth a heartbeat, a hitch of quiet empathy that made Claire want to reach out to him. "Then you don't face regular terrorism at their hands?"

His retort was meant to be light. Maybe only Claire caught an undercurrent. Maybe it was just because suddenly she remembered her homecoming all those years ago. She had boiled with excitement and relief and anxiety and outrage. Her life had changed forever, and she'd paced the living room with its ironed slipcovers and empty end tables trying to tell them. Desperate for someone—anyone—to simply hold her and let her say all the terrible things she'd needed to. She could still see the light as it had winked off her father's glasses when he'd picked up the newspaper. She could hear the deafening silence as her mother had simply walked from the room.

So she answered him with the truth. "I'm jealous."

For a second, his attention wavered, and Claire could have sworn he shot a look over at her bulletin board.

"I have a great idea," he said, turning his full attention on her and making her unforgivably giddy.

She was already smiling completely against her will. Drawn to his enthusiasm, as if it were light or warmth. "What?"

"Hooky. Do you have a shift today?"

"If I had, I would have been there by now. I do have a restaurant to run, however. Johnny has work, and Jess has lessons and—"

Tony lifted a hand in exception. "I want to see some examples of Colonial architecture. So I can better judge what you want in finishing your rooms."

"I'll give you a map."

"Give me a tour. We'll pack a lunch. We can take the kids if you want. I bet we have enough leftover chicken last night to invite the crew of the Yorktown."

"Tony—"

"When was the last time you went on a picnic, Claire?"

It would have been pointless to think about it. She hadn't had time for anything that frivolous since Sam.

She didn't have the time now.

Suddenly that didn't matter so much. She wanted to go. She wanted, for once in her life, just to have fun. She didn't want to think of the consequences or the pressures that still built in her chest without relief or the cost to her or her children or Tony. She wanted to be selfish and play with her children and this man with his talent for life.

"Not today," she found herself saying, hoping he'd argue with her. Hoping he'd change his mind and go back to work

He didn't. "Tomorrow."

"Hospital."

"You've never called in sick?"

Claire couldn't exactly face him with her answer. "Not unless I was."

But then, sick covered a lot of sins. And she'd committed a goodly portion of them in her career. She couldn't commit any more.

"The day after."

She lifted her head and glared. "You don't give up easily, do you?"

He grinned, brash as a teenager. "It's against my religion. I'm a Marine, and Marines never retreat."

She fought another grin. "They just strategically regroup."

"Not around a woman, they don't."

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to scream. He was too sure of himself, and she was too frightened. She wanted too much and was afraid of it all.

She could so easily fall in love with him.

"Day after tomorrow," she said, spinning around and heading for the door.

"Claire."

She halted, her line of sight including the hallway, the lovely oak-and-glass front door, the willow tree looking like an impressionistic painting outside. Quiet order, ordered beauty. Everything she'd been fighting for for so long. Why was it suddenly not enough?

"It's only a picnic."

Claire smiled. No, it wasn't. Not anymore. She just wished she knew how she felt about it.

Without bothering to answer, she headed on out of the office.

Claire must have broken the news to the kids, because one by one they came over to question Tony while he worked. Gina came first, beer in hand, which meant she'd also found out that her Uncle Vince had called.

"You didn't tell me not to tell her," she defended herself, her voice rising close to a whine.

Tony checked his watch to find with some amazement that it was already three o'clock. It had been a long time since he'd enjoyed a project enough to lose track of time over it. But then, it had been a long time since he'd been the one wielding the hammer.

"Her," he said, taking his first pull of beer. "Your grandmother?"

Gina sighed. "She was worried."

Tony chucked his daughter under the chin. "I'm forty-three, honey. Don't you think it's a little late to worry when I take some time off?"

Gina blushed and fidgeted. "Not when you act so weird about it."

"You've met my friends. You went to The Wall with me. You know what this is all about."

She shook her head, still uncomfortable. "No, it's not."

Tony considered her a moment, this almost-woman with her big heart and her quick head. So grown-up most days he forgot she still needed him to be the daddy.

"No," he admitted, "it isn't. I'm not really sure I can explain it, but I can promise you one thing. It doesn't affect you and me."

She looked up at him with those big, liquid eyes of hers, and Tony knew that he wouldn't be the first one leaving. She would. Somehow she'd grown up on him while he wasn't looking, and it hurt.

"You sure?" she asked, her voice briefly again a little girl's.

Tony dropped a kiss on her forehead and wrapped her in a father's hug. "I'm sure."

Jess wasn't nearly as ambivalent when she showed up a half hour later. "Cool," she proclaimed with a bright giggle, a glass of tea her passport upstairs. "I like picnics."

Tony didn't bother to tell her he'd already had a beer. Thanking her, he turned away from the studs he'd been pulling down and took a long drink of the tea. "You pick the place," he suggested. "I want to see the Shirley Plantation, maybe one other. Then let's go someplace fun."

"Ever been across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge?"

"Nope."

She nodded. "Cool."

The opposition was represented as Tony was closing up shop for the day. He'd worked late again. The heat had collected in the second-story rooms like heavy smoke until Tony was drenched with sweat. He pulled his T-shirt off and wiped his face with it. Working alone in these closed-off rooms after hours, it never occurred to him to put it back on again.

"Holy—"

Tony straightened like a shot at the sound of the stunned voice.

Johnny was standing about ten feet away at the top of the stairs. He brought neither bribe nor passport, and his posture threatened confrontation. His features, though, were slack with shock.

Tony didn't have to ask about what. "You shouldn't sneak up on people," he said evenly, and bent back to close up the toolbox Gina had brought him.

"I'm not the one who doesn't belong here," Johnny retorted. He should have sounded surly. He just sounded unsure of himself. "Is that from Nam?"

"Yep."

"Do they... does it hurt?"

Tony straightened, faced him man to man. "Yeah," he admitted simply. "I'm always having shrapnel working its way out. And when you have bones involved, you end up being able to predict weather. It's gonna rain like a bitch in about forty-eight hours."

Johnny didn't know quite what to say. "My dad was injured." He shrugged ineffectually. "He was cut by eggshells when a mortar hit the mess hall."

"He was there," Tony assured him. "That's reason enough for a Purple Heart."

"I think my mom has one, too. I found it in her old trunk once."

"She's never told you about it?"

A shrug, and Johnny began to look younger. "She, uh, doesn't talk about it at all."

"She didn't even watch 'China Beach'?"

This time he got a fleeting grin. "Nah. She said she didn't need to watch it. She was in the original cast."

Tony nodded, gave his face another swipe with his T-shirt. He'd been thinking all afternoon of the admission she'd made. Of the family she'd come home to. No wonder she was having trouble. There had been no one who had supported her unconditionally.

When Tony had come home for leave from the VA, he'd slept on the floor. He'd startled at backfires and cried at the sound of helicopters. More than one night he'd simply sat on the edge of his bed, too terrified to sleep. Someone had always seemed to find him there. It had usually been his mom, short and round like an Italian dumpling, with her statue of the Blessed Virgin she'd put in his room to keep him safe and her soft mother's arms she'd put around him when he shook.

She never asked questions, but she always listened. And even when he couldn't tell her because he didn't want to hurt her, she would simply sit holding him as if he'd been four again and gotten lost on the way to the store. Some guys still wore their dog tags. Tony still wore the Miraculous Medal his mother had sent with him to war.

"She's worried about you, ya know," he told Johnny about his own mother.

That quickly, the boy's composure disintegrated. "It's not my fault. She doesn't listen to me, like I'm still five and want to ride whales for a living. All I've ever wanted to do is fly jets, and she doesn't understand!"

"She understands," Tony assured him. "It scares the hell out of her. Especially seeing what's going on in North Africa right now."

"It's not exactly Vietnam," the boy retorted, shoulders forward, fingers wound through belt loops to give them a place to be.

"It's exactly like Vietnam. At least to her. Cut her some slack. She's trying her best."

"She's going to make me miss my only chance," he insisted, and Tony heard all that longing, all the pain of a boy terrified that his dreams are going to die.

"There will be others."

"And she'll say no to those, too."

She would, too. Tony had seen the look on her. Tony wasn't about to lie to Johnny. The best he could do was work with him.

"Then you're just going to have to help me," Tony told him.

"Help you what? I'm no carpenter."

Tony waved off his objection. "Do you love your mom?"

Johnny huffed in embarrassment. "Well, yeah. Sure."

"Do you want her to be able to sleep like normal people and be happy for you when you become a pilot?"

"Yes." No dissembling this time. Raw sincerity.

"Well, that's why I stayed. It's the only reason I stayed." He made a motion to include the terrible scars that bisected his chest and wrapped across his abdomen and around his right side. "She's the only thing that kept me alive, John. I owe her. I'm trying to help her, okay?"

Johnny shrugged. "Yeah. I guess."

He wasn't convinced yet. As long as he was thinking, Tony didn't care.

"Are you going on the picnic with us? I think it's important."

This time he got a classic put-upon scowl. "I can't not go. It's all Mom's been talking about this afternoon, like we're going to Disney World or something."

"She's looking forward to it, then?"

"She can't wait."

Tony nodded. "Tell you what, then. Let's you and I talk. You need to know some things."

She couldn't wait. She kept telling herself that. Then she double-clutched her way down into second and skidded around the curve in the mountain road.

Mountains. Baloney. These weren't mountains. They weren't even as big as the Ozarks back home in Missouri. Now, those were mountains you could really crank a car up on, the roads narrow and winding so they swooped over the tight hills like a roller coaster to send your stomach lurching into the air.

Claire needed more speed. She needed to take her little car to the very edge and expend all her concentration controlling it. She needed to scare herself more than Tony had scared her.

The car had always worked. At least for a while. Whenever she was feeling desperate or unbearably sad or frightened, speed and challenge at least dulled the edges a little. It kept her from seeing Jimmy.

Kind of like the wine she drank to get to sleep.

Like working in a critical-care area, where you had to improvise at the speed of light sometimes to pull a patient through a crisis.

Picnics didn't help. Challenge helped, work, distraction. Sometimes a lonely beach where the only sounds were birds and wind, where nobody could find you. Not a beautiful day with her children and a man more dangerous than sin.

Not the first taste of anticipation to touch her in years.

God, she wanted to go. She wanted to salve herself on the endless water and watch exotic birds in flight and hold a man's hand. She wanted to have nothing more on her mind than laughter and somnolence.

She knew better.

She drove faster.

She couldn't drive fast enough to outdistance Tony Riordan, and that terrified her most of all.

Chapter 9

"You gonna talk to his wife?" Nadine asked the next afternoon, her brown eyes glistening with the threat of tears as they walked together from the silent room.

Claire dumped all the paperwork from the cardiac-arrest team on the desk and straightened. "Yeah," she said. "Might as well. I sure don't want Dr. McKenzie telling her."

Another day until the picnic. It seemed like a year. It seemed Claire would never get there. Rubbing away the tension in her neck from the hour she'd just spent, she turned for the door only to find Nadine staring at her.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Nadine shook her head a little. "You stopped getting attached to your old guys, didn't you?"

"Of course not," Claire retorted instinctively, mining the heaviness in her chest for signs of grief. She'd just lost a patient. The third one in her past two shifts. But, as they said, he'd lived to the fullness of his time. It was hard to rail in protest when a man dies at eighty with a dozen grandchildren out there to mourn him.

"I feel every one."

She felt dry and tired. Anxious. Empty, as if each patient had taken something from her as they'd left. Weighted down so that walking was a chore.

She was going on a picnic tomorrow. Today she felt like crying, and it wasn't because she had to talk to little Mrs. Milner with her crumpled monogrammed handkerchief and her anxious gray eyes.

But Nadine was still shaking her head. "You still ain't looking much better, girl. Wanna share the load? I could come over with some PMS food and we could dis everybody we can think of. I sure don't have a date tonight... unless that fine, fancy-cookin' friend of yours isn't busy."

Claire jumped on the subject with relief. "Girl, you ease up on my pastry chef, you hear? Poor thing's fretted himself down to his last two hundred fifty pounds just from wonderin' who's gonna be poppin' through his door. I think he's more afraid of you than a return trip to Raiford." Claire forced a grin. "But then, so am I."

Nadine clucked in disgust. "What's wrong with that man he can't see what's good for him? He's got a good, Godfearing, hardworkin' Baptist woman standin' right there wantin' to make him an honest man, and he shies away like a horse in a fire. He needs me. He just won't admit it."

"I'm sure he does. But every time you surprise him, he ends up burning an oven full of pastries, and I can't afford the flour and sugar."

"Well, just invite me to Johnny's party," Nadine suggested, straightening her uniform as if she were headed that way right then. "That way, he can be prepared. And I can make him jealous by talkin' up that new contractor of yours. Now, there's a fine man, you ask me. Just ripe for nasty thoughts."

"Johnny's—" That quickly, Claire's knees gave out. Her chest caught fire. She couldn't take her eyes off Nadine and couldn't answer her.

Nadine went back into the outraged sister routine, hands to hips, head tilted to forty-five degrees. "He's your baby, and I have to remind you when his birthday is? What's the matter with you, girl?"

Two weeks. His birthday was in two weeks.

"Oh, God..." Claire sank back down into her chair, her head in her hands, her attempt at humor shattered. She'd completely lost track of time. The tears welled up in her eyes before she knew it and spilled all over her paperwork.

"I forgot. I forgot."

It was Johnny's birthday in two weeks, and she didn't know what to do. For some reason, that was what Claire couldn't handle.

"Hey, hey, baby what's the matter?" Nadine soothed, slipping the paperwork away to a safe place and shooing the rest of the staff away. "I tell you what. I'll go talk to Mrs. Miner. You sit here a minute."

Claire never heard her. She was fighting the desperation, the sudden, searing sense of loss.

"I forgot..."

She dreamed about Jimmy that night and woke up sobbing. It didn't matter. She knew better than to brave the yard. Tony might be down there, and she couldn't deal with him. She couldn't deal with anyone. So she sat in her window with the lights out and the ceiling fan on and the night air washing over her damp skin, and she watched for the sun to come up beyond the trees and the river.

Maybe if she had a beer or a glass of wine, she could get back to sleep. Maybe she shouldn't go on the picnic tomorrow. In the mood she was in, she doubted sincerely she'd
Contribute to anybody's fun.

She felt...God, she didn't know how she felt. She wasn't sure she wanted to anymore. All she knew was that something was gnawing at her chest, something was making her startle and smile and weep. Something was bearing her down, and something else setting her loose.

Maybe if she could get in her car and shake some of this loose. Maybe if she could just run her car into something and find some peace.

Claire wasn't surprised by the thought. She'd had it before. A temptation more than an inclination. A sometimes tantalizing sin of surrender. She was just so tired of hurting. So tired of trying to get by, get along. She was so tired of the dreams and the faces and the hundreds of reaching hands.

She was tired of waiting to feel something more and living in fear that she would.

Oh, Sam, she thought in weary sadness. I wish I could say I didn't understand.

Outside, a match flared in the darkness over by the old oak. Tony was walking late tonight. For just that brief moment, Claire could see the outline of his features, sharp and strong and deceptively easy. No one who saw that face would think that that man was such a bulldog. No one would suspect the depth of his strength, the extent of his compassion.

No one would know about those dimples he hid away beneath that mustache of his.

How do you feel, Claire? she asked herself, imagining his features after the light went out, tracking his progress when she knew he couldn't see her.

She felt impatient. Tentative. Raw as a burn. She wanted to run down those steps like the girl she'd once been and preen for him. She wanted to incite those dimples and make his eyes dance with laughter. She wanted to test the strength of those magnificent arms and savor the unexpected shivers of attraction.

She wanted to run as far away from him as she could.

He was going to hurt her. He was going to set loose the same demons that had shattered Sam, and she couldn't let that happen. She couldn't let him endanger her children.

But he would. He already was. She'd forgotten Johnny's birthday, and she'd never done that in her life. She'd never once lost a second of her children's time, because it was all she had. It was the only thing she'd done right.

And now he was here, and she'd forgotten.

She should have walked down there and told him to go home. She got up instead and sneaked in to check on her children. Resettled their covers, just as she'd done every night they'd been alive, and kissed them in their sleep. Promised them in silence that she'd always be there for them and prayed they'd always be hers. And then she came back to sit at her window until the sun pearled the eastern sky and set the birds to chattering, and she just watched as Tony settled against the trunk of the tree and slept.

"Are you sure you're okay to drive?" she asked a few hours later.

Tony looked over from where he was buckling his seat belt and smiled. "I promise, Officer. I haven't touched a drop."

"You haven't slept, either."

"Sure, I did. It was great."

"It was hot, humid, and there were ants crawling on you."

His smile became an impish grin. "I didn't know you cared."

"I do if you're planning on driving the Chesapeake Bay Bridge."

"May I remind you that if you saw me sleeping with ants, then you must have still been awake, which means I had more sleep than you?"

Claire scowled with every inch of outrage she had left in her weary body. She had just caught sight of Jess, who had dug into her closet for her only non-black attire in honor of this, her first family picnic. Clad in denim shorts and a bright apple green top, she was giggling and dancing around the back of the restaurant as if she were off to a parade.

She hadn't stopped talking about this field trip since Claire had made the mistake of telling her about it. Johnny, on the other hand, hadn't said a word. He still didn't as he accepted a heavy basket and several admonitions from Peaches that made Jess giggle all over again.

Claire wanted to close her eyes and just soak up the sound. She just wanted everything to be all right. If it couldn't be all right, at least back to what it was.

"She's really excited," Tony said, as if Claire hadn't noticed.

"That's blackmail."

They were sitting in the front seat of the sedan Tony had rented for the day, since neither of their sports cars would squeeze in five people.

"Don't you want to go?" Tony asked.

Claire gave into impulse and leaned her head back against the seat. "I want to sleep."

One hand resting atop the steering wheel, he nodded. "I know the perfect place. In fact, I'll join you."

Claire was astonished by a sudden image of the two of them sleeping together. Intertwined, sated lovers, her hand spread across his belly, his arms nestling her to him.

She squeezed her eyes shut and commanded her heart to slow back down.

"Come on, Claire," he urged. "When was the last time you took a day off?"

"The day before I went into labor with Johnny."

"Precisely. Today is for fun. No cost, no expectations We're celebrating summer, okay?"

She opened her eyes again, faced the unholy light in his, the kind of enthusiasm that was far too infectious.

"Is this how your family operates?" she asked dryly.

He grinned like a pirate. "I'm not even warmed up yet. You know darn well you don't have anywhere else to go today."

"I have things that need doing. People I should be seeing."

He shrugged. "And what are they going to do if you don't show up? Shave your hair short and send you to Nam? Lighten up, girl."

The oddest urge to giggle swelled in her. A desperate desire to let loose.

"Tell you what," he coaxed. "We'll have such a good time today that we'll both be asleep by dark."

Claire saw the subtext in his statement. She saw the invitation, whether intentional or accidental. She heard enough messages in that one challenge to take the stuffing out of her knees, especially when they were coupled with the subtle fire in those shallow-water eyes. Her heart gave a slow roll. Her toes curled with the lazy lightning that flickered through her limbs. She was surprised how much she liked the feeling, when she knew as well as he how impossible it was.

"Sounds good to me," she answered, and was disconcerted all over again. She didn't hear invitation in her voice. She heard plea. She heard the kind of desperation a woman closes to herself like a grievous sin.

She heard the defeat she felt every time she saw Tony Riordan walk out into the dark.

She was even more surprised to see that he understood without her having to explain. He lifted his hand, brushed his knuckles against her cheek as if his message were too important to be given so far away.

"Believe it or not," he assured her with a quiet voice and honest eyes, "I didn't sleep with the ants because I was afraid. I like the night, especially outside. Always have... well, always did. That was one of the things I lost, and it's one of the things I've gotten back."

"But it was hard to do," she insisted.

He didn't touch her. He didn't have to. "So's having to drink half a bottle of wine every night to get some sleep, honey."

"I don't need that wine," she protested instinctively, just as she did every time she opened the bottle.

His smile was deprecating and open. As courageous an act as Claire had ever seen. "And I don't need the beer. Except when I'm stressed. Right before I finally went to The Wall, I was up to almost half a case. It's not just the hard-core cases who rely on crutches sometimes, Claire."

"Hey, are we on our way yet?" Johnny called out as he ushered Gina their way.

Claire's heart threatened to stop. She didn't want them to know. She had so much she suddenly still wanted to say.

That quickly, Tony smiled, a flash of sunlight against a threatening sky. "But enough about me," he said easily. "Today is for the kids. All us kids."

Claire battled tears. Her throat closed with them. Her chest was thick with them. She didn't know what she wanted. She didn't know what she was ready for. She just knew that whoever had sent Tony Riordan to her had sent a miracle, and he frightened her to death.

She was still faced off with him, soaking in his courage like water to a dry rag, when Jess yanked the back door open like an escaping felon.

"Shut up, Johnny."

"Shut up, Jess."

"Shut up both of you," they both chorused with impish glee as the three of them tumbled into the car like rodeo clowns, filling the small space with scents of fried chicken and fresh dinner rolls. The sights and sounds and smells of normalcy. Claire turned to the front of the car and squeezed her eyes shut. Pushed back the tears. Regained control. Found, to her eternal astonishment, that below that maelstrom of emotions lurked anticipation.

She really did want to go to the beach, and she wanted Tony to take her.

"Who has the directions?" Tony demanded, turning his attention to the ignition.

"Right here!" Jess sang out, waving the atlas she'd been carrying. "You're in charge of reading it, Mom."

"No, Jess. You do it. And listen, you two—"

"Seat belts!" she and Johnny chorused just as they had since they'd been old enough to parrot their mother's instructions.

"'We're off to see the wizard...'" Tony intoned with absolutely outlandish pitch.

The car purred to life, and Claire turned to fill her eyes with the sight of her laughing children.

"What did Peaches say?" she asked.

Jess chortled. Johnny flushed.

"Nothing," he said.

"He said," Jess offered as they turned for the road and their adventure, "for Johnny to act like a gentleman around his mother, and—"

"Jess—"

"—a priest around that girl."

The tension was broken, and the trip was on its way. Claire reached back and tousled her chagrined son's hair and noticed that Gina was flushing almost as badly as Johnny. Well, she thought, with no little disgust. At least I have other problems to keep me occupied this afternoon.

The day began perfectly. Laughter and not a little off-key singing filled the car, and plans were revised and recommended with amazing abandon. By the time they reached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, they had discarded requests to drive straight on down to Key West, hop a ship for Nassau and find an airport with glider lessons.

History was dispensed with some imagination, and directions offered in a manner befitting grand opera. Tony entertained them all with accounts of the house he'd built for a man who wanted to live just like Elvis, and Gina told stories about how her dad had been kindly asked not to sing in church anymore. They were so busy laughing that Claire didn't even notice Johnny craning his neck to see the bustle in the Norfolk naval shipyards as they swept over the Hampton Yards Bridge. She didn't see Jess elbow him in disgust or Gina take his hand.

Today was for kids. Claire found herself giggling with an outrageous delight as they accelerated away from the tollbooth at the bay bridge to discover a horizon of water and marshes and a bridge that seemed to stretch straight to infinity.

The afternoon was warm and lazy and soft. Almost half a mile out, the water of Chesapeake Bay lapped at the sand, the receding tide leaving behind shellfish and jellyfish and the odd hermit crab to face the sun. On the other side of the dunes, the tiny town of Cape Charles slumbered like a place that had been transported through time from the age of Queen Victoria. Crepe myrtle trees were beginning to send out purple and pink and white blooms, and lilac bushes scented the air. The wind gusted from inland, where banks of thick purple clouds were building up somewhere south of them. Claire didn't notice. She was stretched out in the freshly cleaned sand watching her children claim their prizes in the tidal pools.

"Oooh!" Jess shrilled, arms up. "It touched me! I hate jellyfish!"

"They're out early this year," Claire mused from one of the beach chairs Tony had pulled out of the trunk of the sedan. "Usually you don't see them till August."

Tony didn't move from where he lay, beer bottle propped on his belly, eyes closed. "Not a problem we have in Atlanta."

Claire sipped at her soda. "I can't imagine living that far away from the water again. When I moved away from home, I headed right for a beach."

"Yeah," he said with a slow grin. "China Beach."

Only a few hours earlier, Claire would have deliberately turned away. Shut him out, shut herself off.

"Hey," she said instead, "who said you shouldn't be able to get in a little surfing in the middle of a war?"

"Not me," he sensibly agreed. "Best we got to do was play poker. We tried horseshoes, but those people didn't have any horses. And it's real tough to get the shoes off a water buffalo."

Claire laughed. She let the sun heat up her skin and the wind cool it off. She let the sound of the water soothe her and the excited voices of her children be her balm.

She let Tony Riordan mesmerize her with his easy camaraderie.

"Were you any good?" he asked.

"Nope." She took a sip of soda. "I surfed about as well as you sing."

That got his attention. "I beg your pardon—"

"Matter of fact, I ended up in my own neuro unit once. Got smacked in the head with the board when I was at a beach party and almost drowned. Admitting diagnosis was possible head injury. Dismissal diagnosis, surfeit of bourbon, bad wienies and ajudgmentia."

"Ajudgmentia?"

She grinned. "Medical term. Means complete absence of common sense."

"Ah."

"It was a great party."

"What you remember of it."

"What I remember of it. Actually I amazed myself over there with an undiscovered talent for partying."

"No parties in Kansas City?"

She laughed again, but there was faint humor in the sound. "No. No parties."

"Obviously because it had no good beaches."

"Obviously. I've never been without a beach since."

"Which ones?"

"You name it, I've lived there. West Coast, East Coast, south coast. I don't necessarily have to live on the water, but I have to be pretty damn close to it."

"Is Atlanta too far?"

Claire turned her head to see that his eyes were closed, his breathing easy underneath that old Rolling Stones T-shirt he was wearing over his gym shorts. As if the question weren't important.

"I don't know," she admitted, and wished he'd turn to her. Prayed he wouldn't. It occurred to her suddenly that he'd been kind enough all those nights to offer himself without hope of reciprocation. She knew he'd always lived in Atlanta. Always would, since otherwise it would be too hard to get to all those holidays his family demanded attendance to. Holidays no other human felt responsible toward, St. Patrick and St. Anthony and at least a hundred personal birthdays.

Claire couldn't imagine it. She hadn't shared a birthday with her parents since she'd gone to war. She'd never once felt compelled to go into the family business simply because it was expected of her.

"Is the inn what you've been working toward all these years?" he asked.

"Nope." She took another drink, settled her attention back to the children as if she, too, were unconcerned. "I never had a real plan. I do love the place, though."

"You should. You've done a hell of a job with it."

Johnny was holding Gina's hand. Gina was letting him. Claire didn't know how to feel. Maybe if Johnny concentrated on how pretty and bright Tony's daughter was, he'd forget how much he wanted to fly. But then, maybe that would only incite another complete set of problems Claire didn't want to deal with, either.

"Thank you," she said anyway, her mind already past the compliment. "How far would you consider moving from Atlanta?"

As if they were still playing a game. As inconsequential as the breeze, as meaningful as a picnic on the beach.

But Tony didn't answer right away. He tipped the bottle to his lips and took a long drink. Claire wanted to feel the pulse at his throat. She wanted it to match the quick cadence of her own.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Depends on how easy it was to get home. How important it was. Want to celebrate Fourth of July in Atlanta?"

Another slow roll of her heart. Another easy question with terrible possibilities.

"I don't know," she admitted, turning her attention deliberately to where her daughter was harassing the two older teens.

Easy enough. He didn't push it. Didn't demand or question or investigate. He simply lay in the sun and balanced a brown bottle on his chest as if all of life were that basic.

Out in the water, Jess splashed Johnny and Gina. Shrieks rose on the wind, and with them the very real growl of protection.

"I am going to have to beat up your son," Tony admitted with a slow drawl as the two of them watched Johnny wrap Gina in his arms and pull her into the waves that tumbled at the edge of the sandbars.

Claire nodded, somnolent and amused. "Right after I beat up your daughter. Are her intentions honorable?"

"No more honorable than your son's."

Another nod. "Then I think we may be in trouble."

"I think that's what I just said."

For a while, they just watched as the boy and girl splashed and ran and laughed. When Claire realized that Jess was left to circle the two like an ineffectual moon, she decided it was time to get into the water herself.

Tony beat her to it. "Well," he said as he stretched his way to action, "I guess it's about time to cool off out there, ya think?"

Claire swung her legs over the side of the chair. "I have to protect my son's virtue," she agreed.

Tony's laugh was delighted. "I have to protect your son's virtue, too. Come on."

Claire hadn't really thought about that limp of his. Usually it was so slight it simply looked like part of Tony's slow, easy gait. But as he climbed to his feet today, he lurched, then cursed, then waited a second before straightening.

"Okay?" she asked, not knowing what else to offer.

His grin was dry as dust as he rubbed at his left hip. "It's gonna rain like a pig any time soon," he said, and then finished straightening.

Claire saw the scar there, snaking out beneath the hem of his shorts like a dirty secret. Old and raised and shiny. There were others on his chest, worse ones. Scars she hadn't seen yet.

Tony held out a hand. "Let's go. I'm going to need a head start to bring down that daughter of mine."

Claire took his hand, carefully raised her eyebrow. "No suntan today?"

Tony took a quick look down at the shirt he still wore. "I usually leave my shirt on." The shrug he offered was easy and matter-of-fact. "Been a long time since I've had to prove anything. I don't need to make Jess uncomfortable just to make a point."

"You're sure?"

He squeezed her hand, shot her a smile that should have been a kiss. Then he turned them both deliberately for the water. "I spent almost a year in the VA, Claire. After that, I didn't have any shame left at all. Matter of fact, I was so used to people just walking in on me any time of day or night, I had to remember to keep my clothes on when I got home. I gave my sister Victoria the scare of her life one night when I walked out of the shower during the middle of one of her slumber parties. My mother went to Mass for a month over that one."

She was laughing again. How could she be laughing, when he was telling her just what those scars had cost him? How could he make her feel better when he was telling her that he didn't in the least mind compromising his life?

Claire minded. She minded for him. She hurt for the man who had lost his innocence to a war and his youth to hospitals. And yet he was telling her she wasn't allowed to.

"Hey, Jess!" he was yelling as he stepped into the warm water. "Reinforcements are on the way! I say we get 'em!"

The water lapped at Claire's ankles, and she instinctively squinted down to the water to look for crabs and jellyfish that might object to her arrival. Tony's hand was warm and rough, his grip tight. Claire found the hurts of the past slipping behind her like the shore, until all she could think of was how delicious the water felt against her legs. How warm the sun was. How hungry she'd been for the sound of Johnny's laughter. He turned toward his sister and her surprise champion with a shout of challenge, and the water flew.

"You were right," Johnny admitted as they climbed the bridge back to the mainland much later to find the distant horizon cloaked in lightning-shuddered black.

"About what?" Tony asked.

"It is going to rain."

Tony just nodded. "The farmers need it."

Claire didn't pay either of them much mind, except to note that Johnny was beginning to let Tony closer. It might have had something to do with the fact that Johnny had taken to looking at Tony's daughter like Helen incarnate, or the fact that Tony approached her son with an attitude that resembled more big brother than adult.

Claire was glad. She was glad the day had been so nice. She was glad she was full of Peaches's wonderful food and sleepy from the sun. She didn't even mind the fact that her skin was already a little too tender. She felt sated. Comfortable. Her mind hummed with memories of bright eyes and laughing faces and delicious sensations. Sunlight and the tickle of tiny fish against her ankles and the caress of a man's hand.

It was enough to settle anyone to sleep. It settled Claire to sleep, her arms wrapped around Jess, who had insisted her mother ride in the back with her, much to Johnny's chagrin. Much to both parents' amused relief. Claire closed her eyes to the sounds of Motown on the radio and Tony talking to Gina about some family member or another who was mad at some other family member or another, and the hum of tires on asphalt. She warmed herself on the weight of her child and actually entertained the fantasy that maybe it wasn't going to be so bad.

Maybe she could let this man just a little closer. Share a few more of the war stories that didn't hurt. Allow herself the pleasure of his smiles. Maybe she could just fall a little in love.

Just a little.

For the first time since it seemed she could remember, Claire actually toyed with hope. She slept with it all the way back to the inn and woke to it for at least a few moments when Tony bent over her to pull a slumbering Jess from her arms. She considered it as she stretched out the cobwebs and let Johnny hand her up out of the car.

In the distance, lightning fluttered along the edge of the sky. The wind was damp with the promise of rain. Claire turned her face to it and thought of how sweet the rain smelled.

"Mom?"

"I'll be in in a minute, John."

She turned away from the house, toward the road where the willow was beginning to sway in time to the freshening breeze. Behind her, the door slammed and the voices of sleepy teenagers drifted down from open windows. Lights blinked on in the house, and then the television. Claire was watching the clouds and thinking of how much had changed in her life since she'd last faced a storm.

She heard him approaching, that rolling gait that she'd come to anticipate so much. She was already smiling before he spoke, and only the darkness knew how tentative that smile was.

"You okay?"

Claire looked away from the coming rain. "Just thinking about how nice the day's been."

She earned the kind of smile that took a woman's heart. "I'm glad," he said simply, standing close.

The wind tugged at his hair, and the light limned his eyes, making them look almost phosphorescent. Claire couldn't pull her gaze away. She thought of the scars this man carried, the nightmares he'd walked through on his way to find her. She thought of how, when any other person would have the right to simply rest, he'd offered to help her.

A quiet man. A persevering man. A man who was teaching her that courage was a quiet thing. Claire couldn't stop herself from reaching up to touch that angular, well-used face. She couldn't help but smile.

"Thank you," she said, and then before he could react, she lifted up on her toes and kissed him.

That quickly, she was in his arms. Wrapped tight and safe, pulled so close she couldn't tell his heart from hers. Stirred by the gusting wind and the feel of his hands in her hair.

He tasted like fresh water and dark night. He smelted like the ocean. His mustache tickled and his mouth enticed. Claire heard a whimper and knew it was hers. She felt the shudder of lightning and wondered if he saw it, too. It skittered through her like quick-fire, startled her and spun her around, stole her strength and stunned her with its magic.

Ah, God, his lips were soft. His stubble chafed, and his hands seduced. Claire tasted urgency and wound her fingers through his hair, his sweet, silky hair that fanned in the wind. She arched against his chest, suddenly starving for the feel of him.

Joy. She wanted his joy. She wanted his life, his quiet, certain strength. She wanted his faith that she was what he remembered her to be.

She wanted, just for once, just for a little while, to be free and open and urgent. She wanted to be sung to in a voice that couldn't keep a tune. She wanted to be praised with work-roughened hands and delighted with the surprise of discovery, and she wanted to give all that back without thought.

"You're shaking," he whispered in a trembling voice.

"I'm afraid," she admitted against his throat.

"Don't ever be afraid of me, Claire," he promised, and bent to gather her even closer. "Don't ever be afraid of me."

"I'm not," she admitted, her own voice suddenly as faint as the breeze as she battled the rush of anxiety in her chest, the sudden, seething delight. "I'm afraid of me. And it's all your fault."

"My fault?" he asked, running a finger along her cheek, his face as close as a whisper. "Why?"

Claire refused to retreat. She met his gaze and gave him the truth, no matter what it cost. "Because I want you to make love to me."

Chapter 10

He made love to her. When the rest of the house slept, he crept up to her room, where the rain-dampened breeze lifted the curtains and the shadows reigned, and he led her out of the house by the hand.

Tony knew he was making a mistake. This wasn't why he'd come to her house. This wasn't what she needed. This wouldn't give her closure or peace of mind or purpose. He couldn't help it. He hadn't been able to help it ever since he'd first seen her smile.

Her hand trembled in his, but she never hesitated, gliding over the wet grass in a plain white cotton nightgown and hair the color of sunset. She followed him to that weary old bed in the corner of the inn as if it had been the master suite in a stately home, bestowing grace and dignity and beauty where he'd only dreamed it.

"And here we were worried about the kids," he whispered with a smile, his hands in hers, his heart stumbling around in his chest like a drunk.

Her hair was dewed with rain, her skin glowing in the soft light of the candle he'd set in a bowl by the window. The light glimmered in her hair, licked the sleek lines of her limbs, shuddered across the cotton at her breasts, and Tony found he couldn't look away from it.

"I've never done anything..." She shrugged, suddenly a young girl again.

Tony smiled for her. "…like this. I know. Neither have I."

He lifted her hands, turned them over. Captured her sweet blue eyes with his and kissed her palms in greeting. "Guess we've just been out of the circuit too long, huh?"

Tony saw her eyes widen, saw her nostrils flare and her chest lift. He could smell the rain on her, fresh soap and soft night. He could feel the satin of her skin against his lips. God, he wanted her. He hurt hard, harder than he had in years. He'd lain on this cot night after night picturing her up there in her room in a nightgown just like this one, demure, simple, incredibly sensual on her lithe figure, and he'd forbidden himself to hope.

He had anyway.

He did now.

"I'm a little...rusty," she admitted, and then giggled. "It sounds like I'm riding a bike."

"Same principle," he reassured her, his thumbs caressing her wrists in slow circles. "I've heard that it all comes back to you pretty easily."

She began to move, an instinctive dance that brought her closer to him. "It does, huh?"

Her voice sounded like a breeze. Her body mesmerized. Tony couldn't remember to breathe. He couldn't remember anything but how she'd looked that afternoon, laughing and tumbling in the waves.

"Yes," he assured her, letting go of one hand to cup her face to him. "It does. And just in case you're worried, I brought along all the safety equipment needed for this ride."

He didn't give her a chance to argue. Instead, smiling, he bent to kiss her.

She tasted like morning. She felt like life itself, warm and round and nourishing in his hands. She met him without hesitation, measuring her dance in eagerness. She sighed, and Tony captured the sound with lip and palm. He feasted on her lips and captured the depths of her mouth for his plunder, and he forgot the rain outside. He forgot the candlelight and the breeze and the narrow bed that would have to carry them. He saw only her, felt only her, heard only her as he finally allowed himself the exquisite luxury of discovering what lay hidden away beneath those pastel flowers and that mother's sensibility.

He swept impatient fingers over cotton to be tempted by the hint of soft, full curves beneath. He measured her waist and spanned her hip and cupped her bottom, pulled her to him so she could feel how much he wanted her.

She hummed with his touch, arched against him and opened to him, and Tony forgot the morning and the responsibilities that lay beyond this small room. He forgot everything but the spill of her hair in his hands, the lush pleasures of her lips, the petal-soft texture of her skin.

With his hands, he eased the gown from her shoulders. He tasted the tender skin at her throat and felt her head fall back before his assault. He felt her hands scrabble at his back and wrapped her more tightly in his grasp.

He spread his hands across the neckline of her gown where it rested over her breasts and inched it down. Her skin pearled in the dim light, blushing faintly with the day's sun, warm where he tasted and teased it. She whimpered at his touch, writhed and danced and tempted until the gown fell away and she stood naked before him.

Tony couldn't breathe. He couldn't believe how beautiful she was, with her eyes closed and arms up and her skin as pale as moonlight in his hands.

Her breasts. Oh, God, her breasts, so full and heavy with nipples the color of peaches. Tony lifted them, courted them, bent to take them in his mouth and pleasure them. He lifted her, carried her to that small bed so he could wrap himself around her, so he could sate himself on the feel of her, so he could lose himself in her.

"You're so beautiful," he groaned, burying his face in her hair, filling his hands with the feel of her softly rounded belly.

"I'm a forty-something-year-old mother," she retorted with faint protest, her own hands creating havoc.

Tony lifted his head, faced her and smiled. "That's why you're so beautiful," he said, and returned for another sampling of that delectable mouth.

He almost stopped her when she moved to lift off his shirt. He was trembling, trying so hard to maintain control. It had been too long, and it had never been like this even then.

"Come on," she said with a gentle grin. "I'm not going to be the only one baring everything to the cold air."

Tony all but held his breath. He'd meant what he'd said. He'd given up shoving his scars in people's faces a long time ago. Even so, he suddenly wasn't sure. He didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want to incite any regrets where they had no business.

He didn't want to take the chance that she would turn away from him.

"You've seen my stretch marks," she protested.

He lifted off his shirt.

He closed his eyes.

"My God," she breathed, and Tony fought the urge to turn away. But then she chuckled, a low, earthy sound of delight, and he had to open his eyes.

There was laughter in hers. Delight, a slow, trenchan light of arousal. There was something deeper, as well something Tony knew would return to haunt him later, but for now he chose to ignore it, just as she did.

"You do have a great chest," she admonished, splaying her hand right across the scar that bisected it like an arrow. "I thought so."

"So do you," he assured her, rather than telling her what he wanted to. That if he hadn't fallen in love with her before, he would have then.

Her hair was fanned across the pillow like a sunrise, her eyes glowing and her lips bruised from his attention. Tony had never wanted a woman more. He had never felt so powerless, so overwhelmed by the gift he'd been given, even for this moment.

And so he returned that gift to her in the only way he knew. With his mouth and his hands and his words, there on that little cot where the candle flickered and the moonlight slipped fitfully through the clouds and the only sounds were the sighs and whispers and small, surprised cries of delight and discovery.

He captured her, caressed her, courted her, until she arched and whimpered beneath him, her own hands desperate and clever in their command of him. Heatedly, he teased her nipples to attention and laved her breasts. He measured her arms and skimmed her legs and dipped his fingers into her to find her hot and wet and waiting.

And when she shuddered, her eyes opening in surprise, her hands reaching out blindly, her whimpers growing to pleas, he slid a hand along her thigh to ask entrance, and she gave it. And Tony, who had been alone a long time, slipped into her and found himself home.

It was a mistake. It was a mistake. Claire knew it, knew that sanity waited out there for her somewhere. Reality. Action and consequence. Sin and penance. She had no business lying in bed with this man.

For these brief moments when she was warm in his arms and her hand was splayed across the broad plane of his chest, though, she didn't care. Tony had given her a perfect day. From beginning to end, laughter, excitement, adventure. Delight. He had pulled her away from the past, at least for these few hours, and let her enjoy the perfect present.

For the rest of her life, she would be grateful.

For this moment, she was quiet. Purged of her emotions, swept clean of dreams by the song in one man's arms. For these few minutes in the middle of a rainy night, she was happy.

For this perfect present, she was in love.

"Now your son's going to have to beat me up," Tony mused as he fingered her hair.

Claire smiled and closed her eyes, soaking in the feel of him, the smell of him, the sound of him entwined with her as if they had always belonged here. "He's got to get through me to get to you."

"Want to go an another picnic tomorrow?"

She laughed and thought how delicious it felt, how fragile.

"It's been a long time," she admitted softly.

He kept playing with her hair, sending delightful chills down her neck. "Since you've gone on a picnic?"

"Yep. Not many picnics on my social calendar in the last few years."

"Me, either. I guess it was just a lot easier to concentrate on the business after Gina's mother left, ya know?"

"Oh, yeah," she admitted. "I know. A lot less trouble for the money."

That elicited a companionable chuckle. "Not to mention the fact that you don't have to take it out to dinner and a movie first."

She punched him in the chest for that one. "Neanderthal."

"I was kidding."

"I'm sure you were."

He was so warm against her cheek, against her breast and her belly and her thighs. He was a gift she'd never expected, a surprising comfort in the rain.

"I'd forgotten how nice it was just to share space with something other than a cat," she admitted out loud with a shy smile.

Tony dropped a kiss on her forehead. "I was thinking the same thing. Imagine how fun it would be on a real bed."

Claire thought of that big four-poster in her room she'd never shared with a soul. She thought of Tony sprawled out in it in the morning with the early sun gilding his hair and his eyes closed in comfort. She thought what it would be like to have him belong in that bed, and the comfort died. Ambivalence crept up like a cold tide and took her smile.

He would be too close.

He was too close already.

She couldn't allow herself to hope for that much, when she knew what the cost would be to gain it. And she simply didn't have the coin to pay a price like that.

"It's been since Sam," she said, challenging him with ghosts and consequences.

"Your husband."

She nodded so that her cheek rubbed against his skin. She sated herself on him while she had the chance. "And even before he died...before he left...well, the Henderson household wasn't a very happy one."

"Johnny talked about it a little."

"Johnny doesn't know."

Claire heard a heartbeat's worth of hesitation. She closed her eyes, knowing her challenge had been taken. Knowing that the peace was over, and that it was her fault. Not certain at all whether she was relieved or sorry.

"He said his dad was pretty depressed toward the end. Paranoid. Kept a gun under the pillow and flew into terrible rages."

Claire died a little all over again, even though she'd known it all along. Hearing it in Johnny's words when he'd never shared them with her.

"It must have been tough to realize that you couldn't help him," Tony offered quietly.

All the recriminations squeezed up in her, taking her breath. All the missed chances, the fruitless arguments, the pleading. The long, terrible nights when he'd been drinking.

"I thought it would help...that we could help each other."

Tony's hand stilled, his arms tightening gently around her. Wrapping her in warmth when she had felt so cold for so long. "Was he diagnosed with PTSD?"

"Yes." Such a simple word that couldn't possibly convey the nightmares Sam had suffered.

"Sounds like a pretty severe case."

Finally she said what she hadn't said to anyone else. "He killed himself. Ran his car into a bridge abutment."

Another hesitation, this one quiet with contemplation. "I wondered."

Tony wasn't surprised. Just that realization shook Claire to the core. She'd held it to herself for so long, so certain that no one would understand. That no one would realize how hard she'd tried to keep him from that lonely place.

How horribly attractive his solution seemed on the worst nights.

"He was so sad," she admitted in a hushed voice. "He'd never tell me why. Wouldn't tell anybody. He'd just say that since I hadn't been at Khe Sanh, I wouldn't understand."

"Khe Sanh was bad," he agreed. "A lot of places were bad. But I don't have to tell you that."

Dangerous territory again. Defused a little by the solid warmth of Tony's body, the gentle comfort of his voice. The feeling of protection in the dark and silent room at the back of an empty building. Doors opened with no more than soft words and the age-old need to share. To share everything, especially the worst.

She hadn't talked about it in so long. Hadn't admitted it. It hadn't been so bad that afternoon when they'd laughed about stupid things. Couldn't she just admit that she'd been there? That she should be able to cry for what she'd seen, what she'd done?

"I didn't have it that bad," she insisted again.

"Because you had a roof?"

"I was a KBMF. It wasn't like being out in the jungles or stuck on a firebase in the middle of nowhere."

"You weren't a rear-echelon anything, Claire. Trust me."

Outside, another band of rain was approaching, the thunder grumbling irritably in the distance. The owl was calling, a lonely, sad sound in the darkness, and the trees whispered to each other. Here in this shadowy little room, Claire kept her eyes wide open. Kept her body still. Held on to Tony like the lifeline he was.

"What is your most vivid memory of Vietnam?" he asked.

That quickly, her breathing stopped. Her protection disappeared. "My most vivid memory of Vietnam? What are you talking about?"

"Just tell me."

She shrugged, skin rubbing against skin, her cheek nestled against his throat so that if she wanted she could see those terrible scars she'd examined with her hands just moments ago. "I told you. I don't remember that much about Vietnam. Why?"

"Want to know mine?"

No, she thought with dread. "Yes," she said instead.

He tightened his hold on her just a little, lazily fingered her hair as if it were the gold from which he mined his memories. "My platoon was ambushed," he said easily, his voice hypnotically calm. "One minute we're walking along, the next my face is in the dirt. Guns firing, guys yelling and humpin' for cover. Suddenly the weirdest thing happened. It was like the whole world disappeared. All the noise, the gunfire, the shouting, everything. 
Right there in front of me, I saw the most beautiful little wildflower. I remember so distinctly lying there on my stomach with my rifle under me just staring at that flower as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. I knew people were yelling at me, but it didn't connect. I was too amazed by that little flower in the dirt. Then it was like this wave of sound washed over me, like the world had receded and then poured over me again. Everybody's yelling at me to see if I'm okay, and Charlie's firing at anything that moves, and I'm just lying there. I got back into the action, and we got out of there. But I'll never forget that flower."

"That's your most vivid memory? What about when you were injured?"

"Actually I don't remember much of that at all. Just vague images, like a dream. That flower is much sharper."

For a long while, Claire simply lay against Tony's chest, his arm around her, his hand in her hair, his chest rising and falling beneath her, that old candlewick bedspread holding off the cold. She saw a flower, purple, maybe, there in the dirt in the middle of a firefight, and a young man with seawater eyes watching it. She thought of memories and she thought of Jimmy.

Claire opened her eyes. Focused on Tony's chest, his stomach beyond. The evidence of what he'd survived. She didn't have the courage he did. She couldn't do this.

"I was in my hooch getting dressed," she said in a small voice, the image suddenly as sharp and clear all over again as the day it had happened. "I was due on duty in half an hour and I couldn't get my boots on. I remember one of my shoelaces was stuck. Suddenly we get a call for mass cal— mass casualties. Everybody has to respond. I'm throwing on clothes and already I can hear the dust-offs coming in. So I grab the coffee I was drinking and I head out the door toward triage. And as I'm running trying to beat the choppers, I'm thinking it must be raining, because it's plopping into my coffee. I look up, and it's not raining at all." Her voice died a little, even as her heart had as she'd looked up. "There's a chopper overhead. What's dripping into my coffee is blood from the wounded."

The pain rose, hot and heavy. Swelling in her chest past the sweet delight of lovemaking, the slow pleasure of companionship, the easy camaraderie of the day. Old pain, hard pain, pain she thought she'd kept in its place.

Images threatened to follow that one. Jimmy called to her, and Claire refused to listen. She brutally shoved him back into his place where he belonged. Where they all belonged.

"And you don't think you have the right to be affected by that?" Tony asked quietly.

In the daylight, she wouldn't have answered. Separated and forced to face him. Here in the dark in his arms, where her protection was around her instead of before her, Claire found her voice.

"I never had to kill anybody."

"And that's the only reason a person should suffer from a war, because they have to kill?"

She struggled to get free. He wouldn't allow it. He kept her right where she was, so that she could answer in safety when she didn't want to answer at all.

"I did my job," she insisted yet again. "I just did my job."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you do your job? Why did you go to Vietnam?"

Claire opened her mouth to answer, but the words wouldn't come out. The words that committed her, that indicted her.

She wanted to help.

All she'd wanted to do was help.

Standing there at Long Binh in her dress uniform, Vietnam nothing more than truck transports and dusty airstrips so far, noise and heavy heat and incredible smells. Anxious, certain. Saluting the assignments officer. Ready for whatever he gave her. The rest of the United States was swinging onto the antiwar bandwagon, but Claire Maguire had enlisted right out of training to take part in a war.

"They were dying," she said aloud before she realized it, her memory still caught at that moment when she'd smiled at the news she was getting an evac hospital. She was going to the real war. "No matter what else was going on, there were too many boys dying, and I knew I could help."

She felt Tony's hand in her hair, his breath against her, his steady, certain strength. In the darkness, it helped.

Even so, the old tears crowded her throat, the truth no one had wanted from her caught too long in darkness. "All I wanted to do was help."

For a moment, Tony simply held her. Simply stroked her hair, as if he were the mother and she the child who had been frightened. Injured. Betrayed.

"Do you know what they called posttraumatic stress in the Civil War?" Tony asked, his voice impossibly gentle.

"What does that have to do with it?" she retorted in desperation, not wanting to hear more. Not able to give more.

"Just hear me out," he said. "Then I'll be finished. In Vietnam, we call it PTSD. In Korea it was battle psychosis. In World War II, battle fatigue, and World War I, shell shock. Do you know what they called it in the Civil War, Claire?"

"No," she snapped. "Tell me."

He didn't just tell her. He faced her with it. Lifted her in his arms until they were eye to eye in the dimness and she was forced to wash in that mystical water. "In the Civil War, Claire," he said so gently she wanted to cry, "they called it soldier's heart."

Claire couldn't answer. She couldn't breathe past the sudden agony in her chest.

"I just wanted you to know," he said gently, brushing a finger along her cheek. "I think it's a much better name for it, don't you?"

Tears stung her eyes and spilled over onto his chest. "Yes," she admitted on a breath. "Yes."

Because here in the dark, in the arms of a man she barely knew, Claire could feel her heart tearing apart all over again where it had never really been healed. She saw again the mug she'd held in her hand that day, and how when she'd looked back down at it, a thick droplet of blood had hit the rim and trailed an obscene path down the white side and across the caduceus printed there. Over her thumb, her wrist. One drop of blood, and she could never quite clean it from her memory, like Lady Macbeth.

She'd scrubbed for years, and she still saw it.

"I'm here," Tony whispered, his arms tight around her in the darkness, his mouth against her hair, his heart beating so close she could almost hear it. "I'm here, Claire."

And for the first time in years, when Claire sobbed, someone held her.

Chapter 11

One couldn't go on like this. It had been almost four days since she and Tony had shared a bed, and Claire still didn't know what to say to him.

She talked to him every day. Settled questions about the building and defused tensions with their children and conspired to help Nadine catch poor Peaches unawares. She shared meals and plans and small, surprising silences that should have been much more comfortable. And then in the evening, when she would have sat at the kitchen table with him or walked the yard, she disappeared up into her plain white room with its spindle poster bed and its watercolors and its silence.

She felt suspended high above the ground, susceptible to any capricious breeze that might send her tumbling earthward. She felt as if she were balanced so precariously that one wrong breath could spell disaster.

She felt spun around, turned upside down, inside out, and it was all Tony's fault.

He knew about Sam. Nobody knew about Sam. Nobody would have understood.

He understood.

He'd given her the sweetest gift a man had ever given her, there in that tiny out-of-the-way room with its borrowed bedspread and its half-finished decorations.

He'd forced open old doors better left closed, letting loose not old memories or old ghosts, but old emotions. Sadness and futility that had no place for a woman who was seeing her children grow healthy and happy. Terrible frustration when all she had to deal with was a small-minded hospital administration and a smaller-minded county government. Useless anger and crushing melancholy. Unexpected rages and even more-unexpected flashes of delight.

She saw Jimmy all the time now, in old patients and quiet moments and the laughing face of her son. She heard whispers she hadn't allowed to find her in years. She found herself trying to remember small things she'd forgotten.

And all because she'd asked Tony Riordan to make love to her.

Because she'd let him close enough to tell her the truth.

She wanted to ask him more. She wanted him gone from her life so she could have her precarious equilibrium back. And every night when she closed the door to her room and locked it, she sat in the easy chair by her bed and battled the urge to run back to him.

To run back to his laughter. To his seawater eyes. To his quiet understanding that undermined her resolve in the most terrible ways.

She wanted to hide in his arms and she wanted to tear away his composure.

So she sat alone every night and shared her wine with no one. And in the mornings, she went about her life as if nothing had changed.

* * *

"What do you mean you're withholding the permit?" she demanded as politely as she could.

From the other end of her phone line came the same indifferent male voice she'd been battling for the two years she'd been working on the inn. "Your contractor has to be licensed."

"He is licensed," she insisted. "I brought all the documentation down to your office last week."

She heard the shuffle of papers. "To this office? Are you sure? I don't see it here anywhere."

"Am I sure?" she retorted, flushing. "Pretty sure. It's been a long time since I've mistaken your office for the pediatrician's. On the other hand, you might just have my daughter's vaccination card down there. You want to look?"

Silence.

Claire sucked in a breath. God, she never did that. For two years, she'd been the soul of politeness to this man. This man who could withhold approval of her B and B simply because he was having a bad day.

She dropped her head into her hands and lost focus on the pile of paperwork that still waited her attention. "I apologize," she said, her voice strained by the overwhelming urge to tell this guy to eat his license. Backward. She was shaken by the urge to scream.

Johnny had asked again that morning. The deadline on ROTC applications was closing in, and Claire hadn't answered him. She hadn't even explained. She'd been watching the news at the time.

"I'm not sure what you want me to do without the proper documentation," Mr. Ramsey told her in a way that betrayed just what was going to happen to the next set of identification papers she brought down to that office.

"Please check there," Claire asked. "I handed them to a woman at the front desk. She said she'd take care of it for me."

"Well, the papers aren't here. I'm sorry." She squeezed her eyes shut. Battled to breathe. Thought of what could happen if she didn't get off the phone any moment.

She didn't have to worry about it. The resounding crash from upstairs neatly took care of the problem.

"Mom! Oh, my God, Mom!" Jess screamed at the top of her lungs. "I've killed him!"

Claire didn't even bother with goodbyes. She just ran.

Peaches almost beat her up the stairs as the lunch crowd looked on in stunned silence.

"Jess?" Claire called, pushing aside the plastic drop cloth that protected the first floor from the dust Tony had been generating. "Tony?"

Her heart was hammering so hard she could hardly hear.

All that worked its way through was a funny little moan. From her daughter.

Claire crashed down the newly enclosed hallway and headed for the far bedroom where Tony had been working.

She got there to find Jess bent over him, her eyes huge, her features ashen with shock and her hands covered with blood. Covered with Tony's blood, if he was any indication. His face streamed with it where he lay sprawled on the floor at Jess's knees.

Jess looked up at her mother and gave way to panic. "Mommy, what did I do?" she cried out, looking up, looking back down. "He's dead!"

It only took Claire a second to size things up and relax. "Go on back downstairs, Peaches," she suggested, turning to take the towel he always carried on his shoulder. "I'll yell if I need the paramedics. Tell the guests that everything's fine. Jess, sit back and take a breath. He's not dead."

"But look!"

"You sure?" Peaches asked, features puckered at the sight of a very still Tony.

Claire actually smiled. "I'm sure. Now go. Jess, settle down, honey. He's fine."

It hadn't taken Claire a moment to realize that Jess hadn't reacted to the injury to Tony's head. She'd reacted to his stomach. When Tony had fallen off the ladder that lay beneath him, he'd caught his T-shirt on something and ripped it, treating Jess to her first look at the effects of battle on the human system, enhanced by the blood she herself had left behind in trying to help him.

Of course, all that blood didn't help, but Claire was well-enough versed in head injuries to know how dramatic they looked. And Tony's looked more dramatic than deadly. Even as she bent to check, his eyes fluttered and he groaned.

"See?" Claire reassured her distraught daughter as she surreptitiously checked his pulse to find it strong and steady. "What happened?"

"I tripped," Jess confessed. "I was just trying to help. Tony was teaching me about renovation, ya know? He was on the ladder working on the window frame and...Tony? Tony, can you hear me?"

Considering the volume of her voice, the county official Claire had just hung up on could have heard her.

"He's hurt, honey," she soothed. "Not deaf."

"I hear you, Jess," Tony assured her very quietly, as if any excess use of his voice would hurt worse.

"But you're hurt!" Jess insisted, tears still streaming down her face, her gaze riveted by the old scar tissue she'd inadvertently exposed.

"You didn't do that, sweetheart," Claire told her daughter even as she pressed Peaches's towel against the gash she'd finally found at Tony's hairline. "That's an old scar. He just hit his head. You just hit your head, didn't you, Tony?"

"I just hit my head," he assured the girl, his eyes closed again and his hand instinctively up to that other scar on his temple. "I do this at least once a week. Should have warned you."

"You should have warned my insurance company," Claire retorted easily. "Now, Jess, go wash off your hands in the kitchen and bring back my first-aid box. Don't upset the guests, okay?"

"But Mom—"

"I'm fine, Jess," Tony said, and smiled to prove the point. "I'm sorry I scared you."

Claire took another look up to find her daughter shaking worse than her patient. "Go on," she commanded in a clear, calm voice.

Jess lurched to her feet, still stifling sobs, and ran out of the room.

"And walk, Jess!" Claire commanded. "I don't want you doing a header down the stairs!"

Jess evidently didn't feel like listening. Claire fought a surprising urge to chuckle. Poor thing. She really thought she'd done in their houseguest.

"You are okay, aren't you?" she asked, turning her attention back to him.

"Don't worry about me," he said, and opened his eyes.

She wasn't sure what it was—the blood, the words, the sight of his eyes opening in that ashen, injured face. Suddenly Claire lost her balance. Suddenly she lost the light and the scent of cinnamon and the sound of chattering voices downstairs.

Antiseptic. She smelled antiseptic. She smelted infection and the sweet stench of gangrene. She heard the rain.

She heard the rain pounding on the tin roof of the Quonset hut.

"Claire?"

Don't worry about me. Get Smitty. Get my radioman….

"Claire, what's wrong?"

She squeezed her eyes shut. She willed him to go away, to look different.

She fought the terrible urge to cry out for help.

Claire didn't even feel his hand close around her wrist. She didn't realize he'd pushed himself up to a sitting position. She kept hearing the rain, and it hurt.

It hurt so badly she couldn't breathe.

Please, you get Smitty, he's hurt bad....

"Claire, it's okay," Tony insisted, and she finally felt his hand at her cheek. "It's okay."

"I hate this," she raged, her eyes still closed, her heart thundering, her hands suddenly slippery with sweat. "I just hate this."

"I know." He brushed her hair from her face, wound his fingers through hers to help her balance. "I know."

It wasn't the dislocation, the confusion, the sensations that were so bad.

It was the fury. The terrible, swelling grief each sight produced. Emotions she hadn't felt in twenty-three years since she'd held dying boys in her hands and not been able to do anything. Emotions that ambushed her without warning.

Tony still held her with his patient hands. He still watched over her, even when he was the one who was hurt.

"I've heard of the myth of matching orgasms," he said with a sly grin. "I've never heard the one about matching flashbacks."

That got her eyes open. "What do you mean?"

"I guess there's just something about waking up to the sound of your voice. I was damn near done in by the feeling that I was finally safe. And finally dry." He smiled for her, but it was an infinitely sad smile, those beautiful eyes brittle with old pain. "Did you remember me," he asked, "just for a minute?"

"No." Her answer was too abrupt; she knew it. But if she gave away this little bit of herself, she'd have to give it all away. She wouldn't just have to tell him about him. She'd have to tell him about Jimmy. And she simply couldn't do that. "No, it was just general, uh, impressions. The smells and sounds and all that."

The feeling that she wasn't moving fast enough. That she could never move fast enough.

"I'm surprised you haven't had flashbacks at the hospital. I've talked to a couple of nurses who say they find themselves seeing camouflage at the weirdest times."

Claire fought to hold still. To keep from telling him she thought she was the only one who'd had that happen.

"Maybe it's one of the benefits of working coronary care," she said, lifting a shaking hand to reapply pressure to his cut. "Not much resemblance to Nam there."

He nodded carefully. "Good point."

"Your leg okay?" she asked, trying so hard to get back on a safe plane.

"My leg's okay. Am I going to need stitches?"

"Oh, yeah. I'll take you as soon as I settle Jess down."

Even as Claire spoke, they could hear the clatter of Jess's heavy black shoes on the stairs.

"You okay now, Claire?"

Claire paused a second, closer to him than she'd been since they'd shared his bed, her hand to his head, her heart still stuttering with dread and surprise. She searched his eyes for ghosts and found only that hint of old sadness she knew too well. The reflection of terrible lessons learned early. She found, surprisingly enough, that she could smile for what she saw there.

"Yeah," she admitted tentatively. "I think I am. Thank you, Tony."

"Anytime."

"I'm so sorry," Jess blurted out, careening to a stop in the doorway, her face still blotchy and wet, her hands filled with the tackle box Claire kept in the kitchen, her chest heaving with exertion and stifled tears. "I'm sorry, Tony, really, I didn't mean to do it, I didn't mean to..."

Claire sighed in resignation. Tony grinned, took the towel himself and climbed all the way to his feet.

"See?" he said. "I really am okay, Jess. You didn't kill me."

She shuddered with distress. "I looked," she whispered.

Tony didn't understand. Claire smiled for her little girl who had such a big heart and so much to learn.

"He doesn't mind, Jess. I told you, honey. Those scars are from when he was injured in Vietnam."

Jess's eyes grew even wider. She went, if possible, paler. She let Claire take the tackle box from her with nothing more than a mere "Oh."

Tony's answering smile was as easy as if they'd been talking holidays. "Now you know how good a nurse your mom really is," he told her, and Claire was amazed to see her daughter smile.

She went to him that night. Crept out in the darkness when the children couldn't hear her, when Peaches was asleep and the owl was quiet, and she walked to his room in the empty inn where no one could hear her. She walked with determination, and she stood in his door in silence, not knowing how to ask for his comfort.

She didn't have to. Without a word, he simply opened his arms and she went to him. In the dark, they murmured and whispered and sighed, and their bodies grew slick with the heat and their own need. In the empty hours of the night, they held off the ghosts and kept away the rage and created a beauty neither had allowed in lives meted out in careful doses.

Claire wanted to talk to him. She wanted to ask him about those nurses he'd talked to who'd been to Vietnam. She wanted to ask him if he knew any other nurses who might have found themselves waiting at the door of a trauma center for wounded who had died twenty years before.

She wanted to ask him to be there with her in the morning. Not so much because she was afraid, but because she was falling in love.

She didn't ask him.

She didn't ask him that night or the night after that. She didn't ask them when they ate together as a family or when she sat down with a glass of wine in her hand while the kids celebrated with the country as it racked up impressive military victories against a distant warlord. She didn't ask him when they sat in her office talking about his work or when they strolled along the back roads by the James River enjoying the quiet of a country summer.

Feeling fragile as new ice, she took her steps with the most delicate of care. Girded herself with those soft, dark nights for the moment she would have to take the next step. Hoped with an emotion she wasn't used to that each memory she shared with Tony would ease those old doors open with enough care that she could handle whatever came pouring out. Convinced herself that she could make it through without having to tell Tony the truth.

She felt better. Stronger. More in control. She had someone who could share the good and the bad and make sense of them both. Someone who smiled at her in a way she hadn't allowed a man to in almost eleven years.

She still drove faster.

She slept less.

She bought her wine and hid her bottles.

"I don't know what you want me to do."

Peaches just glared at him. "Not doin' much now. She looks like hell."

Tony rubbed at his face, exhausted. "She's beginning to talk to me," he hedged.

Peaches just snorted and slammed down the dough he was kneading onto the counter. "She's drinking."

"I know she's drinking, damn it. She'd be drinking if I weren't here, Peaches. I think she might be drinking a lot more."

"I heard her crying last night."

Tony could see her out the back window where she was crouched in catcher's position so that Jess could practice her pitching. She was smiling. She looked content, comfortable, as if she carried nothing around heavier than the weight of that softball. Tony knew better. He'd had her in his arms the night before, when she'd had the nightmare Peaches had heard. She'd struggled and cursed and reached out in her sleep, begging somebody to help her. Begging them to help somebody named Jimmy.

When he'd awakened her to slip back into her own bed before dawn, he'd asked. She'd looked at him as if he were crazy and told him she didn't know anybody named Jimmy.

She had circles under her eyes. She'd lost weight. And Tony had taken to counting the wine bottles under the cabinet when the kids didn't notice.

He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say or ask or give to take that brittle look from her eyes.

"You just tell me what to do, Peaches," he said. "And I'll do it."

But Peaches couldn't do more than slam the bread down again with his big hands and scowl.

Tony smiled, but his smile was grim. "I know. I wish this were something I could fight with my hands. That'd be easy. This... this, I feel like a blind man walking across glass in my bare feet."

"Except she's the one gettin' cut."

Tony nodded, more frustrated than he'd been in his life. "Except she's the one getting cut."

"Breathe," Claire suggested to her son as he stood poised in her kitchen like a heron ready to take flight.

He flushed uncomfortably. "I'm breathing. But the deadline is going to pass, and I haven't gotten an answer from you yet."

Claire couldn't take her eyes off the television screen. A motley crowd of civilians filled it, their heads covered, their mouths twisted in grimaces of atavistic hate.

They had captured a pilot. Claire's stomach twisted in knots as they dragged the body through the streets to the people's shouts and jeers. She couldn't watch. She couldn't look away.

A soldier's heart.

Is that why it hurt so badly? Why the hurt never went away but just spoiled into something old and ugly and decaying? Is that why no matter how much she cried, it wasn't enough?

Maybe Tony was right. Maybe she should get in to talk to somebody. Begin to offer up her secrets where they might be safe. Maybe it was time now that her children were getting old enough to understand. Maybe it was time to begin trusting someone. Someone who'd been there before and survived to only wander the night a few nights instead of all of them.

"Mom, come on!" Johnny insisted. "I've tried real hard to be patient like you asked. I've left you alone about it, but you know I'm not going to change my mind. This is all I've ever wanted."

Claire turned her attention to him, to her sad-eyed, handsome son with his unruly passions and his unbounded talents. Be a painter, she wanted to beg. I'll pay for it. I'll support you the rest of my life. Don't do this to yourself.

Don't do it to me.

"No," she said, and turned away.

"Why?" he demanded, following right on her heels.

All she could do was squeeze her eyes shut. "Because I can't deal with it," she said, more than she'd ever said to him. "I've worked almost eighteen years for you and Jess to be safe and healthy, and I just can't throw that away."

"But Mom—"

"Please, Johnny," she begged, whirling on him. Knowing she was being unfair. Not caring anymore. He had to be safe, or she couldn't make it. "There are other ways to be a pilot besides the military. We'll work together to find you something. I promise. I just can't give you permission for this when I think it's wrong."

Neither of them heard the back door open. "John, I need some help over in the inn."

John spun on Tony even faster than his mother.

"Go to hell!" he snapped. "And get out of my house!"

Claire paled. "John Samuel Henderson," she accused in a hot mother's voice. "How dare you?"

Johnny spun on her. "Please, Mom. He's not involved in this."

"Yes," she said, eye to eye with her baby, "he is involved in this. Now, either apologize to him or forget we've ever talked."

She was shaking. Johnny was shaking. Tony stood in the doorway, quiet and passive as if her son hadn't just insulted him.

"You don't understand..." Johnny pleaded.

Claire couldn't take much more. "I do understand," she said gently. "I just can't agree. Not now. Not while this is going on."

Johnny took his own look at the television. Bit back some comment he wanted to make. Whirled at Tony with all the confusion a seventeen-year-old boy could manage and bit out an apology.

"I still need some help, if you don't mind," Tony said quietly.

Johnny stalked past him without a word. Claire closed her eyes and listened to the reporters on the television wonder whose son this was being dragged through the streets of a foreign country.

"Claire? Are you okay?" Tony asked quietly.

She wanted to run to him. To fold herself in his arms where she was safe. Where for just that moment their scars didn't matter.

"No," she admitted, and opened her eyes. "I'm not. I'm trying, but I'm not."

The screen door shushed shut behind him as he walked up and slipped his arms around her. "What can I do to help?" he asked.

Claire laid her head against his chest and just rested. "Do you really think it might help if I talked to the other nurses?"

He never hesitated. "The Richmond vet center has a really good women's group. I've met a couple people there, and I think you'd like them."

She reared her head back, trying so hard to be outraged. "You did all that, huh?"

She should have been furious. She didn't have room for it right now. Especially when she hurt so badly and his smile was so sweet.

"I'm like the library, Claire. Information's all there for the asking. But I'd never walk into your house and demand that you read."

She laughed. She couldn't believe it. She felt as if she were going to break open, and she laughed. It was Tony's gift, his miracle, that he could coax her out onto the precipice and make her look forward to looking down.

"I have been thinking about the people I worked with over there," she admitted. "I didn't think about them for a long time."

He nodded. "I know. It took me damn near fifteen years just to find out if any of my buddies had made it back to the world. Before that, I just pretended they'd never existed."

Claire closed her eyes. Soaked in the sound of his steady breathing. Admitted what she never had. "It's so much safer that way."

"But it's so much better this way."

"Is it?"

"Yes, Claire. It is."

She nodded, wishing with all her heart that she could know that her children would be all right so she could afford the luxury of time for herself. She wished she knew how to protect them from it all. She'd tried to protect them from Sam, and that hadn't seemed to work. It hurt her too badly to think she'd have to protect them from her, as well.

"I can't hurt my babies," she said without thinking.

"You could never hurt your babies," he answered, and Claire thought she believed him.

"Maybe," she said with a slow breath for courage, "we could talk about this some more."

"I think that would be a great idea."

For a long while after Tony left to finish that work on the inn, Claire sat at her kitchen table and thought about what he'd said. What he'd offered. A women's group. Nurses who understood what she'd seen, who wouldn't think less of her because her nightmares weren't worthy. It was such a terrible temptation, like seeing another war on the television and not being able to turn away.

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to know that the friends she'd made in that terrible place had come home safe and sane.

She was too afraid to find out.

She'd been to The Wall. She'd never gotten close enough to read the names.

She wanted to find a way for Johnny to be happy without taking away her only support on sanity.

As long as my children are safe, I'll be okay. It had worked for almost eighteen years. Claire wasn't sure it would last much longer.

She was watching the television again. More news, more footage. More outrage at the intimate face of war. Jess and Gina were due to get back from horseback riding down the road so they could have dinner. When she heard the car turning into the driveway, Claire figured they were home. When she heard it skid and then slam to a stop, she figured they were not only home but in big trouble.

Claire got to her feet and turned off the television. Jess didn't deal with this kind of thing well, and she was still recovering from almost killing her new best friend's father. Hopefully she and Gina had spent a lovely afternoon. They might even spend a nice evening, after they survived the punishment Claire was about to mete out for reckless driving.

When the door slammed open, though, it wasn't Jess and Gina who stumbled in. Claire turned around at the sound of a little choked sob and knew that her brief equilibrium was over.

"Pete?" she asked, already heading for the boy. "Honey? What's wrong?"

He looked dazed, cold, his eyes glittering like glass.

"Wrong?" he echoed stupidly. "Oh, wrong..."

Claire reached him, settled a hand on his shoulder. Felt him startle like a rabbit. "Pete..." She was getting scared now.

He finally looked at her, and his eyes filled with tears. "It's my daddy," he said. "He's dead."

Chapter 12

"Ready! Aim! Fire!"

It was a perfect day. Marshmallow clouds climbed into a startling azure sky, and a breeze skimmed the rolling hills. Summer had come to Virginia, and the trees were heavy and somnolent.

Claire stood between her children with a view to endless rows of white headstones that marked the green earth with such crushing finality. Another funeral was being conducted here at Arlington National Cemetery, another circle of uniforms and black dresses and the sharp report of rifles over a flag-draped coffin.

"Ready! Aim! Fire!"

The honor guard stood at perfect attention, their uniforms gleaming whiter than the headstones behind them, their rifles pointed skyward, their eyes blank and staring. The seven rifles cracked a second time. Claire flinched as if they'd been aimed at her.

"Ready! Aim! Fire!"

Crows cackled in alarm and wheeled into the sky as the last volley echoed through the grass like frail thunder.

"Shoulder arms!"

The rifles were shouldered, and the guard turned in one sharp movement. Silence hung over the assembled crowd for the space of a heartbeat as the bugler lifted his gleaming instrument to his lips.

Claire froze. She couldn't bear this. She couldn't listen. She couldn't stay here and watch this happen all over again.

She couldn't listen to "Taps" again as long as she lived.

It was a tune that defined her life. The anthem of her generation. She remembered it first at John F. Kennedy's funeral, at this very cemetery, the pure notes cracking on that frigid November morning. She'd heard it again and again as the boys came home in their metal caskets to be laid out under those anonymous white stones to be forgotten.

It was a sound she never again wanted to hear. Plaintive. Lonely. Echoing through the verdant hills like the cry of a mother who saw her son being lowered into the ground.

She couldn't stand here.

She did.

All around her, heads lifted. Eyes misted. The notes soared into the sky, pure pain on the breeze, and Claire lost the battle to hold in her tears. They spilled down her cheeks and onto her best, brightest dress. They welled up so thickly in her she thought she'd choke on them.

She remembered the body bags they'd filled at graves registration with such cold dispatch, the metal boxes stacked at Tan Son Nhut waiting for the planes home, the sealed bronze caskets that hid away what she'd seen on her gurneys thousands of miles away.

Pete's mother stood like a statue. His grandparents wrung their hands. The military men saluted in solemn tribute, as precisely positioned as those headstones that would eventually name them. Claire held her children's hands as if holding them back, holding them to her where they could be safe and she could survive. She stood as rigidly as the captains and lieutenants and chief petty officers. She wanted to cry out, just like that bugle.

Tony never said a word. He simply stepped up behind her. He laid a hand on her shoulder to let her know he heard it, too. Old echoes in this bright sun. Names long since lost on the lists who had had "Taps" played for them. Tony knew. He shared that with her in silence and forced the pain into a different, sharper shape.

Claire watched the honor guard fold the flag in their white-gloved hands and band it to Pete's mother. Claire had a flag just like it, bestowed in less auspicious circumstances. Sam had earned his flag. He simply hadn't died of his wounds for fifteen years.

With a final murmur of sympathy, the mourners began to migrate. Television crews, come to report the first batch of North African funerals, swiveled for final shots and began to pack up equipment. The funeral was officially over.

A handsome younger man stood by Pauline Winston's shoulder as she accepted condolences, which meant she had someone new to entertain. She never noticed that Pete left her side. Claire did. She watched him skirt the edge of the casket in his too-big black suit, stumbling a little over the uneven ground. She knew where he was headed, and when he reached there, she had her arms open to hold him. And when he finally wept for his father, he did it in Claire's arms.

And Claire, who folded him into her mother's embrace and let him cry, could only think how awful she was, because all she could think of was that maybe now Johnny would change his mind.

"Why couldn't we go see The Wall?" Jess asked later as they gathered in the kitchen, the sky outside a wash of peacock and crimson as the sun set over the hills. "We were right there, and you keep saying you're going to take us."

"Today was for Pete," Claire said, just as she had the first two times the girl had asked. "Not for sight-seeing."

"But that's not sight-seeing, Mom," Jess protested, her face still blotchy from her own tears, her movements jerky with agitation. "It's important. It's the people you knew."

"I didn't know anybody on The Wall," Claire answered quickly enough.

"But there's the new women's statue there," Jess protested. "The one with the nurses on it. Don't you want to see it?"

"Another day," Claire said. "We'll all go together, all right?"

"What about you, Tony?" Johnny asked from where he shared the picnic bench with Gina in the corner of the room, a touch of challenge in his voice. "Do you know anybody on The Wall?"

Tony saw Gina's surreptitious look and found himself smiling. Protective as ever. He hadn't been able to take her with him until his third trip, and even then he hadn't done much talking.

"Yeah," he said simply, his attention on the chicken he was sautéing. "I know somebody on The Wall."

Fingers reaching out in hesitation, a single name standing out among the thousands. Reflections on the black granite of flags and flowers and small notes stuck in the cracks. People milling in silence behind him. The statue watching in the distance like an old memory. Waiting for him to return.

One name. Ten names. Twenty. Tony had sought out them all. He had touched each one of them with his hand, as if he could really reach behind him through the years and have them back again. He'd donned his old fatigues and held his friends who had gained weight and lost hair and kept that distant, sad look in their eyes, and he'd finally wept for the ones left behind.

It had been the most difficult thing he'd ever done, because the minute he touched those names with his fingers, he'd been forced to admit that his friends had existed after all. That they had saved him over there in that terrible place, and that he hadn't been able to return the favor.

It was why he knew that Claire Henderson was lying.

Yeah, he thought. I know somebody.

"What did you do in Vietnam?" Jess asked, poised like a high-wire artist, mangling the plastic cup she was still carrying from the fast-food stop they'd made on the way home.

"He doesn't want to talk about that," Johnny protested.

Jess whirled on him. "Maybe he does," she said. "Maybe I want to hear it."

Tony left his chicken to simmer and turned his attention to that quicksilver little girl who reminded him so much of Gina as she'd been teetering into the teen years. "What would you like to know?" he asked quietly.

On the other side of the kitchen island, Claire made a show of getting out plates, her back turned to them both.

"Anything," Jess admitted. "Where you served. What it was like. How you... how that happened."

"I was a Marine," he told her. "First Division. I enlisted in 1968 and went to Vietnam in December. Ended up serving in with a Combined Action Group right around the area where your mother was in Chu Lai. The CAGs supplied individual villages with teams of about ten men to help with Vietnamization. By the time I was wounded in November, we were about the only Marines left that far south in the country."

"November?" Johnny echoed, finally interested. "That meant you only had a couple of weeks before you were supposed to go home anyway,"

"I was so short I was invisible," Tony acknowledged. "Almost a single-digit midget."

It had been his first reaction. Two damn weeks and he would have been on the Free Bird. Two weeks. He'd thought about it all night when he wasn't telling Smitty how stupid they both were to end up in the water at midnight in a monsoon. When he wasn't watching for muzzle flashes and straining for the sound of movement beneath that pummeling rain.

"How were you hurt?" Jess asked.

He kept it simple. Recon patrol, ambush, a night in the lovely Paddy Suite at the An Diem Arms. A quick hop in the dust-off and Claire.

Jess never took her eyes off him as he spoke. Claire never looked over. It made Tony realize that her children had never heard about what she'd done over there. The bad or the good. They saw their mother as a mother like anybody else's, maybe a little sadder, a little less open about her life. Normal. They didn't really realize that she'd survived mortar raids during surgery and sappers and the crushing weight of all those wounded men.

Say something, Claire, he almost begged out loud. Tell them that their mother is a heroine. That but for you, there would have been no respite over there. There would have been no heaven in that hell.

Tell them so they know how lucky they are.

Tell them so you'll remember how much you gave.

She was bent over the cutlery drawer counting knives and never heard his plea.

"When your mother saw me," he said anyway, knowing he was treading on unsteady ground, "she hit me in the jaw. Smacked me silly."

Jess's eyes got very wide. "She hit you?"

He nodded, his gaze still on Claire. "Hard. She said it was to get my attention. It did."

"But why did she hit you?" the girl demanded.

Over by the corner of the table where Gina and Johnny sat, the attention was on the far corner of the kitchen where the cutlery drawer was. It was on the clinking of metal, syncopated and slowing.

"Because," Tony said, deliberately focusing on Jess, "I had given up. I was tired and I hurt and I guess I couldn't imagine making it through. Your mom convinced me otherwise. She says she can't remember me, so she must have hit a lot of guys over there."

"Hundreds," she allowed in a curt voice without turning. "I must have hit somebody every five minutes."

"That's what I thought," Tony retorted, toying with a thread of hope. Would she say something? Could she give something to her children, who were both watching her in absolute silence? "From what I remember, she kept doing it for two weeks. It must have been because I harassed her about my friend Smitty."

"Smitty?" Jess asked.

Claire's back grew stiffen. Her hands tightened against the counter.

"Yeah," Tony admitted, trying to sound nonchalant when his heart was running away with him. "He'd been with me all night out in that rice paddy. He died, but she wouldn't tell me—"

She swung around, her face stark, her eyes glittering.

"She couldn't tell me," Tony said, facing her without flinching. Hoping she saw what she needed in his eyes. "If she had, I would have given up completely."

Silence.

Thick, old, heavy as regret. He wanted to go to her. To tell her that he'd found Smitty's name there on The Wall with Baker's and Doc Rodriguez's and Washington's. All killed that night, all together again and forever where they'd finally found their peace. He wanted to tell her it was all right. That he'd put Smitty to rest. That she should, too.

"Did you take care of Smitty, too, Mom?" Jess asked, her voice curiously young. Uncertain.

"No...I mean...I don't...I don't remember." She couldn't seem to take her gaze from Tony, couldn't seem to find the words she needed to weave the lie she'd lived for so long.

It's okay, Claire, he wanted to say. Tell them. Tell us all.

"Your mom had a lot of patients like me," Tony told Jess. "A lot like Smitty. More than you ever want to know."

"I know," the girl defended herself. Defended her mother. "I've seen 'China Beach' and all the stuff about The Wall. Fifty-six thousand men died in Vietnam."

"A heck of a lot more didn't," Tony told the girl. "Because of your mom."

Claire was shaking her head. Tony saw the light flicker, retreat. "I was just one nurse in one evac hospital. There were hundreds of us, nurses, doctors, corpsmen, medics."

"It wasn't the doctors who held my hand when I thought they were my mom."

Her smile was fleeting and tenuous. "The doctors didn't look a thing like your mom."

"Neither do you. But you were there."

Her eyes gave her away before she could ever manage the words. Huge eyes, eloquent eyes, eyes that betrayed the old horrors she'd locked so far away. "It was only my job," she said quietly, and nobody in the kitchen believed her.

"What are we going to do about Pete?" Johnny asked her later.

Claire looked up from the employee evaluations she was working on. "What's the matter? Is he having problems?"

Johnny waved off her concern and settled himself onto the bench seat by the wall of the kitchen where he'd earlier sat with Gina Riordan. "No. He's still asleep. Poor guy. I don't think he's slept since that chaplain showed up at his door. No, I mean later, you know. For good. You don't really think he's going to be able to handle...you know. What's going on in his house."

Instinctively Claire ironed out the skirt of the dress she hadn't taken off yet from the funeral. There was a half-empty wineglass on the table and a stack of bills to be paid after she finished with work problems.

Claire had orchestrated it that way. Things to do. Business to care for. No room for recriminations or sessions in self-awareness. No time for the fresh wounds inflicted in her kitchen not two hours ago.

She could see it in Johnny's eyes, a new caution. A question he wouldn't ask. She could sense it in the careful way everyone moved around her. She knew that Tony had set something terrible into motion, and she didn't want to face it.

How could he have done that to her? How could he have stood in her kitchen and absolved her, when she could still hear the raw cry of grief that had met her admission that Smitty hadn't made it after all.

Get Smitty. You get Smitty…

She simply couldn't deal with anymore today. So she'd taken herself and her wine off to pay bills, hoping everyone would get the message. She'd hidden in her kitchen where no one would make her hurt worse.

"Mom?" Johnny said, frowning. "You okay?"

Claire startled, flushed. Patted at her skirt with hands that shook. Fought fresh tears that wouldn't do anybody any good, because she knew Johnny was about to hurt her after all. "I'm sorry, honey. Pete is always welcome here. You know that. If he wants to stay, we'll just get him a bed. But for right now, how 'bout we just take it one day at a time and see what he wants?"

Johnny watched her for a moment. "You'd really do that?"

Claire blinked. "What, honey?"

Her son shrugged. "Just take him in like that. Without any questions."

"You don't want to?"

"Well, yeah. But...I don't know, most moms wouldn't just invite a kid in for life, ya know?"

Claire managed a smile. "I like Pete," she said. "I don't want him to have to face this alone."

For a moment, Johnny looked away. Looked back up, his eyes big and liquid and uncertain. "You're getting pretty involved, aren't you?"

The real reason he'd sat down. She could see it in his eyes.

"With whom?" she asked. "Tony?"

"Yeah. Tony."

Claire's heart stumbled and righted itself. She tried hard to push patience past the overwhelming sadness she'd been battling all night. She thought of Tony, even now over in the inn with both girls, showing them how to put in plumbing. Making a task a game and giving Jess a sense of accomplishment, when she'd had so few of them to celebrate in her life.

Claire thought of that small bed he'd welcomed her to, the big bed she hadn't had the courage yet to share. She thought of small silences and gentle hands and the delicate balance he kept with her.

"I like him, too," she admitted evenly. Even after tonight. Especially after tonight.

Johnny's eyebrow arched in disbelief. "I think you've gone way past 'like' here, Mom. You're telling him things you've never told anyone. Even us."

A clutch of fear, a surge of regret and worry. She was wearing out beneath the emotions that had been unleashed and she didn't know what to do about it.

"He understands things you don't," she told her son, too afraid to even reach out and brush his hair back for him as she always did. "Besides, I'll bet you tell Gina things you don't tell us."

That fast, his throat colored. "That's different."

"It is?"

"Yeah. What we have to talk about isn't as important as what you have to talk about."

"Such as?"

Again he hesitated. Again he straightened himself as if gathering courage to face her. "Such as you say you won't let me fly. You've never told me why. Not really. I mean, 'no' is one thing, but you have a major problem with it."

"Not flying," she assured him, trying to hold still. Battling sudden memories she should have handed him intact as explanation. Memories that would only terrify a mother, because no boy really believes he could meet such an end. No man believes he could return from a war without his limbs or his eyes or his sanity. But a mother does. A mother prays every waking hour of her life that such a thing should never happen to her child.

A mother who has never even seen war. Who has never smelled it and awakened to it night after night when the jets scream overhead at treetop level and the choppers fragment the silence and the boys cry out in small voices.

A mother who has seen that prays with every breath.

"Not flying," she repeated, finally reaching out if only to stabilize herself with the feel of him safe here in her kitchen. "Flying warplanes. Putting yourself in that kind of danger just to fly. Every pilot I took care of wanted to fly as much as you do. Every one. They were no older than you, and baby, that's just too young to die."

"Who says I'm going to die?"

Claire was on her feet now, trembling, too tired, too exposed. "I can't take that chance, Johnny. I can't. I spent twenty years trying to survive what I saw in Vietnam, and I did it because I had you and Jess. Don't you understand? Every time I see a story about an injured soldier in North Africa, I see your face on him. Your eyes. All those soldiers I took care of in Chu Lai looked just like you when they went over there. They didn't when they came home."

He was on his feet, too, red faced and rigid. "You're never going to give your permission, are you?"

Claire couldn't answer. She couldn't take his dreams. She couldn't allow them, either.

"Are you?"

She had nowhere else to turn. No one to help her. Only her son, who battled her with dreams and yearnings and passions. Only her son whom she would have given her life to save.

"No."

He turned without another word and walked from the kitchen, and Claire knew she'd been wrong. He wouldn't change his mind. He wouldn't back down. And she was left standing alone with all the ghosts he'd resurrected pulling her down.

Tony spent a long time in the kitchen with Claire that night. Pete shuffled downstairs at about ten to sit at the table in silence, and Claire rubbed his back and gave him a cup of hot chocolate. Johnny hovered, obviously distressed, until Claire shoved him out the door with Jess and Gina for a movie. She went about the business of housework with Tony's help as if it were perfectly normal to have Pete at her table, and after a while it worked. The boy relaxed a little. Talked a little. Cried a little when his friend and idol was safely away and couldn't see him. Claire dealt with it all with pragmatic empathy, until finally at about midnight Pete gave out and went back to bed.

Tony was amazed. He was humbled. She made the art of compassion look so effortless, when he could see the toll of the day in her eyes. He could tell what an effort it had been simply to appear purposeful, after Pete had gone up to bed and Claire slowed to an abrupt halt.

Tony sat with her. He talked to her and listened to her silences and wished he could tell her who he was going to talk to tomorrow. She didn't want to talk about herself, though. She didn't want to talk at all. It was up to Tony to fill the spaces in the conversation, and Tony did so. It was up to him to pour the drinks and watch for the kids, because Claire was distracted and fidgety. She trembled and she stared as if she didn't really see him there, and finally when the kids had come home and gone up to bed, when the wine was gone and the owl had begun calling, she got to her feet and kissed him good-night and walked up to her own room alone.

Tony listened to her house for a while before heading across the lawn. He watched her light from his small room and waited, praying she'd change her mind and walk across the grass. He waited a long while, but she didn't come. She didn't turn off the light. He fell asleep still waiting for her to settle in for the night, and woke to find her already gone.

Once again he met Mary Louise Bethany at a Denny's restaurant on Highway 60. Once again she brought her cigarettes and her pragmatism to the meeting. Tony bummed a cigarette and bolstered himself on her common sense.

"I told her you'd probably be calling this morning," she advised, passing across the slip of paper with the name and phone number on it.

"I'll probably call from the car phone when I get out of here," he agreed. "I don't like making these calls from the inn. Not until Claire's ready to participate."

"You said she started asking about the group. That's good. I told you, I'd be happy to go there and meet her, if she's hesitant at all."

"I'll suggest it to her."

Mary Louise nodded. She sighed. "Tell her I know how she feels. Please tell her that, Mr. Riordan. She needs to know."

"Hopefully you'll get to tell her yourself soon," he said, grinding out the cigarette he'd only half smoked. "I'm hoping that Peggy Williams does the trick."

Peggy Williams Peterson, RN, MSN, COIN, cofounder of the women's support group in Little Rock, charter member of the Women Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Committee. Staff nurse in OR and neuro, Ninety-first Evac Hospital, Chu Lai, 1969. Claire's roommate. Tony put the call through from a park halfway home and was relieved to hear another pragmatic, compassionate voice.

"You were one of her cases?" she asked without any real surprise. "Sure. She did that all the time. Picked one guy out of a shipment, no rhyme or reason, and stuck to him like dog dirt. Harassed him right out the door. We used to call them 'Claire's kids.'"

"That's what I thought," Tony admitted. "She says she doesn't remember it at all."

The answer was slow in coming. "I'm not surprised," she said. "You forget a lot of stuff when you have to. I forgot the name of the chopper pilot I was engaged to. He went out on a support mission into the highlands and never came back, and he disappeared from the annals of Peggy Williams's history. If you want to understand it better, ask her who the kid was."

"Kid? What kid?"

"Whichever one it was that was finally too much. We all had one. Mine was a burn victim who lasted a month. I can still hear him when it rains out. Can't remember his name, but I remember him. Each nurse has one. The one patient that ruined her. Claire has one, too. Ask her who it was."

"Don't you know?"

"Nope. I didn't know who mine was until I started group. Never realized what was going on at the time. But then, in those days, I was spending all my time either keeping my head down or balancing it over a toilet."

"What would you think of coming out and talking to Claire yourself?"

"I can be there by dinner if you need me. Claire got me through that hellhole. The least I can do is share the load."

"Thank you, Mrs. Peterson. I can't tell you what this means to me."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Why didn't you just send a card?"

Tony couldn't help but laugh. "Because I never saw her eyes. I wanted to see her eyes."

"She has beautiful eyes."

"Yes," he said, "I know."

After hanging up the phone, he simply sat there for a few minutes watching the early-morning sky. Thinking that finally, finally he had something he could give Claire. Something concrete to show her the rest of the way. She'd made the first step; now he could show her the rest.

It was finally beginning to look better. Pretty soon she would have other people to rely on, other women who knew more what she'd faced than Tony ever could. She could turn to them for her support, and Tony would be free to leave.

He would be free to go home alone and spend his mornings watching that pond in silence.

Without thinking about it, he flipped on the ignition and shifted into first. One thing at a time. One problem at a time. For now all he needed to think about was the fact that for the first time since he'd stumbled onto Claire's secret as she'd crouched in the corner in her kitchen, things were looking better.

It only took twenty minutes for him to understand how wrong he was. He hadn't even pulled to a stop at the back of the house when Peaches came running out with Claire's friend Nadine in tow. Both of them looked frantic.

"What's wrong?" Tony demanded, climbing out of the car.

"She's not with you?" Peaches demanded.

"Who, Claire? No. Why?"

"She's supposed to be at work," Nadine said. "Two hours ago. She never showed up. Nobody's seen her."

"What do you mean nobody's seen her?"

"She means nobody's seen her," Peaches snapped. "Claire's missing."

Chapter 13

The most horrible part was, Tony realized he wasn't surprised. He should have seen it last night, should have realized that the funeral yesterday had been too much for her, the responsibility of taking on another lost soul when hers was in such a precarious place.

He wasn't surprised. It didn't mean he wasn't terrified.

"Nobody's seen her at all this morning?" he demanded. "The kids, nobody?"

Peaches decided to be in charge. "She's always up before the kids when she works. Leaves 'em notes if need be. There ain't no notes this morning. Nothin' but that wine bottle she left last night."

There had been no wine bottle when Tony had turned off the kitchen lights. Raking his fingers through his hair, Tony tried to think. Tried to work his way past the instinctive panic. She was gone and he didn't know where. He didn't know where to find her or how to save her.

"You were supposed to help her," Peaches accused.

"I know that!" Tony snapped. "I thought I was. I thought..."

"Yeah, you thought. Now what do we do?"

"What do you mean he was supposed to help her?" Nadine demanded, her posture, if anything, more aggressive than Peaches's.

Tony ignored the question. "Have you talked to Johnny and Jess yet?"

Peaches answered. "Just did. We thought she might be with Johnny. He and Pete just got back from somewhere, but they didn't see her. So we just kinda asked had they talked to her. Didn't want to scare 'em. Not yet."

Tony nodded. Not yet. There'd be plenty of time for that later.

Disappeared.

"Is her nursing bag in the house? Did it look like she headed for work?"

"Purse and bag are gone," Peaches informed him. "Nothin' else."

"So she wasn't planning on moving out."

Nobody laughed. Tony's brain headed into overdrive.

Claire, dealing with Pete, with the revelations she'd made, with Johnny's passion to fly, with the war. Claire heading off one morning to work in her fast red car and not making it.

"Have you tried the police yet?" he asked. "Other hospitals?"

Claire with a husband who'd run into a bridge abutment to quiet his demons.

"We were just fixin' to do that now."

Instinctively Tony turned for the house.

"Not there," Peaches barked. "Don't scare those kids."

"One of those kids is mine," Tony informed him. "She can help without giving away too much. Now, call the police. I'll be over at her office in a minute."

"What do you mean," Nadine demanded again behind him, "you were supposed to help? Help what?"

Gina was in the kitchen making tea. Tony could hear the rustle of other bodies upstairs. When he walked in, she flashed him a knowing frown. She knew about the men who met at the vet center. She'd heard about the furies that could work free, the sudden cataclysms that forced middle-aged men to form posses in the middle of the night.

"Is she all right?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know, honey. I just found out. I'm going to work with Peaches to find her. Can you keep the troops occupied?"

Gina nodded. "Jess is frantic."

"So am I, but don't let her know that."

Peaches said nothing of Claire's was touched. Even so, Tony went upstairs to make sure.

Tony had never been in her room before. What he found didn't really surprise him. Neat, tidily decorated with a spindle postered bed and primitive American dressers surrounded by watercolors of the sea. The bed with its old patch quilt hadn't been slept in. The rocker had been pulled up right before the window where she could see the inn and the sunrise. The steamer trunk that sat at the bottom of the bed lay open, its contents shuffled a little.

Tony checked it, but he didn't know what to look for. What he would find missing. She'd left behind photo albums, christening gowns and an ivory wedding dress peeking out of the tissue. Tony had no idea what she'd taken away with her. What she might have pulled out of the bottom of her keepsakes to brood over as she rocked in front of that window all night. And so he left the trunk open and headed back down.

Jess caught up with him on the stairs.

"My mom wasn't with you," Jess pleaded, "was she?"

Tony didn't want to stop. He didn't want to waste a breath. He didn't want to answer Jess's question, because it wouldn't help.

"No, honey," he said. "I must have just missed her. Peaches and I are going to look now. Will you stay by the phone for me? I think your mom's gonna be real upset that we've gone out hunting for her when she probably just forgot to tell us where she went, and I figure she won't yell at you." He tried a smile. "Okay?"

Jess returned a much more watery version. "Okay."

Tony nodded, reached out to take her hand. "Good. Now, come on down so Gina can feed you some of that breakfast she's been putting together."

He kissed his own little girl on the way back through to the inn.

"Everything's gonna be fine, Daddy," she reassured him, as if she'd been the adult instead of him.

Tony smiled for both girls. "On a day as nice as today? Of course it is."

Stepping outside, the first thing he saw was his own car. Foreign, fast, sleek as sin and twice as nice to handle. Just like hers. Giving in to that need for speed. For another kind of challenge to replace the one you could never get back. Testing the limits on the highway because life hadn't seemed nearly as precious since people had stopped shooting at you.

When he had felt everything falling in on him, he'd climbed into his car and taken off. Just drove, cutting the corners a little too close, testing the speed limit and the benevolence of his insurance company and his guardian angel both.

If he'd been in Claire's shoes after the day she'd had yesterday and found himself on his way to work, where there would just be more pressure, more reminders, more claustrophobic sameness, what would he have done? Where would he have gone?

"Is there a favorite place she goes when she gets upset?" he asked Peaches as he walked into the office.

Peaches was in the process of hanging up the phone. "Nothin' from the police."

"She just goes outside at work," Nadine offered from where she was paging through the phone book for hospital numbers.

"Driving," Tony amended. "Anyplace she likes to drive?"

Peaches shrugged. "She just likes to drive. Always has. Day she picked me up to show me this place, like to scare me to death. Been a long time since I'd gone faster than foot power."

"What about friends? Ministers? Anything like that?"

Peaches and Nadine exchanged glances.

"She's the one everybody else goes to," Nadine admitted.

"Kids go to church," Peaches said. "Don't know she has."

Tony started pacing the room. Checking the walls, the corkboard, the desk for clues. Maps, directions, brochures, anything that might lead him to her.

She'd been on her way to work. She had her bag. Her purse. She'd headed out with a purpose and somehow lost it. Wandered away, as if the pressure that was building was a physical thing that pushed her off course.

Tony just had to find her before she wandered too far. He had to hope he hadn't pushed her too far to come back.

Come on, Claire, he begged silently. Where did you go? What did you need to settle you down? What made you run?

There on the corkboard was a picture of them on the Eastern Shore. The beach.

She always lived by the beach.

He turned on Peaches. "She goes to beaches," he said. "Which ones?"

"Beaches?" he asked. "I don't know."

"Come on, Peaches. We don't have any time to waste. Anything she might have mentioned."

Another shrug. "She talked about that day you took her over the bridge, liked that a lot..."

Too far. It was too far across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Besides, Tony didn't want to think of what she might want to do there. He wanted her on a beach, where she might go to settle things in the fresh air and watch the waves and the birds.

"Something closer," Tony commanded, turning for the file cabinets. "Look for maps. Anything that might have a name on it. She has to have mentioned something. How 'bout roads, places she talks about driving?"

"You think she just took off?" Peaches demanded, incredulous.

"I think she's lost," Tony said. "And we have to find her."

He had to find her.

"But why?" Nadine demanded. "What could possibly be awful enough it could make her want to run from her babies."

"Me," Tony admitted. "I made her run."

"You didn't help," Peaches snapped, then relented by inches. "But it was those nightmares sent her off."

"Nightmares?" Nadine echoed. "What are you talking about? Is that what he was gonna help her with, nightmares? What the hell would a contractor know about nightmares?"

"She didn't tell you, did she?" Peaches demanded, as if it were Nadine's fault. "She never tells anybody. She started her nursing in Vietnam. Seems she never really got over it."

Tony found a map of Virginia in the top file drawer and turned for the door. "Nobody really does," he said, more to himself.

"Vietnam?" Nadine demanded. "No way."

"You keep calling," Tony said, his attention on the map, which had markings all over it, most of them wandering in the same direction. "I'm going to drive and see if I can find her."

He was heading out the office door when Johnny appeared, truck keys dangling from his hand like a taunt, Pete standing in his shadow.

"I'm going, too," the boy said.

"No need for that," Peaches instinctively said.

Tony knew better.

"I'm going," Johnny repeated. "She's my mother."

"Has she ever done this before?" Tony asked.

Johnny almost backed off. "Not since we've been here."

"When, then?"

The boy shrugged, looked down. "Sometimes... like after Dad died. When she got real quiet."

Tony nodded. "Okay, tell you what. Why don't you and Pete head on up along the route your mom takes to work? In case she had car trouble. You want my car phone?"

"I have a CB in the truck."

"Call Peaches with updates, okay?"

Johnny flashed him one final glare. Challenge, as if to remind Tony who belonged in this place and who didn't. But Tony saw the fear, too, the young boy too afraid to ask what might have really happened to his mother. And then he just turned and left.

"But she didn't go to work," Nadine said as the back door banged shut. "I just came that way."

"I know," Tony said, pulling out his own keys. "But I don't want him to be the one to find her."

"Well, somebody better find her," Nadine declared. "If nothin' else, her job's on the line. Administration's crackin' down on unplanned holidays, if you know what I mean."

Tony didn't bother to answer. Claire's job was the least of his worries.

"Listen to me," Peaches said as Tony turned to follow Johnny out. Tony had no choice but to listen. To see the intent behind Peaches's words. "Anything happens to her. Anything." A pause, pregnant, more of a threat than the words themselves. "I got no problem with doin' more time. You hear me?"

Tony nodded. "I hear you. Stay by the phone." And then he left, because it wouldn't do any good to tell Peaches that if anything happened to Claire, Peaches couldn't inflict any worse harm on Tony than Tony could himself.

He didn't go north. There were no beaches north. Nothing at all in the direction she would have headed to work. He did follow the back roads. If Claire was anything like he was when she needed her car, she wouldn't go near a highway. Two lanes, swooping over the hills and meandering through farms and marshes and meadows. Those were the roads she'd take no matter where she was going.

Tony followed them.

He followed them to every spit of land he could find that had some kind of marking on it on the map. Any strip of sand that overlooked appreciable water. He drove and he prayed and he kept looking for a hot little red sports car tumbled into a ditch, because he was really afraid that was where he'd find it. He called Peaches and called the vet center and kept driving.

"Come on, damn it, Claire. Come on..."

Finally he had no idea where he was. Somewhere along Chesapeake Bay, one of the fingers of land that had managed to stretch past rivers and marshes and housing developments. An empty place on a busy seashore where the birds wheeled in the morning sun and the ships passed in the distance.

Barely enough sand to call it a beach. Right off the end of a road so small the only way he'd seen it on the map had been Claire's tracing it in red.

Quiet. Isolated. Empty.

Just enough room for one hot red little sports car to pause in the turnaround above the water and watch the waves.

Tony saw the car just sitting there, saw the fall of her hair around the headrest, and fought the urge to panic. He'd found her. He didn't know if he'd found her in time.

She didn't move at the sound of his car pulling up behind her. She didn't move as he shut off the engine and opened the door and stepped out. The doors of her car were closed, the windows rolled up. Everything was as still as death beneath the gliding, shrieking birds.

Tony's hands were shaking as he approached. He didn't see blood. He didn't see movement, either.

"Claire?" At least the door was unlocked. He opened it and crouched alongside the car.

She was in her scrubs, her hair down around her, perspiration pearling on her lip and forehead. She was staring ahead at the water with eyes that didn't seem alive.

They were, though.

Tony breathed a sigh of relief. He reached out to take her hand. "Claire, it's me, Tony. Honey, you made a lot of people nervous this morning."

They owned the night. Stealthy, silent, deadly, they crept through the darkness where an American couldn't see and they created havoc. Claire wasn't sleeping at night anymore. She was working. Better than trying to sleep when you didn't know when the rockets would start up again, screaming overhead and slamming into the earth to make the windows shatter and the night disintegrate. Rockets and sappers and gunfire were easier to take in the daylight. At least the lightning wasn't such a terrible surprise. At least it didn't feed your nightmares.

It was night, and it was hot, so hot you couldn't breathe, even the ocean was still beyond the beach. It wasn't quiet. It was never quiet, with crickets and geckos filling the trees. Tonight, though, the night shuddered and bellowed. Jets screamed off like outraged women, and sirens whooped in delight. Throughout the complex, voices rose in anxious discord, and beyond them the hills rumbled with the attentions of the VC.

They owned the night and they were coming.

Claire didn't have time to worry about it. She was fighting another battle. The same battle she'd been fighting since she'd arrived, with her hands and the glistening metal claws of her instruments and the acrid jump of her drugs. She was fighting a battle she was losing, but Claire refused to give up.

"Get undercover, Lieutenant!"

Heads ducked as a whistle arced through the sky and disappeared. Seconds later the windows blew in, and the lights flickered off and on. Bent over the form on the cot to protect it from further injury, Claire furiously packed the terrible wounds with lap sponges, just as she'd been doing for hours. There was blood all up her arms, blood on her boots, blood on her dog tags where they kept swinging into the field as she worked.

"I need more fluids!" she yelled furiously, her eyes on her work instead of the terrified eyes at her hands. "Humbug, where the hell are you?"

"Lieutenant, he's an expectant! Get to cover!"

Another rocket hit closer, and the lights flickered again. Patients cried out and medical personnel scuttled on hands and knees to reassure the men they'd pulled under cots for protection at the first whoop of warning.

"He is not going to die on me!" she shrilled more sharply than the rockets. "You're not going to die on me, Jimmy!"

"No, ma'am," the boy answered, his voice already a ghost. "I'm not going to die on you."

He wasn't going to die on her, even if he had no legs, even if he had a great, seeping hole in his abdomen. There were a lot of men who had no legs coming in here. Men with injuries that couldn't possibly be healed. They healed them.

"That's right," Claire told him. "Now, somebody help me!"

"Claire?"

"Help me! I'm not leaving until I get this bleeding stopped!"

"Claire, it's me."

She didn't hear the whistle this time. She just felt the impact, right across her ribs. Slamming into her like a freight train and taking the lights.

"Claire, can you hear me?"

"I can hear you, Tony."

She didn't bother to look over to know that he was crouched at her side holding on to her hand. She didn't need to see to know that his eyes were dark and sorry, that he was smiling anyway. She just watched the water.

"You had us worried, honey," he said.

"I'm sorry." It seemed all she could manage. The water was so quiet, so deep, so calm. She wished she were calm. She wished the tears would stop, the memories would stop, the fury would stop. "I think... I'm late for work."

"Yeah, Claire. You're late for work."

She tried to shake her head. She should move. Should gather herself together and get back in the fray. She couldn't. Jimmy wouldn't leave her alone.

"It's okay, though," Tony was saying. "Nadine took care of work. We just need to take care of you."

Something flickered in her. Something anxious. Tears spilled again, but she didn't really notice anymore.

"What happened, Claire?" he asked. "What made you run?"

She tried to answer. She started crying again.

"Go away," she told him, trying to pull her hand back. "Just go home and leave me alone."

"I can't, honey. You know that."

He hadn't moved. He was still crouched next to her in the open car door as if he were a carhop and Claire wanted burgers. She wanted to sleep. She hadn't slept in so long.

"I just can't do this anymore," she said. "I can't..."

"You can," he insisted. "You can get through this."

"No. I quit. I want you to go home and let me get back to my life."

She found she could turn to face him, because the tears had brought up the anger, the long-simmering rage that could erupt so easily.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she demanded.

She saw the grief in those seductive green eyes. She saw the creases of anxiety that weren't there the first day she'd met him. Even so, she didn't expect the answer.

"Because I love you."

Claire yanked her hand away. She pushed him back and tried to shut the door on him. He wouldn't let her.

"I'm not doing that again," she declared. "I'm not going through it. I'm not putting you through it…"

She was fighting him. He managed to grab hold of her and yank her right out of the car.

"Leave me alone!"

"Why?"

The tears came faster, hotter. The pain welled up like a terrible wound. "Because it hurts," she sobbed, folding. "It hurts too much, and I'm tired."

He caught her against him, pulled her tight, with his arms around her and his head close over hers.

"Oh, Claire, I know. I know."

"No," she insisted. "You don't. You don't know anything."

"I know some things," he murmured, and she hated herself for listening to him. "I've been talking to other nurses. I've talked to Peggy Williams. She called Chu Lai a hellhole. Said you pulled her through it."

"I didn't do anything," she said. "Not anything. Go home, Tony. Please. Just leave me alone."

Peggy. God, Peggy. Bright-eyed blond Peggy who played the guitar and collected the worst music ever heard in a hospital and lost her fiancé in a copter crash.

Peggy.

Claire had forgotten.

"Leave me alone," she begged, wondering how she could have more tears.

"I can't, honey. Not anymore. I started this, and I'm going to have to see it through."

She pulled away now. Faced him with all the anger she could muster. Stared hard at those eyes she'd come to love so dearly, that comfortable, well-used face that had survived so much with its whimsy intact. There was no whimsy now. He faced her out on that poor excuse for a sandbox as if he were fighting barehanded for her soul.

For the first time, Claire realized where she was. She heard the ships out in the bay and the birds overhead and the insects that chorused from the trees. She didn't remember getting here. She didn't remember driving or looking or stopping. She just remembered that she had to get away, because Jimmy was chasing her. Jimmy and every other ghost she hadn't laid to rest, and she didn't have time for that. She didn't have the energy. She had to get her children taken care of.

If they were all right...

"Oh, God," she moaned, trying to turn for her car. "Johnny. Jess. I have to..."

Tony caught hold of her. "They're fine. You're not going home like this, Claire. Not till we talk."

"About what?" she demanded, spinning on him. "The good old days? Well, I can't remember one good old damn day, Tony. Not one. What do we talk about now?"

"Peggy said that you were always hitting patients," he said quietly.

She struggled to breathe, though it wasn't hot out. It wasn't dark or noisy or fearsome. "I already told you that."

He didn't smile. He didn't back away. "She said you would adopt one guy from each batch of wounded and harass him until he got better. That you were one hell of a nurse."

Claire fought to keep from sobbing. "Peggy's memory isn't any better than mine."

"You don't remember doing that?"

"What does it matter? Do you want me to say I remember you? All right, yes! I remember you. I remember Smitty and having to lie to you when he was dying. I didn't remember your name. I don't remember any of their names. I remember your injuries, though. I remember everybody telling me that you'd die anyway, why was I bothering. But I wouldn't stop. I knew better. It didn't make any difference, though. You all just left, and I never knew what happened to you. To any of you."

She got away from him this time. Fled as far as the water, until she could see it lapping right at the toes of her white shoes. The tide was slipping away. Somehow that made her even more sad. More anxious. More angry.

"What happened, Claire?"

His voice, as quiet as the water, as persistent, as careful. Warm enough to wrap yourself in, if you didn't know better.

If you didn't know what he didn't.

So she turned on him and she told him. "What happened was I quit," she told him. "Quit fighting, quit asking, quit giving a damn. I went over because I could make a difference, but I was wrong. I couldn't do it. I couldn't take every one of those boys looking to me to save them, to hold them, to be their mothers and sisters and lovers. I couldn't let them die without trying and I couldn't tell them it was going to be all right when I was sending them home with only one limb. So I quit."

Her heart was pounding; her chest ached with shame. She couldn't face him anymore, because he loved her. Because she loved him and she couldn't live with that anymore.

"Did you stop doing your job?"

"It doesn't matter. I wasn't what they needed. I couldn't... I couldn't..."

So many things, so many memories spilling free. So many sins to be confessed, and she couldn't confess them. She couldn't bear them anymore, either.

"You couldn't what, Claire?"

So gentle, so understanding. Claire squeezed her eyes shut, and still the tears came. Still the remorse and futility swelled in her like a terrible cancer.

"I just... couldn't."

"Why?" he asked. "What was his name?"

"Jimmy," she answered before she even thought of it. "His name was Jimmy."

"Tell me about him, Claire. Tell me how he hurt you."

"How he hurt me?" She turned on him, faced down those sweet eyes with the truth. "Jimmy didn't hurt me. Jimmy didn't hurt anybody. He was a FNG. Three weeks off the plane and so uncoordinated his friends named him Inspector Clouseau. Three weeks off the plane and he stepped on a bouncing betty and lost his legs. Lost most everything below his waist. He was so afraid... he grabbed my hand and begged me not to leave him. Not to let him die, because it was his birthday and he couldn't do that to his mother. He couldn't..."

Sea gulls spun like figure skaters over their heads. A breeze ruffled the trees, and a sandpiper skittered across the sand. So peaceful. So quiet.

Claire pulled in a breath that hurt like a mortal wound and forced herself on, forced Tony to understand what he'd been asking for.

"Well, I wasn't going to let him die. I made him repeat it to me. I made everybody listen. They listened until we were attacked. Everybody else was getting the patients under cover. I was pouring blood into Jimmy and trying to keep the rest from pouring out. One of the corpsmen, Hamelburg, kept yelling at me to take cover. Hamelburg was...he was the best. We called him Humbug because he was so tough. Taught me how to function in the middle of disaster. I was six months out of training when I walked into that triage area, and Humbug held my hand until I got it right."

Tears again. Useless, choking tears that filled her throat and her chest and her lungs. That tore away her sanity like sharp nails. Tears that couldn't seem to stop. Tony stood close to her and they still wouldn't stop. They wouldn't stop because she knew better.

"A rocket hit our ward," she said, her face lifted so she could watch the birds. "Humbug threw himself on me to protect me. He was killed. I held him in my arms, but he was already dead."

"What about Jimmy?"

She shrugged. "He died, too. He was going to die anyway. I should have known better, just like everybody said."

Tony wrapped his arms around her so she didn't have to feel the wind, so the gulls didn't sound so lost. She still wept. "Just like Humbug said."

"How old was Jimmy, Claire?"

"Eighteen. Jimmy was eighteen. He died on his birthday."

Chapter 14

Tony held her, but he couldn't help her. He murmured to her, but she stood deaf, her body shaking with the memory of the one boy who had been too much. An eighteen-year-old who had died on his birthday, and Claire left behind to hold her friend in her arms.

Above them, the sun winked in and out of clouds, and the breeze rustled the trees that crowded the shoreline. Traffic droned in the distance, and somewhere a ship bleated a mournful call. Tony heard these things and didn't move. He just held Claire in his arms and let his heart break.

He'd seen what she'd brought with her from that old steamer trunk. It had been sitting on the front seat next to her, a clear plastic bag filled with brightly colored bars. Swatches of ribbon, pressed metal in old colors.

Her medals. Her service ribbons. She'd brought them out the night before and carried them away with her.

Johnny had been right. She did have the Purple Heart. She had it lying right atop the yellow-and-red-and-green Vietnam campaign bar. Hidden away beneath her baby things and wedding memories all these years. Closed in an old trunk.

Tony understood. The day he'd come home from Vietnam, he'd closed up his ribbons and medals in a box and left them in the bottom drawer of his mother's breakfront. He hadn't worn them on his service uniform for the rest of his tour or brought them out on Veterans Day. He hadn't even had the courage to look at them for another fifteen years.

"Now you know," she said, her voice flat and empty. "You know why I didn't want to see you, why I've avoided The Wall like the plague. Why I'd rather just get on with my life and leave the rest where it belongs. Not a very worthy story, but all I have."

Tony pulled back just enough to see her face. There was desolation there, a wasteland of loathing and recrimination that was directed only one place.

"Because you tried too hard and had to face too much?"

"Because I should never have tried. Because I ended up hating it. Hating them all, every boy who came in begging for help, every villager who wanted treatment for her baby, every FNG who hadn't had the time to learn how to put on a helmet and clamp an artery at the same time during an attack. Every short-timer who was going home before I was."

"And then you came home and found you wanted to go back."

She closed her eyes again, turned away.

"It won't stay there," he told her. "You know that."

She straightened, literally pulling herself together. "It will if you leave me alone."

Tony had never heard harsher words in his life. He struggled to keep his voice calm in the face of what he realized now would be the worst nightmare he could face. "I can't leave you alone, Claire. I haven't been able to since the moment I saw your eyes."

She all but shoved him away. "You got me confused with a voice you heard a long time ago."

"No, I didn't." He reached out to her, caught hold before she could get away. "I found someone I hadn't expected at all."

She trembled in his hold, her hair lifting from her face, her eyes so sad and lost. Tony wanted the right words, the right action that would take her away from this place, this empty, lonely place she thought she deserved.

"Let me take you home, Claire," he pleaded. "Let me take you to find your friends and find what you lost."

"I can't...."

"You have to."

She shook her head, tried to pull away. "I have an inn to run. A job to do. I have children who need me there with them, who need me to be stable and understanding and supportive." Finally her eyes flared, and Tony saw the depths of her real fear. "They only have me," she insisted. "No relatives, no father, nothing. Just me to make sure everything's all right. If I let you drag me into this..."

"You'll end up like Sam?"

The question was a quiet one. It seemed to strike her like a physical blow. Again she closed her eyes, as if the light were too bright, as if Tony were too close. "He went to The Wall," she whispered. "He went to group therapy and the storefront counselors who said they knew what he'd been through. He let them talk him into thinking that if he just told them about what he felt, it would get better."

Her eyes opened now, and Tony felt their heat like a high sun. "Well, it didn't get better. He walked right up to The Wall and put his hand against it, as if it had some magic power to heal him. He went in real close so he could see all the names and he cried, and then he came home and he drank until he couldn't see and he killed himself."

"You've never gotten that close, have you?"

She didn't answer. Just glared, as if the words were too terrible, as if the emotions were so strong they locked up together trying to force themselves free.

"You went to The Wall," Tony told her, still holding on, knowing that if he let go he'd lose her. "But you were a tree vet, weren't you, Claire? You stayed back up the hill where it was safe. Back in the grove where you didn't have to see the families and the other vets who were crying. Where you could say you'd paid your respects and put your demons to sleep, but you didn't have to get really close enough to see the names."

"Yes." The answer was an anguished whisper. "Yes! I was supposed to go, wasn't I? Everyone was supposed to go, so I did. I did my time, and now I want to go home!"

"Why didn't you get close, Claire?"

She flinched, furious. Frightened. Alone, because she didn't realize that Tony was there for her.

"Why?"

"Because I held them!" she cried, the sobs choking her. "Because I told them I wouldn't let them die and they did! Because every name on that wall was a time I was too tired or too frustrated or too hung over. Because I went over to try and make a difference, and I didn't make any difference at all!"

Tony didn't think he could hurt more. He didn't think he could be more afraid. He was. How had she survived this long without breaking? How could she believe this of herself?

"But you did make a difference," he insisted, trying so hard to keep his voice sane and level when he wanted to shout. He wanted to plead. "I'm here. I'm here because of you. Only because of you. Doesn't that mean something?"

Again that fight for protection, for salvation. Again Tony struggled to maintain his distance, his control, when all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and just hold her. Just protect her. Just keep her safe from the monsters that still lurked from a twenty-year-old war.

"Please," she pleaded, broken and sobbing. "Just let me go home. Let me get back to my life."

And finally Tony had no choice but to give in to her wishes, because he could think of nothing else to keep her here.

She had to get back into control. She had to think. She had to pretend that everything was all right.

Jess would be waiting at home. Jess who didn't understand, who hadn't ever understood what Claire's insomnia was about or why she couldn't watch "China Beach." Jess whose heart was so big she just wanted everything to be all right, so Claire made it that way for her.

Johnny would be standing in the kitchen like a personal challenge. Johnny would know. He would recognize the symptoms. He would understand implications, because he'd been there that night when Claire had opened the door to the highway patrolmen.

She had to keep herself together for them. If she didn't, she would be lost.

If my babies are all right, I'll be all right.

Claire repeated that to herself all the way home as she rode in the passenger seat of Tony's sports car, as she stopped for cold, wet paper towels to drape across her eyes in the hopes that the damage wouldn't be too bad. As she deliberately ignored him, when all she wanted to do was fold up into his lap and weep and weep and weep.

She couldn't love him. She couldn't open herself up to that again. She couldn't ask to hope, because when she'd begun to hope, she'd begun to remember.

And there was no future in remembering.

She had to pull herself together. She couldn't stop shaking and crying. She couldn't think past her mantra. Past her children, who needed her.

Tony, please, she thought behind her closed eyes where he couldn't catch her. Make it better. Make it stop hurting so much. Make the ghosts go away.

But he didn't hear her. She didn't give voice to her plea. She just sat there holding that old plastic bag in her lap like a penance. Like an indictment.

"Lieutenant Maguire, looks like you can stop borrowing everybody else's Purple Heart to impress the brass. You got one of your own."

Still sitting on the floor rocking Humbug in her arms, she couldn't even tell the chief of staff what he could with his Purple Heart.

She still had it, though. Right there with all her other ribbons. Hidden away like a list of sins she couldn't bring to the confessional.

She sat silently not three feet from the man she'd fallen in love with and knew that she didn't deserve him, either.

"Prepare to smile and be friendly," Tony advised, his voice only a little more distant since she'd turned down his offer of help. Since she'd told him to leave her alone and let things be.

Don't leave me alone, she begged silently. Don't take your laughter out of my life.

Claire opened her eyes to find a real welcoming committee out there to greet her. Peaches, Nadine, Johnny, Jess, Pete, Gina. Even Bea, still dressed in her mobcap and gray.

"My God," she breathed. "What did you tell them?"

"They told me, honey. Nadine showed up on your doorstep at about eight-thirty this morning wondering where you were."

Work. Oh, God, work. Claire hadn't been thinking about the new edict since Barbara's unfortunate flouting of policy. She just hadn't been thinking. Now she was going to have to explain her absence. She was going to have to figure out a way to hold on to her job.

She couldn't lose another.

She straightened in the seat, brushed trembling fingers through her hair, pulled in breaths that felt too heavy to carry. Fought for control, when she felt as if she'd left it all on that white-rowed hillside the day before.

"You won't say anything," she commanded, knowing her voice didn't sound commanding at all.

"Of course not," Tony assured her.

They pulled to a stop, and all the adults began to descend. But for a second before she had to face them, Claire had another task to handle. Reaching over, she laid a hand on Tony's arm.

He turned to her with some surprise.

Claire struggled for composure. For at least the appearance of composure, when what she wanted to say to this man was so much more than what she ever could.

"Thank you," she said, and saw the caution in his eyes melt into something far more intimate. Far more sweet and tender and perfect. She opened her mouth, trying to find the words to tell him what he had given her, what she had wished, what she still wished. The words in the end simply weren't enough.

It didn't seem to matter. Laying his hand over hers, Tony smiled, and in that smile, said everything.

"Whatever else goes on," he said. "I meant what I said. I love you."

Tears threatened past her hard work, but the tears always seemed close lately, as if they were only lying in wait. Claire fought through them to give Tony what she could. The same words he'd given her, because she knew that more clearly than anything. No matter what happened, no matter what she could or couldn't do, she loved him. She would always love him.

"Mom! Mom! Are you okay? We were so worried about you!"

The chance disappeared and the world descended. Giving her hand a final squeeze, Tony opened his door and distracted the welcoming committee.

"Her car broke down," he said simply, just as he had when he'd phoned Peaches on the road. "We're gonna get it later."

Claire almost slumped with relief. She never got the chance. Her door was unceremoniously yanked open, and she was surrounded by anxious eyes and busy mouths and puckered faces. Jess threw herself into her mother's arms, Johnny stood alongside and patted her on the shoulder, and Peaches and Nadine assumed comically identical positions, with arms folded and frowns solidly in place, as if celebration were too much to ask for after what they'd been through.

"I'm sorry," Claire managed, wrapping her daughter into her embrace and soaking in the scent of her. "I left early for work to drive off a little energy and got caught."

"Now you'll get that car phone, won't you?" Peaches declared.

Claire gave him the best smile she had. "Now I will."

She should have felt more centered. She always did when she walked back into the inn. It was her haven, her respite, reconstructed and decorated to be an island of peace.

She still couldn't control her emotions. She couldn't stop the need to flee, the desire to take Tony by the hand and escape all over again.

"I made you some tea," Jess offered. "And Peaches made lemon tarts this morning."

"Thank you, baby," Claire accepted, following the crowd through the door into her kitchen. "That sounds wonderful."

"Mom, what do you have those for?" Johnny asked from behind. "Are they Dad's?"

Claire had forgotten that she still carried her bag. She closed it in her hands so no one could really see it until she could get it safely away.

"Oh, I..."

"No," Tony answered for her. "They're mine. Thanks, Claire. I almost forgot them."

She surrendered them with hands that shook, glad her children wouldn't know a medical ribbon from a combat ribbon. Ashamed at her own deceit. She didn't lie to her children.

Not about anything else, anyway.

She just wasn't ready to talk about it. Not with Nadine and Pete and Bea here. Not when she felt so poorly stitched together.

Not when she looked up to see the expression on Johnny's face.

Something slipped inside her. Something dreadful.

There were too many people in the kitchen, too many questions being asked, too many opinions offered. Claire couldn't ask what was wrong, when she knew it was something big. She could see it in the way Johnny avoided looking at her, the way Pete balanced from one foot to another just behind.

"Pete, honey, have you called your mother this morning?" she asked, desperate for something else to take her attention. Her head pounded and her throat was raw. She couldn't quite keep her thoughts together.

There was something to do. Something to finish. But for now, she needed an easy task, and Pete was at least a clear one.

His head bobbed uncomfortably. "Yes, ma'am. I'm gonna go over this afternoon, since my Aunt Mary Phyllis is gonna be there. But, well, Mama said she feels better just bein' alone right now. Is that all right?"

Claire instinctively reached out to the boy. "I told you yesterday, Pete. You're a member of my family whether you're here or not. Okay?"

Pete blushed, ducked his head, shrugged uncomfortably. "Thank you, ma'am."

Claire saw the raw grief in those young eyes, the confusion and pain. She let herself ache for him, because that was a safe thing to feel.

"Does that mean he has to take a turn with the dishes?" Jess demanded, and finally the mood in the room broke.

Claire saved her job, at least for now. Her excuse was plausible and her regret genuine. She managed to get Nadine as far as the inn, where a surprisingly acquiescent Peaches was sharing recipes with her. She swallowed some aspirin and held her daughter and fought hard to push the shadows back where they belonged.

She couldn't remember why she'd run. She couldn't remember doing it, just ending up in her bedroom the night before with those old medals in her lap. Just rocking and watching the night and sinking under a burden she couldn't lift.

She remembered thinking she should go to Tony. She should let him hold her. She should tell him what hurt her so he could help her carry it.

But it had been too long since she'd trusted anyone with that kind of truth. Since she'd asked anyone to bear that kind of cost. So she'd just sat. She'd sat until the sun came up, and then she'd just run.

Jess talked her into lying down for a while, and Tony took her bag over to the inn with him, where he could be heard hammering and sawing as if he were on a deadline. Claire knew the boys were around. She knew she should ask them what was wrong. She couldn't do it. She just didn't have the energy. She didn't think she could handle one more revelation before just crumbling into dust.

She'd run that morning. She hadn't run in five years. She hadn't just disappeared into herself where no one could find her.

It terrified her.

Tony terrified her. He offered so much. He promised to share everything with her, to help her, to be there for her when no one ever had before. He fought hard for her.

He almost made her think she could make it.

Almost.

It didn't matter. He'd be gone soon, and she'd get back on with her life. She'd see to her children and her inn and her life just as she always had, putting this all away for later.

If only she could stop shaking. If only she could lift the suffocating stone of sorrow from her chest so she could breathe again.

If only she could look forward to a life without Tony Riordan there to bring it whimsy and delight.

"Mom?"

Claire looked over from the view out her front window. She'd ended up in her living room, in the quiet, civilized sitting room she'd used as her buffer against stress. Now, as the sun sank, her son had come to find her.

She heard it in his voice. Saw it in his posture. He was going to make things worse, and Claire wasn't at all sure she had the strength left to handle it.

Still, she smiled. "Come on in, honey." Her heart tilted at the sight of him, so tall, so handsome, so full of passion and purpose. He reminded her too much of herself at that age. "What's up? You goin' out tonight?"

He stepped on in, as uncomfortable as a man in a funeral parlor. "Pat's out in the kitchen."

"Pat with his hot red car, huh? Where ya goin'?"

He didn't answer. He walked right on up to the couch and sank onto it alongside her. "I need to talk to you, Mom."

Claire battled the urge to run. No more. No more, please. She wanted to call Tony. She sat very still instead.

"What, honey?"

He couldn't seem to look at her. Claire couldn't breathe. She couldn't think.

"I wasn't gonna tell you," he said. "Not for a while. But you need to know."

"Know what?"

He took in a breath and faced her.

"Do you know what yesterday was, Mom?"

"Of course I do. The funeral. We spent all day there."

"My birthday."

She held on tight. It was the only thing that kept her from running again. "Don't be silly...."

Color crept up his cheeks. "It was my birthday. I'm eighteen now, Mom."

Claire looked away, struggled for composure. "I never forget your birthday, John. Never."

"Mom, you've been taking care of Pete the last five days since his dad died, and you had to get through the funeral yesterday. I told Jess to let you forget it this time. It's okay, really."

"No," she insisted, suddenly terrified. "It's not. It's not okay at all."

"Mom, that's not what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell you that I gave myself a birthday present this morning. Pete and I went out before we knew...before Nadine told us you hadn't been to work."

Why was she feeling such panic? Where had the days gone? How could she have possibly forgotten Johnny's birthday, even after Nadine had reminded her? His eighteenth birthday? How could that have happened? The walls were closing in again. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't push away the fresh agony.

"Mom, please," he pleaded, and got her to look at him.

When she didn't answer, he reached over and took hold of her hand. "We enlisted, Mom."

Claire found herself on her feet. "No."

Johnny jumped up, but she was too fast for him. She pulled away, tried to get out of the room.

"Mom, listen to me."

She whirled, furious. Terrified. "No! I told you no." She was disintegrating. She could feel it, as if logic and sense had finally reached their breaking points. As if the insanity she so feared had walked in the room with her son.

"I told you no!"

"I want to fly!" he retorted, intense, adult, horrifyingly certain.

"You are flying! You fly almost every weekend. You can fly any plane you want. You don't need to do this!"

"I want to fly fighters. I've always wanted to fly fighters, but you wouldn't listen to me. You wouldn't even talk to me about applying to the academy, and after yesterday, I knew you wouldn't let me try anything else. So I thought I had to make a commitment you couldn't turn down. I had to take matters into my own hands. They've promised me a program that will let me be a pilot. With my hours and experience, I can get a degree in engineering and fly."

"But you're only a senior," she insisted, her hands clenched to keep from striking him, her chest on fire. "You haven't finished high school."

"They'll wait. They're thrilled to have me."

She laughed then, the sound ugly and frightened. "Of course they're thrilled to have you. They always need fresh meat for the grinder."

Not now, she thought. Not today. Dear God, not my baby.

"Mom, listen to me."

"No. No, I am not going to listen to you." She wasn't saying this. She couldn't be. She couldn't seem to stop herself. "I'm having nothing to do with you."

As long as her babies were all right...

Well, they weren't all right anymore.

"Mom, you're not listening."

She stalked toward him, furious, seething, tears burning her eyes. "Get out. Get out of my house."

Johnny backed up, his young face devastated. "Mom, please!"

She slapped him across the face. "I said get out!"

He ran. Stumbling like a child who'd lost his way. Slamming the door into the yard. Claire heard the engine start and gravel spit as the wheels spun and headed back down the driveway. She heard her son run from her, when he'd never run from her in his life.

She heard him escaping, because she'd told him to get out.

She heard the emptiness in her house, in her quiet, carefully ordered living room, and suddenly she realized what she'd done.

She'd hit him. Forced him away.

She'd promised to protect him, and then she'd hurt him herself.

Her hands at her mouth, she sank to her knees. She watched out the window with eyes bunded by tears. She died there in the quiet of her living room, and no one heard her, because she'd sent her son away.

"Claire?"

Tony's voice. She heard it through the agony, through the heart-pounding grief that gripped her. Tony's voice, like a balm in a wasteland.

"Claire, talk to me. What happened?"

He was on his knees next to her, on his knees, with his arms around her, with his head against hers, as if he could protect her.

Protect her from what? There was nothing out there anymore. The monsters were inside, set loose and tearing her apart. The monsters were feeding on her, and she couldn't stop it.

"I hit him...." She sobbed. "Oh, God, I hit him. I can't... I can't do it anymore…."

"You don't have to," he said, and she heard him. "I'm here. We're all here for you."

"I have to find Johnny," she pleaded, turning to him when she'd promised she wouldn't. "I have to find him, Tony. Please."

"What happened, honey?"

His eyes. Those sweet, seawater eyes, magical eyes that could soak up pain. His hands. Strong hands. Hands that could hold her up when she didn't have the strength anymore.

"I forgot his birthday," she sobbed. "How could I forget his birthday and... Oh, God, I sent him away. I sent my baby away...."

He wrapped himself around her like a blanket, and Claire turned to him. She clung to him. She inhaled the scent of him and soaked in the sound of his heart, his generous, giving heart.

"Help me," she begged. "I can't do it alone anymore."

He lifted her face and smiled for her, and she knew it was going to be all right. For the first time in twenty years, Claire knew it could be all right. "You'll never have to again as long as you live, Claire. I promise you. Now, let's go find Johnny and wish him a happy birthday."

Chapter 15

"You couldn't have just treated yourself to a new computer game or something?" Tony asked two hours later.

Johnny was standing at attention in the kitchen, his posture a delicate balance between defiance and pleading. His face was still mottled and his eyes restless. Claire didn't blame him. Her face was so swollen she looked as if she'd taken the hit, not him. She reached up for the tenth time and brushed her hand against his cheek, as if she could wipe away the invisible handprint there.

"I'm sorry, baby," she told him again, her voice catching, her heart so sore. "I can't tell you how sorry I am."

Johnny lasted no more than a few seconds before he buried his face in Claire's shoulder, a young boy once again. Claire hugged him to her with every ounce of strength she had.

"It's my fault," he said. "I didn't know...I thought you were okay with everything that went on, and I knew that if I didn't do something you'd never let me enlist, and I just did it, Mom, I'm sorry."

"Shh," she soothed, her heart stuttering, her eyes open and focused on Tony, who had held her together with his own hands while they'd looked for Johnny. While Claire had come so very close to breaking apart into a million pieces and losing her way. "We'll deal with that later. I'll ground you until the day you graduate from high school for going behind my back, and then I'll probably come see you get your wings."

It will be all right, she assured herself, feeding on the certainty in Tony's eyes. It will be all right.

"Are you sure?" her baby asked, lifting his head and looking down at her from his eighteen-year-old height.

Claire smiled again, knowing she didn't mean it. "One step at a time, honey. Okay?"

"I can't back out of this," he insisted. "I'm committed now."

Claire took a breath to quell the instinctive terror that wouldn't die simply because she had no choice. "I know."

His eyes swelled with tears, her almost-grown son with his passions and his dreams. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"We'll work on it, Johnny. All of us together, okay?"

Johnny's attention lagged a minute. "Him, too?"

Claire let her gaze follow his to find Tony there just as he'd always been. Just as she hoped he always would. "Him, too."

Jess waited until early the next morning to speak her piece. It wasn't any easier. She walked into Claire's bedroom while Claire was still half-asleep, as if it were the only time to tell the truth.

"It's my fault," she said.

Claire struggled up in bed, held her arms out to her little girl. "What are you talking about, Jess?"

But Jess wouldn't move. "I thought it would help, Mom. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Thought what would help?"

"Tony. I thought if he stayed, he could make you feel better. I mean, he was there. You could tell him things you couldn't tell us."

Claire felt all her delusions disintegrate with just the sight of Jess's eyes. Older eyes, wiser eyes. Eyes that were too sad for a little girl who had the world before her. In that moment, Claire realized she hadn't protected her babies from anything. "Come here, sweetie. Come sit with me."

Jess balanced there in the doorway for long seconds, her eyes wide and glittering, her hands restless, her posture rigid with distress.

Claire patted the bed next to her as if the discussion they were having weren't going to change both their lives forever. "Please."

Jess came. She sat next to Claire and curled her feet up under her in those black socks and black pants and black shirt. A study in contrasts, her little girl. Winsome giggles and boundless compassion. Struggles and delights. A little girl with a woman's perception.

"Now," Claire said, fingering Jess's flame-bright hair, "what do you mean?"

Jess focused on the quilt at her feet. "'Vietnam," she said, her voice hushed. "You wouldn't talk to us about it, and I didn't know what else to do."

Claire didn't know how much more of this she could handle. No matter how hard she tried to sound nonchalant, her voice caught. "You mean you conspired with Tony behind my back because you wanted me to talk about Vietnam?"

Jess finally looked up at her mother. Her lovely blue eyes filled with tears. "I just wanted you to stop crying."

Claire couldn't answer. She couldn't fit the words past the anguish in her chest. Past the pride and grief. The realization that instead of protecting her daughter, she'd hurt her.

She'd forced her away instead of closer, and she could never change that. She could do something to heal it, though.

Adding her own tears to her daughter's, Claire pulled her into her arms. "Oh, Jess," she whispered into that sun-bright hair. "It's a good thing mothers don't have to deserve their children. Because I don't deserve you."

"You'll stay here with me."

Tony nodded. "I'll stay here with you. But, honey, I think you're going to find that you're not going to need me after a while. I think you and Mary Louise are going to have plenty to talk about without entertaining me."

Claire ironed out her skirt with her hand, just as she always did when she was nervous. She flashed him a smile that was equal parts anxiety and sheer terror. Tony saw the tears swell in her eyes just for a moment. She dipped her head, uncomfortable with them.

Tony would have none of it. "They're not going to stop all at once," he warned her gently. "Don't expect them to."

"I don't." She sighed, stepping over to peek out the front window. "I don't know what to expect. I'm so terrified of talking to somebody else, like maybe my experience wasn't as bad as I thought. Like maybe I'm a coward after all, or..."

He stepped up behind her and held her shoulders. "What did they call PTSD?"

Like a game. A reminder, when she needed it, of just what this was about.

"Soldier's heart," she answered, her conviction still shaky. "Well, I'll tell you what. This soldier's heart is sure about worn down."

"Yours has had to deal with more than most. It's one thing to have nightmares. It's another when you're also the strong shoulder for everyone around you. You need some pampering of your own, Claire."

"I never had time."

He turned her back to him, winnowed his fingers through that luscious fall of sunset hair. "Well, then, it's about time you take it, don't you think?"

She shuddered and sighed again, still as unsettled as a new bride. Tony wasn't surprised. It had only been forty-eight hours since Johnny had made his big declaration of independence. Since Claire had found out that she'd forgotten her son's eighteenth birthday.

It still hadn't occurred to her yet just why. Tony knew it would come to her, sometime when she was prepared to deal with it. For now, it was one step at a time. He'd managed to get her past that first night by simply sitting up with her and letting her vent. He'd given her a hammer yesterday and let her work out a little of the aggression. Today they were meeting with the other nurses. Today Claire, still raw and frightened and ashamed, would finally understand that she really wasn't the only one who had hidden those feelings away all these years.

At least a little of the life had returned to her eyes. Tony had nurtured it like a frail fire, terrified beyond words that he might see it disappear completely again as he had when he'd walked in to find her on her knees in the living room.

Claire wasn't whole, but she had decided to try to heal. It was more than he could have asked for a few weeks back. It wasn't nearly what he wanted anymore.

He hoped it lasted past what he had to do to her next. What he and Mary Louise and Andy and his mother agreed would be the only course open to them both.

He prayed he could do it when the time came, because he knew, too, it was the only way. It was simply the hardest thing he was ever going to have to do in his life.

"They're here!" Jess yelled from the kitchen.

Claire broke away to get a look through the living room window. "Go help Peaches and Nadine at the inn!" she told her daughter.

"Parents," she groused. "They're no fun at all."

"That's all right," Gina answered, still in Richmond despite the job she was supposed to have returned to days earlier. "We have ways to make them suffer."

Both girls chuckled like conspirators as they slammed out the back door.

"Good thing we have even better ways of making them suffer right back," Tony offered.

Claire laughed, a surprised sound that echoed oddly in the carefully placed room. Still running her hand along her skirt, she stepped toward the front door. Halted. Straightened as if she were opening the door to the Lord High Executioner. Tony couldn't bear this. He couldn't let her talk herself out of her right to grieve or heal. Walking up behind her, he placed his hands once again on those shoulders that had carried so much for so long. He turned her back around so he could see those eyes. Those laughing, gentle eyes that could heal with nothing more than a smile. He cupped a hand to her face and held her still before him. Made her look at him, listen to him. Believe him.

"Don't wimp out on me now, Claire," he commanded. "You've already done the hard part."

Her eyes swelled with unbearable emotion. "I'm so scared."

"And I'm right here. Now, go meet your guests."

The doorbell rang. Tony smiled. Claire fought hard to give him one in return. She let him turn her back to the door and she opened it.

"Claire Henderson?"

It was Mary Louise in her sensible suit and her boxy shoes and her square-cut hair and her Vietnam-campaign-ribbon lapel pin. Claire opened the door and showed her in. "I hope you don't mind coming out."

Mary Louise walked right in. "Not at all. I hope you don't mind, but I brought someone along I thought you might like to see."

Another woman stepped onto the porch. Tiny, petite, blond, with a wealth of crow's-feet and brown eyes the size of dinner plates. "Claire?" she demanded. "Claire Maguire, my God, it is you. You better di-di mau, girl. Sun's about to set, and you have all the party favors."

Claire stood frozen on the spot as if she'd just seen the dead rise. "Peggy? Oh, my God, Peggy?"

The two of them met in the foyer in a resounding hug that had both Mary Louise and Tony grinning in relief.

"Where the hell have you been?" Peggy was demanding, pounding on Claire's back and crying at the same time. "Don't you know we can't call the Sunset Club to order without you?"

"Oh, my God, Peggy, my God..."

Tony knew then that it was going to be all right. He knew that Claire was going to survive. So he stepped back out of the way and let the women share their tears. They were so busy talking that they never noticed him walk out the back door.

He finished the inn two weeks later as Peaches tested out his new recipes for dinner items and Nadine, who had been silently welcomed into the kitchen ever since the day they'd searched for Claire, helped. Tony probably would have taken a lot longer if three of his brothers hadn't unexpectedly shown up and pitched a tent in the backyard to stay and offer their assistance.

As part of their punishment for enlisting without letting Claire know, Johnny and Pete had been added to the crew, and Jess and Gina had ordered and hung all the wallpaper and decorations. The James River Inn B and B was officially open for business.

It was after the party favors had been cleared out and the guests meandered out to watch the Riordan brothers challenge each other and a formidable Peaches to endless rounds of horseshoes, that Tony shared his decision with Claire.

They'd been doing dishes in Claire's kitchen, one eye out to the boisterous activity in the back, while Claire watched the announcement on television that the North African skirmish was considered an unqualified success and troops would begin pulling out once again. Tony watched her, knowing perfectly well he was saving up the sight of her for the months he would be without it. Praying like hell she'd understand.

"Claire."

She turned to him, and he sated himself on the life that flickered more brightly in those eyes. The sadness had receded today, and she almost looked at peace.

"We don't have time," she teased, referring to the clandestine maneuvers of the night before, when they'd tried to sneak past not only their children but his brothers.

Tony's smile was at once reminiscent and wistful. "They really like you."

She tilted her head so that her hair tumbled over her shoulder like a fire fall. "That seems to be important."

He nodded. "Oh, it is. They report back to the home front every night, so that the family will be all primed when I have to defend myself on Fourth of July."

Claire finished drying the last plate and set it out on the rack. "Well, I'm glad. I like them, too. I'm finding that I like a lot of noise in this house. It's been too quiet lately."

"It wasn't quiet yesterday."

Yesterday Peggy had visited again, bringing her four children, her husband and a seemingly bottomless vat of chili. The kids had disappeared while the women had shared reminiscences.

"Ya know, it's funny," Claire mused, truly pleased. "I'd forgotten the good times. We did have a lot of those."

"You had good friends."

Her eyes filled with tears that didn't spill. "The best. The very best."

"Except for me, of course."

With a grin, she wrapped her arms around him. "We were talking, ya know. We both bet you were cute in your dress blues."

Tony grimaced. "A Marine is never considered cute. Formidable, intimidating, gamey, but never ever cute."

She giggled. "Cute."

He returned the embrace, filling his hands with her, filling his senses with the sight of her sunlit hair and deep-lake eyes. With the scent of rain on her hair and her dress a whisper of grace. It only made him hurt worse for all those months he would be waking alone. It made him terrified that it wouldn't end the way he wanted it.

"Honey, I need to tell you something."

"As long as you haven't enlisted for the navy, I think I can handle anything."

"I'm leaving."

She went still in his arms. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "You just got here."

He shook his head. "I have to get home, Claire. You have to get on with your work."

Her eyes widened, her breathing quickened. "But I can't do it without you."

"Yes, you can. You have more courage than anyone I know."

"But you said you loved me."

"Oh, Claire, I do. I love you and that mangy brood you call a family and this inn and the beach. But if I stay now, you'll never know if you love me."

"What are you talking about? Tony, I'm just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. How can you walk out on me now?"

He rested a quieting finger against her lips and tried to make her understand. "You and Sam got what you were going through mixed up with what you meant to each other. If we're going to have any future, we can't let that happen to us. You're on the right road, Claire. You're going to heal. You're going to put Vietnam in its place and come through it whole. But, honey, it's something you have to do on your own, or we're never going to be able to meet as equal partners. I'll always be the patient you saved, and you'll always be the nurse with PTSD I forced into treatment."

The tears that had threatened fell, and Tony fought harder for his conviction. With a thumb, he wiped them from her cheeks.

"Please don't do this to me," she begged, holding on more tightly.

"I'm always there for you. Phone me any time day or night. For anything, whether it's fireworks on the Fourth or Jess needing help with homework. But you need room right now, and I have to give it to you."

She wept harder. "Please, Tony."

Tony kissed her, savoring the taste of her mouth, the silk-soft texture of her skin. Breathing in the life of her, the gentle compassion wrapped in sense, the grace of her body against his. He battled his own grief, because he couldn't imagine waking up again to nothing but that empty pond out in the backyard. He couldn't imagine not sharing Gina with this crowd or following Claire to the beach again.

But he'd made up his mind. He'd talked to Andy and he'd talked to Mary Louise. He knew it was right. He just had to keep remembering it as he felt his heart crumble to dust in this beautiful old house.

"I'll be there," he told her again. "You'll know when to call me. You'll know when you're ready."

"I can't do this," she insisted.

Tony held her there where she could see him, and he told her what he truly believed. "If I thought you couldn't do this," he said, "I'd never leave. But if I thought you couldn't do this, I would never have fallen in love with you in the first place."

"I can't do this," she insisted. "Not alone."

He held on tight. Forced her to listen. "I promise," he said. "I'm only a phone call away. You've taken the first step, Claire. Take the rest."

He wasn't sure she believed him. He wasn't sure the whole time he prepared to leave, as he packed up his tools and sent his brothers home before him, as he said goodbye to the kids and got Peaches's word that he'd be in touch if there was any trouble.

It took him four more days to make good his promise, and he knew every day that Claire held out the hope he would stay. It was harder every day to leave, but he did it anyway, knowing that if he didn't give her this, the rest of what they'd been through together would have been worthless.

It didn't make it any easier.

"I can call you," she said again as she stood alongside his car in the drive.

He held on to her hand through the window. "Any time."

She nodded, stiff and unyielding and already alone. "Then I won't say goodbye."

Tony simply lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, knowing there was nothing else to say. As he pulled away, he looked into the rearview mirror to see her standing in the drive, her pastel dress weaving about her like a wave, and he prayed.

"Remember," he said, even though she couldn't hear him. "You'll know when you're ready."

Chapter 16

The November sky was a brilliant, breathtaking blue. A cold front had passed through during the night, lowering the temperatures to the thirties, chapping faces and hunching the shoulders of the pedestrians who paced the streets of Washington, D.C. The trees that exploded into blossoms in the spring huddled against the cold in empty rows.

Claire had never been here in the winter before. Somehow it seemed more appropriate, more desolate, as if the patina of glory had been completely stripped from the wars that were remembered along these streets.

She stood up among the trees, just as before, her heart hammering, her palms sweating, her throat dry. She had come back to The Wall, and it hurt.

She'd never really cried at The Wall before. She'd never allowed herself. She'd never faced the grief in the faces of that statue and told those young men she was sorry. She'd never walked close enough to The Wall to find out just how many of them had died on her shift. She'd never tried to find a familiar name or let her fingers stray to feel the granite. She'd never gotten close enough to hurt, like a guest at a wake who stands just inside the doorway, as if pain were measured by a perimeter.

Today she was coming out of the trees.

"You ready?" Peggy asked.

"I'm not going to be ready as long as I live," Claire assured her, shaking. "I wish Tony were here."

"This move is the one you have to make."

Claire laughed, a breathy sound of nerves. "Yeah, okay. I know. He was right all along. If I hadn't done this by myself, I wouldn't have been able to face him again."

Peggy took her hand, and together they walked toward the end of The Wall. Glossy black granite, ground level, a narrow slash against the earth. Rising as the years of the war collected, the names increasing geometrically, the world falling away beyond into muted silence. Claire saw the names and felt the old rage, the old futility. She knew there was a crowd around her and heard their bright tourists' chatter as they set out on the same walk. She heard it die around her as The Wall rose above them, as if they were walking into the depths of some lofty cathedral.

Or some great tomb.

They walked right up to the panels that represented those who had died in 1969, nearing the apex of The Wall, where the names piled upon each other, where they rose row after row over her head, each name an image, each image more painful than the last. Each moment pressing down on her as if the granite itself were tilting.

The names. So many names. Claire hadn't really realized. Gonzalez, Smith, Washington, Patterson, Wilkerson, Jones. On and on and on, a flood of names, a torrent washing over her. Claire saw the names and thought of her dream, the one in which the boys' hands were out to her and she couldn't catch them all. She hadn't understood why until she stood at this wall and saw all their names. Until the tears came and washed away her sins.

With trembling hands, she reached out to the granite that reflected her face. She reached back in time to all those young boys she'd held and told them again she'd never forget them. She held them to her where they'd be safe and alive again, if only for a moment. She told them she was sorry, because she was.

She felt the warmth of the stone and realized that Sam had been wrong. He had only felt the pain through his fingers, not the life. Not the memory and the voices and the faces that were finally given a place to gather. Claire placed her hands against those names, stroked them with her fingers, all the names, because even though she couldn't remember their names, she'd known them. She'd carried their wishes and their dreams and their regrets with her for twenty-three years, and now she could give them back.

She'd been so afraid of The Wall. She shouldn't have been. She should have come here a long time ago.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to those young faces who had haunted her, to her own children who had been held away, to Sam, who had never recovered from what he'd seen and done there.

"I'm sorry."

Here where it was a gift, she offered her tears where so many others had offered theirs before her.

"I'm sorry."

Peggy held on to her, just as she had so long ago when Claire had been forced to give Humbug back. Just as Claire had done for Peggy when her fiancé had failed to come home. They shared the old memories and the old pains and the old promises. And Claire realized that Tony had been right all along. She was going to make it. She was going to make it with her friends, and with her family, and by herself if need be.

"You ready to see our statue?" Peggy asked.

Claire wiped her tears and nodded. "Yeah. Let's see if they got us right."

The statue commemorating the women who had served in Vietnam was at the other end of The Wall, set opposite the men they'd helped. Claire and Peggy made their way over.

"My God," Claire murmured, the tears welling all over again as they approached. "She got it right. She really got it right."

All Claire could think of was an American pieta. Three women each facing a different way, each reflecting the desperation, the frustration, the despair. One woman, her eyes soft and sorrowful, on her knees with a dying soldier in her arms. Claire felt the weight in hers all over again.

"It's beautiful," Peggy said, "isn't it?"

Claire couldn't speak. She walked right up to it, drawn to the memories it evoked. She reached out to the nurse's face, lifted fingers to soothe the grief there, because it was her grief. She felt the old tears well again in her chest, and she couldn't stop them. They spilled down her cheeks and down her hands and down to the grass below.

"I was my best there," she admitted softly, a secret she'd never shared. The final truth that had always seemed too inconceivable to admit. "I miss it."

Peggy slipped her arm around Claire's shoulders. "I know," she said. "I do, too."

They stood there a long time remembering old friends, old times, old sorrows. They held hands and they shared dreams, just as they'd done during the long months since Tony had invited Peggy to Claire's house. Since Claire had begun to heal.

They wept, and they talked, and finally, facing the names they'd spent so many years avoiding, they smiled.

And it was then that Claire saw him.

Standing there at the far end of The Wall, hands in coat pockets, head bare, eyes tentative.

Waiting. Just as he said he would.

Waiting for her to know it was time.

It was time.

"Go on," Peggy said, giving her a little shove. "We'll meet you at the hotel."

Claire's heart did a slow roll. Her tears, so newly dried, rose again. She stood there on the rise above The Wall and found that Tony was right after all.

She had missed him so much. Wanting to turn to him every time she'd had to face another trauma. Expecting his laughter, his smile, those sly dimples that betrayed so much. She'd worked hard on her B and B and talked to her new friends at the vet center and sat down to share her life with her children. She'd called Tony, just as he'd told her to do, when it seemed that nobody else could talk to her. And he'd talked to her.

And then, at night, she'd lain in her big, empty bed and thought that some day Tony would belong there. Some day he'd come home, and she would laugh again.

But he'd been right. If he'd stayed there with her, he would have been her crutch, not her friend. He would have gotten so mixed up in the ghosts Claire was putting behind her that he never would have withstood the future.

And now he was here.

He looked so handsome. So alive. So certain standing there among the tourists and the fatigue-clad vets. So strong.

Before she could question what she was doing, Claire ran for him.

"You came!" she sobbed, disappearing into his embrace.

He was trembling. He couldn't be trembling. Tony was never afraid. "So did you," he answered, and Claire thought she heard tears in his voice, as well, as he surrounded her and pulled her home.

She lifted her head back to make sure. Found those delightful seawater eyes glittering and lost her heart for good.

"I'm ready," she said.

He sighed as if he'd been holding his breath for a long time. "You're sure?"

Claire lifted her hand up to his cheek, to that scar that betrayed his strength. "I love you. Did I ever tell you that? I talked to the kids, and they think it's time for a new challenge. I asked them, would you like that challenge to be Tony and Gina? And they said they might like that challenge a lot."

Claire would have been happy with a simple yes. It didn't seem to be enough for Tony. He bent to kiss her, and Claire remembered his joy. She remembered his quiet courage and his delicious life. She remembered how his mustache tickled, and how soft his mouth was. How just the taste of him could take the strength out of her knees.

"You're sure," he repeated, more serious than she'd ever seen him.

She smiled. "Only if you don't mind a house with four kids in it. The only question is, do we live in Atlanta or Richmond?"

"You'd give up the inn for me?"

"I'd give up anything but the kids for you. Maybe I didn't tell you, but I love you."

He laughed, that deep, heartfelt laugh that meant he believed her. "I love you, too, lady. You'll never know how much I love you. But I can't make you move."

"What about Savannah?" she asked, the first real thrill of anticipation displacing the desperation that had lived in her chest for so long. "It's near a beach. It has a lot of historic potential, which means you'd have houses to rebuild and I could very easily find another inn—Jess has decided that she's going to go into business with me, by the way. She loves the life—and we're only about five hours from Atlanta by car. Or Charleston... would you mind if Peaches and Nadine came along?"

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Peaches and Nadine?"

Claire laughed. "I can see we have a lot to catch up on."

Tony kissed her again, slowly and certainly. "A lot," he assured her. "Are John and Jess here with you?"

"And Pete. They're at the hotel. I'm bringing them back here in the morning."

He nodded, looked over to the polished mirror of granite that stretched away from them. Looked back at Claire with a soft smile. "Want to come meet some of my friends?"

Claire knew exactly what he meant. She pulled out of his embrace and took his hand for her return trip to The Wall. "Only if you'll let me introduce you to Humbug. You would have liked him."

Tony smiled. "It's a deal."

They turned back to The Wall, hand in hand. But before they made it, Claire pulled them both to a stop.

"Oh, wait, I forgot," she said.

Tony stopped with her. She'd been so distracted by what she'd had to do that day that she'd forgotten one of the most important parts. Reaching into her coat pocket, she pulled out the twin rows of ribbons Jess had fashioned into a single unit for her. With utmost care, she attached them over her heart, where they belonged. All her ribbons, even the purple-and-white ribbon she'd earned in a desperate struggle to save just one more life.

"That's much better," Tony said.

Claire took his hand again, looked up to sate herself on the encouragement in his eyes, and she walked once more into 1969.

They were saying goodbye to Humbug when a vet shyly stepped up next to Claire.

"Excuse me, ma'am."

She smiled for him. "Yes?"

"Were you there?"

She nodded. He was a tall man with gray hair and glasses. Claire knew that a very long time ago, he'd been a boy with ancient eyes.

"I was a nurse with the Ninety-first Evac at Chu Lai," she said, shaken by the pride she'd never known before.

He took her hand, fears in his eyes, and Claire noticed that his left leg was a prosthesis. "I never got to say thank-you to the nurses who saved me," he said. "Would you mind if I thank you instead?"

Claire felt all those old griefs change again, metamorphose into something bittersweet and strong. "No," she assured him with a smile as she accepted his fierce hug. "Not at all. Thank you for them. I know your nurses are just glad you got home."

"Welcome home, Lieutenant."

She took hold of Tony's hand because he understood. "Thank you," she told the vet with a hushed voice, and the vet walked on.

"Would you mind if I said the same thing?" Tony asked her.

Claire looked up at him. "But you did."

He shook his head. "This time you know just what I meant." He took both her hands and faced her as if his words were a vow instead of a measure of gratitude. "Welcome home, Claire Maguire Henderson. And thank you. You gave me my life."

Claire felt the tears come again, and knew that this time they would heal her. This time they were tears of thanksgiving, of joy, of hope. This time they were shared with the man who had changed her life.

"Thank you, Anthony Riordan," she answered, already back in his arms and knowing she'd never leave again. "You did the same for me. You healed my soldier's heart."