Read Online A Hero to Come Home To by Marilyn Pappano - Free Book Online Page A

increased the possibility of one of them seeing him. He should have seen that the shortest path from the table to the ladies’ room, of course, went right through the bar.
    Carly stopped abruptly, still holding his gaze. When a young soldier tried to squeeze past with an apology, she realized she was blocking the way and took a couple of slow steps to bring her to his table. “The world’s even smaller than I thought.”
    He didn’t know what a person from Utah sounded like, or if years in Colorado and Oklahoma had made her accent uniquely her own. He did know her voice was quiet, definitely female and, at the moment, lacked the all-business edge he associated with the only women in his life: doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. Only the women shrinks he’d seen back east had ever sounded that soft.
    “They tell me this is the best Mexican restaurant in town.” Someone had actually told him that, when he’d first arrived. He hadn’t paid attention, since he hadn’t eaten in a restaurant since he’d come back to the States.
    “It is.” A group of girls who looked barely old enough to be in the bar swarmed past on their way to the biggest table in the corner, and Carly eased out of their path, practically hugging the tall chair across from him. Her left hand rested on its back, the wedding ring prominent.
    He’d taken his gold band off the day his buddies had confirmed his suspicions of Sheryl’s affair. Last he’d seen it, it was sinking in the polluted waters of the Bacchiglione River. Surely by now it had been silted over or had been carried into the Adriatic Sea.
    Picking up his beer bottle, he gestured toward her table. “So you guys are intrepid adventurers and connoisseurs of Mexican food?”
    She glanced at her friends, none of them watching, then slid onto the stool and folded her hands on the tabletop. “Connoisseurs of margaritas, actually—but yes to the ‘adventurer’ part, too. We’ve scaled high peaks, braved dark caves, and hiked until our feet blistered. We even dared to attend the Tulsa State Fair with a group of twenty, rode every ride and sampled every food available. On opening day, no less.”
    “I’m impressed.”
    Her smile appeared suddenly, softening the seriousness of her expression. “Don’t be. You saw the high peak and the cave, and the hiking trail was paved. But the state fair…it was two thumbs-up until Jessy puked up a funnel cake and a fried Snickers on the Ferris wheel. From the top. The people below were not happy.”
    “Jessy—the redhead?”
    Carly nodded, and a thick strand of her hair, worn down tonight, fell from her shoulder to dangle over a sweater the color of a fine Italian red wine. “Never ride a Ferris wheel with her.”
    Like that’s gonna happen. He’d never been fond of amusement park rides when he had two good legs to escape if he got trapped at the top. Not even a pretty woman like Jessy—or a prettier one like Carly—could entice him to put his life in the hands of old equipment and traveling carnies.
    His cell phone rang, and he fumbled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, then muted it. Carly moved as if to leave. “You can take that.”
    “Nah. No name. I don’t answer calls with no name.”
    She smiled faintly. “Afraid the command’s trying to call you in to work?”
    He made a stab at smiling, too. Caller ID had made it more difficult for first-line supervisors to call people in; most soldiers knew better than to answer a call that likely meant work. The first-line supervisors had started blocking their numbers when they called, so their subordinates had stopped answering blocked calls, too.
    He set the phone aside, screen down, and returned to the subject. “Why margaritas? Why not wine or cosmos or lagers?”
    “To drown our sorrows, and because not one of us would willingly drink a cosmo or lager.”
    The face she made showed what she thought of the last two, and he deliberately wrapped his hand around the label