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

on his bottle. The muscles in his neck tightened, a little bit of guilt because he knew something about her of which she wasn’t aware. Hell, that was why he’d come here tonight, even after he’d tried to talk himself out of it. He’d known she would be here, and he’d wanted to…just see her. That was all.
    The guilt made the next question—the obvious question—difficult to get out, but he managed, sounding relatively normal, he thought. Not like he already knew. Not like he particularly cared. “Do you have a lot of sorrows?”
    Her expression saddened, and she fingered the wedding band a moment before putting on a resigned face and answering. “We’ve all lost our husbands or fiancés in combat. Around here, they call us the Fort Murphy Widows’ Club, though not to our faces. We prefer the Tuesday Night Margarita Club. It’s a little more frivolous. A little less mournful. And you don’t have to say you’re sorry. You were there, weren’t you? In Iraq or Afghanistan.”
    He nodded. “Both. Four years.”
    “You’ve lost a lot, too.”
    He wondered for one cold instant if she knew, but she went on.
    “Time, hope, illusions. Friends.”
    His throat narrowed, with both unrealized fears and the sad fact that she was right, and he nodded again. She understood as much as it was possible for someone who’d never been there. She wouldn’t ask for war stories, for the retelling of close calls to leave her breathless. She wouldn’t ask if he had killed anyone, or how many, or how it had felt. She wouldn’t relish the details the way so many people did.
    With a fortifying breath he would have missed if he hadn’t been watching so closely, she picked up the magazine open in front of him, marked his place with her finger and flipped to the cover. “Ah, motorcycles. Man toys. Do you have one?”
    That lump still in his throat made swallowing difficult. “I used to.” Still did, to be honest. The racing bike he’d bought in Italy was in storage with his household goods, waiting for him to land someplace permanently, where he would likely sell it. Like those gorgeous palominos Sunday, the Ducati seemed way out of his league now. His limbs were already 25 percent bionic; he didn’t want to take a shot at losing any more.
    “I prefer totally enclosed vehicles myself, but you Airborne guys like to fly, don’t you?”
    “The need for speed.” There was nothing quite like going a hundred and fifty miles per hour on the bike, besides free-falling at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Freedom, exhilaration…and a world of hurt or death if anything went wrong. Kind of like combat. They all got your adrenaline pumping.
    The waitress set a steaming platter on the table, then added a plate with the makings for fajitas. Carly inhaled deeply. Then she met his gaze, reluctance in her hazel eyes. “I should get back before they come looking for me and find you. You’d be stuck with eleven of us tonight.”
    “Yeah.” He sounded reluctant, too, that one word all he could say. All he would let himself say. Not Stay awhile longer. Certainly not Can we meet again?
    She stood, but instead of saying good-bye and leaving, she looked at him. “Three times now, and I don’t know your last name.”
    “Clark.” He gave a flippant salute. “Staff Sergeant Dane Clark.” The same rank as her dead husband whose ring she still wore nearly two years after his death.
    Her smile softened, and so did something inside him. “I’ll see you around, Staff Sergeant Clark.”
    It was hunger, he told himself as she wiggled her fingers in the smallest of waves, then walked away. He hadn’t had fajitas in nearly two years, and he couldn’t remember what he’d had for, or even if he’d had, lunch. Just hunger.
    And the hell of it was, it was true.
    He just wasn’t hungry for food.
    His phone beeped while he was finishing the first fajita. He turned it over, pressed view later, and assembled a fajita. He hadn’t lied when he’d