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The images came with a vengeance. Like a chopped-up snake crawling and coiling together to form a neat picture of hell. A handful of buildings on fire, others ripped apart from the explosion. Blood on the bleached-out sand. The screams for help. The kids.
Why the hell were there kids?
Riley had been trained to rescue military and civilians after the fight, after all hell had broken loose. Had been conditioned to deal with fires, blood, IEDs, gunfire, and being dropped into the middle of it so he could do his job and save lives.
But nobody had ever been able to tell him how to deal with the kids.
PTSD. Such a tidy little label. A dialect that civilians understood, or thought they did anyway. But it was just another label for shit. Shit that Riley didn’t want in his head.
He grabbed his pain meds from the pocket of his uniform and shoved one, then another into his parched mouth. Soon, very soon, he could start stomping the images back into that little shoe box he’d built in his head.
Soon.
He closed his eyes, the words finally coming that he needed to hear.
“Jingle bells, jingle bells...”
He really did need to come up with a more manly sounding song to kick some flashback ass.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_3bac8a22-b62e-5801-97a5-f3746f4c2a22)
“HI DA TOOKIE,” someone whispered.
Riley was sure he was still dreaming. At least, he was sure of it until someone poked him on the cheek.
Hell. What now?
“Hi da tookie,” the voice repeated. Again in a whisper.
Obviously this was some kind of code or foreign language, but Riley’s head was too foggy to process it. He groaned—and, yeah, it was a groan of pain—and forced his eyelids open so he could try to figure out what the heck was going on.
Eyeballs stared back at him.
Eyeballs that were really close. Like, just an inch from his.
That jolted him fully awake, and Riley automatically reached for his weapon. Which wasn’t there, of course. He wasn’t on assignment in hostile territory. He was in his own family’s home. And the eyes so close to his didn’t belong to the enemy.
They belonged to a kid.
A kid with brown eyes and dark brown hair. Maybe two or three years old, and he had a smear of something on his cheek.
“Hi da tookie,” the kid said again. He didn’t wait for Riley to respond, however. He jammed something beneath the pillow.
A cookie, aka tookie.
And it had an identical smell to the one Riley had just been dreaming about. Except it was no dream. Riley realized that when he lifted his head and the crumbs fell onto the collar of his uniform. Hell’s Texas bells. He’d slept on a chocolate-chip cookie. But why the devil was it there in Logan’s bed?
Like the women in his own bed and the gibberish-talking kid, an answer for that might have to wait a second or two because Riley had a more pressing question.
“Who are you?” he asked the kid.
“E-tan,” the boy readily answered.
That didn’t explain much, and Riley wasn’t sure how much a kid that age could explain anyway.
“Tookie,” the boy repeated. He took one of the crumbs from Riley’s collar and ate it.
All right, so maybe that did explain why he’d slept on a cookie-laced pillow. This kid was responsible. But who was responsible for the kid? He didn’t get a chance to find out because the little boy took off running out of the room.
Riley got up. More groaning. Some grimacing, too. The damage to his shoulder and knee weren’t permanent, but at the moment it sure as hell felt like it.
The docs at the base in Ramstein, Germany, had told him he needed at least three more weeks to recover from the surgery to repair the damage done by the shrapnel when it’d slashed into his right shoulder and chest. After that, he’d start some physical therapy for both the shoulder and his wrenched knee. And after that, there would be a medical board to decide if he could continue being the only thing he’d ever wanted to be.
An AF CRO. Short for Air Force Combat Rescue Officer.
It twisted his gut to think that it could all be taken away. That whole “life turning on a dime” sucked donkey dicks, and he could go from being part of an elite special ops force to someone he was darn sure he didn’t want to be.
That was a violation of man-rule number one: don’t be ordinary.
Frustrated with that thought, with the pain and with the whole world in general, Riley headed into the adjoining bathroom. When he came out, the kid was still nowhere in sight.
Brushing away some more cookie crumbs from his uniform, Riley went into the family room to look around. No sign of E-tan there. Someone had cleaned up the party remains, so Riley headed to his own bedroom. Good gravy. The two women were still there, still asleep. Riley was about to wake them, to tell them about the cookie-hiding toddler, but then he caught a whiff of something else.
Coffee. The miracle drug.
And he heard someone moving around in the kitchen. Since Della and her sister, Stella, had sworn on John Wayne’s soul and their mama’s Bible that they would follow Riley’s orders and stay far away from the place, there shouldn’t be any sounds or smells coming from anywhere in the house. Still, if this was a break-in, at least the burglar had made coffee. He might just give up everything of value to get a single cup.
Once Riley hobbled his way to the kitchen, he saw that E-tan had already crawled into a chair at the table. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was sprawling, and even though they had two other dining rooms, Riley had eaten a lot of his meals in this room. In fact, he’d sat in that very chair where the kid was sitting now.
Riley immediately located the cookie source. There was a plate of about a dozen or so of them on the kitchen table. He spotted the source of the moving-around sounds, too.
Another woman.
A blonde this time. Her hair was cut short and choppy and fell against her neck.
This one was very much awake. She was at the stove, her back to him, and she was stirring something in a skillet. Her body swayed a little with each stir, and despite the F-5 tornado in his head, Riley noticed. Hard not to notice since she was wearing denim shorts that hugged a very nice ass.
An ass that was strangely familiar.
She turned slightly to the side when she reached for the saltshaker, and Riley got a look at her face. Familiar all right.
Claire.
A real blast from the past. Calling Claire Davidson a childhood friend was a little like saying the ocean had a bit of water in it. Once they’d been as thick as thieves, but he’d pretty much lost touch with her after he graduated from college.
Riley took a moment to savor the moment. There was always something about Claire that reminded him of home. Of the things he’d left behind. Not that she’d been his to leave, but it always felt a little like that whenever he thought of her. Now he didn’t have to conjure up a memory. She was right there in front of him.
Wearing those nice-fitting shorts.
Riley went to her, slipped his arm around her waist to give her a friendly hug.
And Claire screamed as if he’d just gutted her with a machete.
Along with slapping him upside the head with an egg-coated spatula.
She made some garbled sounds. Hit him again. This time on his already throbbing shoulder. She took aim at him once more, but her common sense must have kicked in, and she looked at his face.
“Riley, my God, you scared the life out of me!”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” He didn’t mean to sound grouchy, but hell in a handbasket, that spatula had hit the wrong spot.
Claire’s face flushed red. Then she smiled. And despite his eyes watering in pain, he had no trouble seeing it. That smile always lit up the room, and it gave him a sucker punch of attraction. But as Riley had done since about the time he’d first sprouted chest hair, he stepped back. For the past fifteen years or so, Claire had been hands-off.
Not that she’d ever actually been hands-on.
Evidently she didn’t have the same rules about the hands-off part. She put her arms around him, pulled him really, really close to her for a hug. He wasn’t able to bite back a grunt of pain so the hug was short and sweet.
“I’m so sorry.” Claire grabbed a tea towel, began to wipe the egg off his face. “I heard about your injury, of course.”
Judging from the noodle banner, so had everyone in town. “I’ll be fine. I just need a few weeks to recover.”
At best, that was wishful thinking. At worst, an out-and-out lie. It was a sad day when a man lied to himself, but right now Riley needed anything that would get him through this.
Lies and oxycodone.
She stared at him, made a sound as if she hadn’t fully bought his answer. Her smile faded. “Should I ask how much you’re hurting right now?”
This was easy. “No.”
Claire nodded, maybe even looked relieved. Good. Because if she was uncomfortable talking about it, then maybe it wouldn’t come up again.
“About an hour ago someone dropped off an Angus bull that Logan bought,” she said as if this were a normal conversation. It wasn’t, but he guessed this was her way of chit-chatting about anything but his injury. “It must have been worth a fortune the way they were treating it. The men wore white gloves when they touched it. Don’t worry. One of the guys took care of the paperwork and such.”
By guys, she probably meant one of Logan’s assistants from the office in town. Or maybe a ranch hand who tended the horses and cattle that came and went through the stables and grounds on the property. Other than a couple of riding horses for their personal use, none of the livestock stayed too long, just enough for Logan to make whatever amount of money he intended to make off the deal. As a broker, Logan usually dealt in bulk purchases.
Since Riley hadn’t been home in nearly six months, he wasn’t sure exactly who was on his brother’s payroll for McCord Cattle Brokers or for managing the livestock on the grounds. His payroll, too.
Technically.
But while the house would always be Riley’s home, it was Logan’s heart and soul in the family business. Logan had been as happy to stay put, and buy and sell cattle as Riley had been to head out for more exciting pastures.
He looked out the back bay window at the sprawl of green grass, streaked with white fences and dotted with a dozen barns, corrals, the hands’ quarters and outbuildings. Everything looked exactly the same as it always had down to the yellow Lab sleeping under one of the shade trees. Both a blessing and a curse as far as Riley was concerned.
“How’d you get from the San Antonio airport?” she asked.
“Taxi.”
That earned him a raised eyebrow because Claire likely filled in the blanks. Riley hadn’t called anyone to come and get him because he didn’t want to see anyone. And he hadn’t rented a car because he was in too much pain to drive. It’d been worth every penny of the hundred-dollar cab fare to get a driver who hadn’t asked him a single question.
“Logan called the house phone earlier to check and make sure you got in all right,” Claire went on after lowering that eyebrow. “He said he didn’t want to call your cell and risk waking you. Oh, and no one’s been able to get in touch with Lucky yet.”
That was all right. He didn’t want to deal with Lucky. Or Logan for that matter. They were his big brothers, and he loved them—most days anyway—but Riley wanted to go the less-is-better route with his recovery. Actually, he wanted the none-is-best route.
“Why are you here?” he asked Claire, and since it was probably all related, he added two other questions. “Why are there women in my bed?” No sense asking about the one in Lucky’s because that was often the case. “And who is he?”
Riley tipped his head to the kid, who was now out of the chair and eating the bits of scrambled egg that’d fallen off the spatula and onto the floor.
“Ethan, no. That’s yucky,” Claire scolded, sticking out her tongue and making a face.
She scooped up the little boy, wiping that smear off his cheek. It was chocolate. And in the same motion she eased him back into the chair. A chair with a makeshift booster seat of old phone books.
“Don’t wiggle around, or you’ll fall,” Claire told the kid. “I’ll get you some eggs when they’ve cooled a little. The women in your bed are Wilbert Starkley’s twin granddaughters,” she added to Riley without missing a beat. “The one in Lucky’s room is their sister.”
After she moved the skillet from the burner to the back of the stove, Claire got busy cleaning up the egg mess on the floor. Cleaning off Riley, too.
“Wilbert Starkley’s granddaughters?” Riley repeated. Wilbert owned the town’s grocery store and was someone Riley had known his whole life, which was pretty much the norm for Spring Hill. “No way are those his granddaughters. They’re just kids. The two in my bed are grown women.”
With boobs that jiggled when they breathed.
Claire smiled as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Not kids. They’re nineteen and home from college for the summer. Their sister is twenty-one and works for their dad. Wilbert dropped them off last night, and they fell asleep waiting for you to get in.”
He listened, still didn’t hear them stirring around. “Are they deaf? Or drugged? They slept through your bloodcurdling scream.”
“I guess they’re just deep sleepers. Anyway, when they heard you were coming home to recover and that Della and Stella were on vacation, they wanted to help.”
Claire lifted her eyebrow again on the vacation part of that explanation. With reason. Della and Stella didn’t normally take vacations and never at the same time. One of them was always around to take care of the place and the McCord clan.
“I wanted Della and Stella on vacation. I’m the one who told them to go. And how are those other women supposed to help?” Riley located the biggest cup he could find and filled it to the brim with coffee. Judging from the size of the headache he was going to have to cure, he’d need at least six more cups.
“They want to help by doing things for you so that you can get all the rest you need. That’s why I’m here. To fix you breakfast.”
It wasn’t as if Riley didn’t appreciate Claire’s efforts. He did. However, it didn’t help his confusion that was growing with every new bit of this conversation. “But why are you here? As in here in Spring Hill? Did you move back?”
Claire nodded. “I came back about six months ago when Gran got sick. I still have my apartment in San Antonio, though. I’m still working as a wedding photographer, too. But I’m staying on awhile longer here to clean out Gran’s house so I can get it ready to sell.”
Yeah, that. He had no trouble hearing the grief in her voice. “I was sorry to hear she passed away.”
Claire didn’t even try to dismiss his sympathy. Probably because she couldn’t. She’d been close to her grandmother, and it didn’t matter that the woman was old and had lived a full if not somewhat eccentric life. Claire obviously hadn’t been ready to let her go.
Still multitasking, Claire took out two plates from the cabinet, scooped some of the eggs onto both of them and set the plates on the table. Apparently one of them was for him because Claire motioned for Riley to sit. The other plate was for the kid.
“And who’s the kid?” Riley pressed.
“That’s Ethan, my son. He’s two years old.” She smiled, this time one that only a mother could manage. Ethan gave her a toothy grin right back.
Riley’s attention went straight to her left hand. No ring.
Claire followed his gaze. “I’m not married.”
