Hearts Divided (Cedar Cove #5.5)(77)

“He never talked about what he saw?”

“Never,” Gram said.

“What?” Elizabeth asked softly when Gram’s frowning expression told her there was more.

“I’ve wondered if he talked to Nick. If they talked to each other. There were times, especially after Charles’s stroke, when they’d go to the orchard and stand side by side gazing at the trees. I’d think they weren’t speaking, but maybe they were, in the way men do. One word, when we might have used a thousand. And, on occasion, a solemn nod. They wouldn’t have needed many words, of course. Wouldn’t have needed to explain. They’d both seen the unspeakable.”

“Both?”

Gram’s unpatched eye opened, concerned.

“Both, Gram?”

“Nick hasn’t had a chance to tell you yet.”

Oh yes, he has. Whatever it was Nick hadn’t told her, it wasn’t because he hadn’t had the opportunity to do so. Choice, not chance, determined what he’d shared. A choice Nicholas Lawton had every right to make.

“Tell me what?”

“He spent some time in the military.”

Enough time, Gram had already revealed, to see the unspeakable. “Close your eye,” Elizabeth ordered.

“Not until you stop looking so upset.”

Elizabeth flashed a smile. “How’s that?”

“Unconvincing.”

“I’m fine! So Nick hasn’t mentioned his military service to me. Why should he?”

“My vision may have been problematic, but my hearing hasn’t. Nick cares about you, Elizabeth. And you care about him. Please remember, darling girl, that our men, our soldiers, need to be able not to tell us about their battles. And because we love them, and trust them, we can give them that gift.”

Gram closed her eye then, and moments later drifted off to sleep.

“’Night, dearest Gram,” Elizabeth whispered as she withdrew. “I love you.”

She stood at the top of the staircase, gathering her emotions. So Nick had omitted that key bit of data about his life. So what? He was under no obligation to tell her anything—much less everything.

This was far from a betrayal. Elizabeth knew betrayal—Matthew’s—and had weathered it admirably.

The only trouble was she hadn’t been in love with Matthew….

Nick was outside, in the orchard, standing in the precise spot—perhaps—where he and Granddad had shared in silence as much as in words the secrets of men who went to war.

He smiled as she approached. “How is she?”

“Sleeping.”

Nick’s smile went away. “How are you?”

“How long were you in the military?”

“Twelve and a half years. Elizabeth—”

“You told me you’d always been a handyman.”

“I told you,” he said quietly, “that from the time I was seven, whenever I saw something that needed to be fixed, I wanted to fix it. That’s the reason I became a soldier. I believed I could help make the world a better place. I knew, at least, that I had to try.” He met her eyes. “I didn’t lie to you. And when I told you about the things Charles might have seen in battle, the fear and rage he might have felt, I was talking about myself. I was telling you, Elizabeth, more than I’ve ever told anyone…more than I ever believed I would.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“About my military service? No. There isn’t. And I understand what that means. You didn’t know the man I was before I went to war. You can’t know, as Clara knew about her Charles, that I’d have died before committing—”

“I do know that, Nick!” On faith, she thought. On love. “I do.”

“There is something else I want to tell you.”

Elizabeth shivered, but not from fear about what he’d reveal. She trusted this man. Believed in this man. “Okay.”

“I love you.”

“Nick…”

He shivered, too. Not from fear. Her shining eyes gave him her reply.

Elizabeth saw his joy. His desire.

Then he was touching her, holding her head as he gazed at her, wanting her.

“Nick?”

“I love you.”

As his mouth found hers, her hands curved over his wrists. She tasted his desire, felt his strength. He had the power to crush her…or to protect her with everything he had.

The kiss ended with a sigh, and a promise. There’d be more, so much more.

His lips caressed her fingertips as he spoke. “I’ve been wondering what kept me alive, kept me believing the fight was right and good. I’d always thought it was the memory of these trees, this orchard, a farmhouse glowing gold.”

“You moved here three years ago.”

“I returned here then.”

“Oh.”

“But there was more to the memory, one I’d give my life to protect—a place where a lovely little girl was free to chase the twinkling Christmas lights on the apple trees she loved…and where, even when she sat sobbing at the end of the driveway, she was safe from harm.”

“Because,” she whispered, “her hero happened by.”

“A lonely boy happened by.”