Love, Tussles, and Takedowns (Cactus Creek #3)(17)

She shook her head sadly. “He tried a few years ago. But they didn’t follow-up and honestly, I can’t really blame them. He was a high school kid telling them that their intel from years prior had been wrong. That he had strong evidence suggesting some of those men’s remains are there waiting to come home. That at least two might have survived, if they hadn’t been captured and tortured afterward. And that he’d obtained his information by hacking into multiple government-secured sites along with sources in the Middle East that he couldn’t disclose. I actually think they specifically didn’t say anything to protect him from himself.”

Hudson slid his hand over hers. “Do you believe him?”

Glancing up to meet his gaze, she nodded. “Yes.”

“And I also believe that whether Leo’s alive or not, Drew is prepared to spend his entire life finding some way to bring him home one day.”





CHAPTER FIVE


HUDSON TOOK OUT his phone. “Give me Drew’s information. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll contact folks on my end and see what I can do. Back then, it was a lot tougher to follow-up on casualties but the climate of the war has changed. I’ll make some calls. You said it was only a few months after he deployed?” He typed some notes to himself on his phone, grimacing at his left hand’s inability to cooperate fully.

“Yes, but he entered with JROTC from high school.”

“So he was a Private First Class.”

She nodded.

He stopped screen-tapping for a bit. “I’ll do everything I can to help you and Drew bring him home, I promise.”

The fact that he’d just promised the most beautiful, enthralling woman he’d ever met that he’d help bring her husband home wasn’t lost on him.

Neither was the part about him just creating a tether between their lives for the unforeseeable future.

As if she could read his thoughts, she placed a hand atop his forearm and informed him, “I’m not pining, you know.”

“It’s completely understandable if you were.”

“I can say with certainty that absolutely everyone in my life disagrees. They all think eight years is way too long for me to still be in mourning.”

“Are you? Still in mourning?” He had to know. Not that he could stop this train wreck that was his growing attraction for the woman if she were…or act on it if she weren’t.

“No. I stopped mourning about four years ago. Around the point where Drew literally came to my shop, shoved one of his single teacher’s phone numbers in my hand, and told me that he was giving me permission to stop being sad about his brother.”

One day, Hudson really hoped he’d get a chance to meet this kid.

“Drew reminded me then that it had been over four years since Leo’s disappearance, which was exactly one year longer than the time I’d spent with him when he had been here. I hadn’t done the math on that, or even looked at it that way until then.” She smiled. “Then he proceeded to try and sell his eight grade biology teacher to me, saying he’d hacked into one of those dating sites to get the algorithm for a good match between couples, plugged in everything he knew about me and all the single, decent-looking teachers in his school.” A droll smile hit her lips. “Apparently, the biology teacher was the winner.”

He couldn’t picture her with a biology teacher.

Probably because he couldn’t picture her with any other man but himself.

Dammit. No.

“So you’re saying you’ve dated other men.”

“Three. To be sadly exact.” She chuckled. “But yes. So no pining here.”

“So last night’s drinking extravaganza…”

“Was my celebrating Leo’s twenty-first birthday. For him.” She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “With him in a way, if he’s still alive.”

Surprised, he stepped back to see if she was telling the whole truth. “So yesterday wasn’t your wedding anniversary? Or the anniversary of Leo’s death? The town data seems to be split on that one.”

Her sigh was long, but tiredly affectionate. “I should clear that up for them. Every year, on Leo’s birthday, I have several ‘twenty-first birthday drinks’ as I would’ve done for him had he been here. Remember, he and I were friends first and foremost. And since he’d been not just literally but figuratively a boyscout, he’d never had a drink in his life. When his twenty-first birthday rolled around six years ago, not too long after my own, I went to a bar to have a few drinks. And when I repeated the tradition the year following, it then became an annual thing.”

“But everyone swears you get drunk out of your mind because you’re depressed.”

“No, I get depressed because everyone looks at me with pity all night long. And yes, I do drink a lot when that day comes around each year, but that’s only because they all keep buying me drinks all night long. I swear, I haven’t paid for a single drink during these annual traditions in the last three years.”

Despite the massive information avalanche the last few hours had been, Hudson couldn’t help but marvel at his final big takeaway from the day. “This town is kind of great.”

She grinned. “Yeah.”

“So do all of the town’s efforts to get you drunk help you celebrate with Leo? You mentioned ‘with’ earlier.”