The Military Wife (A Heart of a Hero, #1)(20)

At his reticence, she waved her hands in a “gimme more” gesture. “How do you know I’m stubborn?”

“You’re not denying it?” He moved to the nearest rack and straightened hangers for something to do.

She gave an impatient-sounding huff. Or maybe the sound landed closer to pissed off. “Whether or not I’m stubborn has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Did Noah talk about me or something?”

“A bit.” More than a bit. All the damn time, if he was truthful. But, beyond that, Noah had gotten into the habit of reading Harper’s emails and occasional letter out loud. They’d been chock-full of humor and wit and normalcy. She had helped Bennett understand what they were fighting for even though he didn’t have anyone to protect. No one to live for.

“What does ‘a bit’ mean exactly?” She raised one eyebrow, the corner of her mouth ticked up to match.

Their only other meeting had been a few weeks after Noah was killed. Bennett had been injured in the same raid. Bad enough to get sent stateside and be given a Purple Heart. She’d been heavily pregnant and sallow faced and red eyed, her hair scraped back into a limp ponytail. A familiar black cloak of grief had weighed across her shoulders. The same outfit had stared back at him from the mirror every morning.

A different woman stood in front of him now. This one crackled with energy, with no hint of the guilt and grief that still plagued him. Somehow she’d come out the other side of Noah’s death with her hope intact, or at least refurbished.

“Did Noah talk about me?” she asked again. “About us?”

He refused to look her in the eye and admit her letters to Noah had provided him a lifeline. “Nights were long and lonely. It helped to talk. And Noah wanted to talk about you. He loved you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Her voice had softened.

He made the mistake of looking at her. Her eyes were a striking hazel framed by her thick golden-brown hair. What would she look like in the sunlight with a smile on her face? She was pretty in a way that made his chest ache.

Pity hid poorly in her eyes. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? He shook off the feelings of melancholy. “You seem to be doing well. You have a son.”

“I am, and I do. He’s five. Happy and good natured and sweet.”

“Like his dad then.” As soon as the words were out, Bennett wanted them back. “Or maybe like you, I don’t know—”

“No, he’s a mini-Noah in attitude if not looks.”

Noah had been over-the-moon excited that he was going to be a daddy. One bullet was all it took to steal that dream. The promise he’d made to Noah standing in the middle of a soybean field in Georgia still bound him to Harper no matter that he’d tried to break it with his gift of money.

“His name is Ben?”

“You didn’t know Noah wanted to name him after you?”

“Not really. No.” He remembered joking about the possibility with Noah, but the reality was sobering. And humbling.

The ensuing silence made him shift away from her stare. A shudder made its way down his back. Sarge had told him tall tales about a Mississippi swamp witch who stole poor wanderers’ souls. Harper looked prepared to extract his painfully.

“I’m glad things are well with you,” he said. “We’ve established I’m not taking the money back, so if there’s nothing else you need, I have work to do.” He walked away. His destination? Anywhere but next to her.

His rudeness was inexcusable, but he needed this woman gone and out of his life. The longer he was around her, the worse his insides became tangled. In BUD/S, an unknottable knot was called a whammy. Harper was his whammy.

“Actually, we have not established that fact.” She had followed him into the storage area in back of the shop where he kept equipment for overnight bookings. The lighting was dim. “But I’ll let it go for now, because I have other questions.”

He found a shadow and parked himself in it. Old habits. Even after all these years, his hands felt empty without a gun. Instead, he clasped Jack London’s fur, the softness and warmth a salve. “What kind of questions?”

“You were with Noah when he died.”

He hoped she couldn’t see his face. “Who told you that?”

“Allison Teague. Darren’s wife. Is it true?”

Truth, lie. Black, white. Dream, nightmare. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t telling her or anyone else. “You need to leave, Harper.”

The warning in his voice seemed to have no effect on her. She stepped closer. “Not until you tell me about the night he died.”

“Ask for the report.” He left the shadows feeling like a wild animal being chased out of its hidey-hole and pushed the back door open. The cold air washed over him and helped control the blaze of memories she’d sparked.

“I have and they sent me some vague bullshit meant for civilian consumption. I want to know if he was in pain. If he said anything. I want to know what his last moments were like.”

The wind tumbled her hair around her face and shoulders, her shiver noticeable. In spite of the hardships Harper had endured, she retained an enviable purity and innocence. People like Harper were familiar with TV death. Movie death. Not the stark reality of your best friend bleeding out in your arms. The pain of watching life leak out of Noah’s eyes, painfully, slowly, with a recognition of all the years he would miss with the love of his life and the child he’d never meet.