She waved a dismissive hand. “It’s a long story.”

Like his brother Jimmy Joe, Troy had a long fuse, but even he had his limits. He clamped down hard on his temper, but he could feel his heartbeat accelerating and the heat starting to pump through his veins. He drawled with deceptive softness, “Like I said before, I’m not goin’ anywhere. Why don’t you just try givin’ me the short version?”

“The short version?” Her voice was brittle with her own suppressed anger, which Troy had enough sense to know he wasn’t the true cause of. “You want the short version. Okay, how’s this? Rebellious young girl living in small Southern town gets pregnant out of wedlock, refuses to do the decent thing and go off to an aunt’s house out of town for the duration to save the families embarrassment and shame, et cetera. Baby’s sensitive teenage father commits suicide, girl gives birth to a son, girl puts baby up for adoption, girl hops the next bus out of town. End of story.” She stopped it there on a choking sound.

Troy didn’t say anything. He drove in narrow-eyed silence while his brain processed all that and his heart pounded like a demon against the wall of his chest. He kept thinking, Wow. And, Okay, you asked for it. And Wow again.

Finally, though, he was hearing those words End of story. And then he realized, Not by a long shot.

This morning he’d thought about circles and coming back to the beginning in order to find the end. And he still thought there was something in that notion. But if Charly was telling him a story, then the part he’d just heard was maybe the first few chapters. All that had happened a long time ago. That was in the past. It was pretty plain to him that there’d been some new chapters added since then. Yesterday that rebellious girl, now all grown up, had come back to that small Southern town to make peace with her past, and instead something had happened, something that had hit her like a Scud missile.

And today? Today he figured she was walking wounded, just trying to figure out a way to live with the pain from one minute to the next.

What troubled him was, he couldn’t for the life of him think of anything he could do to help her. He was a United States Navy SEAL, doggone it, and feeling helpless didn’t sit well with him.

He cleared his throat, knowing he had to say something. “Is that the thing you’re so ashamed of?”

She looked confused for a moment, then remembered and shrugged. “Some of it.” Her voice turned bright and harsh as neon. “Hey, I bet you’re sorry you ever answered that phone, huh?”

Troy gave a little “Huh!” of surprise. Because the truth was, he didn’t know how he felt about that. There was no use denying there’d been a time or two in the past twenty hours or so when he’d had second thoughts about what he’d gotten himself mixed up in.

He looked over at Charly, and for a change she was looking back at him. She had her head tilted at a cheeky angle and a wry smile on her lips, but her eyes were clinging to his, searching and unsure. Maybe he imagined it-it was just for a moment, before he had to pull his gaze and attention back to the business of driving-but he couldn’t shake the notion that he’d seen something in the deep-woods shadows of those eyes. Something looking out at him…like a little girl in her secret hiding place, hoping against hope he was about to find her but expecting him to turn away before he did.

It gave him a strange and, for a strong man and former navy SEAL, a damn unsettling feeling. It made him feel like crying.


“So, what do you do, now that you aren’t in the navy anymore?” Charly asked between bites of her Double-Whammy Super Deluxe Cheeseburger, chasing stray globs of special sauce with a fingertip. “When you’re not bailing delinquent bridesmaids out of jail, that is.”

Since his own mouth was full, Troy couldn’t answer right away. He chewed and thought about it while his gaze rested idly on Bubba, who’d already polished off his three burgers and was sitting at attention with his jaws dripping and his eyes locked onto Troy’s dinner like heat-seeking missiles. He knew what Charly was doing, and he was inclined to let her get away with it. Hell, he’d known guys pinned down and taking heavy fire to pull their kids’ pictures out of their pockets and start exchanging stories about birthday parties.

He swallowed, wiped his mouth with his napkin and cleared his throat. “Not too much, actually. Marybell’s had me doing-”

“Marybell?”

“Yeah, you know, Mirabella.” Charly was looking so stunned, he had to smile. “She didn’t tell you, huh? That’s what Jimmy Joe calls her. Guess it’s startin’ to rub off on the rest of the family.”

She put a hand over her eyes and murmured, “Oh, my Lord.”

“Anyway,” Troy went on, “I’ve been doing some things for her-handyman stuff, you know-gettin’ things ready for the wedding, remodelin’ the house to make a nursery for Amy. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds, let me tell you. Hell, I remember boot-camp instructors who weren’t as hard to please. You know how she is-got to have everything just so.”

Charly smiled wryly. “Sounds like Bella.” She shook her head as if she’d just had her bell rung. “Jeez…Marybell.”

After a moment she gave a sort of cough and aimed a frown in Bubba’s general direction. “So, how is she?”

“Mirabella? She’s fine, I guess. Seems real happy.” Troy thought his smile must be a carbon copy of the lopsided one Charly had just been wearing; it was the way Mirabella affected people. “Sometimes it’s kind of hard to tell. She can be pretty intense.”

Charly chuckled in agreement, and there was a moment’s silence that seemed almost companionable.

The hospital with its cool corridors and beeping monitors and high drama seemed a long way off. They were the only occupants of the fast-food restaurant’s outside tables, since it hadn’t seemed fair to leave poor Bubba tethered to the Cherokee in the heat while they dined in air-conditioned comfort. The breeze Troy had had such hopes for earlier hadn’t lived up to its promise, and the day had the lazy feel of a long late afternoon not quite ready to turn itself over to evening. The insect hum and heat shimmer combined with a stomach full of cholesterol and too little sleep the night before was making Troy feel drowsy and relaxed. He wondered if they were affecting Charly the same way.

He was thinking about asking her if she wanted to go back to the motel and change her clothes, and thinking about the various possibilities of where that might lead, when she suddenly coughed and said, “Well, I hope she is.”

He said, “Pardon?” having completely lost the thread of the conversation.

She had picked up a french fry and was studying it minutely. “Bella. I hope she’s happy. She sure deserves to be.” She sounded gruff, almost angry.

“Doesn’t everybody?” Troy said cautiously.

She hitched a shoulder and popped the french fry into her mouth. “So they say.”

“I sure can’t think why she wouldn’t be happy,” he said after a moment, leaning forward on his elbows to steal one of her fries. “Seems to me she’s got it all-beautiful little baby girl, a good man who happens to think she’s the most wonderful woman ever born…”

“Oh, please.” She made a sound that was more cynicism than laughter and looked away. “Like all it takes to make a woman happy is to keep her barefoot and pregnant? That is just so…Southern.”

“Well, now,” Troy drawled, “last time I looked, women had the vote down here, too. We got women doctors, lawyers…hell, we even got women politicians.”

“Oh, Lord, don’t get insulted.” She laughed and shook back her hair, and he could see it was the physical part of an effort she was making to banish the darkness of her thoughts. “I’m just havin’ trouble picturing Bella living in the South, is all.”

“Lots of people do,” said Troy, with a little shrug to show he wasn’t arguing with her, or trying to convince her of anything. Which he wasn’t. “More an’ more all the time.”

“Well, anyway,” she said lightly, “she sure does think your brother walks on water. You ask me, the man sounds almost too good to be true.”

Troy had to look down to dilute his smile. “Well, I’m afraid he’s the genuine article. Yeah, she got herself a good man there-definitely the pick of the litter.”

“The pick of the litter?” Charly laughed, one of the first sounds of real amusement he’d heard her make, then angled a look at him from under her lashes he could have sworn was flirting. “What about you? You and your brother anything alike?”

“What? Aw, hell no.” He squirmed in the hot plastic seat, all of a sudden feeling something he’d never felt before: self-consciousness, the back of his mind clicking away like an adding machine, totaling up the pluses and minuses of his character and looking for the first time in his life as if it might come up with a deficit. Nothing like a woman, he thought ruefully, to test a man’s confidence.

“Naw,” he said, brazening it out, “Jimmy Joe’s a whole lot smarter’n I am. Sweeter, too.” He grinned at her, showing all his teeth. “But I’m cuter.”

She laughed again, but this time he couldn’t hold her eyes. She looked away, reaching abruptly for her drink.

He watched her lips close around the straw, watched her throat move with her swallow, thinking of all the things he could have said then, all the things he wanted to say…wondering what was in her mind, and if it was anything like what was in his. Because he was thinking again of making love with her, not the way he already had, but the ways he’d like to.

And it occurred to him that in a way, having sex with somebody made it even harder to get to know them. Kind of like two different radio signals trying to come in on the same frequency. Sometimes it was tough to make sense out of either one.