Navy Seal Promise

He always felt warm when he thought of the innkeeper. She’d often cooked for him, baked for him. Long before she married Cole and gained Gavin as a stepson, she’d let Kyle sleep in the linens she tended as religiously as the landscaping. He’d done homework at her kitchen table. He’d laughed himself silly chasing a giant Irish wolfhound named Rex across the kempt lawn—a lawn he’d regularly mowed as a teen to keep his Jeep full-up on gas.

He’d caught crab for supper from the traps tied off her dock, had learned to fish and swim there, had tied his first skiff there. It was also there he’d kissed a girl for the first time, hunkered down in the butterfly bushes. Amelia Blankenship. They were almost eleven. She wore pomegranate lip balm.

He’d slipped her the tongue, and she’d told his mother. He then spent two weeks sulking without video games as penance. But not two years later Amelia started cornering him behind the lockers at school looking for a French partner, and all was forgotten.

As Kyle shifted from the leather seat of his hog and planted his hard-soled riding boots in the gravel, he wondered if he’d be able to stick around long enough to catch the sunset from Hanna’s. There was nothing like the view from her sunporch at the day’s end.

He should know. He’d seen the sun set most everywhere.

The bells chimed over the door to Flora as he entered the shop, the sound as comforting as it was timeless. He stuffed his gloves in the riding helmet and tucked it against his side. The girl—well, woman—behind the checkout counter and the old-fashioned cash register was built like a willow branch. She had short-cropped raven-colored hair in a punk-ish sweep. There was a teensy diamond stud in the crease of her nose and several others creeping up the shell of her ear. She wore black makeup, black clothes. She always dressed in black, even in the thick of summer.

She was a carbon copy of his mother without the red hair neither of them had managed to inherit. Adrian’s freckles had faded out long ago, but they remained on Kyle’s sister, dark and splattered every which way across pale features. Still, the woman before him was so small even holding her as a child in arms, arms that had felt clumsy and reckless, Kyle had wondered that they could be so closely related.

He was eight when his mother married his biological father, James. And he was just shy of ten when the sibling he’d wished for with every fiber of his being was at last born. Not a brother like he’d wanted. But a sibling just the same.

When the door closed behind him, encasing him in the fresh, sweet-scented showroom, she didn’t look around. Her head bent over a large open book, she recited in a bored monotone, “Welcome to Flora, Fairhope’s finest florist. How may I assist you?”

“Damn,” Kyle muttered, backtracking. “This ain’t the cathouse.”

Mavis’s spine straightened. Her head whipped. Dark eyes pinned him to the spot, the muscles of her face momentarily slack in a rare show of surprise. “Kyle?” It wasn’t so much a question as a demand. “You’re home,” she stated, combing him.

“Just.”

“You didn’t call,” she said, accusing now. A well-worn scowl pulled at her insouciant mouth. “Typical of you to just show up and give everybody the shock of the month.” A fist came to rest against her hip. “Jackass.”

“Pipsqueak,” he threw back.

“Nimrod.”

“Tightwad.”

“Meathead.”

The corners of his lips moved. “Meathead?”

He watched hers waver. “Yeah. That’s what I said. Meathead.”

He couldn’t stop it. He broke into a fond grin. “Get over here.”

Mavis had never been one for public displays of affection. Despite that and the tough love she volleyed routinely back at him in spades, she moved toward him. When he wrapped her tight against his chest, she stood only slightly stiff in his embrace.

“Miss me?” he whispered, his cheek against her hair.

“Eh.”

A quiet laugh rumbled through him before he let her go.

She gave him another study. “At least you’re intact. Wilderness Man.”

Kyle skimmed his knuckles over the unruly beard. “Yeah, I could probably do with a shave, huh?”

“You’re going to need a bush-hog to rid yourself of that mess.” Eyes widening, she asked, aiming to tease, “Didn’t lose any more of the family jewels, I take it.”

He hissed through his teeth. “Can’t afford it. What’s left is here, standing right in front of you,” he added when she continued to eyeball him, waiting for a solid answer on the health front. She blinked, and the relief was gone, but the glimpse of emotion he gleaned made his stomach tighten just the same. “What about you? How’re you doing?”

“No complaints.” When his brows hitched and he scrutinized her much as she’d scrutinized him, she repeated, “I said no complaints.”

“Good,” he said after a second’s longer study. Mavis had been treated for epilepsy since she was a little kid. “And how’s business?”

“Fine,” she admitted.

“Mmm-hmm. Any, uh—” he fanned his fingers in the air “—sightings lately?”

She smirked, banding her arms over her chest. “You know that’s confidential.”

Mavis had an unusual job description and loose hours to go with it. When she wasn’t tied up doing paranormal investigation, she filled the needs of her parents and their various industries—Flora, Carlton Nurseries, Bracken Mechanics and his father’s latest and fondest project, a start-up company called Bracken-Savitt Aerial Application & Training. Or B.S., for short. “You’re being careful out there at least,” he said. “Right?”

“God, Kyle. It’s not like I chase zombies or supervillains or whatever it is you do.”

“Just ghosts and ghouls,” he asserted. He digressed. “Where’s Mom?”

“Greenhouse,” she told him. “You better have brought her something. Seeing you’s bound to knock her over.”

He flicked the end of her button nose. She dodged and swiped. Bringing her against his side, he pecked a quick kiss to her temple. “Plans for dinner?” he asked as he backtracked to the entry door.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She crossed her eyes at him.

He rolled his at her and pushed his way out into the heat. “I’m still waitin’ for directions to that cathouse.”

“Drive hard due west,” she called at his back. “When you hit the bay, hold your breath and keep going!”

He chuckled again when the door closed behind him. He followed the path through the silver sale buckets and past an impressive display of succulents planted between the slats of an Old West wagon wheel. Around the side of the building, a wheelbarrow overflowed with annuals and a pineapple-shaped fountain burbled just before the wide-parted doors of Flora’s greenhouse.

He heard the clomp of the stem cutter before he was even part of the way through. Inside, it was sweltering. The hanging plants and tables of vegetation soaked up the humidity. Kyle was already sweating under his cotton T-shirt when he rounded the corner and saw his mother chopping the stems off her latest delivery of fresh roses. The blade swung down, decisive under the guiding stroke of her hand. She worked by rote, quick, efficient in a red apron labeled with the Flora logo and thick work gloves to ward off any ill will from thorns.

He reached into the leg pocket of his cargoes and pulled out the wrapping with his offering inside. “Howdy.”

Adrian’s head rotated quickly, and she stopped.

It took her a moment. Kyle knew with the beard, and his hair grown out a good ways, that the resemblance between his father and himself was striking. He watched it sink in. Her hands fell away from the cutter, and her mouth parted. With her, the emotions bled through him easily and he let them, smile going soft. “Is this where you keep Dad’s testicles?” When she continued to gaze, slack with surprise, he went on. “Mav and I. We’ve always wondered.”

Her lips closed and her throat moved on a swallow. Though her eyes filled, she pulled in a breath and offered him a smile in return. “Why do you think I germinate the best bulbs in five counties?” The mist in her eyes grew until she blinked. She lifted her shoulders, taking him in. “Oh, my God, Kyle.”

“Hey,” he said, as her hands rose to her face and she lowered it into them. He crossed to her and spanned his arms around her. It was easy to hold her, much as it was once easy for her to hold him. When a silent sob tremored through her, he cradled her closer and rocked, side to side. He gave a small, cajoling laugh. “Mom. Hey, it’s okay.”

“Did something happen—to send you home early?”

“I’m fine. My rotation just ended.”