Navy Seal Promise

“They’re verklempt. Nobody ever said you don’t put on a good show.”

“Just sit back and enjoy it, why don’t you?” she suggested. “Coming in again...”

Even she whooped as she made the next sweep. This was worth all the hassle they’d gone through to get the summer show off the ground. They’d haggled for weeks with FAA regulations. With well-trained pilots, they’d managed to rustle together all the right paperwork and get the all-clear from the powers that be.

God, it felt great to be in the cockpit. No way she would ever give it up again. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t give to stay airborne.

Well, there was one thing she wouldn’t give. Harmony’s gaze strayed to the three-by-five photograph she’d taped to the control panel for luck. Her daughter smiled back at her over a ruffle-lined shoulder, curly-headed and coquettish. She was the reason Harmony couldn’t try any of her old barnstorming maneuvers, though the temptation sang. She was the reason Harmony heeded James’s warning and performed fly-bys instead of loops.

Gracie Bea, who’d lost one parent before she was born, was the general reason Harmony toed the line. Because no matter how trained she was, no matter how well-maintained the warbird might be, she couldn’t take risks. She took enough on a day-to-day basis. Aerial application wasn’t low-level aerobatics, but it still held its share of dangers.

Harmony liked being the pilot mama who taught her daughter not to slow down but to run and climb, whoop and holler. Yet she knew her limits, and she heeded them as she’d heeded few other limits in life, even gravity, because no child deserved to grow up an orphan.

It hurt enough that Bea would never know her father, Petty Officer Benjamin Zaccoe—Benji.

“Last pass,” Harmony informed James through the radio. “Ready down there?” A frown pulled at her lips when he didn’t answer. “James?” She was already going in for a dive. She pulled off the final fly-by and tapped her headset. “Tower, do you read?”

Communications must be down, she mused. Wheels down, she executed a safe, only somewhat flashy landing that brought the bird to a standstill in front of the rows of spectators who clambered to their feet and cheered her as she rose from the cockpit and waved. She’d dressed the part in a vintage flying helmet and sheep-lined leather jacket. As had been her trademark in flying days past, she wore her hair in a thick braid over one shoulder.

The warm reception brought her flight buzz to a satisfying conclusion. She stood on the wing of the fighter, gave a salute, and prepared to hop to the grass before she saw James approaching.

“Nice flying, ace.” He nodded, impressed.

She pulled off her helmet. “I lost comms.”

He reached out to grasp the wing’s edge. James was well over six feet tall and had aged well. Very well. His hair and beard were still thick, with some salt and pepper sprinkled through. His tan face only looked worn around the corners of his eyes where laughter had inscribed itself. “Sorry. It was me,” he admitted.

“Why?” she asked. “What happened?”

“I was distracted,” James told her. He turned toward the row of B.S. personnel on the ground. “You can blame that one over there.”

Harmony squinted. Well-worn T-shirt, cargo pants, battered baseball cap over hair that curled brown under the rim and bordered on unruliness. The beard was full enough to rival James’s, and the smile wove a wide path through it. Blue eyes winked at her from under the brim of the hat.

“’Ey, Carrots,” he greeted.

She nearly shuddered. “Kyle!” Hopping down to the grass, she got a running leap on him.

“Umphf!” he groaned under the impact, breaking into a low-rumbling laugh as he grabbed her up off the ground in a fierce hug.

Some hugs had the power to heal all manner of woes. Some were as vital as the bodies they brought together. Harmony tightened her hold around Kyle’s neck. For a moment—a small moment—she let all her anxiety bleed through to the surface where she never let it stray. Not when he was away. She couldn’t think about what he and her brother, Gavin, did. She couldn’t think about the risk of losing either of them where she’d already lost too much.

Ducking her head into Kyle’s shoulder, she felt her brow creasing and the muscles beneath quake with the effort to hold it back. Beating it under, she breathed deep and smelled sunshine, Zest soap and sea salt—smells that were so very Kyle.

He was back. It was her turn to feel verklempt.

“Talk about a hero’s reception,” he murmured.

Her lips curved. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Harm?”

“Hmm?” she mumbled. She felt a bit fuzzy-headed as she pulled back in his embrace. “Oh.” Loosening her grip, she let him set her on the grass. “Sorry. I just... I missed the hell out of you.”

All the fuzziness faded, and her focus sharpened, everything zeroing in on him. As a girl, she’d felt a magnetic pull toward him. He might’ve known her since she was a baby, but Harmony was a woman, damn it, and Kyle Bracken was a man, a soldier, that women noticed.

“You look the same,” he said.

She swore sometimes Kyle still saw her as his best buddy Gavin’s little sister. Did he look at her and see the four-year-old who’d wrecked her bicycle in earth-scorching fashion on the gravel outside his mother’s flower shop? Or the eighteen-year-old he’d tossed into a mud puddle in front of his navy friends? “Is that good?” she asked.

He reached up, touched her hair. Just a brush above the temple where some flyaway strays had pulled free of her braid. “Couldn’t be better.”

She ignored the missed breath and balled her hand into a fist. Throwing it into the rock slab of his shoulder, she knocked him back half a step and startled a short laugh out of him. “You don’t call. You don’t write. You just show up out of the blue to let us know you’re—” She stopped herself just short of saying alive. She licked her lips and shook her head. “You’re nearly as bad as my brother.”

“Ouch,” he said, his good humor fading by a fraction. He touched his shoulder. “You’ve been working on that jab.”

“I’m a mama now, K.Z.B.,” she reminded him. “Somebody’s got to step up their game. Since Benji can’t be here, and with you and Gavin gone more than half the time, I’m the only one left to teach Bea how to breathe fire.”

His face went solemn at the reminder of Benji, of Kyle’s own continual absence. She saw a spark of guilt there. Harmony hadn’t meant to hit him in the tenders. It was easy to forget he even had tender spots. He was built exactly as what he was—an elite fighter. He didn’t exactly wear his emotions on his sleeve. He wasn’t trained that way.

He just got back, she reminded herself. She knew better than most how long it took a soldier to settle after returning home—physically, emotionally, psychologically. And Kyle’s heart reached as wide as the warm Gulf waters. Switching gears quickly, she said, “Bea will be thrilled to bits when she sees you.”

“Not as much as me.”

“Are you staying at The Farm?” she asked, referring to the farmhouse and acres of horse pasture, fields and woods that belonged to Adrian and James. “You could come by. Though you probably want to settle in first.”

“I’ll stay at The Farm for a little while,” he acknowledged. “I’m not sure Mom would have it any other way. It’s not much of a walk from their place to yours.”

That was true. She lived on Bracken land in the mother-in-law suite. When Kyle’s grandfather, Van Carlton, passed away, he and James had built the cozy little house for his grandmother, Edith, while the Brackens moved their family of four into the farmhouse she had no longer wanted to keep up. The arrangement had lasted little more than three years before his grandmother moved to a retirement village in Florida.

When Harmony returned home after Benji’s death, she’d accepted the Brackens’ invitation to live in the empty suite. The arrangement worked for all parties. She couldn’t have very well brought a squalling newborn to the inn like her parents had wanted. They might like the idea of having their grandchild so close, but they also had an established business to run.

And Harmony liked the Bracken lands. She’d enjoyed raising Bea there with not much but honeybees and squirrels for company. The Farm was a rich place to raise a child. Bea had learned to ride in the last year. Adrian and James had even bought her her own pony. The Brackens themselves were generous landlords, understanding and unobtrusive. And it helped that Harmony’s business partner was only a hop, skip and a jump away. B.S. butted up against The Farm and Carlton Nurseries, meaning the commute to work wasn’t half bad either.

“Come by,” Harmony invited. “See Bea. I’ll make macaroni.”

Kyle hissed, reaching for his waistline. “You know my weakness for your macaroni. Just as you know a soldier’s got to watch his form.”

“A spoon or two won’t kill you,” she said, slugging him again in the stomach. Her knuckles did little more than ricochet off the abs underneath his T-shirt. The man was a machine. There were strong men. Ripped men. Then there were men like Kyle who were made of stronger stuff—concrete and rebar. “I’ll make it for Bea. You can gank a few bites off her plate if it makes you feel better. I’ll even throw in a free trim.” She motioned to his neckline. “You’re getting long in the back.” Overseas, he often let it grow out, but hair as thick as his didn’t last long at home without a trim, particularly in the summer.

He scrubbed those peeking brown curls. “It didn’t bother me ’til the humidity hit. Mavis could do it, but it’s a foolish man who asks her to take scissors to his head.”

“You’re afraid of Mavis,” Harmony noted. She shook her head. “I thought you big SEAL types were fearless.”

“Not entirely.”

“What else are you afraid of?” she asked experimentally.

He turned thoughtful. Again, his smile slipped. She wondered at the hitch before it vanished, and he responded. “Sharks.”