Rules of Engagement

“Were you still working?”

“The work doesn’t stop because the clock says it should.”

She gestured to the sofa. “Is merlot all right? I know it’s not trendy anymore, but my wine choices don’t follow fads.”

“Sounds good.”

He wandered over to her window, glancing around the room as she poured the wine.

She gestured toward the tray of food. “I snagged some food from the restaurant.”

He picked up an artichoke puff. “Looks better than the hamburger I had for dinner.”

She groaned. “I feel the guilt of four generations. I shouldn’t have let you leave the restaurant without insisting on dinner.”

“Hamburgers aren’t lethal.”

Tess sipped her wine. “I’m sorry I read your letters.”

“I guess that was because of your brother.”

“Yes,” she admitted.

She dug a bare toe into the hand-knotted silk rug that covered the oak floor. “I was touched by the way you wrote about the Iraqis.”

He shrugged. “They’re real.”

“And how you wrote about the men under your command.”

“Also real.”

She swallowed. “Especially the ones you lost.” She met his eyes, reacting to their startling shade of blue. She wanted to get past this small talk, to tell him that she felt as if she knew him, really knew him. That she wanted to talk with that man, the one she was sure would understand about David.

“It’s all right.”

“All right?”

“To ask what you want.”

What to ask first? She couldn’t decide. So she talked about David, about who he’d been, what had mattered to him. Then she had to know. “Were you scared?”

“Only a fool thinks he’s invincible.”

“And you’re not foolish.” She cleared her throat. “Does it bother you to talk about this?”

“It depends. Some people want to be armchair quarterbacks—telling me how it should have been done. Some people want gruesome details. It’s bad enough I lived through that part once. I don’t need an instant replay. But you want to know how it was for David. That’s different.”

“I hate to think about him being scared or alone.”

Cole’s smile was rueful. “In the Army you’re never alone.”

“David’s letters never told me how it really was over there. It didn’t occur to me when I read them that he was still being the older brother.”

“I thought you were twins.”

“He was born first, never let me forget it.” She smiled at the memory. “I wish he hadn’t felt the need to be so protective.”

“If you’re worried that he didn’t have anyone to talk to, don’t. That’s what battle buddies are for.”

“But you wrote letters that went below the surface.”

“Most of them were to my dad. He served in Vietnam. I could share things with him I couldn’t with other people.”

“It’s lucky you took the laptop.”

He paused for a long time. “Yeah. Lucky.” She wondered what he was leaving unsaid.

“Is that something many officers do?”

“Pretty much.”

“I keep thinking what a waste it was. All of it. David and the others who died. They had so much to give…now they’re just…gone. He never married, didn’t have any children. He would’ve been such a good father.” She couldn’t hide the entreaty in her voice. “Didn’t you feel that when you lost one of your soldiers?”

“I thought a lot of things. Sure, about their families they’d left behind. But, no, I don’t consider their heroism a waste.”

“When David was deployed, I was a little scared for him, but mostly proud. I believed in what he did, in how important our country and values are, how we have to keep that safe. I could recite the World War II heroics of my grandfather and his brothers by rote. And I’m not discounting what they did at that time. It mattered. Then it mattered. It was a different world back then. I don’t think there’s anything to idealize about this war.”

“What do you say to the people who thank us for their freedom?”

“What do they have to say to me? To my family?”

“Every time I lost someone under my command I struggled with what to tell his family, to let them know the sacrifice counted.”

“Your letters were kind…insightful,” she admitted. “But how do you rationalize the incredible loss of life? Especially young people who haven’t really had time to know better? Eighteen, nineteen years old? They aren’t even old enough to declare a major in college but they have to decide whether they’re giving up their lives? No. It’s not right! Not for a manufactured war.”

“What we did…what David did…it mattered.”

Tess could scarcely see beyond her fury. “When you ask young men and women to lay down their lives, they deserve to know the real reason they’re doing it.”

“The reality isn’t sound bites on the news or the supposedly in-depth reports either. It’s seeing the crushing grief, the need for hope and knowing you’re it—the only hope. And when you lose one of your own people, you mourn the life that could have been. And then you go on soldiering.”

Tess wanted to call him an impostor. The man who’d written the letters she’d read couldn’t believe it was all right. He just couldn’t.

CHAPTER FOUR

COLE WALKED DOWN the long curved driveway, past the patio to the big three-car garage. As he’d known he’d be, his father was surrounded by motorcycle parts and tools. Since Cole’s childhood, John Harrington had carried on a passionate love affair with Harley Davidson. Each restoration had led to another. Old and new, he loved them all. With the sole exception of his family, they were his only loves.

As the oldest, Cole had learned his mechanical skills at his father’s side helping him restore a 1957 Harley Sportster. Others had followed, but that one had always been Cole’s favorite. Since his father had never sold it, Cole suspected he felt the same way.