One Good Man

“Every time we pulled on our BDUs—” Gofer began.

“Battle dress uniforms,” Jeff explained.

“And smeared on camou-paint,” Gofer continued, “he sang, ‘It Isn’t Easy Being Green.’ So we call him Kermit.”

“And this is Ricochet.” Jeff pointed to a lanky fellow with soft brown eyes and curly brown hair who was nearly as tall as Jeff himself.

“Ma’am,” he responded with a respectful nod. “Brittany.”

“We call him Ricochet,” Gofer, apparently the most talkative of the group, explained, “because he can’t keep still.”

Had Ricochet actually blushed, Jodie wondered, or was his color a trick of the rising sun?

“Unless we’re on a mission,” Jeff added. “Then he’s as focused as a hound on a ham bone.”

“And I’m Trace, Ms. Nathan.” The fourth member of the team was tall and muscular with long, slender hands and the face of a poet. “Short for Tracey, my last name.”

“What do they call you, Mr. Davidson?” Brittany asked.

As one body, the four men snapped to attention and shouted in one voice, “Lieutenant Davidson, sir!”

“At ease,” Jeff ordered with a laugh. “And help these ladies unload their car.”

Jodie swallowed her astonishment. Outcast Jeff Davidson, whom everyone had believed would join Hell’s Angels and die in a bar fight, was an officer and a gentleman? Who would have thought?

Jeff motioned toward the building site. “We set up tables under a canopy and ran a power source. Having the food nearby will speed up our work.”

Jodie opened the van’s hatch. Kermit and Gofer each grabbed a Crock-Pot, Trace manhandled the massive coffeemaker she’d borrowed from the church, and Ricochet tucked a huge cooler under each arm and headed for the tables. Jeff began stacking boxes of baked goods.

“Where’s Brynn?” Jodie asked. “I see her car.”

“Inside.” Jeff used his chin to steady the pile of boxes in his arms. “With Daniel.”

“Another member of your team?”

“Nope,” Jeff called over his shoulder as he followed the other men. “My first client. He’s living with me until the dorm’s finished.”

“Cool,” Brittany said. “Can I meet him?”

“Not now. I need your help.” Jodie winced at the edge to her voice.

She definitely had her work cut out for her. Between feeding ravenous Marines and keeping her daughter away from Jeff’s first resident delinquent, it was going to be a long day.

* * *

FIVE HOURS LATER Jeff sat beneath a sugar maple and devoured a bowl of chili and an Italian sub. The morning had gone well. The timber framing crew from Asheville had arrived immediately after Jodie. Grant and Merrilee had made a brief appearance but had to leave when the vet received an emergency call.

With Jeff and his buddies, assisted by Brynn and Daniel providing additional grunt work, the massive dormitory with kitchen/dining/living room was taking shape. By dark, the framing would be complete, and Jeff and his Marines could add the roof, walls and finishing work over the next few weeks.

An unaccustomed lump blocked his throat. He’d never had friends while growing up in Pleasant Valley, mostly due to his father’s infamous reputation. Jeff hadn’t been like the other kids with their extended families, tidy homes with white picket fences and fathers who didn’t stay raging drunk and beat the crap out of them. And no one had understood better than Jeff that he didn’t belong. He’d built a wall around himself merely to survive.

But the corps had been different. Backgrounds and social status were irrelevant. All that mattered was that a man carried his load, became part of the team and watched his buddies’ backs. Determined to make the grade, Jeff had thrown himself first into training and later into missions with every fiber of his being. As gung-ho, kick-ass, hang-tough as the best of them, he’d not only developed self-esteem, he’d won the unqualified respect and undying loyalty of his men. And he loved them more than he’d loved his own blood kin.

“Dessert?” A soft, musical voice interrupted his thoughts.

Jeff glanced up at Jodie, standing in front of him with a plate of chocolate cake in each hand. He set aside his empty chili bowl and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “If you’ll join me.”

Her creamy complexion blushed like a Georgia peach. “I have to—”

“You’ve served everyone else. They’re fine.”

Jodie glanced across the clearing as if hoping to prove him wrong, but the framing crew, gathered at the back of their pickups, held full plates. Brynn, flanked by Brittany and Daniel, sat under the canopy at a makeshift table of planks and sawhorses. Gofer and Kermit had set up a chessboard on a nearby stump and were engrossed in a game. Picking up trash and stray tools and, as usual, unable to stay in one place, Ricochet wandered the work site. Trace reclined on the porch steps with his nose in a novel, Cold Mountain, whose namesake stood just over the North Carolina line near the Blue Ridge Parkway, fifty miles north.

Jeff patted the ground beside him. “Sit with me.”

With the tension of a wild animal trapped with no place to run, Jodie handed him a plate and sank beside him.

“I won’t bite,” he said.

“Hmmmph.” She avoided his eyes. “Thought you Marines ate civilians for lunch.”

He lifted the plate with its thick wedge of cake. “Only when there aren’t such delicious alternatives.”

Not that Jodie wasn’t delicious in her own way. The delicate fragrance of her magnolia-scented shampoo teased his nostrils and fanned a hunger unrelated to food. He stowed his desire and put a lock on it. He had promises to keep, and no woman, not even one as pretty as Jodie, could distract him.

“You have a name for this place?” she asked.

Jeff shrugged. “I’ve always called it home, such as it is.”

“I mean your project, your camp. It has to have a name.”

He’d named it, all right. Maybe if Jodie knew the story behind that name, she’d be more amenable to helping later. “I’m calling it Archer Farm.”

“Archer? As in bows and arrows?” She seemed confused.

“Archer, as in Captain Colin Archer,” Jeff said quietly, steeled against the pain the name evoked.

“One of your team?” She indicated the Marines scattered across the building site.

“The best of our team, but he’s not here today. Except in spirit.”

Jodie took a bite of chocolate cake and waited for him to continue.

“Arch saved my life in Afghanistan.”

Remembering, Jeff could almost feel the biting cold of that winter night, see the star-strewn heavens above the dark mountain peaks, taste the grit of the desert and hear the keening wind.

“We were on a re-con mission to identify the exact location of a terrorist group hiding in a complex of connected caves. Our job was to secure coordinates, convey them to headquarters and get out. Smart bombs would do the rest.