The Nurse's Secret Suitor

Then he bolted.

“Kate?” The voice of her best friend Bri Landis drifted from a doorway. No wonder the bandit had fled. The crasher had sensed company before Kate had, and hadn’t wanted to get caught.

After the sensation of being stun-gunned subsided, Kate faced his retreating back. “Wait! Who are you?”

But her bandit had already scaled the eight-foot-tall wood fence, cape flying behind him like a flag, and she lost sight of him.

“Marvelous Masked Intruder, come back,” she whispered into the inhospitable night. Bri’s voice neared, reeling Kate back to reality. Kate banged her forehead on the fence. Why hadn’t she chased him down? Simply put—she couldn’t.

He had taken her by such sublime storm and surprise, and that kiss had so incapacitated her, she wondered if she’d imagined it. She put fingers to her lips and tingles there whispered she most certainly hadn’t.

Kate couldn’t kick the insane urge to find him and spend time with him again. Not only because of the amazing kisses, but also for the way it had felt to have someone she could really talk to—someone who would listen without judging and comfort without questioning. All the things none of her friends would imagine she’d ever need and that this stranger had offered automatically. That kind of thing could go to a girl’s head. It made her sad to think that the beautiful moment they’d shared would be the only moment they’d ever have.

“Hey!” Bri approached, dressed to the nines in a frilly-winged fairy costume but with a warmly concerned look on her face. “I got worried when I couldn’t find you. Everything okay?”

Kate slid onto a nearby bench. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” Bri was the one person she could talk to about this. Kate thanked God Bri was who He sent.

Bri sat next to her. “What’s going on?”

Where to begin? “Well, there was Mom’s mysterious text and thirty years thrown away like yesterday’s trash, then a man dressed as a bandit in black leather appeared out of nowhere. We talked—well, I talked and he listened. And then...we kissed. He swept me off my feet, really—until he vanished. Jumped the fence when he heard you coming out to find me. Night swallowed the most appealingly compassionate creature who ever lived.”

Bri blinked slowly. “Wait, text? What text?”

Kate calmed herself and took time explaining everything from the first text from her mom, to the blue camo handkerchief wiping away her tears, to the kiss that ended with her bandit disappearing over the fence. She only left out the part where she’d confided her fears about never finding love. Bri was currently engaged and blissfully happy—Kate didn’t want to make her friend feel bad. That part of her little breakdown could remain a secret between her and her bandit.

“Kate, there’s no one remotely dressed like a bandit here. I took photos of each and every person in their costumes for Mitch and Lauren’s memory-book gift.”

Kate shrugged. “I know. He had to be a stranger.” Kate left out the part where knowing he was a stranger made him easy to talk to. It would hurt her best friend’s feelings to be told Kate found it easier to pour her heart out to someone she didn’t know. “Probably a wedding crasher who heard about the masquerade theme, since he knew enough to show up in costume. Whatever his reasons for being here, he did manage to show up at exactly the right time, when I needed someone to listen to me unload about my family fracturing apart.”

Bri nibbled her lip. Kate flinched at what she’d said and the painful memories she might have stirred. If anyone knew what fractured family felt like, Bri Landis did. Her father had been the first to drop out of her life—he’d walked out on the family when Bri was a child. Now he sat incapacitated in a nursing home with all hope of reconciliation gone. Her mom had passed away recently, leaving Bri to tend a run-down family lodge alone. Her brother, Caleb, the only family she had left, was deployed overseas, dedicated to building his military career.

Kate sighed. “I’m sorry, Bri. I shouldn’t be melodramatic, in light of all you’ve been through.”

Bri shook her head. “Nonsense. Things are looking up for me. While I desperately miss my geeky gun-toting army-medic brother, I’m freakishly in love and freshly engaged to Eagle Point’s most gorgeous anesthesiologist.” Bri wiggled her ring-embellished finger, reminding Kate how much there was to be happy about. Yet a twinge of sadness hit Kate instead. Mom, Dad...

“I’m also fulfilled being a mother figure to Tia. Though she’s only five, you and I both know Ian’s daughter is an amazing gift and constant source of joy. And of course her daddy and our wedding plans are equally bright on my horizon.”

Bright horizon. Kate recalled the bandit’s admonition that darkness never defeats the dawn, as the confidence that usually carried and defined Kate ebbed back. Grandpa could still get better. And her parents’ divorce wasn’t finalized yet—maybe things could still be fixed. If not, as Bri had reminded her, there was still so much to be thankful for.

Like a moonlit kiss from a handsome stranger.

Kate brushed the thought aside. She’d probably never see the bandit again. He was just someone God sent her way to give comfort she needed at her lowest moment. She’d weathered it, and was ready now to be strong on her own again—as always.

“Speaking of that handsome fiancé of yours, let’s go back in before he wonders where you are.” Kate rose to her feet.

Bri stood, as well. “Sure you’re all right to go back in?”

“Of course.” Kate flashed Bri the grin that used to win her the tiara back in her beauty-pageant days. “I’m always all right.”

For a second, Bri looked as though she wanted to argue, but with a shrug she let it go, leading the way back into the reception hall. Kate followed her with a quick, confident stride.

And if she paused for a moment before stepping through the door to look back at the spot where she’d last seen her bandit...well then, that was no one’s concern but hers.

* * *

Bzzzt! Army medic Caleb Landis snatched his phone before it vibrated off the sun-bleached windowsill. Stumbling out of his sleeping bag, he tripped over his bandit costume before finally settling on his feet and checking the phone’s display.

Sergeant Asher Stone. Not surprising. Their unit chaplain would be the first to check on Caleb’s well-being. The pair had received unexpected temporary leave of duty for exemplary service after extended back-to-back deployments and had left Afghanistan the same day.

“H’lo.” Caleb shouldered his phone to his ear as he rolled up the sleeping bag and checked out the window. No sign of anyone outside. Good—that meant his sister hadn’t yet noticed that he’d crashed in cabin seven of the family’s lodge the previous night without letting her know he was there. He couldn’t resist the temptation to surprise her.

“Hey, Landis. Calling to make sure you made it safely in.”

“Yeah, after a two-day flight delay back into the States.”

Asher whistled. “Wow. Seriously? Did you make it in time for Mitch’s wedding?”

“Nope.” Caleb turned a bucket upside down and sat on it. “Missed the whole ceremony and the first half of the reception. I didn’t even get a chance to congratulate the bride and groom before—” Caleb cleared his throat, blaming early morning fuzzy-headedness for what he’d nearly let slip. “So, um, how was your flight home?”

“Hold up, Landis. Before what?”

“I...ah...ran into someone before I could go into the reception. We talked for a while. And then I...left.”

“Left?” Asher repeated. “Without even going in? Must have been some talk. Wait a second, was it Kate you talked with?”

Caleb frowned. Asher knew him way too well. “Who said anything about Kate?”

“You did, Romeo, for hours at a time after your last stretch visiting Eagle Point. Come on, it’s not like you were subtle. Everyone in the unit knew about your insane attraction to Kate, who scarcely knows you exist. But hey, if she talked to you she must know you exist now, right?” Asher chuckled disbelievingly on the other end of the line.

“Well...sort of.” Before the previous night, he’d seen the beautiful nurse on only a few occasions. While Kate knew of him through her friendship with Bri, he’d bulked up since his last visit and he was certain she hadn’t recognized him at the point of the kiss. To complete the costume, he’d worn black contacts, disguising his gunmetal-gray eyes. And he...hadn’t been like himself. Yes, he was always spontaneous, so that was nothing new, but he wasn’t usually that smooth, that suave. He’d seemed to know exactly what to do to put her at ease, and that was a bizarre and unfamiliar situation for him when it came to a pretty woman. Especially that pretty woman.

Kate was Kevlar-strong to the core in a way that demanded respect. She and her family had earned enormous admiration among the military community, and she herself was a living legend. It had thrown him for a loop to see her so brokenhearted. Caleb had only wanted to alleviate the pain that put the tears in her pretty, sapphire-blue eyes.

“Do I want to know?”

“Doubtful. I screwed up last night. Didn’t handle the Kate thing well. It wasn’t my brightest moment.”

He didn’t—couldn’t—regret the kiss. But he also couldn’t help feeling he’d taken advantage of her vulnerability to steal a kiss Kate wouldn’t have given him under any other circumstances.

Putting aside the fact that he was pretty sure she really didn’t know he was alive, except as Bri’s little brother, he also knew from his sister that Kate was only looking for romance with non-military men. She was done with the danger of that lifestyle, and wanted a stable man she could count on to be around. Army medics like Caleb need not apply—especially considering his efforts to get accepted into the rangers.

“Anyway, I didn’t even get a chance to let my sis know I’m in town for four months. Hopefully she won’t be too mad. Maybe she’ll forgive me once I tell her I plan to renovate her bunkhouses before I leave and take that load of stress off her.”

“Then Bri’s wedding before you go back.”

Caleb chuckled. “Sure, remind me. I leave a brother-in-arms stateside to watch over my sister and he finagles her into marrying him and adopting his daughter.” He liked Ian, though. He treated Bri well and brightened her outlook after losing Mom.

“Hey, you’ll have a little niece to spoil.” Asher laughed.