Military Grade Mistletoe

His disappointment surprised him more than the relief he felt. “You’ve got a problem?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She tucked a stray lock of hair back into the purple and brown waves behind her ear. “I hope not, but...”

He could change a flat tire for her, or do some heavy lifting or pull something down off a high shelf. He owed the fantasy Daisy from his letters at least that much. But as Harry waited for the details, he read something more troubling than the awkwardness of this conversation in the blue eyes behind her glasses. She was scared.

Seventeen years of military training put him on instant alert.

“Show me.”

Stopping only to put on her coat and order the dogs to stay inside the mudroom, Daisy walked out onto the back deck, and Harry followed. She went to the railing and pointed down into the snow. “Those footprints. Something seems off to me.”

This was about something more than tracks through her backyard. Her cheeks should be turning pink with the dampness chilling the air. Unless the colored lights were playing tricks on him, her skin had gone pale. The buoyant energy that had overwhelmed him earlier had all but disappeared. Seemed he wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

With a nod, he accepted the simple mission she charged him with and went down into the yard. Stepping farther out into the snow so as not to disturb the suspicious tracks, Harry switched his phone into flashlight mode and made a quick reconnaissance. This was an awful lot of traffic through the yard of a woman who lived alone. And all of these tracks were too big to be Daisy’s. His boots were digging into snow instead of sand, but the hackles at the back of Harry’s neck went up just as they had overseas when he sensed an enemy lurking somewhere beyond his line of sight.

Trusting suspicions he wasn’t sure he was equipped to deal with yet, he retraced his own path a second time, kneeling to inspect some of the deeper tracks. They’d frozen up inside after a bit of melting, meaning they’d been there long before the afternoon sun had reached them. He pushed to his feet and moved closer to the house to confirm that the deepest boot prints were facing the house, a good five feet beyond the gas and water meters. Harry looked up to a window with a shade drawn halfway down and curtains parted a slit to reveal the blackness of the room inside.

Harry glanced up at Daisy, who was watching his every move from the edge of the deck. She was hugging her arms around herself again. Something definitely had her spooked. “That’s not just a case of a new meter reader guy thinking he could get out on that side of the yard, is it?”

“I don’t think so. He’d only have to see that part of the fence once to know there’s no gate over there.” And yet her visitor had walked back and forth multiple times, then stopped here to look inside that window. “What room is this?”

She paused long enough that he looked up at her again. “My bedroom.”

Harry walked straight to the deck, braced one foot on the bottom planks and vaulted over the railing. The snow flinging off his boots hadn’t settled before he’d turned her toward the door to walk her back inside. “You need to call the police. You’ve got a Peeping Tom.”

Chapter Three (#u24867251-8052-5487-9e00-c5bcbc2bafa4)

Harry sat in the darkness of his truck watching Daisy’s light blue Colonial with the dark blue shutters and dozens of Christmas lights, wondering if she was going to give the balding guy at her front door the same kind of hug she’d given him when he’d left a half hour earlier. He already wasn’t a fan of the older gentleman who’d insisted she leave the barking dogs on the other side of the glass storm door and finish their conversation on the brick porch where Daisy was shivering without her coat. If she hugged the guy, then Baldy was definitely going on Harry’s do-not-like list.

Not that he’d handled either her enthusiastic greeting or grateful goodbye terribly well. But something simmered low inside him at the idea that Daisy’s stuffing-squishing hugs were available to anyone who came to her front door.

Finally. The would-be renter handed Daisy a business card and shuffled down the steps. Harry exhaled a deep breath that fogged his window, relieved to see the thoughtless twit depart without a hug. He approved when Daisy crumpled the card in her fist, clearly dismissing the inconsiderate anti-dog man. She huddled against one of the big white pillars at either corner of her porch to watch the rejected tenant drive away.

“Go back inside,” Harry whispered, urging the woman to show a little common sense and get out of the cold night air. But she was scanning up and down the street, searching for something or someone. Was she still worried about those snowy footprints in her backyard?

Harry hunkered down behind the wheel as her gaze swept past his truck. The brief glimpse of fear stamped in the big blue eyes behind those purple glasses when she’d asked for his help had been imprinted on his brain. And since the gray matter upstairs was already a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, he wasn’t quite ready to have any worries about her safety lingering on his conscience. So he’d decided to hang out at least until Baldy left. But Daisy already had one pervert who thought looking through her bedroom window was a fun idea. She probably wouldn’t be assured to know that he was still out here in the darkness, spying on her, too.

After one more scan, she went back into the house, petting the dogs and talking to them before closing the door. The colored Christmas lights winding around the pillars went out, followed by the bright light of the foyer. She must be moving toward the back of the house because a few seconds later, the lights decorating the garage went out, too. From this vantage point, Harry wouldn’t know if she was fixing dinner or changing her clothes or making a path through the mess of projects in her dining room.

Not that it was any of his business how she spent her evenings. Baldy had left her house and it was time for him to go.

Harry started his truck and cranked up the heat, obliquely wondering why he’d felt compelled to sit there in silence, putting up with the cold in lieu of drawing any attention to his presence there. Probably a throwback to night patrols overseas, where stealth often meant the difference between avoiding detection and engaging in a fire fight with the enemy.

But he shouldn’t be thinking like that. Not here in Kansas City. He watched Daisy’s neighbor to the north open his garage and stroll out with a broom to sweep away the snow that had blown onto his front sidewalk. That was a little obsessive, considering the wind would probably blow the dusting of snow back across the walkways by morning. The neighbor waited for a moment at the end of his driveway, turning toward the same revving engine noise that drew Harry’s attention. They both watched from their different vantage points as a car pulled away from the curb and made a skidding U-turn before zipping down the street. Probably a teenager with driving like that. The neighbor shook his head and started back to the garage, but paused as a couple walking in front of his house waved and they all stopped to chat. Yeah, Christmastime in suburbia was a real hotbed for terrorists.

Muttering a curse at his inability to acclimatize to civilian life, Harry pulled out, following the probable teen driver to the stop sign at the corner before they turned in opposite directions. Although this was an older neighborhood, the homes had been well maintained. The sidewalks and driveways had been cleared. Traffic and pedestrians were the norm, not suspicious activity he needed to guard against.

Bouncing over the compacted ruts of snow in the side streets, Harry made his way toward his sister’s loft apartment in downtown Kansas City, avoiding the dregs of rush hour traffic as much as possible. This evening’s visit to Daisy’s house needed to go on his list of dumb ideas he should have reconsidered before taking action. What had he thought was going to happen when he showed up on her doorstep? That the woman who’d sent him all those letters while he’d been overseas and in the hospital, would recognize him? They’d never exchanged pictures. He’d thought that trading news and revealing souls and making him laugh meant that they knew each other. That the same feeling he got when he saw her name at mail call would happen to him again when they met in person. If he was brutally honest, he’d half expected a golden halo to be glowing around her head.

Golden-halo Daisy was supposed to be his link to reality. Seeing her was supposed to ground him. The plan had been to let go of the nightmares he held in check, and suddenly all the scars inside him would heal. He could report back to Lt. Col. Biro and never look back after a dose of Daisy.

So much for foolish miracles.

Daisy Gunderson wasn’t fragile. She wasn’t golden-haired. And she certainly hadn’t been glowing. She was a brunette—a curvy one, if his body’s humming reaction to those impromptu bear hugs were any indication. A brunette with purple streaks in her hair and matching glasses on her nose and a need to chatter that just wouldn’t quit.

And the dogs. He hadn’t expected the dogs. Or the mess. Everything was loud and chaotic, not at all the peaceful sort of mecca he’d envisioned.

The fact that some pervert had been peeking in her bedroom window bothered him, too. He’d foolishly gone to a woman he only knew on paper—a stranger, despite the letters they’d shared—for help. Instead, it looked as if she was the hot mess who needed help.

Harry needed the woman in the letters to help him clear his head and lose the darkness that haunted him.

He didn’t need Daisy Gunderson and her troubles.

He’d done his good deed for her. He’d assuaged his conscience. It was time to move on.

To what? What was a jarhead like him supposed to do for six weeks away from the Corps?

If he was overseas, he’d be doing a perimeter walk of the camp at this time of the evening, making sure his buddies were secure. Even if he was back at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, he’d be doing PT or reading up on the latest equipment regs or putting together a training exercise for the enlisted men he intended to work with again. He was used to having a routine. A sense of purpose. What was he supposed to do here in Kansas City besides twiddle his thumbs, visit a shrink and reassure his sister that she didn’t need to walk on eggshells around him?

He supposed he could find the nearest mall and do some Christmas shopping for Hope, his brother-in-law, Pike, and nephew, Gideon. But even in the late evening there’d be crowds there. Too many people. Too much noise. Too many corners where the imagined enemy inside his head could hide.

Pausing at a stop light, Harry opened the glove compartment where he’d put the list of local therapists Lt. Col. Biro had recommended and read the names and phone numbers. Even before he’d finished reading, he was folding the paper back up and stuffing it inside beside the M9 Beretta service weapon he stored there. He closed the glove compartment with a resolute click and moved on with the flow of traffic.

He’d already made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. He wasn’t ready for an emergency call to one of them yet. Maybe he should ask his brother-in-law where he could find a local gym that wouldn’t require a long-term commitment. He could lift some weights, run a few miles on a treadmill. That was all he needed, a physical outlet of some kind. A way to burn himself out until he was too tired to have any more thoughts inside his head.

It was almost eight o’clock when Harry pulled into the driveway beside Fairy Tale Bridal, the wedding planner business his sister owned. He pressed the buzzer and announced himself over the intercom before Hope released the lock and he jogged up the stairs to the apartment over the shop where she and Pike lived. He heard her warning Pike’s K-9 partner, Hans, to stay before opening the condominium door. His sister had a quiet beauty that seemed to have blossomed with the confidence she’d found in marriage and motherhood. He was happy to see her soft smile when she welcomed him home.

But that smile disappeared beneath a frown of concern before she shooed the German shepherd into the living area of the open layout and locked the door behind her. “That coat is too small for you. You need to get a new one that fits.”

“Guess I’ve filled out a bit since the last time I needed my winter coat. There’s not much call for them in Southern California or the Middle East.”

Although he’d fully intended to put his own things away, Hope took his coat from him as soon as he’d unzipped it. “You’re later than I thought. Did you get any dinner? I can heat up some meatloaf and potatoes in the microwave.” Seven months pregnant and wearing fuzzy house slippers with the dress she’d worn to work, she shuffled into the kitchen, hanging his coat over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Would you rather have a sandwich?”

Harry followed her, feeling guilty that, even after all these years, she felt so compelled to take care of him. “I’m good.”

“Did you eat?” she stopped in front of the open refrigerator and turned to face him.

Hope was only a year older than Harry, and he topped her in height, and had outweighed and outmuscled her for years. But she could still peer up at him over the rims of her glasses with those dove-gray eyes and see right into the heart of him, as though the tragic childhood they’d shared had linked them in some all-knowing, twin-like bond. Lying to Hope wasn’t an option.

“No.”

“I wish you’d take better care of yourself. It wasn’t that long ago you were in a hospital fighting for your life. Besides getting winter clothes that fit, you need sleep and good food inside you.” She nudged him into a chair, kissed his cheek and went to work putting together a meatloaf sandwich for him. “You found Daisy’s house okay? What did you think of her?”

Harry pictured a set of deep blue eyes staring up at him above purple glasses, in an expression similar to the pointed look Hope had just given him. Only, he’d had a very different reaction to Daisy’s silent request. Yes, he’d reacted to the fear he’d seen there and taken action like the Marine he was trained to be, but there was something else, equally disconcerting, about the way Daisy had studied him in her near-sighted squint that he couldn’t quite shake.

“She’s a hugger.” Surprised that those were the first words that came out of his mouth, Harry scrubbed his palm across the stubble itching the undamaged skin of his jaw.

But the faint air of dismay in his tone didn’t faze Hope. In fact, something about his comment seemed to amuse her. “I told you she was friendly and outgoing. She approached me that first morning in our adult Sunday School class. I’d still be sitting in the corner, just listening to the discussion if she hadn’t sat down beside me and started a conversation.”