The Bracelet

She shook her head. “No. That was my first.”

“And your last?” His eyes looked a bit amused now.

“No! Absolutely not. I don’t want to see anyone else sent over there.”

“I’m going to be going over there.”

She stared at him, dumbstruck.

He was six inches taller than she was, at least six-two. His shoulders were so broad. He was a stranger and she shouldn’t have just followed him like that, but no one could tell her now what she should or shouldn’t do. She was twenty and becoming liberated day by day.

Eager to know more about him, she asked, “When are you going?”

“I’ll be called up as soon as I graduate.”

“Graduate from where?”

“Lehigh Valley. I’m just home on break.” He extended his hand to her. “Brady. Brady Malone.”

His fingers felt so wonderfully warm engulfing hers. He didn’t exactly shake her hand, but rather just held it.

“Laura. Laura Martinelli.”

Ten more buses could have stopped at the curb and expelled demonstrators, but they wouldn’t have noticed.

“I have a car,” he said. “It’s parked in the public lot. Would you like to go for a burger and shake?”

“That depends,” she decided. “Will I be safe with you?”

“You’ll be as safe as you want to be.”

This Brady Malone was obviously a lot more experienced than she was. But instinct told her she had nothing to fear from him.

Nothing at all.

As Laura finished recounting the first time she’d met Brady, Sean studied her and asked thoughtfully, “So you just went off with him without knowing him?” His voice didn’t hold reproach, rather surprise.

“Yes. But don’t tell your sister. It’s not something I ever want her to do.”

“Don’t want me to do what?” Kat asked, suddenly standing in the waiting room, a soda in her hand.

“I was telling Sean how I met your dad. It was at an antiwar protest.”

Kat’s eyes grew big.

But before her daughter could ask questions, Dr. Gregano appeared, a serious expression on his face.

Chapter 2

When Laura opened the glass door into Brady’s CICU cubicle a few minutes later, she drew in a huge, bolstering breath. She felt so responsible for what was happening now…the condition he was in. The last thing she ever wanted was to hurt him.

Brady was hooked up to monitors, IVs, oxygen and a blood pressure cuff. The leads on his chest were producing the green lines—the hills and peaks on the largest monitor. He was so white, so lifeless, that she feared she’d lost him already. She was paralyzed for a moment, afraid to go forward. She’d been afraid so many times with Brady. But she’d covered it, and in acting strong she’d discovered strength—when he’d returned home from the army, when she’d tried to get pregnant, after they’d adopted Sean. Although when their baby had died of SIDS, Brady had been the strong one.

She only had ten minutes with him, so she dragged the orange vinyl chair to the bed. Nurses bustled in and out constantly. To have a few seconds alone with her husband, she’d have to talk to him now. Who knew what could happen next?

She covered his hand, the one without the IV line, with hers. He was cool to the touch, not at all like the man who always emanated heat. He could be hot in the dead of winter, when her hands and nose were usually cold.

“Brady,” she whispered.

When there was no response, she cleared her throat and said his name again, louder.

His eyes fluttered but didn’t open.

“Brady, it’s Laura. I’m so sorry. I never should have pushed you—” Her voice broke. Regaining her composure, she said, “I love you. You have to fight. You can’t let anything happen now. I want to be married to you for another thirty-three years.”

She kept talking. “Soon the doctors will determine exactly what’s wrong. You have to cooperate with them. You have to fight to get well. Kat and Sean and I need you.”

“Sean,” Brady mumbled, then drifted off again.

“Brady?”

He appeared oblivious to her presence. She understood his body needed rest, but she needed all the time with him she could get. With a lump in her throat, she stroked back her husband’s hair. Although it had silvered at the temples over the years, it hadn’t gotten any thinner. She loved running her fingers through it. She’d loved him from the moment she’d met him. Definitely from that first night when they’d gone to dinner and talked.

After Brady had rescued her from the protest demonstration, they’d walked to the public lot where his car had been parked. The blue Camaro was shiny and new.

“Wow!” she’d said, impressed. “Nice car.”

“I just got it last week. The old one broke down when I was driving home from school.”

He was dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a knit shirt, but from the way Brady Malone spoke and acted, she’d expected he’d come from a middle-class home. Now she knew he was probably upper middle class. “Did you buy the car yourself?”

“I work summers on my dad’s construction sites. But I have to admit, he helped with this. Bottom line is, he and Mom don’t want to drive me back and forth to school. And I’ll need a car eventually. It’ll sit in the garage when I’m away, but I think my dad wanted something tangible of mine that he could take care of. Sort of like he’s doing something for me.”

She hated the fact that this man was leaving the U.S. to risk his life in a war everyone was confused about, a war that took up so much of the news and caused controversy. “You might not go. More troops could be pulled out. You could get a medical deferment.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he told her over the hood of the car.

She saw the truth of it in his eyes. Her heart pounded every time she looked at him. How could that be when she’d known him such a short time?

“Where do you live?” he asked.

Now she went on alert. “Why do you need to know?”

“We could get something to eat near wherever you live, then I could drop you off at home.” Studying her face, his gaze lingering on the daisy over her temple, he suggested almost casually, “On the other hand, if you’re afraid to ride in the car with me, if you think I’m going to take advantage of you, I can walk you to the bus stop.”

He seemed annoyed that she would even consider he wasn’t a man with a fine reputation. That bit of arrogance wasn’t unattractive. “Where do you live?” she asked.

“So you can seek vengeance if I don’t behave?” Now he grinned and the annoyance was gone.