Night Driving

“You don’t say,” Boone spoke into the phone.

She hitched her butt up on the porch railing, legs dangling off, blues eyes dancing with mischief.

Go away. He was not in the mood for Pollyanna.

“Yes, yes.” He nodded as if someone on the other end of his fictitious conversation had just said something he could really support.

Tara’s gaze skated over his injured knee. She pursed her lips in a pity pout, but then took in the beer and the bottle of pain pills. Her sympathy disappeared—thankfully—into a concerned scowl. She made a shame-on-you gesture, scraping one forefinger crossways over the other.

Buzz off, brat.

“Hang on a minute,” Boone said to his imaginary caller. He put his palm over the phone, met Tara’s eyes. “This conversation is going to go on for a while.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

What the hell did she want? “I mind.”

“Private conversation?”

“Yeah.”

Her lips were glossy cotton-candy-pink and her hair was four or five different shades of blond. Streaked in that chunky way that was popular these days. A modest dolphin tattoo graced her left shoulder and numerous earrings lay nestled in each ear. Her toenails were painted an alarming shade of aqua, and on the second toe of her right foot a gold toe ring spelled out LOVE.

“I’ll go water your shrubs while you’re talking,” she said. “They look thirsty.”

“No, no.” He didn’t want her doing him any favors. “Leave it be.”

“Okay.” She held up her palms. “Didn’t mean to tread on your pride.”

Glowering, he pressed the cell to his ear again. “I’m back,” he said, feeling stupid for having gotten trapped into a fake phone call.

Well, if you could try just talking to her.

Except that never worked. Give her an inch and she took a mile. If he struck up a conversation, she’d plunk down on the porch beside him for hours as if they were friends or something.

That’s when the phone rang for real.

Tara’s lips formed a humorous O and her eye twinkled. “Oh, dude, you’re so busted.” She did the finger-shaming gesture again. “You were trying to avoid talking to me.”

“Yes, and I really am on the phone now,” he snapped and pressed the talk button without bothering to look at the caller ID. “Hello?”

“Boone?”

“Jackie? Hold on a second.” He covered the receiver again. “It’s my sister. Could we have this conversation later?”

“You have a sister?”

“Half sister.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.” Thank goodness for that.

“You never talk about her.”

“I never talk about her to you.”

“Touché,” she murmured, but she looked slightly wounded.

He forced a smile past his injured-war-veteran grouchiness. “Right now I just want to talk to her, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.” She shrugged. “I only came by to tell you that I’m moving away.”

Yay! No more nosy neighbor butting into his business, throwing noisy late-night parties, no more bringing over casseroles and lecturing him on proper recycling techniques. But even as he thought it, Boone felt something else entirely. A strange, soft sadness. It was the same kind of melancholy that used to come over him every Sunday afternoon when he was a kid, knowing that the weekend was over, and he had to go back to school the next day.

Part of him almost told her to wait, but he managed to squelch the impulse. “See ya.”

“See ya,” she echoed and hopped from the railing.

He watched her lope across his lawn, her fanny swaying in those snug-fitting shorts. Mesmerized, his gaze locked helplessly on Tara’s delectable butt.

“Boone? You still there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” He hitched in a deep breath and turned his full attention to Jackie. “Hey, sis. Long time no hear.”

“I’ve been really busy,” she said, sounding oddly giddy. Normally his sister was intense and serious. Her father was the famed oceanographer Jack Birchard. Jackie had followed in his footsteps and she was working on her PhD.

Boone realized it had been over four months since he’d spoken to her and he hadn’t told her about the third surgery. He hadn’t wanted her to worry. They hadn’t grown up together and they had really only gotten in touch with each other as teenagers when they’d bonded over the fact that their flighty mother had abandoned them both to their respective fathers. But Jackie was as resilient as Boone. They’d survived and thrived.

That is, he’d thrived until the damn bomb blast.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I’m getting married!” Jackie announced.

“Married?” he echoed, stunned. “To who?”

“You don’t know him. His name is Scott Everly and he’s a lieutenant in the Coast Guard.”

“Jackie, seriously? A coastie?”

“What’s wrong with a coastie?”

Boone wasn’t going to get into the fact that he didn’t consider Coast Guard real military. “I can’t see you as a military wife. In fact, I can’t see you as a wife at all.”

“What does that mean?” All the joy escaped from his sister’s voice.

Don’t be a jerk, Toliver. Apologize. “Your career means so much to you.”