Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

“On your cooking?”

“What else would I mean?” he asked.

“I’m willing to take it. And if it doesn’t work out, well, I could teach you to cook. Or you could just let me do it.”

He shook his head. “No way am I going to let you cook for me every night. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

She could almost see him closing down again, as if the idea that he might lean on her concerned him. “Okay then, cooking lessons if you need them.”

That seemed to satisfy him. Armed with the idea that they’d take turns cooking seemed to loosen him up though. He started tossing more items into the cart.

“I should go buy some more groceries,” she said suddenly. “I just realized, I only bought enough for myself for a couple of days.”

“Let me,” he said. “It’ll cover the cooking lessons I’ll probably need.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but then shut it. This man absolutely needed to feel as if he wasn’t a burden. That much was clear to her so she endured it as he spent money on foods she would have ignored because of the price.

But the thought of cooking some of the dishes she had once loved to cook and eat soon had her thinking of ingredients she should buy.

“I don’t know what’s needed to cook some of this stuff,” Wade said. “Grab whatever you need.” It was enough to get her going.

Along the way she saw the man from the parking lot again. He was pushing a cart and carrying a piece of paper, and nodded when he saw her. She managed to smile back. Evidently he’d found his list.

Before they even reached the checkout, two more people had smiled and nodded at her. She was used to that when she was working and in uniform, but for the first time it struck her that folks around here might be friendly as a matter of course. Maybe she ought to make a bigger effort.

By the time they left the store with another four bags of groceries, she was looking forward to dinner.

And how long had it been since she’d last felt that way? No, she wasn’t going there, not when she was actually feeling good, feeling almost normal, for the first time in a year. There was absolutely nothing wrong with feeling good, she reminded herself. Nothing at all. Jim wouldn’t have wanted her to become the woman she had been during the past year.

The shadow that hovered over all her days tried to return when she had to deal with the alarm, but she refused to let it. No more of that, she told herself, as if something as simple as a command to herself could change her entire outlook and banish the fear that never quite deserted her.

But at least she was making an effort, and when she looked over the past day, she felt glad those kids had made that stupid call. Yes, it had thrown her into a tizzy, and yes, it had upset Marsha just as much, but in the course of reacting to it, she had helped Marsha a little bit. Now she could at least help Wade learn to cook.

Little things, but more purposeful than almost anything since that awful night. Time to cherish her tiny victories.

“When do you usually like to eat dinner?” she asked as they worked together to put things away. She stopped a moment to look at her refrigerator. It hadn’t been that full while she lived here, ever. And now it held an embarrassment of riches.

He paused, a box of cornstarch in hand, and looked at her. “Ma’am, you’re talking to a SEAL. I learned to eat when the food was there.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip. “A SEAL? Really?”

“Really.”

That would explain at least some of it, she thought, how he could look so hard and dangerous at times. It might even explain his lack of expression and his disinclination to talk. Hesitantly she said, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”

“No.”

And that closed the subject. Well, it would if she let it. How much did she want to risk now that they’d found some common ground? But the silence seemed heavy in some way, no longer comfortable. With one word he’d fixed an image of himself in her mind and she didn’t know how to absorb it. Nor did she know why she wanted to cross the barrier he had set so firmly in place with that one word.

Recklessly, she didn’t take the warning. “I’ve seen programs about SEALs,” she offered.

“A lot of people have.” He started folding her cotton grocery bags neatly.

“The training looks terribly hard.”

“It is.”

Volumes of information. She almost sighed. “I saw another program about an operation where the SEALs had to board a ship at sea to remove a container of plutonium that could have been used to make a bomb.”

“Yes.”

“It’s amazing what you guys can do.”

“Most people have no idea what we do.” With that he put the folded bags in a neat stack on her counter and walked from the kitchen.

She listened to him climb the stairs, listened to the creak as he went into his room.

And with him departed the little bit of positive purpose she’d found just today.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_05ec6d91-0066-5874-a66e-b074f94f007e)

Cory felt bad. For the first time in forever, she had felt positive, felt ready to reach out, however tentatively. And she’d blown it.

She had pressed Wade, even when her instincts had warned her that might be a mistake. Apparently her skills had atrophied over the past year. There’d been a time when she would have handled that approach a whole lot better.

Or would she? How could she even know anymore? For so long she’d been curled inward in a tight ball around her own fear and pain. Maybe she would have flubbed the conversational attempt even back then. Wade, after all, was a grown man, not one of her kids. His barriers had to be even higher, even more deeply ingrained.

Regardless, she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut, because it had been surprisingly nice to do ordinary, routine tasks with someone else, even a someone she didn’t know, and could barely talk with. Just the rhythm of it had probably been one of the most soothing experiences she could remember in a while.

Worse, she was brooding about what surely had to be the most minor of trespasses. It wasn’t as if she’d demanded personal war stories or anything. Far from it.

Let it go, she told herself. Good advice except that perhaps the worst change in her over the past year was the way she could seldom just dismiss things. Like that phone call last night.

In her previous life, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Once upon a time, even if it had disturbed her, she’d have been able to shake it off in relatively short order.

Events had changed her. Worry had burrowed mole holes in her mind, ever ready to grant easy access to the next concern that showed up. The stupidest things could run in circles for hours or days, and she could no longer shake them.

But today, thanks to Marsha and then Wade, she’d managed to put that call out of her mind. To put it in its proper place.

But it was still there, ready to pounce the instant she allowed it to. If she sat here too much longer brooding, the fear would steal back in and soon she’d be like a dog gnawing at a bone, unable to let it go.

Finally she stood up, deciding the best thing in the world would be to take a walk. She’d spent too many hours hiding in this house over the past year, and that had turned her into an even worse mess.

She wondered if she had failed to heal because fear had taken over to a paralyzing degree. Which was more ridiculous when she considered the entire weight of the federal government had thrown itself behind making her disappear.

Yes, she was still grieving, but somehow grief and fear had become so intertwined she no longer knew which was which. The one was a healthy thing, the other not.

Today she seemed to have taken two successful baby steps in the right direction. It was time, she decided, to step back out into the sunlight, to start living again the way most other people lived: without the constant expectation of the terrible happening.