CHAPTER 9
THERE SHE WENT, BEING A JERK AGAIN.
The door to the hallway closed behind her to Jake’s voice. “Aria—”
She didn’t look back. Couldn’t.
Because of course, the man had seen inside her soul. Again. “Because if you were to need anyone . . . then you’d be weak little Aria with the broken heart again . . .”
She stopped and braced her hand on the wall, waiting to hear Jake enter behind her.
No footsteps.
He hadn’t followed her.
Which was probably for the best because . . . well, he was right about the kiss too. It was Aria who kissed him, both times. Aria who wanted to be in Jake’s arms.
Aria who was falling for dangerous Jake Silver who rode a motorcycle and sailed on the wings of a cat and climbed mountains and probably skydived and did everything that both stole her breath and hummed in her heart.
He scared her. Lured her.
She looked over. He still hadn’t followed her.
Huh. She stood up. Walked to the doorway.
The stairwell was empty. And then she remembered their conversation before they fixed the gennie, as he called it. Fresh water. And grub.
She debated a moment, then headed down the stairs, not sure why, but aching at the words between them.
At the fact that she’d run away from him, again.
The lobby was dark, the water nearly to her waist as she waded through it. “Jake?”
She was standing near the information desk when she heard it. A shout, quick and sharp, muffled by the water and the walls, but loud enough that it jerked her around.
The coffee shop. Of course.
She pressed through the water. The door had been shoved open, the water holding it back, and now she stared into the darkened space. “Jake?”
No one.
But she did notice a tray of muffins on the counter. And a handful of bottled waters in the display case. She pushed through the water and headed toward the case. The front had been broken, jagged glass rendering the sliding door useless, so she worked her way around the counter to the back.
She nearly tripped on something solid, and put her hand out—
Touched a body.
She recoiled. Screamed, hard and fast.
Then a cold horror swept through her as she recognized, in the dim light, Jake. His black T-shirt, his cargo shorts—
“Jake!” What—? She hauled him up by the shoulders and pulled his face out of the water.
His eyes were closed, he wasn’t breathing.
“Help!” She dragged his body, with the help of the water, around the counter toward a solid wooden table in the center of the room, climbed up, and pulled him onto it.
“Help! Someone!”
But really, who else was there?
Kneeling on the bench beside him, she tilted his head back and swept his mouth. Clear.
She started compressions.
“C’mon, Jake! Don’t you dare die on me!”
Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen—
“Listen, Jake. You were right, okay? I did kiss you because I wanted to. I really wanted to.” Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. “Please, Jake—”
She gave him two strong breaths.
She checked his carotid artery. It seemed something might be pumping, but he lay lifeless.
More compressions.
“Jake, please. I’m so sorry. I know I can be difficult. I can be a real jerk too. But I need you, ten, eleven, twelve—”
A gasp.
“That’s right, come back.” She kept pumping.
He drew in another breath, this one deeper.
She checked his pulse again. Stronger.
Another breath and she stopped compressions. Leaned over him, rubbing her knuckles on his sternum. “Wake up, Jake—”
His eyes opened and he startled, drawing in another long breath.
She put her hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat, his breath rising and falling, and wanted to weep.
He lay there a long, quiet moment, just breathing, as if trying to get a grip on what had happened.
Quietly, he moved his hand to cover hers.
She hid her face under her other hand, not wanting to give herself away. But her shoulders shook, her breath hiccupping.
“Aria,” he whispered, “I think that counts.”
Swallowing, she wiped her face and looked at him. He was staring at her.
“What counts?”
“You rescued me. So, we’re even.”
“Hardly. And shut up. I never want to do that again.” She turned away from him then, her hands again covering her face.
Really, she just wanted to shatter.
“Aw, Aria.” He moved his arm around her and pulled her down against his soggy body. “Shh.”
“I can’t do this. I can’t keep you and everybody else alive.”
His arms encircled her. “I’ll be okay—”
“You nearly died, Jake.” She leaned up, her eyes hard in his. “You can’t do that to me, ever.”
His mouth tweaked on the edges. “Because you need me?”
She frowned.
“I could hear you. Somehow, even as I was climbing back through all the darkness, I could hear you. You need me. You’re a jerk. And you kissed me because you wanted to . . .”
She made to get up but he caught her arm.
“Stop running from me, Aria.”
She froze. Turned to him. He eased himself up from the table, to a sitting position. “Because I’m not sure I’m in any condition to run after you.”
Then he cupped his hand on her face, drew it to his, and kissed her. Softly, a sweetness in it that she recognized.
Because that was the Jake she knew. Gentle. Sweet. Yes, he might have danger stamped on his forehead, but under his charming, dangerous exterior lived a man who would die for his teammates, follow his friends up a mountain, and weather a storm with a woman who professed to be angry with him.
She closed her eyes and let him kiss her. Let herself feel his gentle strength, the way his body trembled, probably the aftereffects of—
“Wait,” she said as she pushed away. “What happened?”
His gaze was roaming her face, as if hungry, stopping at her lips. “Bad coffee. Got a real bite to it.”
Then he kissed her again, something sweet and perfect.
Oh, Jake. She let him linger, take his time, let herself sink into the taste of him, the sense that right here, right now, they were both alive.
Whether they deserved to be or not.
And maybe, well, that was the point. Jake kept showing up in her life despite her efforts to push him away.
So maybe she’d stop pushing him away. Maybe it was time to . . . well, what he’d said—be happy.
How many second chances was she going to get? She let him deepen the kiss, kissing him back. Because she wanted to.
He finally let her go, his body still trembling.
“Jake, are you still having trouble breathing?”
“With you around—”
“Stop.” She took his pulse at his neck again. His heart seemed to be pumping, but with a strange quiver at the end. “Take a deep breath for me.”
He drew in, but coughed, bending over.
And that’s when she saw his hand. “Jake!” She lifted his wrist, looking at the horribly burned flesh on his fingertips, blistered, already peeling back. “Can you feel that?”
He stared at his fingers, the torn skin. “I . . . yes . . .”
“Probably the water kept it from burning worse. What did you touch?”
“The coffeepot, like I said.”
“The coffee . . . but . . . wait, were you electrocuted?”
He considered her words. “I think so.”
“Let’s get us out of this water.”
“It’s not the water. It’s probably the fact that the electricity is still hot through the lines even though the lights are blown. I was wrong about the power only going to the essential machines. Apparently, it powers the entire building.”
“So anything we touch could electrocute us?”
“Only if we are standing in water. I touched something that was hot and I was grounded by the water, and the electricity flowed through me. The water isn’t electrified. But if I touch something that is, then I act as a conductor and get zapped.”
“So, don’t touch anything.”
“Now you tell me.”
“I need some light to examine this wound. And we should get you upstairs. I wish I could run an EKG, but at least I want you where I can monitor you.”
“I like the sound of that.”
She rolled her eyes. But she reached for him, pulling him to his feet, her arms around his waist.
“You’re pretty good at this trauma doc thing.”
Huh. She was, really. “My ER rotation was one of my favorites.” They waded through the water, toward the stairs. “In ER, you simply stabilize and move them on to better help. But I liked knowing I saved a life.”
She propped open the door and helped him through it. He’d gone quiet.
“I heard about the baby.”
She drew in his words, let them settle on her. “Yeah. I was tired, and I’d stayed up all night, and . . . I don’t know. I just . . . wasn’t enough.”
He stopped her then, one foot on the steps. “Aria, you are so enough. So, enough.”
But even as he said it, his eyes rolled back, his body started to shake.
She caught him even as his knees buckled and he pitched into the water.
Fire coursed through Jake.
The kind of hot that saturated his pores and drenched him with sweat. It dripped into his eyes and blurred the sight of his MK11 scope. Worse, Afghani soil embedded his ears, his mouth, itched every inch of his body as he lay under his ghillie suit.
He was Bigfoot. He even smelled like an animal, his odor enough to turn his gut.
But two days hiding in the grime had paid off.
“HVT en route,” said Danny, aka Charlie One, in his ear.
“I got him,” whispered Bjorn, Charlie Three. He hunkered down in an enclave of sunburned rocks maybe a hundred yards outside the village, point sniper for this particular op, his job to take out the HVT. “Two klicks out.”
Jake’s job was to watch the village while the rest of the team set up a shot to take down Hamid Moussad, a ranking Taliban leader.
Just watch the village.
Nothing more.
Even as Jake settled into the nightmare, he heard a voice in the back of his head.
Wake up.
He ignored it, as if determined to watch it play out.
Again.
“Charlie Three, I have two young men headed out of the village, toward your position,” Jake said.
“Copy that.”
Two boys, one of them holding a kite. Jake zeroed in on them.
They couldn’t be more than fourteen.
A glint of something bulky under the kameez of one of the youths had him centered on it, looking for another glimpse.
“Be advised, I think one of them might be wired,” Jake said.
Next to him, his spotter, petty officer Jennings, confirmed. “And I think he might be holding a detonator.”
A suicide bomber?
“We’re compromised,” Bjorn said. “What do you want us to do?”
No, please, they were too young to be jihadists.
Wake up!
“Sit tight,” Danny said. “Let’s see what they do.”
“HVT has arrived,” Danny said. “Charlie Three?”
“Almost,” Bjorn whispered. Beside him, his spotter was whispering adjustments, his voice hissing through their mics.
Jake’s chest tightened as they unfurled their kite, letting it spin in the air. Then, they bolted right toward Bjorn’s position. One was reaching inside his kameez.
Shoot! “Boss!” Jake said. “They’re making a move.”
“Your call, Jake.”
“Taking the shot,” Bjorn said.
The one with the vest fell to his knees, as if in prayer. Pulled out an object.
Prioritize. Execute.
Jake squeezed off a shot.
The kid dropped, blood puddling in the sand.
“Confirmed,” Bjorn said, about his HVT.
“Exfil,” Danny said, and Jake would have started moving if it hadn’t been for the scream emanating from the village.
A woman, middle-aged, her arms waving, ran toward the downed boy, who was now being dragged through the dirt by his panicked companion.
“Silver, move it,” said Jennings, packing up.
But Jake couldn’t even breathe as he watched her fall to her knees. Cover the kid’s body, screaming.
“Jake, move it!”
Wailing, her body undulating in pain as the boy lay, dead.
“Jake!”
The scream tangled his brains, paralyzed him, separated him from his thoughts, his actions.
“Jake!”
The voice dragged him forward, harsh, strident, a hand on his arm. Jake burst to the surface, light peeling back the dream. And opened his eyes.
Not in Afghanistan.
And not in Walter Reed, although the smells knocked him sideways for a moment—cotton, antiseptic.
He wasn’t even at the base in Norfolk, tangled in his sheets.
“Are you okay?”
His breaths tumbled over each other as he searched for the voice.
Mimi. The old woman on the ventilator, although now she’d pulled her bed close to his, had rolled over and grabbed his arm.
Probably to pull him out of the dream.
Darkness swathed the room, a stillness that, despite the hiss of the ventilators, evidenced the lack of electronics. No buzzing lights, no television, no elevator or air-conditioning hum.
Silence. Air. Heartbeat.
Breathing.
Jake swam through his memories and found nothing he could latch on to. His last clear memory was kissing Aria in the dark kitchen—no, not a kitchen. But somewhere like it.
He’d like to return there, to that dream.
That sweet dream where she let go of all her fears and became the woman who trusted him.
Called him her hero.
He winced. Because he was anything but a hero.
“You were thrashing pretty good there, kiddo,” Mimi said, her voice a whisper. “I thought you were going to fall right outta bed.”
Brisk, cool air filled his nose and his mouth from a mask strapped to his face. Still, sweat drenched his body, and his covers fell to his waist. The smell was back and Jake’s entire body was a knot of hurt.
“War dream?”
He made out Mimi on the other bed. From the looks of it, they were in a patient room. Mimi lay on her side, a pillow between her knees, watching him.
Had she just called him kiddo?
“Van, Rollo’s brother, had them after he came home. Would get up and prowl the house at night. Took to drinking to keep the nightmares at bay.” She patted his arm. “You got some demon chasing you, don’t you?”
He moved the mask to the side. “Just something that happened . . .” His voice sounded like he’d gargled half the ocean. Felt like it too, his throat rough. An anvil lay on his chest, and pain bloomed out from it, right in the center of his sternum. “Why am I in bed?”
“You gave us a scare.” She reached out and patted his arm. “But you’ve been breathing for six whole hours without a hiccup, so that’s a good sign.”
Six hours? “What are you talking about?” He made to sit up, but flame burned through his chest and he lay back, still groaning.
“Don’t get excited now. You need to lay there and let your body recover from all those seizures.”
He knew he wore a sort of horror in his expression.
“You crashed on the stairway. Yola had to help the doc get you up the stairs and she gave you CPR. That ticker of yours tried to give out twice. Once in the stairwell, and once after she got you in a bed.”
No wonder his chest hurt.
He didn’t remember any of it.
“You had a seizure—actually, two of them—and you stopped breathing both times, so she put a tube down your throat, just to make sure you didn’t die.”
He touched his throat, swallowed. “What time is it?”
“Oh, it’s about four in the morning, I suppose.” She looked past him toward the window and he followed her gaze. The periwinkle of early morning had just begun to bleed into the vault of night.
His gaze landed on Aria, sleeping in a reclining chair next to his bed. She wore her hair down, a stethoscope around her neck, her hands folded under her cheek, her knees drawn up, and he just wanted to reach out and pull her into his embrace.
Apparently she’d saved his life over and over again for the past eighteen hours.
“She said it was a result of your near electrocution.”
Electrocution. The coffee machine.
Only then did he notice his hand, bandaged. At least it was his left hand, not his shooting hand.
And weird that thought should come to him. He wasn’t in the navy anymore.
Jake lay back and closed his eyes.
Mimi touched his arm. But when she said nothing, he looked over at her. She had her eyes closed, her lips moving.
“What are you doing?”
She opened one eye. “Shh. I’m praying for you.” She closed her eye again.
He didn’t know why her words tightened the fingers around his chest. Or why he said, “It won’t work.”
She opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve tried to pray it away. It doesn’t work.”
“Then you haven’t tried hard enough.”
He sighed. “I’ve tried, believe me.” And not just prayer. He stared at the ceiling. “Maybe there’s just some nightmares you don’t get to wake up from.”
“Lies from the devil. God wants you to live in peace. With a free mind.”
His mouth tightened.
“What is so terrible, Jake, that you don’t think God will forgive you?”
He blew out a breath. Looked at Aria. But she already knew the story.
He rolled over, looked at Mimi. Lowered his voice. “Fine. I shot a kid.”
Mimi said nothing. Didn’t even blink.
“Did you hear me?”
“I’m not deaf.”
His mouth tightened. “He was thirteen.”
She nodded. “I’m sure you had good reason.”
“Is there ever a good reason to shoot a kid?”
She lifted a shoulder. “War. It doesn’t play favorites.”
He rolled back. “That’s not how the press saw it. I’m not sure how, but they got ahold of the incident, and although they couldn’t name the shooter they called me all sorts of terrible things.”
“And you believed them.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I can’t get the wail of his mother’s scream out of my head. It’s . . . I don’t know. Maybe the press was right . . . I’m a murderer.” The devil.
“Jake.” She tightened her hold on his arm. “That’s not true.”
“It is. I’m impulsive. I . . . I think I panicked. I saw this kid with a grenade and thought he was going to kill one of my teammates. So I shot him. Just as simple as that. But see, SEALs don’t do things blindly. We look at all the angles. Come up with a strategy. Run scenarios. Train. We don’t just . . . well, we don’t just hop on a plane and . . .”
“Rescue a pregnant girl from danger? Help an old woman keep breathing?”
He rubbed his chest.
“You know what a hero is? It’s someone who does the hard thing despite the cost.”
“A hero doesn’t kill kids.”
She drew in a breath. “A kid stops being a kid when they decide to take a life.”
“He made a mistake.”
“God can forgive even this, Jake.”
He must really have gotten the stuffing knocked out of him, because his eyes watered.
She rolled back, holding her mask. “I am willing.”
“What?”
“It’s one of my favorite lines from the Bible. Jesus says it to this poor man who has leprosy. It was such a terrible disease—everyone who had it was required to yell ‘unclean, unclean’ whenever they came into town or were around people. Can you imagine? Having to shout out this terrible condemnation of yourself?”
Jake said nothing. But yeah. He’d been shouting condemnations of himself for a while now. Say, twenty years.
“So, here is this diseased, unclean man, and he sees Jesus. He’s clearly overwhelmed, and he’s heard of him, probably thinks of him as a prophet, but whatever the case, he bows before him, desperate, and says, ‘Lord, if you’re willing, you can heal me and make me clean.’”
She drew in a long breath, her voice changed, thick with emotion. “And Jesus says, ‘I am willing. Be healed.’ And instantly, the man is healed, just like that. Clean.”
Clean.
“I am willing. That is the posture of God, Jake. That is the posture of love. If you’re looking for a hero, you don’t have to look any further than Jesus. The one who, for the joy—for love—gave everything, including his life, to rescue us from death, even though we didn’t deserve it. Or, frankly, even want it.”
On the other side of him, Aria began to stir.
“Do you want it, Jake?”
“Want what?”
“To be rescued. Forgiven. Clean.”
He had nothing. “I’ve been a Christian all my life.”
“Yes, but are you clean? Because it seems to me you see yourself as dirty. A leper. Unforgiven.”
“Maybe I don’t deserve to be forgiven.”
“None of us do, kiddo. But, he is willing.”
His eyes heated. “I spent some time on my knees begging for forgiveness. I still feel like . . . well, like it’s not enough.”
“Then maybe you need to ask God to help you to forgive yourself. To stop punishing yourself. Because if Jesus can forgive you, if he paid the price for those sins, what right do you have not to forgive yourself?”
He clenched his jaw, his voice small. “I don’t even know what that looks like, Mimi.”
“You start by receiving forgiveness. Then, by letting Jesus rescue you every day. We think of forgiveness as a one-time deal, but really, it’s a moving target. Every time the wicked one calls you names and wants to take you captive with guilt and shame, you break free by proclaiming the truth of Christ’s forgiveness. Daily, hourly, if you need to. And you start blessing yourself instead of cursing yourself. You tell yourself the truth. I am forgiven. I am clean. I am loved. Say it, Jake.”
I am forgiven.
“Jake?”
“I’m trying.”
“Forgiven. Clean.”
He stared at the light spreading through the room, the fingers of dawn.
“I know Jesus is in you, Jake. There’s just too much hero in you not to see it. Now, it’s time for you to open your eyes and see it too.”
I am forgiven. I am clean.
Aria stirred again, drew in a long breath, opened her eyes.
And then she smiled at him, something easy, something warm.
Heat filled his entire body, sweeping with it the aches, the scratching in his throat, the fire in his chest.
Loved?
She got up, walked over to him. Picked up his wrist to take his pulse. The dawn shone behind her, turning her hair to a rich, layered brown, her eyes soft in his.
She was made for this—saving lives.
Oh wow, he saw it now.
He didn’t belong in her world.
I am clean. I am forgiven.
How he wished it could be true.
He put his hand over Aria’s. “Thank you.”
“Now, we’re even.” She bent down and kissed his cheek.
Not even close. But he squeezed her hand and let it go.
Because if he loved her, he should probably listen to her.
Get her home safely.
Then let her go.
It was an old dream, really, the kind he’d tried to extinguish for years—and had successfully, most of the time.
More of a memory, really, and just as tangible, just as real as the first time it had happened.
Ham could hear her laughter lifting even before he saw her. He knew it was crazy—just showing up like this, at her cute little off-campus bungalow on the edge of Berkeley campus. In his dress whites, no less. But he missed her.
Ached for her.
And he’d just done the hardest thing in his entire life and he needed . . . well, he needed someone to care.
So he sat on the front steps next to a ceramic pot filled with lavender, listening to the wind knock leaves from the trees, and prayed she hadn’t forgotten him.
It had been a long two years since the day he’d promised them a happy ending.
And then there she was, walking into view, under the dappled shadows of a towering elm. She wore a pair of linen pants, a cropped T-shirt, her blonde hair down, long and golden in the late-afternoon sun.
She spotted him, and any fear she’d forgotten him vanished in the widening of her eyes, the way she stopped.
Her book bag fell to the ground and she sprinted across the lawn and leaped into his arms.
He caught her as her legs went around his waist, her arms clutching his shoulders. “Hamburglar!”
She smelled like sunshine and home, and when she kissed him, the past two years of training dropped away, the fatigue, the fear of drowning, the taste of sand in his mouth, ever-present yelling in his ear.
He was home.
Signe bracketed his face with her hands, leaning away from him, her green eyes bright in his. “What are you doing here?”
“I got my trident. I’m officially a SEAL,” he said, putting her down. “And . . . I had to tell you.”
“Oh.” She stepped back from him, offered a shaky smile. A woman walked up to her, held out her book bag.
“You dropped this,” she said, looking up at Ham.
“Thanks.” Signe nodded to Ham. “This is the guy I was telling you about. Hamilton Jones. Ham, this is my roommate, Tara.”
“And you’re the boy from back home,” Tara said. Pretty, short blonde hair. She looked at Signe. “I’m going to the library.” Then she winked.
Ham stilled.
Signe took his hand. “How long do you have?”
“A 96-er. Four days.”
She opened the door to the house. A Craftsman feel on the inside, with hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that flanked a tiled fireplace, overstuffed furniture covered in throws. Plants in pots lined the window alcove, textbooks were stacked on a chipped wooden coffee table.
He put his backpack down in the entryway.
The place felt exactly like Signe. Comfortable.
She took his hand, brought him into the family room. “Do you want something to eat?”
He shook his head.
She took a breath. “So, was it terrible?”
He nodded.
“Were you hurt?”
“A lot. But it was okay. I knew it was for a good reason.”
She nodded, but she wore an enigmatic expression, her face a little twisted. Then she touched his uniform, first one hand, then the next. “You did it.” She had smoothed her hands over his chest. “You really did it. You’re a SEAL.”
“Yeah. I’m just waiting for my team assignment. And then, deployment. But I’ll be back, as soon as I can, I promise.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, then turned away.
“Signe?”
“I just . . . I’m afraid.”
He took her face, turned it back to his. “I told you, I have a plan, and it’s all going to work out.”
She kissed him then, and even in his dream, he could taste the urgency, the fear, the desperation in her kiss.
She was still his girl, and that truth washed over him. He deepened his kiss, and somehow, too fast, too easily he found himself stretched out beside her on the sofa, breathing hard, fighting not to trace his hands down her body. He pressed his forehead to hers. “Sig . . .”
“It’s okay.” She met his eyes, her face flushed, her breathing tight. “It’s okay, Ham. I love you and—”
“No. It’s not okay.” He pushed himself off her, all the way off the sofa and walked away, to the window. Looked out it. “I made myself—us—promises.”
“But we’re not . . . we’re not kids anymore.”
He looked at her. “No, we’re not. Let’s get married.”
The question just spilled from him, a feeling more than a decision, but once it was out, he couldn’t exactly take it back. And despite the quick rush of her breath, he didn’t want to. He turned to her. “Marry me. Today. This weekend. We’ll go to Vegas and—”
“Yes.” She found her feet. Came over to him, nodding. “Yes, Ham.”
“Yes, Ham. I will marry you.”
His hand moved to his chest, even in slumber, feeling the knot tighten, a sense of doom that clenched his heart, moved through his body, filled his lungs.
He opened his eyes with a quick and sharp breath, a gasp, and stared at the ceiling, trying to place it.
The early morning sunlight filtered through the linen curtains at the windows, and a slight wind lifted the heat from his body.
Ham sat up, still feeling Signe in his arms, tasting her, smelling her fragrance on his skin.
As if she’d been in the room with him.
Haunting him.
He got up, went to the bathroom, and washed his face. Brushed his teeth. He’d spent the past day looking into the yachting accident, talking to the Italian coast guard and discovering that indeed, two men had washed ashore, one matching the description of Pavel Tsarnaev. The other, his brother, Ammon. They’d owned an eighty-meter yacht named the Romea that could sleep twelve. Five decks, with a media room and onboard pool, and room for a crew of twenty. According to the local police investigation, the crew was all ashore for the night, just the family on board.
None of whom had surfaced.
“Are you sure the wreckage was from the Romea?” he’d asked the local police chief, a man in his late sixties who’d detailed him on the accident remains.
“The Romea was built in a German shipyard in 2015. Steel hull, aluminum superstructure, and it was designed by Bernard Tisdale.”
Ham hadn’t a clue who that might be, but apparently Tisdale left his trademark embedded in the designs of the yacht.
“The wreckage we recovered was a Tisdale yacht.”
Ham had tried calling Jake again last night, standing on his balcony looking at the basilicas of the nearby churches and, in the distance, the expansive blue of the Mediterranean Sea. Overhead the sky arched in magnificent brilliance. Ham hung up when the call went to voice mail—no good trying to leave another message.
But as he’d stood there after his no-go call, listening to music drift up from the street four stories below, the smells of gardenias and roses twining up into the night from the trellises, the what-could-have-beens hit deep and hard.
He crumpled onto a chair, his head in his hands. Closed his eyes.
This wasn’t the plan.
Lord, this wasn’t the plan!
He didn’t know how he ended up with his face turned to heaven, wettened, his throat raw, but he couldn’t stop himself. God, I know I’ve made mistakes—lots of them. But I need . . . I need answers. And help. If Aggie is my daughter, help me to be the father I should be to her. Help me to be the man Signe needed. Help me . . . help me to . . . Let her go.
To live with a plan he didn’t want.
He’d scrubbed his face, then gone to bed.
And dreamed of the moment when everything started to derail.
Now he dressed and, his stomach writhing, went outside to find a cafe.
The sun bled rose-gold fingers into the square and he headed back to Caffe Opera, bought a croissant and cheese, a cup of cappuccino, and sat at one of the umbrella tables.
In the square, vendors were setting up shops. Artists selling watercolors, oils, and pencil drawings, florists, wood-carvers selling Pinocchios and other puppets, tourist junk—including the turtle he’d purchased, T-shirts, and beach hats.
He sipped his coffee and considered his next move.
Like, home. Although, he didn’t know why the idea of going home put a fist in his gut.
A little girl ran across the square, her mother quick-walking after her, the pair clearly on the way to school or daycare. She called out to her, and the little girl turned, laughing.
The pain in his gut tightened.
Aggie.
He couldn’t face her.
She was afraid of him—he’d figured out that much. And wasn’t that fun? His daughter preferred his teammate over him.
The one time she’d actually turned to him was when she’d nearly drowned.
But what scared him more was that he didn’t have any feelings for her, either. She was a stranger.
An anomaly.
A kink in his plans.
And he hated himself for even thinking that.
The little girl had run back, grabbed her mother’s hand. He watched her pull her mom through the now-busy square.
His gaze fell on a woman, also watching them from across the piazza. She stood under the shadow of a stall, wearing a light blue headscarf, a pair of long linen pants, and a blue sleeveless button-down. The wind lifted her scarf and betrayed golden blonde hair, tied back. And although he couldn’t make her out clearly in the shadow and distance—
“Signe!”
He was on his feet and sprinting across the square before he had a clear thought. The place had crowded with the morning traffic, scooters and bicyclists crisscrossing to side streets. A bus had pulled up and passengers disembarked.
He kept his gaze on the kiosk, dodging pedestrians, finally cutting through into the open.
She was gone.
His heart slammed against his ribs, cutting out his breath. He sprinted up to the vendor at the stall. “Where did she go?”
The young man frowned at him, shook his head.
Ham turned, searching the crowd. So many people, faces and none of them familiar.
“Signe!”
A few people turned, but no one stopped.
He stood there. Please, God—
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he dug it out.
“Hello.”
“Hamilton Jones, this is Dr. Salvatore D’amico.” The coroner.
Ham stepped out into the sunshine, walking toward the giant elephant statue in the center of the square, still searching for Signe.
No one in a blue headscarf.
No one with her glorious long blonde hair.
No one with Signe’s ability to breathe life back into him, make him believe that he hadn’t screwed up his entire life.
“I have . . . news. The coast guard found a body last night, on shore.”
Ham stopped looking. “What?”
“It’s a female. She’s fairly well decayed, but she matches your overall description—blonde, midthirties. I’m wondering if you have a DNA sample we might use to identify her.”
Ham let out a shuddering breath. “I . . . I don’t.”
“I see. Well, if you want to come by and examine the remains, I will allow it.”
“Thank you, Doc. I’ll think about it.”
He hung up and sank down onto the edge of the fountain. A little boy came up and tossed a coin into the moat around the fountain.
Ham stared at the coins inside. “Lucky dog. He picked the right girl to follow home from school.”
Then he put his hand over his eyes and wept.