A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) Read online

  He’d never considered the possibility that Major Matheson was dead, that that was why he’d never contacted Sabrina, why he’d never acknowledged Mariah. He’d just assumed the major was like any other bastard who’d run around on his wife: ignoring the consequences of his infidelity.

  Dead. That was a hell of an excuse for ignoring his daughter.

  The major’s wife—widow—was waiting for a response from him. It took him a moment to find the proper words. “I’m sorry.” Even as he said them, even as she nodded as if she’d heard them a thousand times, he felt guilty for them. He was sorry. He was even sorry the major had been killed. Too damn many people had died in the war, and every single one of them was a loss to the country.

  But mostly he was sorry for himself. Sorry that his plans had just been shot to hell. Sorry that he couldn’t say, “Here’s your daughter; her name’s Mariah; take care of her.” It might have gone over all right with the major. He seriously doubted it would fly with his widow.

  “Thank you,” she said politely. She hesitated a moment, then took a step back, gesturing toward the living room. “Would you like to come in?”

  “Sure, thanks,” he answered mindlessly when what he really needed was someplace quiet to think and figure out what to do now. He’d been counting on this trip working out successfully. He’d thought Matheson might balk, but he’d been convinced that in the end, Mariah would have a new home.

  So much for hopes. There was no father for Mariah. No easy way out. Maybe he should spend the rest of his leave trying to find Sabrina, but she’d abandoned her daughter once before. How could he know she wouldn’t do it again?

  Besides, Sabrina had spent half her life running and hiding. The four years she’d lived in Leesville were the longest she’d spent in one place since she was fifteen. She had no family to speak of, and she’d had a million dream places to live: Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Chicago, Miami, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Acapulco.

  “I’m Therese Matheson,” the major’s widow said as she led the way into the living room. She put a slight emphasis on her first name, Tuh-race, correcting the seething teenager’s mispronunciation. She offered her hand.

  “Sergeant Keegan Logan.” He kept his handshake brief, the way he’d hoped to keep all his contact with the Matheson family brief. Even in those few seconds, though, he noticed that her hand wasn’t as soft as he’d expected. The skin was warm, a little callused, her nails pale pink tipped with white. She wore a ring on her right hand, gold with a fiery orange stone, and a bracelet with the same stones linked end to end.

  And a wedding ring on her left hand? He checked as he stepped back and saw, yes, a gold band, along with a second band bearing a chunky square cut diamond. It was impressive, but it didn’t suit her. A delicate hand like that needed a more delicate stone.

  And he needed to focus on the problem at hand. No distractions caused by any pretty woman but especially the widow.

  Releasing her hand, he felt the need to swipe his palm on his jeans. Huh. He couldn’t remember the last time a handshake had made him sweat.

  She sat in a chair near the fireplace, the comfortable sort that his mother cuddled all the kids in, and crossed her legs. He chose the opposite chair, not nearly as comfortable, and sat stiffly. “Can I ask when…?”

  Sadness crept into her hazel eyes. “Three years ago. An IED.”

  “Sorry,” he said again.

  “You knew him through the Army?”

  He didn’t like to lie, but what was the point of the truth? Actually, no, I know of him because he slept with my girlfriend. He betrayed your marriage vows, he betrayed you, and he has a baby girl who needs a home. The truth would serve no purpose but to hurt her, and she’d already lost her husband. Hadn’t she been hurt enough? “I was in Iraq and Afghanistan. It must have been tough for you and your children.” He gestured toward a family photo, the girl happier than she’d been today but not by much, the boy looking grim, too.

  Therese looked at the picture for a moment or two before smiling faintly. “It was very difficult for Paul’s children. They miss him very much.”

  Paul’s children. Not our or my. She was raising her husband’s kids from another relationship. Not lucky enough to have any of her own, assuming she wanted them, but surrounded by her husband’s kids.

  “Are you stationed here at Fort Murphy?”

  “No. I had some leave and thought I would look him up. I’m at Fort Polk now.”

  She smiled faintly. “He went down there several times for training. He didn’t like the place, but I always thought being that close to New Orleans would make up for anything lacking in the town and the post.”

  Keegan swallowed back irritation. He might not love Leesville, either, but he was entitled. It was his state. Let Matheson find fault with his own home state before he started on someone else’s.

  “What do you do there?”

  “My MOS is Sixty-Eight Whiskey.” Military Occupational Specialty was the Department of Defense’s way of saying job specialty. Why speak in full words when acronyms and numbers would do?

  When she raised a brow, he added, “A combat medic.”

  A flash of sympathy crossed her face, and he knew what she was thinking. A medic, combat tours, the things he’d seen, the lives he’d saved and the ones he couldn’t do anything for but send on down the line or be with them while they died. Other than the danger, that was the thing that worried his mom most: how he dealt with the inability to save everyone.

  “Tough job.”

  “They all are.”

  She studied him a moment, tilting her head to one side, before asking, “Is that why you wanted to see Paul? About something that happened while you were deployed?”

  So Matheson wasn’t the sort to be friendly with a noncommissioned officer. That didn’t surprise Keegan. A lot of officers mistook subordinate for inferior. They gave orders to the enlisted people under their commands; they risked those people’s lives; but they didn’t become friends with them.

  “Yeah.” It wasn’t a lie. He had been deployed when Matheson had done his last training at Fort Polk, and something had damn well happened. But if she believed he’d wanted to discuss some combat incident, let her. He was fine with misdirection.

  Pushing forward, he stood, and she automatically rose, too, a fluid movement that reminded him not of a dancer’s grace but a dancer’s strength. Therese Matheson was a strong woman. Some wives found their strength when their husbands deployed, some when they died, but his guess was that she’d nailed hers long before she’d even met her husband. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.” His mom’s manners forced him to go on. “I’m sorry about your loss.”

  “So am I.” She walked to the door with him, arms folded over her stomach as he stepped out onto the porch. “Have a safe trip back to Fort Polk.”

  “Thanks.”

  But it wasn’t the trip back that concerned him.

  It was what to do about Mariah.

  * * *

  Therese closed the door behind the visitor, then stepped to the side to watch him through the sheer curtains over the narrow window there. More than three years, and telling someone Paul was dead never got easier, whether it was an old friend of hers, an old friend of his, or a total stranger.

  Keegan Logan. Nice name. It suited him. If he wasn’t thirty, he was close. His sandy brown hair was a high-and-tight in need of a trim, his skin deeply tanned, his eyes surprisingly blue. Even in casual clothes, he had that Army Strong look—erect posture, chiseled muscles, square jaw, a compact body to do a uniform proud. He wasn’t overly tall, maybe five ten, and under normal circumstances he probably exuded confidence, assurance, and charm.

  Under normal circumstances, he probably fluttered the pulses of every woman in a hundred-foot radius. Therese’s pulse had been unflutterable for a long time. Though when—if—it did flutter again in response to a man, it could be a man like him. She did have a weakness for blue eyes and chiseled muscles.
r />   She watched him climb into his car, shiny and black, then pull away from the curb before leaning against the door, considering the future. However distant it might be, someday she might find herself in Carly’s position, interested in, sexually attracted to, in love with another man. A part of her wanted it intensely. A part of her wasn’t sure she could handle loving another man, because as she’d learned too well with Paul, love came with the risk of loss. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be up to that.

  When a noise from upstairs drew her gaze that way, unease curled through her stomach, leaving sourness in its wake. There had been a time in her life when uneasiness was a rare thing—nerves over a school test, regret for an argument with a friend, fear that her college boyfriend was seeing someone else. Now it was a constant. Nerves strung tight. Queasiness. Uncertainty. Dread.

  “Who was that man?” Abby stood on the landing, glaring down at her like an enraged demigoddess. How difficult had it been for her, opening the door to someone asking for her father? Logically, Therese knew it must have been tough—it had been tough for her—but she saw no outward sign of hurt on Abby’s face. Just anger.

  “He was a friend of your dad’s.”

  “How could he be a friend and not know that Daddy’s dead?”

  Daddy’s dead. The kids usually didn’t use that phrase. They usually didn’t talk about Paul’s death at all, but when they did, it was with euphemisms. Dead sounded too harsh. Too final.

  “People lose touch. They met in Iraq. Your dad came back here. Sergeant Logan went wherever he was assigned. Their paths didn’t cross again.”

  “So they weren’t friends.”

  “Just because you lose contact with someone doesn’t mean you stop caring about them. I haven’t seen my best friend from high school in ten years and haven’t talked to her in five, but if we got together again, it would be like nothing had changed.”

  “Things have changed or you would have seen her and talked to her.” Abby snorted. “What did he want?”

  Sometime in the past moments, Therese’s head had begun to ache. It was Abby’s tone of voice, just the right pitch and level of snottiness to zero in on her eardrums with laser precision. She pressed her fingertips to her temple, but it did nothing to ease the throb. “To touch base.” She guessed. People who’d been in combat together always had memories to discuss, maybe questions to answer or sorrows to share.

  With a dramatic hmph! and a toss of her hair, Abby spun around and disappeared down the hall. Predictably, a moment later her bedroom door slammed, the exclamation point at the end of the longest conversation they’d had since her return.

  Therese needed aspirin, caffeine, and sugar. After lunch, she’d stopped at CaraCakes, her favorite bakery in town, and picked up fresh-baked bread and cookies. Cookies never failed to improve her disposition. In the kitchen, she poured a glass of mint tea brewed with simple syrup and took her first cookie from the pink and black CaraCakes box. By the time she began the second cookie, the oatmeal, raisins, and brown sugar had worked their magic, rendering the aspirin tablets unnecessary.

  She was a creature of routine, and except for church this morning, today had broken routine. The things that usually occupied her time—laundry, paying bills, getting ready for work—had been done during spring break. Except for the dirty clothes Jacob had brought home with him, there was nothing requiring her attention. She could read a book. Go for a walk. Talk on the phone with that old friend she’d mentioned to Abby.

  Instead she stepped outside. The house had a great front porch but only a square slab of concrete out back. It was one of the projects she and Paul had planned: jack-hammering the cement, putting in brick in a herringbone pattern, building a low wall around the perimeter to hold flower beds she would fill with something lovely and creeping, like phlox or ivy. They’d intended to reseed the yard, too, and add crape myrtles along the fence. She liked the vibrant colors and the papery peeling bark, and he’d liked the alien-looking seed pods left behind after the blooms.

  All they’d managed was to invest in a nice set of outdoor furniture. Here it was April, and she hadn’t bothered bringing out the yellow floral cushions for them yet. Hadn’t considered hiring someone to replace the patio. Hadn’t even looked at flowers or crape myrtles.

  What did the state of the backyard matter when she hadn’t yet reached a decision about the kids?

  Even though her tea was in a tall insulated glass, sweat formed on it in the time it took to pull a teak chair into the sun and drag over another to prop her feet on. She sat, eyes closed, face tilted back, absorbing the sun’s warmth and concentrating on settling the disquiet inside her.

  It was impossible, though. The first step in giving up custody of Abby and Jacob would be talking to their mother to see if she would take them back. Therese did her best to avoid talking to Catherine. The woman was the role model for selfishness and irresponsibility. Needing me time when she had two small children to raise. Refusing to be there for them when their father died because she was grieving too much herself. Oblivious to Abby’s unhappiness and uncaring that neither child wanted to live with Therese. And those clothes she’d bought Abby…

  Selfish and irresponsible. And yet Therese would return custody to her in a heartbeat. Did that make her the role model for evil stepmothers everywhere?

  Catherine was their mother, the small voice inside her insisted. But another small voice disagreed. Catherine gave birth to them. She hadn’t mothered them in the past four years. They were, for all practical purposes, orphaned. She had left them willingly, Paul unwillingly, but the results were the same.

  Paul had left them with Therese. He’d entrusted two of the three people he’d loved most in the world to the third. He’d believed in her so much that she’d believed in herself. It hurt that she’d lost faith.

  “Are you taking a nap or getting an early start on a tan?”

  “Me, tan? Don’t you know that’s unhealthy for you? I’m getting my daily dose of vitamin D.” Slowly Therese opened her eyes to find Carly standing in the doorway. “Grab yourself a glass of tea and bring those cookies on the island out here.”

  When her friend settled in the chair that had minutes before supported Therese’s feet, Therese gave her a long look. Carly wasn’t an impressive beauty, the kind who made men and women both take a second or third look, but Therese had always thought her delicately pretty. This afternoon she was downright radiant, and it had nothing to do with the sun.

  “Being in love agrees with you.” Therese hoped her friend didn’t hear the envy in her voice.

  “Being in love with someone who loves me back agrees with me.”

  “How is Dane?”

  “Recuperating,” Carly replied with a grin.

  The man had spent months dealing with the loss of his leg, and the long months before that, he’d been in Afghanistan. He probably hadn’t had sex in longer than most men thought possible, until a few nights ago, and Carly had been celibate even longer. But no more. Therese sighed, not caring if her envy sounded loud and clear. Carly and Dane were going to live happily ever after. She would probably be pregnant before the wedding next month. They would find bliss and joy in every moment they could because they both knew how fragile life was.

  Yep, Therese was jealous. All the margarita sisters were. Very happy for Carly, but jealous just the same.

  “I missed church this morning. And dinner.”

  “We missed you, too.”

  “I don’t plan to stop going. To church or to dinner with you guys.”

  Therese wanted to say the thought had never occurred to her, that she’d known things would change with Dane in Carly’s life but she’d also known it would never change their friendship, but she couldn’t without lying. The main group of the margarita club had discussed that very thing a while back—ironically, on the very day Carly met Dane. At the time of the conversation, none of them had guessed that she’d just met Mr. Right—more appropriately, Staff Sergeant Right—least
of all her.

  Even so, there’d been a little fear. All of the group, but especially Carly, Jessy, Ilena, Fia, Marti, Lucy, and Therese, had helped each other through their husbands’ deaths. They’d become best friends, sisters, family. They had assured each other that a new man in their lives wouldn’t affect them, but they worried anyway.

  Because she couldn’t say anything without giving away the relief that filled her at Carly’s words, she settled for leaning forward and squeezing her hand.

  After selecting a cookie from the box, Carly glanced toward the house, then said in a low voice, “Abby answered the door. Gorgeous haircut. She looks so grown up and beautiful. The boys at school tomorrow are going to be tripping over their tongues.”

  “Oh, gee, thanks for reminding me of that. You just brought back my headache.”

  Carly didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “I want boys. Little girls are so sweet and adorable, but then they grow into teenage girls and you have to deal with teenage boys. I want boys.”

  “Paul never thought about her growing up. In his mind she was always Daddy’s girl. If it ever occurred to him that someday she’d be dating, having sex, falling in love, he shoved it out of his mind. If he saw her today, he wouldn’t be able to live in denial anymore.” She paused to sip her tea before drily adding, “If he’d seen her yesterday, she’d be locked in her room for the next ten years. Oh, Carly, am I really considering sending her back to live with the mother who dressed her like a hooker?”

  Carly’s gaze remained steady on her. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  Some decisions were so easy to make. When she’d been offered a job in Georgia after college, she’d taken about sixty seconds to consider accepting, even though it meant moving far from Montana and her family, and she’d never regretted it. When she’d met Paul after he and some buddies helped her with a broken-down car, she hadn’t thought twice about his invitation to dinner—or to bed. She’d never regretted that, either.