Blue Hollow Falls Page 15

  He must have seen something of this on her face as he opened the driver side door for her. Instead of taking advantage, however, he proved her earlier assumption to be a correct one. “It beats a cold drizzle and a tarp pretending to be a bed,” he said wryly. Move along, no sexual innuendo to see here. “I’d have paid money for an early nightfall because that meant the skin-blistering day was over.”

  He held the door as she climbed in, then closed it behind her. No hand accidentally brushing against her leg, no pausing a moment to make direct eye contact all up close and personal like before as he closed the big, heavy truck door in her face. Nosiree. None of that. Which was good. Very good. Because that’s the last thing she wanted. Dear Lord, she was a lying liar who lied.

  Once he was in and had the engine rumbling, she said, “So, you served in the desert, I’m guessing.”

  He nodded. “I shouldn’t complain about the heat. I also served in the mountains in Afghanistan. The winters were cold enough to freeze a witch’s”—he caught himself, grinned—“broom.”

  “That would be uncomfortable,” she said sardonically; then her tone sobered. “I can’t imagine any part of what that must have been like.” She looked directly at him. “Thank you for your service. I should have said that before. You know I looked you up online. There wasn’t much there, and I guessed I missed the part about what branch you served under. But I saw a photo Addie had on the mantel. You were a green beret?”

  “Army Special Forces,” he said, then shot her a smile as he backed out of the small cleared dirt and gravel space between the house and the small outbuilding and chicken coop that sat partway down the slope of the side yard. “A green beret is a hat.”

  She let out a short laugh. “Got it. So I guess your tattoo has something to do with your service?”

  He nodded. “Symbols from our badge.”

  “Bailey must know someone in the Army then. She recognized it that day we all first met. Have you asked her about it?”

  He nodded. “Didn’t get anything back, but there’s something there to be sure. She started school this week down in the valley, so we haven’t spent all that much time together since our field trip to the Botanic Garden. Have you worked there long?”

  “Four years. I got the job not too long after I finished grad school.”

  “Launch pad or final destination?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Not sure. It was definitely a goal reached, and I love it there. But now that I’m not tied to the area, I’ve considered going back to school for my doctorate, possibly out of state. Or maybe doing some traveling, to study more in my specific field.”

  “Orchids?”

  “Partly. Endangered plants is the broader scope. I was assigned to the orchids when I was hired, and have become fairly knowledgeable in that particular area, but I wouldn’t limit myself just to studying them.”

  “And the Ph.D?”

  “Not necessarily a long-held goal, but it would open a few more doors.”

  He started down the long, winding mountain road that led from Hawk’s Nest Ridge into the Hollow, which was all still at a good elevation above the valley floor far below. “Are they doors you want to walk through?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would you pursue the doctorate because you want the knowledge, or would it purely be for career advancement?”

  “Where did that come from?” she asked, not insulted, but genuinely curious.

  He answered easily, comfortably. “My own experience, I guess. I was considered for further promotion a few times, but once I went much above master sergeant, I wouldn’t have the direct experience of being in the field with my team.”

  “Some would say that, in your former line of work, that would be an advantage,” she said with a smile.

  He shared the smile. “True, but it meant I was a step removed from being on the front line of decision making for the men in my division. And any higher I might have gone would have been more steps removed. I didn’t want that.”

  “Is this part of you wanting to control things and keep them running smoothly?”

  He chuckled. “Definitely. And I realize I’d have had a broader control from the advanced vantage point, but that wasn’t a goal I was after. My men and I had gone through a lot together, more than the layperson could ever comprehend. The kind of bond our missions created between us is deeper and stronger than anything there is, save perhaps between a parent and child.”

  He glanced at her, and those blue eyes of his raked over her body with such intensity, one would think they were discussing something far more intimate than his time putting his life on the line.

  She felt like there should have been smoke rising from her clothes, but he had his gaze back on the road now, and he kept on talking as if he hadn’t just visually frisked her. Maybe she’d misread it.

  “I couldn’t just hand them over to someone else,” he said. “We started together from our first tour, most of us, anyway. I wanted to see it all the way through together.”

  “All of you did, what was it, five tours?” She shook her head. “You’re right, I can’t comprehend, even a little bit, what that would be like. Even to go once. And then to go back again. And again.”

  He shook his head. “Not all of us. Seth was with me through the last three, and we did have new additions. And some losses.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For those losses. That’s even more beyond the scope of my comprehension. . . .” She let the words trail off and he simply nodded, but said nothing. “Was it that you couldn’t imagine anyone doing for them what you did? Or you just weren’t cut out for higher management? Not everyone wants to steer the ship. Some folks are meant to run it.”

  “It wasn’t a matter of trusting another commanding officer. It was more like we’d risked it all for each other, so it was only right we saw it through as a team.”

  “Why did you enlist?”

  He looked at her again. “What did Addie tell you?”

  Sunny smiled, but didn’t refute his assumption, though it was Addie who had talked to her about Sawyer, not the other way around. But she had listened, and she had been interested. “Just that you wanted to explore the world, see something bigger than the Hollow.”

  “She’s right.”

  “Most kids just go away to college.”

  He smiled. “I wasn’t most kids.”

  I bet, she thought. “Trouble with a capital T, so you said.”

  “That, too. There was also a big part of me that wanted to be connected to something bigger than myself. Addie was my surrogate parent—still is—but otherwise the world seemed pretty disconnected from me. At least it did when I was younger.”

  “Hence all the acting out, trying to make the world connect to you? Just not in the right way.”

  He gave her a sideways glance, but he was smiling. “You sure your degree is in botany?”

  “Horticulture,” she said, then smiled. “And trust me, I’m the very last person to be psychoanalyzing anyone. That’s Stevie’s domain.”

  “She seems like a good person to be working with. She’s a friend, too?”

  Sunny nodded. “The best at both of those things, yes. She wanted to come with me today, see the mill.”

  “But?”

  “I wanted to talk about the papers I had drawn up and I wanted—”

  “To keep it business.”

  She surprised herself, and him, too, judging by his expression, when she said, “That, too.”

  “I know Addie is putting on the full court press to make you feel you’re a part of this new family dynamic she’s creating,” he said. “But it’s not something you can force. I was telling her that when you came in from the porch.”

  “Ah. I wondered what you two were cooking up. I’m pretty sure sending you out as tour guide means she’s not giving up on her mission.”

  “Her heart is in the right place, I can assure you that. But don’t let her push you into doing anything yo
u aren’t willing or ready to do.”

  “I won’t. I did want to talk to her about having Bailey come stay with me for a weekend, maybe when there’s a school holiday, so we can get to know each other better. I asked Bailey about it on our trek out to the greenhouse, and she seemed interested. I know I can’t be here like you and Addie are, but I do want her to know I want to be part of her life.”

  “If she said she wanted to come, then I’d believe she means it. She’s not chatty, but I’m already learning that she always says what she means. And she clearly wanted you to see that greenhouse.”

  Sunny recalled, quite clearly, the disappointment on Bailey’s face when she’d mentioned giving away her part of their inheritance. “I think maybe she’s taking a page from Addie’s family planning book.” They shared a smile at that. “She’s taken to you very quickly. I think that’s a good sign.”

  “Of what?” he asked, as he slowed to take the tight corkscrew turns that led down to the first meadow.

  “That she really is doing okay. With everything. I mean, she’s a pro at not letting us see how any of this affects her, of remaining detached—well, no, not detached. But she sort of hovers above it all, observing, but not participating. Not really. And I can’t blame her one bit; it’s one of the healthier survival tactics she could have adopted.”

  Sawyer nodded, smiled. “Yes, I can second that from personal experience. The opposite experience.”

  Sunny shared his smile. “I do worry that she’s bottling it all up, though. Keeping it all inside isn’t a good thing. I mean, she should have at least one person she can confide in. That’s my personal experience talking. So seeing her reaching out to you, trusting you, laughing with you, that’s a really good thing to my mind.”

  “How did you deal with what you faced? So young, and taking care of a sick parent. I can’t imagine the challenges you faced.”

  “It took me a good while to reach out, but I finally found a friend. It helped to talk. When my middle school guidance counselor found out what I was dealing with at home, she’d make the time to talk to me, and she had an uncanny way of getting me to open up and not make it seem like offering assistance. That basically saved my life during those years. I wasn’t like other kids. They seemed so . . . I don’t know. Carefree, I guess. And I had this weird name, and weird clothes.” She looked at him. “My mom didn’t believe in things like girls wearing pants, but they also had no business showing off their bare legs, so I was always in these long prairie skirts.” She lifted her shoulders, let them drop. “Anyway, having that adult perspective, hearing another adult talk to me in ways that made sense to me, made me feel that I wasn’t such an outsider, that maybe I was more like normal people than I thought I was.”

  “I guess I never thought about that part. You must have had to grow up pretty quickly. So it would make sense that with kids your own age . . . you didn’t get each other.”

  “That changed as I got older. In a good way. Being eclectic and out there was considered way more cool later on. Plus, I’d long since stopped caring what my classmates thought of me, and so maybe that aloofness was more attractive than if I’d been sullen, or shy. But knowing there was someone I could turn to early on was a big part of that happening. So much so I considered getting actual counseling and would have if we could have afforded it.” She smiled briefly. “Instead I wiped out my local library on self-help books trying to find ways to cope with everything.”

  “Did they help?”

  She nodded. “Partly in the way I thought they would, but they also helped me to understand my mother better, which was probably the bigger assist. And I learned about the challenges caregivers face that aren’t so obvious, which ultimately led to the most helpful part, which was realizing that a lot of other people were out there, doing exactly what I was doing. Enough of them that there were whole books on the subject. I wasn’t alone.”

  “We’re a lot alike in that regard,” he said, almost more to himself than to her, but she responded to him anyway.

  “Did you get help? For what you faced in your tours overseas?”

  He nodded. “Like you with your guidance counselor, I had the great good fortune to have a commander who looked out for the signs. I learned much later on that he had lost his own son to PTSD and his way of dealing with not being able to help his child was to pay extra attention to the signs of things affecting the men under his command.” He shot her a grin. “He was a little less subtle than your counselor in how he went about offering his assistance, but then we were pretty stubborn about admitting we needed help, and even more hardheaded about accepting it.”

  “I’m so sorry about his son, but that was probably the best tribute he could have made in his memory. Does he know how much he helped you?”

  Sawyer nodded again. “He does, yes. He made sure I continued to seek help once I got out, and I was smart enough, for once, to listen to him. I don’t really want to think where I’d be right now if I hadn’t.”

  They rode along in silence for a few minutes; then she asked, “Is that why you came back? Why you’re rebuilding the town? Is that part of how you’re making peace with yourself, by giving back to your hometown? Because there are those who would argue that you’ve already given more than enough.”

  “But it’s not about that, is it?” he asked, and she knew what he meant. “You had it exactly right. It’s not about what I owe to anyone. It’s about making peace within myself. Yes, I was defending my country, yes, I was following orders in service to my country, but that only washes so far.”

  She nodded, and they fell back into silence again, but it was a comfortable one. She was connecting with him in ways she hadn’t expected. And it felt good. Maybe too good, but she didn’t want to think about that right then. “You have every right to pursue whatever brings you peace,” she said, more quietly now. “I said earlier that there wasn’t much about you online. I did read the story about what happened on your last tour, though. The whole Sergeant Angel thing.”

  He sighed at that, but other than a quick glance out the side window away from her, he said nothing.

  “What you did, running into a building you knew was targeted for bombing, because the insurgents discovered it was an underground school for educating young girls. Going in there, by yourself, getting them all out, even as the ordnance was already incoming . . .” She shook her head. “You earned that nickname, you know.” She smiled then, but it was kind and compassionate, rather than teasing. “I’m sure all of those girls will think of you as their personal angel the rest of their days.”

  His expression remained flat, his attention focused forward. “It’s what we’re trained to do. I was lucky, very lucky, that day. That’s all.”

  She probably shouldn’t have probed, but it was a defining event in his life, and if they were going to get all personal, she wanted him to know she knew about it. “The president of our country personally awarded you a medal of honor. I think that pretty much says it all.” She tried to lighten the mood with a dry smile and a sideways glance. “I bet you keep it in a drawer or something.”

  He didn’t look at her, but the smile was back. “I sleep on a cot in a gutted mill. I don’t exactly have it hanging on the wall.”

  “Addie has it, doesn’t she?”

  He nodded. “I’m surprised she hasn’t shown that to you, too.” Now it was his turn to shoot her a sideways glance. “You two have become a little chummier than I thought.”

  “Not really,” she replied, relaxing a little, grateful her dip into his past hadn’t gotten awkward. “I learned most of what I know when you all came to D.C., while we were walking around the Botanic Garden. You and Bailey were off exploring this and that and, well, Addie can be quite chatty.”

  Sawyer laughed, though it held a rueful note. “She’s been working this whole thing even harder than I realized.”

  Sunny grinned. “I think you’re right, that she means well. And I guess I do want to know about you, about Addie,
about Bailey, and the town. It is part of my heritage, after all.”

  “Speaking of which, what are in those papers you brought with you? I know Addie told you to see a lawyer, but you know we’re not—”

  “You know I mentioned to Bailey on our greenhouse jaunt that I wanted to set up a trust for her, with my share of the mill.” She looked at him. “Actually, I’ve already done that. My share of the mill has been set aside for her when she turns eighteen. I was going to make it twenty-one, but I thought Bailey more than most kids would probably know what she was about by the time she reached eighteen.” She laughed. “Heck, she could probably make wiser decisions now than most folks twice her age. Or three times,” she added, pointing at herself.

  Sawyer laughed at that, too. “True.” He glanced over at her again, his smile warm, and there was something that looked like admiration in his eyes. “That’s a nice thing you did,” he said. “She might not think so now, but I know in time she’ll appreciate the gesture very much. Especially when she realizes that you didn’t do it as a way to wash your hands of the mill or of her.”

  Sunny was still thinking about that, about Bailey’s willingness to give up her share of her inheritance, if it meant Sunny might spend more time in the Hollow. “I was shocked when she offered me her share. I guess I should have put it together when she was so eager to show me the greenhouse in the first place. But she didn’t really talk much on the hike out there and we were too busy exploring once we got inside.”

  “The day we went out there, the day she first got here, I was actually taking her up a trail that winds back to an overlook where you can see the top of the falls spilling down over the boulders, and get an aerial view of the mill and the whole area. I thought it might give her a different perspective, about her inheritance, and her new home. I didn’t really think much about the greenhouse part of the hike, other than it might be a good distraction from what was a pretty crazy day, but she clearly did.”