The Welcome Home Garden Club Page 7

  And then for the first time, she’d felt Danny move. A fluttering inside her belly. Soft, but distinct. Movement. Gideon’s son. A piece of him was living on inside her.

  The moment was so surreal she could not absorb it all. Emotions of every kind and facet poked and prodded her. Anger, hope, regret, joy, fear, sadness, exhilaration. It was a mad jumble that set her pulse to jumping and her stomach rocking.

  She stood on the precipice. Her inner urge was to fling herself into Gideon’s arms, but he looked so changed. It had been eight long years, and she no longer had any idea who he was. And if he wasn’t dead, why hadn’t he come home before now?

  He swiveled his head, cast a glance at her from the corner of his eye. Tentatively, she reached out a hand to finger his jacket, but he jerked back.

  “Don’t,” he snapped.

  Hurt, she dropped her arm.

  His eyes narrowed. His jaw hardened, but his tone softened. “Just don’t.”

  Pain at his rejection cut deep. What was wrong with him? What had happened to make him so hard? It must have been something terrible. She didn’t know what to do. It was all too much. Seeking the only thing she knew that could ground her, she pivoted and went back to the van. Danny. She had to get to her son.

  Caitlyn slammed the back doors closed, climbed into the front seat, and with fingers so numb she couldn’t feel the keys, she started the engine and drove away.

  Chapter Five

  Traditional meaning of almond blossom—hope and watchfulness.

  Wedding ring. On the third finger of her left hand. Simple gold band. The realization solidified in Gideon’s mind like cement.

  Caitlyn was married.

  Feeling like he’d lost the last hope worth living for, Gideon stared after the retreating van, as did everyone else in the pavilion. After Caitlyn disappeared from sight down the winding road, people converged, peppering him with questions.

  “Where have you been?”

  “We heard you were dead.”

  “Why haven’t you come home before now?”

  “Goodness, Gideon, you’re better-looking than ever.”

  In the past, he might have enjoyed the attention, but not anymore.

  He raised his palm, growled. “I came to see J. Foster Goodnight put into the ground. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me in peace until that task is accomplished.”

  But of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  His older half brother, Bowie Goodnight, stalked over and shoved his face into Gideon’s. He smelled like a distillery and wore an expensive black suit with a fat paisley blue tie that made him look like a 1970s undertaker.

  “You’re not wanted here,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Leave.”

  “Actually,” Gideon said coolly, “I’m afraid to burst your bubble. But our old man invited me.”

  “Bullshit!” Bowie curled his hands into fists, leaned inward, crowding Gideon’s personal space. “And you’re not my brother.”

  Gideon cocked his head at Lester LaVon, who was hovering at the fringe of the crowd. “Tell him, LaVon.”

  Lester nodded, his balding head shining sweatily in the sun. “It’s true. Your father sent me to Afghanistan last month to find him.”

  Bowie looked like a wasp had flown up his nose. “But why?”

  Lester shifted, tugged at his tie. “Because Gideon is his youngest son, and J. Foster named him in the will.”

  The words Lester spoke didn’t really register with Gideon, but they had a powerful effect on Bowie and Crockett. They were yelling at once, throwing a tantrum right there at their daddy’s funeral.

  “This is outrageous,” Bowie shouted. “Not to be tolerated.”

  “I’ll sue! I’ll sue!” Crockett waved his hands. “He’s not getting one red cent of our inheritance.”

  Gideon stared at the coffin. Was this what you intended, you ornery old coot? To have your three sons at each other’s throats? Are you and Satan sharing a snout full of whiskey and laughing your asses off?

  “Settle down.” LaVon pushed his palm down in a calming motion and looked chagrined at the stupidity of his mistake in announcing details of the will at the graveside.

  Gideon could have taken a moment to bask in the sweet irony of the situation, but Bowie was red-faced and spewing spittle as he repeatedly shouted, “Leave, leave, leave.” He could stay put and fight with high-octane Bowie, or he could get on his motorcycle and go after Caitlyn.

  Because one look in her eyes and he’d been jettisoned back to the past. All the old feelings had swarmed back, stronger than ever, and he hated it. He’d sworn never again to be that vulnerable, never again to open himself up to such heartache.

  God, why had he returned? He didn’t give a damn about the contents of Goodnight’s will. And he’d mentally cut his ties to Caitlyn years ago. He’d been happy enough in Afghanistan. Why had he mucked it up? Moira had been so wrong. Closure was the last thing he’d found in Twilight. All he’d done was split open a raw and achy wound, only to discover it was abscessed to the bone.

  He shouldered Bowie aside and headed for his motorcycle, but he’d taken only a few steps when an old man stood up from the last pew.

  “Garza,” the man called.

  Judge Blackthorne’s hair was grayer, his jowls thicker, his shoulders sloped, but his eyes remained eagle sharp.

  All the old fury—and the need to prove himself to this town and this man—came whipping back. His good hand curled into a fist. He’d lost his other hand in a large part thanks to Judge Blackthorne, who’d backed him into a corner. He wasn’t blaming Blackthorne for his actions. Gideon had set that barn fire. But Blackthorne had given him no wiggle room, made no allowances for Gideon’s extenuating circumstances. He met the old man’s eyes with a dagger-sharp gaze.

  Blackthorne did not flinch. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from my daughter,” he barked. “Get out of town now.”

  Gideon had an urge to brush up against him hard. Slam his shoulder into the old man with enough impact to spin him on his ass. But if nothing else, the army had taught him impulse control. A lesson he’d sorely needed.

  Instead, he simply narrowed his eyes, drilled a hole straight through the judge, and dared, “Or what?”

  Caitlyn paced her kitchen and wrung her hands. Not knowing where else to go or what else to do, she’d raced home from the funeral, leaving the van parked haphazardly at the curb in front of her house. She hadn’t even stopped at the babysitter’s to pick up Danny. She needed time to process what was happening. To get her head straight. To calm her racing pulse.

  Gideon was alive!

  How could he be alive? She’d hired a PI. He’s shown her the paper trail. Gideon was dead.

  Except that had been no dead man cradling her head in his lap in the back of her van. He’d been warm and strong and very much alive.

  Her heart soared, wanting desperately but very afraid to believe in this fragile dream. How many people who’d lost loved ones had dreamed dreams like this? Their beloved returned to them, whole and safe. She bit down on her lip, felt both exquisite joy and intense anxiety threading through her.

  Gideon was alive.

  The first rush of questions hit her. But what did this mean? Where had he been? Why had the PI lied? Had it been some kind of mistake? Or was her father somehow behind it? Then the second wave of questions crashed. What about Danny? How did she tell Gideon about Danny? How did she tell Danny about his father? Everyone in Twilight believed that Kevin was her son’s father. To protect him, she’d let Danny believe it too, planning, one day, when he was old enough and the time was right, to tell him the truth about his real father. What was she going to do about this?

  The thought made her feel liquid and jittery.

  The magnitude of what had happened hit her in fresh waves. She stopped pacing, wrapped her arms around her waist, sank her spine down the length of the counter cabinet until her butt touched the cool tile floor.
<
br />   Gideon was alive.

  Memories tumbled through her. Their first date: a canoe ride on the river followed by a picnic of bologna sandwiches and fresh-picked pears. Their first kiss shared underneath the Ruby Street viaduct. The time they’d conceived Danny in the wee hours of the morning on a blanket in Sweetheart Park.

  How was she supposed to handle this? She didn’t even know who Gideon was anymore. At the cemetery, he’d looked so imposing. Like a warrior straight off the battlefield. Emotionless, detached. Had he lost his humanity? Was he still in the military? Where had he been? How long was he staying?

  It was all too much to absorb.

  She pulled her knees to her chest, pressed her forehead to her knees. Her emotions ran the gamut from giddy joy, to tentative hopefulness, to abject fear, to downright panic. What if Gideon wanted to take Danny away from her?

  Don’t let your imagination run away with you. He doesn’t even know about Danny.

  No, but someone in Twilight was bound to tell him soon enough. She needed to do it first. Except how did you tell someone something like that? Someone you thought dead and buried for eight years?

  Good to see you again, glad to know you’re not dead. Oh yeah, and by the way, you have a seven-and-a-half-year-old son who has no idea you’re his father.

  But in the midst of her panic, a small inner voice whispered, What if Gideon still loves you? What if he’s happy about Danny? What if he wants to be a family?

  How beautiful, that what-if scenario! She wanted to believe it was a possibility, but she couldn’t afford to kid herself or assume anything. They’d both grown and changed. Neither of them were the kids they used to be. Becoming a mother had altered her in fundamental ways, and she was certain that being a soldier had changed him.

  Without warning, the tears were upon her. Tears of sadness and hope. Tears of relief that he was alive. Even if they couldn’t pick up where they’d left off, she was so happy that he wasn’t dead.

  She wished she hadn’t been so shocked and run away. She wished she’d gone against her innately cautious nature and just flung herself into his arms, and told him how much she’d missed him, how she’d loved him. But she hadn’t done that and there was no chance to redo their first meeting since he’d risen from the dead. It was already set in stone, her reaction.

  He can’t blame you for that. He had to know how much it would rattle you, his showing up for J. Foster’s funeral dressed like that.

  He had presented an unsettling image. He should have given her some warning. Written a letter, picked up a phone. She was listed in the phone book. Not that hard to find.

  You’re listed as Caitlyn Marsh, not Caitlyn Blackthorne. He doesn’t know you’re married.

  Maybe he did know she was married. Maybe that was why he hadn’t called. Maybe he did know she was married and hadn’t heard that Kevin had died. And where had he been for eight years? Why hadn’t he come home before now? Why hadn’t he tried to contact her?

  Oh, this dithering was getting her nowhere. She needed to talk to him. Caitlyn hauled in a deep breath. Yes, okay, she’d talk to him. But not right now. She needed time to rehearse things in her head, get a plan together for how this was going to go. Get a—

  A knock at the back door broke off her thoughts.

  She sat frozen.

  Another knock.

  Get up. Go answer the door. Reluctantly, she forced herself up off the floor.

  A third knock.

  She peeked through the blinds, and there he was. Gideon. Standing on her back porch. The sight of him nailed her feet to the floor. Her breath slipped from her lungs. Gooseflesh traveled the length of her forearms, spread across her shoulders and down her back.

  How had he found out where she lived?

  It was a stupid question. This was Twilight, where everyone knew everyone. It wouldn’t take a black ops agent to find her. All it would take was for him to pop into any store on the town square and call out, “Does anyone know where Caitlyn Blackthorne lives?” He wouldn’t even have to know her married name. Or even if she was married. Then again, if he didn’t know she was married, wouldn’t he have just gone to her father’s house? Maybe he did go to her father’s house and Greta had directed him here.

  Another knock. “Caitlyn.”

  The sound of her name on his lips sent adrenaline shooting through her like a bullet, blood circulating through her veins with a breathtaking ricochet. She wrapped her hand around the knob and wrenched open the door.

  He stood there looking down at her. She’d forgotten how tall he was. Six-foot-three, his shoulders as broad as oak tree branches. Unable to meet his gaze, she focused on his chest. Even through the bulk of his unzipped leather jacket, she could tell his chest muscles were honed, chiseled.

  “Caitlyn.” His voice was soft as the spring breeze, in sharp contrast to his hard eyes, his hard body, his hard everything. Soft, and yet much deeper than she remembered.

  Their past was an electrical current connecting them, surging with a force that was both compelling and utterly terrifying. Her entire world shifted, changed. She drew in a breath and heard his own harsh intake of air.

  Slowly, she raised her head. His gaze slammed into hers, more powerful than ever. She inhaled sharply, felt his stare pierce her lungs. They just looked at each other. Neither one making a move. Both hung on the horns of indecision. Him on the outside. Her on the inside.

  “You’re not dead,” she said after what seemed like an eternity.

  “Neither are you.”

  She frowned. “You thought I was dead?”

  He shook his head. “I thought all kinds of crazy things when you sent my letters back.”

  Misery gripped her. She put a palm to her forehead, let out her breath. He’d written? “You sent letters?”

  “You’re telling me you never got them?”

  “You sent letters?” she repeated, unable to believe it. Her fingers ached to reach out and touch him, to skim over his face, but she remembered how he’d reacted, how he’d told her not to touch him when she’d tried it at the cemetery, so she held back. In fact, she tucked her fingers into her armpits to keep from touching him.

  “I did.”

  “I never got any letters.”

  Gideon swore darkly. “Your father.”

  Caitlyn jumped back at the anger in his tone. He was so big and he was virtually a stranger to her now. Yes, she’d once known him well, but that was a long time ago. She did not know this man standing in front of her. He seemed so changed. The Gideon she remembered had been a lot more emotional, a lot less controlled. He’d been full of passion and dreams and a strong determination to remake the world into a better place. This guy, this guy . . .

  His eyes were hooded. His body language guarded. This guy had been remade by the world, not the other way around. An idealistic boy had left Twilight, but a hardened, cynical man had returned. She could see it etched in his face—the ugly things he’d seen, the loss of his innocence, the disturbing new values and beliefs formed by war and heartbreak.

  He smelled differently too. Once upon a time, the aroma of his exuberant passions had clung to him. He’d loved tinkering with his motorcycle, woodworking, carving, making things with his hands. The scent of pine and oak and maple, of wood polish and lemon oil had defined him. To Caitlyn, his old fragrance had represented safety, comfort, home.

  This new smell spoke of change. It was foreign, strange—almond blossoms and turmeric, cardamom, cumin, caraway, cinnamon, and sticky dates. Scents of the Middle East now owned him—exotic, dangerous, alien.

  His stare was more intense than the noonday Texas sun in August—bold and hot and vivid. She had to turn her head away or be forever scarred. Briefly, she closed her eyes, but she could still see him. Still smell the almond blossoms.

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “What? And have you reject me over the phone? No ma’am. The letters returned unopened was kick in the gut enough.”

  “But I
didn’t get your letters.”

  “How was I to know?”

  “I left home,” she explained. “Just weeks after you went away.”

  He pushed at a crack in the cement with the toe of his motorcycle boot. Her gaze followed his movement, fixed on that heavy leather boot.

  Should she invite him in? It was the polite thing to do, but the thought of being closed up with him inside her small kitchen was too overwhelming to consider. She didn’t know him anymore. Not really.

  “So your father was the one who sent the letters back.”

  “I guess that’s what happened,” she agreed. She certainly didn’t put it past the judge.

  “And you really thought I was dead?”

  She nodded, raised her gaze back to his face again. Could he see it in her eyes? How his death had destroyed her? His expression was impassive, hiding whatever he might be feeling. Was he even feeling anything? Had the army turned him into an automaton?

  “Why did you believe that?”

  “I hired a PI to find you.”

  “You looked for me?” He swallowed hard, his shoulders tensed visibly.

  “Yes. The PI showed me proof that you were dead. He said you’d been killed in a roadside bombing.”

  “I wasn’t killed.”

  “But you were involved in a bombing?”

  “Bombings. More than one. The first time, in Baghdad, I suffered a severe concussion resulting in temporal lobe retrograde amnesia,” he explained.

  “Oh. I bet that was weird.”

  “Worse than weird. You feel . . .” He paused, speaking of himself in the second person, keeping the experience universal, unspecific. “ . . . lost.”

  She placed a hand over her mouth, unable to think of anything to say.

  “It took months for my memory to fully return, and when it did . . .” He paused. “There were some things that I still did not remember clearly.”

  “Did you remember me?”

  “In my dreams.” His smile was vague, humorless. “I’d dream of you and wake up feeling confused and empty. It took a while to piece everything together, but with time and therapy I recovered most of my memory, although I still can’t recall the hours just before the bombing.”