Steadfast Soldier Read online

  The way his gaze dipped, she knew he would have kissed her unconscious had Ivan not been in the next room.

  She also knew she would have let him.

  Until things she’d dreamed of doing since childhood tore through her mind.

  “I need to know, Chance, how you feel about me. About us. Because I have plans in life that can’t be broken. Not by anyone.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. I have dreams too. But who’s to say our dreams can’t meld? The only thing I’m going to say is that you and me, we’re about partnership, Chloe. Teamwork. That’s how I operate. That’s how it’d be. Whether we’re friends or more. For the record, I hope it’s more.”

  Again, nothing shy about his words.

  “Your job is important. More important than mine. You rescue people. I rescue animals.”

  “No, Chloe. We both rescue people. There’s no difference in me hauling stranded hikers off Mount Hood and you saving that battered dog and giving his life meaning by loving and teaching him to pluck Dad from a depression so deep I couldn’t reach him anymore.”

  How did Chance know about Midnight’s horrible past?

  And how many other at-risk animals and people needed her help and wouldn’t be helped if she quit the program in order to please herself?

  Tears flooded Chloe’s eyes. “I can’t sacrifice my childhood dreams for a new one. Do you understand?”

  His face softened. “I understand that God can show you He loves you any way He wants.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” It came out desperate, but she truly wanted to know. When Chance spoke, she knew he’d grasped a God-truth she needed.

  He’d learned God through his trials. Experienced Him and His love. Chloe sensed from the quiet confidence in his words that he’d come out on the other side of suffering with the treasure of knowing God better.

  “There are things in your future that you can’t begin to imagine, Chloe. Things you want that are buried so deep inside you, desires and hopes you aren’t even vaguely aware of.” Cupping her face, he smiled tenderly, and both his look and his touch held a promise she was terrified to grasp. “Yet.”

  She swallowed and took a step back, her mother’s warning dogging her. Words she’d heard since childhood.

  Don’t let any man get in the way of what you want.

  “Not only that, Chance, you are going to end up a pastor someday, the one kind of person I promised myself never to marry.”

  “You made that vow out of brokenness because of your dad.” His jaw hardened, yet his eyes yielded to an empathetic softness. “I’m not your dad.”

  She shook her head. More to clear the cobwebs than because she wanted to ponder his words. “I know what I want, and this doesn’t fit.”

  Now he looked like he could laugh. “Of course not. Our dreams rarely do. But God knows how to fish, Chloe. To draw deep things out of us. Especially when He planted seeds there in the first place. I pray He does it sooner rather than later. I want a family while I’m young. I know we’d be good together.”

  “You’re saying you won’t wait for me forever.”

  That should have made her feel relieved. Instead it made her feel like rushing to the restroom and throwing up.

  Especially when his answer was silence. Not a stormy kind of dark and brooding silence. Nor dead-fish cold and punishing like her dad’s used to be when he was alive.

  But a quiet, confident, resolutely sad kind of silence. And it spoke volumes to her heart and mind.

  This man wanted a future. He wanted it with her.

  But if she didn’t want it back, he didn’t plan to wait around for her to get it. And no woman in her right mind would turn down this astronomically appealing man who possessed high-caliber character. Was she out of her mind?

  Feeling suddenly on the brink of a place she promised herself she would never go, Chloe scrambled for something. Anything to repel him and break this spellbinding connection.

  “Really? God has good things for us? You can say this after you lost your mother and almost lost your father?”

  The jolted look on his face resembled the slap of remorse instantly jabbing through her like a sharp arrow.

  She gasped. “I’m so sorry, Chance. I don’t know why I said something so cruel.” What on earth was wrong with her?

  She expected harsh words, then the dreaded lash of silence. Instead, an undeserved look of understanding graced his face. “Maybe because of fear over the feelings you and I both know are forming between us.”

  She swallowed, feeling weirdly exposed, yet compelled with the need to apologize. “Forgive me.” She gulped.

  “I know you’re not prone to making insensitive comments, so I’ll chalk it up to lack of sleep last night because of the poison ivy. And for the record, I’ll wait as long as I can without jeopardizing quality time with my children and grandchildren.”

  Chloe blinked. Obviously by that comment, he was willing to wait awhile. She clutched her collar to her throat and grabbed her bag. “I need to go. I’ll tell Ivan goodbye.”

  He nodded and followed her from the kitchen but didn’t walk her to her car today like normal. She missed his presence more than she expected to. She’d taken his friendship for granted.

  Dogged by regret and other things she didn’t dare try to decipher, Chloe threw herself into her SUV. “All I have to say, Miss G, is that once I attain my dream, it had better be worth it. Especially considering what I have to leave behind in order to see it come to pass.”

  Feeling Chance’s eyes on her, she turned to face the house.

  He stood on the landing, hands braced casually on the porch molding above. He looked like a muscle-clad letter X.

  She swallowed and looked away. Started her car.

  He stepped off the porch.

  Her heart leapt. She should drive away. Now. She forced her fingers to put the car in drive and inched from the curb.

  “Chloe, wait!” His feet thundered across the yard and down the sidewalk. She applied the brakes and rolled her driver’s side window down, then blinked back tears at the tortured look on his face.

  In a storm of movement, he bent all the way into her window, hands reaching for her. Never breaking eye contact, he swaddled the sides of her face tenderly. Firmly. Carefully. Sure.

  And promptly kissed her.

  For who knew how long, because her body sank until it melted into her leather seats.

  Her car started rolling. Chance jerked back to prevent being dragged by the car and bumped his head in the process. She jammed her foot on the brake and slammed the gear in park. “Sorry. Didn’t realize I left it in drive.”

  He rubbed his head and slowly unfurled that hallmark lopsided grin. Her face flushed. Whether from the delicious kiss or the fact that she nearly ran over the handsome one issuing it, she wasn’t sure. Nor was she sure how such a shy guy learned to smooch like that.

  But she was sure of one thing. Her heart was in serious jeopardy.

  Which meant her unmet dreams were sure to follow?

  Chance reached in and grasped her hands, wringing themselves in her lap. “Give me hope, Chloe. One sliver is all I need.” His eyes held irresistible appeal. “Promise you’ll at least pray about it? Please,” he whispered.

  Though it could have been construed by someone who didn’t know him better as begging, this man was far from desperate.

  This was the appeal of a quietly confident man falling fiercely in love and unwilling to walk away from what he wanted without a worthy fight.

  Her chest fluttered at the thought and the new, unexpected possibilities. Sharp, achy urges to cling to his stalwart promise thrummed through her. Her heart pulsed with want she didn’t know it possessed. It longed to let the care bloom in her for him too, to let it plume open in the light of his growing affection. Together, they could nourish their feelings to grow until they reached the whispered edges of forever.

  Staring into his soulful eyes, how badly she wanted to cave. How badl
y that scared her.

  But the anchor of her dreams dragged heavily. They’d been there longer, were stronger.

  She knew what she must do.

  Pain streaked through her. She’d never felt so morbidly sad. Not since losing her dad and along with him, the hope that they’d ever be close.

  She squeezed Chance’s hand, brought it to her mouth, and planted a final kiss. Then she raised her own hand to wipe an unbidden tear streaking down her face.

  “I’m sorry, Chance. Unlike my dad, I can’t promise something that’s never going to happen.”

  Chapter Ten

  “What’s wrong with you, boy? You haven’t moped like this since you ran your Honda 50 into the eight-foot-deep hole the neighbor dug for his septic tank.”

  Chance chuckled grimly at the memory. “Yeah, the way I remember that is you wouldn’t help me out. You stood on the edge and said if I got myself and that bike in there, I had to get us out or I couldn’t ride it anymore.”

  “But you got it out, didn’t you?”

  “After a long hour.”

  “Nope. It was twelve minutes ’n’ forty-seven seconds. And you’ve no idea how long and torturous that twelve minutes was for me. I smelt gasoline leaking all over you. But if I bailed you out that time, I knew you’d try to jump that hole again and endanger yourself despite the fact that I told you to stay away from it. Am I right?”

  Chance grinned. “Probably so.”

  “For real, what’s goin’ on between you and my OT?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Which is precisely the problem.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because you’ve been limping around in a bad, sad mood since the day she dragged you into the kitchen. You conveniently find someplace else to be on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It just so happens you’re gone during the hours she’s scheduled to be here and on Saturdays too.”

  Chance eyed Ivan’s therapy schedule on the wall. “I’ve been busy with PJ trainings.” Partly true.

  Ivan snickered. “Right. And I’m a rocket scientist.”

  “Given the opportunity, you could have been.”

  “Given the opportunity, I’d come out of this chair and turn you over my knee for treating that girl that way.”

  “Chloe’s fine, Dad.”

  “Fine? Where’ve you been? Oh, that’s right. You’ve been doing your best to avoid her.”

  “It’s what she wanted.”

  “Then what she wanted isn’t what she thought it’d be.”

  “Why do you say that? Seriously, Dad, don’t blow smoke.”

  Ivan grew as serious as Chance had seen him in a while. The kind of serious that reminded Chance of former times, of life the way it once was, of a time when Ivan took care of Chance and gave him advice and guidance instead of the other way around. “Son, sit down.”

  Chance sat, glad to see glimpses of his old dad back.

  “Though she tries her best to be professional and lighthearted, she mopes twice as bad as you do. So does that mutt. Why, he drags his tail around the house from room to room to room whining and looking for you.”

  Chance sat back, folding his arms across his chest.

  “And when he can’t find you, he circles your jump boots exactly seven times then flops down on the floor and curls his body around them. Then he whimpers to beat the band. It’s the saddest, most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I think you’re embellishing that story the same way you used to embellish those clay sets.”

  “Speaking of which, Chloe asked if I’d pass the message along to you to pick me up some clay. She wants me to try to start molding it as therapy.”

  Arms unfurled, Chance sat up. “And you’re willing?”

  “Of course. I’d love nothing more than to be able to work with clay again.”

  “And I’d love nothing more than to see you do it.”

  “And to see Chloe again?”

  “Dad, she has other priorities. Don’t meddle.”

  Ivan snickered. “Who, me?”

  Two days later, Chloe’s car pulled up exactly five minutes after Chance arrived home. Chance turned to Ivan. “I should have known. Should have suspected something amiss when you told me Chloe was coming in early today.”

  Ivan adopted an overly innocent look and tapped his ears, conveniently void of hearing aids. “What’s that you say?”

  Chance smirked and went to answer the door. “You hear me loud and clear. You set me up, Dad.” Clearly, Chloe’d planned to be here at her usual time. Had Chance known that, he wouldn’t have rearranged his schedule to avoid her this morning, when Ivan said she’d be there.

  Which meant that his dad had officially joined the—what was it Chloe called it?—oh yeah, the cupid posse.

  She stumbled at the landing when he opened the door to let her in. For a brief second, Chance thought about passing her and going right out the gate and to his Jeep.

  But something in her eyes stopped him.

  “Hi.” She brushed a tendril of hair behind her ear.

  “Hi.” His mouth tightened the way it did before he stuttered so he left it at the short greeting.

  He stepped aside and averted his gaze. She shouldered in, looking more beautiful than the images his mind had tormented him with the past few weeks.

  Chloe set down the delicious-smelling meatloaf dinner she’d brought. “Did Ivan mention the clay?”

  “It’s on the table.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” She swallowed hard and seemed distracted. Her hands quaked as she pulled stuff from her bag.

  He wanted nothing more than to rush over and hold her. He took tentative steps toward her. “This is hard for me too, Chloe,” he whispered once close.

  She nodded. Drew in a sharp breath. “I’ve missed you.” She blinked several times and appeared to search rapidly for something in her bag.

  “Can I help you find something?” he asked.

  When her face lifted, tears filled her eyes. She gulped a swallow. “Yes. I need help finding the resolve I need to be able to stay away from you. And I need to find strength not to think about you every second of the day. I need you to help me look for whatever it’s going to take to erase you from my mind. And free me from the urge to drive past the DZ to catch glimpses of you,” she whispered in a scratchy voice.

  Joy filled him with every word spoken. He grinned. “Drive by the DZ. You do? Really?”

  Her face tinged pink. “No.”

  He tilted his chin. “No?”

  She shook her head. “But I’ve wanted to. Especially on Tuesdays when I know you’re training recruits outside.”

  Without hesitation or prompting he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. Held her tight.

  And, thank God, she let him.

  She sighed. “At first I couldn’t do what you asked. Couldn’t pray. But then, I don’t know, God started dogging me. And He wouldn’t relent. Pestered me until I prayed.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know, Chance. I just know I don’t want to live without you, but I don’t want to see my dreams die either.”

  “So let’s take it slow. Let come what may. Let what will be, be.”

  “Can we start back at friendship?”

  “It’ll be torture not kissing you again, but I’ll try. How about we go fishing this weekend? Just you and me?”

  “And Mom. Because if you try to kiss me, Chance Garrison, I will surely be powerless to stop you.”

  The images and possibilities that provoked caused him to eye her supple mouth. She ducked under his arm and grabbed her stuff off the table. “Time for Ivan’s therapy. Bring the clay. And be amazed.”

  His Chloe was back. The spunky, fun, witty, zesty girl he’d first met was traipsing through his kitchen right now.

  He gathered the clay and followed. A sense of thankfulness washed over him. He paused and put his hand on his mother’s Bible, near her cookbooks on the counter. He was
so grateful to her for the example she’d set by living her faith out loud, yet quietly, day in, day out in front of him. Even though he hadn’t embraced it until recently, the mortal, moral and immortal impact remained.

  Whispers rose from his lips, “I don’t need clay to be amazed, God. I know You’re working on Chloe. Thank You. Keep molding her heart and her future and help me know how to help all she hopes for to come true. Even the dreams buried that she doesn’t realize are in desperate need of rescue.”

  “This thing is a dream!” Mary neared the beautiful fishing boat on a trailer attached to Chance’s Jeep.

  “Wow.” Chloe tried not to drool over the glitter-coated red-and-silver Bass Tracker. “Gorgeous.”

  Chance stepped from behind the trolling motor and grinned. “Yeah, it’s high-end. Pretty top-of-the-line. It’s also Brock’s. He’s coming with us. Hope you ladies don’t mind. He’s an avid angler. When he heard the word fishing he pretty much invited himself.”

  Mary chuckled. “He’ll be in good company. Chloe and I love to fish. We don’t mind Brock crashing our fishing party. Do we?”

  Chloe took the heavy cooler from her mom. “Of course not. The more, the merrier. I just wish we could have talked your dad into coming,” she said to Chance.

  “Is he well enough to fish?” Mary transferred their fishing poles from Chloe’s SUV to Chance’s Jeep.

  “He is, but I think he’s scared he won’t be up to par.” Chloe slid the cooler filled with the day’s nourishment inside the hatch of Chance’s Jeep.

  “What’s his first name?”

  “Chance’s dad?”

  Mary nodded and handed Chloe their tackle boxes.

  “Ivan.”

  Mary set her backpack inside the car. “Oh, I always did like that name.”

  Chloe eyed her mom, then Chance, who’d paused at that comment. A strange look crossed his face before he resumed packing the boat. “Brock ought to be here shortly.”

  On cue, a flashy yellow car sped around the corner and slid into the drive. Music thumped from speakers inside the sports car until the ignition shut off. Brock emerged smiling and waving at the women, then popped his trunk.