“Nothing’s been heard from either man,” Stephanie said.
Hell.
“So what do we do?” Garrett asked.
“We wait,” Dwight said heavily. “We pray. And we thank God I have an inside track on what’s going on. The other pilot’s family will be in the dark.”
Garrett grimaced.
“I’ve sat in on this kind of situation before,” his father said. “I’m hopeful both men will be found alive.”
Stephanie pushed herself off the sofa. She rubbed the small of her back. “I’ll make coffee.”
“Thank you, darling,” Dwight said.
She blinked. Then turned and headed to the kitchen.
Garrett paced to the window. Down below, a garbage-truck driver was involved in a shouting match with a cabbie. Everything out there, everything he’d done today, seemed meaningless compared with the potential loss of his brother.
Lucas, on the other hand, had been doing something important. Worthwhile. Garrett wished he’d made a different choice. Been a better man. Wished now he could have another chance with Rachel.
“Your mother wouldn’t have expected you to do the same with your life as Lucas,” his father said.
Garrett started.
“You two were so different. And you were never going to sign up for something in the hope of impressing me.”
“Yeah, well, I had other priorities.” Garrett didn’t want to have this conversation now. It was the kind of conversation to have after someone dies, and he wasn’t willing to accept Lucas’s death.
His father scowled. End of talk. Good.
Dwight broke the silence a moment later. “This is the first time I’ve been glad you didn’t go into the military.”
Garrett tipped his head back against the sofa. “I spent this morning giving the pitch that might win me that chief creative officer job.”
A pause. Then his father said awkwardly, “How did it go?”
Garrett hesitated. Small talk with his father? Now, of all times? “Uh, well. I think. I think I nailed it.”
His father nodded, but Garrett had the impression he wasn’t really listening. Garrett didn’t blame him.
Just as Stephanie set a tray of coffee on the glass coffee table, a thump sounded on the apartment door, startling all three of them. Cups clattered, coffee slopped into saucers.
“It couldn’t be…they don’t know where I am.” But Dwight looked uncertain.
Garrett strode to the door. Opened it.
There, on his doorstep, was another chance.
Rachel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
R
ACHEL
DIDN
’
T
WAIT
for Garrett to invite her in. She stalked past him.
“Why is Tony asking me about your pitch?” she demanded. “Why does he seem to think it would upset me? Did you steal my—” She stopped, realizing she had an audience.
Garrett’s father and Stephanie stood in the living room, oddly frozen.
“Uh…hi?” Rachel glanced inquiringly at Garrett.
“Lucas, my brother, has gone missing,” he said. “His chopper went down.”
“Garrett, I’m so sorry.” She walked up to him and wrapped her arms around him. Because no matter what he thought, right now he needed her.
After a moment, he yielded. Let her absorb some of the rigidity of his body. Then his arms came around her, and he squeezed.
Dwight cleared his throat. “We’re very hopeful Lucas will be found alive. We have every reason to believe…”
Garrett disentangled himself from Rachel. “It’s a matter of waiting.”
Torture for him. For all of them.
Rachel’s eyes met Stephanie’s, and she realized how much the woman was suffering. She clearly adored Lucas.
Rachel felt like an intruder. “I’m so sorry for barging in.” She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder. “I’ll leave you in peace.”
“That’s probably best,” Dwight said.
“Stay, Rachel,” Garrett said. “Please.”
It sounded as if he really wanted her, rather than simply scoring points against his dad. Stephanie nodded, adding her invitation to his.
“I’ll make some lunch,” Rachel offered.
Three voices started to say they weren’t hungry.
“It’ll be a long day,” Rachel said. “And you, at least—” she nodded to Stephanie “—definitely need to eat.”
In the kitchen, she took stock of the supplies. She wasn’t a great cook, but she could make a frittata and slice the sourdough loaf she found in the pantry. It was the kind of meal she often made for herself when she came in after a late night at the office.
Despite their avowed lack of interest, half an hour later everyone dug into the meal. The lack of small talk meant it disappeared fast. Every so often, Stephanie would pull out her cell phone, check that it was still working and she hadn’t missed anything. Dwight gave her an envious look each time, as if he’d like to do the same, but couldn’t show weakness.
After he pushed his plate away, Dwight held Stephanie’s hand on the tabletop, his thumb caressing her knuckles.
The silence seemed to grow heavier with the passage of time.
“Isn’t there someone you could call?” Garrett asked his dad.
“They’ll call me as soon as there’s news.”
“Is this about looking stoic?” Garrett demanded. “Because now isn’t the time, Dad, to prove how cool you are under fire.”
“It’s always the time to stay cool under fire,” Dwight shot back.
“Typical,” Garrett said, disgusted. “Heaven forbid that you should actually
feel…
”
“So tell me, Garrett,” Rachel said quickly. “If your brother was a fruit, what fruit would he be?”
Stephanie made a little sound of surprise.
“My son is not a fruit,” Dwight said, fury turning his face almost purple.
Garrett laughed out loud. He held Rachel’s gaze as he said, “Lucas is an apple. Smooth on the outside, the kind of fruit you see every day, but you don’t know what you’ll get until you bite into it.”
“That’s him,” Stephanie said, a little smile playing around her mouth.
“What the hell…” Dwight growled.
Stephanie squeezed his hand. Incredibly, it silenced him.
“I figured out what fruit you’d be,” Rachel said conversationally to Garrett. “Would you like me to tell you?”
His father sputtered.
Garrett held her gaze. “Yes, please, Rachel.”
“You’d be a durian,” she said. “They look really interesting, but they stink.”
He grinned, and a peculiar warmth spread through him. “I thought I smelled of, what was it, pine needles and citrus peel?”
She smiled, and there was a secretive quality to it that made him want to kiss her senseless. But he’d lost his chance to do that ever again.
Or had he? Garrett had made a bad judgment call, but it was Rachel’s nature to say they could get past that. He knew how tightly she liked to hang on. Maybe she would forgive him and this would all work out. He thanked God she wasn’t like him, quick to let go, slow to forgive.
“I was being polite about the pine needles,” she said.
“Of course,” he murmured, glad beyond measure that she was here. He wished they were alone so he could… Ugh, what kind of jerk did that make him, when his brother was missing?
He wished he’d said more to Lucas on the phone the other day. Told him he loved him, or something. He squelched a grin at the thought of Lucas’s likely reaction. They were both Dwight Calder’s sons.
They were both Michelle Calder’s sons, too. Maybe Garrett had been a bit harsh in his judgment of Lucas for attaching himself to Stephanie. He’d been twelve years old, for Pete’s sake. Fact was, when Garrett thought about what Lucas said on the phone the other day, about taking Mom’s advice to heart in his navy career…well, Lucas had done a great job of honoring Mom’s memory.
Unlike Garrett, who—
Garrett stopped, stunned. Rachel was right.
This whole partnership thing
was
all about his mother. All about proving he was the best he could be, because that was what Mom had dreamed of for her boys. No wonder the pressure had been so much more intense for this pitch than it ever had been before.
Garrett owed Rachel an apology.
He hoped that maybe, when he admitted that he’d been in major denial, it would help her understand what he’d done with his pitch. And why.
It would help her forgive him.
His father’s cell phone rang. Dwight dropped it in his haste to take the call, which was probably the nearest Garrett would ever come to seeing his dad flustered.
“Calder,” Dwight barked into the phone.
His countenance was totally neutral. Garrett imagined him hearing news of missile launches, of battles lost, with this same lack of expression.
How could his father be so unfeeling?
“Thank you for letting me know,” Dwight said tonelessly and ended the call.
“Well?” Garrett demanded.
Stephanie clasped Dwight’s hand.
“They know where Lucas is, and they believe he’s alive,” Dwight said, his tone as measured as if he was passing on the weather forecast. “They plan to mount a rescue mission at 0100 tomorrow. That’s 1600 this afternoon, our time.”
Just a few hours away. Stephanie burst into tears. Garrett wished he could do the same.
Thank You, God.
“Is Lucas hurt?” he asked.
“They have no data on that,” his father said.
Garrett wanted to punch him.
Then Stephanie wound her arms around Dwight’s neck, and he clutched her so hard, she made an “oof” sound. Maybe his dad wasn’t as cool as he seemed.
“So now we wait some more,” Garrett said.
His father nodded.
“Will you stay?” Garrett asked Rachel.
She smiled, and his heart caught in his chest. “Of course.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“How about we go to the store? We can restock your sad bachelor pantry,” Rachel said.
* * *
S
HOPPING
AT
D
UANE
R
EADE
with Rachel turned out to be an education. Garrett had never met anyone so particular about what she put in her cart. His strategy was to grab whatever sounded or looked or smelled good. She read every label as if cyanide might be lurking in the ingredients list.
“We haven’t got all day,” he grumbled when she put a perfectly ordinary pack of peanuts back on the shelf in favor of a seemingly identical pack of peanuts.
The smile she gave him was so impish that he had to kiss her. So he did, right there in the middle of the aisle. She must have figured out by now that he wanted out of that stupid breakup.
“Hmm,” she said when he pulled away. She peered at the small print on a pack of cookies, then put it into the cart. “Garrett, have you heard from Tony yet? Any news from Brightwater?”
Not the subject he wanted to discuss. “I haven’t looked at my phone.” He’d left it in the apartment. “Did you hear anything?”
She shook her head. “Brightwater probably haven’t made up their mind yet. It’s a bit soon.”
“Yeah.” It would always be too soon to tell her what he’d done with his pitch. He scowled at the bunch of bananas she was inspecting. “I don’t care if those are black-and-blue and filled with a lethal dose of pesticide, just put them in the damn cart.”
* * *
B
ACK
AT
THE
APARTMENT
, Rachel took orders from Stephanie as they prepared a meal. She wondered what Garrett had done in his pitch that was so extraordinary. But she didn’t want to spend time second-guessing Brightwater now, not when he was so worried about his brother.
Dwight switched on the TV to see if any word of the crash or the rescue mission had made it on to CNN. “It shouldn’t have,” he said. “No one wants the Iranians to know we’re coming, but with so many reporters over there…”
Garrett sat with him, both of them with their eyes fixed straight ahead on the screen.
“That’s the closest I’ve seen them in fifteen years,” Stephanie observed as she sautéed onion and garlic.
“You and Dwight seem closer, too,” Rachel said.
Stephanie smiled. “We had dinner a few nights ago, like a date. It was lovely.”
“I hope things work out for you,” Rachel said.
“Dwight can seem a bit stiff to people who don’t know him.” Stephanie added sliced chicken to her pan and turned up the heat. “That’s his armor, his shield. But to me…I see beneath that, and I see what an effort he’s making. Heroic.” She looked apprehensive. “This thing with Lucas…if they don’t bring him back alive…Dwight will be devastated.”
“So will you,” Rachel said.
The other woman nodded. “You’re right. We’ll get through it together. If Dwight will let me in. Could you pass me that soy sauce?”
As Rachel handed over the sauce, she hoped Dwight wasn’t as big an idiot as his oldest son.
“Not all the Calder men screw up in these things.” Stephanie poured the sauce from on high and immediately began turning the chicken pieces. “Garrett and Lucas aren’t close on the surface, but those boys love each other fiercely.”
Rachel said a silent prayer for Lucas’s safe deliverance. That Garrett wouldn’t lose another person he loved. And as a result be less able to trust love from those who were still in his life.
“You’re good for Garrett,” Stephanie said. “When I see you two together, I think he has more confidence.”
Rachel felt warmth in her cheeks. She focused on topping and tailing a pile of green beans. “Garrett doesn’t need more confidence.”
“More confidence to be open, to give something of himself,” Stephanie said. “He doesn’t do that easily.”
“That’s for sure,” Rachel muttered.
“With you,” Stephanie said, “Garrett lowers his guard. If he can learn that he won’t get hurt the way he’s been hurt before—by his mom dying, his dad substituting control for love and me…” She paused. “Me rushing to fill a gap that I never could, which only emphasized what Garrett had lost…”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Rachel said. “I don’t think Garrett holds a grudge. Not anymore.”
Stephanie’s smile was watery. “I think with you…I think he might start to trust that it can last.”
It.
Stephanie hadn’t used the word
love,
but that’s what she meant, Rachel knew.
Was Stephanie right? Could he love her back? Would Garrett know love if it clubbed him on the head with a baseball bat? Rachel wasn’t so sure.