When You Return to Me Read online

  A month before the wedding that had never happened.

  “Maggie? Is that you, honey?” Grandpa Gardner came from the back at last. At the sight of the roaster pan, a wide grin split his leathered face. “Got another one, didn’t I?”

  “It’s pretty decent sized.”

  “Wasn’t sure. Can’t see worth a damn these days.”

  “Might be a good time to stop hunting,” she suggested gently.

  But he countered with, “A man ain’t a man, if he can’t shoot his own dinner.” He squinted at the rooster. Pride laced his voice as he shuffled forward with his walker and added, “I’ll eat off that thing for a week.”

  Maggie pulled his chair out for him and made sure he had his noon pills at hand. She smiled at him, even if looking at him reminded her of Cam way too much—that blue gaze, the voice, and definitely the manly-man attitude. Her heart clenched.

  She went back to the counter and popped three potatoes into the microwave, then grabbed the leftover peas from the fridge and warmed them. She’d brought the peas over yesterday with a pair of pork chops.

  A pair.

  And now she was microwaving three potatoes.

  Because, even after four years, every time she cooked for Grandpa Gardner, she cooked as if they still had Cam.

  After the first year, she’d stopped putting out an extra plate. But she hadn’t been able to stop cooking enough, just in case Cam showed up at the last second.

  She drew air into her suddenly too tight lungs. She had to let go. She couldn’t.

  Because in her heart of hearts, she still couldn’t accept that Cam was gone; she didn’t believe it.

  “Listen to the wind, it talks.

  Listen to the silence, it speaks.

  Listen to your heart, it knows.”

  When she listened to the wind, it brought her the echo of Cam’s voice. When she listened to the silence of her lonely house, it spoke Cam’s name. When she listened to her heart, all she heard was that she loved Cam, and Cam loved her.

  She’d been to the funeral, she tried to remind herself. She’d watched the coffin go into the ground.

  Her brain understood the stark reality.

  Her heart was prepared to die hoping.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught a pecan pie on the shelf next to the sink, and it turned her mind into a happier direction. She stole a sniff and nearly moaned from the scent of sugary, nutty goodness. “Who brought this?”

  Grandpa Gardner swallowed his pills. “Luanne. Love that girl.”

  Everybody did. Even when Luanne had been accused of murder last year, most people in town never believed it.

  Gravel crunched outside as a car pulled up the driveway. Probably Captain Bing, checking up on Grandpa Gardner. Since the old man was hard of hearing, calling him on the phone didn’t work. Unless he was sitting in the kitchen, next to the wall phone, he rarely heard the ring.

  Maggie put another plate on the table. Maybe Captain Bing would have a few minutes to grab a bite with them.

  She stepped to the fridge to grab the sour cream for the potatoes. The front door opened behind her. Closed.

  “Hey, Captain—” She turned, dropped the sour cream, didn’t feel the plastic tub bouncing off the toe of her boots.

  Inside the front door stood a stranger.

  A very familiar stranger, in rumpled Army fatigues. His dark-blond hair was longer, his face leaner, white scars on his jaw. The skin on his neck was puckered where it had burned. He looked…harder, gaunter.

  Even his blue eyes weren’t the same. In her memories, his eyes always laughed. Now they looked ancient, as if not just four years had passed since they’d last seen each other, but thousands.

  For a moment, she considered that Grandpa Gardner had shot her. Maybe she was lying on frozen ground outside her barn, hallucinating as she bled out, because not enough blood was reaching her brain.

  Then he spoke. “I’m back.”

  His voice sliced through her.

  In her fantasies, this was where he opened his arms and she flew into them. But he just watched her with his ancient eyes. And her feet were frozen to the spot. She wrapped her arms around herself, in shock. She was shaking.

  She tried to control her breath so she wouldn’t hyperventilate.

  “Maggie,” he said. “Gramps.”

  She looked at Grandpa Gardner, because looking at Cam hurt. The old man couldn’t take his eyes off his grandson. His leathery cheeks were wet.

  “Cameron. Let me look at you, boy. Come over here. You came at the right time. We’re having Christmas lunch. Not that you could have come at a wrong time.” His voice that Maggie had never heard as much as waver, now broke. “Thank God, you’re back.”

  Cam strode over and lifted his grandfather up from the chair in a bear hug. “I missed you, Gramps.”

  And the two men held and held.

  While Maggie felt as if she was having an out-of-body experience. She picked up the tub of sour cream that, thankfully, hadn’t busted open. Placed it on the counter.

  But then she had nothing else to do.

  “How?” she asked.

  Cam let his grandfather go and turned to her. “I was captured by insurgents and held in a cave.”

  Impossible. She’d fantasized about that. How could this be real?

  “All this time?”

  “I got injured in the crash,” Cam said with a tight expression. “At first I was pretty out of it.”

  “And then?”

  “I escaped.” He reached up to rub his chest. “A couple of times. They kept catching me.”

  Deep down, something inside her fiercely resisted the idea that this was real. Because if she believed in Cam’s return, and once again all this turned out to be an elaborate dream, and she woke up, her heart would break and she would die right there in her bed. She couldn’t feel what she was feeling right now and have all that be yanked away from her. She wouldn’t survive it.

  “The Army said there’d been six bodies,” she said. All men accounted for. No survivors.

  Cam eyed the third plate she’d just put out moments ago. “Are you expecting someone?”

  “I thought Captain Bing might stop by.”

  The flash of emotion in Cam’s eyes was gone before she could identify it. He sat by the plate.

  “When the insurgents shot us down,” he said, “we fell right on top of them. I was thrown from the chopper when it crashed, slammed into a crevice in the rock. The explosion that came seconds later killed the crew, not the crash. But the explosion must have blown over my head.”

  A grim expression sat on his face. “The insurgents lost one of their men. They took me with them. I was out of it. Didn’t know anything until weeks later.” He held her gaze. “I don’t remember much. Just flashes.”

  Her chest squeezed so hard she had trouble breathing. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  She stepped toward the door on shaking legs. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can stay for lunch. I’m baking bread for Doris. I need to check on things at home. I should give you two some time together.”

  And then she ran like a coward.

  She didn’t stop until she was standing in her kitchen, gripping the sink so hard she thought she’d break it, tears pouring down her face.

  She didn’t understand what was happening to her.

  She remembered being five years old, wanting to meet Santa more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. She couldn’t sleep for days beforehand. Then her mom took her to the mall, and Santa was there, and he was perfect, larger than life, all her fantasies and so much better, just there, smiling at her, opening his arms.

  She’d screamed and run in the opposite direction, suddenly more scared than she’d ever been. Her mother couldn’t talk her into going within twenty feet of the guy.

  He’d been…too much. He’d overwhelmed her so much, her brain had shorted out.

  Maggie had been five then. She was twenty-nine now.
>
  Cam was back.

  She didn’t understand why his return would gut her almost as badly as his loss.

  But she knew one thing. She wasn’t going to run.

  “Listen to the wind, it talks.

  Listen to the silence, it speaks.

  Listen to your heart, it knows.”

  She could swear she could hear the wind outside calling her name. In Cam’s voice.

  She eased her death grip off the sink and hurried to the door.

  She took only a few steps in the yard when she saw him striding toward her from his grandfather’s house.

  They both stopped when they were maybe twenty feet from each other. His gaze was filled with uncertainty and caution, his body language a study in control, as if he was struggling to hold back, as if it cost him to make himself just stand there.

  “Maggie?”

  A single word, but more than a word. Her name on his lips was hope on wings.

  And she flew to him.

  His arms around her were real. The warm neck she buried her face in was real. She pressed her lips against the puckered scars of his skin and breathed in his familiar scent.

  He’s real. He came back.

  She couldn’t speak. She could no longer even see. She was crying so hard, her tears soaked his shirt.

  He didn’t seem to mind.

  His strong arms closed around her and held her so tightly she could barely breathe.

  She didn’t want to breathe. She didn’t need air. She just needed Cam to hold her like this, forever.

  “Maggie,” he whispered into her hair, his voice laden with emotion. “My Maggie.”

  She tilted her head up and smiled at him through her tears.

  “Are you still my Maggie?” His tone turned raspy.

  “Forever.” The single word came from deep inside her, straight from her heart.

  Cam held her gaze. “I thought… You aren’t wearing my ring.”

  She explained what happened.

  “I’ll get it out.” He closed his eyes for a second, and a look of incredible relief came onto his face, then he opened his eyes, and they were filled with a look of incredible possessiveness.

  “You had a plate out for Captain Bing,” he said. “Are you close friends?”

  She was ashamed of how much she liked the tone of jealousy. “Not that close. He remarried, actually. Wait until you meet his wife, Sophie. She’s as small as a pixie and looks like Orphan Annie. But she’s a spitfire.”

  “She’d have to be, to take down the captain.”

  Maggie shook her head. “No takedown. They lifted each other up. I swear, the stuff they went through, it’s enough to turn you to reading romance novels.” She grinned when Cam looked skeptical. “They’re adopting a little boy.”

  “I’ll have to stop by the station and congratulate the man,” Cam said. “What else have I missed?”

  They were talking about others because the reunion was still too raw to talk about themselves, but that would come. They had time. They had forever.

  She couldn’t think. Her brain couldn’t hold any other thought than that Cam was back. But then she said, “We had a serial killer.”

  Cam’s arms tightened around her. “In Broslin? Who?”

  She told him. Then she said, “You know the guy who replaced Murph Dolan at the PD?”

  “Jack Sullivan?”

  Maggie nodded. “He got buried alive and everything. Ashley Price dug him up.”

  Cam raised an eyebrow in a gesture of pure disbelief. “The artist?”

  “They’re together now. He adopted Ashley’s daughter, and then they had another. You know how he was all dark and broody and scary?” She paused a beat. “Now he wears pink tiaras to Madison’s tea parties.”

  “I’ll believe that,” Cam said with a bucket load of skepticism, “when I see it.”

  “I have pictures on my cell phone.” Maggie grinned. Then she added, “Oh, and Luanne married Chase. He’s Detective Chase Merritt now. Can you believe it?”

  “Not really,” he said in a stunned tone. “The Luanne who told everyone in high school that Chase was bad in bed?”

  “She was accused of murder. He was the detective on the case. I guess he forgave her past transgressions.” Maggie smiled. “By the way, apparently, Luanne brought a pecan pie by for your grandfather yesterday, so thank her if you run into her in town.”

  Cam nodded.

  Because Mildred, his grandmother, had been a policewoman, the PD kind of kept an eye of Grandpa Gardner. Captain Bing stopped in often to check on the old man. The wives of the officers brought a pie or a casserole now and then. The PD was like family. They took care of their own.

  “Oh, and Captain Bing’s brother, Hunter, is engaged. To a city girl!”

  “No way.”

  “Way.” She grinned. “Gabi used to be an inner-city cop, but now she’s with Broslin PD. Okay, don’t tell anyone, but Sophie told me, she stopped by the PD to drop off dinner for the captain last week, and she walked in on Gabi and Hunter in the back.”

  Cam’s eyes went comically wide. “They were having sex in a holding cell?”

  Maggie blushed. “Gabi had Hunter handcuffed to the bars.”

  And Cam murmured under his breath, with feeling, “Lucky bastard.”

  She fanned herself. “The way those two look at each other, I think they’re singlehandedly responsible for global warming.”

  “Like this?” Cam shot her his own smoldering look.

  Good Lord, she could practically hear the arctic icecaps melting.

  Then he dipped his head, held her gaze. And she staggered under the warm weight of the love in his eyes. He brushed his mouth over hers before he pulled back.

  She reached up to touch his face.

  He put his hand over hers. “Your fingers are cold.”

  He turned them toward his place without letting her go, just tucking her under his arm, the two of them moving together as if they were part of each other.

  Grandpa Gardner smiled at them from the kitchen as they stepped inside. “Glad you brought her back, boy.” He winked. “Always said you got your smarts from your grandfather.”

  Cam’s lips pulled to the side in an almost smile. “I think I’ve grown up in the past four years, Gramps. You think you’ll ever switch to calling me a man?”

  “When you smarten up enough to marry our Maggie here.”

  Cam’s gaze dropped to her face. His smile could have resurrected the dead.

  He asked his grandfather, “You know a good priest?”

  Maggie’s heart beat so hard, she thought it might fall out of her chest.

  Grandpa Gardner harrumphed. “He might not want to deal with you again. You never showed for your last appointment.” He struggled to push to his feet, grabbing the walker. “I better get my afternoon nap. Dang pills make me sleepy.”

  Cam went to help him get settled in.

  While Maggie did the dishes, she could hear the deep murmur of their voices as they talked to each other. Having his grandson back was going to make a world of difference for Grandpa Gardner.

  Then Cam was coming down the hallway. “Hold on for a sec. I need to get something.”

  He stepped out the back door. Probably for wood. It was Christmas Eve. He was home. Maybe he wanted a fire in the fireplace like back in the old days. She blushed as she thought of the evenings they’d spent necking in front of the fire. Necking and more, the nights Grandpa Gardner spent at his hunting camp with his buddies.

  But when Cam returned five minutes later, instead of wood, he was carrying her ring. He’d even shined it up on his way back.

  He stepped in front of her, and she held her breath.

  “Maggie O’Connor, will you marry me?”

  She didn’t have to think about it. “Yes.”

  And he slipped the ring on her finger.

  He reached up and framed her face between his large hands. “I’m sorry I shocked you by showing up out of the blue. I’v
e been spending a lot of time in debriefings with my colonel. I asked him not to notify the family. I didn’t want you and Gramps to think I’d be home for Christmas, then have to postpone and disappoint you, make you wait when another debriefing session was scheduled.”

  “You’re not ever allowed to say sorry. For coming back to me, I forgive all past and future transgressions,” she said through tears.

  “Can I get that in writing? Because in sixty or so years of marriage, I figure I’m bound to make a few mistakes.” He smiled that smile of his that had been carved on her heart.

  He brushed his lips against hers then let her go, his expression tightening, as if holding back required great effort. Then he let a smile soften his face again, and picked up the dishcloth. “I’ll dry.”

  “You’re not allowed to do housework.”

  His eyes glinted. “Can I get that in writing, too?”

  “Don’t get too excited. I meant, today.” She put the last dish on the drip tray, dried her hands, and turned to him. “We are going to ignore housework today.” She stepped up to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Let’s do something else.”

  “Are you sure? I can wait,” he said in a voice taut with hunger. “I know you’ll have to get used to me again.”

  But she lifted her lips to him without hesitation, as if the past four years had never happened. He was the one returning, but somehow she felt as if she’d just come home after a long, arduous journey through a dead and arid land. She felt complete, a deep joy filling her to the marrow.

  He kissed the top of her head first, then her nose, and then her lips finally, slowly, gently, as if reintroducing himself.

  She needed no introduction. She was his. She opened up to him. She had nothing she wouldn’t give to this man.

  He accepted her unconditional surrender and claimed her with a desperate groan, the warmth of his embrace heating as his tongue swept inside her mouth and reminded her what passion was. He held her tighter.

  He couldn’t hold her tight enough, as far as she was concerned.

  He kissed her into oblivion, into heaven.

  Words from the romance novel she’d been reading in the evenings surfaced in her mind: He took her in that kiss, took everything she had, and left her empty.