A Soldier's Promise Read online

  Something about the slight change in his father’s tone made Levi clench his jaw. Keeping his gaze averted, he removed the chicken pieces from the pan to lay them on a plate by the stove. “And why are you telling me this?”

  “Because since you’ve been back,” Dad said behind him, “you haven’t said ten words about your deployments.”

  Levi turned to find his dad leaning back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. “You didn’t ask, either.”

  “Didn’t want to pry.”

  “Then what’s the problem? Because let’s be honest, it wasn’t like we were exactly best buds before I left. Right? Maybe...I simply didn’t think you’d be all that interested. Crap,” he muttered, giving his head a sharp shake. “That didn’t come the way I meant—”

  “Sure it did. But you’re wrong. I’ve always been interested, Levi. I love you, dammit. I—” He took a moment. “I always have, whether you want to believe that or not,” he said quietly, and Levi’s gut cramped. If Dad had ever actually said that before, he couldn’t remember. Except then he said, “Yeah, even when you were being a complete knucklehead,” and Levi had to smile. “So I’m asking now. What went on over there?”

  Feeling as if he’d been thrown a flaming curveball, Levi looked away. “You don’t want to know. Trust me.”

  He heard his father sigh. “Yeah, I figured that’d be your response.”

  “It has nothing to do with you, Dad,” Levi said, facing him again. “I swear. I don’t like talking about it to anybody. Anyway, it’s in the past, it’s over and done with—”

  “The past is never over, son. Not as long as we remember it. And before you say anything else—if you don’t want to talk to me, or your mother, that’s up to you. But I’m guessing you need to talk to somebody. Maybe somebody who’s in as much pain as you are.”

  “I’m not—”

  His father held up one hand, cutting him off. “You forget—we lived through your rebel phase. Barely, but we did. The only saving grace was that for all you nearly drove your mother and me crazy with your shenanigans, we could always see a spark of something that gave us hope, that eventually you’d channel all that energy into something worthwhile. But since you’ve been home...” His father sighed. “It’s like you’re too steady, if that makes any sense. Whatever happened over there, you need to deal with it. And I’m guessing if Tommy were here, he’d be the one you’d talk to.”

  Pain stabbed. “Well, he’s not, is he?”

  “No. But his widow is. She hasn’t been through the same hell as I’m guessing you have, but she’s been through hell, nonetheless. You two might be good for each other. Which I’m guessing was the real purpose behind Tommy’s request. Because he knew if anything happened, you’d both be hurting. And that nobody would understand your hurt better than each other.”

  Levi gawked at his father as if he’d announced he’d chatted with Jesus. Except, damned if the truth of his words didn’t whisper through the buzzing in his head. Then he pushed out a soft, humorless laugh. “Except even if I were to accept your...theory, there’s another major flaw in your reasoning. Which is why would she be even remotely interested in talking to me?”

  “Meaning because of the knucklehead thing?”

  Levi almost smiled. “Could be.”

  His father was quiet for a moment—never a good sign—before he said, “So why not tell her the truth? That you tried to talk Tommy out of enlisting?”

  His appetite gone, Levi grabbed the plastic wrap out of a nearby cupboard, ripping off a length of the clingy film to stretch over the chicken. His parents had only heard the one conversation, of course, right after Levi had signed up and Tomas had come over—to the old house, on the ranch—to say he’d decided to enlist, too. His eyes bright with excitement, he’d gone on and on about how the military could change his life, make Val proud of him in ways that helping out at his father’s store never would. Once she got used to the idea, that was. Levi’s initial reaction—aside from the irritation that, once again, his friend was playing tagalong—had been to tell Tommy he was crazy, that Val was already plenty proud of him. So, yeah, maybe he should rethink this.

  Except in the days that followed Tommy only became more enthusiastic about enlisting, and Levi eventually let it go. Because ultimately it wasn’t his place, or business, to talk Tommy out of anything, was it? He was a grown man capable of making his own decisions. And of handling the ramifications of those decisions. If Val wasn’t exactly on the same page, what on earth did that have to do with Levi?

  Even so, regret that he hadn’t tried harder bubbled like acid to the surface of his grief over Tommy’s death, nearly devastating him. Now he looked at his father, shame still eating at his gut. That he couldn’t tell his father, or Val, or anyone the truth only made the sizzling worse.

  “And what good would that do, Dad? Either she’d think I was only trying to cover my own butt, or—far worse—she’d believe me. And how would that make him look, that he’d gone ahead with something that everyone tried to talk him out of? It would only wreck her even more than she is. I know it would.”

  “So you’d rather let her continue to—”

  “Blame me, yeah. She worshipped Tommy, Dad,” Levi said through a thick throat. “He was her savior. Even if I didn’t know the entire story back when they first started going together, I knew that much. Like you said, after everything she’s lost... I can’t take that away from her, too.”

  “At least he died a hero.”

  “Doesn’t make him any less dead, does it?”

  Releasing another breath, Dad slowly wagged his head. “Ten years ago we couldn’t get you to take responsibility for your own actions for love nor money. Now you’re taking it for something that’s not even remotely your fault? No, you listen to me—when Tomas asked you to make sure Val was okay...that was guilt talking, son. His guilt. For his own decision. It wasn’t up to you to change his mind. It never was. But now, well, you accepted the burden he dumped on you—”

  “Yes, I did. For my own reasons.”

  Their gazes butted for a long moment before his father pointed at him. “Then if you want to make good on that promise, there’s a lot more that needs fixing than that house. Which isn’t going to happen unless you get everything out in the open. And that’s my last thought on the subject,” Dad said, before going out on the back deck, probably to enjoy the sun’s too-brief blaze of glory before it sank behind the mountains.

  Leaving Levi—again—to wrestle with the truth of his father’s words. Not to mention a dilemma the size of Texas. Because which was the better choice? To spare the woman any more pain? Or to abide by her own demand about being honest with each other?

  He sighed so hard his chest hurt. Because truthfully? There was a big part of him that wanted to turn tail and run, like he would’ve done when he was younger. To make up some story, any story, that’d get him out of this predicament. Except the past six years of his life had done a pretty good job of slapping him upside the head with, yeah, that whole responsibility thing. Of manning up to a challenge instead of backing down from it.

  Especially when the challenge went way beyond simply making good on a promise to his best friend. Oh, no. The challenge was how to really help Val without revealing truths that would only hurt her more.

  Or change that look in her eyes from anger and resentment to...

  To pity.

  Of course, it wasn’t like he’d been pining all these years for the girl who’d never been his, the girl he’d tried like hell to stop thinking about once Tomas had confessed he was sweet on her. But the truth was, the toughness and courage that had originally attracted him to the girl had only intensified in the woman...a woman obviously doing her best not to infect her children with her own anger and grief and loss issues. Hell, Val Lopez was frickin’ amazing, the kind of woman any man would be proud to call his partner.

  Any man but Levi, that is.

  At this rate, he thought on a ro
ugh breath, he was gonna be able to rip out those dead bushes with his bare hands.

  * * *

  Sweatier than a race horse, and probably stinkier, Levi glanced up to find a wild-haired Josie sitting on the porch steps, the kitten in her lap, watching him dig up that shriveled up old lilac. He was beginning to get used to the staring, as well as the way she had of saying whatever was on her mind. Actually, in some ways it was a relief, letting her take the lead in the conversation, since what he knew about how to talk to little girls you could write on a Post-it note. One of those itty-bitty ones.

  Like most little girls around here, she was more likely to wear jeans and boots than some froufrou tutu or whatever. Even if her T-shirt did have some glittery hot-pink design on it. Far as he could tell, Josie was her own person, nothing like either of her parents. As someone who’d been nothing like either of his, Levi could relate.

  “Hey there, Miss Josie,” he said, jabbing the point of the shovel into the stubborn taproot. “How are you today?”

  A heavy sigh preceded, “Bored. I miss school.” The kitten abandoned her lap to jump at a fly buzzing around the porch. “Mama says I’m not supposed to bother you.”

  “You’re not.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay. Whatcha doing?”

  Levi scrubbed his wrist across his sweaty forehead, then plucked at the front of the soaked T-shirt plastered to his chest. Even in the spring—and even though rogue snowstorms were not out of the question—the sun was hella hot at this altitude, and the bushes had been a pain to dig out. But at least he’d been grateful to see, once he started the excavation, that the foundation seemed to be in decent enough shape, thanks to some smart waterproofing efforts in the past.

  He attacked the stubborn root again. “Digging up these bushes so we can plant the new ones you and your mama bought the other day.” He grinned over at the child, sitting there with her pointy little chin in her hands, her elbows digging into her knees. “Wanna help?”

  She sat up straighter, beaming. “Can I?”

  Levi laughed. “Sorry, honey, I was only joking.” At her disappointed expression, he gently added, “The shovel’s way too heavy for you to lift, let alone dig with. Besides, you’d get all dirty.”

  “Oh, that’s okay—these are my play clothes. And I’m not some little weenie wuss. Dirt doesn’t bother me. At all.”

  And with that, he definitely saw her mama in her. Even to the way she pushed her shoulders back and crossed her arms over her ribs.

  “Then tell you what—when I get around to planting the new stuff, you can definitely help me. How’s that?”

  “Deal.” She plopped her chin in her hands again. Over in a pool of shade, the sleeping dog started whooping in his sleep. Josie giggled, then sighed. “I don’t think Mama wants me talking to you.”

  Levi jerked his head up. “She tell you that?”

  “Nuh-uh. But I can tell. ’Cause whenever I say something about you she gets this funny look on her face. Like this.” With that, she flattened her mouth and squinched up her eyes in such a dead-on imitation of her mama Levi nearly laughed aloud.

  He reached over to give the damn root a mighty tug. Nope. He went back to hacking at it. “I’m not surprised. Your mama and I...” His gaze flicked to the child’s, then back to his task. “We weren’t exactly best buds when we were kids.”

  “Oh, yeah. She said.”

  “She did?”

  “Uh-huh. She said you were a goofball.”

  Levi chuckled. “Idiot is more like it.”

  “That’s not a nice word.”

  “I wasn’t a very nice person. Sometimes, anyway.”

  “Like, how? What did you do?”

  Chuckling, Levi rammed the point of the shovel under the root ball, then put all his weight on it and rocked. “Nothing a sweet little girl like you needs to know about.”

  “You didn’t—” Josie got very quiet “—hurt people, did you? Like beat them up and stuff?”

  His cheeks got tight with his grin. This kid was something else. “Of course not. I wasn’t bad. Exactly. I just got in trouble a lot. Did stuff I knew I wasn’t supposed to do.” Or rather, that nobody else would. No, he’d never hurt anyone. As big as he’d been, he’d never had to. But he’d sure as hell put the fear of God into a few people—

  “Oh. Like the time Mama told me not to stand on the chair to get something out of the cupboard, but I did it anyway, only then it fell over and I banged my head? And broke the plate I was trying to get?”

  The root ball finally gave way. Eureka. “Yeah. Like that.” The mangled clump of roots and dirt tossed aside, Levi yanked up the hem of his army-issue T-shirt to wipe the sweat out of his eyes.

  “Daddy said you were the funnest person he’d ever met—”

  “Josefina Maria!” Val banged back the screen door, Risa propped on her hip. “What did I tell you about bothering Levi?”

  “But I’m not!” she said, scrambling to her feet, wobbling for a moment in her boots. “Levi said!”

  “She wasn’t, Val,” Levi said calmly. “And I liked the company.”

  “And he said I could help him plant the new bushes, too! Didn’t you, Levi?”

  “I sure did,” he said. Only to add at Val’s thunderous look, “But only if Mama says it’s okay.”

  “Is it, Mama? Is it?”

  “We’ll see,” Val said, then smiled for her daughter. “Now get upstairs and straighten out your room, little girl. Which I asked you to do three hours ago, so you can stop with the eye-rolling. Go on, now.”

  On another heavy sigh, the child shot what could only be described as a longing look in Levi’s direction before snatching up the kitten and stomping into the house, the soft-close mechanism on the new screen door not even offering the satisfaction of slamming shut behind her.

  Levi picked up the shovel again to start digging up the dirt around the last bush, a rangy euonymus that’d been ugly twenty years ago.

  “You can trust me around your daughters, Val,” he pushed out as he rammed the shovel into the rock-hard dirt. “No matter what you think of me, or what I was like then...” He glanced up into her startled expression. “I’m not gonna hurt your kids—”

  “Levi! For God’s sake! I know that—”

  “Or say anything to them you wouldn’t want me to say. I have added a few brain cells to my collection since we were kids.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then lowered Risa into her little play...cage...thing, waiting until the baby was happily beating a stuffed toy with something that made a mind-numbing racket before sitting on the edge of the steps a few feet away. As usual she was wearing beat-up jeans, a hoodie, a pair of those ugly-ass rubber shoes that made her look like a damn duck. Except the hoodie was soft and clingy, and her hair was soft and shiny, and her mouth was...

  Doing that pressed-tight thing her daughter had just imitated so well.

  “And I can’t tell you how much it ticks me off that you would even think I’d think that,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t hurt the kids. Or say anything. But Josie...” She glanced up, even though Levi knew the girls’ bedrooms were on the other side of the house. Providing, of course, Josie was actually in her room. “I don’t want her getting all these...expectations. Because of what her father said to her. And I definitely don’t want—” She looked down at her hands, tightly laced together in her lap, then back at Levi. “I don’t need her looking at you and seeing something that’s not there. I don’t need her liking you. Especially not in a you-could-be-my-daddy kind of way.”

  Because clearly her mama wasn’t about to see him that way, either. Not that this was a surprise. What was a surprise was her even considering the kid might.

  “So, what? You afraid I’m gonna break her heart?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  Anger spurted through him. “So I should stop being nice to her?”

  “Of course not. Just not too nice.”r />
  Levi blew a short, dry laugh through his nose. “First off, that was the first real conversation Josie and I have had since I started coming over, so I think we’ve got some wiggle room between her and me being friends and her looking to me as her new daddy—”

  “You don’t understand. She barely saw her father. His skill... They couldn’t simply send anybody over to do that job, could they? So he was away far more than he was home. Even when he was stateside, he spent more time at the training facilities than he did with us. She adored her father, but she kept feeling like he’d been stolen from her. It didn’t matter so much at first, when she was tiny. But as she got older all she wanted was for him to stay home. To stay with her. So I’m guessing she heard in that cockamamy promise he extracted from you—”

  Frowning, Levi leaned heavily on the shovel. “That I would be his replacement?”

  “I doubt her thought processes would label it as such—although knowing that kid, I wouldn’t put it past her. But, yeah. Dammit, Levi—she’s only now getting adjusted. She even aced school last semester. But it hasn’t even been seven months since Tommy died. She may act like everything’s fine, but I know how fragile she still is. So the last thing I want is for her to get attached only to get hurt all over again.”

  Levi let Val’s words bounce around in his brain for a moment or two until they lined up right in front of his eyes, like a bunch of privates ready for inspection. Not that he doubted for a moment her wanting to avoid any more pain for her daughter. What mother wouldn’t? But it wasn’t only Josie’s heart she was trying to protect, was it? Whether Val herself fully realized that or not.

  Like she said, it’d only been a few months. Barely time for her to come to terms with being a widow, let alone move far enough past her grief to see a future. God, it still hurt like hell every time Levi thought about how he’d never see Tomas again, so he couldn’t imagine what Val was going through, how she was holding it together for the kids. Sure, he’d made other friends in the army, some of ’em close. But not like Tommy.