Courage To Live. Morgan Q O'Reilly

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      The neighbor to the north, Jack, had pulled in as well, but hadn’t yet closed his garage door. Hoping he’d disappear into his house so I wouldn’t have to talk to him, I took a moment to stare into my garage and wonder how much I could get for the tools and wood making it impossible for me to park the car inside. Considering my run of luck, I merely sighed when I saw two men from the corner of my eye.

      Since there was no point in sitting there longer, I opened the car door and climbed out, doing my best to look completely normal while letting my shoulder-length hair swing around my face. All the better to hide the spectacular swelling and bruise makeup and my sunglasses barely covered. As Rob and I gathered groceries, purse, gym bag and the usual daily detritus, Jack was giving his friend, a tall young man with red hair dressed in everyday Air Force blues, a verbal tour of the street.

      Robbie slammed down the rear hatch of the ubiquitous white minivan the insurance company had provided while a shop tried to calculate the damages to my car sustained over the weekend. I was doing my best to extricate myself from the strange vehicle and not aggravate my new injuries. I straightened and turned so I could close the door with a hip swing, and made the mistake of glancing up. The redhead’s eyes were aimed at me and, as he leisurely gave me the once over, he also gave me a slow, sexy smile. Somewhere deep inside me, something twinged. I straightened my back hoping I hadn’t just added a pulled muscle to my list of pains.

      “That’s Candy,” Jack said. As usual, he had a derisive tone in his voice when it came to talking to me, or about me. The introduction was grudging. “My new housemate, Lieutenant Cayden Shaughnessy.”

      Jack directly addressing me was a rarity. Usually he avoided looking at me. He’d answered a brief hello a time or two, but mostly he ignored my existence. Pointedly.

      I nodded.

      “Cayden, ma’am. Pleased to meet you. Lovely home you have.” He nodded at my small balcony, where planter boxes held petunias, marigolds and spilling curtains of lobelia.

      “Mom? Can you handle those?” Rob took a protective stance in front of me, his hands and arms loaded with twice as many grocery bags as mine. Even then, he only let me carry lettuce and chips.

      “I’m fine, honey. Go on in.”

      “Lawn’s getting a little long,” Jack said, frowning his disapproval at the grass a week overdue for mowing. During mid-summer, it meant twice as much work. If it wasn’t mowed every five to seven days, it got out of control. Twenty hours of sunlight did that.

      “I know.” I turned toward the garage hoping to escape before Jack questioned me again about Quint’s continued absence. I’d run out of things to say and didn’t want to hear any jibes or questions about the switch in vehicles.

      “If you need some help, ma’am, just let me know.”

      I glanced at the eager young lieutenant. He seemed to mean it.

      Tall and lean, military-short hair gleaming with golden highlights in the Alaskan summer sun still riding high in the early evening sky, the man was the very picture of young, cocky Air Force pilot. I pegged him at about twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven. A good six years younger than I was, at least. Hell, I might have been his babysitter at one point.

      “The woman’s married and has a kid. Leave her be,” Jack growled before turning his cold glare on me. “Where’s Quint? What’d you do to him after the Super Bowl? New car, Candy?”

      I ignored Jack, as I had the last six months when he asked the same questions about my missing husband, but stopped walking when the lieutenant winked at me.

      “Damn sorry to hear you’re married.”

      He wasn’t the only one.

      However, six months earlier Quint had disappeared into a snowy night. Not that I really cared about where he was, but my situation was precarious. Over the weekend, a dumbass drunk had hit me head on, leaving me reeling from a whole new set of injuries, worries and anger. In short, I was no closer to letting myself be charmed by a handsome face and cocky grin than I ever had been. Didn’t mean I hadn’t noticed the sculpted hard body of the new resident next door. I just didn’t have time, or energy, to fence or flirt with him verbally or otherwise. The cocky youngster’s hit on me was like a match touched to tinder.

      Without stopping to think, I lit into the younger man, who suddenly looked more like a Golden Retriever puppy than a pilot who flew multimillion dollar, armed jets.

      “Let me tell you, Mr. HotShot. This isn’t San Diego. There’s no Top Gun here.”

      In his pressed uniform, duffle slung over his shoulder, the man I directed my venom at stared back at me with laughter in his laser blue eyes. The amusement pissed me off even more.

      “Hey–”

      “I appreciate what you guys do,” I rushed over his rebuttal, trying to sound reasonable, and failing. “But once you step off that base, you’re in the real world, and you’re expected to act like real people. That I’m-too-sexy-for-my-jet thing doesn’t work here. National Guard, Army and Coast Guard all have a presence in town, not just Air Force. And we know all about behavior unbecoming an officer. You’re not remotely special or unique and the sooner you figure that out, the better we’ll get along.”

      Bluer than blue eyes twinkled at me across the lawn separating our domiciles. I secretly bet he flew one of the F-22 Raptors stationed at the base just a few miles north. Extreme confidence fairly oozed from his pores. Even in the face of my ranting, the wide grin on his chiseled face didn’t fade one bit.

      The grin unnerved me as much as the fact I’d blown up at him under far less provocation than I’d endured from Quint. Hell, I’d known Fly-boy mere heartbeats and had no insight into his intentions behind the flirting. I was running on nerves, caffeine, pain and little sleep. The compression around my chest that made my battered ribs bearable also limited my breathing to shallow, dizzying huffs and reminded me of the worst of it.

      I trembled as the tirade flew from my mouth. But really. Although I’d just been introduced to him, the man standing ten feet away across the narrow strip of lawn and his all-too-obvious arrogant attitude was too much on top of the previous couple of days. As my husband had learned, I could only put up with so much and then the words formed and burst from me, almost of their own volition. Rather like frozen pipes at thirty below. Usually without a thought given to the consequences. And with Quint, there were always consequences. Sometimes big, mostly small, but always there. Six months hadn’t erased that lesson.

      That thought should have been at the top of my head. Science says that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Not true. In some cases, the reaction is multiple times the force of the original action. As a result, the only thing holding me upright, my medical corset, a torture device marketed as a compression vest and posture aid, reminded me all too clearly of the last round of consequence. The barely healed ribs were newly injured, and came with more bruises, strains and aches from the car accident. At least it hadn’t been my estranged husband’s foot. Lord only knew where the foot, and the rest of his body, was right then. I had no clue, and neither did the police. They seemed to care only slightly more than I did, which wasn’t saying much.

      “In fact,” I added, “just mind your own business and leave me to mine. Then everyone will be happy.”

      Was I a glutton for punishment or what? I felt as if I breathed fire by the time I finished.

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