5. Chance
5
CHANCE
I slammed the front door and gripped my keys until the edges bit into my palm.
“You realize you don’t have a curfew, right?” Harris’s voice penetrated the haze in my mind.
I whipped my head toward the sound and found Harris and Lee lounging in the living room, watching baseball on TV. “What?”
“It’s eight twenty.” Harris rolled his eyes and took a sip of his beer. “You’re home way too early.”
“Mandy shut you down?” Lee sat forward, frowning.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I barked, fighting the replay of Mandy storming out of the bar. And like a jackass, I’d let her go. Stunned at how quickly she’d turned on me, I’d sat there drinking our beers, not tasting the potato skins I’d shoved in my mouth until I couldn’t take the side glances from the other patrons anymore.
Lee hoisted himself out of the recliner and smirked. “So that’s a yes.”
“That’s a ‘don’t push me.’” I squared my shoulders, glaring at Lee.
Lee lazily finished his beer, eyeing me the entire time with a smirk, antagonizing me on purpose like only a brother could. “The sexual frustration rolling off you is overwhelming. Women can sense that stuff. Maybe Mandy?—”
“Lee,” Harris snapped, rising to his feet.
I growled, my keys digging into my palms.
“I see we’re going to handle this like girls.” Lee plunked the empty bottle onto an end table. “I’m sorry for hurting your feelings by pointing out the obvious. You want a hug?”
I bit back the urge to take my frustration out on my youngest brother. Instead of swinging my fist, I marched straight by Lee, up the stairs to Dad’s room and those boxes of old papers I’d found shoved in the closet. Now seemed as good a time as any to start going through them. As pissed off as I felt, I definitely wasn’t going to get sentimental about throwing out old junk.
I heard footsteps approach behind me.
“Ignore Lee,” Harris said, moving to stand beside me. “He’s lashing out. He’s bitter about having to leave the Rangers before he was ready.”
“I know.” I exhaled, taking a seat on the floor and pulling a box closer to me. “I get it. I do. I’d probably feel the same way, but that doesn’t mean I won’t beat his ass if he keeps it up.”
“Maybe it’d be good for him, an old-fashioned throw down.” Harris shrugged. “Give him an outlet for all that anger.”
I snorted. “Something’s got to reach him. I never thought I’d miss the wisecracks and smartass comments, but I hate seeing him hurting. It kills me, knowing there’s no easy fix.”
Harris eyed me, scrutinizing my face. “Lee’s not the only one hurting.”
Damn it . I kept my focus down on the box. Looked like there were old income tax records in this one. Really old, from back when I was just a baby. Definitely no need to save those anymore.
“All kidding aside,” Harris plunged on, not taking the hint to remain silent. “You’re home really early for things to have gone well.”
“She marched out of the restaurant ten minutes after we sat down,” I admitted. “But not before she took a couple of confusing shots at me.”
“Crap.” Harris sighed, sitting down next to me. “I’m sorry.” He turned toward me. “I know you said you were over her, but Mandy’s always been in your blood. That means any shot from her is going to hit home.”
My shoulders slumped. “I thought I could handle it. Seeing her again. Being close to her.” I raked one hand through my hair, fighting frustration. “But the second I’m near her, all the old feelings rise. I’m not the same eighteen-year-old kid I was when I left.” I pulled at the ends. “I’m different. Mature. But she still drives me as crazy as she did back then.”
“You sorry you came home?”
“Yes. No.” I kept going through the box, mindlessly paging through the old forms. “Hell, I don’t know. One thing hasn’t changed, though.” I glanced at my brother. “She wants nothing to do with me…at least romantically.”
“Damn.” Harris meant well, but I could do without the pity. I kept talking over him before he could say anything else.
“But then she surprises me by remembering little details—things we talked about once and never again. What is that? That means something, right? Like she’s been thinking about me, keeping the memories alive. She has to have been, to remember stuff like that.” My voice roughened, and I cleared my throat. “Then there’s the way she looks at me. You should’ve seen…” I groaned at the memory of her hazel eyes darkening, her lush lips parting as I steadied her on her feet. “One minute she’s snapping at me, the next, she’s all nostalgic, then it’s like she’s imagining me slamming her against the wall.”
“Sounds like you need a road trip to clear your head.”
I blinked, forcing the X-rated fantasy out of my head, and focused on my brother. “Road trip? You planning something?”
Harris nodded. “Lee and I were talking about it before you got home.” He shrugged. “I’ve only got twenty-eight of my thirty days’ bereavement leave left. I need to blow off steam, and I think it might help Lee with his restlessness.”
“Where?” The idea of hitting the open road with my brothers should have made me excited, but it didn’t. It felt like running away. And a SEAL—even a retired one— never ran from a problem.
“Don’t care where,” Harris responded bluntly. “Maybe west to Las Vegas or north to New York. Either way, I’d love it if we could take the Mustang. It’d be like Dad was with us.”
I nodded, clapping my brother’s shoulder. After a respectful pause, I lightened the tension. “Hey, guess who I ran into at the pub?”
The grief cleared from Harris’s eyes and he cocked his head.
“Your prom date, Pepper Hammond.”
“Ahhh, Pepper.” Harris’s face softened and a twinkle lit his eyes. “Beautiful and adventurous in the sack. The things that girl let me?—”
“Nope.” I threw a hand up. “I don’t want to hear any more about how she lost her virginity to you or whatever you two did that summer.”
Harris laughed. “She told you that?” His grin widened. “Good to know I’m memorable.” The gleam in his eyes turned devilish. “I think I need to stop by the pub before we head out. But seriously. You should come on the road trip. It’ll be good for you.”
I tried to step back from my emotions and evaluate the merits of Harris’s plan. “You might be right about clearing my head. I’ll think about it.”
I was near the end of the box when my fingers landed on something unexpected. Pulling it out, I found a stack of…letters, maybe? All the tax return stuff had been laid out flat and held together in binder clips, separated by year. But these pages were all folded, like they’d just come out their envelopes, and the bundle was tied together with a piece of string.
“Hey, what’s that?” Harris asked, leaning in.
“No idea. Letters between Mom and Dad, maybe? But I don’t know when they would have been apart long enough to have to write.”
I untied the string and unfolded the paper on top. The first line read “ Hey little brother .” I stared at the words for a full heartbeat, hoping they would start making sense. They didn’t.
“What the hell?” Harris said, reading over my shoulder. “Dad didn’t have any siblings…did he?”
“I…didn’t think he did,” I answered. “He sure never talked about any.” Truth be told, Dad had never talked much about his family at all. Both his parents had died before I was born, and as far as I knew, there weren’t any other McCallisters around. I skimmed through the letter quickly.
“From the looks of it, this mystery brother was serving in the Middle East back in the ’90s.”
“So not only did Dad have a brother, but that brother served?” Harris asked, looking completely shocked.
“He never mentioned anything like that to you?” I asked.
Harris just shook his head. “Not a word. Think we can track him down?”
“Well, just from this letter, there’s not a lot to go on,” I admitted. “No envelope. He didn’t even sign his full name, just ‘Pete.’”
“Yeah, but it’s still something we should look into, don’t you think? This Pete could still be out there somewhere. Maybe he doesn’t even know what happened to Dad. We should at least try to track him down.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I agreed, though where I was going to find the time to go digging for this particular needle in a haystack, I really couldn’t say. Between figuring out what I was going to do with my life, packing up the house so we could sell it, finishing up work on the Mustang, and getting my head straight about Mandy, I already had a full plate. But hell, what was one more challenge? If it meant I could get a little more clarity on my dad, it might prove to be worth it after all.
I halted in the parking lot of Mandy’s garage. Acting on instinct, I ducked out of sight, crouching behind an old Jeep Wrangler parked in the lot. The morning sun beat down on my head. The day was a scorcher, a real asphalt-bubbler. I’d seen the temperature on the bank sign on my way up Main Street proclaiming that it was ninety-one already, and it wasn’t even noon. Mandy looked hot, too, hovering in the doorway to catch the AC. Vince was there with her, standing outside.
“Thanks, Mandy,” he said. He frowned as he accepted a plain white envelope. “Listen, I?—”
“You don’t have to explain.” Mandy’s shoulders slumped, but she lifted her chin as if to tough out the words. “I’m sorry for…everything. I wish you luck on the new job.”
I strode forward, feeling sleazy for eavesdropping on Vince obviously quitting. I nodded as we passed each other, and Vince nodded back. Then he got in his car and drove off the lot. Mandy looked small, huddled in the doorway, but she straightened up when she spotted me. Her freckled cheeks flushed slightly, and she bit her lip. The moment I stopped walking, she jumped right in.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Last night was a mess. I shouldn’t have walked out like that, even if?—”
“What happened with Vince?” I cut her off quickly, not wanting to rehash last night’s disaster. Mandy obviously wasn’t ready to delve into the past, and I had no desire to push the topic. Yet.
Mandy’s flush deepened, and she turned away. “He, uh, got an offer from the paper mill. He decided to take it.”
Something in Mandy’s demeanor tripped my alarm bells. She seemed closed off, like she was hiding something. I angled in closer, trying to catch her eye. “Looks like you have enough business.” I made a show of scanning the lot that curved around the side of the building. “Was it better pay?”
A flash of anger blazed in her eyes, but she soon banished it. “Something like that. What brings you in today?”
I eyed her narrowly. My instincts told me she wasn’t bracing herself for more talk about our history. This was something else, something more pressing. What did she not want me asking? What was she hiding? I didn’t think she’d tell me, so I manufactured a smile. “The fuel pump I ordered should be in by now.”
Mandy relaxed visibly. She moved out of the doorway to let me inside. “I got something delivered a half hour ago. I guess it’s yours.”
“So,” I ventured, staying hot on her heels until she rounded the counter. Then I moved to the front of the Formica like yesterday. “It sounds like you’re in need of a mechanic.”
She shot up from her crouch, holding a medium-sized box. “Are you applying?”
“You don’t have to sound so shocked.” I arched an eyebrow. “Your dad taught me everything I know, and I kept up the skills in the Navy in my downtime.”
“But,” she sputtered. “You want to work here. With me?”
“Mandy,” I stated quietly. “We always worked well together.” I paused a moment to let that settle in. It was true, and she knew it. She couldn’t argue. When it looked like she might try anyway, I plowed ahead, “You’d be doing me a favor. I don’t really want to work in security or as a bodyguard. I’d like to establish myself as a mechanic in a civilian garage.”
Her jaw clicked shut, then another bolt of anger flashed in her eyes. “I can’t afford to pay someone right now.”
I glanced around the office, keeping it casual. I’d seen some of the equipment in the garage. It was showing its age, and the building itself appeared slightly run-down. That didn’t add up. The garage was busy. Almost too busy, judging by the cars stacked up waiting. Add in the fact the next closest garage was over an hour away, and Mandy should be doing fine. Doing great, even, so why wasn’t she? Where was the money going, if not into the business? Why did I get the impression she could barely make ends meet?
The jackass crowding her space yesterday, then sitting in his black SUV, flitted through my mind. He didn’t add up, either. I was willing to bet he was wrapped up in this, maybe even the root of Mandy’s problems. Another mystery to solve—though this one felt a little more pressing than figuring out the identity of Dad’s maybe-brother. Mandy might be in danger…not that I expected her to admit it. She’d always been fiercely independent.
I kept my thoughts to myself and kept working on Mandy. “Since you’d be doing me a favor by helping me transition to civilian life, I wouldn’t need you to pay me much. I’ve got plenty of savings, and the house, so it’s fine.” And no way was I leaving without securing my position. I could accept Mandy not wanting me in her life romantically, but I couldn’t turn off my need to know she was safe. Until I could be certain of that, my place was right here, keeping that jackass off Mandy’s back. She was scared of the man, and that was all I needed to know. I would protect her until my dying breath. And in the meantime, maybe I’d work out my feelings, figure out if it was her making my heart race or just my memories.
I plucked the industrial razor from the cup holder and sliced the box open. “I promise, you won’t be taking advantage of me.” I spread the flaps. “Did I mention, I’m drawing a retirement check from the Navy? I’m fine accepting whatever you can afford.”
I could practically see the wheels turning in her mind. Not wanting to push too hard, I lifted the packaging and read the specs for the fuel pump. Another reproduction, but with the cost of an original way too high, I’d make this one work.
“We’re closed on Sundays,” she rattled off in a flat monotone. “Business hours are eight to five, Monday through Saturday, but I’m here by 7 a.m.”
“Fair enough.” I tucked the fuel pump under my arm and headed for the door. “See you Monday morning.” I could feel Mandy’s eyes on me as I started down Main Street. I was aware of other eyes too, behind darkened store windows. I found I didn’t mind as much, now I had a mission. Let the gossips wag on—what could they say? That I was home and lending a hand? I’d kill them with kindness, that’s what I’d do. Smile when they came in to get their mufflers serviced. Send them home with their old beaters shining like gems.
I scanned the street for black SUVs, for anything out of place, but nothing jumped out at me, and soon I started to whistle. It was early in the day—maybe I’d swing by the library, see if I could find any old newspaper clippings that might mention my dad and the rest of his family. No telling whether or not the librarian would be happy to see me, but that could be a good starting place for my “kill them with kindness” act. And if it meant I got some help on my research project, all the better.
I lifted the house’s garage door open to capitalize on the slight breeze and placed the fuel pump on the quilt lining the Shelby’s fender.
“Hey,” Harris said as he sauntered in from the kitchen entrance with some bottles of water in his hands. “I was just telling Lee about those letters we found. Crazy, right?”
“Yeah, do you think we really have an uncle out there somewhere?” Lee asked, following him out.
I snatched the bottle from Harris and chugged it down before answering. “Looks that way,” I said. “I swung by the library and found our grandparents’ wedding announcement. Turns out when Grandma married Ben McCormick, she was already a widow with a son from her first marriage.”
“Well, that explains why we don’t know of any other McCormicks,” Harris said. “Pete would have had a different last name. So what was his name?”
“Anderson. Peter Anderson.”
“Wait, as in Admiral Anderson?” Lee asked.
The retired admiral had been a fixture in town for years, though I didn’t remember any of us ever meeting him personally. Everyone knew his name. He gave back a lot to the community, had even adopted some foster sons years back—guys who had gone on to join the Navy themselves, becoming SEALs. I’d met all of them in passing over the years, though the encounters had been brief.
“It’s the same name,” I agreed, “but I can’t be sure it’s the same guy. And it’s not like we can ask him.”
“We can’t?” Lee asked. “Why not?”
“He died three years back—I looked that up at the library, too.”
“Well, damn,” Harris said, looking disappointed. “So that’s a dead end.”
“Maybe not,” I replied. “He adopted those brothers back in the day, remember?”
“The Vales, right?” Lee asked. He’d be the one most likely to have known them back when we were kids. If I was remembering right, the oldest brother, Zach, was a year younger than Lee, which meant he would have been a freshman when I was a senior.
“I didn’t know them all that well,” Lee said, “but they seemed like good guys. Had it kind of rough when they were younger, I think, but things really turned around for them when they ended up with the admiral.”
“Don’t suppose you kept in touch with them at all, did you?” I asked.
Lee shook his head. “But I can ask some of my old high school buddies. I think Zach and I had some friends in common.”
“Great. If we can get in touch with them, maybe they’ll be able to tell us if the admiral ever mentioned having a half-brother. I’ll keep seeing what else I can dig up around town.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to be road tripping with us?” Harris asked, picking up on what I hadn’t said. “Or just that we’ll all be in town for the next stretch because it’ll be awhile before the car’s fixed?”
“If you can hold off leaving for a few days and lend me a hand, I should have the car running.” Fingers crossed all the low-cost parts did what they advertised and didn’t leave Harris, Lee, and the ghost of our dad on the side of the road. “But no, I won’t be coming with you.”
Harris eyed me with concern. “What happened to clearing your head?”
“I’ve got a job,” I answered, chucking my empty bottle into the box I used for trash, then bending over the engine to avoid my brothers’ stares. I figured sticking with this reason instead of talking about “girly feelings” would fly better. “You’re looking at the new mechanic for Loomis Automotive.”
Lee exploded with laughter. “You’re working for your ex-girlfriend? What are you, nuts? You came home last night with a set of balls so blue the shade could be named after you.”
Truth, not that I’d admit it out loud. “Yeah, well…” I loosened the wingnut securing the air cleaner and lifted the large, round metal pan off. “I wouldn’t feel right enjoying the open road when Mandy’s in some kind of trouble.”
The laughter ceased. I had their attention now.
“Trouble?” Harris repeated, moving closer. “Is she in danger or something?”
“I don’t know yet.” I began pulling vacuum hoses and lines I’d already labeled last night off the old carburetor. “That’s the problem. She had some creep in her personal space yesterday when I showed up at the garage. She was scared, I could tell, but he left when he saw me.”
Harris and Lee stiffened.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Harris said. “From what I know of Mandy, it’d take a lot to scare her.”
Lee nodded sagely. “Didn’t you two meet in some cafeteria brawl?”
I laughed. “Not quite, but close.” We’d met in high school, when a bully had the Lewis kid pinned against a wall. Mandy’d been right there, yelling Get off. Let him go . I had steamed in and tossed the bully on his ass, and when he’d tried to get up, Mandy had kicked him in the nuts. Our eyes had met over the whimpering, whining form of the formerly arrogant bully, and it’d been love at first sight.
“Mandy’s a fighter,” I said. “She doesn’t back down…except with this guy, she did. He was up in her space, but she didn’t fight him off. That tells me she has to placate him for some reason. He has something on her, but I don’t know what.” I placed a rag under the fuel line before I disconnected it. I doubted the hose still had gas, but I wasn’t risking it. “Then I found the asshole watching the garage from his SUV. When I asked her about it last night, she got really defensive.”
“Crap.” Lee picked the fuel pump box up and studied it, as if needing something to occupy his hands. “You want us to stay and help? I may have my problems with how she broke up with you, and let’s not even get into you running back for more, but I don’t want to see her hurt.”
I hung my head. I felt like a weight squeezing my chest had just snapped free. In that moment, I’d caught a glimpse of the Lee I used to know. Lee would be okay; I could see that now. My brother would work through his personal demons and come out the other side. “Thanks, man,” I answered gruffly. “That means a lot.” I snatched up a socket wrench and started on the rusted mounting bolts. “Since I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t say for sure I’m not being paranoid. Your road trip is more important, and I can always call if I need your help.”
“Damn straight,” Lee grunted, putting the box down. “I’ll order a couple pizzas, then we can all debate which direction is worth seeing on the open road while we work.”
“Let me change clothes.” Harris started to follow, then turned back. “Chance.”
When he didn’t say anything else, I peered around the hood, leaning on the fender. “Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
“I can take care of myself,” I retorted. “I didn’t survive Hell Week and a million missions since without learning a thing or two.”
Harris nodded, but didn’t smile like I expected. “It’s not the physical danger I’m worried about.” His eyes narrowed. “Mandy still has a strong hold on your heart. I’m afraid you’re going to let her rip it out of your chest again. And this time, you’ll watch her do it with your eyes wide open.”
I grunted. Part of me worried the same thing.