Chapter Eight
Kyle
Kyle reined in the rowdy talk after Madison left.
The woman had garnered everything from marriage proposals to potential lifetime commitments to be their cook, and the dessert she had made only cemented the guys” feelings on the matter.
Murdock had even grunted in appreciation at the meal, which was so far outside his range of normal that everyone paused a moment to make sure he hadn’t been kidnapped and replaced with a doppelganger.
Aiden had finished his and come back for seconds, which also hadn’t happened since he’d been there. That could have had something to do with Kyle’s own efforts at cooking the evening meal, which—while great that first night— had become less appreciated as time went on.
Jimmy still complained about the bag of chili in the freezer.
Kyle had to threaten to halve his grocery budget until the man let up. It was a close thing though.
They’d really lucked out with Madison, and even Evans had said she was a good enough cook that he’d stop the blatant flirtation as long as she planned to stick around and serve them sweets and meat.
Kyle had to restrain the impulse to knock him the hell out when he murmured something about serving her some ‘meat’.
He’d had to mention the fact that she was married for him to shut up.
Evans may not have as much respect for women as he should have, but he wouldn’t harm one and he would never encroach on a marriage.
Not seriously, anyway…he hoped.
He didn’t know Madison, and he didn’t know her circumstances, but he was intrigued. Maybe they needed money and that’s why she had chosen to take the job. Maybe she just loved cooking, and as good at it as she was, that made the most sense.
He couldn’t get her out of his head.
∞∞∞
Over the weekend, she had shown up as promised and prepared some dinners that he would probably never forget, though that might be due to how beautiful she was than to anything else.
There was something about her that was caring and nurturing and he found himself drifting to her more than he should.
He was never inappropriate with her. He made sure of it. He would never wreck a marriage and he sensed that Madison was loyal and had integrity, something that he admired greatly.
He’d seen how she watched Aiden, as if her hands itched to help him in some way. He’d even seen her sneak him the last piece of chocolate pie on Sunday night after she claimed it was all gone.
She never talked about her life outside the chalet and she never took the bait that Evans persistently dangled in her face.
Murdock’s reaction to her had been the most surprising of all.
Murdock didn’t trust anyone outside the team. He disliked most men and had a big grudge against women, for reasons that he never, ever spoke about.
Kyle could only speculate what made him that way, but whatever it was, he’d been like that even before he’d been captured.
The torture had only made it worse.
Madison had begun to wiggle her way in under his defenses in a way that didn’t send off alarms to the big, silent man. Oh, he didn’t do anything different—he didn’t talk more to her than usual or spend extra time with her—but he was less menacing when she was around…and Kyle had caught him bringing in more than just vegetables from the garden.
Sunday night before she left, Kyle had been sitting out on the patio with a drink. Murdock had wandered in, sweaty from the evening sun, with a crate of vegetables. As he passed, Kyle saw a single sunflower resting on top.
He turned away quickly and pretended not to have noticed.
Kyle felt something in his chest tighten and release at the simple gesture. Murdock was right. She’d brought a small measure of sunshine into their lives. He hoped she stayed on for a long time.
Monday, he woke up bright and early and made his way to the kitchen for a plate of pancakes and sausage. Jimmy was grumbling about Madison’s sloppy handwriting on the supper menu and Kyle scanned it and laughed.
“She writes like a damned doctor. Can’t read a thing she wrote,” he complained.
“It looks pretty clear to me,” Kyle said raising an eyebrow. “Monday—Hamburgers, potato wedges, broccoli slaw, brownies.”
Jimmy snorted. “What kind of chef serves broccoli slaw with hamburgers?”
“Have you ever eaten her food?”
“No, and I don’t need to. It’s plain they aren’t teaching those students right over at the school. Can’t figure out what kind of chef decides to make a broccolislaw with hamburgers,” he muttered again.
“Well, you’ll get to meet her tomorrow. Looks like she’s going to make corned beef tomorrow. If I’m not mistaken, that has to be started early.”
“Let me see that!” Jimmy said, snatching the clipboard. He scanned the menu and frowned. “She’s got no cabbage on here. None.”
Kyle was starting to get exasperated. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Logan, there are certain things that just go together…peanut butter and jelly, ham and cheese, pears and smoked gouda, and corned beef and cabbage. This ain’t right,” he said, jabbing the paper.
“Leave it alone, Jimmy. I’m warning you, be nice to her tomorrow or you might find yourself out of a job.”
Jimmy raised an eyebrow at his tone.
Kyle wouldn’t fire the man, not when he had twins on the way, but he wouldn’t tolerate him being rough on their other employees—any of them.
“Fine, fine,” he said, holding his hands up. “If you folks want to eat like savages, that’s your call.”
Kyle shook his head and left before anything else was brought up that he’d have to deal with.
He walked out to the living room, where Aiden was in his usual place beside the picture window. “Your first fitting is today, are you excited?”
Aiden gave him a droll look. “Hardly.”
“You’ll be able to get around a lot easier. Eventually, you’ll be able to do a lot of the things you used to enjoy,” Kyle pointed out.
“What’s the point? Sure, I’ll get around okay, but to what purpose? So I can be alone the rest of my life?”
Kyle frowned and Aiden went on.
“No woman is going to want to tie herself to a damned cripple. No woman is going to want to have children with me…sure maybe if I’d only lost my legs…but with this?” he asked, gesturing at the scarred side of his face. “It’s a fucking horror to look at. What woman in her right mind would want to sleep with me? To wake up to this every day?” he asked bitterly.
Kyle was silent for a moment, trying to process Aiden’s words and figure out the best way to help him cope.
“The other side is untouched, and any woman that wants you just for your looks isn’t worth having,” he said carefully. “I guarantee that there is one out there for you. You’ve just got to get out there and find her.”
“And why haven’t you found yours? You have two good legs and a pretty face,” Aiden scoffed.
“I haven’t been looking,” Kyle said quietly, feeling every moment of his age. “And I’m far from pretty,” he added with a huff. “Evans is the pretty boy around here.”
Aiden gave him a ghost of a smile but it didn’t last long.
They were silent again and Kyle could practically see the self-loathing rolling off of him in waves. He didn’t know what it would take to help the younger man see himself more clearly, but he thought the prosthetics and some exercise would help.
A car drove carefully up the driveway and for a moment, Kyle’s breath caught as he found himself hoping it was Madison, even though she wasn’t due for another seven hours.
He scratched his stubble and felt a little pathetic, a thirty-nine-year-old man looking forward to a visit from his married employee.
“That must be Jace,” John said, coming up behind them.
He thought back to Jace’s file and application.
Jace was the twenty-eight-year-old Marine with a missing hand, a TBI—traumatic brain injury— and nobody in the world left to call his own. One of his buddies had brought him here and Kyle intended to make him feel as welcome as he could.
His circumstances were up in the air at the moment.
He was conscious of his injuries and he had no real cognitive decline. According to his medical records, he was forgetful, sometimes combative, suffered from migraines, and nightmares, and had a bad case of PTSD.
Kyle commiserated with that. He just hoped this was the right place for him, and that they might be able to salvage a future for him.
He watched the men in the car as they sat in the drive. He thought that Jace was probably trying to talk his buddy into getting him out of there.
His friend, if he was a good one, would not.
It only took a few more moments before both doors opened and he got his first look at Jace O’Neal.
Jace was a tall man, gaunt-faced and much too thin for his stature. He had dark brown hair that was slightly long and slicked back. His eyes were brown and sunken and his cheekbones stuck out at jagged, sharp angles. Deep shadows marred the skin below his eyes. He looked haunted…hunted.
He scanned the building and the trees, taking in everything in a single glance before he approached the doors. His buddy stayed at his side, talking low and pointing at the mountains behind the large cabin.
Kyle wouldn’t be surprised if the man had even spotted Murdock in the trees near the edge of the driveway. The guys were always on guard, but Murdock especially liked to make sure he kept an eye on things.
Security was a priority at McClellan’s Hope because there were people in the world who would make it a mission to cause them harm in any way they could. They were people whose war didn’t end at the borders of Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever, and it always paid to be wary.
Jace didn’t need to worry about that. Jace’s biggest enemy was himself right now, Kyle could tell just by the way he looked and walked.
His stump was hidden by a shirt sleeve, and he knew from the application that he’d declined a prosthesis.
He opened the door before they could knock and Jace took a step back and moved his hand—the injured one— as if he was reaching for a weapon, only to find that even if he’d had one, he wouldn’t have been able to grab it.
It was time for Kyle to say something…anything to diffuse the tension. He felt Aiden roll up behind him, catching Jace’s eye.
“I’m Kyle,” he said, reaching out with his opposite hand.
Jace stared at it, then shook.
“Welcome home, Jace.”
∞∞∞
“Aiden’s room is there and yours is right next door. I’ll leave you to settle in. There’s food down in the kitchen if you get hungry. There is always water and other drinks available, whatever you need just ask.”
Jace was standing at his window, staying slightly to the side, and Kyle knew why. Sniper fire.
It would take him a while to become accustomed to being out of immediate danger. Sometimes that adjustment came later than others. No amount of telling him that he was safe would help.
His friend, a man named Dave, came back with his luggage and set it just inside the door. Kyle gave them some privacy. Jace looked spooked and he didn’t want to cause him any more stress.
Sometimes just being around strangers was stressful enough.
Back downstairs, he saw John and Aiden leaving for Aiden’s appointment in town. They’d be back later for supper, though Evans had been trying to lure him out to the little bar. Murdock seemed reluctant to go, but he’d never let Evans go alone, and if John and Aiden were going it was likely that they’d all want to eat here first.
Kyle was wary about Evans taking Aiden out to the bar.
Sure, he was a grown man and he wasn’t a prisoner here. He could come and go as he pleased and he could always have one of the guys take him wherever he wanted to go, but he didn’t think ready access to that much alcohol was a good idea for anyone recovering from a near-fatal injury.
It was too easy to lean on it as a crutch and it could very quickly become an addiction.
They had neither the training nor the resources to help anyone battle an addiction and part of the paperwork they’d signed had informed them that any substance abuse would be grounds for removal from the program.
They needed a safe place to recover, not a party house to wreck their lives.
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. It was clear that he needed to have a chat with Evans.
Kyle left the window and went to the desk, where several days” worth of work awaited him.
He went through some paperwork and bills as he waited. He skipped lunch and found himself triple-checking figures that he’d already double-checked before. He decided to put it on hold for a while and check his emails.
He was very surprised to find seven more inquiries for beds. He’d go through and look at the details of each case. It would have to be first come, first serve, but he had to make sure they only accepted cases they were equipped to handle.
They did not offer nursing care or round-the-clock assistance, though if any of them needed help Kyle would be more than happy to assist. They didn’t dispense medication and were not set up to care for extensive cases of paralysis or severe behavioral issues.
As much as he wanted to help everyone, they simply couldn’t.
Looking over the initial inquiries, he was upset that he had to reject two cases right off because they fell outside the parameters of their facility. He recommended that they reach out to a long-term care facility an hour away. He resolved to follow up with them and make sure they were taken care of.
He’d been working for several hours by then, and his eyes were hurting from staring at the computer screen for so long. He leaned back and closed them, hoping to stop the headache that was trying to develop.
He needed to start finding places in town that might take on those who still needed or wanted to work.
He didn’t know about Jace yet, but Aiden might want to branch out eventually and meet new people. Kyle didn’t think he planned to live with his parents for the rest of his life.
In his opinion, Endurance, North Carolina was the perfect place to live, raise a family, settle down, and eventually retire. They had plenty of places for local shopping, a supermarket, and the mountains, and the cost of living was cheap. Crime was practically nonexistent and there was no bad side of town that he could recall seeing.
There were plenty of jobs in the larger towns down the road, plus superstores, and nightlife too…but Endurance was the best for those who wanted a quieter life.
It couldn’t be too quiet for him.
He’d stumbled on the place years ago when he’d been traveling from Raleigh to Chattanooga in the few months between his first and second deployments. At the time, he’d had a powerful compulsion to just stop and stay forever.
Of course, he couldn’t do that without going AWOL, but the place had gotten stuck in his head and no amount of rationality could get it out.
After the last deployment, he’d had another powerful urge…and McClellan’s Hope was born. He got to live in the place that called to something deep in his soul, and he got to help others while doing it.
It was probably as close to heaven as he’d ever get.
He pulled a notepad from the drawer and tried to think about business owners he knew personally. Southern Sweets had potential. The owner was an elderly woman in her eighties. She had one assistant that she relied on heavily, and he happened to know that she needed more help.
He wasn’t sure if Aiden or Jace would be amenable to baking and frying up donuts though.
There was the market, which was adequate for the needs of the town, but by no means large enough to support many extra workers. There was also a flower shop, an antique store, a law firm, a small gym, and a book store. There were other places but he’d have to investigate those later. The list was large enough for now.
He sighed, thinking about the legwork he was going to have to do. He couldn’t send anyone in his place to meet with the owners. The thought of Murdock negotiating with anyone was laughable, Evans wouldn’t give the task the seriousness it deserved, and John was too busy with other matters.
He’d have to do it himself.
He was hoping at least a few of the places might be amenable to offering employment or even just taking on volunteers if anyone wished to go that route instead. Some will have ample disability pay, and while they may not want to work for money, they may want to get out a little for the social aspect.
He’d found that helping others had also helped him when he was in a dark place. The foundation—the chalet—had probably saved his life…or at least his sanity.
He stood abruptly, tired of being cooped up in the office. He went out to the living room, but it was empty. The day had turned cloudy and he checked his watch. It was only three. He had plenty of time to get a workout in.
He changed his clothes and headed for the small gym at the back of the house. It was chest day and he felt the urge to push himself more than usual.