Chapter 4
Raemy showed up at his door, rang the doorbell, and waited with what she could only call a deep and abiding glee for the sounds of him inside, because the grumpier he got, the more she felt compelled to do things like…insist on dinner.
She also liked cats. What could she say? She liked to win over the cantankerous creatures.
And she only got more entertained when she heard what sounded a lot like some spontaneous wrestling had broken out on the other side of the door. There was a crash. A loud thump and a few very male grunts. Then another loud thump, and this time, it shook the porch she was standing on.
Then there was silence.
A concerning silence.
Raemy bit her lip and was debating whether or not to knock again when the door was finally opened.
Noah stood there, a scowl on his face and no apparent signs of the fistfight she was sure she’d heard.
“Is everything all right in there?” she asked. “It sounded like things got a little intense.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Noah said blandly.
Behind him, Crusoe and Tank were struggling, and a few of the vets she had seen but couldn’t name seemed to be attempting to hold both of them back.
Very much as if she had come to the house of a bunch of teenage boys tonight.
She grinned. Noah only scowled more, didn’t look behind him, and slammed the door when he stepped out onto his porch.
“It’s like a pack of puppies, or something,” Raemy murmured, looking at the slammed door. And perfectly capable of hearing the sounds of yet more wrestling behind the door, complete with a masterful command of some of the filthiest language she’d ever heard.
Noah smiled slightly. “Or something.”
It was a cool, breezy evening. The morning fog had burned off, the day had been lovely, and now a deliciously atmospheric gray evening was settling in.
If this was a good example of weather on the Oregon coast, Raemy was in love. And it didn’t hurt that they started walking and she therefore got the opportunity to really take in the fact that this man beside her was beyond beautiful.
He wore a button-down and what looked like the same jeans, only crisper.
Like maybe they were the dress version. His hair looked like it wasn’t entirely dry, suggesting that he’d showered for this.
If she didn’t know that he was a former Marine and was capable of doing just about anything under pressure without breaking a sweat, she might have been under the impression that he was a little anxious.
Or maybe he was trying to break his own jaw in two, clamping it tighter and tighter with every step they took.
“You already look like this is the worst night of your life,” Raemy pointed out as they headed down into the heart of the quiet village. She was unable to keep herself from laughing. “I promise you, it won’t be that bad. Some people even think that I’m good company.”
Most of those people were in the third grade or related to her by blood, but she saw no reason to share that with him.
Noah let out a breath as if he was fighting for patience.
That only made Raemy grin more.
“I told you that I would talk to you about your brother, and I will.” He glared at the street ahead of them and the lights on all the weathered buildings, gleaming in the gray dusk. “I thought maybe we’d sit down first.”
Raemy had to bite her tongue at that point, because it was that or she’d start telling him more details she was sure he didn’t want from her earlier tarot card reading. She kept it bitten as Noah all but stalked to one of the restaurants she’d seen when she’d been walking around earlier.
The hostess knew Noah and said hello, though she didn’t look particularly surprised when he replied with what sounded a lot to Raemy like a grunt.
They were led to a small table that sat near the window and was lit by the candles on the tabletop, and the pretty lighting inside. Speaking of atmosphere. This place was delightful.
“Do you want to hear about my tarot card reading?” Raemy asked as they sat down, because she might have decided that it would be more fun to tell him and see what his face did than simply imagine it for her own amusement.
Noah looked at her. This close, she could see that his dark brown eyes appeared to have their own ring of gray around them, as if he needed to be more mesmerizing.
And right now, he was looking at her as if he was going to need all of his considerable strength to make it through this dinner.
“Would it matter if I said I didn’t?” he asked.
“Big changes, perhaps a mysterious stranger, but no worries, it’s all going to be okay,” she summarized for him, airily.
“In a nutshell. The non-nutshell version is more interesting, of course, but I think it might make you spontaneously combust. And who knows what you might do if I start talking to you about the meanings of the cards. I’m not sure you’d ever recover. ”
His gaze narrowed slightly. But all he did was press his lips together. Which, if he wanted people to look at those lips, was an excellent plan. Raemy certainly found herself staring.
But there were menus to look at, and their server was sweet and bubbly and also clearly knew exactly who Noah was, though he didn’t appear to notice she existed.
It wasn’t until they had ordered their food, got their drinks, and had a basket of bread between them that Raemy could pay attention to just Noah again.
“I’ll explain to you the conditions that day,” Noah began, sounding stilted and strange.
Raemy—maybe thinking about earlier, or maybe simply acting on instinct, she didn’t know—reached over the tabletop and put her hand on his where it lay there next to his plate.
Because he was sitting up so straight, palms down on the table, like he was expecting an interrogation.
“Hey,” she said quietly. “I don’t actually need you to tell me about that day. I already know how he died. I’m pretty sure that finding out more details about it is not going to make losing him any better.”
Noah was looking down at her hand on his as if her hand was the actual torture device, and was maybe a fire poker. Raemy had just enough boldness to keep it where it was. Maybe because she could see that muscle in his jaw flex once again.
He cleared his throat. “Then I don’t understand what we’re doing.”
“How about this.” She eyed him. “Why don’t you tell me about you?”
“Me? Why?”
She laughed as she sat back, relinquishing his hand in the process. And she was sure she wasn’t imagining the way he curled it into a fist, then flexed it as he pulled it back and set it in his lap. As if he could still feel the place where they touched, same as she could.
“I want to know about you,” she said. “I told you before. William idolized you.”
“He was a good kid and a good Marine,” Noah said sternly. “He was—”
“Why did you join the Marines?” Raemy asked, cutting him off before he could issue more proclamations about William. Proclamations that she doubted would differ much from the speech he’d given at the funeral.
Noah sat back in his seat and folded his arms, and looked very much as if she was threatening him again. And he was sitting there, stoically allowing this torture.
It should have been annoying, but all it did was somehow make him hotter. At least that was annoying, she thought.
“What kind of question is that?” he asked, in that quietly outraged tone that he did so well.
“It’s the kind of question that people ask one another when they want to know more about each other’s lives,” Raemy replied, in that particularly bright voice she used for misbehaving eight-year-olds.
“It’s fun! If you wanted to try, you could ask me things.
Like, what do you do for a living, Raemy?
And I could say, well, Noah, I’ve been teaching elementary school for a long while.
Almost ten years. Mostly third grade. And, yes, I love it, but I am also happy to be on a bit of a break from it.
” She smiled at him, wide and guileless.
“See? So easy. Now you know more about me than you did before.”
While she was talking to him, she got the great joy of watching him react to the way she was talking to him. The clearly patronizing—she liked to call it helpful—tone she was using that she doubted anyone used on him even when he was eight himself.
Noah looked...thunderstruck. Then something like astonished. She saw a flash of heat, though whether it was temper or something else, she couldn’t have said. Her body had its own ideas on that.
And now that she was finished, he was still sitting there with his arms crossed, regarding her as if she was some kind of potentially dangerous magical creature sitting there across from him. Something that disobeyed all laws of nature and man.
“Did you just speak to me like I was in your third-grade class?” he asked, incredulously. “Because that’s what it sounded like.”
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, Staff Sergeant,” she replied, and he couldn’t possibly see that her pulse was beating a little too fast, so she hoped he thought that she was as relaxed and unbothered as she was trying to look.
She reached forward and picked up one of the warm, yeasty-smelling rolls and cracked it open, then lavished it with butter.
She didn’t look up again until she’d taken a big bite, and was pleased to see that he was still staring.
Though now that particular gleam he had in his gaze made her whole body seem to break out into some kind of exultant shiver.
Or maybe that was the butter. She did love her butter. A genetic necessity for a Midwesterner.