Cherish and Protect Read online

  “She’s complicated, James.”

  James didn’t answer. He didn’t have anything to say. He could object and tell her he’d been avoiding Presley like the plague, even going up to his loft when she came to look for him. Which, she had the other day, leaving him a box of cinnamon buns and a thank you note for his help when she’d hurt her ankle.

  “You’re complicated,” Laura said, adding to the pile of reasons to stay away from Presley. As though he needed a pile bigger than the one he’d already stacked up in his head. Presley didn’t need him in her life. No woman did.

  Laura looked to the tree trunks he was splitting. “New project?”

  “Yeah.” He lifted the iron wedge and sledge hammer and readied the wedge for the next split.

  “What are you making?”

  “Work table. For your greenhouse.”

  She rewarded him with a smile that lit her face. “For me?”

  He nodded. “I haven’t decided yet what it will look like.” He ran a hand over the bark. “This bark is nice, so I might make that the table top, set it in some resin to give you a flat surface. You’d still be able to see the bark through the resin. Or I could flip them and let the bark be visible on the underside and sides of the table.”

  “Whatever you do will be gorgeous,” she said. She’d always had more faith in him than she should.

  “You’re not thinking of getting on, are you?”

  Presley turned to grin at Cade. “No, I’m not that crazy.”

  “Laura said four weeks?” Cade asked.

  “Yes. At least.” Presley didn’t mention that her physical therapist thought he could get her there sooner. “I really appreciate you adding extra rides to your schedule for her. Just add them to my boarding bill.”

  “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.” Cade stepped up onto the railing next to her. “How would you feel about letting James ride her?”

  Presley looked to the brother barn. “James? Can he ride?”

  Cade nodded. “He can. Worked at a stable when he was in high school and rode there quite a bit. He wouldn’t jump her or anything.”

  Presley chewed on her lip and looked at Tess, who’d moved away a short distance to tug at young tufts of grass just outside the fence line. She didn’t want to take a chance on someone who wasn’t skilled enough riding Tess, but she also didn’t want to say no. If Cade was asking, that must mean he didn’t have the time to ride her himself. Maybe she could get a friend to come over. Someone she knew was up to riding Tess.

  Now Cade was looking over at the barn where James likely was. “If you aren’t comfortable with it, I understand, but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think he had the skill. I promise you. I’ve asked Laura and he used to handle some tough horses where he rode. It’s just that, I was hoping to tell him I needed the help.”

  “You don’t?” Presley asked. She’d assumed he needed the help if he was asking.

  “No. I can ride her if you need me to. It’s just that I thought getting out of the barn might be good for James. He’s got Lulu in there with him, but he needs something to draw him out. A horse would be good therapy for him.”

  It made perfect sense. Horses were good therapy both mentally and physically.

  Presley looked out to the barn again and nodded. If it could help James, and Cade was sure he had the skill, she couldn’t say no. Besides, she trusted Cade. He’d never let someone ride her horse who didn’t know what they were doing.

  “Will you be here the first time he gets on?” She would have insisted she be there the first time, but something told her that wouldn’t be a good idea for James.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then I hope Tess can help him.” She meant it. After all James had been through, he deserved every chance he had at living a life free of whatever demons haunted him. She had a feeling they were many.

  4

  James stood at the window of the loft, looking out at the black landscape. The window had been the hay door to the barn at one point, but they’d framed it out and put in a large window when they redid the barn for him to live in.

  He liked the quiet of the ranch after everyone had gone to bed for the night. He’d eventually lay down and try to sleep, but not before he wore himself out as much as he could. He moved back a few steps, then reached above him for the bar that went from one ceiling beam to another.

  One, two, three, four…

  He liked getting lost in the mindlessness of the counting as he pulled his body up over the bar again and again.

  Ten, eleven, twelve …

  With any luck, he’d be able to fall asleep before midnight.

  He dropped to the ground when a set of headlights pulled up the long drive that led into the ranch. Drawn back to the window, he watched as the truck slowed near the stables where Cade and Presley kept their horses and any other animals Cade was rehabbing at the time. His brother-in-law was a whiz where animals were concerned, taking in ponies and horses to rehab and sell. He also took in any number of other breeds. Everything from rats from the local rat rescue, to goats that had been mistreated and needed a calm hand.

  The truck stopped and James watched as the door opened and a figure stepped out.

  That was all it took for him to recognize the man. It was a silhouette he’d seen time and time again in the dark. The tall lanky build was hard to miss, even though James hadn’t expected to see his former squad mate in Texas.

  “Hunt,” he said under his breath, then grabbed a shirt to tug on and hoofed it down the steps to the loft, Lulu on his heels.

  He came around his barn in time to see Hunt walking around to the doors of the stable, looking for a way in.

  James gave a sharp whistle and raised his arm above his head when Jeff’s head came up.

  As Jeff Hunt hiked it to where James waited for him, James let the memories hit him like bricks. He knew they’d hurt coming at him, but the faster he let them hit, the faster he’d get the pain over with.

  “What the hell? Just passing through Texas?” He asked as Jeff clasped his hand and arm in a tight grip.

  White teeth flashed. “Went so many years without being able to check on your scrawny ass, thought I’d check in.”

  James gave him the kind of look that said he could have used the phone.

  “Cool place,” Hunt said as James led them back through the darkened space of the barn and up to the loft.

  “It works.” James was more than grateful for the quiet place to come to after he’d finished his treatment and debriefing. He just wasn’t one to gush over the décor. Hunt, on the other hand, liked to gush. He’d been the guy who always had something positive to look at, even when they’d been in the pits of hell. It was a mystery how he did it.

  He’d last seen Hunt in the hospital when he and Eric Larson—known in their squad as Lars because of his name and his Nordic good looks—had shown up within days of his arrival.

  Learning that only two members of his squad had made it out of the firefight had been a blow. He had no memory of the firefight that left him in captivity for years.

  It might have been a blessing now that he knew the whole squad, save the three of them, had been wiped out. Thirteen men lost in a massacre.

  “Drink?” James tilted a water bottle at Hunt. “Or I have beer. Or milk. I’ve got milk.” Milk was one of the things he’d craved since getting out. He hadn’t craved anything when he was in captivity. Hadn’t allowed it. It would have killed him to want anything in that hellhole.

  Now, he could indulge a craving for days. Last week, he’d eaten nothing but giant bowls of Rice Krispies cereal with sugar sprinkled on it. Bowl after bowl. The week before that, it had been Hot dogs and potato chips. The sour cream and onion kind.

  “Beer.” Hunt grunted the response, like James should have known he’d choose a beer over milk or water any day.

  James returned the water to the fridge and pulled out two longneck beers, pausing to open them before turning back to Hu
nt.

  The tilt that hit him when he saw Hunt’s boots as he turned caught him off guard and he froze for a minute, grasping at the strands of memory that tickled his mind. A flash of boots on the ground. Stacks of crates. Weapons.

  It was a millisecond’s hesitation at best, but Hunt caught it.

  “What?”

  “You ever feel like there was something off in that last mission?” He didn’t know how to put words to what he was feeling.

  Shadows crossed his friend’s face. “There was a lot that was off that night, but why don’t you tell me what you mean?”

  James shook his head, reaching to hand Hunt the beer then falling into one of the two large chairs that took up residence in one corner of the open studio space. “It’s not something I can point to specifically. There’s something I keep trying to remember, but I don’t know what it is. It feels important, though. And it feels wrong, like there’s something I’m not going to want to know once I do remember it.”

  Hunt sat in the other chair and Lulu flopped down at James’s feet, letting one paw rest on James’s bare foot.

  Hunt looked at James, and for once, the strong facade Hunt kept up fell. “I think maybe it’s a good thing you can’t remember that night. It might not be a bad thing to just let it go.”

  James didn’t answer. He’d been telling himself that for a while now, but something still kept trying to break through. He didn’t seem capable of shutting it out.

  “Nice dog.”

  James let his hand fall to pet Lulu’s head. “Thanks. My brother-in-law trained her for me. I guess he does a lot of that sort of thing.”

  “Trained her for what?”

  James took a long pull on the beer before answering. “She does things for me. Wakes me up if I have a nightmare. If I have a panic attack, she seems to know before I even know it’s happening. She recognizes signs of agitation, like if I’m clenching my fists. She’ll interrupt that.”

  In reality, there was more the dog did for him. Some of it, Cade had told him, couldn’t be trained. A dog either had an aptitude for it or not. Lulu seemed to sense when he was having trouble. She’d climb right into his lap sometimes and just sit there for hours like she knew he needed an anchor or something.

  Cade called it an embrace behavior, but all James knew was she’d let him cling to her like she was his life float. In some ways, she was.

  “Does he do that for a living? Your brother-in-law, I mean.”

  “Not really. His family has money so he doesn’t need to work, but he rescues animals, rehabs them and stuff. Knows a lot about training. I guess when he heard I was coming, he started looking for a dog he could train for me.”

  Hunt nodded and looked down at the bottle in his hands. “I’ve heard there’s a long wait for most service dogs like that.”

  “I think there is.” It felt like Hunt wasn’t saying something. “You think you need one?”

  Hunt shook his head. “Not me. Lars.”

  “He’s struggling?” None of them liked to talk about any of this shit, but he owed Lars and Hunt. Even though, in the end, it had been a lot of people coming together to get him out of South America, he knew Lars and Hunt had never stopped pushing the Army for him. They’d thought they were pushing for the military to go in and find his remains and bring them out. They hadn’t held out hope he could be alive, but still, they’d been there for him when no one even knew he’d survived the firefight.

  He thought of the scarring and burns running up his legs. He’d been lucky. His were second degree burns so they scarred and had taken months to heal, but they hadn’t done significant damage to the nerves in his legs or to any of the joints or bones.

  Whenever he thought of the months of healing his body had required, thoughts of Catalina tried to push to the forefront of his mind, but he didn’t let them. Thinking of her was more than he was ready for.

  Hunt answered slowly, as though he didn’t want to put words to what was happening. “He’s drinking a lot. Last time I went to see him, he started hurling shit at me, told me to get out. I know Izzy’s been trying to get him to go see someone, but he’s fighting her on it.”

  Izzy married Lars before he went overseas. They had two beautiful little girls together. James couldn’t remember how old the girls would be now, but the oldest couldn’t be more than seven or eight.

  “You’ve talked to Izzy?”

  “Yeah. She says it’s bad. She’s worried about the girls. He’s angry all the time. He used to have wild mood swings, but she said now he stays on the angry side of things most of the time. She’s going to take the girls to her mom’s house in Vermont for a while.”

  Hunt and Lars were both living in Pennsylvania.

  “I can ask Cade if he can train a dog for Lars, but it’ll take a few months, at least, I think. We can ask him in the morning.”

  Hunt nodded. “Maybe I can get him to talk to someone in the meantime.”

  James knew Hunt would try. Hunt had taken on responsibility for both James and Lars.

  “How long you plan to stay?” James asked. He liked the idea of getting to spend a few days with Hunt. It was different being around people who knew what you’d been through. Who understood you without having to talk about it. On the other hand, the longer Hunt stayed, the more he might see that James wasn’t doing all that great. He still hadn’t set foot off the ranch since he got here, and the thought of doing that terrified him. He didn’t want to lay any more guilt at Hunt’s feet so he sure as hell wouldn’t let on to any of that.

  “Couple days. I have to get back to work and I want to stay close to Lars.”

  James nodded. “What are you doing for work these days?”

  “Private security. You remember Dylan O’Leary?”

  “Vaguely.” James remembered the name well enough to know they’d been through basic together, but they’d lost touch after that.

  “He’s got a company. It’s small. Just a few of us. We do security at private events, the occasional bodyguard shit. Nothing major. It’s all pretty low key, but I like that.”

  James could see that for Hunt. A lot of guys who left the service wanted to find a way to stay in the game. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was because they didn’t know anything else. Hunt had never seemed the type.

  They spent another hour talking about a whole lot of nothing before Hunt crashed on the couch and James did his best to catch a few hours of sleep before the nightmares kicked in. With Lulu curled up next to him on the bed, he almost felt like he could ward them off. Almost.

  5

  They found Cade first thing, sitting at his mother’s breakfast table. James didn’t spend a lot of time at May Bishop’s house, but she’d told him he was welcome anytime.

  James made the introductions, including Josh, May Bishop’s live-in boyfriend. Laura had told him Josh was an old friend of the family, and he’d been responsible for getting her to the ranch when she was hiding from her deceased husband’s family.

  Laura’s daughter, Jamie, who was now three-years-old but seemed more like a teenager some days, launched herself at James. He held her, breathing in the scent of her. He didn’t spend a lot of time with her. Truth was, he was a little afraid one of his flashbacks would hit when he was with her and he’d scare the hell out of her. But when he did see her, it was like getting to hold a little piece of heaven in his arms. The girl was pure love, pure joy.

  James set Jamie down and she ran back to Josh’s side, digging into her pancakes.

  “Eat, boys,” May said, ignoring the fact she was talking to four quite grown-up men. She put plates on the table and bowls and platters with pancakes and scrambled eggs appeared in short order.

  Hunt and James competed to see who could put away the most food in the shortest time. Even James had to admit he should be taking May up on her offer to feed him more often.

  “Cade, how long does it take to train a dog like Lulu?” James asked.

  Cade finished chewing a bite of
biscuit and gravy before answering. “Anywhere from eight to eighteen months. I was lucky with Lulu. One of my friends had her halfway trained on some other stuff before we found out you’d be coming. I was able to finish off her training in a pretty short time because of that, but usually it takes time to find and evaluate the dogs, then at least eight months or more for the training.”

  James wondered if he’d thanked his brother-in-law properly for what he’d done for him. Cade’s whole family had been there for him from the day he came home, no expectations of anything in return. They’d treated him like he was their blood, even though the family connection was only through marriage.

  “You need a dog?” Cade asked Hunt, not seeming bothered by the fact that they might ask him to train another dog for free.

  “Not me. Our buddy, Lars.”

  Cade wiped his mouth and thanked his mother for the food, then rose and cleared the plates from the table. James and Hunt rose and helped with the job.

  “Let’s go out to the stables,” Cade said, leading the way out the back door of the kitchen.

  Hunt stopped and looked to the wheelchair on the porch and the paved sidewalks that went from the house to both of the barns and even out into some of the fields on the property.

  “My mom,” Cade said, answering the unspoken question. “She gets around inside the house most of the time without her chair, but she can’t walk for very long without it. We’ve set up the ranch so she can get around in her chair.”

  They continued down the path as Cade asked questions about Lars. “Does he have any physical disabilities?”

  “No,” Hunt said, and James knew it was a bit of a miracle the guy didn’t. Hunt walked with a heavy limp and James was sure he and Lars both had their share of pain, but they had their limbs and senses intact.

  “PTSD or TBI diagnosis?” Cade asked. PTSD stood for post-traumatic stress disorder, although James knew the facility he’d been in while he healed now referred to it as PTSS, for post-traumatic stress syndrome. TBI stood for traumatic brain injury. And yeah, there was a lot of that going around, too,