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SALE ENDS SATURDAY!
BOOK OF THE MONTH: HOMEFRONT
CHAPTER SIX
“She is going to go back to school, right?” Gale asked when they were downstairs and away from the pounding heavy metal upstairs.
“Yes. Ten minutes or thirty, it doesn’t really matter. But I want to give her time to calm down.” Mel glanced over at him from the fridge. “What kind of sandwich do you want?”
“I get food out of the deal?”
She fought the urge to smile at his question. It was strange having him here. Strange having him in her home. Strange having him stand by her side as she battled with their daughter.
She’d been fighting with her daughter for so long she’d forgotten what it felt like to not argue. To remember that there had been a time when they’d laughed and she’d painted Jamie’s toenails and hadn’t felt the anger pulsing off her little girl in violent purple waves.
“Where’d you go just then?” he asked gently.
Mel gave herself a mental shake and looked up to see Gale watching her. “Nowhere,” she said after a moment.
He didn’t look away, didn’t acknowledge her dodge in any way.
She opened the fridge, pulling out lunchmeat and cheese and setting it on the island. “I forget what you like on your sandwiches,” she said.
She stepped back to close the door and he was there. Right behind her. Everything fell away. In the hushed solitude of the house, his body pressed to hers. A perfect fit even after all these years. Her hips were flush against him, her back pressed against his strong chest. It was a simple accidental embrace, but suddenly Mel couldn’t remember how to breathe.
They simply stood for what felt like an eternity.
She felt his breath catch. A sharp intake of breath that took her mind to a dark and primitive place. His fingers flexed on her waist, a slight touch that sent her mind into a spiral of sex and need and wanting things.
He tightened his grip on her. A momentary insanity, nothing more. Savoring the feel of his big body surrounding her. Making her feel cherished like he had once upon a time.
She closed her eyes savoring the feel of his breath, deep and slow against her back. Almost, she could imagine him cupping her face, angling her mouth to his. Almost, she lost herself in the fantasy of the moment, of the feel of his body against hers.
Then he shifted, reaching across her, leaning close enough that she could smell the soap on his skin, a hint of whatever he’d used to shave with that morning.
“Mayo,” he said. He held up the jar as though her entire world hadn’t just melted in a rush of heat between her thighs.
She narrowed her eyes as he moved away, setting the mayo on the counter. Mayo her Aunt Fanny, she thought. He’d done that on purpose, and now he was acting like everything was fine while she was still struggling to remember how to breathe.
There was a thump upstairs and Gale looked up at the ceiling, listening intently. “What’s she doing up there?”
“Probably throwing something,” she said. “She has your temper.”
He looked down at her sharply. “I don’t have a temper.”
Mel lifted one eyebrow. “Since when?”
His lips curled at the edges. “Since I had to go to anger management training after my first tour in Iraq.”
She paused, studying him. He’d turned a simple comment into a joke but there was something more. Something deeper. “Why did you have to go to anger management training?” she asked.
“Several reasons,” he said after a moment.
There was nothing she could say to that. She wanted to ask. About the deployments. About the war. But she didn’t know if it was rude or not, so she left her questions unasked. If he wanted to talk about it, he’d bring it up.
“Did you do stuff like that a lot?”
Gale shrugged and plucked the mustard from the door next to her before turning back to the meat on the counter. “I spent a lot of time learning to control it. I’ve still got a career. Win-win, right?”
There was a flippancy to his words that made her doubt the lightness in his tone, but she didn’t press. She pulled the bread out of the cabinet and pulled out four slices. She looked toward the stairs. “I wonder if Jamie wants to eat.”
“Want me to go ask her?”
Mel sighed and thought about her answer. “You’ll probably find the door barricaded again, which would mean that Jamie wants to call my bluff about taking the door off the hinges.”
Gale stopped her where she was laying out the bread. His hand closed over hers, big and solid and rough. “Mel.”
She looked away, not wanting him to see the fatigue that was breaking her. “I don’t want to fight with her,” she admitted.
“How long has this door battle been going on?” he asked after a moment.
“It feels like forever.”
Another thump from upstairs. “What the hell is she doing?”
He didn’t move his hand but his grip tightened. She looked up at him, his jaw tense. He hadn’t moved. “Gale?”
But he was gone, moving toward the stairs. Fear had her following him. Fear that her daughter and her ex were about to clash and she had no idea if either of them would escape unscathed.
***
Gale took the stairs two at a time and headed down the hallway as quickly and as silently as he could.
He paused outside Jamie’s door, his blood pressure spiking as he heard muffled voices from behind the closed door beneath the pounding heavy metal.
He slapped his palm against the thin wood door. “Open the door, Jamie.”
The music pulsed louder.
Gale jimmied the door handle, wondering how pissed Melanie would be if he ripped it off its hinges. If he was right, he’d probably get a pass.
He was backing away to get some momentum when the door opened. Just a crack but it was enough. He pushed into the room past Jamie and inhaled deeply.
“Where is he?”
His daughter stiffened and he could actually see her working to come up with a lie. “You don’t have any right to come in here like this.”
“I have every right,” he snapped, then followed his intuition and ripped open the closet doors.
He would have missed the little shit if he’d had normal colored hair but the boy hiding in Jamie’s closet had multicolored spikes that clashed with the darkness.
Gale grabbed his upper arm and dragged the kid out of the closet.
“Mom! Do something!”
Gale was vaguely aware that Melanie had followed him up the stairs to their daughter’s room.
“A boy, Jamie? Have you lost your ever-loving mind?” Mel was supposed to be the voice of reason and well, she apparently wasn’t going to be either of those things right then. One of them had to be calm and rational. Gale lashed his temper back violently, reminding himself that the kid in his grip was just that—a kid.
Not one of his soldiers. A kid. Just like he’d been once upon a time.
Jamie threw her hands up and rolled her eyes. “He was helping me study for biology.”
“I bet,” Gale muttered. The kid squirmed on the end of Gale’s grip. He tightened it. He turned the kid to get a good look at him. “Your father is going to be quite interested in this little tale. Does he know where you are right now?”
“None of your business, gramps,” the kid sneered.
Gale briefly wondered how long the prison sentence would be for throwing a sixteen-year-old walking hard-on down the stairs of his ex-wife’s house.
“I’ll give you one more chance to answer me, then I’m calling the police.”
The kid lifted his chin defiantly. Gale’s heart pounded in his ears violently. “Melanie, phone.” Gale held out his hand.
“Yes! Shit. No, my dad doesn’t know where I am.”
Gale’s smile could have cracked glass. “Excellent. Let’s go tell your dad what you’ve been up to.” Gale twisted his fist in the kid’s collar and forcibly guided him from the bedroom. It took everything he had to keep his temper reined in.
The need to do violence pounded in his veins. Damn it, his little girl wasn’t going to end up repeating the same mistakes he and her mother had made.
“You got this one?” he said to Melanie as he paused near the door, jerking his chin back toward Jamie’s room, where a class one tantrum was erupting. Gale took one look and realized his soldiers at their worst had nothing on a highly pissed-off teenage girl.
“Oh yeah,” Mel said. There was deep resignation in her voice. “So much for lunch, huh?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take a rain check.” The little bastard squirmed in his grip. “Hold still,” he snapped at the punk ass kid. The kid froze. “Jamie, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I hate you!”
She slammed the door and Melanie sighed, following Gale down the stairs. “Wow, guess this changes the afternoon agenda,” Mel said after a moment.
The kid was struggling for defiance but Gale could have sworn he looked like he was going to piss himself. Two seconds later, Mel returned from the garage with a bright yellow electric drill in one hand. “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?”
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so pissed off. He didn’t envy her. She was going to spend the rest of the afternoon battling their daughter.
He had the strongest urge to touch her but the walking boner in his hand was squirming too much for him to let him go. “I’ll come back later to make sure you haven’t killed each other,” he murmured.
Her tongue flicked across her bottom lip a moment before her throat moved as she swallowed. “I’m sure we’ll both be alive,” she said bitterly. “But I’d like that very much.” A hesitant whisper.
If they’d been alone, he would have kissed her then. But they were not alone, so there was no acting on the suggestions of the good idea fairy on his shoulder, urging him to part her lips and taste her.
But he wanted to.
He had no idea what he’d do if she kissed him back.
***
“This is child abuse!”
Melanie dropped the screws to the hinges in her pocket, then hoisted and carried the door down the hallway, doing her best to ignore her daughter’s tantrum.
She offered up a silent apology to her parents for every bad thing she’d ever done as a kid. If she survived long enough to keep Jamie not pregnant, off to college, and not in much more therapy, she’d consider herself a success at parenting.
Right now, she was considering herself an abysmal failure.
She leaned the door against the hallway wall and went back to retrieve the electric drill. She straightened and held out her hand. “Phone.”
“No.” Jamie folded her arms over her chest, her expression a mixture of belligerent and stubborn defiance that set Mel’s teeth on edge.
“Fine. I’ll turn it off at the cell phone provider.”
“Ugh.” Jamie stomped to the bed and pulled the phone out from under her mattress. “Why are you being so mean?”
“Because I’m your mother and I’m not going to let you sneak boys into my house. I’ve raised you better than that.”
“You raised me to be a dried out, frigid old bag!”
Mel winced. Damn but her daughter knew how to fight dirty.
“Watch your mouth,” Mel said softly. “Now, let’s discuss the consequences for your lying and sneaking and cutting school. No phone for two weeks. No friends’ houses for two weeks. No TV, no video games. I will allow you to keep the iPod provided you don’t break any of the other consequences. We’ll talk about the door when your two weeks are up.”
“You are the worst parent ever!” Jamie’s words broke over a sob, tears streaming down her face.
“I’ll see you at dinner.” Melanie offered a flat smile she didn’t feel and headed down the stairs, acutely aware of her daughter burning holes into her back as she walked away.
“If looks could kill,” Mel muttered. She set the drill on the table behind the couch then went into the kitchen. Today called for wine on more than one count.
She was glad Gale had been here today. If he hadn’t figured out that Jamie had a boy in her room¾dear Lord, the next thing they might have been discussing was grandbaby names. And what the hell would she have done with the boy had Gale not been there?
What a disaster.
She must have been horrible to puppies and kittens in a past life.
But honestly? She did not remember being this rotten. She was sure that adding Gale to the equation wasn’t helping things with Jamie. No matter how much having him around made Melanie feel…supported.
There was a thump on the ceiling and Mel glanced up, wondering what her daughter had done to her room as payback. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d told Gale that Jamie scared her but the sound of her crying echoed through the house.
When she’d been a toddler, her tantrums had been epic, but Mel had thought she was just needy. When she’d been a preteen, she’d started getting huffy. Then came the day when Mel had discovered her daughter passed out on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood.
She’d completely lost her shit.
She’d put a call through to Gale, who’d been in Iraq at the time. She’d sent the Red Cross message in a blind panic. And she’d waited for the phone call, hoping this time he’d be able to come home and help her deal with their daughter.
I can’t come home, Mel.
Instead, she’d dealt with her daughter’s latest rebellion. Alone. Like always.
The cutting had terrified Melanie and sliced at her in its own way. Reminded her that she’d failed as a parent. Good parents didn’t have kids who cut themselves, right? Those were lies that tormented her when she was alone in the dark. Cutting was a mental health problem. It was not Mel’s fault. Except that no matter what she did, there was no shaking the guilt, no ignoring the what ifs. Melanie had always done her best but it hadn’t been enough to keep her daughter from scarring herself.
She glanced up at the sudden lack of noise from upstairs. Downing the rest of her wine she walked to the foot of the stairs and listened, then walked down the hall and checked the bathroom, just to be safe. She paused outside Jamie’s room. She’d probably cried herself to sleep.
It was exactly what Mel felt like doing.
***
“What were you doing in my daughter’s room?”
Gale wasn’t in the mood for chitchat with the creepy miscreant in his passenger’s seat but he figured Tellhouse wouldn’t appreciate him skull-dragging his son all the way home behind his truck.
The kid sighed dramatically and looked out the window with a sulk.
That sigh tried the last bit of Gale’s patience. The kid had no idea how close his temper was to snapping the leash that restrained it.
“Son, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I’ve been to Iraq. There’s no telling when my PTSD is going to act up.” Gale had known Tellhouse for years but for the life of him, Gale couldn’t remember his kid’s name.
“I’m not your son.”
“No, you’re not, because if you were my kid, you would have one color hair. Now what’s your name?”
Another dramatic sigh that was like nails on a chalkboard for Gale’s nerves. “Alex.”
“What were you doing in my daughter’s closet?”
Alex shot him a dirty look. “Filming a porno, gramps.”
Gale had a vision of slamming the kid’s face into the dashboard like something out of a cheap B movie. But that would be neither right nor legal. He was just a smart-mouthed punk kid, trying to get Gale’s temper up. And oh but it was working.
Gale had been young once. Damn, if he didn’t feel like that was a million years and a lifetime ago.
Gale worked really hard not to lose his temper. Times like this took a superhuman effort.
There was a time and a place to lose one’s temper and wreak havoc. Havoc was good in bar fights. Not so much in company training meetings.
Or when dealing with pissy little shits in the seat next to him.
“You better pray for your immortal soul that you’re joking.” Gale drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “What were you doing with my daughter?”
“Biology.”
The leather on the steering wheel twisted in his grip. “Son, you say biology and I start needing anti-psychotic medication.”
Gale pulled onto Fort Hood and drove the rest of the way to his company ops, choosing to say nothing further. He stopped behind Tellhouse’s office. “Let’s go.”
Alex’s eyes widened. “My old man is going to kill me.” There was genuine fear in his eyes.
Gale was still pissed off enough to have absolutely zero sympathy, but the fear looking back at him penetrated the anger. For a moment, Gale stood there, looking down at a frightened boy. No longer the defiant little shit he’d dragged cussing out of Jamie’s closet. No, this was something different. “You should have thought about that before you cut school and hid out in my daughter’s room.”
Just like that, the defiance was back. “Ugh.”
Gale ground his teeth at the universal sound of disgruntled teen angst. But when Gale followed him out of the truck, he looked back, his eyes wide. Gale kept his expression blank. “Oh, you didn’t think I was going to let you just leave, did you?” He patted the kid on his shoulder. “No, your dad and I are going to have a little chat.”
He squeezed Alex’s shoulder until he saw the boy wince. “Stay away from my daughter.”
He released the kid with a shove toward the back door of Tellhouse’s company ops.
Tellhouse looked up from behind his computer. His eyes narrowed instantly when he saw his son. “Sorren? What the…?”
“I think this belongs to you,” Gale said as Alex slouched between the two men and tried to disappear.
“Where were you?”
When Alex didn’t answer, Gale filled in the empty space. “Hiding in my daughter’s closet.”
Tellhouse frowned. “Lovely.”
Gale shrugged. “Long story. Short version is your son was up to no good in her bedroom. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep him and his overactive hormones tied up until she’s in college.”
Tellhouse glared at his son. “Wait outside.”
“Ugh.”
Gale ground his teeth once more. “I hate that sound.”
“That makes two of us.” Tellhouse folded his arms over his chest. “Did he hurt your kid?”
“Not that I know of. Found him hiding out. Both of them were being sneaky. I’d just as soon not become a grandfather any time soon or go to jail for inflicting grievous bodily harm on a teenager so…”
Tellhouse held up one hand. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Appreciate it.” He started to go.
Tellhouse told his kid to get in the office and shut the door. Gale wished he hadn’t heard the other first sergeant start yelling before the lock was clicked.
Gale hesitated at the sound of a hand slapping on wood. On the one hand, Gale was still royally pissed he’d found him in his daughter’s bedroom. On the other, Gale had been a horny sixteen-year-old once upon a time.
Tellhouse wouldn’t hurt the kid. Right? Gale waited another moment, then left, an unsettled feeling deep in his gut.
SALE ENDS SATURDAY!
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