cominghomeseries #homefront #grumpysunshine #secondchanceromance #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #angstyromance #booksofinstagram #booknerd #romancereads #romancebooks #contemporaryromance #booktok #militaryromance #bookofthemonth #goodreads #tbr #netflixbooks #netflixromance #passionflix #virginriver #sullivanscrossing
BOOK OF THE MONTH: HOMEFRONT
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“So when is Dad coming over again?”
Jamie was at the kitchen sink, adding water to the blender for her morning protein smoothie before school.
Mel searched the pantry for the sugar she knew she’d bought last week but somehow now could not find. “I’m not sure. Why don’t you call and ask him?”
“Um, no cell phone, remember?”
“We have a land line,” Mel said, refusing to rise to the bait of her daughter’s comment.
“I don’t know his number. It was stored in my phone.”
Mel counted to one hundred and tried to ignore the swipes. Maybe she was just being overly sensitive. Damn, but it was hard to break bad habits, like taking everything personally.
“Here.” She pulled out her phone and jotted Gale’s number on a piece of paper and stuck it to the fridge. “Call him.”
“Are you fighting with Dad?” Jamie asked abruptly.
“No, why?”
“Because you’ve been in a weird mood since he left the other night.” Jamie dumped strawberries into the blender and a scoop of protein powder. Mel was not a fan of milk shakes for breakfast but it was one less thing to fight with Jamie about. Her daughter was eating and that had to be good enough.
“I didn’t sleep well.” A convenient lie to mask the complicated truth.
She hadn’t even begun to process everything that was happening in her life. She hadn’t told Jamie about lunch with Gale. Hadn’t slept well that night either. Because after a lifetime of fights and blame, she wanted something more. More for him and for herself. In that brief moment at lunch, she’d seen a glimpse of what they might have become if she’d been strong enough to last through the tough times instead of breaking camp and running away the minute things got rough.
The blender roared to life, covering any further conversation. A minute later Jamie poured her drink into a tall tumbler and leaned against the counter. “Can I ask Dad over for dinner?”
“Sure.” She ignored the twisting nerves in her belly at the question.
“You’re acting weird.”
“I’m fine. I’m just tired.” She paused. “I’ll drive you to school if you want.”
She held her breath, waiting for Jamie to brush her off. Waiting for the bit of hurt telling her she wasn’t good enough to be seen with her daughter. A daughter she’d managed to make hate her.
“Sure, Mom.”
She looked up sharply but Jamie had already turned away, hunting for something in one of the drawers.
It was something so small, so trivial.
It was suddenly the most important thing in the world.
***
Gale sat at his desk, correcting evaluation reports and wondering what qualified for basic English in high school these days. If there was a properly used comma, he’d eat his Stetson. Heaven forbid any one of them would know the difference between an adjective and an adverb.
Gale wasn’t a grammar fanatic by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew how to write a strong report card for one of his direct reports. “He explicticated to his soldiers that they wasn’t supposed to drive fast and no one got caught” was not even remotely close to an appropriate comment on an evaluation report.
Bad writing was a good distraction from the ache in his chest.
He kept the door closed, trying to get some work done and not actually accomplishing shit. His office was a revolving door of personal trauma, gripes, bitches, and complaints-some legit, some just twisted panties. As much as he grumbled about it, he loved his job. Loved making a difference. It was a powerful force in his life. The one thing he was really good at. Right then, though, he needed time to sort through the riot in his head. He was not prepared to leave again so soon. What was Jamie going to say? What about Melanie?
Jesus, he was a mess. He turned his attention back to his evaluation reports, determined to at least get the admin processes under control, but sure enough, the minute he tried to concentrate, his phone vibrated on his desk.
“First Sarn’t.”
“Gale? It’s Melanie.”
***
She had debated about calling him. She’d gotten used to dealing with Jamie’s issues on her own but something about this latest episode exceeded her capabilities on a couple of levels.
Besides, he wanted a chance to be a dad, so well, here was his chance.
“Hey, Mel.” The sound of his voice warmed her. It shouldn’t. She was a grown woman who’d moved beyond hormones. But hormones were exactly the reason she was calling. Just not her hormones. Which was a shame, actually.
“We have a small problem.”
He sighed. “What did Jamie do now?”
“I…It’s complicated and I’m not sure I should tell you over the phone.”
She could feel the physical shift in the silence long before he answered. “Is she…”
“No, not that.”
She wished she could call her mother and ask her what to do but her mom had died a few years ago, long before Jamie had started pushing Melanie to her most recent nervous breakdown. Her dad was somewhere in Tibet doing heaven only knew what.
“Then what?” There was frustration in his voice and she couldn’t blame him.
“Can you come by?” She tapped her pen against the table, nervous about his answer.
He made a rough sound. “I was going to work through lunch but yes, I can come by. Now?”
“Now works. It’ll keep me from freaking out for the next two hours.”
“Mel, what is it?”
“Just, just come to the house.”
She hung up the phone, pacing in the kitchen. She’d been gathering the laundry from her daughter’s prison cell, as Jamie had called it, before Jamie had stomped out of the house to walk to school.
Gale knocked on the door twenty minutes later.
Mel rubbed her hands on her thighs as she opened the door. “So, um, I’m trying to be rational about this but I’m not really feeling rational,” she said, opening the door to him.
He walked into her living room and she led him into the kitchen where the…ahem…evidence sat like a train wreck on her island countertop.
“You’re not working today?”
She shook her head, trying to ignore the warmth that built slowly in the vicinity of her belly. “I have a client in a couple of hours.”
“Jesus, Mel. Did you find weed in her pocket or something?”
“No, I think I would have been happy with weed.”
“Holy shit. Meth?”
Mel shot him an odd look. “Why do you know so much about drugs?”
“Soldiers will never cease to amaze you with the shit they will smoke.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and shrugged. “As long as you didn’t find any hard drugs, I think I can live with whatever has you so wound up.”
Mel pointed at the small plastic wrappers on the island. “Okay, smart guy, so you’re cool with condoms?”
Gale’s face flushed and she could have sworn he turned a deep shade of magenta. It was hard to tell under the weathered tan of his skin. He rubbed his chest over his heart. “I think I just had a small heart attack.”
“See?” She folded her arms over her chest. “So now what?”
Gale sank into one of the kitchen chairs, scrubbing his hand over his mouth. “I am not ready for this,” he mumbled. “Wasn’t she twelve just a minute ago? I mean we just went to Sea World last year.”
“That was a lot longer ago than last year.” Mel almost enjoyed watching the big man squirm. It was kind of endearing in its own way, if they hadn’t been talking about their daughter having sex. “I guess we should have expected it after finding Alex in her room.”
“Shit.” He rubbed the back of his neck, not taking his eyes off the condoms. “Are we supposed to be glad that she has condoms and she’s being safe?”
Mel flushed and turned away, opening the fridge and pulling out two hard ciders. “I’d offer you a beer but I don’t have any.”
“I have to go back to work but this warrants alcohol.” Gale accepted. “I am not ready for our little girl to be thinking about penises.”
Mel choked on the sip of cider she’d been taking. “That’s so wrong. I don’t even want to say the word ‘penis’ in the same sentence as our daughter.”
“Was it too much to hope that they really had been studying biology?” Gale rubbed his thumb through the moisture beading on the side of the cider. “Have you, ah, had the talk with her?”
“We had the talk the minute she started getting pubic hair,” Mel said. “But I am confident she and her friends have Googled tons of misinformation.”
He frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Web history. She doesn’t know how to clear it and after the hospital, I’m paranoid,” Mel admitted. She wished she could trust her daughter, but the hospital stay and its aftermath had left her badly shaken and they didn’t have a strong enough foundation to rebuild from. Jamie was angry, and Mel? Mel was terrified she was going to lose her.
Which was why she’d called Gale when she’d found the condoms. She’d been so focused on watching for signs of cutting, it had never even dawned on her that she’d be thinking about boys and—God forbid—sex.
Mel’s brain had gone into full-blown Muppet flail upon discovering the condoms. Now that Gale was here, it was more of a slow motion flail. More like a happy Snoopy dance.
She giggled into her drink. Gale looked up sharply. “What’s so funny?”
Mel paused for a moment, not sure how to describe the image of Snoopy in her head. Instead, she just smiled down at him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
***
Gale studied his ex-wife, noting that she looked a little more rumpled and a lot more desirable than he was used to seeing her. She was less stressed at the moment than she had been when he’d gotten there.
She’d always tugged at him. He could admit that now, after a couple of rounds of anger management therapy, and after identifying the source of the constant rage burning inside him.
He hadn’t been a good enough man to hold onto her. And when he was honest with himself, everything he’d done over the last decade and a half had been to make himself a better man.
Not that he’d ever harbored illusions about her taking him back, but a man could dream.
Now, sitting in her kitchen, looking at her slightly fuzzy from the alcohol, his mind took a sharp detour away from their daughter’s problem and landed squarely on another problem that he was not prepared to deal with.
His feelings for his ex-wife.
He offered a wry smile. “Sure, this is exactly what I wanted to be dealing with on my lunch break. My daughter and sex.” He rubbed his heart again at the spasm. “I think this might kill me yet.”
Mel laughed into her cider. Gale studied her for a moment without saying anything. She’d never been good at holding her alcohol. He smiled at the memory of the first time they’d gotten drunk together.
“What are you smiling at?” she asked.
“Remember the first time we got drunk and tried to have sex?”
“Oh God.” Mel’s cheeks flushed. Her eyes sparkled with the memory. “That was terrible.”
“Your dad wasn’t too happy with me,” Gale said. “I’m lucky I didn’t get shot.”
“This is true. We did manage sex that night, right?”
“It was terrible sex,” Gale said, taking a long pull off his cider. Jesus, he was going to have to swing by his house and take care of himself before he went back to work. He wasn’t a eunuch, after all, and Mel? Mel was a sexy, beautiful woman. His brain automatically connected the memory of the girl she’d been to the woman sitting across from him now.
“Terrible and messy, right?” She covered her mouth with her hand. “I’d forgotten about the condom breaking.”
Gale looked down at the condoms, memories colliding with the stark reality of time that had passed all too quickly. “Remember how scared we were until you got your period?”
It had been a long time since they’d talked about anything other than Jamie. Time was always short, and he always had such a limited amount of it on visits. He’d focused his attention on his daughter because he’d continued to be convinced that his wife¾ex-wife¾didn’t want anything to do with him. She’d always been cool. Distant.
This was new. In the fifteen years since she’d left him, they’d never sat around and reminisced about a time when they’d been younger and more carefree.
When they’d still been naive enough to believe that love was enough to conquer any problem the world might throw at them. Before the real world had interrupted their make-believe and forced both of them to grow up too fast.
“That was terrible. I convinced my aunt to help me go on birth control my senior year. Holy cow, was my mom mad when she found out I wasn’t a virgin.” Her gaze drifted back to the condoms, throbbing like a heartbeat on the kitchen counter. “So how do we handle this better than our parents did?”
“What are you talking about? My dad handed me a bunch of condoms and said good luck.”
Mel lifted an eyebrow. “I’m thinking your response is going to be slightly different?”
“I’m going to break the little bastard’s pecker off,” Gale growled. “She’s too young for sex.”
“We had sex when I was seventeen.”
Gale looked over at the odd tone in her voice. Her eyes were blurry, ringed with makeup she hadn’t taken off last night. Her hair was in a ponytail and her sweater was slipping off one shoulder, revealing a hint of skin beneath a thin tank top strap.
His mouth went dry. He wasn’t a warrior monk¾not by a long shot¾but looking at Melanie right then, the woman she was collided with his senses, sliding past the fantasy and reminding him of the flesh and blood woman who stood before him.
She was fucking beautiful. There were laugh lines around her mouth now but they made her smile more pronounced. The tiny creases around her eyes drew his gaze to the quick intelligence in them that had always drawn him closer when other boys had been running the other way.
He cleared his throat as his mind took a detour, wondering what else had changed in the years since she’d left him.
“Are you telling me you’re okay with her having sex?” His voice grated on his ears.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” she said carefully. “I’m just saying that she’s not much younger than we were when we first started misbehaving.”
He glanced toward the condoms. “So what do we do?”
She took a deep drink from her cider then pointed the tip at him, a wide and mischievous smile on her lips. “I think you should talk to her. You’ve been a teenage boy before.”
Gale laughed. “Yeah, I think I remember those days.”
“Well, just tell her what all boys are thinking about. How she’s probably not with the guy she’s going to spend forever with and that she should respect herself enough to wait for the right person.”
Gale flinched at her words. They hurt because they were a direct hit.
He’d been Mel’s first but he hadn’t been her forever. He hadn’t gotten a chance to be her forever.
He set the half-empty drink on the counter and straightened. “Sure, I’ll talk to her. Want me to pick her up from school?”
The pounding in his ears no longer had anything to do with his daughter’s condoms and everything to do with his own failings.
“I’ll bring her home when we’re done.” He dug his keys out of his pocket and turned to go, needing to get away before some of the old anger and hurt escaped the place he’d stored it and tried to forget about.
“Gale, wait.”
He didn’t look back. “What?”
He didn’t miss her heavy sigh. “Nothing.”
Continue Reading…
Apple Books | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Google Play
