Amber Leigh Williams - Navy Seal Promise

Energy zipped from the bottom of Bea’s frame to the top. She gave a short squeal, tearing off from her hiding place. She launched herself at Kyle as he went into a crouch, arms spread wide.

“‘You’ll fly like a bee!’” he shouted. Then he tossed her, giggling and kicking, into the air. “‘Up to the honey tree, see?’”

“I see!” she shrieked. “Again! Higher!”

Kyle grunted, tossing her up toward the stars.

After the third toss, again Bea cried, “Again, again!” and Kyle eyed Harmony.

She shrugged. “You brought this on yourself,” she told him.

“Yeah, but you made it,” he countered. He threw Bea up one last time.

As she came back down, Bea latched on to him around the neck, much as Harmony had earlier in the day, and didn’t let go. Nuzzling her cheek against his, the smile in her voice was clear. “I missed you!”

Any trace of the sullenness Harmony had glimpsed when Kyle had trudged out of the thicket vanished quickly. He folded his arms over Bea’s back, letting one hand stray into her vivid curls. “Missed you, too, Gracie Bea.” Turning his lips into her cheek, he closed his eyes and rocked her from side to side.

Harmony tried not to melt too much over the pair. She failed. Bea’s pink high-top sneakers dangled free, four feet from the ground. Kyle’s hard muscly arms tightened around her, his hands splayed over her slender back, soothing. Those hands were made for fighting, for pumping rounds through an M-60 machine gun. They were calloused and rough. They could put a man down in seconds. Yet they cradled the child of his buddy and his best friend’s sister, and his expression was putty. Soft, soft putty.

What chance did a mama have?

Harmony sighed a little, sliding one hand slowly into the back pockets of her capris. She gave the pair another moment, two, before stepping forward. “Bea.” Touching her other hand to her daughter’s back, she let out a laugh. “Bea. Let him breathe, baby.”

“She’s fine,” Kyle assured Harmony, meeting her gaze through a tuft of downy hair that had blown across his face.

“She’s choking you.”

“Not since I joined the navy have I been so happy to be choked out,” he admitted.

Harmony patted the ringlets just beneath the hand Kyle used to crib Bea’s head to his shoulder. “What are you doing out here?”

He shuttered, giving a slight shake of his head. “Walking.”

“Walking?” She eyed the tree line he’d been blazing a trail through. Give the man a machete and he could pave the way to town. “You were fighting kudzu. We thought you were a predator.”

“Oh, yeah? And what are the two of you doing out?”

Bea’s head lifted finally. “Me and Mama found the strawberry.”

“Strawberry?”

“Strawberry moon,” Harmony said, gesturing toward the sky. “It’s tonight.”

“It is, huh?” Kyle asked, hitching Bea on to his hip. She pointed and he nodded sagely. “How about that, little wing? They hung a strawberry in the sky just for you.”

“I can’t eat it,” she said, crestfallen. “I love strawberries.”

“Don’t we know it?” Kyle set Bea on her feet. He crouched to her level. “When you lay your head on your pillow and dream, I bet you’ll be able to reach out and grab it.”

“How will I get all the way up there?” she asked, her dark wondrous stare seizing on his.

Harmony rubbed her lips together as Kyle eyed her briefly over Bea’s head. “You could climb up on my shoulders,” he offered.

“You’ll be there?”

“If you want me to be.” He dug his fingertips into her ribs. She shrieked. “Do you? Huh?”

Bea wriggled. “Yes, yes!” She snorted and squealed as he kept tickling. When he subsided, she settled down with a smile, rubbed the hair plastered to her brow again, and asked, “Will you come home with us?”

“It’s late,” Harmony pointed out. “Kyle probably wants to go back to the farmhouse and rest. He’s been gone a long time.”

“A long time,” Bea echoed.

“What’s a few months to buddies like us?” Kyle suggested.

Bea placed her hands on his cheeks. Rubbing her palms over the soft texture of his beard, she said, “We could watch Stuffins.”

“Stuffins,” Kyle repeated, clueless.

“Doc McStuffins,” Harmony elaborated. “Disney. She’s allowed to watch one episode before bed. I’m sure Kyle would rather finish his walk and go home.”

“Actually,” he said, “Stuffins sounds perfect.”

“Really?” Harmony asked as Bea cheered his decision-making skills.

“Really. If you don’t mind.” He smirked. “Mama.”

Harmony rolled her eyes as Bea sounded off with a chorus of pleases. “I don’t have mac-and-cheese. Tonight’s leftovers.”

“Chitlins and dumplin’s,” Bea informed him very matter-of-factly.

“Chicken and dumplings, baby,” Harmony said when Kyle’s brow peaked. To him she added, “I don’t feed her pig intestines. I swear.”

“They’re not so bad.” When Harmony and Bea’s noses wrinkled in sync, Kyle grinned in a wicked sort of way that resonated from the past. “Come on. You’d try them once.”

“Only if you wolf that big strawberry down first,” Harmony suggested.

Kyle frowned at the moon. They both knew he was allergic to the fruit. It’d always puzzled Harmony—someone as strong as him, felled by a berry. “Did, ah, these leftovers come from your mom, by chance?”

Harmony ran her tongue over her teeth. He was allergic to strawberries. But unlike her mother—the culinary goddess of the south—she was allergic to cooking. “Yes. But I mashed the taters.”

“With the raw bits left in?”

“How else would they stick to your ribs?”

Bea tugged on his hand, and Kyle followed her, rising to his feet and swinging their linked fingers as he fell into step with Harmony. “Now, that sounds like a treat.”

“You didn’t eat with your family?” Harmony asked as they began to walk down the lane to the suite.

“I did,” he admitted. “Mom made her glazed Andouille-stuffed pork because she knows that’s all I think about when I’m away. But when I’m really tired of MREs, I’ve been known to think about Briar’s chicken and dumplings.”

“Anything else?”

“Your freaking macaroni and cheese,” he noted. “Though it is bound to kill me eventually.”

She smoothed her lips together, pleased to make the cut.

“And if your mother’s thinking about making a blackberry pie or her coq au vin anytime soon...”

“I’ll be sure to bring leftovers home for you.” Harmony picked up the hint.

He sent her a sly sideways smile. “Thanks.”

Bea skipped ahead, buzzing with excitement. The wind swept up her hair as it tossed through the alley of trees arcing like an awning over the narrow pathway. Honeysuckle blossoms tumbled down, a soft white rain. The sweet fragrance teased up memories of summers long ago. Summers when life was still simple, rich and undefined. “I envy her,” Harmony mused as she watched her daughter caper toward the lights of the white-framed house. Kyle turned to question her. She explained, “She gets to grow up at The Farm. Could childhood be any better?”

A frown toggled Kyle’s mouth, and he looked at the ground as they kicked honeysuckle blossoms up under their feet. “No.”

“I was so jealous of Gavin when we were kids,” she pointed out. “All those weekends he got to come here and run wild with you.”

“You came with him,” he remembered.

“Not as much as I wanted to.” They walked on, quiet together. Almost at the point of lollygagging. The night was one of those lulling complacent ones, tepid and inky, luring people outdoors like a crooking finger. “And, anyway, you boys reveled in leaving me behind.”