Caro Carson - The Colonels' Texas Promise

“Are you sure you’re not a parent?” she asked.

“You don’t have to be a parent to realize that’s a lot on a kid’s plate. This is a bad idea. I don’t want to make things harder for him.” He opened the car door to get his sunglasses.

“You’d like him if you met him.” She blurted out the words.

He snapped his attention back to those golden-brown eyes. The way she’d taken a step closer, the way her hands almost reached to stop him—did she think he was going to get in the Corvette and drive off without her? Was she afraid he’d drive off without her?

It was hard to imagine Juliet Grayson afraid of anything. Evan grabbed his sunglasses, shut the car door and silently cursed the impossibility of having this conversation in his battalion parking lot. In uniform. He wished he could hold her, hug her against his chest until some of the tension that was humming through her subsided.

“I think you would,” she said more quietly.

He could only reassure her with his words. “I’m sure I’ll like him. He’s your kid.”

“And Rob’s.”

“I know he is. I know Rob, and I know you were married to Rob. This isn’t news to me.” Evan felt a touch of relief that she wasn’t afraid to bring up potentially difficult subjects. That was the Juliet he knew.

“It doesn’t bother you?” she asked.

“No.” An incredible lie, but now was not the time to confess how jealousy had nearly eaten him alive. “That has nothing to do with anything. When I said it’s a bad idea, I meant it’s a bad idea to spring a marriage on any child as a done deal. We can get married when the courthouse opens on Monday as easily as today. Matthew and I can meet under a little less pressure. You and I can spend the weekend catching up.”

He wasn’t going to say they’d spend the weekend getting to know each other, because they knew each other. They’d always known one another. Time had passed, and they’d had separate experiences during that time, but nothing had changed them. He was still Evan. She was still Juliet.

“You have a roundtable scheduled for Monday,” she said. “I’ve only been at Fort Hood for two weeks. I can’t show up Monday morning and ask for the day off. I can’t ask for any day off next week.”

“Next Friday afternoon, then, so we’ll have the weekend afterward. I’ll wear my blues to work. We’ll go straight to the courthouse.”

She clasped her hands behind her back—had they been shaking like his?—but she didn’t nod or agree.

“Why today? Is there some legality I need to know about?” Evan tried to imagine what that could be. The army could be a minefield of legalities that affected soldiers’ lives. “Are your household goods going to be put into long-term storage if you don’t give them a delivery address today? Are your orders for Fort Hood going to be changed if you’re not married?”

“I hadn’t even thought of those things. Stop, or I’ll have even more to worry about.”

“Then why do you want to go to the judge right this minute?”

“Because you said...” The flush was back—no, a blush. This time, she looked embarrassed, not aroused. She turned away from him, just slightly, and fixed her gaze on the colorful sign in front of the building that was painted with the battalion’s crest. The green shield depicted a gold gauntlet in a fist, enforcing order.

“Because I said what?” He watched her face as she put her thoughts in order.

“I’ve been in the army too long. For a minute there, I thought the best course of action would be to exploit my advantage. Strike while the iron is hot. Allow you no time to regroup after my ambush. If I let you stop and think about it, you might choose to retreat.”

“Not a chance.” He said it out loud this time.

“There’s always a chance, but you should have that chance. And I shouldn’t assume everything is a battle.” She turned her face toward him once more. “Forget I tried to rush it. I’m sorry about that. Back to the original plan. You should meet my son first, before you decide anything.”

She was afraid he was going to change his mind and leave without her. Juliet: afraid. Incredible.

“I already decided. If a week could make any man change his mind, then you shouldn’t be with him anyway. You deserve better.” You know that —but he choked back the words, because her brown eyes suddenly glittered not with gold, but with unshed tears.

She tugged the brim of her hat down a half inch.

Time had passed. They’d had separate experiences, for certain, and hers had included a man who had changed his mind and broken a promise, hadn’t it? Rob Jones had been so much less than she deserved.

Evan shoved down the guilt. “Juliet, I won’t change my mind.”

“Twenty minutes ago, you didn’t know I was divorced. You didn’t know I was stationed at Fort Hood.”

A sergeant passed behind Juliet. Evan returned his salute without taking his attention off Juliet. He looked her squarely in the eye, unafraid, as sober and serious as he’d ever been about anything in his life. “You and I are getting married because we’ve had sixteen years to think about it, and neither one of us has changed our mind.”

They stared one another down for a moment.

The memories continued to bombard him, the times they’d gauged one another just like this, each holding their ground during debates over chemistry lab hypotheses or proper pizza toppings. In retrospect, he could see that their showdowns had been frequent but fearless, because they’d been so certain that their friendship wouldn’t be changed by championing opposing views. They’d opposed each other on lab reports and pepperoni just for the heck of it sometimes, because it was always invigorating, often fun, and it had made the rest of their friends either groan or place bets on which one of them would concede the point. Now here they were, debating how and when to get a marriage license. It felt natural.

Surrounded by the sights and sounds of his everyday life—the beige building, the battalion sign, the people in camouflage crossing the sidewalks—Evan was struck anew by the miracle of Juliet restored to his life, standing here, right before him, right in the middle of his ordinary world. He shook his head slowly and started to smile.

“Lieutenant Colonel Grayson, can we please get in your car and continue this conversation somewhere, anywhere, away from here? I can’t touch you or hug you or have any kind of normal interaction with a woman I’m so damned happy to see, because we’re standing outside my own headquarters.”

“You’re happy to see me?”

“Ecstatic.”

“You want to hug me?”

“You have no idea.”

“Hmm.” She pressed her lips together skeptically, another expression he knew so well. It tugged at his heart. He hadn’t thought about missing Juliet’s expressions. Now that he didn’t have to miss them any longer, each one was making him realize in how much denial he’d been all along.

She pulled out a car key from somewhere in the vicinity of her skirt waistband. “Being in a car isn’t going to make us invisible, but I’m parked over there.”

“Lead the way.”

But she didn’t move. “You made a valid point. It’s been sixteen years. Next Friday will work.”

“Yes, it will.”

But she didn’t smile. In fact, she’d barely smiled at all in the past twenty-something minutes. Juliet had always been smart and sharp and driven, but she’d also been joyful. He knew her expressions, and her smile had been the most frequent of them all. Even at the end of a deployment to Afghanistan, she’d smiled on that airfield. Had life dealt her so many negative experiences while they were apart that smiles were less frequent than skepticism? That talking about her current life required stoicism?