Abby Gaines - The Wedding Plan

Stephanie took the baby from Dwight. “I’ll put her to bed. Sorry, sweetie,” she crooned to Mia, “but Mean Mommy’s back.”

Mia babbled something that may or may not have been an attempt at words. Her parents cooed as if she’d just recited Shakespeare.

Lucas couldn’t help noticing that Dwight caressed his wife’s bottom as she passed. Things really had changed.

Was his dad even capable of focusing on Lucas’s problem?

Lucas reminded himself that Dwight had been a navy man far longer than he’d been a family man. If he could just recall his “pre-enlightened” state, he would understand why Lucas needed his help.

“It’s good to have you home,” Dwight said as he settled into the burgundy leather chair behind his oak desk. The desk had once graced the captain’s stateroom on a nineteenth-century sailing ship. “How’s the hand?”

“Fine,” Lucas said. “Great. Fully recovered.” Sixteen months ago, his minesweeping chopper had been shot down in the Persian Gulf. Lucas had been medevaced to the U.S.A. for treatment—on the day Mia was born, as it turned out. Getting over the concussion, broken ribs and ankle and punctured lung had proved easy. Or so he’d thought at the time.

The surgery on his shattered hand had been more complex, the rehabilitation endless. Partly because Lucas had insisted on doing it all in one long stretch, relocating to Baltimore to be closer to the rehab center.

“Shame about your eyes.” Someone must have reported the details of Lucas’s latest physical to Dwight. Shouldn’t happen, of course, but Admiral Calder had so many friends in high places, there was always someone keen to fill him in about his son. Even though Dwight would have been too honorable to ask.

“The only problem was my depth perception,” Lucas said. “Everything else was fine.” He’d had no idea that, after working so hard to restore his hand, he would fail his back-to-duty physical because of his eyesight. The doctor had attributed the change in his vision to the deep concussion he’d sustained in the crash.

The skeptical pursing of Dwight’s lips said his father wasn’t fooled by the words the only problem.

It was an insurmountable problem.

Nothing is insurmountable.

“You’ve heard they’re discharging me, as of December 31,” Lucas guessed. “I’m on leave until then.”

Dwight nodded. “I understand you turned down a desk job.”

“I want to fly.” They’d told him that couldn’t happen. He should have known better than to issue an ultimatum to the U.S. Navy. But no way did he want to sit at a desk while, out there, men risked their lives to protect others.

Thanks to his ultimatum—send me back or discharge me—he’d be out at the end of the year. A man without a mission. He couldn’t get his head around the idea.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to.

“You failed the physical, you can’t fly,” Dwight said.

Usually, Lucas considered having his father so high up in the navy to be a disadvantage. Today, he hoped that for the first time in his life, it would help.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” he said. “I need to see a different doctor, get a retest and a second opinion. I figured you’d know someone.”

Someone who would understand his need to get back out there.

“We don’t do retests,” Dwight said. “Besides, if you failed it once, you’ll fail again.”

“There are exercises I can do to improve my depth perception,” Lucas replied. He hoped what he’d read on the internet was true, not some urban myth. “If I’d known I had a problem, I would have done them already. As it is, I want to spend a month strengthening my vision, then sit the test again.”

Another pilot had been assigned to Lucas’s chopper on a temporary basis, on the assumption that he’d be back. Now that he was out, his C.O. wanted to appoint the other guy permanently. At Lucas’s request, he’d agreed to hold off for a few more weeks. Seemed he had more faith in Lucas’s ability to swing a retest than his dad did.

“I’m not sure I like the idea of you going back after what you went through,” Dwight said. “You’re lucky to be alive. You’ve done your duty to your country, and then some.”

“It’s not about duty,” Lucas said. “It’s about…” No one in my unit is better than I am at undersea mine detection and destruction. No one is better at protecting our ships and their crews. They need me. He wasn’t about to argue with his father about the numbers of lives and ships that were at stake every day over there. “This is who I am, Dad.”

“Maybe this is a time to reevaluate who you are.” Dwight’s emphasis recognized the irony of a man like himself talking such postmodern jargon. “The navy isn’t everything—I almost lost what really mattered before I figured that out.”

He and Stephanie had split up briefly before Mia’s birth. Lucas wasn’t sure what happened during their time apart, but Stephanie had said his father had come through it a changed man. His dad hadn’t seemed much different when he’d visited Lucas in Baltimore, but here at home…

Change wasn’t always a good thing.

“I’m a bit young for a midlife crisis, Dad,” Lucas said evenly. “I know who I am, and I know what matters. Will you help me or not?”

His father picked up a fat, cigar-shaped gold pen and flipped it between his fingers. “What does Merry think you should do?”

“We haven’t talked lately, and I haven’t seen her since I got into town. I came straight to you.”

Merry Wyatt was the daughter of John Wyatt, retired navy lieutenant and Dwight’s best friend. John and Dwight had served in Vietnam together, on a submarine, back when they were practically kids. John had saved Dwight’s life. Which Lucas assumed was why his unsentimental father had always shared John’s desire to see Lucas and Merry’s childhood friendship evolve into a romantic attachment.

He and Merry had humored their dads by dating once a year for the past, what, nine years? Yeah, nine, starting right after Merry graduated from high school. That first date had been a disaster, but some of the others had been…interesting. Over the years, each of them had used their on-again, off-again “romance” to their own advantage. Such as the year Lucas had claimed a back-home girlfriend as an excuse to refuse the attentions of his captain’s daughter without offending the captain.

Their last date, six months ago in Baltimore, was responsible for the recent radio silence he and Merry had been observing.

“You should ask her what she thinks,” his dad urged. “Merry’s a sensible girl.”

Sensible wasn’t the word Lucas would use. But if talking to Merry would help bring Dwight around…

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll go see her now.”

Sooner or later, they would have to meet up again. Might as well be now.

Merry was the forgiving type…wasn’t she?

She’s a romantic. An idealist. Idealists are quick to forgive.

Dwight beamed in approval of the plan. Since his father wasn’t the beaming type, Lucas found it creepy. Still, he took advantage of that approbation to push his luck. “Dad, you didn’t say if you’ll help me get a retest.”

An appeal against medical disqualification would require Dwight to pull strings. Something he had an aversion to.

Dwight steepled his fingers on his desk. “I’ll think about it. How long are you staying?”

“Until you’ve thought about it,” Lucas said.

* * *

LUCAS SLID OPEN THE double-wide, yellow-painted iron door of Wyatt Yachts’ waterfront workshop. The track needed oiling; Lucas despised the effort the movement took.

A year of rehab on his right hand and it still felt as if muscle and sinew could turn to water at any moment. Part of his rehabilitation had been schooling his expression to not show pain.