The Marine Makes Amends
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Victoria Pade
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HarlequinChapter One
“Home again, home again...” Lexie Parker muttered to herself in relief as she headed for a restroom in the Billings, Montana, airport.
She wasn’t quite home yet. Home was the small town of Merritt where she’d grown up. But this was the closest she’d been in over a decade.
“A little pit stop, get my luggage, rent a car and I’ll be there, Gram,” she said as if her grandmother could hear her.
It was the last Saturday in May and Lexie had been traveling since 3:00 a.m. If she’d waited for a direct flight, the trip from Anchorage, Alaska, would have taken approximately four and a half hours. Instead, she’d had to zigzag, enduring through two layovers, over the course of ten hours. But there was just no way she’d been willing to wait.
Her grandmother had had an accident yesterday that had badly broken the eighty-year-old’s leg. Lexie had received a frantic call from their cousin Mary just as Gertie was being sent into surgery.
The surgery had gone well—so well that after spending the night in the hospital, Gertie had been released this morning. But still Lexie wanted to get to her grandmother. Ditching her original plan to move home from Anchorage ten days from now, Lexie had apologized to her boss for not finishing out her two-week notice, thrown everything she owned into two suitcases and rearranged her travel plans.
But the rush and the lengthy trip—not to mention the mess her life had been in for the last several months—showed on her face as she peered into the bathroom mirror.
“You look lousy,” she told her reflection.
And not the way she wanted to look when she saw her very observant grandmother.
She decided it would be worth taking the time to spruce herself up before getting her bags and her rental car. Rushing to baggage claim wouldn’t make her suitcases appear any faster.
Hair first, she decided, taking a hairbrush from the floppy oversize purse she carried. She pulled her sloppy topknot free and flipped over to brush her hair from the bottom up.
It took a while to get the tangles out but she finally managed it, regathering the long thick strands into another topknot and tuck before replacing the hairpins.
Better, she judged when she glanced in the mirror again.
Being upside down had also helped put some color into her cheeks, though that was likely temporary. Since confronting Jason with her resolve to finally move back to Merritt—and the bombshell he’d dropped in response—Lexie had had friends and coworkers telling her she was pale. Normally, she didn’t care, but it was something else she didn’t want her grandmother to see.
So she fished around in her purse for some emergency makeup, digging out blotting papers, a well-used blush compact, a tube of mascara and an almost-used-up eyeliner pencil.
One of the blotting sheets went to work first, followed by just a hint of the blush on the apples of high cheekbones that were a bit more pronounced since stress had stolen her appetite.
Next she used the eyeliner, making a single thin line on the top of both lids, following that up with mascara to help bring out her silver-gray eyes and make her look less weary.
As she smoothed her ring fingertips over her dark eyebrows, her eyes were drawn to the lack of her wedding ring.
She’d taken the band off not long after filing for divorce five months ago and had stopped feeling naked without it—and yet right now, she felt so aware of the absence of it again. But she reminded herself that this was the beginning of her fresh start and that that was a good thing.
A fresh start, she repeated silently to remind herself of her goal.
Exhaling slowly, she shoved away thoughts of her past as she took a tinted lip gloss from her purse and applied it to lips that were just full enough and just rosy enough not to need more than gloss.
Better, was her decree when she moved her head from side to side to judge her handiwork.
From there she switched her focus to her clothes.
Her jeans were fine but the yellow turtleneck was making her too warm. Late May in Merritt meant warmer temperatures than she’d find in Anchorage, and she hadn’t planned ahead.
But she didn’t have a change of shirts in her purse so the best she could do now was smooth out the shirt’s wrinkles and push the sleeves above her elbows.
“That’s as good as it’s going to get,” she told her reflection, slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder to leave the restroom.
She wasn’t far from baggage claim and went directly there, seeing that even with her restroom delay, no luggage had come onto the carousel yet.
She took a spot among the other passengers.
Any minute, folks, I want to get where I’m going...
“Lexie?”
The sound of her name startled her and she shot a glance to her left.
She locked eyes with the owner of the deep male voice, who then said, “Yep, that’s you. I thought so. Gertie was right—you haven’t changed...”
It took Lexie a moment to register that she recognized the man. And then came the sinking feeling when she noticed that he didn’t have the air of a traveler about him—no luggage or carry-ons or reading materials.
Instead, he gave the impression that he might be there to pick someone up. The fact that his attention was on her and that he’d mentioned her grandmother’s name made her instantly afraid that that someone might be her.
The man was Micah Camden and since the first week of their senior year in high school, she’d regretted ever having known him.
Old anger and resentment zoomed through her but she worked to keep it out of her voice when she said, “Odd to see you here...”
“I’ve been with Gertie and Mary since yesterday,” he responded. “Mary said you were going to rent a car to drive to Merritt and Gertie didn’t like that idea, so I came down to get you.”
“She must be on a lot of drugs.” To send you, of all people, Lexie thought.
The sound of the baggage carousel starting up drew his attention away from her. But Lexie continued to glare at him, frozen in disbelief that her grandmother would send Micah Camden.
A moment later, he turned his still-striking cobalt blue eyes back to her and said, “You don’t have to take me up on the ride, if you don’t want to. You can still rent a car and I can just follow you to town so Gertie knows I’m at least watching out for you.”
That was an idea. Then she wouldn’t have to be in an enclosed space with him for the hour it would take to get to Merritt. She wouldn’t have to talk to him.
It was tempting.
But frugality was one of the things she’d learned well over the years and renting a car was not cheap. It even seemed a little frivolous, since once she got to town, she could drive her grandmother’s car or truck until she could afford something of her own—but it had been the quickest way to get there.
Until now, when Micah Camden was giving her another option.
An option that irked her even though it was to her benefit.
She tried not to show too much of her irritation. “Renting a car if I don’t have to would be a waste of money,” she admitted reluctantly.
He nodded but didn’t say anything else as she caught sight of the smaller of her suitcases.
Without saying anything else to him, she stepped over to scoop the duffel-like bag off and stayed where she was just to get some distance from Micah Camden as this situation sank in.
Until fifteen years ago, she’d considered him one of her three best friends. The Four Musketeers—that’s what everyone had called them growing up. Lexie, Jason Lundy, Jill Gunner and him.
But fifteen years ago, Micah Camden had proven he was no friend at all. Not to her. Not to Jason. For the remaining two years Lexie had been in Merritt, she’d had nothing to do with him, and since leaving she’d put any thought of him out of her mind altogether.
And now here he was.
He’d said she looked the same and so did he. Only better, if that were possible, she thought begrudgingly as she secretly studied him.
The Camden brothers—all four of them—were known for a few things. Their good looks topped the list.
When it came to Micah, that meant coarse brown-almost-black hair that he now wore crisply short over his very square forehead.
His undeniably handsome face was angular, with a straight, perfect nose poised between high cheekbones and a razor-sharp jawline that currently had a hint of five o’clock shadow that Lexie refused to admit was rugged and sexy.
His intensely masculine face was softened only by those blue eyes.
Those eyes...
Beneath a shelf of faintly unruly eyebrows, they were a little deep-set—just enough to somehow emphasize the color that was so remarkable and so distinctive to his family that there were actually articles written about The Camden Blue Eyes, focusing on his cousins, the higher-profiled Camdens in Denver who owned Camden Superstores.
Those eyes that were so blue, so bright, it was difficult not to stare at them. They hardly seemed real.
But real they were and Lexie forced herself to stop staring at them, moving on instead to his mouth in hopes of finding some fault there.
Nope, she couldn’t find a flaw there, either. His lips were male-model impeccable, giving no evidence of the lies that could spew from them.
No, time hadn’t diminished how drop-dead gorgeous he was. If anything, the added maturity had honed and added to his appeal.
And the body that went with the face and hair?
The last time she’d seen him it had been barely more than a boy’s body. But over the years, he’d gained some height—at least three inches over the six feet he’d been. And now, barely contained by a military blue crewneck T-shirt, he had shoulders a mile wide, pecs that filled the knit impressively and wowza-biceps that stretched the short sleeves to their limits.
Below that were jeans that traced narrow hips and clung to sturdy tree-trunk thighs that made it seem as if nothing could make him fall.
Unlike the actual tree he’d crashed into her grandmother’s house...
Lexie averted her eyes and concentrated on the bags coming out along the carousel.
Her main bag was approaching, and because she’d needed it to carry the lion’s share of what she owned from one move to the other, it was trunk-sized. When she tried to grab it, Micah reached in front of her, saying, “Let me do that.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say no but too many times her recovery of that suitcase had been less than graceful, so she just let him. But as soon as he had it off the carousel she took over, pulling up the bar handle and tipping it onto its wheels.
“Sooo, the verdict is that you’re going to let me take you to Merritt?” Micah asked.
His voice was lower than she remembered it. And there was something strong and confident in his tone, too, as if her agreement was a foregone conclusion.
And, damn him, it was.
“I guess so,” she answered with resignation.
He nodded agreeably—not victoriously—which was a good thing because Lexie might have accepted the ride but she wasn’t conceding anything.
Fifteen years ago, he’d shown her his true colors.
And that was when she’d learned that he was an A-one jerk who couldn’t be trusted.
After they loaded up Micah’s big white pickup truck and finally got on the highway, Lexie tried to put her dislike of Micah Camden aside enough to get some answers about her grandmother and what had happened to cause Gertrude Parker’s injury.
“Is Gram doing well enough not to be in the hospital or did she just refuse to stay?” she asked.
“She’s doing great. By this morning when she asked if she could go home, the doctors didn’t see any reason not to release her. She might have a lot of years under her belt, but you know how she is—she’s a firecracker, she has spunk.”
“I just don’t want that to override anyone’s better judgment about her health. She’s eighty years old.”
“I don’t think she was fooling anybody. The surgeon and the orthopedist came over from Northbridge.”
Lexie let out a sigh of relief. Northbridge was a fairly small town, but it had a bigger hospital than Merritt, making it able to sustain a few specialists. If Gram’s doctor had called them in, then that meant they were taking the situation seriously.
“By this morning, they signed off on her leaving the hospital. Plus, her local doctor came in to talk to them and agreed. So Mary and I checked her out. And you know Merritt, it isn’t like a big city—house calls aren’t unusual. Joan—Gertie’s regular doc—said she’d stop in every day for a while to check on her.”
Lexie’s worries weren’t completely allayed—they wouldn’t be until she saw for herself that her grandmother was all right—but she relaxed enough to ask the other question on her mind.
“What exactly happened?”
“You know I’m renting Gertie’s barn as my brewery?”
Lexie knew, all right—and she considered it a deal with the devil.
“Yes, she told me she decided to rent you the barn the way she leases the fields to the neighbors now that she can’t work the farm anymore.”
“Right. Well, I’m using the space for a small craft brewery. Gertie is actually my adviser and my taste tester—not that that has anything to do with this. There wasn’t any tasting going on when she got hurt,” he added in a hurry.
Lexie knew Gertie well enough to know she only ever drank in moderation. And besides, after a lifetime of hobby brewing, she could handle what she did drink.
“Anyway,” Micah continued, “I was having a new forklift delivered and it got away from the guy who was unloading it. It hit that tree that stands between Gertie’s place and the little house—”
“My house—the house my dad built next door for him and Mom and me? The house where I’m going to live? It was involved in this, too?” Lexie demanded, alarmed.
“Yeah...well...” Micah said, clearly uncomfortable, “the forklift hit the tree and it went down. It took out the side wall of Gertie’s house, and uh...a pretty good chunk of the little house...”
“A pretty good chunk of the little house? More than just a side wall?”
“There’s damage all the way around,” he answered reluctantly. Then, as if to avoid getting into more of that, he returned to her original question about her grandmother’s injury.
“Luckily, Gertie was downstairs when the tree went down, on the opposite end of the living room—which was untouched, by the way. But she didn’t know what had happened and she ran like a bat out of hell out the front door. She was in such a hurry that she tripped going down the porch steps and fell.”
“Don’t make it sound like it was her fault!”
“I didn’t mean to,” he assured her. “Of course, it wasn’t her fault. She was scared—rightfully so—and ran out just like anybody would have. When she fell, her leg twisted out from under her, and the lower part of her femur caught the brunt of it.”
He was just stating facts but Lexie was already upset about her grandmother. Learning that the house she’d expected to come home to was also a casualty pushed her unhappiness that much further.
Then, as she thought about her house and her grandmother’s, something else occurred to her.
“How could Gram go home to a house without a side wall?”
“Actually it’s the stairs that made returning to her house impossible,” he informed. “The surgery put a plate and four screws in her femur—”
“Mary told me that.”
“Well, the leg is in a cast and it has to be raised and stationary for a while. So they want her in a wheelchair for now. She can’t be anywhere where she’d have to navigate stairs—”
“Or, I would assume, any house that’s missing a wall.”
“Well, yeah...”
“So where did Gram go home to?” Lexie demanded.
“Mary’s apartment. It’s tiny but there are two bedrooms and she really wanted Gertie to stay with her. She said she’s bored and lonely and she’d be happy for the company. And she’s a retired nurse, you know, so she’s a good choice for taking care of Gertie. Plus, with the apartment in the heart of town, Gertie is closer to the hospital if anything goes wrong, and the apartment is easy for Joan to get to for house calls. So Gertie and Mary decided they’re going to be roomies until Gertie’s place is fixed and Gertie can handle that layout.”
Mary had been in her apartment for as long as Lexie could remember so Lexie knew it wasn’t big enough to house her, too, and she suddenly wondered if she was homeless.
Yet another unpleasant revelation from this guy...
She took a breath and focused on what was most important. “Okay, that sounds like a decent arrangement for them.”
“I think it is,” he said, sounding relieved that she wasn’t kicking up more of a fuss.
“But,” Lexie said then, “I was going to move into the little house—my house. Did the pretty good chunk taken out of it make that impossible?”
“It did,” he confirmed, sounding guilty. “But,” he added in a hurry and in a more positive tone, “I had both places inspected this morning by county inspectors. And while the little house can’t be lived in yet, most of the damage to Gertie’s house is really concentrated in that one spot. The rest of the big house is structurally sound, and has been cleared for occupancy. So you can move in there.”
“With a gaping hole that could let anyone just walk in any time of the day or night,” she said more to herself than to him.
“That’s taken care of, too,” he assured her.
“How is that taken care of, too?”
“I had the open side of the house tarped and I promised Gertie that I’ll move into the sunroom downstairs and stay there so I can make sure there’s no looting—and no kids trying to use it as a party spot...”
Was he honestly telling her what it seemed like he was telling her?
“You and I are going to be housemates?” she said, her voice louder than she’d intended it to be.
“You’ll be upstairs, I’ll be down—in the sunroom that’s not really in the house. I’ll use the bathroom downstairs. You’ll have the one upstairs to yourself. I’ll never even climb the stairs...”
“And we know how you like to take that kind of situation and spin it for your own benefit,” she said, this time keeping none of her animosity toward him hidden.
That left a heavy silence for a moment before a much more subdued Micah said in a somber voice, “I can never tell you how sorry—”
“As if that matters!” Lexie snapped, cutting him off. She was in no mood to hear apologies or rehash the past with him.
Instead, as they approached the sign welcoming them to Merritt, she turned her head to glare at him again and added, “Don’t forget that I know you. And don’t think for one minute that I won’t be watching your every move.”
He nodded his head, accepting that with every indication of resignation.
Lexie went on glowering at him, furious with the situation but not seeing any way out. The one person on earth she didn’t even want to know existed was the person she was going to be cohabitating with. And worst of all, this was putting her in a position similar to the one he’d used to cause trouble for her fifteen years ago.
This was not what she’d wanted to come home to.
But, unlike the rental car, in this she didn’t have any choice.
She couldn’t afford a room at the bed-and-breakfast that was the only temporary option in town and she certainly couldn’t pay for an apartment of her own. And while she could insist on him leaving her to stay by herself, she didn’t like the idea of being alone in a house that anyone could walk into day or night. She had a feeling Gram wouldn’t like the idea of that, either, and Lexie didn’t feel as if she could add any more stress to her ailing grandmother by pitching a fit about it.
So she was going to have to put her own negative feelings about him on the back burner and make the best of a rotten situation.
But there would be no forgetting that even if Micah Camden had grown up to be as head-turningly handsome a man as she had ever seen, underneath that very impressive surface was nothing good.
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