He sucked in a deep breath. He was going to enjoy this.
“Let me get this straight. My wife told you she left her ID in the car, and rather than let her leave the store to look for it, you dragged me halfway across post to confirm that I’m her sponsor?”
Wade cleared his throat. “We’ve been having some issues recently with women…people…trying to shop with their kids’ dependent IDs after they’ve split up from their military spouse. I was concerned she would vacate the post and not be caught if I let her leave.”
“Do you see any kids accompanying my wife, Wade?”
“No sir, but—”
“How about her shopping basket? You see any hot dogs in there? Chicken nuggets? Baby formula?”
“I didn’t inspect her groceries.”
“You didn’t inspect her groceries?” He moved up to the man in several quick strides, deliberately looming over him and raising his voice to the accusatory shout he used with disobedient privates. “You were so concerned that she’d breached gate security and trespassed on federal property that you prohibited her from exiting the store and summoned me away from duty and you didn’t even take a look at her motherfucking groceries? She could’ve hid a weapon in there, son!”
Wade began to stammer something unintelligible but Chance didn’t let him finish. “Now you listen up good, boy. If you ever disrespect my wife again I will ram my left boot so far up your ass that your mother will cry when she sees what I’ve done to you. I’m a very violent man, Wade. I’m paid to be that way. You copy?”
Wade rolled conspiratorial eyes toward the nearest attentive cashier as if to say, Let’s give this nutcase what he wants and get him out of here, but Chance read the underlying fear tensing the man’s soggy body. He’d seen it before, so many times, on Iraqi roadsides and in Afghan huts and on the faces of NCOs when he handed in his marksmanship scores. It was that poorly concealed concern that he seemed different from the other soldiers, like reason and remorse had abandoned him long ago and danger had crept in to take their places. Like he could be capable of anything.
“I appreciate you’re upset,” Wade began, but Chance had a sudden, overwhelming wave of boredom and he raised his hand to shut him up. He was tired of this, now—weary of people looking at him like he was a loose cannon and sick of proving them right.
He plucked his military ID from his pocket and slammed it on the nearest conveyer belt. “Ring up the damn groceries. I’ll pay for them.”
As the cashier hurried to retrieve Tara’s basket and Wade kept a watchful eye over the proceedings, Chance’s attention shifted to his wife. Stoicism had replaced the fear in her expression, and his stomach lurched as he wondered whether he’d gone too far. Would she be scared of him now? Would she tuck away her fiery energy and tiptoe around his temper? Would he wake up one morning to find no trace of her, then receive divorce papers two weeks later?
He shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the dirty linoleum floor. This was exactly what he’d wanted to protect her from when he decided to shove his belongings back into his bag and hightail it out of that hotel room before he could change his mind. She needed the stability she’d never had, a guy who would finally treat her right and give her the life she deserved. Not some hair-trigger grunt who only felt normal when he was treating a chest wound in the middle of a firefight.
Tara didn’t speak as he paid the cashier, took the bags from her hands and followed her out into the parking lot. She popped the trunk on the Malibu and they loaded the groceries in silence. She jangled her car key, and he hesitated, searching his brain for a phrase that would reassure her, that would erase his hotheaded outburst and get them back to where they’d been.
He was drawing the oxygen he’d need to fuel some bland excuse when she spoke.
“Chance?”
“Yeah?”
“No one’s ever stood up for me like that.”
He gritted his teeth, bracing himself against her oncoming judgment. “I admit I got a little overheated, but I can work on—”
“No, I mean no one’s ever stood up for me, period. Not my dad, not my teachers, not even Child Protective Services. I know we’re talking groceries, not a state custody case, but still.” She shrugged. “It means a lot.”
They stood in silence for another few seconds, looking past each other, listening to the wind rustle the last few dry leaves clinging to the branches of the trees bordering the parking lot. Chance thought about what she’d said, replayed the scene in the commissary. He found it hard to believe she wasn’t even a little bit annoyed, but when he mustered the courage to lift his gaze to hers, she smiled.
He opened his arms. “Come here.”
She slammed into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and burrowing her face into his chest. Her gripped her as tightly as he dared, lowering his head to catch her blackberries-and-vanilla scent, savoring the softness and warmth of this woman, so much smaller than him yet twice as fierce.
“I’m sorry about this,” she mumbled against the staff sergeant’s insignia on his sternum. “I asked them not to call you, but—”
“Forget it. Just some asshole on a power trip.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble. He can’t call your boss or anything, can he?”
“My ability to express myself in an inside voice without using profanity is so far down my boss’s list of priorities you could dig halfway to China before you found it. What’s important is that you don’t worry about coming back here while I’m away. You’ve got every right to be in this store, so don’t let that douchebag intimidate you.”
Her hands fisted in the synthetic material of his ACUs. She leaned back in his embrace to stare up at him, eyes dark and heavy with an emotion he recognized instantly, something too nascent to have a name yet too potent to ignore.
They stood like that for a moment, silently acknowledging the change happening between them. Tara moved first, slipping out of his grasp and backing toward her car.
“You should get back to work. I think I’ve disrupted your morning enough.”
He almost threw it away, almost gave in to the temptation to toss her a flippant, flirty comment about being welcome to disrupt him anytime. Instead he forced himself to push past the discomfort and stay sincere, no matter how hard it was.
“You need me, you just call. Otherwise I’ll see you tonight.”
She nodded. “I will.”
He lingered while she started the car, pulled out of the space and drove off, telling himself he wanted to make sure the Malibu’s spluttering engine turned over. He should open the hood that weekend and take a look, see if he couldn’t stay that old wreck’s execution a little longer. And he should show her how to turn on the Challenger and let the engine run so the battery wouldn’t die while he was deployed, and how to jump it if it did. He cringed at the idea of handing over the keys. He wasn’t sure he could cope with her actually driving it anywhere, even if she was his wife.
His wife.
He got in his car, turned the key in the ignition and grinned all the way back to the clinic.
Six
“Good morning, my name is Shelley, please may I have your account number?”
“Oh, sure.” Tara leafed through the stack of papers on the kitchen table for Chance’s latest statement from his military-specialist bank. She read out the number, then added, “It’s my husband’s account. I’m calling to be added to it.”
