“It’s not my place,” he said shortly. “He should be the one talking to you about this. When was the last he came home?”
Harmony sighed. “I don’t know. Last summer sometime.”
“For how long?”
“He stayed overnight at the inn and left the next evening. Mom and Dad both wanted him to stay longer. We all did.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He said he had training.”
“You believe that?”
She rolled her eyes heavenward, tired of the third degree. “I don’t know.”
“He visits once a year and is hardly around for twenty-four hours when he does. That’s bullshit, Harmony. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it.”
“Maybe it’s hard for him to be here,” Harmony suggested. “You ever think of that?”
“Why should it be?” Kyle asked, finally turning his face to hers. There was anger there, and he opened up just enough for her to see the genuine mystification behind it.
“Because it’s a reminder,” Harmony replied. “The town, the inn, The Farm... They’re all reminders of Benji. Because Bea... She’s all that’s left of her father. She looks like him. She acts like him. God, Kyle, look at her. She even walks like him. Sometimes it’s difficult to process. Even for me.”
Kyle shrugged. “I’m here. Right?”
She measured the breadth of his stance, the realness of him.
“Why shouldn’t Gavin be?” he challenged. When she kept walking, his voice gentled. “Bea’s his niece. Flesh and blood. That’s no simple matter.”
Harmony licked her lips. “No. It’s not. But since Benji died, Gavin’s driven straight back into that big tough lone wolf mentality. He always had it, deep down. But then Benji...” She shrugged. “You know he was there, don’t you? The night Benji was killed? When Benji was shot. He was there when he—” she licked her lips again and made herself say it “—when he bled out. He carried him out on his back.”
Kyle nodded, eyes forward.
“It’s hard to say,” Harmony noted, “still. It’s hard to think about. It never won’t be. But to have been there...” She let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how he carries that around with him. And part of me doesn’t blame him for being the lone wolf. I don’t even blame him for not being here. Because maybe that’s his way of coping.”
Kyle fell into thoughtful silence. The surly bent of his mouth was back.
Harmony had the absurd notion to feather her fingertips across it to soften it once more. She rolled her eyes, moving her shoulders back to loosen them. “We do appreciate it.” When he turned to her, she added, “You being here. You always show up, hard times or no. That’s big. Don’t think I don’t notice.”
He searched, eyes roving from one of hers to the next. His mouth curved at the end. Acknowledgment. Gratitude.
On the wind, a honeysuckle blossom skittered across her face. It danced into her hair and tangled. She reached up to pry it loose.
Kyle beat her to it, tugging it free.
“Thanks,” she said, tossing her hair back.
Methodical, he used ginger fingers to extract the long green stem where the nectar lived. He pinched off the petals, discarded them. “You know what honeysuckle makes me think of?”
“No,” she admitted, watching how he handled the fragile parts of the minuscule flower with infinite care.
“Springtime at Hanna’s. I knew it was spring when the honeysuckle vines burst on the trellises. You could smell them a block away.”
“I used to hide there,” she said. “Whenever I did something I shouldn’t have.”
“A frequent occurrence,” he remembered, smiling at her sideways.
“Yes,” she said with a nod. “Poor Mom. I gave her more hell than she deserved.”
“Growing up’ll do that to you.” Holding the stem up, he offered her the small bead of nectar dripping from the end in a motion that was as natural as the wordless shift from spring to summertime.
Harmony tipped her head back without thinking, accepting. It felt natural, sure. But she was very aware of his eyes on her face and the momentary brush with his laser focus. And she felt hot.
She frowned. She could blame it on June or the tropics. But she’d had these brushes with him since she was a girl. A girl with a crush so boundless and hopeless, it had nearly cracked her in two.
Before Benji, before womanhood, there had been only Kyle. Her daughter wasn’t the only young’un who’d ever been enamored with K.Z.B.
Turning her eyes to his, she closed her mouth around the drop. It was barely enough to taste. When his gaze held hers, she swallowed because her pulse began to work in double time. His beard drew her attention. “You need a shave.”
As she walked on, she breathed carefully. She was burning hot beneath the skin. It’d stopped being a problem for so long, she’d forgotten how difficult it was to cool. Go big or go home had always been her go-to phrase. It was typically her body’s response to everything, as well.
Sometimes that was nothing short of hell.
Kyle was still off-limits. Military. She could not under any circumstances love another military man like she’d loved Benjamin Zaccoe. And, frankly, she’d thought she was done with this hot mess she’d developed for Kyle. Before she’d moved out West and thrown herself into school and piloting.
It had helped that Benji had been stationed at Coronado by that point and had visited often. It helped seeing him fresh out of BUD/S. A new Benji. Hard-bodied, disciplined, with that cheeky grin peeking through, a hint of the troublemaker she’d known back home where he’d cracked jokes about her gangly build and ginger mane.
It had helped that, without Gavin around to police things between them, Benji saw her in a new light, too. No longer the petulant tagalong but an adult. You’re a frigging force of nature, he’d sized her up after watching her train without an instructor for the first time. You know that?
The only thing that had threatened to slow down the snowball of their relationship was Gavin and Kyle’s opinion on the subject. Benji had come away from a few days with them on the Gulf with bruises and five stitches in his forehead. He’d come away smiling, nonetheless, with cautious blessings from his bosom buddies.
It had helped that Kyle had been involved in a serious relationship as well, one that had gone as far as the potential of marriage. Laurel Frye had been the bane of Harmony’s existence from the moment she started tagging along behind Kyle, too. The whole fairy-tale romance had started in early high school. Kyle had been smitten with Laurel, which had made the whole affair worse for Harmony.
High school sweethearts were rarely lasting. It had seemed that Kyle and Laurel would be one of those rare exceptions...until his first tour and the frag grenade that had torn through his left leg. Laurel wasn’t the only one who’d wanted him to quit the teams after. Harmony had gone so far as to reason with him not to re-up. But Laurel’s voice had been louder. And when he did go back close to a year later, her voice was the one that had grown embittered.
Kyle and Laurel’s relationship hit the skids shortly after. By that point, Benji was dead, and it was clear that Harmony was going to have to raise a baby alone.
Not alone, Kyle had assured her. By phone. By email. He was right. A single parent she might be, but she hadn’t been alone like she thought she’d be. Not even in the delivery room. Kyle had returned just in time for the early labor. He’d driven her to the hospital, sat with her in the delivery room until her mother was there to relieve