Suddenly Home. Loree Lough

so sophisticated where women were concerned.

      He wanted to go home, slump into his easy chair and find an old war movie on TV. So for the life of him, Alex didn’t understand why he stayed, why he chatted with other brunch attendants.

      That wasn’t entirely true. He knew, as he nodded and smiled and talked about the weather, that the sole purpose of his participation in the banal conversations was in the hope they might lead to information about Taylor Griffith.

      He was about to ask an elderly woman if she’d seen Taylor when his mother, Helen, spotted him. Smiling, she waved. There was no mistaking what that “look” meant. She seemed as happy as a mother could be, believing he’d taken her advice, finally, that he was making an attempt at getting back on track, into “the stream of things.”

      Helen had been at him for months, saying he needed to socialize more, get busy building a new life. And that couldn’t start, she’d insisted, until he first started talking about the accident. “You could have died in service to your country. That’s not something to hide—it’s something to be proud of!”

      It was a hot button, but out of respect for her, Alex chose not to respond. Besides, he couldn’t imagine admitting the truth aloud, not even to his own mother: The mission had been a failure because he’d taken the coward’s way out.

      A thousand times he’d relived those last milliseconds of the flight, searching his mind for the one thing he might have done differently, the decision that might have saved him and the Falcon. It was humiliating, not having a clear memory to help him understand what had gone wrong. That, in itself, Alex believed, was proof of his ineptness as a pilot.

      Not an easy thing to admit, when flying had been his life for nearly a decade; when, for generations, all male Van Burens before him had been fliers.

      His great-grandfather had tested some of the military’s earliest bombers, his grandfather had flown during World War II, his father had served in Vietnam. And each had earned awards and commendations for their bravery. Based on the evidence, Alex could only conclude that the “good pilot” gene had skipped a generation.

      And though the man hadn’t said so, Alex believed his stepfather felt the same way, too.

      Rusty Martin had been a good pilot, a good substitute father. He’d never actually vocalized disapproval of how Alex had handled things that fateful day, but then, he hadn’t said he agreed with his stepson, either.

      Couldn’t be easy, Alex reasoned, for a guy whose best friends—like himself—had been part of the space program for most of their military careers. Poor guy, Alex had often thought, to have a loser for a stepson.

      Even the men in his mother’s family had a long, illustrious military history. Alex didn’t suppose his grandma was any too surprised when her daughter announced her plans to marry a pilot; she’d married one, herself. Nor was it a surprise to anyone, when his mom finally chose to remarry, that she picked another pilot.

      Alex hadn’t expected anyone else to understand the root of his shame, his guilt. But his mother… She’d spent her whole childhood with soldiers, most of whom had been pilots. She’d spent nearly a decade married to his father, another quarter of a century with Rusty. If she couldn’t figure out why Alex preferred to keep to himself, why he’d rather not discuss what he believed to be his greatest failure, who could?

      He didn’t need some shrink to tell him why he worked so hard to avoid conversations that started with “So what was it like…” Alex knew full well that a beginning like that was sure to be followed by “waiting to be rescued?” or “knowing you could die?” or “realizing it was you or the plane?”

      The questions were reminders of that failure. Besides, he had no satisfactory answers for any of the questioners. More important than that, he hated being reminded what a coward he’d been during those hair-raising last seconds before the crash.

      The first-ever coward in a long line of Van Buren heroes.

      Leave it to me to start a whole new tradition….

      He knew as well as anyone that avoiding those questions had been harder than answering them. So why was today so different?

      Simply put, because Taylor was different.

      She was the sole reason that today, for the first time since the accident, he’d good-naturedly answered the questions put to him by his mother’s church cronies. If talking about what had happened that day would get him close enough to ask if anyone knew where Taylor had gone, it was worth the temporary discomfort.

      Turnabout is fair play, he supposed when no one had an answer for him. Not Mable Jensen, not Alex’s mother, not even Taylor’s Uncle Dave knew where she’d disappeared to. She’d been the only reason he’d agreed to stay for the luncheon, rather than just drop his mother off at the church. Now that Taylor had obviously left, there wasn’t much point in hanging around.

      After making sure his mom had a safe ride home, Alex aimed himself toward the door.

      These days, church activities—church people in particular—made him extremely uncomfortable. One fellow’s well-intended opinion pretty much summed up how Alex believed everyone else felt: “The Lord performed a miracle out there, or you’d have been shark food, for sure.”

      What the Lord had to do with it, Alex didn’t know, though he hadn’t said so at the time. Instead, he’d nodded and smiled politely at the sentiment. He’d never admitted it aloud, but it was true nonetheless—the accident had shattered more than his confidence…it had destroyed his faith.

      He hadn’t exactly turned into one of those guys who blames God for the bad things that happen in life. But the Almighty had been responsible for letting Alex survive the crash. If He was so all-knowing, wouldn’t He have known that for a man like Alex, life without flying was no life at all?

      Alex said his goodbyes and headed for the parking lot, frowning. If not for the limp, he didn’t think anyone would guess what had happened to him eighteen months earlier. Then again, if not for the limp, he wouldn’t be home again, trying to build a new life in his hometown. Rather, he’d be on active duty, waiting his turn to run yet another test on yet another F-16.

      As he slid behind his pickup’s steering wheel, Alex thought about how he’d spent the past hour, answering painful questions in the hope he’d get an answer to a question of his own.

      Why he wanted to know where Taylor had gone was a puzzle to him.

      And then he pictured her, and the mystery began to unravel.

      He shook his head. There had been attractive women in his past. Yeah, he preferred blondes, but there had been a brunette and even a redhead or two. He liked ’em tall, but a few of the short ones had been fun. Taylor seemed intelligent enough, but then, he’d dated doctors and attorneys and scientists….

      Key in the ignition, Alex frowned, wondering what was so special about this petite brunette. And as the motor roared to a start, he had a feeling the answer had little, if anything, to do with her pale brown eyes or her chestnut-colored hair, her curvy little body or her big bright smile. No, something told him it had more to do with the person who lived behind that big, bright smile.

      She’d left him feeling the way he had back when he’d flown to that village in France. No one there had spoken a word of English, and his French began with oui…and ended with oui. The “stranger in a foreign land” impression had been uncomfortable then, so why was it accompanied by such pleasant sensations now?

      Alex slid the gearshift into Reverse and backed out of the parking space, shaking his head. Too much fruit punch, he decided, grinning.

      Half a dozen times, as they had stood in her foyer, as they had chatted in the church basement, he’d considered asking if she’d mind if maybe he gave her a call some time.

      So why hadn’t he asked?

      He drove north on Route 40, the image of her fixed in his mind’s eye. She was gorgeous, there was no denying that,