The Marine Makes Amends Page 2

  “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.

  Chapter Two

  The drive from the airport in Billings to Merritt took until nearly four thirty Saturday afternoon. When Micah pulled up in front of the fourplex where Gertie was staying with her cousin, he asked Lexie if she wanted time alone with her grandmother and offered to wait in his truck if she did.

  Lexie took him up on the offer so that left him with plenty of time to kill, sitting in the cab of his pickup truck and thinking that he must be getting soft. On active duty in the Marines, there had been more than one training mission that had cost him plenty of sleep. None of those had left him feeling as tired as he was now, even though all he’d done last night was sit in a chair in Gertie’s hospital room.

  Fighting his exhaustion didn’t serve any purpose, though, so he closed his eyes and laid his head back against the seat.

  He’d been told there was no need for him to stay last night but he’d still refused to leave. Gertie was eighty years old with a broken leg and had just undergone emergency surgery. She’d been groggy from the anesthesia and he’d been afraid she wouldn’t have the wherewithal to ring for a nurse if she woke and needed care.

  While he and Gertie might not literally be family, Gertie was still like family to him. Anything he would do for his brothers or his own grandfather, he would do for her. There was no question about it.

  Add to that the fact that it was his runaway forklift that had caused this whole mess and there was all the more reason for him to make sure that whatever Gertie needed, Gertie got.

  He hated that she’d been hurt at all, let alone over anything to do with him or his business.

  “Damn it all to hell,” he cursed for the hundredth time since it had happened, struggling under the weight of his guilt, wishing he were the one with the broken bone instead of Gertie.

  Gertie, who had only ever been kind, generous, caring, compassionate and even sympathetic to him when he hadn’t deserved it. When she’d had every reason to just write him off.

  But somehow Gertie had found it in herself to forgive him.

  Unlike Lexie, he thought ruefully.

  The past hour had proven that her feelings for him, her opinion of him, definitely weren’t any better now than all those years ago.

  He understood that. He’d done something truly lousy that had caused a domino effect of problems. It hadn’t been his intention to hurt anyone. But what he had intended had been purely self-serving and it had avalanched. Directly onto her.

  He wasn’t the same person he’d been then, the person his mother had raised him—and his three brothers—to be. The Marines had taken that raw material full of not altogether good values that his mother had given him and used it to make him into what he hoped was a better man.

  But all Lexie knew was the person he’d been before the Marines taught him honor and integrity, loyalty, brotherhood and unity. All Lexie knew was the boy who’d had only a vague acquaintance with those things and so had brought disaster into her young life.

  Disaster that had hurt her in particular, and cost him his friendship with her and with Jason. Friendships that had begun in preschool.

  Hell, his singlemindedness was still costing him, he thought. Most recently, he’d paid the price for it with Adrianna—even when he’d been sure he was doing everything right with his former significant other...

  Tired or not, his racing mind wasn’t letting him rest, so he lifted his head from the back of the seat and opened his eyes.

  There was nothing he could do to rectify the current fallout wi
th Adrianna. But he was going to make sure every inch of Gertie’s and Lexie’s property was fixed as good as new. And maybe in the meantime he could find a way to atone for the ugly part of his history with Lexie, too.

  You didn’t let me say it, but you can never know how sorry I am...

  He’d just been so young and immature. And brainwashed.

  And so damn head over heels, wildly and hopelessly crushing on Lexie for four years by that point—ever since the end of seventh grade—up until that day when it had stupidly seemed to him like an opportunity had finally presented itself.

  Until the end of seventh grade, Jason, the boy next door; Lexie, the part tomboy, part sweetheart; Jill, the bookish, analytical mouse; and Micah, the push-the-limits smart-ass, had been inseparable best friends. They’d done everything together, and Micah hadn’t felt anything but friendship for any one of them. It had been clear-cut.

  And then little by little it had started to be confusing...

  By the summer before eighth grade—about when his voice had cracked and he’d sprouted up five inches overnight—he’d begun to notice that he wanted to be with Lexie more than he wanted to be with Jill or even Jason. That he wanted to be alone with Lexie.

  Little by little, he’d started to take note of things about Lexie that he didn’t notice about Jason or Jill.

  Lexie’s hair. Lexie’s eyes. Lexie’s laugh—and how good it made him feel if he could make her laugh...

  He hadn’t understood what was going on at first—not until his brother Quinn figured it out and teased him about wanting Lexie to be his girlfriend.

  He’d denied it, of course. Punched Quinn for laughing at him. And told himself that Quinn was wrong. But eventually he’d begun to realize that Quinn wasn’t wrong.

  The trouble was, about the time Micah had accepted that he might like Lexie as more than a friend, Jason had gotten on the same track.

  At first it was as subtle as two thirteen-year-old boys could be—posturing, vying awkwardly for her attention, competing with each other, horsing around in order to entertain her.

  They’d jockeyed for which of them could persuade her to study with him or do a school project with him. They’d both tried to be the first at her door in the morning to walk her to the bus stop. They’d wrestled to be the one to snag a seat next to her on the bus.

  But over time, Jason had developed some game—he’d learned to flirt and his adolescent edges had smoothed out.

  While Micah’s hadn’t.

  Suddenly—or at least it had seemed sudden to Micah—Jason and Lexie started to have private jokes that neither Micah nor Jill had been privy to. Suddenly Jason was bold enough to whisper in Lexie’s ear, sharing secrets just for them. Suddenly Jason was making her smile and giggle in a way Micah wasn’t.

  Before Micah knew it, there was something between Jason and Lexie that he couldn’t quite seem to have with her.

  And every time he watched Lexie with Jason, it tore his heart out.

  You guys thought you were soul mates. What happened to that? Micah wondered, recalling how their young romance had developed while he’d watched from the sidelines, tortured by it...

  It had taken years even after they’d all gone their separate ways for him to move on to the point where he could hope they were happy together.

  But apparently that wasn’t how things had played out. He knew now, through Gertie, that Lexie and Jason had just divorced. He was sorry for both of his former friends. Genuinely sorry.

  And the fact that his first glimpse of Lexie at the airport this afternoon had given him a split-second flashback to his childhood crush?

  That was only a memory, too. It didn’t mean anything. He’d moved so far beyond those old days, those old longings for her, that a fleeting moment of recollection was all it could be.

  The door to Mary’s apartment opened just then and out came Mary and Lexie.

  As they paused there to talk on the front porch, Micah watched them.

  Well, not them—it wasn’t white-haired Mary he was focused on. It was only Lexie.

  In the two years between when he’d wrecked their friendship and when Lexie and Jason had left Merritt, Lexie had avoided him as much as possible. But he’d gone on stealing any glimpse of her he could get, so he knew that her looks hadn’t altered any during that time.

  But add another thirteen years?

  He’d recognized her at baggage claim the minute he laid eyes on her, so when he’d told her she hadn’t changed, he’d meant it.

  But there were changes, he realized.

  Changes that were all improvements.

  And he couldn’t help taking in every detail one by one.

  Her hair was the same rich russet brown, shining reddish wherever the spring sunlight hit it. She’d cut it to chin length at the end of high school but now, judging by the scale of that knot wrangled at the crown of her head, he could tell that if she let it loose it would again be long and thick and luxurious. The way he’d liked it.

  The years had refined and perfected her face. The pretty girl had become all-out beautiful.

  Her skin was pure peaches and cream—flawless, without a hint of teenage blemishes, and so smooth and velvety that it couldn’t possibly feel as soft as it looked.

  She’d always had a refined bone structure—a straight delicate nose, high cheekbones, a patrician jaw that hammocked a perky chin. But now it was all more elegant-looking.

  Her ears were still just right—small, close to her head and cute—with lobes he’d pictured himself tugging on with his teeth. And the neck that she’d always complained was gawky now just looked long and graceful. The neck that, in his obsessed youth, he’d fantasized about kissing.

  Though not as much as he’d fantasized kissing those lips...

  Plush petal pink lips that could expand into a smile warm enough to melt glaciers.

  He didn’t know if that had changed because nothing about their reunion today had brought it out.

  And then there were her superhero-colored eyes, he thought with a laugh, recalling the moment she’d turned them to him at the airport.

  He’d coined the phrase superhero color to describe them back when he’d first become infatuated with her—gray eyes that were streaked with so much luminous silver that they seemed something more than mortal.

  The silver streaks only seemed to have brightened to make her eyes all the more sparkling, all the more mesmerizing...

  Okay, yes, for maybe the span of one breath he’d felt mesmerized at his first sight of them again. But they were stunning eyes. Anybody would have been momentarily struck by an initial glimpse.

  It had been only for an instant, though. Then he’d come out of it...and noticed the rest of her.

  She was dressed in a turtleneck and jeans that were both just snug enough to accentuate a body that was even better than when he’d seen her last.

  Curves that had filled out in a way that made it hard not to stare.

  Oh, yeah, she’d definitely gotten better, he decided. Much better, really.

  And you let her go? he mentally asked his childhood friend in disbelief.

  It seemed hard to fathom—though not because he had any designs on her, he was quick to remind himself. No designs. No feelings. No nothing. Because when it came to Lexie, they were just...

  Well, he didn’t know what they were.

  She hadn’t seen him as anything except a friend when he was lovesick over her, and he’d long since lost her friendship. Whatever they were now, it wasn’t anything good.

  On the other hand, his relationship with her grandmother was important to him. So important to him that he didn’t want to lose either the personal or the professional part of it under any circumstances.

  So not only was it vital that he make peace with Lexie over what he’d done fifteen years ago just to right the wrong, he thought that it was also essential that he try to reach some sort of civility with her in order not to damage his friendship and association with Gertie.

  If he didn’t, Lexie’s opinion of him might muddy the waters with Gertie.