Lone Star Survivor. Colleen Thompson
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running, and more and more returning soldiers are applying for our help every day. They need us, desperately. Where else can they go, if they don’t have places like this when their lives come crashing down around them? Who else will prepare them to reintegrate into their families and meaningful employment?”
He held up a hand to stop her. “You’re preaching to the choir. There’s no need to sell me on what we do. I never would’ve come aboard if I weren’t 100 percent behind it.”
“I know that. I do.” Like everyone else who worked at Warriors-4-Life, Julian had accepted little more than the use of one of the center’s Spartan housing units and a nominal salary in exchange for his sixty-to eighty-hour workweeks. He even donated a portion of his military retirement pay to the cause, saying he couldn’t encourage others to do something he wasn’t doing on his own. Inspired by his generosity, Andrea gave whenever she could, as well, despite the mountain of student loans she would probably still be paying into her dotage.
“Then don’t look so shocked that I’m thinking practically. I have to. Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to scale back the number of young men and women we can assist—and reduce our staff levels, as well.”
She gritted her teeth, thinking of how overworked all of them were already, how many sacrifices they had made. And the look in his eyes told her that if the cutbacks didn’t solve the issue, the doors they’d fought so hard to open might be forever shuttered. What would happen to their clients, then, people like twenty-year-old Ty Dawson, who’d gone missing for hours just yesterday after a lawn mower had kicked up a stone and cracked a window. He was found shaking and hiding in the darkened corner of a storage closet.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll rearrange tomorrow morning’s schedule and try to get back by—”
“Your schedule’s cleared, for the time being. Michael, Cassidy, Connor and I will all pitch in while you’re away.”
“Away? What do you mean? It’s, what, an hour or so from here to Rusted Spur? If I leave early, I’m sure I can be back by lunchtime to help cover the afternoon group sessions.”
Julian shook his head. “For the next two weeks, you’ll be staying at the ranch.”
“Staying at the ranch? With my ex-fiancé? Are you serious? You won’t— This won’t worry you at all?”
She studied his face and caught the flicker of discomfort. But he quickly squared his shoulders and reclaimed his usual composure. The composure that had made her feel so safe.
“I’ll admit I was hesitant at first. You know about my ex-wife, about what happened between us?”
Andrea nodded, remembering what he’d told her about a marriage in his twenties—and a wife who’d eased her loneliness with multiple affairs during his deployments. He’d spoken of it matter-of-factly, but she had seen the hurt, the vulnerability lurking behind his solemn brown eyes. And she’d sworn to herself she would be the wife that he deserved.
He reached across the desk and found her hand, then squeezed it. “I refuse to let it change me, let that pain turn me jealous and suspicious when you’ve done nothing to deserve it. When I could never imagine a consummate professional like yourself—a generous, decent woman—betraying what we have.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t.” She’d learned her lessons young; she would never be her father. “Especially not for a man who broke my heart. But I will do my best to help him, just the way I’d help any other client who was hurting.”
“Then it’s settled,” he answered with a nod. “I’ll need you to log in and update your contact records daily, but I’m told there’s wireless available.”
“When have I ever forgotten my logs?” It was a protocol she frequently reminded the counselors to follow, since the portion of their funding received from government grants depended on the number of recorded contact hours. The case notes themselves, however, remained password protected, covered by patient confidentiality.
“Also,” Julian said, “I thought you’d like to know that when Captain Rayford’s family extended the invitation for you to come, they mentioned they’d set up a suite of rooms for your use.”
“A suite of rooms, just for me?” It sounded like paradise, since her own quarters consisted of a single bedroom in the women’s dormitory, where female staff and clients alike shared a communal bath and kitchen.
“Play your cards right, and I’ll throw in some bubble bath.” From across the desk, he winked at her, a gesture so at odds with his usual demeanor that it made her laugh with delight.
“Ooh la la.” She waggled her brows at the man who’d asked her to keep their engagement under wraps for the time being, to avoid causing any suspicions of favoritism among the staff. And given that there was no way either of them could visit the other’s room without drawing speculation, the physical side of their relationship had been largely confined to their imaginations—a situation that was growing more frustrating by the day. “But it’d be ever better if you could join me in that bathtub.”
He smiled. “With or without strategically placed bubbles?”
“Up to you, Colonel,” she teased, standing when he left his chair and came around the desk.
He pulled her into a warm embrace. “I promise you, my darling, by the time you come back to me, I’ll have figured out a way to break the news to the others. And after that, no more sneaking around like a couple of teenagers.”
“In that case—” she smiled up into his brown eyes “—I promise you, I’ll do everything I can think of to get Captain Rayford’s memory back in record time.”
Funny what it was his mind chose to remember, Ian thought as he curried the palomino, a sturdy gelding known as Sundance. Though Ian had been told that he hadn’t set foot on the ranch since the day of his high school graduation, he remembered the order of operations he’d been taught to the last detail: currycomb, then dandy brush, followed by the mane and tail brush and the hoof pick. He remembered to lay the saddle pad over the withers and slide it back so the golden hair would lie comfortably and to walk the horse a few steps before cinching up the saddle so it would be tight enough. He knew to mount from the left side, too, just as he could still not only ride but rope a calf or cut a heifer from the herd with ease.
Procedural, semantic and short-term memory intact, one of the army shrinks had written on his report, which meant that Ian also remembered the meaning of words and could acquire new information. But it had been the next part that disturbed him, the notation: Retrograde biographical memory continues impaired—psychogenic origin likely due to emotional trauma.
In other damned words, they figured him for some kind of nut job. Not a veteran who’d lost his memory due to the injuries he’d clearly suffered, judging from the scarring on his back, his arms and legs, but a head case too soft to handle the stress of the ambush that he’d been told had killed a fellow soldier, along with the captivity that followed. Insulted by their insinuations and sick of being poked and prodded, he had gone back to the ranch and vowed to stay there, with the people he was learning to accept as his family...slowly.
He led the horse out of the barn and into the bright September morning, happy that last night’s shower had knocked down the dust and cooled the temperature. Zach kept telling Ian he didn’t have to work like a hired hand to tackle any of the never-ending chores that kept the cattle ranch’s wheels turning, but he found it far easier than staying in the house to be watched, fussed over and treated like a ticking time bomb by his mother or stuffed full of pastries by their cook, Althea, who apparently took it as her God-given duty to help him put back on the forty pounds his ordeal had cost him.
His older brother was easier to deal with, maybe because he’d served as a marine corps fighter pilot before his return to run