“Right where we’ve always been.”

  His response relieved her. She couldn’t say why.

  “You want me to call next time I need a pilot?”

  “If you want.”

  If you want. Not Of course. He was leaving the ball in her court.

  And the response she had for him was, “Talk soon, then.”

  “Yeah. And...thanks,” he added right before clicking off.

  Wendy had no idea what on earth he was thanking her for.

  But his gratitude felt good.

  * * *

  Wednesday morning, just after dawn, Greg Wesley Martin presented himself to his airplane hangar. He’d inherited his backbone from his father, Randolph Wesley Martin, a retired career–army brigadier general, and his grandfather, William Wesley Martin, a career–army colonel. Though Greg couldn’t help but feel like a disappointment to his namesake lineage with his medical discharge in the place of a full career of service, he still had the example they’d set for him. The strength they’d infused in him pretty much from birth.

  His grandfather was gone, but when William Wesley had been alive, he’d been not only the rock of their family but the calmest bastion of strength in any crisis. As Randolph Wesley was now. Both were men of few words, and yet there’d never been a doubt as to who they were, what they expected and what others could expect from them. Their presence had been and was steady, dependable and loyal.

  And there’d never been any doubt in Greg’s mind that he’d been expected to be the next career soldier. “Hooah” was the way his father had told him good-night every night since Greg was a baby. When he was old enough to understand, he’d taken comfort and pride from the intimate—between him and his dad only—understanding of who they were. Loyal. Committed. Always there for each other, and for others, too. Greg took on the persona willingly.

  No way he was going to chicken out. Not out of life. And not out of flying. He was strong. Able to take on challenges for himself and others. He was one who gave service, not one who took it.

  Weakness would not debilitate him.

  He would not disappoint his father again.

  But as he stood beneath the rising sun, approaching the plane, it wasn’t his father he was thinking of. Wendy Alvarez was the person pushing him. It was her face he saw encouraging him. Her voice he heard in his mind.

  No way he was going to let down her Pets for Vets program.

  Or his own Pilots for Paws.

  And no way in hell he was going to have her thinking of him as less of a man. He couldn’t have her believing he was someone who’d let her down. One who was unreliable or disloyal to their cause.

  Not because he hoped to build something personal with her. He didn’t.

  But because she was counting on him.

  And because she’d respected his ability to help himself. She’d offered assistance, both the night of the storm and the previous night, as well. And when he’d said no, she’d accepted that he’d made his choice without trying to make him feel as though he’d made the wrong one.

  She’d called him to fly for her again, showing faith in him. In his abilities. Hardly the action of a woman who saw him in need of fixing.

  And he was going to make damned sure that he didn’t do anything to let her down. On sure feet, with no hesitation now, he strode to the door of the plane. Climbed up into the cockpit. Settling himself in the pilot’s seat, he looked at the controls. Reached to start the engine.

  And stared at his shaking hand.

  All he could think about was getting out of his seat, out of the cockpit. Onto solid ground.

  But he couldn’t go anywhere. He hadn’t conducted his preflight check. Or radioed a take-off. There was absolutely no reason for him to panic. And there was absolutely no denying that that was what he was doing.

  He forced himself to go through the motions, to look at dials. Put himself into mental run-throughs of the purpose of and proper setting for every knob and switch, every round-windowed gauge, as though taking an exam.

  Focus beat fear.

  Or at least, that was the plan. He thought it might be working at first, through sheer force of will, but then his head started to feel heavy, almost drugged, and he knew he had to get out of the plane.

  To breathe.

  Stumbling back to his car, he didn’t allow himself to think about the cockpit or of himself inside it. He shoved his thoughts away from any replay of the major failure he’d just experienced.

  And turned onto the highway. Wide-open space.

  But more importantly, the road to getting his head straight. To a visit that would remind him who and what he was.

  And wasn’t.

  Because Wendy Alvarez and the prospect of her disappointment in him was weighing far too heavily on his mind. Weighing him down.

  He couldn’t let a woman, any woman, get to him to the point of him starting to develop deep, personal caring about her opinion or otherwise. And when he was more worried about disappointing her than his father or himself, that signaled that the caring had gone too deep.

  It took him forty-five minutes to get to his destination. Another ten to get parked and inside. The private facility did everything they could to make the place seem welcoming and cheerful, but the long-term care facility still seemed to carry a certain pall, despite the manicured grounds and large windows letting in lots of light. The woman at the reception desk just smiled and waved him through. All of the staff knew him by sight. After all, he visited every Wednesday, without fail.

  “Hey, bro,” he greeted the man strapped upright in a wheelchair, his mouth hanging open, his head tilting awkwardly. His eyes were open, but they stared out, unfocused and unseeing. “I had some extra time today so I’m early. Figured we could watch the game together. Red Sox are favored to beat the Blue Jays today, my man.”

  His comrade in arms, fellow soldier, the man he’d carried out of the exploding desert hellhole, gave no sign of having heard him.

  Or knowing that anyone had entered his room.

  But Greg kept trying. The doctors couldn’t say for sure that Duke couldn’t hear. Didn’t know whether or not the man understood what was said around him.

  Duke breathed on his own. His body processed nourishment sent through his feeding tube and disposed of waste. He was staying alive without life support. And if you spooned chocolate pudding or ice cream into his mouth, he swallowed it.

  He had daily therapy and was on very little medication, and there he sat. A man who’d been on track to make general before the rest of them. Most of the rest of the soldiers caught in that blast hadn’t survived.

  Greg sat through the game with Duke. Talking to him as though the man he’d known was sitting right there with him. And during commercials, he read the day’s news from his phone, discussing current affairs, sharing his opinion, as he’d once done.

  Greg had to do what he could to keep Duke prepared to step out into the world in the event the man was still in there and was ever able to find his way out.

  A couple of times, Greg opened his mouth to tell his closest brother in arms about coming down in the storm. He ached to hear Duke tell him to get his ass back in the plane and up in the sky, but each time, he closed his mouth again without saying a word. Duke didn’t need to be burdened with his woes. The man had enough of his own. And Greg’s inconveniences...they completely paled in comparison to the challenges Duke faced every single day of his life.

  He didn’t talk about Wendy, either, for different reasons. A guy talking to a guy about a woman...made the woman something in the guy’s life.

  And she wasn’t.

  Couldn’t be.

  No way he was going to ask Wendy, or anyone, to be in a relationship with him. He couldn’t even trust his sleeping self to keep her safe. It was humiliating that he’d had a nightmare when he’d slept on her couch, but it could have been worse. What if she’d gotten too close during his nightmare and he’d struck her? There was a reason he didn’t want anyone near him while he slept, and it wasn’t just a matter of keeping his private business private. It was a matter of safety, too.

  Wendy was safer without him. And that was why, when she called twice, midafternoon, he didn’t pick up.

  The game went into extra innings, and Greg, with no great incentive to get back to thoughts of panic, lost track of time.

  Until it was too late.

  “Oh!” He heard the female voice at the same time he became aware that Duke’s door had pushed open behind him. “Greg, you’re here later than usual.”

  Julie—Duke’s sister, his only family, a woman who stopped by to see her brother every single day on her way home from work—didn’t have to sound quite so glad to see him.

  “The game went over,” he said, standing abruptly, pushing the chair he’d pulled up beside Duke back to its usual position in the corner of the room. “I’ll go now, though.”

  She didn’t argue or try to persuade him to stay. The two of them... It seemed to hurt both of them to be together with a comatose Duke.

  Stopping by Duke’s chair, he clamped the man on the shoulder, held tight for a moment. “Hooah, bro.”

  “Thanks for coming.” Julie took the seat he’d just vacated, pulling yarn and the metal hooked needle she always used out of her bag. “I know it means a lot to him.” She nodded toward her younger brother.

  Greg nodded, too. Wished her a good-night, strode out of the room as though he had somewhere to be, propelled by the guilt that consumed him every single time he read the pain on Julie’s face.

  It should have been Greg, not Duke, who’d been so badly injured. His sisters had each other and their spouses. His parents had each other and his sisters. And Julie...she only had Duke.

  But it hadn’t been Greg who’d been hit worst by the blast. His leg had been injured, but his life and his mind had been spared. He owed it to Duke. To the comrades in their platoon who’d died that day. And he didn’t intend to use his life to honor them by chickening out.

  Or letting fear win.

  He owed it to himself. And to the people still in his life. His family.

  Wendy.

  He wasn’t open to a committed partner relationship, but he could be a friend. A damned good one.

  He would fly again.

  He had to fly again.

  He wasn’t going to let Wendy down.

  No matter what.

  Chapter Six

  Sitting outside in a folding camp chair, her feet flat on the grass of the caged enclosure, Wendy constricted her breathing, consciously tightening her chest, refusing to relax it as she felt her heart rate speed up. She thought of being down in a mine and having the elevator that was meant to take her back up break down. Hearing a drizzle of rock fall in the distance. Eyes open but unfocused, she blocked everything but the image she was creating in her brain.

  And felt a pair of paws and then full front legs crawl up and settle in her lap, followed by a big wet nose nuzzling the underside of her chin.

  She grinned. He’d passed the test.

  Moving her hand up to the big canine mouth so close to her own, she held her fingers out flat, revealing the treat she had.

  “Good boy, Jedidiah. Good boy!” she told the eleven-month-old German shepherd she’d had her eye on for months.

  One of twenty-one dogs the Furever Paws Animal Rescue shelter had taken in after the arrest of a backyard breeder, Jedidiah was currently the only dog left, other than some moms who’d recently had pups—and Pepper, who had been one of the breeder’s personal pets.

  Out of the four skinny male German shepherds who’d been in the lot, Jedidiah had been the sickest, meaning he’d stayed at the rescue center even after the other three dogs had gone into the Pets for Vets program. But the dog was well on the road to recovery now, and he’d also shown signs of service-dog training right from the beginning. As though someone had started to work with him. Wendy had arranged for him to have a trainer come in as soon as Jedidiah could handle it, and the result made her heart soar.

  The dog still needed extra care for his health. He’d had the hundred-and-twenty-hours’ training mandated for service-dog work but hadn’t yet had the thirty hours of public exposure necessary before she could match him up with one of the veterans on the Pets for Vets waiting list.

  She’d had a peek at the dog’s medical file and with all of the X-rays and infusions and medications, Jedidiah had already run up a bill in the thousands. He couldn’t be adopted until he had a clean bill of health. And the trainer didn’t want to introduce him to public exposure until then, either.

  Assuming Jedidiah continued to respond well to treatment and got healthy.

  Giving the dog a hug, petting him, finding her calm by doing so, she made up her mind to think positively—to feel confident that Jedidiah would get well. That the smart, eager-to-please, mistreated dog would live a long, happy life with someone who loved him.

  When her phone rang, Jedidiah stepped down from her lap and wandered off to explore the enclosed grassy area behind the shelter while she pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the screen.

  Greg.

  She’d left a voice mail. Hadn’t liked that he hadn’t returned her call. For various reasons, probably, but the most prominent one was that not hearing from him meant he could be in trouble.

  Perversely, now that his call indicated he was alive, she didn’t want to pick up. Didn’t want him to matter so much that he’d been on her mind all afternoon, that she’d been worried about him. But then again, she didn’t want him to matter so much that she dodged his calls, either.

  “Hello?” Jedidiah came back as she answered, probably sensing the tension in her tone. Or her body language. The dog didn’t immediately embark on providing deep pressure therapy as he had moments ago, and she counted that as a win.

  She might be tense, but she wasn’t exhibiting the signs of panic he’d been trained to respond to.

  “I’ve been with a friend all afternoon, just now got free,” Greg said, sounding a lot more fine than she’d been picturing him.

  Note to self to take a step back. Maybe several.

  “What’s up?” he asked when she got too caught up in talking to herself to respond to him.

  “I had an emergency run, wanted to offer it to Pilots for Paws and you’re my contact, but I ended up placing it with another pilot.”

  “Wow. I’m sorry.”

  “Not a big deal,” she quickly told him, standing to walk the yard with the dog who was staying close. “After this morning...I wasn’t really wanting to force you to ask one of your other pilots to go up for you.”

  Except that she had been. She’d thought the emergency run coming in as it had was a sign—a way to get Greg back in the game even if he wasn’t actually up in the sky yet. Thinking of others, doing for others, having something outside of oneself upon which to focus were all ways to help stave off panic.

  She knew. Had learned everything she possibly could, more than she’d ever probably use, in her desperate need to help Michael.

  And it hadn’t helped.

  He hadn’t wanted her help. Or hadn’t been willing to admit that he’d needed it. He hadn’t thought she could help.

  Was she ever going to learn?

  * * *

  He shouldn’t have called her back. Not that late in the day. It wasn’t like he’d be up for a night flight, and the only reason for them to converse was to arrange a dog transfer.

  And yet, standing there in his hangar—he’d driven straight there from Duke’s facility—he’d pulled out his phone and had called her back.

  Like bringing her to the scene of his crime, his weakness, would somehow make it better.

  Then she’d said she hadn’t felt good about asking him to call another pilot when he couldn’t go up himself?

  What the hell? If she was going to start feeling sorry for him...making concessions as though he wasn’t whole and able...

  Hearing the lack of complete lucidity in his thoughts, he took a deep breath. As she’d said, he was her contact with Pilots for Paws, only one of the sources she used for pilots. He’d called other pilots on the Pilots for Paws roster several times. And if she hadn’t needed them, why call them?

  Because she always called him first. And would have asked him to arrange for a pilot, even knowing that he was struggling himself, if he’d picked up the phone.

  Angry with himself, maybe with her, angry that life left people like Duke injured, angry that his heart had started to pound the second he’d climbed into the cockpit that morning, angry that Wendy Alvarez sounded distant, like she was giving up on him, he blurted, “The friend I was with for most of the day...we’ve known each other a long time.” Since boot camp—bonding first and foremost because they’d both been from North Carolina. They’d been of like mind, he and Duke—lifers who were prepared to sacrifice everything to serve and protect.

  “It’s fine, Greg. You don’t owe me an explanation. You don’t owe me anything. With all the hours of volunteer work you’ve done for Pets for Vets over the years, if anything I’m in your debt. Truly, we’re all good.”

  “Duke’s living in an institution,” he said then, leaning his butt on the front wheel base of the plane—keeping the aircraft at his back. And touching it, too.

  How could something he loved be the cause of so much stress?

  “He sits in a chair, seemingly unresponsive, day after day, week after week, year after year.”

  And every day, Julie had stopped by after work to visit with him. A lawyer, Duke had said that she’d always been more dedicated to her work than she’d been to dating, which was why there was no romantic partner in her life. He’d mentioned how she had joked about planning to be the fun aunt to Duke’s kids rather than having any of her own. And Greg knew she still worked as many hours in a day as she could squeeze in, oftentimes bringing work into Duke’s room with her.