Chapter Two
Abby’s phone rang the moment she put the key in the lock of her front door—her sister’s ringtone. She paused on the wide front porch before opening the door, pulling the phone out of her bag with enough force to send her wallet, a lip balm, and a box of Tic Tacs crashing to the floor. Of course.
She answered the phone as she crouched to collect her stuff. “Crud. Hang on, Kelly.”
A bark came from the other side of the now unlocked but still closed door.
“No barking!” she ordered as she shoved everything back in her bag and stood.
The dog didn’t listen.
She opened the door, catching the three-year-old chocolate lab as he leapt onto her. “Darcy. Down.”
Darcy redoubled his efforts to get up.
She sighed and gave in, rubbing his ears until he groaned. “If anyone knew how badly trained you are, I’d lose every patient I have.”
“Abby,” her sister said, her voice far away.
Abby repositioned the phone and dropped her bag to the floor as she closed the door and returned her attention to her sister. “Yes. I’m here. Sorry. Hey, Bennet,” she said, leaning down to pet the black cat weaving between her legs, before moving to collect the mail that had been dropped through the slot.
“Do you have time to talk about Naomi’s birthday?”
The cat sniffed at her sleeve and immediately turned away, reminding Abby that she was covered in, well, dog. She’d seen three puppies that day, and each had left her with presents of sorts. She wrinkled her nose, dropped the mail on a side table and peeled off her lab coat, already heading for the laundry room. “Naomi’s birthday in, like, four months?”
“It’s not every day you turn three, you know.”
“It sure isn’t,” Abby said dryly.
“All the other moms are planning huge parties. Here’s what I’m thinking—”
Kelly and her husband lived in Cherry Hills, a posh Denver suburb where they were experts at the game of competitive parenting. Well, Kelly was, at least. But Kelly had been an expert in competitive Kellying since she was born. And she always won. She was beautiful—silky blonde hair, rail thin, head cheerleader, married-the-quarterback beautiful. She’d literally married the quarterback, who’d then become an investment banker, allowing Kelly to spend her days on juice cleanses and in Pilates classes and thinking about what all the other moms did. And how to one-up them.
If Abby didn’t love her sister so much, she’d hate her. Particularly now, chubby and frizzy-haired and covered in puppy pee.
Kelly was still monologuing, so Abby felt only slightly guilty putting the phone down to take off her long-sleeved shirt and jeans and throw those in the wash, too, before opening the dryer and pulling out a pair of clean pajama bottoms and a tank top that read Wag More, Bark Less. She put the phone back to her ear as Kelly was saying, “—I mean, I can’t believe he’s not available. I should have started planning months ago.”
“Wait. Who’s not available?”
Kelly paused. “Musical Mark.”
“Who is Musical Mark?”
“Are you even listening? Only the best children’s musician in Denver.”
Abby smiled. Only. “Of course.” She headed to the kitchen, Darcy on her heels, to find Bennet on the counter already, silently judging her for the dog t-shirt.
“I mean, I can’t even imagine the looks I’ll get for only being able to book Noisy Nicolai.”
It was possible Bennet was judging Kelly.
Her sister kept going and Abby listened with half an ear, murmuring sympathetically on cue as she fed the animals and returned to the entryway to get the mail. She didn’t really know why she was so obsessive about the mail. It was never more than catalogues and bills.
She paused at the plain white envelope, her name perfectly hand-printed in black ink, her gaze darting to the return address in the corner.
Sergeant Theodore LaRoux.
For the life of her she couldn’t say why, but standing there, holding that envelope, reading that name, her heart started to pound. And there was suddenly nothing more important than getting to the letter inside.
“I gotta go, Kel. I’ll call you back.”
She hung up without waiting for a response—something she’d no doubt pay for—and moved to the living room, dropping her phone on the couch before tearing open the envelope. She unfolded the letter, excitement and nervousness and anticipation flooding through her until she took in the black ink, lines and lines of strong, bold text, and she couldn’t explain it…but she felt as though everything was…suddenly…right.
Abby,
I’m Roux.
“Roux.” She whispered the name, testing it on her tongue. Feeling a little guilty that she enjoyed it so much.
Theodore LaRoux, but the only person who ever called me Theodore was my grand-mère, and even then, only when I was in trouble. The guys here call me LaRoux, but you should call me Roux. Like you said, we’re someone to each other now.
I grew up outside of New Orleans in the bayou, Cajun to the bone until I enlisted and was shipped to North Carolina and then out to Ft. Collins near you. I can’t tell you much about what I do, but I can tell you that I’m in the Special Forces and these days, I’m stationed in Yemen.
Abby didn’t know much about the military, but she knew that Special Forces meant he was in danger more often than not. She clutched the letter tighter, as though she could keep him safe by sheer force of will.
I can also tell you that I’ve spent more time in Germany than any good Cajun should. Just writing that sentence makes me desperate for gumbo. Real bayou gumbo. And coffee the way it’s meant to be. And crawfish.
You make me hungry, cher.
That one sentence, five words, and he had her. Maybe it was the casual French endearment, but if she was honest, it was the rest of it. The part where she made him hungry. The power that came with it. And the part where she suddenly felt incredibly hungry herself. What was happening to her?
Let’s get a few things out of the way:
1) I don’t have a wife. Not at Ft. Collins or anywhere else. It’s just me.
Relief flooded through her, more than it should. It shouldn’t matter if he was married, should it? So why did it seem to matter so much? It didn’t. He was a soldier stationed half a world away, and they’d exchanged one letter.
2) You apologized twice in your letter. Never apologize for anything again. Not to me. And definitely not for being you.
She didn’t remember the words, but there, in that command, in that insistence that she be herself without remorse, Abby fell for Theodore LaRoux, hard and fast, and enough that she knew everything in her life would now be aligned to this moment—before and after Roux.
3) Tell me more about the dog and cat. And next time you talk to her, tell your mother I’m not scared in the slightest.
Abby shivered at the words, rereading them until she lost count of how many times. Was he flirting with her? More than that, the command came with an insistence that she write again. Was she supposed to flirt back? Could she flirt back? She’d never flirted in her life. She’d never imagined anyone would ever want her to flirt. She didn’t even know how one began to flirt back.
She could figure it out, though. It was just letters. She could flirt. They didn’t know each other. They’d never meet.
It would be fun, and then it would be over.
4) You promised me secrets, Abigail Trent. Pay up.
Uh-oh.
Abby knew instinctively that telling him secrets would make it impossible for her to keep her distance, no matter how far away he was. She looked up at Darcy, who’d finished his dinner and was now waiting for permission to climb up on the couch with her. “This might have been a mistake,” she said once the dog settled down, his head on her ample thigh.
Darcy sighed, deep and happy, oblivious to Abby’s panic.
Panic that only deepened when she read the rest of the letter.
Yours
“He didn’t sign his name,” she said out loud, flipping the paper over, disappointment flaring. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much, but she wanted to see it in print once more.
Which meant only one thing.
She was going to have to write it herself.