Connie's Wedding Read online

  Connie’s Wedding

  a Night Stalkers Wedding story

  M. L. Buchman

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  Chapter 1

  Five Years Ago

  “Who were you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Connie sat in the stopped car and waved helplessly out the windshield.

  “Who was I?” Big John dominated the right seat of the rental car—he was broad-shouldered and tall enough to dominate any car, but this one was a squeeze. He squinted out the front windshield as if searching for a clue. Something Connie was lacking at the moment.

  “No, I mean who was I?”

  “Being even less clear than usual, Connie. And that’s saying something, girl. You’re Sergeant Connie Davis and I’m Sergeant John Wallace. We’re getting married in two days. Pleased to meet you.” He held out a hand as if to shake hers. Instead she grabbed onto it with both of hers and held on.

  He was right, her thoughts were usually clarified and tested inside her head before she gave voice to them. Only around John did she ever let that barrier down. She’d try again.

  “Six months ago, I was here at your farm for three days. It didn’t look anything like this.” The previously winter-barren Oklahoma fields now stretched out of view with wheat to the left and corn to the right. She’d never imagined that the four tall trees at the four corners of the cozy two-story farmhouse would be massively pink magnolias in mid-June. The wrap-around porch was embraced by roses in a thousand shades. “It all looks so…homey.”

  “It is home. That’s why it looks that way. And we’d be there if you’d just drive that last couple hundred feet.”

  “But who was I then? I…ran away.”

  She’d left abruptly six months ago in the middle of a devastating loss for the family. Grandpa Wallace, Grumps, had died. And, not knowing what else to do, she had walked away.

  No, she’d run.

  Had she thought she was protecting the family by removing the obvious outsider? She certainly hadn’t recognized that there was any more than sex between her and John. It wouldn’t be until she was barfing out her guts from pure terror against the sides of the Stockholm Cathedral that she’d come to understand that.

  Had she thought she was protecting her heart by running away? Instead, she’d run from the only man who recognized she had one. Another thing she hadn’t understood at the time.

  Instead she had wounded the man she’d been learning to love—the first ever in her life. Thankfully, John had forgiven her.

  But would the rest of his family? Their texts said yes, but her heart—and nerves—were far less sure. They were now just a hundred feet down the gravel driveway and she didn’t recognize it at all. The tall corn blocked her view of the barn where she’d rebuilt Grumps’ tractor. The house and its massively blooming trees blocked the view of the orchard around back.

  The only thing that made sense to her in the entire vista was John close beside her and looking worried.

  She hadn’t seen a single one of the family since that day she’d run, except for Big John of course. Their team had been deployed in Eastern Europe—on the types of missions that no one in Eastern Europe could ever know about. They had been working to delay the Russian expansion, but it was clear that they were gearing up to roll westward once more. It looked as if Ukraine and Syria were in their sights and there was only so much the Night Stalkers could do to slow them down—warning Ukraine of the dangers to their Crimea region was still proving pointless. Some missions had delivered pinpoint “insurgency” at critically tactical moments. Dozens of other raids had gathered intel that the Russians had fought to hide.

  The drastic setbacks they’d delivered to the Russian Navy’s plans to create a new fleet of aircraft carriers could also never be pinpointed to the Night Stalkers of the 160th SOAR.

  Sergeant Connie Davis recognized herself as Connie the soldier. She was proud of the silent, fanatically driven, ace helicopter mechanic of the most successful company in the entire regiment. When Joint Special Operations Command, or occasionally even the President, needed to activate a company for a black ops mission, they tapped the 5th Battalion D Company.

  “Too late to run,” John murmured in her ear.

  “No. It’s not. We drove from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, we can drive back just as easily.”

  “I’d be a goddamn pretzel by then.”

  She considered her options. The driveway in mid-June was a tunnel of green that the setting sun was fast turning to gold. It was beautiful—and it was completely unnerving.

  How could it be such a shocking contrast to the pure blue, winter sky she’d seen last December? She’d understood herself those three, cold winter days. Their bitter chill had fit her—an Army orphan. Those three days were the first she’d spent any time with a family since her slow-fading grandmother had died when Connie was sixteen. The first real family since her father had been shot down when Connie was twelve.

  These lush fields and lovely farmhouse before her, so vibrant with life, were so foreign they could be alien. She didn’t understand any of this at all.

  A small figure in a bright sundress stepped out onto the porch. After shading her eyes, the figure waved.

  “Now it’s definitely too late,” John teased her.

  Connie had finally learned how to judge when he was teasing her with greater than ninety-four percent accuracy.

  “Who’s driving anyway?” She tried a riposte—which had less than a five percent success rate at stopping John, but she kept trying.

  “Not you. We’re just sitting our asses here. C’mon, honey. This boy wants to go home. That’s Mama waiting.”

  “You’re close enough to walk.”

  “Nope. Not giving you a chance to run.”

  “I won’t.” And she turned to look at him. How had she ever run from him the first time? He was such a good man and the way he looked at her, she could actually believe in herself. She had made the mistake of running away once—perhaps the greatest mistake in her life as it had almost lost her John. Never again.

  “Maybe I’ll be the one to get out and walk.” And she’d take the keys with her if it would leave him stuck so close to home but unable to get there.

  “Too late for that, too.”

  “Why do say thaaa—” She finished the last on a startled cry as a truck horn blared out close behind her. Only her seatbelt kept her from banging her head on the ceiling.

  John waved cheerily out the back window.

  Connie checked the rear view just in time to see Paps climb down out of his big pickup. He strolled up to her window with the rolling gait of a big man—almost as big and powerful as John—before crouching down to face her. They might not be related by blood, but Big John certainly looked like Paps’ son.

  “Getting pretty close to the altar to be getting cold feet.” Paps’ grin was as infectious as his step-son’s.

  “It’s impossible to have cold feet during an Oklahoma summer,” she did her best to smile back.

  “Summer?” He inspected the sky in surprise. “This ain’t but June. Even so, June brides got no excuses for cold feet. Do they, John?”

  “Not as far as I can see, Paps.”

  “I was worried about you being the one with cold feet.” The voice, and a smack on the back of John’s head, came in from the window on his side.

  Chapter 2

  John laughed and shoved the door open as hard as he could. It caught Tim Maloney in mid-crouch, knocking him
head over heels into the corn.

  “What are you doing here, loser?” John climbed out of the car.

  They traded crushing hugs after Tim extracted himself from the stalks. “Figured you’d be the one likely to be getting cold feet. So, I flew in early to keep you in line. Paps picked me up. Tried to time it with your arrival. Good timing as always.” He congratulated himself as usual. He and Tim had met in Basic Training and flown together for over a decade. He was the unofficial white-boy son in the Wallace household.

  “Why in the world would I get cold feet?”

  “Shit, bro, facing the big ‘I Do,’ especially with a hot chick like Connie? Figured you for a definite runner.” Tim sent a wink to Connie where she was coming around the car.

  She accepted Tim’s hug, but John could see that she didn’t quite know what to do with it. They were all Black Hawk crew chiefs for the 5D. Connie had earned her place—no one doubted that, not even Tim since their first Ukraine mission. But she was still…Connie.

  “Hot chick” was the wrong adjective. That’s what he’d always gone for in the past. Hot women, tall, and partial to short dresses revealing legs that went on forever.

  He looked at his fiancée.

  Connie was the classic sitcom-girl-next-door: quiet, unexpectedly pretty with the softest light brown hair in the world, and gold-brown eyes so big that they seemed both innocent and filled with wonder all the time. He’d seen her in a blouse and skirt a grand total of once. She was a camo pants and t-shirt kind of gal who barely came up to his chin. She was also absolutely brilliant.

  He’d been the Number One mechanic in all of SOAR until she came along and showed him how it was really done. Together, they kicked serious helo ass. Command had already started asking when they were going to leave the field and join the airframe development team. Not yet, but it was nice of them to ask.

  “Man doesn’t get this lucky twice in a lifetime, bro.” Tim tried to trip him, but John had been watching for that. “You get that shit, right?”

  “Don’t I know it.” John turned to Connie, because he still couldn’t believe a man could get this lucky even once. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Tim’s attention drift for a second. He casually hooked a foot behind Tim’s ankles and shoved him back into the corn.

  “Now don’t you two go wrecking our crops,” Mama slapped a hand lightly against John’s shoulder before she stepped into his arms.

  All he could do was hold on.

  This was what home felt like, exactly like this. She smelled of the farm and his favorite peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies that she must have been baking pending his arrival. She was where he belonged.

  Except that wasn’t true anymore. He had two homes now.

  And one stepped out of his arms to greet the other.

  “Hello, Mrs. Wallace.” Connie’s shy setting was turned up full and he could see that her self-preservation blast shields were set for fast closure if needed.

  “Oh, none of that now, Connie. Name’s Bee and you know that right well.”

  “I do…Mrs. Wallace.” Then Connie was actually the one to step forward into Mama’s arms as Mama laughed.

  John offered her an eye roll and Connie stuck her tongue out at him over Mama’s shoulder. A very encouraging sign.

  Chapter 3

  Connie didn’t understand. She had learned to accept that there were some things beyond her, but still it rankled that some portion of her was simply…missing, and she couldn’t even see what it was.

  She had hurt this family and herself in the process—though being a loner since Dad’s death when she was twelve, that latter part didn’t worry her. And yet John’s family treated her as if the only curious thing she’d ever done was to get engaged to John. She was made welcome at the big kitchen table as if she’d sat there a hundred times, not three. Her offer to help with the dishes had been readily accepted as if she was family, not a guest.

  It was incomprehensible.

  As evening had turned into night, they’d all moved out onto the porch to sip beers and watch the lightning bugs dance over the back lawn. The talk wandered as lazily as the big fans which dissipated the heat and the mosquitos. It focused on the news of the farm, mostly what was being planted where and why. With Grumps gone, Paps had taken full possession of his role as farm manager and head of the family. The family discussed the changes he was bringing in. Nothing big, but there were some crops that had flourished in Grump’s youth that were no longer as viable with the changes in seed stock, the weather, and the marketplace.

  She had grown up on Army bases and lived and breathed helicopters. It was all a foreign language to her, though she could feel through the arm draped lightly about her shoulders John’s nods of approval about the changes Paps had made. Tim and Larry were farther down the porch trading girl stories.

  “Girls and cars. Same thing every time those two get together,” John whispered to her.

  “Do you miss it?”

  His low chuckle said that she’d been right, that was his earlier place on the porch. He turned enough to kiss her on the temple.

  “Got the best girl anywhere already. Don’t see much point in revisiting any past that glows less than a lightning bug when you’re shining brighter than a sun.”

  “Smooth talker.”

  “Must be how I won your heart.” It was anything but that. Smooth talk was almost as mysterious to her as why alfalfa was preferable to corn in the southwest acreage.

  Connie had never imagined herself living long enough to think about a man in more than the briefest of terms. And the few times she did, she’d imagined a quiet, studious engineer. Instead, Big John Wallace was at the center of every story and launched every laugh that echoed through their flight crew. He lived in a state of innate joy that poured forth in his booming voice and grandiose gestures. It had pushed her away; made it clear that she didn’t belong anyplace near such gusto for life.

  But he’d won her respect by being the finest mechanic she’d ever met. Eventually he’d won her love by…seeing her. By seeing her as she’d never seen herself; worthy of something more than fighting the good fight until some mission went horribly wrong and snuffed her out faster than one of the lightning bug blinks.

  John, with a strong nudge from his sister, had given her a dream that lasted beyond the next mission. It was a gift she had never imagined.

  He’d also given her a gift of family.

  Yet another thing she still couldn’t understand.

  Chapter 4

  “Hey, Knothead.”

  John eased open one eye to see his sister glaring down at him.

  “Hey yourself, Meddler. When did you get in?” Noreen was six-months into her Army training as a medic and it clearly agreed with her. She’d always been slender and the real beauty of the family, but now there was a shine to her that came from being Army fit and loving it.

  “Just now. Where’s Connie?”

  “What?” He opened his other eye and looked at the pillow beside him. No Connie, though it still bore the impression of her head. Barely. It had been smoothed out. He remembered the awesome wedding reception morning wake-up sex, but had fallen back asleep afterward. She had—

  Run again!

  “Goddamn it! She said she wouldn’t!”

  He jolted out of bed.

  Noreen covered her eyes. “Whoa! Too much information, big brother.”

  John flipped the sheet around his hips and struggled to reach his pants draped over the back of a chair while keeping himself covered, but it was tucked in too well on Connie’s side. She’d, of course, made her half of the bed already—to full Army regulations—even with him in it.

  “Ease the Code Red. Her gear is still here.”

  And then he spotted it. A small duffle bag, too small for any normal woman, but Connie wasn’t normal. She was the queen of efficiency—even by Army standards. It still rested beside the dresser he’d meant to clear out for her last night, but forgotten.

&nbs
p; He sat back on the bed with a gasp of relief. Noreen had been almost as devastated as he was when Connie had left the farm so abruptly on Christmas Eve after Grumps died.

  “I’m going to forego the hug until you get yourself dressed. Mama has breakfast waiting.”

  He sniffed the air. Eggs, bacon, and her own warmed sand-plum syrup which meant pancakes as well. Pure heaven.

  “You ready for this, Slacker?” Noreen dropped down to sit on his clothes, knowing full well she was delaying his race to breakfast.

  “Look, Trouble. I can’t get dressed if you’re sitting on my damn clothes.”

  She raised her butt enough to pull out one sock and tossed it to him before settling back down. “Better?”

  “Way!” He pulled it on just to show her who was in charge.

  “So answer the question.”

  “What question?” He knew damn well what question.

  That earned him yesterday’s underwear in his face. He slipped into them under the sheet.

  “What makes you think I’m gonna screw this up? I love her. I’m going to marry her tomorrow. Happily ever after will start immediately after the ceremony.”

  Noreen shrugged uncomfortably.

  “What?”

  “Don’t know. Call it an itch.”

  “Shit. I’ll track her down and ask.”

  Noreen scoffed at him just the way she used to when he’d bring a date home—one Noreen didn’t approve of. It was her “You’re so stupid” scoff. No way was he rising to the bait.

  Or maybe he would. “What?”

  “Don’t you know anything about her? You hit her with a question like that and all you’ll get is the blank mechanic look. You better let me deal with her if you want her to make it to the altar.”

  “You’re saying you know more about my fiancée than I do?”

  “Hello. Woman sitting here on your clothes. Can’t help it. Besides, it’s you. Larry’s golden retriever knows more about women than you do.”