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“I’m thirty-one just before Christmas,” Ridge confessed. “And you don’t need to flatter me. I spent damned near two years in scuba gear, and the mask does nothing for wrinkles.”
“Yeah, I heard Mitch mention that. What did you do?”
Ridge flipped the steaks with practiced ease, thoroughly impressing Raven both with the neatness of his movements and the obvious, understated strength of his forearms. They really weresomething. “I was in the Navy,” he said simply.
“A sailor?” she asked, extremely curious but trying not to show it. Ridge shook his head. “Submarines?”
He closed the grill and looked at her. “Don’t get too hot under the collar or anything,” he warned, “but I was a Navy SEAL.”
Slack-jawed amazement was not an unusual female reaction, so Ridge was used to it, but Raven was thunderstruck. “Wow, that explains the muscles,” she saidsotto voce.
“Huh?”
“Erm... did you train in the jungles?” she asked, feeling the bucket of embarrassment being tipped over her head.
“I was in a few different places,” Ridge replied with a gracious smile, not fooled in the least. “There was a lot of time away, training and on operations.”
Raven adopted a more serious tone. “So, you were...over there?”
The first set of steaks was ready, he judged. “Four times, all to Afghanistan. They must have thought I loved the place.”
“And did you?” she asked, her stomach fluttering at her own sudden audacity.Oh God, please don’t be offended.
Ridge stopped grilling for a moment, looked at Raven and said, “It’s a very beautiful country, especially in the winter. If things were better there,” he said rather heavily, “it would be a tourist hotspot.” More steaks hit the grill with an impressive burst of flame. “With the situation so unstable, it’s hard to see where development money might come from. We’ve certainly thrown enough cash at the place, but it doesn’t seem to have done much good.”
“Do you think you’ll be going back?” she asked.
Ridge managed to laugh, shaking his head. “Forgive the profanity, Raven, buthellno!” She giggled, finding that her fingertips had landed on his upper arm for some reason. “They’ve had quite enough of me. I left the service at the end of my last tour there, and there ain’t no way they’re pulling me back in,” he said, mimicking Al Pacino’s gathered fists.
“Maggie’s daddy was in the service, back when we were kids,” Raven told him. Aiming for a medium-rare steak this time, Ridge flipped the meat a little earlier than before. “They transferred him down here to Laughlin Air Force Base where she says he was helping to train pilots.”
“Yeah, it’s a big training facility,” Ridge remembered. “I think I probably flew in and out of every military base in the country at some point.” He mimed this shuttling back and forth, his face capturing the exasperation — experienced by so many in the armed forces — of ceaseless change and uncertainty. “What about you, how come you’re down here?”
The steaks were done; Ridge threw the remaining franks onto the grill. “Well, I guess I’m just...” She paused, looking up at him, willing to tell him about herself after his own openness and honesty, but somehow scared that he’d judge her. It would be easy to sound like a rootless vagrant, but she quickly reminded herself that her life’s journey had, thus far, largely been decided by others. “I was born near Chicago and we lived in different places in Illinois growing up, but in the last couple of years, most of my reasons for being there disappeared.”
“I know what you mean,” Ridge said compassionately. “Pendale is getting less attractive by the week.”
Without thinking, Raven said, “You’re not going to up and leave right after I’ve met you, are you?”
He chuckled, that carefree sound, deep and resonant, like a California redwood laughing. “Not likely,” he explained. “I have friends here, my doctors are all in San Antonio, and I haven’t finished renovating my house.”
“You don’t look like you need a doctor.”
Ridge raised an eyebrow. Raven immediately loved his curiously amused facial expression; she began to think up ways to provoke it. “If you could see my lungs, you’d think different,” he confided. “I was involved in an explosion, and the pressure wave just beat the hell out of my respiratory system.” Raven was thunderstruck, yet again. “They did some repairs and I was very lucky. These days, I run more to exercise my lungs than my legs.”
“Is that why you left? You were injured?” she asked quietly.
Ridge used tongs to transfer the last franks to the serving plate Raven held for him. “That, and other things. Four combat tours was enough. Plus, I wasn’t sure anymore that we were doing the right thing in Afghanistan.” He seemed comfortable enough discussing these things, Raven noted, but she was very wary of opening old wounds, both the psychological and the physical.
They walked together back into the house, where Wes was near inconsolable following a calamitous fifth inning. In the kitchen, Raven leaned close and said, “I’m sorry if it upsets you to talk about what happened over there. I don’t mean to pry.”
Ridge turned, and what Raven saw simply melted her heart. It was the most beautifully serene, compassionately forgiving smile. It seemed to come from deep within, a place which held great patience and love. In one simple smile, he had told her not to worry, that he wasn’t offended, that he enjoyed talking with her, that he liked her. “You’re a sweetheart,” he said simply and brought a big plate of food into the living room.
Raven let her head spin for a while and decided to head to the bathroom and collect herself a little. She breathed deeply and looked at herself in the mirror, trying to will her brain back to reality and away from thoughts of Ridge’s muscular arms. How easily, how quickly, she thought to herself, he could have picked her up and pinned her hard against the wall outside while he kissed her... Or against the sink she was now leaning on, with her legs wrapped around his waist and his mouth moving hungrily from her lips down to her neck, while his hands slid up under her shirt...
God, girl! Just pee already and get back out there before people start to wonder what on Earth you’re doing in here!
The Texas Rangers were rallying, she found as she returned, slightly jelly-legged, to the living room. Glued to the TV, literally on the edge of their seats, the three men were willing their team to the startling comeback needed to overhaul the Athletics’ early lead. Raven took her seat next to Ridge, who smiled quickly at her before returning his laser-beam focus to the game.
