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But she frowned because now she was craving a blasted Peanut Buster Parfait.
Alana forced herself to tune back into dictating her notes, which sadly meant mentioning other foods that the retiring chief master sergeant was going to have to cut back on. Honey-barbecued ribs, slabs of cherry cheesecake and deluxe hot fudge sundaes that, according to the base dietitian, were on the sergeant’s menu multiple times a week.
She’d have to figure out a way to convince the chief that those particular meal choices didn’t play nice with his potentially deadly hypertension, sky-high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes. She would give him the gentle lecture, dotted with some lighthearted foodie humor, so that he wouldn’t tuck tail and run when she laid out that there had to be some serious changes if he wanted to live past the age of forty-five.
Ironic, since thatserious changespart sort of applied to her, too. Not the food selections, though, but rather for her late husband. She loved Jack. God, she loved him. She had married him, made plans to have a family with him, and he’d died in an IED explosion twelve thousand, four hundred and thirty-six miles from home. From her.
It had taken months and months just for Jack’s death to really sink in. Even longer for her to grasp that what she felt about his life and death wasn’t going away. That nasty mix of so many emotions. The love glopped together with, well, the rest of it.
The worst of it.
She had no doubts, none, that Egan was metaphorically chowing down on that particular gloppy dish as well. She had seen it in his face earlier today, and it was as strong and raw as it had been three years ago when they’d stood over Jack’s grave in the pouring rain while his coffin had been lowered into the ground.
Once, before the emotional glop, Egan and she would have greeted each other with real smiles. Real warmth. Real everything since they’d both loved Jack. But the realness was gone, replaced by...
She wasn’t sure exactly what.
Definitely some awkwardness. Then, there was some girded loins and walking on eggshells. There was that “never going to heal” wound in his eyes that she was certain was mirrored in hers. On those rare occasions when they saw each other, that was the norm now.
Too bad nipple circumference was also in the proverbial mix.
She groaned, cursing herself for blurting that out. It was the sort of thing to joke about with girl pals and close siblings. Not with her dead husband’s best friend.
Alana took the final turn to Emerald Creek just as her phone rang, and she groaned again when she saw the caller. Tilly, Jack’s mom. She answered it, of course, on speaker. Well, she answered it after she took a deep breath. Girded loins and yes, even some walking on eggshells were standard operating procedure for Tilly, too, because her former mother-in-law was a reminder of Jack.
“Tilly,” she greeted, trying to make her voice seem as if she weren’t dreading this call.
“Well, did you talk to Egan?” Tilly immediately asked.
“I did, and unfortunately, he has to work the day of the life celebration. He won’t be able to attend.”
The sound that Tilly made was of disappointment, and it came through loud and clear. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She paused a moment. “Maybe I can try to call his stepmom and see if she can arrange to get him the day off.”
“No,” Alana couldn’t say fast enough.
Then, she had to come up with something else that wouldn’t spell out that Egan likely didn’thaveto work but would choose to do that so he wouldn’t have to put himself through what was essentially a sad, horrible trip down memory lane.
“Audrey’s not in Egan’s chain of command,” Alana tried. “And besides, he wouldn’t want that kind of special treatment. It wouldn’t play well with the morale in his squadron.”
Alana couldn’t swear on a Bible any part of that was the gospel truth, but she thought that was probably how Egan would feel. She was already on the hot seat for this life celebration, no way around that. She’d be front and center in attendance so that everyone could get a gander at the hero’s widow. However, she couldn’t blame Egan for wanting to spare himself.
Tilly made another sound, this time of mild agreement over the “chain of command and morale” argument. “All right, then I’ll just talk to Egan myself and see if I can convince him to rearrange his schedule. Or maybe I’ll ask him for the dates he’s available and change the life celebration to whatever works for him. I want him to do it since he’ll have a lot of funny stories to tell about when Jack and he were kids.”
Alana nearly tried to talk her out of that as well, but she decided to let Egan deal with it. He could probably do a better job of saying no than she could. “He’ll be at work now so you’ll likely have to wait until tonight to call him.”
“Will do,” Tilly agreed. She paused again. “Uh, how did your visit go with him?”
“Okay,” Alana settled for saying. Sheesh, she couldn’t get more wishy-washy than that.
“It’s been a while since you’ve seen Egan so I suspect you two did some catching up on what’s going on in your lives?” Tilly pressed.
“Some.” All right, so wishy-washy was going up a notch, after all. “Egan seems busy,” she added.And bitter-ish, Alana mentally tacked on to that when she remembered him tossing Colleen’s letter. Heck, she was bitter-ish about the letter, too. “He asked how I’ve been, and I told him about the virtual dating.”
Silence for a couple of moments from Tilly. “How’s that going?” asked in the same tone of someone questioning a toddler who’d just made an unwise choice to eat an entire sleeve of Oreos.
“Badly,” Alana admitted, and she made darn sure not to blurt out anything to do with nipples.
“Obviously, that means you’re not ready to move on,” Tilly promptly concluded.
