“Definitely not.”
Ten minutes later, Kathleen emerged from the private stairway, eyes sparkling, face glowing with radiance. Jack followed right behind her, a possessive, smug look for anyone who had the courage to make direct eye contact. Knowing smiles and a few chuckles met his ears. One of the women near the sink picked up a glass and tapped it with a piece of silverware – the traditional wedding cue for newlyweds to kiss. Soon others had picked up the cue, and the kitchen was a cacophony of ringing glass.
Jack pulled Kathleen into a steamy, soul-searing kiss until the clattering faded away. Only then did he release her and smile wickedly at their audience.
“Atta boy, Jack,” laughed Kathleen’s sister Erin. “Show ‘em how it’s done, Katie.”
Kathleen blushed to the roots of her hair. Jack gave her an affectionate pat on the backside and a kiss on the forehead. “You’re sure about this?”
“No,” she admitted. “But it feels right.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “It does. Now grab another tray, woman. We’ve got guests to tend to.”
Chapter Sixteen
September 2015
Pine Ridge
“You’ve got a guest.”
Jack opened his eyes, finding himself once again in his private hospital room. It was getting easier to make the transition from the past to the present. He’d been going back and forth for a couple of days between an alert, wakeful state and floating in a world of what once was. The realism of the dreams was disorienting at first, but he was learning to adjust.
He focused his gaze past the nurse, onto the tall figure in jeans and a black leather jacket. Jack blinked a few times, thinking maybe he was still caught in the past. But no, this had to be real, because if he was reliving a memory, the man’s black hair wouldn’t be sprinkled with gray and he wouldn’t have crow’s feet around those pitch-black eyes.
“I’ll be damned. Jed Baker. What the hell are you doing here?”
Jed grinned down at him. “I came to pay my last respects.”
Jack snorted, then drew a hand to his chest when even that tiny, sudden movement felt painful. “I’m not dead yet.”
“Uh huh, I can see that.”
“Looks like you made the trip for nothing,” he smirked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Jed walked farther into the room, looking a lot older than the first time Jack had seen him. He still had that same swagger, that same no-nonsense glint in his dark eyes that Jack had seen forty years ago when Jed Baker and his team pulled his ass out of that hellhole in Vietnam after two years as a POW.
“All these years ya been braggin’ about that Pub of yours, tellin’ me I should come up for a visit,” Jed said, shaking his head. “And when I finally get there, your boy Jake tells me you landed your ass in the hospital.”
“Wasn’t part of the plan, but shite happens.”
“Damn straight it does,” Jed agreed. “Seen a fair amount of it myself.”
Jack nodded. They’d kept in touch over the years. Not often, but enough to know the major events in each other’s lives. Jack knew, for example, that Jed had four sons: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He also knew that like him, Jed had lost his first wife, Ginny, when his kids were still young.
“How are the boys?”
“Still wild as hell,” Jed chuckled. “But men now, with families of their own, just like yours.”
“Time flies.”
“Hell yeah it does,” Jed agreed.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Pull up a chair and sit a spell.”
Jed cocked a brow. “Sit a spell?”
“Sorry,” Jack said, his eyes glittering with amusement. “My redneck is a little rusty.”
Jed snorted and sat down, stretching out his booted foot. “Better than that bull shite you speak out your Irish arse.”
Jack laughed, careful not to pull anything. “It’s damn good to see you, Jed.”
“You too, Jack.”
“How long are you in town?”
“Just the day. Claire and I are doing a cross country train trip. Figured we’d do a little sightseeing, take the scenic route to the station in New York City. She talked me into one of those damn honeymoon suites in the Poconos with the hot tub shaped like a champagne glass.” He grunted, clearly not as thrilled with the idea as his wife.
Jack sympathized. He’d never quite understood the allure of that either, but apparently a lot of people did. It was novel, different. He and Kathleen had been to places like that often enough, short romantic getaways without the kids. All those special amenities were nice, but it was the time alone with Kathleen that he’d treasured. They might not have made it up there for their honeymoon as originally planned, but Jack made a point of stealing her away for a long weekend every year. Those couple of days, when it was just the two of them, away from the kids and the pub and the rest of the world, were some of the best days of his life.
If he had only known there would be so few of them... “Treasure every moment, Jed.”