Carolina Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

Operating Procedure. The brass recognized that those lucky enough to return from combat just wanted to find their families and go home.
    Luke shouldered his bag and climbed down from the bus into the milling, calling, crying, kissing crowd.
    “Do you see him?”
    “Dad-deee . . .”
    “Steven! Steve!”
    He was bumped, jostled, and thanked by complete strangers. He stopped to shake hands with Cody Burrows’s parents, saw Ortega stagger as his tiny girlfriend launched from four feet away into his arms.
    “Welcome home, honey.”
    “There he is!”
    Danny Hill’s wife cried into his neck, their infant daughter crushed between them. Hill bowed his head against his wife’s hair, his face raw with emotion.
    Luke blinked and looked away from their private moment.
    He had served seven deployments in ten years. He’d never sought—or missed—the distraction of a family. But watching the joyful reunions all around him, he felt . . .
Not sorry.
    Alone.
    A familiar whistle pierced the hubbub.
    Luke stiffened like a dog on point. “Dad?”
    And heard it again, the same shrill note that always announced his father’s return, whether it was from Beirut or the grocery store.
    Luke pivoted, scanning the sea of people waving signs and flags and cell phones, searching for his father’s face.
    There.
The red Vietnam vet ball cap, the shock of gray hair, the tanned face, and faded blue eyes.
Dad.
    And big brother Matt, tall and broad with big hands and weathered jeans, his normally serious face split in a wide smile.
    Luke started forward, an answering grin working its way from deep inside. His gaze dropped. His throat constricted.
Was that . . . Between them . . .
    Tess Fletcher had always been short. Now, since the accident, she seemed to have shrunk even further. But her eyes were brilliant, her smile as warm as ever as she waved one hand above her head. The other rested on a cane. “Luke! Over here!”
    He reached her in three strides.
“Mom.”
    He put his arms around her slender shoulders, careful not to hug too hard. Small as she was, Tess had always been the family’s rock. Their anchor. But now she felt so frail.
    She squeezed back hard, her arms, her love, as strong as ever.
    “Hey.” Luke swallowed and drew back to smile into her face. A little paler than before, he thought. A little more lined. “You look great.”
    Tess ran her fingers through her short cap of dark red hair. “Do you like it?”
    Luke blinked. “Sure.” He wasn’t sure. His mother’s hair had been salt-and-pepper as far back as he could remember. “What does Dad think?”
    “It’s all good.” Tom Fletcher winked. “I get to sleep with a redhead for the first time in forty years.” He grabbed Luke in a one-armed hug. “Good to have you back, son.”
    Matt was next, dragging Luke into the family circle, gripping his hand, pounding his back. “You look like shit.”
    “You smell like fish.”
    They beamed at one another, reassured.
    “I didn’t expect to see you here,” Luke said.
    “Brought somebody else to see you, too.” Matt reached down with one hand, nudging the somebody forward, producing her from behind his back like a magician with a reluctant rabbit.
Hey, presto, it’s your daughter.
    Suspicious blue eyes regarded Luke from under the brim of a United States Marine Corps fatigue cap. His eyes, looking back at him from his daughter’s thin, unsmiling face.
    Emotion seized him by the throat. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t grab her. From her point of view, they were practically strangers. She didn’t, he remembered painfully, like to be touched.
    But she was wearing his hat, the eight-pointed utility cover he’d given her before he went back to Afghanistan.
    Maybe that meant something.
    He observed the way she hung back, her skinny arms crossed behind her.
    Yeah, and maybe not.
     • • • 
     
    T AYLOR HELD HER breath, waiting to see what he would do. Luke, her . . . Well, her dad, even though