LITMIR.BIZ

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polymer wrapping on his left arm and drawn a big-busted, half-naked warrior princess, detailed enough that Vance had been forced to beg his cousin Baxter this morning for some help in disguising the X-rated image. He was meeting an impressionable young person, after all.

      Grimacing, Vance glanced down at his cousin’s solution, then back at Baxter himself, who was sitting across the table, nursing a club soda. “Really?” he said to the other man, not bothering to blunt the edge to his voice. “A tat sleeve? That’s the best you could come up with?”

      Baxter blinked. In their youth, people had mistaken the two of them for twins and they still had the same blond hair and blue eyes. But while Vance sported a soldier’s barber cut and casual clothes, his one-year-younger cousin had a salon style and looked the epitome of his nickname, All Business Baxter, in a conservative suit and tie. His gaze dropped to the nylon fabric stretched over Vance’s cast. “I say it’s inspired. And I could have made a worse choice, you know. As it is, you almost blend in.”

      Vance grunted. He supposed Bax was right. The sleeve’s design wasn’t demonic, or worse, straight out of a prison documentary. Instead, the images were intricate and colorful weavings of tribal signs, tropical flora and curling waves. Nothing to scare off a child.

      “Snuggle up closer with Teddy if you’re still worried,” Baxter advised. “Then your new little friend won’t even notice them.”

      It wasn’t embarrassment but annoyance that burned Vance’s skin. “Shut up,” he said, adjusting the toddler-size stuffed bear on his lap. A big blue satin bow was tied around its neck. “And remind me why you’re not at work again?” His cousin managed the numbers end of the family business, Smith & Sons Foods, that grew avocados and citrus in a fertile area about sixty miles southeast of here. “Shouldn’t you be counting packing crates or something?”

      Baxter tilted his head and seemed to consider the question. “Good point. I am very busy. But I’m also the only relative who gets more than the rare two-line email from you. My three sentences confer a certain responsibility upon me.”

      Vance looked toward the ocean to avoid the censure in the other man’s gaze. The restaurant was situated at one end of Southern California’s Crescent Cove, a gentle curve of land that created a shallow cup for the gray-blue Pacific water. Today’s bright July sun scattered gold discs onto its dappled surface. A beautiful sight, and as different as could be from the stark landscape of Afghanistan that he’d been gazing upon for months, but he didn’t find it soothing. There was that kid in his future. Four weeks playing father figure to a stranger.

      “‘Confer a certain responsibility,’” he muttered, taking his uneasiness out on his cousin. “You’ve turned pompous, you know that?”

      “It must be those sixteen hours a day I sit behind a desk,” Baxter replied without heat. “Not everyone has spent the last half year or so dodging IEDs and getting in the middle of firefights.”

      “It’s my job.” He was a combat medic, and though it wasn’t what he’d originally planned for himself, Vance held no regrets about being the one to aid his fallen brothers on the battlefield. He did it damn well. Lives had been saved.

      And some not.

      “Uh-oh,” Baxter said now. “Stay with me, fella. You look ready to bolt.”

      “I’m not going anywhere.” He could still hear his grandfather’s voice in his head. A man never breaks a promise. And Vance lived by that. His fingers absently played with the ends of the stuffed bear’s satin ribbon. “When her dad was dying in that godforsaken valley, I swore to him I’d give Layla a vacation to remember at Beach House No. 9.”

      The injured colonel had carried the details of his planned trip in the interior webbing of his combat helmet, where it was common for soldiers to tuck valued letters and precious photos. Like Vance, he had learned of Crescent Cove from Griffin Lowell, an embedded journalist who had waxed poetic about his childhood summers at the place to anyone who’d listen. Those idyllic reminiscences had served as an escape for all of them from the drudgery and brutality of war, but must have struck a particular chord with the officer, because he’d arranged the cottage rental for his upcoming leave and stashed the particulars with the photo he carried of his little girl.

      Hiding behind a straw-and-mud wall, while Vance was doing his best to stanch the bleeding from the older man’s multiple wounds, Colonel Samuel Parker had one thing on his mind—his daughter. As death closed in, he’d extracted from Vance a promise to act as stand-in tour guide during Layla’s month-to-remember. Vance considered it a point of honor to obey the good man’s final order.

      “Hey.” Baxter jerked in his chair, his attention riveted over Vance’s shoulder. “Is that...?” He wiped a hand across his mouth. “It couldn’t be.”

      Alarmed by his cousin’s sudden loss of urbanity, Vance glanced around. “Oh,” he said, relaxing. “It’s Addy. You remember Addison March—her mom is friends with our mothers, she grew up down the road from our ranch—”

      “I know who she is,” Baxter interjected. “But why is she here? Why is she coming toward us?”

      Vance once again glanced over his shoulder. Addy, a small, curvy blonde dressed in a pair of flat sandals and calf-length pants, was crossing the deck toward their table. She didn’t look the least bit worthy of the thread of distress in his cousin’s voice. “I hired her to act as a nanny. I couldn’t very well be alone with a little girl. I ran into Addy when I was checking out the cove a couple of days ago and—”

      “But you said you’d never heard of this place before that reporter mentioned it. I’ve never heard of it before. Of all the gin joints,” the other man muttered, pushing out of his chair with agitated movements. “I’ve got to go.”

      “Hello,” a female voice said from behind Vance’s back. Addy had arrived. “Leaving already, Baxter?”

      His cousin froze and his panicked expression would have been comical if it wasn’t so out of character. “You feel okay?” Vance asked him.

      “I’m fine. Fine,” Baxter muttered, sinking back into his seat. “Never been better. Not a care in the world.”

      “Whatever you say.” Vance gestured toward one of the free chairs at the table. “Sit down, Addy. You’re right on time. Layla should be here any minute.”

      “With her uncle?” the young woman asked.

      “I suppose.” The arrangements to meet today had been made via email through Phil Parker, the contact he’d been given by Layla’s father. If you asked Vance, the man came off a bubble short of level, his often-vague replies free of punctuation and peppered with irrelevant references to kismet, fate and surfing. Each email ended with namaste, whatever the hell that meant.

      “The stuffed animal’s a nice touch,” Addy said.

      The mention of Teddy irritated Vance all over again, so he slipped the photo he carried out of the breast pocket of his sports shirt. Yeah, he’d sort of dressed up for the kid, too. His best jeans and a short-sleeved button-down, straight from the dry cleaner’s plastic. He slapped the picture onto the tabletop. “Her father had this with him. It’s what gave me the idea.”

      Layla Parker stared up at the three of them. She was sitting on a short flight of concrete steps, one of her knobby little-kid knees sporting scabs. Her long hair was in pigtails tied below each ear, revealing a wide forehead over big brown eyes. She appeared to be approximately ten years old and she stared into the camera, a little smile curving her lips as her skinny arms hugged a potbellied teddy bear to her middle.

      “Ah,” Addy said, smiling. “Cute.”

      “Yeah.” Her dad’s fingers had been trembling when he fished out the picture. Isn’t she beautiful, Vance? You’ve got to do something for her. You’ve got to do something for my girl. What choice had there been? The husky emotion in the mortally wounded man’s voice had impelled Vance to say he would.

      He’d

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