“Well if you didassistme in that situation, I saved your ass from drowning in the lake when we were twelve.”
“I thought the ice would hold,” Aldo shrugged with a white-toothed grin.
“We were grounded for all of January for that one.”
“Our moms were so pissed. So what does Claire think of Harper?”
Luke bit back a sigh. He knew his friend wouldn’t wait long to pry. Sometimes he had to remind himself not to shut everyone out. “She loves her. Thinks she’s just what I need.”
“Is she?”
“What I need is peace and quiet. Harper is anything but that.”
Aldo laughed. “So why is she here?”
Luke shrugged as he took the on ramp for the highway. “It started as a favor. The girl had no place to go and no way to get there.”
“And then?”
Luke cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve met her.”
“I have. Think she’ll stay?”
Luke shook his head. “Nah. She’s got things to do, places to go. Six months is a long time to ask someone you just met to wait.”
“It’s a long time to ask anyone to wait. She would, you know.”
“I don’t know if I’d want her to.”
“Bullshit.”
“Kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Where do you think I learned it?”
It was the truth. Despite the fact that Mrs. Moretta went to church every other Sunday, she had the mouth of a sailor who retired and started a new career trucking. She had never shied away from a healthy four-letter word when the situation called for it.
“Speaking of women, Harper seems to think you have a thing for Gloria.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“You’ve had a thing for anything with a nice pair of legs and big brown eyes.”
“Where do you think I got my type?”
“So if you’ve been carrying this torch since high school, how is Glenn still alive?”
“I ask myself that every day. The deployments made it easier to think about something else. Gave me something to focus on.”
Luke knew exactly what Aldo meant.
His friend shifted in his seat. “I gotta say. I’m thinking about retiring. This is number four and I want to make it my last.”
“Really?”
“We’ve been doing this since high school. That’s twelve years of packing up and moving out and hoping we get to come back after the job’s done. I’m ready to stay put. I want to put more time into some engineering projects. And then I want to make a nice girl the next Mrs. Moretta.”
“Jesus, Aldo.” Just the thought of it made Luke start to sweat. “When the hell did you decide all this?
