Page 77 of A Texas Hero

His father picked up in his usual way, now that he had decided to pay for caller ID. “Bon Giorno, mio.”

“Hey, Pops. How are you?”

“It is my knee this time. The doctor says he has to replace. Is the job over? Tu Madre wants to know if you’re coming home for Christmas.”

Damn. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d likely be in Asia at Christmastime. His parents were going to have a fit.

“I don’t know yet,” Archer said. “I’m going to Asia now. A diplomat there needs a team of agents. It’s a good opportunity and I was given the job.”

He never told his parents about the way he’d screwed up his first assignment. Pride kept him from doing so, but even more than that, he never wanted his folks to worry.

His father groaned. “And I will be the one to have to tell your madre.”

“I’ll tell her,” Archer said, not looking forward to it.

He kept thinking about Zoey and how much she would love to have another Christmas with her mother. Archer was going to squander yet another Christmas away from his family for the sake of a job.

His father sighed deeply. “Well, at least you are not in a war zone.”

It reminded him of when his father had said, “At least you did not lose your entire leg.” Always the optimist, his dad. When he had a headache, he’d say, “At least I don’t have a brain tumor.” If he got the flu, he’d say, “at least I don’t have cancer.” Archer figured he’d inherited his father’s sense of what counted as doom and what didn’t. And whenever you had a breath left in your body, no matter how bad things were, there was hope.

“Right,” Archer said. “Look on the bright side.”

“How is the foot?”

“Much better. I’m getting used to it. Believe it or not, it’s starting to feel like a part of me.”

Joey had helped. He’d reminded Archer of how blessed they both were to have the technology available to them. They could both live full lives.

This morning, he’d forgotten he was missing his foot. Amazingly, the lack of his foot did not at all affect his ability to have sex with a beautiful woman. Turned out, he didn’t need the foot for that extracurricular activity, and was doing just fine without it. Zoey had been great and accepting of it all, never making a big deal out of it. To think he worried she’d feel sorry for him. Like him, she hadn’t missed his foot. She’d been far more concerned about another part of his anatomy.

“Anyway, Pops, I should go. I have to start packing up the apartment. I may as well give up my lease.”

“Before you go, here is your mother.”

Seconds away from a clean getaway!

“Hey, Mama.”

“There is a job here you could do. There are a lot of them. I looked, I asked.”

“Here we go again.”

“Do not say no until you hear! There is a Christmas tree farm looking for workers.”

A Christmas tree farm? Archer sighed. He didn’t even own a single flannel shirt.

“Ma, I really like my job.”

“But it sound dangerous!”

“It’s not.”

He talked with his mother for a few minutes and assured her he’d get home to his small town in Connecticut soon, then hung up before she could bring up the subject of Asia. He didn’t want to argue with his folks, but this was his life, and he had to live it on his own terms. There was no way he could go home after the adrenaline-fueled life he’d led and be a tree farmer.

Archer took off his prosthesis, hopped in the shower, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and went through his paperwork to find his lease agreement and the contact information. Before he could dial his landlord, the doorbell rang.

Strange, he never had company.