by Kira Blakely
“I get she feels some personal responsibility for Maurice’s company.”
“That ain’t it, not even half of it. You have a girl with a big, huge heart and she still hasn’t asked to go home yet. I think you have a chance to make this right, but you gonna tell me what actually happened. I figure two heads are better than one on this.”
I snorted so hard I almost choked on my breakfast. “Are you saying that I can’t fix this on my own? I can fix the image of anyone on Earth, no matter how much smack’s in their veins or what club they made an ass of themselves at. A Twitter mistake is no match for me.”
Leonard stroked his chin. “That’s all about image, sir. There’s a difference between that and improving the reality. Belle knows you, and she wants something sincere from you. Now what actually happened?”
I stiffened and shoved my bowl away. “I respect you, Leonard. You’re probably my best servant, but some things don’t go further, even with us.”
“So, I’m not completely the Alfred to your Batman?”
“Hardly, and I’m no Dark Knight,” I added before he could take the shot and make the joke. “She just pushes so fucking much, wants things I can’t give her.”
“Does she really or is it just uncomfortable to give them?” he asked, playing armchair shrink like some fucking Haitian Dr. Phil.
“There are sides to me she’s already seen far too much of,” I replied, repressing the shudder at all the things that had happened, at the blood on my knuckles as that asshole’s nose broke, at the medal I never looked at. So much was there, and if she really saw it—saw the marks it had left on me—she’d be out the fucking door anyway.
“Or maybe it hasn’t been enough. I know what I saw yesterday out on the yacht. You’re different with Belle, sir, better. I think this is the real thing or could be. I’m lucky to have my Jamayla, always have been. I’d hoped for a long time you’d find a girl like that and maybe now you have but…”
“What?” I groaned, impatient with his self-righteous spiel.
“You won’t if you keep running and only show her the walls you want to show her. You don’t know everything about her yet, but she hasn’t seen everything you have to offer either. Be honest with her, do something big for her to show you’re sorry.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Then you’ll lose her, and that would be the biggest mistake of your life.”
I shook my head. “There’s one bigger than anything, Leonard, and even you know that.”
***
Damn Leonard and his talks. His advice had pounded in my head all day until inspiration struck and I made the calls and arrangements. Belle wasn’t the type of girl to be swayed by just a new diamond necklace or the latest iPhone. Frankly, if she had, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about her. I’d had flings or drunken hookups back in L.A. with more than my fair share of bimbos and golddiggers. In between my usual subs, I’d be bored and entertain the newest ditzy CW or Freeform starlet on my arm for a date or two. None of them were like her; none of them had her resolve or her spirit. None of them would dare talk back to me like she had while cleaning my wounds.
Belle was special, and I didn’t know if I could be the man she wanted, but I was fucking well going to try it. I hadn’t run from snipers in Iraq or mad bombers, and I wasn’t about to turn chicken shit because of some girl.
Even if I didn’t want Belle to leave me when she saw everything I was hiding.
Then again, might as well tear that Band-Aid off if I didn’t have any other choice.
But the gift I’d gotten for her would take a day or so of set up. I hadn’t given them a hell of a lot of notice, and even with tons of money, there were things that even I couldn’t swing. That meant I’d have to try and talk with her first, and then see if the gift could win her over fully tomorrow.
I approached the door to her room with my blood pounding through my veins. She was pissed, I got that, but I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say. I could talk the panties off a girl in five minutes, but this wasn’t about charm. This wasn’t about getting someone ready to party. This was about trying to make up for what an ass I was being with someone who was already wounded and, even before the service, I hadn’t had a lot of experience with that.
Knocking on the door, I waited as I listened to the sound of a chair scraping on the wood floor. “Belle, I know you had dinner already in your room, but I was wondering if you’d like to go on a walk on the beach with me. It’s gorgeous under the moonlight. You really haven’t heard the sound of the surf unless you hear it fresh on the beach.”
The door pulled open ferociously. She was there, staring at me with those blue eyes, now so like ice. Crap. “So, that’s it. You walk out on me after sex like I’m your call girl, and we’re just going to give it twelve hours and have a moonlit stroll, holding hands?’
“I’m sorry for what happened. I… can I come in?”
She paused and looked toward her bed, probably wondering whether I was trying to trick her. Again, not my style. I only wanted the willing and had no fucking understanding of guys like those punks at the bar who didn’t feel the same. Besides, this wasn’t about sex, at least not right now. I understood that I needed to make things right here, and I was trying. She could be in a damn bowling alley for all it mattered; we’d be about as likely to do it as we were now.
“I just want to talk. I didn’t think you’d want to do it in the hallway in case any of the staff overheard.”
Belle’s expression softened. “I forget this place has staff, I mean, outside of Leonard and Mrs. Johnson.” She stepped aside to let me in. “I don’t think this conversation should be anything but between us.”
I nodded as I stepped through the threshold and sat at her desk chair just to emphasize my point that this was about a talk and only that. “I shouldn’t have left you last night.”
Belle didn’t sit on the bed or the sedan chair. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and tapped one foot on the floor before her. “No, you shouldn’t have. All I did was touch your shirt and ask about why you always wore it. That wasn’t an excuse to make me feel like a whore.”
I swallowed hard at that. That was the last thing Belle could ever be and the last thing I’d ever want her to think about herself, even if I was the jerk who’d put that thought in her head. “It’s not about you. It’s me.”
Belle shook her head. “That was the kind of line my college boyfriend used to feed me. I need to understand more than that. Is this how it always is? Is this about landmines? I feel like I’m going to set off a damn trip wire.”
“No, it’s…”
I couldn’t continue. Her words struck me hard, like a punch to the gut. Even though I was sitting in the white, clean bedroom before me, I wasn’t there anymore. No, I was back in Iraq, back in the grueling heat and the checks to my boots to make sure a damn scorpion hadn’t crawled in it. The jeep was rolling through the desert on the regular recon mission until we hit the wrong spot, until…
There was a concussion so loud that I couldn’t hear, couldn’t focus.
Blinking, I tried to crawl out of what remained of the vehicle to my friends. When I got to Jimmy… dear fuck, was that his arm?
“No!”
Belle’s arms were around my shoulders then and it snapped me back from the flashback. I was shaking and the sweat was pouring down my forehead. I closed my eyes, trying to get some breath and sense into me, and then I was there again in the desert, the blood of my friends all over me.
“No, Jesus Christ!”
Belle cupped my cheek, and I opened my eyes. “Drake, look at me. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. You know that, right? You know that you’re safe now. It’s back there and it can’t hurt you anymore.”
I took in a shuddering breath but focused on those blue eyes, ones that shone like sapphires. That icy coolness was gone from them now, and I wished I could feel relieved about that. All I felt like right now was a burden. But I
had to sit there, had to take in deep measured breaths to match her own as the flashback waved over me and faded. Belle’s kind words and her kind eyes were the only anchors I could cling to in order to keep from slipping back to that fucking hellhole of a desert.
“Shhh,” she said, stroking my hair. “It’s all right. You’re here in the Bahamas with me. You’re not there, Drake. You never have to be there again.”
I swallowed and set my forehead against hers. “You shouldn’t have to see me like that.”
“I don’t mind. I understand… I think more than a lot of people who know you that the service took a lot out of you.”
“That’s an understatement, but that’s why,” I said, reluctantly slipping out of her grip and sitting back up in my chair. “It’s why I’m a Dom. I need to have control over something because my mind keeps dragging me back there whether I want it to or not. It’s why I hide all my medals in a footlocker, why I try not to talk about it. It’s why I don’t…” I trailed off, not wanting to talk about what lay under the clothes I wore.
“Were you badly injured?” she asked, nodding toward my eyebrow. “I know you have that scar, but I wasn’t sure if you were sent home for injuries, at least it wasn’t in your dossier. I realized when I saw the Purple Heart that it had to be more than a flesh wound to earn that.”
“I didn’t earn it,” I replied, an automatic reaction. I was no hero and the medal wasn’t something I deserved, not in a million years. “But, yeah, an IED explosion and it wasn’t pretty. It took me about six months to be able to walk normally again. It was a complete sonofabitch. I was lucky though,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “I got to come home at all. Christ, I was twenty-three and had a cath bag attached to me for the better part of a year in a V.A. hospital. But I was the lucky one.”
“Your whole team?” she asked, the concern coloring her words.
“Yeah, every damn one of them, and not a one deserved to die like that,” I said, rubbing at the top of my right knee. “I keep everything covered, and I should have explained more to you about it. It’s not awful but it’s not exactly pretty either, and I just need the privacy. I think about what happened in Iraq too much…”
“And you’re right back there,” she said, leaning forward to kiss me.
I was surprised at the tenderness of her kiss. It wasn’t some hungry make out, no full-out porno tongue, but it was sweet and intimate, something I needed right then with the flashback still so fresh in my mind. It wasn’t even a kiss, not really, I realized. It was a promise; Belle was swearing, at least for now, to stick with my fucked-up self.
God help us both.
She pulled back and stroked my hair. “I’m sorry I pressed. I should have figured it out, put the pieces together better.”
“And it doesn’t give me some special license to be a dick to you. I shouldn’t have either, but it’s… it’s too much sometimes.”
She nodded and then stood, crooking her arm out for me. “Then maybe we don’t have to talk about it. After all, I heard that the moonlit beach and the crashing waves are something I just have to see to believe. Will you take me, Drake?”
“Princess,” I said, regaining my usual swagger, even if most of it was bravado. “I’ll take you anywhere.”
***
Belle
His hand was firm and strong covering mine. Drake was a massive, hulking guy. I never thought about it much. Even after a few days, it was easy to get used to someone else. Even with his tall 6’4 or so frame and his broad shoulders, I easily forgot how big he was. After all, I tended to give back as good as I got when we argued. He wasn’t going to get one over on me based on looming, but this was different. As I walked down the shore with my bare toes digging into the sludgy sand, I marveled at how large his hand was compared to mine. It covered it so completely. He was strong and yet wounded, someone who clearly sought to protect others. No matter how he tried to bluster through things, he needed someone to be there for him as well.
Drake wasn’t saying anything, and I hadn’t expected him to talk at first. He’d clearly been uncomfortable admitting so much to me, and I could understand how he’d accidentally shown me too much of himself. I understood, at least a little. He couldn’t help when the flashbacks came, but he had no reason to be ashamed. He was a hero, serving his country and paying such a high price. If this was part of the whole Drake McManus package, then it wasn’t going to make me run for the hills. I wasn’t sure where any of this was going, but I wasn’t going to bail on anyone because of something they couldn’t help about themselves.
“It’s really gorgeous,” I said, perking up my ears as the water crashed onto the shore. “You weren’t wrong about that.” I smirked and squeezed his hand playfully. “I suppose the great Drake McManus is rarely wrong.”
He frowned for a second and then chuckled. I hoped he accepted the olive branch I was offering. We’d had too much darkness for the night. It was time to heal, to laugh. “My bank balance and client record tends to say no to that,” he agreed. “There’s so much beauty on this island. I know some prefer other, more remote, places in the Pacific Ocean but I always wanted to be here.”
“Can I ask why?”
“When I was a kid, we didn’t have much money, and that was an understatement. Mom was the type who clipped hundreds of coupons to make ends meet and she entered every contest or sweepstakes you could think of. When I was thirteen, she won a cruise—the only really good thing she ever had happen to her or to our family—and we got to go to the Bahamas. It was too expensive to do much once we got here, even eat more than bottled water and sandwiches. The food import costs are pretty insane. But we had this amazing time, splashing all week in the ocean and lying on the beach. Hell, I think it was the only time I ever saw my family relax. I guess… I just wanted to come back here once I’d made my bones and have that again.”
“Are you and your parents close?” I asked, surprised he’d mentioned them at all. He hadn’t before.
Drake squeezed my hand back. “I take care of them now that I can, and I think they appreciate it. Mom said thanks when I bought the farm out of debt. So that’s something.”
I frowned and wanted to ask about his dad, but he hadn’t brought the man up first so I decided it was probably a no-go zone. I was learning there was a veritable walk-in closet of skeletons for Drake and that pressing on them too fast caused him to withdraw. I didn’t want that so I bit my tongue on it for now.
“What about your parents?” he asked. “I know Maurice Fontaine had some high roller days. You had to have been to more than your fair share of beaches.”
“All the way into high school, the finances were good. I didn’t have it hit me till I took out loans for college and we had to sell off our mansion. I know that sounds so ‘poor little rich girl,’ but it’s true. So… Monaco, Fiji, the Mediterranean, yeah, I’ve seen all of it, but the best time I ever had was a couple years ago. We went up the coast a bit to some small town in Cali, not even a tourist trap place. We just spent the day there with Mom, enjoying everything. We weren’t worried about making appearances. Mom enforced this ‘no cells’ rule and we just, I dunno, were with each other.”
“You really care about your mom, don’t you?”
I frowned. “Did Leonard say something?”
“No, but you talk about her a lot, even more than your sister or Maurice. It sounds like you two have a special connection.”
“She’s, uh, struggled,” I offered. “Ever since we hit the hard times, she’s just suffered the most from it.”
That was all I could offer. Maybe I was a hypocrite for insisting on truths from him while I couldn’t or wouldn’t dare talk about my own family’s pain. I just didn’t want him to know about Mom’s cancer. I don’t know what it said about our budding relationship, but I didn’t trust revealing that information because it just gave him too much leverage over me.
I wasn’t ready for that.
“Then we’ll work on actual
business talk tomorrow, I promise. Let me see what you and Carol have come up with, and, I promise you, we will figure out how to help your father’s company and to make sure that mine gets what it needs as well. Okay?”
I nodded and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, my tongue tangling with his in a frantic dance for dominance. Tonight, we needed to come together and heal, but I wasn’t ready for sex again. I needed to just make sure we could just be together, could take comfort in each other. He seemed to understand that need, and while his arms twined around my back and he pulled me closely to him, he didn’t do more. There was no insistent thrust of hips against mine, no roaming hands. Instead, there was just us, our kisses, and the roar of the ocean behind us.
Chapter Eleven
Belle
The beeping of Skype buzzed to life as the screen flickered before me. I’d been so busy with all the negotiations with Drake that I hadn’t been able to talk to my family. We’d spent the morning going over figures. He wasn’t happy yet and could maybe meet us as far as sixty cents on the dollar, but we’d have to go back to the drawing board if we wanted the full eighty that Carol and I were hoping for. I hadn’t broached what roles Dad, Carol, or I would play after the merger. I didn’t want any of us to be just figureheads, remnants of the old company shoved in an office, but never given any projects to work on. That would come later. I still had to figure out a way to slash and hack or butter up the budget—whatever I could—in order to increase what Drake was willing to pay us.
“Hey,” I said, offering a neutral smile and hoping I didn’t look as glowing and sexy as I felt. A lot of sisters had a radar for that sort of thing, for when you just got laid or did something wrong or both. I didn’t want Carol to realize that I had gone that far and twice now with Drake. “How is everything?”
Carol sighed and offered me a tight grin back. “Actually, better than I’d have thought. Yesterday, well, I don’t know what kind of arrangement you worked out but Drake did give us an advance on merger funds. I think he must be leaning that way and seeing the rest as details.”