Virgin's Night Out

by Shiloh Walker

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Boone snorted. Keeping his voice caustic and dry, he said, “Why? Because you made the wise decision to keep a no-account bum out of your baby’s life?” Our baby…

  Sloane touched his arm. “You’re hardly a no account bum, Boone. I know too much about you, about what you do—”

  “For a paycheck.” He caught her wrist and gently nudged her hand away before he turned to face her. “I do it for a paycheck. I joined the army because I didn’t have any other options and I went to work for DDX because the two men I called friend—the only two—asked me to. I was tired of the killing and tired of the military and they offered me an out. A job. A paycheck.”

  “Oh, Boone.” Her eyes softened. She went to touch him, but he backed away.

  The slice of hurt that appeared in her eyes sent an echoing pain through his chest.

  But she didn’t back down. “Boone, you don’t do the kind of job you do for a paycheck. You risk your life, your sanity…your freedom and you do it because you believed you could help.”

  “Don’t go making me into some sort of altruistic hero. That was Pierce. That’s Taylor. It’s not me.”

  Her eyes flickered at the sound of her dead brother’s name.

  Taking a step toward her, he said, “He died because of me. He saw the sniper and he shoved me out of the way. I should have been the one to bleed out in the dirt and muck that night. Not him.”

  Those ragged words split her heart right open.

  Reaching up, she cupped his face in her hand. He froze and she prepared herself for him to back away. But he just stood there, as if he was unable to move.

  “If life was fair, then both of my brothers would still alive,” she said quietly.

  He reached up, his movements jerky. When he closed his fingers around her wrist, she felt her pulse jump up. All from his touch.

  His lids drooped, shielding his gaze, but not in time. She saw his the way his pupils flared and his mouth parted on a harsh intake of breath.

  “Fair is a fairy tale, Sloane.” He tugged her hand away and let go, gently. He raked her with a look and it left her feeling like he’d scraped away layers of skin.

  She wrapped her arms around herself as he moved in and murmured against her ear. “If life was fair,” he murmured. “Then you wouldn’t have gotten knocked up by a bastard like me. You wouldn’t have had to sidestep my questions when I asked if you were pregnant.”

  “Sidestep?” She turned to gape at him as he strode away.

  He shot her a look over his shoulder, “Yeah. Sidestep. You dodged me when I asked you and don’t think I don’t know why. I wouldn’t want to raise a baby with me, either.”

  Insult held her rigid and kept her silent as he looked away and once more continued forward.

  To the horse.

  He was leaving—

  “Oh, no, you’re not,” she muttered under her breath.

  It took no time for her to cross the distance between them, her long legs eating up the feet in less time than it took him to mount the horse.

  She caught the reins, murmured soothingly to the gelding as he balked at her sudden appearance and the weight of the man who’d just slung a leg over his back. “It’s okay, Cocoa,” she said, stroking the horse from his forehead down to his muzzle. “It’s okay.”

  “Give me the reins,” Boone said in a monotone.

  “No.” She kept her voice low and gentle as she continued to stroke the horse. He sighed and leaned into her touch while the man astride his back glared at her. “You don’t ride much. You should have grabbed the reins before you mounted.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  She smiled sweetly up at him. “Get off the horse.”

  “We’re done here.”

  “Oh, no, we’re not.” She studied him while Cocoa started to shift nervously. Boone was a bigger guy than Cocoa was used to carrying and the skittish beast was picking up on the tension in the air. “Get down.”

  When he just stared at her, she gave him a long, thorough study.

  “You ever been thrown by a horse?” she asked as Cocoa continued his anxious little dance.

  The abrupt change in topic confused him enough that he actually answered. “Almost every damn time I get on one,” he said, reaching out to stroke a hand down the horse’s neck.

  Cocoa rolled his eyes backyard.

  She murmured to him again.

  “Well, you can get off or take your chances,” she said.

  “Give me the damn reins.”

  She did just that and stepped back. “Get ready.”

  Boone’s reply was cut off by a nervous whicker from the horse and the agitated sound of it had Boone stiffen up.

  The worst thing he could have done.

  Cocoa reared.

  When Boone came flying off, she winced in sympathy.

  “You’re too big a rider for him,” she said as he lay on the ground.

  He didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes.

  She called to Cocoa, clicking under tongue.

  The horse was pacing around nervously and if she wasn’t mistaken, he gave her an embarrassed look. But he didn’t come to her right away.

  Sighing, she looked at Boone. “You made him feel bad!”

  “He should feel bad!” Boone, now sitting up, glared at her. “The damn thing threw me! And you knew he would.”

  “No.” She slid her hands into her pockets. “I told you to get down or take your chances.”

  “You damn well knew he was going to throw me.” Boone went to stand and winced.

  “No. I thought he might.” She lifted a shoulder. “And if you knew anything about horses, you would have realized he was nervous.”

  The look he gave would have withered her where she stood—if she had been the same woman he’d taken back to the hotel room. But the past year had changed her, and not just because she barely slept more than three or four hours at a stretch these days.

  When she angled her chin up, she thought she saw a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

  “Okay,” he said sourly as he shoved upright and started to dust off the seat of his pants. “You got me off the damn horse. Now say what you need to say.”

  “I didn’t sidestep you,” she said.

  “So what would you call it?”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared at him. “You were eavesdropping—you should know the answer.” Feeling more than a little defensive, she gave into the anger flickering inside her. “You stupid ass. You asked me if there was a problem. Dani isn’t a problem. She never was. It’s not my fault you asked the wrong damn question.”

  He gaped at her.

  On a roll now, she strode toward him. “You can’t stand there and tell me I sidestepped you because I didn’t want you to be a father. I don’t know what kind of father you’d be, so how the hell could I sidestep you?”

  She stopped in front of him, a few bare inches away.

  Fire seemed to burn in his eyes. “You want me to believe you lied to me just because you felt like it?” he demanded. Before she could answer, he caught her chin in his hands, bending down until their gazes were level. “You did the right thing. I don’t blame you—I don’t know shit-all about being a dad and even less about being a good dad.”

  He let go of her abruptly, backing away as if she was contagious.

  She didn’t follow. She heard something in his voice. And it broke her heart.

  “What I know about dads would turn your stomach, sugar,” Boone said. His spine was a hard, rigid line, shoulders tense as he stared out over the smooth water of the lake. “My dad? The man had this thing for instant obedience. As in he said get your ass out of bed and if you were out of bed by the time the words left his mouth, he’d haul you out. I saw him dragging my mother out of bed by the hair—she’d been sick with the flu and was all but unconscious, but he didn’t give a fuck about that.”

  Sloane closed her eyes.

  “My kid s
ister…”

  His voice trailed off.

  When he didn’t say anything, Sloane opened her eyes and forced herself to move. He didn’t look at her as she came to a stop by his side. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

  “She’s been dead for more than twenty years.”

  Startled, she looked over at him.

  When he turned his head to meet her gaze, his eyes were all but dead. Lifeless. “She was three years old and she’d fallen down, hit the back of her head. She was crying and didn’t shut up when the old man told her to.”

  A hollow ache spread through her chest. Instinctively, she wanted to reach out for him, but she held herself still.

  “We had these neighbors—nice folks,” Boone murmured, his voice thick. “They were in their sixties. The guy had served in the military—fought in the Korean War…he was a tough son-of-a-bitch. His name was Phillip. His wife was Marie. They’d called the cops on my dad more than a few times. Once, my dad went over there to get some of his own back. He’d waited until Phillip had left, thought the woman would be an easy target. Marie met him at the door with a gun in her hands.”

  He looked down at his hands, flexed them. “They called the cops when they heard Ashley crying. She was screaming by the time the old guy got to our front door. Phillip kicked it in…but it was too late. She’d already stopped crying.”

  Boone looked over her. “My dad had slammed her into the wall. She was crying…I went to pull him away and he threw me across the room. He was a big mother-fucker.” He looked back down at his hands.

  She suspected he wasn’t seeing his own hands, but his father’s.

  “Ash…he’d slammed her into the wall so hard, her head split. She went into a coma…never woke up.”

  Sloane wanted to weep. For the little girl she’d never even known existed, and for the man standing before her now.

  “Phillip knocked my father down. His wife was there—she grabbed me and pushed me into my mom’s arms, but my mom…she couldn’t do anything. Marie went to take me out of there and…she…she stopped. I saw Ashley.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  She’d been so pale, her blonde hair like snow, right up until it met the red spilling out of it.

  “He killed her.” Boone closed his eyes as the fury and misery and grief twisted through him yet again. It had been almost twenty-five years and he still couldn’t forget the sight of his little sister lying there, like a broken doll.

  His arm had been broken and he’d had a concussion from where he’d hit his head when his father threw him, but the worst pain had come from knowing he’d never again wake up to find the little girl snuggling in next to him after a nightmare. They’d only been a year apart and she’d been sweet and gentle and innocent—everything Boone had never been.

  “You’re nothing like him.”

  The sound of Sloane’s voice pulled him out of the past.

  His voice was rusty as he answered, “I look just like him.”

  “That’s on the surface,” she said, her eyes soft and gentle. She reached out a hand.

  He didn’t know what drove him to take it, but he did.

  “My dad walked out on us. I was four and he just left. He walked away from his family farm, walked away from my mom, my brothers…me.” Her voice skipped and she had to clear her throat before she continue. “My brothers and I, we don’t look much alike.”

  She looked away and he let himself stair, let himself look at her. A breeze kicked up and blew several strands of her dark brown hair across her cheek. “They look a lot like my mom and my grandfather—her dad. But me?”

  A soft sigh escaped her before she looked back at him. “I look like my dad. I’ve got his hair, his eyes…even the shape of my mouth and my nose. I can see it now and I know my mom saw it then. But I’m not my dad. She knew it. I know it. I’m not ever going to walk away from my baby and I don’t walk out of my family.”

  She squeezed his hand and moved in closer. “And you’re not your father. You couldn’t raise a hand to a woman.”

  “But I have.”

  She blinked, startled.

  “I spent years hunting down terrorists, Sloane. I’ve killed women before.”

  “Did you have a choice?”

  The question caught him off guard. He’d been prepared for disgust, for fear, but not for that simple—and honest—question. “I did what had to be done—or what I thought had to be done, at the time.”

  She reached up and when she thread her hand into his hair, he didn’t pull away. “You’re not him. Maybe you don’t know shit all about being a father, but that’s because…”

  She closed her eyes. Erratic breaths escaped her and he watched as she made a visible effort to calm them.

  When she looked at him again, her gaze was serene. “That’s because I didn’t give you a chance. I know what it’s like to have a father who doesn’t care. I didn’t want to take that chance with my baby. She couldn’t be a problem—not even from the beginning. Do you understand?”

  A problem.

  Two hours later, he held Dani in his arms and she stared back at him with the same, avid fascination he seemed to feel. When he stroked a finger down her cheek, she batted a hand at him and then closed her fist around his pinkie.

  She had a solid little grip there, especially for something so tiny, so delicate.

  She had his eyes.

  He wondered why he hadn’t seen that already.

  She had his eyes.

  Sloane had said she didn’t want her baby to have a father who thought of her as a problem, but he wasn’t so sure that possible.

  Little Dani was already a problem for him. She seemed to hold his heart in that tiny hand and as if she’d read his thoughts, a brilliant grin lit her face.

  “I didn’t know.”

  He lifted his gaze to the man in the door.

  Taylor stood there, his hands in his pockets, his expression troubled.

  Boone went back to staring at the baby.

  Sloane was outside.

  He could see her from where he sat, both her and Ellen. They were out on the swing and although he’d been sitting there for nearly thirty minutes, he hadn’t seen either woman say a word.

  “I’m having a hard time believing that Sloane could do this to you, man. I’m so so—”

  “Don’t.”

  At the sound of his voice, his daughter started and then blinked, gazing up at him with what looked like fascination. He couldn’t help but smile at her and stroke her cheek. She cooed and waved her fists—including the one that held his finger—in the air.

  “Don’t,” he said again, keeping his voice soft. He looked up at her. “I get it.”

  “Do you?” Taylor stalked closer, moving to stare out the window. “Well, that’s just great. Explain it to me. I mean, I don’t get it. Damn it, Boone, she knew you.”

  He laughed. “Did she?” He shook his head. “I don’t think she did. Nah, she didn’t know me. We wrote each other a few times and when we…” He stopped and then tipped his head back, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment before looking back at Taylor. “We met at the bar in town—Huley’s? Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t know who she was, she didn’t know who I was.”

  Taylor’s eyes went wide. “You met…” Then he breathed out a soft curse. “Son of a bitch. You’re the big guy Huley saw leaving with her.”

  It didn’t surprise Boone that Taylor had done some nosing around. Even if he claimed he was trying to respect her privacy, Taylor cared too much about his sister to just let it go as short as that.

  “That’s me,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “We…um…well, we didn’t figure out who the other person was until you introduced us the next morning.”

  “At my wedding.” Taylor looked away, a muscle starting to pulse in his cheek. “Son of a bitch.”

  “You’ve said that.” Dani started to squirm and he lifted her up to his shoulder, patting her bottom the way he’d seen Sloane doing. “
We didn’t know each other. If we had…” Boone shrugged. “I guess I would have figured out I was handling it wrong—or I would have known the right way to handle it. And maybe…”

  He lapsed into silence.

  Taylor moved closer and settled on the low-lying coffee table across from Boone. He watched Boone closely as he said, “This is about your father.”

  Boone looked away. “I don’t want to do a post-mortem on this. If I was her and I knew jack shit about me, I’d run screaming in the other direction.”

  Taylor glanced out the window. “She’s not screaming.” Then he met Boone’s gaze dead-on. “And there’s the deal, man. You know how much I love her, how protective I am. If I had any idea about the kind of man you were, I never would have invited you—not for my wedding and not after…your little vacation down in Mexico. You’re a good man, Boone.”

  Boone knew better than to believe those words. Hours later, they echoed mockingly in his head.

  He stood at the window, staring out over the sprawl of the Redding farm. It was so peaceful here. Quiet and easy, everything he’d never really known, not even as an adult.

  He’d slept easily in the silence over the past few weeks but right now, the quiet felt stifling.

  And then it seemed to disappear entirely when he looked up at the soft click.

  Sloane slipped inside his room.

  His mouth went dry. Blood started to roar in his ears.

  There were no lights on his room, just the silvery rays of the moon streaming in through the wide window on the southern wall.

  She came to stop in front of him and that put the window at her back.

  His heart slammed against his ribcage with enough force that it practically knocked the breath out of him.

  The nightgown was thin and white.

  He could see every elegant line of her body, the slope of her hips, the curved length of her legs.

  His hands itched. He wanted to reach out and catch her waist, pull her to him.

  He forced himself to look away, but it didn’t do much good. That image of her body was imprinted on the very fabric of his memory.

  “I thought maybe we should talk,” she said softly.