His throat moved as he swallowed. “Tuesday.” The word whispered between them like a heated ribbon. It brushed her cheek and slid beneath the collar of her coat.
“Yeah!” Charlotte stood and wrapped her arms around Natalie’s waist. “I got half a dog.”
Natalie laughed without humor because there was nothing funny about having half a dog. Nothing funny about lust tickling her skin and making her tingle. Nothing funny about wondering what it would be like if Blake Junger did something to satisfy all those tingles.
He’d been stuck with the dumbest dog on the planet. Blake folded his arms across his chest and stared at the puppy tangled up in the purple leash Charlotte Cooper had provided to match his collar. The leash was wrapped around the puppy’s legs and body and wound around the lone branch of the tree stump where Blake had tied him.
Recruit Sparky just wasn’t getting the hang of his training. Blake knelt down on one knee and felt the cool earth through the worn denim of his Levi’s. He unwound the leash from the single branch. This was the third time the dog had gotten all caught up. The last time he’d nearly choked himself to death. The puppy barked and sank his teeth into the sleeve of Blake’s old gray sweatshirt as Blake untangled the leash from his legs. Then Blake rose and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Sit!” Special Warfare Operator First Class Blake Junger ordered as if he was talking to a newbie. “Stay!” He leaned down and put a hand in front of the puppy’s face. “Stay or I’ll put a foot up your ass and wear you for a mukluk.”
“Yip.” Recruit Sparky bit Blake’s finger and wagged his tail. Blake had clearly lost his touch. He’d worked with Sparky for five days now and the dog didn’t sit or stay and it still shit in the house at will. This hadn’t been the plan when he’d reassigned the dog to Charlotte Cooper.
“At ease,” he said as he moved past his truck already loaded with wood. He continued to a stump where he’d left his gear and his embedded ax. Behind him the dog barked and pulled at his leash, and Blake had no doubt the puppy would eventually succeed at choking himself out.
His property was packed with lodgepole, white, and ponderosa pine. Aspen and huckleberries grew from the earth littered with decades of nettles and pinecones and blowdowns. He shoved his hands into his work gloves and pushed his safety glasses on his face. Then he picked up the chain saw he’d left on a log. He pulled the cord with one clean jerk, and the engine split the mountain air with the sound of raw power. He set his feet against the saw’s biting teeth and cut a blowdown into rounds he would later chop for firewood.
Within the natural light filtering through the variegated shade of pine and aspen, a stream of sawdust shot through the crisp autumn air. Between cuts, he glanced at the dog chewing on a stick. He’d felt somewhat bad that his plan to reassign or “foist” the little dog had caused a problem between Charlotte and her mom. He hadn’t meant for that to happen, but he hadn’t meant to keep a dog he didn’t want, either. Not even part-time. He was still baffled by how that had all gone down. Usually he was a better negotiator. He blamed Natalie Cooper and her shiny hair and pink lips and deep blue eyes. Eyes that could flash with anger or simmer with sexual interest.
The dog’s first visit to the vet had cost him several hundred dollars in shots and a checkup. He’d learned that Sparky was approximately three months old and was a mix of black Lab, some sort of spaniel, and perhaps a bit of Dalmatian. In other words, an all-American mutt. A mutt he’d agreed to share with a little kid and her hot-as-hell mother.
Blake paused to kick a few rounds out of his way before setting the teeth into the next section of log. When he’d first opened the front door and laid his eyes on Sweet Cheeks standing on his porch in her trench coat like she might be naked underneath, he’d lost the dog debate. His brain sank to the front of his pants and he’d worked at a disadvantage from that point. Then she’d shoved him and walked into his house, and his primitive instinct to shove her kicked in. To shove her down and climb on top. To shove up her coat and kiss her mouth. To shove inside her body and die.
He cut the saw engine and set it on the log. He had a hard-on just thinking about her, and he tossed his gloves on the ground. Time to think of something besides jumping on Sweet Cheeks. He moved to the CamelBak he’d left leaning against the stump and picked it up. For a lot of his life, the water reservoir had been a constant on his back. Like the sniper weapon at his side, SIG at his hip, and brain bucket on his head, he’d never left the wire without his hydration system.
The chilly October breeze rustled the leaves and branches of pine and brought with it the taste and feel of autumn. Blake hadn’t felt a real autumn season in a long time. He’d always been stationed where it was warm and sunny or deployed to the desert or Afghan mountains. He liked the change of season. He liked the sharp contrasting color and the smell of leaves and earth on the crisp autumn air.
For the first time in his life, he didn’t have to report to anyone or pack up his gear and hop a cargo plane destined for the latest hot spot. He was on self-imposed leave. He’d invested his bonuses over the years and could chop wood for the rest of his life if he chose. He could walk through the forest with nothing more than a camera. He didn’t have to kit up or pack up an MK12. He didn’t have to eat dust or crouch in a swamp. He didn’t have to do anything.
But for the last twenty-one years, he’d lived on high octane. He was hardwired to go and do and conquer. To have a goal and achieve it. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could run on a slower fuel before he got restless.
Probably two more weeks. Two more weeks to conquer this alcoholism. A month at the most, and then he’d review his options. Several private military contractors had contacted him recently. He was Blake Junger. His name alone cut through red tape and bullshit. His name gave him options. He could work six months on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden or on the Somali coast, then return to his Batcave here in Truly. Or he could hire on with crisis contractors to manage kidnaps around the world. Kidnap resolution was a specialized job for which he was uniquely qualified.
He glanced at the dog and set the CamelBak on the stump. Recruit Sparky was all tangled up again, and Blake scowled as he walked toward the furry black puppy. Three of his legs were trussed together and he shook with happiness when Blake knelt and untangled the stupid mutt.
He had eighty-three days of sobriety under his belt. He still wrestled with Johnnie, but today wasn’t a white-knuckle day. Today his head was clear and filled with clean mountain air.
To his left, the distant crack of rifle power stopped his hands. His head jerked up. His senses instantly alert and heightened, he calculated the shot had been fired from 3.2 kilometers behind him. He heard a second shot, and even as he reminded himself that it was hunting season in Idaho, the green and yellow leaves in front of his eyes wavered like a heat mirage. Instead of rich earth and pine, the smell of rotting garbage, molding concrete, and baharat rose up to fill his lungs. His ears rang and the shifting ripples between what was real and what was not spun his head. He knew he was in the Idaho wilderness, yet his visceral memory had him crouched on a rooftop in Ramadi, sucking the smell of the Middle East into his lungs.
It wasn’t real. One second. Two seconds trapped in visceral hell. He closed his eyes against the shimmering mirage. It would stop soon. It always did. Three seconds . . . Something wet slid across his cheek. Warm and sloppy. Something real, and he opened his eyes to a beady black gaze staring back at him. His tilted world righted, he took a deep breath of rich earth and dry leaves. Recruit Sparky barked and licked his mouth, and he was so relieved he almost kissed the dog back.
Almost. The stupid puppy tried to climb up his chest and nearly knocked him on his ass. Blake’s ears still rang, and as always, he felt disoriented, confused, and foolish, but unlike the other times, he was distracted by a dog. A dog so happy he practically shook apart while his tongue assaulted Blake’s face in a dervish of enthus
iasm.
“Stand down,” he ordered, but of course the dog ignored him. He untied the mutt and shut him in the cab of his truck, the bed loaded with firewood and few interesting logs he’d found. He loaded his chain saw and ax and shut the tailgate. He tried to ignore the pressure squeezing the back of his neck as he stowed the rest of his gear in his tactical rucksack.
His flashbacks had started several months ago. Before today, the last one had happened while he was staring out at Lake Mary when he’d first moved to Truly. The one before that in rehab. The first in his brother’s Escalade in Nevada. Beau had taken him to his home in Henderson to sober him up before the trip to California. They’d been driving through the desert town, arguing over who was the biggest badass superhero, Batman or Superman, when he glanced in his side mirror. Within the reflective glass, a confusing image of a white Toyota filled with Iraqis sped toward them. They wore ski masks and keffiyeh, and dust rose from the truck’s bald tires. The image wavered like smoke, and adrenaline shot through Blake’s veins as he reached for a grenade in his chest gear and his SIG Sauer on his hip. Innocent men did not wear ski masks in a hundred and thirty degrees.
“What are you doing?” Beau asked.
He looked at his brother looking back at him from the driver’s side of the SUV. It was like staring at his own reflection. “Bad guys on your five.”
Beau glanced into his rearview. “What’s going on Blake?”
He looked back into the mirror and the image of the truck shimmered and disappeared. It had seemed so real. So real it spun his head and he grabbed the door handle. “Not sure.”
“Do you have PTSD?”
“No.” Jungers did not have PTSD.
“No shame in it.”
“I don’t have PTSD. Let it go.”
A few silent moments passed as they sped across the Nevada desert. “One punch from Superman’s powerful fists, Batman’s head rolls like a gutter ball.”
Blake had tried to laugh. Thinking back on it now brought a smile to his lips. “One punch from Batman’s kryptonite boxing gloves,” he’d said, “and Superman crumples like a pussy.”
Blake missed his brother, but he wasn’t going to call. Beau would want to talk about Blake’s sobriety, and Blake didn’t want to talk about it right now. Not when it tugged at his gut and whispered in his ear.
The drive home took ten minutes because of the rough terrain. Ten minutes of puppy barking, tail wagging, and window licking. To anyone else, this might seem normal, a man and his dog, but this wasn’t normal. Not for him.
His head ached from the flashback. His hands griped the steering wheel a little too tight. He needed a drink. A couple of shots of Johnnie to blunt the sharp edges. The bottle was in the wine cellar. It would be so easy to pour it back.
No one will know, his addiction whispered.
Giving in would be so much easier than white-knuckling his way through it.
One drink. You can stop after one drink.
He’d never stopped after one drink. One drink led to two. Two to three. Three to a bottle and a shitload of beer. A bottle and a shitload of beer led to waking up with raw knuckles, a split lip, and a killer hangover. At the moment, a good old-fashioned bar brawl sounded like a good time.
Charlotte ran across her front yard as he pulled into his garage.
“Blake!”
He left the garage door up and climbed out of the truck.
“Blake!” She stopped at the rear of the truck, breathing hard. “It’s my night for Spa-ky.”
“I know.” The dog jumped across the console and Blake lifted him from the driver’s seat. He set Sparky on the ground and the dog barked wildly, then shot across the floor toward the little girl. He tripped on the leash and slid on his belly.
Charlotte laughed and picked up her part-time mutt. “We got Spa-ky a name tag,” she said as the dog licked her face. He wiggled and squirmed and slipped out of her grasp. “It’s purple. My favorite color.” She tried to pick up the mutt up again, but he jumped and barked and bit the hem of her coat. “Stop, Spa-ky.” She reached for him but he jumped back and barked.
Blake watched the dog’s shenanigans for several more moments before he shut the truck door and picked up the mutt. At this rate, she was never going to get the dog home. “I’ll carry him to your house.” He subdued the recruit in a compression hold. “Settle your ass down before you piss yourself.”
“You said a bad word.”
“Are you going to tell your mom on me?”
She thought a moment as they moved down the driveway. “No.” She shook her head. “I won’t tell. We’re friends.”
Friends? He wouldn’t go that far. His friends were considerably older, male, and said as many bad words as they could fit into one sentence.
Sparky wiggled as Blake looked up the neighboring driveway and at Sweet Cheeks leaning into the open hatchback of her Subaru. His male friends would pause to appreciate her ass in those jeans.
“Mama, I got Spa-ky.”
Natalie pulled out several bags of groceries and her blond hair swung across one shoulder. “Oh joy.”
Blake set the dog on the ground and moved toward her. She straightened and he reached for the groceries in her hands. “I’ll get those.”
Her sunglasses slid down her nose and her blue eyes stared at him above the brown frames. “I’ve got these, but you can get the last few.”
There was something about the eyes the color of the deep ocean, the aviator glasses, and her pink mouth that licked at the sharp edges of craving. Something white hot, and turned it into a different kind of craving altogether.
Blake grabbed the four remaining bags of groceries and shut the hatchback. He followed her and Charlotte in through the garage door and set the bags on the kitchen counter. The house smelled like a woman lived in it. Like fresh baked cake and flowers and clean laundry soap. The house looked like a woman lived in it, too. A white tablecloth. A pink smiley cup sitting in the sink, and lacy curtains. Photographs of Charlotte all over the place.
“Do you need any more help?” he asked as he took in the sights and smells of the girly home. It was about half the square footage of his house and was semi-custom. Built from a builder’s blueprint with some nice woodwork, stone, and tile. The back faced the lake, like his.
“No thank you.” She shucked off her jacket and tossed it on a kitchen chair. “Can you hang around for a minute?” His gaze slid to the front of her thin white T-shirt.
The warm parts in his belly got hotter with the promise of a full-blown erection, and one thing was for certain, white-hot lust sure beat the hell out of white-knuckling it. “Sure.”
“I want to show you something.”
He wanted to see it. And when she was done showing what she had, he had something to show her, too. The way she’d looked at him the other day in the wine cellar was the way a woman looked at a man when she needed to get laid. He’d been with enough women to recognize that look. It wasn’t teasing. It wasn’t coy. It wasn’t manufactured. It was a dark yearning in the depths of a woman’s eyes. It was the drop of a full-bottom lip and a sweet inhalation.
She walked across the wood floor to the refrigerator, and the puppy barked as Charlotte giggled in the living room.
Standing there was a distraction. He didn’t plan to have sex with Natalie. She was the kind of woman who wanted sex to mean something. She wasn’t the kind to just get naked and have fun. She’d want some sort of commitment, but thinking about her thighs around his waist and bouncy breasts in his hands got him hard as a steel hooley.
Blake pushed his sweatshirt sleeves up his forearms. He could control his hard-ons. There were those who thought he was like his dad, a guy who jumped from woman to woman, and that was partly true, he guessed. But unlike his dad, he’d always been in control of his dick. Unlike his brother, he’d never believed he had to be
celibate to do it.
Chapter Five
Natalie grabbed a drawing stuck to the refrigerator with a cupcake magnet and set it on the counter. “Charlotte made this last night.” She pointed to a round figure with long dangly arms and legs. Charlotte had carefully drawn ten fingers and toes, and a big head topped with three strands of blond hair.
“What’s that?”
Natalie pointed to the gray eyes and the straight red line for a mouth. “This is you.” She slid her finger to the black furry circle with paws and tail. The puppy had a head with a red tongue and floppy ears. “This is Sparky. I’ve noticed that Charlotte’s artwork has improved in the last few months. Everything used to be stick figures.”
His brow furrowed and he leaned in for a closer look. “Is that supposed to be my hair?”
Natalie smiled. “Charlotte doesn’t have very much experience drawing hair on men. Her grandfather is bald.” And her father has a prison cut.
“Is that a pot gut?”
He sounded so insulted her smile turned to soft laughter. Blake Junger had a full head of hair and his gut was definitely flat. “Your eyes are the right color.” She moved to a lower cupboard and pulled out a pan. “And your smile.”
“This thing isn’t smiling.”
“Exactly.” She filled the pan with hot water and set it on the stove to boil. It was mac and cheese night at the Coopers. Living with a five-year-old, she’d learned it was easier just to keep the menu simple and hide veggies in things her daughter liked to eat. She’d learned to pick her battles. Over the sound of cartoons in the living room, Sparky barked, proving that she’d lost that one.
What I Love About You (Truly, Idaho) Page 6