by Diana Gardin
Dammit. My voice betrays me every time I speak to Jeremy. It’s still surreal that he’s standing here in front of me like this.
Glancing down at his arms, his deep voice caresses me when he answers. “After I made Ranger battalion. Maybe someday I’ll tell you what they mean.”
Oh. It’s unexpected, how much I want to know that story. I used to know all his stories.
As I stand, I give him an awkward wave. “Well, bye. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
A struggle happens right before me on his face. The warring emotions chase one another until finally, he holds a hand out toward the door.
“I’m going to walk you to your car.” His tone is grudging.
I’m so taken aback by this that I just take him in for a second. His rigid stance, his irritated expression…everything about him says he doesn’t want to walk me to my car, but he feels he has to.
I can’t even help it when my eyes roll skyward. “Oh, really, Jeremy? How the hell have I made it from my place of employment to my car for the past nine years? Are you really going to walk me?”
I stare at him, arms folded, my stance identical to his.
“I’m walking you to your car, Rayne. Maybe I haven’t been there for the past nine years to do it, and maybe someone else has been doing it instead. I don’t give a shit. All I know is that I’m here now, and I’m walking you to your damn car. Understood?”
A tingle of pleasure that I’ll never admit to ripples through me, heating me up from the inside out.
I think of Wagner, and the relief I feel at having this big, muscly man walk me to my car is immediate.
“Understood.”
A few minutes later, we’re heading toward my sister’s car. Jeremy nods toward it as I pull out my keys.
“This is you?”
“It’s Olive’s. Mine is still in Phoenix.” Along with most of the things I own. But I keep that thought to myself.
Jeremy quirks a brow. “Yeah? Are you planning on staying in Wilmington?”
I shrug. “For now.”
Jeremy clears his throat. “So, Olive…she works with Berkeley now, huh? We’ve seen each other a few times a barbecues, and I went on a trip to Georgia with her not too long ago. I recognized her pretty quickly, even though she looks a hell of a lot different now than she did in high school.”
Smirking, I nod. “Yeah, like she’s a redhead now. And she’s lost a lot of weight, too. She’s been through a lot.”
We both have.
“She was pretty tight-lipped when I asked her about you. Said she hadn’t been in touch. I’m guessing that’s not actually the case, is it?” He only needs to take one look at my face for his answer.
Curiosity gets the better of me, pushing me to ask questions I know I shouldn’t. “What would you have said to her if she’d been willing to talk to you?”
A tendril of resentment, a feeling that I’ve buried way down deep in reference to Jeremy, unfurls inside of me. If he’d chosen differently all those years ago, if all the promises he made to me had been true, he wouldn’t have had to ask my sister about me.
He’d know firsthand.
We stop walking beside Olive’s little luxury coupe, a car that I’ve been having an interesting time trying to cram myself, Decker, and all our stuff into anytime we need to go somewhere.
“Hell, I don’t know.” Jeremy takes a deep breath. “Back then, I was young and stupid enough to think we were it. Forever. And then you left…took me a long time to bounce back from that, Rayne. A long damn time.”
Something inside me, a piece of me I thought had been healed a long time ago, fissures open. My voice breaks on my next question. “How are your grandparents, Jeremy?”
His expression darkens, his green eyes going all stormy and cool. When Jeremy and I were together, he had a strained relationship with his grandparents. But since he lost his parents at such a young age, they were all he had.
They’re the reason I knew, all those years ago, I had to leave Wilmington without a backward glance.
But, looking at his expression now, the first-ever tingle of doubt shoots through me about that decision.
“I haven’t spoken to them in years, Rayne. I cut them out of my life right before I enlisted.”
He’s searching my gaze, looking for any reason I could have for asking that question.
“I…I didn’t know.”
Jeremy opens my car door and waits for me to climb inside. Just before he shuts it, he leans in the slightest bit and looks me in the eye. “Yeah. There’s a lot you don’t know about my life after you left, Rayne. And I have a feeling it’s the same way for me with you.”
7
Jeremy
By Friday, Rayne and I greet each other when we arrive at Night Eagle in the morning. We’re polite when we bump into each other in the lounge grabbing coffee or heating up lunch. On Wednesday, when the guys went out for lunch she refused to come. It put a pain in my chest, leaving her alone at her desk while we went out to eat. I’m not sure why, I know I’m not responsible for her. But it did. And I walk her to her car at the end of every day.
It’s killing me. The fact that I can’t stop thinking about why she left me all those years ago. How could she have just walked away from everything we had? Was it all in my head? Maybe she wasn’t as serious about me back then as I was about her. Maybe she never saw a future with me. Fuck. Just thinking about it makes me want to hit something.
I’m going to ask her. But I haven’t found the right time. As it is, she’s skittish as hell around me, and I don’t want to make that worse.
We haven’t spoken about the past or our feelings or whatever the natural, combustible attraction that seems to sizzle between us is. So far, it’s working for us.
At least that’s what I tell myself when my body pulls me toward her desk whether I want to go or not. And the way I physically react when I see her twirl a piece of that black, black hair around her finger while she’s staring at something on her computer screen.
I’ve been comparing this Rayne to the one I knew in high school. To the one I knew intimately. The differences are subtle, but they’re there. The way she carries herself is the biggest variation. In high school, she was a quiet girl. She was always gorgeous, but she had no clue how much. I was the outgoing one, pulling her to sit with me and the other football players at lunch. Dragging her to parties with the most popular kids in school—the ones she couldn’t care less about. She was happy just to be with me, but I knew she didn’t want to do half of the things I did.
But not this Rayne. This Rayne is quick to offer a helping hand or a smile to one of the guys. Every time I hear it I want to punch the man who made it happen. It’s insane, because these guys are like my brothers. But dammit if I’m not pissed every single time they make her light up. Her laugh is the best thing I’ve ever heard. It’s big and boisterous, and sometimes she laughs so hard she starts to hiccup.
And then there’s her sailor’s mouth.
The girl never uttered a curse word back then. Her family was very religious, attending Catholic church every Wednesday night and Sunday morning. She didn’t dare utter a curse word back then. But now? Now she curses just as well as we do, and that’s saying a whole damn lot.
I can’t figure out the thing that makes her the most different, though. Can’t pinpoint the cause, can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it is that makes her seem even warmer, more loving, more thoughtful than she was before. She was always a sweet, kind girl. It’s what made me fall for her in the first place. But now it’s like that sweetness has been amplified. And it’s in direct conflict with her dirty mouth, which just makes me want to know more. It makes me want a lot of things I know I shouldn’t, that I can’t have.
Even when I tell it not to, my body reacts to her. Every time she pulls her lip between her teeth. Every time her midnight blue eyes meet mine and smolder with some unseen emotion. Every single time I see a peek of the perky breasts that were really
nice in high school, but are just spectacular now.
And I’m having a more difficult time every day hiding the way my stomach clenches when she checks her phone with that look of fear on her face.
It’s at one of these times that I don’t fight the pull and stalk toward her desk. Snatching the phone from her hand, I read the text that put the disturbed expression in her eyes.
“Jeremy! What the fuck?”
Ignoring her pissed-off shout, my eyes narrow and my teeth clamp shut when I read the words on her screen.
You can’t hide forever. I will find you. And I will take what’s mine.
Rage explodes inside me. Glancing around the lobby, where Grisham and Dare are acting like they’re not listening to us, but who are clearly paying attention, I grasp her by the elbow and tow her and the phone down the hallway and into the lounge.
Tossing her phone onto a countertop, I spin her around until she’s pressed against the nearest wall. I cage her in with my arms, leaning forward while taking deep breaths to try and control my temper.
“Tell me about that text, Rayne. Tell me now.” The words are gritted out through my teeth.
“It’s none of your—”
“Dammit, Rayne! If you tell me it’s none of my business I’m probably gonna break something. I know that I shouldn’t care, shouldn’t want to know. But I do! Okay? If someone is threatening you like this, then I need to know about it. I just do.”
She clamps her mouth shut, staring back at me with stubborn fear in her eyes. While I’m watching, a lone tear escapes and rolls down her cheek. She’s too mulish to wipe it away, so it just keeps falling while I trace its track with my gaze.
“Fuck me.” The curse is muttered from me while I use a thumb to wipe the tear away.
“Rayne…I know it’s been a long time. You don’t know the man I am now. But there’s no way in hell I can watch you keep getting these texts—see the fear in your eyes when you read them—and not do something about it. You’re working in an office full of guys that can take out whoever this is. But you have to trust me enough to let me help you.”
She sniffs. “I don’t trust anyone, Jer.”
Jer. The nickname rocks me, sending me reeling into the past where her plump lips would utter that name on a sigh while I kissed the sweetest spot in the world—the hollow right above her collarbone.
Blinking, I shake off the image and dip my head a little. “I know. What I don’t know is why. What happened to you?”
Her mouth stays firmly closed.
“You think I’m gonna let this go, Rayne?”
She just stares up at me, a war going on in her eyes. It’s like she wants to tell me what’s happening, but something inside won’t let her. She doesn’t want me to get close.
I’m suddenly aware of the fact that we’re only inches apart. I can smell her. The fresh, slightly sweet scent of something floral washes over me, mixed with the hint of spice that is just Rayne. This Rayne.
“I just want to help you,” I whisper, before letting my thumb roam over her soft skin.
One hand is still braced against the wall while my thumb sweeps a path across her cheekbone, and even though I’m fighting the lust bubbling up inside me, my cock swells in my jeans. Taunting me. Forcing me to think about what she’d look like now if she were lying naked under me. All that gorgeous black hair splayed out on the pillows, my name falling from her lips while I please her.
Whether I’m willing to admit it or not, that’s still a deep, dark desire inside me. Pleasing her. And I don’t want to just please her. No, I want to possess her, to own her. Because a long time ago, I did. But she slipped through my fingers, and I was left wondering how the hell I lost her.
The urge to close the last remaining inches between us and kiss her is intolerable. Like she can read my thoughts, her pupils dilate and her chest rises and falls with a heavy breath.
It takes all my strength, but I push back from the wall and back away, not going far but putting some distance between us.
Much needed distance.
But I keep her in my sights. I’m waiting.
Taking a deep, shuddering sigh, she hangs her head. “There’s someone in Phoenix…a guy I used to work for.”
My body goes rigid with where this story might be going. Rayne with another guy? Of course there were other guys, it’s been over nine fucking years.
She shakes her head quickly. “Not like that. He was just my boss.”
I try not to be relieved, and fail. “And?”
“And he’s looking for me.”
That’s all she gives me. Taking a step forward, I fold my arms across my chest.
“Why, Rayne? If you two weren’t…why would he be looking for you? And why don’t you want him to find you?”
She grabs her phone off the counter, clutching it to her chest like protection.
Come on, Rayne. Trust me. Tell me. Why are you so scared?
“I, uh, didn’t give him any notice when I left. I got a bad feeling about him and just took off. There’re loose ends back there.”
Shaking my head slowly, I assess her. Her stiff posture, the way she isn’t looking me in the eye.
She’s lying.
“Do you want me to find him?”
Startling, she finally looks up at me. “Can you do that?”
With a shrug, I shoot her a small smile. “You really don’t get who we are and what we do here, do you?”
She returns my smile with a shaky one of her own. “Um…well, I guess you don’t need to find him. I know his name and where he lives. I just don’t want him to find me.”
I inhale sharply. “Are you scared he’ll hurt you?”
I can see with her reluctance that it goes against every ounce of independent strength she has to admit it, but finally she nods.
I hiss out a breath through my teeth. “Give me his name, Rayne. We’ll keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t get anywhere near you.”
Stark relief scrawls across her features. “Really? Thanks Jeremy.”
Nodding, I move toward the door and beckon that she come with me. “It’s not a problem. But today’s Friday, and I don’t want to go the weekend without being able to let you know what I find out. Why don’t you give me your number so I can update you?”
She nods, handing me her phone. I plug my number in and send myself a quick text while she turns off her computer and gathers her stuff. When I hand her back the phone, she offers me a small smile.
“Thanks. For this. I mean.…you didn’t have t—”
“I want to.” My interruption has her looking at me with a new expression in her eyes. It’s not quite trust, but it’s something closer to it.
Progress.
When she’s ready to go, I lead her out of the building and walk her to her car. Before she gets in, she turns to me and throws her arms around my neck.
Stooping so she can reach me, something warm and liquid melts inside me. She whispers in my ear, and a shiver crawls down my back as a result.
“Thank you.” Her voice trembles, going so soft it’s barely a whisper against my skin. Her arms squeeze tightly around my neck, but the pressure is welcome.
I can’t answer her. It might be because of the lump that finds its way inside my throat, but I gently push her into her car and close her door. She stares at me for a few seconds, just watching me with an unreadable expression on her face. It feels like she’s summing me up or evaluating me. But for what? For whether or not I’ll be able to protect her when she needs it?
I’ve started parking right beside her every morning when I arrive, so I unlock the Land Cruiser with my key fob and climb into the truck while she reverses and pulls out of her parking spot. I watch, still thinking about the way her body felt pressed up against mine, when she pulls out into the street.
It’s because I’m watching that I notice the dark sedan start up and pull out two cars behind her.
It shouldn’t have gotten my attention; it normally w
ouldn’t be a big deal.
But something feels wrong, and with what she just told me about the guy she’s afraid of from Phoenix, I immediately start the Land Cruiser and pull out after them.
Years spent first as an enlisted soldier, then as a member of Special Forces, then as a part of the elite team at Night Eagle, my instincts have been sharpened. Right now, my nose is telling me that something stinks.
The little silver coupe weaves in and out of busy five o’clock traffic. I’m following, always two or three cars behind her sedan tail. I’m waiting, waiting to see if the other car will drop off, make a turn, anything to prove to me he’s not following Rayne.
But he stays with her, making unease in my gut grow into urgency.
“Okay, asshole. You want to follow her? You get to deal with me, too.” I grit my teeth, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles are white.
I’ve seen the other guys deal with personal cases. The assistant who used to work for Night Eagle stalked Grisham’s fiancée, Greta. Grisham was a machine when he found out, bent on keeping his girl safe from a psychopath. I was on the force when I first met Dare. His girlfriend, Berkeley, had been kidnapped. He wasn’t going to stop hunting the man who took her, not until she was back in his arms again.
Maybe Rayne and I aren’t like them.…We’re not together. And I’m not…shit, I don’t know. I’m not responsible for her. But this feeling inside me, watching someone follow her home, it’s an overwhelming sense of protectiveness. Like I’d fight my way through any obstacle to make sure she’s safe.
After fifteen minutes, Rayne pulls into a residential subdivision. Winding through the neat, manicured streets lined with live oaks and cookie-cutter houses, Rayne’s brake lights flash and her right signal begins to blink.
There’s one car separating her and her tail, who I’m now directly behind. Anger boils in my blood when I see the bright red of the sedan’s brakes.
Not today, motherfucker.
When Rayne pulls into the driveway of a white two-story, I gun my engine, swing out from behind the sedan, and pull out beside him. Staring the driver down through my passenger side window, I jerk my chin forward, indicating he should keep going.