Completing the Pass

by Jeanette Murray

  His hand sifted through the ends of her hair, brushing against the sensitive nape of her neck. She shivered in response. “Playing.”

  “Playing . . . with my hair?” Wow, that was practically a Marilyn Monroe voice, all breathy. “I-I can’t think when you do this.”

  “Thinking’s overrated anyway,” was his unconcerned response. Then he leaned in to kiss her. “Thinking leads to overanalyzing, which leads to you leaving the state to escape from nothing.” The zipper of his hoodie scraped against her upper arm as he stretched to kiss her neck. “Let’s stop thinking for a bit.”

  “Okay,” she breathed, then cupped her hand behind his head and dragged his mouth to hers.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, after making out on the front porch like a bunch of teenagers returning home after a date, they relaxed in each other’s arms.

  “I love you,” she said into his chest. One small fist clenched his shirt, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to let go. “I love you and I hate myself for giving in to the stupid voices in my head about the moms.”

  “Shh.” He kissed her temple and rubbed a hand up and down her arm. “Family brings a weird dynamic to any relationship. Our moms are . . . a handful,” he finally decided on, wanting to be diplomatic, even though the moms couldn’t hear them. Negativity didn’t deserve any space just then. “It means that much more to me that you fought through the family crap and came back to me. That you made the effort, that you’re willing to go there.” After a moment, he decided to ask, “Why?”

  Carri sighed and snuggled closer to him. “Because I finally realized that one way or another, I was bending and shaping my choices because of something my mother did or said. Either it felt like I stayed because she manipulated me into being here, or I left because I didn’t want to be manipulated. Either way . . . she had a hand on it. So why wouldn’t I choose the one that would make me happy in the long run? I had the choice this time. I don’t have to be here. Mom and Dad are taken care of now.”

  “They are,” he agreed, holding on to the exact way he knew that for sure. “No worries you’ll regret it later when Maeve does that happy dance thing of hers?”

  “No promises,” Carri said dryly, and he chuckled. “But I know I won’t regret being with you.”

  “Good.” He kissed the top of her head and held her close. “So what’s next for you? What?” He asked when she leaned back and stared at him. “It’s a logical question.”

  “I just told you, like, five seconds ago I’m moving back here and I love you, and you’re already asking how I’m going to earn my keep.”

  “You’re an independent woman who wouldn’t have made the leap without planning all the pit stops on the fall down. So spill. What’s going on?”

  “Well.” She sat up fully now, no longer in his arms. He wasn’t a fan. He liked her where he could hold her tight. “I, uh, sold the houses in Utah to Jess.”

  “Jess . . . Your assistant Jess?” That knocked him back a little.

  “I don’t want to be a long-distance landlord. I just wanted the equity, and fast, so I made her a damn good offer. She got a deal, and I got a clean break. They’re good houses. She’s got my old investors backing her now, and so I took the equity and ran. I still want to flip houses,” she added quickly, as if she wanted to deter him from mentally heading elsewhere with that information. “I just want to change the market. I’m thinking there might be a lot of Bobcats who would love a rental house instead of living in an apartment.”

  He grinned at that. “Conniving. I like it.”

  “I like to think of it as being resourceful,” she muttered, lightly tapping her fist on the cement of the porch. “I would have already had a head start on building my real estate empire, but someone beat me to it.”

  “Beat you to what?” he asked, already focusing on her lips and calculating how soon he could get over there to kiss them again.

  “The house,” she said, exasperation clear. “This house. I wanted to get it and make it my first flip. Maybe, I don’t know, stay in it for a little while before moving on to the next house. Or a long while . . . I want to slow down and do less with investors this time around. Too tricky.”

  “This hou— Oh!” He felt his mouth curve into a grin slowly but surely. “You wanted this house.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was tinged with annoyance. “I just said that. It’s in a good neighborhood, solid. It’s got good bones, and . . . Okay, so this part’s emotional but I just kept thinking of it as our place.” Her cheeks flushed with color at that admission and she looked away, as if she couldn’t believe she was being so sentimental, as if it embarrassed her.

  Too damn bad. Josh loved it. He hauled her over to him and kissed her until they were both breathless. “What if . . .” He had to pause to take a breath. “What if I told you the house wasn’t actually out of your grasp yet?”

  “It is,” she said morosely, pointing behind them at the front door. “Another investor must have poached it. It happens. But damn, I wanted this house.”

  Josh bumped her nose with his. “Then ask nicely.”

  Carri chuckled and squeezed his chin. “I know you’re not familiar with this business, but it takes more than that.”

  “Not when you love the guy who bought the house.”

  Her eyes widening, Carri leaned back to take it in. “Wh-what? You?”

  “You said it was our place.” He shrugged, as if it were nothing. “I agreed. I just . . . I don’t know.” He looked back at the front door with its peeling paint and foggy windowpane. “I couldn’t let it go. So it’s mine. Or it will be,” he corrected, “once the paperwork advances through.”

  “Which could take a few months,” Carri reminded him, but he just shrugged again. “Wow. So . . . What are you going to do with it?”

  “We,” he corrected. “What are we going to do to it?” He pulled her back against his front so they sat together, his back propped against one of the front porch columns. Their legs twined together in front of them. Propping his chin on her head, he said, “I saw a plan once, that this hot chick sketched out while she was passing the time.”

  “Hmm.” Her voice was warm and content. “Tell me more.”

  “I thought I’d seduce the hot chick into letting me have the sketches, then use them for my starting point. I might even convince the hot chick to do most of the construction. I hear she’s a pro with drywall.”

  She pinched his thigh. His muscle tightened, but she didn’t punish him further.

  “Then, I’d seduce her into moving in with me.”

  “Sounds cozy.” Carri snuggled back more comfortably against him.

  “Yeah, but living in sin in the same neighborhood as my mom . . . just doesn’t seem right.” He grinned when he felt her stiffen beside him. “So I’ll have to seduce her into marrying me.”

  Her entire body relaxed. “She’d be a fool to say no,” she whispered after a minute.

  “The hot chick is definitely not a fool,” he said, kissing just below her ear. “I should know. I’ve known her since we were in diapers.”

  Epilogue

  Four years later . . .

  Carrington Gray Leeman sat in their crunched home office, cross-legged, moving manila file folders from the small file cabinet to boxes for ease of organizing. As she leaned over, her back protested the awkward position by screaming pain up her spine.

  “Ugh.” She straightened, tried to twist to stretch the abused muscles, and found she’d lost even that tiny range of motion. “You, child, are leaving me with a very bad taste in my mouth about the miracle of childbirth.”

  Their daughter kicked, a few rapid-fire taps from inside her womb, as if in protest at the accusation.

  “Sorry.” To soothe them both, Carri rubbed a hand gently over the bulge where she was 94 percent sure there was an elbow lodged. “Mommy’s
just tired. I used to pack up a house and move at least twice a year. Now I’m struggling to even organize a single room in one house. Whose idea was this whole switching-of-rooms thing, anyway?”

  The single swift punch to her bladder was all the answer she needed. Yours.

  “Well,” Carri reasoned, stretching her legs out, then bending one in, then the other . . . desperate to find a more comfortable position, “there were circumstances. I didn’t want your room to be too small. For a nursery, that’s fine, but you’ll eventually grow, so it stands to reason we might as well just start with the bigger one. The office has to move, unfortunately.”

  The office was, in fact, moving to a new building entirely. With Josh’s singular investing, they had been able to steadily build their real-estate portfolio. The beauty of investment real estate when there was only a single investor—one she was married to—was rather amazing, compared to her piecemeal investment ring from before. The ease, the security was overwhelmingly positive.

  Josh was, God love him, terrible at being patient and waiting for a deal. In his mind, it made sense to buy the property the second it came on the market, price be damned.

  Carri scoffed at that and patted her protruding belly. “Daddy’s silly.”

  But under her careful eye, and his ready pocketbook, they’d taken off, had nine profitable, paid-for rental homes with two more being renovated and one under contract. She had her eye on moving into commercial real estate next. As Josh had said it was his last year in the league—thank God Almighty—they were moving him to managing the rental company full time alongside Carri. Mostly so she could stay home more with the baby. Josh was also convinced she would need a year or two to recover from the trauma of birth. Having not experienced such a miracle yet, Carri wasn’t inclined to argue. But she also had a sinking suspicion that after a few months, she’d be crawling up the walls and running around looking for new property, baby in tow.

  Did Gerber make infant-sized hard hats?

  Her cell phone rang, and she answered it while it was still on the floor. “Hello?”

  “Hey, baby. How are my two girls?”

  That made her smile as she flipped through the last two pages of the file in her hand and set it in the Keep pile. “We’re good. You get out of practice?” Carri lifted another, bulging manila envelope from the very back of the filing cabinet and set it down in front of her.

  “Just got done, now off to grab some lunch before I head to that assembly at the elementary school.”

  “Assembly?” she asked absently.

  “The assembly with Michael Lambert and a few rookies about being active, staying fit, eating healthy, that sort of thing. We’ve got a few drills we’re going to run with some kid volunteers. Should be cute.”

  Josh thought all things involving children were cute . . . even more so now that they were expecting their own. “Sounds good.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hmm?” She opened the file, ready to decide if it was shred-worthy.

  “I heard rustling. Are you . . . No. You’re not. Don’t tell me you’re actually working in the office?”

  She let her silence—and the flipping of a paper—answer for her.

  “Carri. Carrington freaking Gray.”

  “Why am I only a Gray when you’re annoyed with me?” she wondered out loud.

  “Don’t change the subject. I don’t want you lifting or pulling or picking up anything. Oh my God.” Panic infused his voice. “Don’t tell me you’ve moved a bookshelf. Please.”

  She sighed and settled back a little. “I’m a fully grown adult who knows when her body has had enough, Josh.”

  “I worry, so sue me. You’re my world, and you’re carrying the only other piece of my world that matters a damn to me inside your body. Keeping you safe is the number one thing on my mind at all times.”

  Well, damn. She felt her eyes start to water. Stupid hormones.

  “So stop, okay?” His voice had gentled, making her more inclined to actually listen. “If you keep going, I’ll worry. And if I worry, I won’t be worth a damn at the assembly. And if I’m not worth a damn, I’ll just come home early and bug the hell out of you.”

  “Okay, okay.” She laughed and rubbed at the aching stretch of the skin over her stomach. God, pregnancy was undignified. “I’ll stop and go lay on the couch and watch reality TV reruns and eat a pint of ice cream and get incredibly fat.” She paused, looked down, then sighed. “Fatter.”

  “That’s my girl. Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” she said and clicked the End Call button. “Bossy pants.”

  Well, it stood to reason she could at least put the last file away before she went to make herself useless on the couch. Because he would absolutely not hesitate to come home and bug the hell out of her, as he warned.

  She flipped the folder closed again and looked at the tab on the file and double blinked. That looked familiar. Where had she seen that name before . . . her father’s medical care. The charity that sent the in-home health worker to her parents’ home before she tried to head back to Utah. But how did Josh know all of that? And why did he have a file with the nonprofit’s name on it?

  She opened it cautiously, started flipping through pages, then the file folder dropped from her numb hands.

  The nonprofit was Josh’s. He’d started it . . . for her. For her family. The more she read, the more she understood. The nonprofit had gone on to help dozens of other families in the following years, not just her own. But her family had been the first.

  He’d given her a choice. He’d given her the opportunity to walk away, when he’d wanted to hold on tight. He’d given her the option to choose. How must he have felt when she’d taken the out and left? Her heart clenched and she hiccupped, not realizing until just then she’d been crying. Tears blotted the top page of the file, and she shoved it to the floor, curled into a protective ball around her stomach, and let her hormones loose.

  After a good fifteen-minute crying jag, she sat up, rubbing at swollen eyes. “Sorry about that, baby,” she muttered. There was a soft flutter in her belly, a gentle, It’s okay, Mommy.

  Slowly, she gathered the file up and put it back together the way it was. Then she stacked it in the cabinet exactly as it had been before shutting the drawer as if she’d never seen it. If Josh wanted this to be something he kept private, for her parents’ dignity and for her own pride, if he wanted to choose when—or if—he shared the secret . . . she’d give him that.

  He’d already given her so much more.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from the first book in the First to Fight series

  BELOW THE BELT

  Available now from Berkley

  First Lieutenant Bradley Costa tossed his pack on the bed and sank to the mattress beside it. Fucking hell, what had he walked himself into?

  The best—and most terrifying—opportunity of his life, that’s what. He stood and shook his hands, a habit he’d yet to break, to release the nerves. He couldn’t let it get to him, or else he’d be screwed before he hit the gym on the first day of training camp.

  A knock at his open door jarred him from his self-induced pity party. He turned and saw a guy holding his own ruck, wearing a civilian “uniform” of khakis and a button-down polo shirt that was similar to what he’d worn on his own trip to Camp Lejeune.

  “Hey, you Costa?”

  “Yeah.” Brad strode over to shake the outstretched hand. “You Higgs?”

  “One and the same.” The other man grinned, then squeezed a little in friendly warning before letting go. He was an inch or two shorter than Brad, with a more wiry build. But there was strength in the grip, and Brad didn’t doubt the man could likely run circles around an opponent. Pushing past Brad, Higgs walked in and observed the tiny room, nodding in acceptance. “Seems we’re lucky roomies while we’re here.”

>   “Seems like.” Brad watched him warily. “I’ve claimed this one. Yours is that way.” What the hell was this guy doing? The small single bedrooms of the Bachelor Officer Quarters were connected by a tiny sitting room and shared bathroom. Obviously, this was his room.

  Making himself at home, Higgs tossed his pack next to Brad’s on the bed and sat in the chair. “I like company.”

  Oh, good. He got the Chatty Cathy for a roommate. He could wait it out. He went to his own ruck and started unpacking.

  “So you think you’ll be here awhile, huh?”

  God, he hoped so. He glanced up as he organized the top drawer with his workout gear. “Wouldn’t have made the trip otherwise.”

  “I’m not big on unpacking, myself.” Higgs stretched and laced his fingers over his stomach. “I figure I’ll just leave things the way they are for now. See if I like the setup. If not, easier to ditch and go if my shit isn’t spread out from here to kingdom come.”

  Brad snorted. “What, like you’re just going to walk away from this if you don’t like how it’s playing out?”

  “Why not? Life’s too short to do shit you don’t like.”

  Brad’s hands tightened into fists around the top drawer. He’d tried for years, nearly a decade, to get the chance to come to training camp for the Marine Corps boxing team. Had been working for the goal—even just indirectly—since watching his father compete at age six. For the next twenty-three years, the goal had been at the top of his bucket list. And this moron was willing to just walk away from the opportunity?

  Fucker.

  And yet, if he did, it would be one less fucker Brad had to step over to make it onto the team. He shut the drawer and shrugged. “Probably right.”

  Higgs watched him for a minute, then snorted and stood. Most likely disappointed Brad didn’t invite him to stay to paint their toenails and gossip about boys. As Higgs grabbed his bag, he said, “A bunch of the guys who arrived today are heading down to Back Gate.”