She swept her gaze over him from head to toe, thinking he was definitely sheer male perfection, the epitome of every woman’s fantasy. It was only when he’d cleared his throat that she realized he had finished reading the text and had caught her ogling him.
“Yes? Did you say something?”
He chuckled. “No. Just wanted you to know that our ride will be here in a few minutes.”
She lifted a brow. “Our ride?”
“Yes. We’re changing vehicles. Chances are the people looking for you have already ID’d this one, so we need to swap it out.”
“So who’s bringing us another vehicle?” she asked, glancing out the window. Other than a huge vacant building, the parking lot was empty.
“Flip’s dad.”
She frowned. “His dad?”
“Yes. He’s an ex-SEAL.”
Moments later Crystal heard the sound of another vehicle pull up and noted the driver had turned out the headlights. Bane looked over at her.
“That’s our ride.”
Seven
Bane gathered their belongings out of the SUV so they could place them in the trunk of the car Mr. Holloway had delivered.
Flip favored his father. Same shade of blue eyes and blond hair, although the older man had streaks of gray. It was easy to tell the man had been a SEAL. A commanding officer. He was still alert and wore an intense look on his face. And it was quite obvious that even at the age of sixty-five, he was in great shape physically. He was ready for anything and could probably still hold his own.
“Don’t need to know where you’re headed. The less people who know the better. Just be safe,” the older man said, handing Bane the keys.
“I will, and thanks for everything, Mr. Holloway. I owe you and your family.”
Mr. Holloway waved off his words. “No, you don’t. David told me and his brothers what happened during your last mission when you saved his life. Besides, any friend of my boys is a friend of mine. If you get in a pinch, just give us a call.”
Bane didn’t plan on getting in a pinch, but figured it was best to accept the offer just the same. “I will, and thanks.”
Crystal was already seated inside the new car with her seat belt snapped in place. The older man followed Bane’s gaze. “I understand that’s your wife who you haven’t seen in a while.”
Bane nodded as he looked back at the man. “Yes, that’s right.”
“And she waited for you to come back for all that time?”
Bane nodded, remembering what Crystal had told him. She had kept her promise like he’d kept his. “Yes, she waited.”
The older man smiled. “Then, you’re a very lucky man. Take care of yourself and your wife.”
His wife. He liked the sound of that. He was ready to finally claim her as his wife—but he had to keep her safe first. “I will. Again, thanks for all you and your sons have done. Are still doing.” He knew Flip and his brothers would be keeping an eye on Crystal’s place for a while.
“Don’t mention it.” Mr. Holloway gave him a supportive pat on the shoulder before getting into the SUV to drive off.
Bane quickly walked to the car, got inside, closed the door and locked it.
Crystal glanced over at him. “Where to now?”
He could hear the exhaustion in her voice. It was close to eleven. Probably past her bedtime. “A hotel, but not here in Dallas. Get some sleep. We’ll be riding for a while.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t ask where they were headed and as he started the ignition, he watched her lower her seat into a reclining position. He couldn’t stop his appreciative gaze from sweeping over her, taking in how the denim molded to her hips and thighs. At eighteen she’d had a slender figure. Now she was amazingly curvy with a small waist. Forcing his eyes off her, he adjusted the car’s temperature to a comfortable setting. It had gotten pretty cold outside.
As he pulled out of the parking lot he saw her starting to doze off. She looked just as beautiful with her eyes closed as she did when they were open. This was what he had dreamed about, what he had craved. The two of them together again.
Bane had driven a few miles and had made it to their first traffic light when he heard the sound of her chuckle. He glanced over at her and saw that her eyes were closed, yet a smile had formed on her lips. Was she having a dream or something? No sooner had that thought entered his mind than she opened her eyes, saw him looking at her and shifted upright in her seat. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing is wrong with me. You chuckled in your sleep just now.”
A smile touched her lips. “I wasn’t asleep. Just resting my eyes. And I got to thinking that this is getting to be the norm for us.”
“What?”
“Being on the run. The last time we were together we eloped and were running from Sheriff Harper. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” How could he forget? They had intentionally led everyone on a wild-goose chase thinking they were headed to Vegas when they’d married in Utah.
“Now we’re on the run from heaven knows who.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re together again,” he said.
She didn’t say anything, and when the traffic light changed, he moved forward. After a while he figured she’d dozed off...or as she put it, had gone back to resting her eyes, when she asked, “For how long, Bane?”
Grateful for another traffic light, he brought the car to a stop and glanced over at her. “How long?”
“Yes, how long will we be together before you leave? Before I’m all alone again? You’re a SEAL. That means you’ll be gone a lot, right?”
He hesitated for a moment, giving thought to how he would respond. If she thought he would allow her to use his being a SEAL against him, against them, then she was definitely wrong. “Yes, I might be gone on missions whenever my CO calls.”
“Your CO?”
“Commanding officer.”
“And what if he calls now? You’ll have to go, won’t you?”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Was she trying to insinuate that when it came to her he wasn’t dependable? “Unless there’s a national threat of some kind, it won’t happen. I’m on military leave. My entire team is.”
“Why?”
Now, this was where things got kind of sticky. He had to let her know that parts of his job weren’t up for discussion, but he’d save that heart-to-heart conversation for later. Right now he merely said, “We were due one.” That was the truth, although he wasn’t telling her everything.
“You take risks. Put your life in danger.”
Now it was his turn to chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I was just thinking that right now it’s not my life that’s in danger. I’d say we both have unusual occupations.”
“There’s nothing unusual about mine. I just happen to be working on research that’s pretty sensitive.”
He smiled, figuring that was one way of looking at it. “I guess you can say I work on things that are pretty sensitive, as well.”
“There’s no comparing what we do so don’t even try, Bane.”
Okay, so she had a point. But still, like he’d told her, he wasn’t the one in danger now. “I’m well trained in what I do. Six months ago I made master sniper.” That had been a major accomplishment for someone who was new on the team. But Bane’s skills as a sharpshooter were what had caught the eye of his chief in boot camp. When he discovered Bane could hit a bull’s-eye target with one eye closed, the man had put the thought of becoming a SEAL in Bane’s head. The chief had made the captain aware of Bane’s skill and the captain had pulled a lot of strings to get him into the naval academy.
“Master sniper? That doesn’t surprise me. You were the one who
taught me and Bailey how to shoot. And you always held your own against JoJo.”
Yes, he had, he remembered proudly. And the Westmorelands sure knew how to shoot. He hadn’t been surprised when he’d gotten home and everyone had told him about that grizzly bear Bailey had taken down in Alaska last month. And Crystal had been just as good a shot as Bailey. Only person better than those two was JoJo, who was now married to his brother Stern.
“And you want me to think your job isn’t dangerous, Bane?”
“I admit it’s dangerous, but it’s also rewarding.”
He heard her snort before she said, “I can see you think it’s rewarding because it gives you an excuse to kick ass in the name of your country.”
He laughed, and considering everything, it felt good to laugh. Especially with her. She always had a knack for bringing humor to any situation, although he was convinced what she’d just said hadn’t been meant to be funny.
“You’re making a career out of it, though, aren’t you?”
Was she seriously asking or did she think she had everything figured out already? “Not sure. It’s a decision we will have to make together.”
“Oh, no, don’t pull me into this, Bane. I won’t let you blame me for making your life miserable.”
Making his life miserable? What was she talking about? “Define what you mean.”
“Gladly. I can see you as a SEAL, and a darn good one. What I don’t see is you going into the office at Blue Ridge Management every day. You’d go stark crazy sitting behind a desk. And you’d never forgive me if you saw me as the reason you had to go work there.”
She knew him well and was right about his not wanting to work at his family’s company. Although his brothers—Dillon, Riley, Canyon and Stern—as well as his cousin Aidan were a perfect fit for Blue Ridge Land Management, he wasn’t.
“I could join Jason, Derringer and Zane in their horse-training business,” he said. Honestly, he couldn’t imagine doing that, either. He didn’t have the same love of horses that his brother and two cousins had.
“Bailey told me about their company the last time we talked.”
“But she wouldn’t tell you anything about me,” he said in a gruff tone.
Crystal frowned at him. “That was the rule, Bane, and need I remind you that it was your idea.” She broke eye contact with him to glance out the side window.
Yes, it had been. And it was time they talked about it. He suddenly felt the tension flowing in the car between them and didn’t like it. “You know why I made my decision, Crystal.”
“The decision to desert me?”
He quickly swerved off the road and whipped into the parking lot of what looked like an all-night truck stop. He pulled in between two tractor trailers, which concealed them from the view of anyone driving by. He brought the car to a stop and turned off the ignition.
“Are you trying to kill us, Bane?” she asked, trying to catch her breath.
Instead of answering, he unsnapped his seat belt and turned toward her. “I know you didn’t just say that I deserted you.”
* * *
Crystal could tell Bane was furious. She’d seen him angry before, but his anger had never been directed at her. Now it was. He was glaring at her to the point where the color of his eyes seemed to take on a Saint Patrick’s Day green. But she had a feeling it was not her lucky day. Not backing down, she lifted her chin. “And what if I did?”
“Then, we need to talk.”
“Too late for that. Nothing you say will make me change the way I feel.”
“Then, you need to tell me why you feel that way.”
He really didn’t know? She would find the whole thing amusing but instead she wanted to cry. She had loved him so much. He had been her world. The yang to her yin. The one person she’d thought would never hurt her or let her down. But he had.
“Crystal?”
Fine, if he wanted to pretend he didn’t know why she felt the way she did then she’d tell him. “I understand why you let my father send me away after we eloped but—”
“It was for the best. You were going to drop out of school, Crystal. I couldn’t let you do that. I couldn’t interfere with your education. It was November. All you had to do was make it to June to graduate.”
“I know all that,” she snapped. “So I let my father think he was calling the shots when he sent me to live with Aunt Rachel.” The memory of that day still scorched her brain whenever she thought about it. “I figured I could put up with it because you would come and get me in June after I finished high school.”
She saw the look in his eyes, knew the exact moment he figured out where she was going with this. She took a deep breath and plunged forward. “When you finally called me in January, I thought it was to tell me you couldn’t live without me and had decided to come for me early. And that I could finish school back in Denver while we lived together in the cabin you had built for me. As man and wife.”
“Dammit, Crystal, I know you. If I had come for you early, you would have come up with all kinds of excuses not to go back to school. Plus, I wouldn’t have been able to support you. I wasn’t old enough to claim my land or my trust fund. When I finished high school, my income came from working odd jobs. I walked off the job Dillon gave me at Blue Ridge at the end of the first week. I didn’t like my supervisor telling me what to do. I was a Westmoreland. My family owned the damn company and I figured that gave me the right to do whatever the hell I wanted.”
“I would have gone back to school, Bane. I promised you that I would. And as far as you not having a stable income, we would have made it work.”
“You deserved more.”
“I thought I deserved you. I was your wife.”
“Why can’t you understand that I needed to make something of myself?” he asked in an agitated tone. “As your husband, I owed that to you. Why can’t you see that you deserved better than what I was at the time? I was an undisciplined man without any goals in life. I enjoyed defying authority.”
“Those things didn’t matter to me, Bane.”
“They should have.”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Your family got to you, didn’t they? Convinced you we didn’t belong together. So you told no one we were married. No one but Bailey.”
She watched him rub his hands down his face in frustration. As far as she was concerned, he had no right to be frustrated. She was the one he’d forgotten about when he’d chosen a career as a SEAL over her.
“You’re wrong about my family, Crystal. They knew how much I loved you, but they saw what we refused to see. They knew we couldn’t keep going the way we were headed. So I made a decision that I felt was best for us. And I want to believe that it was. Look at you now. You not only finished high school, but you went on to college and got your master’s degree and are working on your PhD. You were always smart and I was holding you back. Had I been selfish enough to claim you as my wife, I would have taken you to that cabin and made a pitiful life for you there. And it would have been just our luck if you’d gotten pregnant. What sort of future would our kid have had?”
She quickly turned her face away so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes, but she hadn’t been quick enough. Bane knew her. He could read her when she didn’t want to be read. And she knew he was doing it now when he reached out, used his finger to turn her face back toward him. He studied her features intently.
Moments later he narrowed his gaze. “What’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me, Crystal?”
She knew she had to tell him. There was no reason to keep her secret any longer. “That day when you called and told me you had decided to go into the navy, you asked me if I was pregnant and I told you no.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute and a part of her knew he’d already guessed what she was about to say. “But
you lied, didn’t you? You were pregnant, weren’t you?” he said in an accusing tone.
She didn’t say anything for a long moment and then answered, “I didn’t lie. When you asked, I wasn’t pregnant...any longer. I had miscarried our baby, Bane. A few days before. The day you called was the day Aunt Rachel brought me home from the hospital.”
Eight
Bane literally buckled over as if he’d been kicked in the gut. In a way he had. He drew in a deep breath as if doing so would ease the pain. It took a few moments for him to get himself together, and when he looked over at Crystal, she was sitting up straight in her car seat and the first thing he noticed were the tears streaming down her face.
His breath caught. He’d always been a sucker for tears...especially hers. But a part of him couldn’t ignore that she’d been pregnant with their child and hadn’t told him. Although he hadn’t known where her parents had sent her, other than to live with some aunt, she had known how to reach him. And she hadn’t even tried.
He recalled the days he had waited by the phone, figuring she would get around to contacting him somehow to let him know where she was. And when she hadn’t, he’d figured her parents had probably talked the same sense into her that Dillon had talked into him. It was then and only then, that he had made the decision to follow Dillon’s advice and make something of himself before going to claim her.
Trying to pull himself together and keep the anger out of his voice, he asked, “How could you not tell me?”
She looked over at him. “I didn’t tell you because you’d already made up your mind about what you wanted to do.”
“Dammit, Crystal, I only went into the navy because—”
“You thought I deserved more. You’ve said that.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. When had she developed such a damn attitude? He felt anger beginning to roll around in his stomach and he worked hard to control it because he’d never lost his temper with her. “Yes, I said it and I will keep on saying it.”
Neither of them spoke for a while and the silence between them was thick, full of the tension he knew they both felt. “When did you know you were pregnant?” he finally asked her.
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