Unfortunately, she didn’t have the wherewithal to do it.
He’d basically kicked her out and she’d left because she’d been hurt and mortified by his rejection.
Her only consolation was that a.) she knew that she was right and b.) she’d driven her own damned car home.
Call her a cab, my ass. As though she were a hooker he’d met on the street that he could conveniently ship off at a moment’s notice. Logic told her that he’d been concerned for her safety, but her heart had been aching too hard to accommodate clear thinking. She’d--
Julia stilled as a noise snagged her attention and she listened closely. What was that? It was coming from the living room window.
She carefully set her bowl aside, fear making her pulse leap into overdrive. Another sound, this one more insistent, reached her ears and in a nanosecond she realized what was happening.
Someone was trying to break into her window.
Shaking so hard she could barely dial, Julia snagged her cordless phone and quietly moved to the kitchen where she promptly dialed 911. “What do I do?” Julia asked, terrified.
“Stay on the line until the authorities get there,” the operator told her.
“Shouldn’t I run? Aren’t I trapped in the house? I--
Her living room window shattered and she heard someone swear from outside. Julia frowned. The voice sounded oddly familiar. “Hold on a minute,” Julia said. “I’m going to check something out.”
“Ma’am, you don’t need to do that. Wait for the authorities. They should be there any minute now. Ma’am? Ma’am?”
Julia peered around the doorframe and watched as a leg encased in blousy black pants angled in through her broken window. “Son of a bitch,” she heard the intruder mumble. He braced an arm inside the frame and it was then that she noticed the shirt--white, equally blousy...almost like a pirate’s outfit. “...from a friggin’ stallion to gelding if I’m not careful,” she heard him say. “Honestly.”
Julia blinked, astonished. “Guy?”
He banged his head against the window sill and swore. “Motherfu-- Julia?”
“Ma’am? Ma’am?” came the insistent operator. “What’s going on? Do you know your attacker?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “He’s not my attacker,” she said. “It’s fine. I know this man.”
Sirens sounded in the distance and to Julia’s astonishment, Guy actually looked pleased with the prospect of getting arrested. “Oh, good. They’re almost here.” He grimaced at the window. “Sorry about that. The door would have been too easy.”
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. “I could have shot you.”
“But you don’t have a gun,” he pointed out, looking at her hands to make sure.
“But I could have! What the hell is wrong with you? Why didn’t you knock like a normal person?”
“Because I’m trying to get arrested,” he said, seemingly exasperated with her because she wasn’t following his cockeyed logic.
Her eyes bugged. “Get arrested? Why?”
“So that I can give you a mug shot.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Along with my heartfelt apologies.”
The pirate suit, the mug shot. Julia felt a wild laugh break up in her throat. “Have you lost--“
The police roared into her driveway cutting off what she was about to say. Julia’s gaze swung from him to the blue lights flashing outside and stifled a groan. “Hold on,” she said. “Let me go take care of this.”
“No!” Guy insisted. “You have to press charges.”
He’d clearly lost his mind. “What?”
“You’ve got to press charges. For the mug shot.” That endearingly crooked smile curled his lips. “And then I was hoping that you would come bail me out.”
She knew she kept repeating him, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. It was too much. Unbelievable. “Bail you out?”
He nodded. “I’d appreciate it. And I want you to forgive me, too, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Her heart melted like a pat of butter over a warm bun. “Guy.”
A knock sounded at her door. “Police!”
“You don’t have to do this,” she said quickly. “I forgive you.”
“I know I don’t have to, Julia...but I want to. For you. Because you’re special.”
Uniformed officers burst into the room. “Freeze!” They tackled Guy to the floor and in short order had him cuffed. Rather than looking put out or frightened, he looked downright pleased with himself.
“You want to follow us to the station, ma’am?”
“Sure. How long before I can bail him out?”
The officer blinked. “What?”
“How long before I can bail him out?” she repeated. What? Had she stuttered?
Thoroughly confused, the cop looked from Guy to Julia and back again. “If you’re just going to bail him out, what’s the point in pressing charges?”
“It’s complicated,” Julia said, her gaze tangling with Guy’s.
An hour later, Julia watched Guy stroll across the parking lot toward her car. The pirate outfit ballooned around him and for a second he looked like the genuine article. She leaned her head out the window of her car. “Need a lift?”
Smiling, mug shot in hand, Guy climbed in beside her and hand the picture over. “Not bad, considering they took my eye patch,” he said.
Her heart pounding wildly, Julia nodded. Her mouth parched at the unbelievable gesture. “It’s nice. Thank you.”
“I owe you an apology,” he said without preamble. “I was an ass.”
“You are, but I knew that already. I should have left you alone.”
“Don’t you get it? That’s why I’m here.” He reached over and ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “I never want you to leave me alone. Call me an ass, tell me to go to hell, but don’t ever leave me again, even if I’m trying to run you off. “ He paused, swallowed tightly. “I need you.”
Her eyes misted, recognizing the gesture for what it was. In his own round about way her bad ass former Ranger, modern day pirate was trying to tell her that he loved her.
He was botching it up, of course, but...
“I love you, too,” Julia told him, chuckling softly.
He smiled and breathed a significant sigh of relief.
“And do you know what I’d really like you to do?” she asked him.
“Name it.”
“I want you to love me...now.”
That slow wicked smile she’d come to love spread across those sinfully crafted lips and he laughed softly, the sound eddying through her, vibrating ever nerve in her body. “Baby, just say the word,” Guy told her, then his mouth founds hers and sealed the promise with a kiss.
EPILOGUE
Three months later...
“Are we too late,” Julia asked, hurrying into the maternity waiting area. Guy trailed along behind her, content to watch her move.
Emma shook her head. “Nope. No baby yet. Jamie’s in there with her.”
“And you can bet he’s a nervous wreck,” Payne drawled, doodling his fingers on his wife’s upper arm. “Just like I will be six months from now when Emma delivers our first baby.”
Julia’s gaze swung to Emma’s and she gasped, then squealed with delight as Emma, misty-eyed, confirmed her husband’s announcement. Guy smiled and looked to Payne for confirmation. The Specialist nodded once.
“Didn’t waste any time, did you?” Guy asked. “Congratulations. You’ll make a fine father.”
Julia tugged at his arm, pressed her lips up against his ear. “You will, too,” she whispered.
Guy drew back and blinked. “Do you mean--“
A gorgeous grin spread across her lips and her eyes twinkled with delight. “I do.”
Emma looked from Julia to Guy and back again. Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God. Are you?”
“February eleventh,” Julia told her.
Impossibly, Emma’s eye
s widened further. “Mine, too,” she breathed.
Payne chuckled and looked at Guy. “Sounds like someone else didn’t waste any time on my honeymoon,” he teased. “Congratulations.”
“Meet Daniel Garrett Flanagan,” Jamie announced proudly from the doorway, Colonel Garrett at his side.
“My great-grandson,” the Colonel said unnecessarily, beaming from ear to ear.
Emma and Julia instantly moved into place so that they could get a better look at the baby, but Guy and Payne hung back and the three of them shared a smile. An understanding passed between them, the unspoken communication that they’d used for years. Guy didn’t have to hear Jamie’s thoughts to know that he was more proud of his son than he’d ever been of anything in his life. Nor did he have to hear Payne say that Emma completed him, when one look at the two of them together told any fool that.
And as for himself, Guy thought. Well, he had Julia...and he wanted her now as much as he wanted her forever.
THE LONER - Sneak Peek!
Read on for a sneak peek of THE LONER, the 4th book in the Men Out of Uniform series...
PROLOGUE
“Oh, shit,” Lucas “Huck” Finn muttered, using every trick he’d learned as a U.S. Army Ranger--particularly those in Jump school--to guide his parachute toward the drop zone he instinctively knew he was going to miss. Call it a sixth sense, a premonition, a damned psychic moment, hell he didn’t give a damn.
He just knew he was screwed.
And on a friggin’ training mission at that, one he was running point. Because he’d been thinking about his father again, a man he’d never even met. Why? Who knew? Curiosity? Closure? He didn’t have any idea, but he couldn’t deny the faceless parent had been on his mind a lot in recent months. He’d even begun making inquiries, trying to find out the identity of the man. No luck yet, but the PI he’d hired assured him that it was only a matter of time.
Cheeks burning, he hit the call button on the radio. “I’m north of the DZ,” he said tightly.
“North, sir?”
Bloody hell. “I’ve overshot the drop zone,” he clarified, mortification making his voice gruff. Two-hundred plus drops, HALO training--High Altitude, Low Opening--almost a decade of experience and, while he’d had some pretty scary things happen while stealthily floating through the skies for Uncle Sam, this was the first time in years he’d scuttled a training exercise. He’d landed in an eight-by-eight square of beach at high-tide between two rocky outcroppings amid enemy fire and still stuck the landing, for Pete’s sake. He swore again and struggled with the lines to pull himself back on target.
In vain, he knew. Still...
“You’re going to be in the trees, Major,” Dennis Jenkins told him, as if he didn’t know. Even if it wasn’t nearing midnight and even if he didn’t know every inch of Fort Benning, GA like the back of his hand, it was hard to miss the looming shadows of the tree tops reaching up from the ground like ragged fingers trying to catch him.
The last damn thing any paratrooper wanted to do was land in a tree--too many chances for injury--but in this case, given the rocky terrain, steep hills and valleys on this particular stretch of ground, something told him he’d be better off kissing an oak tree than landing on uncertain terra firma.
“I’m coming in,” Huck told him as the earth loomed ever closer.
“You want me to send a crew?”
“Hell, yeah. I don’t want to walk out of here, dammit.” He could cut himself free and get out of the tree, but hoofing it several miles back to the heart of the base in the dark was unnecessary. Doable, of course, but unnecessary.
“Roger that,” Jenkin’s said.
Huck tripped the switch on his flash light illuminating the bit of air right above his feet, trying to gauge the best place to come in.
Unfortunately there wasn’t one.
Trees, trees and more trees.
He swore again, worked the lines to slow his descent and drew his legs up in an attempt to keep them out of harms way. He felt the first branch scrape his thigh, a second scratch his face as he plunged into skinny pine tree. Soft wood, weak branches, he thought dimly as his parachute finally snagged and took hold, momentarily jerking him upward again, pushing the breath from his lungs.
Before he could take stock of the situation, he heard an ominous crack and was free-falling once more. His flashlight swung in an illuminated beam through the forest as he plunged downward. He felt his right arm break as he tumbled from branch to branch, a stinging sensation in his side--no doubt a puncture wound--then a horrible mind-blowing, gut-wrenching pain so intense it made his mind go white then black and then back to gray, and then another ominous crack as his knee struck another limb and bent at an unnatural angle.
Huck suddenly stopped falling, hovered upside down roughly ten feet from the ground. He could hear the hum of the jeep motor powering on in the distance. Under ordinary circumstances he would have pulled his knife and sliced the lines, but considering the extent of his injuries he knew better.
So much for walking out of here, he thought with bitter irony, struggling to stay conscious. His world faded in and out of focus and his strained, breathless curses turned the air blue around him. Given the stupid mistake he’d just made, he knew he would be lucky to ever walk again.
Years wasted, he thought fighting the pain, panic and blackness threatening to consume him.
Career over.
And with that thought...nothing.
CHAPTER 1
Three months later...
“Are absolutely certain this is what you want to do?” Colonel Carl Garrett asked, his tone as grave as his expression.
Seated in an uncomfortable chair in front of the Colonel’s desk, Huck nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You could still be an asset to the military, Major Finn. Just because you’re no longer physically able to meet the demands of an active Ranger doesn’t mean that you are no longer of value to your country. You have other talents as well,” he said, carefully perusing the documents on his gleaming mahogany desk. “You could be very useful in an instructional capacity if you--“
Huck bit back a blistering curse. “With all due respect, sir, I didn’t join the military to teach. I joined to defend.”
And he couldn’t do that anymore. Would never be able to do that again.
He swallowed, pushed back the despair, anger and absolute fury roiling in his gut. How could he have been so stupid? Have made such a rookie mistake? His knee twinged, remembering, and his fist involuntarily tightened around his cane. “I know that there are lots of other men who make the transition that you’re talking about, Colonel, and I respect their decision. However, it’s not the path for me. I’m a man of action, sir, and since I’m no longer capable of acting, I know that leaving the military is the best route.”
For him, it was the only route.
Because Huck had never considered a life outside of serving Uncle Sam, he’d never recognized the need to draw up a contingency plan. Lots of fellow soldiers had made inquiries as to his plans once he’d decided to leave, but he could hardly tell them when he didn’t know himself. All he knew at this point was that he had to get out. That being here, being wounded, being unable to perform his job was slowly eating away at the few tangled shreds of sanity he had left.
No matter what Garrett said, he was useless now. Dead weight. A liability to his unit.
And just like when a lady always knew when to leave--the kind he made it a point to date--a has-been Ranger knew to heed the exit cue as well.
Where would he go? Hell, who knew? At this point he didn’t even care. He just wanted to get away from here. Thankfully he had enough money in the bank to coast for a while until he could figure out the next chapter in his life. He could always go home, he knew. Home being Red Rock, Georgia, a little town which sat right outside Savannah. Close enough for his mother to drive in every day to clean and cater to the city’s upper crust, but far enough away to always remember his place, Huck
thought bitterly.
And God knows he never forgot.
Between the snotty rich kids he sometimes crossed paths with while his mother was working and the efficient grapevine of a small town, Huck had never had a problem forgetting he was a bastard child borne to a young unwed mother, one he grimly suspected had been taken advantage of by one of the smug, entitled bastards she’d cleaned up after. Had his mother ever told him this? No. But he’d caught enough snippets of conversations between his mother and grandmother while he’d been growing up to rouse his suspicions.
Following her lead, Huck had never asked about his father. He’d been loved enough without a father--it had seemed to be her personal goal, a guilt she’d carried and couldn’t shake--and he’d instinctively known that asking about someone who clearly hadn’t given a damn about either of them would cause her undue grief.
And that, of course, had been unacceptable.
His mother would welcome him back with open arms, but somehow burdening her with his new problems--when he’d joined the military to free her of them to start with--seemed particularly counter-productive.
After years of cleaning up after the idle rich, Beth Finn had finally saved enough money to start her own business and no one was prouder of her than Huck. A firm believer in the power of sugar--of the perfect cookie, specifically--his mother had opened a cookie bakery. Snickerdoodles specialized in its namesake, of course, as well as beautiful iced cookies which were packaged as cookie bouquets. Her online business, in particular, had taken off. He inwardly smiled. He received a care package from her every Friday like clock-work.
Keeping her in the dark after his injury had been particularly hard, but Huck simply hadn’t been able to tell her and had forbid anyone else from sharing the information with her as well. She would have put everything on hold--including the brand-new business that needed her--in order to come to Fort Benning and take care of him. He’d let her help take care of him until he’d turned eighteen, then he’d earned an ROTC scholarship, joined the program at the University of Alabama--Roll Tide!--and the rest, as they say, was history.
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