What if he thought I was too fat? What if… he came back different and didn’t love me anymore? He hadn’t sounded different on the phone. He still had that lovely timbre I adored, the one that made my insides quake with need. What if he didn’t find me as attractive? Two years of motherhood took its toll on me, as well as managing the house, and paying the bills, and the constant worry that Brody wouldn’t come home to me.
I looked up, and my entire thought process vanished. Brody was different from what I remembered. He carried himself taller. His dark hair was short and crisp, newly cut. His face has stubble growing along his jawline. His eyes, dark and haunted… not like what I’d expected from his amber gaze. He’d always been carefree. He’d never had a worry in the world.
This Brody did.
He was scanning the place as he came down the escalator, and finally, his eyes rested on me. The intensity of his recognition weighted me down to the floor, freezing me in my place as he stepped off the escalator. My heart pounded, so hard I thought it might break out of my chest.
Before now, I’d toyed with the idea that the whole thing was a joke, that it wasn’t real. Brody wasn’t really coming home. It was a hoax. But then I’d spoken to him on the phone. Then I got here, and he was alive and in the flesh in front of me.
He stopped, only a few inches away. My breathing was shallow and loud. The noise from the airport vanished, and for the next few moments, there was only the two of us. I studied him, memorizing every nook and cranny on his face, from his dark, sunburned eyes to his angular jaw covered in day old stubble.
“Devyn…”
I didn’t have time to overthink anything. His lips came down on mine, his arms around me so tightly I should have been afraid of him snapping my spine. My hands crushed against his chest, my breasts pillowing against him. He felt amazing, firm and hot, and all consuming.
A moment later, he pulled back, and I dragged in a much-needed breath. My face burned both with arousal and embarrassment. My first kiss in two years, and he’d already blown my mind.
“I missed you,” he whispered, intertwining his hand with mine. “You look beautiful.”
I didn’t have any words for him. He’d kissed them all away. He smiled, and he led me toward the baggage claim. I couldn’t stop staring at him. He was both at once familiar and strange. I knew him, yet I didn’t. But the one thing I did know? My husband. My lover. My best friend. He was home.
Chapter Five
‡
Devyn
Sitting in the driver’s seat and on the highway, I finally got my brain working. I’d never expected to be rendered speechless when I saw Brody again. Cry? Sure. Laugh uncontrollably? Possibly. Cling to him like a sticker? Yes. But stunned into silence? Not at all.
Brody’s hand snaked into mine as I rested it on the center console. I glanced down at it, amazed at the size of his hand. Was it always that big? My hand looked like a child’s inside his.
“This feels awesome.” Brody’s voice was low, but strong.
“Holding my hand?” I asked, knowing my voice had to be shaking. He didn’t seem to notice though.
“It’s the first time in two years I get to hold your hand. It’s the first time I get to touch you, feel the warmth from you.” He needed to stop talking. Not because I didn’t want to hear it, but because if he kept going, I was going to melt into the floorboard, and then we’d wreck and never make it home.
“You’re flattering me, sir.” I chuckled instead, uneasy as his thumb stroked along the back of my hand. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“It’s true.” He smiled, a sad one, not the happy one I’d expected him to have. Brody had always been full of life. He’d been the one that made me laugh. A joker. My joker. This Brody was serious. I hoped it was just because he was overwhelmed about being home. He hadn’t smiled at all except for this one small one, and it wasn’t even a happy smile.
“Well…” I decided to try to be cheery. “Um, Jane is sitting with the girls, and she should be giving them their nap so that we can see them awake when we get home.”
“Jane’s your friend?”
“Yes.” Had I mentioned Jane before? I couldn’t remember.
“You’re not going to wake them because of me, are you?”
“No, I’m going to wake them up because if I don’t, they won’t sleep tonight. And I want them to sleep tonight.”
“Oh.” He leaned back in his seat, quiet.
I didn’t like the quiet. I wasn’t used to it at all, especially not from Brody. Brody was always full of life, a joker. I cleared my throat. “So, I was telling Riley the other day that her daddy was coming home and she kept thinking I said Addy, and then she kept saying that Aunt Addy was going to come visit, which of course led to wondering if Uncle Chris was going to come with her, because they’re twins like she and Jackie are.”
Chris and Addison Hardy were good friends of mine, practically family. Their parents had taken me in once, when mine had skipped town again.
“She talks? Like words and everything?” Brody asked. He seemed surprised, which gave me pause. Did he expect the girls to still be babies after two years?
“Yeah. Um, not big sentences or anything, but she gets the point across. I haven’t allowed anyone to speak in baby tongue around them, which I think helped their speech development. The doctor says that they’re light years ahead of other girls their age—”
I stopped talking. God, I was rambling. Someone stop me, please.
“The doctor? Are they sick?”
“Their primary care physician. I take them in for regular checkups.” I explained.
“Oh, I see.” He was sinking lower into the seat. “Tell me more about them.”
“Well, Jackie is probably the boss of the two. She likes to inspect things. She likes to break things apart and see how they work. Riley’s usually more cautious, except when she’s around Jackie. She likes to show off a bit around her sister. She’s also the screamer.” It was the strangest thing to be explaining the girls like I was talking to a stranger.
“Screamer?”
“You’ll see. Doesn’t get her way, she turns on the water works, and the opera singing.”
“Sounds wonderful,” he replied. I glanced at him, thinking he was being sarcastic, but there was no indication of it. He still held my hand, but his eyes were out on the ocean as we passed over the Coronado Bridge. His thumb absently stroked my hand, leaving me wondering what he was thinking. How he was feeling. But he offered nothing that I could see. So I kept talking, because apparently, I had a need to fill the silence.
“Riley hates all food. Jackie loves it all.” I supposed I kept talking because I hoped that it would make things less awkward and make Brody feel like he knew his children better. “But they both love bath time. They’re already pretty strong swimmers. I imagine that they get that from you.”
“They can swim?”
“Yeah. Um, since we live on the beach in base housing, they got lessons when they were a year old. I just didn’t want to chance them drowning or sneaking out when I wasn’t looking. I mean, the back doors stay locked, but you never can tell what the little buggers will do next. And since I’m usually alone with them during the day, I needed that piece of mind that they had some survival skills for the water.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. That took me by surprise.
“For what?”
“For not being here. For forcing you to be alone, raising our children alone.” Was he really apologizing to me? He’d spent two years in god-knows-where doing gods-knows-what, and he was apologizing to me? I wanted to sink into the floorboards in shame. My job was nothing compared to his.
“You have a very important job, Brody. Even if you were here, you would still have to go to work during the day. And I would still be alone with the girls while you were. The only difference was that you were out of the country.”
“I just… I feel like I should have been here. They’re so big. I saw the
ir pictures online. The videos you posted. I shouldn’t be surprised that they are walking and talking, but I am. I, for some reason, still expected them to be babies.”
His words made my heart ache for him. I’d been rattling on about the girls and me, trying to make him feel better, and I was just making it worse. I swallowed, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say anymore. In fact, anything I did just seemed to make things worse.
Brody was haunted by something, or maybe he just needed some time to adjust to being home. I knew he wouldn’t tell me where exactly he’d been for the last two years. I didn’t expect him to. I didn’t have the clearance. So he couldn’t always talk to me about what was bothering him. But he knew if he did need to, I was there. At least, I hoped he knew.
*
Pulling into the driveway at the house, I had to maneuver around Vera’s car. I shook my head. How in the hell did they get here so fast? The dark blue sedan was partially blocking the driveway, but luckily, our neighbors weren’t home so I was able to use their driveway to get to mine.
“Is that my mother’s car?” Brody asked.
“Yes. Your mom called while I was in the car coming to get you, and I was distracted, and accidentally said I was on the way to the airport. Want to go for a movie for a couple hours?” I flashed him an unhappy, uneasy grin.
Brody chuckled, the first sign of happy Brody I’d had since I’d picked him up. “My mom is the master at ferreting out information. It’ll be okay. They know I’m coming now, and they were probably watching through the windows when we pulled up.”
“Oh, fine.” I huffed, but I got out of the car at the same time as he opened his door. The front door burst open and Vera, the force of nature flew out of it. Yeah. She’d been watching at the window.
“Brody!” Arms outstretched, she practically tackled Brody, hitting him with such force that even he stumbled backward. Following behind her, her husband Chuck embraced his son. Brody’s younger brother, fifteen-year-old Matt, trailed behind. But instead of joining in on the tackle hugs, there was a handshake and a manly one-arm hug with a pat on the back. Then he fell back so his parents could converge on their long lost son once more.
Brody’s face brightened. Jealousy coursed through me, because I hadn’t gotten that smile on his face yet. I shut the door to the driver’s side and popped the trunk with a press of the button on the fob. But before I could pull the bags out, Matt grabbed them both.
“I can do it,” I objected.
“I know. I’m being nice. Why don’t you go sit with them?”
“You’re a sweet guy, Matt, but you know as well as I do he’s going to be unreachable by mankind for the next three hours at minimum.”
Matt laughed, his long black-dyed hair falling over his eyes. He shouldered the first seabag, and then picked up the other one, carrying it down by his side. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You should be there,” I told him. “It’s family time.”
Matt shrugged, though it was obviously difficult to do so with a full seabag on his back. “I’ll talk to him later. Why fight Mom for it? She’s scary when she wants something.”
It strangely made sense. I didn’t want to fight for my husband’s attention with his family either. But I did want him all to myself. I wanted to hide him away from the world and do wicked things to him for the next ten years.
My in-laws were talking to Brody in the living room when I came in with Matt, but I couldn’t understand them, as they were all three talking at once.
“Where do you want these?” Matt asked.
“Can you take them upstairs? To the bedroom?”
He nodded and vanished up the stairs. I looked up after him. It was hard to comprehend that I was only eight years older than Brody’s younger brother. At this point, it felt like a hundred years. I’d never felt so old, and it had nothing to do with him. I just didn’t feel like myself.
Jane wasn’t anywhere to be found. I checked the kitchen, and the other rooms of the house. The girls were fast asleep, though I did not expect this to continue with the commotion downstairs. I shut the door carefully and let out a long sigh. I wasn’t ready for this. Not for Brody to be home, and not to deal with his family. Deep inside my heart, I was afraid of it all.
Matt came out of my bedroom, shutting the door behind him. He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Jane’s not here,” I lied.
“Oh, she took off as soon as we got here. Said something about calling you later?”
“Oh. Okay.” I didn’t expect Jane to take off like that, but I supposed that with my in-laws here, the girls were supervised and she didn’t really need to be present. Except I was feeing a little weirded out and I wanted my friend to be there.
A loud uproar of laughter from the three downstairs had slithering jealousy snaking through my veins.
“They’re all pretty excited, huh?” Matt’s eyes were on the stairway.
“And you’re not.”
He shrugged. “I’m the only one who didn’t think Brody was god before he left. But I’m being a stick in the mud. I’m glad he’s back. It’s been two years. So… yeah.”
“Yeah. Two years.” I slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “And I barely got a hello.”
I’d really been looking forward to having the first day with Brody, so he could meet his daughters and I could touch him for the first time in so long. To be able to sleep the entire night through for the first time in since he left.
“I’m sorry, Devyn.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m glad he’s able to see his family.” I glanced at my brother-in-law. “Even you.”
I sighed, deep and long. I couldn’t hide up here with Brody’s brother all day. I stood up and turned to face the twins’ room. It was time to suck it up.
“You could let them sleep a little bit longer.”
I laughed. “This is Riley and Jackie. They aren’t sleeping.” As if in answer, Riley squealed from inside the room. I smiled at Matt. “See?”
“Come on, I’ll help you.” He pushed the bedroom door open and walked in. I followed him in and we took the girls downstairs.
When we got to the bottom on the steps, Matt immediately took Riley to Vera. Brody smiled down at Riley, and then glanced up, meeting my eyes from across the room. Jackie squirmed in my arms as a big smile filled Brody’s face. His amber eyes burned with promises to make my knees melt later.
It was just a couple more hours with his family. They’d fawn over him, and then we’d have our time. We’d hang out with the girls, snuggle, and do couple things together after the girls were asleep. At least, that was the plan. If his family would cooperate.
Chapter Six
‡
Brody
I don’t know how I knew she was there, even before I lifted my head. When I did, her beautiful brilliant emerald eyes were trained directly on me. She had a baby girl in her arms, while my brother carried her twin.
Not just a baby girl. My baby girl. One of my daughters. My twin daughters. Our twin daughters.
They were so much bigger than they were in the videos I’d seen online. And cuter. Both of them had a head full of auburn curls, with a light dusting of freckles across their noses. So much like their mother.
She handed the child off to Dad, a pasted on smile on her face. I knew it was fake. I could see it, as clearly as I had when we were younger. It wasn’t that which bothered me. It was the fact that I hadn’t known which twin she was holding. I knew by the way they looked, they were their mother’s children. But I’d heard that parents knew which twin was which, just by looking at them. But me? I was sitting there, unable to determine which was Riley, and which was Jackie.
I glanced around as everyone talked all at once, excited and passing the girls around. I’d expected this kind of homecoming. I was okay with that.
But the mission weighed on my mind. My face was floating out there somewhere, even though in eighteen months, there had been no indica
tion. I knew it deep inside. By now, even Simon Giroux knew my face. At least, he probably did.
It was no huge feat to run my face through a facial recognition program. We were doing it now with the footage we’d shot with our own cameras, running all the faces we’d uncovered in the last year. It wouldn’t be long before we had names to go with those faces.
The ones that didn’t have criminal records anywhere… They’d take longer to go through the facial reconstruction software. I couldn’t wait for that. I needed my family to be safe. Devyn had no idea of the danger out there from enemies I’d made as part of Lucky Thirteen. It wasn’t fair to her.
But I also couldn’t tell her. I’d put her more at risk, for one, and then I’d be thrown into a military prison for breaking the confidence of my team’s missions.
“Brody, here, hold Riley. I need a picture.” Mom shoved the girl toward me. I caught her, just barely before my mother withdrew her arms. I tensed, unable to reconcile that I was holding such a precious package in my arms. Riley squirmed, and then started squealing uncomfortably. She twisted, looking around, maybe for Devyn.
“I don’t think she wants—” As if on cue, Riley started screaming higher than a banshee’s scream. I froze. I’d never been around children before. And the last time I’d held either of the girls, they’d been two-week-old preemies.
“I got her.” Devyn pushed her way through and grabbed Riley from me. “She just woke up. All the activity is making her nervous.” She retreated before anyone could reply. Guilt and fear bled into my body. I couldn’t even hold on to my child without screwing it up.
Mom blinked, stunned for a second, and then it vanished from her face. “Well, we can do pictures later when they’re more awake then.”
Pictures. Family. Screaming babies. I wasn’t prepared for this. I was more prepared to pick up an M4 and walk into an enemy stronghold. Devyn grabbed Jackie’s hand and swept them into the kitchen. Great. Just great.
*
Devyn
As Brody said goodbye to his parents, I set the girls up with a movie and a few toys on the floor. It was almost dinnertime, and I’d half-expected his mother to worm her way into staying for dinner. But I was less worried about his mother and more about him.
SEALs of Summer: Military Romance Superbundle - Navy SEAL Style Page 68