Both of their eyes turn to me. Calling our police department small is an understatement. There aren’t many other cops aside from me, so even if I weren’t working on the case, I’d know about it.
“She holds her own,” I tell Jack.
“I know she does. She has to in order to put up with the idiots,” he says, referring with male fondness to the two younger brothers they adopted after Sofie’s mom passed. “But I just want you to keep an eye on her. Make sure it doesn’t open old wounds.”
“You don’t even have to ask, man.”
“Thanks. I never would have re-upped if I didn’t think they’d be in good hands when I deployed.”
“She’s stronger than you think she is. I think it helps her to be there for other women going through the same thing.”
“Livvie’s the same way. She says it helps her process. Sofie gave her the idea.”
My head jerks as I break at a stoplight. “What?”
“She is?” Jack asks.
Ben shrugs. “She volunteers with an advocacy group for families with children who have heart conditions. Not necessarily HLHS like Cole, but similar birth defects.”
I remember when Ben came home from the deployment. A broken man, to be truthful, but learning he’d fathered a child with Livvie—Jack’s sister and the one woman he always wanted—was the turning point that brought back the man I’ve always known.
“When the hell did she start doing that?” Jack demands. “She’s my sister. How do I not know about this.”
“Since Cole’s heart transplant. It was a rocky time for her and when we thought it was going to fail, she needed an outlet to take her mind off the stress. When he got better, she kept at it.” He lifts a shoulder. “She’s happier now, so I don’t get on her shit about it.”
“It’s not too much for her?” Jack asks, the consummate big brother, even continents away.
“Nah, and you know Sofie’s got a lioness packed inside that little body. If she were in over her head, she’d let you know.”
Jack snorts, and he and Ben share a commiserating glance. Then Jack says to me, “Just wait, your time is coming. If you play your cards right, you’ll finally have a woman to worry about.”
“I was under the impression you hated all the women I brought around.”
Jack groans, and Ben says, “Tag chasers. You brought tag chasers home. Even before you got with your ex, the women you brought around were only in it to bang a man in uniform.”
I grin. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Well, look who you married.”
My grin fades. “Not cool.”
Ben holds his hands up. “I’m just sayin’. It’s about time you found someone real.”
“You two are worse than your wives,” I say.
“Just wait until they find out you’re dating someone.”
Ben laughs, and I consider banging my head against the steering wheel.
Piper
“This is just beautiful,” Lena, a newcomer at the B&B, comments that evening as she sits down at the table where the dinner I’ve spent the last hour arranging awaits the guests.
“I can’t take all the credit,” I tell her. “Diane is absolute magic in the kitchen.”
In the time since I started working at the travel agency, I’ve learned vacationers become a sort of temporary family. There is a small, but intense, connection, almost a fantasy, that forms.
It has to do with memories, I’ve concluded. People go on vacation to make memories, so they’re choosing to include you in them. There’s something beautiful about it, especially to me, since so many of my recent memories are too bleak to recall. It’s much more fun to run away from my real life and make all new ones.
“I’m a baker, and I can assure you, presentation is half the battle.” Lena closes her eyes and draws a deep breath. “Smells amazing.”
“I’ve sampled some, it tastes better than it looks—or smells.” We share a smile as I arrange a rolling service cart with the beverages.
“Are you from around here?” Lena asks.
Without a pause, I say, “Alabama and South Florida, yes, but I’ve moved around quite a bit.”
Lena groans. “I’m so jealous. I wish I had the time to travel. I bet you’ve seen a ton of amazing places.” She leans forward on her elbows, her dark blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders.
I think back to those horrible months spent on the road, running blindly from city to city. I hedge the question with a vague, “Oh, tons,” and hope she swallows down the lie.
“I’m so jealous. I’ve always wanted to get in a car and see everything. Just start on one side of the country and pick a direction. See what I’ll see and all that.”
“Why didn’t you?” I ask, moving the conversation further away from myself.
She sips the wine I put in front of her and gestures with her free hand. “Oh, you know. I had college first—my parents wouldn’t let me start the bakery without a degree in business.”
I think of my own parents and wince. They were so excited when I got into college. We haven’t spoken much since I dropped out.
Lena doesn’t notice my expression. “Then after that, I went to train with the most successful baker in the country.”
“I bet it was exciting.”
She laughs, sips again, then snorts and starts coughing, which makes me laugh, too. “It was horrible.”
I stop arranging the spoons and forks and shoot her a horrified glance. “Horrible?”
Nodding emphatically, she explains, “He was French and he was a bonafide tyrant.”
“Sounds delightful.”
“Nightmare,” she insists. “Night-freaking-mare. I worked for him for two terrible years after I graduated. My blood, sweat, and tears went to perfecting the perfect ganache, the most delicious crème brûlée. And he never gave praise. There was always something I could have done better.”
“Probably makes you the best damn baker, though.”
She grins and points at me. “You’re right about that. He may have made me want to kill myself at the end of every shift, but after my internship there, I went on to have the most successful bakery in the tri-state area.”
“No wonder you never traveled. So, what brings you to Florida? More work?”
Her smile goes electric. “Actually, I’m scoping out honeymoon spots.” She holds up her hand and flashes a ring the size of a small mountain.
“Holy Moses!” I scoot around the table for a better look. “Look at that!”
“Well, when he wasn’t shouting at me, he was the hottest man I’d ever met.”
My mind blanks for a second. “Don’t tell me you’re marrying him?”
“Oui,” she says with a huge smile. “Next fall.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thank you.” She picks up an empty glass and fills it with wine before handing it to me. “Let’s toast to me.”
We clink glasses, and I say, “To the first of many wonderful vacations with the sexy French chef.”
She raises her glass to sip but gasps, “Wait! What about you? I’m no bridezilla. What are we toasting for you?”
I think about it for a second and then blush. “Well, I did just meet someone and I don’t know if it’s serious, but I feel like it could be, if I let myself.”
“Take it from me, the quintessential single girl: do it. It’s the scariest, most death defying leap you’ll ever take, but when it’s the right person, anything is worth the risk.” She raises her glass and I do the same. “To my sexy chef and to your . . .”
“Sexy Southern cop,” I supply.
Her giggles are infectious. “That’s what I’m talking about. To them and to us.”
I clink glasses. “To us.”
After the last guest has eaten, including the bubbly and very tipsy Lena, I clean up and take the short walk back to the bungalow. Rocky trots happily by my side, only deviating from the path to investigate a bush or to dart ahead and
then come back to my side.
I finally broke down a few days ago and got a car to take me back and forth to town. Unlike most of the large cities I’ve lived in in the past few months, Nassau doesn’t feature a large transportation system and I couldn’t keep relying on Diane’s generosity every time I needed to go into town for groceries or to run an errand.
It isn’t anything special, just a six-year-old sedan that was in desperate need of another coat of paint, but it will get me to and from town. Like Rocky and the garden, though, it’s another way for me to lay down roots.
Logan leans against it, smiling at me as I near the house. The sight of him almost stops me in my tracks, if nothing else, it slows my pace considerably.
He exchanged his police uniform for a pair of jogging pants and a T-shirt, but he could be dressed in rags and somehow make them look sexy. The pants hug his muscular thighs and the T-shirt accentuates his defined chest. I’m not going to lie. It’s been a long time since I’ve been with a man. A long time since I’ve felt the kind of heat he stirs to life. After Gavin, I simply couldn’t find it in me to trust anyone.
When I get close enough, he tugs my hand and pulls me to him. “Hey,” he says, after kissing me senseless. He leans closer, and I feel his breath on my neck. “You smell amazing.”
“I smell like I’ve been working all day.” I pull away because the eager feeling in my belly is screaming at me to drag him inside and do some investigation of my own.
His eyes glint like he can see the truth behind my evasion, and it makes me want to frown at him. “Ready to go?” he asks.
“Let me just water the garden and grab his leash.”
He follows me across the yard and up the stairs. “How was work?”
I glance back at him as I unlock the door. “It was alright. You?” I wonder if it sounds as awkward aloud as it does in my head. “How’s the case going?”
“It’s going. Haven’t had much luck interviewing potential witnesses. Until we get another lead, there isn’t much I can do, unfortunately.”
I make a noncommittal humming sound as I turn on the water to the hose and start spraying. I keep my face averted so he can’t read my expression. The fact is, I know just how frustrating the waiting can be—except from the other end of the scenario. I know what it’s like to wait and wait as the police valiantly try to dig up clues.
“You’ll find the guy,” I say, and I hope it doesn’t sound as hollow to him as it does to my own ears.
“I’ll grab Rocky, and we’ll wait for you in the truck,” he says.
I nod and finish spraying down the rest of my garden. I take extra care because I can use the time to settle my nerves. To think I used to be so confident when it came to men. The old me would laugh at my skittishness now. She would have eaten men like Logan for breakfast.
With her in mind, I wind the hose back onto its wheel and lock up the back door, triple-checking the locks out of habit. Then I move to the windows and do the same there. By the time I finish, Logan’s already gotten Rocky into his truck and has moved it from his driveway to mine. Rocky has his head poked out of the door and I could swear he’s grinning.
He makes room for me as I swing myself up. “Where exactly are we going?”
“A little park. It has an old closed off baseball field they turned into a dog park.”
I scrub Rocky on the neck. “He’ll love it.”
Like any other place in Nassau, the park is only a short drive away. It’s located just off the main road, but it’s relatively deserted.
“You’d think there’d be more people here,” I comment as I jump out of the truck.
“There is a more upscale park built near the center of town a year or so ago. Skate park, basketball courts, the whole nine. This one kind of fell by the wayside.”
“Based on the peeling paint and brown grass, I’d describe it more as badly in need of attention.”
“Maybe that’s why I like it so much.”
I refrain from asking if that’s why he was so attracted to me at first.
Logan lets Rocky inside the double gates and Rocky takes off with a round of cheerful barks. I lean against the fence and watch as he sniffs every plant and pole in the park.
“So are we going to talk about this?” he asks as he comes to stand beside me.
I look away, pretending to study an incoming couple with an excited beagle. “Talk about what?”
He turns, leaning back against the fence and crossing his arms over his formidable chest. “You can pick a topic at this point. Why you keep pushing me away. Where you’re from. Why you carry a gun everywhere you go and never turn the lights off in your house.”
All the fight goes out of me, and my shoulders slump. “Logan, I—”
“You don’t have to tell me everything. Just give me one thing. One little thing about you that I don’t already know.”
Wind whips my hair around my face, and for the hundredth time since Paige died, I wish she was here to guide me. She was always better at this sort of stuff. “Why does it matter?”
“For one thing, did you just hear yourself? I’m trying to get to know you, and you’re asking why it matters? Of course it matters. You matter.”
“Why are you pushing this? Why can’t you just leave it alone?”
He turns so his shoulder nudges mine as he gazes over the dogs happily running around the park. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I bet that’s how you’ve kept to yourself for so long. You show them that prickly side for long enough and they just don’t put forth the effort.” A long silence follows until he sighs. “Did I ever tell you what I did in the Marines?”
This man, I swear. I can’t keep up with him. I blow out a breath and then turn back so I can look at him. “No, you didn’t.”
“Since you’re being stingy about the personal details, I figure if I share some with you, you’ll be obligated to return the favor.” Before I can object, he continues, “I didn’t join the Marines to kill people, but that’s what I ended up doing.”
My eyes flash to his, but he’s not looking at me anymore. He’s watching Rocky greet the beagle, but his eyes have a faraway quality that tells me he’s not really seeing what he’s looking at.
“I was a sniper, Sienna. I spent a lot of time waiting, and if you think I’m going to back off because you keep pushing me away, you can think again. Patience really is a virtue and probably the only one I actually excel at.”
I scowl at the ground. I don’t want to know these things about him. I don’t want to think of him on top of a dusty building in the desert as he gets his target in his sights. I can picture his cool-eyed stare all too clearly. I don’t want to feel sympathy for the man who had to make such terrible choices. I don’t want to feel anything for him.
When I don’t speak, he continues. “Shooting was about the only thing my old man and I had in common, aside from the appreciation for good whiskey or a cold beer. He was the one who took me out shooting for the first time. Who taught me how to clean and care for a gun. Practiced with me for hours. At first I went with him because I couldn’t get him to spend time with me any other way. Then, I got good at it. Real good. When Ben, Jack and I joined the Marines, I got better at it. For a long time, it was the only thing that mattered.”
Unbidden, words spill from my lips. “What happened?” I nearly wish I could suck them back in, turn back time, but then he glances over with his eyes so sad, I want to wrap my arms around him and never let go. The part of me who’s running from all the horrible things I can never seem to forget recognizes it’s likeness reflected in Logan’s eyes. The kinship rises up in me so swiftly, so strongly, it’s all I can do to keep my hands from offering comfort, from soothing away the pain.
“Nothing worse than anyone else whose been in my shoes,” he says in a tone lighter than the subject, a tone that tells me the truth is anything but light. “I did my job, kept my men safe. I did what was necessary.”
I go quiet, watching Rocky bound t
hrough the maze of tricks they have set up for the dogs to run through. He goes up and over a bridge, weaves through a line of poles, and picks his way through tires, his mouth spread in a wide smile, tongue lolling.
I don’t have to ask Logan for details. It doesn’t take much imagination to paint the picture. He’d gone to boot camp, then probably to his first U.S. duty station. After that, he must have gone back and forth with tours overseas. His lack of description tells me more than any long speech ever could. Without the explanation, I discern he’s taken lives. I can only speculate how many or the circumstance. It only takes one look at the faraway look in his eyes to see it. It explains why he has trouble with drinking, why he often holds himself separate like he’s both there and somewhere else at the same time.
And again, the words just tumble from my lips without conscious thought. “Phil, the man who you talked to that day? He’s a journalist just dying for his big break. Some . . . things happened to me a few years ago and he likes to follow me around hoping there will be a change in my story. Something that will be his big claim to fame.”
When I look up, he’s got a frown playing around his lips. “He’s not bothering you again, is he?”
I study him for a few long seconds. “You aren’t going to ask what he’s trying to scoop?”
“What are you afraid of?” he asks instead of answering my question. He turns to me, caging me between the fence and his muscular body.
“You’re not the only one with a past that haunts you.”
He leans closer and I have to tip my head up to meet his beautiful eyes. “Your ghosts won’t scare me away.”
“You don’t know anything about them yet.”
He brings his hand up to my cheek, tucks his fingers into my hair. “I don’t need to. I already know you’re worth it.” With one last long look, he lets his hand glide down my arm to take my hand. “Getting dark,” he says after a glance around. “We should round up Rocky.”
The part of me aching to touch him protests. “What? That’s all?”
He pauses and leans down to touch his lips to mine. Despite my firm resolutions to keep my distance, my body melts into his, my hands going up to his chest. He deepens the kiss enough to make me breathless, then pulls away, leaving me wanting. “It’s a start.”
First to Fight Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 66