A crash from below made Sadie jump. Her heart pounded and she took a step back out of the room. She brushed the tears from her cheeks.
She felt like a cup that was about to overflow. She couldn’t stand in the hall staring at her father’s things and she couldn’t return downstairs. The thought of sipping more tea and smiling politely felt like one drop too many.
She moved into her bedroom and shoved her feet into her old boots. She slapped her Stetson on her head and grabbed her little black clutch from the bedside table. The heels of her boots made a soft thud on the hardwood floor of the hall and down the stairs. She passed several people on her way out the front door, but she didn’t stop to say hello. She just kept walking. Past the line of parked cars, down the dusty road. The hat shaded her eyes from the late afternoon sun and she kept going. Anxiety and grief gripped her heart. What was she going to do now that her daddy was gone? What was she going to do about the JH? She didn’t have to live on the ranch. She had several options. Get involved in the day-to-day management of the ranch, let the current ranch manager and foremen take over completely, or something in between. She had a meeting with Dickie Briscoe, Snooks Perry, and Tyrus Pratt Monday morning. The ranch manager and two foremen wanted to talk to her about her plans and options. She was now the sole owner of ten thousand acres, several thousand head of cattle, and a dozen registered American paint horses. She was fairly certain she owned a few cattle dogs and a slew of barn cats, too.
A part of her wanted to run, like always. To jump in her car and leave it all behind. Yet there was also a part, a new and intriguing part, that wanted to stick around and see what she could do.
A slight breeze blew the wild grasses and dust. She stopped in the middle of the road and looked back at the house. She figured she’d walked about a mile. She should go back.
“Everyone says Sadie is leaving town as soon as she gets her daddy’s money.”
Vince glanced up at Becca. He hadn’t seen her for about a week. Thought maybe she’d forgotten about him. No such luck. “Is that what everyone is saying?”
“Yep.”
He tossed her a cold Dr Pepper out of a Coleman cooler on the floor of the office at the Gas and Go. Today her hair was a short bubble. A little strange but not as strange as the lopsided do she’d had a few days ago. “I don’t know her plans.” She hadn’t discussed them with him.
“Aren’t you dating Sadie Jo?”
He knelt and rummaged through the deepest part of his toolbox sitting in the middle of the room. The renovations were taking longer than he’d planned. Instead of working, he’d spent the day looking at apartments, and now he was going to have to stop everything and take a trip to Seattle sooner than he’d expected.
“Aren’t you?”
“Aren’t I what?”
“Dating Sadie Jo?”
His sex life wasn’t Becca’s business. “I don’t know that I’d call it dating.”
“What do you call it?”
He glanced up at the annoying little twenty-one-year-old. “I call it none of your business.”
Becca frowned and popped open the can. “I saw the way you looked at her, Vince.”
“When?”
“Last week when I was here and she drove up.” She leaned a shoulder in the doorway where the jamb had been a few days prior. He hadn’t planned to remove the wood doors and moldings, but decades of Luraleen’s cigarette stench had seeped into the wood and made it smell like a bar in old Vegas. “You had sparks in your eyes for her.”
That was fucking ridiculous. If there had been anything in his eyes, it had been pure lust. “I don’t spark,” he told the girl who wore glitter on her eyelids. He continued to rummage for his level and added, “I’ve never sparked.”
“Oh, you sparked.”
His face felt hot, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think he was embarrassed. Which was just damn ridiculous. He didn’t get embarrassed.
“Remember when we met at Tally’s wedding?”
He wasn’t likely to forget. He rose and grabbed his tool belt off the desk.
“I didn’t think I’d ever find someone again after Slade.”
He wrapped the soft leather belt around his waist. Lord, she was dramatic.
“But I did. His name is Jeremiah.”
He looked up and wondered why she thought he’d care. Oh yeah, she thought he was her dad.
“So I won’t be around as much.”
Praise Jesus.
“So is Sadie gonna stick around?”
Even if he wanted her to stick around, she’d always said she was going to get the hell out of Lovett as soon as she had the chance. Back to her real life. When they’d first met, it was one of the reasons he’d found her so appealing. Now there were a lot of things about her that appealed to him. Besides the obvious, she was smart and tough. These past few days, she’d been strong in the face of her loss. Unlike his own mother who had always fallen to her knees when she fell apart, Sadie stood and faced what came at her with calm dignity. He liked that about her. Sadie’s leaving was no longer one of the things he liked about her though. He wouldn’t mind if she stuck around. When he’d first driven into town, he’d thought he was going to be around for only a week or maybe two. Shit happened, or to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there were known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. The press had made fun of the former defense secretary for that statement, but it made perfect sense to guys like Vince who’d gone into known unknowns only to land in a shit storm of unknown unknowns. He loved a well-executed plan of known knowns. He liked to anticipate complications. Liked to see trouble coming before a known known became a known unknown. Or worse. An unknown unknown where there was nothing left but to blow shit up and shoot anything that moved. Just burn the fucker down.
“You’re a nice man and deserve a nice woman.”
Which showed how much she knew. He wasn’t a nice man. He’d seen and done things he would never talk about with anyone outside the teams. Things civilians would never understand. Horrific things that left a mark on his soul, yet things he wasn’t sorry about and would do again if his country asked it of him. Things he would do to protect his family. Only his family didn’t need him to protect them anymore.
“I think you’re really great, Vince.” Her big brown eyes looked across at him.
His phone beeped and he pulled it out of his pocket. He opened the text and read: Rescue me. There was a lot to do at the Gas and Go. He’d spent all day looking at apartments, and the last four days he’d spent with Sadie. He was behind on his renovations. He could get in a few good hours yet today. He needed to get in a few more hours today before he left for Seattle in a few days. The unexpected trip was going to set him back even further, which could cost him money.
Vince hated losing money almost as much as he hated the unknown unknowns and owing people.
He slid the phone into the side pocket of his cargo pants. “It’s late,” he said. “Time to go home.” He ushered Becca out the back door and jumped into his truck. On the drive out to the JH, he didn’t bother to ask himself why he was dropping everything to rescue Sadie. It made no sense, and he preferred things to make sense. A well-executed plan. A clarity of purpose. A known known.
He turned off the highway and drove beneath the entrance of the JH Ranch. He’d like to tell himself that it wasn’t anything more than a sex thing. That was the simple answer. Straightforward. Clear. But walking toward him, tiny plumes of dust coming off the heels of her boots, looking sexy as hell, was one smoking hot complication. What old Don Rumsfeld called the known unknowns.
The smart thing to do would be to turn around before the unknown part of that equation blew up into a shit storm. He hated shit storms. Hated the feeling creeping up on him like he was in unfamiliar territory. Every good warrior knew when to abort. To get the fuck out. For half a second he thought of fl
ipping a U. Then she smiled and her hand lifted in a little wave and it felt like someone shoved a fist to his diaphragm. He had to remind himself to breathe. He hit the button on the door and the window slid down.
“Hey there, sailor,” Sadie said as a cloud of pale dust rose from the dirt road. She looked through the open window and her gaze met black hair and green eyes set in a face that just seemed to get better-looking every time she saw him.
“Where ya headed?” he asked.
“Anywhere.” She waved the dust away. “Interested?”
“Depends.” He grinned. “What do you have in mind?”
She smiled, a real smile, for the first time that day. “Poor decisions we’ll probably regret later.”
He motioned to the empty seat beside him. “Hop in.”
She didn’t have to be told twice. Several cars filled with mourners had passed her on her walk down the road. They’d been kind and well-intentioned, but she was all talked out. She slid into the seat and pulled the belt around her. “Lord, what a day.” She took off her hat and leaned her head back.
“Tired?”
“Mmm.”
“How’d it go?” He turned the truck around and headed back toward town.
She turned her head on the rest and looked across the cab at him. This from the guy who said he didn’t want conversation? “The service was nice. Tons of flowers, and a lot of people turned out. Enough food to feed a village. Which in Texas is a big deal.” Sitting in the comfort of his truck, she let herself relax for the first time all day. Perhaps in the past week. “What did you do all day?” Wow, they alarmingly sounded like a couple. Which was a little scary.
“Looked for an apartment and bought an air mattress and sleeping bag in Amarillo.”
“I didn’t know you were looking.” He wore his usual uniform of brown T-shirt and beige cargo pants. He was the only guy she knew who could wear such bland colors and make them look anything but dull.
He pulled onto the highway. “Luraleen came home last night.”
“I know. She was at the funeral and brought a Frito pie afterward.”
He glanced at her, then back at the road. “Which is just one of many reasons I moved out.”
Her brows lifted up her forehead as she studied his profile, his big neck and shoulders in his tight T-shirt. “You found something already? That was fast.”
“I move fast.”
“I remember. The second time I met you, you had your hand up my dress.”
He chuckled and glanced over at her. “You weren’t complaining.”
“True.”
He reached around the back of his seat and handed her a cold bottle of Diet Coke and a bag of Chee-tos.
She looked at the orange bag in her lap. Felt the cold bottle in her hand, and her chest suddenly got heavy. The bottom of her heart pinched a little. In the past, men had given her flowers and jewelry and lingerie, and her heart was getting all achy about Chee-tos and Diet Coke? “Dinner?” It had to be the emotions of the day. “Careful. Next you’ll be asking me to a movie.”
“I have an ulterior motive.”
She opened the bottle, took a drink, and blamed the funny little feeling in her stomach on carbonation. “I’m pretty much a sure thing. You don’t need to ply me with Chee-tos and Diet Coke to get lucky.”
“I never rely on luck.” He glanced over at her and the corner of his mouth lifted up. “I rely on a well-executed plan. It’s called full-circle readiness.”
“Is that in the SEALs handbook?”
“Somewhere.” He laughed, a soft, amused sound that tickled her pulse. “Somewhere between ‘on time, on target, never quit,’ and ‘grab your sack and jump.’ ”
She smiled. “Your rucksack?”
“That, too.”
“Do you miss jumping out of airplanes?”
He looked out the driver’s side window. “Not as much as I used to, but yeah.”
“Why’d you get out?”
Several moments passed before he answered, “Mostly because of family obligations.”
She thought there was probably more to the story but didn’t want to pry. Okay, she wanted to pry but felt she couldn’t. “What do you miss most?”
“My teammates.” He cleared his throat and returned his attention to the road in front of him. “Being part of something with a noble purpose.” He paused a moment, then added, “Swimming in the ocean. Attack vehicles tricked out with M–2 machine guns and 40mm grenade launchers. Shooting shit up.”
She chuckled and opened her Chee-tos as they pulled into Lovett. “Sounds like my kind of job. I’m a pretty good shot.”
He looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. “For a girl you’re all right.”
“I can outshoot most men. If we have a rematch, I can probably outshoot you, too.”
“That would never happen.”
True. She’d seen his deadly accuracy, courtesy of his government training. “What else do you miss about the military?”
“I miss finning up and hitting the waves.”
“Lake Meredith is about sixty miles west of Lovett.” She took a crunchy bite and added, “My uncle Frasier has a pool a few blocks from here, but it’s past cocktail hour and Uncle Frasier is probably swimming around drunk and naked by now. I could ask though.”
“For the past sixteen years I’ve lived near the ocean. I prefer it to a pool.” He turned onto Desert Canyon Street, then hooked a left on Butte. “Especially a pool with a drunk guy floating around in it like a naked cork.”
Which pretty much described Uncle Frasier.
Chapter Sixteen
The Casa Bella Apartment Complex was new and was made of terracotta-colored stucco and Spanish tile roof. There looked to be around twenty units, and Vince pulled the truck beneath a covered parking spot. He led her to an apartment on the second story. It was a basic eight-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath unit. The carpet was clean and it smelled of new paint, perfect for a guy who didn’t know how long he’d be living in the small town. “If I’d known,” she said as she moved into the kitchen and looked around at the mid-priced appliances, “I’d have brought you a housewarming plant.” She opened the refrigerator and set her Diet Coke next to a case of Lone Star and a six-pack of bottled water.
“I don’t want a plant.” He grabbed her hat and tossed it on top of a box sitting on the counter. Then he slid his hands to her waist. He pulled her back against his chest and kissed the side of her neck. “I didn’t work much at the Gas and Go today. So I shouldn’t stink.”
She smiled and tilted her head to one side to give him better access. “Does that line work for you?”
“Does it work for you?”
“Apparently.”
He unzipped the back of her dress and slipped it from her shoulders. “Your bra’s black.”
“It matches my panties.”
“I noticed.” The crepe dress fell to the floor, and he said against her bare shoulder, “I wanta fuck you with your boots on.” His fingers moved to the back of her bra. “Does that work for you?”
Oh yeah. She turned, and her bra joined her dress. “Yes, Vince.” She pulled his shirt over his head and ran her hands up and down his hard muscles. She kissed the side of his throat and her hand dived down the front of his pants. “You work for me,” she said, and wrapped her hand around his thick, corded erection. “You’re on time, on target, and never quit.” He sucked in a breath and she smiled against the warm skin of his neck. “I believe you called it your ‘full-circle readiness.’ I like a guy who is fully ready with a really nice, big, hard”—she slid her hand up and down his shaft and over the plump head—“body.” She bit the lobe of his ear and whispered, “Fuck me with my boots on, Vince.”
And he did. Right there against the refrigerator with her legs wrapped around his waist. It w
as fast and furious and so hot their skin slid and stuck and she felt burned up from the inside out.
“You’re good. So good,” he groaned as internal combustion raged through her and she gasped, unable to catch her breath. Her heart pounded and her whole world blew apart. When it was over, when every cell in her body reassembled, she felt different. Not in love different. More like not so alone different. She’d been surrounded by a crowd of people all day. Hardly alone, but with Vince she felt alive.
“Are you okay?” he asked against the side of her throat, his warm breath tickling her still sensitive skin.
“I am. Are you? You did all the work.”
“I like this kind of work.” He sucked in a breath and let it out. “Especially with you.”
For how much longer? she wondered for the first time since that first night he’d come to her house. She’d known he would fill her nights. She just hadn’t counted on him to fill up her life so completely. And it was scary as hell. And letting her mind wander down that scary path meant she cared. Caring wasn’t necessarily bad, but caring too much would really be bad. Something that at the moment she probably shouldn’t think about. She’d think about it later when she had to think about every other screwed-up thing in her life.
Afterward, she sat cross-legged on his back patio, drinking Lone Star. The hard concrete chilled her backside as she watched the setting sun.
“I booked a flight Monday afternoon for Seattle.”
Sadie wore her panties and his brown shirt that hit her just above the knees. “Why?”
“Now that I know I’m going to be here for a while yet, I need to get some of my stuff out of storage.” He sat beside her with his back against the wall. His bare feet rested on the bottom rung of the wrought-iron railing. He wore his cargo pants and nothing else. “I’m renting a van and driving back.” He took a drink. “I’ll stick around for a few days and see my sister and hang out with Conner.”
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