His throat worked as he sucked the contents from the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing, the tendons in his neck drawing her eyes to his shoulders, to his biceps, triceps, the stained pit of his arm, the tufts of hair peaking from his sleeve that strained around his muscles.
And then she realized the time she’d spent in the barn had left its mark—on her skin, her clothing, her hair. Lovely.
“I’m a mess.” She set the bottle between her boots, turned into the wind and pulled the tie from her hair, capturing the tangled strands and twisting them into a knot that was probably as untidy as what she’d started with.
“We’re all a mess today. I don’t think anyone’s going to care or notice.”
He wasn’t a mess. He was beautiful, in his element, man against nature. Yes, he was sweaty, dirt clinging to the golden hairs at his wrists, matted in the hollow of his throat, but he was perfect, and she was staring, and she felt like she was seventeen again, waiting in the library for him to finish football practice, to sit beside her and lean into her space while she pointed out the missing logic in his English essay.
“I always liked your hair long,” he said out of the blue. “I’m glad you grew it back out.”
“I never really wanted to cut it,” she admitted, stopping because he didn’t need to know the reason she had.
Except he did know. She saw it in the tic at his temple before he spoke.
“When we called it quits, Karen told me what she’d done. Threw it in my face, actually. I should’ve come to you then, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Or a way to make it up to you.” He bit down hard on some choice words, keeping them under his breath. “How could anyone make up for something like that?”
She shrugged. “I’m just glad they didn’t chop off my fingers or something.”
“Someone got too close.” He reached out, ran his thumb along the tiny scar on her jaw, lingering there, his own jaw tight as if wishing he could go back and stop the attack.
She took his hand, held it for a moment then let him go. “Shane, it’s okay. It was high school. Like you said, teenagers aren’t known for thinking straight.”
She watched as he looked to the ground, and it struck her again how much time they’d both wasted, how much needless baggage they’d carried when all either of them needed to do was talk. “How’re things going? With the firebreaks?”
“Pretty good. We’ve done just about all we can here. We’ll keep the water going, and watch the wind.” He turned, looked behind them, his profile strong, his jaw determined.
She imagined his gaze being equally so as he studied the very scene she’d come out here to escape. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” he asked, coming back to her, the lines on his face softening as she became the object of his concentration.
She remembered what he’d said earlier in the day and used his words instead of wrangling her thoughts. “Get armed men in and out of tight spots.”
He shrugged. “You train. You learn. You put it into practice.”
“Where?”
“Wherever I’m needed.”
“No. Where did you train? Coronado?”
He gave a single nod. “There. Some at Fort Benning.”
“I thought so.”
“It’s not a big deal. It’s just what I do.”
Something she would expect a SEAL to say. She laid her palm on his wrist and wrapped her fingers as far around as she could. “It’s a very big deal, Shane. A very big deal.”
He looked down to her hand, turned his beneath hers to lace their fingers. “I took you with me. You were there in my head telling me to pay attention, to focus, to be smart. Funny that yours was the voice I heard when so many after you drilled home the same things. A little more forcefully, but yeah. I always came back to you.”
When he lifted his head, she stepped closer, bringing their joined hands behind her. She felt the beat of his heart as she pressed against him, as her own blood rushed through her veins.
She rose on tiptoes, found his lips with hers, and closed her eyes, humbled, frightened, honored. The kiss was tentative, an exploration of new feelings, so soft and tender, a memory of their first. He tasted the same, but different. He felt the same, but nothing like he had. She knew who he was, but she didn’t know him at all.
And then she stepped away.
He rested his forehead on hers. “Sometimes, when I’m on a mission, and it’s quiet, and we can’t do anything but wait, I think about you. I think about you a lot, actually. About making it out and seeing you again.”
“But you’ve never come back. Until now.”
His lashes swept down, swept up. “I told myself it was all in my head. That I didn’t have anything to come for. There was no reason you would want to see me.”
Her heart wanted to break but held on. “Why would you think that?”
“You were bullied and I didn’t stop it.”
“You didn’t know it was happening.”
“I knew later.”
“By then it was over and done with.”
“I still should’ve—”
“Shh.” She used her fingertips to silence him. “Don’t. We’re here now. That’s all that matters.”
“I need to get back to things,” he said after a long moment of mingled breath, regret thick, longing thicker still.
“I know.”
“I’ll be around later.”
“I know.”
“I won’t leave you again.”
“I know.”
18:30
Hooking the earpiece of his sunglasses in his T-shirt’s neckband, Shane leaned close to his laptop, adjusting it this way and that on the front seat of his truck to better see the screen. The satellite imagery and wind models had his hopes up. They verified what he’d thought he was seeing, watching the smoke change directions.
Teri initiating that kiss had his hopes up even more. Different hopes, yeah, but ones he’d been entertaining since returning to Crow Hill.
He hadn’t intended to follow her again. Going after her into the barn had seemed like enough stalking for one day, but the unfinished business between them had only been stirred, not settled. He’d seen her walk off, watched her disappear behind the house. He’d fought with himself and lost the battle. He was so glad he had.
“Shane?”
He turned. Teri stood five feet away holding a paper bag from the Blackbird Diner. He breathed deeply and smelled what he was pretty sure were a burger and fries. But he also smelled soap and shampoo, and hunger of another sort gripped him deep.
“Daddy had burgers sent over from the diner. I thought you might be hungry.”
His stomach rumbled loudly enough to be heard over the one tractor idling nearby. “I could eat.”
“It’s not much, especially after the day all of y’all have put in.”
It was everything. The food and the fact that she’d brought it to him. He took her in, her boots, her faded jeans, her damp hair twisted on top of her head. Her face clean of makeup. Her sleeveless shirt closed with only three strategically placed snaps.
He thought about popping them, burying his face against her chest and breathing her in. “It’s plenty. Anything more and I’d probably pass out from a food coma.”
Their hands brushed when he reached for the bag, and he lingered, wanting to take her by the wrist and pull her to him. Wanting to feel her mouth beneath his, her breasts against his chest, her hips pressed to his and begging.
Clearing his throat, he turned and pushed the laptop into the passenger seat, boosted sideways into the driver’s. Elbows on his knees, he opened the bag and dug in.
“What?” he asked moments later, his mouth full.
Her smile was shy, tentative, but not innocent. “There’s something about watching a hungry man eat.”
He could tell her about being hungry. The ways he’d wanted her. The things he’d said to her when she wasn’t there to hear. “I went eight days once living on a
single MRE a day. We got stuck on a mission and had to ration our rations while staying invisible. You should’ve seen us chowing down once we got back to base camp.”
“Does it scare you?” she asked, her smile fading. “What you do?”
“I have a healthy respect for all the ways things can go wrong. I do what I can to make sure they don’t,” he said, then shoved a handful of fries in his mouth.
“I guess you’ve seen some bad things.”
Bad people. Bad situations. “I’ve seen a lot of good, too.”
“And done a lot of good.”
“It puts life in perspective.”
“Like your sister losing both of her parents.”
He took another bite, chewed to gather his thoughts. “That shouldn’t have happened. She’ll be fine, but she should’ve had these years free of that sort of tragedy. It’s going to change who she is, the choices she makes.”
“Are you talking from experience?”
“Human experience as much as my own, I guess.”
“Did you enlist after 9/11?”
He nodded. “I’d been fighting wildfires for the state a couple of years. Had an engineering degree. Thought I could put some of that to better use.”
“And yet here you are, jumping in to save one single barn.”
He caught her gaze, held it. “I jumped in because of you.”
“Me?” She frowned, and after a long moment asked, “Are you saying if it had been the Campbell’s house threatened you wouldn’t be trying to keep it from burning down?”
“Sure I would, but for a less personal reason.”
“Shane—”
“I wasn’t quite telling the truth when I said you’d been my best friend. You were a whole lot more,” he said because in for a penny, why not the whole pound?
“Shane—”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it, how I’ve never been able to let you go?” He ran a napkin over his mouth, tossed the garbage to the seat behind him. “I was pretty damn happy when I found out you were still single.”
She scuffed the toe of one boot at the ground, hiding behind her sunglasses, hands in her back pockets.
“I got my degree, started teaching. Just never really dated much.”
“Not to sound selfish, but I’m glad.” Because the thought of another man’s hands on her . . . .
Her gaze came back to his, her pulse throbbing in her throat. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
Oh, baby. Blinking hard, he grabbed his sunglasses and shoved them on. “Don’t say anything. Just know.”
02:30
Not to sound selfish, but I’m glad.
Eight hours now, and that was the only thing Teri could think about.
Shane being selfishly glad that she was single. So many responses had tumbled into her head, and what had she said?
I don’t know what to say to that.
Yeah. She was some prize. She couldn’t even tell him the truth. That she’d given him her heart in high school. That she hadn’t thought it fair to raise the hopes of another man when she knew Shane would always be there in the back of her mind.
She would wonder. She would wait. She would hope.
What she wouldn’t do, it seemed, was sleep. She tossed off the bedding, and walked to the window, looking at the moon and the paper thin ribbons of smoke drifting beneath it. When she’d gone to bed, the fire had been eighty percent contained, and the volunteers working to save her family’s belongings on their way home.
All but Shane.
He was standing at the back of his truck, staring at the same view. Knowing she was looking at the rest of her life, she slid her bare feet into her boots, used her sheet like a shawl to cover her pajamas, and made her way out of the house and across the yard to where he stood guard. To where he waited.
“It’s the middle of the night,” she said, moving to his side.
“I know,” he said without looking at her.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Just watching. Making sure.”
A kick of worry ached in her chest. “I thought you said—”
“Teri,” he said, cutting her off and turning toward her. “Watching and making sure doesn’t mean anything I said earlier has changed.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I am. C’mere.” He reached for her, lifted her to sit on the tailgate then hopped up beside her. Right beside her. Their thighs touching from hip to knee, his shoulders broad and like a wall behind hers as he braced his palms on the truck bed and leaned back.
She couldn’t help it. She dropped her head to his shoulder, nuzzled her face against his T-shirt that smelled of sweat and smoke. The afternoon’s kiss came back, swimming over her until she thought she might drown in the things she was feeling. Had he been so much a part of her life all this time that she’d kept herself for him?
Before she could find her voice, he turned into her, loomed above her, his eyes glittering in the darkness. He covered her, pressed her down. The liner in the bed of his truck was smooth and hard beneath her back. She didn’t care. She dropped her sheet behind her and raised her arms, looping them around his neck and bringing him down.
He supported himself on one elbow, splayed his other hand on her belly, working his fingers beneath her thin cotton tank while holding her gaze. She said nothing. She only breathed and held on as he covered one of her breasts, thumbing her nipple before moving the same hand lower, to the drawstring waist of her low-riding knee shorts.
He freed the knot, slid his hand beneath the fabric, into her panties. She pulled her heels to her hips and spread her legs, her hands kneading the balls of his shoulders. As he slid a finger between her folds, she bit at her lower lip, and when he moved lower, entered her and pushed deep, she gasped and began tugging his T-shirt up his back.
He sat up, stripped it away, and went to work on his fly. She swallowed, watching the play of the moonlight on his body, his wide shoulders, the dusting of fine hair on his chest. The thicker hair trailing behind his dark briefs.
She scooted further into the truck bed, and he kneeled between her legs. When she lifted her hips, he tugged down her bottoms and her panties, then shoved his briefs to his knees. He was thick and full, and she stared as he rolled on a condom, then could see nothing but his face as he crawled above her, entered her, making everything in her world right for the very first time.
He held himself still, his forearms bearing the brunt of his weight, and she reached for him, her hands on his neck, her thumbs skimming along his jawline, his skin dirty, scruffy, sunburned and beautiful.
“It scares me to think of you in danger.”
“Then don’t. Think of me inside of you.”
“It scares me to think of losing you.”
“Then don’t. Think of being with me.”
“It scares me to think of never seeing you again.”
“Then don’t. Think of seeing me until you’re sick of my face.”
“I’ll never get sick of your face.”
“What about the rest of me?”
“I’ll never get enough of the rest of you.”
He loved her then, moving his body over hers, into hers, with hers until they were one. The beat of their hearts. The cadence as they rocked.
The rhythm of their shared breath. They finished together, and she arched into him, burying her cry of passion in the crook of his neck, soaring as he carried her places too high to bear.
She waited until his breathing had slowed and his shudders had stopped before asking, “What are you going to do now?”
“Besides put on my pants and hope your parents are still asleep?”
That made her grin. “About your sister. About where you’re going to live.”
“I’m moving back to Crow Hill. But my sister’s only a part of it.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been in love with you for sixteen years, Teri Stokes.” He stroked a finger down her cheek, her neck, circling
it in the hollow of her throat and pulsing inside of her as he hardened again. “I think it’s time I let you know exactly how much.”
07:00
Standing on the Stokes’s front porch, Shane buried a yawn in his fist. It had been a long twenty-one hours, physically, mentally. Emotionally. A totally different exhaustion than what followed his SEAL team’s missions, those keeping him awake for days at a time. But tired or not, he had miles to cover before he could sleep.
His first order of business? Stopping to see Shannon. To let her know he was fine. That the fire was out and no longer a danger. That no matter how often he might be gone, or for how long, he’d fight heaven and hell to get back to her.
He would write. He would call. He’d get her a computer so they could video chat no matter where in the world his job might take him. They were family. And families stuck together, thick or thin. Shannon. Teri. They were his. To care for. To provide for. To keep safe. Now and forever.
Behind him, the Stokes’s front door opened, and Gavin walked out with two steaming mugs of coffee. Nora, holding hers, shut the door. He handed one to Shane, who as dirty as he was, had declined to join the older couple inside.
The three of them drank their coffee in silence, watching the sun rise over the grass that was as dry and yellow-brown as yesterday, over the barn that was weathered to gray and wet, but was still standing proud and strong.
Before another yawn took him, Shane turned. “I guess I’ll head out.”
“You should get some sleep, Shane,” Gavin said. “You have our undying gratitude, but you need to see to you and yours. Reports this morning have the blaze at ninety percent contained. I think we’re out of the woods.”
“Trust me. Sleep’s on my schedule. Just a few things to take care of between here and there.” He gestured toward the barn. “I thought you might need help moving things back inside.”
“No rush on that. Teri rented the truck for a few days. She’ll get it back to Austin in plenty of time.”
“Sounds good.” Handing his empty mug to Nora, Shane shook Gavin Stokes’s hand, then made his way back to his pickup.
SEAL of My Dreams Page 26