SmokingHot

by Anne Marsh

  “Yeah.” A note of pride filled Kade’s voice. “She’s something special.”

  “A hell of a woman,” Tye agreed.

  “Right.” Kade looked over. “So...”

  “So Katie said the two of you were over. That you were never really...”

  “Engaged?”

  “That.”

  “I asked. She said yes. Were we planning on walking down the aisle? I don’t think so. Why?”

  Uh. Yeah. That was the question. “Katie and I spent some time together,” he said carefully.

  Kade nodded. “She’s great.”

  “Yeah. But if the two of you are—”

  Kade tilted his head back again the seat. “Damn. I don’t think I’m ever straightening this leg out again.”

  Decoy.

  That was okay. Tye reached for the radio, fiddled the dial until he found a country singer lamenting pissing his life away. Perfect.

  The music filled the hours, as did a stop for gas, but eventually Strong appeared in front of his windshield and there was no putting off the moment. Kade was home. Tye parked the truck.

  “I’ll get the duffel. Katie will want—”

  “To see me.” A weary grin split Kade’s face, but he got out of the truck faster than he’d gotten in.

  Tye followed, more slowly and not just because he was on luggage duty, then stopped halfway up the walkway.

  Yeah. He so had no business being here.

  Katie must have been waiting by the window, because she was already out the front door, flinging her arms around Kade and dancing him around the porch. Laughing. Crying.

  Laura took the duffel bag from him. He hadn’t seen her coming. “Tough break.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Katie tugged Kade inside. Nope. Because he hadn’t had known either.

  How he would feel. What it would mean to see Katie tugging Kade inside the house, leaving him outside.

  ***

  Katie might have dragged Kade into the house, threading her fingers through his. Maybe. Possibly. She wanted to squeeze hard and then harder, to make sure he was really there. Kade was home. She was fairly certain she hadn’t said one coherent word since Tye had driven up and Kade had gotten out of the truck.

  Tye.

  Tye hadn’t come in. She didn’t know what to make of that. Later. She’d figure it out later.

  Kade stumbled slightly, slapping a hand against the wall to steady himself. “Slow up.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Why does everyone keep asking that?”

  “Because you were declared dead three months ago. IED and crater were mentioned. I assume whatever kept you off the grid had to be pretty intense.” She spun around. “It wasn’t a secret mission, was it?”

  Kade sighed. “Nope.”

  This close, there was no missing the lines of pain and exhaustion carved into his face. He started moving again, though, and she went with him like she always had. If he’d flown in, he probably hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  “Hey,” she said, opening her door. “You can talk to me. Or there’s a bed right there with space in it for you.”

  “Thanks.” Kade limped over to the bed and flopped onto it, facedown. “I’ll be human later, I promise.”

  “There’s no rush.” She ran a hand down his back, but he didn’t flinch. Just settled deeper into her bed, his face half-buried in the pillows. Moments later, the steady up and down of his back told her he was asleep. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d lived through.

  But he’d lived.

  He was home.

  Everything else could be worked out.

  Moving to the bottom of the bed, she carefully untied his boots and eased them off his feet. Climbed back up beside him and watched him sleep.

  Home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Laura eyed the box addressed to Tye sitting on Katie’s bed. “You have to use the U.S. post office? You’re not seeing the man anytime soon?”

  Katie really didn’t think so. “We’re—” she wondered how she could possibly explain her non-relationship to Laura. She hadn’t seen Tye in the week since Kade had come home. He’d avoided her like she’d come down with the plague. Or acquired a fiancé.

  She looked down. So she’d bought him a pair of shoes. A thank you present for his part in bringing Kade back to her. Or... well, okay, it might have been a hey, remember me? She’d added a little doodle of his closet with three pairs of shoes in it. She had no idea what he’d make of the gift.

  “Taking some time apart, exploring options, screwing up the hottest sex of your life?” Laura offered the list of options, no smile on her face.

  “That about sums it up.” She sat back on the bed. She’d made a mess of the packing tape. Good thing Tye never went anywhere without that knife of his, because she’d apparently gone for overkill and used half a roll on the box.

  “Uh-huh.” Laura sat down on the bed and wrapped an arm around Katie’s shoulders.

  She wanted to hold it together. She really, really did. Somehow, though, there were tears dripping down her face and the box was polka-dotted with wet spots except for the three hundred or so places where the tape reflected back the water.

  “He was just helping out a friend,” she sniffed.

  Laura made a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “You don’t have sex to help a friend out. Not a guy friend, at least,” she added judiciously. “We girls can get way more into taking one for the team.”

  “He came here to Strong because that’s what Kade planned on doing.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t really the part that bothered her.

  “Misguided sense of loyalty. Definitely a guy.” Laura sighed. “I’m not sure how any of them survive to old age.”

  “Then he looked me up because he told Kade he would. If something happened.”

  “That’s not a bad thing,” Laura pointed out, “although full disclosure should have happened shortly after he met you and not when Kade came back from the dead.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Tye was a good guy and he’d meant well. He’d come here with a plan to honor Kade’s memory. She knew that, even if she really hated his execution. After all, she’d wanted to work through Kade’s bucket list herself. She completely understood not being able to let go and needing to do something. But she hadn’t passed Kade’s list off as her own. She’d been honest about what she wanted.

  Which was Tye.

  Damn and double damn.

  Laura swore. “You fell in love with him. You broke the cardinal rule of hot summer sex and got attached.”

  Katie stared down at the box. Too bad she couldn’t wrap up all of her feelings that neatly. Or maybe not so neatly. Cat hair stuck in the packing tape and there wasn’t a straight line in any of her handiwork. She had no idea how she could make shoes but taping up a box eluded her. It was probably one more reason why the post office had moved to self-stick boxes.

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “Probably.”

  “Love is like pregnancy. You can’t be maybe, possibly or half pregnant—or in love.” She frowned. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “God. No.”

  “Good. Then I’ll take this to the post office for you.”

  ***

  “You’re living the good life out here.” Kade dropped into Tye’s lawn chair and cursed as he stretched his leg out in front of him. In the week since he’d come back to Strong, things hadn’t changed much in the leg department. “Maybe they should have cut the damn thing off.”

  They both looked at his leg and then at the cane in Kade’s hand. Tye would bet Kade hated relying on a stick.

  “Two is definitely better than one,” Tye said.

  “True.” There was a moment of silence, then Kade closed his eyes, letting his head thunk back against the camper. “Still hurts like a bitch though. You got a beer for an old friend?”

&nbs
p; And that was it. Eight words that answered all of Tye’s questions. Questions like: Do you blame me for that last night in Khost? And: Are we okay?

  “Yeah.” He got up and grabbed a beer from the cooler inside the camper. Popping the top would have been overkill, so he settled for handing the cold can over.

  “Thanks.” Kade settled back further into his chair.

  Tye opened his own can and took a sip. The beer probably didn’t contain enough alcohol for this particular conversation. “What happened?”

  “You saw the kid.” Kade sounded certain and he was right, damn it.

  “I saw him. I—” The words burned in his throat. “I did nothing. The kid started to fire, you stepped in, and then both of you were just...”

  “Gone,” Kade supplied. “IED. If you hadn’t been standing on the other side of the Humvee, you’d have been toast. The blast did a number on my leg, knocked me to the ground.”

  Tye waited. Kade hadn’t been lying on the ground when the rest of their unit had swept in for a rescue op.

  “Insurgents dragged me off. I spent the next six months enjoying a luxurious spa vacation in a basement in Khost.”

  Tye had a pretty good idea that those six months had been beyond hellish. Kade’s tone said don’t ask, however, and he could fill in the blanks for himself. He didn’t need the details until and unless Kade felt the need to share.

  “Rough?” he asked, hoping his friend understood Tye was good for whatever was needed. He wasn’t going to push, but he’d do whatever it took to get Kade back on his feet. He wasn’t sure fine and one hundred percent were in the game plan anytime soon, however.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Kade admitted. “Eventually, I worked the bars over the window free and wiggled out, found a U.S. patrol and they patched me up. It’s all good.”

  Tye doubted that. He admired the fierce determination in Kade’s voice, but some things were harder to shake off than others. Six months of insurgent torture and off-the-radar captivity weren’t easy to take.

  “If you say so.” Jesus. He should say something else. Something that let Kade know Tye had his back now and wouldn’t let him down again. Instead, all he had were platitudes. “You need something, you tell me. I’m on it.”

  “Appreciate it.” Kade worked on his beer like it was a lifeline.

  “They do a decent patch job on you? The leg okay?”

  He’d seen how Kade levered himself down into the lawn chair. That leg wasn’t one hundred percent any more than Kade’s head was and what Kade had shared in the truck didn’t begin to cover it.

  “I’ll make it work,” Kade said fiercely. “I’m going to be jumping. I’ll be back on the line.”

  Tye knew his friend would, too. Kade was one determined son-of-a-bitch. “No re-upping?”

  Kade shook his head. “I’m done. Three tours were enough.”

  He hadn’t seen that coming any more than he had the IED and the kid with the gun. Kade ringing out, Kade quitting the SEALs... he’d never even considered those possibilities. Downtime, yes, because a body could only take so much. But a permanent hiatus? Not in this lifetime.

  Like he’d read Tye’s mind, Kade said, “Don’t.”

  Tye stalled for time, taking a swig of his own beer. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over that night. You saw a kid.”

  “That kid wanted to shoot your ass with an AK-47.”

  “Yeah.” Kade sighed. “And I shot him right back.”

  “You did the right thing. You did your job.” He hadn’t.

  “Did I?” Kade opened his eyes and looked over. Tye could read the pain and discomfort in those dark eyes easily, even though he was no fucking genius. New lines fanned away from the corners. Too much time squinting into the desert sun and holding on when every nerve in the body screamed stop. Not enough time laughing. “I wonder about that every fucking night, Tye. You saw a twelve year-old boy. I saw a target. Which one of us is the better person?”

  “It wasn’t about being the better person.” Hell. This was the last thing he wanted to talk about. “It was about being the better SEAL.”

  “Maybe. I have no idea.” Kade set his beer can into the cupholder Walmart’s genius engineers had built into the chair arm. “I can’t go back until I figure that out though. How about you? Are you re-upping?”

  “I was planning on it.” What had happened to his simple yes? When had going back become a hypothetical, something he was planning on—but hadn’t committed to yet?

  “What about Katie?” Kade asked, going straight to the heart of the problem.

  How did you ask the guy you got mostly killed if you could have his girl? And, to be fair, it wasn’t like Katie was something they could pass around anyhow. She was a person. An amazing, loving, hot-as-hell woman he just might want to stick around for.

  “Shit,” he groaned and rubbed his hand over his face.

  “That sums it up,” Kade agreed.

  “She wanted to check off the items on your bucket list,” he found himself explaining. “She wanted help and I figured I owed her so I volunteered.” But it had been more than that. He just wasn’t sure how much more.

  Kade made a choking noise. “Really? She wanted to do the list for me?”

  “You bet.”

  “I cribbed that list from the Internet,” Kade said dryly. “Because she kept going on and on about how I needed some kind of goal for myself after I got out of the military.”

  Tye hadn’t realized that Kade had decided months ago not to re-enlist. He filed that away to think about later.

  “You stole the entire thing?”

  Kade flashed Tye a look. “Except for the ménage part. I added that all on my own. Plus, I figured it’d shut her up.”

  “Hence the number two pole position.”

  “Yep.”

  “And you and Katie are really not—” He had to ask, had to know. If Kade still wanted a shot, he damned well deserved it.

  “We broke up. Hell, we weren’t ever really together.” Kade sighed. “Being with Katie would have been good, but she deserved great.”

  “So it’s true?”

  “You should be asking Katie that.”

  “I did.” He tossed his empty towards the milk crate full of recycling. “But I need to hear what you have to say.”

  “We’re friends. We’re always going to be. But anything else? That’s over.”

  Tye could read between the lines. Kade and Katie had been lovers. His friend and teammate had held Katie in his arms, kissed her and loved on her. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he was sure it didn’t matter. The past was the past. Mostly, he was glad Katie had had someone to love her. She deserved that.

  “So.” Kade curled his fingers around his beer can. “About you and my Katie.”

  “You just said she wasn’t yours.”

  “Yeah, well—I lied. She’s always going to be mine. I’m just considering sharing her with you. This is the part of the conversation where you man up and tell me what your intentions are.”

  Tye eyed his friend. “You really don’t have any?”

  Please tell me you don’t.

  Kade narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you. We already covered that.”

  Discussing his feelings for Katie ranked slightly higher on his fun list than, say, a root canal without a shot of Novocain. Too bad there wasn’t a local anesthetic for the heart.

  “She doing okay?”

  “Damn it, man. What do you think?”

  Tye didn’t know. That was why he was asking. Katie deserved happy. Sure, the idea of happy having her wrapped up in Kade’s arms made him want to holler and hit something, but the important factor in this equation was Katie. He wanted her smiling, no matter what it took.

  “I’m not the guy who walked away from a woman like Katie,” Kade said pointedly, when Tye didn’t answer. “And thanks for me feeling like the
girl in this relationship, discussing her feelings. Katie wanted you, dickhead. And you walked away from her.”

  Tye thought about that for a moment.

  “Wanted or wants?” he asked. He snuck a peek at his watch. If he got his ass in gear, he could be sitting on Katie’s front porch in under twenty minutes.

  Kade sighed. “It’s probably wants, but if you quote me on that, I’ll have to kill you. You should tell her you love her. Just put it out there and see what she says.”

  “Got it.” Tye stood up. He wasn’t practicing his I love yous on Kade. Friendship only went so far.

  Kade looked down. “Nice shoes.”

  The boots were fantastic, and only partly because they were a gift from Katie. She’d sent him a pair of boots. By the U.S. Post Office. The boots were something she’d labeled chocolate brown and softer than anything he’d ever owned. There was some kind of scroll-y design on the side, but his jeans covered that bit, so no worries. He wondered if she really took issue with his minimal shoe count or if she’d just been thinking about him.

  “Katie took issue with my only owning three pairs of shoes,” he said. Damned nice, too, although he was probably lucky his new boots weren’t pink or decorated with ribbons.

  “Tye?”

  “Yeah?” He fished in his pocket for the keys to his truck. He could be at Katie’s place in ten minutes.

  “She’s not home.” Kade didn’t bother trying to his grin. “She told me she was going hiking today.”

  “You know where?”

  Kade waved a hand toward the ridge. “Up to the lookout on Black Ridge trail.”

  Tye frowned. “Jack was worried about that area. Said he might have spotted a sleeper smoke there, but he wasn’t sure. Could have been someone’s barbecue gone bad.”

  Automatically, they both looked towards the ridge. A puff of black smoke mushroomed over the treetops.

  “Huh,” Kade said. “That wasn’t there an hour ago. That’s no barbecue.”

  Tye didn’t answer, because he was already racing for his truck.

  Chapter Sixteen