Audrey tugged on her husband’s shirt and motioned for him to lower his head so she could whisper in his ear. Gabe laughed at whatever she’d said and pressed an affectionate kiss to her forehead.
Eva glanced away from the pair, only to see Jude and Libby standing hand-in-hand a short distance away, a fortified unit against the exhausting wave of well-wishers. There was so much love and trust between them, it hurt to look at.
A pang of longing struck Eva in the chest with such force it took her breath away. What was so wrong with her that she couldn’t find the kind of strong, lasting relationship those two couples had?
Must be hereditary. Certain people had to be genetically predisposed to happy marriages—the kinds of people raised in normal households, who had soccer moms and doting fathers. Not people like Eva, raised by an irresponsible mother who fell for whatever loser showed her the least bit of attention. Then one day the loser would leave and Katrina Bremer would fall further into depression and drugs until the next one came along. After witnessing what each new heartbreak did to her mother year after year, Eva supposed she’d never be able to give up enough control to put her own heart in a man’s hands.
Cam’s hand landed on her shoulder, startling her back to the present, and awareness seeped from the skin under his palm into her chest and belly, warming her from the inside out.
Oh, shit. Not this again.
He was her best friend. Best. Friend. She wasn’t supposed to light up like a firework every time he touched her. What the fuck was wrong with her?
She sidled a casual step away from him and took a long drink of her beer. Cam started to say something, but Jude and Libby had finally made it over to them. With an easy smile, he turned and embraced his new sister-in-law, then gave his brother a few solid thumps on the back. Niceties out of the way, Jude’s smile slipped a little, and he motioned to his brother to lean in as if he was about to tell a secret.
Uh-oh. Something was up.
“What’s wrong?” Cam asked.
And he was ready to jump into the situation with both feet. It was such a Cam thing to do that Eva had to bite back her smile.
Jude hesitated and exchanged glances with his wife, who nodded encouragement. He tilted his head, indicating the beach. “Seth’s here,” he said as if that explained everything. But judging by Cam’s wince, it was enough information for him.
Eva scanned the water’s edge and spotted the lone figure standing on the beach, staring out over the ocean.
“I’m worried,” Jude admitted. “He won’t say it, but he’s having trouble with all the noise and people. He’s determined to stay and torture himself even though I told him he’s not going to offend us if he ducks out early. He was here for the ceremony, which was more than enough. Can you go talk to him? Convince him to go home and take it easy? I tried, Gabe and Quinn both tried. Even Audrey tried, but the stubborn jackass won’t listen to any of us.”
“What makes you think I’ll be able to change his mind?” Cam said.
“If he’ll talk to anyone, it will be you. Everyone talks to you.”
That was true. Although Eva had no idea what was going on, if anyone could fix the problem this Seth guy was having, it would be Cam.
“All right,” Cam said, handing his empty to Jude. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Eva followed him to the end of the boardwalk, where he kicked off his flip flops, then peeled out of the gaudy Hawaiian print shirt, revealing the white tank top he wore underneath and the elaborate tribal tattoo that covered most of his right shoulder. He pulled out the linings of his shorts pockets as visual proof he had nothing on him. She’d seen him do this many times before and, like all of the other times, adrenaline spilled into her blood, kicking up her heartbeat.
“Is this guy dangerous?” she asked.
“Only to himself.” He handed her his shirt. “He has PTSD. He’s working hard at overcoming it, but he still has rough days.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Just talk to him.” He turned toward the beach, but Eva caught his hand and gave it a quick squeeze.
“Be careful.”
His lips quirked in his funny little smile and he squeezed her hand back before releasing her. “Hang back, okay? I don’t want to spook him.”
…
Cam snagged a bottle of beer from a passing waiter, then walked down to the beach and settled against a palm tree several feet away from Seth. He popped the cap off his bottle and took a long drink. It wasn’t his favorite kind—too light for a guy who preferred stouts thick enough to chew—but that didn’t matter. The whole point of drinking it was to put Seth at ease. No big deal. Just someone out on the beach to watch the sunset with a beer. It also gave Seth the opportunity to start the dialogue. People abhor silence. It was human nature to seek to fill it, and it always worked like a charm when you wanted someone to talk.
Seth was no exception.
“So they’re sending the hostage negotiator now?” Seth’s voice was low and rusty, as if his vocal chords didn’t get a daily workout. He wore the hood of his sweatshirt up despite the humid night and wouldn’t look in Cam’s direction, kept his gaze focused on the ocean.
Cam shrugged. “They’re all worried about you.”
“I’m not going to hurt myself,” he said after several beats. “I didn’t live through hell to kill myself now. And I’m not going to go all ape-shit and start picking people off with my rifle from the lighthouse or something.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I’m not crazy.”
Cam laughed. “C’mon, Jude’s your best friend. You expect me to believe that line of bullshit? You have to be a little crazy to hang out with him.”
The corner of Seth’s mouth twitched upward. “He used to tell me stories about you and Vaughn when we were deployed.”
“He used to tell us stories about you when he was home.”
“He blames himself for what happened to me.”
A vice of guilt clamped briefly around Cam’s heart and he took a deep breath to loosen it. “Jude blames himself for a lot of things that aren’t his fault. It’s just the kind of guy he is. He takes everything to heart.”
“I know. It’s…nice to see him happy.”
“It is.”
The tension seeped out of Seth’s shoulders. “I just wanted to come here and wish Jude and Libby well. Say congrats, maybe toast the newlyweds like a normal best man. He asked me to stand up for him, you know?”
“Yeah, he mentioned that.”
“I wanted to, but…I couldn’t.” His fists balled inside the front pocket of his hoodie. “I’m so fucking sick of being afraid. I’m tired of worrying I won’t be able to keep the people I care about safe.”
Oh damn. Didn’t that hit a little too close to home for comfort? “Yeah,” Cam said softly. “I get that.”
Seth glanced over and lowered the hood of his sweatshirt. Stubble covered his head, so short his hair color was hard to judge. A thin white scar started at the edge of his hairline, cut across his forehead and the bridge of his nose, and ended at the corner of his eye, but that one was nothing compare to the ragged ridges of scar tissue on his neck peeking out from under the collar of his sweatshirt.
“You know, people always say they get it. Usually, it’s just words. Hollow. How come I feel like you mean it?”
Cam tore his gaze away from the scars and stared out over the water, his mind kicking up all kinds of gut-wrenching images of Seth with his neck slashed open. Beaten. Tortured. Brutalized.
And then, in a sickening twist of his imagination, Seth’s face morphed into Jude’s.
It could have been Jude in that prison camp. Hell, if he hadn’t gotten dangerously ill right before the mission that landed Seth in that horrible place, it would have been Jude.
And Cam would have been stuck stateside, unable to do a damn thing to protect his baby brother. Helpless, just like when he’d been eleven and his entire world crumbled out from
under his feet after a senseless act of violence left the five young Wilde boys orphaned. They had lost so much more than their parents that day. They’d lost their home, their sense of security. And Cam had lived every second since then terrified it would all happen again.
Seth was still staring at him, and he had the strangest sense those blue eyes could see through him. The silence started to get too thick. Yeah, he wasn’t any more immune to the silent treatment than the next Joe Schmo.
“So,” he said after another long drink of the too-light beer. “Jude’s glad you came, but he doesn’t want you staying if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“I know.”
“Do you need a ride home?”
Seth heaved out a breath. “Yeah. I guess I’m not ready for this yet.”
“All right. You wanna stay here until I get my keys?”
He nodded and up came the hood again.
Cam pushed away from the tree and emptied the rest of his beer out in the sand. “I’ll be back in a few.” He didn’t wait for a reply and walked toward Eva on the boardwalk, depositing the empty in a bin on his way.
“What happened down there?” she asked and handed back his Hawaiian shirt. “You look a little rattled.”
Only she would see the slight tremor in his hands that gave away how much that encounter had upset him.
Cam slid into the shirt and buttoned it. “He has a house not too far from here. I’m going to take him home so he can regain his bearings without all this noise and confusion around him. Cover for me, will ya?”
She rubbed a hand down his bicep in a friendly caress that wasn’t the least bit sexual, and yet his balls tightened at the skin-to-skin contact. She looked too good in that damn dress, with her hair loose and wavy with wilted curls…
“I’ll have a Guinness waiting for you when you get back,” she said.
Cam gave himself a mental slap. This was Eva. Eva. In other words, off limits for naked fantasies. Fuck, how many more times would he have to remind himself of that tonight? Usually, when it came to her, he had better control over his urges. He’d spent the last five years reigning them in, after all. “Uh, yeah. Thanks. I just drank half a Corona, so I’m going to need it.”
She made a face. “You actually drank half a bottle of that cat piss?”
“It was for a good cause.”
“Aw, my hero. I’ll have two glasses of Guinness waiting then.”
“Have I told you lately that I love you?” he crooned in his best Rod Stewart impression.
She rolled her eyes. “Christ. I’m never singing karaoke with you again.”
Cam laughed, and it felt good, releasing some of the tension from seeing Seth’s scars. He’d talked her into karaoke a few weekends ago when some of his Air Force buddies were in town, and he’d made a complete ass out of himself, much to her horror. Her refusal to sing that night after she’d accepted his dare had resulted in her coming to Key West as his plus one for the wedding. Now he was getting a kick out of breaking into random song just to needle her.
“Hey, at least I never back down from a bet.”
She flipped him off, and Cam found himself smiling as he ducked into the hotel’s lobby.
Chapter Three
Most of the guests had taken their dinner seats by the time Eva made it back to the reception. Laughter and the faint clink of silverware mingled with the guitar music from under the tent. She watched the happy, glittering crowd for a moment, marveled at how they all appeared at ease as they chatted over drinks and appetizers. She should join them and play her part as one of the groomsman’s “dates” but…
Yeah, no.
Still barefoot, she about faced and strode into the hotel lobby, intent on finally finding the bar. She had no idea where her sandals had gone, only vaguely remembered setting them down somewhere. Didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if she planned on wearing those toe-crushing torture contraptions ever again.
Signs pointed the way across the lobby to a dimly lit lounge packed with other hotel patrons. She imagined there was a bar set up specifically for the wedding guests, but this was more her speed anyway: Dark and a little cramped with TVs lining the oak bar tuned to the latest football highlights. It reminded her of Maguire’s, the Irish pub several blocks over from the police station, where a lot of cops hung out after their shifts. It was her and Cam’s favorite hangout, and this place gave her a comforting sense of familiarity as she parked it on a padded stool and flagged the bartender, who wore the brightest neon orange shirt she’d ever seen. He practically looked radioactive and his smile was just as bright. He chatted her up as he pulled two pints of Guinness with perfect white foamy heads. After the first sip had her wiping foam from her upper lip, she supposed she could forgive him for searing her eyeballs with his choice of clothing.
Still, homesickness tugged at her.
Key West was like a carnival: wild and unpredictable, full of bright colors and strange people and fun house mirrors reflecting a distorted, margarita-soaked version of reality. It was fun to get caught up in the whirlwind of it—until you started to get nauseous from all the spinning.
Man, she missed D.C. and grumpy old Rick Maguire, who never wore neon and only “chatted” when he wanted to complain about the president’s newest transgressions. At the moment, she wasn’t even sure why she’d agreed to come here. Well, except for the fact that she lost a bet. And she had a really hard time saying no to Camden Wilde.
Thank God she was leaving tomorrow.
Eva set the second pint of Guinness in front of the empty stool beside her. Cam wouldn’t have any trouble finding her when he got back, and she was a woman of her word. Besides, he deserved it. There was something about the man that people instinctively trusted. Even she had trusted him from the get go, and she wasn’t one to trust blindly. She’d been new to homicide, fresh out of a two-year stint with narcotics, and nervous that she wouldn’t be taken seriously as a woman in the all-male squad. But the moment she set her bag down on her new desk, Cam had slid his chair across the aisle between their desks and offered her a carrot stick.
“Carrot stick?” she’d echoed like a dunce, unsure that she’d heard him right and leery that he might be playing a prank on the noob.
He shrugged and took a bite of one. “Better than a cancer stick. I’m trying to quit.”
They caught their first new case together that afternoon. A man had shot and killed his girlfriend and barricaded himself inside an apartment with the couple’s newborn daughter. Eva soon learned Cam was the only certified negotiator in their squad, a former member of the Emergency Response Team. That was the first time she’d ever seen him turn his pockets inside out and walk into the lion’s den with his hands held up.
How could you not trust the guy?
“Eva?”
Yanked out of her reminiscence, she half-turned in her seat, expecting to see Cam and ready to congratulate him on a job well done. But then the voice registered like a sucker punch, and she whipped around. Not Cam. Definitely not Cam.
Oh, God, that voice. Like a sensual rasp of velvet over her nerve endings.
Please, no. It can’t be him. She was hundreds of miles from D.C. It just couldn’t be—
The familiar scent of Preston Linz surrounded her. His cologne hinted at coffee, wood, and citrus fruits, and she used to love the smell. Now it made her slightly nauseous. Was he still using the same bottle she’d bought him last year for Christmas?
“Holy cow,” he said, ever the politician, always so careful about not swearing in public. “It is you. I almost didn’t recognize you in that dress. Wow. You look gorgeous.”
She didn’t bother with a smile. “What the hell are you doing here?”
His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. He used to have a slightly unruly mop of sandy blond hair, but now he wore it cut and styled in a gelled sweep away from his handsome, narrow face.
“C’mon, Eva. Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
“We’re not frien
ds,” she said unequivocally. “We’re exes. Big difference.”
His polished smile dropped into a scowl. “I thought we agreed to be civil about everything.”
“Yeah, in D.C. We crossed state lines, so that verbal agreement is now void.” With that, she chose a TV at random and pretended to be interested in the scrolling football highlights as she sipped her beer. Hmm. The Patriots tromped the Bills. No surprise there. The Steelers won against the Titans in overtime. And, dammit, the Redskins got their asses handed to them by the Packers. Fucking Redskins.
“Eva…” Preston caught her wrist as she reached for her glass. He tugged until she faced him, and hurt shown in his dark eyes.
Okay, so she was being childish. They’d been splitsville for six months now. Time to move on, right? Besides, deep in her heart, she knew he’d made the right call by ending their two-year relationship. They’d met at the YMCA five years ago, where they both swam laps in the morning, and she’d originally spurned his advances. She hadn’t been looking for a relationship, didn’t want to tie her happiness and self-worth to a man like her mother had, but that didn’t deter him. He’d worked at her for years, winning her over little by little until a tiny, forbidden hope flared that maybe—just maybe—he’d be the one to give her the one thing she’d never had: a steady, stable family.
Things had started off great between them. They had a lot of the same interests. They both enjoyed the Nationals and had gone to as many ballgames as they were able to fit into their busy schedules. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t many. They enjoyed the same kinds of movies and music—blow ‘em up action flicks and country. They both loved to camp and hike—and, boy, had they gone on some crazy trips together to the backwoods of West Virginia, the memories of which still made her smile. She had liked spending time with Preston. He was good in bed and also easy to get along with outside the bedroom. He was a comfortable fit. Maybe too comfortable and too easy, because they had hardly ever fought. He never got angry and retreated from her when she did. Even their break-up had been half-hearted.
But despite how seemingly well-suited they were for each other, there were two big obstacles to them ever having a happily ever after. One: Preston was politically ambitious. The harder he worked to climb the unstable ladder of D.C. politics, the less she felt like she knew him. He stopped suggesting camping trips and started asking her to black tie social events. He started griping about her job, which had never bothered him before. As time went on, they’d spent less and less of it together.
Wilde for Her (A Wilde Security Novel) (Entangled Brazen) Page 2