by Hart, Taylor
A pang went through the center of Blaine’s chest, and he pushed it aside. No way, he wasn’t here to get into all this family crap. His father’s friend crap. He thought of the way Elena had been looking at his baby pictures and the way the one with his mother and father holding him had made him feel vulnerable. It’d been so long since he’d felt that.
Mr. Brooks was smiling and pointing at him. He turned back to Elena. “I remember this guy having the worst case of colic. It kept his parents up until all hours.” He shook his head, and he had that hazy look older people got when they spoke about past times. “He would cry something fierce. Kept his papa up all night.”
Elena laughed. Mr. Brooks laughed too.
The only thing Blaine wanted was for this guy to get to the point. “Do you know what the key goes to?” he blurted out.
Mr. Brooks frowned. “Actually, that’s the reason I’m here. I’ve been looking for you since the funeral, my boy. I have the safe in my apartment.”
“What?” both he and Elena said at the same time.
Mr. Brooks looked back and forth between them.
“At the funeral, all you said was that my father wanted to make sure you gave this to me.” Adrenaline shot through Blaine, and he felt like he’d been played a fool. “But you said nothing about what it went to.”
Mr. Brooks gave him a flabbergasted look and threw his arms up. “That’s why I told you I’ve been trying to track you down.”
Blaine was normally patient. He’d been trained to wait for days, sometimes not to move from the spot he’d been ordered to stay in. But this was pushing him to his limits.
Mr. Brooks motioned for them to follow him and started down the hallway, talking over his shoulder as they trailed behind. “I moved the safe to my place to keep it safe.”
Blaine shot Elena a murderous glance. She put a hand over her mouth, and he could tell that she was holding in a laugh. He didn’t feel like laughing, but the way she found the situation funny lightened his mood. Grateful for her presence, he took her hand.
Mr. Brooks was only four doors down. Blaine watched the man pull his keys out and wondered what in the world could be in the safe that would have this man putting it in his apartment for safekeeping. “Thank you for your diligence, Mr. Brooks.”
Soberly, Mr. Brooks nodded and pushed his way inside. They followed quickly, and Mr. Brooks closed the door behind them.
The first thing Blaine noticed was that the apartment was in much better shape than his dad’s. The paint was newer, as was the furniture. There was more clutter, but there was also more life to it, including pictures on the walls of what looked like Brooks’s wife, two daughters, one son, and some grandkids. There was a fish in a tank, and a little dog yipped at their feet.
“That’s Ernie,” said Brooks. “Ignore him. He’s been grouchy since your father …”
Blaine caught Brooks’s gaze, and Brooks looked away.
They gathered in the kitchen, and Brooks pointed to a small safe. One that wasn’t really a safe, Blaine thought. He could pick it in less than two minutes, he figured. With the right tools, less than thirty seconds. With the right explosives, less than—
“Blaine,” Elena said, standing next to him, staring at him.
“Oh.” He’d been lost in his thoughts. “Sorry.” He picked up the safe. “Uh. Thanks.”
“Yes, good,” Mr. Brooks said. “Go on back to his place and open it up, and remember what I said.” He poked Blaine in the shoulder as he passed by. “Your father’s most precious things are in that box.”
Blaine hesitated, then gravely nodded at the old man. “Thanks again, sir.”
Mr. Brooks frowned. “I know it’s not my place, but your father missed you at Christmas, young man. He did.”
Blaine thought of the fight that had ensued on the phone with his dad, and what his dad had threatened to take from him. “Sir,” he said respectfully, because respect had been pounded into him. Then he walked away.
He heard Elena behind him. “Well, goodbye, Mr. Brooks. Thank you.”
She stuck close to Blaine as he opened his father’s door and held it for her. She stayed with him as he put the safe on the coffee table and pulled the key out of his pocket. When he flashed his eyes to Elena, she looked nervous. He wasn’t nervous. No, he was still ticked off.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Looking down, he saw his hand trembled with the key in it. “Fine.” He grunted, sticking it in the lock and pulling the top back. “Letters?” he said as he inspected them. They were bundled together in twill thread, much like how he imagined something out of the Civil War might have been kept. “What the …”
There was nothing else. It’d just been a pile of letters in the lockbox.
“Wow.” Elena considered the bundle of letters he was still holding in the air like it was rat poison. “May I?”
“Yeah.” He released them into her hands, feeling like his head would explode.
Carefully, she thumbed through them without taking them apart. “It looks like they’re addressed to your mom. Except the one on top.” She held the whole thing out to him. “It has your name on it.”
He didn’t want to take it, and he knew exactly why. Turning away from her, he felt his pulse speed up, and he cursed under his breath, not wanting Elena to see him like this, but unable to hide how uncomfortable this was making him.
“I think it’s from your father. Do you want to read it?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and ran a hand down his face, rapidly feeling himself get hot and cold.
“Blaine? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He tried to calm his heart rate and not sputter out a bunch more curse words, because why the crap was this happening right now? More light-headedness.
He didn’t know how she’d gotten next to him so quickly and why her hand felt so cold on his forehead, but it did. “I’m fine,” he lied, looking into her eyes.
Those green eyes. Everything seemed to fade into the background. They were pools of warmth. She put her other hand on his chest, directly over his heart, and he felt himself calm down. He put his hand over hers, relishing in the connection between them.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Whatever is in those letters, we’ll face it together. It’s okay.”
Together. He liked the thought of that. Selfishly, he was beginning to like the thought more and more. “Okay.” He straightened, and his head cleared. A sudden desire to get away from all memories of his father—to get away from all the stink of his things, to get out of this apartment—overwhelmed him. “Let’s go.”
“Okay,” she said, moving with him, keeping her hand in his. They moved through the apartment, and he made sure it was all locked up. Thinking about tomorrow, he detoured.
Releasing her hand, he grabbed his Navy-issued bag of clothes and toiletries. He flipped off the kitchen light, grabbed the pack of letters, and picked up the two albums of pictures. He stared at Elena. “I don’t need to come back here. I’ll leave the key at Mr. Brooks’s and ask him to let the storage and donation companies in tomorrow. I’m done with this.” He gave her a pointed look. “And I don’t want to talk about those letters.”
Chapter 12
Elena stared at the canvas in front of her, smelling dinner sautéing. The taxi ride back to her apartment had been quiet. He hadn’t spoken about the packet of letters, and neither had she. It had been a bit comical that the lock they’d been searching for the whole day had simply been with his father’s friend in his apartment.
After seeing the way Blaine had broken down … would that be the right words for it? No. Partially? She wished she knew him better, wished she knew how to talk to him.
Kissing him, now, that wasn’t a problem. But he’d made it quite clear he didn’t want to talk about whatever was in those letters.
Holding her brush at an angle poised right next to the nose, she tried to get the right stroke for his jaw. Her eyes fluttered closed and she pictured Blaine’
s face, felt it in her hands. She smiled and opened her eyes, gently brushing in the first lines of his jaw.
“You were lost again,” Blaine whispered, putting his arms around her middle and pulling her against him.
Between his body pressing firmly against hers and the smell of spicy cologne and some type of residual food sauce that clung to him, Elena found herself melting. It felt so natural to turn to him, to yearn to kiss him, to have his hands tighten on her waist and pull her closer.
Their lips met, and she pulled back. “Olives and garlic.”
He chuckled. “Oh. You’re the chef now?” His lips were back on hers, and one hand was on her waist. The other hand pulled her paint stick out of her hair.
She wanted to protest, but he pulled her head into him, deepening the kiss. She thought of how they’d both confessed to falling for each other earlier.
He loosened his grip.
“Chives?” she guessed. “Mint?”
“Uh, no.” He kissed her again.
Bam. Zing. Elena let the weakening feeling that accompanied this kind of kiss wash through her. She held him tighter, finally understanding what junkies meant when they needed a hit. The thought of living a single day without him was unthinkable.
“Elena,” he whispered, trailing kisses down her jawline and into her neck. He forcibly pushed her back. “Elena,” he said, now at a normal volume, shaking his head as the side of his lip tugged up. “Woman, don’t get me off track by kissing me like that.”
“You’re the one who kisses me like that.” It amused her to see him flustered. Truthfully, she felt a bit flustered herself. Turning, she bent to pick up the paintbrush he’d dropped. “And you’re the one who got me off track.” She gave him a mock angry look and put her messy brush into the water bucket to rinse.
“Oh, really?” He let out a low chuckle.
Quickly, she rinsed the brush and put it with the others to dry. “Really.”
Standing in a militant way, arms crossed, skeptical look on his face, he looked like he was about to say something snarky. “I’m sorry. Dinner’s ready, my lady. Would you do me the honor of joining me?”
Amused by his antics, and touched by the way he took the task of cooking for them so seriously, she took his hand. “Ya know, Romeo, I think I would love to join you. Thank you.”
He took her hand and put it on the crook of his arm, tucking it in. He pulled the door open, and the good smell got even more amazing.
“Oh my gosh,” she said, as he took her to the barstool at the counter. Her best dishes and cloth napkins were out. With a flourish, he pulled the tops off of three dishes.
Sudden hunger took hold of her as she inspected the steaming rice and the salmon drenched in some sauce that smelled divine. The last dish was filled with a salad of spinach and assorted vegetables. “If you’re trying to convince me to marry you based on your culinary skills, I’m in.”
“Good, because that’s absolutely what I’m doing,” he said without missing a beat.
She froze.
He winked at her.
Her pulse pounded. Was he serious?
He sat. “If I was going to ask you to marry me, I sure as heck wouldn’t do something as cliché as just make you dinner. No …”
Sensing his playfulness, she finished dishing up and sat too. “Really?”
He took her hand and bowed his head, and she followed suit. He uttered a couple of words over the food, then opened his eyes and released her hand, tugging out his napkin and putting it on his lap.
She marveled at how fast she’d gotten used to him praying.
Picking up his fork, he took a bite. “Oh no, if I were going to ask you to marry me, I would do something else.”
A nervous thrum wound through her gut. “What would you do, soldier?”
“You want to know how I would ask you to marry me?”
The tension between them ratcheted up a notch, and she sensed he was teasing her, but if he was going to throw bait out there, she was going to bite. “How would a hotshot Navy SEAL ask a girl to marry him?”
He squinted, considering, and snapped his fingers. “You’re a helicopter girl. We’d take a helo, get you up in the air. I’d have a buddy write it on the ground, and we could skydive in over it.”
Her water glass was pressed to her lips, and she couldn’t help but sputter out the water she’d almost inhaled.
Blaine jerked back and then let out a deep tenor laugh. Taking his napkin, he mopped up around the plate. “Already spitting stuff everywhere, Gates?”
She shook her head. “Don’t even.”
With a smile, he used his napkin to dab gently at her face. The gesture felt intimate, and their eyes locked. Then he pulled back. “So no helo?”
She took a bite, relishing the garlic smokiness of the salmon. “This is delicious,” she said out of the side of her mouth.
“I’m glad you like it.”
She praised everything again and again as they ate.
After a bit, he looked up at her again. “Really, no helo?”
“No, no helicopter.”
“Ah.” He tapped his fingers on the side of the table, acting like he was really trying to calculate what she’d like. “I really like helos.” He scrunched up his face, then pointed at her. “Statue of Liberty. One knee.”
She shrugged. “I do love Lady Liberty, but …”
“But you’re not wowed,” Blaine said, looking determined. “Baseball game? Written on the jumbotron? No. You’re an artist. You don’t like baseball.” He glanced at her. “Do you like baseball?”
“I don’t hate it,” she said. “Never been to a game.”
“What?” His face scrunched up. “You’ve never been?”
She shook her head and laughed, taking another bite.
“Wow. No.” He tapped his chin with his fork. “Classy. Artsy.” His brows creased even more. “Something …”
She loved how it felt so easy between them, and wondered why she and Antonio had never played this game.
Blaine’s hand slammed down beside her. “You’re reconsidering the helicopter?”
“What?” She shook off her other thought.
He leaned in, evaluating her. “That’s what you were just thinking. You do want the helo?”
“No, I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Really?” he said, all disappointed.
“Sorry, not the action girl type.”
“Then what were you thinking?”
She frowned. “Nothing.” She took another bite, not wanting to reveal what she’d been thinking.
“Spill it, Gates. Tell me what you’d really want in a proposal.”
She laughed. “I like how you use my last name, like we’re on the same sports team or something.”
“Don’t deflect.” He leaned over his meal, propping his elbows on the counter. “You know you want to tell me.”
Rolling her eyes, she let out a breath. “Here we go, back to the cockiness. Is this the jock in you or something?”
“Honey, I’m a SEAL. Jocks got nothing on us. We are the cockiest guys out there.” He winked at her, unfazed. “And we have the results to back up our cockiness.”
Her stomach flip-flopped. “Honey, huh?”
Looking at her with hooded eyes, he smiled. “You don’t like that either?”
The truth was she didn’t really care, but she couldn’t let him get away with it. “My lady is just fine.” She felt her cheeks redden, which took away the prissiness she was going for.
He reached out and brushed his hand down hers. “Ahh, you like being my lady. I can work with that.” For a moment, she thought he would kiss her, but he stopped right before her lips. “Tell me what you were thinking a couple of seconds ago?”
“What? No.”
He pressed a light finger on her lips. “Nope, darling. I want to know what’s in that pretty head of yours.”
“Darling?” She copied the Southern twang he’d used to say the word.
&n
bsp; “There’s a guy I work with named Maddox. He has the best Southern drawl.” He frowned. “Obviously, it doesn’t work for me.”
“No, it doesn’t work for you.” Thinking about how she’d actually wanted to talk more with him, she sat back, crossing her arms. “Keep going with the proposals, though. I like it.”
He mimicked her arms crossing. “You’re shutting down,” he said accusingly.
“What?” She gave him an incredulous look. “Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t think you talked with your last boyfriend, or else he would have known what the answer would be when he popped the question.”
His words and the way he said them so smugly made her blood boil. “Ugh!” She got off the barstool and stomped into the kitchen. “You have the gall to tell me I shut down?”
Ever so calmly, he sipped some water and swished it in his mouth, keeping his face unreadable. “You do. I notice everything, remember?”
Now it was getting deep. She pointed at him. “You … you …” How could she describe it to him? “You have this look that just … why do you think I started calling you soldier?”
He frowned. “Because I’m a soldier?”
She stomped her foot, and even as she did it, she knew it was childish.
“You seriously just stomped your foot like a two-year-old.”
Red-hot anger coursed through her. “No,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “I stomped my foot because you have this soldier look, a completely blank shut-down look. It’s like no one could make you talk.”
“They couldn’t make me talk. I was literally trained that way.”
“Not what I’m talking about, and you know it.”
He gave her another smug grin.
“You haven’t told me details about any of your ex-girlfriends.”
“You haven’t asked,” he shot back. “And don’t deflect.”
Her heart rate kicked up a notch, and she glared at him.
“What were you thinking about?” He kept pushing.
“No,” she said.
“Why?”
“Why do you care so much?”
He stood, pushing the stool back with force. It scraped on the cement floor, making a sharp screeching sound. “Because you can’t shut me out.”