by Monroe, Jill
Had it only been three days? It felt much, much longer, and her heart beat faster at the sight of him. Nate appeared exhausted. Lines fanned from his eyes, and his shoulders drooped. As an instructor he did almost everything his men did, and whatever it was they’d done had nothing to do with sleeping for the last three days.
Her irritation and frustration with falling in love with this man faded when she saw him smile and a fire behind the steel eyes of his.
“I’ll just, uhm, be in the kitchen,” Rachel said, leaving them alone.
How could a man look so good? She had no idea. She allowed herself to drink him in with her eyes. Hailey didn’t want to seem too anxious, but she raced across the room, ladylike, of course, but she wanted him. Right now.
“You seem tired,” she said, stroking his pale cheek.
“And when you look at me like you’re doing right now, all I want to do is find the nearest bed as fast as I can and stay there.” He hauled her up his body, smelling of soap and the outdoors.
“What do you know, we just happen to have quite a few beds upstairs.”
“Show me the way.”
After seventy-two long hours she was hungry for him. She didn’t want a slow, explorative experience. She wanted him with the desperation of a woman who’d just realized she loved the man she was with and their time together surely would be short. Their clothes were off the moment her bedroom door closed behind them. She tugged his head down to her breasts, arching toward him.
His mouth circled her breasts, finding her nipple and sucking. She ran her tongue over his ear and down the side of his neck. With a groan he hoisted her against the wall, his cock between her legs.
“I want this to be good, but I’m so hot for you, Hailey,” he said roughly, his lips at her collarbone.
And that’s how she wanted it. Against the wall and fierce. She wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling his erection already probing her.
He groaned. “You’re killing me, Hailey. I’ve got to get a condom.”
She released him. “Just come back. Quick.”
Nate flashed her a sexy look that told her all she needed to know. He dug around in his wallet, making impatient sounds and she smiled. Then he was back, raising her to his waist, and she locked her feet behind him. With one stroke he was in her, and her moan matched his.
“Open your eyes,” he insisted.
Her lids drifted open, and her gaze collided into the warmth of his. He pulled away and thrust again, his eyes never breaking contact with her. “You feel so good,” she told him. “You make me feel so good.”
Her words must have triggered something deep inside him because his shoulders tensed. “I can’t hold out any longer.”
“Then go.”
Afterward, they lay on the bed, Nate drawing lazy circles on her arm and staring at her wall. “What would you say that color is?” he asked.
“When I picked the sample out at the store, they told me it was called blush.”
With her head on his chest, she felt and heard him laugh. “I knew it had to be something like that. Can I ask you another question? What’s with all the horse stuff?”
Hailey rolled over and smiled. “You remember our talks about me being a girly girl?”
“I see the evidence all around me.” There were a lot of things here leftover from her childhood.
“Well, one of the side effects is a love of all things equine. I have half a dozen notebooks filled with nothing but drawings I made of horses.”
“Just horses?”
She shrugged. “Some were ponies.”
He chuckled softly, hugging her closer.
“Okay, now I get to ask you a question.”
“Shoot,” he said, looping his arms behind his head.
“I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with you. I mean what is your issue?”
“My issue?” he asked, his brows drawing together in confusion.
She began twisting the fitted sheet with her fingers. “Yeah, what is it that you want from me? What makes you want to be with me? My first fiancé wanted me because—”
His hands stilled hers. “I don’t want to discuss who you were with before me. They let you go, so believe me they were all idiots.”
Hailey battled a smile. Everything inside her screamed now was not the time for honesty. No time was good, in fact, but she had to run with this. “I worry about who I choose. The engagement thing, it’s there. It will always be there.”
“How about, those guys just weren’t right for you. I am.” Nate peered into her eyes, his gaze a steely gray. “I want to be with you because I like you.”
“Why are you still single?”
“I hadn’t met you yet.”
The perfect answer.
AFTER A LONG POWER NAP, Nate followed Hailey downstairs, and for the price of spaghetti and meatballs and oatmeal cookies, The Sutherland had neatly clean baseboards. Nate turned out to be handy with a hammer, and fixed a few that were loose.
That evening, she mixed him a mojito and they lazed together out on the terrace.
“This is one of the worst things you’ve ever served me,” he told her after a single sip.
She raised a brow. “One of?”
He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. The only bad thing.”
“That’s better. Would you like a beer?”
Nate shook his head. “No, I have to drive back to my apartment.”
Hailey stared out into the surf, knowing she was about to make that next big step. “You could always stay here for the night.”
He cut her a sideways glance. “I have to get up pretty early in the morning,” he warned.
She nodded, still not taking her eyes from the beach. “Doable,” she told him.
Nate surged to his feet, drawing her up with him. “In that case, forget the beer, let’s go to bed.”
The next two weeks followed a very similar pattern. On his days off, Nate was at The Sutherland helping them with all the little things that needed to be done before the wedding. Amy and Jake joined them. For meals, they sampled Rachel’s creations. Her sister had a lot of plans for a new menu, most of them fantastic. For the first time in a long time, she felt hopeful about the future.
On those evenings when Nate didn’t have to get up so early the next morning, he stayed over. Sometimes he made tender love to her. Other times it was as fast and wild as that first time in her bedroom. After the initial night when her invite had come out of the blue, Nate had always brought his beat-up old Duffel bag.
When she opened the door to him, her eyes always strayed to his hand to see if he clutched it. She’d grown to love seeing that Duffel bag because she knew her night would be filled with the pleasure only he could give her.
That was why she was so surprised to see what he’d left on her dresser. Panic burned in her chest. “Rachel,” she called. “Come quick.”
“What? What?” Rachel asked, rushing into the room. “At some point you’re going to have to learn how to take care of the spider yourself.”
“No, look!”
“What?”
Impatiently, she pointed to her dresser. “Don’t you see it? It’s his comb. He left it here.”
Rachel propped her hand on her hip. “What’s the big deal? You’re having sex with him, right? That is Nate Peterson I see leaving sometimes in the morning?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s in a platonic, uh, way…”
Rachel began to laugh. “Did you almost tell me you’re having platonic sex? I mean, that sounded like what you were about to say, but even you can’t be that delusional.”
Hailey flopped onto the bed clutching his comb to her chest. “Oh, Rachel, I’m in trouble here. Everything I’m feeling I don’t trust. I have to end this right now.”
14
NATE FINALLY HAD THE ORDERS he’d been waiting for. In less than a month he’d be back in the Teams, this time out in the Indian Ocean. Strange, Nate always knew where he belonged,
how he fit in this world, but with Hailey in his life things had changed. She’d changed him.
“I heard the good news,” Riley said. “Got my orders, too. I’ll be sad to kiss all the ladies goodbye, but it’s where I belong.”
“I know what you mean,” Nate replied.
“Doesn’t sound like it. All those free meals at The Sutherland softening you up?”
Nate shut his locker with enough force to be considered a slam. “No.”
Riley held up his hands, backing off.
“Sorry,” Nate mumbled. He was acting like a jerk.
“No problem. I’ve seen this before. Have you dirt dived her yet?”
Nate didn’t bother pretending he didn’t understand Riley’s meaning. Twelve men saw her kiss him on the beach, so word got around when he spent less time in the weight room. No, he hadn’t dirt dived her. SEALs planned, tested and retested every action, every drill, so that it would become second nature. With Hailey, he hadn’t planned his next step. He couldn’t even anticipate her reaction to his wanting more. It was a stretch to bring his Duffle bag that first time. Nate shook his head.
“Figure something out without making the ladies mad, would you? I don’t want to miss out on pork chop night.” Riley’s laughter echoed down the hallway.
He was kind of partial to Hailey’s pork chops, too. He was partial about everything where that woman was concerned. He’d learned to tread carefully when it came to the relationship they weren’t having, but his orders created a sure problem.
He loved her. It wasn’t something that he’d planned, but he liked it. Now he wanted things differently in his life, things that included her. And today was the time to act.
HAILEY WAS STAPLING THE last bit of fabric to one of the high-back chairs she’d pulled out of storage. As furniture goes, it was sound, just needed to be reupholstered. She’d saved their budget a cool two-thousand bucks with that afternoon’s work. She dusted off her knees at the sound of the doorbell. The staple gun slipped from her fingers because she knew Nate would be on the other side of that door.
And he wouldn’t like to hear what she had to tell him. She ignored how good he looked as she opened the door. Instead, she pulled the comb from her back pocket, and slapped it in his hand.
“You found it,” he said, following her into the foyer. He tossed the black plastic in the general direction of where he’d already dropped his Duffle bag.
She closed her eyes and felt her chest tighten. That bag almost did her in. Knowing she could spend one last night in his arms loomed so tempting. But it wasn’t fair to him or to her. Hailey opened her eyes, and faced him with resolve. “You can’t leave your stuff here, Nate. It’s not like that…it’s not like that between us.”
Nate squared his jaw, obviously full of resolve himself.
Don’t take no for an answer. Fate had given him the wrong card.
“How is it between us, Hailey?” he asked.
His voice sounded odd. Cold. She also noted a hint of a challenge. “We’re just friends,” she said with a shrug.
“Friends who make love?”
She shook her head. “Friends who have sex.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “That’s crap, and you know it.”
Now she was mad. “I told you right from the beginning that I didn’t do—”
“Do relationships,” he finished for her. “Yeah, I know. You’ve told me a million times.”
“You obviously weren’t paying attention.”
“How could I over all the mixed signals you’ve been sending my way.” Nate stormed toward her, dragged her tight against his body. “You make love to me like a woman who can’t get enough.” She felt his every straining muscle. His erection almost made her cave. “Tell me you don’t want me, Hailey.”
She met his eyes, saw the raw intensity, the raw emotion he felt for her in those depths.
“I love you, Hailey. That’s all you need to know. I love you.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head away. “I don’t want you to love me.” It made it harder to say since she knew she loved him, too.
He released her carefully. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t want to love you, either.”
She gasped, swiping at her cheek.
“Actually, it’s not true. I’m glad I love you, Hailey, even though you don’t make sense a lot of the time.”
Something that sounded similar to a sputter came out of her mouth.
“But I’ll tell you what does make a lot of sense. You and me. At first I thought I wanted what you wanted. A quick, fun fling. Someone to spend my time with between deployments like every other woman I’ve had in my life. But that all changed because I fell in love with you.”
“How do you know you actually love me? That it’s not the heat of the moment?” Three other men had told her they loved her, too. But none of them had…not really. She couldn’t bear it if Nate did the same. He was too special. She loved him too much.
“Because I’ve never been in love before.”
“Never?” she asked, shocked.
He shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I was never looking for it. You saw my dad. The kind of man he is. I didn’t want to be like him.”
“All guys want to be like him. A different woman every night,” she challenged.
“Maybe hearing my mom cry so much made me not want to be like all the guys.”
And here he was stuck with her. With her past relationships, she was more like his dad. Fate had its irony too, that was for sure.
He cupped her face. “I wasn’t looking for love, but you made me realize how lonely my life has become. I know it’s probably not the life you imagined, Hailey, but we have something special, so I’m asking you to wait for me.”
“Wait for you? What do you mean?”
“I got my orders. I’m shipping out.”
“When?” she asked, her throat feeling raw.
“End of the month.”
Hailey tugged away from his grasp and wrapped her arms around her waist. “I’m happy for you.”
“You’re not going to wait for me, are you?” he asked slowly, like he needed to hear her say the words.
Hailey shook her head.
“Why? I know you have feelings for me, Hailey.”
“You’re right.” She couldn’t lie to him to make this easier on herself. She owed him more than that. “I do have feelings for you.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t trust those feelings. After my last breakup I left my job and my home in Dallas, but it was more like running away. I can’t risk my heart again.”
He gently wiped a tear away from her cheek. “I told you I’d never let anything hurt you.”
Hailey gripped his hand, needing his warmth even though she was being selfish. “You wouldn’t mean to. I’m sure right now your intentions are all good. But so were theirs, and look where it got me.”
“So that’s it? You’re giving up?” he asked, his hand falling from her face.
“I think this is just the way it has to be.”
He looked like a man who wanted to argue with her. To try to convince her everything would work out. As a SEAL he was used to making things work his way. Nate drew her chin up toward him and kissed her. His warm lips soft against hers. It was a goodbye kiss.
She watched as he turned away from her, reached for his Duffle bag and walked out of her life. Hailey almost called him back. Almost ran toward the door so she could block his exit. Instead, she stood planted to the hardwood floor of the foyer, praying she hadn’t made a mistake.
TWO HOURS LATER, Hailey joined Rachel in the kitchen where her sister was shelling peas for their dinner. “Where’s Nate?” she asked. “I thought he’d be joining us. I bought chocolate chips so you could make him more cookies.”
“He got his orders. He’s leaving.” Hailey felt dead inside.
Rachel’s face was a picture of sisterly outrage. “So that’s it?
He’s done with you? That jerk.”
Hailey swallowed over the lump in her throat. “No, he, uh, he asked me to wait for him.”
“Well, that’s just great. You’re supposed to wait on him and he gives you nothing?”
“He told me he loved me. I think he would have asked me to marry him if I’d given him the chance.” How she’d wanted to give him that chance.
Rachel huffed so hard her bangs blew. “Big sis, you’re making it really hard to be on your side here. So what did you do?”
“I told him it was over.”
Rachel tossed the remaining peas in the strainer. “I knew this was going to happen. Have you ever thought that maybe one day you’re going to push the wrong someone away, and they might stay pushed?”
Fighting tears, Hailey busied herself wiping the kitchen counter where water had splashed. “Easier for them not to break my heart that way.”
“Not that you’re interested in my opinion, but I think this is bad. Nate is different from all those other guys you dated.”
“How so?” she asked, trying not to sound defensive.
“First off, he doesn’t want anything from you other than to be with you. To share his life with him.”
Hailey sighed heavily. “What’s the point of bringing this up?”
“Because besides being total losers, not one of your other guys ever made you truly happy. Nate did. He wanted to. That’s what makes him different.”
THE NEXT WEEKS PASSED in a blur of wedding preparations. Amy’s complete happiness only highlighted how miserable Hailey had become. At some point she realized she hoped Nate would ignore what she’d told him and contact her anyway. But he wasn’t like that. He respected her wishes. Ugh.
Stop thinking about him.
“Hey, I hope it’s not awkward for you, but Jake invited Nate to the wedding. They became friends when Jake and I were working here,” Amy said.
Hailey gave her a blasé shrug. “No, it’s fine.”