by Tawna Fenske
“Speak of the devil,” she said, pushing the door wider.
Anna looked up and felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. “Grant. What are you doing here?”
“You left before I got a chance to explain.”
Anna shook her head, feeling like an idiot for sitting here sobbing over a man who didn’t want to marry her.
Jesus. Talk about a stereotype.
“There’s nothing to explain, Grant,” she said, trying to keep her voice even and hoping her face wasn’t blotchy and red. “It’s fine. We have different goals in life, and that’s okay. It was fun while it lasted, but there’s no reason to shed any tears over it.”
She forced herself to smile, a gesture that made her whole face feel prickly with dried tears. With a discreet sweep of her arm, she tried to push a pile of crumpled tissues into the wastebasket, along with four sticks from Fudgsicles she and Janelle had devoured in the last fifteen minutes.
God, you’re pathetic.
She half expected him to run, but he just glanced at the wastebasket, then back at her. He met her eyes again, his expression pleading. “Can we go someplace and talk privately for a minute?”
“You can have this place to yourselves,” Janelle said, not sounding too thrilled about it. “I have a manicure appointment in fifteen minutes anyway. Anna? Is that okay?”
Anna looked at Grant, then nodded at her sister. “Go. It’s fine. Thank you for everything.”
Janelle walked back over and gave her a sloppy hug. “Hear him out, okay?” Janelle whispered. “I’ll cut his heart out later if I need to, but at least give him a chance to explain. The man rubbed papaya on your butt and rescued a cat from a tree. He deserves a chance to speak his mind.”
Anna nodded and released her sister. Janelle grabbed her purse from the space next to the laptop on the kitchen table, then flounced out the door with one backward glance at Grant.
As soon as her footsteps faded away, Anna turned to Grant. “And now you know.”
“Know what?” He seemed to hesitate, then moved across the room and dropped heavily into the kitchen chair Janelle had vacated. He looked tired, and his shirt was wrinkled.
“Know I’m just like all the other girls. I fantasize about frilly dresses, I eat Fudgsicles when I’m sad, and I cry when I have my heart broken.”
Grant winced, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He sighed and put his head in his hands, looking down at the floor. “I’m sorry, Anna. I never meant for this to happen.”
“It’s not your fault. We were both up front with each other about not planning any sort of future that involved marriage. I’m the one who had a change of heart, not you.”
He took a heavy breath, still not meeting her eyes. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”
Anna studied the back of his head. Her tears had dried up, and there was a prickle of something else in the back of her throat. If this thing between them was over before it even got started, at least she could get some answers. Some little shred of honesty from the man who’d been so hell-bent on hiding himself.
She rested her hand on the laptop, then flicked the power button with her index finger. Grant’s flash drive was still in the USB port, and Anna slowly navigated her way to the folder.
“Grant?”
“Yeah?”
“When I got back here after leaving your place, I didn’t want to come inside right away. I wasn’t ready to face my sister, so I sat there in my car and looked up a word on my phone. Desiderium?”
He’d gone very, very still. He was still breathing, but other than that, he looked like a man frozen. Anna kept talking.
“It’s Latin. There are a few different meanings, but the one that jumped out at me was ‘grief, longing, or regret.’”
He said nothing, just sat there like a statue, so Anna went on. “I saw the photos on the drive. The pictures of your brother?”
It was an awkward subject change from their breakup to his family, but what the hell did she have to lose? If nothing else, she wanted answers. About Grant, about his secrets, about what on earth made him the way he was.
“Why don’t you ever talk about your brother?” she asked. “What happened?”
He shook his head slowly, raising it up to look at the image splashed across the screen. He didn’t look surprised to see it there. Just tired. So very, very tired.
“I can’t—” He began, then stopped. He let out a heavy breath and looked away again. “I just can’t.”
“You can, actually. You just choose not to. You’re willing to bare your body to me, but never your soul. Not what you’re thinking or feeling, not ever. Why is that?”
He shook his head, but didn’t speak, so Anna answered her own question.
“You’re scared to death to let anyone see the real you. The you that isn’t perfectly perfect all the time.”
He shook his head, but didn’t argue. Didn’t defend himself.
“Okay, then how about another question,” Anna tried. “If this is over between us, at least let me have the closure of some answers.” When he didn’t say anything, she licked her lips and continued. “Why don’t you want to get married? I don’t mean right now or to me. I mean ever. What’s your reason for feeling like that?”
“I told you—”
“Actually, no. You didn’t.”
He looked up, his eyes dark gray and stormy. “Sure I did. We’ve talked about this stuff.”
“No, we haven’t. I’ve done all the talking. I’ve told you about my parents’ divorce and my guilt over my sister’s failed marriage and my stupid near miss in Vegas, while you used your supersecret spy-hunter skills to keep me sharing story after story after story. I’m not saying it’s all your fault. I’m not exactly the kind of girl who keeps her thoughts to herself. But this whole time, you’ve hardly shared anything with me.”
Grant looked at her for a moment, then glanced away. He didn’t say anything, but Anna had a feeling she’d touched a nerve. She reached out and rested a hand on his arm. She hesitated a few beats, drawing out the silence the way he’d taught her in an interrogation.
Then she asked the one question she’d been wanting to ask all along.
“Who was she?”
She felt his whole body stiffen. When he looked back at her, his eyes were more troubled than she’d ever seen in her life.
He sighed and closed his eyes.
And then he began to talk.
Chapter Thirteen
Ten years ago
Grant walked into the bar, feeling the thrum of country music twanging through his veins. This wasn’t his usual scene, but he was on vacation.
Most of the other bars he’d poked his head in had been teeming with military folks. Fort Irwin was home to the National Training Center where units came to get ready for overseas deployment. He’d seen a few of Schwartz’s Army buddies at the last bar, and a couple of his fellow Marines down the street. Tonight though, Grant felt like trying something different.
“What can I getcha?” the bartender asked as Grant ambled over and straddled a stool.
“Whiskey and Coke,” he said, pulling out his wallet to flash his ID before the bartender even asked. He’d just turned twenty-three but hadn’t been able to lose the baby face. The bartender nodded, then thunked a smeared-looking glass down in front of him. He dropped in a couple ice cubes, then filled it halfway with cheap-looking whiskey.
The Coke seemed like an afterthought, but Grant thanked him anyway and shoved a twenty across the bar. The guy nodded and turned to the cash register.
“You stationed here?” the bartender asked.
Grant took a sip of the drink and tried not to choke. Schwartz always drank his whiskey straight, and so did Mac. How the fuck did they do it? Grant took another gulp and set the glass down. “Nah, I’m stationed over at Camp Twentynine Palms. I just drove over for the weekend to visit my brother. He’s a trainer at the NTC. Staff sergeant. Runs all kinds of tactical training exe
rcises for units that come here to certify.” Grant realized he sounded boastful and also a little young, so he picked up his drink and took another sip. The bartender busied himself wiping down the bar with a damp rag, while Grant surveyed the room. It was oddly peaceful here. Two cowboys sat hunched together playing cards next to the jukebox, which was belting out a twangy tune about a dog and a truck.
In another corner, three women in cutoff shorts and halter tops sat giggling and sipping neon-colored drinks. One of them smiled at him, then leaned across the table to whisper to her friends. All of them turned to look at him, and for lack of anything better to do, Grant smiled.
“Your brother meeting you here?”
Grant turned back to the bartender. “Nah, my brother’s out of town. I drove out here to surprise him, but it turns out he’s in L.A. this weekend.”
“Birthday?”
“Nope, he just got engaged. I got the call from him two nights ago. I haven’t met her yet, so I thought I’d come out and offer my congratulations in person.”
“That’s mighty thoughtful of you.”
Grant nodded and turned at the sound of female giggles. One of the women from the corner—the one who’d pointed at him—was making her way toward him, a sexy sway in her hips. It didn’t take much to figure she’d put it there for him.
Grant waited, pretty sure she looked like trouble, but not having anything better to do at the moment.
“Hey, soldier,” she said, sliding onto the barstool next to his. “Buy me a drink?”
“I’m actually a Marine, not a soldier,” he said, then smiled to show he wasn’t a total asshole. He glanced back at her table and noticed she already had a drink, but it didn’t seem polite to point that out. She’d undone an extra button on her top, so it seemed rude not to show some appreciation.
“What do you want to drink?”
“Tequila sunrise. Extra cherry.”
Grant nodded at the bartender, who turned around and began making the drink. The woman leaned close and extended her hand. “Jenny,” she said. “You have the most beautiful gray eyes.”
“Thank you, Jenny. I’m Grant. Grant Patton. And you have the most beautiful—”
She shifted a little on her barstool then, making everything jiggle and distracting him for an instant. He suspected it wasn’t an accident. “Eyes,” he said at last. “You have beautiful eyes, too.”
She laughed like he’d said the funniest thing in the world. She reached for her drink as the bartender set it in front of her. “Grant Patton,” she said. “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a seedy bar like this?”
The bartender grunted a little at that, but said nothing. Grant sipped his drink again. Was it his imagination, or had Jenny just undone another button on her shirt?
“Just in town visiting for the weekend,” he said.
“Vacation?”
“Something like that.”
She smiled and leaned closer. He could feel the heat from her skin, smelled something soft and floral. It had been a couple months, and Grant felt his cock lunge at the sight of all that flesh on display.
Jenny sipped her drink again, looking at him over the straw. “Vacations are all about having a good time. Wouldn’t you say?”
Grant didn’t say much over the course of the next twenty minutes. Jenny did all the talking, including making the suggestion they head back to his hotel room. Grant raised no objections, though he did ask once if she was positive she hadn’t had too much tequila.
“Relax, sweetie,” she’d said with a laugh, grabbing his arm as he led her back to the hotel.
When it was all over, Jenny swung her bare legs over the edge of the bed and began rummaging around on the floor for her shirt. “I’ve gotta run, baby. Thanks for the good time.”
He watched her get dressed, feeling a little disoriented. He’d had casual flings before, but none quite this casual. He sat up with the sheets still tangled around his waist, wondering if he should offer to call a cab. No, that would be stupid. She’d told him she only lived three blocks away.
“Should I, uh, call you later?”
She rolled her eyes and stuffed her feet into her abandoned flip-flops. “Under the circumstances, that would be pretty stupid, don’t you think?”
Grant opened his mouth to answer, but Jenny cut him off.
“Don’t bother. This was fantasy fodder, nothing more. You and your brother are remarkably similar in bed, you know that? I’ll be thinking of that next spring as I’m walking down the aisle to marry him.”
And with that, she turned and flounced out of the room.
…
“Oh my God.”
The stricken look on Anna’s face felt like a sucker punch right in Grant’s solar plexus. It was like reliving that moment all over again, only this time, he had an audience.
She shook her head, looking too horrified for words. Grant swallowed and looked down at his hands.
“Schwartz found out, of course. I’m not sure how, but I suspect it was one of Jenny’s friends. Or hell, maybe the bartender. I never knew, exactly. Just got an email from Schwartz saying, ‘Jenny cheated, the engagement’s off.’”
“Did he—do you think—”
“Did he know it was me?” Grant balled his hands into fists. “I never knew. I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. A week later, he volunteered to join a unit deploying to Anbar Provence. It was crazy. Schwartz was a tactical-operations trainer for the Army. He did predeployment training. He was a badass, sure, but he wasn’t supposed to head into the danger zone. Not then, anyway. Not when things were heating up down there.”
Anna was shaking her head. “You think he was so upset by what happened—”
“I don’t just think. I know. He talked to Mac the night before he left and said all this shit about needing to get away, to go where the action was.” Grant took another deep breath, bracing himself for the worst part of the story. “Nine months later, his Humvee was hit by a rocket. Everyone but Schwartz was killed, and he was pretty messed up. When he came back, nothing was the same. He wanted nothing to do with anyone—not the family, not the military, definitely not women. He wanted to be left alone. For good. That’s what he said.”
“And you obliged?”
There was a note of dismay in her voice, but Grant chose to ignore it. “I tried at first to stay in touch. I’m the only one he trusted with his contact info, and for a while I thought that meant something. But no matter how many ways I tried, he shut me out. He told me to leave him the hell alone, and so I did.”
He watched Anna’s throat move as she swallowed. When she reached out to touch his arm, her hand was warm and soft and filled with a tenderness he didn’t deserve.
“Grant, it wasn’t your fault.”
He shook his head, hating the sympathy in her voice almost as much as he hated the pity in her eyes.
Not nearly as much as he hated himself, though.
“Are you kidding me? Of course it was my fault. I slept with my brother’s fiancée, broke his goddamn heart, and sent him careening into a combat zone where he didn’t fucking belong. You want to tell me how that’s not my fault?”
She jerked back a little at the force of his words, but her hand didn’t leave his arm. She shook her head, tears clouding her eyes now as a look of determination crossed her face. “No. You couldn’t have known who she was, Grant.”
He shook his head slowly. He knew the instant the words left his mouth that nothing would be the same again. That she’d take her hand off his arm and everything would change between them.
But still, he had to say it.
“No,” he said, forcing himself to meet her eyes. Those beautiful, trusting eyes he’d give anything to gaze into for the rest of his life.
But that would never happen. “You don’t understand,” he said at last. “I knew exactly who she was.”
Chapter Fourteen
Anna blinked, wondering if she’d misunderstood. “I’m sorry?”
He stood up then, not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m not the man you thought I was.”
She let those words hang there between them for a moment before she stood up, too. “When?”
“It happened ten years ago.”
“No, not that. You already said that. I mean when did you know she was his fiancée? At the bar? Before you even got down there?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m trying to understand.”
He sighed and raked his hands over his buzz cut. “Not until we were back at the hotel and—uh—already to third base. I made a crack about not being the sort of guy to sleep with someone if I didn’t even know her full name, and she just laughed.”
“She laughed?”
“Then she slid down on her knees and—” He closed his eyes, unable to finish the sentence.
So Anna gave it her best shot. “Told you with your cock in her mouth that she planned to marry your brother? Is that about it?”
Grant gave a tight nod, but said nothing.
Anna grabbed his arm and dug her nails in, forcing him to look at her. “Let me get this straight. You were a twenty-three-year-old kid with a raging case of hero worship for your brother, and you found yourself unable to resist when his fiancée—who obviously set the whole thing up—took off her clothes, took your dick in her mouth, and asked you to fuck her?”
“Please don’t.”
“The hell I won’t!” Anna snapped, leaping to her feet. “We all make mistakes, Grant. Even perfect Boy Scouts like you. You sure as hell insisted I stop blaming myself for mine. What makes you any less worthy of redemption?”
He shook his head, looking tired and beaten down and desperate to be anywhere but here. “It’s not that simple, Anna. My brother’s life was ruined because of me.”
“Even if that were true—which I don’t believe for an instant—you’re going to punish yourself forever by never allowing yourself to marry and be happy?”