Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book

by Tracey Alvarez

  She felt Charlie let out a heavy sigh.

  “Are you losing your mind back there?” His tone was resigned, like he had already decided it was a possibility and that made her giggle all the more. “Because I’m not a psych specialist. You break something I’m your man, but anything to do with your head, we’ll need to find you a professional.”

  Laura rubbed her face on the back of his t-shirt to wipe her eyes and felt him stiffen. Her grin widened. Was it possible that Charlie was reacting to her too?

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “You’re making me nervous, short stuff.”

  She was making him nervous? There were so many possibilities for fun. Laura waited until he was relaxed and focused on his cycling to make her move. She pressed herself into him as she splayed her hand flat across his stomach. Yep, he tensed again. She rubbed his stomach as though she was trying to shift her grip, to get more comfortable. His pace slowed. Laura grinned wickedly. She ran her other hand up to his chest as she pressed her cheek to his back. The bike wobbled. The hand she’s placed on his stomach moved lower to grab the waistband of his jeans as an anchor.

  “Laura,” his deep rumbling voice vibrated through her cheek. “What are you doing?”

  “Just trying to get comfortable,” she said as innocently as possible.

  She rubbed her face on his back as she tightened her grip on his jeans. She couldn’t resist pressing a little kiss against his spine. The bike screeched to a halt. Laura let out a yelp as she landed on her back on the grass. She shielded her eyes against the sun as he towered over her.

  “I know you’re amusing yourself,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest, “but it isn’t funny.”

  Laura grinned. It was kind of funny. He scowled and pointed at her.

  “Stop trying to turn me on.”

  She looked down at his jeans.

  “Trying?” she said sweetly.

  He shifted uncomfortably.

  “Any more funny business and you’ll be the one doing the cycling. Got it?”

  “Aye, aye captain,” she saluted before struggling to her feet.

  As she climbed back onto the bike she couldn’t stop grinning. There was something about Charlie that made her behave like a reckless girl. She’d forgotten how good that felt.

  “I hear mum jeans are all the rage,” Charlie said, imitating Tim Gunn from Project Runway, a programme he insisted Maddie made him watch when he was home on leave. Yeah, right.

  Laura wriggled in her seat.

  “I’m glad you’re amused.”

  “Hey, you were lucky they let you raid the second hand clothes at the church, otherwise you’d be wearing my t-shirt as a dress.”

  Lucky. Yep, that was the word. She looked down at her ‘new’ outfit. Her jeans were stone washed, high waisted and straight legged. Exactly the kind of thing Wham! would have worn in the eighties. They were almost up to her bra line. To complete the eighties pop theme she was wearing a faded white t-shirt with a bright pink ‘relax’ printed on it. The whole thing made her regret that her contacts were back in her eyes; it would have been better if her clothing was a blur.

  “My stuff will be dry tomorrow,” she told him again.

  “Oh no, I think you should keep that on. I like it. It’s entertaining. Plus, if anybody needs a reminder to relax, there it is.”

  They were eating in the town’s only eetcafe - a cross between a restaurant and a pub. It consisted mainly of one large open room, filled with modern oak furniture. Laura didn’t like the old style oak furniture that she’d seen, it was all so solid and heavy looking, but this stuff was different. It was bright and contemporary. It made her relax. The walls were painted a pale lemon and dotted here and there, as though someone had arranged the displays while drunk, were several Delft blue tiles and plates. The overall affect was charming. She understood why it was busy; if she’d lived nearby she would have loved to hang out there. Laura ate breaded chicken with boiled potatoes and spinach, while Charlie ate everything else. She reserved comment because she’d seen how much energy he’d used during the day, most of it just for thinking.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Wear that tomorrow, it cheers me right up.”

  Laura narrowed her eyes at him and imagined his head popping like a squished grape.

  “You’re doing that thing again,” he said through a mouthful of chunky chips. “The thing where you imagine evil things and think none of us know.”

  She grunted. Obviously her face wasn’t as deadpan as she thought it was. Charlie chuckled.

  “How about I wear this tomorrow if you let me ask you one interview question?”

  She tried to smile sweetly, innocently, but even she knew she wasn’t pulling it off.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll wear any of those ugly clothes in the Church for the day, for one question.”

  Nothing was worse than the stuff she had on.

  “How about naked?” His eyes twinkled.

  “Bra-less and any clothes you pick.”

  He almost choked on his steak.

  “It’s a deal.”

  Laura grinned widely. At last she would have something, anything to report to her boss.

  “Okay,” she said eagerly. “Let me get a pen.”

  She borrowed paper and a pen from the waitress. When she got back to the wide oak table Charlie had relaxed back into his chair and was sipping a tall thin glass of Leffe, a blond Belgian beer.

  “One question,” he reminded her.

  His face had closed up. Getting her interview was going to be like pulling teeth from a crocodile. She’d thought long and hard about what she might ask, but now that she had a chance she wasn’t sure where to start. She didn’t want to scare him off for the rest of her interview. In the end she picked a question she thought would be easy to answer.

  “So, the little girl you rescued. Did you know her beforehand?"

  She held her breath as he studied his beer.

  “That’s your question?”

  She nodded.

  “I thought you were going to start somewhere else.”

  “Quit stalling and answer my question.”

  His luminous blue eyes looked into hers as his honey coloured hair flopped over onto his forehead. He brushed it away, but he never broke her gaze.

  “Yes,” he said at last.

  “How did you know her?”

  “That’s two questions. You only get one.”

  Laura desperately searched around for another bargaining chip.

  “I’ll go without any underwear tomorrow.”

  She didn’t consider being underwear free a great sacrifice. The only lingerie she had left came from the local supermarket. It scratched and pinched her with every move she made. Charlie’s mouth twitched as though he was trying not to smile. Laura felt a pang of insecurity. She looked down at her body. It wasn’t exactly Playboy material. Offering to go underwear free probably wasn’t much of a bargaining chip.

  “Or, I can cook dinner?” she offered instead.

  It was as though he could read her mind. Her face flushed under the scrutiny of his gaze.

  “No, I think I’ll go with the first offer. No underwear for the whole day and I get to pick the clothes.”

  “Fine.”

  Was that relief she felt that she wasn’t repellent? Laura ignored it and concentrated on the question.

  “The little girl?” she prompted then reached for her water to signal it was his turn to talk.

  His face closed off and his eyes took on a faraway glaze. His shoulders slumped. Laura held her breath.

  “We knew all of them,” he said at last, “all the kids who were killed and injured that day. They lived in an orphanage close to the barracks and we would spend time there helping out. I held clinics and some of the guys taught English or played football with them. Stuff like that. The girl in the video is six years old; I’d tried to save her brother a couple months earlier when he’d been hit b
y sniper fire.”

  He looked up into her eyes and Laura felt the world shift. She couldn’t even describe the things she saw there, but she had never seen them before. This was a new Charlie. Someone with depth she hadn’t believed possible.

  “There were Taliban guys who would fire randomly trying to pick off the people who fraternised with us. The kids were easy pickings. No matter how many times one of our guys caught a sniper another would pop up in his place. The kids were never safe. Never. Because of us.”

  Laura couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what it had been like.

  “I couldn’t let the girl die too. Not after losing her brother. That’s why I ran back.”

  “What happened to her?” Laura whispered, afraid to break the spell.

  “Another city, another orphanage.” He rubbed his hand over his face before his shoulders shook with a heavy sigh.

  “Do you keep in touch?”

  “That would put her in more danger.”

  “So, did you…”

  He held up a hand to stop her.

  “You used up your two questions. I need another beer.”

  He pushed his chair back and headed for the bar. As she watched his lazy smile for the waitress, Laura had a niggling feeling that there was more to Charlie than met the eye. She was even beginning to suspect that he may have hidden depth. Well hidden. She’d always thought he’d joined the army on a whim, because he was bored. But now she wasn’t so sure. In fact there was a lot about him that suddenly didn’t make sense. He’d spent ten years studying to be an emergency department doctor, that didn’t seem like the actions of a guy who lived by the seat of his pants. Whenever she heard him talk about medicine, he always made a big deal out of how he followed a pretty girl into the study and got stuck. But for ten years? She motioned to him to bring her a white wine. If she was going to entertain thoughts of Charlie having hidden depth then she would need alcohol to do it.

  It was almost one a.m. before they were forced to deal with their sleeping arrangements. With Laura’s tent at the bottom of a canal, Charlie had to come up with an alternative. One that didn’t bear thinking about. And it seemed that Laura agreed. They were both content to while away the hours in the bar rather than to face each other in the dark. He would have loved to have gotten so incredibly drunk that Laura and her attitude didn’t bother him. Unfortunately, gone were the days when he could drink all night and cycle all day. So he couldn’t take refuge in an alcoholic haze. Instead, much to the amusement of the old guy behind the bar, he ordered a strong coffee. Laura finished making notes on the napkin in front of her before following him to the bar.

  “I need your phone,” she held out her hand. “Mine went swimming with the fish.”

  Charlie handed it over. He sat at the bar sipping his coffee while Laura sat in the corner and tapped furiously away on the tiny keyboard that came with his phone. No doubt updating her boss on their mini interview. Now that, he didn’t want to think about. It led only to dark places.

  “She’s a pretty girl,” the bar owner said as they both watched her.

  Charlie had to think about it. He’d always thought she was sexy in a terrifying I-will-eat-you-after-the-act sort of way, but he’d never really considered her pretty. She absentmindedly brushed her mane of hair over her shoulder as she worked. Her tiny pink tongue licked her full bottom lip and her cheeks were flushed deep pink from the warmth in the bar. He could just make out the row of freckles across her nose as her long lashes fluttered on her cheeks as she looked down.

  “Yeah, she is pretty,” he told the guy.

  They watched her chew her bottom lip and Charlie felt something tighten in his gut. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what it was. He’d felt it before, twelve years earlier. He wanted the Iron Maiden. Fortunately a man can gain a lot of self-control in twelve years and he wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  “Girlfriend?” The guy behind the bar put a bowl of nuts in front of Charlie and he helped himself to a handful. The wonderful rich thickness of Dutch coffee warmed him through as he questioned the wisdom of caffeine in the middle of the night. Too late now.

  “No,” he said casting around for a decent explanation. “She’s my sister’s best friend.”

  “Mm.” The guy stroked his handle-bar moustache. “Is your sister on holiday with you too?”

  “Nope, just us.”

  “And you are not together?”

  “No.”

  Charlie was fed up with the inquisition. He watched Laura shift in her seat and saw her eyes gleam. She was pleased with herself. Pleased with something she’d written.

  “I think you are fooling yourself a little bit.” The guy behind the bar laughed.

  Charlie spun in his chair to face him.

  “Look, we’re not together, there is nothing going on. If you want her you can have her. Honest.”

  “Charming,” Laura’s voice came over his shoulder.

  Charlie winced.

  The bartender grinned widely before erupting into a belly laugh.

  “Come on Romeo,” Laura said drolly, “time for bed.”

  She handed him his phone and stalked from the bar.

  “Oh, you’re in trouble now,” the bartender said. “You’re not going to get any tonight.”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. It was obviously pointless to explain again.

  “This is your big idea?” Laura put her hands on her hips as she glared up at him. “Your great plan for the night?”

  Charlie counted to ten before he spoke, but the words were still squeezed between his teeth.

  “Believe me when I say that I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  Laura’s eye began to twitch. It had been doing that a lot lately. In fact everything about her seemed to be wound up tight as though she was trying desperately to fit herself into a box that was completely the wrong shape. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the tent. His tiny one man tent.

  “Why can’t we sleep in the church?”

  “Melinda said they had rules about that sort of thing.”

  He was tired of explaining this to her. When did her IQ slip so low that simple concepts escaped her?

  “What if one of us slept in there? i.e. me.”

  “Look, do I have to go over this again?” He took one look at her determined little nose stuck in the air. Obviously he did. “When Melinda let me back into the church to get your clothes for tomorrow she said that it would be wrong to have an unmarried couple sleeping there for the night.”

  “We wouldn’t be sleeping together. Did you tell her that?”

  “Yes, believe me; I was clear about our relationship.”

  “And I can’t sleep in there, even if I’m alone?”

  She motioned to the old stone building.

  “No, you can’t. They have rules and they don’t know us well enough to believe us when we say it would only be you.”

  Laura looked so dejected that he tried to cheer her up.

  “At least they let us use the bathroom to wash up.”

  She glared at him. So that didn’t work.

  “There’s no way the two of us will fit into that thing.”

  She pointed at the tent which seemed to be getting smaller by the second. Sure they would fit, but he didn’t want to imagine the positions they would get into to make it happen.

  “Aren’t they worried about what we would do in a tent that size in their garden?”

  She glared up at him as though this was his fault. On second thoughts there may have been a hint of panic in her eyes.

  “Well there is that,” he said.

  Her eyes went wide and her mouth made a little oh shape. He watched as she looked around the village for another alternative. There were none. He’d looked too. They had to be in the smallest town in Holland, and the only one that never expected any tourists. There weren’t any hostels, hotels or guest houses. There wasn’t any place else he could buy a tent. He’d even asked the nic
e Melinda if there was a tent he could borrow and after several phone calls she’d come up empty handed. It was his tiny tent or nothing.

  “I hate this,” Laura mumbled. “I hate you,” she said with more force. “I hate that you are making me do this just to get a story. And I hate my evil boss for blackmailing me into it.”

  With that she stomped off in the direction of the pub.

  “Where are you going?”

  And please, if you’re getting alcohol, bring me back some.

  “To use the toilet.”

  No luck on the Dutch courage then. The phrase made him chuckle, which made Laura think he was laughing at her and she gave him the evil eye. It was going to be a long, long night.

  When Laura returned she was in practical take-charge mode. He’d seen her do this time and time again with her parents when she was growing up. She’d always had this attitude of being stuck with things and having to make the best of it. Now that he thought about it, with her parents that was pretty much what she did have to do.

  “Get in,” she ordered. “Then I’ll squeeze in beside you.”

  He didn’t like her tone.

  “I sleep naked,” he told her.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Not tonight you don’t.”

  Fine, if she wanted things clinical that’s what she would get. He was a doctor. He could do clinical. He smirked in her direction as she turned away when he began to strip, but he kept his boxers on before climbing into his sleeping bag.

  “Your turn,” he challenged.

  Now this was going to be funny. He waited for Laura to strip but all she did was take off her shoes before she started to climb in beside him.

  “You’re joking, right? You’re going to wear everything to bed? At least take off your jeans. They’ll scratch the two of us all night long.”

  He could see her weighing her options.

  “If it helps I plan to keep my hands out of the bag.”

  Reluctantly, she took off her jeans. Charlie looked towards heaven and asked for some patience. With the long t-shirt and underwear she had more clothes on that she’d been wearing for most of the trip. Women. There was no explaining their logic.