He clenched his jaw at the thought as he fought back the mixture of panic and steadfastness that had been hitting him ever since the orders came through.
This was it.
The gut feeling was there. He’d served four times in the Middle East. Making it out with barely there injuries on each occasion.
His luck was in. Surely?
Maudlin wasn’t a word that belonged in his description, and morbidity wasn’t ordinarily a part of his nature, but things were changing. He was changing in reaction to what he felt sure was going to hit him the instant he landed in the Middle East.
It hurt that these doubts were coming now, during a period of his life when he’d never been happier. He loved Josh and would have loved to raise a baby alone with him, but meeting Gia had been a gift. Having Lexi with her, the circle of their bond—it had been amazing.
Since kindergarten had started, that circle had been unraveling, and he knew he was the only one to feel that way.
Such isolation hadn’t helped. Add to it the ever-approaching deployment, which was weighing heavily on his mind, and the fact that his baby girl was suffering for choices her parents had made…
Things were not good.
His vision blurred as his thoughts plagued him. That haze retreated, to be replaced with the sight of Gia’s dream kitchen. Amber marble counters, cream plantation-style cupboards, an island where she stood when chopping her vegetables for whatever beautiful meal she intended to create for them, and the raft that hung from the ceiling, weighed down by expensive copper pans.
This kitchen had been their three-year-anniversary present to her, and he clenched his fists at the memory of what they’d done to her on the counter. But rather than let himself drift deeper into hot and happy reminders of times past, he headed for the double fridge.
After grabbing some juice, he moved to the island, reached for a glass in one of the cupboards, and set it to one side. It smashed the instant it connected with the marble. He jumped back and spun around at Lexi’s, “Daddy! What’s wrong?”
Startled by his own clumsiness, he took a few seconds to reply. “Nothing, sweet pea. Stay there; let Daddy clear this up.”
She studied him nervously. The curls dripping onto her forehead hid the puckered scowl on her brow. Lexi was far too smart for her own good, and she saw far more than a five-year-old ought to see.
The sound of feet thudding down the stripped floorboards of the hallway had him swerving toward the utility room in search of a broom and a dustpan. Gia kept a tidy house, but her system was out of his ken. She appeared at his side, dressed in Josh’s BDU jacket and precious little else, if the glimpse of her ass when she bent over to reach for the pan was anything to go by.
Her smile was wan as she hurried back into the kitchen, and from the doorway, he watched them interact, the three of them the perfect nuclear family without him to skew the balance. He knew when he left, everything would settle down. The world would right itself when he was out of the picture.
It killed him to think like that, but when such a notion planted itself in the gut, it was impossible to shake.
As Gia cleared up the mess he’d made, Lexi asked, “Mommy, why are you wearing Daddy’s uniform? Are you a soldier now?”
Gia laughed. “No, baby. I’d make a terrible soldier. I’m a rebel without a cause.”
“What’s that?”
“It means she’s a hippie,” Josh remarked, grinning as he bussed the top of Lexi’s head.
Gia glowered at him in midsweep. “It does not. Look how strict your daddies are, baby. All rigid and with all those rules. You’ve seen Daddy’s chauffeur, right? How he salutes?” She popped her hip to the side and saluted Josh and Lexi. “Doesn’t suit me, does it, princess?”
When Lexi clapped and giggled, Gia grinned, and despite his mood, Luke did too. Lexi’s laugh was contagious. “No, Mommy. Papa does it better, don’t you, Papa?”
He forced himself to grin and gave Lexi one of his best salutes.
She clapped again. “You need to take lessons from Papa, Mommy.”
“Oh, he teaches me things, honey. I promise you that.” She cocked a brow at him and waited for him to respond, but he couldn’t. Her gaze was warm, almost glowing with the memories of what they’d done to one another upstairs and in this room—hell, every room of the house. Those love-filled experiences shot sparks through those gorgeous eyes, making him swallow at her beauty.
“Will you teach me, Papa?”
When Gia choked, Josh snorted. “Don’t you learn enough at that school of yours, sweet pea? All that book learning’s going to turn you into a little genius before you’re six. We can’t keep up with you as it is.”
She shook her head, the movement exaggerated so her hair whipped about her shoulders. “Don’t be silly, Daddy.”
“Daddy’s always silly,” Gia teased. “That’s what daddies and papas are for.”
“Why aren’t mommies?”
“Because otherwise you’d never eat, and you’d be walking around in dirty clothes, and the house would be full of empty cereal boxes. Someone has to be responsible, baby.”
Another snort came from Josh. “I wonder how we coped without her, don’t you, Luke?”
Invited to join in the joke, Lucas found it hard to smile. He forced it for Lexi’s sake but nodded rather than replied.
After clearing his throat, he murmured, “I’ll be out in the yard.”
Gia looked up, her stare piercing him with her confusion. She was hurting, and he’d done that, but he hadn’t meant to. Neither was he sure how he could rectify it.
Deciding he couldn’t, not in front of Lexi, he stepped back through the utility room to one of the two doors that led to the yard. Heading for the other one would have meant he had to pass Josh, and solitude was what he needed, not a confrontation. That was definitely Josh’s frame of mind—Luke's arm still stung from where Josh had accidentally laid him out upstairs.
The evening sun was hot, and he tilted his face to it as he moved deeper into the large plot. At his back, the old-fashioned ranch house was a sprawling hodgepodge of buildings. Bang in the middle of the garden, his home overlooked green lawns, pruned bushes, and neat beds of flowers.
For a woman of twenty-eight, Gia was mighty old-fashioned when it came to her place in the home. They’d encouraged her to go out in the big wide world and make a name for herself, to actually use the college degree that had bankrupted her. That had forced her into the position of hiring out her womb to a gay couple. But she liked it here. She tended the house and yard, looking after them all as though she were born to the role.
Lucas often wondered how that fulfilled her, but it seemed to. She was happy. She enjoyed her life, and there was no shame in that. No shame at all. He worried that she’d get bored, but she hadn’t yet.
It was why he pushed her to see if there was a course she wanted to take at the local school. The idea that she could be unhappy here unnerved him and made him want to fix it, to make it better. Just what it was, he’d yet to figure out.
Although he was predominantly stateside, he worked a lot of hours. His position as an MP was mostly administrative now—he didn’t work on any active cases—but he was still on the job more than he liked. And Josh was worse.
She spent a lot of time here, alone.
Was that good for her?
He frowned at the thought and took a seat on one of the benches. It creaked under his weight, but then this stuff was for one-hundred-and-twenty-pound women, not men used to carrying that deadweight on the battlefield.
Staring out at a view that encompassed the local town and the city in the distance, he tried to relax, but as had been the way for the last month or so, he couldn’t.
He concentrated on the calm of the moment as he sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes to focus on the stillness of the evening. His hearing picked up on the tweets of the birds, the rustle of something in the lawn, and then, the faint click of the door opening and closing.
&n
bsp; Knowing it would be Josh, he kept his eyes closed. Moments later, a hand on his shoulder squeezed down gently, and his lover’s voice rumbled, “I didn’t mean to lay you out on the floor earlier.”
“I know.”
“You deserved it, though.”
He jerked a shoulder. “I guess.”
“You’ve got Gia all in a twist. She’s nervous as hell something’s going on with you. I’m starting to think she’s right.”
Luke absorbed that and, in as bland a tone as possible, commented, “My orders came in. I’ll be downrange this time next month.”
Silence was the first reply to his words, and then came “Where?” Josh’s voice was like gravel.
“Libya. We’ll be training Libyan security forces, assisting them on active cases. It’s a covert operation. We’re there, but we’re not.”
“How long?
“Nine months.”
“Not long,” he whispered, but Luke heard the solemnity in his tone.
“No. But long enough.”
“For what?”
He shrugged. “To see what a normal life will be like.”
Josh’s hand clenched down on his shoulder. “Are you serious?”
“It’s hardly a time for jokes. This is my fifth round, Josh. With ISIS lurking about, fuck knows if I’ll be as lucky as I’ve always been.” He pulled in a breath, and when it didn’t hurt, he realized he could think about not coming home without his chest aching now. Without thinking about everything he’d lose.
See Gia grow round with his child, watch Lexi turn into a woman, grin as Josh finally went gray.
Okay, maybe he was wrong. His chest ached like a son of a bitch again.
“Don’t say shit like that to me,” Josh snapped and rounded the bench to glare down at him. “You’re going there with a fucking target pinned to your chest? You want to get killed?”
Luke shook his head, smiling a little at Josh’s rage.
“You think this is funny?”
“No. But you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
“You’re a fucking asshole. Do you hear me?” Josh gritted his teeth. “You’ve got that woman in there crapping herself because she thinks you want to leave us, and instead, it’s a deployment. It will hurt her to know you have to leave, but better that than thinking you’ve fallen out of love with us.”
“I’ll always love you,” Luke whispered. “Till my last breath.”
“Enough of the morbid shit, Lucas. God Almighty. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Luke closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It feels like”—he curled his hand into a fist and rapped his chest—“this is it.”
“If I thought I could knock some goddamn sense into you, I’d fucking do it.” Josh pinned his hands on his hips, then spat out, “I hate you for making me do it this way.”
“Do what?” Luke frowned as Josh, bare-chested, tanned flesh gleaming in the sunlight, dressed in nothing but his favorite and most ragged pair of jeans, got down on one knee.
THE NUMBER OF times he’d seen enemy fire, the number of moments in his life when he’d been sure his time was up, it surprised Josh how nervous he was at what was to come.
Staring down the barrel of an insurgent’s gun and looking into the lost eyes of the man he loved were equally terrifying. Except this, now, felt like his whole life was on the brink of crumbling if it didn’t go according to plan.
Since the SCOTUS ruling, the idea had been percolating in his head. The notion of marriage had never cropped up among the three of them. Gia seemed content with the status quo, and as marriage was illegal for Luke and him, it had been a nonstarter.
But things were different today.
The God’s honest truth was if he could marry both of them, he would. But he doubted the US of A, the country he’d dedicated his life to, the nation he’d protected with his very being, was ready for such an outre idea.
Hell, a huge number of folk were already arguing about this current ruling, so polygamy was never going to be mainstream.
Not that he cared.
He’d reached his position in the army thanks to hard work, dedication, and long service. He was a brigadier general, had been since before it had come out that he was gay, and he wasn’t an idiot.
Brigadier general would be his last promotion. Unless the good old armed forces wanted to make a propaganda special out of him and Luke, a we-take-all-sorts kind of pamphlet to reassure the masses that gays were welcomed.
Well, they weren’t blackballed anymore, but neither were there open arms.
Being a woman or different was still tough in the ranks. Not according to the legislature, but on the ground, amid the troops, there were and always would be dicks.
In the middle of a war zone, it would be easy to believe there were more important things to worry about than whether the soldier guarding your back was fucking a guy or a chick when he was back stateside…but that wasn’t always the case.
His commanding officer had been integral in maintaining the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and Jarvis didn’t particularly appreciate Josh’s current household.
He was happy with his rank, and he’d serve until he had to retire, but then, he was happy riding a desk. Until now, he’d believed Luke missed active duty, but apparently he’d been wrong.
Things had been strained of late. Mostly because of his time on the base. With the US Army withdrawing from Afghanistan, that left a hell of a lot of paperwork and administrative bullshit to handle.
He was one of the unlucky ones dealing with a chunk of it.
On top of that, Lexi had started school only a few months ago, and Josh knew Gia was finding the transition without her hard. And more recently, Luke had been pulling away.
He now had the answer for that.
Whether it was wise to propose, given Luke’s certainty he was heading for an early grave, he didn’t know, but he had to get it off his chest. It was like heartburn, scorching at his insides, demanding he take heed and act on it.
“What are you doing?”
Luke’s low voice still hit the same spots it had fifteen years ago when they had first met. The rumble with the tang of New England, could make his cock harder than porn ever did.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he retorted, jaw working. He had to remind himself that this was supposed to be a romantic moment, but more than anything, he was pissed off.
Lucas wasn’t a defeatist. What the hell was going on?
“I don’t know. But I think you’re doing it to the wrong person.”
Josh cocked a brow. “Oh, really. And you know that how?” Before Lucas could reply, he gritted out, “You’re still the only human being capable of making me so goddamn furious that I want to punch a wall. You still make my heart race after all these years. I still love you like I did when we first met. I still want you like there’s no tomorrow.
“Together, we’ve created this family that is far more than we ever imagined possible. We have a daughter, a beautiful little girl, and we have her mother. I don’t think either of us expected Gia, and maybe that’s how it should have been. A happy surprise. But both of those girls in there are extensions of our love for one another.
“Do you think I could have opened myself to her if I didn’t know you loved me unconditionally? You’re my foundation, Luke. You always have been, and without you, our life would suck. Stop fucking imagining yourself buried in Arlington and start thinking of coming home.” He licked parched lips and scraped out, “Do you want to leave us? Is that it?”
Luke swallowed. The natural gesture looked like he was trying to choke down a whole orange. “No, of course not.”
“Right, then, well, you’re not going to leave us. I’m not allowing it.”
“You’re a brigadier general, Josh. You’re not God,” he retorted, his tone amused.
“I’m not having it, Luke. You’ll get your ass back to us, safe and sound, or I’ll make you regret it.”
“What? You’ll haunt me in heaven? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
Josh glared at him. “Less of the morbid maudlin, Luke. I’m on my knee—my injured one, no-goddamn-less—for a fucking reason.”
“Yeah? You gonna get around to saying what that reason is?”
“You’re a prick, you know that?”
“What every man needs to know when he’s about to hear a proposal.”
Josh sniffed. “At least you’re not buried so far up your own ass that you can’t realize what’s going on here.” When Luke’s lips twitched, Josh glowered at him. “You’re going to marry me, and we’re going to make this official. You’re not leaving the States until I have you so lawfully tied up, you’re in fucking legal bondage.”
“What about Gia?”
“You think I haven’t discussed this with her?” Josh’s gaze narrowed into a slit. “You think I’m that big a jackass?”
“No, of course not, but if this is a knee-jerk reaction to today, the gesture is appreciated but totally unnecessary.”
“I’d say it’s very necessary if you don’t know how much I fucking love you, you prick.”
“Fucking hell, Josh. Could you get more romantic?”
“Could you? Luke, by the sound of it, you’re not leaping for joy at my proposal. You’re about to reject my ass. And the fact you believe this is a knee-jerk reaction shows me how off base you are.
“The Luke of old knew exactly what was happening in this place, from the basement up. I don’t know what’s going on with you, and I wish I’d seen earlier. I’ve been busy at the base, but that’s no excuse, and I’m going to make amends.
“However, let me state this now: this is not one of those ways to rectify how I’ve been neglecting you, Gia, and Lexi. I’ve been thinking about this since the SCOTUS ruling, and as much as I love Gia, and as much as you do, there is no me and her without you. That doesn’t make her an unequal partner in our relationship, but you make me whole. You enable me to have her, to love her. Without you, I’m fuck all. Nothing, do you hear me?
“So, Lucas Gray, will you be my husband?”
Chapter Three
The Luck of Love Page 3