Kirk had picked her a mile off. He’d hated the piece of crap she’d driven back then. And for some reason, he hated it just as much now, though she was no longer anything to do with him. Slowly, from the obscurity of his darkly tinted windows, he let himself drink in her appearance fully. He’d thought of little else but Annabeth Sparks since two nights ago, when he’d seen her again. It was through sheer force of will power alone that he hadn’t gone back to The Whistlestop the following night.
Dressed now in a pair of denim cut-offs and a tight white t-shirt, with ballet slippers on her feet and her hair piled into a big, messy bun on top of her head, she looked every bit as sexy as he’d remembered. He killed his engine and climbed from the car.
“Trouble?”
Of course it was Kirk. The one person to drive by in her moment of need happened to be the one person she wanted nothing more to do with. Ever.
“No. Just frying myself on the side of the road for no good reason,” she snapped tartly.
He tossed her a sidelong glance. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Beth.”
“Hey, what are you doing?” She squealed, as he brushed past her and reached into her car. He pulled a lever and the bonnet clicked up.
He turned back to face her, clearly impatient. “What does it look like?”
“Come on, Kirk. You’re not a mechanic.”
He slanted her a look of seething annoyance. “No. But I know my way around machines far more sophisticated than this.”
She closed her eyes. The only thing they’d argued about when they were together was Kirk’s insistence on signing up for the bomb disposal unit of the Navy. His job was dangerous and unpredictable, and she’d hated that. She’d hated it with a passion, to think of him wading into the most deadly countries in the world, cutting wires and pulling pins.
“The hydraulics supports are broken.” His tone was accusing. “You’re going to have to hold the hood. Can you manage?”
She glared at him. “Of course I can.”
His eyes warred with hers, silently challenging her. “Fine. Come here then.”
Annabeth held her ground. “Kirk, just leave it. I can call a friend for a ride and get Pete to come have a look at the car.”
“Pete should be in prison for keeping this thing on the road. Apart from anything, it’s an environmental disaster.”
Her laugh was caustic as she stomped over to Kirk and took hold of the bonnet. “Oh, this coming from you, the man behind one of the biggest construction companies in the world, singlehandedly pouring more concrete into this earth than we’ll ever be able to get rid of. Don’t you think that’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?”
“Actually,” he muttered, leaning forward and inspecting the pre-historic engine, “We’re considered to be environmentally conscious in the industry.”
“That’s like saying some murderers are less violent when they kill than others. Just doesn’t make a dot of difference in the long run.”
Kirk tried not to notice the way her shirt was lifting up with her arms, exposing her tanned, flat midriff. But up close, everything about her was intoxicating. He focused on the engine. The hoses were so old the rubber was frayed. He shook his head. “You shouldn’t be driving this.”
“Can you fix it?” But her voice was without hope.
He leaned forward and pulled on the oil cap. “Honey, even a miracle worker would give up on this engine.”
“Shoot.” She furrowed her brow, and looked up at Kirk. He had a smear of grease across his forehead, and her fingertips were tingling with the urge to reach up and wipe it. “Well, thanks for looking, anyway,” she said, trying to remember her manners.
Kirk didn’t say anything. His mouth was a grim line in his face as he put his arms on either side of her and took the weight of the bonnet. The only problem was that he’d effectively trapped her against his body. She could feel his hard, warmth at her back and she shivered involuntarily.
“Step back,” he ordered, and she did, so far as she could, right back into his chest. He eased the bonnet down, but kept his hands on the hood. Slowly, Annabeth turned in the circle of his arms. She didn’t need to look at him; she could see him even with her eyes closed. Her body was responding with burning passion to his proximity, her central nervous system was in overdrive. The outline of her taut nipples was clearly visible through the cotton of her shirt.
Kirk groaned as he dipped his head forward and kissed her. Every fiber of his body knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself now, any more than he could in the past. There was something about Annabeth that ate through his usual self-control. Her lips were soft beneath his, her body completely pliant as he pressed himself against her, easing her back onto the sun-warmed hood of the car.
His hands lifted her shirt and ran across the stomach he’d been admiring only moments ago. Her body was different. More womanly. Softer. Curvier. And infinitely more desirable. She moaned, low in her throat, and ground her hips against him, her need fevered.
Annabeth felt like she’d fallen through a crack in the hot bitumen, straight back into the past. Everything about being kissed by Kirk was like coming home. Held tight against his body, she felt a sense of safety and security she hadn’t known since he dumped her. Since he’d dumped her. Idiot! Her brain shouted at her, as her hands reached up and ran through his thick, fair hair.
He lifted her onto the bonnet, so that her legs straddled his torso, and he kissed her neck, hungrily. He let his mouth roam her body as it once had, and his hands touched and felt and ached for more.
“You’re perfect,” he growled, loosening her bun so that her blonde hair tumbled down her hair in tight curls. “Too perfect.”
She shook her head. It wasn’t her. It was him. This magic that weaved around them had to be because of him, she was sure of it. His hands were on the button of her shorts when he froze. Groggily, Annabeth opened her eyes, and stared up at his face. “What is it, Kirk?” Her voice was a husky invitation.
“What the hell is that, Annabeth?”
She pushed up off the car, and turned to follow his gaze. When she saw what he was staring at, her heart plummeted. Wade’s car seat.
He stepped away from her as though she’d burned him.
“Well?”
“It’s a booster seat,” she mumbled, sliding off the car and straightening her clothes.
“I can see that,” he ground out. “Whose car seat?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She had to tell him. Her first instinct was to lie, but she discounted it almost instantly. When he’d kissed her, he’d reminded her of what they’d once meant to each other. And though he’d broken her heart into three thousand pieces, he still deserved to know.
“My son’s,” she prevaricated, trying to choose how exactly to tell her ex-fiancé that she’d been raising a son he didn’t know about.
“You have a son?” He spun away from her, dragging a hand through his hair. Emotions sagged his frame. She had a son. A son with a father. A lover for Annabeth. His stomach turned.
“Yes. His name is Wade.”
Kirk’s expression was like an unmovable stone when he turned back to her. “I don’t care what his name is. My God, Beth. You have a son. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She frowned. “When?”
“When I saw you the other night. It would have been normal for you to tell the man you once promised to marry that you’d ended up with someone else.”
Comprehension dawned. “I didn’t end up with someone else.”
“You mean the bastard didn’t even stand by you? Hell, Annabeth, what kind of asshole got you knocked up and didn’t stick around to see it through?”
Tension arced inside of her. She needed to tell him, but her tongue wouldn’t cooperate.
“What about financially? I guess he’s not even pulling his weight there, for you to be driving a car like this and working at your dad’s bar.”
Annabeth shook her head. “It’s not like that. Ki
rk…” She swallowed past the lump of anxiety in her throat.
“Hell it isn’t,” he snapped, his eyes burning into hers with an intensity that almost knocked her sideways. “You were going places, Beth. You got an academic scholarship to Boston College, for God’s sake. And now you’re a single mum in a backwater town, all because you got pregnant by a jerk who didn’t give enough of a damn to do the right thing.”
“You could say that,” she agreed drolly. Even in her hyper-emotional state, she could see the irony in his invective.
“Why are you smiling?” He demanded. “This isn’t funny.”
She sobered instantly. “No. It’s not.” She darted her tongue out to moisten her upper lip and sighed. “It’s just… you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know about responsibility and sacrifice, Beth,” he contradicted warningly.
Anger stoked inside of her. “Oh, yeah? Like ending our engagement via email? That’s real responsible, Kirk.”
“It was for the best,” he ground out resolutely.
“Why was it?” She asked, pulling her hair into a pony-tail in an attempt to disguise her shaking hands. She’d lost her hair tie, though, or he had, so she made do with twisting it into a sort of knot.
“Just, believe me. It was.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Kirk. You’re so quick to judge Wade’s father. What about you? You don’t think you deserve your share of judgment?”
“I told you then, and I’m telling you now, it wouldn’t have worked out between us.”
She shook her head angrily. “I don’t believe you. You loved me, Kirk.” She closed her eyes. “I doubted that for a long time. These last five years, I actually doubted the truth of what we shared. But I’ve just had a crash course reminder and what’s there between us isn’t pretend. You loved me.”
“Love isn’t enough, Annabeth,” he denied with a calm edge to his voice. He was pulling away from her. The emotions that had been ripped raw by the sight of Wade’s seat were quickly being patched over.
“Since when?” She demanded, pulling at his arm, forcing him to look down at her. “All through school, you loved me. Even when you were training, we were inseparable. So what happened to make you change your mind?” She gulped, forcing herself to ask the question that had always been in her mind. “Did you meet someone else, Kirk?”
Kirk didn’t meet her eyes. He hated lying to Annabeth, but he knew enough of her stubborn streak to know she wouldn’t be put off until he gave her a good enough reason to give up. “Yes.”
Bile rose in her mouth. Annabeth clamped her lips together, half afraid she was about to be sick at his feet. Which would serve him right, anyway, she decided mutinously.
“Who?” Her voice was flat, her soul split in two by the confirmation of her worst fears.
“It doesn’t matter,” he promised gravely.
“It matters to me.” She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. Or, at least, it shouldn’t.”
Regret was gnawing through his stomach lining. He’d hurt her. He’d caused her pain and sadness, and he knew he could never get rid of that. But he had no choice. He had loved her too much to saddle her with what he’d become.
“Come on. I’ll give you a ride into town.”
Annabeth was shivering. Shock, she supposed, as she wordlessly followed him back to his car. He opened the front passenger door to her, and almost told her the truth, when he saw the pallor of her skin.
Halfway to Clearview, she turned in her seat to look at him. She didn’t speak, just stared. Finally, he met her gaze, a brow raised.
She looked away.
The fact he’d cheated didn’t change anything. He deserved to know about Wade.
“Are you still involved with her?”
“Who?”
“The woman you left me for,” she intoned flatly.
Kirk’s fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white beneath his golden tan. He was already regretting the lie. “I’m not involved with anyone right now.”
“I see.” So it hadn’t even been worth it. Somehow, that made it so much worse. “Why didn’t you just tell me this? Save me wondering all this time.”
“I thought sticking to the facts would spare you pain.”
She snorted inelegantly. “Oh, yeah, right. What facts, exactly? Your email was three lines long. Dear Beth, I’m sorry to hurt you but I’ve realized I can’t marry you. I never intended to hurt you. I hope you can move on quickly and enjoy your life without me. Kirk.”
It was, word for word, what he’d dictated to the staff sergeant.
“I didn’t see any point in justifying my decision.”
“Your decision,” she said on a sob. “It was our decision. Our future. Our engagement. Ours. Yours and mine. You ended it without so much as telling me why. That’s contemptible. Even you must see that.”
His hands gripped the wheel tighter. “I knew you’d argue with me.”
“No,” she shook her head slowly, and despite the fact it had all happened half a decade earlier, tears stung Annabeth’s eyes. “I might have been tempted to fly over to wherever the heck you were and kick your ass,” she muttered. “You caused me more pain by leaving me wondering.” She fingered the frayed edges of her shorts. “You weren’t just my fiancé, Kirk. You were my best friend.” Her voice cracked, and she looked out of her window, so that he wouldn’t see the way tears were running down her cheeks. “
Grief hung between them. Kirk felt a buzzing in his ears, the sound of blood pounding in his brain. He shook his head. It had been for the best. He had no doubts on that score. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
She pressed her mouth to the back of her hand, to stop from crying. “I wrote you, you know.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t read the letters.” They’d arrived back, unopened.
“No. I told you. I didn’t want to discuss my decision.” He hadn’t wanted to read that she was hurting, half a world away, and him, impotent to help in any way. He had known that glimpsing her words would weaken his resolve.
Annabeth hadn’t been writing to him about their engagement. In the cruelest twist of fate, the day after she’d read his email, she’d discovered her pregnancy. She’d been over four months along, which made it easy to work out the night they’d conceived. His last night in the country. She’d tried to tell him, figuring he had a right to know. He hadn’t wanted anything more to do with her, though.
She shook her head, emotions making rational thought difficult. “Just… let me out here.”
“It’s a mile to the bar, Annabeth, don’t be silly.”
“Kirk,” her voice was high-pitched, bordering on the hysterical. “Please let me out before I’m sick all over your car.”
He swore, swerving the car off the road. “I don’t care about the damned car, Annabeth. I care about you.”
“Bull,” she groaned, pushing open her door and stepping out. Still no breeze, but at least in the fresh air, she could breathe again. Out of the confines of his car, so close to him, reality began to tilt back on its normal axis.
“Why is that so hard to believe,” he asked, hopping out of the car and crossing to her side.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
He swore again. “You know what I don’t get, Beth? Why you’re acting so cut up about all this. It was five years ago.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, but his eyes were screaming at her. “You have a child. Clearly you moved on.”
Beth twisted her fingers together, nerves shuddering and shaking her body. “If you’d read my letters, you’d know I didn’t.”
“What do you mean? What are you saying?”
Her expression was haunted. “I found out the day after you dumped me.” She forced herself to meet his enquiring gaze.
“Found out what?”
“That I was pregnant. Wade’s yours, Kirk. And if you’d read my letters or emails, or taken my calls, you
would have known that.”
CHAPTER FOUR
He’d been deep in one of the most dangerous warzones in the world, but nothing could have prepared him for the sense of complete shell shock he was experiencing at Beth’s raw confession.
“What did you say?” He demanded, unknowingly taking a step closer.
“He’s yours. Wade.” Saying the words brought her relief. So many years of carrying the secret, and now he knew.
“No,” he shook his head, a wholly new emotion forging through his body. “I don’t believe it. You would have told me.”
“I tried,” she whispered.
“Not hard enough.”
“For months, I wrote you. Eventually, you moved, and it wasn’t you returning my letters, but the US post office. I got the hint, loud and clear.” She swallowed. “I thought it would be better to raise him alone than force you into his life, anyways.”
“I can’t… how old is he?”
“Four,” she smiled weakly, thinking of their son. “Going on ten.”
He shook his head. “I just… I can’t believe it, Annabeth. I’ve been back four years. You could have contacted me through Don and Mary. There were ways.”
“I told you,” she said, staring at him levelly, “I didn’t want to force you into his life. I know, better than most, what it’s like to have a parent in your life who doesn’t love you.”
She was alluding to her mother, who’d given up pretending around the time Annabeth turned nine. She’d woken up one morning to find her mother gone. Horace had never really spoken to Annabeth about it, but Beth had known. Her mother didn’t like being tied down. She hadn’t wanted to have a child. She’d run away when it finally got too much for her.
“I want to see him.”
Annabeth jerked her head in a sign of dissent. “No.”
“No? You’re actually going to try to keep my own son from me?”
She bit down on her lip. “I don’t know, Kirk. I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“There is no need to think. It’s not something you can control. I am going to meet Wade, regardless of what you think.”
Raising the Soldier's Son: So what if they share a history? That's in the past. And it's staying there. (Hometown Hero Series Book 3) Page 4