by Susan Stoker
“A kiss to seal the deal?”
Emily nodded shyly. She’d been wondering how his lips would feel against hers for months. She’d felt the same attraction when she first met him that apparently he did for her.
Fletch didn’t let go of her hands, but leaned into her slowly, drawing out the moment. Emily smiled at him right before his lips met hers. They weren’t touching anywhere other than their lips and hands, but she felt the electricity arc throughout her body nevertheless.
The kiss started out chaste, a simple touching of lips. He drew back momentarily, smiled, and then swooped back in. This time his tongue ran across the seam of her lips and Emily opened to him. Not wasting time, Fletch moved in. He caressed her, made love to her mouth with his tongue. He tilted his head to get a better angle, and that only increased Emily’s pleasure.
She moaned and tried to get closer to him. Fletch hadn’t let go of her hands, and the fact that she couldn’t touch him as he devoured her, made it all the more erotic. Finally, he pulled back, licking his lips as if trying to memorize her taste.
“Wow,” Emily murmured to break the silence.
“Wow,” Fletch agreed, letting go of one of her hands for the first time, bringing his up to her face to run the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “Hungry?”
Emily blushed. She knew he wasn’t asking what she thought he was asking, but it sounded dirty all the same. “Actually, yeah. I could eat something again.”
Fletch laughed, obviously having mind-reading capabilities as well as superhero make-out ones. “Come on, perv, let me feed you.”
Emily took his hand with a smile, deciding keeping silent was the better option so as not to embarrass herself any further. As they walked toward the kitchen, Emily thought to herself that it was nice to be looked after for once, rather than always being the one who looked after others. Really nice.
Chapter 13
The rest of the week went by quickly, and Emily and Annie got into a comfortable routine. If she was honest with herself, it seemed as though they’d lived in Fletch’s house for weeks rather than only days. Emily moved into the guest room with Fletch’s help. He’d carried her stuff over from the garage apartment, and only gave her a few disapproving looks at how little she had.
Emily appreciated him not making her feel worse than she already did about it. Annie’s belongings took a few more trips than her own, but she was finally settled into the room next to Emily’s. She still hadn’t opened her precious Army men, but kept them propped up next to her bed so they were the last things she saw when she went to sleep and the first things she saw in the morning when she woke up.
Luckily Fletch was a morning person, because Annie, as Emily had warned, was not a quiet child. Much to Emily’s dismay, she seemed to need less sleep than other children. Her bedtime was eight, which meant she had to be in her room in her bed, but she didn’t usually go to sleep until at least an hour or two later. Then she was up around five or six. Annie had learned over the years to let Emily sleep.
But Fletch was up around the same time as Annie, so most mornings when Emily came into the kitchen, Annie and Fletch were already there chatting away while eating breakfast as if they’d been doing it their entire lives.
Seeing the big strong alpha man treating Annie with such care—and yes, love—made Emily like him that much more.
The only issue they’d had in the week they’d been living with him was the morning Emily came downstairs and saw that Annie had drawn all over her arms with markers.
“Look, Mommy! I’m just like Fletch!”
Emily had frowned and crossed her arms, glaring at both her child and Fletch. He’d held up his hands as if to say, “Don’t blame me.”
Emily and Annie had spent an uncomfortable twenty minutes scrubbing the marks off her arms. She’d tried to explain to the little girl that while it might be appropriate for Fletch to have tattoos, she’d have to wait until she was at least eighteen.
Fletch had come home that night with some temporary Army tattoos for Annie, and all Emily could do was roll her eyes. Annie had been so excited that Emily didn’t have the heart to forbid them, her only rule was that they had to be placed somewhere others wouldn’t see them. Annie was now the delighted owner of an “Army Proud” temporary tattoo on her upper thigh.
Emily hadn’t had a talk with Annie about everything that had been going on yet, but it was on her agenda. She’d meant to do it before her date, but now it was Saturday and Rayne and her friend Mary had arrived early to get to know Annie and Emily better. Emily decided to talk to her daughter on Sunday, after seeing how things went on her date with Fletch.
He’d left to do some errands, but Emily knew it was more to give her time to chat with the other women.
“So…you and Fletch, huh?”
Rayne hadn’t wasted any time in teasing her about her relationship, whatever it was, with Fletch. Emily blushed. “I guess so.”
“For the record, you’ve picked a good one.”
“I’m not sure I really picked him. It just kinda happened.”
“Well, however it happened, it’s a good thing.”
“Whatever you might think, we’re not really together-together. We haven’t even been on a date yet.”
Mary put her drink aside and leaned her elbows on the table. “When you click with someone, you click. It’s something that you just know, deep down, is right.”
“Have you felt that way about someone?”
“Yeah.”
“And what happened?” Emily asked.
“It’s complicated,” Mary said with a sad smile.
“You’ve heard the story about me and Ghost, right?” Rayne interrupted, obviously knowing more about Mary’s situation than Emily did, and trying to steer the conversation away from her friend.
Emily shook her head and checked on Annie. Her daughter was sitting in front of the television, mesmerized by the GI Joe cartoon she’d run across ten minutes earlier. “Not really, just that you were caught up in that thing in Egypt, and Ghost and the others went in and got you out.”
“I’d met Ghost six months before then. We had a one-night stand during a layover in London.”
Emily couldn’t have been more shocked if Rayne had told her she was actually a mermaid or something. “Wow, really?”
“I know, I don’t seem like the one-night stand kind of person, do I?”
Emily could only shake her head. She really didn’t. Rayne was younger than she was, and seemed way less…jaded or something. Maybe it was the fact that Emily had been a mom for four years by the time she was Rayne’s age, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I’m so not. That was my first one, and it hurt when he left the morning after, even though I knew going in that it was only going to be for one night. But as it turns out, Ghost was upset too. He’d never wanted more with a woman before.”
“So how did he know you were in that Egypt thing?”
“He didn’t. It was a complete coincidence.”
“Wow,” Emily breathed. “A lucky one, I’d say.”
“Best and worst thing that ever happened to me,” Rayne agreed. “Look, here’s the thing, we spent one day and night together and then didn’t see each other for six months. But when we did? I think we both knew we were it for each other. We still went through some shit, but in the end, we had a connection that couldn’t be broken. I see that same sort of connection between you and Fletch.”
Emily wanted to protest, but she couldn’t. She felt it too.
Rayne went on in a lower voice just in case Annie was listening. “When Annie came over the other night, you should’ve seen Fletch. He immediately took charge, soothing her and getting to you as soon as he could. Now, he’s an alpha Delta Force guy, so that’s something any of the guys would do, but it wasn’t any of them. It was Fletch. He wouldn’t leave your side until he knew you were out of danger. He got Annie settled into his home as if he wanted her there forever. My advice to you? Go with it. You’ll n
ever find a better man, one more devoted to you and your daughter’s happiness.”
When Emily opened her mouth to speak, Rayne hurried on. “I’m not saying he won’t be a jerk sometimes. He will. He’ll think he knows what’s best for you and Annie, and you’ll have to speak your mind, otherwise he’ll run roughshod over you. But they’re used to taking charge and fixing things. They think like guys. Ghost has mellowed some, but he’ll always be the kind of man who will take charge of any situation. Let go of what you can, but put your foot down on the things that really matter.”
Emily nodded. She’d already seen that side of Fletch…and liked it. She was a capable woman, had been on her own for a long time, had done a darn good job of raising Annie, if she did say so herself, but it was very nice to not always have to be responsible for everything all the time. She could easily give some things to Fletch.
“I can do that.”
Rayne beamed. “Good. And I have to say, I’m so thrilled to get to know you. Mary and I have talked about it a lot. We’re best friends, but we’d love to have more girlfriends. We’ve kinda been in a bubble.”
“Bubble,” Mary laughed. “Yeah, that’s a good way to describe it. I love Raynie like she’s my sister, but it’d be great to have a group of friends we can hang out with.”
“And now that you know what Fletch and the others do for a living, I figure it might be nice to have someone else to talk to about it,” Rayne told Emily.
“I’d like that,” she confessed. “I have so many questions about what Fletch does, and I know he can’t tell me most of them.”
Rayne nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. Most of the soldiers on the base have no idea that Ghost and the others are Delta Force, it’s something you can’t talk about to anyone who isn’t married to a Delta. Mary knows, simply because I flat-out told Ghost there was no way I could keep it from her…and she almost castrated him after he’d landed in the hospital but didn’t tell me he was hurt on a mission. I’m sure Fletch will give you ‘the talk’ about this, as Ghost did me, but the bottom line is that we’re kinda an island. We can talk to our men, and the others on the team, but not anyone else. To outsiders, we’re typical Army girlfriends.”
“He’s already brought it up. They can’t tell us where they’re going, can they?” Emily asked, remembering the missions Fletch had been on.
“Nope. It’s top secret. Are you understanding now why I’m thrilled to meet you?”
Emily smiled shyly at Rayne and Mary and nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”
“Great. Now that that’s out of the way, come on, let’s go see if we can pry Annie away from her show and make a mess in the kitchen. I’m sure between the three of us, we can figure out something fun to teach her to bake.”
“Sounds good to me!” Emily agreed.
The rest of the day went by quickly, between Annie’s nonstop chatter and getting to know Rayne and her friend. As Emily was getting ready for her date later that afternoon, she thought about what Rayne and Mary had told her. She did feel a crazy connection to Fletch…and she could see with her own eyes how he felt about Annie. Those feelings had been there from the start.
Emily wasn’t an idiot. She wouldn’t have gone along with what Jacks had forced her to do, and wouldn’t have felt such a sense of disappointment in Fletch, if she didn’t care about him in some way. It wasn’t just that he’d given her a place to live when she’d desperately needed one, it was him. His goodness rang out loud and clear to her. He’d probably deny it, claiming he was a bad-ass soldier, but Emily saw it anyway.
Tonight could be the start of a wonderful relationship—or it could prove that all they had was affection, and no deeper connection. Emily took a deep breath and readied herself to go into the other room.
She was hoping for the connection. She liked Fletch. A lot. She could only hope he felt the same by the end of the night.
Chapter 14
Emily took a sip of her coffee and smiled over the rim at Fletch. Even though they’d left from the same house, he’d made an effort to treat it like it was a conventional date. Much to the delight of Annie, he’d walked out of the house, shutting the door behind him, and had actually rung the bell, as if he’d just arrived to pick her up.
He was wearing a pair of khaki pants with a polo shirt. The tattoos on his arms and the five o’clock shadow he always seemed to have kept him from looking preppy. He’d taken her hand in his and led her to his truck, which he’d pulled up to the house earlier. It was a little thing, but somehow made it less awkward than just waltzing out of his room and telling her he was ready.
He’d taken her to a hole-in-the-wall steak place and Emily had eaten the best meal she’d had in a long time, partly because she didn’t have to worry about the cost. A tender filet, mashed potatoes full of cheese, bacon and onions, steamed broccoli, and they’d topped it off by sharing a plate of fruit for dessert. They’d been sitting talking about nothing, just getting-to-know-each-other stuff for the last forty minutes, and Emily felt more comfortable than she had in a long time.
“If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?” Emily asked Fletch. They’d been asking more and more serious questions of each other as the night went on, and this one was a doozy.
Fletch didn’t even seem to have to think about his answer. “I would’ve asked you about Jacks the second I got back from that first mission.”
“What?”
“I’d have confronted you about the guy you’d met up with in the driveway. Annie told me that was the first time you met him. I saw it on my security camera footage, but completely misinterpreted it. If I had asked you about him when I got back, you wouldn’t have given him so much money, wouldn’t have been stressed out, and you wouldn’t have had to starve yourself.”
Emily was speechless for a moment. “Out of your entire life, that’s what you would change?”
“Yup.”
“But…Fletch, there has to be something else. Something you’d do differently while on a mission, something you’ve said to someone.”
“Nope. You said one thing. That’s the biggest regret I’ve got. We wasted months because I was a pansy. I should’ve just come out and asked you about him. What about you? What would you change?”
Emily hadn’t recovered from Fletch’s answer. Trying to think of what she might change was tough. Lots of things ran through her mind…not saying “I love you” to her parents more often before they’d died, not being smarter about Annie’s father. But right that minute? She’d have to agree with Fletch and say she wished she’d confronted him about Jacks, and stood up for herself and asked what the hell was going on.
She opened her mouth to tell him when a shadow fell over the table.
The very man they’d been talking about stood by their table, smirking, as if he knew something they didn’t.
Fletch didn’t even give him a chance to open his mouth, he was standing and holding onto Jacks by the collar of his shirt before he’d said a word.
Emily stood up herself, but didn’t leave her spot by the table, just stared as Fletch pushed the man backwards through the restaurant, ignoring the gasps of the other people eating dinner. Not sure what she should do, Emily stayed put and watched from a distance.
“Is everything all right?” their waitress asked nervously, coming up beside the table.
“Uh, yeah, I’m sure it’s fine,” Emily told her, not sure herself.
“Okay,” the young waitress fretted, clearly not reassured.
Emily kept her eyes on Fletch and Jacks as they had a discussion outside the window of the small restaurant. She supposed it was inevitable that the two men had words, but it was unfortunate that it had to happen during their first date.
Finally, after what seemed like forever but was probably only a few minutes, Fletch re-entered the restaurant and came back to the table. Instead of sitting across from her this time, he motioned for her to scoot over and joined her on her side of the booth. Emily could see his
jaw flexing and noted his clenched fist behind her on the booth. Other than that, he looked completely in control of himself.
Taking a risk, she put her hand on top of his on the tabletop and squeezed. “Are you okay?”
“No.” The word was flat and pissed off.
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing I’ll repeat to you,” Fletch told her matter-of-factly.
“But Fletch, I—”
“You ready to go?”
Emily cocked her head at him. He looked ready to explode. It was definitely time to get out of there.
“Yes.”
“Good.” Fletch pulled out his wallet and put enough bills on the table to cover the cost of their dinner and a sizeable tip, and then stood. He held out his hand and Emily took it. She knew she was looking at Fletch the soldier, and not Fletch her date at the moment, but it didn’t make a difference as to how she felt about him.
Actually, that was a lie. It did. It totally made a difference.
She felt safe. Even though Fletch was pissed off, he was being gentle with her, and even polite to the waitress, who they passed on the way out the door. He hadn’t thrown anything, hadn’t even raised his voice to her. He’d simply dealt with the situation and he obviously wanted to get her out of there as soon as he could.
Emily couldn’t fault him for that.
He was one hundred percent in control of himself—and for some reason that turned her on. Annie’s father hadn’t had nearly the control that Fletch did. Emily had seen him punch a wall once. Why did guys do that, anyway? It wasn’t as if it would do anything other than hurt their own hand, and he’d even trashed his apartment when he was drunk.
Fletch led them outside to his truck, but not before checking to make sure Jacks was gone. He opened the door and assisted Emily in, then stalked around the vehicle and got in on his side. Without a word to her, he pulled out his phone.
“Hey, Coach. It’s Fletch. Jacks just waltzed into the restaurant where Em and I were having a nice dinner…I have no idea how he knew where we were. Yeah, we had words… Thanks, appreciate it.” He clicked off the phone and threw it on the dash. He put both hands on the steering wheel and took a deep breath.