by Angel Payne
“Yo, Franz.”
He barely looked up from where he was parked in the sand, glaring at the world through one eye. “Yo, crap waffles.”
While Rebel Stafford chuckled, Rhett Lange glared. The two buddies, who’d been his best recon and intel team, were among the earlier arrivals of the week—obviously eager to make up for lost time since missing all the action in Vegas, Seattle, and Barking Sands. While their lives certainly hadn’t been boring since leaving the Big Green machine, the stress of missions replaced by the whirlwind of co-managing their woman’s dance career, “the mavericks” had arrived at the house looking like fanboys who’d missed the opening weekend of a Star Wars episode. Didn’t take them long to stow the self-pity, however. Not with a much more nuanced role to bite right into. Let’s take care of Franzen but pretend we’re doing something else.
Surprise, surprise. It was such a fun part, everyone else wanted a crack at it too. The whole fucking gang of them were here, as well as their women. Joking with him. Drinking with him. For Christ’s sake, even rallying for bullshit like poker games and movie nights.
Movie nights.
Who the hell flew all the way to the northernmost end of Hawaii, just to watch Indiana Jones for the twentieth time?
Idiots like them.
Friends like them.
He’d been nothing but an ass to them all, for nearly seven days straight, because of the one factor they couldn’t change.
The only person who hadn’t gone in on the let’s-pretend-we’re all-just-having-fun act was Tracy Rhodes.
Worst part about it?
All these bastards saw right through it. Especially the two who’d damn near invented this particular part of the game.
And, judging by the whip of a glance they exchanged, held back from the group microbrew stock-up trip into Port Allen for the purpose of calling him on his bullshit.
Fine by him. He was ready for the double whammy of a speech, ropes of tension down his shoulders as proof—but he was also ready as hell with the comeback to silence them.
“Well.” Rhett dove in first.
“Deep subject.” Franz rejoined.
Neither of them tossed out a groan let alone fake laughs. “In some cases,” Rebel huffed instead.
“Guess it depends on how far you want to bury the body,” Rhett added.
Rebel jumped on that one. “You mean like the choad bucket that was supposed to be buried under our asses right now?”
“Thank you very much, Mister Moonstormer.” Rhett’s return was as artificially sweet as his smile. “That’s exactly what I meant.”
As the guy added a sarcastic finish of rapid-fire flirty blinks, comprehension power-blasted in. “Shit,” he growled. “Kanapapkis.”
Oh, they laughed at that.
He didn’t.
They led with his lead. Popped the ammunition out of his goddamn gun, slammed it into theirs, then teamed up as the elite stealth team they were damn near famous for.
“So now that we’re all in agreement,”—Rhett’s drawl was edged with the lazy snark from the Bayou in which he’d been raised—“that playing the better-bitter-than-dead card is off the table now, let’s see what you’re really ready to ante up, Dragon Man.”
Franz didn’t say a word. Pretended to swat at a bug. “What the living fuck are you talking about?”
Rhett chuffed. Shoulder-butted Rebel. “Isn’t that adorable? He looks just like a constipated gorilla.”
“I was thinking more a bad cos play pirate.” Rebel’s eyes flared. “Merde, Franz. You going to ask to switch call-signs now? You’d be a good Moonstormer. The original wore a tricorn, though. You like tricorns?”
Franz shook his head then shot to his feet. “Eat shit.”
“Not a problem,” Rhett jumped in smoothly. “Just as soon as we hash a few things out.”
Dammit. The guy’s equally unique accent, a combination of highbrow British and hardcore New Yorker, was smooth as a knowing criminal—because he damn near was. Fucker had known exactly where this conversation would go, didn’t he?
Franz grimaced, unsettled. No. Horrified. Since when did his own guys pull a psychological wedgie on him? It was his job to know them better. Always.
Always.
He jammed both hands in his pockets.
And for the first time in his entire life, began to pace.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
His world was so goddamned off-balance—a chaos having nothing to do with losing his eye. This shit went deeper. So much deeper. Half his breaths weren’t worth taking anymore. Half his thoughts weren’t worth completing. At the top of every minute, he all but screamed at time to hurry the fuck up and get on with the next—only to realize the exact same experience waited for him in the next sixty seconds.
Every one of those sensations was even worse now—not helped a goddamned bit as he wheeled on the smug sonofabitches, openly gritting his teeth. “Just a few things. huh?” Raging defensiveness cut into the words. He heard it, and hated it—and forced himself to just live with it. If this was what Head Shrink Lange wanted, this was what the bastard was going to get. “Outstanding. Let’s go, doc dick wad. What you got for me?”
The guy pushed to his feet too. Almost assumed a full attention stance, which flattened Franz’s instinct once more. How the hell was he supposed to stay pissed at the po’o ’olohaka, when he was playing the half-prince of politeness in return?
“This isn’t about what I’ve got for you, Captain.” He lifted his head a little higher, causing the sun to ignite the red tints in his light brown hair. “And I think you know that, as well.”
“Oh, by God’s massive cock.” Rebel rolled upright, heaving a labored sigh. “And they say we French beat around the bush.”
Rhett swung a pissed glower. “Maybe I’m attempting a little bloody respect? We’re talking about the president of the country, asshole.”
“Who’s also a human being,” Rebel rebutted. “A femme magnifique, I might add—one who is, perhaps, a woman at last worthy of this homme incroyable.” His stare sharpened as he dipped a nod toward Franzen. “Question is, does this guy still agree?”
His jaw clamped so hard, his teeth hurt. Didn’t come close to the agony of the vital organ beating at the inside of Franz’s ribs. “What this one agrees or disagrees to isn’t part of the equation.” When Reb just blinked blankly, he snarled, “Reminder of the day? In your boy toy’s own words? President of the country, Stafford. Let me translate that one a little clearer. A woman who’s now being called on to help redefine a brand-new world. To restore some semblance of security for our whole land. To take on a job that will be, on most if not all days, overwhelming—”
“And you think she doesn’t want help with that burden?” Rhett stepped in, firing the charge—making Franz notice, for the first time, that both he and Rebel wore long white cargo pants with their basic white polos, instead of shorts. “That she doesn’t long for someone to be there, helping with all those crazy days and decisions?”
“And suddenly I’m that guy?” Franz spat. And why the hell were they having it out about this, right now? If Mom was demanding everyone fancy their shit up for Sunday dinner, these two bozos were smart enough to realize she’d be livid about the “appetizer course” being a vicious dust-up, yeah? Because this shit was turning into that shit pretty fast. “And what happened to you being on my side about this? Understanding exactly who the hell we’re talking about here?”
“Which is why I’m still standing over here—” Shrink Lange swept both hands toward his feet—“not lunging over there, trying to strangle some fucking sense into you.”
Franzen spread his own arms—wide and violently. “I can’t help her.” The bellow turned his torso into a volcano, his mind into bursting lava, his composure into a black wasteland. “Do you not think I crave that, Lange? Do you—any of you—not see it’s what I spend every other goddamn minute thinking about, grieving about, praying to any power out there about? Do you
not really know that I wake up every fucking morning, begging—God, pleading—that I’d been smarter out at Barking Sands? That I’d told Kellan to take his shot at Wrightman sooner that night? Hell, that I’d taken the damn shot at the fucker myself, back in Vegas?”
His hands had twisted into fists. With vehement resolve, he uncurled one pointer finger out, then slowly raised the quivering spear toward his face. “Does this fucked-up shit see better than all of you boxes of rocks put together?”
“Maybe it does.” The interjection wasn’t Rhett’s—or Rebel’s. Only one guy belonged to that Dark Knight baritone, with the enormous physique to match. “So enlighten us, fucker,” Zeke intoned, striding onto the sand in nearly identical clothes to his battalion mates. Garrett appeared behind him, also adhering to the all-white theme.
“I’m on board with that.” Ethan. Scowling. Also all-whiting. “Show us the light, Franz.”
He narrowed a glare. What the hell? Show them the light? But what if they’d already showed him? Had Wrightman really taken him all the way out at Barking Sands, and were the last few weeks just a strange Purgatory? Was he actually resting under the ground beneath these palms, being visited by weird angel versions of the guys? Or maybe this was just one hell of a crazy-ass dream…
No matter what the explanation, it brought one defining conclusion.
They wanted the truth that bad?
They could sure as hell have it.
“Okay.” He folded his arms, running an assessing gaze along the semi-circle of their attentive faces. “You want the light on? Here’s your goddamn light, kids.”
So starting was easier than continuing—but he tightened his gut, ordering the words back the right direction. Words that had haunted his psyche for all these agonizing, endless weeks. Had pushed at the confines of his heart like words to a poet, music to a minstrel…purpose to a warrior.
“I’m in love with Tracy Livia Rhodes. Pretty damn sure I have been since the moment I met her.”
He looked up as another movement caught his eye. Quirked one side of his mouth, saying to the new arrival to their circle, “You all think I’m the one who kept her alive after that explosion then the bullshit in Seattle—but the truth is, she saved me. All of me.”
He trailed off, knowing he didn’t need to say more—confronting the understanding of that in every inch of Garrett’s brotherly smile.
“And though I’m the one who locked the handcuffs on her, she was the beauty who locked my sorry-ass beast down.”
Zeke nodded hard, his gaze glassy, his formidable jaw jutted. He was joined by the Bommer brothers, Shay and Tait, who added emphatic nods of approval.
“And yeah, it was the best high in the fucking world, watching her finally embrace the beauty of her submission…just for me. Because she trusted…me.”
Ethan’s face, such a famous sight the world over now but set in the smirk he reserved for his battalion brothers only, widened in a commiserating smile.
“She was my gift from the gods. The treasure that showed me the way again. Proved my life could still have purpose, when I truly thought I’d lost anything like it.”
Christ. Cornier words had never spilled off his lips but every damn syllable of them was true. So indelibly, breathtakingly, true. Every corner of his soul resounded with that truth. Sang with it. Ached from it. He looked up, squeezing stinging moisture from his eye, to witness the same sheen in Kellan Rush’s gaze. Kell scooted in closer, clapping a hand around Tait’s shoulder.
“She sees my scars but believes in my perfection. She knows my violence but calls it passion. She peers into my darkness and doesn’t try to change it or heal it—but because she dives into it with me, she does change it. She has changed it.”
For that, he received a pair of appreciative grunts from yet two more arrivals to the circle: Sam Mackenna and Dan Colton.
“Awww, fuck it,” he muttered then. Let himself drop back into the sand, his head low, his mushed-up vision trying to focus on the tops of his doubled-over knees. “She’s changed me. She’s changed me forever. Forever…”
He didn’t even waste thoughts on everyone’s angel garb, or why Pop’s ukulele music was suddenly silent, or why the air was so thick and quiet and expectant. He only knew the breeze smelled like Tracy, citrus and ginger and jasmine colliding with the tang from the sea and the salt from his tears, twisting his heart into a bigger, messier, stupid-ass knot. He only knew that for once, he would accept every goddamn branch of support his men offered to him right now. He’d readily let them grow a fucking tree under him if they wanted, lifting him up with the incredible, unbreakable, bond of their brotherhood.
Until the circle parted once again.
Opened with the discernible rustle of warriors’ feet…and the tangible energy of their collective honor.
To let one more into their energy.
One more with tiny footsteps…preceded by the scent of citrus and jasmine.
An angel disguised as a kitten.
The core of his soul…contained in the most gorgeous female on this planet.
The woman who plummeted onto the ground in front of him. Wrapping her small, urgent hands around his. Holding him as if she’d plunged all those sweet fingers into his chest, yanked out his heart, and now held it in the center of her palms.
Because she pretty much did.
“Forever sounds damn good to me, soldier.”
John blinked. Again. Swallowed hard but realized inhaling the whole damn ocean wasn’t going to help his dry, tight throat. Every drop of liquid in his body, now packed with every joyous, merciless, careening, disbelieving, detonating emotion in his soul, began exiting him through one orifice only. His one goddamn eye.
Finally, his vocal chords snapped into line again, working themselves around rasped syllables.
“Tracy?”
Her sweet kitten mouth turned up in a tiny smirk. “Yes, Sir?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
All the guys laughed.
He didn’t.
“You’re the president, dammit.” He didn’t wait for the mirth to fade. This was too damn important. He showed her so by securing their hands tighter, twining his fingers between hers. The move had absolutely nothing to do with how fucking good it felt to touch her again. With what a miracle he once more held…and already dreaded having to let go. “You can’t just be flitting to the Hawaiian Islands on a whim, just to—”
Her sharp jerk back sure got him to shut up. “Flitting?” she retorted. “On a whim? Is that really your argument here, asshole?”
He was conscious, vaguely, of the guys chuckling again—though mostly he dealt with his fresh irritation. Why was she so bent out of shape? And why the hell did she have to look so magnificent about it? All he wanted to do was order everyone to go back inside and demolish Mom’s dinner, so he could flatten her in the sand, hike up the embroidered skirt of her filmy white sundress, and bury his body inside hers for hours.
But even that wasn’t an option anymore, since here was Mom, suddenly appearing behind the woman. Even she’d changed into white, with a matching hibiscus blossom in her hair and bright tears brimming her eyes.
What. The. Hell?
Tracy consumed his attention again, rising on her knees to plant hands on her hips. “Let’s set a couple of things straight, mister. I wouldn’t have to be ‘flitting’, if you’d have come to the damn phone even once when I’d called. Do not even think of dreaming up another excuse on that. Second, this isn’t some damn ‘whim’.” She traced a broad circle on the air with the top of her head, including the guys and Mom—and now Dad, showing up behind her—with the motion. “You should be buying at least half a clue on that one by now, right?”
He scowled. Hard. And yeah, it probably did turn him into the goddamned pirate of Rebel’s reference, but it was better than admitting he didn’t comprehend even half her precious “clue”. Stumbling in the dark wasn’t something he handled well on normal days—and this w
as sure as hell not a normal day.
“Tracy. Fuck.” He topped off the growl by dragging a hand across his head. “I—I don’t know what the hell you’re looking for here.”
She lowered again. Scraped her own fingers across the length of his jaw. “For starters, how about repeating the good shit?”
Deep scowl. “The what?”
She grinned. “Okay, maybe not all of it. Just the part about me being your beauty, and taming your hot ass down. Oh, and that gift-from-the-gods stuff too. Definitely that.”
He swore beneath his breath but ended on a caustic laugh. So she’d been eavesdropping. What the hell did it matter? “I’d be thrilled to repeat all of it with you sitting right here, ku’uipo, but what’s it going to accomplish? You sure as hell can’t re-open that job offer,”—pointing out his Bluebeard patch would’ve insulted even the seagulls’ intelligence so he didn’t—“so there’s no talking about being your Secret Service fling anymore—”
“Oh my God.” She muttered it so fiercely, he expected a chest whack to follow. No such luck. She smacked him with the reproof in her eyes instead. Christ, her eyes. How had he lived a day, let alone weeks, without those dove wing depths? “I knew you were stubborn, but this is ridiculous.”
“Excuse the hell out of me?” Enough was enough. He pushed all the way up to his feet again. “No. don’t excuse me. I’ll do it myself—because clearly, I’m not stubborn. Just really fucking dense.” He spun a glare around the wide circle of his friends. “You all look like a bunch of penises. And you,” he gritted, pointing at the woman who’d matched his jolt with a rise of her own, “are too goddamned gorgeous for even this beach.”
Tracy’s chin, already jutted at him, tightened just a degree more. In a second, she went from gorgeous to outright hot. “Even if I came to this beach to get married?”
And from confusing to outright baffling.