THE WATCHERS: 6 Military Romance Bundle

by Kristina Weaver

  I pretended all the way till my second year when I turned eighteen, and I kept pretending till that two-month period when they were stateside and home for training. God, just thinking of that summer still makes me cringe. I was a lovesick fool. That pathetic girl who followed him with my eyes and probably looked like an idiot the way I smiled and grinned all the time.

  I was a real idiot at eighteen, and even more so for what I did next, something that I will never get over—no matter how much time passes.

  Imagine, an eighteen-year-old virgin throwing herself at a twenty-five-year-old man….

  I mean, you get it if y’all are cringing as badly as I am right now, and trust me, even then you don’t truly get how badly I made a fool of myself. To make this short—for myself mostly, since I still can’t think of that day without feeling like three kinds of loser—I kissed King.

  My first kiss.

  Just picture it. There was blond-haired, gray-eyed King, all huge and muscled, water still clinging to his body and swim trunks as he marched upstairs to the guestroom to change.

  And there was me, scantily clad, waiting for him, my young body awash in arousal and hope as I walked in, closed the door and faced him. I won’t tell you about everything that was said after he saw me.

  What I will describe is the shock on his face when I launched myself at him and started sucking at his lips, and oh, the feeling of his mouth…

  But that came crashing to a halt almost immediately when he pushed me away.

  Look, I’m probably not making much sense right now, and that’s okay since the only way you’d truly understand it is for me to tell the whole story, which I’ll never do.

  I kissed him. He rejected me, and that….

  Chapter Two

  Kinsley

  The wedding. Jesus, help me. All I keep thinking about as I rush from the bank to my car and hit the street is that this entire thing has become a freaking nightmare.

  Jon’s mother changed yet another seating arrangement and added another three people to the guest list, which means I have to leave work for the rest of the day and rush to the planner’s, where the caterers are also waiting, to chew my new asshole into yet a third.

  I start the car with a curse and gun it, peeling out of the parking lot with the check gripped in my fist against the steering wheel.

  This has just been the day from hell. I spent my Saturday and Sunday listening to Jon whine about my family not accepting him, and then this morning I woke to my freaking period, which by the way, is not cool.

  To top it all off, I have meetings up to the freaking ceiling all day that had to be cancelled and rescheduled because my damn mother-in-law is motherzilla with the wedding.

  My phone rings just as I turn onto Third Street, and I answer absently, grinding my teeth against the need to scream my annoyance. I hate changing my schedule, I freaking hate it, and they all know it and—

  “Kinsley.”

  That voice has me slamming the brakes immediately, and I almost fly head first into the wheel as the car jolts and skids out, fishtailing before I can correct soon enough.

  I end up slamming to a screech on the side of the road as horns blast and people behind me curse me half to death before moving on.

  I’m so shaken I hardly breathe as I fall back into the seat and stare at my phone where it sits in the Bluetooth speaker thingy that lets me go hands free.

  I can’t breathe. I’m not breathing, as I watch it like a coiled snake, my mind blank and struggling to unfreeze for long seconds.

  “Kins?”

  Oh God. It really is him, and oh God again, why is he calling me? I haven’t heard that voice in six freaking years, and to tell the truth, I don’t want to!

  I can’t do this, and I can’t—

  “Kins? Are you okay?”

  No. No, I am not. How can I be when just hearing him sends me back to that one day that forever changed my life? How can I be okay when everything inside me stops, going right back to that humiliating event that I’ve been trying to ignore for almost my entire adult life?

  And, dammit, why is he calling me, for the first time in…ever, just on the cusp of my wedding?

  “What do you want?”

  I’m proud of my voice when it comes out steady, though how that’s even possible with everything inside me vibrating to high heaven is a miracle. I feel like I’ve been plugged into a live socket just hearing that husky rasp, and even worse, just like always, I feel something inside me respond to King…just like it did when I was young, dumb, and too naïve to understand that love doesn’t just happen, no matter how hard you wish it.

  “Lex told me to call you. He said you had something to talk to me about.”

  Huh? So that’s why he’s calling, huh? One bark from my brother and all of a sudden I’m not public enemy number one?

  To make things less confusing for you, let me say this: I once kissed Brett King with every ounce of pent up love and lust that lived in my young body. I loved him so much that for that one summer I dropped every plan I had, canceled tutoring sessions and those extra-credit classes at college, and even refused to leave home because he was there.

  For me, that was wild. It was my inner rebellion against myself, and you know…I just loved it. I spent every day of that summer with my brother and King, who were home on extended leave after doing some job that was high risk or something. They never told us everything, just that they’d earned the time with blood.

  I was just happy to have them there, and even happier when it seemed as if King was finally not ignoring me. Take one virgin with a lot of hope, and have the man of her dreams actually smile at her and talk to her, and you can imagine the embarrassment I still live with.

  I truly did follow him around and damn near killed myself flirting with him. When he didn’t rebuff me, I got it into my head that he wanted me because, hell, I didn’t understand very much about social interactions.

  My mama once told me I was way too cut-and-dry in the way I saw things for my own good, and boy was that a bad thing when coupled with my love and lust whenever King was around.

  So, I kissed him. When he rejected me, I swiftly moved on to what my research had told me and removed every stitch of clothing from my body.

  I won’t bore you with the details; more like I won’t make myself suffer through remembering them all, but I will say that he reacted as if I just whipped it all off and revealed a hidden penis in my bikini.

  “Kins?”

  “Lex told you to call me? What the hell for, King? I want nothing from you.”

  “Kin—”

  “Look, I need to go. I’m on the way to the wedding planner. I don’t have time for this,” I snarl, cutting the call short with a flick of my wrist.

  I’m pretty certain he’s the one that starts calling again just as I manage to calm myself enough to pull back into traffic. I ignore it and finally just turn off my phone before pulling into the wedding planner’s place and hustling for the door.

  “Miss Jacobs! Please Jesus, tell me you’re not changing things again.” The little middle-aged blonde yells the minute I shuffle in, the check creased and gripped in my fist.

  “Barb, look, please don’t kill me for this, okay? But she’s at it again, and I just…” I start crying before I can stop myself and just sink down into a chair at her desk, my nerves strung out from the earlier call and the loss of control that has become my day.

  The pills aren’t working, not with all the upheaval, and—darn it—I feel ready to have a fit by the time Barb and Cindy, the caterer, have me cleaned up and sipping a cup of steaming tea.

  “That damn old crone! I swear to God, I thank the sweet baby Jesus for my mother-in-law every day when I see what you have to deal with. You sure you’re up for a lifetime of that?” she mutters, gripping the check with a wince and smoothing it out on her table.

  The thing looks like I chewed on it and spat it out, nothing like the perfectly written checks I usually present with a
clear and cool head.

  “I just have to get through this, and then it’ll be fine. Jon’s mom has been dreaming of this day since he was a little boy, and who am I to take it away from her?”

  They share a look, the little blonde blinking at the robust brunette that is Cindy, as I sip my tea and fight for calm. I can do this. All I have to do is get through this re-planning, straighten myself up a bit, and then if things go okay, I can get back to work and have those meetings. If I can just get it all done just as I had planned with a little modification, I know I can still the panic creeping up on me.

  “Honey, I hate to tell you this since it seems you’re on the edge of a collapse, but you’re the bride. That means you get to have your wedding, not the wedding of her dreams, and you shouldn’t be driving yourself ragged to ensure it either. No, the seating is nailed down, and I am not changing it again.”

  “But the other—”

  “Guests not already included in the RSVPs we’ve received will be put at the extra tables I’ve incorporated to handle Old Yeller’s newest demands. If she doesn’t like it, that’s her problem. Now, as far as food…”

  “I’ve asked Molly to order more lobster, and the booze guys will handle more drinks for the open bar,” Cindy finishes, passing me a tissue to wipe at my sweaty brow.

  Okay. Okay, this is okay, I think, picturing the seating in my mind’s eye and relocating some of the other guests just in case mother Hatchet has a fit about the plans when I email her for the hundredth time today.

  “Okay. Good. Listen, if you could just handle this for me, I can go back to work and actually get something done before I have to talk to her again.”

  They agree to it all, and I’m out of there fifteen minutes later, after another tea and some time to organize myself. I make it to the office in record time, and I’m busy with a client when the phone rings and my assistant gives me the signal, letting me know I have to answer.

  “Mr. Groen, thank you so much for coming in again at such short notice. I’ll have it all ready and done for you on Wednesday, and we can move forward on the next phase of the release for the housing development,” I say sweetly, shaking his hand with a smile.

  I’ve been handling Groen since I hit the firm, and he’s one of my biggest accounts. He’s a real estate man with too much money for his own good and absolutely no organizational skills to speak of. I not only balance his books and keep things running smoothly, but I also release all funds for projects to ensure that every penny is accounted for.

  It’s a lot of work what with all the work I already handle, but it ensures that I don’t have harried clients running in here with scrawled, incomplete ledgers and boxes of receipts that would take me months to trawl through.

  “That’s right fine, little Missy. You just relax now and take things easy till that wedding of yours, you hear? See ya, Kinsley.”

  I let him go and answer my desk phone just as Carol places a cup of tea at my elbow, my equilibrium once again attained since I’m back on track again.

  “Kinsley Jacobs.”

  “Honey, now I do not know what’s going on, and it’s baffling what with the smooth way you usually run things, but that check of yours bounced the minute I deposited it and…”

  Cindy keeps rambling on and on, and I hear Molly in the background as my mind stops working for a hot minute before running through her words at an alarming rate.

  “That’s impossible. I was just at the bank this morning, and that account is well over the fifteen-thousand-dollar mark still.”

  Daddy, in lieu of being harassed for money every time I needed to pay for things, put a lump sum in an account for me to handle all the wedding expenses. That account should still hold the spending money for my honeymoon and incidentals.

  “Well, it doesn’t. Obviously.”

  “Look Cin, I’ll check it out and call the bank right now to sort this out and bring another check by this evening if that’s alright.”

  But it isn’t. The minute we’re off the line, I go straight to my login and almost keel over when I see the balance.

  “But…”

  I check over and over again, frantic now, as the zero balance keeps glaring back at me. I almost faint dead away when I access my personal account and see the same thing staring back at me.

  Thirty grand, plus the fifteen I had for the honeymoon…all gone.

  “Carol! I need to run to the bank,” I yell to her as I run past, my armpits sweating as I hit the elevator and hear her shuffling behind me in a panic.

  “Mundy—”

  “Will have to come back tomorrow, Carol. Someone hacked my accounts and stole all my money. I need to clear this up.”

  Do I though? The answer is no, as I walk out of the bank in a daze an hour later, my entire body just wrung out and shaking as I fall into my car and drive home on autopilot.

  I don’t think of work or the wedding or any of the hundred things I have scheduled in my planner as I go home at one instead of seven, which is my usual scheduled cut-off time.

  I walk into the house feeling stunned as I drop my bags in a messy heap and go right for Jon’s office, my mind working furiously even as my numb limbs carry me into his inner sanctum.

  Jon and I have this privacy thing that is never violated. His office is his, and not once have I ever stepped foot into it, not even to clean, though Lord knows I’ve itched to do it.

  My space is off limits too and…and…

  I push the door open with a shaking hand and ignore the messy piles of paper on his desk as I sit down in his chair and fire up his laptop. It only takes me a minute to crack his password—I’m good with those sorts of things what with being a borderline genius—and gape at what I find.

  He’s broke, like, so broke that I gasp when I see the messy state of his finances—finances that I get to share once we’re married and living together permanently.

  The worst part? I carry the bulk of the financial burden because Jon has yet to make senior partner in his firm, and we decided that since I make so much more money it would be okay for him to take care of the smaller things.

  I have no idea how, why, or when this started, or if he was going to tell me, but I can tell you that I am more than angry at his point, the more I uncover.

  I need order and certainty in my life, not this…this mess that he seems to have gotten us into, and I sure as hell do not need to be looking at this chaos after what happened at the bank.

  Not only is Jon now officially broke and in debt, but apparently so am I, something that has never happened, even when I was just out of college and not yet as well off as I am now.

  “What the hell?”

  I don’t jump when he walks in hours later to find me sorting through the unpaid bills that he takes care of for the house. Instead, I just keep reading through them to understand exactly what the hell is going on.

  Seems Jon not only hasn’t been paying the bills that we’ve split down the middle, but he’s in so much debt that I don’t understand how we still have electric or phone connections at this point.

  “Kinsley, what are you doing in here pawing through my things?”

  I look up from the last bill and rise slowly, my chest so tight I can’t breathe through the need to panic and start yelling.

  “Your things? You mean these unpaid bills that affect my life? What the hell is this, Jon?” I ask as calmly as possible, my hand shaking as I hold them out to him. “You’ve messed up everything—no electric, no heating for the winter and, and you stole—”

  I have to stop and breathe, as the urge to throw things overwhelms my good sense. Nothing good will come of it, and it won’t solve a thing either.

  “Jon, please, just tell me what is going on here.”

  His face has gone a deathly shade of white, and then turns so red I think his head may explode if he doesn’t calm the heck down. That all happens in seconds before the Jon I know comes right on back, his soft smile and stoic shrug making my jaw clench.
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br />   This Jon is my least favorite, because I know how this is going to go. He’ll be the voice of calm and reason and start talking to me in this patient voice that restores calm and order.

  I hardly ever lose my temper, so I’m not subjected to this side of him too often, but Goddammit!

  “Now, honey, just calm down and let me explain. You know I lost that big client a few months ago, and things are not going too well at the firm. I’m taking care of it though. As soon as my new catch comes in and I’m back to normal, I’ll take care of all this. I’ve made payment arrangements—”

  “How? How do you intend to pay these bills?” I ask, knowing without a doubt that he still doesn’t know that I’m aware of his visit to the bank just minutes after I left.

  And why would I have been, anyway? We just spoke last night about the final costs for the wedding and how much money I had stashed in the honeymoon account.

  As far as he was concerned, I wouldn’t be touching it again for at least the next three weeks, and as for my personal account, well, I wouldn’t have looked at that too closely either. I would have just continued to shop, maybe never getting close to the two grand he managed to leave in there.

  Clever. Smart. Sneaky. But too freaking bad for Jonny boy, his ass of a mother decided to change things, and that required more money. Money my check should have covered.

  No freaking wonder I couldn’t find my checkbook this morning! The asshole probably hid it to stop me from writing checks he knew I wouldn’t be able to cover.

  I’m a boiling pot of rage and trying not to show it as he patiently takes the bills from my hands and pulls me into his chest, hugging me softly, like a child. When he pulls away and kisses my head, smiling with understanding as if he’s the one who has to practice patience here, I’m just about ready to kick his butt.

  “Come on, honey, let’s go grab a glass of wine and talk this out like we do. You’ll understand once I explain.”

  I follow him into the kitchen on stiff legs and allow him to seat me before handing me a glass of wine and lowering to the chair across from mine. I need the wine, a lot, as he starts blathering on about interest rates and things I know more about than he does.