Born on the 4th of July

by Rhonda Nelson; Karen Foley Jill Shalvis

  “Wait.” She tugged his shirt over his head and then bent to kiss his throat. When she dipped even lower, licking his collarbone, a nipple, he hissed in a breath as his hands came up and fisted in her still-wet hair. “You shouldn’t be here,” he grated out, trying to make himself let go of her, but his hands only tightened. “I shouldn’t have come home—”

  “But I am. And you did.”

  He swore roughly, and in the next beat, he claimed her mouth again, the kiss belying his own words. God, he was in deep here. Her eyes were twin pools of jade waters, and he was drowning in them. It’d been so long, so damn long, since he’d felt anything like this. For weeks, it’d been nothing but pain and agony, both physical and mental, and then, flying home, finally numbness.

  But now, on the damn floor no less, he was feeling again. Because of Lexi. Torn between a terror that he’d screw this up and lose their friendship, and a need so strong it was blinding, he held her tight, too tight, not even realizing until she cupped his face, stroking his jaw, soothing him with soft words he couldn’t quite catch and the gentle movement of her body.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she was murmuring, his brain finally making sense of her words, and then her mouth shifted down his chest, her busy hands undoing his cargoes. And then, oh, Christ, and then she wrapped her fingers around him. She lifted up to her knees, then sank down on him, bringing him home.

  They both cried out, and he held on to her for dear life, the need for her filling him, shaking him to the core. How was it that this felt so—powerful? He’d known how important she was to him, but this went beyond what he’d imagined he could feel.

  That it was her, someone so integral to his life, made him feel it all the more intense. Urging her closer, over him, his lips went to her breast, sucking her nipple into his mouth. He felt her pant for breath above him as he slid a hand down her belly to where they were joined, finding her wet, God, so wet for him. Stroking a finger over her core, absorbing her rough gasp of pleasure, he tried to thrust up into her, needing to be deeper, needing to move, but a sharp pain shot up his leg, stilling him, and in frustration, he shook his head. “I can’t— I—”

  “It’s okay. I can.” And before he knew it, she’d shifted, allowing him deeper inside her. Using his body as leverage, she began to move on him, again and again, until the pleasure pinnacled, until he couldn’t see anything but her face, couldn’t feel anything but her silky heat as she let go with a cry that reached into him, and he followed her over, pulsing powerfully within her.

  FOR LONG MOMENTS they remained tangled in a pile of damp, sated limbs. Lexi tried to take a deep breath, and couldn’t. Her heart had swelled, blocking her lungs from getting air.

  Damn. She’d had no idea it would feel like that with him. She was still trembling with the little aftershocks, and so was he. She could feel them reverberate from his big body to hers.

  “Jesus,” he finally breathed on a shaky sigh, stroking a hand up her back. He didn’t seem inclined to move, which was fine with her. She was still clinging to him, her arms tight around his neck, her face buried in his throat, basking in the scent and feel of him, the rush of joy and gratitude that he was back, if not quite whole, at least safe.

  Eventually, Cord lifted his head, cupping hers so that she had to do the same. He started to say something, except he then stopped and, with a little shake of his head, kissed her instead.

  It was a great kiss, another of his holy mother of all kisses, and she was well on her way to round two, her head already ringing—

  Wait.

  Correction. Not her head, but his cell phone. “Cord.”

  He was kissing and nibbling his way to her ear. Sinking her fingers in his hair, she lifted his face to hers. “Your cell phone.”

  “Ignore it.” He went back to lightly biting her throat, soothing the sting with hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses.

  She was happy to ignore everything but him, but then the house phone started ringing, and again she lifted his head. “Your land line.”

  With a rough oath, he let her slip off. She handed him his crutches, then bent once again for the towel, not missing his harsh groan at the view she gave him as she did. She smiled at him as she began to wrap herself up. “You want me to get it?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it’s important.”

  He sighed and, using his crutches, began to make his way down the hall, only to stop and snatch the towel from her first. With a wicked gleam in his eye, he headed toward his bedroom and the ringing phone.

  “Hey,” she called after him. “Butt-ass naked here.”

  But whether he couldn’t hear her or just chose not to, he kept going.

  CORD STOOD in his bedroom, leaning against the window-sill, staring out at the beach.

  Santa Rey had been his home all his life. Well, up until he’d gone into the army, but even then, he’d come in and out in between missions whenever he could. His two brothers were here in town, one a detective, one in the air force, which still amused him when he thought about it.

  The Madden brothers, now saving the world instead of doing their damnedest to destroy it as they had when they’d been younger.

  Austin and Jacob wanted to save him now…

  Lexi came into view, moving to where he could clearly see her. She was quick. She’d already learned he couldn’t hear shit, and was adjusting for him.

  He hated that.

  To spite him for taking her towel, she’d covered up the most beautiful body he’d ever seen with a knit T-shirt and a pair of shorts. A damn shame. He’d wanted to stare at her all day, wanted to touch again, and taste and bury himself deep…

  But it was Lexi. Lexi, who brought in his mail when he wasn’t home and made him food when he was. Lexi, who dated soft computer techs and laughed at him for dating bimbos. He lifted a hand and touched her pretty hair, wrapping a finger in one of the loose auburn waves he loved so much. Then he ran it over the slight shadow beneath one of her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping again.

  And he’d taken her on the goddamned floor.

  “Who called?” she asked before he could question her about her obvious exhaustion.

  “Jacob. And Austin.” And twenty other concerned family members and friends. “About what just happened,” he said, needing to get this out between them. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Why?” She smiled. “We’re good at it. If I’d known just how good, maybe it would have happened sooner.”

  His body twitched. No, it wouldn’t have. “We’re…friends.”

  Her eyes flickered with amusement at his obvious erection.

  “Fine, I’m hard.” Again. “But I can think with both heads.” He drew a breath. “We’ve always been friends, Lexi. You’ve been there for me. And I was there for you when Brad—”

  Again with the flicker of emotion across her face, this one not amusement. She didn’t like thinking about the fiancé she’d lost to Hodgkin’s disease two weeks before their wedding. It had been a horrible, tragic shock that had only added to her fear of losing those close to her. She’d had a lot of loss, far too much. And that fear made her worry about him, more than she should.

  He hated that, hated that he caused her pain.

  “I know you’ve always been there for me, Cord. After my parents died. After Brad. Always.”

  “If we take this past that friendship,” he said quietly, feeling the weight of what he meant to her, even knowing she meant at least as much to him, “we might lose it.

  “And then there’s the fact that I have nothing to offer a woman right now. Nothing,” he repeated when she opened her mouth to speak.

  She looked at him in that way she had of making him feel like a bug on a slide. Like she could see everything she needed to see no matter how he tried to hide it, and he braced for the questions.

  But she neither said nor asked a thing of him.

  “I’m sorry if I misled you,” he finally said.

  “You didn’t. You couldn’t.
”

  “Lexi.” He let out a slow breath, hating the hurt beneath her words. “What do you want to hear?”

  “Whatever you can tell me.”

  Fair enough. “For starters, I’ve been put on disability as of two weeks ago.”

  “Is your hearing loss permanent? Your leg in danger?”

  “Don’t know on the hearing. No on the leg. But…” Might as well tell her. “My team, my brothers, friends, hell, everyone I know is feeling sorry for me and walking on eggshells thinking I’m on the edge getting ready to jump.”

  “Are you?”

  “Only if one more person offers me a single goddamn ounce of pity.”

  She was quiet.

  A miracle. One that made him want to rip her clothes off and lose himself again.

  “I’m starving,” she finally said. “Want to call for a pizza?”

  3

  “A PIZZA,” Cord said, repeating Lexi’s words as if he couldn’t possibly have heard her correctly.

  “Yeah.” She could feel the tension and frustration pouring off him in waves. She understood it wasn’t directed at her. She understood a lot about anger, actually. Too much. She’d felt it after losing her parents. She’d felt it after losing Brad. “A pizza. Large, fully loaded?”

  He just stared at her.

  He’d lost weight. He’d always been built like a kick-boxer, tightly muscled, and though he was still solid sinew, there wasn’t a spare ounce on him, as if he’d been burning far more calories than he’d been taking in. He was also clearly in pain, and she’d never been able to resist anything in pain. “Cord?”

  His gaze was slowly running down her body again, giving her more thrills on what had turned out to be a high-thrill day.

  “Are you still on the pill?” he questioned.

  “Now’s a fine time to ask.”

  “I’m sorry. I—” He shook his head and then rubbed his temples as if exhausted, beyond exhausted, and she would have melted, but he’d already melted her completely.

  “I’m on the pill,” she reassured him. Not that she’d even given a single thought to birth control once he’d touched her…

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  She knew he was apologizing both for the fact that he’d been so lost in her he hadn’t thought of it either, and that it’d even happened in the first place. “I’m not,” she said frankly.

  He let out a breath.

  “So. Pizza?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He used his crutches to move in her direction, his movements painfully labored.

  Her fingers itched to help but she forced herself to remain still. “Cord?”

  “Yeah?”

  She kept her smile easy and light, even though her heart was not either of those things. “I missed you.” It was true. When he wasn’t on a tour of duty, they spent a lot of time together, swimming, surfing, running, even just sitting around watching TV. They had a closeness born from years of being friends, and being there for each other through thick and thin. “A lot.”

  He let out a slow breath, his gaze never leaving hers. “I missed you, too.”

  She held her smile until he turned and made his way down the hall to the living room, then let it fall from her lips.

  God. What had happened to him?

  She moved back into the bathroom and quickly finger-combed her hair, the best she could do at the moment. Barefoot, she padded down the hall after Cord, slowing when she realized he stood, his back to her, his cell on speaker, volume earsplitting as he listened to his messages.

  “Cord, Jesus. You left the hospital without a word.” The voice belonged to his brother, Jacob Madden, a Santa Rey undercover detective, a guy as big and tough and badass as Cord himself. “You shouldn’t be alone. Call me or I’m coming over.”

  Cord hit a button. Message deleted.

  Next message. “Cord, where the hell are you, man?” This was his other brother, Austin, also big and bad, and currently on leave from the air force. “Jacob’s shitting a brick. Call me.” Message deleted.

  The next message came up before Lexi could make herself known. “Cord, baby, honey, I told you I’d stay with you.” This voice, sweetly female, sounded breathy. “I took the week off to take care of your every…little…need.”

  “Damn.” This was from Cord himself as he again hit Delete.

  As Lexi walked around to where he could see her, he began wrestling with a low cabinet beneath the bar. “Cord?” she whispered on his right and slightly behind him.

  He didn’t react.

  She moved to his left side, still back out of sight. “Cord,” she said loudly, and he turned his head and looked at her as he pulled out a phone book. “Yeah?”

  “Nothing.” Except he still had hearing in his left ear, at least some. She didn’t ask him about it. She knew sure as she knew her own name that he most definitely wasn’t ready to talk about it.

  And after hearing his messages, she understood some of his anger. Everyone wanted to baby the hell out of him, and his pride couldn’t take it.

  Something else she understood.

  Hadn’t her own family and friends tried to do the same thing for her when Brad had died? Everyone but Cord. Cord had given her the space and time she’d needed to heal.

  He opened the phone book, trying to balance himself on one crutch. She was dying to help but, as if he knew it, he sent her a narrow-eyed glare. She simply smiled. “Do you want to get a salad, too?” she asked.

  He paused. “Sure.” Flipping open his cell again, he began punching on the keypad.

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer her, so she moved around the edge of the bar and into the kitchen, on his left side. He looked up, and for one beat she could see he was startled that she’d moved without him knowing it.

  Startled and frustrated.

  She ignored that, even as her heart tightened for him, hard. “What are you doing?”

  “Texting in the order. Drink?”

  “I have beer at my place.” She had a feeling they both needed it.

  He finished the order, closed his phone, slid it into his pocket and stood at the bar, leaning heavily on it.

  He needed to sit before he fell. Prone would probably be even better. She was certain he needed sleep, days of it, but hell if she’d mother him and allow him to lump her in with the rest of his family and friends, so she just waited him out.

  “What?” he finally asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s something.”

  Yeah, it was. Something big. “How long will you be home?”

  He turned his back on her and maneuvered his way to the couch. “Probably permanently.”

  Her heart leaped. “What?” Following, she planted herself in front of him. “What?”

  “I’ve been cut loose.” He shrugged his broad shoulders in a casual gesture that wasn’t casual. Cord was his work. Being in the army had been his entire life.

  “Apparently,” he said, “my team actually needs me to be able to hear them on the equipment, not to mention being able to maneuver around without stumbling.”

  That’s when she got it. He wasn’t just frustrated and angry.

  He was scared.

  Scared of living a life he hadn’t planned on. Throat tight, she waited until he looked at her. If she said how sorry she was, he’d kick her ass out, she knew it. If she so much as offered a single beat of empathy, it’d be over. “I’m going to get the beer,” she said, and forced herself to walk out the door.

  THE MINUTE she was gone, Cord gave in to his quaking leg muscles and sat at a barstool. He dropped his head to the granite top and closed his eyes, letting the silence wash over him, a staggering quiet utterly devoid of anything that reminded him of the Middle East.

  It’d been three weeks since all hell had broken loose on his mission. He and two others from his team had nearly been blown to bits, had certainly been blown from their Humvee. It’d taken twelve hours to get to a medica
l facility, during which time he’d nearly bled out because of the eighteen-inch gash in his leg.

  His ears were still ringing. He had complete loss in his right ear, sixty-five-percent loss in his left. The doctors were fairly certain he’d get at least fifty percent back.

  They’d been more optimistic about his leg. Lying in 105-degree heat in the dirt with his leg sliced wide open to the elements for several hours hadn’t been exactly ideal, and he was lucky to still have the limb at all, but he was slowly recovering.

  But his basketball-playing days were over, and so were his covert-op missions. No one wanted a gimp for a partner, and he sure as hell couldn’t blame them.

  But it still sucked.

  He caught a flash of movement and lifted his head, expecting to see Lexi letting herself back in.

  It was Jacob and Austin.

  Both of his brothers had flown back east when he’d landed stateside. Not easy in their line of work. But they’d come and babysat him at the hospital until he’d been out of danger.

  And then they’d remained on him like white on rice, convinced he was still in danger, this time from himself.

  He was pissed.

  Frustrated.

  But definitely not suicidal, not even close. “Jesus,” he muttered when they flanked him, sitting one on either side of him at the bar. “I’m fine.”

  Across the kitchen, the late sun slanted in the window, momentarily rendering it into a looking glass. Their three faces reflected back to Cord, all of them looking so much alike: dark hair, dark eyes, matching grim mouths. Their broad shoulders nearly touched, and Cord forced himself to push to his feet when what he really wanted was to drop his head to the bar and sleep right there on the spot.

  “Come home with me,” Austin said. “I’ve got a fully stocked refrigerator and the pool, which the doctor said would be great for rehabbing your leg—”

  “I want to stay here, at my place.”