by LJ Evans
“Former womanizer and panty-stealer who feels an inordinate amount of obligation to the wife and daughter of his former teammate.”
“Ah. The catch,” Georgie said, but she was still saying it all with a tease.
“Georgie, be serious.”
“I am being serious. If you think him looking out for Tristan would stop him from being with you, then you’ve clearly been looking through stupid-tinted lenses.”
I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped. “Stupid-tinted lenses?”
I could see Georgie’s smile and wondered what color lenses she had in.
“That’s better,” she said. “I needed to make sure you could still laugh before I called on the Honor Guard to go save you.”
“You can’t tell Mac. I’m sorry to say that to you, but you can’t,” I told her.
“I won’t tell Mac until you do, but you realize he’s going to figure it out on his own, right?”
Mac was far from dumb. His intuition had kept him alive and on the right track since we were kids. Plus, he knew me like he knew his own hand. If he saw Nash and me in the same room together, he’d smell it on us even if we hadn’t just climbed out of bed.
“What’s really the problem?” she asked.
“He’s…romantic. And charming. And gentle. So many things I never expected him to be.”
“So, you wanted a friends-with-benefits sort of arrangement, and it’s become something more? You’re afraid of losing your independence and your ability to do whatever the hell Dani wants without having to worry about how it will impact someone else.”
Her words hit home. “I’m not that cold.”
Her voice softened. “No, you aren’t. You’ve just lived twelve years on Capitol Hill, having to hide every single emotion and every single thought while pushing forward agendas that you believed in but others did not. You’re used to getting your way by bargain and debate without giving away one iota of how important it all is to you. Plus, the last relationship you had was kept a secret, and then you had to pretend it didn’t tear you apart when he left you for his ex on the one night you needed him most.”
Each word sent pinpricks to my heart and soul, and yet I couldn’t deny one word of it. Just like I hadn’t been able to deny the reality of me loving Nash.
“Russell and I were never serious,” I said, trying not to let the thought of that night scramble my nerves. Trying not to hate him for standing me up and leaving me to the wolf.
“You had clothes at his place, Dani. That’s not nothing.”
Russell and I had never agreed to be exclusive. We’d never even named what we did. We’d been stand-in dates for events we had to attend. We’d been the satisfying relief of sex afterward. If anything, it had been the friends-with-benefits that Georgie had just named. It certainly had never been the ground-shaking, world-shattering sensations I felt when I was with Nash.
“It’s not Nash you’re afraid of,” Georgie said. “It’s you. It’s the thought of loving someone and opening up to them in a way that risks a broken heart.”
“What if neither of us can do it?”
“Then, it wasn’t meant to be, and you can enjoy the sex while it lasts.”
I sighed. “You’ve been no help at all.”
“That’s because you thought I’d be shocked and fill you with reasons to run fast and hard away from him.”
Maybe. Maybe I had called her to talk me down from the out of control feelings I had. Maybe I’d looked for her to be the ledge to grab on to before I took an even bigger tumble. Before I fell and shattered in a million pieces. Before I was unable to ever be with another man without comparing it to these dreamlike, honey-and-lemon-scented days with Nash.
Nash
WHAT ABOUT NOW
“This broken heart can still survive,
With a touch of your grace.
Shadows fade into the light,
I am by your side.”
Performed by Daughtry
Written by Hartzler / Moody / Hodges
I left Dani before the sun came up. Unable to sleep, as was often the case with me even before the one mission which had cost me everything, I jogged down to the edge of the property where rows of camellia bushes nestled beneath the live oak trees, sheltering the flowers from the full sun in the afternoon.
The bushes were ones my parents had brought to the farm. My mother had told me they were synonymous with destiny. As I let that word loll around in my brain, I wondered if Dani had any idea I was seeing our futures twisted together. I took the knife from my pocket, trimming a couple of the blooms and heading back toward the house, looking like a joke of a cartoon with hearts floating above my head.
When I got back to the room, Dani was still passed out on her stomach, the sheet barely wrapped around her middle, leaving enough skin exposed to tempt me as it sparkled in the early dawn light. I left the flowers on my pillow where she’d see them when she woke. Then, I grabbed clothes and took off down the hall to shower in another bathroom so I wouldn’t wake her.
Once out, I grabbed a coffee and wandered through the house, restless. A feeling I often had before a new mission—a sense of expectation mixed with adrenaline. I just wasn’t sure what the new mission was, even with Dr. Inez’s words haunting me. A reason to live. A reason to wake up, get up, and smile each day. He’d wanted me to find a purpose outside of my job. A job that defined not only who I was, but how I lived. “For Something Greater” was one hundred percent the reason I did the job, but he was right in that it wasn’t the reason to live. It wasn’t a reason to come back from each mission alive.
The thought of leaving Dani on her own―unprotected―to go on another mission where I killed someone before coming back to her with that hanging on me, tainting our own life... It somehow left a bad taste in my mouth. Metallic, like blood spilling in.
On the other hand, I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I rubbed the small scar over my heart and then the largest scar along my shoulder. All I knew how to do was to go on mission after mission, trying to right the wrongs of this chaotic world. Trying to make our world safer. Taking out terrorists and sex traffickers and anarchists.
I found myself climbing into Betsy and heading off to the General Store. I hadn’t been to the site in more years than I could count. Dr. Inez had been right when he’d said I was on the board for the corporation, but it was a position I’d always delegated to my uncle. To the person who knew the company best. To the person who’d allowed my dog to die, buried my dad, and dragged me away from my drowned mom. To the person who’d taught me how to hunt and play chess and to sacrifice for what I got.
Wellsley Place was just too tied up in my complicated feelings about my uncle for me to ever see it clearly. In rejecting any role with the company, I’d been able to reject him. I’d been able to reject his attempts to reel me back in after he’d sent me away.
The store was closed. It wouldn’t open until ten, but it looked the same as it had the last time I’d been there. I skirted the front entrance for the back door leading to the corporate offices. I punched in the key code at the door―almost surprised when it stilled worked―and entered the main lobby. It was full of antique furniture, enormous vases loaded with flowers, and landscapes of the estate.
The art had been done over several centuries by some of the best artists of the time. It made me think of Tristan and the painting in her studio. The one of Dani that I’d known wasn’t quite right even though I’d been unable to tell her how to fix it.
The receptionist’s desk was empty; it was far too early for anyone to be in. I didn’t even know who sat behind the desk these days. I hadn’t cared ever. Not even when I was small and the bus dropped me off at the store. All I’d cared about then was running to find Mom, or Dad, or Carson to tell them about my day.
Mom and Dad had shared an office until his death, and even after, Mom had refused to let his belongings be taken from the space. When I go
t to the door that had been theirs, it had no nameplate on it, and when I went inside, it felt unused, the air stale like it had been at the mausoleum. Only Mom’s desk remained, but it was cleaned off, empty like the cabinets and shelves which filled the walls. The wooden shutters on the windows were closed. I opened them, letting in the light and sending dust motes shimmering into the beam which filled the room.
I sat down in her chair made of soft, brown leather. It was tucked and pleated, making an office chair look as feminine as possible. Mom had been very feminine. Like the flowers we grew, dainty and frail. But like the Amethyst Falls wisteria she’d seeded and grown, she’d been deceptively hardy. At least until she’d lost Dad. Then she’d withered on her vine.
Thoughts of her stabbed at me viciously in this place.
I hadn’t been enough to keep her.
I hadn’t been able to save her.
I hadn’t been able to save Darren.
I hadn’t been enough for Tristan.
A vicious cycle I didn’t want to repeat. Could I be enough for Dani? Would I be able to keep her safe? I didn’t have a great track record with the people I loved most. If I continued in this direction with her, a path that felt like pure joy and rapture, I’d have to be different. Stronger and softer all at the same time. We SEALs weren’t known for our gentleness, just the steel we were cut from.
“Do you remember the time she raced you down the hall in that chair?” Carson’s voice cut into the silence, jerking me from my thoughts. I hadn’t heard him come in. A natural hunter himself, he was quiet, but I didn’t give myself any slack for it. I would have failed out of training these days. Too much on my brain dimming my natural senses instead of enhancing them.
“I remember you were pissed when I broke the wheel of your chair trying to catch her,” I said, but there was no bitterness in my tone like there used to be when talking to him about anything related to Mom.
He leaned against the doorframe but was looking down at the wooden planks toward the receptionist’s desk as if he could still see Mom and me, feet curled up, using only our arms to push off the walls as we went. He brought himself out of his reverie, coming into her office, and sitting on a chair across the desk from where I was.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve come here,” he said, but there was a question in his voice that I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t sure why I’d come. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. To my surprise, he didn’t jump right into the age-old argument of my place being there. With the family business. It had been our quarrel for so long I wasn’t sure either of us knew how to give up on it.
When I didn’t respond, he continued, his tone kinder than ever before. “I heard about your team.”
I looked up, surprised not only by his words but by the change in the direction of the conversation. I hadn’t contacted either Maribelle or Carson after the blown mission. I hadn’t spoken to them when I’d come back to the States or after they’d stitched me up. I hadn’t told them about fighting at Mac’s side as we brought the assholes to justice who’d approved the op for all the wrong reasons.
And I couldn’t tell him about it now.
It was Carson who continued. “I guess I’m still listed as your emergency contact. I knew you were missing, and then…” His voice seemed to clog with emotions I didn’t expect Carson to ever have. “We―I―thought you might come home to heal.”
There wasn’t a reprimand in his tone; it was more like sadness or hurt. I’d been good at feeling nothing for Carson for twenty-one years, and I wasn’t sure I could continue to do that if he revealed feelings I didn’t know he owned.
“You can’t have it both ways,” I said dryly. “You can’t send me away when you didn’t want me and then honestly expect me to come running back as if I owed it to you to do so.”
His wild and bushy eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “I didn’t send you away because I didn’t want you. I sent you away because it was Suzannah’s wish.”
“What?” The heart that Dani was slowly starting to push back to life curled up at his words.
“Your mom wanted more for you than the local public school and the skater friends you’d been hanging out with. She wanted to give you a sense of your heritage and the honor that had been handed down amongst our family. She was the one who enrolled you and made the first-semester payment…” His voice disappeared as if suddenly realizing the reason for my hard feelings all these years. “I didn’t know she hadn’t told you.”
I didn’t want to believe it. Even amid her depression and loss, she wouldn’t have sent me away like that. We were a team. She’d said it over and over to me until… Until she’d walked into a pond and let herself drown. Until she’d wrung the bell on life and left her own family―her son―shorthanded.
“I was there as much as they’d let me,” Carson said, as if trying to make it up to me. As if trying to show himself in a different light, and I hated to admit it was working. The times he’d sponsored the chess team and the debate team and every single sport I’d been involved with came rushing over me, not as Carson trying to prove he was an important man, but trying to prove I was important to him.
God, what a fucked-up life I’d lived.
The discussions we’d had about my role with the company whenever I’d come home from my deployments hit me equally hard. I’d thought he’d been demanding I give it all up to play the role he wanted for me, but maybe it had just been his way of leaving the door open. Had I been so blinded by grief, sadness, and hate that I hadn’t seen it for what it was? Him waiting for me to take the hand he was holding out?
I’d barely spoken a word during our conversation, but now I literally couldn’t. I wasn’t sure what to say as I tried to adjust the entire filmstrip of my life in my head with a different filter.
Once more, he was the one to do the talking. “When you went to the academy, I understood it. It was a continuation of what you’d been taught. And when you told me you were going to be a SEAL, I understood that as well. A young man wanting to prove he could be the best of the best. The challenge. The honor.” He gave me a wry smile. “The women.”
I snorted.
“I was young once, too,” he said, keeping a smile I wasn’t sure how to read because it was obvious I’d been reading him wrong for years. “Whenever you came home and I talked about the company, it was because I wanted you to know this is yours. That it’s all waiting for you. That we’re all waiting for you.”
Damn. Tears glittered in his eyes, and I had to look away before I lost it myself. I pushed my nails into my palms.
“Henry has been taking over more and more of the business so I can step down and focus on diversifying our products. I’m hoping to travel a little more. But Henry certainly isn’t relishing holding both COO and CEO titles. We’ve been trying to figure out how―who―we could count on. You could take the operations role. It’s yours if you want it.”
There it was. The shove. The little push that had my emotions turning back to stone even as I tried to see it from my new vantage point. The angle where he wasn’t the villain of my story. I swallowed my pride and years of anger as I said, “I know nothing of the business. There has to be plenty of people who would do a better job.”
“I’ve never made it a secret amongst the staff that you would eventually take your place on the management team. No one is going to feel stepped over if that is what you’re suggesting.”
This was the reason we’d fought. He made assumptions. He acted like there was no choice for me but this. I couldn’t help taunting him a little. Our old ways too hard to let go of. “I’ve always insisted that I didn’t want it. I told you to sell it and be rid of the entire headache.”
He nodded. “I guess I’m as stubborn as you. I wouldn’t let go of the hope.”
We sat there a moment, weighing each other’s words. I didn’t want to give him hope. Even if I decided to give up the SEALs—which I wasn’t set on—it didn�
��t mean I’d run home with my tail between my legs. I couldn’t see myself sitting behind this desk. I could work for Garner. Hell, I could start my own security company and do a better job than he was doing. So, I told Carson the truth. “I don’t know that I’ve changed my position.”
We eyed each other for a long time, and as always, I wasn’t the one to look away.
“You’re here,” he said, waving his hand at Mom’s office. “It means something.”
And I couldn’t correct him. Because it did. It meant something. I just wasn’t sure what it was, or if I’d ever give him the answer he wanted.
“Henry and I happen to be meeting today to go over the five-year plan and my semi-retirement. Would you like to sit in? Just to hear what’s going on?”
It sounded like the worst thing I could do. Talking crop rotation and oil sales was a completely different type of planning than talking tactical entry points and evac locations. But I also felt like maybe I owed it to him and myself to do it. Like I owed it to the kid who’d loved Carson with a hero-like worship.
“I can do that,” I said, and it looked like a weight was lifted from his shoulders, but it was placed on mine instead. I wanted to throw it off but knew it was too late.
Carson introduced me to some of the staff as they filtered in. I stored away the names I wasn’t sure I’d ever use. And then Henry showed up, surprise written on his face at the sight of me. I was surprised as well. It had been a good ten years since I’d seen Henry, but it looked like he’d aged even more. In some ways, he’d gotten older than Carson, even though he was quite a few years younger than my uncle. Maybe it was the gray that stood out against his jet-black hair or the wrinkles on his brown face.
When I asked how he and his family were doing, he brought out his phone to show me pictures of his kids and their spouses and their grandkids. His smile was wide as he bragged on his son and daughter, scrolling through to a picture of them with gorgeous coils of black hair and tall bodies pressed in suits in front of an office building that read Gordon Family Lawyers.