by Sybil Bartel
“I know.” He slid his jacket off, tossed it on the counter, and turned back around. His holster with the very large gun looked even more imposing than when I’d first gotten a glance of it when he was helping me stack chairs.
Tired, uncomfortable with his gun hanging out, and at my limit, I snapped at him. “What if I hadn’t had the towel around me?”
He removed his cuff links, tossed them on the counter and rolled his sleeves up. “I heard your dress hit the floor.” His hands landed on my bare shoulders, and he gently shoved me down to the edge of the tub. “And it wouldn’t have been anything I haven’t seen before.”
“You haven’t seen me,” I protested, feeling both insolent and jarringly jealous at his rude statement.
His eyes on me, intense and unreadable, he dropped to a squat. “You’re right.”
I pressed my legs together, and my voice came out a whisper. “What are you doing?”
“Taking care of you.” He pulled my hospital socks off, and thoughts bled out of my mouth.
“I’m uncomfortable.” More uncomfortable than I’d ever been. But I was also fighting an urge to fall into his arms. An urge so strong, it eclipsed every feeling I’d ever had for Brian, even if you shoved them all together and bundled them up like a messy armful of yanked weeds.
“I can sympathize,” he stated quietly.
That took me off guard. “When have you ever been uncomfortable?” He was gorgeous, rich and commanding.
He stood and grabbed a washcloth and the handheld faucet. “When I had staples.”
My mouth opened but no words came out. I was an idiot. He’d served our country, and no part of being deployed sounded comfortable. “I’m sorry.”
He wet the washcloth. “Not as sorry as the man who pushed his wife, strapped with explosives, in front of our convoy.”
Oh God. “Were you injured?”
He wiped the warm washcloth across the back of my neck. “Yes.” Rinsing it, he did it again.
“What happened?” I dared to ask.
“I got lucky.” He wiped the back of my neck one more time before setting the bloodstained washcloth on the edge of the tub. “Hold on to my waist and lean back.” One of his hands gathered up my hair while the other held the showerhead.
I stared at the washcloth with my blood on it as we skirted the subject of his bloodshed. The irony wasn’t lost on me as I avoided his holstered gun and tentatively grasped his lean, hard waist before leaning back only a couple of inches. The movement made the throbbing intensify at the same time as my hands on him made me wish I was touching him for any other reason.
More than all that, I wanted to ask what had happened to him, but I was afraid. Part of me didn’t want to know the gruesome details, but another, selfish part of me was concerned he wouldn’t tell me if I did ask. And I didn’t want to be that to him—another person who gawked at him for his injuries, only to exploit the bad parts of his service then give platitudes about bravery and valor.
So I didn’t ask.
I just held on to him.
A KNOCK SOUNDED ON THE front door as I was about to tell her about Afghanistan.
I squeezed the water out of her hair and grasped her arm to pull her upright. “Stay here.”
Weariness, more so than in the hospital, crept into her tone, and she dropped her hands from my waist. “Expecting someone?”
Having her hands on me was fucking with my head, but I still knew what she was asking. “Yes, Preston. He works with me.”
“Is that who was at the hospital and who drove us here?”
“No, that was Ty.” She looked so damn small and fragile sitting on my tub with my oversized towel wrapped around her. “I’ll be right back.” I strode to the front door and opened it.
Preston waltzed in with a scowl and a flower-print suitcase. His gaze cut across the living room. “You fucking owe me.” He dumped the suitcase next to the entry table as his restless energy bled out around him. “Actually, you more than owe me. How the hell do you step foot in her place? There’s shit everywhere.”
Alarm spread. “It was tossed?”
“If by tossed, you mean someone hung scarves on lamps and tacked hippy shit to the walls and left a week’s worth of dishes in the sink, then yeah.” He shook his head. “It was tossed.” Agitated, looking like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin, he scanned my place again.
“Anyone waiting outside her place?”
Distracted by whatever the hell he was looking at, a beat passed before he shook his head.
I barely refrained from snapping my fingers in his face. “You sure?”
He looked down the hall, then glanced toward the kitchen. “Yeah.”
Goddamn it. “Focus, Preston.” What the fuck was he on?
His gaze cut to the floor, and he tapped his foot twice, then twice again. “I am fucking focused.”
I lost it. “How the hell do you know someone wasn’t at her place if you can’t stand still for five seconds?”
His head whipped up, his steel-eyed gaze cut to me, and he went still dead still. “No security cameras once you get outside the elevator, fourteen four-by-six windows, four columns, eighteen recessed lights, seven paces from the front door to the wall safe behind the landscape picture, six doors in the hall, wolf range, subzero fridge, six barstools and one penthouse pecker asshole. I fucking pay attention. You wanna know about her place now?”
I blinked, then somehow managed to tip my chin.
“Five coffee mugs in the sink, twenty-seven pairs of underwear, no security cameras anywhere on the property, sixteen units, twenty-four parking spots and zero fucking bad guys unless you count the old man in two-B who stole the paper from the doorstep of four-A seventeen seconds after it was delivered.”
Jesus Christ. “You counted her underwear?”
“You didn’t?”
I held his incredulous stare and gave it back. “How do you know it’s a wall safe?”
His eye contact didn’t waver. “Picture’s skewed. Eighth of an inch. Nothing about you is crooked. There’s a wall safe.”
I didn’t confirm or deny it, but now I wondered if the guys called him Trace behind his back because tracked shit or because he never left a trail. Either way, I wanted him out of my place, stat. “Thanks for getting her stuff.”
One of his eyes narrowed in challenge. “You owe me.”
I didn’t say shit. I wasn’t going to commit to owing him a damn thing.
“That’s what I thought.” He nodded once then his expression went blank. “By the way, you and Luna are overthinking this.”
I bit. “How so?”
He reached out and straightened the picture covering my wall safe, then he spun in a circle. “Ever been in a gang?”
He knew who I was. “No.”
“Ever been friends with someone who has?”
“No.”
He nodded slowly. “Not surprising.”
The fucking point? “I don’t hide where I come from.”
“Me either.”
“Where’s that?” He’d enlisted after me and deployed after I was already back stateside. I didn’t know shit about him except that Luna had recently hired him and he seemed like a loose cannon.
“Here and there.” He looked up and made eye contact with me for the second time since I’d known him. “Mostly the streets.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not.” He fingered the edge of the kitchen island, then rested his hand on his piece. “Sorry, that is.”
Fucking great. “I need to get back to what I was doing.”
“What or who?”
My jaw ticked. “Watch it.”
Unfazed by my warning, he switched subjects. “I’m not sorry about where I came from because it taught me to appreciate certain things.”
I didn’t respond. This was the most he’d ever spoken to me, and I wasn’t sure that Luna hadn’t lost his fucking mind hiring him.
“Lots of thing yo
u take for granted until you don’t have them anymore,” he continued. “Roof over your head, closing your eyes without fear of being stabbed, hot meal, running water, a name you can call out at four fifty-seven a.m.”
His back was to the clock in the kitchen. But mine wasn’t.
I saw the glowing numbers.
Four fifty-seven.
My arm brushed against my holster and the weight of my own gun. “Your point?”
He took a step backward. “Kids off the street don’t join a gang because they got options.”
No shit. “Never thought they did.”
He ignored my comment. “They join because they don’t wanna get stabbed in their sleep or shot for the shit rations their food stamps get them. They pick up a gun and choose a color because it’s security.” He took another step backward, moving around a table that was behind him and not in his line of vision.
I needed him to get to his point and get the fuck out, but I also wanted to know what he was getting at. “Is that why you joined the Marines? Security?”
“No.” He stepped another pace backward. “I joined because the ammo was free.”
Fucking psycho. “Great. Why are we overthinking this current situation?”
Reaching behind him, his hand unerringly landed on the doorknob. “That kid who had his ski mask pulled off? Jail isn’t security to him. Getting caught’s a death sentence. The cops will try to make him roll on his friends, then lock him up when he doesn’t. Once he’s in lockup, he’ll get shanked for the simple fact he chose a color to give him security. He has no choice now. In his eyes, it’s kill or be killed.”
My jaw ticked. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her.” I’d kill any of those Tres Angulos pricks if they came after her.
Looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time, he studied me a moment. “Good. That’s good. Keep that thought.” He paused. “And remember, the guy she pulled the mask off has something you don’t have.”
Fucking prick. “What’s that?”
“Time.” He opened the door. “And lots of it.”
“Meaning?”
Trace shrugged. “You can’t stay up here forever. He can wait you out.”
“Luna will find him.” I wasn’t staying holed up indefinitely.
“Maybe.”
“Not maybe,” I argued.
“And that’s where you’re overthinking this. He’ll find her.”
“No, he won’t,” I ground out.
He shrugged again like this wasn’t a life-or-death matter. “Maybe you’ll get lucky doing it your way, but hiding her away is less efficient than dangling her as a carrot. Either way, you know where I’ll be.” He walked out.
I wanted to hate him, but he had a point.
With a sense of dread, I walked back into the bathroom.
I GRIPPED THE SIDE OF the tub while a hero in a dress shirt stood next to me and washed the bottom half of my hair. Warm water, large, competent hands, his stoic presence—for once in my life, I felt still.
Until he started talking.
“I was deployed to Afghanistan, Helmand province. Our assignment was to clear a road leading into one of the districts because the local government was boxed in and losing territories to the Taliban. The insurgents had gotten a stronghold, so we were there to clear them out. Second day out in our convoy, a man approached the side of the road dragging his wife.”
My heart sped up as dread filled my stomach.
Setting the handheld showerhead down, he grabbed shampoo and squirted some on his hand. “I was in the second vehicle. The first vehicle was forced to stop when the husband shoved his wife in front of it.” He lathered the bottom half of my hair, carefully keeping my wound and the top half of my hair dry. “I was in the front passenger seat, and I had a perfect sight line. I could’ve taken the man out, but he looked panicked and his wife had blood on her clothing around her swollen midsection. They looked desperate.” He paused, and I felt his stomach under my hands rise and fall with three breaths before he continued.
“We weren’t supposed to get out of the vehicles, but I wanted her to get off the road before she got shot. We weren’t authorized to offer medical assistance, and I could’ve faced a court martial for trying to assist, but she looked pregnant and like she was bleeding. So I opened my door and had one leg out when a concealed bomb that was strapped to her stomach exploded.”
Oh my God. “Sawyer, I’m so sorry.”
“I took shrapnel in my thigh. Thankfully the front vehicle had armor plating to protect the Marines inside.” He rinsed my hair. “I know what staples feel like.” He replaced the handheld faucet and helped me back upright before grabbing another towel. “They aren’t comfortable.” He gently dried my hair.
“Thank you for telling me.” I glanced at him.
He tipped his chin, but he didn’t look at me.
“I didn’t mean that kind of uncomfortable,” I confessed.
He tossed the towel on the marble floor. “I know.”
“Was anyone else injured?”
His expression turned to stone as he looked me right in the eye. “Besides her husband after he used her as a human bomb?”
I didn’t have to ask what happened to the man. I nodded.
“Not that day.” He stood. “I’ll get you something to sleep in.” He walked out of the bathroom and returned a moment later with a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, handing them to me. “Change and I’ll show you where you can sleep.” He walked out again, but this time he closed the door behind him.
Releasing a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding on to, I stood and used the towel around me to get my hair a little drier.
Then I made the mistake of looking in the mirror.
“Oh God,” I whispered.
Makeup ran down my face, my hair was an absolute mess, and traces of blood were smeared on my shoulder.
I turned the water on in the sink and bent to wash my face, but when my head went horizontal, a wave of nausea and vertigo hit me so bad, I thought I’d lose it. Grasping the edge of the counter with one hand, I breathed short and shallow through my nose as I frantically wet my face with the other. When I stood back upright, the vertigo eased somewhat, and I took deeper breaths until the nausea passed.
Okay, I could do this.
I wasn’t the first person to get a few staples. I didn’t need to look like a horror queen reimagined. Picking up the washcloth he’d already soiled, I rinsed it out and put soap on it. Then I washed my face and my shoulder. Rinsing the washcloth, I was wiping one more time when a knock sounded on the door.
“Need anything?”
I slipped his T-shirt over my head. “No, I’m good. Be right out.” I stepped into his sweatpants while trying not to bend over again, and rolled them a few times at the waist. Not feeling brave enough to attempt to brush or comb my hair yet, I resigned myself to crappy-looking hair and opened the bathroom door.
My heart caught in my throat.
He’d changed into gym shorts and a T-shirt. I didn’t think Sawyer Savatier could get any more handsome, but I was wrong. So very wrong.
“You, ah, look nice.” Awkwardly stumbling over my words, I blatantly stared at every one of his ridiculously formed muscles, from his giant biceps to his mouthwatering thighs.
Being the gentleman he was, he didn’t comment on my pathetic compliment. “I have a guest room all set up for you.”
“Great.” Fantastic.
He stared at me a beat. “What’s wrong?”
I hadn’t known there was a male on the planet who could reduce me to feeling like a needy, dependent child at the same time as making me acutely aware of every curve on my body. But there was, and he was blond and tall and smelled unbelievably good, and he was so out of my league it wasn’t even funny.
“Nothing.” I exhaled. “I’m just tired.”
Studying me a moment longer, he finally nodded once and turned. “This way.”
He led me back down the
hall and opened a door to a smaller, but equally impressive bedroom facing the ocean.
Reaching for the prescription from the doctor that was already sitting on the nightstand, he opened the bottle, shook out a pill and handed it to me, along with a bottle of water. “Here.”
I didn’t even question his dominant, bossy routine anymore. I took the pill and drank the water, and suddenly, I was so tired, I couldn’t stand another second. “Thanks,” I muttered, crawling onto the bed.
He watched me arrange the pillows with a frown on his face that was so severe, I rolled over and gave him my back. When I was under the covers and settled on my side, he turned out the light.
“If you need anything, I’m down the hall.”
“I know where your bedroom is. I was just there, remember?” It was a shitty thing to say, but I was feeling extra ornery after the look on his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Genevieve—”
I cut him off. “Goodnight. Thank you for everything.”
Silence.
I counted down from ten, telling myself if I got to one and he was still standing there, I’d apologize.
I got to four.
“Goodnight.” His deep voice, smooth and refined, brushed over me like a winter chill.
A moment later the door closed.
I lay there.
And lay there.
But sleep didn’t come.
As I curled up in the softest bed I’d ever been in, in a bedroom that was nicer than the nicest hotel I’d ever stayed at, every bad part of the night started replaying on a loop in my head, and I couldn’t shut it off.
Throwing the thick comforter off, I padded down the hall. Everything was so quiet, so still, yet there was an energy here I could only equate to him, a man who moved in his own orbit. And now I was moving in that same orbit, walking past the kitchen and stopping in front of the wall of windows.
I looked out at the beginning shades of the sunrise.
Staring at the ocean, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a sunrise… Or the last time a man had washed my hair, or given me his clothes to sleep in, or handed me medicine and a bottle of water.
I couldn’t remember because none of it had ever happened.