by Laney Powell
Somehow, the thought didn’t thrill me like I thought it would.
Chapter Fifteen
Jensen
I met Carissa in town at the coffee shop that night. She was waiting for me, head bent over her laptop. But when I came in, she got up and gave me a one-armed hug.
That wasn’t going to do it. I wrapped my arm around her waist and kissed her. I didn’t care who saw it. She was smiling when I let go of her.
“Hey,” she said, breathless.
I liked hearing her breathless.
“Hey, yourself.”
“I’ll be seeing more of you, maybe,” she said, sitting back down.
“What do you mean?” Damn right she’d be seeing more of me.
“Freeze hired me again, for more work, although something a little different. It’ll probably take up the rest of the time I’m here.”
I hadn’t even been here sixty seconds, and we were already on that. Her leaving. “I’m going to get a coffee. You need a refill?” I asked, keeping a smile on my face.
“No, I’m good,” she gestured at her cup.
Shit. My mind raced as I went up to order my coffee. I’d just found her, just gotten, sort of, over my own shit to the point where I could manage having someone else in my life. And now she was talking about leaving? I didn’t want to deal with it, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be given a choice in this.
When I returned to the table, Carissa was looking up at me with the smile that drove me crazy, and I felt some of my frustration fade.
“So when are you leaving?” I asked, hoping I sounded casual. I was mad she wanted to leave, on one hand. On the other, I wanted to get down on my knees and beg her to stay.
“I’ve got about two weeks left,” Carissa said. “Then I need to get home.”
“Did you find a place already?” I asked, my heart filled with dread.
She shook her head, her hair falling over her ears. She tucked back one side behind her ear. “No, and I really need to get on that. I could probably buy, but…” her voice trailed off.
It might have been my own hopeful thoughts, but Carissa didn’t sound like she really wanted to go back to San Diego. She was dawdling.
And that usually meant one thing.
She wasn’t sure, or she didn’t really want to leave. But something was compelling her to think she needed to. Just as quickly as I’d felt like the sun had disappeared never to return when she started talking about leaving, the sun came out for me again.
I had a chance. I wondered if Carissa even knew that she didn’t want to leave. I was going to go with no. She didn’t.
People never did. You could see other people’s stuff clearly, but you could rarely see your own shit with the same level of clarity. I’d just have to help her figure it out.
“Your Gran will miss you,” I said innocently.
“She will, but I haven’t lived here in a long time.”
“I’ll miss you,” I said.
Her eyes met mine, and I could see the indecision in them. Good.
“I know,” she said. “Just when I’ve found you.”
“So stay,” I said.
“There’s nothing for me here,” Carissa said.
“Freeze is certainly working you enough.”
“Yes, and when I’m done? I think he was doing a favor for Gran. Helping me out because they’re friends.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know Freeze all that well, but that doesn’t really seem like him. He’ll help you out, sure. But not out of pity. It made sense for him, too.” I felt like I wasn’t articulating it well. “He didn’t make up something for you to do.”
When Carissa didn’t respond, I smiled. “You really think he left his books and all that crap a mess just to do a favor for your grandmother?” I laughed. “I saw that room before you got a hold of it. Freeze needs organization, bad.”
The smile returned to her face. “He does. He’d really let it go after his wife got sick, he said.”
“It looked like it.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Carissa said stubbornly. “Tell me about you. What are you going to do? Are you going to stay here?”
We talked carefully around the subject. I didn’t like not getting it settled, but I knew if I pushed, she’d push back and walk away. I left it, even though I felt like I was taking one hell of a risk.
When I reached across the table to take her hand, she let me.
Carissa looked at her watch. “I should probably go. I told Gran I was coming out to work.”
“Well, we are sneaking around,” I said with a grin.
As we got up, I took her hand. Once again, she let me and we walked out of The Beanery, hand in hand. It felt nice.
I walked her to her little green car, and after she’d put her bag in the back seat, I enveloped her in my arms. I didn’t want her to go.
Carissa held me close to her. I could feel my cock getting hard at her nearness.
“Tease,” I muttered into her hair.
“I wish I didn’t need to go home,” she said to my chest.
“I feel like we’re sixteen again,” I said, laughing a little.
“Isn’t that the point of sneaking around?” Carissa looked up at me, smiling.
“Can you get away tomorrow?”
“Of course I can,” Carissa said. “I’m grown.”
I laughed again. “You tell your Gran we were meeting?”
“No,” she rolled her eyes. “Did you?”
“Of course not! You want Freeze’s commentary on this?”
She laughed again, leaning onto my chest. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.” I pulled away from her and cupped her face in my hands so I could kiss her. Her lips parted under mine, and she melted into me. I wanted to pull her into a dark space and explore her body all over again.
“I have to go,” Carissa said reluctantly.
“See you tomorrow?” I asked.
She nodded.
I watched her get into her car and drive away. Then I went to my Jeep and started back to the ranch. I was alone, which I didn’t like—but it was hopefully merely a temporary situation.
The next two days, Carissa and I met up at the coffee shop, and one night, we took our coffee to go and sat in my Jeep talking. I found that I really enjoyed her—she had a dry sense of humor, and she wasn’t afraid to laugh at herself. She was determined, and I sensed a seriously stubborn streak in her. Having one myself, I understood. We were the ‘have to learn it for ourselves’ types. I’d lost some of that being in a SEAL team—there’s always someone who knows more than you—but the core of that streak remained.
I discovered that the way her ex had left her had hurt her more than she really wanted to admit. I got it. I wasn’t happy being divorced. But had I not been divorced, I wouldn’t have been in the place to meet Carissa.
“Aren’t you worried about the fact that the guys who showed up looking for Stephen might find you?” I asked. I wasn’t an expert or anything, but beefy guys who were owed money didn’t hesitate to spread their shit to people connected to the person who owed money. While I didn’t know bookies, or whatever they were, I knew guys who wanted something.
“No. Mel, that’s my landlord—well, former landlord—he told me about it the day they showed up. They came looking for Stephen, not me. I don’t think they even knew about me.” She said it with a casual air, but I wasn’t getting the casual vibe from her. And I’d made a living paying attention to my vibes, to my gut instinct.
I didn’t press things with her. One night of amazing sex and the beginnings of something weren’t enough for me to storm in and tell her how it needed to be, much as I wanted to. I wanted to protect her, keep her safe. But she was a grown woman—and it wasn’t my place.
Yet. I was determined that I’d be in a place with her where I could tell her she needed to stay safe. But she had to want it too—and right now, she didn’t. I could respect that, even as it drove me crazy.
As I kissed her goodnight, making sure to press her to me, so she knew what she was missing, shit, what I was missing, I thought, Mine.
She was mine.
The thought floored me. After Pammy, I didn’t have any hopes for anything. I’d fought against letting Carissa in, because I wasn’t good enough for her, I was too broken. But she didn’t see me with the eyes of someone who looked on a broken man.
She saw me as her man. The thought made me stand up taller. My heart, which had been angry, and sarcastic, and bitter since the day in the hospital when my entire life changed, felt lighter. Happier, crazy as that sounded.
When I got back to the ranch, I went to bed more content than I’d felt in over a year. She’d be here tomorrow, and I’d know that she was close. Maybe I could even entice her to come here, into my cabin. The thought made desire rush through me.
I fell asleep with thoughts of Carissa in lacy panties dancing around in front of me.
I woke the next morning to the ringing of my phone. It was Carissa.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
She was crying. I sat up straight, reaching for my clothes. “What’s wrong?” I asked, completely awake.
She took a couple of breaths.
“Take your time. Breathe in and out,” I instructed. “You need to let your heart calm, then you can tell me.” I could hear my voice slipping into my Chief voice, calming the new guys on the team, making sure we made it through whatever shit we were in. I’d do it for Carissa, too.
Then I’d tear apart whoever it was that made her cry.
“Stephen was just here,” she said.
“What?” I stood up and pulled on pants. I knew it. That complete shit. Douchebags never went away quietly.
“He showed up while we were having coffee,” her words were rushed, but she wasn’t crying anymore, and she was able to get the words out.
That was a good thing.
“He told me he was so sorry to leave like he did, and that he was glad I just packed up and left—not that he told me to, or anything—” her voice was angry.
Also a good sign.
“And now that he was back, he was going to make everything right. Oh, and I could ignore the nasty texts he sent me. He was just stressed.”
Over my dead body, I thought. And what texts?
“He just needed me to help him out.”
“How?” My words came out like a shot.
“He said that if I paid off what he owed, everything would be all right. And then we could go home, buy our house. He even said he was ready for a dog!” Her voice rose.
“Carissa, where is he now?”
“Well, he’s not here!” She shot back. “I told him to go to hell and get the fuck off my porch!”
I nodded with approval, even though she couldn’t see me. “What did he do?”
“He looked around, and said, You live here?”
“What did you tell him?” I asked. I liked this less and less.
“I told him of course it wasn’t my house, and that I was staying here, and I didn’t know how he’d found me, but he needed to go. I told him that we were over, and I didn’t ever want to see him again.”
A warmth filled my chest that she might have done that because of me, because of us. “I’m coming over there now,” I said.
“No, don’t. No one knows about us yet, and I’m not ready for the questions on top of Gran’s being so upset about Stephen. Plus, I have to work today, and he’s just shot my mood all to hell.” She sounded better.
“You sure he left?” I asked.
“He left here, and I don’t care what he does after that.”
“Where do you want to meet tonight?” I asked. I needed to see her, make sure she was all right. And find out more about the texts he’d sent her. She didn’t tell me about them.
If he was texting her, and then showing up, he wasn’t going away easily.
“Come here. I’ll cook dinner. I don’t feel like going out, and I’ll definitely not want to go out after working all day,” she said. “Oh, God, Jensen, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you!”
“Yes, you should,” I said. “I’ll come over after we’re done today.”
“That’s a good idea. I shouldn’t be out at the ranch all day.”
In the wake of this conversation, I’d forgotten that she was coming here. That was good. She’d be safe. No jackass ex would get near her out here at the ranch.
“Then I’ll see you when you get here,” I said warmly, throttling my voice down so she didn’t realize how close her ex had come to really disappearing, and not because of some asshole mafia loan shark meatheads.
I raced through my shower and went up to the main house. Axel, Pris, and Freeze were having breakfast. They murmured variations on ‘Hello’ and kept on eating. I sat down and served myself, my mind still racing. That sonofabitch. I knew he wouldn’t go away. She was too good—but that wasn’t it.
She had money, and he thought she had enough to bail his sorry ass out. He wouldn’t go away just because she yelled at him once.
Desperate men never did. If there was one thing I knew, it was that.
“What is going on with you, Jensen?” Pris asked, her words breaking in my thoughts.
“What? Oh, I’m just thinking.”
“Yeah, so hard I can feel it over here,” Axel said, eyeing me carefully. Unlike the rest of them, he knew.
I could feel myself gearing up for mission time, and Axel had been there. He hadn’t been a SEAL, but the Deltas were of the same breed. Not that I’d ever admit that to him. Ever.
“Just have some things on my mind,” I said, not wanting to share.
“Really?” Freeze asked. “Would those things be about five-five, with long light brown hair—”
“More blonde,” Pris said, taking a bite of her eggs.
“And working for me?”
I looked up at Freeze, and then at Axel and Pris. Whatever was in my face made all three of them burst out laughing.
“You didn’t think we knew? Come on, man,” Axel said, laughing.
“You running out of here every night this week?” Freeze chimed in.
“What are you, my dad?” I asked grumpily.
“No, but I’m damn glad for you. She’s a good girl, comes from a good family.”
“I—” I started.
“Don’t want to talk about it right now, do you?” Pris asked. “Which is fine. Which means you two,” she gave an evil glare to her husband and Freeze,” are gonna shut the hell up. She’ll be here soon, so knock it off.”
“Yes ma’am,” Axel said, leaning his head on her shoulder and giving her a look of such love, it was almost heartbreaking.
Now who was turning into a big candy ass? If I kept this up, I’d be asking the mafia meatheads Carissa had told me about for a job.
After I set things straight with the ex. My temper flared again. He’d either disappear on his own, or I’d help him.
“You goin’ out tonight?” Freeze asked innocently.
“As a matter of fact, I am. I’ll be having dinner out,” I said, giving him a big smile. “try to contain the tears.”
Freeze started laughing again, but the subject of Carissa and me was put away, and after breakfast, we all helped clean up, then went out to saddle the horses. Even on a ranch like this, where there weren’t thousands of animals, it took all able bodies to keep things running. I liked it. It made me use my arm, and I was getting back more mobility and less pain every day.
Which was good, since apparently, I’d be cracking skulls sometime soon? Because douchebags didn’t just go away quietly.
Chapter Sixteen
Carissa
I got into the shower, my hands still shaking. I couldn’t believe I’d called Jensen, crying no less. But I’d had to calm Gran down. She was on her way over to her new place to get things set up, and she didn’t need to be upset just because I’d once dated the biggest assho
le on the planet.
The nerve of him to show up here! To try to sweet talk me like nothing had happened between us, that I’d be so happy to see him that I’d forget all the shit he’d done to me. I’d had to leave my house. I’d lost my place to live because of him. He’d stolen from me! Lied to me!
I muttered angrily to myself as I showered. When I came out of my room, Gran was hovering around in the front room.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right, honey?”
“I will. I’m going out to Broken Falls today, Gran. I’m doing some more work for Freeze. I won’t be by myself.”
“What about tonight? I was going to spend the night at my new place, see how it feels.”
I took a breath. “I’m having company for dinner,” I said.
“You are?” Her face took on an arch expression as her eyebrows went up into her hair.
I nodded, holding my breath.
Gran stared at me, then she nodded. “Well, there’s enough to choose from in the fridge.” She smiled, coming over to kiss me. “I’m glad you’re doing something fun. Between me and Freeze Buckley, all you’re doing is working.”
“That’s all right, Gran. I like working. It keeps my mind off stuff. I didn’t come here to lounge around. And honestly, I’m spending a lot of time not helping you.”
“Sweetie, am I or am I not moved in over there?”
“You’re moved in,” I said.
“That’s what I needed. We’ll get the house cleaned out and then I’ll put it on the market, and that’s all. You’ve been a great help.” She hugged me, kissing me on the forehead again. “Enjoy dinner tonight. I’m guessing it’s with that Jensen boy. I like him. He’s nice.” She smiled. “You are leaving now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.” I didn’t want to admit it, but I was glad Gran had waited, even as it made me nervous. What if Stephen came back? And why did she zoom in on Jensen? Whatever made her do it—I was glad she liked him.
But Stephen showing up here still rattled me. That was silly. I’d told him to go, and he was such a coward, he wasn’t going to come back. ‘Fuck off’ is a pretty clear indication someone is done with you. I’d told him to fuck off and die, so there was no doubt as to how I felt.
