Cowboy SEAL Redemption

by Nicole Helm

  But it wasn’t her father standing there. And what would she do if it turned out to be? She rubbed the knife she carried in a little hidden holster on her belt. She kept a revolver behind the bar in case of emergencies. She could protect herself against her father.

  And still fear had sprouted like a weed since hearing he’d been released. That old, shaky fear, those old, defeatist thoughts.

  She took a deep breath. She’d gotten this far. Nothing would get in her way again. She’d protect everything she held dear no matter the cost, and she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of falling for any fantasies.

  Girls like her didn’t get the happy ending, but she’d make sure she was safeguarding her sisters one way or another.

  She glanced back at Jack, who was still staring at her, a puzzled frown on his face.

  “Not for you,” she muttered to herself, and got back to work.

  Chapter 2

  Jack had downed his third beer before he considered the fact that Alex had asked them not to get drunk before he and Becca showed. Gabe was two ahead of him, and Jack had no doubt Alex’s comment about laying off had only spurred Gabe to do the opposite.

  Contrary asshole. Jack nearly smiled.

  “Another round of Buds for you gentlemen,” Rose Rogers said, setting two bottles in front of Jack and Gabe.

  “Marry me,” Gabe said, clasping his hands together in a pleading gesture.

  “Sorry. I only entertain marriage proposals before the first drink. Stay sober next time, cowboy.”

  Gabe settled his Stetson on his head with a grin. “I really do look the part, don’t I?”

  Rose rolled her eyes and moved her shrewd gaze to Jack. He only knew a few things about Rose Rogers: she owned Pioneer Spirit, never seemed to be anywhere but behind the gleaming slab of wood, and kept him and Gabe well served because they were good tippers.

  But there was something about her dark eyes that always tempted him to wonder about the smart-mouthed, tattooed bar owner.

  And he’d always remind himself what wondering about the opposite sex got a guy and move on.

  Except tonight she was different. She was on edge, maybe even a little… Afraid wasn’t the right word. Jack couldn’t imagine Rose afraid, but there was definitely a worry written all over her face for about a second every time the door opened.

  “You boys got a sober driver?”

  “Alex and Becca are meeting us here later.”

  Rose nodded. “Then I’ll keep them coming.”

  “No more for me,” Jack said, trying for offhanded. Both Gabe and Rose looked at him with a kind of wide-eyed surprise. While he was also an asshole, he wasn’t a contrary one like Gabe. More, Gabe’s drinking was starting to concern him, and Jack knew the only way he had a leg to stand on when it came to helping his friend was to get his own crap under control first.

  His phone chose that moment to chime, the tone he’d set for his mother, and he stopped caring about anyone’s drinking. “On second thought, bring me two next time.”

  Rose nodded and sauntered down the bar to her next customer, and Jack stared at his phone.

  “Your mom again?”

  “Yup.”

  “She’s not giving up.”

  “Nope.” Jack sighed as the chiming stopped. No doubt Mom would leave a message. Again.

  When his phone rang again rather than making the voicemail sound, Jack downed his beer. He knew his mother well enough to know, if she wasn’t leaving messages anymore, she’d just keep calling until he gave in. Might as well take the call here and now. “I’ll be back,” he said, sliding off the barstool.

  “You sure you want to talk to your mom when you’re drunk?”

  Jack grabbed Gabe’s fresh beer and downed that too. “Only half-drunk and wishing I was a hell of a lot further gone for this conversation.” He slapped the bottle down and hit Accept on his phone, moving through the back hallway so he could get away from the noise of the jukebox.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Well, finally. Do I have to full name you, young man?”

  Jack smiled as he stepped out of the back door of the bar. The parking lot was lit only by a small light above the door. Otherwise, the summer night was dark.

  In the dark, with a couple of beers in his system, he could miss his mother and hate that this was the way things were.

  “Maybe. How are you, Mom?”

  “Angry with my oldest son.”

  “So same old, same old.”

  Mom chuckled. “Now, if you had answered on my first call, I would have phrased this as a very polite question, but as you’ve been avoiding my calls for a week—”

  “I texted.”

  “Coward that you are,” Mom joked, and then there was that horrible, awkward silence where he knew she regretted her choice of words. Because Mom or not, you didn’t call a former Navy SEAL who’d survived a close-range grenade blast a coward.

  “We’re coming to visit,” Mom said firmly. “Which you’ll note is not a question but a point of fact,” she added, her tone back to the breezy, take-no-lip tone he remembered from his childhood. A million years ago, when he’d been young and dumb and so ridiculously sheltered from the cruelties of people. He’d been well acquainted with the cruelties of Mother Nature, of banks, even of God. But never people.

  “Jack?”

  He walked farther into the dark, cool Montana night and tried to anchor himself in the present. Even if it was a present he didn’t know how to navigate, it was better than the past he didn’t know how to leave behind. “I’d love for you and Dad to visit,” Jack forced himself to say. “Montana is beautiful. I’m sure you’ll love it. But who’ll watch the farm?”

  “You let us worry about that. We all miss you. Sarah can’t come, but the rest of us all are.”

  “The rest of you,” Jack echoed, the effect those words had reminding him a little too much of that grenade blast over a year ago. The landing, the horrible second of stillness before everything exploded into excruciating pain and the certainty he was dead.

  Well, it wasn’t that bad. Nothing was that bad. And he’d survived that, hadn’t he?

  “Yes!” Mom said overly brightly. As if she could simply will the rift in their family back together. “Your dad rented one of those RVs, and it’ll be a nice trip. You haven’t met your nephew yet.”

  His nephew. Yeah. He hadn’t. Nor did he want to. It wasn’t the kid’s fault how he’d gotten here, but that didn’t mean Jack felt anything other than…

  Well.

  “It’s been so long, Jack,” Mom said, her voice getting that scratchy quality that always got the guilt pooling in his gut. The situation wasn’t Mom or Dad’s fault, but…

  “Mom.” He didn’t know how to respond. Breathe. This was too much. All of them coming here to his sanctuary, invading it as if they all were welcome. He clutched the cell in his hand a little too tight—so tight he wasn’t sure he’d be able to unclench it once this nightmare conversation was over.

  “Yo, Jack. I need your help.”

  Jack looked in confusion at the woman calling his name from across the parking lot. Rose was standing by the door in the little pool of light, hands on her hips, looking badass and hell bound as always.

  He couldn’t fathom why Rose would need his help.

  “Who’s that? Was that a woman?” Mom asked.

  “Um. That was Rose.”

  “Rose. Who’s Rose?”

  “Well, no—”

  “Madison was so worried you hadn’t moved on yet and that this trip would be too difficult for you, but you have a Rose!”

  Jack scowled. Madison thought he hadn’t moved on? All that confusion and pain swirled into something much darker. Anger. Fury. Revenge.

  “Yeah. I have a Rose. She’s great, and she needs my help. I’ll call you later to wo
rk out the details.” With that, he hit End and stared at the woman who’d just unknowingly saved him.

  * * *

  Rose surveyed the somewhat drunk and very angry man in her parking lot. She supposed some women would be scared in this position, but some women didn’t carry weapons concealed in their clothes, and some women hadn’t grown up like she had.

  Jack might be drunk and angry, but compared to some, he was a pussycat.

  A really hot pussycat. She sighed. He was standing out there, somehow looking like a broken heart in human form. The kind of frozen horror she knew too well. Just like she knew she shouldn’t get involved but had opened her big mouth anyway.

  “What’d you need help with?” he asked, his voice a dark, delicious rasp.

  You are not looking for delicious, Rose Rogers. Not from Mr. Boy Scout. “Looked like a shitty phone call,” she offered with a shrug. “And I’m a Good Samaritan. At least to customers who tip as well as you do.”

  He crossed the lot then, mostly shrouded in dark until he got a few feet from the door. “Thanks,” he offered.

  Which should have been the end of it. “Well, I was taking the trash out if you want to give me a hand.” Why are you helping him? You do not help.

  “Sure.”

  Which was not the answer she’d expected. In her experience, men were quite happy to take favors and not so happy to offer them. But she was hardly one to look a gift man in the mouth.

  She pulled the two bags of trash to the door. He didn’t hesitate or even only take one—he grabbed both heavy bags and walked to the Dumpster out back.

  With that limp.

  Operating a townie bar in the middle of Montana ranching country meant she’d learned a lot about the fragility of the male ego. And since not every guy fixed a bruised ego by beating the shit out of his kids, she’d learned to have a little empathy.

  She didn’t need to be a mind reader to know a man like Jack wouldn’t want anyone rushing over to grab the trash from him because he had a limp. A limp he’d probably earned doing something suitably badass and Navy SEAL-y, saving the country for good and right.

  But that didn’t mean she could just let him heft her trash either. She did her best to follow Jack at a leisurely pace, to act like it was no big deal to grab one of the bags to heft into the Dumpster before he did both. And she quickly focused the subject on something that wouldn’t have a thing to do with his limp.

  “So, what kind of phone call does a guy take in the back parking lot of a bar?”

  Jack dropped his bag and the Dumpster lid. “The kind you’ve been avoiding for a week.”

  “Paternity test gone wrong?”

  He gave her an odd look, because of course this guy wouldn’t be on the receiving end of a surprise paternity test or any other seedy thing. Of the three former SEALs, Jack was the least likely to do any sort of line crossing. Alex was quite the do-gooder leader of the group, but he had an edge to him. Gabe flirted with anything that moved, but Jack…

  Jack was polite, respectful. A lot stoic, which only faded occasionally when he was very drunk. He didn’t flirt, and he was kind.

  She didn’t understand kindness. Some stupid part of her wanted to.

  “My mother,” he offered in that same gravelly tone that had her mind drifting to a slew of seedy things she could show him.

  Except he’d been talking to his mother. “Oh, well, sure. That’s something I’d just keep avoiding too.”

  “She’s coming to visit. Well, my family is.”

  “And that’s bad?” Which was not only not her business, but she also didn’t care. In the wide, crazy world of family troubles, things didn’t get much worse than what she’d survived. Still, she’d asked, and she needed to get ahold of that stupid instinct to want to help.

  An upstanding, strong, stoic man like Jack hardly needed help from her.

  “It’s complicated.” He studied her, closing one eye and then the other in that way he always did when he was drunk enough to be philosophical but not drunk enough to turn into Mr. Comedian. The cool, pale blue of his eyes popped even in the dark of a summer night. “How would you feel about pretending to be my girlfriend when my family comes to visit?”

  Rose threw her head back and laughed. As if the word girlfriend would ever adequately apply to someone as rough and damaged as her, pretend or otherwise. Especially when family was involved. But Jack wasn’t laughing at her. He was studying her.

  She stopped laughing. “Oh my God, you’re serious.”

  Jack shrugged. “It’s either that or I ask my therapist, and I have a feeling she’d find that problematic.”

  Rose blinked at him. Therapist. Fake girlfriend. Likely a little drunk.

  Yeah, Jack wasn’t a threatening or mean guy, but he was also a large guy. Strong. Intimidating if he wanted to be. She’d heard Gabe brag to one of her other bartenders about their days as SEALs. Even if most of Gabe’s talk was crap, you couldn’t get by in the Navy SEALs being a wuss.

  And she very much needed a little show of power with everything going on right now. This…well, this was the opportunity to employ a little of that without having to be beholden to anyone, and that was something to consider.

  “What do you need a fake girlfriend for?” she asked, walking with him to the back entrance of her bar. She watched his profile harden until he no longer looked like just any drunk, angry guy.

  She didn’t know the first thing about military stuff, but she could see the soldier in him now, all ramrod tension and a kind of focused fury.

  “I need to prove a point,” he said, his voice devoid of any emotion, keeping that intense gaze of his on the door.

  She pulled the door open, the dim hallway light spilling over his face. He’d been coming to her bar for a few months now, and he’d gotten shaggier and a little hollowed out as time went on. But his already-golden hair—a pinch too long for a military man—had lightened in the sun, the same way the sickly pallor she’d first seen on him had warmed into a sun-kissed glow. He clearly hadn’t shaved in a few weeks.

  There was something about all of that, added to his troubled blue eyes and the smile that never seemed to reach them that had Rose far too interested in what point Mr. Soldier might need to prove.

  But this wasn’t about him. It was about her. From here on out, her life was supposed to be about her. “I’ve got one condition for you, soldier.”

  “Technically, I was a Navy SEAL, so it’d be sailor.”

  She would not let those little flashes of humor get to her. This was no great favor. She was going to use Jack for her own purposes, and because she was a decent human being, she’d give him something in return.

  Tit for tat. Minus anything to do with her tits. Remember that.

  “Sailor. I like that even better. Okay, so here’s the deal. I’ll play whatever little game you’ve got going on, and you do me a favor a few nights a week at the bar.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “You play bouncer for me. There’s been a guy…” She had to figure out a way to frame her request so it didn’t seem like it had something to do with her. Luckily, Rose had always been quick on her feet. “He’s harassing one of my bartenders, and she doesn’t want to get the police involved, but she’s jumpy. All I need is for you to watch the door for the guy on Friday and Saturday nights when I can’t keep an eye on it myself.”

  “And for something as simple as that, you’ll pretend to be my girlfriend?”

  “Oh, Jacky boy, nothing’s ever as simple as that.” Nothing. Ever. She held out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”

  He stared at her outstretched hand for a long time before he finally reached out and shook it. His hand was large and his palm rough as it slid against hers. He gripped her hand tight.

  “Deal,” he said firmly. It seemed as though everything about him was firm. Stron
g. Endlessly fascinating.

  Rose grinned and pretended the flutters in her stomach didn’t exist.

  Chapter 3

  Jack returned to his stool at the bar, but he didn’t touch another beer. As much as he wanted to get blackout drunk and forget the conversation he’d had with his mother, it wouldn’t change what awaited him.

  He watched Rose while he pretended to listen to Gabe try to make some case for the Yankees’ crap bullpen. What he thought he’d known about Rose didn’t seem to fit into the interaction they’d had outside.

  She ran her bar like an old, snarly navy captain might run a ship. She was quick, efficient, and mostly mean. Her smile had always reminded him of a blade, and that was something he’d never seen in a woman.

  She hadn’t been all sharp outside in the dark though. And while she’d only agreed to his plan in return for a favor of her own, it wasn’t actually for her. It was for the safety of one of her bartenders instead.

  There was a lot he didn’t understand about life since he’d returned to the civilian side of things, so he supposed Rose Rogers was just another thing to add to the list.

  “Finally,” Gabe muttered, gesturing toward the door. “The dynamic duo has appeared. Looking happy enough to make me puke, per usual.”

  Jack glanced at the front doors. Alex and Becca walked toward them, Becca’s arm wrapped around Alex’s waist and Alex’s arm slung across her shoulders.

  Usually if Becca and Alex were around each other, they were grinning—or trying hard not to grin. There was something a little different about the jovial looks on their faces this evening though.

  “Hey, guys,” Becca greeted, her cheeks pink and her eyes a little red as if she’d been crying. Which was weird.

  “What’s up with the two of you?” Gabe asked, studying them suspiciously.

  Becca looked up at Alex, who gave her a little nod, and then she was waving her hand in front of both his and Gabe’s faces.

  Jack was a little too well acquainted with this whole process. Even though it had been years ago—years and years ago—he could remember Madison doing the same thing when he’d awkwardly shoved a ring on her finger.