by Sophie Moss
The door opened and, despite having two hours to prepare, the sight of him caught her completely off guard. He was wearing a gray T-shirt and mesh running shorts. His rugged, strong boned face glistened with sweat. The thick black hair that swept back from his forehead was damp with it, and from the looks of the dark V staining the thin cotton material clinging to the hard muscles of his chest and shoulders, he’d just gotten back from a run.
But it wasn’t the hard, athletic body in the doorway that had her heart skipping a beat. It was the gleaming contraption suspended from the lower half of his left leg. Her gaze flickered down—she couldn’t help it—past the washboard abs, narrow hips, and big powerful thighs to where his stump rested in a padded socket secured to a slim, high tech piece of curved metal.
It was the first time she’d ever seen him in shorts. The first time she’d ever seen the prosthesis.
She’d known it was there. She’d heard the story of how he’d lost his leg, but she’d never seen the physical proof of that injury. She’d never considered the reality of what Colin had been through, the shock and trauma of the actual event, the months of rehab and therapy that would have come afterward, the effect it must have had on him both physically and physiologically.
Ever since she’d met him, he’d seemed cool and confident and completely at ease with himself and his situation. But it couldn’t have been easy at first. It had to have been difficult for him, at least when he’d first come back.
“What are you doing here, Becca?” Colin asked, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Her gaze lifted, surprised by the cold, unfriendly tone of his voice. A wall of defense shielded the emotions in his eyes and she realized, to her horror, that she had been staring—that she hadn’t said a word since he’d opened the door.
She didn’t want him to think she was judging him, that she thought any less of him because of what she’d just seen. If anything, seeing him like this—exposed, vulnerable, wounded—made her feel more toward him. Made her feel like she was finally starting to understand him.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine, she thought. Just like he hadn’t been fine the other night when he’d come to her house. “I heard what Richard Goldwater said about your father today, what he said about the veterans’ center. I know you’re not fine. That had to have hurt you.”
A muscle on the side of his neck ticked, a tiny betrayal of the emotions he was hiding underneath the stony expression. He had probably gone for a run to try to get some of the frustration out, to clear his head. And now, here she was, forcing him to face it again.
But she wasn’t leaving until she knew he was okay.
They were friends now.
Friends…
The word seemed strange, even to her, like it couldn’t possibly apply to them. But if they weren’t friends, what were they?
She lifted her chin. Whatever they were, she wouldn’t let a friend off the hook on a night like tonight. And she wasn’t letting him off either. “I know it’s not true. I know it’s a set up. Lydia’s behind it, isn’t she?”
He didn’t confirm it or deny it. He just stood there, looking down at her, his hand still on the doorknob, waiting for her to leave.
“I wish you would tell me what happened between you and your mother,” Becca said. “I might be able to help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” he said and the words cut through her like a knife. Because that’s what she did. She helped people. She couldn’t stand seeing someone in need and not offering some kind of assistance or support.
But not everyone wanted help, did they? Colin was probably the last person who would admit that he needed it. As a SEAL, he had been the one who provided the help, the one who carried out the missions that were too dangerous for everyone else. SEALs were the ones who got the job done when no one else could, not the ones who called for backup.
She thought about everything he had done in the past year—launching the jobs program, setting up the veterans’ center, stepping in for Will whenever Annie needed a hand with Taylor, offering to help save the elementary school. And it didn’t stop there. When he’d found an eight-year-old boy wandering alone down the side of the road two days ago, he hadn’t called someone else to deal with it. He had picked him up, brought him back to school, and became that little boy’s hero in the space of less than an hour.
Maybe that was why she was so drawn to him. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to shake him from her thoughts, no matter how hard she tried. If it was just attraction, she could have pushed him out by now. But it was more than that. She admired him. She respected him. And the more time she spent with him, the harder he became to resist.
The voice in the back of her head, the one that had warned her not to come in the first place, told her that it was time to go. That she should turn around, walk back to her car, get in, and drive away from this man as fast as possible. But she couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until he told her what was going on.
If Lydia was behind this, then they were in this together. He was going to accept her help, whether he liked it or not, even if she had to use another tactic. If offering help wouldn’t get him to open up, then she would have to push him, make him angry, force him to fight with her.
“I would have thought,” she said, her gaze dropping briefly to the sweat staining his T-shirt, then back up to his face, “that after what happened today, you would be working on trying to find a way to discredit your mother, not taking time off for a run.”
The stony expression remained intact, but she caught the flicker of anger deep in his eyes, a tiny crack in the veneer.
“But maybe none of this really matters to you,” she challenged.
“What are you talking about?” he asked tightly.
“You never wanted to work on your father’s campaign,” Becca said, angling her head. “Maybe you knew all along that he was corrupt, and you’re just pissed off now because the truth came out and screwed up your precious veterans’ center.”
Colin’s eyes flashed. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Is it? Or have you been working in politics for long enough now that you can’t even tell the difference between a truth and a lie?”
He turned, stalking back into the apartment and over to a table by the fireplace where a large stack of papers was piled beside a laptop and a few empty coffee cups. He grabbed a handful of papers off the table and held them up. “Do you know what these are?”
She shook her head, following him inside.
“Resumes,” he said, still struggling to keep his emotions in check as he turned back to face her. “I get at least twenty-five a week from vets who need jobs. And you know what I do? I try to help them. Because it’s the least I can do.” His fingers curled around the papers, crumpling them. “You know what pissed me off the most today?”
She shook her head again.
“It wasn’t finding out that my father might be corrupt. It wasn’t hearing from three different donors that they were pulling their funding for the veterans’ center. It was when that son of a bitch, Goldwater, called it a charity.” He threw the papers against the wall, scattering them. “It’s not a fucking charity!”
He grabbed another stack of papers off the table. “None of these guys are asking for a handout. They want to work. They want to be useful. They were willing to go to war—to lay down their lives for their country—and now they don’t even have a way to feed their families.”
He squeezed the papers, the muscles in his forearm flexing. “We have vets living on the street now. We have vets who are so messed up with PTSD they can’t even leave their homes to try and find a job. We have vets who are so badly wounded they would rather put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger than try to find someone who might hire them and give them a chance.”
He wasn’t angry with her for barging in on him like this, Becca realized, her heart
going out to him. He was angry because Goldwater’s accusation had undercut the importance of the program his father had been planning to announce today. He was angry because he knew the system was broken and no matter how hard he tried to fix it, he would never be able to save every man and woman who carried those scars of war. And, mostly, he was angry because in comparing his veterans’ center to a charity, Richard Goldwater had reduced him and every other wounded warrior out there to nothing more than a charity case.
“Colin,” she said softly, walking toward him.
His jaw was still clenched. The muscles of his shoulders and chest were coiled so tight, it looked like he could snap again at any moment. But beneath the anger, she could see the pain in his eyes—the pain of what he had been through, and the desperate need to protect others like him from ever feeling that helplessness, that hopelessness, that despair.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion when she reached up and laid a hand on his arm.
She could hear the warning in his voice, feel the low thrumming of blood through his skin, warm beneath of palm. “What?” she asked gently.
He looked away. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
No, she thought. He didn’t. No one who spent five minutes with this man would think he needed an ounce of sympathy from anyone. But she couldn’t stand the fact that what had happened today had hurt him, that it had added to his pain in any way.
Colin had gone from being a member of one of the most elite and respected fighting forces in the military—deploying to war zones, carrying out missions in the most dangerous places in the world, and spending every other waking moment training.
Now, instead of doing what he was trained to do, what he wanted to do, he was going to cocktail parties and fundraisers, dowsing political fires for his father, and spending his free time reading resumes to help his fellow former service members find jobs.
“Do you miss it?” she asked softly.
“What?” he asked, still not looking at her.
“Being a SEAL?”
“Every day.”
He said it so fast, so automatically, her heart broke for him. Reaching up slowly, she laid a hand on his cheek. “I think what you’re doing now is amazing.”
He looked at her then, and the emotions in his eyes took her breath away.
She was crossing a dangerous line, Becca thought. Maybe, somewhere, deep down, she knew she had already crossed it simply by coming here tonight. The wind raced through the street, snapping branches off the maple trees, tearing petals off the azaleas. She knew she should pull her hand back, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stop touching him. Recklessly, she pressed up on her toes and brushed her lips over his.
It was only supposed to be a fleeting offer of comfort, while she stole a brief, selfish pleasure…to know what he tasted like. But there was nothing fleeting or comfortable in the way his mouth met hers—in a kiss so possessive, so demanding, there was nothing she could do but surrender to it.
She heard the sound of papers falling as his arms came around her, as she melted into him. His fingers curled into the back of her shirt, molding her closer. She kissed him back desperately, hungrily, pushing her hands into his hair, letting her fingers tangle in those thick black locks as she’d wanted to so badly for days now. His hands were everywhere, touching every surface of her.
She had never been kissed like his before. She had never felt anything like this before.
She didn’t want it to stop.
Her blood hummed, pumping faster. She could feel his desire, the hard length of him pressing against her. There were too many clothes, too much material between them. She needed to feel him—all of him.
As if he’d read her mind, his hands dipped beneath the hem of her shirt, cruising up the front of her stomach, heating her flesh. When his calloused palm closed over her breast, a small sound escaped from deep in her throat.
Where had this been all her life? Where had he been?
Across the street, a clay pot tumbled off a neighbor’s porch and cracked as it hit the brick sidewalk. A group of children dashed by, laughing as they raced toward the harbor. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, a small piece of reality clicked back into the place.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Stop.”
His eyes lifted, locking on hers. They were wild and hungry, filled with a sexual desire so raw and powerful, it nearly brought her to her knees.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
“Becca,” he breathed, still holding her. His voice was thick with need, with longing for her. “Don’t go.”
“I have to,” she said, as guilt settled its gray wings around her shoulders. What had she done? What was she thinking? “This was a mistake,” she said, quickly untangling herself from his arms. “I’m sorry. I should never have come.”
The sense of peace that usually swept over Colin whenever he crossed the four-mile bridge over the Chesapeake Bay to Maryland’s Eastern Shore didn’t come this time. Restless, edgy, and still pissed as hell about everything that had happened the day before, he cranked up the speakers, trying to lose himself in the music, but he couldn’t shake the slow burning frustration that grew with every mile closer he came to Heron Island…and Becca.
He’d considered going after her at least a dozen times the night before, but he’d forced himself to wait, to sleep on it. Because he hadn’t known what he would say when he saw her again. The truth was, he didn’t want to say anything. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted his mouth on hers. He wanted his hands on her body. He wanted to strip her clothes off and bury himself inside her as many times as it took until she promised never to run away again.
He knew, without a doubt, that he could have her. That if he got her alone again they would finish what they’d started. But he wanted her to come to him. He wanted her to end things with her fiancé first.
He didn’t want to be a mistake she made and regretted afterwards.
After what Della had told him, he knew that calling off the wedding to Tom was not going to be an easy decision for her. He knew there was a chance that even if she was coming to realize that marrying Tom was a mistake, she might still go through with it because of the link they shared in their pasts.
He needed to find a way to convince her to stop living in the past, to start seeing her future in terms of what she wanted now, not what she might have wanted when she was sixteen. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do that yet, but he would figure something out.
In the meantime, he needed to decide what to do about the veterans’ center. If Goldwater’s accusation was true, and his father had been doling out political favors in exchange for donations, then he and Will needed to start reaching out to the rest of their investors today to assure them that they’d had no idea what was happening.
Which was going to make them both look like a couple of complete idiots.
Passing a combine backing up traffic in the two right-hand lanes on Route 50, he gunned the engine. The donation they’d accepted from the casino owner several months ago had funded a large chunk of the renovations to the inn. If they were going to even think about giving that money back to cut ties with whatever corruption his father may or may not be involved in, they needed to find another influx of cash immediately.
When the Bluetooth connected to his speakers signaled an incoming call, he glanced down at the name lighting up the screen. Glenn. He was surprised it had taken his father’s campaign manager this long to call. He punched a button on the wheel to answer. “Yeah.”
“Where are you?” Glenn asked. “The press conference is in half an hour.”
“I’m on my way to Heron Island.”
“What?” Glenn’s tone shifted from harried to panicked. “Why?”
“I need to take care of some things.”
“We need you here, Colin. Your father needs you here. It’s going to look really bad if you’re not standing beside him when he responds to Goldwater’s claim.”
“I don’t care how it looks.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Colin,” Glenn said, lowering his voice. “I know you’re angry, but it’s not true. None of it’s true. Your father needs your support today.”
“I’m not in a very supportive mood.”
Glenn started to say something else, but Colin ended the call before he could finish his sentence. He’d already told his father to count him out for all future campaign events until this blew over. He’d spent the last six months playing the role of the perfect military hero son and it had backfired.
All he wanted now was to focus on the veterans’ center.
He cranked the music back up and tried not to think about how much it bothered him that he didn’t know whether or not his father was telling the truth. He usually had a pretty good read on people, but his father had been trained to twist words and narratives to appeal to the public, to say whatever people wanted to hear to get elected.
What would stop him from using that same technique on his son?
It was times like these when he longed the most for his former life on the teams. Things were so much easier overseas. Missions were clear. Goals were solid and tangible. Objectives were stated in black and white—identify the targets, take them out, get the hell out of there.
Back home, everything operated in shades of gray. And just when you thought you had a solid grip on the palette, a new shade would appear, throwing everything off balance again.
The highway split and he veered right, heading south along the peninsula toward the small coastal towns of Talbot County. He was meeting Will at the inn in half an hour. They’d already spoken over the phone to strategize the best way to deal with the fallout from the announcement, but his friend was headed back to the base in Virginia Beach today and he wanted to talk to him face-to-face before he left.
