Jason had a snarky, yes, actually, good-bye, all ready to go, but then a black Labrador puppy popped its face above the top of the cardboard box and hooked two humongous paws over the rim.
Jason rocketed backward, his feet skidding out from underneath him. “Jesus!” The word shot out of his mouth like a profanity; he was stunned down to the bottoms of his bare feet.
“Jason!” Farrin gasped.
He jammed a fist to his chest. This must be what a coronary felt like, heart struggling to work, lungs compressed. With his lips sagging apart, he stared bovinely at the puppy.
The Lab tilted its head in a curious look.
Jason sucked in a much-needed gust of air. Oh, man, the pup already had down the uber-cute crinkly-brow expression that only Labbies seemed to pull off to such perfection.
“Jason, are you okay?” Farrin’s voice was taut with worry.
He licked his lips and swallowed.
Farrin’s hand came to rest on his arm. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”
He blinked a couple of times. No, he wasn’t on the verge of blanking out. He was letting himself feel things nowadays, even the shitty stuff. Probably most especially the shitty stuff, to put it all to bed at last. So…yeah…he supposed if he was resolved to deal with everything, then that included the demons a Labrador could provoke. “I’m here.”
He heard her bellowy exhalation. “I’m sorry. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea for a present. But when I went to see the litter last week, the puppies were so cute, I couldn’t resist. I mean, aren’t they adorable?”
They? He stepped forward, bringing into view a yellow Lab puppy sitting at the back of the box. A pair of solemn brown eyes observed him, and something inside Jason melted and untwisted. He felt, strangely, like he needed to weep. He might have, too, if Shane wasn’t standing there.
“They’re brothers.” Farrin edged up next to him. “The yellow one is Hero. He’s a bit on the sober side. The black fellow is Rotor. He’s the rambunctious one. We’ll have to keep an eye on him, or I fear he’ll devour the entire house.”
The black puppy responded to this assessment with a series of enthusiastic tail wags.
Jason’s heart gathered into a warm ball.
“That is, if, um…if you want to keep them.”
Shane snorted. “He wants to keep them.”
He met Shane’s gaze. Well, shit, maybe Jason’s need-to-blubber thing was more obvious than he’d realized.
“And,” Shane added, “thank you very much, Doc Barr, for giving these dogs actual doggie names.”
Farrin smiled tentatively.
Jason turned to her. “You’re right, these puppies are extremely adorable.” Lifting a hand to her face, he swept his thumb over her cheek. “This is an amazing gift, thank you.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “I had no idea how much I wanted these little guys until just now.” He brushed a kiss over her lips and whispered again, “Thank you.”
Tears rushed into her eyes, but she cleared her throat and waved Shane inside. “Come in, come in. There’s coffee in the pot. Why don’t you two get some while I take the boys out in the backyard?” She commandeered the cardboard box from Shane and disappeared out the sliding glass door off the far side of the living room.
Shane watched her go. When the glass door shut, he said, “So you didn’t blow it, Casanova. I lost that bet.”
He gave his friend a droll look. “Sorry to mess things up for you, Mad Dog.”
“I’ll get over it.” Shane offered him a short nod. “Congrats on nabbing Doc Barr, man. Or is she going to go by Dr. Vanderby now?” He paused, as if hearing what he just said, then curled his lip. “Christ, last thing we need in this world is another Dr. Vanderby.”
Outside, Farrin was producing a hidden stash of dog toys.
“I saw him yesterday, you know. Dr. Vanderby.”
Shane’s attention bolted back to him. “What? Your father?”
“Yep. He got the DA to drop the charges against me.” Jason didn’t elaborate on the story. Farrin no doubt had already filled in Shane on Jason’s stint in jail.
Shane didn’t comment. No, how nice or I bet you were glad. He was well aware that Jason would never be glad of anything Spencer did.
“Apparently,” Jason went on, “my mom and dad are divorced now. Spencer said I should call Georgette.”
Leaving Shane to mull that over, Jason went into the kitchen and poured two mugs of coffee. When he returned to the living room, Shane had ripped off the plastic wrap from the couch and was sitting on it.
“You’re just tearing it up getting this place unpacked, aren’t you, Jace?” Shane accepted a steaming mug of black coffee. “Are you going to call her?”
Jason sat at the other end of the couch. “You’ve always been a Georgette fan.”
Shane shrugged. “She took me and my mom in after…what happened. And you know damned well she had to force the issue with your dad. To me, she’s a nice lady.” Shane sipped his coffee and grimaced slightly, although the brew couldn’t be peeling too many layers off his intestines—Farrin had made it, not Jason. “Have you ever stopped to think about why else she might’ve pressed the issue?” Shane asked.
Jason came up from taking a swig of his own coffee to stare at Shane. “What do you mean?”
Balancing his mug in one hand, Shane flipped the coffee table right-side-up with the other. “Those daddy grill sessions you told me about stopped after my mom and me moved in, didn’t they?” He set his mug on the table. “Spencer couldn’t hold his fucked-up I-am-God councils anymore once guests were in the house. Don’t you think Georgette knew that would be a side effect?”
Jason twisted his mouth tight at the corners. “You give her too much credit.” Georgette had never been able to force any issue with Spencer. Spencer conceded to let Shane and his mother live with them because he’d lost power in the grill sessions after the Barney disposal incident, and he wanted a face-saving way out of them.
“I don’t know, Jace. I think it was your mom’s way of trying to protect you. She didn’t have many options in your house.” Shane lifted a shoulder. “It’s something worth thinking about.”
He studied his drink. “Yeah, okay. I will.” One of his new goals in life was to let more people into his world. It would just take some pondering to figure out if Georgette was one of them. Shane, however, was definitely on the list. “Do you remember at Usman and Afia’s house in Pakistan when you told me I used to date women I could hate? I got a big, fat epiphany from that little gold nugget.”
Hunkering into the couch, drinking coffee, he told Shane about figuring out how he’d pulled away from Jed after Barney died, and then cut himself off from everyone else, basically repeating everything he told Farrin in the Botanical Garden’s Enchanted Forest.
By the time he was done, he and Shane were on their second cup of coffee, and Jason had heard Farrin laugh half a dozen times. She and the boys were apparently having a hoot outside with the doggie toys. At one point, he saw Rotor streak by with a squeaky red rubber bone, Hero hot on his heels…no doubt with a mind for stealing it.
“You accused me,” he concluded, “of wanting to bail on you. Turns out you were right, and you were also right that it wasn’t because I couldn’t deal with us relying on each other too much, like I always believed. It was…” It was because I loved you like a second brother and it became too damned much for me to handle. The stress of BUD/S Hell Week had opened up that wound for him, a mile wide. “Shit”—he flung a hand out. “You can put it together why, after everything I explained. Just, I’m sorry I did it to you.”
Shane nodded brusquely. “Maybe I let you do it too easily, Jace. I had some of my own problems being around you.”
“You’re kidding?” That was a blindside hit. “What problems?”
Shane looked down at his lap, his jaw stony. “The day with Barney in the forest… I didn’t do fuck-all to stop it. I hid
behind a rock. I’ve been so damned guilty over—”
“Don’t,” Jason cut in. “Put that out of your mind right now. There was nothing you could’ve done to stop it.” Spencer had always been unstoppable when it came to his punishments.
Shane’s head snapped up. “Your dad quit doing the grill sessions once I was living in your house, didn’t he? If I’d shown my fucking face that day, he wouldn’t have made you shoot your dog.”
“He would’ve just sent you over to the practice ring or the barn,” Jason countered. “Or he would’ve made me do it at a later time, and, anyway, screw this, Shane—you were ten years old. We were both ten.”
Shane shrugged tightly and looked away.
“Listen, the bottom line is, I want us to be friends again. You good with that?”
Shane tossed back the last dregs of his drink, then clunked his mug down on the coffee table. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Jason set his empty mug on the coffee table, too. “Don’t just say it, either. I want us to call and text each other, even if it’s only for thirty seconds of bullshit.”
“Christ, what are you, a girl? Yeah, I get it.”
Smiling a little, Jason stood and went into the kitchen, where he’d left his cell phone last night. He chucked it to Shane. “Put your number in there,” he said, sitting down again.
When Shane was done, he tossed the cell back.
Jason pocketed it. “Good. Now, no matter where you are, we can…” He stopped and reversed. Where you are… “Wait a minute, what the hell are you doing in Virginia?” Shane was stationed in San Diego.
“Man, Jace, how stupid did your wedding night make you? You just now computing the strangeness of that?”
He slouched back and grinned. “Pretty damned stupid, and I’m not complaining.”
Shane chortled. “The Navy sent me to Walter Reed to recover from my wounds, and since it’s only about a three-hour drive from there to here, I made the trip to Norfolk when Doc Barr asked for help with your wedding present.” He shrugged. “I have some time to kill before I deploy again.”
What the hell? “You’re deploying again? When?”
“Next month.”
“Jesus. Is your command unaware that you were shot four times?”
“Yeah, well, I’m not getting sent back to an operational mission, but to some shit job.” Shane cleared his throat. “As punishment.”
Jason frowned. “For what?”
Shane looked out the glass door, putting the nasty side of his face in profile. “I ran into my ex, Kitty, on the Mercy when I was medevac’d there from the Kunar outpost. Seeing her again fucked me up bad, and I…ended up doing something stupid. Got my ass in a sling. My CO told me I could either take my chances at Captain’s Mast29 or accept a shit job. I picked the shit job.”
“Hell, Mad Dog.” Jason left it at that, not pushing to find out what the stupid thing was. If Shane wasn’t ready to tell him, he wasn’t ready. “You ever consider getting back with Kitty? Because I’m thinking if she can still make you act stupid, you’re probably still into her.”
“Not anything you should be thinking about,” Shane said flatly.
Jason exhaled. “Take it from one closed-off man to another—figure your shit out and get back with Kitty. You’ll never be happy till you do.”
Grumbling, Shane aimed his focus at the ceiling. “Spoken by a newly married man who thinks a woman is the cure to all evil.”
As if on cue, Farrin raced by outside, trailing a braided tug-o-war rope behind her. Rotor valiantly chased after her but got tangled up in his oversized black paws and tripped over himself, causing a pileup with Hero. Jason breathed out a soft laugh. Between Farrin and the pups—soon a baby on the way—his house was going to have a lot of happiness in it. He lifted a single brow at Shane. “Can you name anything else that is?”
Shane gave him a look.
He gave Shane a look right back. “I was at BUD/S with you, so don’t try to talk circles around this. I saw how gonzo in love with Kitty you were from the outset. Just fix things with her, Shane.”
With a stubborn backward tilt of his head, Shane said, “I’ll think about it.”
“It’s a place to start.”
A merry ripple of Farrin’s laughter rang out.
Shane shot a glance at the sliding glass door, then came to his feet. “Time to let you get back to your honeymoon.”
Jason stood too. “Hell, who knows how much of a honeymoon I’m going to have now that I’ve got two puppies to keep me up all night.”
Shame smirked. “Those pups are going to be good for you.”
They set off for the front door.
Shane opened it. “Let’s try to catch a game together before I ship out.” He held out his hand.
Jason shook it. “Sounds like a plan.”
After Jason shut the door behind Shane, he stood in place and just enjoyed Farrin’s laughter. Holy shit. He was a married man now. The reality of it brought up a lot of good. A few nerves. What kind of husband and father would he make?
Well, sorry. I don’t have the capacity to forgive.
If that’s truly the case, son, then should you be getting married?
“Screw it,” Jason muttered. Tugging out his cell phone, he texted his brother: Hey, Danny, do you know Mom’s new phone number?
Might as well have it on hand.
Tucking his phone away, he strode to the glass door. As soon as he stepped outside, Hero and Rotor gamboled right up to him.
“Ha, look!” Farrin enthused. “They already like you.”
Smiling, Jason bent over to scratch behind their ears. “They’re Labs. They like everyone.” But, yeah, a very pleased noise rolled out of him. He scooped up Hero and cradled the pup on its back, huge paws flopped over a furry yellow chest. “Hey, little guy.” He rubbed the pup’s belly. Hero was panting from all the robust playing, and Jason caught a whiff of puppy breath. He almost fainted from the sheer goodness of it.
“Just look at you,” Farrin murmured, her voice taking on a rough note, “holding him like he’s a baby.”
Her tone brought his head up. She was regarding him with such a moony, lovelorn gaze, he couldn’t help but chuckle. “This gets you hot, does it? Me being all fatherly?”
Her eyes twinkled. “Mmmm.”
“How about this, then?” One eyebrow hiked, he gently rocked Hero back and forth in his arms.
Farrin clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, be still my beating heart.”
He laughed deep in his throat.
Dropping her hands, she sauntered up to him. “You know… I’ve worn out the boys playing with them. They should sleep well tonight, give us some alone time so you can work more on the task of impregnating me.”
He cocked up one side of his mouth. “I told you, wife, the job is already done. I have extreme confidence in my potency.” Supporting Hero in one arm, he slipped his other arm around Farrin’s waist and pulled her close. “But, hey…” He gave her a smoldering look. “If you want your cup to runneth over…”
She laughed, and he bent to kiss her smiling lips while Rotor sat on his foot.
* * *
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COMING SOON!
Book 4 in the Wings of Gold Series
SERVE WITH HONOR
Seriously injured during a Special Operations mission in Pakistan, SEAL Team leader Petty Officer Shane “Mad Dog” Madden ends up on the medical ship USNS Mercy, and under the c
are of his ex-girlfriend, Navy Corpsman Kitty Hart.
Still in love with her, he lets anger and frustration goad him into doing something stupid.
He ends up back in Pakistan, but this time in a boring job as punishment—he’s to stand guard at the American Embassy in Islamabad.
But he soon finds that his tour of duty will be anything but boring, because…
Guess who’s been assigned to the embassy’s medical staff?
Corpsman Kitty Hart has sworn off military men. Her ex-boyfriend, Shane, used to ignore her in favor of his SEAL buddies, and a young naval aviator she was falling in love with up and got himself killed recently. No more heartbreak for her, thank you very much. Unfortunately, she’s just been assigned to the same unit as Shane, and he’s got it in his head that she’s the only woman he’s ever loved. He’s determined to make things right between them.
She wants nothing to do with that idea, until…the Pakistani president is assassinated, the government collapses, and Islamabad becomes a terrorist stronghold. Kitty is trapped behind enemy lines, and the only thing standing between her and death is Shane.
Maybe, just maybe, having a Navy SEAL as the man who wants to prove himself to her isn’t such a bad thing, after all…
* * *
COMING NEXT…!
Book 5 in the Wings of Gold Series
FIGHT TO WIN
Taken hostage in Pakistan while on a routine goodwill inspection of the Mangla Dam, engineer Emily Johnson’s life turns into a nightmare. When an American rescue attempt fails to save her and her fellow hostages, it feels like her harrowing journey will never end.
Then comes Navy SEAL Chief Jared Naize…
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About the Author
Tracy is the bestselling and multiple award-winning author of gritty romance, her books spanning genres across paranormal (The Community Series), military romantic suspense (The Wings of Gold Series), and medieval historical (The Baron’s War Trilogy). She is married to a former Navy helicopter pilot, who retired after thirty years of service and joined the diplomatic corps. He and Tracy currently live in Rome, Italy.
Wings of Gold Series Page 83
