by KaLyn Cooper
That night, his were centered around her and the children. In the past three weeks, they had fallen into a routine. His life hadn’t changed much. He still rose every morning and ran several miles along the beach then swam back to his home. As usual, he prepared a large breakfast, except now he shared it with Anora and Brann.
As he’d discovered, the children were early risers. Starting the first morning after they moved into their side, they met him as he climbed the beach to his house.
They were such good kids. They knew they were not permitted on the beach alone, so they’d wait for him on the deck off what he’d come to think of as Teagan’s living room. The first few times he’d invited them to breakfast, they’d met him at his door. Then it dawned on him, these were his children as much as they were hers. They should come and go from his home as comfortably as they did from Teagan’s side.
Because she may also need access to his home at some point, he gave them the key which they kept on a small hook near the door. Now, they would let themselves in and wait patiently on his deck.
He’d grown to love his mornings with the kids. He would make sure they were safe back inside before he’d leave for work. Teagan was usually up and showered, meeting the children at the door where they all stood and waved goodbye to him.
On his way home, he often stopped and picked up something for supper, or they’d try out another restaurant in the area. Elizabeth hadn’t been kidding when she said Teagan couldn’t cook.
Often, Logan would take Brann to the batting cage or they would play catch on the beach until dark. Unfortunately, they had arrived too far into the season for the boy to join Little League that year, so they concentrated on skills improvement. After spending all day with Marines, he truly enjoyed his time with the young boy.
Downing the last of his beer, Logan sat quietly until Teagan had closed the sliding glass door to her bedroom. He took the beer bottle back to the kitchen and tossed it into the recycling. Chuckling to himself, he padded back to his bedroom. Before the children had moved in next door, everything had gone into the trashcan. Both children were little good-earth Nazis. Brann had lectured him on how it was necessary to recycle so that his generation was not left with a trashy world.
Logan had the hardest time not laughing. The faces Teagan had made while sitting in his line of sight during the chastising by the seven-year-old, tested his emotional control. Tomorrow, it would be tested once again. He had to work all day, then drive six hours, with everyone in the same vehicle, up to Washington DC.
When he rolled into home at five thirty that night, he was shocked to see suitcases and backpacks lining the drive.
“Unlock all your doors and the back hatch,” Teagan ordered. “Do you need to shower before we go?”
“Doors are unlocked,” he announced.
“We have the green light to go. Load up.” Teagan called out. The kids dropped their backpacks on the floor of the backseat then rolled their bags to the storage portion in the back of his SUV. They moved without complaint, as though they were on a mission, helping each other like a good team.
“Logan.” Teagan peered around from the back of the vehicle. “Go shower and change. Are you packed?”
He looked down at his uniform and realized they were ready to roll, and he wasn’t. “Of course. Give me five minutes to change.”
Teagan looked at her watch. “Brann, would you please go with Uncle Logan and bring his suitcase down here? Anora, run in and go potty one more time.”
When he slid behind the wheel, both children were already buckled into their seats. In the rearview mirror he could see his bag. He learned long ago to always double check his own gear.
Teagan smiled at him. “Ready to roll with six minutes to spare.” She looked so damn proud of herself.
“We needed somebody like you controlling the MEU load out,” he said referring to the Marine Expeditionary Unit which moved thousands of Marines and hundreds of tons of equipment into a combat zone.
“I didn’t want you to have any reason to complain about the children or me.” She reached forward and punched the go button on the GPS. “I knew it was important we try to leave on time.”
She lightly touched his forearm. Over the past several weeks, she touched him more often. Casually. Never sexually, even though heat radiated from her body and shot straight to his cock every time.
“We’ll get there, when we get there.” He put the vehicle in reverse and backed out onto the road. “There should be less traffic since were traveling on a Wednesday night. Coming home on Sunday is going to be a whole different story.”
“Home.” Teagan smiled as she craned her neck to look at their duplex.
Tilting the rearview mirror down, he saw the children were occupied. Both had on headphones plugged into tablets.
“When did they get those?”
“Brann already had one, but somehow it got shipped. I bought one for Anora, so she could watch her own movies,” she explained. “We’ve spent hours deciding which movies to buy and most of the day yesterday downloading to their tablets.” She twisted to check on them. “They should be good for at least two hours. They’ve snacked most of the afternoon.”
“You’re fucking genius, and the headphones prove it.” He reached across the center console and gave her hand a little squeeze.
“No, I’m not.”
“Fucking, or genius?” He teased.
“Neither. I haven’t had a date in over six months,” she confessed.
Good to know. He hadn’t been out with a woman in eight weeks, and he kissed her on the cheek good night. Karen, his fuck-buddy, had shipped out almost four months ago for a fifteen-month Middle Eastern tour of duty. He’d been on the hunt for a new special friend when Gabriel died. Then his world turned upside down. He grinned as he once again looked at the two beautiful children in his backseat. His children.
“Elizabeth and Matthew know we won’t get there until late. Even though both of them have to work tomorrow, they’re going to wait up for us.” Teagan talked as she texted.
“Let her know I’m willing to get a hotel room.” He’d offered the moment he heard about Teagan and Elizabeth’s plan.
“Oh, no.” There was warning in her voice. “You’re not getting out of kid duty. You’ve spoiled Anora and Brann by making them breakfast every morning. Remember, I can’t cook.”
“I think I’d better start giving you lessons.” Then he remembered something that he saw in the base newspaper. “There’s a gourmet shop out in Jacksonville that offers couples cooking classes one night a week. Are you interested?”
Her face lit up…then suddenly collapsed. “What would we do with the kids?”
“The base has a childcare facility that comes highly recommended by one of my captains. Now that the kids have military ID cards, we can drop them off. They can make new friends and play with somebody else’s toys while we learn to cook.” Logan had discovered that he had more in common with his married captains than he did with other lieutenant colonels on the base. Most of them had children in their teens, or they were working on a second family and had babies.
“That sounds wonderful. Do you want me to sign us up while you’re driving?” She sounded excited about doing something with him that didn’t involve the children.
That was encouraging. “Sure.” He started to reach for his wallet in his back pocket.
“I’ve got this.” She patted his forearm.
“Teagan. When you go out with me, I pay.” He hoped his voice was insistent.
“Logan, let me make something perfectly clear.” She twisted in her seat to first check on the children, probably to make sure they weren’t listening, then to face his way. “This is not a date. This is me learning how to cook…something, so the whole burden of feeding us isn’t on you. We’re not dating.”
“Why aren’t we dating?” The idea of taking Teagan out, alone, somewhere nice, sounded like a good idea. Their joint custody of the children tied them tog
ether for at least fourteen more years, which was longer than any special operator’s marriage he’d ever known. They were already acting like a family. The only thing obviously missing was the sex.
“I don’t do relationships.” She glanced back over at the children and lowered her voice. “I do men. They do me. Most often, that involves me putting on a little black dress, we go out to dinner someplace that has cloth napkins, and we talk. If I feel there’s some chemistry, we have a repeat. If the man makes it through the third date, we’ll get a hotel room on the way home. Sometimes, we’ll have a repeat of date three.”
She glanced out the window for several heartbeats before returning her gaze to him. “It’s been a long time since anyone has made it to date number three. I go out on a lot of first dates.” He saw the pain in her beautiful blue eyes.
She continued the self-deprecation. “There aren’t a lot of men who want to date a forty-two-year-old woman who is set in her ways, tied down with a crazy mother, and would rather talk about engine performance than his boring job in politics. The good ones are all married. If they’re divorced, there’s usually a damn good reason. Same goes if they’ve never been married. There’s a damn good reason.”
He grabbed her hand and wove his fingers through hers locking their palms together. “You’re wrong. You’ve just been dating the wrong men.” And he planned to prove it to her. “I’m divorced, and yes, there’s a damn good reason for it. Kember had an affair with a married colonel. I was a major, several steps down that command chain. For me, adultry an unforgivable sin. She broke up two marriages. Was I at fault? Maybe. I’d been up to my ass in alligators, running ops all over the Middle East. If I made a mistake, a good young man could die. I couldn’t afford to make mistakes at work. But I guess I made a big one with her. My job meant more to me than she did.” Logan had never admitted that out loud before.
She squeezed his hand. “I always wondered what happened to the two of you. But I have to be honest with you, I never liked her. She always seemed so fake. She was such a social climber. Did I ever tell you that I ran into her at a party one night about a year ago?”
Logan was surprised she hadn’t mentioned it. “No. After Kember and the colonel were discovered, I asked to be reassigned to the West Coast during the divorce. With all the shit that went down here at Camp Lejeune, USSOCOM was more than happy to send me as far away from here as possible. I never kept up with her. I think most people saw me as a victim and never talked about her around me.” It had been years since the divorce. The anger and humiliation had finally passed. “So, what words of enlightenment did she share with you?”
“First, I believe in karma, and as far as I’m concerned, that little bit got what was coming to her.” Teagan wasn’t holding back. “You know that the Brigadier General was forced to retire because of his adultery with her.”
“Yeah, it’s nice to have low friends in high places.” Logan went on to explain, “A good friend told me about that.”
Teagan giggled. She fucking giggled. In all the years he’d known her, he’d never seen her quite like this. “Well, it seems that Kember had made an ass of herself blatantly flirting with the general’s married friends, that he divorced her within months of them moving to DC. To her surprise, she had signed a prenup leaving her with absolutely nothing. She was back to working civil service as an administrative aide somewhere inside the Beltway.”
“Probably looking for her next victim. She cost me thousands to get rid of her, but as far as I was concerned, it was money well spent.” They had wandered off on a tangent so Logan brought the conversation back around. “So, Teagan, does my divorce shove me into that same box of divorced men?”
“Certainly not.” When she squeezed his hand, he realized they were still connected. “Logan, it’s no wonder the Marine Corps snatched you up so quickly. Even their motto says they are looking for a few good men. You are one of the best men I’ve ever known.” She leaned in close to him and said in a very low tone. “You have taken in two orphaned children and promised to raise them to adulthood. Most men would run the other way. Hell, most men don’t want their own biological children, say nothing about taking on someone else’s.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror to check on the kids. They were fine, totally absorbed in their videos.
“You took them on, too,” he reminded her.
“Yes.” She glanced over her shoulder at Anora and Brann, a warm loving smile on her pretty face. “But I loved both these children since the day they were born. Marsha shared them with me because she knew that I could never have children.”
“What?” Teagan couldn’t have kids? “Why?”
“Aunt Teagan, I’m thirsty.” Anora took her headphones off and looked pleadingly at the woman beside him.
She slid her hand out of his and dug into the large cold bag that sat on the floor between the children’s backpacks. “How about some apple juice?” She held up one of the little boxes.
“Yes, please.” Anora was leaning very forward in her seat as though she was looking for something on the floor. “Is it too late to have a snack? When are you going to stop for supper?”
His question completely forgotten, or ignored, the next several hours involved conversations with one child or another. By nine thirty, though, their bellies filled with fast food, and snacks that they would sneak when they thought he and Teagan weren’t looking, the children finally fell asleep.
About an hour later, after riding in silence, Teagan finally spoke. “Can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure, anything.” Over the years, they have had some very bizarre conversations about everything from the attributes of baseball versus soccer, to international terrorism.
She glanced back checking on the kids one more time before she shifted to face him. “I love that you spend so much time with Brann, but Anora also needs a father figure. Maybe even more than her older brother. I don’t believe that Gabe ever spent much time at all with her.”
“I spend a lot of time with her,” he said defensively. “We have breakfast together every morning. Most evenings, if we’re watching television together, she curls up in my lap.”
“No, you spend breakfast with her and Brann. Like you admitted, when were all watching television together, she likes to sit on your lap.” Teagan shook her head as though in frustration. “I’m not explaining this very well. You spend time alone with Brann, but you never spend time alone with Anora.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror at the two children he was coming to love. Teagan was right. He was comfortable spending time with Brann. He understood little boys. He used to be one. He had to admit the truth. “I don’t know anything about little girls. What the hell am I supposed to do with her?”
“Play catch on the beach. She needs to learn the same hand-eye coordination that you’re teaching Brann every night.” She let out a long breath. “I’ve also seen you on the floor playing soldiers with Brann.”
“He sees men in uniforms every time I take them on the base, of course he’s interested.” He loved taking the kids with him when he was just dashing to pick up something quick from his office. They always asked so many questions.
“And who was sitting in the car seat beside him?” Teagan’s punch hit home.
Anora asked just as many questions as her brother, maybe even more. She’d been the first one to ask to see his office. Brann’s questions dealt with things, objects that they used as special operators. Anora, on the other hand, wanted to know what the men did, what were their jobs? Both had an endearing curiosity, it was just different.
“All right, when we get back home, I promise to spend some alone time with Anora.” Doing what, he had no fucking idea.
Teagan’s hand on his arm registered. “Thank you. The fact that you’d even try, means a lot to me.”
He moved his hand, capturing hers. “All three of you mean a lot to me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Teagan stared at the two-stor
y brick colonial that used to be the home of Gabriel and Marsha Davis. The yard was perfectly mowed and trimmed, as usual, but somehow it looked cleaner. Newer.
“The new landscaping certainly makes it look different.” Logan pulled into the driveway. “The real estate agent was right about pressure washing off the bottom five feet of the house. The bushes had grown too large and created a green sheen. I think they did a good job.”
“Yes, I have to agree.” Teagan got out of the car and watched several more pull into the driveway and park out front on to the street. All their friends were there, except Elizabeth, who had volunteered to stay home with the four children.
Teagan didn’t recognize the man with short dark hair who stepped out of a black SUV. He walked with an air of authority, the same as Logan, Micah, and Matthew. She instantly pegged him as current or former military. All four men oozed power and confidence.
Logan left her side and moved to intercept the newcomer. “Hey, Tony, how the hell have you been?” With big smiles, they did the bro-hug thing, clasped hands and back pounding.
“Busy.” They started back toward her where she had been joined by Micah and Matthew. “I appreciate you hiring my company.” He looked up at the house. “This has definitely been an interesting case.”
When the two men joined them, Logan made the introductions. “Teagan, Micah, Matthew, I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine, Tony Alvarez. We worked together several years ago, when he wore a green beret.” He gestured to each as he introduced them. “Teagan Williams, former Seahawk pilot. Navy Captain Micah Reid, he pushes around a bunch of SEALs down in Virginia Beach. Matthew Saint Clare, he runs the special operations group out of Langley.”
“Damn. We’re living proof the covert world truly is small.” Tony’s gaze swept the large lawn and well-established neighborhood. “Let’s get started. I feel exposed standing out here. Let me walk you through what we think happened.”
Everyone stood on the front porch. “I was able to hunt down and recapture some of the security video from the neighbors.” He turned on his tablet and tapped to the correct file, then turned it around for everyone to see.
