“Yeah.”
Bernie’s silence stretched. “I should have never opened my big mouth and encouraged you to take the leap.”
“That isn’t why I did it, Bernie. I did it because I wanted to. It’s been over a year since I’ve been held, touched. I wanted him. He wanted me just as much. I know I wasn’t the only one feeling it.”
“Maybe he’ll call tomorrow and talk to you about what was bothering him.”
She doubted it. It wasn’t anything she had done. There was something going on with him. She was tired of moody, secretive assholes.
“He’d be a fool to walk away just when the two of you were getting to know each other.”
“He’s got four months left to serve in the Navy. And I knew this was only going to be a short-term thing.”
“It doesn’t have to be, Sloane.”
What would she have to offer him if they continued to see each other? What if they got serious? He had his secrets and she had hers.
“Maybe it’s good he’s pulled away. If Johnson rehires Reed, I’ll need to come home early and go into the office.”
“Sloane…” Bernie remained silent for a long moment. “Is it really worth it?”
She heard the weariness in Bernie’s voice, felt it in every bone of her own body. “No. It isn’t. But I don’t want to quit until I have another job lined up. I’ll have to face it until I can find another.”
“Don’t come home early. Don’t change your plans because of Reed. Let them do what they will. No job is worth this.”
Her eyes stung. “No, it isn’t.”
“Fuck them,” Bernie’s rage and frustration came through and made her smile.
“You’re right, fuck them!” She put as much feeling into it as she could.
She closed her eyes against the tears. “We’ll draw unemployment together.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“I think I’ve had enough for the day.” She stretched out on the couch. “Now you’ve talked me down, I’m going to say good night. I’ll call you after I’ve talked to Johnson tomorrow.”
“Try to rest, Sloane.”
“I will.” She pushed the button to end the call and threw her arm over her eyes. The silence of the condo settled in around her. She’d go on with her vacation as though Reed had never been here.
She wasn’t going to wait for Connor to call either. She turned her phone off.
Fuck them both.
Men are assholes.
CHAPTER 12
‡
Connor sat in one of the rockers on the front porch and let the soothing sound of crickets and frogs lull him back from his dark mood. He’d fucked up with Sloane. He rushed things this morning, and by pulling back tonight he probably made her feel like this morning hadn’t meant anything.
She hadn’t harped at him the way he deserved, or even said anything at all when he said he needed to go. What was she supposed to say when he’d been telegraphing it all the way back from the beach to her apartment? He deserved a kick in the ass. And he’d been kicking his own ass for the past hour.
He pulled out his phone for at least the twentieth time and stared at the screen. He hit Sloane’s number. The call went to voice mail, and he rubbed a hand along his jaw.
“Sloane, I want to apologize for my behavior tonight. You went to an amazing amount of trouble putting the meal together, and I enjoyed every moment with you. There are things that are difficult for me to talk about… My personal life being one of them. I’d like to make up for it tomorrow if you’ll give me a chance. Call me when you get this.”
Why was this so hard for him? It had taken him months to talk about his divorce with Kate. After Cynthia sent him a birthday card, Kate asked him about her, and he’d given her the bare bones, but she wasn’t satisfied. He’d shied away from telling her more. Because of his reticence, she read a lot of things into what he hadn’t said. And things had ended between them long before he returned from his last deployment.
He turned his face away as Toby’s headlights settled on him, then fell away as he turned along the drive. He’d assumed his dad would have Dorothy over, but he must have gone to her house instead. It was Connor who sat in the dark this time, not really waiting for his dad, but trying to get his act together.
Toby walked around the side of the house from the garage. “You’re home early.”
“Yeah.”
“Problem?”
Yeah. I was an asshole. “No. Sloane was tired from all the activity today.”
Toby took a seat on the rocker parallel to his. “If she doesn’t swim much, that’s understandable.”
“She’s actually a pretty good swimmer, and she picked up the basics of how to use all the equipment as easily as some of our BUD/S guys. She even spent some time in the pool today doing some underwater meditation.”
“Underwater meditation huh? Is that a new technique taught on Coronado now?”
“No. She says being underwater is a little claustrophobic for her and the exercises helped her relax and control her breathing.”
“You may not want to push her, Connor.”
“I’m not. I told her today she doesn’t have to go through with a dive unless she really wants to. I’m leaving it up to her. If she decides to give it a try, we’ll need you to spot us sometime next week. I think we should do a thirty-minute shallow dive.”
“Let me know at least a day in advance and I’ll do it.”
“Thanks.”
“Four months isn’t that long,” Toby said. “You can keep in touch with her until you’re out.”
“Are you matchmaking, Dad?”
“Maybe a little. I really like her, and she can really cook.”
He thought of that little carrot flower and flinched. “She enjoys it too.” He stood up. “I’m going to go for a drive, Dad.”
Toby drew a deep breath. “What’s eating at you, Connor?”
It was time he owned up. “I was a lousy husband to Cynthia, Dad. An even lousier boyfriend to Kate. Because I can’t share most of what I do, I’m even worse about sharing other things. It’s—It feels like I’m ripping skin off just getting the words out.
“Sloane wasn’t tired. I managed to let things from the past get in the way between us. Things that are easy to put aside when I’m on the job. I can keep my focus on what I need to do, throw the other stuff in the footlocker and shut the lid, but when the mission’s over, and every moment of my day isn’t spoken for… It’s the reason Cynthia and I divorced, and it’s the reason Kate moved out. It’s the reason I’m leery of leaving the teams. If I don’t have something to distract me, I’ll actually have to think about everything that happened.”
“Maybe you need to see someone, Connor?”
The quiet concern in his father’s voice only intensified the guilt. He drank his way through his grief before, and now it had come back to haunt him. Once he started pouring it all out, all the pain would eat him up. “She’d be nine next week, Dad.”
“I know.” There was a hitch in his father’s voice.
The pain rose up like an open wound inside him. He walked down the steps and around the house to the car. He wanted a drink. He wanted to drink until he couldn’t think anymore. But he’d learned it didn’t solve anything. He’d just wake up tomorrow with a splitting headache, and the grief would still be there.
He needed…he needed something. He just didn’t know what could ease this. For five years he’d been running away from it by putting his time into the job. Until the little girl in El Salvador broke open the wound and left it weeping.
The forty-minute drive leveled him out some. The clock on the radio read a few minutes after eleven when he parked, walked up the steps, and rang the doorbell.
After a few minutes, the door cracked as far as the metal security guard would allow it to and Sloane peered out. “Connor?”
“I know it’s late, but I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to apologize to you for leaving the way I
did.”
He hadn’t thought through what he was going to say, and for a moment his brain shut down. If he didn’t start opening up to someone he….
“The little girl we saw on the beach…” The pain he thought he’d conquered rose up again. “I used to have this recurring dream…of my daughter running on the beach, just a dark silhouette in front of me, and in the dream I know there’s something dangerous just in front of her, I need to protect her. I run after her as fast as I can, but I never catch up to her.” He swallowed, though his throat felt full of razors. “No matter how hard you try, there are some things you can’t protect them from.”
The door closed, the security guard clicked, and the door swung wide. Dressed in a lightweight gown and no shoes, Sloane stepped out on the porch. She slid her arms around him and held him tight. His arms felt wooden as he put them around her and held on. Some of his tension drained away.
“Come inside, Connor.”
The lamps cast a soft glow over the living room, and there was a faint scent of garlic still lingering from the dinner they shared hours earlier. Her computer stood open on the coffee table, her slippers kicked off in front of the sofa. Sloane drew him toward the sofa and urged him to sit.
She closed the laptop. “Would you like a drink, Connor?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
She went into the kitchen. Ice clinked, and a minute later Sloane came back with a glass with a finger of liquid in it.
“Thanks.” He took a sip and was surprised to realize it was a rusty nail, made just the way he liked it. He cupped the glass in both hands. The lemon wedge bobbed on the surface.
“We don’t have to talk unless you want to. We can just sit here together.”
God, why had he walked away from her earlier? “I’m not used to talking about myself or my family. Not used to sharing.”
She sat down on the couch next to him and reached for the throw on the back of the couch to spread it over her. Connor smoothed it over her knees. Sloane covered his hand with hers. “Whatever you say to me won’t go any further than between us.”
“I know.” He took another sip of his drink. “Her birthday is next week. She’d be nine.”
“Olivia?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the tattoo on his wrist.
She touched it. “I noticed it yesterday.”
He nodded. “I’d been in the teams for almost a decade when we got married. I loved Cynthia, but I was still focused on the job. And then my daughter was born. And for the first time in my life there was something that meant more to me than the teams. More than anything else in the world. She was my girl.” He swallowed against the ache in his chest.
“We called her Livy.” He took a sip of the drink to moisten a throat gone dry. “Because she was so full of life. She ran at twelve months. Not walked, but ran. Chattered constantly. Loved music.” He stared down into his glass to keep from looking at Sloane. “We had to watch her like a hawk. She was into everything. By the time she was two she could climb like a monkey and she talked. I was out of the country a lot. Talked to her on FaceTime as often as I could so she wouldn’t forget me.”
He closed his eyes and struggled to control the wave of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. “By the time she was three, she was a real personality, and you never knew what was going to come out of her mouth. She loved to dance and play dress-up. Loved to be read to, and would pretend she was reading to you. She’d pick out sight words she recognized.
“One day she came home from preschool with a fever and said her head hurt. She started throwing up, and two hours later she had a seizure. Cynthia called for an ambulance. They called me in from the field, and I rushed to the hospital. It was pneumococcal meningitis. They put her in a coma because she was in so much pain.” He shook his head. “She died two days later.”
He drained his drink in a single gulp and set the glass on a coaster. “I used to call my mom when I got like this. But she isn’t here anymore. I haven’t dealt with her loss or Livy’s loss very well. Then something happened during our last deployment…” Why had that small, desperately injured child crossed his path? He’d locked away the loss of Livy in a box, all buckled down. “I can’t talk about that. But it brought it all to the surface again.”
He hazarded a glance in her direction to find her face wet with tears. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dumped all this on you.”
She wiped her face with her hands and dried them on her gown, then came over and sat in his lap. Put her arms around him and held him. He crushed her close and turned his face against her shoulder. Her scent filled him. It felt as though a valve had been opened and some of the pressure released.
With her hand stroking the back of his head, massaging his neck, and her cheek pressed to his ear, the comfort she offered eased the ache.
She slipped off his lap. “Come to bed, Connor. We’ll just lie close and hold each other until we can sleep.” She offered her hand. “You can tell me more about her.”
The way he’d left him, his dad would worry if he didn’t come home. Humor finally broke through his other emotions. “I’m going to have to call my Dad and tell him I’m sleeping over.”
Sloane’s smile broke over into a chuckle. “How about I do that?”
CHAPTER 13
‡
Sloane slipped free of the bed but paused to study Connor. He’d talked for more than an hour about Livy. And after he finally drifted off, he’d been restless, his sleep disturbed by dreams. But now his face lacked the tension of the night before. He looked younger, but not as vulnerable as he’d been last night.
She’d felt the weight of keeping the dealings of her clients private. But what she experienced couldn’t come close to what rested on his shoulders and psyche when it involved the taking of lives to protect himself and others. And not being able to talk about it or share the horror of it with anyone had to be a special kind of torture.
Add to that the loss of his mother and his daughter… The pain he shared with her last night echoed inside her. He grieved for the child he lost with heart-crushing intensity, and she grieved for the one she’d never have.
Though he wrapped his arms around her in his sleep, she’d held him and soothed him when the dreams came.
She crept out of the room and went downstairs to make coffee. She’d promised Bernie she wouldn’t worry about things at the office, and there was nothing she could do to change things. But she wanted a heads-up at least.
With her attention focused on Connor last night, she’d been able to set it all aside, but now dread brought a tremor to her hands, and her stomach knotted.
She poured a cup of coffee and took it and her cell out on the small balcony to sit and coax herself into the right frame of mind to deal with this next hurdle.
Setting aside the cup, she did her breathing exercises to release what anxiety she could. The fragrance from the shrubs Toby gave her the day before seemed to soothe her.
She would remain professional no matter what happened, no matter what was said. She needed to put this behind her.
She dialed the office number, and, recognizing the receptionist’s voice, identified herself and asked to speak to Mr. Johnson.
“I’ll transfer you to Jona, Mr. Johnson’s secretary.”
“Thank you.”
“Mr. Johnson’s office. This is Jona Mitchell speaking.”
Hearing the secretary’s voice gave her an idea and her anxiety ease. “Good morning, Jona. This is Sloane Bianchi.”
“What can I do for you, Ms. Bianchi?”
“Has Mr. Johnson interviewed Reed Alexander to return to work?”
“He’s in a meeting now with him, Ms. Bianchi.”
“Will you give me a call if he offers him a contract?”
“Ms. Bianchi, I really shouldn’t.”
She hated to use pressure to get what she wanted from the woman. “Do you remember that zero you left off the contract for Roberts’ Construction? I never mentioned t
he mistake to anyone, and I never would. I just want a heads-up so I can make a decision about how to proceed.”
Silence hung over the line for a few seconds. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
“Thank you, Jona. I appreciate it.”
“And for what it’s worth, Ms. Bianchi, we all know about what he did before, and what he tried to do. He’s probably trying to do the same thing now.”
She’d wondered if the office staff had picked up on what was going on. “Thank you for the warning. I’ll stay on my toes, and I’ll be waiting for your call.”
She picked up her cold coffee and wandered back into the living room. She was refilling her cup when Connor came down the stairs, his hair tousled, his jeans zipped but not buttoned. His broad chest and torso were bare, every muscle delineated in the early morning light.
A wave of pure lust swamped her, loosening the tension from her muscles, and making her wet.
“Morning.” His deep voice brushed over her taut nerves like a caress. He lifted her chin to brush a kiss over her lips. “Would you like to go out for breakfast?”
“I’m waiting for a phone call, and I’m afraid I’ll miss it if I get in the shower. But after that I could be persuaded.”
He eyed her questioningly. “Trouble?”
“I’m hoping not.” She almost told him about Reed’s visit the night before, but held it back. He’d be upset on her behalf, and there was no need. “Rumor has it that my ex may be returning to the firm. I should know shortly if it’s true.”
“And if it is?”
“I’ll have to resign. I won’t work with him. But I’ll try to negotiate a severance package for leaving quietly.”
“And Bernie?”
“For her, too. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll both apply for unemployment. She and I talked last night and decided the job just isn’t worth it. The working conditions we’ve both endured this year…” She shook her head. She wouldn’t whine to him about it. It was nothing compared to what he’d endured. She lay awake half the night thinking about that.
Hot SEAL, Rusty Nail (SEALs In Paradise ) Page 11
