Navy SEAL's Deadly Secret (Runaway Ranch Book 1)

by Cindy Dees

  Eddie would have killed her—for real—if she’d ever tried a stunt like that on him.

  Brett turned around just then and caught her blatantly staring at him. “What?” he muttered.

  “Do you have any idea how sexy it is to see a man in a kitchen cooking for me?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the tiny kitchenette in the corner. “It’s not much of a kitchen.”

  “Doesn’t have to be with a man like you in it—” She broke off, appalled. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me to say.”

  “I don’t think so. Thank you, in fact.”

  She risked meeting his gaze. Brett wasn’t messing with her. He truly didn’t seem offended. Eddie had flown into rages at the idea of being relegated to kitchen duty. He was a Man, and Men didn’t do menial housework.

  She might have set aside the idea of seducing Brett, but that didn’t stop her mind from working on ways to get him to kiss her again. They ate side by side on the couch in front of the wood-burning stove, which was pouring out heat like crazy.

  He took her plate from her, carried it to the sink and washed it while she watched on in shock. Now that was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. Brett opened the refrigerator, poked his head inside and emerged with a can of beer.

  Oh, God. Her mind went blank as the old terror rushed over her. Her eyes darted to the front door, and she calculated how long it would take her to run down the mountain to the main house. Did she have enough clothing not to freeze to death along the way? Would she get lost in the dark and the snow? Freezing to death was preferable to dying by violence—

  “Are you okay?” Brett asked in concern. “What’s wrong?”

  Dammit. He had to go and be all observant again. “Um, everything’s great. Fine. Just fine.”

  He plopped down on the other end of the sofa, studying her over the can of beer. He said evenly, “We’ve already had this discussion. I can sniff a lie at twenty paces. What gives?”

  “Eddie used to drink sometimes.”

  “How’d that go?” he asked. His voice was laced with enough skepticism that she could almost believe he’d known the real Eddie. The born-again bastard who hid behind the pretty face, winning smile and charming way with the ladies.

  She opened her mouth to say that it had been fine, but something in Brett’s eyes stopped her. He was going to weigh her words. Measure them for truth. This was a test to see if she could and would be honest with him. As the moment stretched out, it began to feel more important. As if this was some sort of turning point in their relationship for him.

  She closed her mouth. And considered his question seriously. Marrying Eddie had been the biggest mistake of her life. She had ruined her future and ultimately destroyed her own soul.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth and let truth come out. The first real truth she’d told anyone, ever, about her life with Eddie Billingham. “Being married to Eddie was hell on Earth.”

  “I can imagine. He was a gigantic asshole in high school.”

  “How did you see that when nobody else did?” she exclaimed.

  “I wasn’t a girl whose panties he was trying to get into. I played football with him. And he was as dirty a player as I ever saw. Cheated all the time. Lied to the coach and to referees. I can think of at least three guys from opposing teams who had promising football careers ahead of them whom Eddie targeted. Destroyed knees on two of them. Gave the third guy a concussion so bad he was never allowed to play football again.”

  “Yeah, well, he ruined me, too.”

  Brett surged partially off the couch at that, and then sank back carefully. He set the beer down on the floor and turned his full attention to her. “What did he do to you, Anna?”

  She shook her head. She really didn’t want to talk about any of this. All of it was stuffed into a drawer somewhere in the back of her mind, closed tight and locked away with every mental padlock she could summon. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” She added lightly, “My mama taught me it’s not Christian to speak ill of the dead, you know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  She stared at Brett. At length, she mumbled, “What?”

  “That’s a stinking pile of steaming crap, Anna. People who were bad in life are still bad in death. Dying doesn’t suddenly make you a good guy.”

  He delivered the words with such bitterness that she blurted, “Who are you talking about right now?”

  It was his turn to stop, blink, and consider her question at length. She waited him out, giving him time and space to come up with an answer. Finally, he muttered, “Myself.”

  “What?” she squawked. “You’re not a bad person!”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Yes, Brett, I do. You saved me from that robber, and you saved me again today from Jimbo Billingham. Without thinking, you just acted heroically. It’s your core nature to be a good guy. You didn’t have to put yourself out for me. You weren’t in any danger. But you leaped into the fray and put yourself in harm’s way to protect me.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. I wasn’t in any danger from the kid and his knife, or from Jimbo. I’m a highly trained Special Forces commando with years and years of combat experience. Neither of those assholes stood a chance against me.” He paused, then added, “Had I still been on active duty, I would be in a world of trouble for not finding a nonviolent way to diffuse both situations. The military doesn’t want guys like me running around acting like Rambo.”

  She could see that. Still. He needed to take credit for saving her. Twice. She tried, “So where were the other people in the diner, or in your parents’ living room? None of them stepped forward to even complain, let alone intervene. Face it, Brett. You’re a hero at heart, whether you like it or not.”

  “Aw hell, honey. I’m a lot of things, but a hero is not one of them.”

  She knew that feeling well enough. Everyone who wasn’t friends with Eddie thought she was the poor, grieving widow of the town’s golden boy. It was all such a lie. After all, Jimbo had not been wrong earlier. She had killed his brother.

  She stared into the fire, visible through the tempered-glass front of the stove, for a long time, letting the sluggish dance of flames and the steady glow of the embers mesmerize her. She lost herself in the silence and the warmth, and the primal allure of the fire. If only she could disappear entirely. The world would be a better place. She didn’t deserve to live in a world that included heroes like Brett who’d left the best part of themselves on foreign battlefields so others could be free.

  A log popped loudly, startling the hell out of her and knocking her out of her reverie. Reggie woke up, stood carefully, turned around a couple of times and lay down on his other side.

  “What happened to Reggie?” she asked idly. “Do you know how he got hurt?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  She glanced over at Brett. He had finished his beer apparently, for he started slowly twisting the can in his hands, turning it into an aluminum rope.

  “Well? What happened to him?” she prompted him.

  “IED.”

  “I E what?” she echoed.

  “Improvised Explosive Device.”

  “There was a bomb here on the ranch?” She was aghast at the notion.

  “No. In Afghanistan.”

  She looked from Brett to the dog and back to Brett. “I don’t understand.”

  “Reggie was a military working dog. Ran with my platoon in Afghanistan. We were out on patrol, and he found an IED the hard way.”

  “Ohmigosh! That poor, poor dog!”

  Brett’s face contorted into a mask of pain so deep it was hard for her to look at it. She was torn between going to Reggie to comfort him and going to the man to console him. She settled for murmuring, “It must have been hard to see him hurt.”

  Brett shook his head. The man looked wired so
tight that he couldn’t even form words. That did it. She slid across the couch to him and laid her palms on his cheeks. “It’s okay, Brett. You’re here. Alive. Safe. And so is Reggie. You both made it.”

  Brett stunned her by pitching forward and burying his face against her neck. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was a sob that shook his chest in a racking shudder. Good grief. How traumatic had seeing Reggie hurt been? She wrapped her arms around Brett’s head, her fingers sliding through his silky, short hair, pulling him closer. He shifted a little so his ear pressed against her chest over her heart. She caught herself rocking slightly, as if she were comforting an upset child.

  How much suffering must it have taken to break a man this tough? Fear coursed through her that she wasn’t strong enough to bear whatever agonies he must have endured. But she could hold him. She could offer silent comfort. Her heartbeat. She only prayed it was enough.

  His arms slid around her waist, and he hung on for dear life. Pain radiated from him in waves so overpowering she wasn’t sure she could breathe under the weight of it. How in the world was he surviving with all this agony and grief locked inside him? No wonder he’d come up here to this cabin to get away from the world.

  Not that it was good for him, of course. In dealing with the weight of her own grief and guilt, she’d discovered that running away from it and distracting herself with projects and people had been easier than actually trying to face it. But running also hadn’t cured what ailed her.

  She glanced over at Reggie, sprawled on his side, sleeping peacefully in front of the fire, his black coat gleaming softly. He wasn’t hanging onto the trauma of nearly being blown up. The dog was thoroughly enjoying this moment, content to be warm and dry and indoors on a stormy night. Reggie wasn’t hung up about the past, and undoubtedly wasn’t fretting about the future.

  “The problem with us humans is we overthink everything,” she murmured.

  Brett snorted against her chest. “That’s the understatement of the century.”

  She stroked her hand through his hair, trying to convey with her touch that she sympathized with his pain and wanted to comfort him.

  He groaned very faintly, under his breath, and she didn’t think he’d intended for her to hear that sound of heart-wrenching grief.

  “You’re not alone, Brett. I’m right here with you.”

  “It’s not safe to be with me,” he ground out. He started to push away from her, but she tightened her grip on him, unwilling to let him run away from this moment. She sensed that he needed this possibly even more than she did.

  “I trust you, Brett. You won’t hurt me.”

  Another sound escaped him, this time laced with self-loathing.

  “You’re not a bad man. I know it. Deep down in my heart.”

  “You’re wrong, Anna. Very, very wrong.”

  “Name me one terrible thing you’ve done. Something really despicable.”

  “How about attacking Jimbo? I damn near strangled him to death.”

  “You’re forgetting that he was attempting to strangle me. He told me he was going to kill me. You did, in fact, save my life.”

  “He said that?” Brett asked quickly.

  She winced mentally because the next obvious question to ask would be why he’d wanted to kill her. She blatantly diverted Brett, saying, “You saw how scared I was and rushed to the rescue without a second thought.”

  “It would be more accurate to say that I saw how scared you were and something snapped inside my head. That I dropped into a violent fugue state and blindly attacked a man who, fortunately in this case, deserved the violence I unleashed on him. But what about the next time? What if I mistake a situation, read it wrong, and hurt or kill an innocent person? I’m a ticking time bomb, Anna. No matter what you say, you’re not going to convince me I’m a good person.”

  “Regardless. Rescuing me from Jimbo was really sweet of you.”

  He lifted his head from her chest, pulled back enough to stare down at her. “Are you freaking serious? You actually think I’m sweet?”

  He started to chuckle, and she replied defensively, “Yes, I do. I can’t remember the last time someone came roaring to my defense like that.”

  Speaking of things snapping inside his head, she saw in his eyes the moment when something else clicked in his noggin. His smile faded and he asked cautiously, “What else—who else—have you needed defending from?”

  And it was her turn to shut down. “Nothing. Nobody. It was just an expression—”

  His eyebrows came together in a frown, and she broke off, realizing she’d blurted the same old, tired lie she always told when asked about her marriage to Eddie.

  “Fine. It wasn’t nothing,” she huffed. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He stared at her for a moment and then nodded, as if accepting that she was trying to tell him the truth. “We make a hell of a pair, don’t we?” he muttered.

  “If you’re referring to our mutual unspoken contest of who’s more messed up than the other one, I suppose we do.”

  He grinned at her. “I’ve got you dead to rights on that score, kid.”

  The smile drained away from her face, leaving her feeling decades older than her twenty-seven years. She highly doubted that he would win the contest. He was a soldier, paid and ordered to kill enemy combatants. She had no such excuse.

  “Don’t you go and cry on me again,” he said in alarm. “I suck at tears.”

  “I thought you did pretty good before,” she managed to say lightly.

  “Aw, Anna. Come here.” He gathered her into a hug, and this time it was her ear plastered to his heart. It thumped slow and steady and strong, like the man in whom it lived. Why couldn’t he see himself the way she saw him?

  She slipped her arms around his waist, which was narrow and hard, completely devoid of any flab. The man didn’t know the meaning of body fat, apparently. Her palms measured the long ridges of muscle down each side of his spine. They might as well have been carved from stone they were so hard. She slid her hands up, following the line of his back, and as he shifted position and pulled her a little closer, bulges of muscle moved as well, giving way to the hard edge of his shoulder blade.

  Nope. No body fat at all. It was enough to make a girl feel a wee bit inadequate. But she’d never been the kind of girl to do hard-core workouts. She’d always been active—a hiker, camper, and outdoorsy kid growing up—but hours in a gym with weights and cardio and sweat? Not so much.

  The heartbeat beneath her ear changed, thudding harder and faster. All of a sudden, her palms felt electrified by the heat of his skin, and her simple exploration shifted, morphed into something with definite sexual undertones.

  She might as well be groping a tiger. Brett’s size and power and lethal training were all right there, in her hands. This was no boy holding her. This wasn’t even a regular man. This was a warrior. A soldier.

  Caution roared through her. Danger! Danger!

  And yet, she was drawn to it. Drawn to Brett. God, was she some sort of junkie for dangerous men? In hindsight, Eddie had given her all kinds of warning signs of trouble to come, even before they’d run away from Sunny Creek at the ripe old age of eighteen and eloped.

  He’d gotten mean when drunk, even in high school. He’d always apologized profusely and showered her with attention, particularly in front of the other girls in school, which had played right into her desperate need for approval and acceptance. He’d dragged her into the “cool” crowd whether the other kids had wanted her there or not. She’d been so needy and insecure that she’d overlooked the fists through walls, the ugly way he’d looked at her when she talked to other boys, how he occasionally manhandled her, and the time he’d torn her beloved teddy bear to shreds.

  Her own parents had divorced when she was little, and she’d never seen what a healthy relationship looked like. She
should have known better, but she’d had no measuring stick—

  “Where’d you go off to on me, Anna?” Brett murmured.

  Oh! Her attention jerked back to the man whose bare back she was feeling up. She realized with a start that she was digging her nails into his bare flesh and loosened her grip instantly. “I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay. I’m pretty tough. What were you thinking about that turned you into a cat with its claws out?”

  She laughed a little. “I was thinking about high school.”

  He groaned. “What a shit show that was.”

  She lifted her head to stare up at him. “You were the most popular kid in your class. Quarterback of the football team. Homecoming king, for crying out loud. What did you have to complain about?”

  He snorted. “My old man was determined to make a Marine out of me, like he’d been. My little sisters had boys sniffing all over them and none of my brothers would help me keep the losers away from them. The girl I thought I was going to marry cheated on me with my best friend, and truth be told, I was horny pretty much every waking minute. Teenage hormones were hell.”

  She nodded. “No kidding. I followed mine to Hollywood and paid the price big-time.”

  “Fill in the blanks for me. You dated Eddie in high school. After graduation the two of you moved to Hollywood and got married. Yes?”

  She nodded.

  “Then he sucked at acting and couldn’t get any jobs. What did you do?”

  “I went to night school and got an accounting degree. I got a job as a bookkeeper for a small movie production company that made porn films.”

  “Holy cow. There’ve got to be some stories there. But let’s get back to that later.”

  “I didn’t see the films getting made. I sat in a crappy office and crunched numbers. Although I can tell you how much any kind of sex toy you can think of costs purchased in bulk from a wholesale supplier.”