Special Forces Father

by Victoria Pade

  In order not to give herself away, though, she played it cool and said, “Yeah, I kind of figured that.”

  But suddenly kissing was on her mind again. More than the night before when it had merely flitted through her brain.

  Tonight it took firm enough root for her own lips to go a little slack in anticipation. Or was it invitation?

  She wondered if he might have shaved because he’d considered kissing her.

  She wanted him to.

  In fact she was thinking about it—wanting it—so much that for a moment she wasn’t sure if he was leaning forward just slightly or if she was hallucinating because she wanted to believe he was.

  She tilted her chin even as she chanted to herself, Onion breath, onion breath, onion breath...

  But the truth was he still only smelled like a tropical breeze...

  He had leaned forward but she only knew it for sure when he straightened up again, taking himself out of range.

  Which of course was what he should have done, and Dani responded with a higher raise of her chin that she hoped conveyed he’d made the right choice.

  Even as something inside her was deflating because he hadn’t gone through with it and kissed her.

  Then he turned and went to the far end of the island as he said, “What’s on tomorrow’s agenda?”

  Back to business.

  “The kids have swimming lessons and sometimes I let them stay to splash around for a while and practice when the lessons are over—it helps wear them out. Then I promised them dinner at Marconi’s afterward. I need to check in, take a few minutes to measure and mix some of the ingredients for a soup I need to make this week. It has a lot of different parts so we only do it once a year and I have to get things started for it. Plus Griff, my manager, called today and said the leak in the pipe downstairs is getting worse and I need to take a look at it.”

  Liam nodded. “Italian food again tomorrow night then,” he said.

  “Our grill man makes the best rib eye around and a great burger, too, so you don’t have to eat Italian.”

  “It wasn’t a complaint, Variety Pack,” he said in a voice that she thought almost sounded affectionate. “I never get my fill of Italian.”

  There seemed to be some deeper meaning in that as his gaze stayed steady on her face, drinking it in.

  But then—like with that lean in a moment before—he snapped out of it, said he’d see her tomorrow and left.

  And alone in the kitchen, Dani took a deep breath and exhaled, telling herself to be glad that he hadn’t kissed her.

  Her life was already complicated and unsettled enough.

  His life might be on the verge of the massive complication of parenthood coupled with a career in the military that meant his life was always unsettled.

  And while they might be together for the time being, it was going to pass fast and they weren’t going to have anything to do with each other once it did.

  Which would make kissing a really dumb thing to do.

  But he had been about to do it...

  Somehow she was sure of it.

  And despite knowing it was for the best that he hadn’t, when she turned off the lights and set the security system before heading for bed, she was fighting some heavy-duty disappointment.

  Chapter Five

  “Liam...”

  “Oh, my god, Declan, you look...” Liam blurted out in answer to his brother’s greeting when he walked into the room at the rehab hospital and set eyes on his twin being helped from a bed into a wheelchair.

  Looking at Declan had always been like looking in a mirror—not only were their features that similar, but they’d always been the same height and build. As teenagers they’d competed when it came to working out, measuring biceps, pecs, waists, thighs and calves to compare who was gaining more muscle mass. Even striving to win that contest, they’d always been within a fraction of an inch of the other.

  But now Liam was faced with the signs of his brother’s injuries. Declan had lost weight and muscle. He was pale; his cheeks were sunken. His eyes were dull and lifeless. He looked weak and vulnerable—something Liam had never seen in him—and it shocked him.

  “He looks great now. You should have seen him before,” Conor interjected, sounding like a cheerleader. “Plus you have to remember he was traveling yesterday. That wore him out. That’s why today is a rest day and he won’t start therapy until tomorrow.”

  “That’s what we were just talking about,” said the man who had helped Declan into the wheelchair. He introduced himself as Declan’s physical therapist.

  The physical therapist left them and Conor motioned to one of the visitor’s chairs for Liam while he did his own examination of Declan.

  He checked the jagged scar on the back of Declan’s left hand, testing the movement of his fingers and the strength of his grip. He studied a nearly healed wound on Declan’s left temple, by his hairline. Then he moved on to what was clearly Declan’s worst injury—his left leg and knee.

  A massive brace kept the knee stationary and his leg extended. Conor unfastened the brace to expose evidence of multiple wounds that—like his head wound—were almost healed, along with the scar of an incision that ran from mid-thigh to mid-shin.

  Conor had Declan show him how far he was capable of bending the knee and asked him to move his toes. Then Conor tested the feeling in his toes and foot before replacing the brace, all while Liam watched his twin comply and show pain only in the flinch of his eyebrows.

  The exam gave Liam a few minutes to come out of the shock of seeing Declan like that. But as he adjusted, he also began to think that Conor had understated the problem when he’d mentioned Declan’s mental state. Declan’s spirits seemed alarmingly low.

  Of the two of them, Liam had always been more by-the-book, serious natured. Declan was the smart-ass jokester with boundless energy constantly looking for action, fun and excitement.

  Now, not only did he merely comply with Conor’s requests without any effort to speak to Liam along the way, he also made no jokes, no puns, no comments at all. He was more poker-faced than Liam had ever seen him, completely expressionless and detached, as if he was there physically but totally removed otherwise.

  Conor finished his exam and Declan watched the brace being replaced as if it were being done to someone else. Then Conor said he wanted to talk to the physical therapist and left the room.

  When they were alone, Declan looked Liam squarely in the eye and said in a gravelly, barely audible voice, “We lost Topher.”

  “Conor told me,” Liam answered the same way.

  They’d both been almost as close to Topher Samms as to each other. In many ways—since Conor was four years older—they’d been closer to Topher than to Conor.

  The Samms farm was next to theirs, so the three of them had been together from the cradle up. They’d gone to Annapolis together. They’d gone into the marines together. Had Liam not become Special Forces, he would have joined Declan and Topher in requesting to be assigned to the same unit. For Liam, losing Topher was very nearly as bad as it would have been to lose Declan. And Liam knew that for Declan, too, losing him wouldn’t have been much worse than losing Topher.

  “I tried but I couldn’t save him...” Declan confessed, the crack in his voice the only sign of emotion that Liam had seen since entering the room.

  “Course you did,” Liam said without a doubt.

  “The front wheel on his side of the Humvee must have hit the IED. Topher took most of the blast. It blew the Humvee onto its side...my side... I was driving...”

  Liam could see that his brother was looking for absolution. But he also knew that there was nothing to absolve him of and even though Declan had to have heard that any number of times, he still couldn’t forgive himself.

  Still, Liam had to add his own. “Wasn’t you who planted the I
ED, Dec. Couldn’t see it to avoid it. Not your fault.”

  His brother’s eyes filled and damned if Liam’s didn’t, too. So a moment passed in silence as they both dealt with that before Declan said in barely more than a whisper, “Feels like my fault. Should have been me.”

  “Hey! Don’t give me that bull—”

  “A pregnant wife...a little girl...that’s what I took him away from. Why the frick am I the one left when he needed to come back to them?”

  “Geezez, Declan, there’s no answer to that! Because it was his time and not yours? I’m just glad I didn’t lose you both, for god’s sake! But it sure as hell wasn’t your fault and it sure as hell shouldn’t have been either one of you!”

  “Uh, this is a hospital,” Conor said as he came back into the room.

  It was Liam’s voice that had been raised and, like with Evie and Grady, he was afraid he was desperately mishandling this.

  He took a breath and recalled advice Dani had given him for the twins, trying to put himself in his brother’s shoes.

  Forcing moderation into his tone, he said, “Okay, it’s bad enough that we lost Topher. I’m seeing you in this shape for the first time. You can’t make me think about losing you, too...”

  Liam needed another moment to regain his control.

  When he had it, in his most authoritative tone he said, “You are not to blame and if I have to have that tattooed on your arm or tell you that a million times, I will. And you and I both know that Topher would be saying the same thing to you. We talked about this—the three of us—we knew what we were taking on, not one of us was doing it because of the other two. We agreed that it was to serve a cause greater than ourselves, no matter what the risk. I meant that. Didn’t you?”

  Declan shrugged and inclined his head slightly, arching an eyebrow that confirmed it without enthusiasm.

  Still, Liam was going to take what he could get. “I know Topher meant it, too. He was willing to do it for that pregnant wife, that little girl of his. It sucks that they’re all making the worst sacrifice they could have, but he went in with his eyes open—the same way we did—and now we have to go on. We have to deal with what’s left, Declan. We move forward from here—you and I—exactly the way Topher and I would have if it had been you, exactly the way you and Topher would have if it had been me. It’s what we promised each other and it’s damn sure what we’re going to do. Because it was Topher, that means we’ll do whatever we can, whatever needs to be done for the family he left behind.”

  It didn’t seem as if that had any impact on Declan. He only acknowledged it with a single raise of his chin.

  “Liam is right,” Conor contributed in support. “You honor Topher’s memory and do what you can to help his family, to make sure they never want for anything.”

  Still Declan just sat there. He didn’t say anything. He again showed no emotion.

  “Letting yourself be another casualty won’t help them,” Liam felt the need to point out. “Work on getting back on both feet, getting yourself in shape again, getting the hell out of here. Then we’ll tackle what Topher left behind. We’ll make sure we do everything for them that Topher would have done for us if the tables were turned.”

  Another slight raise of Declan’s chin was his only response and that seemed to have nothing behind it but a feeble attempt to humor both Liam and Conor.

  But their conversation was cut short just then when a nurse came into the room.

  “I asked your doctor to take some more X-rays,” Conor explained, nodding in the direction of the nurse. “I want to make sure everything is healing the way it should be before we get started with this rehab. It’ll be intense and I want to know the leg can take it.”

  Yet another scant raise of Declan’s chin and nothing more.

  “I’d say you could wait for him,” the nurse said as she unlocked the wheels on his chair and maneuvered it in the direction of the door, “but after X-rays he has his entrance interview with Dr. Noone and that takes quite a while. But it’s up to you. The cafeteria is one floor down.”

  “No, he needs to rest, too,” Conor said.

  “We’ll be back another day,” Liam told Declan.

  Declan merely nodded but didn’t say goodbye as the nurse wheeled him out of the room.

  Liam took a steeling breath and stood. Only when he and Conor were out in the hall and headed in the opposite direction to leave did he say, “He’s not good.”

  “Physically—after what he’s been through—he’s doing great.”

  “It’s not that I’m worried about. When have you ever known Declan to be like that? Flat—it’s like he’s not there.”

  “I know,” Conor said. “No wisecracks, no jokes—”

  “Hell, he barely talks! He’s like an empty shell—except for the stuff over Topher. It’s like there’s nothing there except guilt. And that crap about how it should have been him? Geezez, is he gonna hurt himself?”

  Conor breathed a sigh that made Liam think his older brother was finally letting his own concerns for Declan show.

  “He hasn’t made any threats of that,” Conor said. “But I wanted him in this rehab for their psych department—it’s one of the best and I’ve got him on their radar. I’ve been told that there are a couple of other guys rehabbing here who are carrying some similar baggage so there’s a plan to start a group, get them together with Declan, see if maybe he’ll open up with them better than he does with a shrink. Or with me. Or even with you, apparently—I was hoping it might be different with you—you know, the twin thing—but I guess not.”

  “I don’t know... I just... I didn’t know whether to kick his ass or hug him and try to make him cry it out.”

  “Yeah. Neither one would have worked any better than what you did—I’ve tried both. He’s buried under his own demons right now. Since I’m in Denver to stay I’ve also set it up with the shrink to counsel me—he can’t legally tell me anything specific to Declan because of privacy laws, but I’m just trying to figure out the best way to approach him, to deal with it, because I don’t know what to do either. My area is the body, not the mind. The shrink says it’ll be a process, the same as his leg—one step at a time.”

  “With a guarantee that he’ll be himself again when it’s done?”

  They’d left the hospital and were at Conor’s car, facing each other over the top, so Liam saw his older brother’s weak shrug. “There weren’t any guarantees on his leg. There aren’t any guarantees on this. We just do what we can and hope for the best.”

  * * *

  Was she gawking?

  Well, she was, but was it obvious? Dani glanced around to see if anyone had noticed.

  She was sitting on the bottom bleacher beside the swimming pool where Evie and Grady were just finishing their swimming lessons.

  Dani didn’t always agree to the extension in the pool the twins regularly begged for. Swimming was not high on her list of likes. But today when their pleading had begun, Liam had offered to do it.

  And he’d just come out of the men’s locker room.

  While he’d worn clothes that gave hints about the body being covered, nothing had prepared her for seeing him in only a pair of swim trunks.

  And what those swim trunks didn’t cover was most definitely something to gawk at.

  Not only was his face movie-star handsome, he had the body to go with it. There was a full six-pack of abdominals below pecs that could have been sculpted from granite. Expansive shoulders and biceps were pumped up into boulders under his taut, smooth skin. His legs were long and also well honed, with thighs that looked thick enough to power lift a house. And viewing it all together, Dani had to force her jaw not to drop.

  This is a public place, not a bedroom! she silently reminded herself.

  Bedroom? Had she actually just put Liam Madison and bedroom together in one thought?
r />   That was bad.

  She couldn’t do things like that, she told herself firmly. Not even in her mind. She couldn’t do things like think of Liam in conjunction with anything to do with the bedroom and she also couldn’t do whatever that had been when they’d almost kissed last night.

  But now that thoughts of the bedroom and kissing were creeping in, it told her that she really needed to work on putting it all to a halt.

  The twins were and had to be the center of the universe for them both, with nothing else added to the mix. She was Evie and Grady’s guardian; he was potentially their father. There was no way she should ever, in a million years, let herself feel the attraction she was feeling for the father of kids she was in charge of. It was one great big no-no and she was going to stop it. Now!

  She unscrewed the top to her water bottle and took a big gulp to cool down the sudden flush she was feeling, wishing she’d worn clothes that were lighter weight than the jeans and double layer of T-shirts she had on. At least she’d put her hair up today—that helped.

  But even over the bottle she couldn’t take her eyes off Liam as he got into the water, where the swimming teacher was just saying goodbye to Evie and Grady.

  And the camouflage of the pool water didn’t help much because he was in the shallow end, so his incredible upper half was still there for her to see in all its glory. And Dani thought that if she really wanted to cool down she might have to pour her bottled water over her head rather than drink it.

  But then she took a look at Liam’s face alone, his expression, and that actually helped more than the water or the stern talking-to.

  He was gorgeous. And yes, there was something about that time after the kids went to bed at night when he wasn’t trying so hard, when he seemed to drop his guard, something about talking to him and having quiet time alone with him, that felt like there might be a little connection happening.

  But she’d been looking for signs of Liam’s military service taking any toll on him mentally or emotionally. And today she worried that one might have appeared.