by Seton, Cora
He looked at her, his dark eyes searching her face. Knowing her luck, she probably had cookie crumbs on her cheek or a stray eyelash stuck on the end of her nose. She wanted to be sexy and elegant around this man. In fact, she’d award bonus points for cool and remote, because his eyes were gorgeous. He had the longest lashes…
And he was talking. Whoops.
“I want us to stay married,” he said, like he hadn’t just shown up out of the blue and dropped back into her life like an unexploded ordnance. Which she knew far, far too much about because he’d been overseas and she’d been worried, so she’d gone on a Google binge she still regretted. Sometimes, it was much better not knowing.
“Thirty six months and you want to pick up where we left off? Until you ship out again?”
Her pulse picked up, her neglected girly bits giving a squee of delight before she could put things back into perspective. Sex! She could have hot, dirty, wonderful sex with this man just as soon as she emptied her living room of cookie-exchanging women.
He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand. “I’m not leaving.”
He was not particularly verbose, was he? “More words. Give me something to work with here.”
“I’m no longer employed by Uncle Sam. Joey suggested that I come up here to Strong and think about joining the smoke jumper team.”
It was easy to imagine him jumping out of a plane bay, feet first into the flames. The real question was why this man had finally returned to Strong. One reason came immediately to mind.
“Does Joey know about us?” Because that would be one more complication to untangle. She loved her brother, but he’d never figured out that she’d progressed past the age of five and didn’t need him to pull a protect-and-defend every time she hit a bump in the road.
“Not unless you told him.” Zack returned his attention to the reindeer show. “Did you?”
“It didn’t come up.” Joey had been deployed overseas, as the man sitting beside her knew very well since they’d served in the same unit. She hadn’t wanted to worry him with her impulsive decision and then…well…her quickie marriage to Zack hadn’t seemed terribly real, especially after what she called The Non-Incident eighteen months ago when Zack had completely ignored her during his leave.
“Did you think I wouldn’t come back?”
Zack always had been blunt.
“It seemed like a strong possibility.” Oh. God. That hadn’t come out right, had it? “Not because you’d be dead, but because you probably didn’t really mean to marry me.”
“No one held a gun to my head, Bree. When I made my promises to you, I meant them.”
“You married me because the condom broke and you were shipping out.”
“It was the right thing to do,” he agreed easily, puncturing her last remaining dreams of romance. They’d had sex precisely once and she’d initiated. Her face burned, just remembering the events that had taken place in the front seat of his truck after the Christmas dance. He hadn’t even wanted to take her—he’d done it as a favor because she’d been Joey’s kid sister and dateless. It was quite possible that she’d also been a pity fuck.
“But it turned out to be wasted effort, because we didn’t get me accidentally pregnant after all,” she pointed out. She refused to feel guilty for their hasty, shotgun preventative wedding. After all, the sex had been a we effort. She might have climbed into his lap and kissed him, but she hadn’t been the one who’d slipped her panties off or introduced a faulty condom into the equation. That had been all Zack.
“There’s always tonight,” he said and she jerked. When she peeked at his face, however, that small smile was back. He was teasing her. Right.
Since this was the first time he’d seen her in years, the logical part of her had a really hard time believing he was so overcome with lust that he wanted to hustle her straight off to bed and get down to baby-making. The part of her that wanted a lover and a husband, however, was completely on board.
She was lonely. That wasn’t something to be ashamed of. She was also still attracted to him, although she wasn’t the same person she’d been when he deployed. At all. She wanted those babies more than ever now and sex and…a fully-committed partner. She’d read the Amanda Quick novels where the secondary characters had special companions and she wanted the same thing for herself. Someone to care and to come home to. It was that simple and yet as unobtainable as a quick jaunt to the moon. She’d thought about filing for an annulment, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. She couldn’t possibly have been waiting for Zack to come home.
Could she?
“Do you still? Mean your promises?”
He swore. Something else he had in common with Joey, who cursed like a trucker even when he laughed. Both men had shadows in their eyes too, although her brother covered his up with laughter and speed. If he got one more speeding ticket, the sheriff was going to have to permanently install his butt in Strong’s town jail.
“Yes.” Zack looked down at their hands. Her ringless hand. “I do.”
Oops.
“Did you lose your ring?”
He knew, of course. She hadn’t planned on keeping their not-quite-a-shotgun-wedding secret, but it had worked out that way. After they’d gotten married and he’d brought her home and then driven off, back to his base and Uncle Sam, she’d tugged the gold band off and tucked it away in her jewelry box. The reminder of what they’d almost been to each other had been too painful, especially when he’d made her non-place in his life clear eighteen months ago.
“You didn’t come back,” she pointed out. “You had leave and you didn’t come here.”
You ignored me.
Yep. She could hear the pathetic words hanging in the air between them. He turned her hand over in his, digging his thumb gently into her palm. Oh. Zack had always been good with his hands. He could fix anything.
“I had responsibilities,” he said, a don’t-go-there tone in his voice. “I had somewhere else to be eighteen months ago. I’m here now.”
“More important than visiting your wife?” Because that had hurt. A lot.
“I had to go see my dad,” he admitted tightly.
Wow. She hadn’t seen that one coming. His dad had walked out on him before he’d been born, so needing to see the man had to have been a big deal. And yet Zack couldn’t be bothered to mention it and that made her feel both hurt and bitchy all over again. “You couldn’t have at least picked up the phone when you were stateside?”
He made a frustrated sound. Good. They were both on the same page, apparently for the first time in their marriage. “Can we please not talk about that now?”
Now didn’t mean never.
“And you want to pick up where we left off?” She couldn’t quite conceal the horror in her voice. Sure, she was ready for a husband and kids and she’d enjoyed the fantasy of jumping his bones in the middle of her party, but she’d honestly been planning on a cookie exchange tonight rather than reunion sex with her long-lost husband. Not only did she need to somehow lose the twenty (thirty) pounds she’d gained since he’d last seen her naked, but she needed to shave. And buy some date night panties.
“I do,” he repeated, reminding her of the last time he’d said those words to her.
“You want to go back in there and announce to all of Strong that we’ve been married for the last three-plus years.” Clarity was good.
“It’s the truth.”
“And then what? I trust you to never leave me again?” She could feel her face burning. So her mind went straight to the bedroom. Sue her. Zack’s big body had made a lasting impression and she needed to end her years-long drought. She’d meant the words she’d spoken to Zack in the Nevada wedding chapel too. She’d promised to love, honor and obey (and she must have been seeing stars to leave that last bit in the ceremony). He’d promised to worship her with his body. Sure, he’d disappeared somewhere overseas, putting thousands of miles of ocean between her girly bits and his penis, but surely
that had to be a surmountable obstacle? He must have had some compelling reason for not consummating their marriage. Maybe the night before had been that bad? Or the front seat of his truck that awkward?
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You had some pretty creative suggestions in the letters you wrote me.”
Oh. God. The letters.
Chapter Two
‡
Christ.
For the first few months of Zack’s deployment, even after Bree had told him she wasn’t pregnant and that the marriage precaution hadn’t been necessary, they’d exchanged postcards. Each week, she’d sent him a card of a place they’d “go.” At first, she’d stuck close to home: Alcatraz, the redwoods, wine country. Places neither of them had been. She’d been stuck in Strong and, from what Joey had let drop, their home life had been rough. Bree’s dad had left early and their mom’s love life had been a revolving door of men who came, stayed for a few days or a few months, and then also left. When he’d met her, she’d been planning on going to college and get out of Strong. She’d applied to CSU Humboldt for a degree in art history and business. While she’d waited for the admissions letter (because Bree was always optimistic), she’d been working two jobs and filling out loan applications. Redwoods and romantic weekend getaways weren’t part of the schedule. He, of course, didn’t go to the places she’d picked out because he was an ocean away, covered in sand and fighting for Uncle Sam.
After a few months, the postcards had changed. The places got further away—London, Paris, Barcelona—and then she’d started sending him letters in actual envelopes too. On his birthday, she’d introduced a new note of sexy.
“I can’t be there to jump out of a cake,” she’d written. Naked, his brain had supplied. “Or to croon Happy birthday, Mr. President.”
Hooyah. He’d been reading slowly because her letters were always at least a week and sometimes a month apart and he didn’t want to get to the end too fast because then he’d have to wait for the next one. He’d re-read of course, but there was nothing like the first time, when he had no idea what she would say. He loved her surprises.
“But I’d love to do that for you,” she wrote. He wished she would. She wished him a happy birthday anyhow (duly noted), gave him a paragraph of hi-how-are-ya and Strong weather updates and…bam. She’d announced that she missed him—a sentiment he appreciated even if they’d only been separated a month and he was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he now had a wife—and then she’d mentioned how she’d driven past the riverbank, thinking about him. Okay. He liked that too, because their hours on the riverbank were one of his all-time favorite memories.
He’d pulled his truck off at the riverbank and he’d had two mini-bottles of champagne because it had been her Christmas dance and she deserved a treat. Since he was driving, he’d surrendered both bottles to her and she’d drunk them. Apparently, he should have remembered that she was nineteen and alcohol was off-limits, because then she’d climbed right on his lap. Jesus. Her puffy skirt had been everywhere because she’d picked out a ginormous dress for her Christmas formal dance, but beneath all the fabric she was wearing only the thinnest of nylons and he could feel the heat of her thighs and…elsewhere he wasn’t supposed to think about because she was Joey’s sister. Joey’s sister. She’d stopped being that off-limit female, though, because there was no way he didn’t see her as Bree. His Bree.
Sprawled on top of him, she’d kissed him and, fuck yeah, he’d kissed her back. At first, he’d kissed her, nice and polite, lips closed, because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. He’d tried to let go. He’d imagined Joey’s face, counted to one hundred but…Bree was hot and sweet and desire had hit him hard. He’d tightened his fingers on her waist and lifted her higher, just so he could reach her mouth better. With her kissing him, he was as lost as the Magi picking their way across an unfamiliar desert.
The eight years he had on her made him too old for her. Not to mention, he’d seen things, done things, and while he’d never regret defending his country, she deserved a man whose heart was new and shiny. There’d been no telling her that though. She’d run her hands up his chest, cupping the back of his neck and pulling him into her, and he’d no longer felt like he was plodding through some emotional desert. Nope. He was ass-planted in a fiery inferno instead and he’d wanted nothing more than the woman testing her wings in his arms.
He’d gotten the dress off, her nylons and panties off, the condom on…and they’d worked out the logistics of the front seat in a way that had made them both very, very happy. Afterwards, he’d cradled her in his arms, staring out the windshield at the stars. At that point, he’d still had a few more minutes before he realized that the condom had fallen down on the job, so to speak, and that he might have left more than a piece of his heart inside her. With her. Fuck him if he’d known how to put what he was feeling into words, and he’d certainly had no idea what was going on in her head.
She’d said yes, though, when he’d asked her to marry him. Just in case, he’d explained, they’d made a baby. He had health insurance, thanks to Uncle Sam, and he wouldn’t have left any baby of his alone. And part of him…hadn’t wanted to leave Bree alone either.
He would never abandon a child. His biological father hadn’t been interested in being a seventeen-year-old dad and had bugged out as soon as the sex was over and the pregnancy test came back positive. His mother had drifted in and out of his life, trying and failing to settle down, before she’d finally gotten her act together when Zack was already staring down sweet sixteen. Their relationship was polite, but they’d never be close. She sent him Christmas cards and he went so far as to open them. That was it.
So a broken condom had sealed the deal for Zack. If there was even the smallest chance he’d accidentally started a family days before he re-deployed, he’d covered his bases. They’d gotten married and he’d figured they’d sort the details out later.
He’d taken her home. He’d deployed. She hadn’t gotten pregnant. Boom. End of story for him, except that it hadn’t been, because he’d thought about her. Wondered what she was doing while he was storming insurgent strongholds and blowing shit up.
He didn’t need to run it by anyone else to know that the night in his truck hadn’t been romantic outside of a country song. So when she’d mentioned it in her letter (her only other reference to that night hadn’t counted, being a two-liner on a Greetings from California postcard, politely informing him that he wasn’t going to be a daddy and he didn’t need to have any worries on that score,) he’d been pleasantly surprised. He wasn’t sure what to do with a wife or with Bree, but he imagined they’d figure it out. Her next paragraph, however, packed a punch. She’d driven out there, she wrote, and then she’d pleasured herself in the front seat of her car, thinking about him.
Hooyah squared.
She’d described each stroke, each touch, and he had imagined himself right there with her, his fingers taking the place of hers. Jesus. He’d had the erection to end all erection in the middle of the mess hall and he’d fought to keep his face from burning up. There were some things a guy didn’t share with his teammates and this was one of them.
Joey had elbowed him and stolen a cookie from the tin in the box Bree had sent. “You okay, man?”
He’d mumbled out a “Hell. Yeah.” and shoved the letter into his pocket like some kind of a moron. He knew he had to write back, but what did he say? Tell me more. What came next? (No, too unintentionally punny) I’d like to make your fantasy come true? Give me more…
Zack wasn’t real good at putting pen to paper. In fact, he might have resorted to a little creative borrowing, snagging a romance novel from a box of paperbacks a library had donated. By the time he’d found all the good parts, he knew why the book looked so well-thumbed. He’d pretended he was the leather-wearing vampire with shitkickers and Bree was his female, marked with his bonding scent. At first he’d felt silly. Then he’d decided it was just like cosplay.
In the end…he’d gotten lost in the fantasy he was creating for the two of them.
She’d liked it.
He’d waited five weeks for her response, conducting two covert ops into hostile territory where his unit came under heavy fire. He’d come back and her next letter had been there like a beacon of hope.
And lust.
She made him smile. She made him horny. And, he realized now, when he had all of her letters inside a file folder that went where he went, he’d fallen in love with her one paragraph at a time. The letters had finished what they’d started at her Christmas dance.
He didn’t care when the other guys teased him about his penchant for romance novels. He needed all the help he could get and the Penthouse stuff wasn’t cutting it. She deserved better than that. The vampire thing wasn’t his cup of tea, but he liked how the heroes respected the hell out of their women and went balls out for them. Plus, there was a dearth of reading material on base. When he got back, he’d like to show Bree that he had her back that same way. That she was slowly but surely becoming the best part of his world.
Except that he’d never made it back to California, had he? He’d gotten extended leave precisely once and he and Joey had parted ways in San Francisco. Tagging along with Joey had been tempting but…what if what he and Bree had had in those letters had been nothing more than fantasies, words on paper and not an action plan for their future? Going to Strong, seeing Bree, maybe everything fell apart and he lost the connection they’d shared in their letters.
He didn’t want to lose that.
“You sure you don’t want to come up to Strong with me?” Joey had looked at him, like he suspected something but couldn’t quite figure out how to put it into words. Since Bree sent Zack letters and care packages, Joey probably figured his little sister had a crush on Zack and was trying to decide if he wanted to matchmake or just flat out kill Zack. Somehow, he’d never found the right moment to tell Joey about the quickie marriage and right then, standing in front of the rental counter at the airport, the moment was even less ideal.
