“You share a dog with my sister.” Jealousy rushed in, quickly eviscerating her shock at learning why he’d suddenly walked into her life. “Wait, have you slept with her?”
“No. No.” His eyes widened and his fingers curled into his hips, the tension rippling through his arms. “She’s like my little sister, like family.”
His family.
If now was the moment for complete and utter honesty, she had to admit, if only to herself, that she’d wanted—hell, still wanted—more than an orgasm spree with Cade. Love, family, maybe even a pet—she’d looked to the future and hoped to find those things with him.
No wonder he’d insisted those things could never be. He’d known how much his deception would hurt her. And still he’d gone along with it.
Her hand traced the scar along her face. The knife had hurt, but his betrayal was a new kind of pain.
“You put on quite an act when my mask fell off,” she said softly, her gaze dropping to the ground. “For someone who already knew what was hidden beneath. And that first night…pretending that I still turned you on after you saw my face.”
“It wasn’t an act. Natalie told me about your parents’ car accident, and she mentioned that you’d lived in foster homes. I knew she hated the families, but I had no idea how bad it was for you. And she never said a word about your face. I swear, I never touched you out of pity.”
He crossed the room and dropped down on one knee beside her. He took her hands in his and stared up at her, his expression a wide-eyed mix of desperation and determination. “I admit I’ve been omitting certain facts since we met, but I swear my actions were real.”
She wanted to believe him, to feel the truth in his words. But he’d shattered her trust into hundreds of little pieces.
“You’re my fantasy.” He leaned forward, raised his fingers to the smooth skin of her unaltered cheek. And then his other hand touched her jagged scars. He cradled her face in his hands and captured her lips with his. Soft and sweet quickly gave way to something hot and needy. His tongue traced her lips, and her mouth opened, welcoming him even though her mind knew better.
The kiss deepened and drew her down with it. His hands moved down her neck, over her breasts, her sides, her hips—it was as if he wanted to map the contours of her body. As if he wanted to remember every inch of her the way she was now.
As though he knew he’d never have the opportunity again.
She lifted one arm and touched his chest. The desire was real. But as his mouth moved over hers, she realized it wasn’t enough.
She broke the kiss and gently pressed her palms into his chest. Breathing hard, he released her. He stood and took a step back.
“I can’t.” She took a deep breath. “I want to be with someone whose words and actions tell the same story,” she said, her conviction strengthening with each word.
“I know. I know.”
He crossed his arms against his chest. The muscles he’d built while saving the world drew her gaze away from his face. If only bulging biceps and drool-worthy abs could be enough for her. Two days ago, they would have been. But she’d grown since then. More, she’d discovered what she wanted—what she needed—from this man. And she’d discovered how empty she felt knowing he couldn’t give it.
“That’s what you meant when you said I deserve more.” She cocked her head, his words from last night rushing to the forefront of her memory. “I’m worthy of a man who doesn’t offer lies. I shouldn’t have to guess at what he’s feeling.” Her voice rose with each word. “Or worse, what he’ll do.”
“I would never hurt you,” he said firmly.
“But you did,” she said. Her hand went to her cheek, then touched her chest. “Just not in the way you think.” Her sister had been right—this man had broken her heart. “The moment you decided to hide the truth from me, you hurt me.”
“It wasn’t all a lie,” he said quietly. “I thought you were gorgeous from the moment I saw you staring at that painting. One look and I pictured your dress hitting the floor. And when you wrapped your perfect lips around the chocolate strawberry, I knew willpower would only carry me so far. The sex was never one-sided.”
He was right. It hadn’t all been a lie. The nightclub. The Bellagio fountains. Their trip to the beach. The ice machine. And the way he’d focused on her while she stroked him under the table last night. Those moments were real. She could see that.
In those moments, he’d made her feel gorgeous, pushed her to recognize the feeling and hold on to it. She would leave Vegas feeling a sense of beauty. And with a faith in herself that had been buried for too long. But that was the only thing leaving Vegas with her.
“I want more, Cade. Trust, love, a future with someone who wants to worship me in bed and out, someone I can cherish in return. And I think we both know that I can’t have that with you. Because at the end of the day, you were willing to let me leave Vegas without ever telling me the truth.”
“I’m not in a position to give you what you need,” he said, his jaw tight as if it pained him to say those words. “My job comes first. I knew that from the start. And I swear I never meant to hurt you.”
Only lie to me.
She nodded. “I’d like to pack. I’m ready to go home now. This morning. And I need to have a few words with my sister.”
“This isn’t her fault,” he said. “I crossed the line, turned a simple mission to keep an eye on you into something more.”
“Don’t you see?” she said. “I never should have been a mission in the first place.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “I know. And trust me, I plan to play that card when negotiating for visitation with my dog.” His arms fell to his sides as he headed for the door. “I’ll go.”
The Navy SEAL, movie-star look-alike stepped over the doughnuts and headed for the door.
“Good-bye,” she said as he disappeared into the hall. Call her a coward, but she didn’t plan to be there when he returned. There was nothing left to say. Not when he’d proven anything more would only lead to pain.
She crossed the room, picked up her phone, and typed out a quick message to her sister.
We need to talk. But first, I have to catch a plane.
She drew a deep breath, opened the closet, and started pulling out clothes. She could walk away as if her heart wasn’t breaking into pieces.
She could do this.
She had to.
Chapter Nineteen
When a mission went south, Cade shouldered his share of the responsibility. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter who made the call that sent them spiraling into clusterfuck territory. He owned his share of the mistake.
He found a table in the buffet’s open seating area and sank into a chair. While Natalie deserved some of the blame for sending him to derail her sister’s plans, he’d chosen to fulfill Lucia’s fantasy list. And hiding the truth from her? That was on him, too.
But when a mission slid into the danger zone, he started brainstorming the next step. The hostage wasn’t at this location? Okay, where had he been taken? The next step was always on his mind.
Looking at this mess, recalling the stricken look on Lucia’s face, he couldn’t see a way out. Logic dictated that he walk away. She needed space to heal. And the strong woman who’d made it crystal clear that she should have a man in her life who offered her honest words alongside his actions—she could move on from this.
But could he?
“I haven’t been to a Vegas buffet in years,” his dad said, claiming the seat across from him. He set down a plate piled with eggs and bacon. He’d added one lonely piece of melon into the mix alongside a frosting-covered danish.
“Thanks for dropping everything. And for making the trip over,” Cade said.
“I wasn’t doing much, and you said it was important.” His dad picked up his fork and knife, slicing his eggs into precise, equal-sized pieces. “Something to do with that girl?”
“She’s leaving. Heading back
to Tennessee,” Cade said, holding back the part of the story where he’d driven her away. His dad didn’t need to know the entire complicated mess right now. “And I don’t want to let her go. I’m falling for her, Dad. Hard.”
His father set his knife and fork aside. He raised his napkin to his mouth and nodded. “You just met her, right?”
“Yes, but the timeline doesn’t change the fact that my heart is in this.”
His father didn’t say a word. They’d never discussed feelings. When Cade had first started dating, his dad had been away. Even after his mother left, demanding a divorce, his father had steered clear of Cade’s love life, preferring to bemoan his own situation.
“Dad, I need to ask you something.” Cade sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “If you could go back to before Mom left, would you do anything different?”
The room buzzed around them as people made their way back and forth to the buffet. But Cade kept his gaze fixed on his dad, waiting for his answer.
“I was willing to give my life for my country,” his father said, his voice weighed down by a familiar sadness. “Looking back, I should have been willing to put a helluva lot more on the line for the love of my life.”
“Why didn’t you?” Cade demanded.
His dad shrugged. “At the time, I thought she could wait. I knew I’d retire eventually and then we’d be together. I turned a blind eye to her loneliness. And when she tried to tell me, I didn’t listen. I saw other spouses coping, and I guess I figured she could, too.”
After a moment’s silence, Cade said, “Go on.”
His dad stared at his plate. “Some women embrace military life. Your mother did for a while, but five years in, with a baby at home, she asked me to choose her. And I told her I would. She waited, and another twelve years down the road, she realized I meant I would choose her eventually. And she left.”
Which left you bitter. You held it against her, never accepting your role in the failed marriage.
“If I had to do it all again, I would have tried to find another job. I love my country. But I realized too late that I love your mother more.” His dad picked up his fork and pushed a strip of melon around his plate. “I still do, even though she’s moved on.”
Cade closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. And his mind backtracked to that first night in her hotel room, after her mask had fallen off. He pictured Lucia climbing onto the bed, her breasts spilling out of the robe tied tight around her waist. She’d had every reason to distrust him, but she’d joined him on that bed, allowing him to prove his desire.
But he’d been so caught up in her transformation from a woman who looked determined to mask her flaws to the walking, talking fantasy who’d knelt on the shower floor, waiting to drive him wild with her breasts, he’d failed to see how she’d changed him.
He’d arrived in Vegas convinced long-term was off the table. His dad’s misery was proof that relationships required an end date. Cade had never stopped to think he deserved more—a chance to build a life that didn’t force his heart to take a backseat to his country.
He opened his eyes and stared at the old, lonely man eating a danish. Maybe his father couldn’t rewrite his past, but that didn’t mean Cade had to follow in his footsteps.
“I need to go.” Cade pushed back from the table and withdrew his wallet. He tossed a few bills on the table.
“Going after your girl?” his father said with a smile.
“Yes. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to win a place in her life.”
…
Lucia paced around her studio gathering paints. She pulled blues and greens, colors that stood in stark contrast to the pink hue of the sky beyond her window. Driving home from the Memphis airport, the difference between her quiet suburb and the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip had offered a bleak reminder that the fantasy was over.
She’d stepped into the foyer of her home and dropped her bags. Without bothering to change out of the jeans and T-shirt she’d worn on the plane, she’d headed straight for her studio. The large room off the kitchen was lined with windows on one side and canvases on the other.
She selected a sixteen-by-twenty-inch canvas and set the blank surface on an easel. She needed to add one more after portrait. A complete one, portraying the man torn between what he wanted and what he couldn’t have. He’d walked into her life a hero, the shining star of male perfection. But beneath his muscles, his sinfully sexy voice, and his I’ll-save-the-world attitude, he was just another person struggling with the past, trying to do his best.
On the flight home, she couldn’t escape the lingering questions. How far did the lies go? She believed him when he’d said the seduction wasn’t part of the plan. But what about the other little moments? What about—
Her landline phone rang. She walked to the desk by the window. She recognized the number. Natalie. She pressed the speaker button.
“I made it home safe and sound,” she said, moving to the shelves lined with paint jars. “You can stop worrying.”
“Lucia, I’m sorry.”
A dog barked in the background, and Lucia’s hand froze on a bottle labeled purple. “Is that the dog you share?”
“Yes. That’s Mufasa, our Great Pyrenees,” Natalie said. “Though I think he’s more mine than Cade’s, especially after what he did. He promised he wouldn’t touch you. And he doesn’t go back on his word. Ever. If he says he is going to do something, he stands by it. I thought I could trust him.”
“Me too,” she murmured, selecting a brush from the mason jar beside her work sink. “Me too.”
“I should have come up there myself.”
Her hand froze, the brush submerged in a pool of red paint. “Why didn’t you? If you thought it was so important to keep me from picking up a guy, why didn’t you come yourself?”
“You wouldn’t have listened to me,” she said.
“Because I barely know you anymore.” Lucia lifted the brush to the canvas. “You never even mentioned your best friend or your dog.”
“I’m trying to give you space. I wanted you to rebuild your life free from the past,” her sister said. “Those families, even the well-meaning ones, they stripped away our voice in our own lives.”
“We were kids,” Lucia countered. “It was their job to be the parent.”
“But they weren’t our parents,” Natalie said, enunciating each word as if she needed someone to hear and understand her. “They didn’t love us.”
“I miss them, too. Mom and Dad.” Lucia glanced up. The painting Cade had asked about last night, the one where each brushstroke expressed just how much she missed her parents, hung on her wall. “But I love you, Natalie. And I always will.”
“Forgive me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I might not tell you where I’m going the next time I decide to take a vacation. And one day, I’ll get you back. I’m not sure how, but I’ll find a way.”
“I’ve given up on men, so if you’re thinking about sending a friend to California to seduce me, it won’t work.”
Lucia gave a mock sigh. “Then I’ll have to think of something else.”
“There’s one more thing. And remember that you just promised to love me forever,” her sister said quickly.
“Natalie—”
“Cade called and asked for your address in Tennessee.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“After what happened, he owes you flowers and chocolates at the very least,” Natalie insisted.
“We said our good-byes,” Lucia insisted. “Cade doesn’t owe me anything.”
Except the one thing he can’t give me—a future together built on love and trust.
“After lying to you? We both owe you a lot more than chocolate,” Natalie said. “I wanted to let you know so you weren’t wondering how he got your information. I know it might seem hard to believe right now, but he really is a good guy.”
“I kn
ow,” Lucia said. “Not everything was a lie.”
“He cares about you. He wouldn’t go anywhere near a spa if he didn’t.”
“The spa wasn’t exactly the first example that came to mind.” Lucia swiped her brush over the canvas.
“Spare me the details. The idea of my sister and my best friend…I don’t want to think about it.” The dog began barking in the background. “I need to take Mufasa out before I head to work. Talk to you soon?”
“Yes.”
After ending the call, Lucia returned to her canvas, determined to paint one last memory of her Navy SEAL before she locked him in the past. She raised her brush—
And the doorbell rang.
Cade.
No, it couldn’t be. But who delivered flowers at this hour?
She held the paintbrush in one hand and headed for the front door. She turned on the light in the foyer. Staring through the peephole, she spotted the man who’d turned her life upside down over the course of a weekend. He wore the same clothes he’d had on that morning, his duffel slung over his shoulder.
Her gaze shifted to his hands. She’d never been so happy to note the absence of chocolates. He hadn’t followed her across the country to beg forgiveness with sugary treats. He’d come just for her.
She opened the door with her free hand. “Just the person I wanted to paint.”
Chapter Twenty
On the flight from Vegas, Cade had played this scene out over and over in his mind. It almost always began with Lucia demanding to know what he was doing on her doorstep. He’d prepared for anger, wariness, or even a door slammed in his face. But her words caught him by surprise.
“Paint?” he said.
“I started another portrait of you, and I’d love to work off the real thing.” She held the door open wide. “Please, come in.”
“I’ll play model for you if you promise to hear me out,” he said, stepping into her home. He raised his hand, wanting to reach for her and draw her close. The desire to kiss her nearly overrode logic. But first he needed to give her words, not actions.
To Tempt a SEAL Page 14
