The smell of his liquored-up breath, the slight slur in his speech, and the way he boxed her in brought back unwanted memories.
“There’s nowhere to run, Jaci.”
“Come on, girl, you can do better than that.”
“Fight all you want. Daddy’s not letting go until you calm down.”
“Not so tough now, are you?”
She shook them off. “If I didn’t work, how would I spend my days?”
She tried to slip away.
He twirled one of her curls around his freakishly long, thin, almost womanly index finger and held her in place. “Strolling the Avenue des Champs-élysées. Visiting the beaches of Bali. Shopping in Milan. Skiing in Switzerland. Yachting in the Maldives.”
For the umpteenth time that night she compared him to Ian, and for the umpteenth time he didn’t come close to measuring up. “Look...” Shoot. She’d been referring to him as the investment banker up on ten for so long, that’s the only identifier that came to mind. Think. Oh, right. Richard. “I’m tired, Richard.”
This entire evening had been a mistake, another poorly thought out hastily made decision that’d backfired.
“I told you to call me Dickie.”
Not even if he were under the age of three. “Date’s over.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
As far as Jaci was concerned, their date had gone on way longer than it should have, already.
“Ask me in,” he whispered.
Not even for twenty-five million dollars. “Maybe another time.” Code for never, ever, as long as she lived. Apparently Richard did not like the ‘maybe another time’ idea, and yet one more reason Brandon at the concierge desk never saw him with the same woman twice became glaringly obvious. Jaci looked up at him. “Remove your hand from my breast this instant or you’ll be sorry.”
He smiled.
Incorrect response number one.
And squeezed.
Incorrect response number two.
So she hauled off and landed a palm heel strike to Dickie’s nose. Newsflash: That mandatory self-defense in-service she’d taken at work a few months ago was no joke. The stunned investment banker from ten jumped back and grabbed his bleeding snout exactly like the instructor had said he would, giving Jaci the chance to unlock her door, utter a quick, “Good night,” and hightail it inside.
She let out a relieved breath.
That’s it. There would be no marriage. No twenty-five million dollars. No men period. Jaci Piermont was officially off the market.
Someone knocked.
She jumped.
Jena hurried down the hallway. “Open the door. It’s Ian.”
Ian, who’d stormed out of her office five days ago and had not responded to one of her phone calls since then? Ian, who left overnight messages for the receptionist calling out sick from work for three days with no explanation? Ian, who ran out on her, again, and pissed her off to the point she’d gone out on tonight’s god-awful date to prove to herself it didn’t matter? That he didn’t matter?
Damn if her heart didn’t pound out a couple of extra happy beats at the idea of his return. But, “Why would Ian be knocking on our door at,” she looked at her watch, “after ten o’clock on a Wednesday night?”
“I called him.”
“Why would you call him?” And why did he answer Jena’s call and not hers?
“I was watching through the peephole.”
“You voyeur,” Jaci teased.
Jena shrugged. Unrepentant. “A single mother of twins has to get her kicks somehow.”
“So you saw no-longer-a-husband-candidate put the moves on me and thought rather than open the door to bring a halt to the action, you’d call Ian?”
“I didn’t want to give that miscreant the opportunity to push inside.”
A valid point.
“How did you know he was home?” Since Jaci had been complaining about him being gone since he’d left.
“He called earlier, said he needed to talk to you when you got in.”
Another knock. Harder this time. “Open the door, Jaci.”
Jena pushed Jaci out of the way and opened the door. And in strolled Ian calm as can be. “Did you know there’s a man bleeding outside in the hallway?”
Jena closed the door and pointed at Jaci.
“I wonder what could have happened,” Jaci said innocently.
“I think I heard him mumble something about a hellcat.” Ian gave her a stern look. “He’s a pale pansy who probably thinks a barbell is something a bartender rings at the start of happy hour. A ten-year-old could have taken him. Don’t get overconfident in your abilities.”
“Pleasure to have you home,” she said dryly. But it was. She’d missed him, worried about him and ached for him. And the date meant to distract her and prove she wasn’t crazy in love with Ian had only served to prove the opposite. “Turns out the investment banker as a potential husband candidate was a catastrophic fail.”
“Good,” Ian said, looking serious.
“I’m off to bed,” Jena said and left them.
“Not good.” Jaci looked up at Ian. “And I hold you,” she poked his chest with her index finger, “responsible.”
“Ouch.” He brought his hand up to the area of assault and rubbed. “Me? What did I do?”
“You’re all...” She scanned his tall, muscled body. And, well, YUM. “You’re all...you.”
“That makes a lot of sense. How much did you have to drink tonight?”
“Trust me, not near enough.” Remembering she had half a bottle of wine in the fridge, Jaci walked into the kitchen, grabbed two glasses from the cabinet, and retrieved it. “You want some?” She held it up.
“No.” Ian joined her in the kitchen. “And would you mind holding off on getting hammered for a little bit? We need to talk.”
His grim tone told Jaci she would not enjoy their ‘talk’ one bit.
She turned to face him as he pulled a chair out from beneath her small table, sat down and rubbed his hand down his face from forehead to chin. “I don’t want to...”
...marry you...work for you...have anything to do with you. Because she was headstrong and difficult and...damaged. Just like he’d said. Because the men in her family had done a number on her. She braced herself for Ian’s rejection, knowing it would hurt a thousand times worse than anything her father or stepbrother could dish out.
“...fight with you,” he finished.
Huh? That wasn’t at all what she’d expected. “I don’t want to fight with you, either.” She sat down across from him. But she’d spent so many years fighting, she didn’t know how to stop.
“We need to get better at talking.”
She smiled. “This coming from a man?”
He smiled back. “Ironic. I know.” He inhaled and let out a breath. “I may have overreacted to Mr. Parks’s visit. I’m sorry.” He looked down at his lap. “But I need you to understand where I’m coming from.” Silence.
Jaci waited it out.
“In my ten years in the army, fighting for freedom and human rights, I have seen the worst of human nature. Unspeakable atrocities and depravities you can’t begin to imagine. They color my thinking and impact my decision making and yes, maybe make me overly cautious.” He lifted his head to look at her. “The thought of your beauty, sweetness, and blind compassion being touched by the hand of evil tears me up inside. The fear of it drives me to take action to shield you. It’s who I am, Jaci. I protect. I take care of.”
Which made him perfect for work at the crisis center, but probably not for a fiercely independent woman with control issues.
“You know I can tell what you’re thinking, too,” he said.
Busted! “It’s just...” Just what? She hated to be told what to do? Childish. Hated that he didn’t think her capable of making wise decisions? Better.
“I know,” he said without waiting for her to finish. “But if I try to back off a bit and learn to trust your judgme
nt and you agree to consider ‘what would Ian want me to do in this situation’ before you act, maybe we can meet up in the middle?”
“That depends,” Jaci teased. “After considering what you’d want me to do would I actually have to do what you’d want me to do?”
He nodded. “That’s the plan, yes.”
“Well I don’t see that as meeting in the middle.”
“Then why don’t we take it a step further.” He placed his elbows on the table and leaned toward her. “What would Ian want me to do in this situation so I can return home to him safe and sound and he can reward me by doing wonderfully erotic things to my body?”
She swallowed, imagining a few ‘wonderfully erotic things’ she’d like to try. “That works.”
Based on the gleam in his eye, he did, in fact, know what she was thinking.
“And about us getting married.”
Fun time over. Here it came. The kiss-off...
“I don’t want to be your husband of last resort.”
Of course he didn’t. “Which is fine.” She stood. At dinner, while alone at the table awaiting the return of her date, she’d decided to hell with scampering around to find a husband to meet terms dictated by her father. His control over her life ended tonight. “I don’t want to be married, anyway.” But his statement still hurt. She stretched. “It’s been a long—”
“I don’t think you’re understanding me.” He stood, too. “Rather than stand by and hope you don’t find another man you want to marry so I get to marry you by default, I’d rather we spend the next few months together, exclusively, really getting to know each other and learning how to live together. If we get married, I want it to be because we’re in love and plan to stay together forever.”
The fairytale ending she didn’t dare dream of ever happening for her. She fought back tears.
“But if you don’t want the same thing—”
He mistook her silence.
She lunged at him and hugged him tight. “I do. It’s exactly what I want.”
He kissed the top of her head. “So no more dates.”
As if that needed to be said out loud. She looked up at him. “You want to know how I spent a good part of my time tonight?”
He eyed her cautiously, his hands clasped at her back. “I’m not sure I want the specifics.”
“Comparing my date to you.”
A more self-satisfied grin she’d never seen. “I like it.”
“Ian wouldn’t have humiliated the waitress by carrying on and complaining to the manager over a spilled glass of ice water,” she recounted.
He shook his head. “Never.”
“Ian wouldn’t have been so rude as to answer his phone or excuse himself from the table during dinner, for an extended period of time, to take a call from a business associate,” she added. “He would never show a complete disinterest in what I had to say by reading and responding to text messages during our conversations.”
“Now that I know a broken nose is the price to pay, you can be sure I won’t do it in the future, either.”
“Ha. Ha. The nose bit was in response to him putting his hands where they weren’t welcome.”
He stiffened. Grimaced.
And she kind of liked the display of jealousy. But, “Calm down, big guy.” She caressed his upper arms. “You’ve been doing so well up to now. Sit.”
He did. And Jaci positioned herself behind him and began to massage his neck and shoulders.
“I’m back in therapy three times per week and back to working out,” he said. “I spent two hours in the gym tonight.”
Nothing got her going like Ian all sweaty and manly after a hard workout. Hot. Hot. Hot.
“But there is still work to be done. I’ll be honest. If I’d arrived downstairs in time to see that bastard’s hands on you, I cannot say with any certainty that I wouldn’t have knocked him unconscious.”
Strangely enough, Jaci would have been okay with that.
“I’m trying.” He sat forward, rested his elbows on the table, and clasped his fingers together.
“You’ll get there. I know you will.” She hugged him from behind. “In your own time. There’s no need to rush. And I’ll help in any way I can.”
“Regular sex seems to be helping.”
“Must be my therapeutic touch.” She held out her fingers and wiggled them.
He pulled her onto his lap. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted, loving the feel of his strong arms wrapped around her. “Which brings me to the question of where did you disappear to? And why didn’t you answer my phone calls? I was worried about you.” And she had no intention of letting him off the hook for deserting her without a word. Again.
“I’ll get to where I was in a minute. Maybe you’d better go back to your seat across from me.” He gave her a little push.
Uh oh. She did.
“As far as why I didn’t answer your calls, I thought we could both do with some time apart. But I listened to each one of your messages to make sure there weren’t any emergencies.”
“Let me clue you in,” Jaci said. “Women are talkers. We like to know what people are thinking. In the absence of communication, we form our own conclusions. I thought you’d gone for good and we were through.”
“Well, I thought a little distance would give us both a chance to cool off.” His eyes met hers. “You can be sure if I’d even considered the possibility it’d send you off on a date with another man, I would have done things differently.”
“It all worked out for the best, though.” Jaci shrugged. “My date with Dickie-the-dog reminded me of all the things I don’t want in a man.” She reached across the table, took his hand between hers, and added, “And all the things I do. Now tell me where you’ve been so we can go to bed and commence with the makeup sex.”
* * *
Makeup sex. Ian would be lucky to get any sex after what he’d done. But there was no turning back. He’d gotten Jaci on board with the spending time together, exclusivity, and marrying for love plan. Now to present his marriage deal breaker. Ian swallowed. His entire future hinged on the next few minutes, which he would not rush.
So he started at the beginning.
“The day I turned eighteen I enlisted in the army,” he started. “On that same day my mom and sisters cut off all contact with me, said they couldn’t go through losing another family member to war, like we’d lost my dad.”
“Oh, Ian. I’m sorry.”
“I’m over it.” Most of the time. “Because the men in my squad took me in and became my family, my brothers. Stateside, I visited them, spent holidays with them and got to know their wives and kids. Overseas, we looked out for each other. They saved my ass on more than one occasion. And I returned the favor every chance I got.”
He took a deep breath. This next part was the toughie and odds were pretty much even whether he’d get through it without breaking down. “I lost my four closest friends that last night in Iraq.” Kid—the youngest in the group. Mac—MacPhearson. MP—for meat and potatoes, all the man would eat. Lucky—who had the prettiest wife.
The deafening boom of the IED exploded in his ears. He grabbed for them.
His leg. Pain. Burning. Stuck. His body thrashed around the Humvee. Gunfire.
“You guys okay?”
No answer. Another explosion close by. Smoke. Heat. Darkness.
“Guys?”
No response.
“Medic. Medic!”
All alone. All. Alone.
“Hey.” Jaci’s voice. “You’re okay.” She moved his hands from his ears.
He didn’t feel like he’d ever be okay.
She kissed his temple. “You’re not all alone.”
Had he said that out loud?
“You have me.” She kissed his forehead. “And Justin.” She kissed his cheek.
He sucked in a breath. Felt winded.
“You don’t have to talk about this if you’re
not ready.” She gave him an out.
He didn’t take it. “I need you to understand how much those men meant to me. How much their families mean to me, how I consider them my family.”
“Of course you do.”
“And in the absence of my brothers, the responsibility for their wives and kids falls to me, the last man standing. They’re not here. But I am. To look out for their families like they looked out for me. My brothers.” Tears streamed down his cheeks.
Jaci hugged him to her chest and kissed the top of his head.
“I miss them,” Ian admitted out loud, for the first time since their deaths. “I miss them so much.”
Jaci pushed herself onto his lap and pulled him into a hug.
He dropped his head to her shoulder, hugged her back, so tight. She didn’t complain. And Ian cried. For all that he had lost. All that had been taken from him. The unfairness of it. The anger that raged inside of him. Guilt, for having lived...and now, for daring to fall in love. With Jaci. For daring to hope for a happy future when his men had no future and the futures of their wives and children would be forever marred by death and sorrow.
Jaci didn’t move. Didn’t speak. She just sat there, rubbing his back. For minutes? Hours? He didn’t know.
Finally, when he’d released four months of pent up tears Ian whispered, “Thank you.”
“I bet you needed that,” was all she said.
She had no idea how much. He reached for a napkin to dry his eyes. “On the macho meter I guess I’m ranking a negative ten about now.”
“Maybe for some women. But on the Jaci Piermont attraction meter you are into triple-digit sexy.”
Right where he wanted to be.
“I’m assuming the death of your men and your responsibility to their families has something to do with where you were for the past five days?” She traced the rim of his ear with her finger.
He nodded. “The Kid’s wife has been having a tough time and she asked me to come.” Begged and pleaded until he knew he could not put it off any longer. “I’d planned to tell you.”
“It’s okay,” Jaci said. “I understand.”
“And I hope you’ll also understand how important these four women and their seven children are to me. And now that I’m able, I’ll be visiting them, regularly, probably every weekend.”
Craving Her Soldier's Touch Page 14
