by Tawny Weber
“I think we wore each other out,” he said, his smile a shadow of its usual wattage, his laugh a little rough around the edges. “I can’t believe we fell asleep.”
“You were dreaming,” she said, ignoring the hint to let it go. “Are you okay?”
His jaw clenched, then he shifted, so he could skim his bottom hand down to cup her bare butt and his upper hand toward her breast.
Before he could cup her already aching flesh, she grabbed his wrist.
“You were dreaming,” she said again. At least, if being under emotional attack in one’s sleep counted as dreaming. Eden’s eyes flew over his face, trying to see if he was okay. Stress etched lines in the corners of his eyes, bracketed his mouth. But his lips were curved in his usual, charming smile and his beautiful green gaze was determined. To fight the demons? Or to push her away?
“That’s what people do when they are asleep.” Whether because he saw how determined she was, or out of pique that she wasn’t ready to roll around on the bank again, Cade shifted. He pulled his arms away and sat upright. “It’s going to get cold, though. We should head back.”
Eden gave him a long, considering look.
Here she was at the lake, that magical place of sexual-fantasies-come-true. With the sexiest man in the world. One who’d just rocked her every idea of what pleasure was supposed to feel like. If she ever wanted to feel that rocking pleasure again, she was pretty sure she should let it go. Just let the subject change, gather up her underwear and drag him back to her bed for another round.
But she couldn’t.
This was Cade.
Her hero.
The guy who was always there for her. To save her from falling out of trees. To shoo away the mean girls. To show her that her fantasies had nothing on reality.
Didn’t she owe it to him to be there for him, too?
Even if it ruined her shot at another mind-blowing orgasm?
Feeling very self-sacrificing, and just a little worried, she ignored the tense ball of stress in her stomach and rubbed her hand over his bare shoulder.
“Cade,” she prompted softly, her tone as sweet as it was stubborn. “What’s wrong? Were you dreaming about your friend? The one you lost last year?”
Maybe she should have got up and kneed him in the balls. He’d probably have looked less betrayed.
“Gossip again?” he asked in a tone as chilly as one of his father’s worst put-downs. “I thought you knew better than to believe the whispers on the street.”
“You told me yourself that you lost your friend, Phil,” Eden countered, irritated at being lumped into the same category as the gossips, but deciding to letting it go. If she was hurting, she’d lash out, too. “I know how close you were because your grandmother speaks of him often. Last year she showed me a huge stack of pictures of the two of you and your other friend. Blake, right? She’s referred to you three as those sweet boys ever since you brought them home for Christmas a few years ago.”
For just a second, he closed his eyes as if the memory was too painful to see. Then he looked at her, his eyes as cold as she’d ever seen.
Eden swallowed hard, suddenly very aware that she was naked.
“Grandmother shouldn’t be talking about my friends. Or about me. I didn’t realize she was as much of a gossip as the rest of the town,” he groused, shoving his hand through his hair and glaring across the water.
“She needed help putting photos into the family album,” Eden said, irritation banishing her self-consciousness. How dare he so easily assume they were gossiping. “Your father has no interest, you weren’t home and she doesn’t like to let just anyone poke through her pictures. I’d stopped by to bring her a pie and offered to do it for her. She didn’t gossip. She simply told me the names to write next to each entry.”
“Oh.”
He sounded like he’d rather have had that kick to the balls.
As he should.
“Yes, oh,” Eden snapped back, sitting up and grabbing his shirt to wrap around her, definitely uncomfortable with her nudity now. His was fine, though. Even irritated, she could appreciate perfection when it sat naked in front of her. “Maybe instead of jumping to rude conclusions, you should consider how much Catherine worries about you. How much she loves you.”
His shrug was a guilty jerk of one shoulder.
Eden pulled her knees up to her chest and took a deep breath. She felt like crying. Both for Cade’s misery, and at the realization that she’d been so, so shallow.
All she’d ever seen was the gorgeous guy next door. The hottie who pulled her out of scrapes, who kept her supplied in fantasy material. That he was a navy SEAL only added to his sexy persona.
Sure, a few days ago on the cliffs, she’d clued in that his job had risks. That there was more to being a hero than just riding in with a charming smile and great timing. But she’d sort of let that fade into the back of her head. Not because it didn’t matter, she realized, wrapping her arms tighter around her knees. But because it was scary to think of what he must face on a regular basis. To admit, even just to herself, to the possibility of something happening to him.
“I’m sorry you had a—” What? Bad dream sounded so childish. Nightmare was too B movie-esque. “Troubled sleep. I wish the sex had been a little wilder. Maybe then you’d have been too exhausted to dream.”
She offered a tremulous smile, giving him her best aren’t I cute look.
For a second, he just looked stunned. Then he burst into laughter.
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought it was pretty wild,” he said, reaching back to give her a quick, one-armed hug. He didn’t keep up contact, though. Just as soon as his arm fell away, so did his smile.
Eden’s heart ached.
As always, unable to sit quietly in the face of suffering, she rubbed a comforting hand on his shoulder again.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “And not sorry, in a hey, open a wound and share it with me kind of way. I just hate to see you hurting like this. And hiding from the hurt.”
She wanted to tell him that it didn’t do any good to hide like that. That he should get it out, whatever it was. Air the pain so it could start healing.
But she couldn’t. She knew whatever she was imagining, whatever she’d lived through, couldn’t compare to his pain. Who was she to tell someone how to grieve?
All she could do was be there for him, ache for him.
After a handful of miserably long minutes, Cade shrugged again.
“It was my mission,” he finally said, his focus so strong on the water, it was like he was confessing a sin to the lake gods. “I planned it, I led it.”
“Was it your first?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “I’ve led dozens. Not just like this, no two are exactly the same. But similar. Same region, same objective.”
“Something went wrong?” she asked quietly.
“Phil was hit. Shrapnel to the head. One minute he was cracking jokes, the next he was gone. He still had a smile on his face when he hit the ground.”
Tears trickled off Eden’s chin, horror filling her heart as she imagined how he must have felt to have that happen right before his eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she protested, shifting across the grass until she sat next to him. She shoved aside the sudden cascading barrage of terror that’d come along with recognizing the reality of his job and tried to focus on helping Cade. He still didn’t look her way. Just continued to stare at the water, his face as hard as marble.
“The mission was my responsibility.”
Eden didn’t know what to say to that. She understood responsibility. Knew the heavy weight of it and how tempting it was to shoulder it alone. But she also recognized guilt. Why did the two always seem to go hand in hand?
She should let it go. She should make a joke, change the subject, slide down his body and offer a blowjob as a distraction.
Anything to keep him from thinking about his friend.
But she c
ouldn’t. Not when he was so clearly hurting.
“Could you have stopped it from happening?” she asked quietly. “Could you have done anything to change it?”
He still didn’t look at her. Just stared at the water. His lips were white in the moonlight, his shoulders rigid. Finally, after long, miserably drawn-out seconds, he shrugged. “The powers that be don’t think so.”
“Do you?” She bit her lip, knowing she’d be better off backing away. But she’d never been able to take the safe route. “Does your friend Blake?”
That got his attention.
Cade’s gaze shot to hers like a sniper’s bullet. Iced fury flamed in those green depths, made all the scarier because the rest of his features were now shrouded in the dark.
The charming facade that most people took as the regular Cade Sullivan cracked, showing the real man beneath the usual charismatic amiability. Eden almost took a step back.
“I’m just saying...” She almost stuttered, then took a deep breath and continued, “Maybe you shouldn’t be blaming yourself. I’ve seen all those pictures of you and Phil and Blake. You look like really good friends. Would Phil blame you? Would he want you carrying this?”
“Phil isn’t here anymore,” Cade snapped. “So what he would or wouldn’t have wanted is immaterial.”
Eden’s heart broke for him. The pain, the loss, the misery. Without that protective facade of charm he usually held between himself and everyone else, she could see them all so clearly on his face.
She’d only been interested in the fantasy. In hot, wild sex and a chance to live out all those things she’d dreamed of for so many years with a man she had always hero worshipped. Now he was more than a hero. Cade was a man, all man.
A man that she was terrified to realize she could easily fall in love with.
* * *
CADE WANTED TO TELL HER this was hardly the love talk he usually enjoyed after incredible sex. He liked the manly feel of cuddling in the afterglow. He preferred a slow buildup to round two, maybe a little kissing and sucking.
A woman poking at his most vulnerable parts, and not the one between his legs, wasn’t the makings of a turn-on.
“You’re a hero, Cade. Not because of your job, or because you’ve earned a chestful of medals. But because of who you are inside. Because you care, deeply, about people and about doing what’s right.” Eden bit her lip, then sighed and gestured to the patch of grass across the lake. “You take responsibility for everyone. For everything. Even when it’s not yours to take.”
Cade sighed. She wasn’t going to give it up, was she.
“I was in charge,” he said, appreciating her attempts to make him feel better but not willing to sidestep reality. “That means the responsibility was all mine.”
Eden nodded.
Then, as if she’d heard his mental instructions, she shifted closer to his body, smoothed the palm of her hand up, then down his chest. The vulnerable part he wanted her interested in stirred to life as she pressed a soft kiss to a scar zigzagging down his shoulder.
“That must be rough. Taking all those untrained, unskilled, and what? Unwilling guys into a battle.”
Shocked fury shut down his libido in a flash.
“What?” He ripped his gaze from the safe view of the trees to glare at her. “That’s bullshit. My team is the best. They are SEALs, dammit. We never ran a mission unless they were totally on board, were totally ready to kick ass. There’s nobody unwilling to serve in my squad.”
Eden didn’t say a word. She waited a beat, then arched one brow.
Cade’s frown turned ferocious.
“I’m not saying Phil didn’t know what he was doing, or that he wasn’t damned good,” he snapped, getting the message loud and clear. “But—”
“Either your guys are damned good, highly trained and totally prepared, and the loss of one of them was a horrible result of going into battle,” she interrupted. “Or you were responsible for every single thing, from the weather to the enemy to the state of mind of every man under your command.”
Unable to find a valid argument that’d shoot her down, Cade finally settled on a glare.
She gave him a sympathetic smile, cupping his cheek in her palm and pressing a kiss against his lips.
Then she shifted, rolling quickly so her body angled over his. Straddling him, her thighs gripped his hips and her glorious breasts pressed against his chest.
“What are you doing?” he gasped as his body sprang to full alert.
“Exhausting you,” she said with a watery laugh. Thankfully, her face was dry now, clear of those tears that ripped at his gut. “I don’t know of any other way to distract you from making yourself miserable.”
Cade wanted to protest. To claim that he wasn’t miserable. But she wasn’t leaving him any room to argue.
Or much space for self-pity.
Because it was impossible to feel bad when her body was making his feel so good.
Damn, Cade groaned as she snagged another of the condoms and rolled it over his throbbing length. Then she slid back up, her thighs gripping his sides as she slowly—so, so slowly—impaled herself on his rock-hard erection.
She was delicious.
Glorious. Like a triumphant Valkyrie warrior, fighting his demons for him, then sweeping him away to the heavens.
He was usually the one who rode to the rescue. Who dove in and saved the day.
Just before he took her mouth again, he had to wonder...
Who was going to rescue him?
* * *
CADE CROSSED HIS HANDS behind his head and propped one bare foot on the other, waiting for Eden to join him in bed.
This was pretty damned awesome. He’d never done this domestic thing with a woman before. A night here or there, a few days at a plush resort once in a while, sure. But all week long, everything from meals to sleep to showers? This was a whole new world. One he’d have sworn he’d hate. Instead, he was loving it.
He suddenly understood what Blake was talking about. That feeling of completion. Of happiness. It was freaky. Hell, another few days and he’d be writing bad poetry and crying over afternoon specials. A week and he’d be thinking about baby names and retirement property.
Cade grimaced, feeling like a girl all of a sudden.
Maybe he should drop to the floor and do a hundred pushups. Go flex something in the mirror.
His cell phone buzzed. Grateful for the distraction, he reached over to check the incoming text.
Did you get my money?
Or maybe he’d go beat the hell out of something to relieve frustration, he added to the previous litany.
Damn, his father was a pain.
Cade’s fingers hovered over the text keyboard. He wanted to write back that the loan wasn’t Eden’s to pay. That Robert was an idiot for lending Eleanor money so it was his problem to collect. That Cade wasn’t his damned errand boy.
But he didn’t type any of that.
Because none of it would make a damned bit of difference. The minute he tossed this back in Robert’s face, the old man would come after Eden directly.
She was doing great. Getting her business going, paying off the bank loan her mother had dumped on her. She didn’t need this, too. It was Eleanor’s responsibility, just like the bank loan. Cade wasn’t going to let Eden get railroaded into paying Robert. After trying for a week and a half to reach the elder Gillespie, he’d finally had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen before he went back to Coronado.
So...on to Plan B.
Cade glanced at the bathroom door. He couldn’t hear the shower anymore. She’d be out any second now. So he took a deep breath, made one of those split-second decisions that made him an effective SEAL and texted back:
You’ll have a check tomorrow.
Cade tossed the phone on the nightstand.
So the check would have his name on the signatory line, not Eden or Eleanor’s. Robert could just deal with it. Then, when Cade finally heard from Eleanor, h
e’d make arrangements for her to pay him instead.
There, he gave a mental clap of his hands. All taken care of.
Except maybe he should tell Eden about it.
But what good would that do? It’d just stress her out, add to her worries and mess up his last days with her.
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and shoring up his determination.
He’d tell her later. After sex.
And after he told her he was heading back to San Diego in four days.
Never, since the day he left for boot camp, had Cade wanted less to return to duty. And not just because of the gorgeous woman joining him in bed.
Although she was a big part of the reason.
But so were the nightmares. The intense, gut-wrenching pain of missing Phil. The doubts about his leadership, the second-guessing of his decisions. Cade wasn’t sure he had what it took to do a good job anymore. He wasn’t sure he could be a SEAL.
For a man whose confidence had always topped out at supreme, this wasn’t just humiliating, it was confusing as hell. He didn’t know what to do.
So he wasn’t going to do anything. For now, his entire focus was Eden. On fixing her issues, making her life easier. His, he’d deal with later.
* * *
“WELL?” FEELING FRESH and sexy after her shower, Eden sat cross-legged on her bed and leaned over to peer into Cade’s face. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
He peeled one eye open and gave her a languid look. It took all her control not to giggle, but she managed to keep her expression impatiently expectant.
“I could say I’m looking forward to some good lovin’. Or I could say good-night, since it’s almost midnight and you had me up early this morning to take care of a goat.” He sounded a lot happier about the former than the latter. Probably because Jojo hadn’t taken too kindly to a man in her pen and had tried to headbutt him right back out.
“It won’t be good lovin’. It will be great,” Eden corrected primly. Then she arched one brow. “And you had a nap while I saw clients this afternoon, so I’d think you caught up on sleep just fine.”
Eden wasn’t quite sure what to make of her new life. She just knew it was wonderful. Somehow, in the week since the lakeside lovemaking, Cade had sort of moved in with her. Sort of, because neither of them had actually said a word about it. But his clothes were in a drawer she’d cleared. His toiletries sat next to hers in the bathroom. And the last three nights, she’d come in from a packed day at the clinic to find dinner waiting on the table, Cade in his stocking feet reading the paper and looking about as content as she’d ever seen him.
