by Tawny Weber
“I guess you don’t need me, then, do you?”
Ignoring the uncomfortable looks ricocheting around the room, Genna packed up the rest of her cookies. They’d all gotten a big old dose of gossip fodder. They weren’t feasting on her baking, too.
The last thing she heard as she swept through the door with all the majesty of the princess title Brody had pinned on her was her father’s muttered words.
“I’m gonna kick Brody Lane’s ass.”
* * *
BRODY STOOD BY the small lake down the hill from the park, noting that the cattails were chest-high now and the surrounding trees had created a canopy overhead. He used to come down here with his buddies after dark to drink. Or, every once in a while, with a girl, since not much action could be had on the backseat of a Harley. Some enterprising kid had tied a rope to one branch, right above the no-swimming sign.
Bet the local law loved that.
He missed the ocean.
He missed activity.
Hell, he missed reveille, spot inspections and mess hall chow.
“So this is where you’re hiding?”
Brody sighed.
What he didn’t miss were people. Which was one of the reasons he’d chosen this side of the park. It was rarely populated.
“If I was hiding, you wouldn’t be able to find me.” He didn’t turn around when he said it, just kept staring at the murky water.
“You don’t look surprised to see me,” Masters said as he reached Brody’s side, mimicking his stance of both hands in his pockets staring over the lake.
“I heard you stomping down the path.” And he’d been expecting him. Irene had passed on a half dozen phone messages, each one more demanding than the last. Brody had ignored them, of course. But nobody put Masters off for long. If the guy wasn’t so brilliant, his call sign would be Bulldog instead of Genius.
“I came to haul you out of hiding.”
“I’m not hiding. I’m recovering.” Brody gestured to the uneven path. “Walking, working the kinks out, pushing my limits.”
“Moseying through a cozy small-town park at dusk pushes your limits?”
Brody shrugged.
Leaving the house pretty much pushed his limits these days.
“The doctor’s report said you’re ready for PT. Actually, I’m paraphrasing a little. What it said is that you should have reported to base to start thrice-weekly physical therapy a week ago, as soon as you got back to California.”
“I’m on leave.”
“Convalescent leave. Which, according to the manual, means you’re off duty but still obligated to fulfill your duties, such as they are laid out by your superior officer.”
“You read too much.”
“We’ve all got our faults.” Masters shrugged, kicking around the rocks and gravel beneath their feet.
“I figured I’d take another few days. Start physical therapy next week,” Brody said. Not really a lie. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d definitely have put it off.
“Why?”
Brody hunched his shoulders, glaring at the water and wishing he’d opted for a nice, anonymous hotel room in some remote city to recuperate. Masters still would have found him, but it’d have taken the guy a couple extra hours.
“I’m not ready.”
His teammate was silent for a few seconds, still stirring the rocks with his foot as if searching for gold. He bent down, grabbed a flat rock and sent it skipping over the lake. Three bounces. Not bad.
“PTSD?”
“I jacked up my leg,” Brody snapped. “Not my head.”
“Dude, that mission went straight to hell. Landon is still chewing on asses over the intelligence breakdown. And you bore the brunt of it. Nobody’d think less of you if you were having trouble processing it. There’s no shame in that.”
Brody puffed out a breath. He wasn’t dissing guys facing it. Post-traumatic stress disorder was real, and from what he’d seen, it was pure hell. He thought about pointing out that he’d gotten through debriefing just fine, but he knew Masters wouldn’t buy that. Debriefing didn’t mean jack. Guys came back from missions, left the military all the time with their heads inside out. A guy didn’t do or see the kind of things SEALs did without it taking a toll.
“I’m not ashamed. I’m just saying that’s not the issue.”
“Then you’ll report for physical therapy tomorrow.”
He quickly marshaled a handful of arguments. His bike was on base, so he didn’t have wheels. His right leg was damaged, not in any shape to operate a car. And he couldn’t ask his sweet little gramma to drive him the two-hour commute back and forth to Coronado. He wasn’t even sure she had a license anymore.
He didn’t offer up any of them, though. SEALs didn’t make excuses.
“You could consider it an order,” Masters said in a contemplative tone, bending down to pick up another stone, then winging it across the lake.
Brody grimaced. Not that the guy scored five bounces. But that he’d resort to pulling rank.
“Deal with whatever’s going on. You need someone to talk to, give me a yell. But don’t take forever. The team is waiting for you to finish this little vacation and get your ass back to work.” Masters waited a beat, then added, “Besides, we miss your cookies. Can you get your gramma to send a care package with you when you come in tomorrow?”
Brody snorted.
Then, straightening his shoulders, he faced reality as he had so many times in the past. Orders were orders, no matter how ugly they were or what degree of reluctance he felt about them. He’d do PT until reevaluation. What he did afterward, well, time would tell.
“You need a ride?”
“Waste of resources,” Brody pointed out, thinking of the car that’d dropped him off from the airport.
“Dude, we’re on leave. The team will take turns playing taxi until the doctor green-lights you on your bike. Or you could rent something safe. A Smart Car, maybe.”
Brody laughed, turning to face Masters for the first time since his buddy had joined him. The guy looked good. Normal, except for the seven stitches holding his cheek together. They’d all taken a hit on that mission.
But Brody had been the last man out. Well, second to last. His smile dropped, Carter’s face flashing in his mind just before the guy had gone flying through the air.
“You okay?”
Brody blinked, then shrugged.
“Other than being ordered to see some dumbass who’s gonna play with my body? Yeah, I’m fine.”
After a long, narrow-eyed inspection, Masters nodded and turned to go.
“Don’t forget the cookies,” he called over his shoulder.
Brody let his mind go blank. It was a lot easier than facing the questions Masters’s visit had planted in his mind. Questions that’d been there already, nicely buried. Thanks to his buddy, they’d made their ugly way to the surface. Much harder to ignore.
But not impossible.
The sun was sliding low when he finally made his way up the hill. He wanted to blame the chilly weather for the stiffness in his leg and pain shooting from ankle to shoulder.
He’d just cleared the hill, beads of sweat coating his forehead with an icy chill. He hunched his shoulders and ignored the pain.
“Hold it right there,” growled a familiar voice.
Brody’s fists clenched in his pockets, his jaw tight to hold back the cusswords.
Was there a beacon that went off whenever he cleared the lake? How many times in his life had this guy busted him right here, in this very spot?
And what the hell was with today? Had he missed the note on the calendar calling it face-your-demons day? First Masters with the reminders of the mission. Now Reilly was here to throw off the careful barriers Brody had slammed around any thoughts of Genna. Or more particularly, of the piss-poor way he’d treated her.
His attitude slid downward, from rotten to pure crap. He forced himself to pull it back. It’d been ten years. He was too old t
o play rebel badass. Besides, he’d made his peace with the sheriff’s actions years ago. No point in holding a grudge.
“Lane.” Reilly gave him a once-over, his tone as cool as the look on his face. “You have a reason for being here?”
Looked like time didn’t do a damned thing to blunt other people’s grudges.
“Walking is against the law?”
“I see the service didn’t do anything about that smart mouth of yours.”
“Actually, it improved it. Nobody swears or smarts off with the same finesse as a sailor.”
Reilly just stared. Cold, with layers of anger that said he’d be more than happy to take off his badge and kick Brody’s smart ass.
Brody grinned, amused for the first time in weeks.
Did the guy actually think he was intimidating? Brody had been stared down, shot at and ordered about by hard-asses that made Sheriff Reilly look like a cute little pussycat.
“Stay away from my daughter.”
What? Had Genna run to Daddy, complaining that the big mean guy had kissed her?
Brody’s grin slid away.
He made a show of looking left, then right. Then, just to prod the guy a little further, he glanced behind him before offering the sheriff a shrug.
“I don’t seem to be anywhere near your daughter.”
“Clearly the navy didn’t teach you respect,” Reilly muttered, resting his hand on the butt of his pistol. What, like he thought that’d get him the quote-unquote respect he apparently wanted?
Since Brody could have that weapon out of the guy’s possession and neutralized in twenty seconds—an extra ten because he was injured and hadn’t trained in a couple of months―he was having trouble finding the will to be intimidated.
Nor was he finding any for this conversation.
Before, the highlight of his discussions with the good sheriff was to see how far he could push the guy. To find each particular button and give it a good jab.
Now, he just didn’t care.
“You looked me up for a reason, Sheriff. Why don’t you get to it so we can both be on our way?”
Reilly blinked, then frowned. His hand shifted to his belt as he gave Brody a searching look.
“I told you, stay away from Genna.”
“I haven’t gone looking for your daughter.”
“But you’ve seen her.”
No point denying the truth. But neither was Brody stupid enough to fill in any blanks, either. Instead he just waited.
“Genna’s not smart enough to know when she’s being taken for a ride,” the sheriff said, for the first time looking like a concerned father instead of an uptight cop. “She’s got some starry-eyed idea that you’re a hero. Same way she thinks drunks are safe to talk to and that her brother was gonna rehabilitate.”
Brody rocked back on his heels, his mind adjusting to the lineup he’d just joined. Drunks and a prison-shivved junkie. Talk about perspective. The kind that grated down his spine. But as much as it killed him to let it slide, he didn’t take the bait.
“Sounds to me like the person you need to talk to is your daughter,” he said instead.
“I’ll be talking to her. But I’m warning you, too. She’s vulnerable, and not good at seeing through bullshit. Naive and easily confused.”
Were they talking about the same woman? Genna Reilly, leggy spitfire with a wicked mouth and an attitude that didn’t quit? Did the guy know his daughter at all?
“She’s spent a lot of years getting her life on the straight and narrow, and keeping it there. She doesn’t need any bad influences dragging her off.”
“When did Genna fall off the straight and narrow?” Like the man’s earlier one, this image simply didn’t compute. Genna might be pure temptation wrapped in bold sassiness, but she was still the epitome of the town sweetheart.
“The only reason she didn’t go the same way as her brother is because her mother and I kept a tighter rein on her. Kept her away from influences like you, made sure she works the right job, lives in the right place.”
In other words, they’d tucked her under their thumb and hadn’t let go.
Damn.
Brody felt like an ass. It was bad enough that he’d been a total jerk to her. Now to find out he’d only been act 1 in the ass brigade marching through her life.
He’d been fine justifying his treatment of Genna when it was only the two of them. But knowing her father was giving her shit for something she hadn’t done seriously pissed him off.
“You’ve been warned,” Sheriff Reilly snapped, turning to leave.
Brody wanted to hate the guy.
Still...
“Sheriff?”
Reilly stopped and looked over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry about Joe.”
Grief-laced anger flashed, raw and painful in the older man’s eyes for a second, then he blinked it away. He gave Brody another one of those searching looks, offered a silent nod and kept on walking.
Jerk.
Brody was still fuming when he got back to his hidey-hole of a house, his leg screaming protest at the extra pressure his stomp home had put on it.
For the first time, he looked past the guesthouse to the house on the other side of the alley. Lights glowed, the windows glistening against the darkening sky.
Then he glanced at the door of his hidey-hole.
Brody debated for all of three seconds.
Time to have a chat with Sheriff Reilly’s little girl.
8
WHAT THE HELL was wrong with men?
Were they good for anything besides the occasional orgasm and spider removal?
“Genna, your mom called. Again.”
“I’m not here.”
Macy huffed in the kitchen doorway, then made her way into the bowels of temptation as she called it. Genna called it therapy. She looked around the counters covered in pies, cookies, cakes and her latest experiment, cookie-pops.
“You’re gonna have to take her call,” Macy said, her tone distracted as she stood a good foot away from the counter but leaning so close she was almost bent in half as she sniffed the coconut cake. “Otherwise she’s going to send the EMT over again.”
Focusing all her attention on the ziplocked bag of graham crackers she was crushing with a rolling pin, Genna just shrugged.
Since there was no impact in sending the cops, given that Genna’s dad headed up that game, Cara Reilly had taken to calling for an ambulance when her daughter ignored her. After all, the only reason Genna could ever not respond was that she’d fallen in the shower, or slipped down the staircase, or cut her head off while slicing tomatoes.
Genna beat the bag so hard the seams exploded, sending graham cracker crumbs all over the counter. It was unthinkable that her daughter might not want to talk.
“If you talk to her, she’ll quit calling,” Macy said with an impatient look.
“If I talk to her, I might actually need an EMT.” Genna swept the crumbs off the counter into her hand, her moves jerky with irritation.
“What’d she do that’s so bad?”
Genna shrugged and grabbed a paper towel to clean up the mess instead of answering.
What was the point?
Macy didn’t get it. She saw Genna’s parents as poster-perfect, the epitome of what every parent should be. Attentive, helpful and always there to offer advice on their daughter’s life. What she didn’t see, or chose to ignore since Genna had pointed it out a few million times, was that they were smothering her.
“I’m going to stay at Greg’s for a little while,” Macy finally said, sidling closer to a triple-layer coconut cream cake and swiping a fingerful of frosting.
“Because my mother keeps calling?” Wow, maybe her parents’ nagging and interference had finally paid off. Not that she didn’t love Macy, but she was seriously tired of justifying her mood, choices and entire freaking life.
“No. Because you keep baking. In the last three weeks, you’ve made enough food to stock a fancy
bakery. I can’t take it. I’d rather stay with Greg and risk a big fight before the wedding than stay here and ensure I can’t fit in my dress.”
Genna winced. Shaking the cracker crumbs off her fingers, she finally turned to look at her friend.
Macy’s face was creased with concern. Another reason to leave, Genna supposed. No bride should have worry lines on her special day.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, glancing around the room and seeing what her friend probably saw. Holy cow. It did look like a bakery had relocated to her kitchen. “I have no idea what I’m going to do with all of this.”
She’d been so focused on baking to avoid her thoughts, she hadn’t considered what to do with the results.
Macy backed away as if the very question opened the door to the possibility of her eating it all. Then she stopped, sighed and scooped up another taste of coconut frosting.
“You won’t burn yourself out before you need to make my wedding cake, will you?”
Genna laughed for the first time in three days. What was Macy going to obsess over after mid-May?
“Of course not. I love to bake. I can’t imagine ever burning out on it.” Of course, she hadn’t been able to imagine her heart being stomped on and her dreams trampled while she was still quivering from a mind-blowing climax, either. So what did she know?
“Will you be okay here by yourself?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Better than fine, actually, since all she wanted right now was to be left alone. She didn’t want to talk, she had no interest in sharing her heartbreak or hearing advice. And if Macy wasn’t here, she could turn off the phone altogether. After putting in a call to the EMT center to let them know to ignore her mother, of course.
Nope, she’d rather be alone, baking and contemplating the useless dissatisfaction that was her life.
Fun, fun.
“Go, live with your fiancé,” she said, shooing Macy out of the kitchen before she gave in to self-pity and changed her mind. “Have wild sex, play house, try togetherness on for size.”
“Genna,” Macy protested, blushing. “We don’t have wild sex.”
What was the point of getting married, then?
