Breaking Out (Military Romantic Suspense) (SEAL Team Heartbreakers Book 6)

by Teresa Reasor

  “I’m with him about the faucet. Just go out and buy one and send the lost one back when it comes in.”

  “Customers want what they want, Cal. We’re in the business of making their dreams come true. If they want a certain kind of faucet, we get it for them.”

  “I’d be on the phone telling them it was lost and I was going to find a comparable one.”

  She shook her head, and though she didn’t roll her eyes, he could tell she wanted to. “Which also takes time.”

  It sounded like his mom was just as run-down as his dad, and if she got sick, too…

  Cal pulled her to a stop down the hall from his dad’s room. “Until Dad is on his feet, I think you need to hire someone who can help with the day-to-day aggravations. Dad’s going to be a full time job.” He drew a deep breath. “While I’m here, I’ll make sure the crews stay on task and get the job done, but I have responsibilities back in San Diego. A job, friends, and—most important—Kathleen. I can’t just tear up roots and move back here. And even if I could…I’m not at all sure I want to.”

  “I understand, but we need you, Cal. The last month since your father’s been sick it’s been plain to him and to me.”

  Shit! “I’ll think about it, and I’ll talk to Doug. Or maybe we can do it together.”

  “Okay. Once your father’s surgery is behind us.”

  He’d carried his resentment and pain over this situation for so long, it was hard to lay it down, hard to know what to do with himself when it wasn’t there in the background, goading him. Now he was needed, he wasn’t sure he wanted to turn his entire life upside down again to move back to Texas.

  And what about Kathleen? No way was he leaving her behind. If she couldn’t come with him, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chapter 13

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  Kathleen parked in front of her apartment, but was slow to get out of the car. She sat for a moment, willing her muscles to relax and her nerves to unwind. She’d worked her ass off the entire week to put the finishing touches on the design for the client, only to have them come back and want some additions. It always happened, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

  Through every moment of the hard work and meetings, she’d wanted to drop everything and hop a plane to be with Cal, but she just couldn’t. Not until the changes were finished. She’d go in tomorrow and complete them, and then first thing Tuesday morning ask the clients to come in and okay the changes. That way she’d be on the plane to San Antonio on Tuesday afternoon, just as she and Cal had planned.

  She missed him. Since finding each other, they hadn’t been apart more than a day, and now it had been three days…and it felt like a year.

  What had happened to her? She had been eager to make new friends and build a life here in San Diego. Since the kidnapping, she’d done was hide out at her apartment and hang with Cal. She had grown too dependent on him. Too clingy. But she felt safe while she was with him. And when she wasn’t…the words vulnerable and shaky came to mind.

  When she stepped outside her apartment or car, she was hyperaware of everything around her. And though she thought she was controlling her anxiety, since Cal’s absence, she’d been anxious and having trouble breathing just walking from her car into the building at work. Or from her apartment to the car.

  She had to get over this.

  With that thought in mind, she shoved open the car door and climbed out. She hit the button to lock the vehicle and forced herself to walk slowly up the sidewalk. Her hand shook a little when she put the key in the lock.

  She hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch. It was just low blood sugar, she told herself, though deep down she knew it was much more.

  She shoved open the door, rushed inside, and set the deadbolt. Immediately her tension released, leaving her trembling.

  She tossed her purse on the table close to the door and moved into the living room, where she sat on the couch, rested her hands on her knees, and waited for her heart to stop racing.

  Why was she suddenly going through this again? What had triggered it?

  She needed to go back to the psychologist she’d seen for three months after the attack.

  And how the hell was she supposed to fly to San Antonio when she couldn’t walk from her car to her apartment without being scared shitless?

  *

  Zach settled back in the hot tub on Hawk’s sun porch. The sun slipped in through the privacy blinds in strips that shone on the painted wooden floor.

  Hawk turned up the jets for him, and the heated water bubbled around his legs. “Zoe says fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay.” Zach leaned his head back and stretched his arms out over the edge of the tub.

  Hawk sat down on the couch. “So how are the master chief and his dog?”

  “They’re both recovering, and already trying to work their way back. Master chief will need some therapy to regain the strength on his right side, and Gracie will need some massage and therapy to walk normally again. In the MC’s words, he’ll never give up, and neither will his dog.”

  Hawk walked over to the small refrigerator in the corner. He removed a beer and held one up for Zach. “It’s a real shame both of them are having to go through this.”

  Though he could practically taste the brew, Zach shook his head. “Better not. I’m still on the pain meds the doc gave me. And, yeah, it is a shame. That fucker led her right in front of my car. I damn near hit him, too.”

  Hawk palmed a bottled soft drink and handed it to him. Zach unscrewed the lid and took a healthy gulp. The drink buzzed his tongue and tasted sweet, instead of the bitterness he craved. Maybe it was good he had to deny himself something now and then. It built character.

  His thoughts swung to Piper. He wondered if it would build character if he denied himself her.

  They were barreling down a path that might be wrong for them both.

  He heard himself saying. “I met a woman.”

  Hawk turned to look at him. “Who is she?” He sat down in the glider across from Zach.

  “Her name is Francesca, but everyone calls her Piper. She’s a vet. And her family owns Bertinelli’s Restaurant.”

  “And?” Hawk urged.

  “She’s smart and beautiful. Not a party girl or a SEAL groupie.”

  Hawk raised his brows, encouraging him to continue.

  “We haven’t been out yet. Well, we stopped for lunch on the way to visit Master Chief Flynn. I’m not sure that counts. But I’m going to dinner at her house on Sunday.” His thoughts kept hanging up on the kiss they shared in the parking lot before her asshole partner interrupted. And the one before. The way she looked at him, touched him.

  Hawk’s voice interrupted his musings. “I’m glad to hear it. You need other friends besides the team, and other interests besides bandaging wounds or blowing things up.”

  “And fishing,” Zach added.

  Hawk shot him a look. “And fishing.”

  Zach drew in a deep breath and tasted the chlorination in the mist around the tub. “We’re about to deploy. It isn’t the greatest time to start dating someone.”

  Hawk leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and let the beer bottle dangle between his legs. “In our line of work, we have to grab our opportunities with both hands. Life isn’t about acting when it’s convenient. It’s about living as fully as we can, and making every moment count.”

  Zach dwelled on that a moment. “How do you leave them, Hawk? How do you walk into the fire and leave them behind without going crazy?

  “Who the hell says I don’t sometimes?”

  He’d never seen Hawk reveal even a hint of being out of control. He had a reputation for being one of the most professional operators in the teams. The best of the best.

  Hawk raked his fingers through his hair, roughing up the stick-straight dark strands. His gray gaze looked pale against the dark tan of his face. “When we’re gone, there are times I feel like…if I have to go one more day without seeing Zoe,
or hearing her voice, I might rip something or someone to pieces. That’s when I get on SKYPE. I have to see her face while I’m talking to her. I have to see A. J.”

  “She talks me down off the ledge. She offers me encouragement and tells me how much she loves me. She gives me a little touches of home to cling to, and tells me every detail of what’s going on with her and A. J., makes me a part of their lives. Even if he’s asleep when I call, she gets him out of bed before I say good-bye so I can see him.” A wry smile tweaked his lips. “Sometimes she even succeeds in not waking him up. I don’t know how I’d do what we do without them, Doc.”

  Hawk looked up. “You can’t keep the people you love at a distance and do the job. You have to make them as much a part of it as possible. I can’t share what we do or where we are, but I can share pictures and small events, funny stories, to bring them closer. I can tell them how much I love them every opportunity I get.”

  Zach swallowed against the knot in his throat. Man, that was tough. Would it have worked with Patricia?

  He’d had plenty of time to think about the mistakes he made in their relationship, and dissect the feelings he had for her. He’d found it difficult to sort them out, much less express them to her.

  Hawk was waiting for a response, so he said, “Talking about my feelings is like walking around naked in public for me, Hawk.”

  “You have to trust someone, sometime, Doc. We have too many things we can’t talk about. It’s a mistake not to share the things we can.”

  Zoe tapped at the door. “Sorry to interrupt.” She nodded to Hawk. “A. J. wants you to rub his back until he goes to sleep.”

  Hawk set aside his beer and stood. “I’ll be right back. You have five more minutes in the tub before you need to get out.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Zoe offered. She limped into the sun porch and sat down on the glider Hawk just vacated. “He’ll only be a few minutes. He has the magic touch with A. J.” She flashed him a smile that said with me, too.

  Zach wondered how she dealt with a child alone when they were gone. A child who was missing his Pa, as A. J. called Hawk.

  “How’s the hip feeling?” Zoe asked, cutting into his thoughts.

  “Better, I think.”

  “Good. Hawk can give you a key and the alarm code. We’re not here during the day, so you could slip in and do ten or fifteen minutes in the mornings, and then another ten or so at night.”

  “I wouldn’t want to intrude, Zoe.”

  “You’re family, Doc. It isn’t an intrusion.”

  “I appreciate you saying that.” He touched a spot in the center of his chest with a fist and gave a thumbs up gesture.

  “All I ask is that you make sure the kitchen door is locked when you leave. A. J.’s determined to get into the tub every time it’s uncovered, and he’s as sneaky as you guys. He gets into stuff faster than I can catch him.”

  Zach chuckled. “He’s three and already training to be a SEAL.”

  “Let’s hope he learns the self-discipline to go along with it. Otherwise, God help us. He shot through the terrible twos without any of the usual tantrums, and has hit the thunderous threes with a vengeance to make up for it.”

  The timer went off, and Zach braced a hand on the side of the tub to help him stand. When he climbed out and reached for the towel, he could tell he was moving a little easier.

  He returned to the subject of A. J. “He’s probably sensing things from you and Hawk about the deployment.”

  “Probably.”

  “I know it isn’t easy for you, Zoe.”

  “No.” She avoided looking at him, and instead removed the clip holding her long, hazelnut-colored hair in a tail, finger-combed it, gathering the loose, flyaway strands around her face, then twisted it and secured it with the clip at the back of her head again. An oval face and large blue eyes put her firmly in the category of beautiful.

  A drunk driver hit her while she was out riding her bicycle years before and damaged her legs, one worse than the other, leaving her with skin graft scars and a permanent limp that required a brace on one leg. She was without the brace at the moment, leaving the scars visible below her cropped pants.

  “This will be the third deployment since we met. The second one since A. J.’s birth. It never gets any easier having him away.”

  He wanted to ask if it was worth it, but couldn’t bring himself to.

  “I love him, and I knew what I was taking on when I married him. I’d rather have him half the year than not at all.”

  And if something happened to Hawk?

  He had never allowed himself to think about the people and family he left behind. He’d blocked that off, too, so he could avoid feeling guilty about putting them in such a position. But they still loved him, encouraged him, and supported him, despite the fact it left them open to heartache if something happened to him.

  “I have a good support network with the other wives while he’s away. We help each other out a lot.”

  “You gals seem as close as we are.”

  “We are.” She changed the subject. “Let me look at your leg.”

  Surprised by the request, Zach eyed her.

  Zoe chuckled. “I’m not saying drop your drawers, I’m saying move the towel so I can see if your leg is as swollen now as it was when you first arrived.”

  Zach removed the towel and pulled up on the legs of his trunks. “I don’t think it is.”

  “No, it doesn’t look it.”

  “Are you flashing my wife, Doc?” Hawk asked from the door.

  “She’d be oohing and aahing if I was.”

  Zoe shook her head. “You guys are all the same. Cocky as hell.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes round with shock, then her cheeks reddened.

  Hawk and Doc roared with laughter.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” She pointed a finger at Doc. “Don’t you dare tell anyone I said that. Oh, my God, I’m leaving.” She started past Hawk and he grabbed her and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and whispered something in her ear, making her color deepen. She pressed into him for a moment and hid her face against his chest, easy to do since her face was level with it. She looked fragile up against Hawk’s large, muscular frame.

  When she peeked out again, she avoided looking at Zach altogether. “I promised Doc you would give him a key so he can come in during the day to use the tub. If he uses it every day, it might speed up the healing.”

  “Okay.”

  Zach took pity on her embarrassment. “My lips are sealed, Zoe.”

  “Mine aren’t,” Hawk grinned.

  “They better be.” Her tone was somewhere between a threat and a plea.

  He chuckled again. “We’ll negotiate my silence later.”

  Her color rose again, but she was fighting a smile. “I’m out of here. I think I need to put a cool cloth on my face.”

  Hawk was still grinning when she limped through the kitchen and down the hall. “I am going to get so much mileage out of this.”

  Zach chuckled. “You don’t have to give me a key. I can go out to the base and use the whirlpool in the weight room.”

  “That’s a forty-minute drive there and back, plus the hour it takes for the water to heat for a fifteen-minute soak. We’re ten minutes closer, even with traffic. And I can leave the tub heated so you can simply slide in. It’s up to you.”

  He didn’t want to be a problem. But he was trying to heal quickly so he’d be up for deployment. “Give me the key.”

  Hawk nodded. “You’ll need the alarm code, too.”

  On the way home, Zach mulled over the relationship Hawk had built with Zoe. LT didn’t try to hide his feelings for her from anyone.

  She was partially disabled, had mobility issues, and a child to care for, and she still hung in there with him.

  He kissed Piper today and showed her how he felt. So he’d started off in the right direction. Four days without seeing her didn’t seem like such a good idea. But she had acted li
ke she wanted him to keep his distance until Sunday and give her some time.

  Damnit.

  An idea relieved some of his frustration. She hadn’t said he couldn’t call.

  Chapter 14

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  Piper pulled into the restaurant parking lot and and got out of her car. What good was it if your family ran a restaurant and you couldn’t go now and then to beg a meal? It was Friday night, and she’d just gotten off work. What did that say about her life?

  That it was going to the dogs. Literally.

  She thought about Zach for a moment. He’d kept his distance, exactly the way she asked him to do, and he visited Gracie after she left for lunch, so she missed seeing him for the last three days. Every day she found her heart leaping every time Sherry or one of the other receptionists buzzed her. He called every morning, though, and spoke to her. But he kept the conversation easy, with no demands, leaving her unsatisfied.

  What did she expect? It was what she asked for.

  Her neck tight with exhaustion and wariness, she slung her purse over her shoulder and exited the car. The sign, backlit with the family name in a curved font, acted like a beacon to customers. She paused outside and braced herself before entering. A man exited and held the door for her, so she couldn’t very well turn and run away. This was her family’s place of business.

  Every time she walked inside, it was like running a gauntlet. She couldn’t shut off the memories, and she felt the accusations bombarding her, though they were never spoken. At least not in public.

  She murmured thanks to the man holding the door and entered the foyer.

  She avoided looking at the front reservation desk, where the hostess stood. The memory of blood splatter across the back wall still colored the sheetrock behind it, even though it had long since been cleaned and painted.

  Madeline Salmons walked around the desk and moved to embrace her. She’d been a fixture at Bertinelli’s for ten years, and was more family than employee. She was dressed in a bright red polka dot blouse and red skirt. “Piper, it’s good to see you.”