Playing Dirty

by Jamie Ann Denton

  “Dad should see this,” she said. “Maybe he can prescribe something to help with the healing.” She traced her finger over a particularly deep scar. “Does it hurt?”

  “There’s some numbness, but not all,” he said. “Some days I don’t even think about it. Others, it seems it’s all I can think about.”

  Her husband had always been pure alpha male, and his admission surprised her. In the past, Ford would’ve chewed off his own tongue before admitting any form of weakness. Even to her.

  “I see this...” her voice caught. She withdrew her hand, then gave him a slight nudge. “I see this and it makes me furious. It makes me want to end whoever did this to you.”

  He rolled to his back, giving her room. She smoothed her skirt as she sat beside him and looked into his eyes. “What did they do to you?”

  “I really don’t think—,”

  “And I really do think you need to tell me. I’m not a fool, Ford. And I’m not as naïve as you seem to think I am. I can see they tortured you. Repeatedly.”

  “I don’t think you’re naïve. I just don’t want to upset you.”

  “You were tortured. How could that not upset me?”

  He let out a sigh, and his expression hardened. That quickly, the walls went up, shutting her out. She wanted to scream with frustration.

  “You need to talk to someone. If not me, then maybe a professional.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You think I need a shrink?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you? I think you should at least talk to someone familiar with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  He pushed himself up and sat, leaning back against the headboard before he adjusted the sheet around his waist. “What makes you think I have PTSD?”

  Her gaze dipped to his rock hard abs, the breadth of his chest and for half a second, she lost her train of thought. She lifted her eyes to his. Cold. Hard. Dark. A stranger’s eyes, convincing her more than ever he didn’t have it as together as he wanted to believe.

  “Because you haven’t talked about what happened,” she said. “You know as well as I do, it’s not healthy to keep things bottled inside.” She curled her fingers into her palms to keep from touching him. “There has to be someone at the base you could talk to? If not a counselor, then maybe a support group? Or a chaplain.”

  “I’m handling it,” he said, his tone rough.

  “No, honey, you’re not.” She reached for his hand and wove their fingers together. “Look how long you’ve been home and I’m just now seeing these scars. That’s not handling. That’s hiding.”

  He remained stubbornly silent. She could respect his misplaced determination to “handle” things in his own way, but they’d been through too much for her to let it go that easily. “I need you to talk to me.”

  “There’s not much to say.” He looked away. “I was captured, they tried to break me, I escaped.”

  Her frustration multiplied, and she pulled her hand from his. “Wow. Seriously? That’s all you’ve got?” she asked. “Why won’t you trust me?”

  “I trust you.”

  “No, you obviously don’t.” Disgusted, she shoved off the bed. That he wouldn’t talk to her, after everything they’d suffered, that he couldn’t even trust her with the truth, hurt. Not only hurt, it irritated the hell out of her. “I’m leaving for Dad’s in half an hour,” she said. “I need to go earlier than planned. If you’re not ready, I’m leaving without you.”

  “Mattie,” he called after her. “Damn it, Mattie. Come back.”

  She ignored him. She couldn’t talk to him, not now. Not when she was seething inside. His “death” had nearly killed her, and he couldn’t be bothered to share so much as a single detail of what he’d gone through?

  She stalked into the laundry room and yanked open the door to the storage closet for the cooler and insulated bags she used to carry food to her dad’s every week. After finding the items she needed, she headed into the kitchen, nearly colliding with Ford as she rounded the corner. He’d slipped on a pair of shorts, but hadn’t bothered with a shirt. He looked annoyed, rumpled, and sexy as hell, but she was too ticked at him to care. Much.

  “Excuse me.” She sidestepped him, dropping the cooler and bags on one of the barstools. She still had the ingredients for the macaroni salad to mix together, and needed to pack up marinating beef ribs and secure the batch of hickory beans simmering in the crockpot to ready for transport. She didn’t have time to argue with him.

  He moved near the sink and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his wide chest. She tried not to care that his biceps looked rock hard, or that his forearms rippled, or that the athletic shorts he wore were slung low on his hips, showing off a six pack guaranteed to drench her panties. And she really didn’t care that her heart rate accelerated a few degrees because his intense gaze was filled with frustration when he stared her down.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  She unplugged the crockpot and secured the lid. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the truth for once.”

  “I’ve never lied to you.”

  She let out a puff of breath, then turned away from him to open the refrigerator for the container of marinating ribs. “You’ve withheld information. You’ve always withheld information,” she said and shoved the door closed with her hip. “You’ve never trusted me with the truth.”

  “Why is it wrong that I want to spare you from what I went through?”

  She set the container on the counter with a sharp snap. “Because I’m your wife, Ford.”

  His lips pressed into a thin line, then his expression shuttered, locking her out...

  Again.

  She turned away from him and went back to the fridge before she did something stupid. Or violent. Like chucking the container of ribs at his head. Instead she said, “Look, I do get that what they did to you was horrific. I can see it with my own eyes, and I’m sure there was a whole lot worse. Of course it hurts me to know you’ve been tortured.” She pulled in a breath and let it out slowly, striving for a calm she was nowhere near feeling. “But it kills me when you won’t trust me enough to talk about it.”

  He let out a breath and scrubbed a hand down his face. For a minute, she didn’t think he’d bother to acknowledge her concern. He never had before, so why would he start now?

  “It’s not that easy,” he said quietly. “In order to survive, you bury that shit. Deep. You do it so you can get through the next day, or the next five minutes.”

  “Or the past five years. I get it. I do. But that’s exactly why you need to talk about it,” she said again. “You can talk to me, but I need the truth. Not some watered-down version of it because you don’t think I can handle it.”

  She waited for him to do what he always did—tell her the information was classified, or try to make light of it by saying the need to know was above her pay grade. When it came to diversionary tactics, Ford had always been a pro. She might be out of practice, but more importantly, she was out of patience. After the hell she’d suffered, she wasn’t about to play the dutiful Navy wife. Not this time. She no longer gave a rip about maintaining that even strain so the great warrior wasn’t distracted by trivial bullshit at home. Not any longer. After the price they’d paid, she’d be damned if she’d swallow a single ounce of the bullshit he shoveled in the name of national security.

  “I don’t want to fight,” he said.

  “Neither do I,” she said. “I want honesty.”

  He let out another sigh as he pushed off the counter and moved toward her, his steps deliberate as he crowded her. Too late, she realized what he was about to do. His hands clamped on her waist and he effortlessly lifted her onto the counter. “The truth is,” he said as he planted his hands on the quartz, invading her space and sucking up all the oxygen around her, “that I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But I do.”

  He pressed his lips to her neck, teasing her skin with light kisses and f
eathery flicks of his tongue. “Not now.”

  She struggled for air. “Then when?” The man was dangerous, but she wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. “You can’t distract me with sex, Ford.”

  He chuckled. “Wanna bet?”

  A sucker bet, to be sure. And the rat bastard would win, too. He’d always known just where to touch her. Where to kiss her. How to make her knees go weak. How to make her forget her own name. All too often, he held the winning hand for the simple fact he was privy to all her secrets. Too bad she couldn’t say the same about him.

  That thought had her frowning and shoving at his shoulders. “Enough.” She pushed at him again and slid off the counter, but he grabbed her hand before she could completely escape.

  “Later. Tonight,” he said. “When we have more time.”

  She nodded her agreement, because at the moment, she was temporarily out of options. Not only did she need to go to her dad’s house, she also understood her husband would need time to work through exactly how he planned to tell her. Her own imagination had gone to dark places since seeing his scars. Nothing, she was sure, anywhere near as dark as the reality of what he’d endured in their time apart.

  They had issues. A lot of them. And he didn’t know the half of it.

  Thirteen

  AFTER A LONG day at her father’s, cooking, socializing and pretending everything at home was all sunshine and daisies, Mattie was more than ready to pour herself a very large glass of wine and chill. Ford had offered to supervise Phoebe’s bath and bedtime, so instead of accusing him of avoiding the conversation they needed to have, she took advantage of his offer and decided to do her drinking and unwinding in a nice hot bath.

  She stripped, secured her hair with a clip, then stepped into the deep soaker tub filled with steaming water and lavender-scented bubbles. As she settled in and leaned back, the warmth of the scented water enveloped her. A sip of merlot, a long, drawn-out sigh and she closed her eyes, willing the stress of the day to slip away.

  The sound of Phoebe’s exuberant voice carried through the walls from the bathroom down the hall, and she smiled. She sang a silly song, followed by gales of little-girl laughter at whatever nonsense Ford contributed to the spectacle. The sounds didn’t disrupt her. In fact, they soothed her in an odd way.

  The sounds of family. She reached for her glass and took another sip of the blackberry wine. Her tattered, damaged family.

  Could they ever overcome the hurt, the devastation of the loss they’d each suffered? At one point, she’d believed they could, but now she was starting to worry. Granted, they’d been reunited, but was the simple act of being alive enough? Enough for them to rebuild the life they’d once planned together?

  There was no question in her mind when it came to her loving Ford. But saying the words? That she hadn’t been able to do and understood her reluctance stemmed from her own issues. How could she trust that he wouldn’t leave her again? That he wouldn’t die?

  She closed her eyes again and tried to still her mind, letting the sounds of her family lull her until some time later, the click of a closing door disturbed her peace. Confused, she glanced around the bathroom and found Ford holding up the bottle of merlot.

  “More wine?” he asked.

  She handed him her empty glass. “Yes, thank you.”

  The house was now quiet and the water had grown tepid. She must’ve dozed, which was hardly a surprise given she hadn’t slept much in the past twenty-four hours, even counting the hour or so she’d dozed in Ford’s arms this morning.

  “Phoebe give you any trouble?”

  He refilled her glass and handed it back to her, then set the bottle on the ledge behind her in exchange for a short crystal tumbler filled with what she suspected was scotch. “She was out before Horton heard his first Who.”

  He sipped his drink, then looked over at her, the directness of his gaze giving her a distinct thrill. God, she loved this man so very much. After all they’d been through, she’d thought that maybe, just maybe the intensity of her emotions when it came to him would have waned. Even after twelve years of marriage, not so much as an iota. Intellectually, she understood she needed to be a whole lot smarter. She needed to be able to protect her heart from being shredded again, but she had a bad feeling she was fighting a lost cause. When it came to Ford, there were no half-measures. There never had been.

  “I’m glad you two are bonding.”

  “She’s my daughter, Matt. Why wouldn’t we?”

  “Maybe because for the first five years of her life, you were a concept and a photograph.”

  He took a drink from the glass in his hand. “Well, I’m here now,” he said, a distinct edge to his voice she hadn’t noticed until now.

  She sat up, pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I’m sorry. That was a crappy thing to say.”

  He waved away her apology before he pushed off the counter and approached her. “We’re stuck,” he said. “We keep circling around the same dead carcass.” He knelt beside the tub, snagged her bath sponge and started washing her back. “This water is cold.”

  “I know.” She rested her cheek on her upraised knees and closed her eyes. “We need to find a way through this.”

  “This will help.” He drained half, then refilled the tub with hot, steamy water. “Better?” he asked as he dipped the sponge again, then smoothed it over her back in slow, lazy swipes.

  “Much,” she said and closed her eyes. “Did you have Dad take a look at your back?” His wounds, in her opinion, needed medical attention.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. “Will you at least make an appointment at the base hospital?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She lifted her head and looked at him over her shoulder. “It doesn’t look fine to me.”

  He dipped the sponge, then squeezed. Warm, lavender-scented water sluiced down her back. “I hardly notice it,” he said.

  A smart woman would let it go. Would recognize the walls going up and back off the subject. But not her. Oh no, she kept pushing at full speed. She shrugged off his touch. “That’s not what you’d said this morning.”

  He sat back, impatience evident in his gaze. “Is this what you really want to discuss? You’re naked and I could be in less than three seconds. I can think of a dozen other subjects we could tackle.”

  What she wanted was for him to talk about his time in captivity. He’d shut her down earlier, but she needed answers. She needed to know why it had taken him five years to come back to her. “I want you to take care of yourself, not make jokes or hone your powers of evasion.” She stood abruptly, annoyed enough with him she didn’t much care that water splashed all over his shirt. “You don’t want to risk an infection.”

  He gave her an impatient look as he brushed away droplets of water clinging to his shirt. “Nice,” he said, and reached for a towel. “I’ve seen the doctors, here, in Belgium, and at Bethesda when I was first brought stateside. They’ve all said something different. It’ll take time to heal. It’ll heal in no time. Aloe will help. Use coco-butter for the scarring. Use ointment, don’t use ointment. Keep it moist. Keep it dry. Everyone has a different opinion.”

  “So frustrating.” She wasn’t referring to the parade of doctors with their varying degrees of advice, but his unique ability to avoid having a real discussion with her.

  He tossed the towel in the clothes hamper, followed by his shirt. “You think?”

  She flipped the knob to release the stopper on the tub, then quickly rinsed away the bubbles with the hand-held sprayer. “I think about a lot of things,” she said, wrapping a large, fluffy towel around her. She tucked in the end at her breasts before she stepped from the tub. “Like why in the hell it took you five years to come home.”

  He frowned. “So, we’re back to that again.”

  “We wouldn’t if you’d answer the damned question for a change,” she snapped irritably.
That naked chest of his made her fingers itch to touch him and did little to help her rapidly souring mood. Dammit. She’d been relaxed and now she was all tense again. Tense and irritable.

  He moved to the door, but instead of leaving like she thought he would, he turned and propped his shoulder against the doorjamb. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Honestly? I don’t know where to start.”

  His answer took her by complete surprise. She’d expected more of an argument, more avoidance. Maybe he finally understood she’d reached her limit. Whatever it was, she wasn’t about to let the opportunity slip away. She caught his reflection in the mirror. “Pick a day,” she said. “Pick a random day and tell me about it.”

  A full minute ticked by with him staring at the floor. With his bare foot, he toed the edge of the shaggy, yellow throw-rug, flicking the plush strands. Gathering his thoughts? Or choosing his words carefully, considering exactly how much he planned to tell her?

  When he finally looked up, his gaze locked with hers in the mirror’s reflection. “I’d been held in a dusty camp somewhere in the desert. This was probably two, two and a half years in, and I couldn’t tell you if I was in Afghanistan or Iraq, or maybe even back in Syria. But, I’d just been traded for the second time to another group of insurgents,” he said. “A live American made for a great bargaining chip when bartering for several crates full of AK-47s or rocket launchers. Anyway, I’d been tossed into an underground bunker with five other captives.”

  She had questions. Like how was it he’d managed to stay alive when the news coverage of the war was filled with beheadings and prisoners held in cages and set on fire by the enemy? But he was talking, really talking, for the first time since coming home. She wasn’t about to interrupt him now.

  “There were three holding cells, each one not much bigger than a dog kennel,” he continued, “but they kept us together in a single cell, no doubt just to fuck with our heads. You’d think being underground it’d be cooler, but there was little air flow and six, stinking, filthy, sweaty men, made it even hotter.”