by Anne Calhoun
She paused, so he started talking in the same soft voice. “Cut me some slack, girl. I fucked up big-time, and I could use a little help. Showing up with you might get me back in the door so I can throw myself at her feet and grovel. What do you say? Want to see me grovel?”
Nails scritched against cement, then she ate another offering. Maybe groveling was on the menu with hot dogs tonight.
“You and me, we were two of a kind. Except I wasn’t letting her in, and you weren’t going to let me in.”
She was close enough now that he could hear her breathing. Maybe two piles left. “You were the smart one. Not getting too close to me. You knew I wasn’t good for her. But I am now. Getting there, anyway. So how about you and me, we call a truce. Let me take you back to her, and I promise I won’t hurt her again.”
Gretchen’s black nose nudged at his elbow. Slowly, like there was a scorpion, not a dachshund at his side, he turned to look at her. Another nudge, so he lifted his arm. She climbed onto his lap and sniffed at the bag. He dumped the remaining hot dogs into his palm. Gretchen’s velvet tongue licked over his skin, and the hot dogs disappeared. She sniffed again, then settled into his lap and looked up at him, her brown eyes guileless, trusting. He lifted his hand and stroked the length of her sleek body from skull to tail, nice and slow, as if this was no big deal. As if she was just a dog.
Connections were already forming. People recognized him as a friend of Lauren’s, asked him to say hey to her, which was, in the South, a request not handed out lightly and expected to be honored. So he should go do that. Bring her dog back to her, and say hey from Mr. Minnillo. Then throw himself on her mercy and beg for a second chance.
Keeping the length of his arm under Gretchen’s body he got to his feet, cradling her like he used to cradle his rifle. Then he set off down the sidewalk, toward Lauren’s house.
Chapter Thirteen
Lauren stood at the end of her driveway and watched Ty emerge from Mr. Minnillo’s gate, then disappear into the darkness between streetlights. He moved slowly, almost at a stroll, and underneath her worry for Gretchen simmered the same visceral appreciation for his lanky, powerful body. She wondered if what brought him back to her door had disappeared in a two-hour search for an abused, escape artist dog that’d probably never fully trust anyone again, even Lauren.
She knew what drove him back. Guys like Ty were territorial, and today at lunchtime when he was two hundred feet away and across the lake she could feel waves of alpha male rolling at her, hackles raised, growling. Which wasn’t the nothing he’d said he wanted, but twenty-first century or not, at some primitive level sex with the right man still marked a woman. They weren’t going there. No more hookups, no more booty calls for wounded warriors. But of all the surprises he could have sprung, the willingness to search for her dog topped the list.
He strode into the circular spill of a streetlight halfway down the block, his slow, rhythmic stride meshing with her heartbeat. He cradled something in both arms, but whatever he held was too dark to see against his black T-shirt. The corner of the plastic bag poked up from his jeans pocket. He disappeared into blackness between streetlights again, then reappeared two driveways down. Shoulders squared, spine straight, his gaze met hers, and he smiled, so little-boy victorious that her heart leaped hard against her breastbone. He looked happy, utterly pleased with himself and the world, and then she knew why.
Gretchen rode in his strong arms like the royalty she was. She equably considered the view from this new vantage point until her brawny, six-foot-tall ride neared Lauren, then began to wriggle free. Her arms brushed Ty’s abdomen and forearms as he shifted the dog to her. Gretchen promptly gave her a hot dog-scented face licking. She squeezed her and said, “Thank you! Oh Ty, thank you! Wherever did you find her?”
“She was under Mr. Minnillo’s rosebushes,” he said, then reached out to stroke the dog’s tiny head with the back of his index finger. Gretchen didn’t flinch, just turned and licked his finger. “She’s probably going to be sick tonight. I used half a bag of hot dogs to tempt her out.”
“And then grabbed her?”
“And then she jumped right into my lap.” At Lauren’s surprised glance he cupped his palm in demonstration and added, “I baited the trap. I didn’t want her getting away again.”
“She came to you?” Lauren asked, looking up at him.
He wouldn’t meet her eyes, just kept petting Gretchen. “We made a deal, your useful little dog and me.”
“And what was that?”
He met her eyes, and the remorse and hope blended in the dark chocolate depths took her breath away. “The deal was, if she let me bring her back to you I wouldn’t hurt you again.”
“Oh,” she said inadequately. Gretchen’s warm, sleek body vibrated in her arms. Night dropped warm and dark around them. Fireflies danced above the lawn, golden stubs suspended in the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice blending with the humid air.
No excuses, she thought. The U.S. military in general and the Marine Corps in particular demanded answers, not excuses, and he wouldn’t allow himself that luxury, either. It was up to her to extend forgiveness. She held all the power in her hands.
“Do you want to come in and talk about it?” she asked.
His weight shifted to the balls of his feet as he shoved his hands in his pockets, then came up with the greasy plastic bag. “Yeah. I do.”
Inside the house she set Gretchen down. They washed their hands, then Lauren got glasses of ice water for the humans while Gretchen lapped at her water dish. When she’d drunk enough, she trotted into the living room, stopped at the sliding glass doors and looked inquiringly at Lauren.
“Not a chance in hell,” she said. Gretchen curled up on her bed in front of the fireplace instead. “Please, sit,” she urged Ty.
They settled into opposite ends of the sofa, much as they had before, her at one end with her knees pulled up to her chest, him at the other, but he didn’t sprawl this time. It was as if he didn’t want to break something in her living room, a picture, a knickknack. Her.
She handed him a glass. While he drank she looked him over, liked what she saw. Clear eyes, eased lines around his mouth. She couldn’t heal him, never intended to. He had to do that work himself, but she could be there for him while he got reacquainted with the man he was born to be. Remembering his dig about healing wounded animals, she said, “I never thought you needed to heal, Ty. You just…needed to get reacquainted with yourself.”
He leaned forward to set the glass down, then shook his head, gave a little huff of laughter. “You weren’t supposed to be curious. You were supposed to see my fucked-up-ness and walk, not…”
He gestured helplessly, so she finished the sentence. “Not suggest increasingly intimate sexual experiences? Or not care?” she said.
“Both,” he said with a wry smile. “Why me, Lauren?”
He sounded composed, as if he were asking her the weather forecast, but under the words ran a hint of nerves. The way he smoothed his hands over his thighs told her so.
“Why are you working on the rigs?” she asked, keeping the words gentle, not challenging.
His shoulders were broad enough to block out the rising moon when he squared up. “Because no one knows me, what I’ve done or seen. No one cares. Out there, all I am is a dime-a-dozen roughneck, an interchangeable cog in a machine. I don’t have to care about anybody, and nobody cares about me.” He finished the water in the glass, his strong throat working as he swallowed.
When he set the glass on a coaster, she spoke. “I chose you because I liked the way you moved. There was something in the way you walked and held yourself that inspired confidence. I liked the way you looked, sure, but I really liked your stride.”
He actually blushed. “That’s crazy.”
She shrugged. “Men like hair or breasts or legs. I like a guy who can handle himself, which is what I thought you were until we had sex, because you were totally di
fferent in bed than you were out of it. And then I was curious.”
“I was an asshole.”
“You were acting like an asshole. That’s different from being one.”
“How did you know?”
She smiled, remembering years of dating bad boys of all stripes and sizes. “Hard-won experience,” she said. “Why did you come back?”
He flexed his hands, then met her gaze. “I didn’t like what I’d done. Who I’d become. I’d worked hard to become that man, but in the end, I didn’t like him.”
The words made her lungs seize up like they did when the showers ran cold at her gym, and it took her a few seconds to catch her breath.
“If you want to tell me about it, I’d like to hear the story,” she said.
He looked at her for a long moment, the dark brown eyes seemingly stripped of the protective edge he’d worn for so long. “You know this story.”
“I don’t know your story.”
Another pause. He leaned forward, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then braced his elbows on his knees and talked to the floor. His thick hair slid forward, partially obscuring his expression. “There aren’t many different reasons why people join the Corps. Money for college. Fight terrorists. Family history of service. Get out of a hick town. Wear dress blues and carry the sword for duty and honor and country. The last one’s Sean, the walking recruiting poster.” He threw her a look, sardonic and aching and amused, all at once. “I joined because I believed in the mission, and I thought I could save the world.”
An image bloomed of Ty, young and handsome and idealistic, using kittens to tempt girls into haylofts, and her throat tightened for the boy he had been. “Oh,” she said.
“There was this village, a one-donkey hamlet, a scattering of mud huts housing a few families at the base of the hill country we patrolled every week. We all knew a little Farsi, commands mostly, but I learned more so we could talk to the tribal elders. Gain their trust. And the kids, the boys at least, and a couple of little girls with their hair cut real short so they looked like boys, were learning English in school. So they practiced with me, and I practiced Farsi with them. My sisters organized school supply drives, shipped over books and toys for the kids. I’d been in their houses, drunk tea with them, brought medical supplies and food when I could. It was beyond exchanging information for supplies. We were friends.
“One night a platoon engages in the hill country, and they call in air support, except somewhere in the communication chain someone fucks up the coordinates and the village gets smoked.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. At the movement he looked up, and now she could see the raw pain bubbling and popping, forcing volcanic plates of injustice and anger and helplessness against each other. “It happens. It’s not supposed to, but it does. We got up there as soon as daylight broke. Half the village was obliterated. Bodies, and body parts, and what little these people owned was strewn over the ground, and the smell of high explosives and burnt meat. But they weren’t mad at us. They said it wasn’t us, but it was us.”
He stopped for a moment, drank some water, leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. She waited, her heart pounding.
“The kids wouldn’t come near me. The ones that survived. Three died, and the sound of them wailing as they crouched by their dead friends…I hear it all the time. I tried to talk to them, but they hid behind their mothers on the other side of the road. The Marine Corps is black and white, good or evil, all or nothing, and so was I. No gray areas. But after that everything was gray, and something inside me broke.”
Something inside her broke at the telling. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For them, and for you. I know it’s meaningless, but I am so sorry.”
“It’s not meaningless,” he said. “That’s what I finally learned. Life’s a fucked-up mess, but that’s no reason to stop living, to stop taking care of people. In fact, the people you care about and who care about you are the only thing that make living worthwhile.”
He looked at her then, and the vulnerability in his brown eyes sliced right through her. She scooted down the length of the sofa as he reached for her, burying his face in the curve of her neck, then shifted to pull her onto his lap and wrap his arms around her. Despite the uneven shudder to his breathing, his heart beat strong and steady against her ribs. She held him until the tension eased from his muscles and the embrace lost the desperate quality.
Then she pulled back and kissed him lightly on the lips. “I do care about you, Ty.” And it would be so easy to do so much more than care. They were balanced on the edge of a precipice together, but he needed time. Time, and patience.
His breath eased from him, but tension still hovered around his dark eyes. “Who’d you have lunch with today?”
She laughed. “A friend.”
“A friend you’re curious about?”
What a Neanderthal. She loved it, laughed out loud. “He’s nice enough, but he doesn’t make me curious.”
His hand skated up her spine and released the clip holding her hair in a floppy knot at the back of her head. It tumbled down around her face, and he brushed it back, then cupped her jaw and kissed her, a real kiss, soft and hot and wet. Languid heat simmered in her veins. “I care, too,” he said when he pulled back enough to let words escape, and the potent emotion behind them made her heart leap. He sat back, blew out his breath as he considered her. “I’ve been making plans. Not too many. I need to get my feet under me again.”
It wouldn’t take long, she thought. “That seems reasonable. Care to share them?”
He took a breath, spoke decisively. “I’m going to finish out my next shift on T-22 because they’re counting on me, but then I’m going to quit Gulf Independent and buy into Langley Security. Put what I learned in the Corps and in school to use.”
It was a plan with permanence, a plan engaged with the people and ideals that mattered most to him, a new beginning founded on old principles of trust and commitment and honor. “I like that plan,” she said with a smile.
“John and I are going to team up with an NGO to help the village rebuild. Those kids deserve a school, and they’re going to get one.”
“I’ll help,” she said without hesitation.
This time when he smiled the creases at the corners of his mouth looked like laugh lines, not the weight of the world etched into his skin. “I knew you would.”
He lifted a hand to her tumbled hair and tucked it behind her ear. There was a calm certainty in his actions and in the way he held himself, as if he’d slipped into something familiar, a pair of well-worn boots, a favorite chair, a lifelong friendship. Into himself, really. He was no longer doing battle with himself. “Lie down with me, Lauren.”
This answer required action, not words. She stood, then took Ty’s hand and walked with him down the hallway to her bedroom. The windows were open to the cool night air, a breeze gently lifting the sheer curtains as she pulled back the spread and top sheet and stretched out. Ty followed her onto the bed, wrapped one strong arm around her waist and curved his body around hers. Their feet tangled together, his knee between hers, her leg draped over his thigh, his hand at her waist, her fingers spread over his neck and jaw. His short, spiky blond eyelashes swept down as he looked at her mouth, then he brushed a kiss over her lips, apologetic and repentant and yet utterly male, offering whatever she wanted from all he had.
She took the kiss, gave it back to him. The pulse in his throat leaped under her fingertips, and the muscles in his thigh tightened briefly, but he held himself still except for slow, exploratory kisses. She’d never kissed him like this, face-to-face, with no other goal in mind, and while she felt his cock thickening and shifting in his jeans, ached at the rasp of her lace bra over her nipples, longed to rub herself against him, for an endless length of time she lay with Ty and just kissed him. She learned his mouth, the pattern of his breath, the lazy slide of his tongue against hers, the way a closed-mouth kiss at the corner of his mouth wou
ld make his breathing halt for a second and his fingers tighten at her waist.
He was shivering, tremors eddying through his muscles when she shifted back to look into his eyes. “Hey,” she said. The standard Southern greeting, all-purpose, the intent derived from the tone behind the word. She’d pitched hers to mean Hello, Hi, there, Glad to see you.
His lips curved into a lazy smile. “Still know what you want, Lauren?”
“I do. I most certainly do. I want you.”
“I’m all yours,” he said, and with those words she knew Ty Hendricks was finally coming home.
All on the Line
Chapter One
Of all the places Sean Winthrop had stood around waiting in miserable conditions, the parking lot of an anonymous apartment complex in Galveston, Texas, was the worst. Objectively speaking, it wasn’t. The weather was decent, the waning moon setting among the stars in the western sky, and he wore cargo pants and a button-down shirt against the cool, near-calm, early morning air. He leaned against his car, not standing at ramrod straight attention while upperclassmen flung abuse and spittle at his face, waiting for Plebe Summer to begin. He wasn’t in an Oxford examination hall, his stomach in knots, waiting for an exam. He wasn’t even hunkered down in a near-freezing foxhole, waiting for the right moment to signal his platoon to commence another attack on a Taliban position.
At five in the morning he was waiting for Abby Simmons to walk out of an apartment that wasn’t her own.
0458 became 0502, then 0515 before the door at the top of the third-floor landing opened, then closed almost immediately. She padded down the concrete steps in her bare feet, her high heels and purse dangling from one hand, her car keys jangling in the other. She wore her No Limits waitress uniform, a black skirt and a white shirt, but the shirt was buttoned unevenly and untucked. Her red hair was a wreck, the shining, soft waves from earlier in the night tousled into bedhead. A pool of light from the parking lot’s streetlights illuminated her face just long enough for him to see mascara and eyeliner smudged around her green eyes, and her mouth, swollen and bare of the bright red lipstick she’d had on earlier in the evening.
