by Anne Calhoun
“I’m going to take a shower, Dad,” she said.
A grunt was her only answer.
She raced upstairs to the bathroom in her bedroom suite and started the shower running to warm up the water. She stripped off her clothes and stuffed them into the laundry hamper. Time to do laundry.
When she turned back to the mirror she froze. Nothing so gauche as a hickey marred her neck. Ben was older than her, and if even half the rumors were true, vastly experienced. But looking at her there was no doubt she’d recently had sex. Her hair wasn’t quite a rat’s nest, but there was no mistaking the man’s hands in it look. Her lips were pouty and swollen, kiss-reddened, and the orgasmic flush still stained her throat and collarbone. Her nipples were dark pink and only just softening, and the red triangle between her thighs was flattened.
She met her eyes in the mirror. “That’s what all grown up looks like.”
The words disappeared into the spray and steam from the shower. He told her she needed to grow up, toughen up, and she had, but he wasn’t supposed to see the one thing that gave her release and helped her cope. And while she’d gotten right in his face and told him off, the memory of it made her smart. It wasn’t the coolly disdainful persona she wanted to project to him. The next time she saw him, she’d leave him with no doubt that he mattered not one little bit to her.
Her dad’s coughing followed her into the shower, and by the time she stepped out again, it hadn’t stopped. She dressed and hurried down the stairs, mentally tabulating chores and weighing them against the time she had before she was due in the lab at school. More chores than time, as always.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD, a disease that caused shortness of breath and a lasting cough, now regulated her life. She’d gone to college in Houston, where her mother moved after she divorced Abby’s difficult, brilliant father, but Galveston remained home. When her father was diagnosed after a lifetime of smoking and working at a chemical plant, she’d moved home to take care of him, because no one else would. But her father proved to be a combative patient, resisting the diagnosis, then the various treatments his doctors prescribed. He took his medication irregularly, or not at all. That was the first task of the day.
Her father’s face was gray, his face deeply lined and puffy from poor circulation. “Ready for your breathing treatment?” she asked lightly.
Another grunt. She set up the nebulizer and measured out the medications, something he could easily do himself but refused to, then held out the mask. When he had the mask secured over his face, she got up and opened the fridge. The plate of sliced turkey breast, asparagus, and mashed potatoes she’d left for him sat on the second shelf, uncovered and drying out. “You hardly touched your dinner.”
“Wasn’t hungry,” he said after a deep inhale.
The man in front of her bore little resemblance to the hulking, imposing figure from her childhood that dominated the house with his mood swings. His clothes hung on his frame like a suit on a hanger, jowls sagging from his jaw and neck as they hadn’t even a year ago. A profound mixture of love, irritation, and fear bubbled in her stomach. “Dad, you need to eat.”
“It didn’t taste good. No flavor.”
That wasn’t her cooking. A lifetime of smoking unfiltered cigarettes had destroyed his taste buds, and his precious Tabasco sauce gave him unbearable heartburn. “Hold your breath after you inhale. Two, three, that’s good. I’ll make you eggs for breakfast if you’ll promise me you’ll go for a walk with me before I head over to the lab.”
Her father had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, COPD, and rapidly clogging arteries, and eggs were theoretically off his diet. His churlish eyes lit up. “With a side of bacon.”
“With a side of orange juice, and only if you promise,” she said firmly.
“You’d think you’d be more accommodating, what with spending the night out.”
“I can make Cream of Wheat with a side of fresh peaches,” she said brightly, holding on to her patience with her fingernails.
He inhaled again, held his breath, then exhaled and tugged the mask down. “Goddamn thing.”
“Cough, Dad.”
He reached for a tissue and began the laborious task of clearing the secretions the medication loosened. “The doctor said no eggs.”
“Cream of Wheat it is,” she said.
He looked at her, his eyes red and watering, lips wet and trembling, and a wave of recrimination swept over her. “Watch your tone, missy. Eggs’ll be fine.”
She pulled out the nonstick pan and spray.
“That nonstick stuff’ll give you cancer,” he said as he coughed again. “Cast iron and bacon grease. That’s how you fry a good egg.”
She took a deep breath and counted to ten, then scrambled two eggs and four whites in the nonstick pan, toasted the bread and buttered it with a spread designed to lower cholesterol, set the breakfast and a glass of OJ in front of him, then sat down at her place. He gave the eggs a dismissive snort but ate them, and the toast, and drank half the orange juice. She washed the nebulizer components, then the breakfast dishes, and ran the dishcloth over the counters in the time it took her dad to get up from the kitchen table, heading to his recliner in the family room.
“Not so fast, Dad. We’re going for a walk.”
“I don’t feel up to it.”
“I don’t care, Dad. It’s a beautiful morning. Just down to the corner and back. You haven’t been outside in two weeks.”
She took his elbow and guided him toward the front door, and the simple fact that she could shift his direction, force him to her will, made a lump swell in her throat. He already had his shoes on. She scuffed her sore feet into flip-flops and opened the door.
Her father blinked. She held his elbow until he stepped down the stairs, then he shook her off. “I’m fine.”
Sunshine dappled the driveway, filtered through the big oak in the center of the front lawn. Abby made a slight production of inhaling the slightly cooler fall air and looking around. Perfect picnic weather. The lump in her throat tightened until she swallowed it down. Her father focused on his feet, his once-large stride reduced to a shuffle as he navigated the shifting sidewalk, lips pursed to control the flow of air into and out of his clotted lungs. She kept one eye on him as she looked around, using the weather to steel her resolve and hide her emotions.
“Pretty day,” she said as they walked back up the sidewalk to the front door.
Her dad looked up, his eyes watery, his skin still paste gray. Usually a walk improved his color. “Lawn needs mowing.”
She bit her lips, counting to fifteen this time. “I know, Dad. Not today.”
Inside the house her father again cleared his lungs while Abby packed her bag to head to school. Getting back in her car brought memories of the morning rushing back. She flushed and straightened her shoulders. Cool. Disinterested. Over him. That was the goal. Prove, in no uncertain terms, that she was so over Sean Winthrop.
Chapter Two
The Mustang’s passenger door flew open. Ty thudded into the passenger seat, shook his hair back out of his face, then closed his eyes. Sean’s jaw dropped. Ty was leaving that gorgeous, smart, sharp woman alone…after what they’d just done? In Ty’s place Sean would have her under a hot shower, using soap and touch to inscribe on her skin how he felt. What it meant. What he wanted.
Except Lauren wasn’t Abby. Abby wasn’t his. Lauren, however, was Ty’s for the taking. That came through loud and clear during the ménage, her openness the exact opposite of Abby’s step-back-you-fucker attitude in the parking lot. Abby used to look at him like Lauren looked at Ty, heart and soul in her eyes.
The memory squeezed his heart into his sternum.
Start with the immediate. “What the fuck are you doing in my car, instead of in her bed?”
“She was falling asleep. I didn’t want to wake her up. Drive.”
Lacking the authority to order Ty out of the car and back into Lauren’s bed, Sean turne
d the engine over and shoved the gearshift into reverse. This wasn’t the Ty he knew. The Ty he knew went out of his way to take care of people, especially vulnerable ones. And a woman left alone after a down-and-dirty ménage with a total stranger definitely qualified as vulnerable. “So she’s gonna wake up alone.”
Ty ignored him, lost in thought, or lost in some internal hell. Sean knew the feeling. After an hour of the hottest, wildest sex he’d ever had, he should have been planning the next encounter. Where to go…No Limits…when to go…the second the bar opened…what kind of girl to go after…anyone who wasn’t a redhead. No redheads.
“After what we just did,” Sean added as he drove out of Lauren’s neighborhood.
What they just did started at No Limits, where Abby worked five nights a week. She’d hear about it. He felt like an idiot on the dance floor, danced only under extreme duress, but something about the vibe between him, Lauren, and Ty dropped his inhibitions through the floor. He hadn’t been with a woman since Abby fifteen months ago, and when Ty turned Lauren to face him and she stepped into his body, soft breasts and grinding hips, the hot earth scent of lust rising from her damp skin, all he’d cared about was that he was about to get some, the Marine Corps’ unofficial encouraging cry, along with hoo-rah. But when Ty asked Lauren if she wanted to fuck him, he’d come to his senses to find most of the dance floor watching them, no mean feat in No Limits.
Abby was going to hear about that, for sure. He shook his head in a motion similar to Ty’s, like he was trying to dismiss a thought from his brain. He’d broken up with Abby months ago. She’d moved on. In theory he could fuck a woman on the hood of his car in broad damn daylight in the East Beach Parking Lot and it was none of Abby’s business.
A fist closed around his heart. Lauren had asked if there was anything she needed to know about. What was he supposed to say? No communicable diseases, just a broken heart, ma’am. Entirely my fault. No excuses.
He cleared his throat. “I’m starving. You mind if I drive through somewhere?”
“Whatever.”
Based on Ty’s expression he didn’t mind if Sean drove the car off the Pleasure Pier into the Gulf, so he pulled into the late-night drive-through at Wendy’s and stared at the brightly illuminated menu board. “That was different,” he said absently.
“Yeah,” Ty said, his voice thick.
A girl’s sleepy voice buzzed from the speaker, asking for their order. “A triple stack combo with bacon, extra large, and a Coke,” Sean said. Maybe food would settle his stomach, roiling with a knowledge he’d rather bury under two pounds of grease than acknowledge. “You want anything?”
“I’m not hungry,” Ty said.
Sean looked at him. Ty refused to meet his gaze. Frustrated, he asked, “Why’d we do that? Why did you let me fuck a woman you care about?”
“I don’t care about her.”
Thick-headed bastard. “Great. If you don’t care we can compare notes. I’ll start, because goddamn, that was the best blow job I’ve ever had. Of course, it’s been over a year, but objectively speaking, Lauren was incredible. That thing you were talking about…the back of her throat thing…” Sean shook his head. “Nice soundtrack.”
Some guys could do this, talk about women and sex like it was a replay of a Ping-Pong game. He wasn’t one of those guys. Heat stained his cheekbones, but Ty still wouldn’t look at him, so he kept going. Maybe discussing every little detail would make it real, push Abby to the side so he could move on, and push Lauren to the front of Ty’s mind.
“It was probably for the best that Lauren was on top, because even after the blow job my control wasn’t all that great. The whole thing was so fucking hot. Every time you got a little deeper in her ass she’d tighten around me, and when Lauren came—”
A muscle jumped in Ty’s jaw each time he said Lauren. “Give it a rest, Winthrop.”
Sean just looked at him. “Make up your mind, Hendricks. You either don’t care, or you do. Marines fight in pairs, and they fuck in pairs. Girlfriends are off-limits, but you said she’s not your girlfriend, so she’s just a piece of ass, right? An exceptionally talented piece of ass,” he said meditatively. “So go on, tell me what you thought.”
“I think you’re in danger of losing your teeth to my fist.”
A fistfight in the Wendy’s drive-through lane sounded pretty good, given that Ty was in the process of throwing away what Sean now knew he wanted, so he launched another salvo. “How was her ass? Come to think of it, how do you talk a girl into that? You think Lauren would be up for another round, let me get some practice in?”
Would Abby go for that? Maybe she already had, with Ben the Galveston Cop who looked like he’d be up for anything.
His stomach dropped another six inches.
Fist balled at the end of his cocked arm, Ty swung around in the passenger seat. Sean held his gaze for a long moment. “Don’t care, huh?”
Ty’s gaze flicked past Sean, then his arm dropped. “Take your goddamn food before we get arrested for corrupting a minor.”
Sean turned to get his food and froze. The girl in the drive-through window was a dead ringer for his littlest sister Naeve’s best friend, but she didn’t seem to recognize him, or the car, so he gave her his best I’m-totally-harmless smile as he reached out the window for the bag of grease and extra-large sugar water, then set the bag on his lap, and put the drink in the holder between him and Ty. “I know why I was there,” he said conversationally. He dug in the bag, then crammed four french fries into his mouth. “Get the LT laid after fifteen months overseas, and in a completely fucked-up, guy bonding way, it was thoughtful. But maybe you should have considered what Lauren meant to you before you did it.”
Hypocrite. Maybe you should have thought about how you’d feel when Abby moved on before you sent her a terse, near-brutal e-mail.
Ty tipped his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “She doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Sean said through a mouthful of burger as he turned onto the main drag and headed for No Limits, where they’d left Ty’s truck. “Remember that hot little thing about me watching you fuck her, you watching her go down on me? I was there. Watching. You care about her. It was all over your face, in the way you touched her. And in the end, when she lost all control, she turned to you. Not me.”
“She just knows me better,” Ty said when Sean pulled into the No Limits parking lot. “Emotions have nothing to do with it.”
“You can keep denying it,” Sean said quietly, “but it won’t change reality. That’s the shitty thing about reality. Doesn’t change just because you want it to.”
Ty shot him a final glare, then got out of the Mustang and slammed the door, heading for his truck at the back of the parking lot. Sean stared out his window at the people lined up between the club’s brick facade and the velvet rope keeping them out of the parking lot. Two big bouncers controlled access to No Limits while the presence of two off-duty Galveston cops provided a visible deterrent to fights, drunk driving, and sex in the parking lot.
He recognized one of the cops as Ben, Abby’s hookup, now smiling bright and sharp as he talked to a group of women in short skirts, short shorts, low-cut blouses, painted faces and pouty lips, hair spilling suggestively over shoulders and into cleavage, more female skin than he’d seen in fifteen months. Until tonight. One hot encounter with Ty and Lauren barely made a dent in the longing pent up inside him. No time like the present.
The bar’s back door opened and Abby emerged, a clear plastic bag of trash in each hand. She flipped up the lid on a commercial Dumpster and tossed first one, then the second bag inside. She walked around the side of the Dumpster and went up on tiptoe to slam the lid.
Sean’s heart stopped. When he walked into No Limits just before 2200, he’d looked for Abby, twice, and hadn’t seen her. Her red hair stood out like flame even in the bar’s dim lighting and glowed in the lights on the dance floor. She must have had a late
shift tonight.
Trash emptied, she stopped between the Dumpster and the back door, and put one hand on her hip and the other to her forehead. From his position fifty feet away, hidden in his car, he watched her. Exhaustion slumped her shoulders as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. Feeling like a voyeur, Sean watched her as his brain turned over what he knew about the home front.
It was easy to compartmentalize life in a war zone. There was the mission, the men, and there was everything else, all lumped into the home front. In an era of modern warfare, with Skype and international cell phones, Facebook and Twitter, the home front seeped into the war zone. Marines talked to their wives every day, heard all about the problems at work, the broken furnace, their kids’ difficulties in school. But because the complicated, powerful emotions roiling in his gut whenever he thought about Abby overwhelmed him, he’d severed his obligation to the home front in four short sentences. He’d done it for his Marines, both to set an example and to ensure that they had his undivided attention when they needed it. Or so he told himself.
But turning his back on the reality of the home front didn’t make it disappear, and based on what he saw in Ben’s parking lot, somehow carefree Abby’s life had become trench warfare right out of World War I. After tonight he had one of two options. He could set out to fuck his way through the available female population of Galveston in an effort to replace Abby in his body and heart, or he could find out what happened and fix his fuck-up before it really was too late.
The hand rubbing Abby’s forehead dropped to her hip. She straightened her spine, squared up her shoulders, and strode back into the bar, and something about her unyielding attitude resonated deep inside him. Whatever was going on, she wasn’t quitting.
Step one, get intelligence. Step two, formulate a plan. He’d screwed up once. He wouldn’t do it again.
