Summer with the Soldier

by Amy Lamont

  “So let me get this straight, you guys made a bet to have some wild adventures and you’re losing?” His tone was incredulous.

  I huffed out a breath and if I wasn’t so comfortable draped over my lounge chair again, I would have crossed my arms and given him what for. But exerting that much energy was beyond me at this point. Between nursing the hangover and vacillating between worrying about Logan and grumpiness over my stupid agreement to keep things platonic, I was completely wiped out.

  “Yup.” That was the best I could manage.

  “And you’re okay with that? The Jade Roberts I know and love is usually leading the charge when it comes to wild adventures. I can’t believe you’d just let Paige win.”

  I let my mind skip over yet another profession of love from Logan. One more of those and my heart might just leap from my chest and land itself at his feet. He could keep it like a pet, seeing as how he was one declaration away from owning it anyway.

  I heaved out a sigh just to be sure Logan was aware of how put out I was at having to answer all these questions. “I don’t have to win the bet. I’ve done enough wild stuff in my lifetime. I don’t need to prove myself.”

  I paused and peeped an eye open to peek at the sky. Clear and bright. No sign of lightning from the heavens sent to strike me down for lying.

  A quick glance down proved that my pants had also not burst into flames.

  I shut my eyes again and wiggled back into the cushions of the lounger. Rustling from the other lounge chair tempted me to open my eyes, but I managed to fight the urge until a shadow blocked out the sun.

  With a sigh, I opened my eyes. “You’re blocking my sun.”

  Logan stood by the side of my chair, hands on his hips, his eyes narrowed and his lips tight. “Cut the shit. I’m not buying it, Sweet Pea. What’s up with you?”

  I contemplated Logan’s question. What was wrong with me? It was totally out of character for me to let someone else win a bet. Or for that matter, for me not to be doing something wild just for the sake of doing it.

  “I don’t know. I guess I just haven’t felt like being the wild child lately.” I used a hand to shade my eyes from the sun as I looked up at him.

  Logan’s expression didn’t change. The only movement he made was to move his hands from his hips to cross his arms over his chest. He didn’t say a word, but I got the message loud and clear. He wasn’t buying it.

  I turned onto my side and looked up at him. “Okay, maybe it’s not that. I guess...I don’t know. I feel like something’s missing but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  Logan eased himself down onto the chair beside me, sitting in the curve of my hip. I swear my pulse picked up speed just having him closer to me.

  Platonic. Platonic. Platonic. I repeated the litany in my head just as I’d been doing all afternoon. The chanting had died down a bit, but started up again with a vengeance when he stripped his shirt off when we came back out on the deck. It had just about gotten back to normal when he decided to plant his fine ass an inch away from me.

  I closed my eyes and tried not to inhale too deeply. One good whiff of him and platonic would go right out the window.

  He dropped a large hand on my hip. “Jade.”

  My eyes popped open. “I listened to everyone talking last night. Friends I hadn’t seen in a while. I watched Paige and Emma and Kate and the guys. Everyone is doing these amazing things, and I guess I feel like I’m…I don’t know, missing the boat or something?”

  He rubbed a hand over my hip in what I’m sure he thought was a soothing gesture. “What do you mean doing these amazing things?”

  I shook my head and scrunched my shoulders. “Law school, touring with rock bands, traveling the world, becoming captains of industry. All sorts of things.”

  “And you want to be doing all those things?”

  "No, that’s the thing. I kept feeling like I should want to do those things. I mean, I’m twenty-two years old. I have an excellent education. I have a trust fund that means I can do whatever pops into my head. And I spend my days in temp jobs. And not that I want to be a temp for the rest of my life, but...” I stopped and shrugged again, “nothing’s really jumping out at me.”

  “So you’re upset that you haven’t figured out what you want to be when you grow up?”

  “I guess?” I shook my head, tucking a hand under my cheek and curling more closely around Logan. “I guess I feel like I should want to want to do something. Does that make sense?”

  “You’re still young, Jade. You have lots of time to explore your options.”

  I let my gaze wander the deck and travel down to the ocean. I listened to the waves hitting the beach and rolling back out again. And I thought of all the things my friends were doing—opening businesses, social work, graduate school, writing, traveling. You would think something would call to me. That I’d feel a little twinge of jealousy over their fabulous jobs and the lives they were building.

  But I just didn’t. Even with my closest friends in the world pursuing their dream jobs, I didn’t have even a moment of jealousy. Really the only thing I’d felt even a second of envy over was the relationships they’d found.

  My gaze darted to Logan as all the moisture left my mouth. Cold nerves twisted my stomach. I did want something my friends had. But it wasn’t their jobs or their ambition. It was the relationships they had. The men they were beginning to build lives with.

  Without conscious thought my hand slid to my stomach. For about ten seconds, I had a wild daydream right there on that lounge chair. I saw myself strolling the beach holding the hand of a toddler. A little girl with my shiny, dark hair and Logan’s smile. I could picture Logan, in his uniform, running down the sand to join us and scooping us both into his arms when he got to us.

  “Jade?”

  The vision seeped out just like the waves that got pulled back out to sea. Reality crashed back in on me. I gasped and a keen yearning built in me.

  I knew exactly what I wanted. And it wasn’t a corporate title or a new degree so I could add a few more initials to the end of my name. Nope. It was the letters I wanted to add to the beginning of my name that left me reeling—M. R. S.

  Geez. How 1952 of me. All my education, my family connections, the money that meant I could do anything I wanted. And all I really wanted was a family of my own. And the power of that desire would have knocked me to my knees if I hadn’t been lying down already.

  I opened my mouth and then closed it again. There was no way in heaven or hell I was sharing that revelation with Logan. Or anyone. God, I could just imagine my family and friends if I told them that the one thing I aspired to be was someone’s wife and someone’s mother.

  “I just feel like I should know what I want to do with myself by now,” I explained lamely.

  “Believe it or not, I understand how you feel.”

  Yeah, no. He so totally didn’t.

  “But what I’ve figured out over the last few years is there’s a lot more going on in the world than we ever realize as kids. There could be something out there perfect for you. You just haven’t discovered it yet. I know if you keep exploring, you’ll figure it out.”

  I gave him a small nod. “You’re probably right.”

  The smirking twist of his lips told me he knew I was just saying that to appease him.

  “You’ll see. You’re Jade Roberts. There’s nothing that can stop you once you set your mind to it. And one day soon, you’ll figure out exactly what it is you want to set your sights on.”

  You. I want to set my sights on you. For once in my life, I didn’t have the guts to blurt out what I was thinking.

  I gave him a small smile instead. “Thanks, Logan. I don’t think I even realized I’ve been feeling not quite myself lately.”

  “Well, I do know the perfect thing to get you feeling like your old self.”

  Visions of white sheets and shadowed bedrooms and miles and miles of Logan’s naked skin and hard muscled body flitted th
rough my head.

  “The bet,” he said, breaking off my thoughts abruptly. “The Jade Roberts I know would never let someone else win a bet.”

  He was impossible to resist with that twinkle in his eye. He’d finally shed some of the soldier and the old Logan came to him more easily.

  “Fine.” I huffed out a breath. “What do you have in mind?” I did my best to keep my words slow, my voice disinterested.

  He grinned. I wasn’t fooling him.

  He scratched his chin. “It’s not going to be easy considering all the wild stuff you’ve done in the past.”

  I couldn’t fight my own grin at his words as thoughts of pranks and silly stunts played like a movie in my mind’s eye. “It is going to be hard to top some of the stuff I’ve already done. And don’t forget, I have to beat out all the stuff Kate, Emma, and Paige have done.”

  His lips turned down in distaste. “On second thought, my help comes with conditions. Or at least one condition.”

  I tipped my head to the side without saying a word.

  “Under no circumstances will you share what my sister did to win your wild adventure bet.”

  Laughter burst from me and he offered me a rueful grin.

  I held up my hand, the middle three fingers up, my pinky tucked under my thumb in my palm. “Scout’s honor. I will not share any of the details of your sister’s schemes or her sex life.”

  “Yeah, no. You’re already crossing a line. No mentioning my sister and sex life in the same breath. Ever.”

  A gale of giggles overtook me at the grim, disgusted look he wore. I finally managed to catch my breath long enough to respond. “I promise. No details whatsoever about Kate or Kate and Hunter.”

  He gave me a sharp nod. “Thank you.”

  My shoulders continued to shake with laughter as I sat up. “Okay, so all you really need to know…”

  He shot me a pointed look.

  I held up a placating hand. “..outside of details about your sister...”

  His shoulders visibly relaxed and I fought down another fit of giggles before I went on. “...is that Emma hooked up with a billionaire, sort of on a dare to have sex with a stranger. She’s now all but living with that stranger and traveling the world with him.” I paused, running a finger over my bottom lip. What else did he need to know about Emma? “Oh, and she writes a sex column under a pen name. The stuff she writes about sex would make your hair stand on end. Or, you know, other things to stand at attention.”

  I shot a quick glance at his lap while he dropped his face into the palms of his hands with a loud groan.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No. There’s not enough bleach in the world to clean my brain of the images you just planted there. Apparently I don’t want to hear anything about girls I think of as second little sisters either.”

  I bit my lip to hold back a huge smile.

  He raised his head and pinned me with a stare. “I think I get the picture. Can we move on? I’m sure I don’t need any more details to be able to help you.”

  I widened my eyes, all innocence. “So...you don’t want to hear about how Paige has had sex with her rock star boyfriend in the bathroom of at least seven different A-list celebrities’ homes? And of course, she dropped out of medical school and has been touring with one of the hottest, wildest rock bands in the world. But I should probably keep all that to myself, right?”

  “Oh, God,” he groaned. He dropped his face back into his palms.

  It occurred to me that he really did see Paige and Emma as baby sisters. When did he stop thinking of me like that? Oh, God. He did stop thinking of me that way, right? I sent up a quick prayer that he didn’t see what happened last night as some kind of drunken, exhaustion-fueled, almost-incestuous, ginormous mistake.

  He lifted his face and pinned me with a glare. “You suck.”

  I batted my eyes at him. “You know I do.”

  His eyes widened and his face went from amused annoyance to desire in the space of a heartbeat.

  I did a little internal happy dance. I mean, I knew I was supposed to be keeping things between us platonic. But kill me for wanting a little reassurance that last night wasn’t that big a mistake.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “You have a bit of a mean streak, Jade Roberts.”

  “Sorry,” I said with a completely unrepentant grin. I poked him in the side. “Now stop being such a big baby and help me come up with a plan.”

  “Fine.” His response was curt and clipped like a fourteen-year-old girl throwing a tantrum.

  I did my best to hold back the laughter, but it finally broke from me on a snort.

  I might not have laughed so hard if I’d known what Logan’s help would lead to.

  Chapter 13

  The next morning, shortly after the sun turned the beach a rosy gold as it peeked over the horizon, I stood with my toes digging into the sand and the breeze tugging my silky pink robe in all directions. I gasped and gripped the hem, holding it against me to keep it from flying up and revealing all my bits.

  “This was a bad idea. Maybe we should do something else.” I stared out to sea, watching waves curl in the distance and break before they got to shore. I shivered as the water lapped at my feet and the spray hit my bare calves.

  “Fine by me,” Logan said grumpily. “I didn’t think this was a good idea in the first place.”

  I gave him my angry face—wrinkled nose, puckered lips, eyebrows pulled together.

  He shook his head, unimpressed with my display.

  “What else can I do?” My whining plucked my own nerves. I could only imagine what Logan must be thinking.

  But I couldn’t help it. We’d spent the evening avoiding serious topics like what happened during his deployment or the hypothetical baby that kept me from opening the bottle of wine I was dying for. Instead, we brainstormed ways for me to win the bet.

  The brainstorming turned into a weird game of Never Have I Ever. Weird because I’ve never played it before without the aid of alcohol. Logan thought it would help me come up with some wild ideas that I hadn’t ever tried before.

  I’d shared a few things, but Logan had fixated on the fact I’d never been skinny-dipping. That led to a list of a few other things I’d never done before including singing in public, having an embarrassing video of myself uploaded on YouTube, being handcuffed, and getting married on a drunken Vegas binge

  Skinny-dipping sounded like the simplest place to start. Right up until this moment when I stood all but naked on the beach in the chilly morning air getting ready to plunge into the icy ocean while Logan snapped a photo.

  The photos had been my idea. I figured I’d need proof of any and all wild shenanigans.

  But that was last night when I was a little giddy from exhaustion and worry and what had happened between Logan and I the night before.

  This morning I was something else. Past exhaustion from a sleepless night of tossing and turning, and not tossing and turning in a good way, like I tossed and turned between the sheets of the guest room with Logan.

  It was disconcerting. I slept like the dead on a normal night. At the beach house in my fluffy bed with its crisp white sheets and the windows thrown open to let in the sounds and scents of the ocean, I usually slept even better.

  But last night the pounding surf didn’t soothe me. The sea-tinged air didn’t follow me into my dreams.

  Sleeplessness wasn’t all that surprising given the circumstances. I’m sure many women carrying hypothetical babies tossed and turned as they waited to see if their periods arrived.

  Lots of women probably lost some sleep worrying what they were going to be when they grew up. Especially the women who were a year out of college and hadn’t done much beyond temp jobs and scheming to help their friends have more exciting lives.

  Even the desire to win the bet might be an excuse to keep me up late into the night.

  But no. The reason for my sleeplessness slept down the hall from me. Judging by the d
ark circles under his eyes this morning and his general lack of good spirits, I’d say his sleep wasn’t much better than mine.

  Was it sad I hoped he’d had trouble for the same reason I did? Because we both found it hard to drift off when we were lying alone in vast expanses of crisp white sheets when we’d rather be in it together.

  Long after my sheets were damp with sweat and tangled from my restlessness, I tried and failed to find sleep.

  Which brought me to now, about to get naked with the guy I craved beyond reason. The same guy I’d taken an oath of celibacy with just yesterday. Had it been me or him who thought it was a good idea to keep things platonic?

  “Oh, fuck it.” I snatched the belt of my robe open, slid my arms out and tossed it into a silky puddle just out of reach of the tide. Then I ran like the hounds of hell were at my heels straight into the water that hadn’t yet had months of summer sun heating it. I screeched like a banshee, but I didn’t stop until I was submerged up to my neck.

  A loud groan followed my departure. I peeked over my shoulder to find Logan standing holding the camera in one hand, the other propped on a hip. He bent from the waist, staring down toward his feet. His posture put me in mind of a runner who had just sprinted a mile at top speed and was fighting to catch his breath.

  I felt suddenly cheered. It probably made me a little sadistic to take pleasure in his pain, but I can’t say I hated knowing he suffered right along with me.

  I lifted my feet from the soft sand below me and treaded water, finally beginning to enjoy myself.

  “You’re supposed to be taking pictures!” I called.

  He lifted his head. “You are killing me, Sweet Pea.”

  I grinned and dropped my feet, pushing off the ocean floor with enough strength to lift myself just high enough to flash him.

  “Man up, Soldier. You have a job to do!”

  His groan carried loud and clear across the water and I laughed. My body had gotten used to the water temperature so I swam a little, practicing my breaststroke—no pun intended—in a line parallel to shore.