It's Always Been You

by Jessica Scott

  And he couldn’t stay mad when she angled her body toward his.

  “I could have but we’ve been prickly enough without me asking a question you could misinterpret.”

  He smiled down at her, trying to yank his mind out of the gutter before she figured out the direction of his thoughts. “Aww. You were thinking of my sensitive feelings?”

  “Something like that,” she said. She had to lean a little too close for him to hear her without shouting. It was disconcerting, getting close enough that he could catch the scent of her hair. Something clean and soft and female.

  Her face was cast in soft shadows. He had the sudden urge to kiss her. Not right then, not surrounded by uniforms and Stetsons and curious eyes. But if they were alone? Maybe out at Talarico’s. Maybe on the patio overlooking Lake Belton. He’d feel her breath between them. Her tongue would dance against his, their clothes a barrier to getting any closer.

  In his fantasy, she’d lean into him. She’d curl her hand into his neck.

  He’d invite her back to his place.

  Fantasies crashed over him, slamming into him, taunting him with soft, sensual promises. He was attracted to this woman. More than he’d been willing to admit.

  “Are you flirting with me, ma’am?” he asked quietly.

  Was she? She looked up at him, and he felt the dark promise in her eyes, the lingering taste of her lips on his. He was hungry for this woman in a way that stunned him with its power.

  “I think maybe I am.” A husky admission.

  That simple sentence slammed into him, rocking his world on its axis. He was chained, unable to move, unable to act on the opening that presented itself.

  In a million years, he had never expected… what? A little harmless flirting? But his brain had already detoured to a dark quiet place heavy and thick with sensual gasps and the slide of warm bodies.

  Jesus, he was about to embarrass himself.

  He cleared his throat, yanking his brain back from the edge where it tormented him. “What did you want to know?” he asked, leaning close. He saw the tiny curl of hair near her ear that had come free from the severe hairstyle she wore at work.

  “Escoberra’s award was downgraded,” she said. “Do you know why?”

  The scar on his belly itched. He rubbed it absently. How to explain the politics at play during the war back then. The power plays that had left Ben still standing while Escoberra paid the price.

  “When our base was overrun,” he said softly, painful, burning memories slamming into him. “I got blown up pretty bad. It was Escoberra who coordinated the defense until air support arrived.” He looked down into his beer, fighting to lock the memories back down where they’d lain dormant. “My commander blamed him because he pursued the enemy instead of holding our position. I tried to have that award pushed through but they weren’t hearing it.” He met her gaze. “He saved my life. Escoberra is the reason I’m alive and the army tried to fry him over violating an order in the heat of battle.”

  He watched the emotions flicker over her face. Her eyes darkened, no longer with arousal but with sympathy. He held his breath, waiting for the pity that never failed to infuriate him.

  But it didn’t come.

  Instead her fingers slipped over his. Hidden from prying eyes, her touch was a warm reminder of their shared humanity. “I’m sorry¸ Ben,” she whispered.

  “It says something about me,” he said, unable, unwilling to move away from her touch. “That I wasn’t able to defend him.”

  Olivia shook her head. “I don’t think that says something about you, Ben.” She leaned closer, her hand colliding with his chest as she lifted on her toes to get closer to his ear. “You blame yourself, don’t you?” she said after a moment.

  He sipped his beer. “Somewhat.”

  She wanted to say more. He could see it. That was the Olivia he was coming to know. He almost smiled at her but the memories swirling around his chest were too tight, too painful.

  “I can’t hear myself think in here,” Olivia said, letting her fingers slip from his. “How long do we have to stay?”

  “Have you been seen?” Ben asked, leaning down so he didn’t have to shout.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you’re good. You can sneak out any time.”

  “Are you staying?”

  Ben shook his head. “I haven’t slept well all week. I want to go home, have a beer and crash.” He paused. “I’m starting to think I’ll never sleep well again.”

  She smiled and it was filled with sympathy. “You’ll sleep again. After you change command,” she said.

  He offered a wry grin, wishing that she wasn’t telling the truth that he’d already started to suspect. “That’s not encouraging.” He set his half-finished beer on one of the tables then motioned toward the door. “I’ll walk you out?”

  “You’re not expected to stay because you’re a commander?”

  “Nope. Or, if I am, I’ll just make some emergency up if the boss asks.”

  Olivia laughed quietly as she followed him out.

  Outside, he walked her to her car. They were alone, around a corner and away from prying eyes. The temptation to kiss her, to continue what they’d started only hours earlier was strong, too strong.

  It was something he needed to walk away from. Fast, before he did something stupid like ask her to come home with him. He knocked the brim of her Stetson with the tip of his finger. “Your Stetson looks nice.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He left her there because the temptation to surrender to the invitation he saw in her eyes was too strong, too compelling.

  He wanted. More than he had in a long, long time, he wanted Olivia Hale.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Working on Saturdays was nothing new but her first one in her new job ended with a whimper, and that whimper involved a lack of food. Olivia realized there was no food in her house only after she’d driven by the HEB grocery store, the super Walmart, and any other shot she’d had at foraging for sustenance on her way home. She didn’t feel like cooking anyway. Not at all.

  She was mentally exhausted. All she wanted to do was curl up with a glass of wine and continue to dig into the files in her briefcase in the vain hope that she could make a dent in the massive pile of work that kept breeding in the dark when she wasn’t looking.

  She turned the corner and the answer to her dinner prayers stared at her from its perch overlooking Belton Lake. Talarico’s was relatively new, designed by some big shot architect in Austin. Tuscan and completely upscale, it served the best seafood around. It was her favorite place to hang out—before she’d gone to work in this new brigade and all the fun in her life had died.

  There was a small crowd gathered outside—older folks dressed in business casual and talking about a local football team. She walked in and snagged a seat at the bar. She was hungry but suddenly, nothing sounded good. She ordered stuffed mushrooms and a glass of wine, then pulled out a file to start reading.

  It wasn’t easy going through some of these backlogged cases. There were three incidents of child abuse in this brigade alone. She strongly suspected there were others that hadn’t been uncovered yet.

  Her phone vibrated on the bar and she opened her e-mail. Child Protective Services wasn’t making any progress. Sergeant First Class Escoberra was refusing to talk to investigators without a lawyer.

  Christ, what a shit show. She closed her eyes, rubbing her glass against her forehead. It was so hard to reconcile the man Ben spoke about with the man who could have done what he did to his daughter.

  She took a long pull off her glass as she read through the initial incident report again. Hailey had come home from school and she and Escoberra had argued about television. The report said Escoberra had just snapped.

  And Hailey had borne the brunt of his temper.

  And now no one was talking. CPS was getting ready to close the investigation. Olivia’s heart ached for the family. They obviously loved Escoberr
a. That kind of love was powerful—but it wasn’t powerful enough to overcome the beast inside of the man who was tormenting them.

  Olivia asked the waiter for another drink and wondered if she was going to have nightmares tonight.

  Olivia dragged her hand through her hair, hating this part of her job. The daily confrontation with evil that seemed to eat away at any sense of human decency left in the world. Sometimes it felt like there was a poison, a rotten, creeping poison in the belly of their society. Who could do this to a child and think it was okay? And how could anyone defend it?

  How could Ben? How could he ignore what Escoberra had done? Even if Escoberra had saved Ben’s life, how could he ignore what he was capable of?

  She scrubbed her hands over her face as her emotions threatened to snap free from their moorings. She was tired. She needed to take a break from the constant work but there was no time. There were people counting on her. She couldn’t rest, couldn’t take time for herself when there were people who needed an advocate, who needed someone to stand up for them.

  There was no room in her life for personal things. Escoberra’s case file mocked her from the bar.

  This was just another case. One more family, broken by the war.

  It wasn’t simply another case, damn it. It was a family. A mother and children.

  She didn’t want to let justice run its course. She knew in her heart she was supposed to uphold the procedures, to make sure that the process worked, but sometimes that wasn’t good enough. She let the anger come, let the rage seep into her fingertips as she started writing out the charges against the sergeant. The minute the investigation was complete, she wanted his packet on Colonel Horace’s desk. She wanted Escoberra away from the family who loved him too much to push him out of their lives.

  That love could kill them. God, she wanted to be wrong but she’d seen it too many times.

  She caught herself breathing hard and forced herself to take a deep, quieting breath. Then another. Then she took another sip of her wine and slowly started writing again, focusing on the clarity of her argument, writing the charge specifications neatly so her clerk could type them up tomorrow. Pushing aside the writhing emotions and holding on to the rational side of her brain that demanded perfection.

  She needed to take the anger and the hate out of it and focus on the legal argument. She could get as passionate as she wanted but if she lost her temper, she would lose the case and the monster would walk free into the light once more.

  A monster wearing the smiling, charming face of a decorated war veteran.

  The only lead they had right now was the school nurse who had spoken with investigators the day after Hailey had been treated at the hospital.

  It didn’t matter. None of it did.

  The world fell away as she continued to write, losing herself in the smooth rhythm of her pen scratching against the paper. She imagined it was carving the charges into the monster’s skin, rendering him powerless.

  “You look ready to snap that pencil in half.”

  Olivia looked up at the familiar voice, the heat rushing along her skin as she met Ben Teague’s eyes.

  * * *

  He’d watched her, contemplating the fluid movements of her hand over the paper. But it was the torment in her eyes that had finally compelled him to move, to breach the divide between them and approach her. Cautiously, the riot of emotions twisting across her face as much a warning as they were compelling.

  He’d seen her like this before. The other day at the tiny gym in the headquarters, she’d been lost in the memories. The anger and the sadness had radiated off her, shoved aside by sheer force of will, as though she could save the world simply by ordering it to be done.

  “I get a little wound up when I’m working,” she said, setting the pencil down carefully. Her movements were too guarded. Too stiff. As though she was afraid she might snap.

  She speared a mushroom with a fork but Ben wasn’t fooled by the sudden ease of her movements. He’d stood by the door watching her for a few good minutes and could have sworn he’d seen smoke pouring from that pencil as she’d scribbled furiously.

  She’d been focused. In the zone. Writing hard and fast and utterly unaware of the world around her.

  There was something rough about the way she’d tackled the paperwork. Something fierce in the strokes of her pencil.

  She was a woman on a mission. Dedicated. Focused. For a fleeting moment, Ben wished he could have that kind of dedication to his job. That sense of purpose that motivated him to get out of bed every day.

  But command came with so much power. Power that was so easy to abuse.

  He didn’t want this job. But now that he had it? He hated to admit it but his first sergeant was right—Ben had a job to do and it was a job that came with a huge responsibility. He was slipping into his role as commander slowly. Easing the heavy weight of responsibility around his soldiers. Keeping the fear of the power he wielded at bay.

  Because it was fear. Fear that he would become like his mother, a woman who wielded power and authority like it was her personal right to lead soldiers.

  She was wrong about that. Command was a privilege, not a right, and the power that came with the guidon was not something to be toyed with.

  Ben didn’t want to forget that. “Are you okay?” he asked when she didn’t say anything.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” she said, slipping her fingers around the stem of her wine glass.

  He didn’t miss the slight tremble of the glass as she raised it to her lips or the way she avoided his question. There was something dark and tormented in her eyes, something that called out to him, beckoning to him in the setting sun that glinted across the bar from the bay windows that overlooked the lake.

  And Ben wanted to know why.

  * * *

  She looked up when he’d said nothing for a long time and found him watching her. “What?”

  The need inside her morphed into something yearning, something demanding a human touch.

  Ben’s touch.

  She very much wanted to slide closer to him right then. To feel his arms curl around her shoulders and feel the beat of his heart against her palm. She wanted to slip into his embrace and let the darkness fall away from the warmth of his touch. She wanted this man. She wanted the dark, needful things that made her body ache with long denied demands.

  The work she did was an ugly thing. A necessary thing but so dark and filled with hate and hurt.

  She wanted to push away that ugly darkness for just a moment. She wanted the gasps in dusky light, the sensual slide of his body against hers.

  She licked her bottom lip, the want thick and heavy in her veins.

  “You’re very intense when you’re working,” he said. He stepped close enough that she could see the faint stubble along his jaw. “Do you always work on weekends?”

  She nodded toward his own uniform. “I could ask you the same question.”

  His lips quirked at the edges. “Some shithead got a DUI and the commander called all of us in to yell at us.”

  “Sounds fun,” Olivia said dryly.

  “It was a hoot.” He tipped his chin and studied her quietly. “Are you always this intense?” A husky whisper, filled with innuendo.

  “Depends on what we’re talking about.” She lifted one brow. His lips curled at the edges. Up close, she could see a thin scar at the edge of his mouth. She hadn’t noticed it before and she had the unexpected urge to trace the tip of her finger over the pale raised flesh.

  “Are we back to flirting again?” His voice was deep. Teasing. Sensual.

  She laughed and it broke apart the block of ice in her chest. “Maybe.”

  He leaned closer then and she caught the scent of his skin, warm and male. It wrapped around her, that teasing warmth. It sparked hungry needs inside her and turned her thoughts away from the legalese in her files to something darker and infinitely more sensual.

  “You don’t do this very often, do
you, Olivia?”

  She couldn’t look away from the intensity in his eyes. From the heat in his gaze that made her want to strip away every barrier between them. “Do what?”

  “I think you know what.”

  His lips curled slightly as his dark gaze fell to her lips. A night with Ben would push away all the darkness and let her forget the evil she was fighting. It was tempting, so tempting. She could lean a little bit closer. Slide her fingers over his wrist. Feel the heat from his skin. Trace her fingers over the designs etched into his flesh.

  “This could get complicated,” she murmured, watching his mouth as he took a drink.

  “It’s already complicated.” He set the glass down. A flicker of moisture beaded on his bottom lip. “How much worse could it get?”

  “A lot worse,” she said. She reached for him then, sliding her thumb across his bottom lip. The drop of water was warmed by his skin. It penetrated the pad on her fingertip, warm and wet and smooth.

  He leaned closer. “Considering I’m not avoiding you like the last lawyer, yeah, it’s complicated.”

  “You avoided the last lawyer?” This casual flirting was… nice. It felt surreal, like time had stopped and they were two normal, well-adjusted adults with all their shots and…

  She could not get involved with one of the company commanders. She tried to remind herself of that but sitting there right then, seeing the sunlight glint off the edge of his cheek, she wanted. Oh, but she wanted. Something hard and fast in the darkness. Something wild and intense that would let her forget—for just a little while—all the evil that she confronted on a daily basis.

  His eyes darkened as he watched her. One gesture. One whispered word and she could cross the line.

  She watched his mouth move as he talked, her gaze locked on that wide, full bottom lip.

  “Oh yeah. You have no idea how I avoided the brigade lawyers at all costs. They made my life miserable every time I was responsible for investigating missing property. This one time, I was chasing down a wrench—”