“Let me get these in some water and we’ll talk about it.”
Lani’s apartment was small, but homey and comfortably messy. His nervousness evaporated as he took in the mismatched furniture, the hoodie thrown carelessly over the back of a chair. For someone who lived in a barracks room and carried most of his life in a duffel bag, the casual vibe of her home put him completely at ease.
As did Lani herself. Her hair twisted up in a loose bun, she wore a pair of drawstring linen pants and a white tank top, no makeup that he could see. As unobtrusively as possible, he checked out her tummy. Maybe there was the tiniest bit of roundness there, but if he didn’t know she was pregnant, he didn’t think he’d be able to tell just by looking.
In the kitchen, she dug a vase out of a cabinet and started to fill it with water. “I’m not really a wine-and-dine kind of girl, so I thought maybe we could eat here? I love to cook.” She smiled. “But since you’re dressed to go out, I’m totally fine with that, too.”
A great wave of relief washed through him. “Staying in sounds amazing, and it just so happens I have a change of clothes in my gym bag. Be right back.”
He jogged down to his truck and grabbed the duffel stashed behind the seat, which contained a faded Metallica T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts, along with some beat-up leather slides.
“Ah, much better,” he exclaimed when he emerged from her tiny bathroom. “Not that I didn’t enjoy trying to look nice for you...” His voice trailed off, and he winced.
Real smooth there, pal.
“Go ahead and wash your hands.” Her eyes sparkling with laughter, Lani pointed toward the sink, then carried the vase of carnations to the table. “These are beautiful. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he mumbled as he scrubbed up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bought anyone flowers, and the pleased smile on her face made him glad he’d given in to the impulse.
“So you ready to pitch in?” She picked up a bowl covered with plastic wrap and waved him toward a wooden cutting board. As he watched, she pulled off the wrap and tipped a large, smooth dough ball out onto the board. “Punch that down for me, and then knead it, okay?”
“Punch it down...?” Geo glanced over at her dubiously. “Like, punch it?”
“Yep.” She balled up her fist and slammed it firmly into her other palm. “Punch it.”
Still skeptical, he poked at the dough tentatively with his knuckles. “What does that do?” When he continued to hesitate, she stepped up next to him and gave the dough a quick, sharp jab right in the middle. It instantly deflated.
“See? Punch it.” She grinned at him, and for the first time, Geo noticed she had a smear of flour on her nose and down one cheek. Those pesky butterflies winged to life all over again.
He gulped. “So how do I knead it?” He pushed the dough around with his fingertips. “Like this?”
“No, like this.” She reached out and put her hands over his. “Squeeze it. Work it around.” She demonstrated the motion with him, her grip strong. “Put your back and forearms into it.”
Her body brushed against his, their fingers practically entwined. Her touch, and the bird’s-eye view of her full breasts squeezing together and releasing with her movements soon had him rock hard and aching. He pressed closer to the counter to hide it, teeth gritted, mentally ordering his cock to behave.
“That’s good.” She released him and wiped her sticky hands off on a towel. “You’ll do that for about ten minutes while I work on the salad dressing.”
Geo kneaded as if his life depended on it while Lani moved briskly around the small kitchen, measuring, whisking. When she bent over at one point to peer in the fridge, the sight of her rounded bottom in the air tightened his pants all over again. He snapped his gaze back to the dough.
Jesus, stop it. She’s having a baby, and you’ll eventually be leaving. Those two things do not go together.
He cleared his throat. “So what’re we making?”
“Mmm.” She leaned her hip against the counter next to him. “Pretzel monkey bread. Did you ever have that as a kid?”
“What? No, I don’t think so.”
She smiled. “It’s what we always made with my Lola—my grandma—when we visited her house. I’d do what you’re doing, knead the dough and roll it out, while my brother got to cut the pieces and put them in a baking soda bath.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s what makes them pretzel-y.” Now she grinned at him, her nose wrinkling. “God, when they’d first come out of the oven, they were so golden brown, so yummy. Tyler and I just couldn’t wait for them to cool off, so we’d burn our fingers and mouths eating them right away.” She sighed. “Those are some of my favorite childhood memories, cooking with my family.”
Geo stared down at the countertop, not quite sure what to say. His childhood dinners usually consisted of cold cereal he ate alone in front of the TV, and he couldn’t remember ever baking with anyone.
Then he shook himself impatiently. Who cared? This wasn’t about him.
“Geo?” Lani’s voice at his shoulder made him jump. “Everything okay?”
He blinked, suddenly realizing he was pummeling the dough. With a forced chuckle, he stepped away from it. “Yeah. I’m, uh, just making sure it’s done.”
“It is now.” She sounded amused, but her eyes searched his face briefly before she handed him a towel to wipe his hands. “Why don’t you get yourself a beer while I finish this?”
The beer was cold and smooth, and by the time he’d taken a long swig, the weird knots in his stomach had loosened. He propped his butt against the counter not far from her, determined to get this date back on track. “So what kinds of things do you like to do, you know, besides not exercise?”
“Ha, I can’t believe you remember that.” She shot him a surprised look, and he grinned at her, one eyebrow raised.
“Well?”
“Hmm, let’s see. Obviously I love to cook. And eat what I cook, of course. And for other people to eat what I cook. Oh!” Setting down the rolling pin, she moved to the fridge and grabbed a magnetic notepad with an attached pen hanging there. “That reminds me. I need to figure out what I’m gonna bring to my first support group meeting. It’s a potluck.”
Geo gulped, all his tension immediately roaring back. “Support group...?”
“For suicide survivors.” She wrote busily for a moment while he wallowed in an agony of discomfort, the beer suddenly losing all its flavor. The sharp clink of the bottle as he put it down made her look up.
She frowned at what she read on his face. “Anything wrong?”
“No, no. Nothing’s wrong,” he said hastily. “It’s just—”
She waited while he sucked in a deep breath. “It’s just... I’m not sure what to say.”
“About what?” Her eyes widened as the light dawned. “Oh, about my brother? It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”
Her voice was even, but the slight tinge of weariness to it stabbed deep. Suddenly, he could picture it—the avoidance, the discomfort, the ignorance. Hadn’t he experienced that same thing with...
Before he could think it through, he blurted, “But I want you to be able to talk about it with me.”
Jesus, what the fuck are you doing? No, you don’t want to talk about this! What if she asks...
Cramming his shaking hands in his pockets, he fought the urge to mutter an excuse, any excuse, and flee the apartment. “I guess I’m just afraid of saying the wrong thing.”
“Ah.” When her gaze met his, there was a warmth to it that made him quiver. “I appreciate that, and your honesty, Geo.”
He let himself relax a bit. “Um, were you guys especially close?”
“Oh, man.” Lani picked up a round cookie cutter and started to cut out pieces of dough. “Depends on the day, for sure. We were
typical siblings, one minute best friends, the next at each other’s throats. But we loved each other. We—” She broke off. “I miss him every day.”
She sounded sad, but in control, and sudden admiration banished the last of his hesitancy. Stepping over to her, he reached for the cookie cutter. “Can I go ahead and finish this?” he asked gently.
When she passed him the cutter, her cool fingers came to rest briefly on his. “Just so you know, asking about him, about the person he was, is always the right thing to say.” She let him go with a squeeze.
For the next several minutes, they didn’t speak, except for Lani’s quiet directions. The pieces of dough first went into the baking soda bath, and then Geo arranged them tightly together in a parchment-lined pan and stuck it in the oven.
“C’mon.” She grabbed him another beer and a bottle of water for herself, and then led him into the living room. “I wanna hear the Bosch story.” Plopping down on one end of the worn leather couch, she patted the cushion next to her eagerly, and after he’d seated himself, pointed at his right arm. “Can I see the scar?”
He canted his body and extended his arm, enjoying her awed, “Oooh,” at the sight of it.
“Can I touch it?”
When he nodded, she traced her fingertips lightly over and around the puckered skin. “That must’ve hurt.”
The memory of that particular agony crashed over him, chasing away the tingles left by her touch. “Hands down the worst pain I’ve ever felt,” he said, “kind of what I imagine being run over by an eighteen-wheeler is like.”
Lani winced. “Wow. So does Bosch jump out of planes with you?”
“He does, and he loves it.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Are you sure about that?”
“Totally sure. He told me so himself.”
They snickered together, and Geo said, “Actually, special operations dogs start their training as puppies. He’s been acclimated to water, air, gunfire, explosions, you name it, since he was a baby. Nothing fazes him.”
Her fingers slid away from his arm, and she picked up her water. “If that’s the case, why don’t you let him sleep with you? Why can’t he live with you if he’s that well-trained?”
“Well, let me put it this way. This—” Geo pointed to his scar “—is me and Bosch in a nutshell.”
“What, him biting you?”
“Yep,” he said, infusing that one word with as much pride as he could muster.
She studied him, her brow wrinkling. “I don’t get it. Explain why that’s a good thing.”
Her adorable confusion made him grin, even as he said, “Because that night, I was stupid, and Bosch let me know it. He reminded me that this isn’t a game.”
Pulling one knee up on the couch, Lani turned to face him. “This I gotta hear.”
“Okay. So it was early in our partnership, and we’d been training in the mountains east of San Diego, balls to the wall, lots of detection and bite work. Bosch had performed well, and I was feeling bulletproof, as if our success was all because of me instead of the fantastic decoys we’d been working with.”
She held up a hand to stop him. “Decoys are the ones who wear the bite suits?”
“Yeah, or just a bite sleeve.” He pantomimed sliding something over his forearm. “A good decoy is the difference between making or breaking a military working dog, and that night we’d had some of the best. They got Bosch in the zone.”
She nodded, and Geo sucked in a deep breath. “So after the evolution, Bosch and I were still really hyped. I decided to take him on an off-leash run along the fence line in the team compound before bedding him down for the night. Great idea, right?”
“Sure.”
“That’s what I thought, too. Until he caught a scent—the guy who’d been our decoy.”
She gasped. “Oh, shit!”
“Right. Dude’d had the same idea as me, a short run to bleed off some adrenaline. Of course, Bosch didn’t know we weren’t still training, that the guy wasn’t wearing a bite suit and wasn’t ready for him. All he knew was that he smelled the same ‘enemy’ he’d been ordered all night to attack, and boom, time to get it on.”
“Fuck, what happened?”
“I managed to yell out a warning, and you should’ve seen that guy scale the fence. He was like a goddamned lizard running up a wall.”
“So Bosch didn’t get him?”
“Nope, just missed him.” Geo shuddered at the memory of Bosch’s lunge, how he’d missed the guy’s bare legs by mere inches. “And then, because he was pissed on top of being totally amped, he whirled around, leapt, and tore my T-shirt off.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp, although her eyes were huge.
“I kicked him away, and just like he’d been trained, he went for my arm. Clamped down on that sucker.” He held up his forearm again. “The doc who stitched me up said it was the worst dog bite he’d ever seen.”
As her eyes fell to his scar, she gulped, her cheeks a tad bit pale.
“Got my ass handed to me by the decoy when he came down off that fence, too,” Geo said ruefully. “I was so damn green back then. I should’ve kept him leashed at all times until we both had more training, until I could read his moods better. Running with him loose so early on in our partnership was totally irresponsible, and I paid for it, but at least it was me and not anyone else.”
Letting go of her death grip on her water bottle, Lani set it down on her coffee table before collapsing back against the cushions with a breathless, “Wow.”
“My point is this. He wasn’t raised to be a pet. It’s not the heartwarming story of an abandoned shelter dog who became a Navy SEAL. He’s a highly trained weapon in my arsenal, and while I love him, I’m not going to forget that fact again. Blurring those boundaries—confusing him—by letting him sleep on my bed or hang out with us in the team room while we watch a movie is not gonna happen. Shit, he’d probably go after one of the guys for his beef jerky.”
As if on cue, her tummy gave a giant rumble. “God, I probably would, too. I’m so hungry right now.”
She sounded so serious, so deadpan, that Geo choked on a laugh. “Yeah?”
“Oh, I’d totally pile-drive a Navy SEAL to get his snack,” she assured him. “Got any beef jerky? You’d better run.”
That set him off completely, and when he’d wheezed to a stop, he gasped, “The visual on that is priceless, Lani. Priceless.”
“Glad I could amuse you,” she said drily, eyes twinkling. “And on that note, let’s go finish making our dinner.”
Getting to her feet, she held her hand out to pull him to his and lead him to the kitchen. Once there, she put him to work mincing garlic for the butter sauce while she set the table. The smell of baking bread absolutely made his mouth water, and when she finally pulled the perfect, golden brown rolls from the oven, the sense of ridiculous pride Geo felt over them tugged his lips into a smile.
As if reading his mind, she glanced at him. “You did most of the work. You want to do the honors?”
He nodded, and stepped to the counter to dip a spoon into the garlic butter mixture on the stove and drizzle it all over the top of the steaming hot bread. He touched her arm when she reached for the pan again.
“Go sit at the table,” he urged as he leapt to pull a chair out for her. “I’ll bring it.”
When she was seated, Geo slowly, carefully, lifted the parchment paper from the pan and arranged the rolls on a large platter. He set it proudly down in front of her, next to the bowl of spinach salad and the carafe of bacon dressing she’d made.
Lastly, he grabbed his beer and slid into the second chair. Holding her eyes with his, he tilted the tip of the bottle toward her. “To new friends.”
Smiling, she clinked her glass with his. “And badass dogs.”
Geo couldn’t reme
mber the last time a meal tasted so delicious. He stuffed himself to the gills, finally leaning back in his chair to hide a satisfied belch behind his hand.
Forking up the last bite of her spinach salad, Lani groaned. “I’m so full. I need to get out and move.”
He couldn’t resist. “I thought you didn’t like to exercise. Ow!”
She glared at him as she kicked his shin again. “You’re not supposed to make fun of me.” She surged to her feet in mock outrage and started clearing the table. As she bent over him to pick up his plate, he found himself reaching up to brush the backs of his fingers down her smooth cheek.
“You had some flour there,” he said huskily. “Got it.”
Their eyes met, the spark of desire in hers kicking his heartbeat into a sudden gallop.
“Mmm, well...” As he sat breathless, she picked up his napkin and dabbed it gently along the corners of his mouth. “Had some butter there. Got it.”
They stared at each other, and she leaned in closer. Helplessly, he lifted his face, lips parting...
Crash!
The fork sliding from his plate to the table broke the spell, and with a self-conscious chuckle, she straightened and turned to carry the dishes to the sink.
Geo raked a hand through his hair, once again willing his body to calm down.
She’s having a baby and you’re leaving, asshole.
Shit. If he repeated that enough times to himself, maybe he’d eventually be able to remember it.
* * *
I almost kissed him.
Dropping the plates in the sink with a clatter, Lani twisted the faucet on viciously.
I wanted to kiss him.
Oh, Lord, had she wanted to kiss him. Her lips still tingled from coming within a whisper of his, and pretty much everything throbbed. Jesus, these pregnancy hormones were fucking insane.
Behind her, the chair scraped as Geo got to his feet, and she tensed, wondering if he’d come over and attempt to continue what she’d so foolishly started.
Instead, he quietly excused himself to use the bathroom. Slumping against the sink, she tamped down the stupid disappointment. Why would he want to continue it? The man was thirty years old, and by his own admission had never been married, had no kids. He was obviously a master at avoiding entanglements of any kind, and she’d be one hell of an entanglement, wouldn’t she?
Trusting a Warrior Page 8
