Fall to Pieces (22 page)

"Mom, I know I'm just a dumb male animal, but
from my experience women don't normally like to be praised for
their ability to hammer down plates of cookies."

"It would be one thing if she'd had an ounce
of fat on her," his mother continued, oblivious. "But you would eat
and eat, like a bottomless pit, and still thin as a rail. It's a
good sign, you know," she said and took a sip of her wine. "A woman
who enjoys her food is more likely to enjoy other things."

She waggled her eyebrows as Sadie made a
choking sound. Dylan made a mental note to make sure she didn't get
her hands on any more wine.

"Now that I'm not eighteen, I have to take it
a little easier," Sadie said, rolling her lips together as she
tried to stifle a laugh. "But yes, I do still enjoy my food." She
peeked at Dylan under her lashes, the heat in her eyes telling him,
to his mom's point, she was thinking of all the other physical
pleasures she enjoyed.

The conversation turned to their life out on
the ranch, and Sadie gave Vivian and Frank an overview of some of
the struggles they were facing, minus the details of the
embezzlement. "I don't know what we'd do without Dylan," she said
with a tired smile. "It's going to be a rough adjustment when he
leaves." For so many different reasons.

"Maybe it's time for a career change," Vivian
said casually, but there was no missing the edge of strain in her
voice.

Dylan shot her a pointed look.

"Your mom's right," Frank said, "you've put
in your time. Maybe the injury was a sign it's time to quit."

###

Tension settled over around the table like a
cloud. Sadie turned her attention to her steak as though cutting
required her full concentration.

"Dad," Dylan said, a warning note in his
voice.

Frank didn't take the hint. "I'm serious. You
made it out alive this time, but next time you might not be so
lucky."

Dylan's fork cracked against the wooden
table. "Being a"—he shot her a look, seemed to catch himself—"being
a Ranger is all I ever wanted to do. Why would you want me to quit,
especially when I've worked so hard to recover?"

"Your mother and I, we worry," Frank said,
his voice suspiciously thick. "What you do..."

He flicked a glance at Sadie. She had the
distinct feeling she was missing something.

"In your line of work, we're just afraid for
your future."

"My career is my future," Dylan said tightly.
"Nothing is more important to me than getting back to it."

Vivian gave Frank a pointed look. "This is
probably not the best time to discuss this."

She steered the conversation to more neutral
topics, asking after Sadie's mother, and whether Sadie had read a
recent bestseller, but it did little to cut the tension hanging
over the table when Dylan returned with a fresh beer.

Next to him, Sadie struggled to focus on
providing appropriate answers to Vivian’s questions, as Dylan's
words echoed through her brain on an endless loop.

Nothing is more important to me than getting
back to it.

"Sorry for that," Dylan said later as they
were driving back to the ranch. "I'm sure watching me and my dad
get into it wasn't nearly as relaxing as I'd intended."

"I didn't realize there was so much tension
between you."

He shrugged, drumming his fingers against the
steering wheel. "He just doesn't understand why I don't want to do
things like he, Deck, and Damon did. Do a few tours, get
discharged, and settle into ordinary, run of the mill civilian
life."

"You don't think you'd ever want that?" She
dug her fingers into her thigh to distract herself from the sharp
ache in her chest.

"Not only do I not want it, I'm not sure I'm
capable of it," he said with a humorless chuckle. "When you've had
the kind of career I have, it's hard to adjust to normal."

"Why am I getting the sense that your career
isn't that of a typical soldier?"

He shot her a half smile. "Because it's not.
And that's about all I can tell you."

Sadie was silent for a minute as that soaked
in. Her knowledge of military operations was limited to what she'd
seen in movies and on TV, but she knew there were branches of the
military that carried out covert operations no one ever heard
about.

Was Dylan really part of one of these shadow
groups of highly specialized soldiers?

"If for some reason I'm not cleared..." his
voice trailed off.

"I didn't realize there was any question,"
she replied.

"There isn't," he said, almost as though he
was trying to convince himself. "I'm as strong as I ever was.
There's no reason I can't go back."

But there was a crack in his armor, a note of
uncertainty she'd never heard before. If he didn't go back,
maybe... she thought with a burst of hope. Then immediately felt
guilty for wishing for the end of his military career, knowing how
important it was to him. "But what if the doctors decide you're not
capable of doing... whatever it is you do?" she asked, then
immediately regretted it when she saw the way his fingers tightened
around the steering wheel.

"I can't even entertain that possibility," he
said through clenched teeth. "There's no other option for me."

Sadie shrugged. "It may seem like it, but
if—big if—things don't go the way you're planning, you'll have a
lot more options than you think. You're only twenty-eight. Plenty
of time to figure out a new path." She knew it was foolish going
down this path. It wasn't like she was going to convince him to
change his mind and settle into civilian life.

With her.

His only reply was a non-committal grunt.

"Come on, there must be something else you'd
be interested in," she probed, thinking of the sound of his fingers
on the keyboard late at night.

He shook his head. "All I ever wanted to be
was a soldier."

"You're always working on your computer," she
said as they pulled into the ranch driveway.

He gave her a sidelong look. "I'm obsessed
with Minecraft."

A lie, she knew. She'd seen the text filling
the screen several times before he'd realized she was in the room
and quickly closed the laptop.

She told herself it was stupid that his
unwillingness to share should cause such a sharp stab of hurt.

Nothing is more important to me than getting
back to it.

He pulled up in front of his cabin and
climbed out. Sadie got out of her side before he could come around
to open her door.

The late evening sun turned the distant
mountains orange and the cotton woods lining the drive cast long
shadows across the gravel.

He took her hand and started toward his
porch.

Every nerve in her body was screaming at her
to follow him inside, let him strip her naked, lay her on his bed.
Taker her with his hands, lips, body, until she couldn't think of
anything but him and the way he made her feel.

But tonight, something held her back, and she
tugged her hand gently from his. "You know, after today I don't
think I'll be very good company. I'm going to try to get some work
done and get to bed early."

Dylan looked surprised and a little confused
for a second, but didn't argue. Which only made the pinch in her
chest hurt that much more. "Sure, I understand. See you in the
morning then."

Sadie forced herself to turn around and move
her feet toward the big house. She blinked away the sting of tears,
resisting the urge to turn back, tell him she'd changed her
mind.

But she had to create some distance. The hurt
she felt at something he said—something that didn't even directly
refer to her, or them—and the hurt that she felt now, when he let
her go without a word of protest, made no effort to draw her out of
the funk that had settled back over her shoulders, set off alarm
bells.

She was getting in too deep, crossing the
line of just having fun and in danger of falling hard.

Oh please,
she thought as she let
herself into the house.
You aren't falling, you've
fallen.
You've been half in love with Dylan your entire life, and the
"fun" you've been having has pushed you the rest of the
way.

A sinking, panicky feeling washed over her as
she forced herself to acknowledge the truth. She was in love with
Dylan.

But he wasn't in love with her.

And when he left, it was going to break her
heart.

But she could still handle this, she told
herself as she walked down the hall to her office, struggling to
swallow down the lump in her throat. So what if she had stronger
feelings for him than he had for her? So what if in her ideal
world, they would have an actual relationship? That would have been
the case whether she slept with him or not, so she might as well
enjoy the sex while she could.

But not tonight. Tonight she needed to take a
time out, create a little distance, and remind herself that Dylan
had made no promises to share his secrets, no promises to pick her
up when she was feeling low.

All he'd promised was to help her get the
ranch back on track, and give her the best sex she'd ever had
before he went back to the life that mattered more than
anything.

And that would be enough.

Thanks to the happy hour rush and dinner
service, it wasn't till after Adele's closed for the night that
Molly finally got a chance to talk to Brady about the "important"
matter he needed to discuss.

Okay, to be fair, she hadn't exactly been
hounding him, especially when she realized that he had probably
heard every word of the conversation she and Sadie had been
having.

I want someone to pin me down and have his
way with me.

At least there was no way for him to know
that as she was saying the words, it was his face in her head, his
silvery blue eyes glittering down at her. His tattooed arms
rippling with muscle braced on the bed as he pinned her wrists with
his big, rough hands.

"So what did you need to talk to me about?"
The place was empty but for the two of them. Molly busied herself
restocking the bar while Brady took a seat on one of the bar
stools. Familiar with his nightly ritual, she poured two fingers of
bourbon into a highball glass and slid it in front of him.

"I'm leaving."

Her hand froze in the process of putting the
bottle back on the shelf. "Leaving, like permanently?"

He let out a rough sigh and drained half the
bourbon in one swallow. "I hope not. But I might be gone
awhile."

Her stomach flipped over. "You can't leave.
We're still in the high season. You can't just leave us high and
dry."

He shook his head. "I don't have to leave
till early next week. Between now and then I'll train you, Ellie,
and Adele on how to make the most popular dishes, and of course
I'll leave annotated copies of all my recipes."

Since when did he use recipes? Every time she
went into the kitchen he appeared to be throwing ingredients
together willy nilly, somehow producing a culinary masterpiece at
the end. She gave herself a mental shake. She was getting
sidetracked.

"And Damon is on board with this plan?"

He shrugged. "He's not happy about it, but he
knows I wouldn't leave you all in a lurch if it wasn't
important."

"Really, so what's so important?"

"Family emergency," he said curtly.

"You have a family?" she said, feeling stupid
the second the words left her mouth.

He let out a rough laugh. "Doesn't
everybody?"

"You never talk about them."

"You never ask about them," he said, his
light eyes gleaming with a look she couldn't quite read.

She felt a pang of guilt and wondered why.
She could barely tolerate Brady, with his surly moods and
inappropriate comments. She certainly never aspired to be his
friend. While she would sorely miss his cooking and its benefit to
the business, personally she should be relieved not to have to deal
with him on a near daily basis.

And yet, the way he was looking at her right
now, there was nothing snide in his look, no indication that he was
trying to goad a reaction from her. He almost looked...
wistful.

Suddenly she was feeling a little wistful
too, her heart inexplicably aching a little bit at the prospect of
not watching him bang his pots and pans around, then carefully
assemble his plates with the precision of an artist.

"I'm a horrible cook," she blurted out. "You
said so yourself, my omelet was like eating a plate of raw peppers
and snot."

"Did I say that?" he said, but a rare smile
stretched across his face. "I might have been exaggerating for
affect. Trust me, after a few days of my kitchen boot camp, no one
will be able to tell the difference between your food and
mine."

"No." She shook her head. "I'm hopeless at
anything but slinging drinks. With me in the kitchen, even part of
the time, this place is bound to fail—"

"Shut up," he snapped, cutting her off. He
closed his eyes, took a deep breath. "Sorry. That was rude."

Her head jerked in surprise. Brady,
apologizing for rudeness? Did a Porky Pig just soar overhead?

"Listen, you're capable of so much more than
you think. You have to stop underestimating yourself."

Molly got a weird, swoony feeling that he
wasn't just talking about her cooking. "I—I don't know. Maybe we
can hire someone else. I have so much going on—"

"I know, you have a wedding to plan. Except
it's hard to use it as an excuse when it's not even on the
calendar." For the first time in memory, when Brady mentioned the
wedding, his voice wasn't dripping with exasperated contempt.

No, this time what she heard in his voice was
even worse.

Pity.

She set her jaw and straightened her
shoulders, refusing to let him see how that, more than any of his
snide remarks, his digs at Josh tapped into her fears and sent them
roiling to the surface. That Josh would never marry her. That the
only reason he was still in her life was because she'd dug her
claws in and refused to let go, refused to see any possible future
that didn't include him.