Full Throttle (21 page)

He walked up the short driveway, past the bright
yellow Triumph Daytona motorbike and let himself through the back gate. He
spotted Jason fighting with a wild thorn
bush,
his
hands covered in gloves and his face a fierce scowl.

Josh grinned. “That looks fun.”

Jason lifted his gaze and swore loudly.
“Fucking thing, choking everything in my fucking garden.”
He
yanked the vine away and threw it on the ground as if in complete disgust.

“Who knew you were a gardener.” Josh spotted the cooler
full of beers and headed up to the patio to take one.

“Yeah, well there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
Jason said cryptically and Josh paused, suddenly seeing the strain around his
usually, fun loving friends expression.

“You okay, Jase?” Josh pulled a beer from the cooler
for Jason and handed it to his friend after Jason yanked off his gloves and
fell into a lawn chair. Jason had been in the army since he’d turned seventeen
and an eager lad desperate to make his
drunk
father
proud. His father died a few years ago, and Josh had wondered if Jason would
leave the army, but his friend had stayed enrolled, no matter that every time
he returned home, his mood was darker and
more bitter
than the time before.

Jason sipped his beer and nodded. He cleared his
throat and glanced to Josh. “Next tour is my last.”

Josh raised a brow, his drink halting on its way to
his mouth. “You don’t sound happy about that.”

Jason sighed heavily, took another slug of beer and
cleared his throat. “I am getting too old to keep dodging bullets. Besides,
there’s only so much sand and basic rations a man can take in his life,” he
added with a sardonic smile.

Josh sipped his beer and nodded. He had no idea the
shit his friend has seen, or gone through, in Iraq, but from the dark circles
under his eyes and the haunted look in his expression, Josh could guess sand
and rations wasn’t all Jason had gotten sick of.

Josh tipped his bottle towards Jason. “Well, I, for
one, am glad you’re coming home. And I know Paige will be thrilled to have you
safe. She worries about you all the time.” Josh knew that talk of Jason’s
youngest sister would make Jason relax a little.

Jason tilted his mouth in a half grin. “Yeah, she
popped by yesterday after I arrived back. Fussed like a hen and cried like a fucking
baby when I told her.”

Josh smiled. “I bet.”

Jason cleared his throat and looked him in the eye.
“I didn’t realize how scared she was for me, until I told her I was giving it up.
I feel like a selfish bastard. All these years I was doing it to impress my
fucking Dad, a man who cared shit about me, and in all that, I was forgetting
about my baby sister having to live life out in the real world with no parents,
and no brother.”

“She’s ok.” Josh muttered thinking about the young
girl, turned wild woman, who worked behind the bar they all frequented.

Jason rolled his eyes. “She’s wild.”

Josh nodded.
“Yep.
And
she’s an adult.”

Jason tilted his beer and both of them sat in
relative silence, each locked in their own heads, thinking about life, Josh supposed.
A van pulled up outside the cottage next door to Jason’s, and Josh watched as a
small woman was bundled from the passenger door. A dark, hooded man got out the
driver’s side and the pair hurried up to the front door as if chased.

Jason raised his brows and shrugged.
“Never thought anyone was going to move in next door.
Place
is full of junk and needs new windows.”

Josh studied the small cottage. Weeds choked the
ground around the grass, ivy climbed up the walls and rubbish lay scattered
around the garden.
“Looks derelict.”

Jason turned his attention back to Josh. “It is. I
considered buying it to knock down to make more room for my garden. Guess I’m
too late.”

Josh stared around Jason’s large garden and noticed
the huge lawn mower and tools. “You found green fingers lately?”

Jason sat up, put his beer on the table and nodded.
“Thinking I might go into landscaping after the army.”

Josh sensed a pinch of nerves in his
friends
voice and sat forward.
“Sounds
good.
I have never looked back since starting up on my own.”

Jason turned around and twisted his mouth, “Yeah, I
heard about you losing your job, and about—”

“Penny?” Josh noticed Jason’s uncomfortable tone.

“Yeah.”
Jason snagged another beer and offered Josh one. He shook his head, remembering
he had to get back to Sammy. He sat back, enjoying the peace of the
countryside. The air was quiet, apart from the call of birds or the distant
sound of a car. Maybe there was something in Jason’s need to live out if the
city. Peace was nice.

“She was a bitch, anyway.” Jason said as he sipped
his beer.

Josh grinned and nodded. “Yes, she was.”

“That’s the problem with the biker
chicks,
they’re all feisty bitches just after a fucking. Not
one of them
are
the marrying type.” Jason said,
clearly speaking from experience. Josh remembered Jason was dating a woman a
while back. She, too, was a biker girl with attitude and sass.

Josh ’s
mind
placed an image of Sammy atop her little Ducati, fully dressed in leathers, her
hair flowing from under her helmet. “I’m not so sure all of them are.”

Jason raised a brow in question. “You met someone
else?”

Josh found himself nodding, which was a shock,
considering it was only an hour
ago,
he decided to
take things further with Sammy.

“And?”
Jason asked.

Josh shook his head and stood up. “No details. Not
yet.” He said, not wanting to share a fucking thing about Sammy. She was
special. He knew that, and there was no way he was getting into a talk with his
mate about her looks, her tits, her ass, or how good she was in bed. Sam
deserved better.

Jason stood up, too. Pulled on his gloves and
glanced up to watch a man leave the house next door. The hooded man started the
engine on the white van and drove away hastily. Jason shrugged. “Maybe drug
dealers moved in next door.”

Sarcasm hung in his friend’s voice, but Josh wondered
if Jason was close to the nail. “I’ve got to get back.” Josh stepped off the patio
and back to his car. “How long are you back?”

Jason looked away from his neighboring house and
shrugged.
“A few days.
I go back on Monday. Will you
be in the pub this week?”

Josh frowned. “I don’t know.” He wanted to spend
time with Jason and his friends, but his forty-eight hours wasn’t up with Sammy
yet, and he wasn’t sure she would want to spend it in a pub surrounded by mean-looking
bikers.

“I’ll try and get in the pub at the weekend.” Josh offered
and Jason nodded. His time would be up with Sammy by then, maybe he’d need a
drink or two if she rejected him. He remembered how he’d left their
conversation. He told her he wanted more and she had not had a chance to
answer. What if she said no?

Josh cleared his throat and pressed the fob for his
car. The lights flashed and Josh turned back to Jason. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“
You going
to bring your
new woman?” Jason asked and Josh found himself grinning.

“I doubt she would want to come. She’s not—”
Like me, not like my friends. She is better.
The words stung his chest, and not for the first time, he considered that
asking for more from Sammy was the wrong thing to do. But, damn it, he wanted
her. He glanced to his car. “She’s shy.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah, our group isn’t a place for shy
retiring types.”

Josh grinned, but he remembered Sammy in the bar of the
small bed and breakfast the night before the crash. She had chugged a few pints
that night and chatted up a storm with Bev and Reg. It was just him she had been
shy with. Maybe Sammy would like his friends after all.

“You like her?” Jason asked seriously.

Josh turned looked at his old friend, noted the dark
circles once again around his eyes. Jason seemed slumped, sad, and Josh saw no
teasing in his friends gaze. He nodded, “Yeah, I like her.”

Jason raised a brow and grinned, though the smile
made no attempt at moving to his eyes. “Then, bring her. I’d like to meet her.”

Josh planted his best “keep your hands off” face on,
and Jason laughed and swore. He held up his hands and shrugged. “If I found a
girl who liked bikes and was not a nasty wench, I’d make sure she stayed mine.”

Josh stilled. “How do you know she likes bikes?” He
didn’t remember mentioning that fact.

Jason frowned and scoffed. “There is no way in hell
you’d go for a woman who didn’t. That’d be like me going for a woman who didn’t
want to live in the country—no fucking point.”

Josh laughed and turned to his car. He waved and
grinned as he considered seeing Sammy again. Man, he had it bad.

He bloody hoped she felt the same way.

****

Jason stepped out of his back door and breathed in
the fresh British country air. And his entire body relaxed. The moon had risen
while he’d been in the shower and shadows now stretched across his long, green
lawn like far reaching fingers reaching toward the darkness.

He plucked a beer from the cooler and wandered
barefoot onto the grass. Cool, cold even, with bristles that tickled his toes. Jason
sighed, realizing he had just days left before all this would be a memory again
for another nine months.

His throat tightened with anxiety, and Jason fought
the tremor that wracked his system. The idea of going back to hell this time
seemed too much. His head was far too full of visions he wished he could erase.
His body was tired and beat up, scarred in more ways than one.

Jason raised his hand and covered the bandage on his
side with a flat palm. It had been so close, so fucking close. That stray
mortar had barely missed him, and Jason had seen his pitiful, empty life pass
through his mind one nasty fuck-up after another.

The only thing he had done right was be a soldier. Now,
even that seemed pointless.

Jason swigged his beer as images of war filled his
head. Smoke clogged his throat, the memory of fear so fresh it never really
left his senses. Sometimes Jason thought he might suffocate in the night,
strangled by his fear. Afraid his heart would stop beating just like Scott’s
had.

And wasn’t that messed up? The fearless soldier who
saved many and put himself forward in the face of an enemy, protected fellow
soldiers with covering fire, and ran through the toughest war zones without
thinking, was afraid to go to sleep.

Jason ran his hand through his hair and swore into
the night. He turned to walk back up to his house, ready to meet his old
friends at the pub, ready to laugh with people who knew nothing of the violence
he
knew,
saw—lived, when his gaze fell upon the
upstairs window of the house next door.

A low lamplight filtered through the glass and
highlighted the silhouette of a woman. Jason knew he should keep walking and
move back to his house, he knew the woman inside the neighbor’s bedroom would
hate to know she was being watched. But Jason, for the life of him, couldn’t
get his feet to move.

The woman had long blonde hair flowing well past her
backside as she dried it off with a towel. She was shapely, not very tall, her
hips flared at a sexy angle, boasting a full behind that made Jason’s blood
flow heavily south.

He tipped his beer up and sipped, not removing his
gaze from the woman. When she turned sideways, Jason sucked in a breath at the
plump swell of her breasts. The woman was full everywhere.

Jason watched a for a little while, tempted to reach
down to stroke himself when the woman turned sharply and Jason found himself
staring into wide, shocked, frightened blue eyes.

“Fuck!” Jason hissed. He dipped his head and moved
up his garden fast. He stepped into his house and swore again. What the hell was
he doing? He put his beer down on the breakfast bar and breathed out. Had he
been in the desert so long that social rules had fled him?

Staring like a fucking teenager. Like a pervert.

Irritated by himself, Jason put his bike leathers
on, snatched up his keys and left his house, slamming his door behind him in
temper. He threw his leg over the bike, put the key in the engine, and started it
with a roar and twist of the throttle. He pulled his helmet over his head and
backed the bike up out of the drive. Before he peeled up the country road,
Jason glanced up to his next-door house.

The woman stood in the downstairs window, lit by a
lamp glowing beside her. Her arms were crossed across her now t-shirt-covered
chest and Jason saw the way she hugged herself. Fear shone from her gaze and
Jason was shocked even more by the bruising that marred her pretty face.
Stunned, Jason took a moment to think past her vision. He considered going to
see if she was okay, but when the woman stepped back and yanked her curtains
closed, Jason knew he had been blocked out.