Just a Wish Away (13 page)

"You need to take a breath," Braden advised.

"What if he was seeing Shayla? Maybe he was having an affair with her." She clapped a hand to her mouth, feeling like she might be sick.

"Or maybe that lighter didn't belong to your father, and there's absolutely no connection," Braden said firmly.

"My mother accused my father of having affairs."

"Here in Sand Harbor?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure." She paused, finally taking a breath. "Do you really think I'm jumping to conclusions, Braden?"

"Yes. We can't see the initials on the lighter, nor do we know when the photo was taken, if your father was even in town that night."

"Right. We need to find out Shayla's birthdate." She pulled out her phone and opened up the Internet. It didn't take more than a minute to get the date she needed -- which was August 18
^th
. She looked back at Braden. "Shayla would have celebrated her birthday two days before I left that summer. And my father was in town then."

He shook his head. "I can see how things are adding up in your head, Alexa. But you're still missing a lot of facts. You could probably get answers to some of your questions by talking to your parents."

The idea of talking to her mother about a possible affair her father had had while they were still married was not at all appealing. Her mother had made tremendous strides the last few years, putting her problems behind her, and Alexa didn't want to take her back to that painful place for no reason. Which left her dad. She already had a call into him, and surely he would call back to find out about her aunt's condition. In fact, it seemed odd that she hadn't heard from him yet.

"Alexa?" Braden queried.

She realized she'd been silent for a while. "I need to think about it."

"Good idea." Braden put a comforting hand on her thigh. "We could just drop this whole thing right now. Your aunt is going to be all right. And whether or not the robbery is ever solved, it's doubtful that the antique store will be a target again. If they haven't come back by now, they probably aren’t coming back. As for Shayla's death, it happened a very long time ago."

"I can't just stop, Braden. I have too many questions. And I'm not convinced that the antique store won't be a target again, because we don't know if the thieves were interrupted by my aunt and didn't get what they were looking for. Maybe they're just biding time until I go home or there's less police attention on the shop."

He frowned. "You may not like the answers you get to your questions, Alexa. Believe me, I have personal experience in that area."

His cryptic words made her tilt her head. "Are you talking about Kinley now?"

He stiffened. "Never mind."

"No, you opened the door."

"And now I'm closing it."

She ignored him. "What's Kinley like? I could see she's very pretty, but what does she do? Does she have a job? Did you ever talk about having children?"

"What part of
I don't want to talk about her
don't you understand?" he asked in frustration.

"You need to talk, Braden. You've already admitted to hiding out in your apartment, not going into town, not spending time with your family. You have a festering wound, and it needs air, attention."

"From you?"

"Why not me? There was a time in our lives when we talked about everything. And I'm safe, Braden. I don't know anyone but you. I'm not going to judge, and if I do judge, I'll probably be on your side. Because quite frankly, from what little I've heard about Kinley, she seems like a bitch."

He drew in a long breath and slowly let it out. "Fine, I'll tell you this much. Kinley had a lot of expectations that I couldn't fulfill. She wanted kids in the beginning, but I wasn't ready. So we put it off. According to her, we put everything off. When she wanted to buy a house, I asked her to wait until I was finished with my tour. But my deployment kept getting extended. So she bought the house by herself. When I did come home, we couldn’t stop fighting. When I left again, she was lonely. I couldn't win. And Kinley didn't really want to compromise." He paused for a moment. "Last year Kinley had an affair. She fell in love with someone else. She probably wouldn't have told me, but I couldn't stop myself from asking."

Her stomach turned over. "I'm sorry, Braden."

"She wanted to know how I could blame her when we'd spent more time apart than together. And I didn't have an answer."

"Whoa, wait a second," she interrupted. "The answer is that she was married to you, she took a vow to be faithful, not a vow to be faithful as long as she wasn't bored or lonely."

"I thought you weren't going to judge."

"I told you I'd be on your side."

"She was alone a lot, Alexa. She didn't expect that."

"She should have known that marrying a soldier would mean being on her own."

"I don't think she thought that far ahead. We were living in the moment, caught up in the fantasy of marriage. The reality wasn't what either of us expected."

"When did you find out about the affair?"

"After I was injured. I was in the hospital. She was standing out in the hall, talking to her sister, saying she didn't know what she should do, because it was going to look bad for her to leave me now that I was hurt, now that I was a hero." He said the word sneeringly.

"It didn't just look bad; it
was
bad," she said. "Kinley should have tried harder."

"Come on, Alexa. You saw your parents go through a divorce. If one person falls out of love, it's over."

Her heart broke for Braden. Despite his pragmatic words, she could hear the pain in his voice. "She was wrong to cheat on you. If she was unhappy, she should have left the marriage first."

"She said she didn't want to leave me when I was in a war zone. She didn't want to put that burden on me when I needed to focus on staying alive."

"That sounds like an excuse."

"It doesn't matter. We weren't right for each other and even if she hadn't cheated, we probably wouldn't have been able to stick together now."

"Why not?"

"Kinley says I'm too dark for her. She sees things in my eyes that scare her."

"That's ridiculous. I'm looking at you right now, and I'm not scared."

He met her gaze. "Kinley wasn't entirely wrong. The things I've been through – they changed me."

She didn't want to diminish what he was saying by trying to make him feel better with false platitudes. Maybe he had changed. Maybe he was still working his way through the darkness he'd been through. But she would never have turned her back on him the way Kinley had done. She would have tried to help.

"Thanks for telling me," she said. "I know you didn't want to."

"You always had a way of getting things out of me."

"You weren't so bad yourself."

They sat for a moment, looking out at the street, but she doubted either one of them was seeing anything but their thoughts.

He suddenly stood up. "I should get going. I have some things to do."

"Things that just came up because you don't want to talk to me anymore?"

He stared down at her, an odd expression in his eyes. "It's not that I don't want to talk to you, it's that I want to talk to you too much. We're falling back into old habits, Alexa, and I need to remember that you're leaving in a few days."

"I'm not gone yet," she said, as she stood up. "I like talking to you, too, Braden. I've missed our conversations. I've missed you." The words slipped out before she could stop them.

"This isn't going anywhere. I want to help you find out what happened in your aunt's shop and maybe with Shayla, but that's it. I don't have anything else to offer."

She had a feeling he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to her. "Let's just take it one day at a time."

"I don't want you to get the wrong idea."

"I'm not getting any idea."

"Of course you are. You always have ideas. When we were at the beach earlier, you looked at those kids' bikes and you remembered."

She met his gaze. "Our first and only kiss. Yes, I did remember. I didn't think you did."

"I've never forgotten."

"It was good." She paused. "Did you ever think about doing it again?"

"Only every minute of every day for about the first three years that we were apart," he admitted.

"Me, too," she admitted. "I didn't know what to do with all those feelings I had."

The tension between them turned electric. The surroundings faded into the background. All she could see was Braden, his green eyes, his strong jaw, his full lips. She didn't know who moved first, but suddenly his mouth was on hers. And this kiss wasn't the tentative caress of an unsure boy but a hot, sexy and demanding kiss from a man who knew exactly what he wanted.

She kissed him back with the same fervor, one touch leading into another and another. She could feel his heat down to the tips of her toes. And when he put his arms around her and pulled her in close, she went willingly.

His tongue slipped past her parted lips, sweeping the cavern of her mouth, making her body ache for even closer contact.

She didn't want it to end.

But it did.

Braden suddenly lifted his head and jerked back a step, his hands falling from around her body, his breath coming rough.

Her heart was pounding as if she'd sprinted a few miles in the last few seconds. She wasn't sure she could catch her breath to speak. If she could speak, what would she say?

Braden answered the question by leaving. She thought about going after him, but she couldn’t move.

She'd never had a kiss that had moved her like that. It certainly hadn't been anything like the last one they'd shared. But she had a feeling it would be just as difficult to forget.

Chapter Eight

Was he completely out of his mind? Obviously the answer was yes.

Braden's heart began to slow down as he tried to walk off Alexa's kiss. She certainly hadn't kissed like that when she was twelve. She'd been so sensual, so passionate. And she'd tasted even better than he remembered. He blew out a breath, telling himself not to get carried away. It was just a kiss. A really good kiss. But it wasn't like he'd never had one before.

He needed to get a hold of himself. It was only natural that they would kiss again. They'd been taking a walk through the past all day. It was inevitable they'd end up back in each other's arms. But this kiss wasn't a goodbye kiss. Alexa wasn't leaving in the morning. He would have to see her again. He would have to keep his hands off her. He would have to make sure that he never ever kissed her again.

He couldn't take her into the darkness with him. Maybe if they'd gotten back together in high school or after college. Maybe if he hadn't married someone else or gone to war. But he couldn't change what he'd been through or the man he'd become. The last thing he needed to do was drag Alexa down into the abyss with him.

He needed her to stay that beautiful, golden girl from his childhood, but a part of him knew it was already too late for that to happen.

He shouldn't have kissed her.

She shouldn't have kissed him back
.

His mental rant continued with a new subject – Alexa. He'd told her about his divorce, his injuries, his mental and physical scars. She should have been running for home. She'd admitted to him that she was scared of love, that she didn't want to invest in someone who could break her heart. And there was no doubt in his mind that he could do exactly that. Because he wasn't the boy she'd had a crush on. They both needed to remember that fact.

Turning at the next corner, he knew that there was really only one way to end their relationship and that was for her to leave. But that wouldn't happen until they figured out who had broken into the antique shop. Now, having seen that lighter in the photo, Alexa probably wouldn't go until she figured out whether or not her father had been having an affair with Shayla Cummings. He didn't want to believe that Alexa's father was connected to Shayla, but from what he knew of Rob Parker, it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. He needed to get Alexa answers, so they could both return to their lives.

Ignoring the cramping muscle in his leg, he jogged up the stairs to the front door of the police station and headed inside.

Drew was in the middle of a conversation with another officer. He waited for them to finish and then joined Drew at his desk. "I went by the Wellbourne house," he said. "I found another broken window. Looks like someone wanted to take a look around there, too."

"Damn. I checked the house yesterday, and everything was locked up tight," Drew said.

"Well, it's not anymore." He set the envelope of photos on the desk. "I found a roll of film in a woman's jacket inside the house. I got it developed."

Drew frowned. "Excuse me? You searched the house?"

"It was basically empty, and the window was open. I wanted to check things out."

Drew opened the envelope and flipped through the pictures. "This looks like a lot of nothing. What am I missing?"