SEAL's Baby (Navy SEAL Secret Baby Romance) (13 page)

“What made you marry
Paul?” I asked.

She smiled. “You already
asked me that question.”

“I didn’t believe your
answer,” I replied.

  
She looked down and I knew I was right. “He left for college,”
Lizzie said. “And he moved back into town six years later. He seemed different
at first; he chased after me pretty persistently and in the end I decided to
give in.”

“But why?”

  
She sighed. “Because you weren’t there, Dylan,” she said and I
detected that little note of bitterness in her tone. “And I realized at last
that I couldn’t sit around waiting for you. I realized that five years ago.”

“Five years,” I repeated
and then it hit me. “I visited my parents five years ago.”

  
Lizzie nodded. “You were in town,” she said. “For two whole weeks,
as I recall, and I didn’t hear a word from you at any point. And that was when
it hit me: I was wasting my life away because I was holding on to the fairy
tale we had lived in high school. And I knew I needed to stop.”

  
I stared at her in shock, in surprise, in regret, but I knew that
she was right: there was nothing I could do to change what had happened all
those years ago.

“I was in town five years
ago,” I nodded. “And I didn’t contact you.”

“No you didn’t,” she
said, the bitterness had disappeared from her tone.

“Would you believe me if
I told you that I debated contacting you a hundred times a day?” I asked.

She looked at me. “I
suppose I could believe that now.”

  
“It’s true,” I said sincerely. “I thought about you every second
that I was in Bastrop … but I just didn’t think it was fair to contact you. I
hated how I had just stopped writing, how I had disappeared into my world
without so much as an explanation or a goodbye. I didn’t think it was fair to
bring all that up again … to disrupt your life with my baggage. I thought you
were better off without me.”

“Why?” Lizzie demanded.

  
“Because, like you said, war changed me,” I said trying to avoid
making my explanations sound like excuses. “I didn’t want you to have to deal
with my emotional baggage.”

  
Her eyes were hooded and I couldn’t quite read the expression
behind them. She had gotten better at masking her emotions and I wondered if she
employed that mask her everyone or just me. “I appreciate the thought,” she
said at last. “And I understand it too; I just wish you had left that decision
up to me.”

“You know what? I wish I
had too,” I admitted.

  
“It doesn’t matter now,” Lizzie said after a small pause. “We’re
not kids anymore, we’re adults who have our own lives now. And in a few weeks
you’re going back to yours.”

“Yes, I am going back,” I
agreed. “But I don’t know if that is my life anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like I’ve served
my time,” I said. “I think it’s time for me to retire.”

“Retire?” Lizzie
repeated. “Really?”

  
“The last couple of years, I’ve had this idea of opening up a center
for war vets,” I tried to explain. “Sort of like a rehabilitation program that
would focus on getting them prepared to re-join society.”

Lizzie raised her
eyebrows in surprise. “Dylan,” she said. “That’s a wonderful idea.”

“You think so?”

  
“I do,” she nodded enthusiastically. “I really do. We need more centers
like that across this country. We make such a big fuss about all the heroes who
fight for us overseas but we don’t give much thought to what happens to them
once they come back.”

I smiled, thrilled with
her approval and her excitement at the idea. “I’m glad you think so,” I said.
“Hopefully it will work.”

“It
will
work,” Lizzie said with certainty.

“How can you be so sure?”

  
“Because I know you,” she replied simply. “You enlisted when you
were eighteen and you went through the toughest training program in the world
to become a Navy SEAL. You can do anything you set your mind to, and I’m not
just saying that. I have proof.”

I laughed. “You’ve always
made me feel ten feet all.”

  
Lizzie smiled. “You always gave me the ammunition I needed,” she
said. “And if you ever need some real help, I’d be happy to pitch in.”

“Really?”

“Anything you need,”
Lizzie nodded. “Nurse, cook … even a beer wench if you need it.”

  
I laughed. “Nope, definitely not,” I said immediately. “Every man
who laid eyes on you would lose his mind and hit on you and then I’d have to
get involved. It wouldn’t do to have a rehabilitation for war vets and then
have the owner beat them all up.”

Lizzie laughed. “It would
make quite the headline though.”

  
I pulled her close and we laughed together, as the conversation
gently tilted back into carelessness. She smelled amazing and I couldn’t help
but lean in to bask in her scent. When I pulled back I realized she was looking
straight at me, her eyes were impossibly large and impossibly beautiful. I felt
as though I was hypnotized.

  
“Lizzie,” I whispered slowly as I cupped her face in my hand.
“I’ve missed you so much.” Then I leaned in and kissed her.

Chapter Fourteen

Elizabeth

  
It felt amazing to sit there, nestled against Dylan’s chest with
the sun setting slowly in front of us. It was as though the sky was our theater
and the sun was putting on a show just for us. I could almost believe that we
were the only two people on earth and quite apart from feeling lonely, all I
felt was a sense of peace and fulfilment.

  
It felt amazing to open up to him, to hear him open up with me. It
made me realize that we hadn’t just been lovers, we had been best friends, and
after being starved of that friendship for eleven years, it was impossible to
turn away from it now.

  
“Lizzie,” he whispered to me, as his hand reached up and gently
cupped the side of my face. His blue eyes were soft and tranquil, but they held
passion. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  
He leaned in and I knew he was going to kiss me. I didn’t even
think to stop it, I had anticipated this moment all evening. Despite that, it
still felt like a first kiss and I could feel the anticipation course through
me. He kissed me as though he were scared to break me. He kissed me like I was
the most precious thing in the world. He kissed me like I was the only woman in
the world.

  
It was so easy to fall into him again, and when he was holding me
like that, it was impossible to believe that we’d lived separate lives for the
last decade. Those years became something like an elusive dream that I couldn’t
quite hold on to and I found what little resolve I had left slip away into the
sunset.

  
Dylan pushed me down gently onto the grass as his body came over
mine. It felt like déjà vu, as though we had lived this moment in the past, but
there were things that I knew were different.
He
was different. His body had changed. His stomach was flat and
lined with a ridge of muscles that seemed to go on forever. His arms were
powerfully defined and twice the size they had been in school.

  
But it was more than just his physicality that had changed. He was
more confident, more experienced, he was sure of himself in a way that had been
absent before. He explored my body as though we were strangers and I was a
mystery to him. He looked at me as though I was an enigma that he needed to
decode.

  
The first time we’d had sex, I had been fifteen, and Dylan was
close upon his sixteenth birthday. We had already been together two years, but
we had decided to wait a little longer. It hadn’t been planned, it had happened
out of nowhere, a bolt of light in the dark that took us both by surprise. I
had been in my room crying because my parents had just informed me that they
were getting a divorce. Dylan and called earlier, and when I hadn’t answered,
he had come over right away to make sure everything was all right.

“Lizzie,” he had said,
his voice going soft with worry. “Don’t cry …”

“They’re giving up,” I
wept. “Dad moved out last night.”

He didn’t say a word. He just sat there, holding me
until my tears had dried. “We’re not a family anymore,” I told him with my head
on his shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter,” he
said. “You and I are a family; that will never change.”

  
I was the one who kissed him. I kissed him because I realized he
was right. I kissed him because I realized that he was the one I called whenever
something went wrong, whenever something went right, whenever something
happened at all. He was the one I called for first, above my own parents
sometimes. He was like an extension of myself. He was my family.

  
Rampaging teenage hormones or societal pressure didn’t motivate us.
We were motivated by our need for one another, by the realization that our love
was pure and therefore it was untouchable. It may not have been true in the
greater scheme of things, but it was true for us in that moment.

  
“Lizzie,” Dylan whispered in my ear, calling me back to the
present. He was kissing me tenderly, slowly and I knew he was taking his time
because he wanted this to last as long as possible.

I smiled up at him,
seeing the boy I had fallen in love with all those years ago. “Dylan,” I replied.

“If you want me to stop…
I will,” he said.

  
He was asking because he wanted to give me a choice. He was
leaving in a few weeks and he didn’t want to leave me like he had the first
time he had gone. I loved the gesture; I loved the fact that he cared enough to
ask me the question. Especially because I could see in this eyes that he didn’t
want to stop. It didn’t matter though.

  
“No,” I said. “I don’t want you to stop.” I couldn’t have stopped
even if I had wanted to. The pull was too strong, the need was too powerful,
and I knew that the only thing I would regret once he was gone was if I didn’t
go through with this.

  
He dropped his head down to my neck and started kissing me, slowly
and patiently as though we had all the time in the world. His hands explored my
body, slipping under my blouse and moving in gentle rhythms up and down the
length of me. Slowly, he unbuttoned my blouse and undid the clasp of my
trousers. He undressed me leisurely so that he could watch me as he pealed each
layer away.

  
It wasn’t until I was lying beneath him in nothing but my bra and
panties that the nerves kicked in and I started to feel vulnerable and panicky.
He sensed my unease immediately and he pulled back a little and looked down at
me. “Are you ok?” he asked.

“I don’t look the same as
I did eleven years ago,” I managed to say. “I’ve changed, my body has changed.”

“I don’t care,” he said
before he bent down to kiss me again.

This time I pulled away
from him. “Dylan …”

“It’s ok,” he said
softly. “Tell me.”

“I’m just… I don’t know
why I’m so nervous,” I admitted. “You seem so calm.”

  
“I’m not,” he said. “Trust me. I’ve gotten used to keeping a calm
façade but inside, I’m just as nervous as you are.” He pushed himself up on his
knees. “Maybe this will make you feel better,” he said as he removed his shirt
and began to undo his trousers.

  
I stared at the beautiful marble perfection of his body. “That
doesn’t make me feel better,” I said. “You look like you’re carved out of
stone. Are those even real?”

“The abs?” he asked
looking down for a moment. “Why don’t you give them a close inspection and find
out yourself.”

  
I blushed and he noticed. He smiled and came to lie beside me once
more. He took my hand and held it close to his heart. “You don’t have to do
anything you’re not comfortable with,” he said. “But I want you to know that
you are the single most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. I meant it
then and I mean it now. I have travelled the world, Lizzie, and no woman has
ever come close to you.”

  
I took his hand and placed it back on my body, and he smiled at
the gesture as he leaned in and started kissing me again. This time he was not
as patient or as gentle. He was more insistent; there was a hunger in his kiss
and his touch that made me feel unbelievably desired.

  
He slipped off my bra and I felt the cold air rush at me before Dylan’s
hands came over my breasts. He touched them first, his fingers caressing my
nipples slowly. Then he bent down and took a nipple in his mouth. I felt a moan
escape me and I grabbed at the grass around me.
 
I could feel his hands slip downwards until he had pushed off my panties
and I was lying completely naked under the fading sunlight.