SEAL's Baby (Navy SEAL Secret Baby Romance) (57 page)

“Yeah, she said she started the internship
a couple of weeks ago,” Greg went on. She hadn’t actually spoken to me since
that day. She did send me a detailed email listing out everything she had to do
in order to cancel the wedding and told me which vendors would be keeping our
deposits. I tried to reach out and ask her how she was doing, but she ignored
me. My sister said she sent out little cards to the two hundred guests on our
list and told them the wedding was cancelled without an explanation. She
blocked me from calling her and all of her social media accounts. She was really
and truly finished with me. I couldn’t say as I blamed her, either,
unfortunately. I actually had a lot of respect for her for being a strong,
proud woman.

Since we broke up, I’ve been out with
different women, though never more than once whether I ended up with sex or not
at the end of the night. As badly as I want a relationship, I finally realized
there was only one person I wanted it with…and she was out of my reach.

Greg said something that I completely did
not process. “What?”

“You passed the club.”

“Oh shit.” I flipped a U-turn at the
corner and drove back to the club. We were meeting some friends at a place
called The Round-Up Saloon. It’s a bar with a dance floor and they have live
country music on the weekends. Tonight was our friend Vince’s 30
^th
birthday. We’ve known Vince since high school. Sometimes it was hard for me to
believe we’re all turning thirty. My turn will be in January. It’s September
now, so I only have a few months of my twenties left. I wondered if someday
I’ll be a lonely old man with nothing but regrets.

I handed off the keys to my new gun barrel
gray baby and told him to be careful with her. Greg rolled his eyes at me, but
then caught the eye of a cute little cowgirl and I was forgotten. He chased her
inside as I followed. I stopped in the doorway and looked around. The place was
packed, mostly with a younger crowd. The music was loud and the drinks were
flowing. I spotted our friends and left Greg hitting on the
barely-legal-to-drink cowgirl and went over to their table.

“Kyle!” Vince stood up when he saw me and
shook my hand. “This is my fiancée, Becca,” he said, indicating a pretty blonde
sitting next to him. “You know Ray and Bobby. That’s Sue on the end.” Sue was a
super-skinny brunette. From the looks of it, she was with Bobby, a super-skinny
brunette himself. Bobby is six foot nine. I guess he’d have to eat all day long
every day to put any weight on a frame that size. I said hello to them all and
took a seat. “So how have you been, man?” They were all looking at me with those
eyes that said they heard about the cancelled wedding. I don’t know what Callie
told people, but when they ask me I just tell them it was a mutual decision. No
one really believes that – especially since the invitations had already gone
out.

“I’m great,” I told him, honestly. I was
healthy. I had a great job. I was not quite thirty yet. “How does it feel to be
the big 3-0?”

“I’m better than I’ve ever been.” His
girlfriend snorted. They got into a little lovers nudging match and ended with
a lip lock. PDAs are not really my thing…maybe because I didn’t have anyone I
felt that way about.

“Yeah…while you two do that, I’m going to
the bar to get a drink. Anyone need anything?”

They all said they were good and I got up
and made my way through the crowd on the way to the bar. I ran into Greg on his
way to the table. He had his arm around the young cowgirl. “Hey, buddy, this is
Starla. Starla, this is, Kyle. Starla and I met the last time I came here.”

“Nice to meet you, Starla. I’ll see you in
a bit I’m going to get a drink.” I finished my trek up to the bar and ordered a
whiskey and coke. While I waited for it, I looked around the place again. My
eyes landed on the backside of a pair of jeans. It was a very nice backside
that belonged to a very curvy woman with long, dark hair. Something about her
seemed familiar…or I was just drawn to that ass… I wasn’t sure which. The
bartender handed me my drink and I looked back over. The girl was walking out
to the dance floor with an older cowboy. They stopped when they found a spot
and when she turned around to put her arms up around his neck, I nearly dropped
my drink.

I was looking at Amber. She was two years
older, but nothing else had really changed, and she was still drop-dead
gorgeous. I had to remind myself to breathe as I watched the old cowboy dance
her around the floor. I’d met a lot of beautiful women in my lifetime, but none
of them provoked the kinds of feelings inside of me that she did. Even after
all this time, all I wanted to do was touch her.

I looked over where she’d been standing
before she went out to dance. There was a high top table there and an older
lady with short blonde hair and one with long black hair were sitting there.
She must be out with her friends, or maybe her sisters. I didn’t see her cowboy
lurking around anywhere.

I told myself to stop watching her, but
there were too many people between us for her to notice me staring. I just
wanted a second to memorize her face again, just in case this was the last time
I got to see her. Her soft brown hair fell in waves around her delicate face
and her dark eyelashes were so long they actually touched the tops of her
cheekbones when she blinked. Those green eyes were what really killed me
though, they were like clear pools and when she traps you in them, it’s almost
impossible to look away. My palms itched to trace those delicious curves of
hers and my mouth watered at the memory of how she tasted…

“What are you doing?” Greg was next to me
again. The sound of his voice startled me, and I jumped.

“Shit! You almost gave me a damned heart
attack. Why are you sneaking up on people?”

He laughed. It’s so loud in here there was
no way I would have heard him if he hadn’t walked right up on me. “What are you
looking at?” his eyes scanned the dance floor. I saw the look on his face as
soon as they fell on Amber. “Is that the hot therapist?” He didn’t wait for me
to answer before he said, “Is that old guy her husband?”

“No…at least, it’s not the guy she was
engaged to – Dylan.” I couldn’t help but curl my lip as I said his name.

“Good,” Greg said with a grin.

“Why is that so good?”

He shrugged. “I was just picturing that
old man knocking you on your ass, that would have been embarrassing.”

I laughed. Sadly, the day Dylan knocked me
on my ass, I had been still so weak from the radiation that the old man may not
have had much trouble doing it himself. I wasn’t going to admit that to Greg.
He thinks he’s so damned funny. “Fuck you.”

Laughing, too, he said, “Vince and the
guys want to move down the street to the Beat Box.”

I looked back at Amber. I know the look on
my face had to be longing because my chest was filled with it. Two years…how
could I just walk away and not talk to her? “Right now?”

“Yeah, but I’ll tell them we’ll join them
in an hour, how’s that?”

I smiled. Greg’s not the asshole he likes
to pretend he is…at least, when he’s not sleeping with my girlfriend. “Great,
thanks.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

AMBER

“Don’t think that just because I’m dancing
with you, it means I’ve forgiven you for showing up in town without my nephew.”

My brother-in-law Will laughed. Will is
married to my oldest sister Patty and they’ve been married for fifteen years.
For most of my life, Will has been a part of our family and as far as I can
tell, he and my sister are still madly in love. He’s truly like an older
brother to me now, too. “You’ll have to be mad at the teenager about that, not
me, little missy. He’s the one who has such a busy schedule that he can’t find
time to go visiting with Mom and Dad.”

“What is it that he blew off his favorite
aunt for?”

“There was a rodeo dance this weekend and
there’s some little filly he’s had his eye on all year. She’s a barrel racer
and she was the rodeo queen last year…”

“The rodeo queen! Don’t they have to be
sixteen?”

He shrugged. “What can I say? My boy likes
them older women.”

“Does my sister know you’re encouraging
her sweet little fourteen-year-old boy to go after a sixteen-year-old woman?”

He laughed. “I ain’t so sure he’s as
“sweet” or as “little” as you and his mama would like him to be anymore. He’ll
be fifteen next month.”

“He’s still a little boy,” I told him,
indignantly. It’s hard to see my nephew as a teenager and my little Nona as
already going into the fourth grade. I’m going to be a terribly over-protective
mother…if I ever get that chance.

“He did ask us to tell you that he loves
you and he’s proud of you.”

“That means a lot,” I said, honestly. I am
so glad that my family is mostly all here to share what I am doing. I wish that
Dylan’s family felt the same way. I invited them tonight and I didn’t even get
a reply. Sometimes, I think they somehow blame me for what happened, but I
can’t wrap my head around that. I can’t wrap my head around losing a child,
either, so I have to give them a break, at least, in that respect.

The song ended, and Will kissed the top of
my head and led me back over to the table where my sisters Patty and Rachel
were sitting. Marlene and my cousin Belinda and her husband were supposed to be
here anytime. They’d all been at the opening of my new non-profit rehab
treatment center today and we’d gone out to dinner to celebrate. Afterwards,
Will suggested that we go out. Marlene and Belinda had gone by Marlene’s house
on the way to drop off Mom. She was going to stay with the kids. Daddy hadn’t
been at the opening, but he’d called me earlier and told me how proud he was of
me.

“My turn!” Patty said before Will sat
down. She grabbed him and pulled him back out to the dance floor. Rachel and I
watched them go.

“Do you ever think we’ll find a love that
will last like that?” she said, dreamily. Poor Rachel has been married and
divorced twice. She has never had kids and she has worse taste in men than me.
Sometimes I look at Rachel and worry that the same destiny awaits me. Rachel
realized what she’d just said and suddenly turned to me and with the sympathy
on her face that I’d had to bear for almost a year now she said, “I’m sorry,
honey.”

I smiled and reached for her hand.
Squeezing it, I said, “Don’t apologize. You know that as much as I loved Dylan,
our relationship was nothing like that. It was always volatile and as much as I
hate to admit it, I kind of doubt that we would have ever made it that long.”

She squeezed my hand back. Rachel had
disliked Dylan as much as the rest of my family, but they’d all been so
supportive anyways. Dylan and I got married at the pond on the ranch before
we’d gone off to travel the rodeo circuit just like I’d dreamt we would since I
was a kid. My family had all been there for the wedding and again for the
sendoff.

I had wished they were with me that day
more than once. I had to sit alone and watch as my husband was trampled and
gored to death – but Dylan had made that decision on his own against my wishes
and they had rushed to me right afterwards. The only thing I could do now about
any of it is to either hold that against him and be miserable about something I
can’t change, or try and make his life count for something. I pictured him that
day again and I shuddered as the horrible memories flooded my consciousness.

“I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have
brought it up,” Rachel said.

I smiled again. It was the only way I
could keep from crying when I thought about it. “I don’t mind people bringing
him up. He had a lot of issues, but he had a lot of good in him, too, and he
doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. That’s what this whole night has been
about…remembering him.”

“Excuse me?” The sound of a deep male
voice interrupted us. We both looked up and there was a really nice looking
cowboy about Rachel’s age standing next to the table. “I was just wondering if
you might like to dance?” He was looking at Rachel with a pair of sexy blue
eyes and I watched my forty-year-old sister blush like a schoolgirl.

“I’d love to,” she said. She looked at me
as if to say,
“Score!”
I tried not to
laugh as I watched them go, smiling after her. Another song was starting and
Patty and Will stayed on the dance floor. I picked up my drink and realized I
needed a new one. I started to turn around and flag the waitress when I
realized she was right there already with a fresh drink in her hand.

“I was just going to ask you for one of
those. You must be psychic.”

She laughed. She actually looked dead on
her feet. “I wish,” she said. “I’d be winning the lottery, instead of working
here and having every dirty old cowboy’s hands in the county on my ass all day.”
She sat the drink down and said, “But I can’t take credit for this. It’s from
the gentleman over in the corner.”

“Oh, I really don’t want someone to buy me
a drink…” I really wasn’t in the mood to get hit on tonight and have to shoot
some poor guy down.

“He’s really cute and polite. He said to
tell you it’s an apology drink.”

I laughed nervously. I wanted to turn
around and see who this guy was that thought he owed me an apology. He must
have me mixed up with someone else. “I think he might have the wrong woman…”