Stitched Up Heart (Combat Hearts Book 1) (10 page)

“Wherever we’ll be spending the most time is fine.”

“Feel free to take a look around.” Jase carried the large dog beds down a short hall and disappeared around the corner.

Bree glanced around. The U-shaped kitchen opened into the breakfast area. Rather than follow Jase, Bree went through the door to her left, which led her to the dining room. Built-in hutches occupied two corners of the room. Judging by the thin layer of dust on the table, Bree guessed Jase ate all his meals in the kitchen. Formal double doors to her right led her to the foyer. Straight through was a formal living room was one of the two fireplaces Jase had mentioned. Through two more double doors was a large family room where Jase had arranged the dog beds in the back corner, next to the second fireplace. A large framed drawing hung above the dark wood mantel.

Bree stared at the picture. It was the same one tattooed on his back. A black and white montage of battle scenes. It looked like it was drawn in pencil or charcoal. The detail was exquisite.

At the back of the family room, a short hall led to a full bath and a bedroom, which Jase used as a home gym. On the right, stairs led to the second floor. She kept walking around to the right and found herself back in the breakfast area and kitchen. Jase was pulling food out of the refrigerator, and she could smell onions and peppers sautéing on the stove.

“Fajitas okay?” Jase asked when he noticed her come back into the kitchen.

“That sounds good. You chopped up those onions while I was walking around? Are you a culinary wizard?”

Jase chuckled. “The exact opposite. I hate chopping onions so I buy them pre-sliced.”

“Huh. I’m assuming you have beer,” she said.

He pointed a wooden spoon at the refrigerator. “Yeah, I have beer. Help yourself.”

“You want one?”

“Sure.”

Bree grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and opened one for Jase.

“Do you want some help?”

“I got it. Sit down and relax.” She sat at the table and watched Jase move around his kitchen. His butt filled out his jeans nicely, especially when he bent to get another pan out of a lower cabinet.

“How old is your house?” Bree asked, trying to distract herself.

“Court records said early 1920s. There were some renovations done in the late 70s, early 80s, but it was in pretty bad shape when I bought it.”

“I was going to ask if any of it was original. The brick in the living room is gorgeous,” she said.

The sound of sizzling meat hitting a hot pan filled the kitchen. “My best friend Tony and I spent a little more than a year renovating after I bought the place,” he explained. “We had both just gotten out of the Army and just wanted to relax a little. Have a place away from people.”

“How much land do you have?” she asked.

“Almost ten acres.”

“That’ll get you away from people.”

“Tony didn’t adjust so well after getting out,” he said. Jase looked at her, something in his eyes. A haunted look. One she had observed in many of her patients. Guys who’d seen too much, done too much, and sacrificed more than anyone should ever have to. A look she’d seen in her own mirror.

“Anyway, we gutted the place, top to bottom. A couple of guys we knew from the service did the electrical and plumbing for me, but we did the rest ourselves.”

“You did a really good job. I like that you kept the original structure – all the rooms – and didn’t try to make it open concept,” she said.

Jase stirred the meat in the cast iron pan before looking at Bree. “Your house has an open concept.”

“Only for the family room and kitchen. I renovated it after my gran deeded it to me. I did the demo myself, but everything else a contractor did. Had the bay windows put in the dining room and kitchen nook and opened up the kitchen – it was tiny before. Combined the two back bedrooms into the master and put in an ensuite.”

“That was cool of her, to deed it to you,” he said.

“It got to be too much for her after my grandfather passed away.”

“Where is she now?” He moved the meat off the pan.

“In a retirement community in Haven Springs,” she said.

“She’s close then.”

“Oh yeah, I see her every Saturday. I volunteer there. What about your family? Are they local? Other than Tim?”

“They were,” Jase said. “My parents retired to Wilmington a couple of years ago. I have a sister out in Colorado.” He pointed to a drawer across from the stove. “Can you grab silverware out of that drawer there, and some plates? Dinner’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

Bree got silverware and plates, grabbed some paper towels, and set the table. Jase set a platter piled high with meat and vegetables on the table. Charlie and Polly moved from where they were sitting next to the stove watching Jase prepare dinner to under the table on the off chance some food might make it to the floor.

“They’ll stay on their beds if they’re bothering you,” Bree offered.

“They’re good.”

Bree smiled. So different from Chad. He’d hated when Charlie and Polly sat under the table and always insisted she put them in their kennels whenever he was over for dinner.

They sat at the small table and piled their plates high with food.

Bree spread sour cream on a tortilla. “Who did the picture over the fireplace in the living room?”

“Uh, Tony did it.”

“It’s beautiful. He’s very talented.”

“Yeah, he was.”

Bree hesitated for a moment, not sure she wanted to ask the next question. “What happened to Tony?”

Jase paused in the act of raising his food-laden fork to his mouth. He put it back on his plate and leaned back in his chair.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Bree said.

“PTSD.” Bree set the tortilla and knife down. “Really bad. He didn’t like therapy. Hated the drugs they had him on. Said it put him in a fog, so he didn’t take them for more than a couple of days at a time. One doc prescribed him some sleeping pills, but he didn’t like them since they didn’t actually help him sleep. He’d just walk around like a zombie and lose days. About two weeks after we finished the house, all the major stuff anyway, he downed the entire bottle and chased it with a bottle of bourbon.”

He paused, staring down at his plate as he pushed his food around with his fork.

“The only time I recognized the guy I grew up with was when we were hunting or fishing. He said being out in the woods was the only time he found peace. The only time his mind and soul were still.” Jase’s swallowed, his throat working more than necessary. He grabbed his beer and took a long pull as if he were trying to force the bitter memory back down.

“Anyway,” he continued, setting his beer back down and going back to his food. “I started V.E.T. Adventures a few months after that. I figured if Tony could find peace out in the woods, other guys could, too. Been slowly building it up by word of mouth since then.”

He looked at Bree, putting on a brave face, but she could see the agony he buried deep.

She reached forward and placed her fingers in the palm of his hand resting on the table. His hand closed around hers, so tight her fingers pinched together. Her thumb brushed across his fingers, doing what little she could to ease his pain. She had no words that would erase his hurt or express her sympathy, so she didn’t offer any.

They finished dinner in silence, lost in their own thoughts, but never letting go of each other’s hands.

After dinner, Bree helped Jase clear the dishes and load the dishwasher, then fed her dogs. Once everything was put away, Jase took her hand and led her out the front door onto the screened-in porch. He pulled her onto a large rope hammock and gathered her close. He tucked her into his side with one arm, the other going behind his head. Bree rested her head on his shoulder, tilting it up to look at Jase, who looked back down at her.

“You ready to finish the conversation we started in my office?” he asked.

“What if I say no?”

“Then we do it anyway.”

Bree scrunched up her face and glared at him.

Jase kissed the tip of her nose. “You’re adorable, but we’re still talking.”

“Fine.” She let out a disgruntled sigh. “What do you want to know?”

“How over it is with your ex, for starters.”

Bree turned her head into the pocket of Jase’s shoulder and rubbed her face on his t-shirt, letting out another sigh. “One, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t extremely over,” she told him firmly. “Two, it should have been over a long time ago. I was more pissed that I had to get new sheets and get tested than I was that he was cheating on me. Honestly, I never should have agreed to marry him.”

“You were engaged?”

She titled her head back. “Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Engaged? Less than a month.”

Jase pursed his lips. “How long were you together before that?”

“Eight or nine months, I guess.”

“Why did you say yes when he asked?”

She moved her head back into the pocket of his shoulder. “He proposed at my grandmother’s eighty-fifth birthday party. Did the whole speech and got down on one knee in front of everyone. It caught me off guard. I didn’t want to embarrass him or myself in front of all my friends and family.”

“Wow, that’s…”

“Underhanded?” Bree suggested.

“I was going to say an asshole move, but sure, we’ll go with underhanded. Why’d you stay engaged?”

Bree traced a small circle on the t-shirt stretched across his chest. “I didn’t actually see him more’n a couple of times between when he asked and when I caught him.”

His fingers rubbed back and forth across her shoulder. “You never set a date?”

“No. He wanted to. I didn’t see the rush. The more he pushed, the more I resisted.”

“Why?”

“Why did he push it or why did I keep putting it off?”

“Both,” Jase said.

“Money.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that, darlin’.”

“Sooo…there’s a stipulation in my grandfather’s will that says I won’t receive the entirety of my inheritance until I’m married.”

“That’s kind of old school,” Jase observed.

“It was my grandmother’s idea. She fell in love with my grandfather when she was fifteen years old and married him when she was seventeen. She wanted the same fairytale for me that she had. And yeah…she’s kind of old school about some things.”

“So how much money are we talking about?”

Bree hesitated. She hated telling people how much she was worth. Their attitudes changed as soon as they found out she was wealthy. People she thought of as friends would either start ignoring her, making assumptions about her because she had money, or start sucking up to her.

Jase squeezed her gently. “Now I’m kind of scared to know. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”

Bree bit her bottom lip, then decided to go with her gut and trust Jase. “That I get? Slightly more than five million dollars,” she said quietly.

He let out a whistle. “Shit, darlin’, you are loaded. And you don’t get any of that until you get hitched?”

“I get a portion of the interest as a living stipend.”

“Do I even want to know?” Jase kiddingly asked.

“It’s more than I need to live on and more than enough so I don’t actually have to work,” she said.

“What did your grandfather do? Win the lottery?”

“He was a cryptographer and statistician during World War II, then designed cryptography programs for the CIA after he got out of the Army. After he retired from the CIA, he sold a bunch of programs to big-name tech companies.”

She smiled. “When I say he was smart, I mean genius-level IQ smart. He’d analyze data for hours, just for fun. Right before the stock market crashed in ’08, he pulled out all his money. People told him he was crazy, but he just said ‘watch and see.’ He reinvested everything right after the crash and a couple years later had tripled his investment. Raised all sorts of flags with the SEC, but he kept all his data, all his charts and graphs. They offered him a job,” she said with a small laugh. “By that time he had already been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He set the trust up right after he found out.”

“You miss him.”

“Yeah.”

Jase squeezed her again. “What happens if you don’t get married?” he asked.

“Well, my grandfather was not as old-fashioned as my grandmother. I can leave it to any children I may have down the road, or it can go into the endowment fund I asked him to set up with most of the money.”

“Five million wasn’t most of the money?” Jase asked.

“No, it was about a fifth of it.”

“Holy cow. And you don’t get any of that until you get hitched?”

“Nope.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Sure, why not?” She shrugged. “I really don’t have to work if I don’t want to. The interest is more than enough to live on, especially here in North Carolina.”

“How old are you?” Jase asked.

“You know it’s rude to ask a lady her age,” Bree said, looking back up at him.

He just gave her another squeeze.

“Thirty-two. What about you? Are you really old? Is your beard covering up all the wrinkles on your face?”

“Thirty-four, smart ass.”

Bree grinned up at him before tucking her head back onto his chest.

“Was last week a rebound?” he asked.

“No.” She felt Jase release a breath as if he had been holding it, waiting for her answer. “I had no intention of hooking up with anyone on Friday. I just didn’t want to sit around my house drinking and whining about what an asshat Chad was. I can’t even remember the last time I had a one-night stand.”

“Then why’d you leave? You didn’t even give it a chance.”

“You don’t exactly seem like the kind of guy who’s lacking for female companionship. I didn’t want it to be awkward with you pretending like you’d call and me pretending like I believed you were going to. It was just easier to leave and not deal with the whole thing.”

“I haven’t been a monk.” He wrapped his other arm around her, shifting them so they were face to face. “But I haven’t taken a girl home with me in longer than I can remember. I woke up with your perfume in my nose and the taste of you in my mouth,” he said as he ran his nose up the side of Bree’s neck. “I was pissed when I woke up and you were gone.”