Stitched Up Heart (Combat Hearts Book 1) (16 page)

“Tale as old as time,” Bree replied.

Denise turned from her salad preparation. “Did you just quote Beauty and the Beast to me?”

Bree grinned. “It seemed appropriate.” She opened the refrigerator and gathered cabbage and carrots for coleslaw.

“You’re awfully comfortable here.” She hacked into the bunch of lettuce.

“It’s a kitchen. How uncomfortable should it be?”

She threw the chopped lettuce into a large bowl. “It’s the kitchen of a guy you met a week ago, and you know where he keeps all his cutlery.”

Bree looked down at the knife she held. She’d known right were to find it. Cutlery drawer to the right of the stove. She might have to hunt for specialty items, but she knew exactly where to find the essentials. She could tell Denise where to find just about anything she needed.

She raised her gaze to Denise. “This is going really fast,” she whispered.

“Shit, honey. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“It was coming whether you said something or not. I haven’t thought about how fast this was going.” She cleared her throat and turned back to the vegetables. “I think maybe I should back off some.”

“Why?”

She set down the knife and picked up the grater, intent on demolishing the carrots. “What do you mean ‘why’?”

“Bree, look at me.”

She set down the grater and turned to face Denise. She leaned a hip against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Why do you think you need to back off?” Denise asked.

“It’s too fast. I’ve known him for a week and I’m as comfortable in his kitchen as I am in yours.” Bree swept an arm out.

“Who says it’s too fast?”

“Me. You. Anyone who hears how we met.”

“Whoa, I never said it was too fast.”

“You said I looked really comfortable in his kitchen.”

“Right. And you do. It’s not a bad thing. Bree, you need to go as fast or slow as you need to go. And to be honest with you, Jase doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to let you back off, even if that’s what you really wanted to do.”

Bree snorted and folded her arms over her chest. “Yeah. I called him an alpha-male door-kicker today.”

Denise laughed. “It’s an apt description. What did he say?”

“Nothing, he just smiled.”

Denise paused before confessing, “I never liked Chad.”

“I know,” Bree said with a rueful smile.

“He never got you. He was never in the military. Never understood what you went through or why you chose to do what you do now. Jase…” Denise took a breath and gazed toward the back of the house. She looked back at Bree before continuing. “Jase gets it. You can see it in his eyes. The way he carries himself. He’ll never ask you stupid questions that make you want to throat punch him.”

Bree snorted, her eyes stinging.

“He’ll protect you in a way Chad never could.”

“I know,” Bree whispered.

“You need to grab on to that and hold on tight.”

Bree’s head dropped as she brushed a stray tear off her cheek. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything.” Bree looked up at her best friend. “I’m feeling way more in a week than I’ve felt in a long time. He makes me feel things that…that I don’t actually remember ever feeling before.”

“And?”

“And a lot has been going on. What if, when it all settles down, it’s not so great? What if it goes to shit?”

“What if it does?” Denise asked.

She ran the heel of her hand across her forehead. “I’m not sure I could walk away as easily from Jase as I did from Chad.”

“So don’t walk away. If you decide it’s something worth fighting for, fight for it.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

Bree held Denise’s gaze. “Say it. Whatever it is you’re holding back.

Denise swept her hair up in a bun on the back of her head. “Brutal honesty?”

“Always.”

“Chad was a safe bet. There was never any chance of you actually falling in love with him. You said so yourself it was easier to stay with him than to break it off. Jase is a risk. You’re going to feel things. There’s a chance you could get hurt. That’s what’s scaring you.”

Bree nodded and looked out the window. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Sometimes it sucked having a best friend who knew you so well. Everything Denise said was true. It was a chance. A risk. Her heart could end up torn into pieces, something she hadn’t risked in so long. Bree blew out a breath and shook her head. “We’re not going to figure out my love life in the next fifteen minutes, and I need time to stop looking like I’ve been crying.”

“Well, if your skin wasn’t translucent, you’d be a prettier crier,” Denise said.

Bree picked up a carrot. “Bite me.”

“Only if you ask nicely.” She wet a paper towel and wrung it out before handing it to Bree.

Bree pressed the cool cloth over her eyes.

“So when are you going to ask her to move in with you?” Tim asked.

Jase looked up from the grill. “What are you talking about?”

“Really? This is the first girl you’ve been serious about since— Have you ever been serious about a girl?”

Jase flipped a steak over. “I don’t know. Sarah?”

“That was high school.”

Jase shrugged. “So?”

“So, this is the first girl you’ve introduced me to. You’ve known her, what? A couple of weeks?” He took a sip of his beer.

He lifted another steak and checked the underside. “’Bout that.”

“So, what is it?”

Jase closed the top of the grill and picked up his beer.
What is it?
What was it about Bree that made Jase chase after her? What is it about her that made him want to protect her but still fuck her until she screamed his name?

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It’s like she sees me. She understands without having to ask the question.” He took a pull of his beer. “She hasn’t once asked me about what I did in the Army. She knows I was a Ranger, but it’s like she doesn’t care. She’s not some SOF groupie looking for a little danger.”

“She serve?” Tim asked.

“Air Force. Aerospace med tech.”

“What’s that?”

Jase sighed. “You remember when I came home for a few weeks, middle of my last tour ‘cause I was escorting a guy in my unit back?”

“Yeah, is that what she did?”

“No. I was a non-medical escort. Just someone to help the guy out in Germany. Get him to appointments, that kind of thing.”

“What did she do?”

“The plane we took back was a C-17, configured for medical patients. The aerospace med techs take care of the patients onboard the plane.”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Like a flying nurse?”

“Kind of. But they have those, too.”

“So she’s probably seen some pretty serious shit.”

Jase pulled from his beer. “Probably. We haven’t talked about deployments or anything.”

“But she’s probably gone through some stuff too, even if she wasn’t kicking in doors.”

Jase laughed. “She called me a door-kicker today.”

“Well, you were.” He looked at the bottle in his hand and swirled the dredges. “Where do you see it going?”

“Honestly? Long term. Bree’s the first person to make me want things since Tony killed himself.”

“It’s good to hear that. You had Mom worried for a while. Hell, you had us all worried. You went kind of wild when you first got back. Mom thought you were going to self-destruct. Then, after Tony… Even though you started V.E.T. Adventures, you still weren’t really all there. I think that scared Mom even more. Happy looks good on you. Good to have my kid brother back.”

Shit, is that what it was? Happy? He felt like something had been lifted from his shoulders. Even before Tony killed himself, he didn’t really engage with people. It took too much energy to answer the questions, ignore the looks when people found out he was part of an elite team of U.S. soldiers. Bree just saw…him.

But that wasn’t something he was going to articulate to his pain-in-the-ass brother. “We gonna hug? Do I need to go get you some tissue so you can dab your eyes?”

“And there’s the little shit I know and love.” Tim toasted him with his beer before taking a sip.

Jase lifted the cover of the grill to check on the steaks as Bree and Denise came out carrying a salad and other sides. They set everything down on patio table.

“Do you guys need a refill?” Bree asked.

“Sure,” Jase said.

Tim drained the last of his beer. “I can do another. Thanks.”

The patio door closed behind the girls and Tim asked, “So what’s Denise’s story?”

“Not sure. I know she and Bree are really close. I got the feeling they met while in the service. Ask ‘em over dinner.”

Bree and Denise returned with plates, silverware, napkins and beers for everyone.

“How much longer?” Bree asked.

“Depends on how you take your steak,” Jase said.

“Medium rare.”

“Same here,” Denise said.

“Then probably about five minutes,” Jase told them.

“So how long have you two known each other?” Tim asked.

“About ten years, I guess,” Bree replied, looking to Denise for confirmation.

“Wow, it has been that long.”

Tim grabbed foil-wrapped baked potatoes from the top rack of the grill. “How did you meet?”

“We were trailer-mates in Iraq for, what? Nine months, give or take?” Denise took the platter from Tim and set it on the table.

“Give or take.” Bree sat at the table. “You got there a few months after I did, and I left a month before you did.”

“Where were you deployed?” Tim asked.

“We were at Camp Victory,” Bree explained. “I was assigned to the CASH unit there and Denise was working for a Joint Task Force.”

“What’s a cash unit?” Tim asked.

“Combat Army Surgical Hospital.”

“I thought you were Air Force.”

“I was, but we were back filling the Army positions because they couldn’t fill them. Something about the Army sucking,” Bree said, winking at Jase.

Jase smiled and shook his head at her. “Which JTF?”

“High-Value Individuals. We were tracking al-Qaida insurgency leaders.”

“That’s sounds interesting.” Tim said. “What all did that entail?”

“I can’t really talk about it,” Denise said.

“Or you’ll have to kill me?” Tim suggested.

“Nah. We don’t kill people anymore, just stick them in secret prisons.”

“Was that the only time you guys were deployed together?” Jase asked as he removed the steaks from the grill.

“No, actually. We were both part of a CST in Khanadar.”

Jase paused, tongs suspended in mid-air and turned around. “Wow. Really?”

“What’s a CST?” Tim asked. “Quit talking in alphabet soup.”

“Sorry. It’s a Cultural Support Team,” Jase explained. He removed the last steak from the grill and set the plate on the table. “All-female team that’s trained to go out with Special Ops guys. They engage with the women and kids on target. They get trained on language and culture and go through five or six weeks of intensive training.” He flipped off the knobs of the grill and closed the lid. “It’s a really hard course to get through, from what I hear.”

“We had four or five guys decide to go through the training with us because they didn’t think it could be that hard. You know, ‘cause we’re women,” Denise said. “A couple of Rangers, a SEAL, and a Green Beret, I think. All but two dropped out, and by the end of it they had both injured themselves.” She stabbed a steak on the platter and moved it to her plate. “They finished out of sheer stubbornness more than anything else. Needless to say, we didn’t get any shit about how easy the training was after that.”

The corner of Jase’s mouth lifted and he looked at Bree. “So you were a door-kicker too.” No wonder she didn’t ask him any questions. She was a bad-ass. He took her in. Really looked at her physique and not just her body. She wasn’t muscular to the point you would think she lived at the gym, but she was lean and strong. That explained her taking him down at her house. His gaze drifted back up to find an amused smile on her face.

“I didn’t do the door kicking. I just walked in after it was already off its hinges,” she said.

“You should go out on the trip with Jase next weekend,” Tim said, passing the coleslaw to Bree. “You can probably teach some of the guys a thing or two.”

“I can’t do it next weekend. I’m scheduled through the end of the month, but if you let me know ahead of time, I’d love to go,” she said. “My availability for next month is due next Friday. I just need to know dates so I can block them off.”

“What about you?” Tim asked Denise.

She shrugged. “I’ll go. I just have to know when so I can schedule a couple of extra people for the weekend.”

Jase cut into his steak. “I have a trip lined up next month that’s a bunch of guys who try to go together a couple times a year. It’s more relaxed than the regular trips.”

“What do you have to schedule people for?” Tim asked Denise.

“I run a doggie daycare and rescue.” Denise took a bite of steak.

“She also does training for service dogs and companions,” Bree bragged.

“What’s the name of the rescue?” Jase asked.

“Wiggle Butt Rescue,” Bree and Denise answered in unison.

Tim put his fork down with a clunk. “You just picked up a contract with the county K-9 unit.”