The SEAL's Rebel Librarian (8 page)

She held out her hand in response. Her fingers quivered a little. “It was enough to make
me
shake,” she said.

“I'm trained to handle the worst. I'm failing.”

Calm and collected, she sectioned off another chunk of the pie. “Want to talk about it?”

Normally, no. With her, he did. “A friend died. Bled out in front of me,” he said, then stopped to get himself under control. “It's happened before. We've all lost friends, teammates, men we call brothers. I'd come back from dozens of good outcomes and bad outcomes completely fine. I came back from the last one with a classic case of combat nerves.”

“Hence the paper on PTSD treatments?”

He nodded. “I thought if I quit the Navy, took a break, I'd get better,” he said. “So far I'm not. Depends on the day, how tired I am. I don't sleep much. Or well.”

The conversation had taken a sharp turn from playful to serious. She broke off a piece of crust and popped it in her mouth. “That's why you fall asleep in the library.”

“It's quiet there. Warm. I just shut down,” he said.

She looked at him. “You don't seem all that upset about it.”

“I am,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “Thanks to several months of therapy, I can tell you that I'm both angry and scared. The one thing I've always been able to trust is my body. It's never, ever let me down. All the crazy-ass shit I used to do when I was a kid, BUD/S, eight years on the teams, my body did whatever I asked of it. As strong as I was physically, my mind was stronger. Now it's not, and I have no fucking clue who I am without that control.” He tossed the fork onto the plate, then held up his hand again. “I was supposed to go into security work when I left the Navy. I had a job lined up, even rented an apartment in Istanbul. But with this, I'm a liability, not an asset.”

One hand halfway between the pie plate and her open mouth, she stared at him. “Jack. I'm so sorry.”

He shrugged. “You're not the only one who wants to explore limits. Apparently I have new ones, and I need to find them.”

The smile he flashed her was a shadow of the one he usually wore. She looked at the man sprawled in her borrowed bed, really looked at him. He was a Navy SEAL, a trained warrior, and just a man, too.

“I should go,” he said, sliding off the edge of the bed in a delicious shift of muscles and bone.

“You can stay,” she said with a glance at the clock.

“Thanks, but I meant it when I said I don't sleep so good. I don't want to keep you awake.”

“I sleep really well here,” she said, looking around. “I didn't, for most of my marriage. I always slept best when Jason was on a business trip. I thought it was just the hassle of sharing a bed, but now, I wonder…”

“Wonder what?”

She wondered if she slept well in Nora's house because she was meant to be living Nora's life. “What would this be like, to have lived this life?” she said, not quite answering the question. Every inch of the house held some meaningful object, a memory, a connection to a life lived fully, vibrantly, completely.

He paused in the act of untangling his underwear and jeans. “What do you mean?”

“I could have rented an apartment,” she said. “I came out of the divorce with not much in the way of material possessions, but I make a decent income. I could be in my own apartment, or in a little renovated Craftsman on the East Side. But when Nora offered me the house, I jumped at the chance. Jason thinks it's because I could save money, but I wanted … I thought maybe her things would rub off on me in some way.”

It sounded incredibly stupid when she said it out loud, like she was a little girl trying on her mother's clothes or makeup. What thirty-four-year-old woman didn't know who she was?

“‘You're breaking your word,'” she said. “That's what he'd say to me, over and over. Until death do us part. Over and over and over. He wanted me to keep my word even more than he wanted me to be true to myself. But now all I hear in my head is his voice. You said … you said … you said. That's why I want the motorcycle. The motorcycle somehow became this sore spot in our relationship. Like a bruise that just wouldn't heal.”

Jack dropped his jeans and boxer briefs and put his hands on his hips. “I normally make like Switzerland when it comes to divorces, but you do realize that your ex-husband was a stifling asshole.”

She gave him a rueful little smile. “And you do realize that when you subject your body and mind to extreme situations, you'll change.”

A bitter laugh huffed out. “The training to become a SEAL is supposed to knock that out of you.”

“And love is supposed to conquer all,” she said lightly.

“Looks like we're both trying to learn to trust again,” he said. “I am not this person, someone who quits out of weakness.”

“It's not the same as what you've been through, but … I trusted my love. I thought it would last forever. Something just changed inside me, deep inside. After a while I could look at certain things he did or said, attitudes, and say
That's why I want a divorce
, but the truth is that it happened in my body before my brain caught up with it. Like my body knew before I did that something was wrong.… I was a person who kept her word, until I didn't. Couldn't.” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I'm going to be that person again.”

“Your ex-husband sounds like a real piece of work,” he said. “Look, there's nothing…”

His voice faded in Erin's hearing. For a long moment she stopped thinking and just stared at his frankly incredible body. He wasn't muscle-bound, but his body conveyed a deadly competence she found beyond sexy.

“Erin.”

“What?” she said distractedly.

“My eyes are up here,” he said, amusement roughening his voice.

“Oh my God,” she said, mortified, and dragged her gaze up the length of his torso to his face. “
Sorry.
”

For the second time he plucked his jeans and boxers from the floor, shook them out, and this time stepped into them, a prudent decision given her inability to focus when he was naked. “I said, there's nothing wrong with that. If you want your life to be different, you find someone who can show you the way. Someone like me,” he finished, flashing her a cocky smile as he buttoned his fly.

She backpedaled. “You really don't have to do that. It's not … I'm … I got used to wanting things. I want to have them. They're not big things. I don't want to win an Academy Award or be on a reality TV show. I want—”

“You don't have to justify what you want. Not to me. Not to anyone.”

The last words came through the waffle weave of his shirt. In the second before his head emerged, she realized that the thing about short-term flings was that she had to take what was on offer right now, before he worked out whatever rattled him and went back to his work. Which he would. The thought of Jack Powell staying in Lancaster was laughable. And the temporary nature of what they had made her daring. “So,” she said, clearing her throat and sitting up. “The weather's going to clear up tonight. We've got a nice stretch of sunny days coming up. Perfect bike-buying weather.”

“And skydiving weather,” he added. “I've got some experience jumping out of planes. I could do your tandem jump.”

“Some experience?”

“Some,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

“You'd do that with me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “No big deal. I'll call my friend, set up a date for a jump.”

“Great,” she said. “That'd be great.”

He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss that turned deep, hot, when she gripped his nape.

“You've got a mouth made for sin,” she murmured when they broke apart. She trailed the backs of her fingers along his jaw, then let her hand drop when he straightened.

“So do you,” he said. “See you later.”

Chapter Five

Jack loped up the stairs to his grandmother's big Victorian, knocked twice on the screen door, then hauled it open. “Hello?” he called as he set his helmet on the table in the foyer.

Grannie's bright-eyed, lined face appeared at the end of the hall, a wooden spoon in one hand. “Where's your sister?”

“On her way.” Jack walked down the hall. “The tulips look great,” he said as he gave her a kiss on the cheek. The kitchen smelled of roast pork and apple pie, and a quick glance out the back windows showed the beds in the backyard were coming up daffodils and tulips, yellow, red, pink, and purple swaying in the breeze.

“Thanks. I could use your help this fall. I want to plant more bulbs.”

“In which beds?” he asked, swiping a couple of cherry tomatoes from the salad.

“All the beds, Jack,” she said in the tone of voice she used when he was being incorrigible. The oven timer went off. “Take the roast out, would you?”

He pulled on the oven mitts and opened the door. “Who else is coming?” The table was set with four places.

“Keenan,” Grannie said as she set the salad and covered vegetable dishes on the table. “I thought we'd look through pictures from Turkey.”

“How did that go?” Jack said absently as he plucked an apple ring from the roast and got his knuckles rapped for it.

“How did what go?”

“Keenan guiding. Rose said it was a
very well-executed itinerary
—”

“That's high praise from Rose,” Grannie interjected.

“Yeah, but there's more to a trip like that than a well-executed itinerary. Did you have a good time?”

“I had a wonderful time,” Grannie said, and took off her apron. “So did Rose. Keenan was a perfect gentleman. Help me find the horseradish,” she said as she opened the pantry door.

Joining her, Jack spared five seconds to remember what he could of a particularly debauched forty-eight hours in Munich with Keenan. Highlights included a strip club and waking up in an apartment with a woman who spoke not a lick of English, but apparently Keenan had taken Jack's warning to heart and stayed away from Rose. “Good,” he said, relieved.

“I'm here,” Rose's voice caroled from the end of the hallway.

Jack peered over Grannie's shorter head, catching Rose in the act of pushing her sunglasses up on her forehead. His sister wore a floral sundress, a tiny sweater that showed off more than it covered, and a pair of strappy sandals. “What are you all dressed up for?” he asked, suspicious. Of course Keenan had seen her in Turkey, but jet-lagged and tired and worn out from hauling ass all over a country roughly the size of Texas, not sweet and fresh and pretty.

“I'm dressed up for spring, and a sunny Sunday afternoon, and dinner with you and Grannie,” Rose said as she walked down the hall. She surveyed the table and the roast, covered in tin foil and resting on the carving block, then reached into the pantry and produced the horseradish. “Looking for this?”

“Thank you, dear.”

A knock at the front door. All three of them turned to look down the hallway, Rose peering over Grannie's head, Jack looking over Rose's. Keenan stood on the porch, wearing a pair of khakis, a button-down shirt, and a blazer. His eyes widened slightly, then he waved.

“Come in,” Grannie called. “Rose, go let him in.”

“I'll go,” Jack said.

“We should both go,” Rose said. “Jack, we need—”

“I'll go,” Jack said firmly. “You sit over there, behind the table or something. Here. Put on Grannie's apron.”

“What?” Rose said.

“Someone let that poor man in this instant,” Grannie said.

That poor man
had the worst reputation on the team, and he was standing on Grannie's front porch, carrying flowers and a bottle of wine, dressed like he was going on a
date.
Jack strode down the hall, tripped over one of Grannie's rag rugs, and caught himself just before he pitched through the screen into Keenan's arms.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Hello to you, too,” Keenan said.

“What the hell?” Jack said, mostly to cover his embarrassment at tripping over a damn rug. He hauled the door open.

Keenan stepped inside, then looked at the offerings in his hands. “What?”

“Wine?”

“Your grandmother had wine with lunch every day,” Keenan said, frowning. “Was that a vacation thing?”

“Oh. Never mind,” Jack said, feeling like a bigger ass.

“Keenan, you really shouldn't have,” Grannie said, advancing on them, her eyes on the flowers. “Tulips, how lovely! Are these the variety we saw in Istanbul?”

“They are,” Keenan said easily. “I brought some bulbs, too. Maybe you could plant them in the fall for next spring.”

“So very thoughtful,” Grannie said.

“Hello, Keenan,” Rose said.

His sister was definitely not sitting behind the solid farmhouse table in the kitchen, nor was she wearing the apron he'd shoved at her. She was standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest, her hair spilling forward over her shoulders.

“Hi, Rose,” Keenan said.

Rose looked at him. “Jack, we need to—”

“Not while my roast is cooling,” Grannie interrupted. “Everyone into the kitchen, now.”

They ended up around the table, Jack at the head, carving a pork roast like the head of the household while Keenan listened intently to Grannie's chatter about the flowers he'd brought and Rose passed plates and poured wine.

“Keenan, how are you finding Field Energy?” Grannie asked.

Jack cut off a piece of perfect tender roast and waited to see what Keenan would say about giving up on the contracting work in the Middle East.

“It's interesting, ma'am,” he said. “I've got a lot to learn about the business side of the operation.”

“He's already made some great suggestions for security at the storage facilities,” Rose said.