What I Love About You (18 page)

When she was finished, she moved from the bathroom to the kitchen. It was almost nine and she dug around in her purse sitting on the table. After she’d left Blake at the Loosey house, she’d come home and found the old box with her high school yearbooks and old cheer uniform. She grabbed a tube of lip gloss from her purse, and she had to admit that she felt a little ridiculous. She coated her lips with a thin smear of pink and took a moment to rethink her surprise. What if Blake thought it was stupid? What if . . . She made a scoffing sound and dropped the lip gloss back into her purse. Blake was a guy with cheerleader fantasies. He’d like it, especially the part about her not wearing underwear.

A light knock drew her attention to the side door and she glanced at the clock. Blake was right on time. Natalie walked across the room, took a deep breath, and opened the door. With her arms wide, she said, “Surprise!”

He stood on the porch, half covered in darkness. The light from the house fell across his throat and chest but left his face in covered in darkness. Her heart thumped heavy in her chest but he didn’t say anything, obviously stunned speechless.

“Come in and I’ll show you some of my best routines.” She stepped back, and the second he moved inside, she could tell he wasn’t stunned speechless. Instead of lust or even a smile, he looked at her like he had the first day they met. Cold. Like stone. Like he couldn’t wait to be away from her.

“What’s wrong?” A panicky little flutter settled in her stomach. “What happened?”

He didn’t take off his coat, and instead leaned back against the closed door. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

“Oh.” She might have felt a measure of relief if not for his closed face.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

She knew what he did for a living. Knew he didn’t work nine to five, five days a week. “Okay.”

“I don’t know if I’ll come back.”

“If?”
A little pinch grabbed a piece of her heart. She must not have heard him right. Hadn’t he just made an offer on the Loosey house? “I’m confused, Blake.”

“This isn’t really working out,” he said, and made a motion with his hand, pointing to the both of them. “My job takes me away for weeks and maybe months at a time. You want a relationship, but that can’t happen if one person is gone most of the time.”

She looked into his beautiful face and eyes, reflecting nothing but a chilly indifference. “I’ve known that about you for a while now. We can make it work.” God, did she sound as desperate as she felt? “I don’t care about your job.”

“You will.”

She took a deep breath and said past the growing pinch in her chest and the pride jamming her throat, “I love you, Blake. I don’t care about the rest.”

“There is no rest. I’m not a relationship guy. I told you that from the start.” He pushed away from the door and reached for the handle like he hadn’t heard her confess that she loved him. Like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

“I just told you that I love you and your response is to walk out?”

“You don’t love me. Sex isn’t love.”

“You don’t think I know the difference?”

“I think you’re confused.”

She folded her arms across the pain in her chest. “Then clear it up for me.”

He frowned the way he always did when she forced him to say something he didn’t want to talk about. “Sex with you was great. I had a good time. You had a good time, but it’s time to move on.”

Oh God
. She dropped her head and looked at her bare toenails she’d painted red just for him. She didn’t want to see his cold, closed eyes.

“I’m sorry to hurt you. You’re the most honest person I know, and you deserve me to be honest with you. And the last thing I want is to lead you on and make you think there’s a chance I’ll return your feelings one day.” He opened the door but she didn’t look up. “Please tell Charlotte good-bye for me,” he said, then closed the door behind him.

Then she did look up and stared at the door, unable to move. Had that just happened? Had he just said he was leaving and didn’t know if he’d be back? Had she just told Blake she loved him and he’d said there wasn’t a chance he’d return her feelings? He’d walked out on her? Had he just used the words she’d said about Michael on her?

The backs of her eyes stung and her chest ached like it was caving in on her and pinching her heart. She loved a man who didn’t love her. A man she’d known better than to fall in love with. She’d known he couldn’t be trusted with her heart, but she’d gone right ahead and handed him her heart anyway.

And now? Natalie pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. She was a fool. A tear slid down her cheek and the pain of loving Blake felt like a weight pressing in on her. He’d always said he didn’t want a relationship, but that wasn’t how he’d acted. He’d always acted like he wanted her. He’d pursued her, and when she’d given in to her feeling for him, he’d dumped her flat and shattered her heart.

Maybe this was the reason she’d avoided relationships. Maybe it had nothing to do with a moral dilemma and everything to do with the pain of once again loving a man. The physical pain in her chest and stomach and crawling across her skin.

Her watery gaze fell on the Christmas cards she and Charlotte had made earlier. What about her daughter? He was just going to up and leave and walk out of Charlotte’s life? He was going to leave it to Natalie to say good-bye for him?

Anger bubbled in her veins like lava and threatened to explode, but this time there was no marching over to his house like when he’d stuck her with a dog.

The dog. What about Sparky? He was going to walk out on her and Charlotte and his dog? He was okay with leaving her heartbroken, Charlotte sad and confused, and Sparky abandoned?

Natalie wiped her nose and cheek with the arm of her sweater. She was angry, and heartbroken, and a fool. Such a fool. Once again she’d thought she knew a man. Thought that beneath Blake’s hard, cool exterior was a man who was soft and warm inside. Once again she was clueless about the real heart and soul of the man she loved.

A clueless fool in a stupid cheerleader outfit.

Chapter Fifteen

Blake relaxed among the insertion gear in the back of a Knighthawk heading over the Indian Ocean. The same three security contractors he’d worked with in Yemen occupied the other seats while the pilot kept his eyes on the two green blips off the northeast corner of Somalia.

The four men wore black skin suits and waited for the signal to jump. It came two miles out from a cargo ship, the
Fatima
, which had been boarded and held by Somali pirates. The latest intel reported that the crew hadn’t been seen. Either they were all dead or they had locked themselves in the panic rooms.

The
Fatima
operated under the Panamanian flag and listed bulk cargo on its manifest. While it was loaded with grains, ore, and hatchets out of Hong Kong, the U.S. government had learned that deep in the cargo bay, a dozen fifty-gallon barrels of yellowcake uranium were stowed. Several hundred feet in front of the
Fatima
, an eighty-foot attack boat kept watch, waiting for the cover of darkness to unload the nuclear material. The boat had no markings, no name, and was armed with deck-mounted .50-caliber weapons. Not exactly the usual rusted-out skiff of impoverished Somali pirates.

The helo hovered forty-five feet above the surface of the ocean and the pilot flipped a switch. The light in the starboard door changed from red to green, and Fast Eddy gave the signal. The men pushed a Zodiac into the waves and fast-roped into the rolling inflatable boat. The copilot lowered their gear, and within three minutes, they had everything stowed and assembled and heading for the
Fatima
.

Blake had flown out of Boise a week ago, going to Houston and the new contract that had waited for him at the private security company he’d worked for over the past year. It was for more money and more time out of the country. More time away from Truly, Idaho, and the big house where he’d lived a different life. A life that wasn’t him. A life where his best friends were a five-year-old girl and her beautiful mother.

As much as he hated Beau for being right, Blake had to leave Truly before his leaving hurt Charlotte and Natalie.

The image of Natalie’s face when he’d told her he was leaving was stuck in his memory like an ax to his skull. He’d hurt her. He’d never meant to do that. She and Charlotte were the last people on the planet he wanted to cause pain. He cared about them. Cared enough that the thought of their hurt feelings churned inside him and found the weaknesses in his detached heart and soul.

She loved him.

The memory of pain in Natalie’s blue eyes filled him with guilt and the overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and save her from the pain. To fold her into his chest and make love to her, but that wasn’t the right thing to do for her. He was a man who had plenty of faults, but he always tried to be the man who did the right thing, and the right thing was to stay out of her life.

For right now, he needed to push those memories and guilt feelings out of his head. It was imperative that he concentrate on the mission in front of him. The other three men were depending on him to do his job. To keep his focus on the mission. Years of training enabled him to easily force the memory of Natalie and Charlotte to the back of his mind and keep the front clear and focused.

The closer the Zodiac got to the coast of Africa, the bigger the swells grew. The rubber boat crested them, then slammed to the bottom. Blake’s stomach rose and dropped, and moisture fogged his night vision goggles. Each country had its own unique scent and visceral memories. Somalia smelled of decades of rot and decay mixed with the sweet smell of tropical flowers. Surrounded by flowers and decay, the streets were filled with the sound of continuous AK rounds and gangs of boys loaded with RPGs.

A hundred meters out from the
Fatima
, Fast Eddy gave the signal to cut the engines, and the men donned masks and rebreathers. They attached their gear stowed in waterproof bags to a caving ladder. Each man grabbed his section of the ladder and slid into the Indian Ocean.

Poor visibility made it difficult to see the gauges and dials on their dive watches as they swam at the same speed, twenty feet beneath the surface. Each knew how many kicks it took to swim one hundred yards, and they surfaced on the starboard side near the cargo bays.

Without making a sound, Farkus attached the ladder on the side of the ship, and they shed their scuba gear and hung it on each rung. They grabbed their weapons and ammo from the waterproof bags, then boarded the
Fatima
. Their faces were painted black like super stealth ninjas. They coordinated their dive watches, and Fast Eddy tapped his helmet twice. Each moved silently into position. Blake had done dozens of board, search, and seizure missions in his career, and this time he headed toward the ship’s foremast and winch platform. With his MP5 submachine gun on his back and a 9mm on his hip, he climbed the platform. Without a sound, he knelt on the damp steel and snapped the custom-made tripod on the MP5. He lay on his stomach and dialed in the night scope. Within seconds, he calculated the range and velocity using the conversion chart in his head, then took into account the humidity, drop, and full wind value.

The pirates on the smaller boat below bobbed in and out of his sight, and he estimated there were three of them on the bow, and another two in the cabin. He took his eye from the scope and looked at his watch. In two minutes each operator would be in position. Fast Eddy would transmit a signal on his watch and the games would begin.

Thirty seconds into the two minutes, gunfire erupted in the cargo bay behind Blake. “Shit,” Blake whispered, and put his eye to the scope and his finger on the trigger. Short bursts of AKs smashed against steel as the smaller boat bobbed out of his crosshairs. Beyond the bow, the white-capped waves shimmered and shifted, wavered for a split second, then within the green optics turned white with snow. The wind across his face took on the cold bite and unique scent of winter in the Hindu Kush. With his heart pounding in his ears, Blake took his eye from the scope and his finger from the trigger. His vision flickered between what was real and what was an illusion. He knew he was on the
Fatima
two miles off the Somali coast. Not the caverns and crags of the Afghani mountains. He could control this. It wasn’t happening. The lives of three other men depended on him. He put his forehead on the cold steel platform beneath him and took deep breaths, trying to control his breathing and the vision that wasn’t real. The harder he tried to control it, the more it would not be controlled. The more it couldn’t be controlled, the more panic grabbed his gut. He let out a shaky breath and gave in to it, looking directly at the granite rock and snow peaks, and just as quickly as it came on, it wavered and flickered and melted away. He lifted his head and put his eye to his scope. His heartbeat pounded in his chest and thumped the hollow of his throat. Nausea rolled in his belly but he didn’t have time to get sick. The smaller boat rose in his crosshairs but the pirates were no longer standing at the bow.

Shit. Damn. Mother-goddamn-fuckers. He swung the barrel to the left and caught sight of a pirate running toward a .50-caliber deck-mounted weapon. His body memory took over and he squeezed the trigger and put three rounds center mass. The man fell, and he turned the barrel to the other .50-caliber mounted on the foredeck. Bullets hit the deck around Blake in tight bursts,
whack-a whack-a whack-a
. Hot metal shards flew through the air as he put his crosshairs on a second man in a black and white keffiyeh. The smaller boat bobbed out of sight and rose again. The guy got off several rounds, but Blake was a better shot and took him out. He spotted three bad guys boarding the ship to his left. Bullets furrowed and dented the steel around him as he sent lead down his sights and took them out, too.

Within minutes it was over, and Blake took a deep breath of salty air and let it out. He rose to his knees and looked for the men on his team. He spotted them in the lighted cargo hold and wiped away a bead of sweat sliding down his temple. He’d been on missions that were textbook and missions that got ugly real fast. He’d seen his friends and fellow servicemen blown apart by roadside bombs and RPGs. He’d stood next to men who were practically cut in half by AK rounds, but he’d never been on a mission where he hadn’t been able to do his job. None of the men he’d see die lost their lives because he couldn’t pull the trigger.

“Are you okay, Junger?” Fast Eddy called up to him.

“I’m good.” But he wasn’t. His hands shook and sweat poured down his face and pooled on his chest. He needed a drink and he needed it bad. Nausea rolled in his gut and had a firm grip on his throat. The kind of nausea that had nothing to do with the pitch and roll of the ocean and everything to do with his addiction.

Why was he putting himself through this? Abstaining from alcohol was bullshit. Where had it gotten him? He had been better off before rehab. One shot of Johnnie Walker would cure his flashback and shakes and white-knuckling his way through life. It would cure guilt and his desire to find Natalie Cooper and bury his face in her neck.

Blake rose to his feet and joined his team. He learned that three members of the
Fatima
crew had been killed by the pirates and the other had made it to the panic room. Twenty minutes after the last of the
Fatima
crew was loaded into the medevac helicopter, and the U.S. Navy was ready to board and take over, Blake and the other contractors slipped back into the Indian Ocean.

He needed a drink, and as soon as he hit dry land, he was putting an end to his dry spell. He was going to kick back with a glass of Johnnie Walker over ice. Guaran-fucking-teed. He could practically hear the rattle of ice cubes and taste the first splash in his mouth.

He couldn’t control his flashbacks. He couldn’t control his cravings for alcohol. He couldn’t control Natalie Cooper from crowding his head. Booze would take care of that. It would take care of it all. It would dull it all and make him feel back in control.

Blake and the other four operators landed at the Air Force base in Durban and hopped a flight out of Africa. He knew that once he started drinking he would not stop. He was looking forward to it, but there was something important he had to take care of in Houston, and he respected the men who employed him too much to walk in shit-faced. He alternately slept and white-knuckled his way through the next twenty-two hours until his flight landed in Houston. He caught a cab to the steel and glass skyscraper downtown. The Texas sun bounced off the blue glass and he rode the elevator to the twenty-first floor. He sat in a white chair across from James Crocker, the current president and CEO of Trident Security Worldwide. James Crocker was a former national security advisor and now head of the most powerful private military company in the world. Blake respected the man greatly, but it would have been easy to lie about why he needed to resign after he’d just signed a new contract. So much easier to lie than confess that he could not control his flashbacks and was a danger to the men around him.

James offered him a job at their training facility in North Carolina, but Blake declined. He didn’t know what he wanted to do for a job now. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life beyond heading home and drinking until he passed out. Then getting up and doing it all over again. He didn’t want to drink in a bar. He didn’t want to drive. He didn’t want to see anyone. He just wanted to drink alone, George Thorogood–style.

From Houston, he flew to Denver, then Boise. It was just afternoon when he landed, and he hopped into his truck in long-term parking. A brilliant sun shone in the valley, but the closer he got to Truly, the colder and snowier it got.

He didn’t care. He was going to start a big roaring fire and tip back a bottle. Before Beau had left town, he’d replaced Blake’s three-hundred-dollar bottle of Johnnie Walker with a local Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlet. Like that would keep Blake from drinking. He’d never been to the liquor store in Truly, but he knew it was located on the corner of Third and Pine, just down the street from Hennessey’s Saloon.

Almost home
, his addiction whispered in his ear as he passed the “Welcome to Truly” sign. It was two in the afternoon. Plenty of time to buy a few bottles and maybe a couple of cases of beer.

I’ll make you feel good
, his addiction whispered in case he hadn’t heard it the first time.
No one will know
. He pulled the truck to a stop at the only traffic light. He was tired. Tired of trying to control his life that had spun out of control. Sitting there at the red light, he thought of Natalie and her face when she smiled at him. The sunshine in her hair and the deep, beautiful blue of her eyes. He remembered the touch of her hands and mouth and breath against his neck.

Like his addiction, she was a constant craving, and he reminded himself that he got out of her life because it was the right thing to do. He got out because leaving sooner would cause her and Charlotte less pain than leaving later. He got out because she loved him. She loved him, but she deserved a man who could love her in return. Beau was right, loving one woman felt like a weakness. Weakness was not an option.

A horn honked behind him and he looked up at the green light. He took a right on Pine and pulled to a stop in front of the liquor store advertising the Christmas specials in the window. He wasn’t interested in peppermint vodka or rum eggnog. He got out of the truck and zipped his coat against the howling wind. He stood on the curb and looked through the plate glass windows at the rows of booze. Walls lined with clear and amber bottles, each row more tempting than the last. Tubes of neon advertised different brands of alcohol, and on the door hung a green sign advertising the Winter Festival.

He took a step forward and stopped. His heart pounded
boom-boom-boom
in his chest, and sweat broke out across his skin.

Take me. Grab me. Don’t be weak
.

Blake’s hands shook, and he ducked his head and turned to the right. He moved down the sidewalk away from the liquor store and past Annie’s Attic antiques. He kept walking, past Hennessey’s Saloon and Helen’s Hair Hut. His addiction alternately promised salvation and called him a weak pussy. A thousand times he fought the powerful urge to turn around, retrace his steps, and go grab his lover and friend. With his fists shoved in his pockets, he walked along the side of Grace Episcopal and moved down the steps to the basement. He paused with his palm on the handle.
I’m not your enemy. I’m not your weakness. I’m the only thing you’ve ever loved.