Things that give me anxiety:
—everything
—people without anxiety
Lanie shook her head. She and Mark most definitely did not have a thing. At all. But he had her hand in his one hand and her purse in his other. He walked them through the offices, not looking even remotely silly with her purse swinging from his fingers.
“What are you doing?” she asked, ineffectively trying to free herself. “I’m working.”
“It’s nearly six thirty and you’ve been at your desk since early this morning. Twelve hours.”
“How do you even know that?”
He shrugged a broad shoulder, not slowing down. “I had a really early shift, saw you frowning and swearing at your computer.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“I know.”
She gaped at his back. “You’re the one who keeps leaving me coffee.”
He didn’t answer.
“How did you even know I like three sugars?”
“Because I pay attention,” he said. “And by the way, that stuff’ll kill you.”
“Says the guy who inhales three pieces of lasagna and cheesy bread almost daily for lunch.”
“See, you pay attention to me too.”
“Whatever,” she said. “And it’s hard not to notice because you eat whatever you want and you still get to look like you do.”
He smiled. “So you do like the way I look while you’re pretending to hate me.”
She sighed. “I don’t hate you.”
When he stopped walking, she nearly plowed into him, having to plant her other hand on his back, which was how she discovered that the promise of a great body he gave in clothes most definitely was true because beneath his shirt, he was solid, lean muscle.
When he gave a soft laugh, she realized they were standing in front of her cottage and she was still staring at his body, so she closed her eyes. “What are we doing, Mark?”
“You’re going to go inside and get your bathing suit. We’re going somewhere.”
“Somewhere where?”
He let out a long breath and stared at his shoes for a beat, either trying to hold himself back from strangling her or trying not to laugh. “Are you always this difficult?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “And I’m not getting my bathing suit.”
Because she didn’t have one here—not that he needed to know this . . .
“Fine.” Once more they were on the move. Two minutes later, they were out front and he was helping her into the passenger side of his big truck.
“I’m not going swimming, or whatever you have in mind—” she started.
He shut the door on her, rounded the front of the truck, and ambled in behind the wheel.
“Wow,” she said.
He slid her a look. “I know enough about women to know that even when she says ‘Wow’ I should be shaking in my boots.”
“So why aren’t you?”
“Maybe I am.”
She snorted. “Right. Like you’re afraid of anything.”
He shrugged. “You’d be surprised.”
“Try me.”
“I’m afraid of something happening to the people I care about,” he said and slid her a look. “Including you.”
“What else?” she asked, trying to ignore the flutter at the “including you” thing.
“Dating apps. And a woman saying ‘Wow.’”
She laughed. “This is kidnapping, you know. You’re an officer of the law and you’re breaking that law.”
He just flashed her a grin that, damn, was potent as hell. “You want to call 9-1-1?” He tossed her his phone. “Go for it.”
“I have my own phone.” But she looked down at his and swiped her thumb across the screen. “Passcode required.”
They were on the highway now. “It’s Sam and Sea,” he said.
She had to try three times to get the code right. It was SamNSea. “Sweet,” she murmured, not liking that she thought so. Because now that she knew a little bit about him—things like the fact that he was a pretty amazing dad—something was happening to her inner decree not to like him.
Emotionally detach, she ordered herself, no matter that he smells good and has a body you want to lick like an ice cream cone. But instead of calling 9-1-1, she accessed his photos. Hey, he’d been stupid enough to let her into his phone . . . There weren’t many pics. A few of a group of military guys, of which he was one. It wasn’t odd to see him in uniform, armed to the teeth. But it was odd to see him in military uniform, face blank of emotion, standing tall and stoic.
Then there were pictures of the twins. More of those than his military life.
And . . . little else.
She went to his texts next. He had a few ongoing conversations. A group text with Samantha and Sierra, and another with some guys named Boomer and Mick, something about an upcoming fishing trip, and one with his mom.
“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked in a lazy, casual voice that told her he was amused, curious about her curiosity, and . . . had nothing to hide.
“No,” she said, almost annoyed she couldn’t find anything to fault.
He pulled into a Taco Bell and turned to her. “What’s your poison?”
“You live at a winery that has the best food on the planet and you’re choosing this for dinner?”
He shrugged. “I’m hungry. You want something or not?”
She sighed and leaned in over him to read the menu, ignoring the urge to press her nose to his throat and inhale the yummy scent that was one Mark Capriotti. “Three Taco Supremes, nachos, and an order of Cinnabons,” she said. She sank back into her seat and sneaked a peek at his face.
He was fighting a smile.
“You have a problem with my order?” she asked.
“Hell, no.” He turned to the window. “Double that order, please, and add a few chalupas.”
Gaze still locked on his because she couldn’t seem to tear it away, she did her best to shrug casually. “Decent choice in food,” she gave him.
He laughed.
“This is still kidnapping, you know,” she informed him after he’d paid and taken them back on the road.
“Noted,” he said, and ten minutes later pulled into a deserted parking lot.
“Uh-oh.” She looked around. Green rolling hills, all wild grass, gorgeous sprawling oak trees reaching to the sky. No one for as far as the eye could see. “You’re going to let me eat before you murder me, right?”
“Absolutely.”
She snorted and he gave her a look that, well . . . made her damp in places that had no business going damp. Then he grabbed the food and got out of the truck.
“Hey,” she said.
He shut the door. She watched him walk off and said “Hey” again, not that he could hear her. “You’re not going to follow him,” she said out loud. “No way.” She really wasn’t. But . . . she was hungry.
Dammit.
Rolling her eyes at herself, she got out of the truck and looked around. Ahead of her was nothing but a set of bluffs as far as the eye could see and . . . a set of long, steep stairs that led straight down to a beach.
The sun was close to setting, which meant that the entire horizon was on fire in glorious golds and reds, making everything look soft and beautiful.
Mark had walked over to a rocky cliff overhang and sat, his feet dangling over the ledge. He reached into the bag and grabbed a taco and a hot sauce packet, which he poured liberally over the taco. Then he did a wash-and-repeat with a second sauce.
“Hope you’re saving some of those for me,” she said.
“There’s two kinds of people out here. The quick and the hungry. Learned that early at home.”
Not wanting to be one of the hungry ones, she moved toward him. He gestured with a jerk of his chin for her to sit.
Which she did, keeping a healthy eye to the edge, where she most definitely did not hang her feet like he did. He handed her the bag, letting her choose what she wanted from it. “I’m trying to picture the insulted expression on your mom’s face over our dinner choice,” she said.
He snorted. “Don’t let her fool you. I caught her last week at McDonald’s inhaling a Big Mac and large fries. It was a long-standing joke date between her and my dad; they’d sneak out once a week for Mickey D’s and sit on the beach and eat alone together. They did that for three decades until he died a few years ago.” He said this with clear affection and something inside her melted a little bit.
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks. Me too.” He caught her look and cocked his head. “So is your mom as batshit crazy as mine?”
“Yes, but not the nice kind of crazy. More like . . .” She mimed shooting herself in the head with one hand, using the other to simulate her brains flying out of her head.
He went brows up.
“It’s a long story,” she said.
“I like stories.”
She grabbed a taco and two hot sauce packets and saw his mouth twitch. For that she took a third sauce. “Thirty years ago my mom and dad were having a bunch of problems. So she boinked the mail carrier and got knocked up. With me, in case that wasn’t clear. Mr. Mail Carrier moved across the country without a forwarding address.”
“What the hell.”
She shrugged it off, or at least pretended to. “It is what it is.”
“What it is, is fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, my mom had that sort of effect on men,” she said dryly. “And somehow she convinced my dad—the one she was married to, not the biological one—to stay. I think her inheritance from her grandma helped a lot. But there wasn’t enough money to make them forget how I came to be.”
She felt the weight of his stare but didn’t look at him, instead carefully adding that third sauce to one of her tacos like she was Picasso.
“How young were you when you learned all this?” he asked.
“Five.”
“Jesus, Lanie.”
She’d wanted to hear him use that gentle voice on her, but not because he felt sorry for her.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “But your parents sound like dicks.”
She laughed, surprised to find it was genuine. “It wasn’t just them, it was me too. I don’t really trust love, and so people don’t tend to go all in with me.”
He opened his mouth, his expression a fierce intent that made her throat tighten uncomfortably. Not ready to hear whatever it was he had to say, she pushed the bag of food toward him. “If you don’t think I can eat all of these Cinnabons myself, you’re mistaken.”
Getting the message, he humored her and let the subject drop. He was on his last Cinnabon when he eyed hers. She hugged them to her chest and he laughed. And his laugh caused her to laugh as well, which reminded her she still had no idea what was going on. “What are we doing here, Mark?”
He swallowed his last bite and looked off into the water. “When I was young, I’d ride my bike out here whenever my family pissed me off. Which was just about all the time.”
“Your family is . . .” She stopped, searching for the right word.
His mouth curved sardonically. “Interfering? Nosy? Obstinate?”
“Wonderful,” she said quietly.
He let out a long exhale and removed his sunglasses, tossing them aside before turning to her. “I know. And after what I went through in my marriage, I’ve never been so grateful for them as I am these days.”
“Your wife ran off.”
He nodded. “I made a stupid choice. She was young and spoiled, which didn’t matter to me because she was beautiful and fun and a good time. Then I was sent overseas and she was alone and pregnant with twins. And then she was still alone and dealing with two babies. I was no help at all—”
“You were overseas,” she said, unable to stop from defending him. “Working for our country.”
“I was.”
“So what did she expect you to do? Quit? You don’t just quit.”
“I reupped when I was with her,” he said. “That was a choice I made, thinking she preferred it when I was gone, but as it turns out it was a bad choice. She bailed and I ended up having to come back.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “You chose to. And it sounds like she’s the one who chose to quit and leave you and her own children. Who does that?”
He laughed roughly and shook his head. “Who doesn’t see it coming?”
She stared at him. “You think you’re at fault.”
“I am,” he said. “At least for part of it. I thought I knew her.”
“Yeah, well, people can hide in plain sight,” she said grimly. “You think you know someone, you think it’s safe to love them, and . . .” She clamped her mouth shut.
He met her gaze, his own dark one warm and curious. “Personal experience?”
“Maybe. Just a little.” She shook her head and turned to look out over the water. “So this is your happy place?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you happy?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. Instead, he searched the bag, found one last chalupa, and took his time eating it, so she thought maybe the conversation was over.
“That would’ve been better with another sauce on it,” he said. “But someone bogarted them all.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Be quick or be hungry.”
He laughed again and she realized she could get addicted to that sound very fast.
“I wasn’t happy here,” he said after a minute, surprising her. “Not for a long time after I came back. I was career military. I was good at what I did and I craved the adrenaline rush and the sense of accomplishment. I was angry and bitter and pissed off.”
“What changed?” she asked.
“Not much on the inside.” He gave her a wry grimace. “But Samantha and Sierra . . . they’re the opposite of angry and bitter.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said with a low laugh.
“They lost their mom. The last thing they needed was an angry asshole for a dad.”
“You fake it pretty good.”
He toasted her with his soda in thanks. “You were married too,” he said.
She nodded.
“You’re divorced?”
“No. I’m a widow.”
Mark didn’t show a lot of emotion; he was good at hiding himself. Real good. But there was a flash of shock. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“But you did know I take three sugars.”
He didn’t smile or let her joke this away. “How long ago?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. If he hadn’t died when he did, I’d have killed him myself.” There. She said it out loud. And it only hurt a little. A dull pain really, sort of like a boulder barreling into her. “Probably shouldn’t admit that to a cop, right?” she teased at his silence.
“I’m not a cop right now. And I wouldn’t judge a murderous urge.”
“Because you’ve had one or two?”
“Or a hundred trillion million,” he said.
She choked out a laugh. He challenged her like no one else, and he was also fairly effortlessly dragging her past out of her. At least part of it. But there was no way she’d tell him what Kyle had done to her. That humiliation was all her own, thank you very much. “I’m not actually kidding, you know, about the murderous urge.”
“Neither am I.”
She nodded. Anger, she understood. Anger was a wall she’d built to protect herself. She knew that because she could feel the weight of the bricks she’d built around her heart. What she didn’t know was how to tear it down.
When the food was gone, Mark gathered the trash, stood up, and tossed it into his truck. Then he moved to the back of the truck and pulled out two . . .
“Boogie boards?” she asked in surprise. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was in high school.”
“Found them in the storage unit at the winery,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of shit my mom’s saved over the years.”
“I’m not sure what your plan is,” she said. “But I think I’ll wait right here.”
“And miss out on all the fun?”
“I didn’t know you were into fun,” she said.
“I have my moments.”
She watched him start down the stairs to the beach, jogging easily on the balls of his feet, not looking back to see if she followed.
“You’re not giving in to that unspoken dare,” she told the evening.
The evening didn’t have a comment.
He was halfway down the stairs now. She looked out at the water. The surf was a good three feet, and something about it lulled and drew her in. She didn’t have a lot of happy childhood memories, but being in the ocean was one of them.
“Dammit,” she said, and headed down the stairs. They were steep, the bluffs on either side wet from all the rains they’d had. It’d been a wet year, and it looked good on California. By the time her shoes hit the sand, the sun had set into the water, leaving the landscape cast in long black and blue shadows.
Mark still hadn’t looked back. Near the water’s edge, he kicked off his shoes and tossed the boards aside. His shirt came off next and as his hands went to his belt, she sucked in a breath.
At the sound, he looked over his shoulder, brows up in question.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Swimming.”
“But . . .” She sputtered because he unzipped and kicked off his pants.
His pants!
He’d left his weapons and utility belt locked in his truck. Now the only thing the man wore was a pair of black knit boxers slung low enough on his hips to give her a heart-stopping view of his sleek, smooth back, marred with two scars, one of which looked like a bullet wound. Along the waistband of the boxers was a strip of paler skin, then a set of dimples and what she already knew was the best male ass she’d ever seen.
She felt rooted to the spot, torn between wanting him to pull his pants back on and hoping he stripped out of the undies too.
He did neither, instead bending for one of the boards.
“You’re not in a bathing suit,” she managed.
He flashed her a badass grin that she felt from her hair to her toes and in every single good spot in between. “Since you didn’t grab one, I didn’t either. Didn’t want you to feel lonely.” And then he walked straight into the water, dove into a wave, and vanished.
She gasped and found her feet taking her to the water’s edge, watching as he reemerged only to swim out even farther and then, when she could barely see him, he caught a wave. She could see flashes of him as he rode the boogie board like he’d been born to it, losing sight of him in between the swells.
Her heart was pounding in tune to the surf, which felt like it was flowing through her veins as she continued to watch him take his pleasure in the water. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d kicked off her shoes. She was in a stretchy knit tee and a lightweight gauzy skirt—her work clothes—trying to remember what undies she’d put on that morning. God, please don’t let them be laundry-day undies. She took a peek down her own top. White sports bra. Okay, she could work with that as long as she didn’t get cold. In other words, good luck. Her panties were cheeky cut and DayGlo bright pink. Welp, she wasn’t going to get lost, that was for sure. And hey, she’d be more covered than she would have been in her bikini, right? Right.
Taking a deep breath, she stripped out of her top and skirt. When she looked up, she found Mark suddenly at the water’s edge, the water lapping at his calves. His eyes were dark, very dark, and she pointed at him. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”
“Is there a wrong way to take it when a beautiful woman strips out of her clothes?” he asked without a smile, although it was in his voice. “I’m taking it that you’re planning a swim.”
“Actually, I’m planning on kicking your ass at boogie boarding,” she said. “And that is all.”
His mouth quirked. “Duly noted.”
“Your pants are ringing,” she murmured as his phone went off.
He came all the way out of the waves, water sluicing off his extremely fit body. A few drops clung stubbornly to all those lean muscles and she had to admit, she’d have done the same thing if she were one of those drops of water.
He bent to his pants to fish out his phone. “Yes,” he said into it. “I can hear you.”
Even in only the moonlight, his eyes seemed to gleam as he stared at Lanie in a way that suddenly made her want to forget boogie boarding in lieu of something else entirely.
Not going to fall for him, she reminded herself sternly, no matter how grounded and real and charismatic he seemed. It would only bring heartache.
“I haven’t forgotten the family meeting,” he said into the phone. He listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone for a few long minutes and then, eyes still on Lanie as she bent to pick up the second board, he said, “Start without me, I’m going to be late.” He paused as Lanie strode past him into the water and added “Very late” before tossing his phone back onto his pants. “Winner picks dessert,” he said.
Sounded fair. Especially since she was going to win.
SHE BARELY BEAT him, a fact Mark attributed to several things. One, he was beyond exhausted from all the extra shifts he’d been taking on in the name of saving for the house he wanted to build for himself and the girls. And two, the bright moonlight cast the air around them a pale blue, not black, which meant he could see everything, and what he could see at every turn was Lanie.
Wet.
Laughing.
And swimming like she’d been born in the water. She took his breath away, and that was when the water was up to her chin. When she jumped high and dove with a wild abandon into oncoming waves he caught glimpses of that long, curvy, glorious body that had nearly done him in when she’d been standing on the shore.
Good Christ, he was a dead man.
“That’s five to five,” she informed him loftily, gliding up beside him, lifting her hands to push her hair from her face. They were counting strikes by whoever fell first. “Tiebreaker?” she asked.
“Hell yeah,” he said and they both turned to face the waves.
She flashed him a mischievous grin and dove into the water. Her undies had ridden up, and her bra had gone completely sheer. She looked like some sort of ocean goddess and he found himself just staring after her before remembering that this was the tiebreaker. He made a quick, sloppy attempt to catch her, his gaze held and locked by the smooth way she held on to her board, her body moving in sync with the water and . . .
He took a wave right in the face, which pummeled him, sending him somersaulting across the water.
When he righted himself and shook his head to clear it, she was standing there, water lapping at her feet, grinning.
“Claiming my spoils,” she said. “I pick cookies.”