“Ready to go, Starling?”

I turned my head, locating the voice coming from the grizzled old man with the huge cowboy hat. It was good old Hank! He was here to take me back to the ranch. I should have known.

It had been a long, long journey, in more ways than one. Five years of service with the SEALs, and now it was almost over. The final leg was driving back to the ranch, which would take about half a day from the airport.

I ran a hand over my chin. Stubble had formed, I hadn’t had time to shave. Once the decision had been made, I just legged it. From Iraq to New York, and then another plane to Wyoming.

I held out my hand. “Hank, you’re gold,” I said to the man. His face split with a smile from ear to ear.

Hank was the head ranch hand at my ranch, the Starling Ridge. He had taken the reigns while I was on service, and since the old man had died. I hadn’t been back to the ranch in over two years.

“You look like shit,” Hank grinned, then enveloped me in a bear hug. Damn, it felt good. I had been through things lately that had made me miss home so bad, it almost twitched like the nerve endings from an absent limb.

Lance Starling. Special Forces SEAL. Hero. The names and labels that were once me. They felt like the drooping ribbons pinned to the chest of a child after winning a second-grade sprint.

“Hell, some things never change, Hank,” I told the old ranch hand. “Still full of compliments, you old son of a bitch.”

Hank laughed. It felt like old times. We made our way to the parking lot.

I stopped when we got to the car. “Old Betsy is still running?” I couldn’t believe it. The 1970’s Chevy pick-up was here in all her glory. I thought she would have been relegated to the scrap heap years ago.

“Still purrs like a woman under my hands,” Hank grinned. We climbed into the old girl. I smiled to myself. Travelling in Betsy, we’d be lucky to make it home before dusk. The old girl didn’t clock anything over fifty on the speedometer.

We got out onto the Interstate. Hank turned the dial to his favorite country station. The sound of Waylon Jennings crackled through the speakers, warbling about lost love.

I stared out the window. My eyes saw the mountains of my home state, but in my mind’s eye I could still see that arid desert in Iraq, where everything had gone to shit…

“Sorry about Jack.” Hank’s voice broke into my reverie. His voice was gruff.

“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” I replied. What was there to say, when your best friend since elementary school had just been killed?

“Want to talk about it?”

“You know I can’t, Hank.” I flicked a small spider that was crawling on the dash. “Classified.”

“Hell, Lance, I’m not asking for details,” Hank responded. His eyes were still on the road. “I know that you can’t talk about that. But how did he die, at least? His parents have been told nothing. I think they deserve to know a little. Gemma, too.”

Gemma.

The letters of her name hung in the air. Hank had brought her to life; it was almost like the scent of her perfume seemed to fill the old Chevy. And now I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Gemma Fox. Fox by name, and fox by nature.

Back at Clear Creek High, it had always been the three of us. Jack, Gemma, and I. She had been the one girl who had always done it for me; no one else even came close. There had been a time when I was almost there with her. But Jack had stepped in, and then it was all over. Done, dusted. They had gone steady since senior year, and written each other for a long time after Jack and I joined the SEALS.

But they had broken up by long distance two years ago. Jack had been tight lipped about it, I never knew what had gone wrong. I knew that Jack had played around, bedding quite a few of the women who hung around where we drank on our time off. I had always said how fucked up it was, with a woman like Gemma at home. How could you play around on that?

The thought of Gemma – luscious breasts, ample curves, lips like bee stung pillows – filled my mind, but I could never go there. There was just too much history between her and Jack.

“Lance?”

The spider started to crawl back up the dash from where I had flicked it. Crystal Gayle was crooning from the radio about not making her brown eyes blue.

“Things went wrong,” I said eventually. “The mission was supposed to be straight forward, but we were duped. Jack was caught in the crossfire.” I felt my hands ball into fists. It still rubbed, badly, that I couldn’t save him.

“Gemma will ask you when we get to the ranch,” Hank said.

“She’s at the ranch?” That got my attention.

Hank turned to look at me, taking his eyes off the road momentarily. “She’s been working as the ranch cook for a year now,” he drawled. “Ever since her bakery in Clear Creek went belly up. Your Pa took pity on her. She needed a job. And she’s the best damn cook in Wyoming. Her barbeque ribs are so sweet they make a grown man cry.”

I laughed, despite myself. Old Hank sure did have a neat turn of phrase.

But I was unsettled.

I wanted to see her. Oh God, I wanted to see her so badly I could feel my cock tighten at the thought. But as much as I wanted to, I didn’t want to.

Gemma brought memories to the surface, that a man wanted to forget.

And then there was the laptop.

I could almost feel it on the back seat of Betsy; it was burning through the canvas of the bag like some artefact out of an Indiana Jones flick.

Jack’s laptop. Along with some of his other stuff, which I had taken after it had happened, intending to give it to his parents.

I wasn’t searching for anything personal, I had just been looking for something that might lead to what had gone wrong on that mission.

But when I saw her email address, I just couldn’t resist.

I had read it all. The disintegration of their relationship, how she suspected he was cheating on her, and how lonely she was. How she was trying to stay true to him, but he was so distant.

And then there were other things…

I felt the tightening in my loins again. Gemma. A real, hot blooded woman. She liked to talk dirty, saying in detail the things she would like Jack to do to her.

Which Jack never did, apparently.

I stared out the window, watching those mountain ranges whizz past.

Every mile bringing me closer to her.