She walked away from me, goddamnit.

That woman had the sexiest saunter in the world. Watching her go, her hips swaying from side to side in the green sundress, it was all I could do not to run after her and pin her to the ground. Take those hips in my hands and grind them against me. Tell her that I knew everything. How it had played out with Jack, how disappointed she had been in the relationship.

And all those other things she had talked about.

Suddenly I couldn’t take my mind off those other things. I needed to read them again. Seeing her after all this time made the things she had written come alive in a new way. I ran my hand through my hair, thinking.

* * *

That night, after I had said good night to everyone, promising Hank I would be up at first light to get back into the running of the ranch, I opened Jack’s laptop.

It hadn’t been hard to figure out his password. Jack and I had shared a lot of things, and one of those was the passwords we used from time to time. Variations abounded, of course, but I was a Special Forces SEAL. It wasn’t just the physical stuff we were trained in. I had tried a couple before hitting the jackpot.

Gemma had started off demurely, of course. The first things she had expressed to him were the usual kind of romantic girl stuff. Stuff that seemed so obvious to me that it kind of angered me that Jack had never thought to do it for her off his will.

She wanted him to take her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in a city. She didn’t care where. She just wanted them to take the time to do it, take the time for each other. Order food they had never eaten before. Order the best wine on the wine list. She wanted to dress up like a princess, and she wanted him to dress up for her. Show her that he cared enough to want to be attractive.

I leaned back on the bed head with the laptop in front of me, thinking.

Jack had never done it, of course. Too self-absorbed. When we had leave, he often didn’t come back to Wyoming to spend it with her. Instead, he had pursued other woman, often one night flings after a night of drinking. It seemed to be all that he wanted. Yet, he had kept Gemma in a safe little box back here, biding her time waiting for him. Pretending he would one day come back to claim her.

Not wanting her, yet not setting her free. That he treated her so dismally made my hands ball into fists.

Don’t get me wrong, the guy was my best buddy. We had done everything together. But over the last few years, Jack had started to change. It wasn’t just how he had treated Gemma, though God knows, that was bad enough. He had also started getting secretive with me; often I didn’t know what he was up to.

Sometimes, my sixth sense antennae would twitch urgently with him. There were things that happened on missions that shouldn’t have happened, silly mistakes, or someone where they shouldn’t have been. Like they had been tipped off.

My fingers started drumming on the laptop.

I scrolled to the next message. Gemma, saying that she would love for them to go away for the weekend, camp out. Go swimming in a lake, cook for each other over an open grill. Take long trail walks through the mountains. Sleep under the stars.

Suddenly, it hit me.

Jack had never done any of this stuff with her. It had meant enough to her that she had written him about it, making herself vulnerable. She had put her heart and soul out there, and he had kicked it to the curb like a crumpled up can.

But I could do it for her.

I could make a list of all the things that she wanted, starting with this stuff. Work slowly through it, ticking each thing off one by one. Show her that there were men out there who thought of their woman, and wanted to please them.

Inspired, I grabbed my notebook and pen off the bedside table. I wrote carefully:

Number One: Camping out under the stars

It seemed the safest one to start with. I didn’t want to startle her, it had to be done slowly. Rushing her to a city for a dinner might spook her. But I could definitely figure out some way to get her to go camping with me.

I kept adding to the list. Some of the things made me shift uncomfortably on the bed, my cock stirring. Damn. Gemma was a woman after my own heart. It would not be an issue at all to accommodate what she wanted.

Restless, I put the pen down. She was on my mind so badly, thinking of what she wanted and what was on that list. Maybe a walk would cool me down a bit so I could get to sleep.

I threw on a sweater before I left the house. No matter how hot it was in the day here, it always cooled down at night. I didn’t know where I was going, but my feet had other plans. Before I knew it, I was outside the cook’s quarters.

The light from a single lamp illuminated the quarters, and I could see her in there through the side window. I should remind her to close all the drapes at night, but then, it was the country. You got used to not worrying about things like that out here.

She was walking around, making herself a hot drink. She was wearing one of those short, skimpy nightdresses, with the frilly bits on the top. This one was lemon. I could see her breasts falling from it when she bent slightly. She had taken her hair down, and it was a mass of golden curls down her back.

Stop it, I told myself. You shouldn’t be doing this. You aren’t a stalker. But I couldn’t take my eyes away from the vision of her in that night dress.

Go, I commanded myself.

Back in the house, I reflected that the walk hadn’t calmed me enough for sleep. Now I needed a cold shower.