“That’s her!” I all but shout as I’m overcome with emotion. There’s no need to continue my Oscar-worthy performance because my heart leaps into my throat when I hear the name. It can’t be a mistake. Beaux used my nickname for her and my surname – the thought that she’s kept a part of my feelings for her alive knocks me back a step.

She has to be telling me something. What it is, though, I have no idea.

The receptionist’s face smiles broadly, all trace of the hesitancy I saw moments before gone. “Well good news, Mr…”

“C-Clint,” I stutter, her comment giving me an instant high, that buzz that’s been nonexistent since I left Germany running rampant for the first time.

“Clint.” She smiles again when all I want to do is tell her to spit it out. “Rookie was discharged three days ago, so I guess that means she is doing much better.”

I contain the stab of disappointment that rifles through me because as much as my hunch that she was here was right, it does me no good now. We’ve just passed like ships in the night, the only thing left being the ghost of memories. The problem is that I can’t let the sweet receptionist know my disappointment and realize that she’s just been duped.

So I use the think-on-my-feet tactics that have propelled my career over the years and only have a split second to hope that this works. “Oh that’s such a relief to know she’s okay!” I say as I bring my hand up and accidentally knock the vase of flowers over.

She shrieks and jumps back as water and flowers spill across the desk and toward her keyboard, which she quickly pushes to the side. “Shit! I’m so sorry!” I round the U-shaped desk in an instant. “I’m so clumsy. So excited she’s doing better. Oh my God. I’m so sorry!” I repeat the comments over and over, making sure I play up the bumbling boyfriend, all the while hoping this act is all worth it and that what I’m hoping to find is actually there.

The minute I breach her space behind the desk, my actions reflect a contrite man, head down, hands busy helping to push the water away from her paperwork and electronics, but my eyes are laser focused on the computer screen. It takes a heartbeat for my eyes to find the name Rookie Thomas and to not sag in relief when I see the address listed below her name.

That damn buzz? It’s full-blown electric shock right now.

I read it several times to etch the street and numbers into my head. “Let me go get some paper towels,” I offer once most of the water has been pushed to the floor so that nothing on the desk is compromised. “I’m so sorry. I don’t —”

“Towels. Please,” she says, her patience wearing thin, and I’m perfectly okay with that. I rush over to the lobby restrooms. Once inside, I immediately pull my phone out and type in the address so that I don’t forget it before grabbing a handful of paper towels and heading back to help pick up the mess I made.

Chapter 27




So many emotions course through my veins as I get out of my car and walk toward the quaint little clapboard house on Elm Street. And I can’t help but feel now as I did last night sitting and watching the house that it doesn’t fit the Beaux that I know. None of it. She’s all hard lines and fiery edges and not a postage-stamp-sized patch of grass in the front yard in need of mowing, petunias in the planters, and a porch swing that sits a tad crooked.

Even though I sat parked on the street for a few hours last night, watching as the lights in the front windows went dark, it took everything I had not to knock on the door. But I knew I had to wait. I had to be patient until the morning to see if John got into his manly little Prius and went to work. Because a good husband goes to work every day, right?

So after a restless night of sleep when all I could do was think about what I was going to say to Beaux when I came face-to-face with her after almost three weeks of wondering and hurting and missing her, I sat for three hours this morning, waiting to watch John amble out of the house and into his car, briefcase in hand, with a wave hello to the neighbor before driving slowly away.

And then I waited – just to make sure he didn’t forget anything, didn’t come back for one last kiss from his lovely wife – before getting out of my car. As I walk down the quaint, tree-lined street, everything I’ve felt over the past few weeks comes back with a vengeance, and for some reason it’s anger right now that I hold on to the most. Now that I’m seconds from seeing Beaux face-to-face, the hurt of her deception hits me the hardest.

I knock on the front door with my heart in my throat and venomous words ready on my tongue, each second I wait making them even more poisonous.

And then she opens the door.

The startled gasp she lets out does nothing to rival the freight train of emotion that bears down and slams into me. Every single word I had ready to say dies on my lips now that I’m face-to-face with her. Her perfume, her hair pulled up with pieces hanging down, the startled O of her lips, all of it hits me like a battering ram, but more than anything it’s her eyes. That flash of utter surprise quickly followed by pleasure before it’s smothered out by what looks like anger. Or fear. I can’t tell which she’s feeling, because the sucker punch of seeing her after all of this time clouds my ability to reason.

But it sure as fuck doesn’t cloud my ability to feel.

“Tanner… what? What are…” She leans her head out of the door and looks back and forth quickly before grabbing my arm and pulling me into her house. In complete contrast to her actions, she says, “You can’t be here. You have to leave!”

And my God, the feel of her touch on my skin is like connecting jumper cables while standing in a puddle of water. That connection between us is still there, stronger than ever, and I know she feels it too, because she jumps back the minute I’m inside her house.

Inside another man’s house.

Eyes locked, we stare at each other, leaving words unspoken as we let the invisible current between us die down some.

“You can’t be here, Tanner,” she says again, and for the first time I notice the cast on her left forearm before looking back to her eyes full of concern. And the question I ask myself is whether the apprehension is because she hurt me or because she’s more concerned about hurting her husband.

“I think you lost the ability to tell me what to do the minute you forgot to tell me you were married.”

“We can’t do this right now. It’s not safe, Tanner. It’s just not safe,” she says, backing up until she hits the wall behind her, almost as if she forgot where the walls in her own house are. And her words, the look in her eyes, eat at my anger.

“Why is it not safe, Beaux? Does he hit you? Does he hurt you? Tell me the word and I’ll have the cops here in a second and I’ll take you away so that —”

“No! No. It’s nothing like that. I can’t explain. I can’t,” she says, her voice rising with each word, and I stare at her, shaking my head back and forth because I don’t understand. And I don’t know if I believe her. Why would she be telling me to leave when our connection is still so irrefutable?

“Help me understand!” I shout, shoving a hand through my hair because if it’s there, then it’s not on her, and God, how I want to be touching her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were married? Why did you tell me you loved me? Why did you lie to me?” I could ask about a hundred more questions, and yet no more come because all I can feel is anger when all I want to feel is her.

“It’s complicated,” she says softly, her voice even for the first time and her body stilled.

“Fuck complicated because I’m worth complicated. Jesus Christ!” I grit out as I take a step away from her and try to hold on to the sanity that she is stealing from me with each and every word. How frustrating is it to have the one thing you want so desperately right at your fingertips? Beyond that her behavior is making me feel like she is a million fucking miles away. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen once I showed up. That maybe she was going to open the door, see me, and then profess that she chooses me over John. And clearly that’s not happening. So the only thing I allow myself to feel is anger; the acrid taste of rejection is already churning in my gut, and I have a feeling that I’m going to have a long time to taste that because the reaction I’d hoped for from her definitely isn’t happening.

“You are worth it, Tanner. Worth every bit of it, but not from me. I can’t give you what you need.”

“That’s bullshit!” I yell as I get in her face, needing to do something to expel the ache in my chest. “Then why not leave well enough alone, huh? Why send me the fucking text? Why give me false hope?”

“Because… because…” Then she stops with her eyes welling with tears I don’t want to see. I fell for them once. Believed them once. I won’t be as quick to fall again. Our faces are inches apart, and it takes everything I have to keep from pulling her to me or pushing her farther away. “I wanted you to know that how I felt for you was real.”

“Goddamn it, Beaux!” When I slam my hand on the console beside me, the sound resonates through the empty house just like her words do through my heart. “Tell me what he does to you! Tell me so that I can try to make it better. Tell me so that I’ll stop going fucking insane trying to figure out why you told me you loved me when you were married to another man!”

“Tanner —”

“Don’t Tanner me. Don’t anything me!” I yell, my mind spinning from her mere proximity.

“You need to go,” she says again.

“No! I won’t go until I hear you tell me that you don’t want me. I know what we had was real too, Beaux. Why do you think I’ve tracked you down and am fighting like hell to get you back?”

“I’ve never been yours to fight for.”

Her words leave her lips and die in the space between us, and yet she never says what I need to hear to force me to walk away. I step closer so that she’s backed against the wall, and my body presses into hers. And even through the anger, I can still feel the snap of the live wire of our combustible chemistry when we touch.

“Tell me you don’t want me.” I grit the words out as our breaths mingle and lungs breathe like one.

“I don’t want you,” she deadpans. For a second I believe her. For a moment I hesitate, plan to step back and walk away. But I know her. I know how feisty she is and how she doesn’t back down until she’s won, and I don’t see that right now. Not a single ounce of the fire within her that I’ve come to love, and so I take one last chance to win back the girl that by now I don’t think I ever really had.

“Bullshit,” I sneer at the same time my mouth slants over hers and takes everything I’ve been wanting and then some for the past three weeks. The kiss is horrible and wonderful all at once because it’s like coming home and being shown what you’re going to no longer have.

She struggles against me, pushing against my chest as our mouths fight a savage dance of denied desire and frustrated passion, shifting into resistance and acceptance, as our tongues meld and teeth nip and throats moan with want.

She drags her mouth from mine, her eyes drugged with desire beneath heavy lids, and lets her words slash out at me. “I don’t want you.”

“Don’t you fucking dare lie to me again! I deserve better than that. Tell me! Tell me that again!” I shout at her with one of my hands gripped in her hair and the other digging into her hip.

She doesn’t say a word. She just stares with tears filling her eyes until she whimpers. “I can’t, Tanner. I can’t.” But afterward she leans forward and presses her lips to mine in the most tender of kisses. It’s like a drug and a poison to me, pulling me further under its haze and hurting me all at the same time.

“You can,” I urge, my own voice thick with emotion when she brushes another kiss on my mouth, but this time I can taste the salt of her tears on her lips, and my chest constricts at whatever is going on that I can’t comprehend.

“I can’t,” she says again, but her words don’t match her actions because her hands find their way beneath the hem of my shirt, her touch branding my flesh so that I know even when I walk away it will be like a tattoo there, permanent and painful.