Chapter Six
L ater that evening, Wes sat at Jenna’s dining table, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
The food was delicious, pasta in a creamy spinach and tomato sauce with a tossed salad and fluffy breadsticks.
The conversation was fine, too, with the girls chattering away and carrying most of it.
Still, he was aware of a vague feeling of unease.
This felt entirely too domestic, the kind of warm, enjoyable scene that he had dreamed about through all the long months he spent on the inside.
His own marriage had never been this cozy. He and Lacey had been a bad combination from the start. She had been so young, not at all ready for marriage but eager to escape her difficult family.
He had liked her more than most of the women he’d dated. When she had become pregnant about four months after they started dating, despite their use of protection, they both decided marriage was the best course of action.
She had lost the baby a week after their wedding at the county clerk’s office in North Carolina, where he had been stationed at the time.
He had once cared about her. Or told himself he had, anyway. Having Brielle two years later had been a joy for both of them, going a long way toward erasing much of the pain of that first miscarriage. But somewhere along the way they had both realized they weren’t a good fit and had been talking about ending the marriage before he had ever been arrested.
He knew he had been a lousy husband and blamed himself for the breakdown of their marriage.
He had been a workaholic, completely focused on building up his business. At the time, he told himself he was doing everything for Lacey and Brielle. Lacey had begged him to slow down, to spend more time with them, to help her out more around the house and with their child.
He had made empty promises, again and again, but he hadn’t changed.
In prison, he had finally acknowledged to himself that he had always held part of himself back from the marriage. He had never let himself be vulnerable with Lacey, had never truly opened his heart to her.
He had seen how devastated his mother had been after his father’s murder, and maybe some part of him had internalized that and prevented him from completely letting down his guard.
Even if he had, he wasn’t sure they ever could have healed all that had been withered because of neglect.
By then, Lacey had already reconnected with her childhood sweetheart. She was now very happily remarried, expecting another child with her new husband.
She had found in Ron Summers all that Wes hadn’t been able to give her.
When he saw how happy they were together, Wes had decided he had been the problem all along, as he suspected. He sucked at marriage, apparently. Maybe he should just stick with being the best possible father to Brielle to make up for lost time and leave domestic bliss to others more suited to it.
This, though. This felt so comfortable here in Jenna’s apartment, easy and natural and soothing. Rain clicked against the windows and the puppy snored at the girls’ feet. As she listened to the girls’ steady conversation, Jenna smiled with a warmth that made something in him ache with cravings he thought he had buried long ago.
“That lasagna was delicious, Mrs. Haynes,” Brielle said.
“We did a good job on it, didn’t we? Thanks for helping me. All of you. We have so much left over—you can take some home and put it in the freezer for another day.”
“Good idea.”
Dinner prep with her had been a delight as she showed the girls with calm patience how to make the sauce and then layer the ricotta and spinach sauce on the noodles before rolling it up into pinwheels on the pan.
“You did most of the work with dinner,” he said now to her. “We can clean up.”
“We left the kitchen a mess, though.”
“We don’t mind the work, do we, girls?”
The girls looked as if they minded very much but they didn’t argue, simply went to work clearing away the table and carrying the dishes to the sink.
The cleanup did not take as long as Jenna seemed to think it would. After they had finished, Brielle and Addie asked if they could play a new board game Jenna had recently purchased.
He couldn’t come up with an excuse, since he had nothing else planned for the evening with his daughter and it was too early for bedtime.
The game was fun and challenging and much giggling ensued as they tried to figure out the rules.
“Looks like Theo needs to go out,” Jenna said after the second round. “You three keep playing. I’ll take him out.”
“It’s still raining, though,” Addie pointed out.
“Yes. We live in Oregon. It tends to do that. But unfortunately for us, dogs still need to go outside occasionally, especially when they’re being trained.”
“I can take him,” Wes offered.
“You’re the one who told me how important consistency is in puppy training, remember? I need to reinforce the training. I don’t mind.”
He rose from the table, undeterred. “Can I come with you anyway? After all those carbs, I could use a stretch.”
He wasn’t lying. For reasons he wasn’t ready to explore, his muscles felt tightly coiled. She hesitated briefly then nodded. “Will you girls be okay in here? We’ll just be outside for a few moments.”
Addison rolled her eyes. “I’m eight and Brie is nine. We’re fine. Can we play Mario Kart ?”
“Fine with me. We won’t be long.”
The girls were already moving to the sofa and pulling out the game controllers as Jenna reached for her raincoat. Wes took the coat from her and held it out, manners drilled into him by his mother coming to the fore.
“You don’t have a raincoat?” she asked as they headed for the door.
He shrugged. “I have one but it’s upstairs. I’ll be fine. I’ll stay on the back porch.”
He would actually welcome a little rain right now to cool his skin and his overheated imagination, though he didn’t share that information with her.
She picked up a small towel he assumed was for wiping down the wet dog and handed Wes an umbrella from a container by the door. When she opened the door, Theo trotted happily down the stairs to lead the way.
The rain had slowed to a drizzle, he saw when they walked outside to the rear of the house and the dog yard. The moon even peeked out from behind the clouds to cast a pale light onto the shrubs and flowers.
She inhaled deeply as she walked down the steps with the gangly puppy still leading the way. “Oh, I love that smell. Don’t you?”
He drew in night air scented with rain and flowers and the sea.
“It’s nice,” he had to agree.
“When I was a kid, we lived in one apartment building that had a very small playground with a patch of grass no bigger than one of the flower gardens here. I still loved to go out every time it started to rain and stand on that little patch of grass to sniff the air. My friends all thought I was weird.”
“I don’t think you’re weird.”
Funny, warm, appealing. Definitely not weird.
“Since I’ve moved to Cannon Beach, I’ve decided everything smells even more delicious here, when you add in the ocean and all the pine and cedar trees around, plus the Brambleberry House flowers. It’s magical, isn’t it?”
She was magical. Wes found her sweet and refreshing and unforgettable. How was any man supposed to resist her, especially a man who had known far too little sweetness recently?
He could not disagree about the air. It was intoxicating. Something told him he would never be able to smell this particular combination of scents, rain and flowers and the ocean, without thinking of this night and this woman.
“The first night after my release, we had a rainstorm. I stood outside my motel for at least an hour and just relished the rain on my face.”
It was an admission Wes suspected he could not tell anyone else on earth. Somehow he knew Jenna would understand.
She said nothing for a long moment, attention fixed on the dog, who was currently sniffing the base of a Japanese maple. Finally she turned to face him, eyes solemn and her features sad.
“Why were you in prison, Wes?”
The question seemed to come out of nowhere, like a sudden unprovoked attack from his six that left him momentarily breathless.
He owed her an answer.
He wanted to tell her all of it. At the same time, he wanted to pretend it had never happened.
“I trusted the wrong person,” he finally said. The words sounded naive and unbelievable, even to him. Was it any wonder a jury of his peers had not believed them either?
He wished he didn’t have to talk about this. He wanted to stand in this delicious-smelling garden and enjoy the simple pleasure of talking to a lovely woman. But the past was part of him now, an inescapable imprint on his personal story, and he suddenly wanted her to know.
“I told you I served two tours in the Army as an MP. Military policeman. When I got out, I got a job providing private corporate security. After a year or two of that, I ended up starting a company doing the same thing with a good friend, another MP I served with. Anthony Morris.”
Even mentioning Tony’s name left a bitter taste in his mouth, pushing away the remaining sweetness of the boysenberry pie they’d had for dessert.
“Tony was my best friend in the service. I thought I knew him. I trusted him. But unfortunately, the man I thought I knew didn’t exist. He said all the right words about honor and integrity but lived a completely different reality. Somehow he managed to conceal it from me and our clients, smiling to our faces while filling his pockets with anything he could find.”
“He was dirty?”
“To the core. The whole reason he wanted to start Mor-Cal Security was to use our clients, people who trusted us, as his personal booty chest. He didn’t steal just a few things, either. The extent of it was staggering. He stole something from every single client. Large or small. Trade secrets. Account information. Personnel records. Even loose change. Whatever he could pocket or sell to the highest bidder. He was an equal opportunity thief.”
That helpless rage swept over him again. “And I was stupid enough to hand him the keys. Literally and physically. I never imagined he would betray our clients like that. Betray me like that. I didn’t believe him capable.”
Maybe he deserved to go to prison for being so unbelievably stupid. But if everyone who trusted the wrong person ended up in prison, there would be no room for the actual criminals.
“People can be capable of all sorts of things we never imagine.”
Her tone was tight, resigned, making him wonder who could possibly betray someone like Jenna.
“You are right, unfortunately. If I had given it any thought at all, I would have figured a guy whose life you saved in the middle of a firefight is not going to screw you over a few years later.”
Her features softened with compassion. “Oh, Wes. I’m sorry.”
Her compassion seeped into all the cold places, taking away a little of the chill from the memories. “I should have suspected something was up, but he handled all the finances. He was the brains, I was the muscle. I was just glad I could help my mom and my sister out a little and buy a nice house for Lacey and Brie, after they put up with years of base housing.”
“When did you start to suspect?”
He sighed, remembering the bitter shock. “When I was arrested for grand theft. I denied everything, of course. I thought the feds had made the whole thing up. Tony would explain everything, I told them. Then I discovered Tony had fled to South America, leaving me swinging in the wind. Everything traced back to me. He had cleverly covered his tracks and created a false trail that led straight to my door. From the outside, it looked as if I had planned and orchestrated everything and that he had escaped only to protect himself from me when he uncovered the truth.”
“Oh no.”
“Right. Tony had completely set me up and I was too naive to see what was happening.”
“You must have been in shock when you figured out what was really happening.”
“You could say that. He was the closest thing I had to a brother, you know?”
She placed a comforting hand on his arm and he gazed down at her fingers, small and pale in the moonlight. Did she feel this pull between them, the same magnetic force of the moon directing the tides?
“Is he still on the run?”
He shook his head with a grim satisfaction. “A couple of my Army buddies went down and found him about a year ago. They dragged him back to face the consequences. He eventually ended up coming clean and admitted I wasn’t involved. The prosecutors didn’t buy it, but my attorneys fought like hell to find the evidence to exonerate me. Which is how I can be standing here today enjoying a rainy evening with you.”
“So in the end Tony did the right thing?”
“Only because he was backed into a corner and had no choice. Don’t paint a rosy picture of him, Jenna. He was a bastard who only admitted the truth after he was caught, in hopes that it might mean a lighter sentence for himself. He was only too happy to let me rot in prison for something I didn’t do.”
The bitterness in his voice made Jenna want to wrap her arms around him and hold him close to ease some of the vast pain of betrayal.
“I’m so sorry that happened,” she murmured. “But at least you learned you had good friends you could count on.”
He somehow managed a rusty laugh. “Are you always such an optimist, Mrs. Haynes?”
“Oh, no,” she assured him. “Far from it. I’ve just learned the value of good friends over the years. I would have been lost without them.”
He gave her a searching look, and she wondered how much truth she had revealed with her words. She wanted to tell him what had happened with Aaron but now wasn’t the time, after he had unburdened himself about something much darker from his own history.
She couldn’t think of anything else to say and realized they had been standing for a long moment, gazing at each other silently.
He was an extraordinarily good-looking man. Once a woman could see beyond his intimidating size and fierce features, she began to notice other things. The softness of his mouth. The firm line of his jaw. Those intense blue eyes fringed with long dark eyelashes.
She felt hot, suddenly, as if she had stood too long in front of the little electric fireplace in her bedroom.
“The rain has stopped.”
He blinked and looked around. “Yes.”
“When I’m going through hard times, I try to remind myself that, just like a rainstorm, nothing lasts forever. Pain and betrayal eventually begin to fade.”
“Has your grief for your husband faded?”
He seemed genuinely interested, so she didn’t answer with the trite response she might have otherwise. “I don’t know if it will ever fade completely. But it has...mellowed over the years. I no longer feel devastated every time I think of Ryan. I now can remember the good times as well as the bad. We had several wonderful years together and I will always treasure them. And he gave me the greatest gift of all, Addie.”
“He was a lucky man.”
Something in his voice, some odd, yearning note, drew her gaze. He was looking down at her with an expression that made her catch her breath.
He wanted to kiss her.
She recognized the hunger deep in her soul because she shared it. It seemed so odd—so wrong—to be talking about her husband to a man who was completely unlike him but who made her ache with awareness.
“I should...” She pointed vaguely to the house, to the door. The girls were waiting upstairs, she reminded herself.
“Yes,” he answered.
He didn’t look away, though, merely continued watching her. She drew in a ragged breath, intending to call to the dog, but the words died in her throat.
When she tried to analyze it later, she wasn’t sure which of them moved first. One moment, they were staring at each other in the garden, the next, they were reaching for each other.
His mouth was cool and tasted of berries but the rest of him was warm. Deliciously warm.
He kissed her with a raw hunger that took her breath away. His mouth moved over hers as if he wanted to memorize every dip, every curve.
Her arms rested against his chest and it took her a moment to realize he was shaking slightly. Not from cold. From hunger.
Jenna found something incredibly powerful and also deeply terrifying to know this man could tremble with desire because of her .
The rain started up again, just a cool mist that landed in her hair. She didn’t care. She wanted to stand here forever and go on pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist.
He was the first to pull away. She wasn’t sure what brought him back to his senses. One moment, his mouth was tangled with hers, the next, he had eased away and gazed down, his breathing ragged and his expression dazed.
“I’m sorry, Jenna. I didn’t mean to do that. I’ve been telling myself all evening that kissing you would be a mistake.”
All evening? He had been thinking about kissing her all evening ? She didn’t know what to think, what to say.
“Yes. You’re right. It was a mistake.”
As soon as she said the word, she thought she saw a flicker of something in his gaze reflecting from the landscaping lights, something that looked almost like...hurt.
He had been the one to say the words first and she could not disagree. They were completely wrong for each other. She was finding herself increasingly drawn to the man. But she knew nothing could ever come of it.
“Let’s just blame the moonlight. It’s lovely out here, especially after the rain. It’s hard not to be...carried away by the moment.”
She couldn’t look at him as she spoke, hoping he didn’t see remnants of her desire on her features.
“We should go in. The...the girls.”
Without another word, she scooped up Theo, grabbed the towel off the porch swing and let herself into a house that suddenly, oddly, felt colder than the garden had, almost disapproving.
Jenna hurried up the flight of stairs to her apartment, drying the confused dog as she went.
With each step, she wondered what she had been thinking to kiss him with so much...passion.
That wasn’t her.
Or maybe it was.
It was a disconcerting thought.
Maybe there were parts of herself she had never had occasion to explore before, needs and desires that had always seemed warm and comfortable and... muted during her marriage to Ryan.
Maybe she was like that ocean out there. On a calm afternoon at low tide, only tiny waves licked at the sand. When conditions aligned, though, and storms blew in, the ocean could be mighty and powerful. Terrifying.
She sensed this thing between her and Wes would be like that—wild, passionate, fierce.
And that she would quickly find herself in over her head.
The rain began in earnest again as Wes watched Jenna hurry into the rambling old Victorian house. Drops slid down his collar, soaking him quickly. But he ignored it, too busy cursing himself for letting his base instincts take over.
After he had kissed her, she had almost looked afraid . Did she think he would hurt her?
He had completely screwed up everything.
Why had he kissed her?
He should have simply tamped down his attraction to her, as he had been doing for a long time now.
Maybe he had wondered on some level if kissing her could prove to her he was absolutely no threat to her.
How ridiculous. If he had given her a mild, restrained sort of kiss, that might have been the case, but he had kissed her as if she were his last meal.
Why was she so afraid? She had said something earlier that evening that might have been a clue. He closed his eyes as more rain slithered down his collar.
Who had hurt her? And where was the bastard now, so Wes could make him sorry?
He let out a breath. Her reasons for being jittery around him didn’t matter. Nor did it matter if she was actually afraid of him or simply of any man.
He had done nothing to ease that fear. By kissing her, giving in to the heat and the hunger, he had only provided her with more reason to be nervous in his company.
How could he help himself? He was finding Jenna increasingly difficult to resist.
It wasn’t simply a physical attraction to her, a hunger that kept him up at night and left him aching and empty.
He was quickly developing a thing for her.
Wes curled his hands into fists.
Could he be any more pathetic? He was falling for a woman he couldn’t have.
Jenna Haynes was soft and gentle and kind, all the things that no longer fit into his world.
Wes let out a breath, chilled and damp, though he had moved to the porch, out of the drizzle.
As difficult as he knew he would find it, he had to go back up the stairs to Jenna’s apartment, for Brielle if nothing else.
He had to forget about that kiss, about his aching hunger for her and about his growing feelings he knew were doomed to remain unreciprocated.
As he made his way up the stairs, he had the strange feeling that the house responded to his turmoil somehow.
He shook his head at his own foolishness. It was a house , for heaven’s sake. Four walls, a foundation, a roof. It didn’t have feelings and certainly couldn’t offer sympathy.
When he reached her apartment, his knock was answered almost immediately by Brielle.
“There you are. Did you get lost out in the rain?” his daughter teased.
Yeah. Something like that.
“It’s a pretty night. I was just enjoying it.”
Jenna sat in an easy chair, watching the girls playing Mario Kart . She had Theo on her lap, almost like a shield.
When her gaze met his, the uneasy apprehension in her expression hit him like a blow coming out of nowhere in the exercise yard.
What did she think? That he was going to rush into the room and kiss her again?
“We’re almost done with this race, Dad. Do you want to play?”
“We should head off, kiddo. It’s getting late and we have to get ready for camp on Monday.”
Jenna’s daughter lit up. “Hey, I’m going to camp Monday, too. Are you going to science camp?”
Brielle nodded. “My mom signed me up before she even knew she was going to be out of town. I hope it’s not lame.”
Addison gave her a look of astonishment. “Science camp is not lame at all! It’s way fun. I went last year and we always did cool things. Experiments and kayaking and bird-watching and stuff.”
“I really do think you’ll have a wonderful time,” Jenna assured his daughter with that warm smile she seemed to give to everyone but him. “Addie loved it last year. She couldn’t stop talking about it. She’s been looking forward to it all year.”
“I hope so. I’m happy you’ll be there. At least I’ll have one friend,” Brielle said.
“You’ll have lots of friends,” Addie said breezily. “A lot of the kids from school went last year and I’m sure they’ll go again. But we can totally be camp buddies!”
“Definitely!” Brielle said with a grin. Wes thought again how grateful he was that his daughter seemed happy and well-adjusted, despite the divorce and his incarceration.
She was a curious child who was kind to others and made friends easily.
“If you want, I’m happy to take Brielle to camp Monday and I can pick her up again as well. And she’s more than welcome to hang out here after camp, until you’re done with work.”
“That’s a lot to ask of you for two weeks.”
“Not at all. I know how hard it is to be a single parent, trying to coordinate schedules. I don’t mind at all.”
He had been trying to figure out how he was going to manage things. He had already talked to the Gutierrez brothers, who were willing to be flexible with his schedule, but Wes hated to take advantage after they already had been so good to him.
At the same time, he needed to stay away from Jenna so he could work on getting rid of these inconvenient feelings he was developing for her. Arranging his life so he was guaranteed to see her at least twice a day probably wasn’t the solution.
What choice did he have, though? All his efforts to find someone to stay with Brielle for the hour between camp and the end of his shift had come to naught.
“That would actually be really helpful, unless I can find someone else tomorrow. I was trying to figure out how to squeeze in everything. I was planning to go in late and come home early to work around her schedule.”
“You don’t have to try. I’m more than happy to help.”
“Thank you.”
She still hadn’t met his gaze directly, he realized, except for that first brief moment.
“Thank you also for dinner,” he said. “I definitely need the lasagna recipe to add to my rotation.”
“No problem. I can share it with you, if you want to give me your email.”
She handed him a notebook and he quickly wrote down the email address he rarely used.
“I’ll send it later tonight.”
“Thanks. I’ll watch for it. Let’s go, Brie. Looks like the race is over.”
His daughter sighed, clearly reluctant to leave her new best friend.
“Bye, Addie. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“For sure on Monday.”
The girls hugged as if they were each heading off on different long sea voyages, and Wes had to hide a smile. He caught Jenna’s gaze, finally, and saw that she was smiling, too.
She quickly shifted her gaze back to the dog in her lap, leaving Wes feeling slightly bereft.
Bad enough that he had kissed her, when he had every intention of keeping his attraction to her bottled up.
He really hoped he hadn’t completely ruined a friendship he was beginning to cherish.