3. Savannah
Ben Hayes. Ben fucking Hayes.
I stopped in my tracks to avoid crashing into his chest. Three hours ago, I would have said my life couldn’t get any worse. Now I stood a foot away from the biggest mistake of my life. Yep, from the frying pan into a raging inferno.
As I took a beat to collect my thoughts, I noticed every inch of the man Ben had become. He’d been super-cute when I’d met him as Mai’s two-years-younger brother, too-handsome for my own good when I’d bumped into him the summer after he’d started college, and seriously hot when we’d hooked up for one amazing summer fling when he was twenty-two and I was twenty-four. Those few months might as well have been years because we’d already known each other forever, and had wanted each other for nearly as long. And we’d both fallen hard.
Or at least one of us had.
Standing in the middle of the crowded baggage claim area, I was seven years older and—I hoped—wiser. But I was also a red-blooded woman who hadn’t been up close and personal with a red-blooded man for way too long. And hot damn, Ben Hayes was sex on a stick. The boy had grown into a young man who had then become this definitive specimen of virile manhood.
Like some melodramatic teen drama, the noise of the crowd faded to silence as we stared at each other. We blinked in unison, then sighed and took deep, steadying breaths. After seven years apart, we were together mere seconds before falling into sync with each other.
I’d be damned if I’d fall into anything else with him. Like his bed.
I took a step back, desperate to put distance between us. I wanted to slap him for breaking my heart. I wanted to slap Mai for not telling me her brother was her solution to my problem. I wanted to run out of the airport, hail a cab, and never see either of them again. But mostly, I wanted to lay my hand on his chest and feel his heart beat under my palm like I had on our last day together, minutes before he’d told me he was leaving.
“It’s just terrible timing,” he said. He stood by the door of the cheap motel room, his packed bags at his feet.
I sat on the bed, drowning in the ice-cold water of rejection he’d just thrown on me, barely able to catch my breath. “So it’s all been a lie. This whole summer, none of it was real. You’ve been lying to me every minute.”
He shook his head but didn’t step closer. “I meant to tell you. It was never the right time.”
“And this is? The last possible moment as you’re walking out the door?” I found enough strength to push up off the bed. I wrapped my robe tighter around me and stared him dead in the eye. “You’re on your way to boot camp, then shipping out to who knows where, and I didn’t even know you’d signed up for the Army!”
“Savannah…”
“Savannah.” Ben touched my shoulder. I flinched, and he dropped his hand. “What’s going on? Mai said you’re in trouble.”
Trouble.The word snapped me out of my shitty memories. I glanced over my shoulder, not knowing who or what I was looking for, but scared witless just the same. “Not here. Are we getting on a flight?”
He shook his head, the same way he had in that motel room. But this time, he stepped toward me. He reached out his hand. I waited for his warm touch at the base of my spine. Instead, his fingers brushed my elbow. “That would create a trail with your name on it. I’ll get a rental car. Are these all your bags?”
I nodded.
With his large, warm hand still on my elbow, he guided me through the crowd and out of baggage claim. He kept his hand in place, barely touching but gently guiding me. Each time someone passed too close to us, he angled his body toward mine or maneuvered me out of their path. His physical awareness and protectiveness of me were the same as they’d always been. But his athletic body was broader and stronger, and his movements were clean and precise. I instinctively turned toward the safety of his bulk.
But while my body betrayed my heart, my brain protected it. He’s a liar. He’s a liar. He’s a liar. I would cling to the words like they were my life’s mantra for as long as I was in Ben’s presence, which I hoped would be a blissfully short time.
We entered a lobby lined with car rental company counters.
“Here.” Ben’s breath tickled my ear as he steered me toward an open spot at the counter.
Was his voice deeper now? Yes, I was sure it was, as the timbre slid down my spine and pooled in my naughty bits. I yanked my elbow out of his reach. The last thing I needed was him touching me while I got wet from him whispering in my ear. I used the hand of my freed arm to readjust my backpack strap. No need to be rude about it. After all, the guy was aiding and abetting me going on the lam from who knows what. I would be polite. And professional. Which meant no more touching.
I put some distance between us as we approached the car rental representative. Ben noticed my reaction, but only spared me a glance before turning his attention—and his thousand-watt smile—on the woman behind the computer. She smiled back and introduced herself as Megan, and now I wanted to slap her, too. But I would never admit that, so I smiled at absolutely no one while Ben asked for a mid-size sedan. Megan asked when and where we planned to return the car. When Ben said next week in Chicago, my knees trembled.
A little over two years ago, I’d flown into Chicago for a whiskey distillers’ trade show. I’d closed three distribution deals that week, then had flown to Maryland to visit my mom. She’d lost some weight and a lot of energy but assured me she felt fine. Six months later, she received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. I moved home, even set up a satellite office in the Maryland suburbs, and cared for her for the last six months of her life. After her funeral, I flew home to California, bought my condo, and hadn’t gone past the Mississippi since then, leaving the East Coast clients to Devlin. It seemed like some sick sort of payback that now I was headed east again, this time to escape the mess he’d made of our company and quite possibly my life.
Ben and Megan were discussing details like accident coverage and mileage limitations as the weight of the past two weeks settled over me and squeezed the breath from my lungs.
“And will your wife also be on the rental agreement as a driver?” Megan asked.
“No,” Ben said before I could protest our marital status.
“I’d say yes,” I managed to choke out.
“She’s kidding.” Ben shot me a hard glance with a raised eyebrow. “She doesn’t have a driver’s license.”
Shit. Mai had warned me not to use my ID or credit cards. That was the whole reason for having a friend rent the car for me back in Vallejo. I was so bad at this. And if I was in real danger, if Devlin had truly fucked my life, I needed to become a hell of a lot better at living on the run.
My difficulty catching my breath morphed into a churning in my gut. I knew the reaction far too well. I staggered away from Ben and Megan’s friendly banter, heading in the direction of a metal bench where I could collapse for a few minutes and pull myself together. I was halfway there when my stomach lurched, and bile burned up my esophagus. I changed course and launched myself at the nearest garbage can. I barely made it there in time to spew vomit into the receptacle.
A minute later, something cool pressed against the back of my neck. The touch of an angel. I glanced up into the eyes of the devil.
“I’ve got you,” Ben said.
He pulled the cold water bottle off my neck and slid it into the pocket of my backpack, then set to work piling our bags onto a luggage cart that had materialized beside him. I was pretty sure we had Megan to thank for that. She stood a few feet away from us with an odd smile on her face.
“Thanks,” Ben told her. “We’ll be on our way now.”
As I wrestled with the problem of walking to wherever we would find our car, Ben wrapped one arm around me and took most of my weight against his body.
“Not necessary,” I said, although I knew it probably was. I took two steps sideways to slip out of his grasp.
He silently reached out and anchored me against him again.
This time, I pulled away forcefully.
“Fine, have it your way,” he said.
I was about to gloat—politely, of course—when he bent at the waist, leaned into me, hoisted me onto his shoulder, and carried me out of the airport with my ass in the air.