Chapter 3
Ethan pretended to look at his phone, but nothing was as interesting as Paisley. She sat a few feet away, laughing at something her kid did, and he tried not to let that voice dig deep into his soul and excavate memories he’d rather forget.
He hadn’t known she had a kid until Emma said something about it at the Dawg a few nights ago when Paisley was at the bar picking up food. He’d been more stunned by the news than he’d liked.
Paisley had a kid. A four year old kid. Which meant she’d met and married her husband shortly after he’d left Florida. She said she hadn’t sent him that text message, but she’d sure as fuck married somebody and had a kid with him. And pretty damn quickly, too.
Except she’d seemed genuinely shocked when he mentioned the text. Her eyes had gotten big, her mouth falling open like she hadn’t expected him to say it.
He ground his teeth and looked away, keeping an eye on the crowd in the square. Paisley had been na?ve in many ways when he met her, but no way she hadn’t changed since then. Especially with a husband who’d hit her.
Jesus.
He’d been trying to process that since the instant her kid let the cat out of the bag.
That sweet child had looked up at him with wide eyes, fear written on her face, and asked if he was going to hit her mommy.
In that moment, it was him who felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
He wanted to hunt the motherfucker down and give him a thousand times worse than what he’d done to Paisley.
Not that Ethan knew what the man had done, but if the kid was scared of her own father, then it hadn’t been pretty.
He’d been torturing himself with thoughts about it since the moment he’d sat down to wait. She’d been married, the fucker abused her, badly enough that she’d been allowed to take their kid and leave the state without him knowing where they were.
Ethan wasn’t stupid. He’d been in the business of dealing with evil people long enough that he knew the abuse had to be life-threatening. There was probably a restraining order too.
Yeah, he’d been pissed that Paisley hadn’t waited for him to return from his mission, that she hadn’t answered his calls, but if he’d had any idea she’d met a man who abused her, he’d have charged down to Florida and ripped the guy’s head off for daring to harm her.
He closed his eyes and willed his temper to cool down. He was jumpy, pissed, his skin tight with anger. He felt like all it would take was a pinprick and he’d explode like an overfilled balloon.
He wasn’t used to being this angry. He was methodical, cool, a planner to his core.
He was the practical one on his team, the one who cut through all the distraction and saw the way to the goal.
His guys knew they could name the objective, talk about the obstacles, and leave the details about how to get there to him.
He couldn’t see how to get back to the calm center of his being in this moment. Not with Paisley so near, and not with this knowledge about her boiling inside him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her hold out a hand to help her daughter onto the ledge.
She produced a towel from her oversized bag and wrapped it around the little girl, rubbing her briskly before taking her hand and letting her jump down with the towel still wrapped around her.
The kid slipped into her sandals and Paisley led her over to where he sat.
He looked up like he hadn’t noticed her presence until that moment.
But the truth was he could feel an invisible line pulling between them with every breath he took. Anchoring him to her.
“We’re going for ice cream if you want to come with us. Or we’ll join you when we’re done.”
He unfolded himself and got to his feet as casually as possible. “Ice cream sounds good.”
Paisley’s mouth tightened as if she wanted to argue, but she turned on her heel and walked away with her daughter bouncing along beside her.
Paisley’s dress was loose, a floaty flowery thing that went to mid-thigh.
Her legs were slender and long for someone so short, and he remembered what it’d felt like to run his palm along her calf, up her thigh, cupping her ass as he sank into her.
Her skin was soft, smooth, her body welcoming and wet.
He shook the memory away like peeling off a layer of old paint from a wall before he coated it with something fresh and new.
One of his hobbies since moving to Sutton’s Creek was restoring old homes in his spare time.
Diego Hernandez had let him work with his crew whenever Ethan had the time, and now he was helping out at a renovation in the historic district whenever he could.
It kept his mind occupied, kept him from thinking about the kinds of things that cropped up in his head more often of late.
Leaving active ops to move to Sutton’s Creek with his team had been a big change in his life, one he hadn’t anticipated giving him so much down time.
So much of a regular life to fill compared to the tempo of frequent missions.
The mission in Alabama might be the most important one of his career, but the pace was a lot slower. As the Athena Project lumbered toward completion, and enemy agents lay in wait to sabotage progress, maybe the pace would ramp up. Until then, he needed to be busy. Hence the construction projects.
The ice cream tent was in front of the town hall.
The entire square had been blocked off from traffic so that people could walk through the streets adjacent to the park, and vendors had set up their tents along the streets where the parade wasn’t going to pass.
Wendy Cochran’s Kiss My Grits Café had a tent with pastries and ice cream, and that’s where Paisley led Violet.
Paisley ordered a scoop of ice cream in a cup and a rocket pop, which Violet attacked like a hungry lion that’d just been thrown a steak.
After she paid, she stepped to the side to wait for her ice cream while Ethan ordered his own rocket pop.
Not technically ice cream, but delicious and refreshing on a hot day.
“You like the rocket pop too?” Violet asked, staring at him with wide eyes.
He peeled off the paper and licked it. “Yup. Pretty much my favorite cold treat on a hot day.”
“Me too. Mommy says it’s too sweet.”
Paisley accepted her ice cream and turned a frown on him. “It’s very sweet,” she acknowledged. “But I prefer vanilla.”
“Ours is better,” Ethan said. “Right, kiddo?”
“Yep!”
Paisley looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. They continued to walk down the street, eating their ice cream and ambling toward the Dawg.
“How did you end up in Sutton’s Creek?” he asked.
She slanted a look at him. Violet was in front of them, humming to herself as she ate her treat. “I might ask the same of you. Seems an odd place for a special operator.”
She knew what he was because he’d been at Eglin to train, but she didn’t know about the Hostile Operations Team. She’d thought he was a Green Beret, and he’d let her believe it because he had to.
“Not really. There’s a Green Beret platoon in Birmingham. National Guard soldiers, but important for South American operations. There’s also Redstone Arsenal. But I’m no longer active duty. Moved here with my buddies to start the range and training facility.”
“You aren’t old enough to be retired.”
Of course she knew enough about the military to know that twenty years was the magic number.
“That’s true, but sometimes the military offers early retirement as an incentive. I took it when it came down from command.” He sucked on the syrupy goodness of the cold ice. “Now what about you? How did you get from Destin to Sutton’s Creek?”
She spooned ice cream into her mouth and kept her eyes on her child.
“My grandfather was Miss Hettie’s brother.
She moved here when she got married, and she became the town librarian.
When she decided to retire, she told me to apply for the job.
It took a few weeks, but the committee selected me. And here I am.”
It was crazy how they’d both ended up in the same small town in a tiny corner of Alabama, but that was life for you.
It was random and unpredictable. He knew it better than most. Not only because of what he did, but because of the childhood he’d had.
When you didn’t have a place to call home, when your bed could be on the streets or in a shelter, when you never knew where you’d lay your head each night—well, that was about as random and unpredictable as you could get.
Especially when you were eight and didn’t understand why other kids had homes and you didn’t.
“You cut all your hair off.” He didn’t know why he said it except he needed to get his mind on something else.
She didn’t speak for a long moment. “Yes. It’s cooler and easier to manage. And I like it. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
“Looks good on you.”
“Thank you.”
Emma and Callie spotted them and waved. Ethan tamped down on the disappointment that their walk was nearly over.
He looked for an empty chair away from where Paisley and Violet would be, but of course the women had put three chairs together.
Now that Daphne and Kane were paired up, that left Ethan and Alex as the only singles in the group.
Nobody would dare try to fix Ghost up with a woman, but they had no such qualms about him. He was fair game.
“Hey, Violet,” Emma said as Violet ran the rest of the way. “How are you, kiddo?”
“I’m great! Mommy let me have a hot dog and a rocket pop!”
“Oh, she did? That’s awesome!”
Daphne had disentangled herself from Kane’s side. She came over now, looking concerned. “You okay?” she asked quietly.
For a moment Ethan thought the secret was out, but Paisley nodded and he realized Daphne meant the man who’d gotten too close and looked belligerent. Daphne had excellent instincts about people. Turned out that she had to considering the family she’d come from.
“I’m fine. It was just a drunk who thought he was making a smooth move. Ethan took care of it.”
Daphne turned her gaze on him. There was something in it he didn’t recognize. A smirk? A gleam?
“That’s our Ethan. Always riding to the rescue.”
He glared daggers at her because he knew what she was doing. Trying to push him and Paisley together, thinking they’d start dating, maybe fall in love the way she and Kane had. And not just them, but everyone else on this damned team except for Ghost.
Fuck.
He tipped his head toward the guys. “Any of us would have done the same. I just happened to see it first because the rest of them were distracted. Not that I’m pointing fingers or anything.”
Daphne arched an eyebrow and laughed. “That’s certainly a fair point. I take full responsibility for distracting Kane. Though he’s rather distracting himself if I’m honest.”
“He sure is today,” Ethan said, eyeing his teammate who sprawled in his chair with a colorful cowboy hat and star sunglasses like he was Elton-frigging-John.
Kane raised his glass and took a swig with a big grin.
Daphne rolled her eyes. “Oh lord.” She hooked an arm in Paisley’s. “Come on, Paisley. Let’s get you a beverage and you can tell me what you think about the next book we’ve selected for the Bookalicious Babes. I started reading but things have been a bit, uh, busy and I need to get back to it.”
Ethan watched them walk over to the cooler and dragged in a deep breath.
How the fuck was he going to spend time in Paisley’s company, watch her become a part of his friend group, and not think about everything that might have been if she’d only cared enough to wait instead of moving on to the next guy?
He didn’t know, but it was clear he had to figure it out.