Chapter Twelve
Two days weren’t enough to lift the weight of that package from Church’s mind. In fact, it sat there like a landmine he and Zee were tiptoeing around.
The Black Heart Security team all had eyes on it during a second meeting, and they’d turned the letter over every way they knew how. They cross-referenced numbers and input the QR code time and time again. It always looped back to the same dead end.
He’d studied the photos until the details all blurred together. And still—nothing useful. Just more questions and the same sense that Matt had tried to say something important but died before he could make it plain.
Church sat on the bench outside the therapy lodge with his elbows braced on his knees, staring across the rugged landscape without really seeing it.
Today the movie set was dark. Production was taking a break after the rain turned the ground to mud, and under normal circumstances he would’ve welcomed the time off. He wished his damn mind would take a break too. Instead he was restless, left with too much time to circle the same things.
Matt’s letter. Lucian’s birthday. Syria. The way Zee had gone pale when she realized the package wasn’t intended to soothe the loss she felt at all, but was only for safekeeping information.
The ranch moved around him, never pausing just because his thoughts needed to. Men loaded a wagon with hay bales across the parking area, their voices carrying on the breeze.
The rumbling grind of a tractor rolled across the property. Somewhere nearby a door banged open and shut. Someone laughed.
At breakfast that morning, Willow had invited Zee to join her and the other ladies for a fall festivities planning session.
Church had noticed the way she looked up from her coffee, surprise ghosting across her beautiful face for half a second before a small smile edged her mouth.
She’d been more withdrawn the past few days, and though she wasn’t exactly distant, she had pulled inward.
Like part of her was back in that loft, still holding Matt’s letter.
Willow, in typical Willow fashion, hadn’t let Zee’s hesitation stop her. She’d lured her outside to inspect the pumpkins and decorate the mile-long strip of field the hayride would navigate.
Church hoped Zee found some escape from the knowledge weighing on them both.
“Hey, Church!”
He glanced up to see Pope sauntering by. He lifted a hand in greeting and Pope kept on walking. He turned his attention to the sky. Though there was a small break in the clouds, they loomed deep gray on the horizon, threatening more rain.
He dragged a hand over his jaw and leaned back against the bench. When he’d agreed to take the position in the training facility, he thought the work would keep him scrambling as much as any bootcamp. He’d expected to throw himself into schedules and plans and getting the program off the ground.
He hadn’t expected the small break before the trainees arrived to provide him time to get to know the ranch and the people on it.
Or to find that he fit here too.
In a short time, the ranch felt more like home than any place he’d stayed since joining the military. He never had that home between deployments the way Matt did with Zee. He’d always been an outsider.
Except on the Black Heart.
Movement caught his eye, and he turned his head to see Pope walking past again with another veteran, their arms filled with pumpkins.
Church pushed off the bench and jogged over to them.
“You need a hand?”
Pope nodded. “If you’ve got one.”
Church took two pumpkins from each man, relieved to be useful while the gears of his mind kept grinding. “Where we taking ’em?”
Pope lifted his chin in the direction of the barn. “Willow wants them by the gate where the hayride starts.”
When they reached the gate and set the pumpkins down, Honor hurried over to them. “Oh good! You brought the pumpkins.”
“Anything else you need?” Pope asked her.
She looked around, long curls swaying in the breeze. “That’s it for now. But I think Fern and some of the guys could use a hand in the community garden if you have time to spare.”
Before they headed to the garden, Church scanned the grounds, hoping to see Zee. But she wasn’t anywhere in sight.
At the garden, harvest was underway. Fern and some of the guys were picking the last of the produce. Church ended up carrying a crate full of late tomatoes and a squash to the back patio of the lodge.
The scent of grilling food hit him before he reached the patio. Corn roasted on the grill. Tomato slices were lined up on the surface, charring at the edges. Beef sizzled, sending hunger twisting through his gut.
He set the crate down and lingered to see if he could be of use. A couple of the Malone women were sorting through vegetables while another brushed melted butter over the corn. Everyone seemed to thrive on the energy of the ranch.
Church found himself in the middle of it, carrying plates and passing produce down the line to be sliced and placed on the grill. He hoped Zee was experiencing the excitement on the ranch too. If anyone deserved to have some fun, it was her.
By the time Gabe found him, Church had a plate of steak and grilled vegetables in hand.
Gabe’s lips quirked. “You get roped into harvest duty?”
He nodded toward the thick sirloin on his plate. “Payment’s worth it.”
“I’ll grab a plate and sit with you.”
The patio had tables neatly placed where people could sit near the railing and experience the view. A few tables were pushed up against the wall of the lodge for those veterans who needed a different setting.
Gabe joined him for the meal, and talk fell easily into the training facility. Though they’d hashed through all the details before, they discussed the first group’s arrival and what that would bring.
“Soon,” Gabe said, biting into an ear of corn. “Soon we start training. Will you be done with your bodyguard gig in time?”
He sliced into his medium rare steak. “Should be. They’re a little ahead of schedule.” He looked out toward the mountains that were already showing signs of the shift in seasons.
“The government needs to get through all the red tape fast or those groups won’t be able to get in. The snow and ice make the roads impassable.” Gabe chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “I’m happy to have a warm body in my bed this winter.”
Church huffed out a laugh. “You’re lucky to have Felicity.”
But the light exchange felt heavier each passing second. Because underneath the harvest and festivities, under the working of the ranch and facility plans, there was Zee.
And he still didn’t know where he stood with her.
Nothing that passed between them was casual. There was too much feeling in it. Desire had gotten tangled up with…more.
Then she opened the package and the ground shifted under both of them.
Since then, she’d grown more reserved. She didn’t reject him or pull away, but it was clear she was holding back while she worked through whatever Matt’s last not-quite-a-message had done to her.
Church understood. Hell, he respected it. But he couldn’t sit in uncertainty forever.
He needed to find Zee and talk to her.
Gabe finished his meal and went in search of Felicity, leaving Church alone with the smoke of grilling food and the company of his own thoughts.
He looked out at the field, toward the spot along the fence he’d begun to think of as “their” spot. He saw Zee, so he pushed away from the table and hurried to her.
If he wanted any chance of holding on to what had started between them, he had to stop pretending his heart wasn’t already in it.
He had to face the truth.
Matt had been his friend. A man under his command. And he’d died.
Whatever happened—whatever they were still uncovering—didn’t change that.
Matt wasn’t here.
Church was.
And if he was going to have what he wanted—Zee—he needed to find her and ask the question he’d been avoiding.
* * * * *
Zee’s feet carried her away from the fall festivities, and she didn’t realize how far she’d walked until the voices faded and all she heard was her footsteps in the grass.
She gazed across the land, drinking in the dark clouds banked in the corner of the sky, threatening to cancel the fall plans again, and the mountaintops were lost in a pale fog that never seemed to wash away no matter how hard the wind blew.
She slowed and then stopped. When she looped her arms over the worn wooden fence, she realized what brought her here. This was her and Church’s spot.
The place where they walked and talked—and she’d been missing him all day.
Just as she thought this, she turned her head and saw him striding toward her. Her body sparked to life as if the muscular line of his body left a mark on hers, a heat she yearned to be close to.
When he reached her, those sexy creases extended from each eye, and the depths warmed her as much as seeing his confident swagger.
“Been looking for you.”
Her insides clutched at his words. “I hoped you would find me.”
A smile appeared in his eyes. He leaned against the fence next to her. Neither spoke. Their silence always had a language of its own, and it soothed her more than anything could.
Only today, she felt an undercurrent in the hum.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “You know, I never asked you.”
“Asked me what?”
“Why you’re single.”
His lips twitched at one corner but didn’t spread into a real smile.
“I didn’t think it was any of my business before,” she added.
“And now?”
She met his gaze. “Now it is.”
He exhaled, dragging his fingers through his hair, raking through the salt-and-pepper that she loved.
“I was always ambitious in my career. I didn’t think I could give the military my all and also give a wife what she deserved. Back then, it was all or nothing. I chose my career.”
His voice didn’t echo with regret—he just stated it as fact.
Her chest tightened. “Matt couldn’t give our marriage everything either. Not really.”
Church stilled beside her.
“Oh, I know he loved me. I never doubted that. And he made me feel loved. It’s just that he wasn’t a husband first…and I felt that.” She instinctively touched her ring finger, bare for the past year, ever since she’d taken off her wedding rings.
“He did love you, Zee. I saw it on his face.”
Her mouth filled with salt that she refused to allow to turn into tears. She wasn’t here to talk about Matt. She wanted—needed—to understand what she and Church had. What they were. Before she let herself fall any harder.
“What you’re saying…” She cleared her throat. “It sounds like you’re telling me you can’t give more than this.”
His gaze drilled into hers.
“I get it. I do. If this is as far as we go, I understand.”
Even as she spoke the words, a sharp pain seared through her. She didn’t want that. She wanted him.
He reached for her, closing his hand on her arm. He tugged her a step toward him and then his mouth was on hers—hard and claiming, his lips drugging her even as her mind lit up with a thousand new possibilities.
She gasped into his mouth, and he delved his tongue inside. She gripped his shirt and yanked him against her, needing his heat and strength.
The kiss raged from wild to passionate to hungry and back to tender. When he finally broke it, he dropped his forehead against hers, breathing hard.
“I’m telling you the opposite, Zee.” His voice pitched low with an intensity she’d never heard before, not in all her years of knowing Church.
She blinked, trying to catch up to what he was telling her.
“Nothing is holding me back now. I can give the training facility the attention it deserves and still give you a hundred percent in this relationship.”
Her breath caught.
“The job is not my whole life anymore. Life is different now. I’m not the same man I was back then.”
She curled her fingers against his chest because her knees were trembling so hard they might buckle.
“I came to find you because you deserve to know where I stand, Zee.”
Her throat clamped with emotion. “Tell me why,” she whispered.
He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Because I love you.”
The words sounded like their silence—pure and simple. But they were anything but.
They hit like a lightning strike, illuminating all the places inside her that were once dark.
A soft sound burst past her lips because she’d felt it too, building and growing and taking root.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
The truth swelled between them and bound them closer. Just as she surged onto her toes, he leaned down and captured her mouth again. The kiss was slower and deeper, unhurried now that they had the rest of their lives ahead of them.
When the kiss ended, they leaned against the fence again, their arms around each other. The wood was warm against her body, and Church—Grant—the man she loved, was solid against her side.
“This is nothing like what I had before.”
He turned his head, gaze flicking over her face. “How so?”
“Matt and I…we could talk, but not like this.” She tilted her face up to his. “You and I can talk about everything.”
He brushed his lips over hers, a soft stroke that left her shivering for more. “Good. Because I don’t want anything between us. Not Matt, not the past. Nothing.”
Her mind shot straight to the moment when she urged him to take her without any barriers, and going by how his pupils dilated, she guessed he was thinking of that too.
Their lips collided again in a lingering kiss that was a promise of what was to come.
By the time they pulled apart, the sun was dipping low over the mountains and the breeze brought a hint of woodsmoke on the current.
“Want to join the bonfire tonight if it doesn’t rain before then?” he asked her.
She wanted to fall into her lover’s arms. But knowing they had all the time in the world made her agree.
They twined their fingers on the walk back. When they reached the fire, sparks were drifting up into the sky. People gathered around the flames, talking and joking. Some of them snuggled under blankets.
As soon as she and Church appeared together, Rhae stared at their joined hands and smiled. Layne handed her a cup of hot cocoa, and she thanked her, remembering the sunrise coffee she’d shared with Church that day.
Willow pulled her into a discussion about holding sunrise yoga inside the lodge after the weather turned, and pretty soon Zee was part of the group as much as Church was while talking to the guys.
Every time she glanced up, he was watching her.
By the time the fire turned to glowing coals, Zee’s pulse had started to climb with anticipation. As if Church knew it too, he took her hand and drew her to her feet.
She leaned into his side and let him lead her back to their loft to finish what they’d started back at their spot.