Chapter 6
Cole regretted everything. Not calling the cops. Softening when he’d heard Ana’s pleas. Allowing his brothers to change the conditions and making the teenager work it off.
What was he thinking? Now he was stuck with them both for the foreseeable future until Ben paid off the damages.
Curses filled his head as he exited his Wrangler and followed Ana’s son inside the fancy hotel. People lingered at the bar and in the lobby, most of them staring at a screen of one type or another. He scanned the area for any danger, the exits, the things his years of training had made normal.
Cole tracked the teen as he headed across the expansive lobby toward an inside store on the far side of a restaurant and bar area. The store had fancy gold-glitter lettering and thick moldings that reeked of money. The clothing inside was not on the average sale rack. “This is your mom’s store?”
Ben called out a “yeah” over his shoulder and kept going. Cole paused outside and stared in through the glass to where Analise chatted with a customer.
Her smile froze on her face when she spotted her son, her gaze shifting, searching, until it landed on Cole.
The customer regained Ana’s attention when the woman took possession of her purchase and said goodbye. Ana was all smiles again, thanking the woman before she walked away.
Cole watched as Ana seemed to square her shoulders before addressing her son.
“Benj—ah, Ben, how was your day?”
“How do you think? They treated me like a slave all day. I need money. I’m hungry.”
Ana’s gaze shifted to Cole quickly before looking back at her son.
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. A little work never hurt anyone.”
Ben cursed at that and ignored his mother’s reprimand about his language.
“I’m hungry,” Ben said again. “Give me some money to go get food.”
“I ordered in for you. It’s in the office. Go eat, and when you’re finished you can work here for a few hours before we close.”
Curses filled the shop and overpowered Ana’s orders for her son to stop.
“Enough.” Cole growled the word and planted his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Go eat or starve but don’t swear at your mother again.”
Ben glared up at Cole, hands fisted and body tight.
Cole waited for the kid to strike. He could tell Ben rode the edge and wanted to lash out, but Cole would rather the boy take it out on him than on Ana.
Ben jerked out from under Cole’s grip and headed toward an opening where Cole guessed the office was located.
“Thank you for driving him back and…that. I’ll talk to him.”
A woman appeared from the office area and smiled at Cole when she saw him.
“Um, Cole this is Sasha, my assistant manager. Sasha, Cole Blackwell.”
“Oh, I heard,” the younger woman said with a roll of her eyes. “Ben is back there shoveling food in and muttering about you at the same time.”
Cole managed a smile he didn’t feel. “Sasha, think you can handle things here for a few minutes while I talk to your boss?”
Ana looked surprised and uneasy by the request, but before she could protest, Sasha agreed.
“Don’t let Ben leave, and if he does, call me immediately,” Ana said. “If he finishes before I get back, have him put together that new display.”
“You got it.”
“We’ll be close by in the bar,” he said to Sasha.
Ana grabbed her phone from the desk behind the checkout counter and carried it with her as she rounded the area.
Cole waited, turning to follow her out of the store and into the hotel lobby. “Nice place you have.”
“Thanks. It’s been years in the making.”
They walked side by side past the restaurant toward the separate bar area.
“Back there,” he said, indicating the empty table along the wall away from the other patrons. It was early yet and the bar mostly empty. “Sit down, Ana.”
He held her chair and waited for her.
A long moment stretched before she acquiesced and settled into the seat. He started to sit opposite her but at the last second chose to sit beside her instead. She stiffened and shifted away as though to get up and move to the other side until he placed his hand gently over her forearm. “Stay, please.”
She deflated, like the fight went out of her, and the tension faded in an instant.
“Cole, if this is about our…history, I’m sorry. Okay? I hurt you, and I shouldn’t have shut you out like that, but it was hard for me, too.”
“I don’t want to talk about the breakup,” he said, feeling his body tense even more at her words. Hard for her, too? Was she overseas in a combat zone getting dumped?
Yeah, she owed him answers, but right now the past wasn’t important. Her safety was. “I asked you here because I want to talk about Ben.”
“What about him? Did he give you that much trouble today?”
“Ana,” he said, her name holding a wealth of emotion he held in check. “I need to know if you have safety plan in place.”
“A…what?”
Cole stared into her soft green eyes, watching as confusion turned to awareness and then brokenness.
He fought his own anger that he even felt the need to have this conversation, but her response took the air from his lungs.
“Are you kidding me right now?” She whispered the words. Gasped them. Like her voice didn’t work properly. “I do not need a safety plan because of my son.”
“I think you do,” he said just as softly. “Look, Ana, I’m not trying to freak you out or upset you, but I’m concerned.”
“Don’t be.”
She tried to stand, and he grasped her arm again. “Just hear me out. If I’m wrong I’m wrong but— Stay.”
She glared at him, eyes darkening with the sparkle of tears she hurried to blink away. Her jaw set in a mulish line, and he took her lack of motion as a sign to continue.
“I’m concerned,” he said again. “Ana, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong.”
“You are.”
“Then you can listen to what I have to say and then ignore it. But at least be honest and admit that if you saw someone struggling and knew you could help, you’d do the same.”
That seemed to register, and she stayed silent for a long moment.
“Say whatever it is you want to say and let me get back to work,” she said finally.
“What do you want to drink?”
She frowned at him and the question given their topic, but then turned her head as a waitress stopped at their table.
“May I take your order?”
They ordered drinks, though he doubted Ana would give him the time it took to get them, much less drink them.
Once the waitress walked away, he started again. “I want you to think about a few things, okay? Do you check in with someone regularly? Someone who would notice if you didn’t check in by a certain time?”
“Cole, this isn’t necessary.”
“It is. That kid of yours is a ticking time bomb. He will explode and act out in one form or another. It’s not a matter of if but when. I need to know you’ll be safe when he does. Now answer the question. Do you have someone you contact daily? Your parents? Sasha? A…boyfriend?”
Her lashes flicked up; her gaze wary.
“Quinley.”
Jealousy roared through him at the unfamiliar name, but he forced himself to focus. “Is that Ben’s father?”
“No. Like I told you last night, Benji—Ben’s father isn’t in the picture.”
He noted that she hadn’t elaborated on Quinley’s identity. “Since when? Is this a new thing?”
“No.”
She really didn’t like his questions. Which made him want to ask more. “Do have any weapons in the house?”
“What? No.”
“Do you have a baseball bat?”
“Yes but??—”
“A lock on your bedroom door?”
“Yes, Cole, my door locks,” she said, her tone revealing her exasperation.
“Good. When you get home tonight, I want you to hide the bat in your room. A kitchen knife and can of bug spray, too. The kind that shoots twenty feet. Put them in three separate areas so that they’re easy to get to but only you know about.”
“I’m not hurting my child.”
“Not even if he was hurting you? This is for self-defense, Ana. Worst case scenario which you say will never happen. So since it won’t happen, you can make the preparations as though protecting yourself from an intruder.”
“You want me to blind my son with bug spray?”
“I want you to protect yourself from anyone who comes into that locked room with the intent to do you harm.”
“This is ridiculous. Benji is angry, yes, but he isn’t dangerous. Shoving me and swearing at me doesn’t mean I need to resort to that.”
Cole stilled at her words. “He’s shoved you?”
“Here you go,” the waitress said, lowering their drinks to the table before hurrying on.
Cole didn’t take his eyes off Analise, who picked up her white wine and took a sip, glanced at him, and then took a gulp.
He lifted his hand and placed it along her nape, holding her gently. She felt as fragile as she looked. Her skin soft like velvet and hot to the touch. “Ana…”
“Don’t make it out to be more than it was,” she said, her words emerging raw. “He’s a hormonal teenager.”
“That doesn’t give him a free pass, Ana. Teenager or not, he needs to control himself and his anger like any other person.” He leaned toward her, sitting sideways in his chair with one foot behind her chair and one in front.
He fought the pull of her body, her scent: light and alluring. She smelled like rain and salt and something heady enough to almost make him want to forget the way she’d destroyed him.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you suggesting these awful things? Putting them in my head?”
Her questions drew him out of the haze that had taken him over. His gaze shifted from the sight of his thumb laying over her pulse to her trembling lips to eyes clouded with pain he’d be blind not to see. “I want you to be prepared and know what to do should something happen. I want you to keep your phone charged and on your body so you can call me or Quinley,” he forced himself to say, “if you need help.”
“Cole…”
“You also need a safe word.”
Her eyes flared wide, her lips parting in surprise.
“They’re not just for sex, sweetheart,” he said in a wry tone. “If you’re in trouble but you can’t say so, you need a safe word to alert us that you need help.”
She shifted on her chair and lifted her arm to break his hold. He lowered his right hand to her chair but didn’t back off as much as she probably wanted him to. He crowded her, pushed her, but it needed to be done.
“This is crazy. I’m not going to??—”
“Ferris wheel,” he said, interrupting her to finish the discussion before she bolted like he knew she wanted to. “If you call me or text me and say Ferris wheel, I’ll know something is up and you need me.”
She scrambled to her feet away from him and glared as he slowly rose to his. “I’m trying to help you, Ana.”
She lifted her chin, shaking her head in the doing and looking like a panicked bobblehead.
“This is not helping me. You’re just scaring me.”
“I’m sorry. That’s not my intent.” He ran a hand over his head, noting his skin or jacket—something—carried traces of her perfume.
“Of course it is. You want to hurt me. You hate me for how I ended things, and you want to hurt me. Don’t deny it.”
“I don’t hate you. I don’t like the way things ended, but this has nothing to do with that. This is about me trying to protect you from the train wreck I see barreling your way.” His honesty seemed to throw her off. “Look, just do what I said, okay? And call me or…Quinley,” he said, practically growling the name. “Don’t let pride get in the way of your safety. Promise me you’ll be prepared if you need to be.”
She snapped up the wine glass, nearly spilling the contents, before she drained it in four large swallows.
“Ana,” he growled, watching her.
She finished and set it down with a clunk. “It’s my turn now. I-I want to clear the air about what happened. Between us.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and waited, watching the alcohol or her upcoming words bring a hot flush to her pale cheeks.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. Okay? I didn’t.”
“Ana—”
“No, let me say this. I just— I was eighteen, Cole. You decided the military was your future, and I thought I was okay with it. But while you were away doing what you wanted to do, I realized I’d always be following you and not doing what I wanted. I know how immature that makes me sound, but I was immature. I-I loved you, but my mother was right, and I hated you then for making me admit that. But she was. Graduation wasn’t the first event in my life that you’d miss if I married you, and it sank in that I couldn’t give up my dreams just so I could wait for you to come back. That was your life, and I wanted one of my own.”
Her words sucker punched him, the impact almost as bad as getting that email fifteen years ago. She’d ripped his heart out then, and she did it again now. Because unlike then, he finally understood.
During his many years in the Marines, he’d seen far too many marriages end due to the distance and loneliness. Lives lived separately. Military life wasn’t for everyone, and even though he’d thought love was enough at the time, he wasn’t a naive twenty-year-old kid anymore.
“But I handled things all wrong. I know that, and for that…I am deeply, truly sorry,” she whispered before she spun around and rushed toward the entrance.
“Ana.” Cole followed her, gaze inevitably drawn to the sway of her hips, the core-tightening shape of her, as she hurried back to the life she’d built without him.
He stopped in the lobby, but she kept going, every step taking her away from him once again.
He felt someone watching him and shifted his gaze to see Ben leaning against the open doorway to his mom’s boutique.
Even from the distance, Cole was able to make out Ben’s sneer when he realized his mom came from meeting with him.
Ben said something to his mom when she arrived, and Ana’s hands fisted at her sides.
“Sir, is everything okay?” the waitress asked. “You forgot to pay for your drinks.”
“Sorry about that.” He kept his gaze locked on Ana and Ben as they exchanged heated words, but grabbed his wallet and pulled out some cash, barely glancing away from mother and son long enough to hand over two twenties.
“I’ll get your change.”
“Keep it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Ana entered the store, and Ben glared at Cole from the distance before following his mother.
Cole turned to exit the building, more than a little shaken up by Ana’s revelation. As she’d gushed out her apology, his heart had squeezed with newfound empathy. He’d known her parents were against her getting married so young, but none of that mattered then. Not to him.
He’d been selfish, not even thinking of Ana’s dreams because he’d considered his dreams as theirs. Like she’d said, he’d focused entirely on his path and the military career he’d wanted to build for them—but mostly for himself.
He’d carried the pain of her betrayal for fifteen long years, but suddenly…it was gone. Wrecked by the awareness of just how wrong he’d been in how he’d gone about things.
He slammed the door of his Jeep and punched the start button but didn’t move. Couldn’t. Analise had neutralized all the anger and animosity he’d felt for her with her words. All because she’d opened his eyes to her perspective. One he should have realized long ago.
He’d moved on. Dated off and on when time, interest and leave allowed. He’d lived his life.
But where did that leave him now?