“What?” Tate’s response was instinctive, but even as he said it, a vague memory was tickling at the edge of his consciousness.
“One of Sloan’s contacts heard something about an investigation. He—”
Quinn stopped when Tate held up a hand. His brow furrowed as he tried to pin down the memory, but it kept flitting away. Finally he closed his eyes, shutting out the world here to try to put himself back there. It was something he usually tried to avoid—he got enough of it in his dreams at night.
Even when he finally had the memory locked, it wasn’t clear.
“I...think I remember getting asked about it. If anybody in my unit was using or even dealing. But I didn’t know anything about it, so I just dismissed it.”
“Do you know if they had a suspect?”
He shook his head. “It was right before I got hurt, and my memory of that time’s pretty hazy.”
“Who else did they talk to?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t have any memory at all from the morning before the explosion on.” He grimaced. “I always figured I was better off that way.”
Quinn nodded in understanding. “Some details are better not to have to carry around.”
Tate frowned. “Do you think this is it?”
“We’re not assuming anything. But it is the only thing we’ve come across so far that could explain all this.”
“Explain it how? I didn’t know anything about it when they asked, so—”
This time Quinn held up a hand. “We’re just starting down this path, so I won’t speculate. And we won’t stop pursuing other angles.”
After Hayley and Quinn left, Tate was more puzzled than ever. He turned the idea over and over in his mind, going through the members of his unit one by one, trying to hang the label of drug user or dealer on each of them. It didn’t work. He couldn’t believe it, just as he couldn’t back then.
Or wouldn’t.
“It must be awful, to wonder if someone you trusted to have your back could be behind this.”
His gaze snapped around to Lacy as she spoke his very thoughts. Her voice was soft, understanding. In her face he saw a very real sadness. As if she truly did understand.
“Can’t be,” he said, shaking his head.
He expected her to point out the naïveté of that assumption. Instead she asked, “You really don’t remember anything about that day?”
“No.”
She studied him for a moment. “And you prefer it that way.”
“Yes. I’m never happy when even a bit or piece comes back, so why would I want it all? I’ve seen the aftermath of an IED, so what I imagine is bad enough.”
Her eyes closed, and he was taken aback at the genuine pain in her expression. “The things we ask of you,” she whispered.
He knew she meant that in the larger sense of people in the service in general. And he couldn’t doubt the depth of her emotion; Lacy Steele was many things, but phony wasn’t one of them. Odd, he thought. The name he’d originally thought, and she had joked about being, an oxymoron actually suited her. She was beautiful and fine like lace, but beneath that was a core Tate suspected was steel strong.
He stood up abruptly. She rose as well, watching him.
“I’ve been thinking. About that...test we did.”
He knew by the faint color that rose in her cheeks that she knew he was talking about that kiss.
“So have I. A lot.” Her voice had taken on a husky note that felt impossibly like a touch, as if she had reached out and stroked her fingers over his skin.
“Once isn’t really a fair test.”
“No. It’s not.”
Taking that for permission, he reached up and cupped her face. She tilted her head back. She was watching him steadily, no shying away for her, not once she’d made up her mind.
That she’d made up her mind to this sent a shudder through him he had to fight to suppress.
The first kiss truly hadn’t been a fair test. That had been a tentative, learning thing, and even then had nearly singed all his circuits. This one blasted them all to life in a way he’d never experienced in his life.
Her mouth was soft yet strong, tentative yet willing, and above all incredibly, impossibly sweet. Sensation exploded through him. He didn’t want to just taste her, he wanted to explore, to learn, to know every intimate inch of her, and he wanted it now. It took everything he had to rein himself in.
And then she was tasting him back, probing, exploring, and his body nearly cramped with need. He pulled her hard against him and she not only didn’t protest, she slipped her arms around him to add her strength to his until they were melded together from knee to head. He could feel the soft curves of her, yet at the same time sense the taut muscle beneath, and the contrasting facets of Lacy Steele once more nearly put him on his knees.
She made a tiny sound, a soft, needy moan that made him want to sweep her up and carry her off to—
Reality sliced through the haze of pleasure. Carry her off to his nonexistent bed?
Of course there was her bed, which was obviously closer, but it didn’t seem quite right. It was one thing to choose—the old “Your place, or mine?”—but another when it was “It has to be yours because I don’t have a bed.”
With one of the greatest efforts he’d ever made, he broke the kiss.
Great time for pride to kick in. You’re an idiot, McLaughlin.
But he couldn’t step away, not when she was sagging against him as if her knees had weakened as much as his own had. Not when she was resting her head on his chest, and he could feel her quickened breathing, as if she, too, had forgotten about the need for air in those hot, swirling moments.
“Now that,” she murmured, “was a test.”
“Yeah.” Brilliant, McLaughlin. “That’s me,” he muttered. “Always with the right words at the right time.”
She leaned back and looked up at him. “You think I’d rather hear some smooth, practiced platitude that would tell me you do this all the time?”
Again she caught him off guard. And surprised him.
He remembered again her reaction to what Liz had done. And despite having so misjudged the woman he’d thought he loved, he didn’t doubt that he was right about this woman. She would never do that. Not that way. She would have stayed true until he got home, at least. She would never make someone she professed to care about deal with being dumped so far from home.
Of course, she would never merely profess to care; if she said it, it would be real and constant.
And the man she said it to would be a very, very lucky guy.
* * *
Something had definitely changed. Lacy wasn’t sure if it was in her or in Tate, or maybe both of them. But the dynamic between them had definitely changed.
Gee, maybe it was the fact that he’s kissed me twice now, and nearly accomplished what an explosion had not—burning down the neighborhood.
Even as she thought it, her fingers stole upward to touch her lips. Lips that had belatedly discovered their most powerful purpose, to send her pulse racing and heat rippling through her at the very thought of kissing him. Again. And again and again, if she had her way.
She knew he was wary. He’d meant it about being gun-shy, and she couldn’t blame him after what his ex had done. But she’d lived thirty-two years without this kind of incredible feeling, and she wasn’t about to turn her back on it because he wasn’t ready for it. She wouldn’t push, but she wasn’t going to leave him alone, either.
Besides, he shouldn’t be alone. For a lot of reasons. Something about the expression on his face when he was forced to contemplate the possibility that one of his former brothers in arms was trying to kill him had shifted something inside her. He needed to know he wasn’t alone, she thought. Whether he liked it or not.
But he didn’t seem to mind anymore. He didn’t even mind when Cutter showed up and herded them together again the next day. Although when she turned away from adjusting the cage she’d placed around her newest tomato plant and saw him, Cutter not quite nipping at his heels, she couldn’t stop her eyes from tearing up when she saw he was wearing Martin’s old work shirt. It was a bit small on him, so it was unbuttoned over his T-shirt, but it was so preciously familiar with the various stains and the tear in one sleeve where it had caught on a nail.
He frowned the moment he got close enough to see her face.
“Lacy? What’s wrong? Are you—”
“Fine. I’m fine.” She waved in his direction. “It’s the shirt.”
He looked down at it, then back at her. “It bothers you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I think it’s wonderful that you’re wearing it. And so would Martin.”
He plucked at one of the buttons. “It makes me feel...closer to him.”
“Even better.”
He changed the subject, although not so quickly she felt he was dodging away from his own grief. He gestured at Cutter. “I got the feeling I’d better do what he wanted or he was going to try to help me paint with his tail.”
She laughed, bending over to scratch behind the dog’s ears. “You’d look funny with a blue tail, sweetie,” she crooned, planting a kiss on top of the dog’s head. He gave her a string of canine kisses with quick flicks of his pink tongue. When she straightened she realized Tate was watching them intently, an odd sort of expression on his face and the slightest smile lurking at one corner of his mouth.
That mouth, she thought, and looked away before she could betray the tiny burst of heat that threatened to blossom at the mere thought.
“Whatever you just thought, I’d like to hear it.” His voice had gone a little rough, and the sound of it only intensified her reaction.
She wanted to dodge, to look away, to deny she’d thought—or felt—anything at all. But instead she found herself meeting his gaze.
“I think you already know,” she said.
He stared at her for a long moment. She thought she saw him take in a deep breath before he said, his words almost rushed, “Go to dinner with me tomorrow.”
She blinked. She hadn’t expected that. “Is that a request or an order?”
“Whichever will get me to yes.”
She didn’t dare ask if that yes he was aiming for encompassed more than just dinner.