ONE

ONE YEAR LATER

DANI

“Do you want matte or gloss?”

I blinked, the paint cans blurring before me. What type of paint did you use to erase a broken dream?

No fucking clue.

My hands gripped the handle of my cart, filled with painting supplies that had taken me the better part of an hour to assemble. Every time I thought I had what I needed, I realized I’d forgotten yet another thing. Time had ceased to exist here, and I half wondered if I’d finally escape aisle twelve and discover night had fallen and I’d wasted one more day not fulfilling the task I dreaded.

The salesman sighed, running his hand through his hair. I couldn’t exactly blame him for the frustration—even with the online research I’d done, it was clear I was pretty clueless on how to repaint an almost-nursery-turned-guest-bedroom in order to make my home more likely to sell.

“What will paint over blue?” I asked.

Air Force blue. Baby boy blue.

There will be another baby, Michael had promised when I’d miscarried. Let’s not change the room.

So we’d kept it—his way of clinging to hope and my attempt at supporting him.

Of course, now they were both gone, and I couldn’t walk into the room without feeling an overwhelming sense of loss.

The salesman’s gaze drifted to my left hand, to the diamond engagement ring that sat there atop a diamond eternity band. I couldn’t look at either of those things and yet, like the room, I wasn’t ready to cast them off. My husband might have died a year ago, but the memory of him still lingered.

“Ma’am, perhaps it would help if your husband came with you. He might have a better sense of what your needs are.”

He would have. He would have repainted the room on one of his free weekends and I wouldn’t have had to worry about a thing. Which was the problem. I’d always prided myself on having my shit together—being an Air Force wife allowed for nothing less considering how frequently I was alone—but now that Michael was actually gone, I kept realizing how many things I didn’t know how to do. And how much I’d grown to depend on him during the seven years we were married.

The paint cans blurred even more, my eyes filling with tears. Oh God, I was going to lose it in aisle twelve.

The thing about being a widow was that you never knew when the tears would come. You could have a string of good days, and then something would set you off—the scent of your husband’s cologne on a stranger, the sound of a jet screaming overhead, your wedding song playing on the radio. Apparently mine had come today. I took a deep breath, steadying myself, struggling to push a response out of my mouth when suddenly a large hand landed on my back, palm between my shoulder blades, fingers stroking my ratty T-shirt.

“I got this,” a voice rumbled behind me.

I whirled around and came face-to-face with Easy.

As commander of the Wild Aces F-16 squadron, my husband—call sign Joker—had been both boss and mentor to the twenty-something pilots who had flown under his leadership. I’d gotten to know all the guys and their families pretty well, but there was no doubt that out of all of them, my favorite was Alex “Easy” Rogers.

There were many things to love about Easy—the contagious smile on his face, the compassion in his eyes, the memory of how he’d comforted me when I’d miscarried and Michael had been halfway across the country, how he’d stood next to me at the podium while I delivered Michael’s eulogy, the way he’d always treated me with indulgent affection. He’d been one of my husband’s best friends, so for that alone, I’d always love him. But it wasn’t just that. He was a big kid with a wild streak ninety percent of the time, but the other ten percent of the time he was one of the best men I’d ever known. He was also one of the last people Michael had spoken to when he was alive—a voice over the radio in their formation of four jets right before Michael was lost to us forever.

I struggled to get my tears in check as Easy spoke to the salesman, and then the guy was gone and I was staring up into Easy’s blue eyes.

“You okay?”

“Just trying to pick out paint.”

“What do you need?” he asked, his expression solemn, the usual swagger and amusement drained from his expression.

It had been a rough year for everyone.

“I’m trying to repaint the guest room.” Do not cry. “The one that was going to be the nursery.” The rest of the words came out in a whoosh of pain. “The Realtor thinks the house will be more marketable if the rooms are neutral. It’s been on the market six months now and we still haven’t gotten any interest.”

I still hadn’t gotten any interest. When you’d been a “we” for seven years, it was hard to switch back to the singular.

The days after I’d received the knock on my front door, after the casualty officers had notified me that Michael’s F-16 had crashed in Alaska—that he was gone—I’d walked through a nightmare. When the official military events had ended, I’d gone home to Georgia to grieve in private. But at thirty-one, living at my parents’ had begun to feel cramped, so now I was back in Oklahoma, waiting to sell the house I’d lived in with Michael, trying to figure out the next step.

Easy looked down at his feet, his big body hunched over, and then his gaze was on me again. “I can do it.”

“No. Thanks for offering, but it’s too much. I’m fine on my own.”

The squadron was deploying to Afghanistan in a month. No way I wanted Easy working in his final weeks before he went to war.

“I can hire someone to do it. Which I probably should have done all along,” I admitted.

Michael’s life insurance took financial worries off my plate for a few years, but thanks to seven years of moving all over the world, my résumé wasn’t exactly impressive. Luxuries like hiring someone to paint felt irresponsible until I found a job. Although if the house didn’t sell . . .

“I’ll do it.” He nudged my shoulder, positioning his big body between me and my cart, studying the items I’d collected so far.

“You have the deployment—”

“It’s no big deal,” he answered. “It’ll take a day. I can come over tomorrow and work on it, if it’s okay with you.”

It hadn’t escaped my notice that the squadron had begun stepping in to help out, although I hadn’t seen Easy for a while. I guessed this was his way of doing the right thing for a buddy’s wife, and as much as it made me feel guilty, I couldn’t argue with a military man’s sense of honor.

“Okay. That’s so sweet. I really appreciate it.” I smiled. “I’ll make you a thank-you dinner.”

“You don’t have to,” he mumbled, a slight flush covering his cheeks as soon as the word “sweet” fell from my lips.

“I want to.”

I hated eating meals alone; half the time I couldn’t even be bothered to cook for myself and I ended up eating cereal for dinner. And there was something about Easy that always seemed to need taking care of. He was a confirmed bachelor to the extreme and while I’d seen him with plenty of girls over the years, I couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a girlfriend or anything close to it, had never seen anyone take care of him.

He nodded in response, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His hand left my back, running through his thick, blond hair. He looked tired and I wondered how he was really doing. All the guys who’d been in the air with Michael when he’d died had struggled in the past year.

Easy turned, his face in profile as he scrutinized the paint cans. And what a beautiful face it was. He was teased mercilessly because he looked more like an underwear model than a fighter pilot—high cheekbones, full lips, long eyelashes, the kind of blue eyes people tried to replicate with color contacts.

Hell, I was a little jealous of how pretty he was.

“So what else do you need?” he asked, his gaze still on the shelf.

I handed him my list; the words scratched there might as well have been a foreign language. I’d always handled the finances, but anything related to the house had been Michael’s domain.

“I got most of it,” I answered. “I’ve never painted before beyond my college dorm room, and I figure this needs to look good if it’s going to impress buyers.”

He nodded again, and I realized this was the most economical I’d ever seen Easy be with his words. Since Michael’s death, things had been . . . strained. He was polite, still willing to offer a hand if I needed it. But the friendship we’d built years ago seemed to have been replaced by the guilt he felt over the accident.

“How have you been?” I asked, trying to pull the conversation out of him, realizing how much I’d missed our friendship. “I haven’t seen you in months.” I thought about it. “Since Thanksgiving?”

Had we really let five months slip by? I’d e-mailed him on his birthday in February and he’d responded, but we hadn’t seen each other—

“I saw you at the squadron in March. You were leaving with Jordan.”

Surprise filled me. “I didn’t see you. Why didn’t you say hi?”

He shrugged. “You guys were talking; I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

Could this be more awkward? Did I remind him of Michael’s death? Was he just uncomfortable around me?

I’d been walking through a fog for the past few months, and somewhere along the way I’d missed that we’d gotten to this point. And it wasn’t just Easy; I’d been so consumed by my grief that life had passed me by. Friends’ lives had changed, they’d moved on to other things, and I’d stayed rooted in that day in May, in the loss that defined and overshadowed my world. I’d lost touch with people, simply stopped trying, and I’d given up more than I’d realized, and suddenly, I wanted to make up for it, needed to fix the gap between us.

“Hey.” I laid a hand on his arm and his entire body stiffened. A pang hit me, and then another one, piercing the numbness shrouding me.

My voice cracked. “I miss him, too. If it’s too weird to be around me or if I remind you of everything that’s happened, and you need to take a step back, I understand. I know it’s been hard for you guys to move on from the accident, and I don’t want to make it worse. But if you need someone to talk to, I’m here. I miss our friendship. I miss you.”

EASY

Fuck.

I closed my eyes for a beat, trying to drown her out, to throw the wall back up, attempting to push her out of the cracks and crevices of my heart where she’d snuck in and taken up permanent residence in my chest.

She smelled like apples. Forbidden-fucking-apples. She looked . . .

My eyes slammed open and my gaze slid over her. I blinked, not sure if it was the scent of apples or the sight in front of me that made me so fucking hungry.

She wore a pair of white shorts that showed off surprisingly tanned legs. A faded T-shirt that likely harkened back to her days as a cheerleader at the University of Georgia. Her red-gold hair was up in a loose braid, her green eyes staring up at me.

I’d been in detox, hoped the months apart would cure this ache inside me every single fucking time I saw her.

They hadn’t.

If anything, the time apart had only made the ache worse.

I fisted my hands at my sides, looking away from her again, her words cutting through me as I focused on the paint cans as though my life depended on it. And then I couldn’t take it anymore, and my gaze slid down to the spot where she touched me, where her fingers rested on my bicep, her skin a few shades paler than mine.

I swallowed, trying to drag more air into my lungs, her hand suddenly as dangerous as a deadly spider.

I had a pretty solid you-can-look-but-you-can’t-touch policy where Dani was concerned. There had been moments when I bent the rules a little bit, like a few minutes ago when I’d seen her standing there amid all the painting supplies looking so lost, as though she was drowning and needed a life raft to pull her to shore, but I paid for every fucking moment in spades.

“You don’t make it worse,” I lied, answering her original question, hating that I’d given her a reason to worry about anyone other than herself. She had more shit on her plate than most people could ever deal with, and the last thing I wanted to do was add to it.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my cargo shorts, breaking the physical connection between us, still not quite able to meet her gaze. Her eyes could bring the most resolute man to his fucking knees.

I swallowed again, wondering if my voice sounded as strained to her ears as it did to mine. “It’s good to see you again.”

Heaven and hell rolled into a knot in my stomach.

I’d had it bad for her since the first moment I saw her, but as guilty as I’d felt wanting my friend’s wife, the desire inside me now for his widow was infinitely worse.

I would have given everything I had to trade places with him, so he could have come back for her.

She smiled, a real smile, one she rarely doled out anymore. “You, too.”

Her gaze drifted past me, her smile deepening, and she stepped forward another foot, close enough so her side brushed against mine, warm and soft, the apple smell filling my nostrils once again. It had to be her shampoo. Her head barely came to my chin, her scent wafting up at me. I bent my head just an inch, barely resisting the urge to inhale, drowning in her, the warmth from her body—

“You have admirers,” Dani commented, her teasing voice breaking me from my stupor.

I blinked, following her gaze.

Two girls stood at the end of the aisle—college girls by the look of the youthful glow they sported and the sorority letters stretched across their tits—staring at us, wide, curious smiles on their faces. They both blushed as they caught me staring back, exchanging whispers behind cupped hands.

Dani nudged me, the touch sending another jolt through my body. I was hard as a fucking rock in a home improvement store and it had everything to do with the scent of apples and the allure of soft curves against me, and nothing to do with the sorority girls.

She gifted me with another smile, this one brighter than the last, filling her gaze and spilling over into my heart.

My mouth went dry.

“You can go work your magic,” she teased, her words jolting me back to reality. “I’m fine here.”

The only thing worse than being utterly and totally in love with the one woman who you absolutely could not fucking have, who saw you more as a brother than a man, was having the same woman, the one who’d ripped your heart out of your chest time and time again, try to set you up with someone else.

I was pretty sure there was some bitter fucking irony here considering my rep, but with my heart lying in the middle of aisle twelve, gushing blood, I wasn’t much for humor.

I shook my head, turning away from the girls, Dani once again all I could see.

“I’m okay.”

“You sure? I really don’t mind. Think of me as one of the guys. Hell, I can be your wingwoman.”

“I’m sure,” I croaked, pretty sure she’d just slayed me—death by well-meaning matchmaking and the thrust of a sharp blade that accompanied every one of her words.

I tilted my head, staring back at the girls, wondering if it would help if I did go over there, if I lost myself in two hot bodies. In my younger years, I probably would have gone for it. Now it would be another meaningless fuck in a string of them. And I didn’t want that anymore. I’d watched two of my closest friends—Noah and Thor—meet women and fall in love this past year. Noah was now married with a baby on the way, and Thor was engaged to the girl he’d loved, and lost, and somehow regained. So yeah. Maybe I couldn’t have Dani, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to meet a woman I could love, who would love me in return. At thirty-three it might have taken me a while to get here, but I was ready for something more. And if my perfect woman bared an uncanny resemblance to Dani, whatever.

Some women slid under your skin so deep, you couldn’t carve them out no matter how hard you tried.