Under Fire (Elite Force #3)(25)
Author: Catherine Mann

“And what would be your type?” He didn’t angle closer, but he might as well as have. His presence reached out to her all the same.

Distance would be nice. Now. She reached for her old safety net for putting space between herself and disquieting feelings cropping up at a totally inappropriate time.

So she threw a dead body between them. Or at least the memory of one.

“Are you asking about my high school boyfriend?” She’d told Liam about Caden back in the Bahamas in hopes of scaring him off, and she was doing the same now. Liam had a way of getting too close, making her want to risk too much.

“Rachel, if I had wanted to know that I would have asked. We were talking about the kiss in the car. Whether it was important or adrenaline. Seems a logical conversational leap to me. Unless you have something else we can do to pass the time, other than talk.”

Her skin flamed to life, her lips ached… and her mind shouted there were guards outside the door. “Are you serious?”

He tugged a strand of her hair. “You brought up the guy in your past for a reason, so you must have something you need to say.”

She curled her feet up under her, the Scotchgarded fabric itchy against her skin. “I met him while he was volunteering at the animal shelter where my mom worked.”

“Sounds like an altruistic sort of fella.” He slid his arm around her shoulder, bringing her closer to him.

So they could talk softer and more freely? Maybe. And that provided all the excuse she needed to do exactly what she wanted.

She laid her head on Liam’s shoulder, the past wrapping around her with a squeeze to her heart that made her wonder if she’d brought this up as much to give herself distance as to push away Liam. Except here he was, even closer to her than before.

“Caden—that was his name—was doing community service to work off some major speeding tickets.”

“Not what I expected to hear about him.” His voice heated the top of her head.

“You didn’t expect me to go for the bad-boy type?”

His knuckles stroked along her arm. “I’m not sure what to say here without pissing you off.”

“How about be honest.”

The air hung heavy between them as he seemed to mull over the best way to dole out that honesty. There was only the sound of bullfrogs and a low mumble beyond the front door as their guards conversed. Disco finished his sniffing ritual and settled on the floor in front of the sofa with a doggy huff.

“Let’s just say that every time you mentioned him in the past, there was such… hell, I don’t know… adoration in your voice, I assumed he was a saint.”

Adoration? She would have said it was love he heard. And yet somehow she shied away from searching deeper into what he said, as if flinching away from a finger poking a bruise.

“Caden was the epitome of high school bad boy who wanted to turn his life around. He joined the military hoping it would give him some structure, help him get his life together.”

“How ‘not together’ was his life?”

“Drinking, some drugs.” She’d broken up with him once when she found a bag of pot under his seat during one of their dates. That he would risk getting her arrested… God, she’d been mad and heartbroken. “His parents were well-off, his dad drank, so he did too. Not that I’m making excuses for him. He wouldn’t have wanted that. Caden did a quiet stint in rehab and he’d really turned things around for himself. For us.”

“You loved him.”

She’d told Liam that before, but finally she heard an understanding in his voice. He got that it wasn’t just adoration, or some frivolous high school crush. She’d found and lost her soul mate and that still left a void in her today.

Finally, Liam seemed to believe and accept that about her. While there was victory in that, there was also a loss. Because now he would really understand she was unattainable. Or her heart was, anyway…

But her body?

“I just wish…” She scrubbed her wrist over her dry eyes, which had long ago been cried out of tears, but as she sat here curled up in Liam’s arms, her emotions felt closer to the surface somehow. “Everything just feels fresh right now. He’d been in the service for a year when he went overseas.”

The image of Caden in his uniform stayed just as clear in her mind as if she’d pulled his framed photo from under the album of high school prom memories. He’d said he joined up for her, to show her how committed he was to making a future with her, one he’d built and not one his parents bought for him.

She swallowed down the pride along with tears and regrets. “He got captured at a checkpoint. Recon teams searched for him and finally located him. By the time they could launch an offensive to rescue him, he’d been beheaded.”

“God, Rachel,” he said softly, tucking her closer, his other hand linking fingers with hers. “I am so sorry, for him and for you.”

She let the silence stretch through half a commercial on TV for some deodorant until her brain cleared of the lingering grief enough to put words together again.

“Thank you, but I’m past needing sympathy.” Although the warm firm grip of his thumb massaging the palm of her hand felt so very good right now. “I’ve done my best to channel what happened into something positive. That’s part of what got me into search and rescue. A sense of how vital minutes, even seconds, can be in saving a life. Now I feel like a huge cop-out for backing away from the mission. But since the Bahamas, I’m just… hollow.”

“That earthquake cleanup, the rescues, it was an especially rough gig.”

Her eyes stayed dry but her throat was clogging fast. “Maybe I’m the one who needs a therapy dog.”

“Search and rescue can take a lot out of a person.”

“You’re still working.” She traced a finger around his name tag stitched to his uniform.

“I’m a robot.”

She snorted on a laugh. God, she’d forgotten how he knew just when to roll out his sense of humor. “Hardly.”

“And neither are you.”

Humor and wisdom wrapped up in one hot guy. Not fair. “I let my brain get muddied when I met Brandon. So much of him reminded me of Caden.” She glanced at Liam, close enough to notice a hint of a cowlick in his dark blond hair that seemed endearing somehow. “I don’t have romantic feelings for Brandon. But there was still this sense that if I could help him, I was helping Caden. Does that make sense?”