Wind Chime Wedding (A Wind Chime Novel Book 2) (23 page)

Colin had gone from being a member of one of the most elite and respected fighting forces in the military—deploying to war zones, carrying out missions in the most dangerous places in the world, and spending every other waking moment training.

Now, instead of doing what he was trained to do, what he
wanted
to do, he was going to cocktail parties and fundraisers, dowsing political fires for his father, and spending his free time reading resumes to help his fellow former service members find jobs.

“Do you miss it?” she asked softly.

“What?” he asked, still not looking at her.

“Being a SEAL?”

“Every day.”

He said it so fast, so automatically, her heart broke for him. Reaching up slowly, she laid a hand on his cheek. “I think what you’re doing now is amazing.”

He looked at her then, and the emotions in his eyes took her breath away.

She was crossing a dangerous line, Becca thought. Maybe, somewhere, deep down, she knew she had already crossed it simply by coming here tonight. The wind raced through the street, snapping branches off the maple trees, tearing petals off the azaleas. She knew she should pull her hand back, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stop touching him. Recklessly, she pressed up on her toes and brushed her lips over his.

It was only supposed to be a fleeting offer of comfort, while she stole a brief, selfish pleasure…to know what he tasted like. But there was nothing fleeting or comfortable in the way his mouth met hers—in a kiss so possessive, so demanding, there was nothing she could do but surrender to it.

She heard the sound of papers falling as his arms came around her, as she melted into him. His fingers curled into the back of her shirt, molding her closer. She kissed him back desperately, hungrily, pushing her hands into his hair, letting her fingers tangle in those thick black locks as she’d wanted to so badly for days now. His hands were everywhere, touching every surface of her.

She had never been kissed like his before. She had never felt anything like this before.

She didn’t want it to stop.

Her blood hummed, pumping faster. She could feel his desire, the hard length of him pressing against her. There were too many clothes, too much material between them. She needed to feel him—all of him.

As if he’d read her mind, his hands dipped beneath the hem of her shirt, cruising up the front of her stomach, heating her flesh. When his calloused palm closed over her breast, a small sound escaped from deep in her throat.

Where had this been all her life? Where had he been?

Across the street, a clay pot tumbled off a neighbor’s porch and cracked as it hit the brick sidewalk. A group of children dashed by, laughing as they raced toward the harbor. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, a small piece of reality clicked back into the place.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Stop.”

His eyes lifted, locking on hers. They were wild and hungry, filled with a sexual desire so raw and powerful, it nearly brought her to her knees.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered.

“Becca,” he breathed, still holding her. His voice was thick with need, with longing for her. “Don’t go.”

“I have to,” she said, as guilt settled its gray wings around her shoulders. What had she done? What was she thinking? “This was a mistake,” she said, quickly untangling herself from his arms. “I’m sorry. I should never have come.”

T
he sense of peace that usually swept over Colin whenever he crossed the four-mile bridge over the Chesapeake Bay to Maryland’s Eastern Shore didn’t come this time. Restless, edgy, and still pissed as hell about everything that had happened the day before, he cranked up the speakers, trying to lose himself in the music, but he couldn’t shake the slow burning frustration that grew with every mile closer he came to Heron Island…and Becca.

He’d considered going after her at least a dozen times the night before, but he’d forced himself to wait, to sleep on it. Because he hadn’t known what he would say when he saw her again. The truth was, he didn’t want to
say
anything. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted his mouth on hers. He wanted his hands on her body. He wanted to strip her clothes off and bury himself inside her as many times as it took until she promised never to run away again.

He knew, without a doubt, that he could have her. That if he got her alone again they
would
finish what they’d started. But he wanted her to come to him. He wanted her to end things with her fiancé first.

He didn’t want to be a mistake she made and regretted afterwards.

After what Della had told him, he knew that calling off the wedding to Tom was not going to be an easy decision for her. He knew there was a chance that even if she was coming to realize that marrying Tom was a mistake, she might still go through with it because of the link they shared in their pasts.

He needed to find a way to convince her to stop living in the past, to start seeing her future in terms of what she wanted now, not what she might have wanted when she was sixteen. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do that yet, but he would figure something out.

In the meantime, he needed to decide what to do about the veterans’ center. If Goldwater’s accusation was true, and his father had been doling out political favors in exchange for donations, then he and Will needed to start reaching out to the rest of their investors today to assure them that they’d had no idea what was happening.

Which was going to make them both look like a couple of complete idiots.

Passing a combine backing up traffic in the two right-hand lanes on Route 50, he gunned the engine. The donation they’d accepted from the casino owner several months ago had funded a large chunk of the renovations to the inn. If they were going to even think about giving that money back to cut ties with whatever corruption his father may or may not be involved in, they needed to find another influx of cash immediately.

When the Bluetooth connected to his speakers signaled an incoming call, he glanced down at the name lighting up the screen.
Glenn.
He was surprised it had taken his father’s campaign manager this long to call. He punched a button on the wheel to answer. “Yeah.”

“Where are you?” Glenn asked. “The press conference is in half an hour.”

“I’m on my way to Heron Island.”

“What?” Glenn’s tone shifted from harried to panicked. “Why?”

“I need to take care of some things.”

“We need you
here
, Colin. Your father needs you here. It’s going to look really bad if you’re not standing beside him when he responds to Goldwater’s claim.”

“I don’t care how it looks.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Colin,” Glenn said, lowering his voice. “I know you’re angry, but it’s not true. None of it’s true. Your father needs your support today.”

“I’m not in a very supportive mood.”

Glenn started to say something else, but Colin ended the call before he could finish his sentence. He’d already told his father to count him out for all future campaign events until this blew over. He’d spent the last six months playing the role of the perfect military hero son and it had backfired.

All he wanted now was to focus on the veterans’ center.

He cranked the music back up and tried not to think about how much it bothered him that he didn’t know whether or not his father was telling the truth. He usually had a pretty good read on people, but his father had been trained to twist words and narratives to appeal to the public, to say whatever people wanted to hear to get elected.

What would stop him from using that same technique on his son?

It was times like these when he longed the most for his former life on the teams. Things were so much easier overseas. Missions were clear. Goals were solid and tangible. Objectives were stated in black and white—
identify the targets, take them out, get the hell out of there.

Back home, everything operated in shades of gray. And just when you thought you had a solid grip on the palette, a new shade would appear, throwing everything off balance again.

The highway split and he veered right, heading south along the peninsula toward the small coastal towns of Talbot County. He was meeting Will at the inn in half an hour. They’d already spoken over the phone to strategize the best way to deal with the fallout from the announcement, but his friend was headed back to the base in Virginia Beach today and he wanted to talk to him face-to-face before he left.

Besides, now that he knew their contractor was an alcoholic, he had zero faith in his ability to get the job done on time. At least one of them needed to be there to supervise the workers and make sure the renovations were still on track, despite the fact that they didn’t know where the money was going to come from to pay them now.

Thirty minutes later, oyster shells crunched under his tires as he passed the hedge of flowering blackberry bushes and pulled into the circular driveway in front of the inn. Several work trucks were parked in the lot reserved for guests, and he could hear the whir of a power saw and the crack of hammers echoing over the water. Rolling to a stop beside Will’s SUV, he watched his friend walk out the front door of the house to greet him.

Colin cut the engine and stepped out of the truck, pausing for a minute to let the circulation come back into his leg. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Will said, closing the distance between them.

Neither man smiled as they shook hands. Will’s short brown hair was mussed, a beard covered his jaw, and his brown eyes looked tired and wary.

Colin eyed the long gash on his friend’s left forearm. “What happened there?”

“I got into an argument with a cameraman who wanted to get a shot of Taylor coming out of school yesterday.”

Colin felt a new wave of frustration. “Did he get the shot?”

“No,” Will said. “But he’s threatening to press charges now.”

“Why?”

“He might have accidentally hit his head against the side of his news van and broken his nose afterwards.”

Colin’s lips twitched. He couldn’t help it. He knew Will wasn’t very happy with him at the moment, not only because he’d kept the news about the school from him, but because he was the one who’d talked him into leaving the teams to come back home and open the veterans’ center. He couldn’t have it falling apart before it even got off the ground. “I’m sorry, man. About everything.”

Will shook his head. “I had no idea dealing with reporters would be as bad as some of the terrorists we’ve dealt with.”

“Yeah,” Colin said, shutting his car door. He’d dealt with reporters all his life. He’d left that world purposefully, choosing a branch of the military that was as far from the limelight as possible. When he’d gone to the recruiting office in NYC after 9/11, the most attractive part of the SEALs had been that they were the shadow warriors, the ones who got the job done under the cover of night, the ones who shied from the attention. He felt terrible for exposing his friends to this world—the world he had wanted so badly to leave behind.

“I need to hit the road soon,” Will said, checking his watch, “but I wanted to get another look at the place before I left. See how much progress they’d made patching up the foundation.”

“How’s it look?” Colin asked, as they walked back toward the front door of the old farmhouse.

“I don’t know,” Will admitted. “It’s a bigger job than I expected. Are you sure we’re making the right decision to rush things like this? Maybe we ought to back off, give Jimmy’s crew some time to catch any other mistakes and fix them now, before we open. Besides, after everything that happened yesterday, maybe it would be best if we let things cool off for a few weeks, see how the dust settles.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable suggestion, Colin thought, following him inside, past the stairwell, and into the living room, where a gaping hole in the wall beside the fireplace now offered a view out to the backyard. Two men were laying concrete in a trench that had been dug in the ground to grant them access to the base of the structure. He nodded to the two men, who he recognized as members of Jimmy’s original crew. They nodded back, before going back to work.