Falling for the Marine (A McCade Brothers Novel) (Entangled Brazen) (10 page)

“Chloe, that’s not fair. The night we met you were handcuffed to your bed, wearing two scraps of black lace, yelling your head off for someone to rescue you. As memories go, meeting you ranks right up there in my hall of fame, but no, I was not thinking, ‘Here’s a girl who walks the straight and narrow—’”

He shouldn’t have admitted anything, because she didn’t let him finish. “Don’t you think your commanding officer and his lovely wife are going to sense the same thing?”

“
No
.” He reached over and took her hand. Her free-spirited nature, her courage to embrace her wild side, made her Chloe—unique, chaotic, spontaneous, constantly surprising Chloe. Yes, he appreciated discipline, order and control, and maybe their diametrically opposite approaches to life meant they mixed about as well as whiskey and a piña colada, but he couldn’t stand to let her consider her personality a failing. “They’re going to wonder what a beautiful, vivacious woman like you is doing with a big, cynical marine like me.”

Her fingers curled around his and hung on. “This is a bad risk, Michael. The colonel and his wife will want to hear our Grandkid Story, and ours is hopelessly warped. There’s no making it sound smooth and pretty.”

“Our Grandkid Story?”

“Yes, our Grandkid Story—what we tell our grandkids when they ask how grandma and grandpa met. Here’s ours in a nutshell: Grandpa had to rescue grandma when she handcuffed herself to her bed, then grandma got fired for trying to give grandpa a happy-ending massage, then grandpa and grandma moved in together and pretended to be engaged so grandma wouldn’t be homeless and grandpa wouldn’t get drummed out of the Corps.”

“Sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than, ‘Grandma and grandpa met on Match,’ don’t you think?”

“What I’m trying to highlight here is that our real story has some…problems. I don’t want to embarrass you or set you back. What if I slip up and say or do something to tip the Hardings off that things aren’t what we’ve led them to believe?”

“You won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because they’re not looking to trip us up. They’re curious, that’s all. They may ask a few questions, but those are easy to anticipate and prepare for, right?”

“You think?” She eyed him warily.

“Yes. Trust me,” he got up, grabbed the bottle of wine from the fridge, and refilled her glass, “you’re stressing about this way too much. The questions are predictable. As for the answers, aim for ninety-nine percent truth, one percent bullshit.”

“You make this sound like a game.”

“Think of it as a game.” He raised his beer bottle. “In fact, for tonight, let’s make it a game. For every question one of us gets right, the other has to drink.” She’d be relaxed in no time. “Five right answers in a row, and I text my CO and tell him we’ll be there.”

“Fine. How’d we meet?”

“Easy.” He shot her a grin. “Applying my truth-to-bullshit formula, I’d say we were neighbors, and I got to know you when you needed help opening something. Drink.”

She narrowed her eyes but took a sip of her wine. “Okay, bull-shitter, what was our first date?”

“You invited me over for a beer, to say ‘Thanks.’ The rest is history. Drink again.”

She swallowed and then sent him a look full of challenge. “Where was I born?”

“Texas.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Are you psychic?”

“Drink.” While she obeyed, he explained, “You mentioned it last night at the Stars & Bars…right before you fell off the porch and threw up.”

She covered her face with her hands and groaned. “Oh, Lord, I’d been trying to block that out. How can you possibly want to been seen in public with me—the girl who threw up in front of the Stars & Bars?”

“If I limited my associates to people who hadn’t thrown up at the Stars & Bars, I’d be a pretty lonely guy.” He shrugged. “Around a military base, nights like last night kind of go with the territory.”

She peeked at him from over her hands. “Do I have to drink for that answer?”

He raised an eyebrow and grinned at her. “No. But it counts as number five. Looks like we’ve got plans for tomorrow night.”

She took a large gulp of wine. “You’re moving too fast. We’re not done with our game. What’s my favorite color?”

“They’re not going to ask that.”

“Favorite color is something a fiancé would know.”

“Fine.” The yellow underwear popped into his mind. “I’ll go out on a limb and say yellow.”

“Drink.” She tapped her wineglass to his empty beer bottle. “It’s a trick question. I love so many colors I couldn’t possibly choose a favorite.”

“All right, cheater.” He took her glass and drank deeply, not so much because he liked Chardonnay, but because he didn’t want her waking up with a headache tomorrow. “What’s
my
favorite color?”

Her eyes raked him up and down, but, considering he wore camouflage pants and a plain white T-shirt, he figured his outfit offered precious few clues. She scanned his apartment and took in a couple of framed photographs one of his copilots took of the Hindu Kush Mountains at sunrise, bathed in shades of blue and white. “Blue?”

“Just lately, I’ve found myself partial to gray.”

“Gray?” She frowned, obviously disappointed. “Dull, not-quite-black, not-quite-white gray?”

“Sure.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and stared at her. “I never really appreciated all the amazing nuances of gray until I saw your eyes. When you’re amused, they sparkle like polished silver. When you’re upset, they go dark and opaque, like thunderheads stacked along the horizon of a winter sky. And my personal favorite,” he lifted the wineglass from her fingers and took a swallow, all the while watching her pulse flutter at the base of her throat, “when you’re turned on, those eyes of yours go soft and smoky.”

The gray eyes in question stared at him. She blinked slowly. “Wow…that’s pretty good bullshit.”

The scary part was his response involved none whatsoever. He forced a smile. “You think?”

She nodded.

“Awesome.” He handed her back her empty wineglass and pulled out his phone. “You heat up the lasagna. I’m going to text the colonel and tell him we’ll see them tomorrow night.”

“Oh, God. Okay.” She shot up and wiped her palms on her shorts. “Tell them we’re bringing a homemade apple cobbler, and—”

“We are?”

“Yes, that’s my one dessert specialty. And ask if there’s anything else we can bring,” she said as she retreated to the kitchen.

“They invited us, Chlo. I think they’ve got it covered. And you don’t have to put yourself out cooking. I’m going to the gym tomorrow morning with my friend Dane. I’ll stop at the store on my way home and pick up a nice bottle of wine as a hostess gift.”

“It’s polite to offer,” she said as she preheated the oven, “and a homemade dessert says your fiancée is the type of woman who makes the extra effort.” She started looking through cabinets. “Shoot. I have to put together a list of things I’ll need for the cobbler. If you’re stopping by the store anyway, will you pick up some things for me?”

“Sure.” Shit. She was getting all wound up again. He could feel the nerves radiating off her all the way from his safe zone in the living room. He hit send on the text and then pocketed his phone and wandered into the kitchen. He found her bent over, sliding the casserole dish into the oven. Maybe he startled her or maybe drinking games and hot ovens didn’t mix, but she suddenly hissed in a breath, yanked her hand back, and brought her wrist to her mouth. The oven door snapped closed.

“Here.” He put an arm around her waist and pulled her to the sink, then turned on the cold water, stepped behind her, and held her wrist under the spray. She flinched when the cold water hit the burn, which caused her body to jerk against his, which, in turn, caused a predictable reaction from his dick. Talk about making up for lost time. After weeks of dormancy, Chloe showed up, and he’d had a near constant hard-on ever since.

He held her a little tighter. “Hold still. Let the water cool the burn for a few minutes.” With his arms wrapped around her, they both stared down at the side of her wrist, where a red welt from the hot oven rack rose on her skin.

“Stupid,” she said, shaking her head.

Her hair brushed his jaw and a few strands tangled in his five o’clock shadow. He fought a sudden compulsion to bury his face against the back of her neck and just drink her in, scent and sensation.
Hey, Romeo, maybe you could do that when she’s not suffering from a second-degree burn?

“An accident,” he corrected, speaking softly while forcing himself to back off, “could happen to anyone.” He tipped the hand holding hers and showed her a similar scar on his wrist. “Old college injury—frozen pizza.”

She leaned back until her head rested against his chest. “I’d wondered about the scar. There’s one more question I’ll be able to get right tomorrow night.”

“Hey, do me a favor and don’t worry about tomorrow. We’re going to game the shit out of this thing.” He turned the water off, dug a clean dish towel out of a drawer, and gently dried her hand and arm. Then he grabbed the first-aid kit from under the sink and led her to the small dining area just off the kitchen, opposite the living room. She took the seat he held out for her and looked up at him with a you’re-stoned expression.

“C’mon, this is your chance to learn all my secrets. Ask me anything.”

Chapter Ten

Michael’s challenge hung in the air while he leaned over her wrist and wrapped a gauze bandage loosely around her burn.

“Anything?” she repeated, a little disconcerted to find herself the object of healing hands. She took care of people. As a rule, nobody took care of her.

Then again, her rules had gotten screwed up right from the get-go with Michael.

“Anything,” he confirmed, nodding absently as he secured the bandage.

She couldn’t help noticing the overhead lamp highlighted gold strands in his thick, brown hair. “I can’t think of anything.” Totally true. Her mind was too occupied noticing how uncharacteristically
careful
he was for such a big, tough man. No surprise really. She remembered how he’d rubbed her wrist the night he’d rescued her from the handcuffs.

“How about, ‘When’s my birthday?’” he prompted.

“November twenty-ninth.”

Sharp brown eyes collided with hers. “That’s
my
birthday.”

“I know. I read it on your chart yesterday.”

He kissed her bandaged wrist so gently her heart threatened to melt, and then he looked up at her and smiled. “With a memory like yours, we’re solid. I was trying to tell you to ask me when is
your
birthday?”

“Oh. Sorry. When’s my birthday?”

“I have no idea actually. November twenty-ninth?”

“Nice try. Drink.”

He got up and refilled her wineglass, then took a gulp, and plunked the half-f glass down on the small dining table. “When’s your birthday?”

“May thirty-first.”

“Not too far away.”

“Yeah, in a few short weeks, I’ll be well into my mid-twenties.” She sighed dramatically. “Twenty-five, divorced, and jobless. Thank God I’m engaged, or I’d be so depressed.”

“If it helps, I can promise our relationship will never end in divorce.”

The statement rang with such intensity it took her a moment to get the joke, and then she burst out laughing. “That’s the most romantic thing any man has ever said to me.”

He grinned and pulled her into a quick, one-armed hug. “I’m smooth like that. And I’ll make you another promise.”

“I’m not sure my heart can handle another.” She crossed her hands over her chest.

“If that lasagna you’re cooking tastes as amazing as it smells, I’m your slave for life.”

“The lasagna never fails. What
kind
of slave?” Naughty, but she couldn’t resist.

He raised an eyebrow and gave her an equally naughty look. “Any kind you think you can handle.”

…

They continued the game during dinner—which Michael admitted was the world’s best lasagna, Mexican or otherwise—and willingly assumed his role of slave. This necessitated opening another bottle of Chardonnay. He also found himself playing self-appointed rescuer again, surreptitiously drinking more than his fair share of the bottle in order to save her from a hangover. He managed to get heroically tipsy in the process, which hadn’t happened in a long time, and made concentrating on the game tough. When she spoke, his attention kept wandering to her hands or her mouth. Her actual words tended to get lost in the buzz.

The task of cleaning up after dinner got his body moving again, but his brain still felt sluggish. Chloe, on the other hand, was going a mile a minute.

“So your oldest brother, Trevor, is an LAPD homicide cop, married to Kylie, who owns a yoga studio?” Chloe followed the question up by handing him their dirty plates and utensils.

“Right.” He nodded, rinsed the dishes, and loaded the dishwasher.

She folded a new sheet of aluminum foil over the half-empty casserole dish and placed it in the fridge. “Logan is your younger brother, the rock climber. He lives in Colorado and founded a climbing-gear company. And he’s married to…hmm…” She bit her lip.

Michael shut the fridge door so they stood face to face. “And he’s married to?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “Um…oh… I know. He’s not married. I got that right didn’t I? You, sir”—she poked his chest—“have to drink.”

“I’ve created a monster.” Still, he picked up his glass and drained it. “No more. Your slave requests mercy.” He took her hand and dragged her to the couch, and then pulled her down beside him.

“My slave… I do like the sound of that. I may have to change your nickname from Major Hottie to slave.” Her wide smile and the extra bounce she took when she sat told him he hadn’t completely cornered the market on tipsy.

“Since when is my nickname Major Hottie?”

“Lynne came up with it, I think.”

“Your recruiter?” The idea of his hotness being assessed by a complete stranger left him feeling a little…fazed. Heat crawled up his neck.

“Why, Major, you’re blushing.”

“I am not. Marines don’t blush.”

She giggled and pressed her palms to his flushed cheeks. “Oh, sorry, my mistake, Major Hottie.”

“I think I prefer ‘slave.’”

“You don’t say?” She giggled again. “What are your slave duties?”

“Entirely your call, Mistress, but might I suggest you’re looking a little tense right here?” He rested his hands on her shoulders and kneaded the muscles.

Her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “
You’re
going to give
me
a massage?”

“Sure.” But he also really liked the idea of her body all pressed up against his, so he reclined and pulled her down until she lay on top of him. “I learned my techniques from the best.”

She raised her head and eyed him suspiciously. “The position you’ve chosen is certainly innovative.”

He ran his hand along the back of her neck and lowered her head so her cheek nestled against his chest. The warm weight of her breasts rested against his diaphragm. He found himself taking deeper breaths than necessary and smoothing his palms down her back in slow, even strokes.

She snuggled into him a little deeper. “Mmm. That’s nice.”

He could not agree more. Content to drift, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the feel of her draped all over him like an absurdly sexy blanket. Just for a minute…

A pounding noise jackhammered through his skull and rattled his brain.

“What the…?”

A soft, groggy groan sounded from somewhere close to his ear and warm breath tickled his temple.
Chloe
.

He snapped his eyes open, winced at the daylight streaming through the living room window, and took stock. They were still on the sofa with Chloe sprawled over him, limp and boneless. He had one hand tangled in her hair and the other down the back of her shorts. Her tank top had worked its way up her torso during the night, leaving a smooth expanse of bare skin, and, just above the low, wash-whitened waistband of her shorts, the greenish-blue tip of a hummingbird wing.

The pounding started again, and a familiar voice yelled through the door, “Hey, man, it’s Dane. You okay in there?”

“Fine,” he tried to reply, but the word left his dry, scratchy throat like a weak cough. Chloe groaned again, an incoherent protest against all the noise, and snuggled her face against his neck.

The next thing he knew, his front door swung open and Dane walked in. “You know your door is”—his friend’s voice trailed off as he got an eyeful of Chloe and Michael entwined on the couch, and froze—“unlocked.”

Chloe popped up like a prairie dog and blinked. Her red-gold curls tumbled every which way. She had a line across her cheek from the imprint of his T-shirt. She looked sweet, and rumpled, and so unbelievably sexy, if Dane hadn’t been standing there, he would have hustled them into the bedroom, tossed her down in the middle of his bed, and found out, at last, what it felt like to be inside her while she arched and shivered and cried his name like some kind of prayer.

Instead, he sat up as well, sneaked a hand along her back and tugged her tank top down. Then with no small amount of regret, he slid her off his lap. “Dane, meet Chloe. Chloe, Dane. He was just leaving.”

“Um, right.” Dane ran a hand through his short, uncombed blond hair, and had the good grace to flash an apologetic smile. “Hi, Chloe. Nice to meet you.”

She stood, stretched like a cat, and then held out her hand. “Nice to meet you too, Dane.”

He took her hand, and Michael didn’t miss the way his friend’s gaze traveled over her, taking in long, bare legs in tiny shorts, the yellow bra peeking out from the neckline of her tight tank top, the mass of curls spilling around her shoulders. “Sorry for barging in. I didn’t realize Grumpy here had a guest. I agreed to drag his sorry ass down to the gym this morning, and I thought he was wussing.”

Michael scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m not wussing on anything.” Was it really eight in the morning? He squinted at the clock on the cable box.

“The gym?” Chloe sent him a sharp look and then turned her attention back to Dane. “That might not be such a good idea. Michael has a back injury.”

“Don’t worry, I know all about it. I’m not just his taller, smarter, much hotter friend, I’m also his doctor.” Dane gave her his best ain’t-I-the-shit grin and Michael wondered if kicking his doctor’s ass would aggravate his back.

“Oh, Dr. Anderson. I read your report.” At Dane’s inquiring look, she went on, “I do—well, did—massage therapy at the clinic just outside Camp Pendleton. I worked on Michael earlier this week.”

“Excellent. The massage therapy was another thing I was afraid he might wuss out on. Glad to know he followed through.”

She slid a sly smile Michael’s way. “He grumbled a little at first, but now he’s a believer.”

“That’s good, because I plan to put him through a whole series of physical therapy this morning. He may come crying to you when we’re done.”

Michael pushed off the couch. “Yeah, right, we’ll see whose crying. I’m going to go change. Be useful and make Chloe some coffee.”

He turned, but stopped when she put a hand on his arm. “If I make you a list, can you stop at the store on your way home from the gym and pick up the…uh”—she glanced toward the kitchen where Dane was dumping scoops of coffee into a filter—“the cobbler stuff for the thing tonight?”

“Dane, you got time to hit the commissary after the gym?”

“No problem.” He poured a carafe of water into the reservoir. “I know you hate to run out of Depends.”

Michael smirked and flipped him the bird and then looked at Chloe, who had her fingers knit together so tightly her knuckles had turned white. He unlinked her fingers and gave her hand a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Chlo. You’re going to have the Hardings eating out of your hands tonight.”

She stared back at him with huge, worried eyes. “I just hope the cobbler hides the smell of our bullshit.”