Cathie Linz - Married To A Marine

“You’ve got me there,” Kelly admitted with a grin. “So I don’t always play it safe, I admit it. Ah, I see the kitchen.” She made a beeline for it, bringing the box of food with her and leaving Justice to follow her.

She surreptitiously noted his awkward movement. He was still limping, but his mother had told Kelly that the doctors said that was due to the serious bruising and cuts on his leg. He also suffered a slight concussion. But it was his right arm and shoulder that were the real problem.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the increasing thunder, in addition to the banging of pots and pans as she searched for what she wanted.

“Making dinner,” Kelly replied. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t eaten since I had a burger along the interstate down from Nashville.”

Justice was tempted to ask her what she was doing in Nashville, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of showing any curiosity about her.

His ex-wife’s little sister had certainly grown up. She was wearing baggy cargo pants with flowers on the knees and a lime-green cropped T-shirt that showed the pale skin along the small of her back as she bent over to return the pile of pots to the cabinet. Her wavy, light-brown hair was gathered into a single braid held in place by some sort of flower twisty-thing. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry aside from a sensible watch and silly dangle earrings shaped like question marks.

Justice certainly had plenty of questions. “How did you know where I was?”

“Your mother told me,” Kelly replied. “She’s worried about you.”

“Why would my mother tell my ex-wife’s sister she was worried about me?”

“Ask her.”

“I’m asking you.”

“And I prefer that you ask her. You should call her, anyway, to let her know you’re okay.”

“She has no cause to be worried about me,” he said gruffly.

“Right,” she noted with a wry smile in his direction. “I can’t imagine why she was the teeniest bit concerned that her oldest son took off from the hospital against doctor’s orders to hide out on a practically deserted coastal island.”

“I am not hiding out,” he said in a gritty voice. “A Marine does not hide out.”

“Hey, fella, I’ll have you know that you’re not the first Marine I’ve treated,” she informed him before setting a saucepan on the stove and pouring in a batch of homemade soup from a plastic container she’d brought with her. “I know all about the Marine’s set of values. Honor, courage, commitment. Not stupidity, however. I saw no reference to stupidity.”

Justice couldn’t believe the way she’d barged into his domain and made herself at home. He was a member of the Marine Corps’ elite Force Recon, the best of the best. He could take out an enemy sniper before they knew what hit them.

Or he used to be able to do that. The docs had warned him that those days were gone now.

Justice couldn’t believe it—years of living on the edge, of making danger his friend, and he got hurt not on a mission but by driving in the States on a normal sunny day.

And now they hailed him as a hero. If they only knew….

The inner torment streaked through him, overshadowing the physical pain he’d been living with since the accident. Gritting his teeth, he battened down his emotions and blocked out the raw fear and guilty doubts that plagued him.

Lightning flashed overhead and thunder crashed a second later. Kelly didn’t even flinch as she added salt to the soup.

Her calmness irritated him even further.

His life was in a mess, and she was cooking soup.

Yeah, she might have grown up, but she was still as much a nuisance as ever. And he wasn’t about to let her into his life. No matter how good that darn soup was starting to smell.

First thing in the morning he would send her packing. But first he’d eat. He needed food to regain his strength, and there was no contest that what she was cooking had to be better than the stuff he’d been eating lately.

But she wasn’t staying. No way. He’d have her off-island on tomorrow’s every-other-day ferry to the mainland.

“So what’s the deal with you and my mother?” he demanded, carefully lowering himself into a straight-backed kitchen chair.

Kelly looked guilty. His eyes narrowed. Something was up here.

Kelly tried sidestepping the issue once again by repeating her earlier mantra. “Maybe you should ask her.”

“I’m asking you,” he said, grimacing as he removed the sling in order to use his right hand. He couldn’t afford to keep babying it. This was his shooting arm. He had to regain his mobility ASAP. Regardless of what the doctors said.

She placed a huge bowl of soup in front of him along with a few thick slices of what looked like homemade bread. “And I’m saying you should ask your mother. You have a cell phone with you, right? So you can call her and let her know you’re all right.”

“Why this sudden concern?”

“It’s not sudden,” she denied, putting her own bowl of soup on the table across from him.

“So you’ve been pining for me all these years?” he mocked, and was surprised by the flash of something in her eyes. Such big brown eyes for such a little thing. Well, maybe not such a little thing, he silently revised, remembering how the top of her head had brushed his chin as she’d slipped past him to get into the house.

“Yeah, I’ve been positively lovesick for years,” she mocked right back, even going so far as to bat her eyelashes at him with such outrageous excess that he would have smiled…if he’d been a smiling man. But he wasn’t.

He focused his attention on the soup. It was good. It wasn’t until he saw the satisfied grin on her face that he realized he’d just guzzled down his chow like a raw recruit at boot camp. He dropped his spoon so abruptly it clattered on the wooden table.

“Don’t get too comfy here,” he warned her. “You’re leaving first thing in the morning.”

His pronouncement was accentuated by a crack of thunder.

“Sounds like a doozy of a storm,” she noted a second before the lights flickered and went out. “Good thing I’m not afraid of the dark,” she calmly added. “How about you?”

“I’m a Marine. I live for the dark.”

That didn’t surprise Kelly. She’d sensed the darkness in him from the moment he’d opened the door. There was a new edge to him, a sharper dangerous edge that hadn’t been there before. Brought about by his years in the Marines or by his accident? Or a combination of both?

She could hear him breathing. There was something surprisingly sensual about being caught in the darkness with him, surrounded by velvety shadows illuminated by flashes of lightning. The harsh bursts of light captured the angles of his face, lending them new definition. It was the face of a man who wouldn’t step aside if trouble got in his way.

She reached for his empty bowl only to have her fingers collide with his. Heat shot through her, as powerful as a lightning strike. The storm outside dimmed as her senses shifted to the storm raging inside of her body. She could feel the excitement burning in her like a wild thing.

“There’s something I should warn you about this beach house,” Justice said, his voice silky soft. “There’s only one bed.”

“Only one bed, huh?” Kelly frantically tried to hide the fact that her heart had just kicked into overdrive. She couldn’t afford to let Justice know that he was getting to her. That wouldn’t do at all.

For one thing, Justice clearly didn’t think of her that way. He viewed her as a nuisance. For another, she couldn’t get involved with him. He was a patient. Or about to become one. Not to mention that he was her sister’s ex-husband. A definite hornet’s nest there. Way too much baggage.