Trish Wylie - His Girl Next Door - The Army Ranger's Return / New York's Finest Rebel / The Girl from Honeysuckle Farm

She deserved better than that. But then so did his son.

“I’m going to be a bit longer.” He paused, cringing at the silence down the line. “But I’ll be home soon, then we should grab some lunch, okay?”

“Yeah.”

Ryan hated the way he felt when George hung up. Like he was being torn in two different directions. Yanked one way in his heart, then the other.

He sighed and put down the phone. Fifteen minutes ago he’d been on cloud nine, had felt like everything was going to work out perfectly, and now he was all messed up in his head again. He needed to do something to make things right, and that might mean talking to his boy about Jessica. Somehow.

“Is everything okay?”

Ryan turned to find Jessica standing nearby. He was pleased he’d put down the phone because it would have dropped from his hand and hit the floor.

She was wearing his T-shirt and what looked like nothing else. It only covered her down to the top of her thighs, and she had her ankles crossed, legs together, hair all mussed up and falling around her face. She must have found it while he was on the phone, which meant he’d missed seeing her walk into the room naked.

“Ryan?”

He realized he was standing there like an idiot, mouth hanging open. Her face was like an open question mark, eyes showing her confusion. He didn’t like it. He liked what he saw, her big brown eyes watching him, so much skin on show apart from what was hidden beneath his shirt, but he hated that she was unsure of him.

Ryan crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her, smiling as he realized that she now smelled like his cologne. He kissed her neck, then her cheek, then her lips, hands buried in her hair.

“Everything is fine.”

She pressed her face against his chest, fingers teasing his bare skin where her dressing gown didn’t stretch enough to cover him.

“So where’s breakfast then?”

He growled and slapped her bottom. Jess shrieked and jumped away from him.

“Any more naughty business and I’ll take a photo of you like that,” she threatened.

He followed her across the room, teasing her. “Oh, really?”

She giggled, darting away, one hand holding down his T-shirt. He couldn’t help but smile at her modesty. After the night they’d just had, here she was still innocent enough not to want him to see her bare in the daylight.

When she moved again he pounced, grabbing her wrists and pinning her against the wall.

“You win.” She wriggled but didn’t put up much of a fight.

Ryan held her, restrained her, taking the chance to kiss her before backing away.

“If I win, that means I get a prize.”

He let go of her wrists and walked into the kitchen, taking a look in the pantry. Jess followed him, but she stopped to fill the jug.

“Coffee? That can be your reward.”

He shook his head, reaching for a loaf of bread and the maple syrup.

“French toast?” he asked.

Jessica nodded.

“And my prize is that you say yes to lunch with me today.”

She leaned back against the counter, eyes slanted slightly like she didn’t believe him. “What’s the catch?”

“My son’s joining us.”

Jessica gulped and watched Ryan’s face. He wasn’t kidding.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

He looked around. “Eggs?”

She went to the fridge and pulled out a tray, still waiting for him to respond.

Ryan nodded, but she could tell he was teetering on being unsure about it.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, to be honest. But I’m not here long and I don’t want to feel torn between the two of you. I want to enjoy you both and that means not keeping us a secret.”

Us. She took a silent, deep breath.

She had no idea what that even meant. What they even were to one another. Last night had only further complicated her jumbled thoughts.

This was supposed to be fun, something casual, but it was starting to feel a whole lot more serious than that.

“When you say us …”

Ryan looked up as he cracked eggs into a dish.

“Jess, you mean a lot to me.” He paused, before opening a drawer and reaching in and rummaging, emerging with the whisk. “I want George to know how much you helped me when I was away, and I don’t know why I should have to keep that a secret. If I’m going to make things right with him, I need to be honest. About everything. And I think it might help to open up to him.”

Okay. That sounded better. More like introducing her as a good friend.

“So when I meet him you’ll tell him we’re …”

He smiled. “Close friends.”

Right. “I just don’t want you to push it with him. If he thinks I’m your girlfriend it might make things difficult for you.”

Ryan dipped the first slice of bread into the bowl and gave her one of his double-wattage grins.

“I’m not going to make this difficult for him. But I have to be honest about what’s going on in my life if I want him to let me back in. Trust me again. I’ll talk to him beforehand, explain myself so he understands.” He paused. “I’m doing this for him. If I thought it wouldn’t be the right thing for him, I wouldn’t even suggest it.”

Jessica sighed. She knew what he meant, she just wasn’t convinced, personally, that his son was ready to meet her.

“Do you have any fruit?”

Jessica moved back to the fridge again. He seemed set on them meeting, and she wasn’t going to hurt his feelings by saying no to the lunch. But she hadn’t missed the look on George’s face the other day, and something told her it might not be the right thing to do. Even if Ryan was doing his best to evade her questions right now, they had to tread carefully.

But he sure was good at changing the subject. “Go back up to bed,” Ryan told her, pausing and leaning toward her to plant a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll bring breakfast up when it’s ready.”

Ryan watched as Jessica’s fingers played across his chest as they lay side by side. Breakfast had been started and then somehow quickly forgotten about, but he wasn’t complaining.

He sighed as she snuggled in closer to him.

“What?”

Ryan propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at her. She was so beautiful it took his breath away. So innocent and giving, so kind.

He wasn’t sure if this was the right time to bring this up, but he needed to tell her. Needed to be real with her, be honest if they were going to have a chance at that future he was starting to think about.

“I’m scared, Jess.”

She tucked even closer into him and kissed his jaw. “Why? What do you have to be scared of?”

He tried not to frown. He had everything to be scared of. That was the problem.

“Because part of me wonders if I can do this being a normal person thing. I don’t know if I can forget what I’ve seen, and forget what I’ve thought and just be a human being again.”

“You’ve always been a human being, Ryan. You’ve just seen things that most of us would be too scared to confront,” she said.

“Sometimes I wonder if being in the army, serving overseas, takes the humanity from you and makes you into some sort of machine. It stops you from feeling, it makes it okay to just treat each day as a new opportunity. But in real life, you need to look back, too. You need to remember.”

“See this?” Jessica let her fingers dance along his cheek to wipe at a tear. “This makes you human.”

He smiled, just, from the corner of his mouth on one side.

She kissed his lips, softly, so he could only just feel it. He leaned forward as she pulled away.

“That makes you human, too.” She rolled over and reached inside her bedside table and pulled out a letter. “See this?”