The Elite: The Complete Series of Boomer and Player (With Bonus) (33 page)

“Back so soon?” I asked, stepping into the kitchen.

“Good morning to you too,” Aaron said, his tone gruff. “Oh, and your welcome for clearing out last night so y’all could get freaky in private.” Apparently whatever had happened between him and Rachel hadn’t gone as anticipated.

Holly blushed at his blunt statement, and I gave Aaron a shove to get him in line. “Well, you won’t have to worry about us for long. I’ve been called back to base.”

“What?” Holly’s eyes flew to mine, full of concern.

“Just some final debriefings.”

She nodded but her eyes remained wide.

“How are you gonna get there? You need my ride?” Aaron asked.

“They’re sending a car,” I explained.

“No way, Mr. Hot Shit,” he teased, giving a low whistle.

“Don’t be jealous,” I fired back, grinning at his scowl.

As we were finishing breakfast, the phone I’d been given lit up on the table beside me, interrupting the meal. “That’ll be the car service,” I said, picking it up and silencing the call.

“I’ll go out with you,” Holly said, standing to follow me outside.

Sure enough, out in front of Player’s house was a black town car. It was unmarked, but I knew it was likely only used for military purposes. I stopped short of the car and signaled to the driver that was standing at the door that I would be another minute. After he nodded, I turned back to Holly. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” I asked, tipping her chin up with the crook of my finger.

“I don’t want you to go…” Holly said, her voice trembling. “When am I going to see you again? Am I supposed to go back to Irvine and just go back to long distance?”

Her questions shouldn’t have surprised me, but I’d been so focused on getting back to base and tying up the last loose ends, and getting my next set of orders, that I was sidelined by the realities she pointed out.

“I come back tonight. We could spend another day here and figure it out.”

“What about Aaron?” She glanced over her shoulder at the house.

I shrugged. “He won’t mind. Can you afford to take another day off? Away from the office, I mean?”

She nodded, “Yeah! I’m not going back without you!” but her expression wasn’t totally convincing.

“That’s my girl.”

“I’ll try to get some work done here. Aaron said I could use the computer in his office if I needed to. I can follow up on messages and get on top of things.”

“Okay. Then, when I get back, we’ll talk and figure this out.” I kissed her firmly, hoping the power of it would steady her heart. “I’ll be back before you go to sleep. I promise.”

She kept her eyes locked on mine for a moment longer, before breaking away and nodding her understanding. “Okay. See you tonight.”

I squeezed her hand before releasing her and jogging the last few paces to the waiting car. The driver opened the back door and I ducked inside. We set off and I watched from the rear windshield as Holly slowly turned and went back up the steps into Player’s house.

Once we reached the highway, I started messing around on the phone—my only distraction—and logged into my email account. I hadn’t checked my email since the last day aboard the ship. In the flurry of activity at the base in Turkey, and the long travel back to California, I hadn’t had a chance to catch up with the rest of the world, beyond calling my family to talk to them and assure them that I was all right and would come visit as soon as possible.

The box filled quickly, message after message filling the screen. I began to scroll down, but stopped short when I saw one from Holly:

You’re not here.

I quickly flicked the rest of the message and with each word my eyes filled with tears.

Jack,

You’re not here. And I really need you to be.

There’s something I haven’t told you. Something that I—for whatever stupid reason—wasn’t letting myself feel. But now that I’m here, alone, wondering if I’ll ever see you again, it’s all I can think about. It’s all I can feel.

You are the love of my life.

I’ve never felt the things I’m feeling and while they mostly scare me to death, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I need you to be here, so that I can tell you the three words that I’ve been ducking and dodging with every fiber of my strength because I couldn’t imagine going through the pain of having my heart shattered again. But now, it’s too late, I’ve fallen and you need to know.

I, Holly Alice Palmer, am madly in love with you, Jack H. McGuire.

Please come home so I can tell you in person. I miss you.

Holly

I read through the email once more, my eyes slowing to absorb each word as it was written. I swallowed a lump in my throat. The sweet words were what I’d been waiting to hear—possibly for longer than I’d even realized. For even longer than I’d known Holly. In the past, I’d never had a relationship that got to that stage. I’d had a few occasions where I thought I was falling in love, but never got the balls to say it, because at those times—I hadn’t been ready to follow it through, and I respected the women I was with to put them through it until I was without a shadow of a doubt, certain.

Holly had shattered all that, and made it so easy to fall for her—I hadn’t even realized it was happening, until it was too late. The day we’d said goodbye on the front porch of her little beach house rental, I’d damn near lost it, and that was the moment I realized I was in love with her.

But, I hadn’t said it out loud. Not to her. Not to anyone.

I knew she wasn’t ready. She’d been through a lot and I was willing to wait because I knew my feelings for her weren’t going to change.

I tore my eyes from the screen and gazed out the window, watching the side of the highway zip by, as the driver cruised up the 101.
So, why hadn’t she said it
? The email was stamped from the day after I’d been shot down. I’d been home for nearly twenty-four hours, all of which had been spent with her, and yet, she’d kept her true feelings to herself. Had she regretted the L word after she’d sent the email? Had it just been a case of getting swept up in the craziness of it all?

I turned over a list of questions right up until the town car stopped at the checkpoint outside the base. After the driver flashed his ID and let them know who was with him—since my own ID was still being shipped back from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, along with the rest of my belongings. We pulled up to the familiar building that sometimes saw me more than the walls of my own home.

“McGuire!” Captain Collins was waiting for me at the entry and clapped a hand on my shoulder as soon as I stepped inside. “Glad to have you back, son. Although, this was a little sooner than I’d anticipated!” He chuckled at his own joke as he began steering me through the corridors of the base’s administration building.

“Sorry about that, Sir. Guess you’ll have to find something for me to do around here.” I grinned over at my Captain who mirrored my smile.

“That can be arranged, that is, if we can talk you into staying.”

“What do you mean?”

“Son, after what you did over there…shit…” Captain Collins stopped, shaking his head. He let out a low whistle. “You can go anywhere you want. Any base, any assignment, anything you want, it’s yours.”

“You mean the Germany station?” I recalled our conversation before my leave. I hadn’t given it much thought since then, mostly because I’d met Holly and she’d changed everything.

“Anywhere, son.” Collins shook his head again and started walking again. I fell into cadence with him, letting him lead the way as my head spun, making it hard to concentrate on anything else. “That’s what this is all about. Everyone wants to pitch you and get you to come to work for them.”

His words stunned me into silence. What I’d assumed to be a generic debriefing, was actually some kind of job fair?

Sure enough, when I left the base that evening, I’d been offered jobs by half a dozen commanders from around the world. They’d all heard about my escape from the desert, which, when paired with my rock solid service history, made me a qualified candidate to go anywhere, do anything, and it was all in my hands. For the first time in my career—I was the one with all the power.

I was still halfway dazed as I got in my Camaro that had been kept at the base for me since I’d deployed. Sliding behind the wheel snapped me out of it and I grinned to myself as I turned over the engine. “Hello old friend,” I said to the car. “I’ve missed you.”

The job opportunities and the looming decisions for the future faded to the back of my mind as I roared out onto the highway and started back down the coast to Holiday Cove.

There was a very special woman waiting. And I had a very important question to ask her.

Chapter Twenty

Holly

“Should I even ask what happened with Aaron?” I asked Rachel later that night on the phone. “He’s been acting grouchy all day.”

I had spent most of the day in Aaron’s office, working remotely to catch up on any tasks that could be completed without physically being in my own office. When my brain had officially turned to a pot of overwhelmed mush, I’d shut down the computer, kicked back, and called Rachel for a distraction.

And to figure out why Aaron had been so moody.

Rachel sighed. “Nothing happened.”

“The tone of your voice is telling me otherwise…”

I could picture her rolling her eyes at me. “Everything was going fine. We talked a lot on the way down. It was all fun and sexy and flirtatious. And then, we got back to my house, and I was just getting back in the groove, and you’ll never guess who left ten, that’s right, ten, voicemail messages.”

I cringed. “Rodger?”

“Mmhmm. It’s like he has some kind of radar for right as I’m about to move on with my life. Anyway, I didn’t listen to all of them, but having him whining and complaining about missing me was kind of a mood killer. Aaron was nice, but I think the whole thing kinda turned him off. It’s probably for the best though. He wasn’t exactly husband material anyway, right?”

“I don’t know, Rach.” I didn’t know him very well, but from what Jack had told me, he was a bit of a tom cat, which was definitely not Rachel’s style. “What are you going to do about Rodger?”

“Block his number.”

“Good girl,” I replied with a smile.

Rodger was one of her ex-boyfriends that had truly broken her heart and although they’d been over for a long time, he tended to cycle back through her life every six months or so to try and get her back. I was proud that she was setting a hard line with him. And, if I was really honest, I was somewhat relieved that she and Aaron hadn’t hooked up. I didn’t want things to get complicated between them, especially after the past couple of days of easy friendship between the three—and then the four—of us.

“Is Boomer back yet?” She asked, ready for a change of topic.

I grinned. “Would I be talking to you on the phone if he was?”

She laughed. “Fair enough. When is he getting back?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. I looked up at the clock on the wall in Aaron’s office. It was nearly six o’clock. The museum closed at six, and although I didn’t know Aaron’s work routine, I figured he’d be looking to lock up fairly soon. “I haven’t heard anything.”

“When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know.” I sighed, hating the question, even though I knew I had to get an answer. “I got a lot of work done today, but I have meetings I can’t do over the phone, and I need to get back to the office. It’s just hard to imagine not being with Jack after everything…”

“That’ll be hard. I wish I had better advice.”

“That’s all right. We’ll figure something out.”

“How was last night?” Rachel asked, a smile seeping into her tone.

“Amazing,” I said, unable to stop the wide grin that spread over my face at the cascade of memories.

Rachel laughed softly. “Good! I’m so happy for you, Holls.”

“Thanks, Rach.” Her words warmed my heart. She didn’t know me when I was married, but had gone through most of the fallout from the divorce, and I knew she was always cheering me on to get back to my happy place. “I’ll call you when I get back in town, okay? We’ll go to Pietro’s. My treat.”

“It’s a date!”

As soon as I ended the call with Rachel, the phone lit up again. This time, it was a text message from Jack, letting me know he was on his way back. I finished what I was doing in the office, closed everything down, and went back over to Aaron’s house to get ready to see him again.

A flurry of emotions swirled through my stomach as I got changed, put on a fresh coat of lipstick, and spritzed perfume on my wrists and in my hair. As excited as I was to see Jack again, I knew we’d have a night of heavy conversation ahead of us, as we figured out what we’d do next. Before he got deployed, we’d promised to give our relationship six months, and only after he was home, would we make any big decision. However, after everything that had happened, things had accelerated, both in my emotions and feelings, and the logistics of the situation.

Princess and Hunter started barking and my heart jumped a few beats. He was back.

I ran outside, the two dogs thundering after me, and we all stopped at the end of the drive as Jack’s Camaro came to a stop.

“Hey, baby,” Jack said, gathering me into his arms as soon as he got out of the car. He held me tightly, not speaking, for a long moment. “How was your day?”

I shrugged. “In a word. Overwhelming.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I thought we could go down to the beach and walk for a little while.”

I nodded. “That sounds nice. Should we take these little monsters with us?” I asked, smiling down at the two dogs who were wagging their tails in turbo speed.

Jack laughed. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Yeah, probably not.”

Jack ducked into the house to let Aaron know we were leaving, and then we took off, following the trail down the bluff to get to the beach.

“So, what did they say? Can you tell me anything?” I asked, as we reached the sand.