Heart's Desire (28 page)
Authors: T. J. Kline
“Woman, you make it difficult to spoil you. Could you stop being so independent and let me be a gentleman?”
“Get your butt up here, and I promise I'll be a lady for ten minutes.”
Nathan jumped into the back with her. He spread out the blanket and opened the bottle of champagne before pulling her down to sit between his legs as they both faced the river. Jessie leaned back against his chest and sighed, relaxing as his arms came around her and he poured them each a glass.
Nathan held his up. “To new beginnings and the healing to come.”
“To the future,” she agreed, tapping her glass against his. She sipped the drink, letting the bubbles tickle her nose. “You know, this is the first time I've ever had champagne.”
Nathan drew back a few inches. “Are you serious?”
She laughed at his surprise. “I'm more of a cold-bottle-of-beer girl, but I could get used to this.” She sipped the drink again.
He took the glass from her and set them both on the wheel well. He looked worried and her stomach twisted with dread. “Jess, I want to give you everything you've never had. Everything you've always wanted.”
She smiled up at him, her heart ready to burst with tenderness for this man. “You have, Nathan. You've done that and more. You are the only person who found out what was buried inside meâmy hopes, my dreams, my fears. You've helped me face my demons and conquer them. I can never thank you enough.” She turned to face him. “I love you, Nathan. I have nothing to offer you but me, butâ”
“Stop, Jess.” Nathan cupped her face in his palms and smiled at her. “This is
my
proposal, and you're not going to take control of this, too.”
“What?” Her butt dropped to her heels. “What did you just say?”
“Jessie Hart, I love you. I've always loved you. I can't believe I was ever stupid enough to let you go. I've done so many things wrong with our relationship.” He slid a hand into his pocket and pulled out a small box. “I wanted to prove to you that I could do this rightâthe champagne, the sunset, not touching you this past few weeks when it's nearly killed me.”
Jessie laughed even as her eyes misted over. He flipped open the box and revealed an elegant oval diamond solitaire surrounded by smaller diamonds set in a filigree design. It sparkled like the sun on the water as it dipped to the horizon. “The ring.”
“It's beautiful.”
“Jess, marry me. Let's build this crazy dream of yours together. Let me help you build new dreams, find new hopes. I was a prisoner and never even knew it until you. Without you, I'm only half a man. You've changed me, Jess. You've freed me to be who I always wanted to be, to let go and just let it happen.”
Nathan brushed away the tear slipping down her cheek, and she reached up, covering his hand with hers. For the first time, she didn't feel like a failure. She was fullâof strength, of life, of love. Nathan made her whole, complete and perfect. There weren't any words to express to him how she felt.
Jessie wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his, letting her mouth tell him what her words couldn't. He responded as if they spoke a language only the two of them heard. Lips meshed, tongues danced, bodies twined. Suddenly, Nathan drew back.
“Is that a yes?”
She laughed. “Yes! Now will you please take me home and make love to me?”
“My pleasure.”
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Julia Hart knows how much good she does training therapy dogsâit's what helped her overcome her own trials after a past relationship turned unexpectedly violent.
Dylan, a former soldier, has run out of hope for recovery. Plagued by nightmares and flashbacks, he doubts anything will help him overcome his PTSD. When his brother convinces him to try one last time, he agrees to get a therapy dogâif only to prove it won't help.
Dylan didn't expect to find Julia or that he could begin to hope again. But when Julia's attacker, Evan, is released from prison, Dylan and Julia will have to face the past together.
Continue reading for a sneak peek at the next book in T. J. Kline's Healing Harts series,
Coming in June 2015 from Avon Impulse.
An Excerpt from
TAKING HEART
S
ERGEANT
D
YLAN
G
RANGER
heard a series of loud
pops
as bullets hit the stone wall beside his head and rock dust crumbled into his face. He ducked further behind the wall. Their position had been compromised again, and this time, the entire unit was under attack by insurgents.
“We're not going to make it through this, Doc. We're taking too much fire,” Michaels yelled at him.
“We have to make it through this. I haven't lost a man yet.” Dylan ignored his partner, the junior medic of their unit, and checked the pulse of Sergeant Jefferies, the communications expert he was attending to. The soldier's blood was warm on Dylan's hands as he tried to stem the flow from the gunshot wound to Jefferies's abdomen. It was bad, but if he could get the bleeding to slow, he could save him. After seven years as a Special Forces Medic, Dylan had seen more than his fair share of wounds.
“You hear me, Jefferies?” The soldier's eyes rolled back, but he tried to nod. Dylan could see the fear in his face, knew he was close to giving up.
The desert sun beat down on the three of them as bullets whizzed past, and Dylan looked back over his shoulder where the rest of the unit had managed to hunker down behind a secondary shelter. At least they were covered on all four sides. He, Michaels, and Jefferies were sitting ducks behind a solitary low wall. He had to get Jefferies to the shelter, where they would have cover and he could focus on stopping the bleeding.
He signaled to the rest of the unit for cover and noted their affirmation. “Come on, we're making a break for it,” he told Michaels. “You keep pressure on the wound, and I'll carry him.”
Dylan slid his weapon over his shoulder and wrapped his arm under the officer's armpits as they prepared to drag him to safety. They had to move
now.
“Just leave me, Doc,” Jeffries muttered.
Dylan could see it in Michaels's eyes. He agreed and knew their best option was to leave the injured man behind.
Not on my watch.
“Shut up, Jeffries. You have two kids to get home to. Michaels here is going to hold the compress tight, but you need to help. Press on his hands.” Dylan nodded to Michaels, and they made a run for the building behind them.
The world exploded into broken rock and dust. Heat and fire surrounded them, swirling through the air. For a moment, Dylan wondered if he hadn't just found hell on earth. He lifted his head carefully, the entire world around him ringing, spinning, as he tried to regain his bearings. It took him too long to realize he was pinned to the ground under Jefferies's dead weight. The weight of a mangled corpse. Using his forearms, he dragged himself from beneath the fallen soldier and saw Michaels to his left, face down. Dylan crawled to his side, tugging at him.
“Michaels!” He rolled him onto his back and saw the blood and dirt smeared over his face.
“My leg, Doc.” Dylan looked down and saw that the man was bleeding out. He wasn't going to make it. Another explosion rocked the earth beneath them. “Grenades.” Michaels' voice was barely a whisper. “Fall back while you can, Doc. Go!”
Dylan's felt something hit the side of his helmet, and his vision blurred before going completely dark.
H
E REACHED FOR
his head and bolted upright, sweat pouring from his body. He woke from reliving the nightmare again. It had been a year since he'd left Afghanistan behind. A year since the attack on their base that had left most of his unit KIA. A year of this new kind of hell on earth.
Dylan looked at the clock and reached for the glass of water on his bedside table, hating the way his hands trembled. He balled them into fists, willing the tremors to stop, and clenched his jaw so hard he thought it would snap. He wanted the nightmares to end, wanted his life back, wanted control over this. But what the doctors diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, he called the end of his world.
He'd saved hundreds of men in his service, and now he couldn't function even one day without panic attacks, pills, and doctor's visits. Nothing remained of the man he'd once beenâconfident and capable. He looked up and saw his brother standing in the doorway of his room.
“You okay?”
Dylan hated being such a burden on Gage, but after returning home with a bullet wound in his head and burns that ran from his neck, over his right arm, and down his chest, he knew he would never have survived without him. His brother refused to give up on him, taking him in and putting his own life on hold to help him regain some semblance of a life.
“I'm good,” he lied, popping open the prescription bottle on the nightstand.
“You sure you want another one of those? I thought your doctor said to taper off.”
Dylan glared at his brother. The doctor had warned him about the risks of the medication they had him on, as well as taking more than they recommended. After becoming addicted to the painkillers early in his recovery, he had to be especially careful about which medications and how much of each he was taking. He didn't want to go through that battle again, but right now, it was the only thing keeping him from giving up entirely. He could understand the trap so many returning soldiers fell into, finding only pills and booze could help them escape the nightmare that lived inside them, haunting them even while they were awake. The pills let him fall into a dreamless sleep, where the faces of the men he hadn't saved didn't look at him with accusation in their eyes. The pills kept him from contemplating the other option to avoid their eyes: the loaded pistol hidden under his mattress.
“Dylan, you've tried everything else. Nothing is working. Can we please just call them up and see what they think?”
This discussion again? Dylan shook his head. He didn't want a therapy dog. If the medications and therapy he was already getting from three different doctors couldn't control his PTSD, how would a dog help? He didn't even like animals.
“No. We've already been over this. If I can't take care of myself, how am I going to take care of a dog?”
“What have you got left to lose?”
Technically, Gage was right. He had already lost everything he valued in life except his brother: his job, his independence, not to mention his sanity. He owed it to Gage at least to try to have some semblance of a normal life so his brother could find one for himself again.
“What if we go and it doesn't work?” Dylan asked, voicing the concern he didn't want to admit. It was really the crux of the matter. They'd already tried everything else with little to no success. If this didn't work, he would be forced to face that he was doomed to live in this hell forever, or until he ended it.
Gage raised both hands, palms out. “Then no harm, no foul, and I won't mention it again.”
Dylan untangled himself from the sheet and sat at the edge of the bed, his feet landing on the cold hardwood floor. He might as well get up, since he wouldn't be able to sleep again tonight. “You know I can't afford it, and the military isn't running their PTSD-Canine therapy program anymore.”
“I know.” Gage moved into the room and reached for Dylan's empty water glass. “But I've been looking around at private trainers and other foundations to help. Or I'll pay for it.”
“I can't keep surviving on your charity.”
“Hey, enough.” His voice was as unbending as his loyalty. “We're family. You took care of me for years when Mom got sick and Dad was drinking. You put me through college and got me to this point. Let me help you for a change, Dylan.”
Dylan ran a hand over several days' worth of beard growth. He knew his brother was afraid he'd given up on life. A part of him
had
. If this last ditch effort was what he needed to do to assuage any misplaced guilt Gage had, he'd suck it up and prove to him that a dog wasn't going to fix what was messed up about him. He was broken, in ways that couldn't be fixed.
“W
HAT
'
S THE MATTER
, Wall Street? Cat got your tongue?” Julia grinned at her sister's fiancé across the table.
Nathan had been living on Heart Fire Ranch with Julia's sister, Jessie, long enough to realize what life in the country was like. Sometimes it included the barn cats leaving half-eaten mice as a prize for those they adored. Granted, stepping on that “prize” in bare feet tended to put a damper on the rest of your day when it happened first thing in the morning. The prim-and-proper financial analyst still looked shocked.
Nathan shook his head, trying to keep a straight face as he reached for his coffee. “One day, I might actually get used to these things, but I will never enjoy them.”
Jessie winked at her sister. “Don't let him fool you. He's already found several perks to living out here.” She turned Nathan. “Like the fact that you claim bad cell service when you want to ignore calls from clients. And what about your new addiction to fishing?”
“I see your point,” Nathan said, shrugging before winking at Jessie. “I can think of a few other perks, too.”
“And that's my cue to leave,” Julia said, jumping up from behind the breakfast table. The Great Dane asleep at her feet opened an eye and looked up at her. “Come on, Tango, let's go.”
The dog immediately responded and moved toward the door as Julia put her mug into the dishwasher. As much as she enjoyed sharing breakfast at her sister's house, as they'd done almost daily since their parents' death a year ago, with Nathan there she felt a bit like a third wheel on days when her brother, Justin, and cousin, Bailey, didn't join them. She knew Jessie and Nathan were still finding their footing, and she wanted to give them the space they needed to get reacquainted after eight years apart. They didn't need a little sister tagging along.
