Learning to Breathe Again (24 page)

“
Them? Who’s
them?”

He pointed at the front porch as the door
opened. Bayleigh gasped beside him and she turned to him with wide
eyes.

“
How’d…that’s Jason and
Brian…when’d…what…?” she couldn’t even form a full
question.

Jack laughed and released the wheel to reach
over and give her hand a squeeze. “Jason figured out how to get to
Waco in time to catch a ride. He and Brian asked me not to tell
you. They wanted to surprise you.” He stopped the truck, shifted
into ‘park’ and unlocked the doors. “Go say hi,” he whispered.

“
Oh my God, Jack. Thank you
so much. I love you for this!” she threw her arms around his neck
and kissed him. Full on contact, tongue-meet-tongue, toe-curling,
let’s get it on, kiss. She wasn’t holding back.

The first time she’d initiated contact with
him, other than a chaste kiss or two maybe, and it was in front of
her brother. Hopefully the shock of the cold air would extinguish
any residual flames and evidence before Jason got a good look at
him. And did she just say she loved him?

With a groan, Jack pulled back, resting his
forehead against hers, noting her breathing was just as ragged as
his own. “Go say hi before you get us both into trouble,” he
whispered, giving her a gentle kiss. “I’ll grab our bags and meet
you inside,”

She gave him a smile and slid across the
seat, opening her door and heading for the porch. Jason, Brian, and
Nicole met her at the foot of the steps and she launched herself at
her brother with a high pitched squeal that would put any two year
old to shame. Jack grinned and took his time getting out of the
truck. He’d grab the bags later, if Bayleigh decided to stay here,
but for now he’d at least grab her guitar. He wasn’t sure what the
freezing temperatures would do to the instrument and now wasn’t a
good time to find out.

Nicole saw Jack approaching and broke away
from Jason, who was still hugging his sister. “Hey, Jack. How’s my
computer system?” Nicole greeted him with a smirk.

“
It survived your absence.
Partly due to your sister-in-law there knowing how to save it,”
Jack told her, giving her a hug. “Find what you need in
Dallas?”

“
No, he wasn’t the one,
either. But this guy remembered Mom and gave us some names of guys
in his unit who he thinks she might have talked to and hung around
with, but he couldn’t say if any of them would have slept with
her,” she shrugged her shoulders. “I may never know for sure who my
birth father is but at least I can say I tried to find
him.”

“
We will contact every name
she wrote down in those journals. If he is one of them, we’ll find
him,” Jason told his wife as he joined them, wrapping an arm around
her waist and placing a kiss on her forehead. “Cole, this is my
sister, Bayleigh. Bayleigh, this is Nicole.”

“
So nice to finally meet you
Bayleigh. Jason has told me so much about you!” Nicole stepped up
and wrapped Bayleigh in a warm hug. “And Jack says you prevented
him from killing my computer?”

“
He just managed to input a
wrong code and had it locked up. Once I deleted the code, it was
fine,” Bayleigh winked at Jack. “It takes a special kind of talent
to lock up the system you have.”

“
That’s what I keep telling
him! Hard to believe he was at the top of his class,” Nicole
commented.

Jack rolled his eyes and held a hand out to
Brian. “You must be Brian.”

“
That’s me. Nice to meet
you, Jack,” Brian shook his hand and then wrapped an arm around
Bayleigh’s shoulders. “You ready to go inside? I was told you two
have been without power since the ice storm hit,” he kept a hand on
her elbow to help her up the steps. Jack watched them walk away,
his teeth clenched together.

“
So it’s like that already,
is it?” Nicole asked him, keeping her voice low as she walked
between him and her husband.

“
What?”

“
Better not be,” Jason
muttered, shooting his best friend a dark look.

“
Are you kidding me, after
that kiss they just shared?” Nicole laughed.

Jack scrubbed a hand over his face, checking
to make sure Bayleigh and Brian were far enough ahead they couldn’t
overhear. “It’s not like that, Jason…not exactly. So back off with
the big brother routine. I know what she’s been through in the last
year, more than you do right now,” he held up his hand. “I’m not
trying to start anything. She chose to hold back from you until
now. I just happened to be here this week, and we connected over
the whole PTSD thing, which is its own kind of screwed up. Do we
have more in common than that? Who knows, but I’d sure as hell like
to find out.”

Nicole and Jason stared at their friend in
shock. “Okay, where is the real Jack Williams?” Nicole whispered,
looking between Jack and her husband. “This man is scaring me.”

“
Oh, shut up,” Jack hissed,
starting to walk off.

“
Jack, wait,” Jason grabbed
his buddy’s arm. “You’ve got to give us a minute here, dude. I
mean, you’re the ‘love them and leave them’ original, you know what
I mean? And this time, we’re talking about my sister, and you may
not want to leave her. It’s going to take a few minutes to wrap my
head around that,” Jason shook his head. “I’m not saying I don’t
approve, not that either of you asked for my opinion or anything.
I’m just saying it’s going to take a minute for me to adjust to
thinking that way about you and Bayleigh,” he dropped his hand from
his friend’s arm. “But did you have to kiss her like that in front
of me, man?”

“
First of all, she kissed
me. Second of all, remember all those times you and Nicole have
made out in front of me? Payback’s a bitch,” Jack chuckled as he
walked up the steps and into the house, Nicole’s laughter and
Jason’s muttered curses following him.

“
ARE WE BACK TO THIS?”
BAYLEIGH asked, stepping up next to him as he finished adding wood
to the fire.

Dusting his hands off, he glanced over at
her. “Back to what?”

“
You making me think that
you don’t want to be around me. You’re being all cold and distant
again,” she kept her gaze locked on his.

Jack glanced around the room with a sigh.
Jason and Nicole were cuddled up on one of the sofas, talking to
Brian, who was watching him and Bayleigh through narrowed eyes.

“
So you and Brian are just
friends, never more than that?” he asked, his voice pitched low so
it wouldn’t carry across the room.

“
Just friends, never more.
Like you and Nicole,” she tilted her chin up in a slight
challenge.

“
Point taken,” he muttered.
“Then why is he watching us like that?”

Bayleigh turned her head, her own eyes
narrowing as she took in Brian’s gaze. Realizing he’d been caught,
Brian gave her a grin and turned his attention back to Jason and
Nicole.

“
I would rather imagine he
feels like you used to with Nicole, a protector of sorts,” Bayleigh
shrugged her shoulders, turning her attention back to
Jack.

“
Ah, but the difference is,
Nicole didn’t have any big brothers to watch out for her. Yours is
sitting right there,” Jack jerked his chin towards
Jason.

“
But Brian knows that
there’s been a distance between me and Jason, and I don’t mean in
just miles,” Bayleigh returned, cocking her head to the side.
“Look, Jack, I’ve been with a guy who didn’t trust me, yet if I
asked where he was, I was expected to trust him one hundred
percent, no matter what. Even when I found random phone numbers and
articles of clothing I knew weren’t mine,” Bayleigh closed her eyes
and sighed. “I won’t live like that again. Tell me now whether or
not you can trust me, because if it’s not…”

“
I trust you, Bay. In the
short amount of time we’ve known each other, I think you rate right
up there with the rest of my family,” Jack interrupted
her.

“
So if it’s not trust, what
is it?”

Jack sighed, and reached out a hand to clasp
one of hers, pulling her out of the room and down the hall to
Mitch’s office. He closed the door behind them and backed her up
against it, caging her in with his arms on either side of her. Her
eyes were wide with surprise, but not fright, he noted.

“
That kiss you laid on me
outside, when we first pulled up? You rocked my world, without even
meaning to, which makes it even more amazing. And you did it in
front of all of them,” he leaned in to kiss her lips. “But then,
you jumped out of my truck and ran into his arms, let him help you
up the steps, and stayed by his side for the last thirty-nine
minutes.”

Bayleigh stared at him in shock. “You’ve been
keeping track of how long we’ve been here, and how much of that
time I’ve spent talking to Brian?”

Jack groaned and leaned his forehead against
hers. “It sounds a lot creepier when you put it like that.”

“
You’re jealous,” she
murmured as she slid her hands up his chest and resting them on his
shoulders.

“
I have never in my life
been jealous of another man, so I don’t know what the hell I am,”
he grumbled, pulling her against him. “I just know I didn’t like
the feeling I had of watching you, seeing you completely
comfortable around someone else, knowing that if I make one wrong
move, I send you into hysterics.”

Bayleigh dropped her head onto his shoulder,
wrapping her arms around his waist. “You don’t send me into
hysterics, Jack. And I feel just as safe with you as I do with
Brian. Who’s to say I wouldn’t become tense and panicky if Brian
did make a wrong move around me?”

Jack wrapped his own arms around her and
buried his face in her neck, inhaling her scent. “Can we leave that
out of our little experiment? I don’t need to know how other guys
make you react.”

Bayleigh laughed, agreeing, “I am fine with
only exploring how you make me react.”

“
Should we explore a little
now?” Jack asked, trailing kisses up her neck to her ear and biting
her earlobe. He felt her jerk in his arms at the bite, but she
hadn’t pulled away and her hands weren’t pushing him
away.

“
Uh, Jason and Nicole…” her
voice trailed away as his tongue licked a path along her
jawline.

“
They won’t bother us. Not
if Jason values his life,” Jack muttered, pressing a line of kisses
down her neck. “But you’re right. I am not making out with you in
my cousin’s office, with your brother down the hall,” he pressed
one last kiss to her lips and stepped back. “But later tonight,
we’re can do some exploring and find out exactly what you desire,”
he promised, as he took her hand in his and reached to open the
office door.

Bayleigh pulled on his hand,
stopping him before he could open the door. As he turned to look at
her, she stepped in closer to him. “I want it noted that
you
halted our exploring
session this time, not me, not a panic attack or a flashback, or
anything else,” she told him.

“
Your point?”

“
You don’t always make the
wrong move. And I can already tell you what I desire,” she
side-stepped him and opened the door, stepping into the hallway.
“You,” she said over her shoulder with a wink.

Jack gave a short laugh and shook his head
before following her back to the living room. She waited outside of
the living room for him to join her and then took his hand, leading
him over to the couch to sit down with the others.

They all hung out in the living room for a
short period of time before Jason decided he was hungry and wanted
to raid the refrigerator. Nicole discovered a stash of her aunt’s
homemade spaghetti sauce in the freezer, so she and Bayleigh set
out to make spaghetti with homemade sauce and garlic bread. It
didn’t take long to get the dinner ready and on the table. Brian,
Jack, and Jason took care of cleaning up the kitchen afterwards.
Nicole and Bayleigh sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee,
getting to know each other.

“
Well, if I’m going to be
flying again tomorrow, I should hit the sack,” Brian told them as
he handed off the last dish he’d dried to Jack. Jack glanced at the
clock on the stove, surprised to see it was already after eight
p.m.

“
Are you guys staying here
tonight or heading back home?” Jason asked Jack as he walked over
to the table and held his hand out to Nicole to pull her to her
feet.

“
I’m getting a little used
to the central heat. I think we’ll go ahead and stay here.” Jack
answered, stepping over next to Bayleigh and resting his arm around
her waist. “Is that okay with you?”