Off Base (9 page)

“Now there’s a question a virgin would ask,” Darla murmured. “He must have rubbed off on you.”

“Save the comedy act. We’re in full-on crisis mode.”

Darla calmly sipped her drink. “Point him out to me before we steal into the night. I earned that by putting up with your twattage. I want to see the first man who managed to breach your apartment door.”

Kenna dropped her head into her hands and groaned. “Blue T-shirt at the bar. You can’t miss him, he’s huge.”

Her gaze scanned the crowd and stopped, mouth falling open. “How did
that
stay a virgin?”

“Long story involving a preacher’s daughter and self-imposed abstinence.” Jealousy over the two-timing Mary bubbled in the region of her midsection and she ground her teeth. “Can we go?”

“You’re not going to introduce me?”

“Darla.”

“Okay, fine.” Darla scooted off the booth and stood. “You stay here lurking in the dark and I’ll scout alternative exits.”

She sent her friend a grateful look before hunkering down to wait.

* * *

The day was fast becoming the worst of Beck’s life. And when you’ve lived through sandstorms and had tiny pieces of shrapnel removed in the field, that was definitely saying something. On the barstool next to him sat his best friend, Cullen Flanagan. They’d gone through boot camp together, side by side. Prior to shipping out, he’d asked Cullen to watch out for his sister, Huntley, while he was gone. Cullen had agreed without question. Beck’s end of the bargain had been to look out for Xander Gibbons, one of Cullen’s recruits and mentees. Beck had failed in that endeavor.

After Cullen had recruited Xander right out of Arizona State, the younger man had surprised no one when he’d followed in Cullen’s impressive footsteps and chosen to specialize in EOD. Cullen had even submitted a request for Xander to train under him at Black Rock after he completed his basic training. The two really had been like brothers, hanging out after hours, too. Unfortunately, the fact that it had been Cullen to teach Xander how to properly disarm a bomb was the reason this conversation was so damn hard.

For six months Xander lived in Cullen’s shadow, learning everything he could, but it hadn’t been enough. As hard as this was on his friend, Beck knew it was only about to get harder.

“You’ve been back for two days?” Cullen tipped his bottle of Heineken back, his expression surly, which wasn’t exactly breaking news. They didn’t call him “Sullen Cullen” for nothing. Finishing his beer, he signaled for another. “You don’t even stop by the warehouse to say hey? What have you been doing with yourself?”

Avoiding this painful conversation. Getting lost in a beautiful, fascinating girl who couldn’t get enough or him one minute, and turned pricklier than a cactus the next.

Astute as usual, Cullen tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “You meet someone, man?”

He started to say no, since he had no concrete answers when it came to Kenna, only shifting sand beneath his feet, but he couldn’t deny his curiosity. Cullen would know of her, being that she was Sutton’s daughter. Might be able to tell him something useful. Hell, maybe another part of him wanted to delay the world of hurt he was about to put Cullen in. “Yeah. I met someone.” He shuffled the coaster between his hands on the bar. “Kenna Sutton.”

Cullen choked on his beer. “Say again?”

“I’m guessing you know her,” Beck said, trying to keep his voice even. Cullen was known for his reputation with women. If he’d spent time with Kenna, Beck didn’t know how he’d react. Definitely not well. “If you’ve dated her, you best tell me now and get it out in the open, but I’m seeing her again, regardless, so watch what you say.”

“Have I
dated
her?” Cullen laughed under his breath. “Are you serious?”

Beck’s neck heated, right hand curling into a fist at what he deemed confirmation that Cullen and Kenna had been involved.
Breathe.
“Do I look serious?”

Cullen gave a rare smile. “Relax, man. They call her
No Men-
na Kenna. She’s sealed up tighter than a nunnery at midnight.” When Beck narrowed his gaze, Cullen signaled for shots. “Not that I’ve made any attempts to scale the nunnery walls. Tempting though she is.”

Beck’s body relaxed in degrees, temper cooling like he’d been doused in ice water. She’d lied to him? In an attempt to push him away, no doubt. Too bad it hadn’t worked. Her past made no difference to him as long as he was in her present. Add to what he knew now—that Kenna’s behavior toward him had been out of the ordinary—and his bone-deep feeling had been proven correct. This gravity he felt when they were together wasn’t imaginary. She felt it too, dammit.

The wound in Beck’s side demanded he shift positions. Cullen eyed him curiously as the shots were poured before them, but didn’t comment. Beck left his shot untouched, but didn’t object when Cullen motioned for anther round. This was it. A little fortification wouldn’t hurt, and alcohol might help numb Cullen to the blow Beck was about to deliver.

No more putting it off. He’d had the trip home to digest how things went down over there, but it would be fresh for Cullen. As if Xander had just died.

“Beck!”

His sister’s warm voice brought him up short. Until hearing her speak, he hadn’t realized exactly how much he’d missed Huntley. He’d been away so long, concentrating on the job, staying alive…keeping others alive. After a while, missing his family had become an ache he’d learned to live with. An old injury. Having her familiar, smiling face so close made it new again. “Huntley.” He stood and pulled her into a bear hug. “You look just the same.”

“You look a touch meaner.” She stepped back, wiping tears from her eyes. “When you helped get me this job here, I had this crazy idea you would be around. I’m so mad at you for being gone forever, I could smash something.”

“Now that would be an interesting change,” Cullen said behind him. “Your brother asked me to look out for you, but I can only check up on you at the library or coffeehouse so many times before I die of boredom.”

She pursed her lips, but humor danced in her eyes. “Check out a book next time. You might learn something useful.”

Cullen winked at her. “Curiosity killed the cat, sweetheart.”

Beck wanted to stay quiet, observe this new dynamic between his best friend and once painfully shy sister. When she first arrived at Black Rock, Huntley hadn’t been able to look at Cullen without turning red, but she’d apparently gotten over her shyness while Beck had been gone. If he could have sat there all night and left the news weighing down his shoulders for another time, he’d do it, no question, but the longer he waited, the harder it would be to get the words out.

“Huntley,” Beck started, then immediately had to stop to clear his aching throat. “I didn’t expect you tonight. There’s something I need to speak with Cullen about. Let’s meet tomorrow.”

“You can’t tell me whatever it is, too?” his sister asked, a flicker of hurt in her blue eyes. Rightly so, considering she was his twin and there had been a time they’d shared almost everything.

Cullen had gone still, except for his knuckles tapping on the bar.

One of the drawbacks of going through basic training with someone meant there were no surprises. Beck’s tone had been enough to warn the other man. “Had a feeling this wasn’t just a friendly get-together.”

Cullen inhaled and motioned for another round of shots. They were poured in swift order and he downed his glass in one motion. Beck didn’t touch the one sitting in front of him, his gaze fastened to his friend. Cullen motioned at Beck’s waiting glass. “You going to drink that?”

“I’m good, man,” Beck replied, wincing when Cullen downed the hatch.

Huntley blinked at Cullen, disapproval beginning to color her expression. “I didn’t realize we were getting drunk tonight.”

“I didn’t realize you needed to be consulted.”

“Is that how you speak to my sister?” Taking a breath to allay his irritation, Beck shifted again to ease the pressure on his wound. “We’ll have this discussion later.”

Cullen continued to stare straight ahead, not a hint of emotion on his face. “It’s about Xander, isn’t it? You finally gonna tell me what happened over there?” A muscle ticked in his cheek. He gestured for another drink and watched impassively as it was poured. “When you called to tell us he wouldn’t be coming home, I knew you were holding back. You’re a shit liar, Beck. Out with it. How’d he die? What the hell happened over there?”

There would be no swaying his friend once stubbornness had set in, but dammit, he hadn’t wanted an audience. Huntley and Cullen might be friends now, but Beck doubted he would want her to hear this. This was
Beck’s
fault. He should have been more vigilant. If he’d fulfilled his promise to protect Xander, none of this would be happening. “If I could keep this from you forever, I would, because there’s no sense in both of us feeling guilty, Cullen. But it’s going to come out in the casualty report this week and I want it to come from me.”

Both Huntley and Cullen remained very still.

Beck released a weary sigh. “We were extracting a group of POWs. They’d been there a week, but we couldn’t get close enough or get an accurate count of the insurgents guarding them.” He swallowed hard. “One of the POWs was a high-profile journalist and there was pressure to act faster than I felt comfortable with. We went in at night…and they’d moved locations through an underground tunnel. We missed them by mere minutes and when we entered the tunnel, there was an explosive device waiting for us.” Cullen tensed beside him but maintained his hundred-yard stare. Beck closed his eyes, scenes from the tunnel bombarding him from all sides. “Xander was the most experienced specialist among us, but he—”

“Finish what you have to say,” Cullen demanded, his voice quiet.

“He got it wrong.”
Wood splintering, earth falling, shrapnel lodging in his side. Being unable to reach his friend.
“The explosive went off and half the tunnel caved in. Most of us were in an offshoot that remained standing.” Huntley pressed her face to his shoulder and Beck wrapped an arm around her. “This isn’t on you.”
It’s on me.
“No amount of training—”

Beck didn’t even flinch when Cullen’s fist shot out, sending the shot glasses crashing behind the bar because he’d known it was coming. Nor was he surprised when Cullen scraped back in his chair and took off toward the bar exit.

Beck started to go after Cullen, but Huntley, her eyes full of unshed tears, laid a hand on his arm. “I’ll go.” She rubbed her nose. “I’m a nurse. I work with grief-stricken soldiers every day. He thinks he’s responsible, and that’s worse than grief.” She looked in the direction Cullen had gone, then back at Beck. “It’s going to take him some time.” Her blue eyes sharpened on him. Her hand reached out and touched his side through his shirt, as though assessing his injury. “I’m glad you’re back and it’s over, but you could have died over there, too, Beck. You’re a part of me. I couldn’t have handled that. Please don’t keep anything like that from me again.”

“I won’t.”

He only had a second to marvel over how strong his sister had become in his absence before she turned and went after Cullen. When the door of the bar slammed closed behind her, Beck felt it reverberate in his head, like a gunshot going off, telling him he shouldn’t have come home. More than anything, he wished he’d made different judgment calls that would’ve resulted in having his friend home healthy. If such things were possible, he’d have switched places with Xander.
Too heavy.
The weight of that night, the things he’d heard and seen, was a two-hundred-pound anvil tied to his neck.

Without having made a conscious decision, Beck pushed back from the bar, his destination already a foregone conclusion in his mind. Kenna. Her name was synonymous with comfort, with losing himself, being taken to a place where he didn’t have to think or hurt. He tossed a handful of bills onto the bar and started to leave, but a prickle at the back of his neck gave him pause. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? No. There she stood, about halfway down the bar. Another girl tugged on her arm, urging her in the opposite direction, but Kenna wasn’t budging. She watched him, an odd expression on her face.

Beck didn’t second-guess himself. He went for her.

Chapter Eight

Oh mama.
Kenna had two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle heading her way and it was attached to intensity so thick it surrounded her legs so they couldn’t move. Why hadn’t she followed Darla out the back exit? She’d
started
to, but the misery radiating from Beck had reached her from the bar. At once, his cryptic explanation from their first afternoon together had replayed, as if she was hearing them for the first time.
What I came back with, what I failed to do…it’ll be a burden on everyone soon enough.

Burdened. That’s exactly what he’d looked like as first his friend, and then the woman so obviously related to him had bailed, leaving him there. She didn’t know what bomb he’d dropped, but knew one thing with total certainty. Beck wasn’t a man who caused others pain if he could damn well help it. She couldn’t be the third person to walk away from him that night. It didn’t seem fair. Fair.
Right
. That was the only reason she was standing there, no doubt resembling a wigged-out forest creature who had heard a twig snap.

When Beck had almost reached her, she managed a paltry step backward, but it was too late. He stooped down to wrap a brawny arm behind her hips, lifting her against his hard body with so little effort, a whimper snuck out. His friend sending shot glasses flying across the bar had garnered zero attention, but Lieutenant General Sutton’s daughter being manhandled in public grinded the entire operation to a halt. The band forgotten, everyone shuffled around to face them. Thankfully, the music was still loud enough that only Kenna—and Darla, who stood openmouthed beside her—could make out Beck’s words.

“I
need
you,” he growled against her parted mouth.

Was she nodding? Yes. Yes, she was.
Stop.
“N-need me?”