Bad Boy's Baby Part 60

Gretchen shrugged. "I'm always trying to drum up business."

"Stick around. She's loading a shot gun. You can st.i.tch me up."

She stood, tucking a blood-pressure cuff into her bag. "You're lucky I like you, Zach. Please promise you'll take care of yourself. No more working out for four hours a day."

"Two."

"Zach."

"Three and a half."

"You're healing," she said. "I know you refuse to believe it, but you aren't one hundred percent healed yet. So use your brain and be glad it still works right."

"I am."

"No, you aren't. If you had an episode that scared you bad enough to call me during my date." She wagged the doggy-bag from the Italian restaurant. "Then you're overdoing it."

"The appeal is in two weeks."

"All the more reason to rest. I already lost my brother in this war. I'm not going to lose his best friend too. Okay?"

"I hear you."

"Go rest."

Gretchen shouldered her purse and bag. "And, for Christ's sake, go talk to Shay. Tell her what happened. She won't judge you for getting injured overseas. She looks sweet...as long as she doesn't rip your innards out first."

"If she hasn't yet..."

Only one way to find out. I escorted Gretchen to her car to delay coming clean to Shay. Even if she forgave Gretchen, she wasn't going to be happy about my condition or the truth about my extended leave.

I knocked outside her bedroom.

No explosions. No gunshots. So far so good.

She didn't answer, but I didn't expect her to welcome me with open arms and legs. I knocked again and edged inside.

"So...you came home early..."

Nothing.

The room was empty. Bathwater hummed from behind the partially closed bathroom door. I watched as Shay shifted at her vanity, but I didn't say anything. Just stood there like a d.a.m.ned idiot, without a single f.u.c.king idea of how to start my apology or explanation.

The bathroom door opened. Shay shrieked.

She hadn't tied her silk bathrobe, and the pink graced her dark curves with a hypnotic beauty.

I stared. Who the f.u.c.k wouldn't?

The softness caressed her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the hint of her slit peeked between the short pleads of the robe. She wasn't quick enough to hide from me. Even better, she missed the hem of the robe and revealed more. She screeched and turned to tie it. The pink silk barely kissed the bottom curve of her perfect a.s.s.

"Zach!" She pulled the robe's belt tight, either to shield her nudity or because it'd be a felony to knot it around my neck. "Knock first!"

"I did. You didn't hear."

"Then don't come in!"

"Let me explain."

"Don't start with me."

Shay wove her curls into a quick bun, a little too violent for the clip she jammed against her head.

"I've had a horrible night," she said. "I don't want to hear any excuses. You're free to hump whoever you like." Her eyes widened, dark and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. "But my father ruined his family because he strayed bed-to-bed. Don't you dare make me into some other woman."

"Other woman?" Christ, she thought I was dating Gretchen? I took her hand before she escaped to her bath. "Gretchen isn't my girlfriend."

"I don't need the specs on your petty officer's latest mission."

"She's my doctor."

Shay stilled. I pulled her business card from my wallet.

"Dr. Gretchen Mahoney," I said.

"Internal Medicine?" Shay flipped the card over. Her voice softened. "Why did you have a doctor in our living room?"

Our living room.

f.u.c.k. I snuck into her heart with all the subtlety of a boot to the door and a flash grenade. If I blew it now, I'd wish the shrapnel had finished the job on me.

"It's a long story," I said.

She stared at the scars on my arm. "I want to hear it."

"I wouldn't dream of interrupting your bath."

Shay hesitated, holding my gaze for any reason to stay. I held my breath as she returned to the bathroom. The faucet turned off. My chest ached in relived agony.

She leaned against the doorway. I knew she debated if she could trust me. No reason to lie then.

"I gotta come clean," I said.

She swallowed. "I figured that was coming."

"I'm not f.u.c.king around with Gretchen. She's just a friend, helping me because I served with her brother. She took on my case as a favor."

"Your case?"

I sat on the bed and patted next to me. Shay's eyebrow rose like I unzipped my pants and offered her a seat on my c.o.c.k.

Why was this so hard? It wasn't like I was still in the hospital, p.i.s.sing through a tube and waiting for them to glue my skull back together. I made it out of the f.u.c.king desert alive. I healed. I survived.

Would she see it as a miracle?

Or would she see the same man I saw in the mirror?

Weak. Frail. Aimless.

"I'm not on leave." The words stung. My hands curled into fists. Six months ago, I couldn't even do that. Progress. "I was medically discharged."

Shay frowned. "You said you were going back to the SEALs in a few months."

"I know."

"You lied?"

She bit the word. It felt like a slap across the cheek.

"I am going back," I said. Hope healed more than the migraine meds Gretchen tried to shove down my throat. "Now that I've recuperated, I'm appealing the discharge. I'm meeting with te doctors for a physical in two weeks. If they believe I'm fit to serve, they'll issue me a medical waiver. I'll reenlist."

"What do you mean recuperated?" She asked. "What happened to you?"

Like she hadn't seen the scars. I could pack muscle on top of more muscle, but all people saw were the purple, fading scars where my guts tried to blast out of me.

"IED."

Shay edged closer to the bed. "So you were...hurt."

An understatement. "Yeah."

"How badly?"

"A couple fractures short of entering a cla.s.sified Navy SEAL cyborg program."

"Zach. Talk to me."

I sighed. Shay slipped to my side. I smiled as she tugged the robe over the sinful darkness of her thighs. That little silky reveal was enough to refuel me for another tour.

"It was bad," I said. "I'm...not at liberty to tell you where I was or what I was doing there. I can say I'm d.a.m.n lucky that I made it back to the helicopter. I should be another bloodstain in the sand."

Her eyes widened. She traced a shiny scar over my wrist. "But you're okay now?"

"Of course," I lied.

"Why didn't you tell me you were on a medical leave?"

"Because there's a chance they won't grant me that waiver. They might not clear me to re-enlist. If that happens..."

I eyed the master suite. The estate grew on me. I still couldn't find my way through it in the dark, but a man got used to living every day as a fantasy.

Especially when the most beautiful woman in the world caressed a scar that came from a fireworks accident when I was fifteen, not the explosion that nearly ripped my skull apart.

I brushed her hand with mine. The simple contact was better than any morphine they shot in my veins at the VA hospital. "Last night, you asked me what would happen if the one thing you wanted in life was taken from you?" I met her gaze. "I understand that fear. Completely."

"You want to go back to the SEALs?"

"More than anything."

"But it almost killed you."

"It's my life. Wanted it since I was a kid. I didn't have much of a family, and I thought my dad was a soldier. It seemed a natural life for me."

"Do you like it?"

"I did," I said. "I liked the travel and excitement. Never had a reason to stay at home."

Until now.

I didn't say it. Probably should have.

"I'm sorry." Shay looked away. "Oh h.e.l.l. I sounded like an idiot downstairs."

"I didn't tell you Gretchen was my doctor when you first met her. I didn't want you to know I had been hurt overseas."

"That was dumb."

Yep. Especially after I realized a girl didn't get that jealous for nothing. "I promise. Nothing's happening between me and her. Gretchen's engaged. I have more to worry about than you."

"Why?"

"Well..." I grinned, grateful for the conversation change. "She's a lesbian."

"That is a relief."

"Should I be concerned?"

Shay's playful tone amused me more than her robe slipping over her shoulders. "No, I've been very satisfied lately."

"Just satisfied?"

She hummed. "As much as can be expected."

"I'll have to work harder. No one's ever accused me of being adequate."

Shay didn't want to play. She tucked a falling curl behind her ear. I wished she let me do it for her. A brush to her cheek tempted me more than night between the sheets. Every second she allowed me to touch her cocoa skin was a gift, a blessing second only to her smile.

So why did her smile fade?