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to Tennessee,” Cade said, holding back the part of the story where he’d driven her away. His dad didn’t need to know the entire complicated mess right now. “And I don’t want to let her go. I’m falling for her, Dad. Hard.”
His father set his knife and fork aside. He raised his napkin to his mouth and nodded. “You just met her, right?”
“Yes, but the timeline doesn’t change the fact that my heart is in this.”
His father didn’t say a word. They’d never discussed feelings. When Cade had first started dating, his dad had been away. Even after his mother left, demanding a divorce, his father had steered clear of Cade’s love life, preferring to bemoan his own situation.
“Dad, I need to ask you something.” Cade sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “If you could go back to before Mom left, would you do anything different?”
The room buzzed around them as people made their way back and forth to the buffet. But Cade kept his gaze fixed on his dad, waiting for his answer.
“I was willing to give my life for my country,” his father said, his voice weighed down by a familiar sadness. “Looking back, I should have been willing to put a helluva lot more on the line for the love of my life.”
“Why didn’t you?” Cade demanded.
His dad shrugged. “At the time, I thought she could wait. I knew I’d retire eventually and then we’d be together. I turned a blind eye to her loneliness. And when she tried to tell me, I didn’t listen. I saw other spouses coping, and I guess I figured she could, too.”
After a moment’s silence, Cade said, “Go on.”
His dad stared at his plate. “Some women embrace military life. Your mother did for a while, but five years in, with a baby at home, she asked me to choose her. And I told her I would. She waited, and another twelve years down the road, she realized I meant I would choose her eventually. And she left.”
Which left you bitter. You held it against her, never accepting your role in the failed marriage.
“If I had to do it all again, I would have tried to find another job. I love my country. But I realized too late that I love your mother more.” His dad picked up his fork and pushed a strip of melon around his plate. “I still do, even though she’s moved on.”
Cade closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. And his mind backtracked to that first night in her hotel room, after her mask had fallen off. He pictured Lucia climbing onto the bed, her breasts spilling out of the robe tied tight around her waist. She’d had every reason to distrust him, but she’d joined him on that bed, allowing him to prove his desire.
But he’d been so caught up in her transformation from a woman who looked determined to mask her flaws to the walking, talking fantasy who’d knelt on the shower floor, waiting to drive him wild with her breasts, he’d failed to see how she’d changed him.
He’d arrived in Vegas convinced long-term was off the table. His dad’s misery was proof that relationships required an end date. Cade had never stopped to think he deserved more—a chance to build a life that didn’t force his heart to take a backseat to his country.
He opened his eyes and stared at the old, lonely man eating a danish. Maybe his father couldn’t rewrite his past, but that didn’t mean Cade had to follow in his footsteps.
“I need to go.” Cade pushed back from the table and withdrew his wallet. He tossed a few bills on the table.
“Going after your girl?” his father said with a smile.
“Yes. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to win a place in her life.”
…
Lucia paced around her studio gathering paints. She pulled blues and greens, colors that stood in stark contrast to the pink hue of the sky beyond her window. Driving home from the Memphis airport, the difference between her quiet suburb and the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip had offered a bleak reminder that the fantasy was over.
She’d stepped into the foyer of her home and dropped her bags. Without bothering to change out of the jeans and T-shirt she’d worn on the plane, she’d headed straight for her studio. The large room off the kitchen was lined with windows on one side and canvases on the other.
She selected a sixteen-by-twenty-inch canvas and set the blank surface on an easel. She needed to add one more after portrait. A complete one, portraying the man torn between what he wanted and what he couldn’t have. He’d walked into her life a hero, the shining star of male perfection. But beneath his muscles, his sinfully sexy voice, and his I’ll-save-the-world attitude, he was just another person struggling with the past, trying to do his best.
On the flight home, she couldn’t escape the lingering questions. How far did the lies go? She believed him when he’d said the seduction wasn’t part of the plan. But what about the other little moments? What about—
Her landline phone rang. She walked to the desk by the window. She recognized the number. Natalie. She pressed the speaker button.
“I made it home safe and sound,” she said, moving to the shelves lined with paint jars. “You can stop worrying.”
“Lucia, I’m sorry.”
A dog barked in the background, and Lucia’s hand froze on a bottle labeled purple. “Is that the dog you share?”
“Yes. That’s Mufasa, our Great Pyrenees,” Natalie said. “Though I think he’s more mine than Cade’s, especially after what he did. He promised he wouldn’t touch you. And he doesn’t go back on his word. Ever. If he says he is going to do something, he stands by it. I thought I could trust him.”
