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She glanced up at him with a sa
tisfied smile on her face that knocked the air out of his lungs. It was the kind of look that had made men throughout history start wars and conquer new territory just to impress a woman. Some men, but not him. He didn’t have room in his life for grocery-store flowers and women so beautiful it made his scars ache—no matter how good she felt in his arms or just how badly he wanted to touch her every damn time he saw her.
Clamping his teeth together, he shoved the wisp of possibility out of his mind and turned on his heel, nearly going down in a heap because of the constantly underfoot dog.
“So what’s with the mutt?” The canine’s tail thumped against his calf. “I thought he was getting adopted today.”
Luciana shrugged. “Ellen from The Kitchen Sink came by with a box of puppies. You know those cuties were going to go first.”
She immediately turned and squashed the plastic grocery bags into a ball and stuffed them in the recycling bin she’d brought on a previous visit. But Mateo wasn’t fooled. He knew how his sister worked. If he didn’t act quick, he was going to end up with the furry mutt forever.
“That doesn’t answer my question. Why is the dog here?”
“He sure does like you.” Olivia circled around the island and squatted down near his feet, nuzzling her cheek against the dog’s scruff.
Just the brush of Olivia’s bare shoulder against his hip sent his thoughts veering away from the problem at hand and to the feel of her silky skin faster than a Hellfire missile.
Get a grip, Garcia. He took a step back. The dog followed, but Olivia—thankfully—did not. He looked up at the custom tin ceiling and shoved his hands deep into his shorts pockets to keep from reaching out for her. When he dropped his gaze, his sister was looking right at him with a knowing smirk on her face that made his scar itch.
His sister had many faults, but being unobservant wasn’t one of them. She looked from him to the dog to Olivia and back again. If she got any crazy ideas, his life would go from peaceful to a shitstorm in a nanosecond and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it.
“Luciana.” He’d used that tone a thousand times on fresh recruits and seasoned Marines alike. With them it had gotten immediate results. With his sister, all it got him was a well-practiced eye roll.
She gave him an innocent smile that would have fooled anyone not blood-related. “It’s only until we find this little doggie a home.”
Oh no. His house—shit, his life wasn’t made to be shared. “I’m not a dog person. I’m not a cat person. I’m not even a people person.”
“Really?” Luciana rounded on him. “That is total news to everyone here. Maybe it’s time you got out of your comfort zone, stopped hiding in your own little private fortress and opened yourself up to new experiences.”
“I’m not hiding.” He looked at Olivia. “Anyway, I’m already helping with the fundraiser.”
“Speaking of which,” Olivia said. “We had an idea.”
With Olivia on his right and his sister on his left, Mateo was trapped. “I’m not going to like this.”
“Probably not.” Luciana grinned. “But you’ll get over that.”
“We want you to sing at the fundraiser,” Olivia said.
His blood went cold.
He used to sing all the time—so much so that his nickname in his unit had been Mic. It killed time between missions and broke up the monotony of life on a forward operating base in the middle of a country half a world away from home and everything familiar. Old Motown songs, those had been his specialty. But the last time he’d sung a note had been a week before the explosion that had torn the guys he’d fought with to shreds. He didn’t have to close his eyes to see the devastation his own mistake had caused; it was always with him—awake, asleep or in-between.
“I don’t sing anymore.”
“Why not?” Olivia asked.
Because he didn’t think he could hit the notes anymore. His singing voice, like everything else, had gotten shredded in the IED explosion. Luciana was wrong. He wasn’t hiding from the people in Salvation; he was protecting them from seeing what kind of man one of their own had become. But he wasn’t about to say that out loud.
“Have you seen me?” He gestured to the twisted mess that used to be the left side of his face. “Nobody wants to look at this under a spotlight.”
Olivia moved in close, her fingers brushing across the map of scars on his face before dropping her hand to her side. “You care a lot more about your scars than anyone else in town does.”
It was the first time anyone without medical initials after their name had touched his face.
Unable to process his reaction to that, he fell back on his best weapon: anger. “That’s rich, coming from someone who doesn’t just look like a model but used to be one.”
Her face smoothed out into a beautiful mask of imperviousness. “That was low.”
