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Holly had shattered all that and made it so easy to fall for her—I hadn’t even realized it was happening until it was too late. The day we’d said goodbye on the front porch of her little beach house rental, I’d damn near lost it, and that was the moment I realized I was in love with her.
But I hadn’t said it out loud. Not to her. Not to anyone.
I knew she wasn’t ready. She’d been through a lot and I was willing to wait because I knew my feelings for her wouldn’t change.
I tore my eyes from the screen and gazed out the window, watching the side of the highway zip by as the driver cruised up the 101. So, why hadn’t she said it? The email was stamped from the day after I’d been shot down. I’d been home for nearly twenty-four hours, all of which had been spent with her, and yet, she’d kept her true feelings to herself. Had she regretted the L word after she’d sent the email? Had it just been a case of getting swept up in the craziness of it all?
I turned over a list of questions right up until the town car stopped at the checkpoint outside the base. After the driver flashed his ID and let them know who was with him—since my own ID was still being shipped back from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, along with the rest of my belongings. We pulled up to the familiar building that sometimes saw me more than the walls of my own home.
“McGuire!” Captain Collins was waiting for me at the entry and clapped a hand on my shoulder as soon as I stepped inside. “Glad to have you back, son. Although, this was a little sooner than I’d anticipated!” He chuckled at his own joke as he began steering me through the corridors of the base’s administration building.
“Sorry about that, Sir. Guess you’ll have to find something for me to do around here.” I grinned over at my Captain who mirrored my smile.
“That can be arranged, that is, if we can talk you into staying.”
“What do you mean?”
“Son, after what you did over there…shit,” Captain Collins stopped, shaking his head. He let out a low whistle. “You can go anywhere you want. Any base, any assignment, anything you want, it’s yours.”
“You mean the Germany station?” I recalled our conversation before my leave. I hadn’t given it much thought since then, mostly because I’d met Holly and she’d changed everything.
“Anywhere, son.” Collins shook his head again and started walking again. I fell into cadence with him, letting him lead the way as my head spun, making it hard to concentrate on anything else. “That’s what this is all about. Everyone wants to pitch you and get you to come to work for them.”
His words stunned me into silence. What I had assumed to be a generic debriefing was actually some kind of job fair?
Sure enough, when I left the base that evening, I’d been offered jobs by half a dozen commanders from around the world. They’d all heard about my escape from the desert, which, when paired with my rock solid service history, made me a qualified candidate to go anywhere, do anything, and it was all in my hands. For the first time in my career—I was the one with all the power.
I was still half dazed as I got in my Camaro that had been kept at the base for me since I’d deployed. Sliding behind the wheel snapped me out of it and I grinned to myself as I turned over the engine. “Hello old friend,” I said to the car. “I’ve missed you.”
The job opportunities and the looming decisions for the future faded to the back of my mind as I roared out onto the highway and started back down the coast to Holiday Cove.
There was a very special woman waiting. And I had a very important question to ask her.
40
Holly
“Should I even ask what happened with Aaron?” I asked Rachel later that night on the phone. “He’s been acting grouchy all day.”
I had spent most of the day in Aaron’s office, working remotely to catch up on any tasks that could be completed without physically being in my own office. When my brain had officially turned to a pot of overwhelmed mush, I’d shut down the computer, kicked back, and called Rachel for a distraction.
And to figure out why Aaron had been so moody.
Rachel sighed. “Nothing happened.”
“The tone of your voice is telling me otherwise.”
I could picture her rolling her eyes at me. “Everything was going fine. We talked a lot on the way down. It was all fun and sexy and flirtatious. And then, we got back to my house, and I was just getting back in the groove, and you’ll never guess who left ten, that’s right, ten, voicemail messages.”
