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“A handful.” His laugh was filled with a pain and longing that made her ache for him, for what he’d lost. “We were high school sweethearts. My junior year of high school, she walked through the front doors for her first day of her freshman year, smiled at me, and I was done for. Spent the first two weeks of school that year working up the nerve to ask her out, only to have her corner me in the hall after my first robotics club meeting. She handed me a note with her number on it, told me what restaurant to meet her at that night and when, and then she just walked away.”
“She sounds…”Like everything I could never even dream of being. “Amazing.”
“She was. She also had a temper and a bad habit of doing whatever she wanted, regardless of the rules I put in place for her. Keeping her safe from herself was practically a full-time job. One I unfortunately failed at.”
Tears welled in MaryAnn’s eyes once again, but this time she didn’t bother to keep them from falling. Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed him so hard. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“No. You deserve the truth. All of it.” But he paused long enough to pour and drink another glass of wine before he continued. “I joined the Marines right out of high school. Like a lot of kids in our generation, I fell for the ‘free college’ bit hook, line, and sinker. To their credit, I did get a decent education. Enough for me to leave and open up my own security firm as soon as my time was up. Annie hated every second of those four years, but she stayed with me through it all. And through the nightmares and years of therapy that came after.
“We got married, bought a house. I was gone almost as much the first five years or so of that endeavor as I was when I was deployed. But somehow, we made it work. I swear when I was home, she spent more time over my knee than she did anywhere else. Sorry. You don’t want to hear about that part, I’m sure.”
“No, I do. I already know you were her Daddy so there’s no point in pretending that wasn’t a huge part of who you were as a couple.”
“It was.” The smile he sent her was full of gratitude, even if it was strained at the edges. “More so after things settled down and I was able to be home more often. I built this house for her.”
He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t meant to say that part out loud, which had MaryAnn’s lips curving up in a reluctant smile. “You did?”
“Yeah. She didn’t have much growing up. Her dad died when she was little, and her mom did the best she could. There was plenty of love there, but I always wanted to give her so much more. So when my security business really took off, we built this house together. We only had a couple of years here before…”
Reaching across the table, MaryAnn laid her hand over his. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve lived in this house longer without her than I did with her, and it still hurts. Every day.” He lifted his eyes to hers, grief and heartache swimming in the brown depths. “It’s not that I don’t want you, MaryAnn. God knows I do. You’re the first woman I’ve been even remotely interested in since I lost her. But I’m a fucking mess, and it’s not fair to you for me to drag you down into my issues.”
Moving purely on instinct, she rose to her feet and rounded the small table, sinking down onto his lap, her knees on either side of his thighs. “I’m a mess, too. I think… I think sometimes you need someone who’s just as messy as you are to help you clean things up a bit.”
“I can’t ask you to—”
“You’re not asking. I’m offering. If you’re not ready for me to call you Daddy, I understand. I’ll wait, and if you’re never ready, then that’s all right, too. But that means you have to actually talk to me and not shut me out like you did this afternoon. Okay?”
“Okay. Okay.” Closing his eyes, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers. “I don’t deserve you.”
You’re right. You deserve so much more.“Will you tell me what happened to her?”
“I had a job. A fucking dangerous one, protecting some mob boss’s wife after he’d gone to prison. Apparently, some other families were moving in, and she had a target on her back. So she hired me and my team to keep her safe. Annie just… got in the way.”
“Oh, Dean.” She physically ached to comfort him, to take away the pain echoing in his words. “I’m so sorry.”
“She wasn’t even supposed to be at the office. But I’d been working crazy hours, and she decided to bring me lunch, even though she knew better. I didn’t like her coming in, just in case someone figured out where we were located and came after us. Which is exactly what happened. She died in my fucking arms, and there was nothing I could do to save her.”
Cupping his face in her hands, she brushed her lips across his cheeks, the taste of his tears salty and sorrowful on her tongue. Strong hands gripped the back of her shirt, holding her in place as she slanted her lips over his, offering comfort the only way she knew how in that moment.
The kiss was so tender, soperfect, it almost didn’t seem real. But when she shifted on his lap, inadvertently pressing against the outline of his cock she could feel even through his jeans, something changed. Every trace of tenderness disappeared in a finger snap, desperation and a clawing need she’d never felt before filling the void left behind.
“Tell me to stop,” Dean murmured when they broke free. “Tell me to stop and I will. Because god knows I’m not strong enough to do it on my own.”
She could no more tell him to stop than she could keep her own heart from beating. “I want this. I want you.”
“Fuck.” The word was part groan, part whisper, and for once in her life she felt… confident. In control.
Powerful.
Leaning back as much as his hold on her allowed, she reached for the hem of her shirt, pulling it from his hands and up over her head. She’d always thought of herself as too small to appeal to any man. Olivia had those curves that turned even the most conservative outfit into something scandalous, and Shannon looked like she’d just walked off the cover of a magazine.
But when Dean’s eyes darkened at the sight of her, his fingers gripping her hips and digging into the soft flesh, she finally felt that thrill racing up her spine. That bone-deep knowledge that she waswanted.
And it was intoxicating.
CHAPTER14
