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Four days since that rainy kiss with Alana.
Four days since they’d both lost all reason and given into the greedy bastard also known as lust.
Thankfully, the lust had ended with only the kiss and nothing more. Both of them had behaved themselves and sat in utter and seriously uncomfortable silence while he’d driven her home. As she’d gotten out of the truck, they’d both tried their hands at what would have almost certainly been awkward goodbyes. And finally given up when unable to come up with anything that wouldn’t spur a conversation about what they’d just done. A conversation that clearly neither of them had wanted to have.
So, for four days they’d had thinking time, and in Egan’s case, brain fog, and during that time, he hadn’t come up with a single solution that would help. He still wanted Alana. Still grieved for Jack. Still felt guilty as hell. His dad was still struggling with his recovery, along with being even more down now that Audrey and Remi had gone back to their respective bases.
At least Alana and he had managed to avoid seeing each other during those four days. That was in part because he’d stayed holed up in his office or in one of the pastures during her daily visits to the ranch to check on his dad. Not once on those visits had Alana sought him out, and Egan was still trying to decide how he felt about that. She was smart to have stayed away and given him that thinking time, but she obviously had plenty of willpower since he’d been within a breath of breaking down and just calling her.
Sooner or later, he would need to make that call. Or better yet have a face-to-face with Alana. The last thing he wanted to do was add to her guilt because she’d kissed her late husband’s best friend, and that meant he owed her an apology. As a minimum. He also owed her an assurance that he would keep his hands off her.
Egan was still working on whether or not he could do that.
Contemplating that, he sipped his coffee and kept on walking. Because he needed to make a quick trip to the base to deal with some paperwork and take a quick meeting, he was wearing his flight suit. To fit that in along with his other duties at the ranch, he’d gotten an extra early start to the day, and that meant he’d been able to see the sunrise on his drive to the cemetery. It also meant it had yet to reach the “hotter than hell” stage. There was a cool morning breeze, and the sun was spewing out some beautiful colors over the tree-dotted landscape.
And the tombstones.
Of course, he knew exactly where Jack was buried since Egan had been at the funeral. He’d had to do that with a cast on his arm and some bruises, burns and scrapes. Nothing major. Definitely nothing like the injuries Jack and the others in that vehicle had gotten.
Egan moved off the trail and headed to the tombstone in the far corner. As graves went, he supposed this was a pretty spot, shaded by two towering oaks and surrounded by his kin who’d died before him. His dad who’d died in a car accident when Jack had been twenty. His paternal grandparents and his infant sister who’d been stillborn.
Someone, Tilly probably, had put fresh flowers on all three graves, and it reminded Egan that he should have done that instead of just showing up with his coffee. Actually, he should have visited before now, but it was the first time he’d been here in the three years since the funeral.
Egan stopped in front of Jack’s grave and lifted his coffee mug as he would a toasting drink. Jack might have gotten a chuckle out of that, but Egan was in too bad a place right now to think of Jack chuckling or smiling. And that made Egan realize why he had made the trek here. The answer finally made its way through the brain fog, and it wasn’t an answer he liked much.
He was here to confess to Jack what he’d done to, and with, Alana.
“I kissed your wife,” he said aloud.
The words, though, didn’t take any of the weight off his shoulders, and the clearing fog led him to other thoughts. How would Jack have felt about Egan doing that? Hard to say since if Jack had survived, Alana and he might not even still be married. They might be bitter exes, the way Egan and Colleen were. Even if that were true, though, Egan still would have had obstacles and guilt over the kiss.
“And Alana kissed me,” Egan added.
It still didn’t help, but it gave him a reminder of the heat the kissing had generated. Definitely memorable, which meant he wasn’t going to forget it or the guilt anytime soon.
“I’m sorry,” Egan went on. “Not nearly sorry enough about kissing Alana as I am that I’m here and you’re not. I shouldn’t have asked you to come. I should have changed seats with you so you would have been the one thrown clear—”
Egan stopped since he was basically launching into another blow-by-blow account of what had happened. He relived that often enough in his nightmares without spelling it out here. Besides, if Jack was truly tuned in from beyond the grave, there was no need for Egan to spell it all out.
He heard the sound of the approaching footsteps and groaned. Hell. Was this Alana and had she overheard yet another conversation about Jack? Dreading what he might see, Egan slowly turned around and groaned for a completely different reason. Because it wasn’t Alana.
But rather Tilly.
And judging from the way she had her phone lifted, she’d just snapped a photo of him.
“Sorry,” she muttered, tapping away at something on her phone screen. “I saw you standing here, and I just couldn’t resist. What a picture you made standing there, talking to Jack. I posted it to Facebook so my friends can see it.”
Egan wished she hadn’t done that, but he knew her reaction could have been a whole lot worse. Especially if Tilly had heard the part about Alana and him kissing. He recalled what Alana had said about Tilly wanting her to stay Jack’s wife even after all this time.
“I always want to salute or something when I see people in uniform,” the woman went on while she made her way toward him. “So heroic.”
There it was, that word that Egan despised, and he had to get his jaw unclenched before he could respond. “Practical,” he provided. But he refrained from adding that the flight suit was fire-resistant, comfortable and had plenty of pockets for stashing his wallet and other stuff.
“I have to say,” Tilly went on, stopping beside him, “that it made me very happy to see you here. I visit Jack three or four times a week so I can tell him about what’s going on, and I bring fresh flowers on Saturdays. I used to run into people all the time. But that’s tapered off,” she added in a sad mutter.
Three years was a long time. For most people, anyway. Egan was betting it hadn’t been nearly long enough for Tilly’s grief to lessen over losing both her son and her infant daughter. With her husband having passed as well, it basically left Tilly alone. No wonder she was so determined to be sure Alana remained devoted to Jack.
For just a moment, he wondered how Tilly would react if she learned about Jack’s cheating. Not wanting to shatter that “heroic” image of him, she likely wouldn’t believe it, and if she did, it would crush her. That was a good reason for her never to learn the truth.
