Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(5)

I could tell her about the time I nearly got blown to smithereens in Mosul. Or the time me and my buddies saved a dude who fell out of his raft on some nasty rapids. Or the time I let my commander talk to my mother.

But she’s right.

“After the way you said your divorce went, I thought comfortable might be nice.”

Her brows wrinkle. “Are you looking for just comfortable?”

Retreat! Retreat! my nuts yell. “Becca. We’re not kids anymore. We’ve both been burned. And you keep saying you don’t want to be alone the rest of your life. I don’t either, but I can’t see myself dating a twenty-something, and the dating pool isn’t exactly full for people our age.”

She starts to say something, cuts herself off, glancing sideways, and whispers something that I only catch because I’ve gotten fucking good at reading lips since that mortar round left me with eighty percent hearing loss in my right ear halfway through my career.

I just started dating someone.

Someone who isn’t me.

Because she doesn’t see me like that.

I have four sisters with zero filter when it comes to relationship advice. My parents taught me manners. The Marines taught me to be a man. And I suddenly feel like that awkward teenager on a string of bad dates again.

“Who is he?” I have lots of experience being a brother. I’ll be her fucking brother.

Her cheeks turn into beets. “A dad I met at Mia’s swim meet. He—he was her fourth-grade teacher. That was the year—”

“You got divorced.”

“He’s a good guy. Also divorced. We just clicked. He coaches his son’s little league team, which is why I hadn’t seen him at swim meets until this weekend. The games always conflicted with swim practices. We’re all going mini-golfing this weekend. It’s not—I didn’t do it to hurt you. I didn’t realize you…thought this was going somewhere else.”

“Not your fault. Forget I said anything.”

Neither one of us will forget I said anything.

We make it through swallowing down burgers and shakes with stilted conversation that’s making more bad memories surface.

A blind date to a funeral. The time my buddies put a laxative in my lunch and it kicked in right after I picked up my date for a drive up the California coast. That super fun date where we were playing sand volleyball and I accidentally gave her a black eye when we both dove for the ball at the same time and our heads collided.

I was thirty years old before I had a decent first date. It was with a single mother who was a couple years older. Just as jaded as I was, her because of her divorce, me because I’d never been good at dating. We traded horror stories, laughed ourselves sick, and I moved in with her and her kids six months later.

Lived with them for two years, hearing I love you, but I’m never getting married again.

Turned out, that meant I don’t love you as much as you love me.

All four of my sisters are married. Living the dream, with kids and laughter and the good times and the bad times. Settled. Happy.

Is it so wrong to want that kind of life for myself now? I gave twenty years to Uncle Sam. Now I want some years for me.

Becca and I part in the parking lot. “Call you later,” I tell her, though I think we both know I probably won’t call her later.

Whoa, hotties in the sand volleyball pit, my nuts offer when I slump down onto the beach.

I look closer, realize the skimpy bikini crowd is probably just barely legal, and I take off for a walk on the shore while thunderclouds threaten to move in from the south.

I stroll past the condo I’m housesitting on the beach and break into a jog. My baby brother, who plays pro hockey, knows people. People with money who need nurseries re-done and beach houses babysat, though I have this suspicion he’s actually playing older brother to me right now.

Arranging a place on the beach for me to chill at for the first six months after my time in the military. Introducing me to people who know people who need renovations done so that my business can take off.

Maybe he knows rich women who need a lube job, my nuts offer.

I tell them to shut the fuck up and ramp my jog into a full-on run. Might not be an active Marine anymore, but that doesn’t mean I let myself get soft.

And I need to work out some feelings.

Fucking feelings.

Dating Becca was supposed to be about not having feelings.

Not feelings that could get hurt, anyway.

My sisters will undoubtedly tell me that’s why it was doomed, but I like to think there’s a woman out there somewhere who wants a companion with regular sex, but not the all-encompassing, obsessive, rainbows and chocolate flowers love that leads to heartbreak when it’s over.

After a while, I turn around and head back. I’m almost breathing normally again when I hit my front door. Becca’s long gone.

Probably off to see whoever it is she’s dating.

“Mr. Westley Jaeger?” a guy in a suit asks as I trudge up the stairs of my temporary home. “Wonder West Construction?”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Dudes in suits don’t normally track me down. “Yeah?”

“Stanley Chihuahua. I represent Mrs. Imogen Carter and the Carter family. There’s an issue with Julienne Carter-Roderick’s will, and I need you to please come with me.”