Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2)(6)

The cool fall air kissed Rosie’s damp cheeks when she walked into the garage, and she realized she’d never closed the garage door. Made things easier, didn’t it? She tossed her suitcase into the trunk and climbed into the driver’s side, audible gasps escaping her mouth. Oh my God, I’m leaving Dominic. Oh my God, I just ended my marriage.

She’d almost backed out to the end of the driveway when Dominic appeared in the garage, still shirtless and more beautiful than any man had the right to be. Her headlights caused the cross around his neck to glint . . . and she noticed he was clutching the newspaper she’d kept hidden under the mattress. What? He wanted to talk now?

It’s too late.

“Rosie.”

Her heart seized as he shouted her name a second time, striding toward the car. No. No more. She couldn’t take any more. Before she could change her mind, she whipped the car into a K-turn and floored it down the residential street, Dominic’s voice booming through the dust she left behind.





Chapter Three


Dominic caught his reflection in the door of his truck as he slammed it. His face was unshaven, eyes and cheeks sunken in. Lines that hadn’t existed around his mouth before were prominent this morning, even partially hidden by bristling facial hair. All in all, he looked pretty decent, considering his fucking life was over.

He closed his eyes and leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the cool metal of his truck, breathing in and out through his nose, trying to quell the incessant nausea. He’d started drinking on Tuesday night after Rosie left and now it was Friday. He’d remembered to send Stephen Castle, his friend and boss, a text before going on the kind of bender that would make a rock star proud.

I’m sick.

That’s all Dominic had had the presence of mind to type to Stephen—and it wasn’t a lie. He was sick. Just not with anything that could be cured.

Dominic heard the crunch of gravel behind him and braced for noise that would surely split his brain down the middle. “Jesus H. Christ,” Stephen said, his voice obnoxiously chipper for eight o’clock in the morning. Or any time of day, for that matter. His work ethic made him a great construction foreman, but Stephen’s smiling face was the last thing Dominic wanted to see right now. Unfortunately, he had a solid work ethic of his own and the guilt of missing two days on the job had him feeling like shit on top of everything else. “You still sick, buddy?” Stephen patted him on the shoulder. “Go home. I don’t need the whole crew catching the plague.”

Stephen turned Dominic by the shoulder, jerking back when he saw his face.

“What the hell did you catch? Malaria?”

“I don’t have time for this,” Dominic said, pressing a row of fingers to the center of his splitting forehead. “Don’t act like you don’t know Rosie is staying with Bethany.”

“I . . . Oh. Shit.” Stephen’s hand dropped away. “No, I didn’t know, man.”

Why did that piss Dominic off even more? Leaving her husband wasn’t a big enough event that this tiny-ass town with a rabid gossip mill didn’t know about it? Swallowing the acid in his mouth, Dominic moved to the back of the truck and hefted out his toolbox, just in time for Travis Ford to approach with a shit-eating grin a mile wide. He had the swagger of a man who didn’t need to work, just wanted a hobby in between commentating gigs at Bombers Stadium and getting heavy with his fiancée, also known as Stephen’s other sister, Georgie.

The pair had accidentally hooked up over the summer after pretending to date in an effort to clean up Travis’s “bad boy of baseball” image. It had worked in a way they’d never expected and the guy couldn’t be flying any higher. Or be more obviously devoted to his girl.

I used to be like that with Rosie.

Right up until the day he’d joined the marines and left for his first tour, anytime he and Rosie were in the same room together . . . he saw nothing else. There was simply nothing and no one but the girl who’d held his heart since middle school.

It was still that way. Nothing had changed in that regard. Never would.

He hadn’t been in the same room as her since Tuesday, and thank God. Thank God she hadn’t seen him drunk and raging and calling her turned-off cell phone in between swigs of Jack Daniel’s. He wouldn’t have been able to stomach her seeing him weak.

The ex–baseball player propped an elbow on the raised back gate of Dominic’s truck and took a long pull from his paper coffee cup. Then he lowered it, hesitating. “Heard your wife left you.”

If he’d had an ounce of energy left in his body, he would have decked the cocky motherfucker. As it was, Dominic was too numb to move. Couldn’t even feel the toolbox in his hand. “You have something to say about it?”

“Wait, wait. Hold up.” Stephen stepped in between them with a look of outrage. “How come Travis knows and I don’t?”

Travis grinned into another sip of coffee. “You don’t really want a reminder this early in the morning that I’m moving in with your sister, do you, Stephen?”

“No.” He held up a staying hand. “Please, God, keep it to yourself.”

“Bought an autumn centerpiece for the dining room table last weekend,” Travis continued undeterred, obviously enjoying himself. “Has little pumpkins and pinecones sticking out of it. Cute as hell.”