Off Base(23)

Beck didn’t even flinch when Cullen’s fist shot out, sending the shot glasses crashing behind the bar because he’d known it was coming. Nor was he surprised when Cullen scraped back in his chair and took off toward the bar exit.

Beck started to go after Cullen, but Huntley, her eyes full of unshed tears, laid a hand on his arm. “I’ll go.” She rubbed her nose. “I’m a nurse. I work with grief-stricken soldiers every day. He thinks he’s responsible, and that’s worse than grief.” She looked in the direction Cullen had gone, then back at Beck. “It’s going to take him some time.” Her blue eyes sharpened on him. Her hand reached out and touched his side through his shirt, as though assessing his injury. “I’m glad you’re back and it’s over, but you could have died over there, too, Beck. You’re a part of me. I couldn’t have handled that. Please don’t keep anything like that from me again.”

“I won’t.”

He only had a second to marvel over how strong his sister had become in his absence before she turned and went after Cullen. When the door of the bar slammed closed behind her, Beck felt it reverberate in his head, like a gunshot going off, telling him he shouldn’t have come home. More than anything, he wished he’d made different judgment calls that would’ve resulted in having his friend home healthy. If such things were possible, he’d have switched places with Xander. Too heavy. The weight of that night, the things he’d heard and seen, was a two-hundred-pound anvil tied to his neck.

Without having made a conscious decision, Beck pushed back from the bar, his destination already a foregone conclusion in his mind. Kenna. Her name was synonymous with comfort, with losing himself, being taken to a place where he didn’t have to think or hurt. He tossed a handful of bills onto the bar and started to leave, but a prickle at the back of his neck gave him pause. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? No. There she stood, about halfway down the bar. Another girl tugged on her arm, urging her in the opposite direction, but Kenna wasn’t budging. She watched him, an odd expression on her face.

Beck didn’t second-guess himself. He went for her.





Chapter Eight




Oh mama. Kenna had two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle heading her way and it was attached to intensity so thick it surrounded her legs so they couldn’t move. Why hadn’t she followed Darla out the back exit? She’d started to, but the misery radiating from Beck had reached her from the bar. At once, his cryptic explanation from their first afternoon together had replayed, as if she was hearing them for the first time. What I came back with, what I failed to do…it’ll be a burden on everyone soon enough.

Burdened. That’s exactly what he’d looked like as first his friend, and then the woman so obviously related to him had bailed, leaving him there. She didn’t know what bomb he’d dropped, but knew one thing with total certainty. Beck wasn’t a man who caused others pain if he could damn well help it. She couldn’t be the third person to walk away from him that night. It didn’t seem fair. Fair. Right. That was the only reason she was standing there, no doubt resembling a wigged-out forest creature who had heard a twig snap.

When Beck had almost reached her, she managed a paltry step backward, but it was too late. He stooped down to wrap a brawny arm behind her hips, lifting her against his hard body with so little effort, a whimper snuck out. His friend sending shot glasses flying across the bar had garnered zero attention, but Lieutenant General Sutton’s daughter being manhandled in public grinded the entire operation to a halt. The band forgotten, everyone shuffled around to face them. Thankfully, the music was still loud enough that only Kenna—and Darla, who stood openmouthed beside her—could make out Beck’s words.

“I need you,” he growled against her parted mouth.

Was she nodding? Yes. Yes, she was. Stop. “N-need me?”

“Yeah.” He straightened to his full height and her feet left the floor, leaving her tummy somewhere in the vicinity of his boots. “I was mad this morning. Too mad to say my peace. I’m going to say it now. You listening?”

She swung her feet where they dangled in the air. “Uh-huh.”

“Good.” He laid a hard kiss on her lips. A series of gasps and laughter erupted around them. Beck, although seemingly oblivious to the scene they were creating, pressed his mouth to her ear and dropped his voice. “You might have been my first, Kenna, but I’m a grown man with a brain and a heart. And I know it isn’t going to feel like that with just anyone. I know.” His arm tightened around her, crushing her even harder against his body. “Now, you’re going to walk out of here holding my hand.”

“I don’t hold hands,” she breathed, staunchly ignoring the flip-flop in her chest cavity.

“You hold my hand.” In direct contradiction of his harshly delivered command, he kissed her temple with devastating gentleness. “You hold my hand, darlin’.”

Oh mama, indeed. The way he was making her feel—like she’d fallen into a warm, racing current of water—was very bad.

“Well.” Kenna heard the jingle of Darla’s keys to her left. “Excuse me while I go home and weep into a pint of Chunky Monkey while lamenting my lack of strapping young suitors.”

Kenna’s mouth fell open as her friend deserted her, but Beck recaptured her attention. “So I walk out of here holding your hand. And…and then what?”