Because she couldn’t quite get the D or the ee part yet.
“Hannah and I were getting along fine until she saw you,” I said with a grunt of dissatisfaction I didn’t really feel because my stupid-ass body liked having her this close. Close enough that I could smell her unique scent. It smelled like sunshine. Like honeysuckle, and lemonade, and hazy days. And it brought more memories of people and a place I’d wanted to forget as if I was once again wandering the scented fields of blooming geraniums.
“Was he scaring you, munchkin?” Dani said in the baby-talk voice everyone seemed to adopt when holding babies. Except me. I wasn’t sure I knew how to baby talk to anyone. “Where’s Tristan?” Dani asked.
“Bathroom.”
Our eyes met for a moment above the baby’s head.
“I wanted to say I was sorry,” Dani told me, shoulders back, stiff. She meant it, but it was taking a lot out of her, and I couldn’t imagine what the hell she had to be sorry for. I was the asshole who’d slept with her—had incredible, heart-pounding sex—and then asked her to leave.
“Don’t,” I said, shaking my head.
“I am. About what I said last night. They’re not going to kick you out, Nash. You’re too valuable to them.”
I wasn’t ready to walk away from being a SEAL. I was still hoping to get back on active duty. I needed to slay a lot more dragons before I retired my guns and cammies. I wasn’t sure it was going to happen if the psychologist had any say in the matter.
I stood, bringing our bodies closer together, tantalizing and torturing us both. Wanting to beg for forgiveness in a way I never begged.
“Dani, I?”
She shook her head at me right as the song switched from something I didn’t know into the old-time “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” and she swirled away with the baby onto the parquet dance floor assembled over the pool in the Whittaker’s backyard. They had enough money to buy most of the state of Delaware if they wanted, but you’d never know it on most occasions. They never flaunted it except when it came to things like this—weddings and celebrations. Then, everything was done at the highest level of glamour and cost.
It reminded me of the parties my mom used to throw before she’d drowned. Before she’d been lost to me and everyone else. I wasn’t sure why Mom was so close to me the last few weeks. Images of her from so long ago that I shouldn’t even have them anymore, but I did. Mom laughing, shaking her black hair into my face as she tickled me. Dad’s booming chortle joining her. Images and reminders floating about my brain, haunting me. Making me think of home and a house even bigger than this one that no one knew about. No one knew I had enough of my own money to buy a good chunk of Delaware if I chose. I liked it that way. No one needed to know.
I watched as the goddess Athena twirled on the dance floor with the baby. The hours we’d spent together were burned into my brain cells.
Tristan sat down in the seat next to me that she’d vacated a few minutes ago, and I dragged my eyes from the goddess back to her. Tristan looked like she always looked: tired. She still wasn’t sleeping. At first, she blamed it on the baby. But we both knew Hannah had been sleeping through the night for a long time now. Tristan wasn’t sleeping for many of the same reasons I wasn’t sleeping.
Even worn-out, Tristan was still cute. She’d hated it the other night when I’d called her that, but you didn’t have to be a runway model to be considered adorable. Lovable.Darren had loved her so damn much. Enough that they’d taken the risk to be together, even though it was exactly that—a risk. A risk that they’d lost. Brutally. Harshly.
“Why aren’t you dancing with her?” Tristan smacked the back of my head, Gibbs style, in a move she had done often after picking the bad habit up from Mac. There were few people I let get away with it. Tristan was one of them.
My eyes went immediately back to Dani and the baby.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re so stupid, Nash.”
My body reacted to those words, tensing.
I hated being called stupid. Tristan knew it from my years as her husband’s best friend. That one word was enough to set me off on edge because the stereotype of SEALs as meatheads with guns was so untrue. Our jobs were much more about our brains than the muscles we wore like a suit. But I guess stupid was a fair turnaround for calling her cute, even if I’d only said the words in my head.
“Why would I want to dance with Dani?” My voice deepened when I said her name, and I cursed myself inside for giving that much away.
Tristan laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh, even though she was nice. She was so goddamn nice people didn’t know how to handle her, but to me, ever since Darren’s death, she’d been harsh and cold. I couldn’t blame her. I’d come home alive. Her husband had come home in a box. My presence was a reminder of that, and yet, I was bound by a promise not to leave.
Georgie’s singer friend, Brady, did the one thing I’d been longing to do. He smiled and pulled Dani and the baby both into a dance with swinging hips and swishing hands, happiness radiating from all of them.
“It’ll be your fault if you lose her to him. He’s famous, has a gazillion dollars, and could fly her to Paris at the drop of a hat,” Tristan said dryly.
I ignored the prod because I knew Tristan would never truly approve of me with Dani. She wouldn’t wish what she’d lived through on her friend. I watched as longing coursed over Tristan’s face while staring at the three bodies on the dance floor. If Darren had been here, that would have been them.
“Do you want to be flown to Paris?” I asked, wondering if she’d ever let anyone sweep her off her feet again. It wouldn’t remove me from my obligations, but Darren would want her to be loved and cherished. To be happy. I knew it was too soon; a year was nothing when they’d been together since she was fifteen. But someday had to be in the cards for her.
“Me?” Tristan sounded surprised, but she finally drew her eyes back to mine. “This again? Really, Nash? No. I don’t want to be flown to Paris or anywhere.”
“Where was Darren planning on taking you the next time he had leave?”
