Springwell Series: Books 1 - 6, page 48
Detective Novak hadn’t referred to me as little lady, but that was the sort of treatment I felt I was getting. He didn’t take me seriously. But I wasn’t going to just let it drop. If someone was trying to malign my business, that was deadly serious to me. And if they were willing to hire someone to come in and wave a gun around, then who knew what they might do next? I wanted this situation resolved before anyone else got hurt.
“I think it does mean something,” I said, determination filling me. “I’ll start my own investigation if I need to.”
That got the detective’s attention. “I have to ask you not to do that.” Novak waved his hands as if warding off the idea. “On the off chance you’re right, you could be walking into a dangerous situation.”
I thought about telling him that if he’d do his job, then I wouldn’t have to do it for him—but I got the sense that that wouldn’t help my case. Still, I made no promises. I thanked him for his time and headed to pick up Austin at Nina’s house on my way home. I’d called my pediatrician earlier and had an appointment the following day just to be sure Austin was fine after what he’d gone through.
He sure seemed fine, chatting away in his own lingo as I picked him up and took him home. After giving him a quick snack, I put him down for an afternoon nap and went to the alcove in my kitchen where I sometimes worked from home. I’d just checked in with my mom and Charlotte at the store when I heard a knock on the front door. I dashed to answer it, not wanting the noise to wake Austin. Without looking to see who it was, I whipped open the door.
“Hi.” Zach stood on the front porch with an adorable stuffed dog in his hand. “Is it okay if I visit Austin?”
“He’s napping…but you can come in and wait for him to get up,” I offered. I could have sent Zach away with the ready and true excuse that our son was asleep, but the truth was, I didn’t want to. And the fact that he’d thought to bring Austin a gift warmed my heart.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” He stepped inside, filling the space as he always had. He was tall and fit, lean and handsome in jeans and a black T-shirt. Underneath, I knew, he was ripped with muscle. How I’d enjoyed running my hands over him. My fingers tingled with the remembered sensation. I should have sent him away, I realized too late. The temptation to pick up where we’d left off hit me. We’d been good together during the good times, but it had been far from perfect. His job got in the way. I didn’t know how other wives and girlfriends of the SEALs handled it when their men were gone for months with no word from them, never knowing if they were dead or alive. I couldn’t take the worry.
I’d waited out two deployments during our engagement, but when he was about to embark on the third, I’d given him an ultimatum. It was me or the mission. He couldn’t have both, because I could no longer live with the anxiety and fear. When he’d chosen the mission, it had broken my faith in him, in love. And then I realized I was pregnant. During the months when I’d tried to contact him and received only silence in return, I’d felt anger and betrayal, but I’d transferred my love for him to the baby we’d created.
It had been enough…until he walked back into my life.
“Actually,” he said, “I’m kind of glad Austin’s sleeping. I was hoping the two of us could talk.”
Oh boy. I wanted to say no, to say that the timing was bad and that I was too tired and anxious to be able to handle anything else just now…but Zach had that cautiously hopeful look in his blue eyes that I remembered all too well. As wonderful as the Admiral had been, by the time he took the Vale brothers in, Zach was already fifteen—and he’d basically resigned himself to the idea that good things were never going to happen to him. Even after things had turned around, he still got this look sometimes when he asked for things, as if he wasn’t sure he was really allowed to want things for himself.
I’d never been able to say no to that look.
“Okay,” I said, taking a seat on the couch. “Let’s talk.”
6
CAROLYN
“Iwas talking with my cousin Chance yesterday—” Zach began.
“Your cousin?” I interrupted, confused. “You don’t have a cousin.”
“Oh right, you wouldn’t know,” he said, giving me a sheepish smile. “I kind of do now. The McCallisters. Turns out, their dad and the Admiral were estranged half-brothers. When the guys found out after their dad died, they decided we’re cousins now.”
“Chance McCallister is your cousin?” I said, still trying to process that. “He and Mandy got their engagement and wedding rings from All That Sparkles.”
“Yeah, I know. They love them. Said you were great about finding them rings that wouldn’t get in their way when they worked on cars.”
“Well, that’s my job,” I replied with a shrug. “A wedding ring is for life—wouldn’t make much sense to have one that doesn’t fit with your life.”
He went quiet at that, as if I’d said something profound. “I didn’t fit your life, did I?” he asked after a few beats of silence.
“…What?”
“When I was serving. That didn’t fit the life that you wanted, did it?”
“No,” I agreed quietly. “It didn’t.” He looked so hurt at that, and I struggled to find the right words to explain. The last time we’d tried to have this conversation, it had escalated into a fight—the fight that ended our engagement. I didn’t want to fight anymore.
“Two years ago, when we broke up,” he said, “I didn’t really want to hear what you had to say. I was angry and hurting—it made me go into defensive mode. And when I do that, I stop listening to anyone else. But when I talked to Chance, he told me about how things had gone wrong between him and Mandy back in the day. Do you know the story?” I nodded—they’d told me all about it when they’d come in to buy their rings. “He told me how blindsided he was when things fell apart—but that later on, he realized that she’d been trying to tell him what she wanted all along. He just hadn’t wanted to hear it.” He looked up and met my eyes, staring straight into them like he was trying to read my soul. “What were the things you tried to tell me over the years that I refused to hear?”
My heart skipped a beat. It was the question I’d wanted him to ask for so long.
“I…I tried to tell you that I wanted a life with you here. I know how much the Admiral meant to you, so I understood that you and your brothers all wanted to serve—but I thought it would be something you would do for a few years before coming home to build a life with me. We were engaged, we’d talked about starting a family…there was so much I wanted for us to share. And that meant having you around. I didn’t want to do all of that on my own, with you only around for snatches of time. If we were going to make a real commitment to each other, I wanted part of that to be a promise that we’d always come first for each other.”
“You do come first for me,” he said, and my breath caught. Do. Not did, but do. I swallowed hard.
“It didn’t feel that way. Not when your focus was always on the last mission, or the mission you were about to start.
I could see him start to reply—but then he caught himself. After a moment, he nodded slowly.
“I understand,” he said at last. “And I’m so, so sorry I ever made you feel that you weren’t the most important thing in the world to me. It honestly never occurred to me that you would ever doubt that. I wanted to be the best SEAL I could be for you, because I loved you so much and wanted you to be proud of me. Wanted to prove that you’d made the right choice by choosing me.”
Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Of course I was proud of you. But you didn’t have to prove anything to me.”
He gave me a rueful smile. “It felt like I did.”
My stomach sank. “Did I ever make you feel like I thought you weren’t good enough?”
He shook his head rapidly. “Not you. Never you. But we both know that my family didn’t have the best reputation in town. Even after the Admiral took us in, a lot of people looked at me and my brothers and thought that we’d turn out just like our dad. Joining the Navy, becoming a SEAL—those were things I did to prove that I could be like the Admiral, not like my dad. That I could be someone everyone respected. Someone you’d be proud to be with. Being a SEAL was basically the only way I knew how to be a good man.”
I took a minute to process that, then let out a sigh. “I didn’t know that was how you saw it,” I admitted. “I guess you weren’t the only one who wasn’t really listening back then.” I’d been so focused on the idea that he put the military first that I’d never really stopped to figure out why. Hearing his explanation put a lot of things into perspective. “So if that’s how you felt, why did you leave the Navy?”
“It started last Christmas, when I got back from a mission. Colin and Alex were both overseas, you and I were broken up, and it’s not like I had a place here to stay anymore, so I ended up hanging around base with other teammates who didn’t have anywhere to be. And I love spending time with the guys, you know that, but spending the holidays like that just felt so empty. Chance had gotten in touch about his dad and the Admiral, and we were messaging back and forth. Hearing that the Admiral had family, a half-brother that he never told us about, made me really stop and think about how he lived his life. I never really thought about it when I was a kid, but it just seemed to hit me how lonely he must have been. No wife, no kids—except for us, and he didn’t take us in until he was well into his sixties. The military had been his life, and he had an incredible career, but it meant that at the end of the day, he had a big empty house and no one to share it with. I think that’s why he took us in in the first place. We needed him, absolutely, but he needed us, too—and that was something I’d never really realized before. And that’s when I decided.”
“Decided what?”
“That I didn’t want to end up like the Admiral. Much as I still admire him and everything he did, I don’t want to look back in forty years and realize that I’ve had a career instead of having a life. The day after Christmas, I started the paperwork to end my service. I officially mustered out last month.”
It was everything I’d been waiting years for him to realize. Everything I’d given up on hoping he’d ever come to see. But somehow, he had.
“So…where does that leave us?” I managed to ask.
He leaned toward me, his eyes intense, but he didn’t reach out to touch. “That’s up to you,” he said. “It’s been almost two years. I don’t know what your life looks like these days, don’t even know if you’re seeing someone—”
“I’m not,” I blurted out. “Seeing anyone, that is.”
He looked visibly relieved by that. “Okay, then, I don’t know if you want to be with anyone right now. But if there’s any chance you do, I’m here. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. I still love you just as much as I did the day I asked you to be my wife.”
I couldn’t help flushing at that, remembering his proposal: the moonlight picnic down by the lake, the ring hidden away in the basket. We made love on that picnic blanket, stripped down to bare skin—nothing on me but his ring. It was the happiest night of my life.
“I want the future you imagined for us,” he continued, his voice soft and almost hypnotic. “If it’s not too late.”
It’s not—you’re all I want. The words were on the tip of my tongue…but I didn’t say them. Because they weren’t entirely true. Yes, I still wanted him. Yes, I still dreamed about the life that I’d thought we’d have together. But those dreams had shifted since Austin came into the picture. I couldn’t just make decisions for myself anymore. I had to consider what was best for my son. And for Austin’s sake, I knew we shouldn’t rush this. So much had changed in the past two years. I’d need to see how we fit together as a family before I made any commitments.
But I could give him a little encouragement.
“We’ll need to move slow,” I said. “See how things go with you and Austin—and with you and me. But…I’m willing to try.”
His eyes lit up, a smile on his face more radiant than any I’d ever seen. “Thank you,” he said, so soft, so grateful.
“Thank you,” I replied, “for listening. For trying.”
His smile turned playful. “If this is what I get for listening, you better believe I’m going to hang on your every word from now on.”
I laughed. “Well, we’ll see how that goes.” I searched for something for us—something lighter and less emotionally charged. My eyes landed on my iPad, giving me an idea. It might get a little emotional, but it should also be fun.
“Would you like to look at some pictures and video from Austin’s first year?” I took hold of my iPad and tapped a folder open. Inside it, I’d stored everything from images of his birth to video of his first birthday party.
“That’d be great.” Zach scooted closer to me so that we could go through the pictures together. We spent the next hour going through them, with me giving the story behind every image. Zach had been absolutely enthralled, eager to hear every detail. Once I’d gone through them all, I handed him the iPad, sensing that he wanted to look at them a while longer. While he did that, I slipped back into the kitchen to give him some privacy. What would it be like to know you’d missed more than a year of your child’s life? I couldn’t help the smidgen of guilt I felt. If only I had tried to reach him some other way than through his phone…
But what was done was done, and I couldn’t change the past. Needing something to occupy myself, I focused on my laptop screen, forcing myself to return to business. A reminder popped up that a shipment of gemstones was due next week. With the store still a mess and the investigation ongoing, I was in no position to receive the delivery. I called the distributor to have them hold the shipment.
After verifying my identity through the secure system, I reached a customer service representative.
“I can see the shipment on my screen,” the woman explained over the phone, “but it was canceled five days ago.”
“It was canceled? By whom?” I asked, immediately concerned. I’d personally placed the order.
“Give me a minute to look in the records, and I’ll get back to you.” After a short wait on hold, the representative returned. “The order was canceled via email from the account we have on file for you. Has your email address for purchasing changed?”
“No, it hasn’t. That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Would you mind forwarding that cancelation email to me? For my records.”
“No problem.” Buttons clicked on the representative’s end. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“I’ll need to reinstate that order with delivery in two weeks.” I finished the transaction and hung up.
When the forwarded email came into my inbox, I reviewed it carefully. From the look of it, it had come from our purchasing account and appeared legitimate. But I hadn’t sent it. I picked up my phone, dialing Charlotte first to verify that my sister hadn’t canceled the order. Next, I checked with Jenna, the only other person at the store with access to the account. Neither had sent the email.
Something was off, way off. Could someone have hacked our email account? Such things weren’t unheard of. I called my IT company next, to get their perspective.
“Accounts get hacked,” the representative told me after I explained my concern, “but there’s no sign of a problem with yours. We ran diagnostics this morning.”
“I’d like you to dig into my account deeper and do a full security scan,” I said, my concern about sabotage returning.
“No problem. Someone will get back to you.” He clicked off, leaving me puzzled over the seemingly unconnected incidents that might very well be part of a larger plan to destroy my business.
“What’s going on?” Zach’s voice jolted me out of my thoughts. He leaned against the doorway from the living room to the kitchen, looking way too good.
“How long have you been standing there?” I’d forgotten how silently he could move. I supposed it was his training that made him so stealthy—along with giving him that impressive physique.
“Long enough to know you’ve got a problem. Or, at least, it sounds like you do.”
I debated. The detective hadn’t thought much of my theory, and Zach might not either. But he was someone I could trust. And he had just said he would listen to me, no matter what I had to say. It would be nice to get a fresh perspective. I told him my ideas about the robbery and the other odd occurrences. He listened attentively until I’d finished the list that, to me, suggested something wasn’t right.
“It could be coincidence,” he said, “but with these many separate incidents piling up, it’s starting to look to me like there’s something more going on.”
It was amazing how good it felt just to have someone validate my opinion. But right after the rush of pleasure came a sinking feeling of dread.
“So you think there really could be someone after me, wanting to hurt my business?” I asked.
“I certainly think it’s possible,” he said. “But…” His voice turned steely. “If they think they can attack you without consequences, they’ve got another think coming.”
I still felt uneasy at the thought of danger heading my way, but I liked the thought that with Zach by my side, I wouldn’t have to face it alone.
7
ZACH
“Peek-a-boo,” I said for the umpteenth time, sending Austin into peals of laughter.
I lay on the living room floor with my son on my chest. I’d visited Carolyn’s house every day for the past five, and I was loving each minute I spent with Austin. I’d had some nervous moments, worrying about what kind of father I’d be. My own parents were no example I wanted to follow. The Admiral had known how to love, but my brothers and I had been teenagers by the time we’d moved in with him.
Being a dad to a young toddler was different, but I was managing. It was easy when the kid was this awesome. Happy, carefree, and blessedly unhurt by the robbery. I had been surprised when Carolyn invited me to join her at an appointment at the pediatrician’s office, but I was so glad I’d been there to hear directly when the doctor verified that Austin was fine and would likely not remember the hostage situation.
