The Marine's Second Chance, page 1
They went on kissing and kissing and kissing
without restraint, with more and more zeal, more vigorous tongue-play, deepening that kiss and raising an ever greater appetite in her until Marli lost all track of time, of everything but kissing him.
But just about the time she began to recognize that, for the second night in a row, Dalton seemed to have more wherewithal than she did and gradually reversed things, pulling out of that kiss to drop his forehead to her hairline with a sigh. “I wasn’t going to do that again...” he said in a whisper.
“Me neither,” she whispered back.
But they stayed the way they were, head-to-head, both of her hands on his chest now, his hand behind her head and his arm around her also keeping them together.
They sat there that way for too long for it not to be clear that there was no eagerness to separate.
Dear Reader,
We’re back in the small town of Merritt, Montana, where Dalton—the fourth Camden brother—has been ordered to decide whether or not to court-martial his childhood nemesis, Holt Abbott. What Dalton hadn’t expected to find there was Marli Abbott, Holt’s sister and Dalton’s onetime love.
Marli, whose goal was to get out and stay out of the small town, has recently changed her mind and decided to move back. Knowing that Dalton was a career marine—like her brother until he was injured in the line of duty—she hadn’t expected to see the person who had meant more to her than anyone. The person she’d had to hurt.
Dalton hasn’t forgotten—or forgiven—how she left him. And now he holds her brother’s fate in his hands. It’s finally time for her to explain, to make amends and maybe to help herself get over the past, if it’s possible.
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Best,
Victoria Pade
The Marine’s Second Chance
Victoria Pade
Victoria Pade is a USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous romance novels. She has two beautiful and talented daughters—Cori and Erin—and is a native of Colorado, where she lives and writes. A devoted chocolate lover, she’s in search of the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.
For information about her latest and upcoming releases, visit Victoria on Facebook—she would love to hear from you.
Books by Victoria Pade
Harlequin Special Edition
The Camdens of Montana
The Marine Makes Amends
The Marine’s Baby Blues
The Major Gets it Right
Camden Family Secrets
The Marine Makes His Match
AWOL Bride
Special Forces Father
The Marine’s Family Mission
Montana Mavericks: Rust Creek Cowboys
The Maverick’s Christmas Baby
Montana Mavericks: Striking It Rich
A Family for the Holidays
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Excerpt from Lightning Strikes Twice by Elizabeth Hrib
Chapter One
It was a bad day for Marli Abbott to be running late. But the rental agent had called on that June Saturday morning and said if she didn’t sign the lease on her new office immediately, the other interested party was going to swoop it out from under her. So she’d had to rush from the family farm where she’d grown up just outside of Merritt, Montana, and go into the heart of her small hometown to sign the lease.
After getting that done as fast as she could, she hurried back home at a breakneck speed, hoping the quiet country roads weren’t being patrolled by any traffic officer with a speeding ticket quota to fill. Luckily they weren’t, and she turned from the main road onto the driveway with a full twenty minutes to get herself ready to take the rest of that Saturday off.
The driveway ran alongside the two-story farmhouse and took her all the way back to the garage behind the house, where she parked her black sedan. Then she got out and hurried to the small guest cottage for a shower.
When she’d decided to move back to Merritt, it had been her intention to live in the main house. She and her older brother had inherited the house and guest cottage, plus fifty acres of farmland, which they leased to a neighbor, from their mother two years earlier. As a career marine, Holt had had no intention of living anywhere on the property himself. But then fate had altered her brother’s future and the house had turned out to be where he and his wife, Bridget, needed to go. So Marli had taken the cottage.
She threw off the clothes she’d thrown on, released her long auburn hair from its slapdash ponytail and got into the shower, already thinking ahead to what the rest of the day held. It would mostly consist of being there for Holt and Bridget as they worked through another milestone in her brother’s new situation.
Since his release from a veterans’ rehabilitation center two days ago, Marli and Bridget had been combining their energies and ideas to help settle him in at home. Some modifications were temporary, only needed until he got more of his strength and health back. Others required a more permanent shift. Holt now had paraplegia and required a wheelchair to get around. It was a challenging adjustment on multiple levels—not least because the old house was not built with wheelchair accessibility in mind.
Today would mark his first bath here—with help from Louise, the local nurse, and old friend Yancy Coltrain. While Marli didn’t intend to be in on the actual bathing, she had promised to be on hand for whatever else might come up.
She showered and dried off quickly, then flipped over and brushed her hair from the underside up to gather it at her crown before twisting it around itself and holding the haphazard knot in place with two hairpins.
She was in too much of a hurry for moisturizer and makeup, so to compensate for the absence, she pinched her high cheekbones to add some color, applied a swipe of lip gloss to her lips and regretted that she would be seeing old acquaintance Yancy for the first time since high school looking like she did. But there just wasn’t the opportunity for more, not even for a touch of mascara to highlight her pale green eyes.
She dressed in the first things that came to hand—undies, an ancient bra, a pair of black yoga pants and a white V-neck T-shirt that were all usually left as lounging-around-on-a-lazy-day attire.
Then she slipped her bare feet into a pair of nondescript black ballet flats and out the door she went again.
“I’m back. Did I make it?” she called as she flung open the back door into the main house.
“I’m watching for them but nobody’s here yet,” Bridget replied from the living room. “Did you hear that, honey?” she added.
“I heard,” Marli’s brother answered from the dining room they’d converted into a bedroom.
Marli found her tall, blonde Nordic-looking sister-in-law standing at the picture window in the living room and joined her there.
“I’m glad you got here—I was hoping you would, since I’ve never met this Yancy guy even though Holt says he’s one of his best friends.” Bridget wasn’t from Merritt.
“He’s Holt’s age but we all grew up together,” Marli explained. “He’s a nice guy. You’ll like him.”
“Do you think he’s strong enough for the job? Holt says he was always really skinny...”
“Yeah, but he’s a farm boy. I think if he can hoist bales of hay, he can help with this.”
“I’m relieved that the nurse is coming, too, so she can make sure we get Holt in and out of the tub the best way.”
“Her name is Louise, right?” Marli asked just to make sure.
“Right. And the doctor is—”
“Joan—she wasn’t here before, either, so I haven’t met her yet at all.” The nurse had made the initial house call the day before to check that Holt had weathered the trip from Virginia all right, so they had met her.
“And the nurse will call the doctor once the bath is finished and the doctor will actually make a house call, too,” Bridget concluded. “It’s really nice that they’re making so much extra effort. I didn’t expect that.”
“Small town,” Marli said by way of explanation.
Two cars pulled into the driveway then.
“They’re here,” Bridget called to Holt as Marli went outside.
She crossed the front porch, skirted the ramp she and Bridget had installed over the left side of the three steps and used the still-exposed right side of the stairs to go down into the yard.
The nurse got out of the closest car first, exchanged greetings with Marli and then said she wanted a few minutes with Holt before they got started. She went inside just as Yancy slid from behind the steering wheel of his dingy blue-green truck and rounded the front end.
“Hello, Mr. Coltrain,” Marli said in mock formality.
“Is that really you, Marli? Long time no see,” the tall, thin man responded. “All grown up and...wow!”
“Oh, right.” Marli deflected the flattery she wasn’t buying in to and lobbed a little back. “Look at you—you haven’t aged a day!” Which was true—Yancy still had gaunt, homely boy-next-door features under kinky-curly dirty-blond hair.
“Yeah, I know,” he said ruefully. “Who wants to be so baby-faced at thirty-five that they still get asked for ID to order a beer?”
“Everybody around here knows you, so if anyone is asking for your ID, they’re just doing it to mess with you,” Marli said laughingly as Yancy bent down to give her a big bear hug.
Over his shoulder she caught a glimpse of a newer-model white truck turning into the driveway of the Camden farm across the street. The truck stopped abruptly.
Marli ended the hug with Yancy but her attention didn’t instantly return to him. It stayed on the white truck and the fact that it hadn’t gone any farther up the drive.
Noticing her distraction, Yancy pivoted slightly to peer in the same direction. “Waitin’ for one of the Camdens to throw rocks at you?” the tall man joked.
He was kidding...mostly. Relations between the Abbotts and the Camdens had had some difficulties over the years. Difficulties that had caused a festering grudge in Holt. A grudge he’d held against Dalton Camden in particular from the time they were all children. A grudge that could now put Holt’s future in jeopardy.
And certainly Marli knew that her own actions toward Dalton seventeen years ago hadn’t made things better...
“No,” Marli answered, pretending she wasn’t nervous herself about what she might be facing from the Camden family now that she’d moved back. “In fact, Ben Camden came over to chat this morning while Holt and Bridget and I were having breakfast on the front porch. He said that if there was anything we needed, anything he could do, to just call.”
“Yeah, that sounds like old Ben—he’s a peacemaker.”
Marli had been relieved to discover that was the elder Camden’s attitude because she’d had no idea what kind of bad light the family might see her in after the way she’d left Merritt. And Dalton.
The decision seemed to have been made at least by the Camden grandfather to keep things civil—which sounded good to her. But that made it odd that the truck still wasn’t moving up the driveway.
“Maybe today Ben wants to say hello to you?” Marli postulated. She’d spotted the elderly man behind the wheel just as he’d made the turn.
“Don’t know why. I just saw him at the lodge last night,” Yancy informed her.
Then the white truck’s passenger door opened. Marli hadn’t even noticed that there was a passenger before the man got out.
From the distance and the angle, she could initially tell only that it was a man dressed in a marine utility uniform.
But that was enough to cause her concern.
Marli kept on watching as the man rounded the front of the truck, stopped to say something to Ben and then went to the truck bed to remove a large duffel bag, setting it on the drive.
Please let it be anyone but him...
Anyone but the person who held her brother’s fate in his hands.
The person she’d done very, very wrong.
The man began to cross the road but Marli continued to hold on to some denial because—as irrational as it was—this clearly wasn’t the not-much-more-than-a-boy she’d last seen.
This was a full-grown man. A tall, broad-shouldered, strapping, imposing man with an air of someone to be reckoned with.
This was certainly not the Dalton she remembered.
Not the Dalton who had been her childhood best friend, who had slowly become more, who had been all of her firsts. Who—once upon a time—she’d cared for...
Loved...
As he drew nearer, she focused on more details, hanging on to any basis for denial.
No, the hair wasn’t longish the way Dalton’s had been the last time she’d seen him, but this man’s short-on-the-sides, slightly longer-on-top hair was that same brown-almost-black color.
And no, as she began to see his face better, it wasn’t the face of the merely cute teenage boy she’d known. Instead the baby fat had been chiseled down to reveal a well-sculpted bone structure that formed a straight, thin nose; a sharp jawline; and an all-around starkly handsome, supremely masculine face shadowed in just a hint of dark stubble that the Dalton she’d been familiar with hadn’t been capable of.
But it was the blue eyes that finally forced her to shatter her disavowal of who this was. Those bright cobalt-blue eyes that the Camdens were known for. Those bright cobalt-blue eyes she knew all too well.
There was no denying it any longer. This had to be the Dalton of now.
But his slightly bushy brows were stern over those blue eyes, which shot daggers. His sensual not-too-full lips were a harsh, serious line. And there was nothing friendly about this expression, which she had never before seen from him.
In fact, there was so much coldness emanating from him that it actually made a shiver run through Marli. She was left with no doubt that he’d become a very hard man who bore her only ill will.
Which wasn’t apt to help her brother any.
“Holt has thirty more days of medical leave,” she heard herself blurt out defensively. “You can’t take him anywhere.”
“I came to make sure he’s here and that he stays put. For now,” Dalton said in a voice that was deeper than it had been and left no question that he was secure in and comfortable with his authority.
“Your grandfather saw us all early this morning, so he can verify that Holt is here. But he’s with a nurse right now, so it would be better if you left him alone. Forever...” she added as wishful thinking.
“I won’t be leaving him alone forever,” Dalton warned.
“You’ll let him stay put for now, though,” she said, repeating Dalton’s own words with a hopeful intonation. “To get these last thirty days of rest and recovery...so he doesn’t have to do that locked up...”
“I haven’t decided yet. But make no mistake about where this is leaning. For damn good reason.”
Marli knew there was good reason, so there was nothing to say to that. Instead she maintained a sentry-like stance, raised a defiant chin to conceal how unnerved she actually was and said, “Well, it sounds like nothing is happening today. So since Holt’s nurse and Yancy are here to help Holt have a bath, maybe you should just go.”
Those Camden blue eyes slowly went to their old acquaintance still standing near Marli, watching the back-and-forth.
“Yancy,” Dalton said flatly, more in acknowledgment than salutation.
“Dalton,” Yancy answered with clear reservation.
The Camden blue eyes returned to Marli, settling on her as if taking stock and sizing her up.
It made her terribly uncomfortable, but she wasn’t about to let it show. She just met him eye to eye in a stare down that went on long enough for Yancy to shuffle his feet and nervously clear his throat.
Then Dalton said, “I’ll be back. Marli.”
The contempt in the way he said her name was jarring. Concealing that, too, she merely raised her chin another tick. “Dalton,” she returned with equal challenge.
Which seemed to have no effect on him as he turned and retraced his steps across the road.
Marli watched him go, struck by the breadth and strength in his back as he did.
When he reached the Camden driveway, he bent to grab his duffel bag in an angry swipe then straightened again to take it with him up the drive.
“S’pose he didn’t leave that in the truck because he didn’t want old Ben to carry it in while he came over here,” Yancy murmured as if thinking aloud.
But the duffel bag was the last thing on Marli’s mind.
She was still taken aback by what she’d just seen and heard.
And the knowledge that, like her brother, she’d earned the wrath of Dalton Camden. She likely should have expected that.
But even so, even with seventeen years of nothing between them, it still hurt...
Chapter Two
“Oh, man, Pops, you can’t keep feeding me like you have today! It’s a good thing you have some hard labor for me to do while I’m here,” Dalton said with a groan as he and his three brothers gathered around the big farmhouse kitchen table.
