Kitabı oku: «Married To A Marine»

Chapter One

Lightning flashed against the distant night sky and reflected on the dark water. “You sure you’re expected?”

Kelly Hart nodded at the fisherman she’d hired to take her from the small North Carolina coastal town out to the island known as Pirate’s Cove. The impending thunderstorm didn’t bother her. She doubted it could hold a candle to the storm of protest U.S. Marine Justice Wilder would generate when he saw her.

It was fitting that Justice had holed up on a place called Pirate’s Cove. There had always been something of a renegade about him, something dangerous and sexy.

“Don’t worry about me,” Kelly said. It was something she said often. At twenty-eight, she’d grown into the kind of woman who could take care of whatever came her way, even a furious Marine. “I’ll be fine.”

She repeated the words to herself as she hauled the provisions she’d brought with her the short distance from the beach to the only house visible from the boat dock. There was a single light on inside. Kelly heard the first distant boom of thunder as she pounded on the door.

It was yanked open a moment later.

And there he was. Justice Wilder. Looking none too pleased to see her. And looking far better than a man in his condition should look. But a second glance showed the paleness of his face, the lines of pain around his mouth, the cuts and bruises on his muscular legs, the sling holding his right arm.

His dark hair tumbled over his forehead. It was longer than when she’d seen him last. He was wearing military-green boxers and a T-shirt emblazoned with the USMC logo. He’d barely been twenty that last time she’d seen him. He’d made her heart pound then, and he had the same effect now.

She drank in the sight of him. His lean cheeks, his tempting mouth, his tall ranginess. The teenager had grown into a man—a man who still had the power to go straight to her heart. It was amazing. Even after all this time, even under these conditions, she still felt a zing.

He apparently did not. His blue eyes were dark with fury as he glared at her. “What the Sam Hill are you doing here?”

Marines don’t swear, he’d once told her. Swearing shows a lack of discipline.

His words snapped her out of her reverie. Making the most of the Southern accent she’d acquired during her time in Nashville, Kelly drawled, “I heard you were having a pity party for yourself and I decided to come join you.”

Justice appeared taken aback by her blunt reply.

Good. She wanted to jar him out of whatever idiocy was preventing him from taking care of himself and his injuries properly. He had no right to make his poor mother so frantic with worry. Not to mention that he had no right to look so sexy that her knees were mushy.

“Do I know you?” he demanded.

Okay, so the guy hadn’t seen her since she was an awkward teenager, and even then he’d barely noticed her. She just somehow hadn’t prepared herself for the possibility that he wouldn’t recognize her.

Did she look that disheveled? Sure the cargo pants she wore were wrinkled from the trip, but the lime-green T-shirt she’d teamed with them usually looked fine on her. Her light-brown hair was gathered up into a braid to avoid being messed up by the increasing wind. She didn’t have the kind of memorable looks that her sister possessed. She didn’t even have her sister’s gorgeous blue eyes. Instead Kelly had brown eyes.

But then, she hadn’t come here looking to win any beauty contests. She’d come here to help Mrs. Wilder by helping her oldest and most stubborn son.

Kelly hadn’t seen Justice in years. She wouldn’t be coming to see him now were it not for the desperate phone call she’d received from his mother yesterday morning. She replayed the conversation in her head.

“Kelly, I need your help. I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way…” The older woman’s voice had cracked with emotion.

“You know I’ll help you any way I can,” Kelly had assured her. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Justice,” Mrs. Wilder replied. “He’s hurt. He saved a little boy in a car accident but was badly injured in the process. It happened near the Marine base here in North Carolina a week ago. After staying overnight, Justice checked himself out of the hospital first thing this morning. I couldn’t stop him. But I made him tell me where he’s going. To a friend’s beach house. I want you to talk him into getting the physical therapy he needs. And I’ll be honest with you, Kelly, that may mean giving it to him yourself. I know this is an awkward situation…” Mrs. Wilder’s voice trailed off. They never really referred to it—the divorce between Kelly’s older sister, Barbie, and Mrs. Wilder’s oldest son, Justice—as anything other than the “awkward situation.”

Some might find it strange that Kelly had developed such a close relationship with Mrs. Wilder, a relationship that continued even after Barbie had dumped Justice. But they didn’t know the facts, or the emotions.

Kelly had only been thirteen when her mom died in a train accident and her older sister married Justice right out of high school. Mrs. Wilder had been a godsend to Kelly at that time, taking the gangly Kelly under her wing and mothering her with love and support.

The marriage between Barbie and Justice had only lasted two years, but the close bonds between Mrs. Wilder and Kelly had continued on for a decade and had strengthened. Mrs. Wilder had helped Kelly pick out a high school prom dress, had listened to her worries about attending an out-of-state college, had encouraged her to follow her dream of becoming a physical therapist, had agreed the job opportunity in Nashville was too good to let pass.

Mrs. Wilder had been there for Kelly at a time when she’d really needed a motherly influence, and she’d continued to be there for her throughout the years. Kelly would walk through fire for her.

“I hate to ask you,” Mrs. Wilder had said unsteadily. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

Kelly had known what to do. The right thing, the only thing to do. Help Mrs. Wilder any way she could.

And so here she was. Coming to the rescue. The question was how to do that? Justice didn’t recognize her. Should she let him know who she was right away? Her relationship to Barbie was hardly likely to put her on the top of his guest list.

She was considering her options when something clicked and Justice’s gaze hardened.

“I’m Kelly,” she said, even though she could tell he’d already gathered that much. “Kelly Hart. Your mother sent me.”

Justice looked as if he didn’t believe a word she was saying. Meanwhile the thunder was rumbling closer and closer. “Why would my mother do that?”

“Because she knows I’m a physical therapist.” Kelly was not about to reveal the ongoing friendship she had with Mrs. Wilder to Justice yet. She doubted he’d understand.

“Go away. I don’t want you here,” Justice growled.

“I did rather get that impression,” she noted wryly.

“You can’t stay here.”

“I can’t leave,” she said with gentle cheerfulness, even as she nudged the door open and maneuvered her way around him, away from the huge raindrops that had started falling outside. “There’s a storm coming and besides, the nice fisherman who brought me over in his powerboat has left already.” Her huge tote bag hung from her shoulder and threatened to slip off as she lifted the box she’d brought. “Where do you want me to put these?”

“Where do I want you to…?” Justice repeated in disbelief. “As far away from me as possible. Antarctica would do fine.” His voice held a military curtness and a drill inspector loudness.

Kelly didn’t flinch but instead allowed his anger and his words to roll off her like water off a duck. “That voice isn’t going to work on me, so you might as well save your energy and your vocal cords. You’re not going to scare me away.”

“Don’t be so sure of that, little girl.”

Okay, so now his voice held a dangerous edge that did make her a tad nervous. But she couldn’t afford to let that show. And she also couldn’t afford to let him know how glad she was to see him.

She’d only been thirteen the last time she’d seen him. He’d been marrying her older sister at the time. He’d looked so tall and heroic to her young eyes. He’d adored Barbie and had from the moment he’d met her three years earlier in high school.

Justice and Barbie had gotten married right after graduation. Two years later they’d gotten divorced.

“Why are you here?” Justice demanded. “Haven’t you Hart women messed up my life enough already? Have you come to gloat or something? To kick a guy when he’s down, is that it?”

Kelly set the heavy box on a nearby table before turning to face him. “I came here to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Outside, skeletal veins of lightning flashed and flowed like rivers of light while thunder boomed, rattling the floor-to-ceiling windows in the beach house. Impressive. But the storm didn’t hold a candle to the fire in Justice’s eyes.

There was something more to his anger, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something else reflected in his gaze. Was it bitterness or despair? It was there and gone as fast as a flash of lightning. Maybe she’d imagined that flare of emotion, but there was no way she was ignoring it. “I’m a physical therapist, Justice. I can help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” he repeated, his voice gritty, a muscle in his jaw clenching. “I don’t need it and I don’t want it.”

“I know that’s what you think right now, but you’ll change your mind.”

“That’s what your sister, Barbie, thought. That she’d change my mind about being a Marine. That she’d change my mind about playing Ken to her Barbie-doll life. It ain’t gonna happen,” Justice drawled.

Score one for the Marine. Kelly was stung by the comparison to her sister. She and Barbie had little in common. Her older sister liked being surrounded by adoring men and needed love and plenty of male attention to feel fulfilled. Barbie wasn’t a bad person, she just had different priorities from Kelly’s.

At the moment, Kelly’s priority was dealing with Justice.

She busied herself opening the box. “I brought food. I wasn’t sure how many provisions you had here, so I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.”

“If you really thought that, then you’d never have come here in the first place.”

“You’ve got me there,” Kelly admitted with a grin. “So I don’t always play it safe, I admit it. Ah, I see the kitchen.” She made a beeline for it, bringing the box of food with her and leaving Justice to follow her.

She surreptitiously noted his awkward movement. He was still limping, but his mother had told Kelly that the doctors said that was due to the serious bruising and cuts on his leg. He also suffered a slight concussion. But it was his right arm and shoulder that were the real problem.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the increasing thunder, in addition to the banging of pots and pans as she searched for what she wanted.

“Making dinner,” Kelly replied. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t eaten since I had a burger along the interstate down from Nashville.”

Justice was tempted to ask her what she was doing in Nashville, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of showing any curiosity about her.

His ex-wife’s little sister had certainly grown up. She was wearing baggy cargo pants with flowers on the knees and a lime-green cropped T-shirt that showed the pale skin along the small of her back as she bent over to return the pile of pots to the cabinet. Her wavy, light-brown hair was gathered into a single braid held in place by some sort of flower twisty-thing. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry aside from a sensible watch and silly dangle earrings shaped like question marks.

Justice certainly had plenty of questions. “How did you know where I was?”

“Your mother told me,” Kelly replied. “She’s worried about you.”

“Why would my mother tell my ex-wife’s sister she was worried about me?”

“Ask her.”

“I’m asking you.”

“And I prefer that you ask her. You should call her, anyway, to let her know you’re okay.”

“She has no cause to be worried about me,” he said gruffly.

“Right,” she noted with a wry smile in his direction. “I can’t imagine why she was the teeniest bit concerned that her oldest son took off from the hospital against doctor’s orders to hide out on a practically deserted coastal island.”

“I am not hiding out,” he said in a gritty voice. “A Marine does not hide out.”

“Hey, fella, I’ll have you know that you’re not the first Marine I’ve treated,” she informed him before setting a saucepan on the stove and pouring in a batch of homemade soup from a plastic container she’d brought with her. “I know all about the Marine’s set of values. Honor, courage, commitment. Not stupidity, however. I saw no reference to stupidity.”

Justice couldn’t believe the way she’d barged into his domain and made herself at home. He was a member of the Marine Corps’ elite Force Recon, the best of the best. He could take out an enemy sniper before they knew what hit them.

Or he used to be able to do that. The docs had warned him that those days were gone now.

Justice couldn’t believe it—years of living on the edge, of making danger his friend, and he got hurt not on a mission but by driving in the States on a normal sunny day.

And now they hailed him as a hero. If they only knew….

The inner torment streaked through him, overshadowing the physical pain he’d been living with since the accident. Gritting his teeth, he battened down his emotions and blocked out the raw fear and guilty doubts that plagued him.

Lightning flashed overhead and thunder crashed a second later. Kelly didn’t even flinch as she added salt to the soup.

Her calmness irritated him even further.

His life was in a mess, and she was cooking soup.

Yeah, she might have grown up, but she was still as much a nuisance as ever. And he wasn’t about to let her into his life. No matter how good that darn soup was starting to smell.

First thing in the morning he would send her packing. But first he’d eat. He needed food to regain his strength, and there was no contest that what she was cooking had to be better than the stuff he’d been eating lately.

But she wasn’t staying. No way. He’d have her off-island on tomorrow’s every-other-day ferry to the mainland.

“So what’s the deal with you and my mother?” he demanded, carefully lowering himself into a straight-backed kitchen chair.

Kelly looked guilty. His eyes narrowed. Something was up here.

Kelly tried sidestepping the issue once again by repeating her earlier mantra. “Maybe you should ask her.”

“I’m asking you,” he said, grimacing as he removed the sling in order to use his right hand. He couldn’t afford to keep babying it. This was his shooting arm. He had to regain his mobility ASAP. Regardless of what the doctors said.

She placed a huge bowl of soup in front of him along with a few thick slices of what looked like homemade bread. “And I’m saying you should ask your mother. You have a cell phone with you, right? So you can call her and let her know you’re all right.”

“Why this sudden concern?”

“It’s not sudden,” she denied, putting her own bowl of soup on the table across from him.

“So you’ve been pining for me all these years?” he mocked, and was surprised by the flash of something in her eyes. Such big brown eyes for such a little thing. Well, maybe not such a little thing, he silently revised, remembering how the top of her head had brushed his chin as she’d slipped past him to get into the house.

“Yeah, I’ve been positively lovesick for years,” she mocked right back, even going so far as to bat her eyelashes at him with such outrageous excess that he would have smiled…if he’d been a smiling man. But he wasn’t.

He focused his attention on the soup. It was good. It wasn’t until he saw the satisfied grin on her face that he realized he’d just guzzled down his chow like a raw recruit at boot camp. He dropped his spoon so abruptly it clattered on the wooden table.

“Don’t get too comfy here,” he warned her. “You’re leaving first thing in the morning.”

His pronouncement was accentuated by a crack of thunder.

“Sounds like a doozy of a storm,” she noted a second before the lights flickered and went out. “Good thing I’m not afraid of the dark,” she calmly added. “How about you?”

“I’m a Marine. I live for the dark.”

That didn’t surprise Kelly. She’d sensed the darkness in him from the moment he’d opened the door. There was a new edge to him, a sharper dangerous edge that hadn’t been there before. Brought about by his years in the Marines or by his accident? Or a combination of both?

She could hear him breathing. There was something surprisingly sensual about being caught in the darkness with him, surrounded by velvety shadows illuminated by flashes of lightning. The harsh bursts of light captured the angles of his face, lending them new definition. It was the face of a man who wouldn’t step aside if trouble got in his way.

She reached for his empty bowl only to have her fingers collide with his. Heat shot through her, as powerful as a lightning strike. The storm outside dimmed as her senses shifted to the storm raging inside of her body. She could feel the excitement burning in her like a wild thing.

“There’s something I should warn you about this beach house,” Justice said, his voice silky soft. “There’s only one bed.”