Arrogant Neighbor: A Navy SEAL Romance (18 page)

“
I
s that Meryl Streep
?”

Josh smiled as he pulled Rachel closer to his side.

They were following a maître d in a tuxedo through the most amazing restaurant she had ever seen. As far as first dates go, this one was so far above all the others she’d had—and there hadn’t been many recently—that they weren’t in the same category. A private jet. A dress waiting for her in sheets of tissue paper. Champagne, caviar, and chocolate covered strawberries. And now this…this restaurant filled with actors and actresses she had only ever seen on one screen or another.

It was too much.

“I’m going to trip.”

“You aren’t going to trip.”

Rachel shook her head. “Whenever I’m nervous, I stumble over my own feet.”

“I’m here. I’ll catch you.”

“Do you bring all your dates to Spago’s?”

“I think this is a first.”

The maître d stopped at a table that was set off to one side in the center of the dining room. It was set for two, but big enough to hold four. Josh helped her into her seat, grabbed the other chair and moved it to her side of the table.

“What are you doing?”

“I didn’t bring you out to stare at you from across a wide table.”

She bit her bottom lip and he immediately pressed his thumb against her chin and tugged.

“No more,” he hissed into her ear. “No one chews on that lip but me.”

And then he did.

She should have noticed the people around them. She should have seen Channing Tatum staring at her or Kevin Costner trying to corral his kids four tables over from theirs. But she didn’t. She saw Josh. She saw his hands playing with the expensive, silver cutlery. She saw his fingers trace the rim of his wine glass. She saw his lips twist and turn as he talked about his work, about the places he had traveled and the people he’d met since leaving home—leaving her—seven years ago. She tasted his lips, tasted the salty spice of his throat.

She saw him.

* * *

“
D
o
we have to go back?” she asked as the plane rose into the sky, taking off for the return trip to New York.

“I’m afraid so.” He took her hand and raised her palm to his lips. “But I have something even better planned for us tomorrow night.”

She couldn’t help the sparkle of excitement that came into her eyes. “Where? Paris? Rome? London?”

He leaned close and kissed her lightly. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.”

They leveled out at that moment, and the pilot informed them over the intercom that it was safe to move about the cabin. Rachel released her seatbelt and crawled into his lap, her lips seeking his like a blind puppy seeks its mother.

“We could just hang out at my apartment and watch TV,” she said softly. “Or find some sort of activity that could keep us occupied for a few hours.”

“Something,” he said, his hand moving slowly over her hip, to her thigh, sliding with a soft hiss over the fabric of the dress.

“Something.”

He buried his face in her chest as his hands moved further down her legs, finally finding what he had been searching for. Her skirt began to slide upward, the movement so slow that it tickled skin that was quickly becoming more and more sensitive to his touch. When his hands found their desired goal, when his palms were pressed flat against her ass, he tugged her forward and pressed her hard against his cock.

“You drive me crazy.”

“I can see that.”

He pulled back, his eyes fevered when they met hers. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you.”

She dragged her fingers through his hair, taking an unusual amount of pleasure in the chaos that resulted. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

He groaned, pressing his face to her chest for a long moment. As he did, his hands moved low on her ass, his fingers searching for something she was more than willing to offer to him.

“I’m not going to lie and say there weren’t others.”

Jealousy sliced through her. She caught her breath, surprised at the intensity of it. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

He pulled one hand out from under her skirt and wrapped his fingers in her hair, tugging her head to one side. He studied her face for a long moment, that grin that always made her bones melt making another appearance.

“Just like I don’t want to know about the men you’ve been with.” He clipped the last three words, fire flashing in his eyes. “But I want you to know that none of that crap you’ve read about me is true. I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”

“Josh,” she whispered, running her fingers over his face, “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me that you know. That you know I’ve waited for you.”

And then his hands were back to where they started, his lips searching out hers without the little bit of control he’d shown before. She ran her hands over his head, played with the silk strands of his hair, before she pressed them to his shoulders and adjusted her position, opened herself up to his desperate need.

When he came inside of her, it all just disappeared. She didn’t care anymore that Sam had posted a picture of him with someone new every week for the last three years. She didn’t care that her searches of his name on Google always came back with some gossip piece about the new woman he was dating, the actress-pop-singer-model who was predicted to be his future wife. None of it mattered because he wanted her. He needed her.

He was hers.

* * *

T
alk about whirlwind romances
!

He didn’t take her to Paris, Rome, or London. He took her to Miami for a perfect seafood meal, to Canada to attend opening night of the Toronto Film Festival. They spent a night at a bed and breakfast in Portland, Oregon, took a walk along the Mississippi in Kentucky. There was that weekend in the Bahamas and a late dinner at Delmonico’s right there in the city.

Rachel’s head was still spinning.

She’d been so wrapped up in Josh the past two weeks that she hadn’t had time to pay attention to her own business. She was curled up in her office chair now, scrolling through the long list of ignored emails. Her publisher wanted to know how the third book was coming along—it wasn’t— and her mom wanted to know if she would be coming home for Christmas. The few friends she saw on a somewhat regular basis were wondering what had happened to her. Her Facebook notifications were multiplying like rabbits.

And then there was an email from Sam.

Just seeing her name made Rachel’s heart skip a beat. She immediately felt guilty, as though she and Josh had done something wrong by not rushing to London and telling her immediately they were together.

“She’ll be happy for us,” Josh had assured her when she brought the subject up on their third or fourth—sixth, actually—date.

Rachel wished she was as confident as he was. She ran the little arrow of her mouse over the message a few times, not sure she really wanted to open it. The subject line was blank.

Just as she had worked up the courage to click it, her cell phone rang.

“Hey, darlin’,” her mother said warmly in her ear.

“Hi, Mom. I was about to send you an email.”

“Are you coming home for the holidays?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her thoughts moving to Josh, already so accustomed to his presence that she found herself wondering if he would go with her if she did go home. Despite everything, she could actually see him wearing a Dallas Cowboys’ Santa hat while her parents forced him to sing carols around the old stereo system in the living room.

“Well, we can talk about that later. I actually called because I was wondering if you had Josh Carver’s number.”

“Why do you want to talk to Josh?”

Her mother hesitated, which was never a good sign. Her mother was a high school English teacher who believed uncertainty was the devils playground…or some such nonsense. When she hesitated, you knew that whatever she had to say was not something you wanted to hear.

Her mother cleared her throat and sighed. “You know his father has been ill?”

“Yeah, you told me a couple of months ago.”

“Well, he’s taken a turn for the worse. Doctors don’t think he’s going to make it through the night.”

Rachel ended the call with her mother as quickly as she politely could—which was a good fifteen minutes. Her mother was something of a talker. She immediately dialed Josh’s private cell number, the first time she had used it since he gave it to her. This really wasn’t the situation she had imagined would spur him to use this number that very few others were privy to.

“Josh Carver’s phone,” a female voice said.

Cold pickles creeped slowly down Rachel’s spine. And then she remembered that he had told her that he gave the phone to his assistant as he was walking into important meetings, so that she could monitor it for emergencies.

“Is he in a meeting?” Rachel asked. “It’s important that I speak to him.”

“Is this Rachel?”

Her cheeks grew warm. “You know who I am?”

“Of course. I’m his personal assistant. It is my job to know everything about him.” The woman sounded slightly annoyed that Rachel didn’t already know that. “He’s coming out now. Hold on a second.”

It was longer than a second. Rachel began to pace the length of her small apartment, taking barely a dozen steps before she had to turn back and head toward her desk and Sam’s glaring email again. Six times she made the trip before Josh’s warm, familiar voice traveled through the miles between them.

“Hey, baby,” he said softly. “What’s going on?”

Suddenly, she didn’t know what she was going to say.

“Rachel? Are you there?”

“It’s your dad,” she blurted out. “You need to go home. Tonight.”

T
he hospital was cold
. And the smell reminded Rachel of the time she fell out of a tree—a tree she only climbed because Sam double dared her—and she broke her arm. She spent three days in this same hospital after the doctors put a pin just above her wrist.

The memory still made her wrist ache.

“Jack Carver,” Josh was slowly saying to the nurse for the third time, as though she was hard of hearing, and he was trying to get her to follow the movement of his lips. “I was told he was on this floor.”

Something clicked in the nurse’s eyes. Triumph shone there for a long second before it turned into something closer to pity. “He’s been moved to the ICU,” she said softly. “Fourth floor.”

Josh didn’t react. He simply thanked her and grabbed Rachel’s hand before turning toward the elevator. If it hadn’t been for the death grip with which he squeezed her fingers, Rachel might have thought the real impact of his father’s situation had yet to hit him.

He was in New York and sent a car for her the moment they ended their call. They flew to Texas on the same private jet that had been their vehicle of choice for most of their dates. But it might as well have been a different plane, a different world than that they’d occupied just twelve hours before.

The ride on the elevator took seconds. When it deposited them on the appropriate floor, Josh pulled her forward, dragging her down one corridor after another as they followed the signs to the intensive care unit.

A nurse stopped them as they burst through the electronic doors behind a doctor. “You can’t be in here. Visiting hours ended fifteen minutes ago.”

“I was told my father was here,” Josh announced, using a tone that she imagined carried a lot of weight in boardrooms. “Jack Carver.”

The woman’s eyes widened slightly. Rachel wondered if that was because of Jack’s condition, or if she suddenly realized who Josh was. Without saying a word, the nurse nodded toward a room directly behind the nurse’s station.

Rachel wanted to ask if she should wait outside, but Josh was still clinging to her hand like it was the only lifeline he was likely to get.

The ICU was set up like a horseshoe, glass walled cubicles placed in a rounded pattern around the central nurse’s desk. They could hear the beeping of various monitors as well as the whoosh of life support machines issuing from three of the half-dozen rooms.

Josh hesitated as he approached the sliding glass door that contained the room where his father lay dying. “I don’t even know what to say to him,” he said so quietly that Rachel almost missed the words.

“You don’t have to say anything. Just let him know you’re there.”

Josh inclined his head slightly. It wasn’t really a nod, just an acknowledgement. He pushed open the door and tugged the curtain aside. Rachel gasped when she saw Jack. He’d always been a big man, broad shouldered and overweight, the kind of adult who either intimidated or turned into a teddy bear. Jack had been the latter. Until his wife died.

Thin, his skin yellowed by disease, and his thick, dark hair that was so much like his son’s was gone. There was nothing about him that resembled the man Rachel once knew.

Josh stepped up to the bed and jerked a little when the life support machine drew in a deep breath. “Pop,” he said quietly, touching his free hand to his father’s bare shoulder. “It’s Josh…Joshua.”

The man in the bed didn’t move. His eyes didn’t open. There was no awareness at all.

Josh lifted his hand to his father’s forehead, brushing away tiny beads of cold sweat. And then there was real moisture for him to wipe away, tears that fell from his own eyes.

Rachel ran her hand slowly up his back, between his shoulder blades. She wanted him to know that she was there, that she was more than willing the carry some of the weight that was settling there, settling on his shoulders. He didn’t say a word. But he didn’t pull away, either.

* * *

J
ack Carver died
a few hours later.

His son was at his side.

There was a lot of paperwork that came with the end of someone’s life. Josh had to make decisions within minutes of the doctor’s legal declaration—whether or not to have an autopsy performed, which funeral home to use, who would take legal responsibility for his body, his possessions, and his debts—that they ended up staying at the hospital almost till dawn.

When they were finally free to go, Josh helped Rachel into a rental car and took off out of the hospital parking garage at a speed that woke her up in a hurry.

She hadn’t been back home in almost a year. It never failed to fascinate her how little the place changed. The high school was still a squat little building just off the highway, situated proudly beside the massive, million dollar football stadium that got less use than the decrepit gym that was falling down next to it. There was the water tower that sat almost dead center of town, the post office with its gorgeous brick work, and the store that carried two brands of soup, but more than a dozen brands of potato chips.

She thought he might be headed toward his parents’ house, a pretty little ranch that sat next door to her parents’ almost identical home, but he turned the opposite direction. It seemed odd to smile at a time like this, but she couldn’t help the grin that stretched her tired lips when he pulled the car over to the side of the road.

He helped her out of the car, and they walked, hand in hand, down a small path that led into a dark, humid copse of trees that were once an oasis to her on warm summer nights when teenage angst required separation from her affectionate and well-meaning parents.

“I used to sneak out here and watch you sometimes,” he said as they approached a small, grassy knoll in the center of the tall oak trees. “You would curl up here on that ratty old blanket and read for hours at a time, sometimes hardly moving, except to brush away an occasional ant or fly.”

“You were the one.”

“The one what?”

“Who would dig my blanket out of its hiding place when I wasn’t around.” She let go of his hand and walked over to a partially hidden metallic box buried in the ground. She didn’t know why it was there, or what its purpose might have once been, but it had been a perfect place to stow a few innocent supplies. “I remember coming here a few times and finding it folded wrong.”

“I folded it exactly like I saw you do.”

“But you folded it inside out.”

He groaned. “My sister used to complain that I did the same thing when I folded her clothes. What do I know about inside out?”

She went back to him, needing to see his face without the shadows of the rising sun hiding it. “You should have told me.”

“I tried. So many times. But you always looked so peaceful.”

“Do you know what I was doing most of the time when I came here?”

“Reading?” he asked, his hands snaking around her waist to pull her closer to him.

“Thinking about you.”

“That’s all I ever thought about.” He kissed her temple. “All I’ve ever wanted is you.”

They stood there for a long while, both lost in their own thoughts as they clung to one another.

* * *

T
hey drove silently
to the hotel three towns over where he’d made reservations the night before.

Rachel washed her face and changed into a long t-shirt before climbing between the cool sheets of the hotel bed. Josh climbed in beside her a moment later, his chest bare. She immediately moved into his arms, not to start anything naughty, but to enjoy the warm comfort of his touch. But she wasn’t surprised when he pushed her back against the mattress and stole her lips almost immediately.

It was different this time. His grief made him more insistent, his need more basic. His hands were almost rough as they pushed their way under her t-shirt, his palm rolling over her nipples so roughly that it was almost as painful as it was exciting. He buried his tongue so deeply in her mouth that she couldn’t catch her breath, but she missed it when it was gone.

He made his way quickly down her body, his lips creating a burning path as he tasted every inch of her chest, her belly, as he kissed and nibbled at the bones protruding along her hips, the softness of her inner thighs, that incredibly sensitive skin behind her knees. The feel of her panties scraping along her legs as he quickly jerked them from her body was like the bites on her shoulders—painful, but deliciously so. She would have teeth marks on her shoulders the next day, but the excruciating pleasure that ran up and down her spine, settling deep in her belly, was well worth it.

And then his mouth…he truly knew what to do with his lips, his tongue when exploring a woman’s body. Every time he touched her, she thought she had experienced the heights of pleasure, the limits that desire could reach. But each time he took her just a little bit higher.

She squirmed, her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer only to push him back, to direct him to those places that screamed for his attention. When his tongue finally touched that one, overly sensitive spot, she screamed so loud that for a moment she was afraid she had woken the people in the room next door. And then he slowed his touch, bringing her back down until he could take her up on that roller coaster again.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please…I need you.”

He didn’t stop immediately. He made her beg a moment or two more. But then he retraced that hot trail he created on the way down, sliding almost effortlessly into her body as his lips reached hers again. She didn’t understand how he could breathe, how he could catch his breath when the presence of him inside of her seized her lungs and left her swinging over the edge of sanity.

He thrust hard, quick, breaking the connection of their lips, their tongues, as he buried his mouth against her hair and breathed deep against her scalp. She raised her hips to meet each of his thrusts, her mind so overwhelmed that she could no longer tell the difference between pain and pleasure. It all felt the same now. His fingers pressing into her ass, pulling her tighter against him, his hand compressing her skull as he tried to keep her screams trapped against the curve of his shoulder…his rough movements that spoke of a tremendous need she had felt the possibility of, but never really understood.

He needed her. And that knowledge transcended everything.

Her lower belly exploded, creating fireworks as her vision darkened in the dim light of the silent hotel room. She cried out one last time as she thrust her hips hard up against his. She was riding a wave and she never wanted it to end.

But when it did, she became aware of a swelling, of his deep groan that was an expression of both pain and pleasure. And she felt the heat of his seed flood inside her willing body.

“I never understood,” he whispered moments later, when his breathing began to slow and his need was satiated for the moment, “how he could so completely give up.” He pulled back and pushed her sweaty, unruly hair out of her face, his palm growing kind and gentle. “He had two children, two remnants of what he shared with mom. I thought we would’ve been enough, that he would’ve fought his grief for our sake.”

H
e kissed
the tip of her nose lightly. “I thought I understood love. I thought I believed that it was possible to survive the loss of the woman you had loved all of your life.” His eyes shone with unshed tears. “And then I held you in my arms for the first time, that night by the fence, and I suddenly realized I had unfairly judged my father. I misunderstood what it meant to lose your soul mate.”

Tears came to Rachel’s eyes as she listened to his final words, as she heard the crack of emotion in his normally confident voice.

“I know now that he was broken just as I would be if I lost you.”