My Hero Bear (5 page)

That month was torture. Her imagination ran wild and of course she thought the worst. When she finally learned the truth, in some ways it was even worse than she feared.

Dylan came home at the end of his service and told her the bad news. Her brother never made it back from his last mission.

Dylan couldn’t tell her any details about what happened, although that hadn’t mattered to Rory. Only one detail mattered. Her brother was gone.

She missed her brother desperately. He’d been older than her by a couple of years, the same as Dylan. She looked up to him like little sisters do. Hunter always seemed so smart and confident. So in control. If he was here, none of these problems would have happened.

Damn the military, she thought. They’d taken her brother away from her for five years, and he never came back. And her brother wasn’t the only man Rory lost. Somehow, she’d lost Dylan, too.

That was the other devastating piece of news she learned that day. Dylan told her they couldn’t be together. After everything he’d said in his letters, after all the secrets they’d shared, and the plans they’d made, Dylan broke things off.

She told him to leave and that she never wanted to see him again.

She could still remember the pained look in his eyes, as if she’d stabbed him in the heart and twisted the blade. At the time, she felt a dark satisfaction knowing she’d hurt him as bad as he hurt her. Now when she looked back on that moment, all Rory felt was sadness.

He’d never told her why. That was the part that always bothered her. It still bothered her as she washed the shampoo out of her hair in Dylan’s shower.

That mystery had burned inside her for the last four years. She still desperately needed to know the answer to that question. Why had Dylan suddenly turned his back on her?

Thoughts of the past plagued her as she stepped out of the shower and dried herself off. She wished she’d handled that devastating moment better. But she was just a girl, barely twenty-three years old. She didn’t know anything about handling rejection or loss. Although she’d learned the hard way since.

Now her father was dead. She had no doubt he would still be alive if her brother Hunter had survived. That one tragic event set off a chain reaction, the effects of which were still being felt four years later.

Rory couldn’t bring her brother back, she couldn’t bring her father back, but she could still find out what happened between her and Dylan.

Rory wrapped a towel around her body and frowned. Her filthy clothes lay in a heap by the door. The thought of putting those grimy garments back on made her shudder with disgust.

She needed something to wear, and she had no choice but to ask Dylan. It was unlikely that he had clothing that would fit her, but even a loose T-shirt and shorts would be better than wearing the mud stained clothes she’d been wearing.

She exited the bathroom to find Dylan, shivering when the cool air of the hall hit her bare arms. She found Dylan in the kitchen, clumsily trying to put together a meal.

“What are you making?” she asked.

Dylan spun around with a plate of chopped vegetables in his hand. He looked like he was about to say something, but he froze when he caught sight of her. His eyes widened in surprise and his mouth was open in an “o” shape. He dropped the plate to the hardwood floor with a thunderous clattering sound.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

Rory felt a warm flush of satisfaction at Dylan’s comical expression. The man had faced all kinds of danger in the military, not to mention during his time as a Peacekeeper. So much so that the man had a reputation that bordered on legendary.

But here he was, totally disarmed by the sight of Rory’s glistening body wrapped only in a towel.

At the same time, she bristled at his accusatory tone. It wasn’t like she was trying to seduce him. Although, the idea of flirting with him tickled Rory now that she had seen his reaction. Maybe she could mess with him just a little bit as revenge.

She moved towards him, running her fingertips along the top edge of the towel where it covered her breasts.

“What do you think I’m doing?” she asked in a sultry voice. “I need you Dylan. I need you bad.”

Dylan’s whole body went rigid and he backed away from her, his butt slamming against the counter so hard it made the cabinets shake.

“Aurora, we can’t.”

“Oh, but we can,” she said, trying hard to suppress a giggle.

Watching him recoil in fear was delicious. Served him right for thinking she came all this way just to seduce him. The man apparently thought very highly of himself. Well, Rory was about to put his ego in check.

His eyes raked up and down her body, drinking in every contour of her. To her pleasure, she could see a kindling lust in his eyes. Dylan’s words said he wasn’t interested, but his eyes told a different story. Rory was sure he still wanted her.

The thought thrilled her. She was delighted to know that whatever hangups Dylan had about being with her, it had nothing to do with a lack of physical desire. In fact, she was pretty sure she could see a bulge forming in his jeans. Dylan’s hands clenched at his sides, as if he was restraining himself from doing something he would regret later.

“You need to stop this right now,” he said.

“And if I don’t?” she asked, coming to a stop just inches away from him, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body.

“I might not be able to control myself.”

Rory shivered at his words. This started as a game. A silly little way to pay him back for assuming she’d been trying to seduce him. But she knew he was telling the truth. She knew that if she pushed him far enough, he might really lose control. Rory was both scared and excited at that prospect.

The question was, did she want him to lose control?

“Oh, I was just playing,” she said, hoping she sounded more lighthearted than she actually felt. “I need to borrow some clothes. My old ones are a mess.”

Dylan visibly relaxed. Then his expression darkened. “That’s not funny. What happened between us, everything that’s happened since, it’s not a joke to me. I hope you know that.”

The words shook Rory to her core. Maybe his physical desire for her wasn’t the only thing that survived after all these years. Just maybe, all those old feelings he described in his letters were still there, too.

“I don’t know anything anymore. I thought I knew you. I thought I knew how you felt about me. But I can’t help but wonder, was it all a lie?”

“I never lied to you about how I felt.”

Rory’s eyes narrowed. “Really? Because I remember all those letters you sent me while you were away. You told me you cared about me. You told me you missed me. You told me you loved me.”

“That was all true.”

“So then what happened? What happened when you came back?”

Dylan’s eyes darkened and he looked away. “I told you back then, you and I couldn’t be together.”

White hot anger blazed in her chest. She reached out and grabbed Dylan by the jaw and yanked his face towards her.

“Don’t you turn away from me. Don’t you turn away from
this
. I deserve to know why you didn’t want me anymore. If you say we can’t be together, fine. But at least tell me why.”

His eyes smoldered with green fire, but what he was thinking, she had no idea.

“It’s not important. You don’t need to know.”

The man was unreadable. A puzzle. Whatever secrets he was keeping from her, she’d have to drag them out of him.

“It
is
important. I
do
need to know.”

“Fine,” he said finally. “It was your brother.”

Rory rolled her eyes in frustration. “This again? You think he wouldn’t approve of us being together? Is that it?”

Dylan growled in frustration. “I don’t
think
he would disapprove. I
know
he did.”

“What are you talking about? He never knew about us.”

Dylan’s jaw worked silently for a moment, as if he was suppressing some overwhelming emotion.

“He found out,” Dylan said.

“So?”

“So the last thing he ever said to me was to stay away from you.”

Chapter 4

Dylan watched Aurora’s reaction. The truth was out there now, at least, all the truth Dylan was willing to divulge. She didn’t need to know the rest. It was a burden Dylan would carry all alone to spare her the horrible, final truth.

He could see the warring emotions on her beautiful face. Pain twisted his guts at the knowledge that he’d caused this. The truth was, he never meant to tell her any of this. He’d promised himself that, after Hunter died. He’d kept that promise for the last four years.

It was one of the reasons he’d stayed away from her all this time. He thought about going to see her so many times. She had never really been far from his thoughts. The temptation had been great, but somehow he managed to resist.

He knew if he saw her again he might not be able to keep all the secrets he’d sworn to keep. And he had been right. He’d already let one slip.

Aurora had only been back in his life for a day and he’d told her something he never meant to tell her. He didn’t want her to resent her brother. The man was dead and buried. The least Dylan could do to honor his fallen friend’s memory was to keep his sister’s image of him intact.

He had failed. Aurora knew how to push his buttons. She knew how to get to Dylan in a way that no one else in the world did.

Besides, she’d thrown him off balance by coming on to him in just a towel. Even now, with guilt and dread weighing heavily upon him, he found it impossible to ignore the seductive woman standing in front of him. She was the sexiest woman he’d ever known, and the only woman he’d ever loved.

The white towel clung to her like a second skin, giving him more than a hint of her luscious curves. The swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, and her long shapely legs had him throbbing with desire.

She shook her head as she was trying to process his statement. A bead of water trickled down her neck into the line of her cleavage. Dylan’s eyes followed that drop with great interest. All kinds of dirty thoughts ran through his head that had nothing to do with the conversation they were having.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would he say that?”

The sound of her voice snapped Dylan back to attention. He shook his head. “I’m not sure. We never got the chance to talk it through.”

“But he loved you like a brother. I don’t understand why he would disapprove of the two of us getting together.”

She looked so sad when she said it. So lost. It was the way he’d felt when Hunter first told him. Dylan had always suspected that Hunter wouldn’t approve. Aurora was his little sister, and friends don’t sleep with their friend’s sisters.

Dylan had always secretly hoped that when the day came and he shared their secret with Hunter, he would give them his blessing and be happy for them. That hope shattered to a million pieces when Hunter had confronted Dylan.

“How did he find out?” Aurora asked.

“He found one of your letters to me.”

“Did you show it to him?”

“Absolutely not,” Dylan said. “You asked me to keep it a secret and I did.”

Aurora fumed. “He had no business going through your things.”

“I agree. Of course, I had no business keeping secrets from him. Especially when it came to you.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said, shaking her head. “What happened between us was none of Hunter’s business. It was our secret to keep.”

“I want to believe you. Trust me, it would make me feel a lot better. But come on. I was his best friend. You were his sister. You and I getting together, he had a right to know.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “Still, even if he had the right to know, he didn’t have the right to tell you to stay away from me.” She jabbed her finger into Dylan’s chest. “And you shouldn’t have listened to him.”

Dylan grabbed her hand to stop her from poking him. It felt so small and soft and warm. He realized he didn’t want to let it go.