The Luck of Love (7 page)

The nature of Josh’s work meant he wasn’t there every day. Sometimes he slept on the base. He had a bedroom off his office, and there were occasions, late nights and early mornings, when he would stay there rather than make the forty-minute commute.

Luke always came home. He was like that. It might have meant him losing sleep, but he’d still rather be at home with his family than at the base. It would be hard to be without him on this deployment. She was used to him being here, to always being at her side during an evening.

In fact,
hard
wasn't the word. Doing without him was going to be hell.

His last tour had only been a short one, three months. This was closer to a year.

Nine months without seeing him.

Her stomach clenched at the thought. She pressed a hand to her belly, realizing if they’d made a baby tonight, if a miracle had happened, Luke wouldn’t be here to see the child born.

And like that, she burst into tears.

It had been an emotional day. It hadn’t started out that way. If anything, it had been a regular old hump day. She’d had her chores, had ended them with her stint in the garden, and then Josh had come home and everything had tilted upside down.

She hadn’t cried this much since Lexi’s birth, when postpartum depression had bombarded her with the ferocity of a turn on the bumper cars.

Luke’s head shot up at the sound of her tears. He immediately knelt down by her side. “What’s wrong, baby? I don’t think I’ve seen you cry this much in years.”

She raised a hand and covered her face. “Don’t look at me,” she sputtered. “Please, let me burn this out.” Hell, why hadn’t these thoughts come to her while he and Josh were downstairs, warming up the dinner she’d prepared for them today?

“Don't hide from me, honey. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to put this on your shoulders.”

“They’re broad. They can take it.”

“Not after everything we’ve done today.” She shook her head, and her hair made the water ripple. Digging her fingers into her eyes, she tried to stop the tears, but she couldn’t. They were in for the long haul. She gulped. “I don’t want to spoil it.”

“You could never spoil it.”

“Liar,” she whispered around a watery smile. “I’m tired of crying. Today has been too heavy. I wasn’t prepared for it. It came out of left field, but I know things have been weird recently. I didn’t expect it all to hit the fan today.”

He sighed. “Don’t prevaricate. Come on, love. Talk to me.”

She reached for his hand, slipped it through the oily water, and rested it on her belly. “What if I’m pregnant? You won’t be here for the birth.”

He was silent for a second, and then he blew out a breath. “What did I do to deserve you?”

That made her cry all the harder. Her sobs were loud in the quiet room. “Nothing. You’re wonderful. I don’t deserve you. Please, don’t leave me.
Us
. I know you have to go, but don’t…don’t think you’re going to leave us forever. Don’t think that way. I can’t stand it. Knowing you’re going over there believing…” She shook her head again. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”

“I should never have said anything,” he murmured, regret lacing his tone.

“Of course you should. I’m not a weakling, Luke. I don’t need protecting. But I can’t handle you thinking this is it. That when we say good-bye, it’s forever.” Her chest heaved at the thought, and she sat up. The water displaced, shooting over the sides of the tub. It was hard for her to breathe through the notion. Harder still not to panic. She clutched harder at his hand. “I-I…please, marry Josh. Do it for me.”

He frowned. “Why would that make you feel better?”

“I don’t know,” she bawled. “I think it would make you feel better, and sending you over there feeling more positive is what works for me. Luke, I love you so much. It kills me to think of you not being here at night with me, holding me while we sleep. Waking up Lexi together.

“I have to cope with nine months; I don’t have a choice. I know that, and I’m not… I don’t want to make you feel guilty for having to go. But it’s going to be hard. You don’t know how much.” Her mouth worked. “You have to come back. I can’t live without you.”

He sighed and pressed a kiss to the back of her slippery fingers. “You’re strong, and you have Josh and Lexi.”

“No!” she shrieked, pulling her hand away to slam it down against the water. More tumbled over the side, and this time it drenched Luke’s shirt. She did it again and again, each time yelling, “No!”

He grabbed her hand again, but she moved over to the other side of the large tub, away from him and his reach. “You’re doing it again. You’re thinking this is it.”

“I don’t know what I’m facing over there, Gia. I have to be realistic, and you do too.”

She stared at him. “I’m not strong. Not really. I have Josh and Lexi, yeah. But I need you. Don’t you understand that? You’re my strength.
You.

“Tomorrow, when I go into that principal’s office, I’ll focus on you. I’ll think what would you say, what would you do. And then, I'll do it. I don’t always do it well, but I try. When I’m writing and I get stuck, I think, what would Lucas tell me to do? Then I do it. You’re my strength,” she repeated. “Don’t you see that?
Can’t
you see it?”

“I love you too.” The words were gravelly, filled with the force of his love for her.

She closed her eyes. “I need more than your love. I need your faith. You have to believe you’ll come back to me. For me.” She blinked, looking at him, piercing him with her regard.

For the first time, his hesitation was less pronounced. He nodded, slowly, but it was affirmative nonetheless. The sight of it made her heart pound. She pushed off the wall and moved toward him. Half leaning over the tub, she grabbed his face and held his cheeks tightly. She peppered them with kisses. “Thank you, thank you,” she whispered, letting their mouths touch.

It was a gentle kiss. Just the faintest pressure, but it felt good.

“I’ll come back to you,” he murmured.

“I believe you.”

He sighed, then stilled. Pressing his forehead to hers, he asked, “What do you write?”

She tensed, pulled away. “What do you mean?”

“You said when you get stuck and you’re writing, you think of something I’d say.” He studied her, brow cocked. “What do you write?”

“Nothing.”

He frowned. “It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

She peered at the door. “It’s not a big deal.”

“That means it is.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Luke glared at her. “Bullshit. What are you hiding?”

His sudden anger scorched her, and she ducked her head to watch her fingers tangling and untangling underneath the water. “You can’t tell Josh,” she whispered.

“Why can’t I?”

“Because he might make me stop.”

“If it makes you happy, he’d never make you stop.”

She nibbled her lip and bit down hard in irritation. How the hell had this slipped out when she’d been keeping it a secret for half a goddamn decade? “I-I, it was…” She looked at the doorway, back to Lucas, and then down to her fingers again. “You know when I first moved in here?”

“Of course I do. They were some of the best months of my life.”

She smiled at his earnestness. They
had
been damned good. She’d never had such fun. Now they had fun of a different nature, but all those years ago, they’d been learning about one another and their friendships had been developing.

“Well, sometimes, if…if you were loud, I could hear you through the vents.”

He frowned, then blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I didn’t want to say anything, because
A
, it would have embarrassed the hell out of me. And
B
, it helped me. When I was with you, I had so much fun, but it was kind of torture too. It was damned hard not touching you, not leaning in to kiss you when I wanted. I-I, well, I used to touch myself when I heard you. It used to get me off quicker. I felt like a goddamn pervert, but I thought I’d go crazy. Sometimes, I thought I’d explode from horniness.”

At her admission, he didn’t chuckle or tease, but he shook his head. “Irony is, Josh and I used to fuck the hell out of each other because of something you’d done or worn that particular day. I remember,” he reminisced. “You had this white top you wore a lot, and you didn’t know it, but we could see right through it
and
your bra when we were in the car. I don’t know why, but every time, we could see straight through. Soon as we got home, Josh and I had to come up here and work the need out of our systems. On top of that, you used to do the cutest stuff, and it made us goddamn hard. The way you eat ice cream,” he remarked with a groan. “It still makes my cock pound, but then? It took a hell of a lot of focus not to come just watching you. And with a snow cone?” He shuddered.

“I’m glad you two were suffering as badly as I was.”

“You’re a bloodthirsty minx,” he teased, making her chuckle.

As her laughter died, she mused, “Sometimes I used to imagine what you were doing when I heard those sounds. I did some research online, and the images were strong in my head. I used to write things down. One day, I figured if I put together all the bits and pieces I’d written, I’d have a decent story. I sent it to a publisher, and they bought it.”

“Do you mean to tell me you’re a published writer and you didn’t tell us?”

She licked her lips. “I-I was afraid you wouldn’t approve. Or, worse, it might put you in a delicate situation with your jobs. I know how tough it was back when we first met. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

Luke shook his head. “You still write?”

Gia fidgeted in the water. “Every day.”

“Do you still submit them to publishers?”

She nodded.

He frowned at her. “How many releases do you have?”

Gia cleared her throat. “About forty. Well, maybe forty-two.”

“Forty-two?”

His bellow made her jolt. “I write under a pen name. No one knows it’s me. I swear. I’d never do anything to put your careers in jeopardy.”

“For five years you’ve been writing, and you didn’t think to tell us? Shit, Josh is right. We need to stop keeping secrets from one another. I can’t believe you kept this from us.”

“I didn’t mean to, and then it got easier to keep it quiet.”

“Why would you want to? We’d have celebrated, Gia. Christ, you’ve achieved something most people wouldn’t imagine possible! Over forty books… I mean, God!”

“I thought because they’re all M/M, it might cause a problem for you.”

He paused at that, and for some reason, it seemed to break his anger. “You write gay romance?”

She shook her head. “Gay erotica.”

He studied her for a second, and then a roar of laughter escaped him. It gurgled from him like a torrent of bubbly escaping a champagne bottle. “We were your inspiration?”

Gia grinned at his jubilant chuckles but covered her mouth to hide it. Instead of replying, she simply nodded.

“All those times you watched, were you taking notes?”

“Well, mental ones.”

“You little monkey,” he chided, but his smile was still ridiculously large.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” he remarked. “If you were, you’d have told us. You only told me now because it slipped out.”

She reached for his hands. “Do we have to tell Josh?”

He sighed. “You said you write under a pen name?”

“Yes. No one but my publisher knows my real name.”

“You’re sure?”

“One hundred percent.”

“Then I don’t see why we can’t. The army is
our
boss, not yours.”

“He’ll disapprove.”

Luke snorted. “You have a weird perception of him, Gia. He’s a dirty bastard. You know that.” He eyed the bruises on her throat. “Look at that… He chokes you. Fucks you hard. We’re all involved in a ménage. No one could be more capable of accepting what you write than we two.”

“I don’t want him to think badly of me.”

“Why should he?” He paused. “I don’t.”

“Do you swear?”

“I promise. I want to read them, though.”

She blushed. “You mean that?”

“Of course I do. I can’t believe I haven’t been your guinea pig all these years.”

“I was concerned for you.”

“That’s sweet of you, honey, but it’s supposed to be the other way around. That’s why…” He hesitated again. “I think you should marry Josh.”

The subject, out of left field, had her freezing. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No. I won’t do it, Luke. I won’t. Especially not where your head’s at.”

“I want you to be safe. If you marry him, all his benefits go to you.”

“No. That’s bullshit. And unnecessary. My insurance is covered; so is Lexi’s. I know your wills are ridiculously generous. I’m secure enough as it is. I want you to have this, Lucas. I want you to know that you’re the foundation of what we all have together.”

He sighed. “It’s dumb. I don’t need a wedding ring.”

“Bullshit. You do.
I
don’t. Seriously. I’ve never needed it. If I could marry you both, then I won’t lie—I would. But I could never marry only one of you.”

“We could have a ceremony, celebrating what we have.”

“That’s fine, and I’m sure it would be beautiful. But I want the law at your back. I want you legally protected.”

He frowned. “Why?”

She jerked a shoulder. Water dripped down her arm from the long, drenched curls wrapped around the limb. “It’s important to me.”

“What’s important to you?”

The words had her gawking at the doorway. Josh stood there looking incredibly sexy, even if he was dressed in his uniform. “Why are you in your BDUs?”

“I have to go to the base.”

“You can’t be serious. You’re cutting out on us tonight? After what we all went through this afternoon?”

“It isn’t a matter of my cutting out of here, Gia,” he chided. “I want to pull some favors.”

“What kind of favors?” she demanded.

“Six free days for Luke and me before he deploys. Plenty of time to fly to Las Vegas and get this sorted.”

“I haven’t agreed to marry you. I don’t need you to pull any favors on my behalf.”

“We’re getting married, Luke. If I have to prod a goddamn shotgun in your back. We’d have married years ago if we could have, so I don’t know what’s holding you back now.”