Captured at Nightfall (Capture My Heart Love Story) (28 page)

The redness had crept up into his cheeks by the time he answered. “Yeah.”

Locking her inner
squee!
down hard into place, she played it nonchalant. Didn’t want to embarrass him. “Sounds fun.” And, she hadn’t missed the interjection of Jayce into the equation. Anything he shared from his past with his brother was a majorly big deal.

“Cool.” He seemed relieved, like he’d been waiting for her to tease him. He was normally so self-assured. It was hard to remember sometimes that the whole relationship deal was new to him, too.

Reaching over, she gave his leg a little squeeze. “Great idea.”

After
Matthew had bought a bucket of grease and some biscuits, they were on the road again. Ten minutes later, asphalt had ceased to exist and the road had turned to gravel. They passed through a barbwire fence with a bullet-riddled sign reading
Private Property. No Trespassing.

Allie
’s eyes widened and she swallowed. “Err . . . we’re not going to get”—
shot?
—“in trouble, are we?”

“
You
might.” Matthew hit her with dark eyes. “You
did
just shoot the owner in the ass.”

“Oh, thank
goodness,” she sighed. “This is yours.”

He cocked a brow and smirked. “Worried I was dragging you over to the dark side?”

She laughed. “Well, we both know you don’t have any qualms bending the rules, B and E specialist that you are.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Your B and E specialist.”

She looked back out her side view window, curious to see what had driven him to buy
this
property. All desert landscape, sprung with scrubby bushes and Joshua trees. Pretty in a uniquely Arizona way. But still; a little Deliverance if you asked her. Made her nervous, being out in the middle of nowhere. “How come you bought this . . . place?” Camping hang out, maybe? She pictured Matthew going on some kind of manly spirit walk, drinking coyote blood and building huts out of strips of cactus. The mental image had her chuckling.

“Not impressed?” An amused expression flashed across his face.

“It’s fine,” she said quickly. “Just west of BFE, though.” She blushed as she realized she’d just used one of Adam’s favorite colloquialisms.

“Before Fucking Egypt, huh?”
He gazed out the window. “Little greener than the Sahara, but I get the Egypt assessment. They kinda look alike.”

“You’ve been to Egypt?”

“Seen the pyramids and everything.”

“That’s so cool! Maybe I should become a SEAL. Travel the world and all that. I haven’t even been east of the Mississippi.
Totally lame.”

“You
are
Master Chief now.” He grinned.

“That’s right!” she quipped. “I probably outrank you.”

“Definitely.” His thumb ran under his chin. “Politics never been my forte. I was just happy to be in the teams. Rather stay as far from the head shed as possible. The pay wasn’t as good, for sure; but being in among the enlisted, and in the action, was where it was at.”

With a deep breath,
Allie took the plunge. “What about your brother?”

“
Jay?” His mouth curved down. “He was Leading Petty Officer. Kept my ass in line, too. A wicked prankster. Knew how to stir the shit like nobody’s business.”

Matthew
pulled off at the edge of a grove of small scrub trees and parked. After he clicked off the ignition, he turned back to her. “On one of our first deployments, we’d just raided this building where a terrorist cell had been bunkered down. We were going through shit, gathering intelligence to bring in, and Jay pulls out this big ass pair of crotchless panties. Like size twenty range, or some shit. And all decked out in lace.” Matthew smiled as Allie watched the memories flit across his face. “So anyway,” he went on, “Jay thought they were about the funniest damn things he’d ever set eyes on.

“For the next year, and every few months, one of the guys in our platoon would wake up next to a Polaroid of themselves sleeping with the nasty
things on their face.”

“
Ewe
!” Allie squealed.

Matthew
’s nose curled. “You have
no
idea. Sucked being brothers sometimes. Think I woke up with a Polaroid about three times as much as anyone else. Sneaky bastard. I finally had to hunt down his camera and toss the thing in the Atlantic.”

While
Allie laughed, Matthew went on, “Another time the asshat put superglue on our toilet seat. Where we were, we all had to share one—Jay pissed us all off because we weren’t using a dirt hole for the first time in a while and he’d screwed up the luxury. Lucky for me I hadn’t been the one to use it first or I’d have been missing a few layers of epidermis, if you feel me. The next few weeks we had to double up on toilet paper to cover the seat to avoid the ass hair that had been permanently stuck to the rim. I finally ended up tearing the damn thing off. Better to sit on the plastic bowl than some poor dude’s assfro.”

Allie
was dying—she could hardly make out Matthew’s face through the blur of tears muddling her vision. She was laughing so hard her ribs ached. “That is
so
TMI,” she wheezed.

Matthew
’s teeth flashed. “He’s been like that our whole lives. April first was a fiasco—I still have a complex to this day. And our poor parents. It’s a wonder we didn’t end up living in the backyard. I’m a hot head, and Jay a brutal tease. Made for water and oil, growing up. Jay would see an opening and jump all over my case until we were both rolling around the floor, pounding the shit out of each other.” Matthew shook his head. “We’ve had to work off a lot of damage to my mom’s house. Lot of holes in the walls from elbows and feet.

“But then,
Jay kept me out of trouble, too. He could smooth talk us out of shit about as fast as I could get us into it. I was an asshole when I was younger. Got into MMA as a teen and thought I was the shit all the way into my twenties. Jay dragged my worthless ass with him into the Navy. My dad was on cloud nine the day I enrolled.”

“Is
Jay your only sibling?” Allie asked.

She couldn’t believe how much he was telling her. Where had all this come from?
The therapy session? Her brain was working overtime to keep the questions coming—any questions—just to keep him talking.

His eyebrows pinched together and he frowned. “I haven’t told you about
Desiree?”

Allie
gave him a small smile to let him know it was okay and shook her head. “Nuh, uh.”

“Oh. There’s just
Jay and Dessy. Our little sis. Jay is—was”—he amended—“three years older than me, and I’m five years older than Desiree.”

“What’s she like?”

Matthew chuckled. “Total uppity pain in the ass. But I love her. She was sick a lot as a kid. Got spoiled to death by her big bros.”

“Why was she so sick?”

“Leukemia.”

“Oh.”
Allie didn’t really know what to say to that. “But . . . she’s okay now?”

“Yeah.
She’s fine. Got way into health and fitness in her late teens. She was Miss Illinois, believe it or not.” The pride in his voice was obvious. “Now she’s in med school to become a pediatrician.” He frowned. “Don’t know how much longer she’s got.”

“What are your parents like?”

He smiled. “Greedy for info, aren’t you?”

The corner of
her mouth curled up. “About you? Always.”

“Well . . .” He scrubbed a hand over his head and stretched. “Dad’s an Oncology surgeon. I’d call it ironic that
Dessy was so sick and had a dad with a career in cancer. Dad would call it Divine intervention.”

“Ah. Your dad’s religious?”

Matthew’s hand moved to the back of his neck. “Yeah. Both my mom and dad are Episcopalian.”

Huh
. Allie hadn’t ever thought about Matthew in a spiritual sense.

“Are you Episcopalian, too? Like, do you go to church and stuff?”

He shook his head. “Naw. Not really my thing. I believe in God, and that’s kind of enough for me.”

She moved on, “So . . . your mom?” She suddenly flushed with nerves. What if
Allie met his mom some day? And what if his mom hated her?

“What’s with the look?”
Matthew’s too-observant gaze zoned right in on her. Damn him and his blasted ability to read her body so well.

“Nothing,” she hedged.

“Bullshit.”

“Fine,” she snapped.
If he wanted to know. . . “Since I can’t seem to hide my crazy, stalker-girlfriend thoughts from you; I was wondering if your mom would like me.”

His eyes widened. “Of course she would. You’re perfect. She’d want to know what I’d bribed you with to get you to stick with me.”

Allie tried not to preen from his kudos.

Her shoulders pushed back and she grinned at him like an idiot.

Shit
. She
was
preening.

He laughed and then wound his fingers through her hair at the base of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. When his hand rested over the bump of spine between her shoulder blades, she shivered and pulled back just enough so his sweet breath could wash over her. Smiling, she pressed her lips against his once more.

“Is your family close?” she asked.

Allie
had hated growing up a single child, to a single mother. She loved Mary with everything in her, but she’d always been envious of those kids with huge families, the ones where chaos and love were just a part of daily life. Matthew was so lucky to have a mom
and
a dad.

When
Matthew pulled away, and just as suddenly jumped out of the Escalade, Allie blinked.

Whoa
. What had just happened?

Frowning, she watched him walk around to the rear bumper.

She’d obviously hit a nerve.

The soft
pop!
of the trunk had her twisting in her seat to look at him. He was so flipping moody.

She scooped the bucket of food off the seat and crawled out the passenger-side door to join him. When she rounded the rear bumper,
Matthew stuck his head in the back and yanked out a blanket, shook it a few times, and then carefully refolded it.

She
crossed her arms over her chest to face off against him.
Ready to do battle, as ever.
She sighed. “Matthew?”

He slammed the trunk and tossed the blanket over his forearm.
“Yeah?”

Her lips pursed. “I’m guessing your family stuff is a bad subject?”

He shrugged and took the bucket of chicken from her. “Not really.”

Her eyebrow cocked and she smiled without humor.
“My turn to call bullshit now, huh?”

As he turned toward her and she watched the muscles of his jaw jump, she braced for impact. Taking a deep breath through his nose, his lips contorted into something half-way between a snarl and a grimace. “I haven’t seen them since
Jay died, okay? I just . . . haven’t been able to face them.”

“Oh.” H
is honesty stripped her. The sudden jarring insight into Matthew’s pain left her breathless. “I’m . . . oh, Matthew, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. We were just talking.” She put a tentative hand on his arm.

“Wha
tever. No big deal. It’s . . .”— he swallowed and ran a hand over his face —“Shit. Can we just not talk about my family? It’s too damned depressing.”

“Sure.” She met his bleak expression. “I am sorry. Sometimes I pry too much.”

His shoulders rose and fell. “Not your fault. Don’t sweat it.”

He guided her over to an open grove in the middle of all the scrub trees. Long, waving grasses hosted crops of delicate, white Desert Sandwort and clumps of Cat’s Eye. It was warm outside and the
same invisible breeze that swam through the grasses carried the natural woodsy sweetness to Allie’s nose. Once Matthew laid the blanket over the grass, Allie sat down, feeling the cool plant life crunch beneath her and curve to her body like a cushion.

She looked around to take in the scenery.

Nature was always so peaceful. Beautiful. As close to heaven as Allie could imagine. That’s what her version of Heaven looked like, anyhow: a totally sapped-out revive of
Little House on the Prairie
, one with her leaping across a hillside without any worries.

Smiling like a dunce and enjoying the late afternoon sun on her back and shoulders, she shucked her boots and socks so she could wriggle her toes through the lus
h strands and watch the wind blow the surrounding landscape into an ocean of rolling, green waves.

“I recant my earlier BFE comment,” she murmured, leaning back on her elbows. “This place is magical.”

When Matthew sat down beside her, she rolled onto her side so she could nestle her head into his lap while he went to work on a drumstick.