Carolina Man

“VIRGINIA KANTRA DELIVERS.”

—Jayne Ann Krentz,
New York Times
bestselling author

PRAISE FOR

CAROLINA GIRL

“Positively sizzles with sexual tension and hums with the rhythm of life on a North Carolina island where family matters most and love really does conquer all. I loved it.”

—Mariah Stewart,
New York Times
bestselling author of
At the River’s Edge

“Returning to Dare Island is always a pleasure . . . Add to that the slow-burn sexual tension between Meg and Sam, and this series second really keeps things interesting.”

—
RT Book Reviews
(4 stars)

CAROLINA HOME

“A story as fresh as the Carolina ocean breezes . . . It’s always a joy to read Virginia Kantra.”

—JoAnn Ross,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Christmas on Main Street

“Kantra’s
Carolina Home
is intimate and inviting, a feel-good story featuring captivating characters who face challenges as touching as they are believable . . . Contemporary romance at its most gratifying.”

—
USA Today

“It feels like coming home . . . Reading this book is like relaxing in a Hatteras hammock, gently swaying in the breeze.”

—
Dear Author
(Recommended Read)

“Truly enjoyable.”

—
All About Romance

“A wonderful contemporary drama with great characters, a touching romance, and the beginnings of a fantastic series.”

—
Romance Around the Corner

“A sizzling good time. Kantra’s story building is excellent.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Virginia Kantra is an autobuy author who has never let me down. Her skillfully crafted, character-driven stories and knack for creating a vivid sense of time and place bring readers into the heart of her stories and the hearts of the characters who populate them. I highly recommend it.”

—
The Romance Dish

“A thoroughly wonderful read.”

—
BookPage

AND FOR THE NOVELS OF VIRGINIA KANTRA

“A sensitive writer with a warm sense of humor, a fine sense of sexual tension, and an unerring sense of place.”

—
BookPage

“A lyric, haunting, poetic voice.”

—Suzanne Brockmann,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Do or Die

“Virginia Kantra is one of my favorite authors.”

—Teresa Medeiros,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Temptation of Your Touch

“A really good read.”

—Karen Robards,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Hunted

Berkley Sensation titles by Virginia Kantra

HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT

CLOSE UP

The Dare Island Novels

CAROLINA HOME

CAROLINA GIRL

CAROLINA MAN

The Children of the Sea Novels

SEA WITCH

SEA FEVER

SEA LORD

IMMORTAL SEA

FORGOTTEN SEA

Anthologies

SHIFTER

(with Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, and Alyssa Day)

OVER THE MOON

(with Angela Knight, MaryJanice Davidson, and Sunny)

BURNING UP

(with Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, and Meljean Brook)

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

CAROLINA MAN

A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Virginia Kantra.

Excerpt from
Carolina Blues
by Virginia Kantra copyright © 2014 by Virginia Kantra.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Berkley Sensation Books are published by
The Berkley Publishing Group. BERKLEY SENSATION
®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 978-0-425-26887-2

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63110-2

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / March 2014

Cover art by Tony Mauro.

Cover design by Rita Frangie.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This one’s for the boys.
To Andrew and Mark,

And to Michael,
their model of what a man should be.

Thank you to everyone who made this book possible. To Angela R. Narron, for her legal expertise and creative brainstorming. To Carolyn Martin and Michael Ritchey, who supplied comments, encouragement, and coffee as needed. To Robin Rue and Beth Miller of Writers House, whose insights are always spot-on. Thank you to my editor, Cindy Hwang, for supporting this series; to Kristine Swartz; and to Rita Frangie and Tony Mauro, for creating such fabulous covers.

Thank you to my readers.

And a special thanks to the memory of Sergeant Major Paul W. Ritchey, USMC (Ret.), and to all the men and women who serve.

HELMAND PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN, AUGUST

I
N
A
FGHANISTAN, THE
kids threw rocks.

Staff Sergeant Luke Fletcher watched four boys in the street take aim at an oil barrel and counted himself lucky that today, at least, they’d found another target.

He didn’t dislike kids. They were sort of cute under the age of five. From a distance. The kids in Iraq used to tag after the Marine patrols hoping for handouts, candy, maybe, or soccer balls or humrats—humanitarian rations.

A stone ricocheted off the metal barrel like a bullet, and twenty-three-year-old Corporal Danny Hill, sweeping the bomb wand at the front of the column, froze.

“Easy,” Luke said. “It’s just some kids throwing rocks at a . . .”

Shit. At a dog.

He could see it now, slinking in the shadow of the wall, just another stray: abused, malnourished, obviously feral. Nothing he could do about it. The weak picked on the weaker. Yelling at a couple of ten-year-olds wasn’t going to make them respect the dog or the law.

The dog yelped.

“Hey!” The word jerked out of him.

His tone needed no translation. The boys scattered in a flurry of jeers and stones. Nothing Luke could do about that, either.

He and his men were here to provide training and support for the Afghan National Police who would replace them. For two days, their joint patrol had hiked from town to town, sweating through the afternoons, freezing through the nights, trying to buy the ANP time and breathing room to hold this desert province once the Marines were gone.

Sergeant Musa Habib, the Afghan team leader, met Luke’s eyes. “You know they will be back.”

He meant the kids with rocks. Or he could have been talking about their fathers. Their brothers. The Taliban.

“You do what you can do.” Luke glanced at the dun-colored mutt shrinking behind the barrel. He had too many people depending on him already. The last thing he needed was to take on responsibility for a dog. “Maybe it will be gone by then.”

The mutt didn’t move.

Luke dug in his harness for an MRE. He’d eaten the snacks already. Ripping open the leftover meat pouch, he squeezed a chunk on the ground.

Lance Corporal Anthony Ortega, an ex-gangbanger from East Los Angeles, grinned. “I wouldn’t feed that shit to my dog.”

But the mutt wasn’t so picky. It poked its head from behind the barrel. Its ears were cropped, one eye swollen nearly shut.

Nineteen-year-old Private First Class Cody Burrows whistled in sympathy. “They really messed that bastard up.”

“Kids didn’t do all that,” Luke said.

Fresh blood oozed from a gash on its shoulder. But its other scars were older injuries, puckered and scabbed over.

“No,” Habib agreed. “This dog has been used for fighting.”

The mutt inched forward, quivering.

“No way that’s a fighting dog,” Ortega said.

“It’s big enough,” Hill said.

“Often the bait dogs, they are cut like that,” said Habib. “To rouse the other dogs and make them fight.”

Poor mutt. Luke threw another piece of MRE. The dog’s eyes rolled toward him as it took the food. Its big, black-rimmed eyes made it look like a bar girl after a bad night.

“Gee, Daddy, can we keep him?” Hill said.

“He’s a she, numbnuts,” farm boy Burrows said. “Look at her belly. She’s gonna have puppies.”

They all stood around watching the dog, like feeding some pregnant stray was the best, most entertaining thing to happen to them all day. Which it was.

“We should take her back with us,” Hill said. “You saved her life. That makes you responsible for her.”

Luke shook his head. “Don’t give me that Zen shit.”

Rescuing strays was not part of his mission. He put the rest of his MRE on the ground, watching the mutt lap it almost delicately from the foil.

He liked dogs. His family always had a dog.

He pushed the thought of home away, rolling his shoulders to resettle his pack. “Break time’s over.” He looked at Habib. “What do you want to do?”

The Afghan sergeant looked momentarily surprised. But the rules had changed in the past few months. Now it was the Afghans who were supposed to step up and take the lead.

Habib cleared his throat. “We should patrol the market.”

Luke nodded.

They walked the narrow alleys between residential compounds. Luke watched the doorways and rooflines, braced for sniper fire. Their survival depended on his ability to make snap judgments, to distinguish between a threat and a friendly, to react quickly and correctly in a crisis. Everything in the village was parched and brown, the color of the never-ending dust that hung like fog over the landscape. It was part of him now, engrained in his skin, choking his sinuses.

Sometimes he missed the blue Carolina sky with a longing that burned the back of his throat.

The squadron emerged into the bazaar. A few stalls were open for business. Motorcycles zipped by like wasps, kicking up clouds of dust. A circle of men—village elders—squatted in the shade, surrounded by a standing ring of boys. Always boys, never girls. They kept their women out of sight. Luke’s sister would have had something to say about that.

Habib looked at Luke, seeking guidance.

“Ask them how it’s going,” Luke said.

The new Afghan police force needed to build rapport with the community, to establish trust in the new government. He stood back, an itch between his shoulders, watching their faces as Habib and the elders went through the usual bullshit.

No Taliban
, the villagers said. They hadn’t seen anybody. They just wanted to be left alone.

“Is there anything we can do for them?”

No. Nothing.

“They got kids?” Luke asked.

One of the younger men nodded.

“You tell him he can go to the base if they need medical attention.”

More nods, more smiles, more bullshit. It was the same in every village. The patrol moved on.

“Hey, look,” Burrows said. “That dog’s following us.”

“Happens when bitch gets knocked up,” Ortega said.

Laughter rippled up the column, relieving the tension.

Luke looked back. Sure enough, the dog had fallen in behind the last man like a member of the patrol.

She was still with them when they made camp that night on a plateau of hard-packed gravel. They could have sheltered in the last town. But despite Luke’s mission to improve community relations, he didn’t trust their hosts not to report them to the Taliban while they slept.

As the temperatures plummeted, the dog crept closer, drawn by the need for warmth or food or simple companionship. Luke could sympathize. He tore open another MRE and set it on the rocky ground.

“Why do you feed it?” Habib asked.

“Staff Sergeant’s our den mother. He takes care of everybody,” Burrows said.

He couldn’t take care of everybody. But by tagging along, the dog had made herself one of them. Theirs.

After ten years at war, Luke wasn’t fighting for freedom and democracy. He was in this for the guys next to him, to keep them safe, to bring them home alive.

The mutt licked the wrapper, her thin tail stirring cautiously.

Out here, it was the little things that mattered. Making the world safe from global terrorism sounded good, but these days Luke measured victory one step, one sunrise, and now one dog at a time.

“You ever have a pet growing up?” he asked Habib.

The Afghan smiled wryly. “We can barely feed our families. We do not think of animals as you do.”

The dog sighed and settled her head on her paws, fixing her dark, mascara-ringed eyes on Luke. Like a hooker who’d been knocked around and still hoped this time would be different. Better.
Help me. Save me. Love me.

He looked away.

“Think she’ll make it back to camp with us?” Ortega asked, seeking reassurance.

Luke didn’t know. He didn’t know if any of them would make it. The weight of responsibility pressed on his shoulders.

No Marine left behind.

Or dog, either.

“Sure,” he said. “As long as we keep feeding her.”

“She’s eating for two now,” Hill said.

“More like seven,” Burrows said.

“How many puppies you think she’s got in there?”

Luke listened to their good-natured speculation, his shoulders gradually relaxing. By the time they reached the forward outpost two days later, the mutt was taking point with Luke at the head of the column, barking to warn of the approach of other dogs or people, and Ortega was making book on the size of her litter.

No way was Luke enforcing the ban on pets on base. His men were denied enough of the comforts of home. No beer, no porn, no barbecue. Only a hard-ass would deny them a dog.

Luke had more important things to worry about.

His report made, he sat on his bunk, turning over the thin stack of MotoMail that had accumulated while he was on patrol. Three letters in five days.

The fine hair stirred on the back of his neck.

He got mail, of course. His mom, trained by twenty years as a Marine wife, sent plenty of care packages, tucking in notes with the eye drops and baby wipes, hard candy and homemade cookies. His dad always had a word during Luke’s infrequent phone calls home.
Stay safe. Shoot straight.
But Dad wasn’t much for writing, never had been, even when he’d been the one on deployment.

And it wasn’t like Luke had a wife and kiddies back home, sending him love letters and complaints about the toilet and scrawled crayon drawings.

He flipped to the first envelope, glancing at the return address. Katherine M. Dolan, P.L.L.C., Beaufort, North Carolina.

His brows raised.
A lawyer.

He didn’t need a lawyer. He wasn’t sixteen anymore, getting pulled over for drunk driving. Anyway, no Beaufort attorney was going to solicit new clients in Afghanistan.

He ripped the envelope open.

Dear Staff Sergeant Fletcher
, he read in neat type.

Okay, so this Katherine Dolan wasn’t some woman he’d met in a bar during his last leave. That was good.

This office represents the estate of Dawn Marie Simpson.

Dawn. Jesus. That name took him back. All the way to high school. Pretty, blond Dawn, with her wide smile and amazing breasts.

His hand tightened on the letter. And now she was . . . ?

I am sorry to tell you that Dawn is deceased as of August 9.

Dead.

Shit. Ten years in the Corps had hardened him to violence. But death came to the battlefield. Not to girls back home.

His gaze dropped back to the letter.

I am writing to inform you that Dawn left behind a minor child, Taylor Simpson, born February 2, 2003. In her will, Dawn identified you as the father of her child . . .

The tent broke around him, a kaleidoscope of shards, as his world, his heart, stopped. His vision danced.

. . . and as such named you as the child’s guardian and trustee.

His heart jerked back to uneven motion. His head pounded. He didn’t have a child. He couldn’t. It was a damn lie. A joke. He hadn’t seen Dawn in ten years, since she dumped him at the end of senior year for Bo Meekins. No way was he the father of her baby.

He read the first paragraph again.
February 2, 2003
. Not a baby. It hit him like a kick in the gut.

I understand that you are currently deployed with the US military
, the letter continued in crisp, impersonal type.
Pending instructions from you, Taylor is living with her maternal grandparents, Ernest and Jolene Simpson. Please advise me of your intentions for assuming parental responsibilities for your child.

He dragged in an uneven breath. His responsibilities were here. His life was here. The familiar tent whirled and refocused around him, his surroundings assuming the flat, clear detail of a firefight, boots, locker, green wool blanket, everything coated in a fine layer of grit. Time slowed. The paper trembled slightly in his grasp.

I realize this news must come as a shock. In addition to her will, the deceased left a letter for you which may address some of your questions and concerns. I will be happy to forward it per your instructions. Dawn was adamant that you were the right person to care for Taylor in the event of her death.

Dawn was out of her fucking mind. That was the only explanation that made sense.

I hope that you will consider your response very carefully in keeping with Taylor’s best interests. Your present situation may not be conducive to the raising of a minor child. There are other options that you and I can discuss. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, K. Dolan.