The Returning Hero (7 page)

“Promise me we can have chocolate for dessert, and you have yourself a deal.”

Brett held out his hand, smiling when her palm slipped into his. He was on dangerous territory, and he was starting to enjoy it.

CHAPTER SIX

I
T
HAD
BEEN
a long time since Brett had shopped for groceries and arrived home to cook dinner. He kicked the door shut with the heel of his boot and carried the bags through the house, before putting them on the ground and calling out to Jamie.

“I’m back,” he called, wandering down the hall toward her office.

“Oh, hey,” she said back.

He walked a couple of steps backward, looking into the bedroom he’d just passed. Jamie was tucking sheets into the bed, hair pulled up into a ponytail, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a tight tank top.

He could have done without seeing Jamie looking like that, making a bed that was presumably for him. Thank God it was down the hall from her room.

“I just wanted to let you know I was back.”

She smiled and threw the duvet on the bed, followed by a couple of pillows that had been sitting on the ground.

“You were secretly checking up on me, weren’t you?”

Her smile was infectious, no matter how much he wished he could distance himself from her. In the car, he’d reminded himself how he needed to behave, how he needed to think about her, but no amount of good intentions could help him when he was faced with Jamie in the flesh.

She didn’t seem to notice that he hadn’t replied and breezed past him, her shoulder skimming his bicep as she headed down the hall.

“Before you ask, I worked solidly almost the entire time you were gone, so I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.”

Brett froze before he could follow her, had only managed to turn before his feet refused to move. Because staring at him, eyes on his, was Sam. Sam’s smiling photo was hanging in the hall, straight outside the bedroom, and he hadn’t even noticed it when he’d walked past looking for Jamie.
For Sam’s wife
.

“Brett?”

He shook his head, mouthed
sorry
to his friend, the friend he was so close to betraying, and followed Jamie to the kitchen.

“Are you okay?”

Brett forced himself to snap out of whatever the hell it was he’d sunk into. She’d been Sam’s wife for years, he had known that this morning and he’d known it the night before, and yet he was the one who’d suggested he stay, who’d decided to go grocery shopping for dinner. It wasn’t Jamie’s fault that he was flipping out over something that was every bit his fault, so he needed to pull himself together.

“Sorry, yeah, I wasn’t sure what you’d like.”

“Mmmm, what are we making?”

He watched as she started to pull things out of the bags. “It’s the only thing I can make that doesn’t involve packets of sauce or frozen food.”

Brett never took his eyes off her as she laughed and pulled out a bag of tomatoes.

“Pasta?”

He nodded. “My mom was a great cook, and it’s the only thing I ever learned from her.”

Jamie’s face lost the rosy glow he’d been enjoying watching, her eyebrows dragging together as she frowned.

“You were only young when you lost your parents, weren’t you?”

Her voice was tender and it made him want to walk straight around the kitchen and hold her, to engulf her slender body in his arms and just feel what it was like to have her pressed to him. This woman who was driving him crazy—who’d
driven
him crazy for years—was driving him wild now.

Brett cleared his throat, well past the pain of what he’d endured as a teenager, but still not a fan of dredging up the past.

“I was eighteen, and they both died in a head-on collision,” he said, wishing he’d just shut his mouth and not said anything. Talking about what had happened back then was almost as bad about talking about what had happened to Sam. “I was at a party, drunk, and I phoned them to come and pick me up. Turns out they both got in the car that night, and if it hadn’t been for me, they would have still been at home.”

Jamie was staring at him, palms on the counter. “I can’t imagine what that was like for you, Brett, but you can’t honestly blame yourself.”

“Actually, you’re the one person who probably can understand,” he said. So many people had acted like they knew what he was going through, but Jamie had only just emerged from that place of loss herself. “It’s no different to you losing Sam, it’s just at a different stage in your life. The only thing that isn’t the same is that you had nothing to do with him dying. Me? I’ll never forgive myself for making the call that took them away from me and changed my life forever.”

“Brett, you were eighteen years old. Teenagers are supposed to call their parents in the middle of the night when they need them.”

Brett shrugged. “Nothing anyone says to me will ever make me believe that I wasn’t responsible.” He stared at her, watching her mouth as it turned down into a frown. “The only thing that saved me back then was the army. I was surrounded by guys like Sam every day, and they become my surrogate family. They still are, I guess.”

“So in other words you found a way to forget about what had happened.”

“I’m the first to admit that I ran away from that life, but at the age I was, I didn’t really have any other choice. Well, not any choice that would have been good for me.”

And this was why he needed to respect Sam, even in death. He’d been family to Brett, just like the rest of his unit had been, and the last thing he needed was more guilt to carry around.

He listened to Jamie sigh before she returned to taking the groceries from the bags. “I’d run away in a heartbeat, Brett, so don’t think I’d ever judge you for turning your back on the life you had taken away from you. You were brave to start over, especially in the army.”

Brett should have stood his ground, just stayed still on the other side of the kitchen, but he ignored his better judgment and joined her.

“What do you want to run away from?” he asked, voice low.

“From everything about this life, from the memories, just to start over and pretend like this was all a bad dream. That I didn’t choose to marry a soldier, knowing that there was a chance he’d die like my father did. I still can’t believe that I lost both of them like that.”

He wished he could offer it to her, wished he was brave enough to just tell her that he’d run away with her if it meant they could both forget and start over.

“I can’t help you run away, Jamie, but I can help you heal.”

She smiled across at him, nudged him with her shoulder. He should have resisted, but instead he slung his arm around her and pulled her in for a hug, closing his eyes when she dropped her head to his shoulder and wrapped her arm around his waist.

“I think you’ve already helped me,” she told him, her voice laced with a softness that made him wish he wasn’t thinking what he was thinking. That he was just a friend wanting to help another friend with no hidden agenda.

“What do you say I teach you how to cook Mama’s tomato pasta sauce?”

She loosened her hold on him until her arm fell away, and he made himself let go of her, too.

“Was your mom Italian?”

He grinned, glanced at her before taking the tomatoes from the packet. “Sure was. And she’d kill me for buying nonorganic produce.”

“Ah, well that explains the dark good looks, huh?”

Jamie was laughing and he raised an eyebrow back at her, which only made her laugh more.

“You would have liked her,” he said. “And I know she’d have been impressed that I at least remembered one of her dishes.”

“I have no doubt that I’d have loved the woman who raised you,” she said. “Even if you did lose her young, she sure did a good job.”

He looked away when Jamie leaned down to pull out the chopping board, not needing to see the way her shorts showed way too much skin when she bent forward.

“What else do you need?”

Brett reached past her for a knife from the wooden block on the counter, pleased that they were finished with their awkward conversation. He didn’t mind opening up to Jamie, but going back into the past was never easy. Not for him. “You can either chop tomatoes or onions?”

“I’ll do the onions,” she said.

Brett went to question her, to be the gentleman and offer to do the crap job, until she reached for her sunglasses and put them on.

“Ah, smart girl.”

She laughed. “Years of experience chopping these suckers. I always keep an old pair handy.”

“You know this isn’t going to be a quick meal, right?” he said, chopping the tomatoes into even pieces. “It needs to cook for an hour, maybe longer.”

“Did you buy wine?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jamie dropped her knife and pulled her sunglasses off. “Red?”

He nodded. “Paper bag on the floor.”

She crossed the room, pulled out two big wineglasses and pulled the cork from the bottle, before pouring a little into each glass. “We may as well have fun, right? I don’t mind waiting if we have something to do to pass the time.”

Brett took the glass from her, wishing he didn’t have to look at her, that her eyes hadn’t locked on his.

“To new beginnings,” she announced, holding her glass up to touch his.

“Cheers to that,” he said, wishing he’d been man enough to tell her how important the past was.

Brett took a sip as she did the same, swallowing the wine slowly before putting down his glass.

“So what do we do once we’re done with chopping?”

They were standing side by side, Jamie with her glasses back on.

“If I was being a purist then I should have skinned the tomatoes first, but it’ll still be great like this and otherwise we’ll run out of time,” he told her, pleased to take his mind off her by talking food. “We need to saute the onions first with some fresh garlic, then add the tomatoes, some chopped red capsicum and a few handfuls of fresh basil.”

“Sounds heavenly.”

“Wait until you taste it with freshly shaved parmesan sprinkled on top with a grind of black pepper.”

Jamie’s tongue flicked out to moisten her lips and he wished it hadn’t. She was clearly thinking about the food, but it made his mind skip off in an entirely different direction.

“Sounds delicious.”

“I also cheated with the pasta,” Brett told her. “I should be making it myself, but I found a homemade spaghetti at the store.”

“I can’t believe
you’re
teaching
me
a recipe.”

He put down his knife and reached for the wine again. “You say that like I’m some uncouth caveman.”

Jamie chuckled as she finished the onions and washed her hands. “I guess I just never took a special forces soldier for a cook. I mean, when have you even had time to learn culinary skills?”

“You did hear me say that I can only cook one dish from scratch, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s a damn good one from the sound of it,” she said, pulling out a stockpot and turning on the gas. “Want me to start on browning the onions? I can be your sous chef if you like?”

He nodded and reached for the cloves of garlic he had sitting on the counter, then started peeling and slicing them. There was nothing he didn’t like about cooking with Jamie, about being with her, about having her by his side.

Maybe it would have felt the same with any woman, because it wasn’t like he’d ever cooked side by side with anyone else before, but deep down he knew he was kidding himself.

The way he felt for Jamie wasn’t normal, which made it all the harder for him to fight. When he’d been out shopping, he’d wondered if he should just call her and say he’d gone back to his motel, that he’d see her again in a couple of days, but that thought had left his mind as fast as it had entered. Because Jamie was addictive, and right now, he was the addict.

* * *

“If we don’t eat it soon my stomach is going to start roaring.”

Jamie leaned back in her seat and gave Brett what she hoped was her most pathetic face. It seemed to work, because he laughed and walked himself and his glass of wine across the room and to the bubbling pot. The aroma of the sauce cooking had filled the room, and her stomach
was
starting to rumble.

“Mama will be shaking her fist up there in the clouds,” he joked, turning around with the wooden spoon in his hand. “She’d be telling me that it needs two hours to reduce properly.”

Jamie groaned. “I don’t care.” She took a final sip of wine and joined him in the kitchen. “Is this for me to taste?”

He nodded and held it out, his other hand poised beneath it to catch any drips.

“Tell me what you think,” he said.

Jamie leaned closer and opened her mouth, letting him tip the spoon. The taste explosion made her shut her eyes for a second, instantly fuelling her angry appetite.

“Oh, my God,” she managed to say after swallowing, her words all sounding like they’d merged into one. “That’s incredible.”

Brett dipped the spoon back into the pot and tasted a mouthful himself. “Not bad, if I do say so myself.”

“I can’t believe I’ve known you for so long and never known you could cook like that.”

She reached for the spoon but he didn’t let it go, shaking his head. “Just one more taste, then you have to wait until the pasta is cooked.”

Jamie made a face but dropped her hand, waiting for Brett to offer her another mouthful. He was grinning when he extended it in her direction, before pulling back and leaving her openmouthed and waiting.

“Brett!”

He just laughed and gave it to her, but she moved at the same time, meaning a few drops dripped onto her chin. Brett pulled the spoon back and reached for her face, wiping gently at her chin, his fingers sweeping across her skin to catch the sauce. He licked the sauce from his finger, and she couldn’t take her eyes from him, watching his face, his mouth, his tongue.

They were standing closer than they should have been, and now they were staring way longer than they should have been, neither blinking, just watching.

Brett moved his body slightly but Jamie stayed motionless, eyes still never leaving his. She couldn’t think of anything else except for Brett; suddenly he seemed to fill the room with his presence. It was like he was towering over her, his body blocking out everything, his eyes stopping her from seeing anything else, his masculinity calling out to her, making her want to close the distance between them and end up wrapped in his big arms.