The Re-Enlisted Groom

Damn.

Damn, damn, damn.

It shouldn’t be this hard to just look at her, Kyle thought, the agony of losing her and never knowing why clutching at his chest Yet like a masochist searching for more pain, his gaze moved over her face, her petite features, the lush figure even a shapeless flannel shirt and down vest couldn’t hide. She’s cut her hair, he thought stupidly. Her auburn waves were evenly trimmed, side parted and skimming her jaw, her long drop earrings emphasizing those great bones. One thing he had to say about Maxie—she had a body that evoked wild fantasies and a face that gave a man sleepless nights.

He ought to know. He’d had his share of them. And he didn’t want any more.

He brought his gaze back to hers. “Hello, Max.”

The sound of his voice, deep as the ocean floor, coated her, sending tremors through her bloodstream. And with it came a flood of unwanted memories, of heartache and guilt. Oh, Lord, the guilt, Maxie thought. It had never eased completely, and as she stared into his eyes now, it magnified. The last time she’d seen him, he was cramming his gear into a marine green Man!, expecting to marry her before he shipped out to Saudi Arabia. Her gaze wavered. Selfpreservation steadied it. Don’t panic, she thought He doesn’t know about the past seven years.

“Why are you here?” she finally asked, trembling and trying not to show it.

He arched a brow, his dark gaze boring into hers. “Don’t have anything else to say, Max? Like ‘I see you survived’? Any bullet holes to show for nine months in the Iraqi desert?’”

She cringed, his bitter tone reminding her that she didn’t know what had happened to him after Desert Storm. Only that he’d never wanted to see her again.

Not that she could blame him.

Yet she refused to rise to his bait and acted as casual as she could with him staring at her so intensely. “Hello, Kyle,” she said calmly, bracing her gloved hands on the top of the shovel handle and tipping her head. “You look good. Any bullet holes?” He shook his head. “Now...why are you here?”

“Me and my chopper are on loan to the park service.”

Disappointment shaped her face. “Helicopters. Surprise, surprise,” Maxie muttered, then hefted the shovel, scooping and dumping, relieved that her voice was steadier than her hands. “I should have known you couldn’t go far from chasing danger.”

Resentment burst through Kyle, that she didn’t believe he’d changed—and more so that she appeared unaffected while his heart hadn’t made it back to his chest, still sitting in the pit of his stomach. “You mean instead of manning a .50-caliber machine gun in an open chopper during low-flying reconnaissance?” His biting tone grabbed her attention, and she met his gaze. “No,” he said, as if mulling over how to solve world peace. “I can’t say it’s the same.” His features sharpened, his eyes penetrating. “Hauling tourists lacks some of that killer adrenaline rush you get under live enemy fire.”

His sarcasm wasn’t hard to miss, yet she paled at the image anyway. “What?” She focused on hitting the wheelbarrow and not his feet. “Not dangerous enough?”

“Forget about my chopper—” he unzipped his jacket and tipped his hat back “—what the hell are you doing here?” He gestured to the rows of stalls.

She scoffed and kept shoveling. “You don’t think I wade in this stuff because I like the fragrance, do you?”

Kyle’s lips thinned, his impatience gone. “Look, Max, just point me in the direction of the boss, and I’m outta here.”

“I am the boss.”

“What?”

Maxie glanced up. His disturbed look was almost amusing. If she wasn’t doing her level best not to unravel all over the place, she might have smiled. Instead she held on to her frayed nerves, deposited the scoopful in the wheelbarrow, then propped the shovel against the wall. She faced him, brushing her hair off her forehead with the back of her gloved hand and said, “I own this place, Kyle.”

Briefly he glanced around, scowling, but her mutinous expression dared him to contradict her.

They stared.

The wind skated along the barn, searching for a spot to enter and chill them to the bone. The dropping temperature outside didn’t compare to the atmosphere inside.

“So. You’ve been here?” His words dripped ice. “All this time?”

“Not all this time,” she answered frostily, bending to move the wheelbarrow farther into the corridor. “And it doesn’t matter now, does it?” As she spoke, she pulled a pair of wire cutters from her back pocket and snipped open a hay bale lying outside the stall.

With his free hand, he reached out to pat the horse, anything to keep from shaking some feeling into her. Maxie had never been so...emotionless. “Not that I can see,” he said, shrugging.

“Good.” She grabbed a pitchfork, quickly spreading hay in the clean stall. “At least we understand each other.”

He hitched the duffel higher, shifting his weight to one leg. “Do we?”

Her gaze shot to his, and she shook her head, a warning in her tone. “Don’t even go there, Kyle.” She told him like it was. Over. “If I’d wanted you in my life, I would have shown up at the church.”

He scowled, his gaze raking over her, making her feel as if she’d been scraped raw with a knife. She tried to look away, but couldn’t and Maxie told herself it didn’t do any good to notice how well the heavy cable-knit sweater clung to him, how well the rich green shade showed off his eyes and dark hair. It would be wiser to notice only one thing about him... the barely checked hostility in his eyes.

“Still heartless, eh, Max?”

She reared back. “Go to hell, Kyle.”

A single brow arched, a dark wing over his penetrating eyes. “You’re the one prepared for the trip.”

She looked down at the pitchfork in her hand. Damn him. Damn him for coming into her life again, for making her see she couldn’t escape her mistakes. She was mortally ashamed of how she’d treated him all those years ago, but Maxie had more at risk now than old feelings. She knew what her decision had cost her. And she’d paid for it in more ways than he could ever imagine. But it would be just like a man to want to hear the gory details of how badly she’d suffered, too. And she wasn’t about to give him more fodder to feed on.

She met his gaze. “We haven’t seen each other in seven years, so don’t assume you know me anymore, because you don’t.” She pulled off her gloves and jammed them in her hip pocket, moving toward the horse.

He rolled the duffel off his shoulder and dumped it on the dirt floor.

Maxie’s gaze lowered to his name stenciled on the canvas, and she froze as recognition dawned. It was the same seabag he’d had when she’d last seen him. Her gaze flew to his, and something flickered in his eyes just then. The cold air between them crackled. Her skin flushed. For a moment, they were alone in his barracks room, groping at each other, their wild hunger making them impatient enough not to bother taking off all their clothes.

Kyle’s heart did a quick slam in his chest at the familiar heat in her green eyes, vivid enough to create an ache in his groin. Damn. He hated and wanted her all in one breath. It wasn’t natural. What was, was his need to shake her, to demand why she’d abandoned him so brutally when he’d needed her the most.

Maxie Parrish had been his biggest heartache and his greatest humiliation.

But he was over her now. If he wasn’t, he would have looked her up long before now and certainly before this contracted deal with his chopper put him in her life. Regardless, Kyle’s gaze unwillingly lowered over the long slim body he remembered in his dreams. Her faded plaid shirt shaped her torso better than silk, loose shirttail over jeans worn nearly white and fitting her like skin. Her boots were scarred and caked with dirt. The Maxie he remembered was always dressed to kill and never without makeup. This woman had muddy knees and chipped nails.

But she was the same woman who’d deserted him without explanation, he thought as she reached out to unsnap the horse’s lead.

He caught her wrist as she passed, and their gazes clashed. “You’re wrong, Max. I know you better than any man.”

She tugged on his grip. “You’re dreaming. Again.”

With a jerk, he pulled her against him, hemming her in between his body and the wall as his free hand slipped smoothly inside her down vest. The cold air rushed into her lungs at the contact, then staggered as his fingers found their way beneath her shirttails, touching her bare skin.

Lord. It was as soft as he remembered, satiny, warm, making his body throb for her.

“Kyle, don’t.” She wiggled her wrist, but he held tight, even as his mind screamed at him to quit torturing himself, that he wasn’t prepared for any involvement with her, not again, not after the way she’d humiliated him. Yet without thought, he spread his hand over the small of her back, driving his palm upward, caressing, feeling. She was naked beneath the faded shirt.

“Oh, Maxie,” he hissed softly, and her eyes softened, drifting closed, her body gravitating toward him and he remembered... remembered tasting her skin, lying naked with her, being buried deep inside her soft body. His groin thickened painfully, and he pressed her into it. His face neared, his lips a breath from hers. He drank in her startled gasp as his hand swept around to enfold her bare breast, his thumb heavily circling her tight nipple. A moan escaped him, unheeded, like a long-awaited burst of freedom. That this, the passion, the desire neither could fight or understand, hadn’t changed, was a complication he hadn’t expected. Suddenly it made him feel unreasonably weak.

And he resented it.

Feebly Maxie wrestled against him, but the liquid heat blossoming through her body with every tiny movement of his fingers was hard to ignore. She’d hoped if this moment ever came, that her feelings would be faint, like an old wa tercolor, yet they were more like a cattle stampede, coming from all directions with a force that defied nature. Her knees softened, and all at once she was hot and hungry, vulnerable for the caress of a man. This man. No one made her feel like she did when Kyle Hayden touched her. The passing years had done nothing to extinguish it; in fact the ache in her was blistering, just waiting to be uncapped. She gripped his jacket lapel to keep from sinking into the floor and waited for more.