Unbridled

“Thank you, Pierre,” Laney said after he pulled out the other chair for her.

He usually thanked her back or at the very least told her to enjoy her lunch. This time, he just gave her a little bow and then scurried away as fast as his fashionably decked feet could carry him.

The waiter came immediately, not indicating one way or another whether Carter’s purposely chosen attire affronted him as he offered the wine list. Carter didn’t bother reading it but handed it back and requested a beer in a frosted glass.

Laney did the same.

“I’m impressed,” she said quietly, fingering the rim of her water glass and ignoring the stares from neighboring tables. “I figured you would have turned and left the instant Pierre informed you that you weren’t dressed properly.”

“Then it takes little to impress you.”

She enjoyed it when people acted contrary to her expectations. So few did. She could usually predict exactly what a person would say. And was disappointed when they did. So when she came across the odd man like Carter, she liked to linger in his company. Just to see what he would do next.

The waiter served their beer and then informed them of the specials. Laney didn’t have to look at the menu he handed her. She already knew every dish listed and what she would have. She was surprised when Carter didn’t bother to open his menu, either, instead holding her gaze as the waiter finished with the specials and looked to her.

She ordered salmon with rice and then raised her brow when it was Carter’s turn. He didn’t even blink as he said, “Give me a strip steak, grilled. Baked potato and salad with vinegar and oil. No gravies, no funny stuff I can’t identify. Just give it to me straight up.”

The waiter bowed slightly, took back the menus and disappeared.

If Laney had hoped to outmaneuver him by bringing him here, she’d failed. And she couldn’t have been happier.

“So,” she said, taking a sip of her water, “how is it that you know my cousin Trace?”

Carter grimaced and looked around the nicely appointed room, giving a small finger salute to an older woman nearby who openly stared at him. “He shot me.”

Laney nearly spewed her water over the table. “Pardon me?”

Carter’s grin returned. “I said he shot me.” He formed a gun with his fingers and pulled the trigger. “I have to say that if our positions had been reversed, I’d have done the same thing to him. But I would have hit him so he wouldn’t get back up.”

Laney had heard stories about her mother’s side of the family. “A bunch of rowdy cowboys,” her father would say before launching into a story about rustled cattle or gunfights or land feuds involving the branch of her family that came from the southwest part of the state.

Blake Cartwright was never flippant when telling the tales that had undoubtedly grown longer and longer over the years. Rather, he usually looked envious of a way of life so different from his own upbringing chasing oil with his father. Although occasionally guns had been involved, there had been no real honor in any of the clashes. All the disputes had revolved around money and who would be walking away with it. And it was usually Laney’s grandfather.

Which explained why Laney had never had to worry about anything. She could have attended the best Ivy League colleges in the world, but had instead chosen to go to the University of Texas. Her father had been proud of the move, when she had expected him to argue with her.

Then again, her father had never acted the way she anticipated, either. Much like the man across from her.

Their salads arrived.

“To be honest with you, Ms. Cartwright—”

“Laney, please.”

“Any outstanding debt is only part of the reason why I requested to see you today.”

She folded a few spinach leaves onto her fork with the aid of her knife. “Oh?”

Carter took a bite of his salad, and then wiped his mouth with his napkin, resting his elbow on the table as he chased the greens with water. “Christ, they’re feeding me cow food. I feel like I should be grazing.”

She laughed.

He pushed his plate away and took a bread roll instead, slathering it with butter. Laney found her gaze riveted as he put the extra large bite into his mouth, chewing without much regard for etiquette. A man who was obviously hungry for more than what was on the table in front of him.

“I want you to help get me reinstated into the Corps.”

Chapter Four

“I DON’T NORMALLY HANDLE military cases,” Laney had told him when they’d walked back to her office building a couple of blocks away from the restaurant.

“Define ‘normally.’”

“Never.”

Carter had figured as much. He was already working with a JAG attorney and understood the way the military worked. Especially in his case, after he’d been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, essentially a rubber stamp they used to cover every personnel problem they encountered. Mouth off to a rookie captain who couldn’t tell his ass from an IED—improvised explosive device—and find yourself suspended for an amount of time to be determined by other glorified civilians who were even more clueless than the ones who had diagnosed him in the first place. Men who had no idea what it was to spend days on end in a shit-ridden sandbox without supplies and adequate protection, where everyone and no one could be your enemy, where ultimately your only friends were your weapon and your balls.

Things were just going far too slow for his liking.

Still, Laney had agreed to look into his case. See if there was something she could do to help expedite matters.

Sweat dripped from Carter’s forehead, landing on the tile of his kitchen floor where he was on this second set of one hundred push-ups. Old Blue lay nearby, his head on his paws, his droopy eyes shifting up and then down as he followed Carter’s movements.

It was after dark and outside the cicadas were kicking up a ruckus as they claimed the night.

This was Carter’s least favorite time of day. Darkness yawned in front of him like a murky, endless ditch that no amount of dirt in the world could fill in, no matter how hard he shoveled. Shadows claimed the corners of the small, old house and lengthened, the few lamps and lightbulbs stopping them from swallowing the rooms altogether.

Carter usually did one of two things right about now. Either he sat in front of the old television set with a twelve-pack next to one ankle while Blue rested against the other. Or he hit a nearby roadhouse, seeking temporary companionship and ultimately escape in a welcoming woman’s arms.

Neither option seemed palatable to him just now. Mostly because the only arms he could seem to concentrate on belonged to Laney Cartwright.

His muscles trembled as he pushed them beyond their limits. He finally collapsed to the floor, his cheek resting against the cool tile, his lungs on fire. But he paid attention to nothing outside the image of Laney’s surprised and happy smile earlier at the restaurant when she realized he wasn’t going anywhere.

The closest he’d come to meeting his match in a woman was JoEllen Atchison. He winced. At least that’s what he liked to tell himself. It turned out JoEllen must not have returned the sentiment or else she would never have believed him capable of trying to rape her two months ago. Still, before then, he’d been convinced that they had been simpatico, two jarheads who didn’t require foreplay but went straight to the deed when the need hit, their only real relationship being with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Carter rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Now with the wisdom that came with hindsight, he realized that what he and JoEllen had had was nothing but a handful of one-night stands that had occasionally included a weekend locked away in a seedy motel room with a box of pizza and a case of beer. And that somewhere down the line he had mistaken that for a relationship.

Of course, it was hard to understand the difference, because he had never really had a steady relationship with a woman. When he was younger, he’d been too busy being a Marine commander’s son. There had been no real time for the usual teenage stuff outside his positions as varsity football cornerback and team captain, the roles nothing more to him than warm-up for what he would do once he enlisted in the Marines when he was eighteen.

Girls…oh, they’d been there. Lifting up their pretty skirts and kissing him with their cherry-flavored lip gloss. But he’d never seen one of them more than three times, and even then not necessarily in a row, since he went out with other girls in between. He hadn’t fooled himself into thinking that the reason he got away with such bad behavior had to do with his good looks. As his father had liked to tell him, he looked two licks shy of a full tongue bath.

No, he knew his status as football captain allowed him certain privileges. Liberties he hadn’t been extended in the Corps, where one Marine was treated no different than a hundred others.

His mother…well, his mother lived down in Austin with another family. One she’d started after leaving Carter with his father when he was five, marrying another man and going on to have four more children that were no more like Carter than the sun was like the moon.

Heaving himself up from the floor, he opened the refrigerator, staring at the half-dozen bottles of beer in there, and reached for the water bottle instead. Unscrewing the top, he went to stand at the back doorway, staring out at the dark sky as he guzzled a good portion of cold water.

It wasn’t often that he wondered how life would have turned out for him had his mother taken him with her instead of leaving him with his father. Only every now and again when he found himself drifting in a sea of uncertainty. As he was now.

Would he have been a lawyer like Laney? A doctor? All four of his half siblings either boasted advanced degrees or were in the process of earning them.