Tempting the Millionaire: An Officer and a Millionaire
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But it didn’t come.
Frowning, he kept running, the sounds of his footsteps like a disembodied heartbeat thundering out around him.
It was Margie, he told himself. He’d allowed himself to be drawn into an affair he’d known from the first would be nothing but a mistake. And yet he couldn’t really regret it, even now. Even knowing that he’d be leaving, a divorce would be filed and he would, most likely, never see her again.
His scowl deepened and his pace quickened. His breath charged in and out of his lungs, and sweat rolled down his bare back. Where would she go? What would she do? And how would he ever know if she was all right?
“Of course she’ll be all right,” he muttered, disgusted with himself. “She’ll have five million reasons to be all right.”
There. Reminding himself that she was doing this for the money made him feel less like a bastard for using her. Because, really, who was using whom?
He didn’t even hear the car come up behind him until it paced him. Hunter didn’t stop, just smiled at the man rolling down his window to talk to him. “Morning, Sheriff.”
“Can take the man out of the Navy, huh?” Kane Hackett said with a grin. “Figured I’d find you out here running. You always did like this road for training.”
Hunter kept going, sparing his old friend a derisive glance. “And it figures that you’re driving the road, not running it. Out of shape, are we?”
One dark eyebrow winged up. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Have to go see Simon,” Kane said, his smile fading into a worried frown. “Figured it’d be best if you were with me when I did.”
That got Hunter’s attention. He stopped running, bent in half and took a few deep breaths before asking, “What’s going on?”
“There was a fire at the Cabot building in town last night,” Kane said.
“Fire?” Hunter grabbed the edge of the car window. “Anyone hurt?”
“No.” Kane shook his head. “The night cleaning crew went in; apparently one of ’em turned on a stove in the break room to make some tea. Left a towel too close to the burner.”
“Damn it.”
“That about covers it.” Kane waved him over to the passenger side door. “There’s damage to the first two floors, though, and I thought, well, Simon had the heart attack last year—”
Hunter was already moving. He climbed into the black-and-white SUV, buckled his seat belt and told his friend to drive.
“Well, how bad is it?” Simon wanted to know an hour later. The old man wore a faded blue robe, and his white hair was standing out around his head like cotton swabs on end.
“Kane took me by to see it for myself before he brought me back here to tell you,” Hunter said, remembering that Kane had left right after delivering the news, leaving it up to Hunter and Margie to watch out for Simon’s blood pressure.
Now as Margie poured Simon’s coffee, Hunter watched his grandfather warily for any sign the old man was going to clutch his chest and drop like a rock.
“And…?” Not dropping. Instead, the old man wanted answers, not coddling.
Hunter gave him a wry grin. Apparently, Simon was a lot tougher than any of them knew. “And, it’s a mess. The fire chief says no structural damage, but there’s plenty of smoke and water damage to make up for it. Most of the files are on the upper floors, so that’s good. We didn’t lose much.”
One corner of Simon’s mouth tilted upward. “No,” he said slowly, “I guess we didn’t.”
“Simon…” Hunter sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Freudian slip, huh?” Simon looked pretty pleased for a man who’d just been told his company headquarters had nearly burned down.
Hunter hadn’t meant “we” the way Simon had taken it. After all, the company wasn’t his baby. He was a SEAL. But touring through the damaged building with Kane at his side, Hunter had actually caught himself thinking about the reconstruction. And what changes might be made. After all, if they were going to have to do some remodeling, there was no reason they couldn’t do some updating as well.
Such as, for instance, making the break room larger. The area was so small now that it would comfortably hold only two or three people. The day care center Margie had instituted also had been ruined, since the room set aside for it was on the ground floor. Now that they were redoing it, he thought they should make it more kid friendly than the old room had been.
And the workers’ cubicles that were now twisted and melted should simply be tossed. Why lock people away into separate little stalls? It’s not as if cubicles gave people the sense of having their own little offices. All they really did was separate them from their coworkers, and what was the point in that?
“Hunter?” Simon prodded, “What’re you thinking?”
What was he thinking? Scraping one hand across the top of his head, Hunter muttered, “Nothing. No thanks, Margie. No coffee.” He put out one hand to stop the cup she held out to him. “All I want now is a shower.”
Then he left the room fast before his own thoughts could start marching in time with Simon’s.
“Well, well, well. Did you hear him?” Simon chuckled and took a sip of coffee that was mostly 2 percent milk.
“He doesn’t want to stay, Simon,” Margie told him. “Nothing you can say will change his mind. You know that.”
The old man’s white eyebrows lifted high on his forehead and wiggled around like two worms on hooks. “It’s not what I can say that’ll keep him here, Margie, honey—it’s you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re looking back.”
“Simon, don’t play Cupid,” she warned, not wanting the man she loved like a grandfather to be as heart-broken as she was going to be when this all ended.
He only chuckled again. “You’ll see…”
She sighed, took a sip of her own coffee and slumped back into the chair closest to Simon’s. Margie had seen the hunted expression in Hunter’s eyes before he left the room and knew that he was already regretting getting as involved as he had in the fire investigation. He didn’t want the life that was waiting for him here in Springville.
He didn’t want her.
Not beyond the tumbled hours they spent together in his bed, anyway. There at least, she knew he wanted her. Felt it in his every touch, his kiss. In the way he held her during the night and the way he turned to her when nightmares plagued him. But she also knew that at the end of the month, he would leave and let her walk out of his life.
Just acknowledging that sent a spear of pain darting through her heart, and Margie didn’t know how she would survive when that pain was her constant companion.
Chapter Eight
Hunter didn’t mind helping out, he told himself a few days later. After all, he was here, wasn’t he? And there was just so damn much to do. There was the construction at the company headquarters to look after, and there was Simon’s birthday party. Since Margie couldn’t really be expected to do it all, and since he didn’t have a clue about how to arrange a blowout party, Hunter had taken over the work on the building in town.
He met with the contractor, talked to the employees to get their ideas and helped to draw up plans for the remodeling. Now, sitting in Simon’s study, with blue-prints spread out in front of him on the desk, he asked himself how he’d managed to get sucked so far into the life of the town.
His grandfather was upstairs, taking a nap, Margie was off in the kitchen talking to Simon’s cook about the caterer’s party menus and Hunter was sitting behind the very desk he’d spent most of his life avoiding.
“So, how’d you get here?” he muttered and poured himself a glass of scotch.
“We turned left into that freeway out front you call a driveway,” a familiar voice said, answering the rhetorical question Hunter had posed.
“As long as you’re pourin’, brudda,” another voice told him, “get two more glasses out.”
Only one man Hunter knew used island slang in every conversation just to make sure people knew he was a proud, full-blooded Hawaiian. Hunter was grinning as he stood up to face two members of his SEAL team. Jack Thorne, “JT,” his team leader, and Danny “Hula” Akiona were standing in the open doorway of the study.
“Where’d you guys come from?” Hunter asked as he came around the desk, hand out to welcome his friends.
JT was tall and blond with sharp blue eyes that never missed anything. Hula was just as tall, with black hair, black eyes and a smart-ass outlook on life. Damn, Hunter’d missed them both.
“We were on our way up to Frisco for a little R and R,” Hula was saying. “Thought we’d stop and see how you were healing up. Didn’t know we’d find you sitting in a mansion.”
Hunter winced. Exactly why he’d never told his friends about his background.
Hula sniffed the air, then slid his gaze to where the decanter of scotch sat on the edge of the desk. “Hmm. Thirty years old. Single malt.”
Hunter laughed. “How the hell do you do that?”
“It’s a gift.” Hula shrugged, looked around the immense study, then shifted a look back at his friend. “So how come you never told us you were stinkin’ rich?”
JT frowned at him. “Nice. Real subtle.”
“I don’t do subtle,” Hula told him and shifted a pointed look at Hunter. “Takes too long, life’s too short. Gotta wonder why a friend keeps a secret like this, though.”
Hunter blew out a breath. “So I wouldn’t have to listen to you saying things like ‘stinkin’ rich.’”
“No offense, you know?” Hula glanced around the big room again, then slid his gaze back to Hunter. “Just surprising finding out one of our own is a gazillionaire.”
“Shut up, Hula,” JT said and walked into the study, his gaze also darting around the room, taking it all in.
“Have a seat,” Hunter said, glad to see his friends despite the fact that they now knew his secret. He retrieved the scotch, got two more glasses and then sat down across from two of the men he routinely trusted with his life. They were looking around as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, and he couldn’t really blame them.
In all the time they’d been together, Hunter had never once mentioned that his family was rich. He hadn’t wanted them or the others on the team to treat him differently. All he’d wanted was to be one of them. To be accepted for who he was, not what his family had. Now, though, he had to wince. Had to look to his friends as if he’d been lying to them for years.
Because he had been.
JT braced his elbows on his knees, stared at him and asked, “So why’d you never say anything?”
“Yeah, brudda,” Hula said, his dark eyes flashing. “Seems you like to keep secrets, huh? What’s wrong? Afraid I’ll borrow money after one of our poker nights?”
Hunter sprawled in the chair, balanced his glass of scotch atop his flat abdomen and shot first one man, then the other, a hard look. “This is why I never said anything. You’re both looking at me like I’m a rich sonofabitch.”
“It’s only the rich part that’s new,” Hula told him with a wink. “Seriously, man, why’d you hide it? If I had a great place like this, I’d be telling everybody.”
“Yeah,” JT said with a shake of his head. “We know. But then, you tell everybody you meet every minute of your life story.”
“Well, I’m a fascinating man,” Hula said with a smile before he took a sip of scotch. “Like the time I tangled with a tiger shark off the coast of Maui…”
“We already heard it,” Hunter and JT said together.
Then the three of them grinned at one another like loons. And just like that, things were back on an even keel. The secret of his family’s money was out, and his friends had put it aside already. Made Hunter wonder what the hell he’d been worried about for so long.
“I actually missed you guys,” Hunter told them.
“Good to know,” JT said, easing back into the leather chair. “When we didn’t hear from you, I started thinking maybe you were reconsidering coming back to the team.”
“I told him that was cracked,” Hula said after a long, appreciative sip of scotch. “No way Hunter doesn’t come back, I said. Hell, Hunt lives for the buzz, man.”
The buzz. What they called the adrenaline-laced rush they got just before a mission. What they all felt when they were given orders to complete and dropped behind enemy lines. What they celebrated when they were all back home safe.
The buzz had a hold on Hunter, and he couldn’t deny it, but lately he’d been asking himself if the buzz was enough to live on. And how much longer could he do this job to the degree of perfection he expected of himself? He wasn’t getting any younger, and already two or three of the guys he’d entered SEAL training with had retired or taken on stateside training jobs.
JT was rolling his glass of scotch between his palms and watching him quietly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” his boss said. “You just seem…different, I guess.”
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