Night Maneuvers

chapter 7

SITUATION REPORT—DAY FOURTEEN: he had no freakin’ idea.

For the second time in a week, Mitch parked his Jeep in front of Hughes’s newly purchased house. He shoved the keys in his pocket as he jumped out. Waves of heat rose from the black pavement. Hughes would pick the hottest day in September for this painting party. She’d better have plenty of beer stocked.

Normally, he’d have been looking forward to a day like this. Barbecue, beer, maybe some foosball and air hockey later.

But even that couldn’t entice him. He didn’t want to be here.

It’d been a strange week. Everything seemed normal between him and Hughes. But something felt…not right. Strained. He’d tried to get their friendship back on track by offering to help with her Mustang. But that had been just as disastrous as the air combat maneuver the day before.

Come on, McCabe. Shake it off.

The other day he’d been so focused on the weird vibes with Hughes he hadn’t really noticed the house. Her new home was small and old, probably built around the 1950s or ’60s. An old tree shaded the green lawn. Not something one typically saw in Vegas.

Mitch could tell the front yard had recently been landscaped with trimmed shrubs and brightly colored flowerbeds. Hughes—or someone—had put a lot of sweat equity into the curb appeal. If he’d ever once dreamed of the perfect family home as a kid, this would have been it.

Now it just made him want to jump back in his Jeep and head for the nearest bar.

The front door was open and he let himself in. The living room had the same homey atmosphere the front lawn had promised, with a comfy sofa, a warm area rug and a club chair all grouped together. This front room had already been painted a soft buttery cream color. A week ago, he would have doubted this house would suit Hughes. But now he wasn’t so sure.

Before he was tempted to go check her bathroom for romance novels, he strode into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Grady was on a ladder painting the wall above white cabinets.

“’Bout time you showed up,” Grady grumbled without ever looking away from the wall and his roller.

“Am I late?” Mitch made a show of checking his watch and then popped the cap off his bottle.

“We’ve been here since 0800.” Grady finally looked down at him and then descended the ladder. “But I saved the master bedroom for you.” He shoved a paint can and a clean roller into Mitch’s arms.

“Where’s Hughes?” No way Mitch was painting a bedroom with Hughes in it.

“Out back. Making lunch.”

“Mitch! You’re here.” Lily swept into the kitchen and hugged him. “Oooh, your aura is cloudy.” She cupped his cheek. “Poor confused guy. You need a tarot reading from my friend, Sun—”

“Lily, sweetheart,” Grady cooed as he came up behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. “The last thing McCabe needs is your sympathy.”

“But, Ethan, if it weren’t for Mitch giving you my apology card, we might not have found each other again. He’s the one who called me when—”

“Okay. Okay.” Grady smiled warmly at his wife. “Whatever you want, baby.”

“Oh, Ethan.” When Lily put her arms around Grady’s neck, lifted onto her tiptoes and started kissing the guy, Mitch took that as his cue to leave. He could only stomach so much saccharine.

As he stepped around the couple, he could see through the sliding glass door into the backyard. His hand halfway to the door handle, he came to a dead stop.

Hughes was standing in front of a fancy new propane grill wearing cut-offs and a backward ball cap. She’d spilled paint on a faded, too small T-shirt that hugged her tiny curves. She was flipping burgers and, as he watched, she wiped her temple on her T-shirt and managed to smear white paint on the side of her face.

God, she looked cute.

Mitch choked on the thought. Cute? Cute was for puppies and kittens. Not women. And definitely not women he was usually attracted to. He liked ’em brash and bold, bodacious and big-busted. Not necessarily in that order.

As if she sensed his stare, she turned and caught sight of him standing there like a clueless recruit, his hand paused in midair. She frowned, pointed to the nonexistent watch on her left wrist, and motioned for him to come outside.

Mitch stepped out and heat blasted him like jet-engine blowback. An empty pool teased him with possibilities. He pictured it filled with sparkling turquoise water beckoning him to escape the heat.

“Now you decide to show up?” Hughes berated. “Just in time for lunch?”

“Hey, I never said what time I’d be here.” The landscaping in the backyard was a work in progress. Work being the operative word. Mitch shuddered at the thought of buying a house. The upkeep and repairs seemed like something for dopes chasing the ever-elusive American Dream. After the divorce, he’d put that delusion out of his mind.

“Most of the painting’s already done.” Hughes had turned her attention back to her grill. “But if you want one of my famous Texas burgers, grab a roller and get to it, buddy.”

Mitch shrugged. “Eh, I’m not hungry.” He took a swig of his beer and then couldn’t stop a grin.

Hughes swatted him hard with her long-handled BBQ spatula. “Git!”

“Ow!” He rubbed his arm. “You got grease on my best Hawaiian shirt!”

“That’ll be the least of your problems if you don’t get painting,” she threatened.

Mitch grinned, went back inside, and met Jackson and his new bride in the hallway. Seemed like they were getting more paint on each other than the walls. They broke apart once they caught sight of him.

Jackson cleared his throat and shot him a sheepish grin. “McCabe. How’s it going?”

“Apparently, I’m late.”

“Really? We hadn’t noticed.” Jackson reached over and patted his wife’s behind.

“Cole!” Jordan yelped and swatted his hand away, but she was smiling and snuggled up against the guy. Jackson lowered his head and began raining kisses all over her face.

Mitch was quickly approaching his breaking point. Any more lovey-dovey and he was outta there for good. “Please. Don’t mind me.”

The Jacksons barely noticed his departure.

Mitch took the paint can, tray and roller into the master bedroom and got to work. Or, at least, he meant to. Most of the furniture was shoved to the middle of the room, covered by a plastic sheet.

With a quick glance out the bedroom door first, he gingerly lifted the plastic and inspected the books stacked on Hughes’s bedside table. Damn. She’d punked him again. There were mostly aviator biographies, combat and war nonfictions, and a political humorist’s book, but no bare-chested men or couples clinching.

Good to know he at least knew her that well.

His gaze moved on to the top of a long dresser and he lifted the plastic. Framed photos of her family back in Texas. Her brothers and their wives and kids, her parents. And one of her as a teen on a horse. She wore a white cowboy hat, a white Western shirt with fringe along the yoke, and a huge grin as she held up an oversize gold belt buckle.

He knew she’d grown up on a ranch outside Amarillo, and he vaguely recalled she’d mentioned barrel racing in the rodeo as a kid. She must have been pretty good if she won the buckle.

She looked funny with long curly hair past her shoulders, but other than that she looked the same.

His ex had had a big, warm family, too. But that was where the similarities ended.

Would Hughes’s family like him? Luanne’s family had taken him in as one of their own. So much that Luanne had accused him of marrying her for her family, and not her. It wasn’t until this moment that he considered whether that might actually be true. Well, if it was, the relationships had ended with the divorce. After that, they’d treated him as if he had the plague.

He couldn’t blame them. They’d just been loyal to their daughter. Alex’s family would stick by her, too, he imagined. They looked like a close-knit bunch. “Snooping, McCabe?”

Mitch jumped and spun to face Hughes standing in the doorway. “Why’d you leave?”

“What?” Hughes’s brows crinkled.

He lifted the framed photo. “You had it so good. Why give all that up for combat and soldiers’ rations?”

She came into the room and took the frame from him, studying the picture. “Geez, was I ever that young?”

“You look happy, though.”

“Yeah, I was. Mostly. You know. Families can be difficult.”

“What’s difficult? Nice house. Two parents. You even had a horse.”

She put down the picture and pierced him with a penetrating gaze. “My mother wanted me to be like her. Little Suzy Homemaker.” She raised a brow and grimaced. “Can you see me wearing an apron and oven mitts, baking pies?”

“No.” He picked up the photo with her mom and dad and dropped onto the plastic-covered bed. “But at least your mom made a home for you.”

She shrugged. “That’s true. But at the time, all I saw was the drudgery. Cook and clean and wake up the next day and do it all over again. If I’d married some neighboring rancher like they all wanted, that’s what my life would’ve been.”

He nodded. Had his mother seen her life as drudgery? Living in that dilapidated trailer and having to take care of him? Was that why she’d drunk herself into a stupor every night?

“Your mom…it was bad, huh?” Hughes asked as if she’d read his thoughts.

He stood and returned the photo to the dresser, then picked up a stick and stirred the can of paint. “Oh, you know, I did okay.”

After a moment of Hughes not saying anything, Mitch looked up from pouring paint. She was watching him with such intensity, if he’d been a kid he would’ve squirmed. “What?”

“You always do that.”

“Do what?” He smiled and poured the paint into the tray, reading the sticker on the can. “Celestial Celery? Come on. Why don’t they just call it green?”

“Deflect. Change the subject. Anything but talk about your childhood.”

Mitch shrugged and shook his head. He’d always regretted going to her that awful night his marriage ended. Letting her see him weak and sniveling. No way he was going to expose anything more. “I was a kid, I went to school.” He spread his hands out to his sides in a gesture that said that’s all there was. His smile was getting more difficult to maintain under her penetrating gaze.

She folded her arms and raised a brow. “You can talk about it with me, you know.”

“Jeez, Hughes.” He picked up the roller and dunked it in the tray of paint. “What are you, my therapist all of a sudden?” He tried to fake a laugh.

“You told me your mom was an alcoholic—”

“Just drop it, all right?” He jabbed the tray of paint with the roller, splattering paint, and then attacked the walls with it.

He heard her suck in a deep breath. Here it came. With Hughes’s temper, she’d tell him off before marching out.

But all she said was, “I came to tell you your burger’s ready.”

Mitch blinked at the spot where Hughes had been standing. He took a step toward the door. Ready to leave, to drive off and forget all about the stupid painting party. But he’d be damned if he’d retreat like a yellow-bellied coward. So, he dipped the roller in the tray again and slapped paint on the walls as if they were the enemy.

The physical labor released the tension, but the mindless repetition of the job gave him too much time to think.

Not too many people, male or female, he’d spend his day off helping. He could name his buddies on half a hand. And he’d never ask them for anything. He didn’t like the feeling of being in someone else’s debt. Too many times he’d watched his mother humiliate herself for a loan that would only be paid back one way.

Forty-five minutes later he’d finished all four walls and his stomach was growling. He cleaned up and made his way to the kitchen.

He caught sight of Hughes at the front door hugging Jordan and Jackson. “Y’all come back next weekend and we’ll swim. I should have the pool cleaned and filled by then.”

“Let’s do brunch tomorrow, just us girls,” Jordan suggested. “And then go shopping. Lily wants to look at cribs.”

“Sounds fun,” Hughes answered as she waved them off.

Lily was pregnant? They sure worked fast. Grady had only been home from Iraq a couple of months. And looking at cribs sounded fun to Hughes? Since when was she interested in babies?

When he’d asked her about buying this house, she’d scoffed and said something about turning thirty and being tired of apartment life.

Mitch took in the rest of her house. Curtains on the front windows, a dining table with place mats. Candles and knickknacks on the small fireplace mantel, and kitchen towels that matched the place mats.

Were these somehow signs of a lifestyle change? Was she getting ready to settle down and have a family? Her career was more settled now. Was it that guy she’d mentioned dating while she was stationed at Langley? That SEAL?

Feeling a little off, he rubbed his empty stomach.

Before Hughes could throw him out, he headed for the patio where Grady and Lily were. Lily was leaning against Grady and he was rubbing her back with one hand and cupping her flat belly with the other, murmuring something in her ear. She nodded.

“Thank y’all for helping,” Hughes said from behind Mitch. “But, Lily, if I’d known you were pregnant, I would have insisted y’all stay home.”

“Oh, no. The paint’s nontoxic. I’m a little tired, but nothing a nap won’t cure.”

Grady and Lily said their goodbyes, Grady shaking Mitch’s hand, Lily hugging him. Hughes walked them out.

A paper plate with two juicy burgers loaded just the way he liked them, a bowl of chips, a bowl of barbecued beans and two icy cold drinks sat on a battered picnic table. Mitch gratefully swung a leg over, grabbed a burger and dug in.

When Hughes came back out she was carrying a large bottle of some sort of cleaner. Without a word to him, she made a beeline for the garden hose, hooked it up to a power washer and pulled the washer nozzle down the steps with her into the empty pool.

She was giving him the silent treatment? Just like a woman. She wouldn’t tell him to get the hell out, but she wouldn’t get over their stupid spat either. He stopped chewing. He sounded like a married man talking about his wife!

No. That was ridiculous.

He slammed up from the table and stalked over to the pool’s edge. He had to yell above the motor of the power washer. “Just what is your problem anyway?”

She eyed him, shut off the washer, slopped some cleaner against the side of the pool and started scrubbing with a brush. “I don’t have a problem. Did you already finish the bedroom?”

He stuck his hands on his hips. “Yeah.”

“Well, thank you for helping out. Don’t feel like you have to stay.”

Mitch hesitated. Did this mean they were good now? She wasn’t mad anymore? Just last week he would’ve known exactly what that meant.

Screw it. He kicked off his shoes, stripped off his expensive watch and joined her.

She stared at him a moment, then gave him a halfhearted smile. “What about your best Hawaiian shirt?”

He shrugged and grinned. “It’s my second best.”

She gave him that look she’d been giving him a lot lately. The one that said, “You’re hopeless, McCabe.” Then she tossed the brush at him.

He caught it with a grunt. While he scrubbed, she rinsed with the power washer. After making his way around one side of the pool and achieving a hefty sweat, he straightened, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

Cold water sprayed his shoulder and he spun around.

Hughes’s mouth gaped open. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.” She tried and failed to suppress a snicker. “You should see your face.” She burst out laughing.

He charged at her.

“No,” she called to him as he advanced. “The nozzle just got away from me, I swear.” Grinning widely, she dodged his grasp and turned the sprayer on him full force, soaking his shirt. She screeched as he made another grab for it and fought him for possession.

She was laughing wildly as she struggled in his arms, no match for his strength. But he was no match for her soft curves and tiny waist as his hands slid over her body. One minute they were fighting for control of the nozzle, the next he yanked her against him and covered her mouth with his.

Like the last time they kissed, his world clicked into place. Everything felt right. Her lips moved with his in perfect rhythm, her tongue teased his. Her body fit into his, soft and round where he was firm and flat. His cock pressed against her stomach and he cupped her bottom to hold her even tighter against him.

Then her mouth was gone. He continued pressing soft kisses down her jaw and neck and back up behind her delicate ear, until he realized she was trying to pull away.

Breathing heavily, he let his hands drop from around her hot, lithe body and stepped back.

Her lashes were spiky wet, and she was biting her lower lip. She held her hands in front of her, palms out, as if she couldn’t bear to touch him. Her golden-brown eyes gazed up at him with, what? She looked scared. Vulnerable. He’d never seen Hughes look like that.

“What’s happening to us, Hughes?” His voice shook, for the first time he could remember.

“I—I don’t know.” She dropped her gaze and folded her arms around herself. “Maybe we can’t be friends anymore.”

No. He couldn’t lose Hughes. She was his best friend. If she didn’t want him kissing her, he’d stay away. He’d get over this…infatuation, or obsession or curiosity. Whatever it was, he could lose it. But he couldn’t lose Hughes.

With a gut-wrenching noise he turned away and heaved himself out of the pool. He scooped up his shoes, grabbed his watch and stalked out to his Jeep, screeching his tires as he pulled away.