Page 40 of Protecting What's Mine

“See? You’re a natural,” Linc said, leaning in to make faces over Mack’s shoulder.

She could smell his shower gel, his deodorant. She could feel the heat that pumped off his body. It felt…close. Intimate. And entirely inappropriate for all her new goals.

She turned and took a step back to put a little distance between them. “How’s the shoulder?” she asked abruptly.

He circled his arm slowly. “Still a little tender. How are you at massage?” he asked wolfishly.

“About as good as I am at holding babies.”

“That good, huh? Maybe you can sneak over the fence sometime and—”

Mack whirled around. “Not in front of the baby!”

14

It was a study in normal. Parents, couples, families. All enjoying a Friday night with the people they loved the most. Mack felt an odd, decades-old ache at the unfamiliarity of it all.

“What do you think? Wanna give it a go?” Once again, Linc appeared at her side. It kept happening, one of them drawn into the other’s orbit in this backyard.

“Give what a go?”

“Marriage. Kids. Backyard BBQs on a Friday night with half the town in attendance. I’ve got the day off Wednesday. We could swing by the justice of the peace.”

She knew he was flirting. But there was something intoxicating about him being so close, so focused on her.

“Yeah, I don’t think I have those genes,” she sighed. “I can barely recognize healthy family dynamics, let alone live them.”

“You’d figure it out,” he said with confidence. “I’d help.”

“I appreciate your faith in me. But this is like a foreign language to me.” She lifted her beer. “They make it look easy.”

“That’s because you’re seeing the end result of years of blood, sweat, and tears.”

“Aldo definitely deserves a happily ever after,” she said, remembering in a flash his ashen face, covered in dirt and blood. The way he clung to the hand of her other patient, cracking jokes, while she grimly kept him from bleeding out.

“They all do, Dreamy. Just like you.”

“I’ve got too many skeletons,” she said lightly. There were too many dents and dings between childhood and here. Reminders that there were no guarantees.

“Did you know that Gloria was in an abusive relationship that almost got her killed?” He said it calmly as if he were discussing the weather. “Or that Harper lost her parents and grew up in foster care. She put a foster parent in prison for abuse when she was twelve. Got a broken arm and ribs for putting herself between a monster and another kid. And then there’s Garrison.”

“No love lost between you two,” she observed.

Linc grinned. “He always thinks I’m trying to steal his women.”

“He’s got good taste.” She watched Harper ruffle her oldest’s hair while she perched on Luke’s knee and said something that made her father-in-law laugh. Harper was happy. Down deep, in-the-bone happy.

“Always has. He was married before. High school sweetheart. Lost her in a car accident the day he came home from deployment. She was on her way to pick him up.” There was a tone present in Linc’s voice that she couldn’t quite identify.

“Jesus.” She took a long pull on her beer.

“They make it look easy. But it sure as hell isn’t. It’s work. Hard work. But you’re not afraid of a little manual labor, Dreamy. You’ll do fine.”

She cleared her throat, surprised at the emotion she found there. “Your approach is all wrong, Hotshot,” she complained, trying to lighten the mood.

“Educate me.”

“You can’t come at me all flirty about weddings and babies. I’m a short-term, no-strings kind of woman. No messy endings that no one saw coming. No long-term commitments. No fuss. That—” She pointed at the campfire where couples canoodled and kids begged to roast the bag of marshmallows they found. “—is not for me. Now, if you wanted to make real progress with me, you’d promise me no-holds-barred, stringless sex and a drama-free parting when one or both of us is ready to move on.”