So I deserved the worst punishment imaginable. I deserved it all.
It took a lot of time and a lot of counseling to recognize that none of it was my fault, but it was moments like these when I recognized exactly how evil he was that I felt the weight of it all over again.
“If you ever find yourself wanting ball-handling advice, you know where to find me,” Lauren said. I stared at her, too lost in my thoughts to understand her comment, and forced a smile before shaking myself out of it.
Fall apart when the wedding’s over.
“I should really check on the gift baskets,” I said, shuffling off the bed. “And the tent timeline. I don’t want them setting up the reception tent during the ceremony.”
My priorities didn’t stop there. Matt was convinced Lauren’s Navy SEAL brothers were going to waterboard him, Patrick was moping like a premenstrual teenager, Sam was drunk, Riley was scamming on Lauren’s friends, Andy was very, very late in getting her ass here, and Erin…all things Erin.
“You want to talk about it?” Lauren asked.
I realized I’d been staring at a sweater for no fewer than ten years and sighed. “No. Not tonight. Not this weekend.”
She stood and inspected her hair in the mirror. Matt wasn’t the only one who fell in love the minute he met her. She was the best friend I’d always wanted, the bad bitch who liked to drink and swear and spend obscene amounts of money on shoes, the sweetheart who always knew when I needed to cry on her shoulder.
And she was one of the few who knew all my secrets.
“Would a special project help?” she asked. “A strategic initiative to keep your mind off everything else?”
“Depends on the project,” I said, pulling the baggy sweater over my head. It was a size too big, but it was the last one at the Tory Burch sample sale and I could not help myself.
Lauren rolled her eyes at my sweater—she tried to talk me out of this purchase but I wouldn’t hear of it—and adjusted the sleeves. “I’ll handle Patrick and Andy if you deal with Will. Chat him up, debate foreign policy, insult him, send him into town for a jar of peanut butter, whatever you want. Just don’t let him out of your sight.”
I gave the bed petulant a glare and nodded. “I might need to borrow your black Mary Jane Manolos,” I said while slipping my credit card, room key, and phone into my pocket. “You know, forever.”
“I guess that’s the price I’ll pay to keep my husband’s balls unharmed.”
“Make it stop,” I groaned. I stomped toward the door, shaking my head and covering my ears. “We’re not talking about Matt’s balls anymore.”
Chapter Three
WILL
Eighteen months ago
Surveillance wasn’t mything.
I hated all the waiting and watching. Don’t get me wrong—keeping track of a bossy redhead who didn’t know how to mind her own business was one of the easiest gigs to ever fall into my lap, but it was tedious as fuck. This was why I couldn’t do protection ops. I was a scalpel: perfect for quick, quiet attacks, the kinds that were measured and rehearsed for the greatest impact.
I was about ready to bind and gag Shannon Walsh, and then lock her in a closet until the wedding was over. Listening in from the far end of the bar while she quizzed the bartender on his stock of craft beers only reaffirmed it.
She couldn’t go five minutes without flitting between the Walsh encampments, and that was on top of her routine cross-examination of the inn staff. She wanted to know when they were pitching the reception tent, where the blue hydrangea centerpieces were being housed for the night, whether they’d prepared extra scallops wrapped in bacon for the cocktail hour.
Apparently those were the groom’s favorite, and if her tone was any indication, the catering manager could expect Shannon’s fancy high heel to find a home in his small intestine if he underdelivered.
I had to hand it to her—the bitch had balls.
And maybe I was a little punchy. I’d been traveling for the past seventy hours and my body and brain were still in mission mode. There was a gravity associated with coming off deployment. All sailors experienced it, but everyone experienced it differently. For me—after nearly threeyearshunting terrorists—it was the sudden, shocking loss of purpose. Without the constant chatter of comms in my ear, the familiar weight of body armor and weapons, the adrenaline of running exceedingly dangerous ops, the dual responsibilities of guarding my country and getting my men home safely…without all that, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Instead of figuring out how to shake off the culture shock, I fixated on Shannon. She was the expensive, refined kind of beautiful. High maintenance. Diamond earrings bigger than most mortar shells. She couldn’t go thirty seconds without checking her phone.
Amazingly enough, that wasn’t the most annoying part.
No, it was that this woman didn’t evenlikebeer. I refused to believe she could. This chick was too high society for beer, even weird hipster beer.
“What about Upper Case?” she asked. There was no hint of impatience or condescension in her voice, and that was the secret weapon. She was calm and relatively pleasant, but it was obvious in the sharp angle of her eyebrow that she was ready to climb over the bar, show this guy how to do his job, and shrivel his dick off with little more than a tight grimace. “Or Congress Street? Triple Sunshine?”
