Cullen handed Archie the gun he’d stripped from Nico. “And this. I’ve got the shotgun and my handgun.” When Archie reached for it, he gripped the old man’s arm for a moment. The words remained stuck in his throat.
Archie smiled. “Didn’t think I’d get a chance to storm some beaches this late in my life. Who’d have imagined? Wait till I tell the grands.”
“Don’t let it be the last beach, okay?” Cullen rasped out.
“Tell you what. If all this simmers down and Ember decides not to blast us into oblivion, we’ll go fishing.” He looked at Kit. “You fish?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. My father taught me, and not to brag, but I once snagged three twenty-inch rainbow trout in one morning.”
Archie laughed. “I don’t doubt it for a hot minute. All right. It’s a fishing date. We can teach Tot too. Never too early to start the learning process when it comes to fishing.”
She wrapped him in a tight embrace and then pulled him to arm’s length and poked his chest with her pointer finger. “Do not get yourself killed, do you understand me? If you do, I will be furious with you. I won’t even come to your funeral.”
He laughed again and kissed her forehead. “You are a treasure, Miss Kit Garrido. Only one who could keep Cullen Landry in line.”
“I’ll get that pack for you.” She pulled in a breath and made her way to the back, avoiding the thorny branches. Cullen suspected she didn’t want them to see her cry.
Archie leaned inside the back seat of the ATV. “All right, Tot. Grandpa Archie’s got to go. You be real good for Miss Kit and Uncle Cullen, you hear me? Give their ears a breaksometimes, huh? And save all your big diaper blowouts for Cullen’s watch.” He stroked the fuzz of hair and kissed her. When she reached out, he pressed her tiny hand to his wrinkled cheek. “Grandpa’s real proud of you. Don’t you forget it.” He accepted the pack Kit handed him and stretched his scrawny frame before he slid it onto his shoulders. “I’ll stick to the bushes, move slow so as not to attract attention.”
Cullen considered that this might be the last time he ever laid eyes on librarian Gunnery Sergeant Archie Esposito. “Sir...”
Archie quirked a brow. “If you try to hug me, I’ll brain you. Only the ladies get away with that.”
Cullen drew himself up and snapped off a sharp salute.
Archie returned it, and in that moment he was every inch the proud marine. “Don’t look so serious. I wasn’t finished boxing the collection of Zane Grey novels at the library. Not gonna let them get burned up, am I? I’ll be back to finish.”
With that, he turned on his heel and slunk off into a narrow margin of shrubbery until he vanished from sight. They watched for a while, sequestered in their thorny fort.
“Is he going to make it?” Kit whispered with the tiniest wobble in her voice.
“If I’ve learned one thing from Archie, it’s to never bet against a marine.” Cullen put an arm around her shoulders, and she turned her face to his chest. She was breathing hard, seeming to fight back tears. He was trying to swallow a lump in his own throat.
Then somehow her arms were around him too, and he found himself stroking her hair, this slender woman with a truck-sized helping of grit and grace. Was it too much? He’d barely known her a day, but she felt so right. Thebranches seemed to weave together around them, cutting them off in space and time from the wreck and ruin. He angled his face down toward hers, drinking in her soft profile, the pearly glimmer of her eyes.
She tipped her mouth up to his and kissed him. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to return that kiss with one of his own. Surreal. Definitely not his imagination, though, because he couldn’t have conceived such beautiful warmth, the absolute perfection of that kiss. They eased apart a few inches, and he was reaching to brush her hair with his palm, moving in for another kiss, when she twitched and inched away. The moment popped like a soap bubble against an unforgiving thorn.
“I, um, I should close the doors. Keep the air clean for Tot.” She climbed back in and pulled the door shut while he tried to understand what had just taken place. It felt so ... momentous, but that could be his thumping heart spinning a tale. He’d shared a kiss with an astonishing, complicated, surprising woman because they’d been through terrible trauma and they were both worrying about Archie. It probably shouldn’t have taken him aback that she clearly had some second thoughts and appeared not to want to acknowledge what had just happened between them.
Otherthings to consider at the moment,Landry.But his lips still tingled and pulsed from the kiss, and his arms missed the feel of her body against his. A twig caught his hair as he plowed back to the driver’s seat. Tot had fallen into a quiet examination of a plastic toy Kit had given her. All right. He resigned the moment to the back part of his brain.
They hunkered down in the ATV as the morning turned from silver to dull cream. The less movement now the better.The quick glimpses he’d gotten indicated Nico and Simon had moved almost out of range, uncertain about the location of their quarry, and they were no doubt still scanning for any sign of movement in the hollow. He tried to calculate how long it would take Archie to reach the truck and radio for help. Two hours? Three, maybe, since he’d have to move stealthily.
The list of potential complications was endless.
Archie could fall, break an ankle.
Become lost, victim to ground movement, toxic gasses, heart attack, simple exhaustion, or dehydration.
Kit startled him out of his thoughts by handing Tot to him. “She needs changing and it’s your turn.” She followed up by passing him the wipes and a padded mat. Tot’s legs bicycled as he began the process.
“Hold up, Tottie. You’re not competing in the long jump here.”
“Gah,” Tot answered, then offered a string of syllables that sounded almost like words.
Kit looked up from her perusal of the map to check his progress. She wasn’t quite making eye contact, and there were spots of color on her cheeks. He wrangled one of the diaper tabs closed and then the other, re-snapped all the access points, and cleaned his hands with a wipe. Tot grabbed his sleeve. He suspected she might be ready for some refreshments.
“Would you like to sit up and have a snack, sweetie?”
