“So nothing’s changed, huh?” JT asked.
“That’s right,” Hunter told him, knowing he didn’t sound convincing. Hell, how could he?
“You know,” Hula mused, “I like this one a hell of a lot better than Gr-” He stopped, covered his glass with the top of his hand to prevent spillage and stepped back from JT. “That other one, she was cold, man. Sort of empty. This one…” He smiled and nodded. “She’s a different story.”
Yeah, she was, Hunter thought, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to ignore the rattle and clang of thoughts and notions running through his mind. Despite wanting to keep an emotional distance between him and Margie, she had gotten to him. She’d sneaked beneath his defenses and had managed to make him question the way he lived his life. Forced him to look at his decisions. His-
JT just looked at him for a long moment or two. Then thoughtfully, he said, “You know, you wouldn’t be the first of us to choose to stay with his wife rather than risk his life every other day.”
True. He’d seen plenty of other guys fall in love, get married and leave the military. But their situations were different. They were in love with their wives. He was deeply in lust. But he couldn’t admit to more than that. If he did, too much in his life would be affected.
“I told you, boss,” Hunter said tightly. “Not gonna happen. I’ll be back. My…marriage won’t stop me.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Hunt. I’m glad you’re coming back, and we all know the buzz is good, man,” Hula said quietly. “But you have a woman who loves you? That’s a buzz, too.”
Did she? Love him? He thought about that and wondered. Or, he asked himself, was she just enjoying him as he was enjoying her? Was she trying to make him need her? Was she hoping that he’d make this marriage a real one? And why was he thinking about all of this anyway? He knew what he had to do. What he always did. His duty.
“Not the kind I need,” Hunter told him. “So why don’t we quit talking about my wife and you guys tell me what’s been happening while I’ve been gone.”
They sat down again, and while his friends talked and filled him in on life on base, Hunter’s mind drifted. He wasn’t sure why. He should have been hanging on the guys’ every word about the base and the other teams. Should have been eager to turn his mind back to his job, back to the world he’d sought and built. Instead, his gaze slipped to the doorway through which Margie had disappeared, and his mind filled with thoughts of her. How she looked, the scent of her, the sound of her laughter and even the soft whisper of her sighs.
She was more than he’d expected, more than he’d wanted, and playing this dangerous game of theirs was getting more complicated. Now he was lying to his friends about her, and they’d no doubt have questions when he and Margie got their divorce, too. He never should have agreed to this insanity.
Because there was a part of him that was buying into it. A part of him sliding almost effortlessly into the rhythm of married man. Of Margie’s man. And that couldn’t happen. Because his life wasn’t here. No matter what Simon or Margie might want.
He’d be going back to the Navy because that was where he’d always felt he belonged. His friends, his team. The missions. He’d signed on to do a job and he would continue to do it. He’d given his word, and he knew what that entailed. He belonged to the Navy, not this little town.
But for the first time, that call to adventure seemed a little less compelling than it once had. For the first time, a part of Hunter felt that he would be leaving behind something important when he left.
Margie stood outside the open study doors and listened to the three men talk.
There was laughter and the rumble of deep voices, and she hugged herself as she picked Hunter’s voice out of the crowd with ease. He sounded happy as he sat and talked about missions and danger and adventure, about the bonds that tied the men together.
This was something she couldn’t fight. These men who were closer to Hunter than brothers had a hold on him that was so deep it couldn’t be defeated. Even if she were trying to.
She knew that no matter how she wished things were different between them, Hunter would never stay with her. Even if he actually loved her-which he didn’t-he still wouldn’t stay. He was a SEAL, and she doubted that would ever change.
And just who was Gretchen?
A few days later, Hunter was feeling just as itchy as he had when his team members had visited. He felt as though he should be doing something, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what. He worked out at the local gym, did his morning runs down country roads and in general tried to get back into shape for his return to duty.
But through all of it, a different kind of duty kept rearing its head, demanding he take notice. Over the last few years, when he’d come home to see Simon, he’d made fast visits, in and out and back to base. But this time, with his medical leave and Simon’s precarious health and Margie, the visit had been a longer one. Long enough to remind Hunter that there was a world outside the Navy, that there were other duties every bit as important as the one he owed to his country.
And Hunter was having a hard time reconciling what he wanted to do with what he knew he should do.
“Hunter. Good. I was looking for you.” Simon walked into the study, and his steps were slow and careful.
Hunter stood up to help, but the older man irritably waved him off. “I’m not helpless yet,” he muttered, walking around the edge of the desk to pull out the bottom drawer.
His heart fisting in his chest, Hunter watched his grandfather and tried to tell himself that despite appearances, the old man was as tough as any SEAL recruit. There was steel in that old man’s bones, he thought with pride. But even as he thought it, he knew that his grandfather wasn’t as strong as he’d once been. That the years had taken a toll that Hunter had never allowed himself to notice before now.
Had he really been so selfishly determined to live his own life on his own terms that he’d avoided noticing how much Simon needed help? Was he really ready to turn his back on his grandfather? After all the elderly man had been to him? What the hell kind of man would that make him? Choose duty to country over duty to family?
Shaking his head, Hunter pushed away the thoughts crowding his mind, because he didn’t have any answers. Instead, he concentrated on what his grandfather was doing. In the bottom drawer there were dozens of files, neatly arranged. While Hunter watched, Simon quickly thumbed through them all until he found the one he wanted. Then he set the file onto the desk and flipped it open. “I want you to look these over and sign them before you go.”