Claiming Holly (Holiday Cove 1)

“Morning.” I pushed the strand of hair I’d been fondling behind my ear. Jack was wearing a crew neck t-shirt, and a pair of gray workout shorts. A thin layer of perspiration glistened on his forehead. “Good run?”

He nodded and removed his sunglasses. “Yeah. Perfect. What about you? Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

I laughed as he looked down at Hunter. “Best night in a long time. Hunter didn’t wake me up once!”

Jack chuckled. “Good. I thought that might be the case.”

He stepped for the entrance and held the door open for me. I went inside and he followed, after calling back to instruct Princess to stay. She was sitting beside Hunter and didn’t look in the mood to be going anywhere anyway. “I’m not sure who’s more in love with whom,” he said, joining me in front of the pastry case.

I choked at his statement and flashed him a questioning glance. “I’m sorry?”

“Princess and Hunter,” he said, grinning at me.

A rush of relief flooded over me. “Oh, yeah, right…”

“Good morning!” Carly interjected, coming from the back to greet us. She had sprinkles of flour all across her black work shirt and I smiled, knowing that whatever she was whipping up would be delicious. “Hey, I know you,” she added, looking at Jack. “You’re Aaron Rosen’s friend, right? The fighter pilot?”

“That really depends on what you think of him. If you’re one of his exes, then no, I have no idea who you’re talking about,” Jack answered. His tone and expression were filled with humor, but his blunt answer still surprised me. Carly threw her head back and laughed, and I was left thinking I’d missed the punch line. Jack looked over at me and registered my confusion. “My buddy means well, but he can be kind of an ass when it comes to the ladies.”

I nodded, logging away the tidbit of information.

Carly’s laughter petered off, but she was still smiling broadly as she shook her head. “No, not an ex-girlfriend. He comes in here a few times a week though, he loves to show off pictures, and I remember seeing you before,” Carly explained. She glanced away for a moment and I swore her cheeks went a shade darker. “Anyway, the last time he was in, he mentioned you were coming to visit before you deploy.”

All humor fell from Jack’s face and he stiffened.

“Deploy?” I repeated, staring up at him. The bottom of my stomach dropped out as the word echoed through my mind. In all the time we’d spent together the day before, he’d not once mentioned anything about a deployment.

Jack met my gaze, his eyes wide with alarm. He opened his mouth to reply, but Carly interjected, “It’s good to see you again, Holly. Vanilla latte?”

I nodded, unable to form words with my suddenly parched tongue.

“Make that two,” Jack said as Carly crossed her small workspace to the espresso machine.

“Coming up! Take a look at the case. I have a couple new things in there. Toffee nut sticky buns, chocolate tarts, and back in the kitchen, I’m just about to pull out a fresh tray of lemon scones.”

Normally, all those options would have had me salivating freely, but a dark, ominous cloud had eclipsed the entire situation, and made it impossible to think of anything else.

Jack grabbed my arm gently, his fingers warm and steady on my bare skin. “I’m sorry, Holly. I should have told you yesterday.”

“I thought you were here on vacation?” I replied, raising my voice to be heard over the milk steamer.

“I am.” He glanced over at Carly as the noise stopped.

I turned to the case and then smiled, as nonchalantly as possible, up at Carly as she brought two steaming mugs over to the counter. “I’ll take a lemon scone.”

“Me too.”

Carly smiled brightly. “All right. I’ll bring them out as soon as they’ve cooled a little.”

Jack picked up both drinks and started for the side door that led to the patio space. I got ahead of him and opened the door for him. “Thanks, Carly,” I called out before ducking out the door.

Jack had the drinks set up at a table but was standing and pulled out a chair as I approached. “Thank you,” I said, sinking down into the offered seat.

“Holly,” he started, sitting across from me. “I am on leave for two weeks, but when I get back to my base, my unit will be shipping out on what we call a Westpac to the Middle East. I’m sure you don’t want the details. It’s pretty boring stuff, but I’ll be gone for six months, and then I’ll come back home.”

“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

He hesitated, holding me in his stare. “Because I didn’t want you to bail on me.”

“What?”

“You were hesitant to even talk to me, Holly. I didn’t think dropping that bomb was really going to help my case in getting you to come out with me.”