Jack's Surrender (Holiday Cove 5)

“Holly.” Jack’s expression melted and he rushed toward me. “What would even make you ask something like that? Of course, I want to get married.” He rounded the counter and gathered me against his chest. His hand went through the strands of my ponytail as it hung down my back.

“Then why won’t you set a date? You get so weird about it every time I even hint at it, and it feels like you’ve been avoiding me. Or the house. I’m not sure which.”

Jack sighed deeply. “Baby, I’m not trying to avoid you. I told you, I got the dates mixed up. If you saw the calendar at work you’d understand.”

“I did see it.”

“Okay, well, there ya go. Aaron scribbles all over that thing and then he’s got Lana running around spouting off ideas and dates and appointments.”

I wanted to believe him. He was right about the calendar, but he was leaving out the part that he was a detail man to the nth degree. He knew everything about everything and somehow kept track of it all. Of the two of them, Aaron was the big picture man and Jack was the one who would actually get shit handled. So it was hard for me to believe that he’d simply mixed up the dates. And somewhere underneath that disbelief was the ugly question I didn’t want to outright ask myself. Would he have come home once he realized it was a mistake?

He let go of me and I went back to the stove to dish up dinner. “Let’s just eat dinner.”

“Holly…”

“It’s fine, Jack. It was just a mistake like you said.”

He sighed. “We’ll set a date as soon as I have a job.”

I turned to look at him. “You have a job.”

One of the dogs scratched at the back door and Jack moved to open it. Princess and Hunter thundered back into the house, leaving sandy paw prints on the hard wood floors as they bounded into the living room and chased each other around the coffee table. Jack swore loudly as he chased after them. “Knock it off, guys!”

I ignored the chaos and took the garlic bread and salad bowl to the dining table. By the time I had glasses and a bottle of wine on the table Jack had the dogs in their kennels so they wouldn’t beg all through dinner and had swept up the sand.

“You know that me working for Aaron is a temporary thing,” he said, picking up where we’d left off.

“No, actually, I didn’t know that.” I stopped what I was doing and turned around to face him. “Does Aaron know that?”

A guilty look crossed Jack’s face.

I took that as a no.

“It’s complicated,” Jack continued. “Aaron is so busy with the expansion that he hasn’t had much of a chance to breathe. I don’t want to dump this on him. Besides, nothing else has panned out yet so it’s not important. I’ll tell him when the time is right. He knows the museum is his thing.”

I nodded but I wasn’t entirely convinced. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “For the first time in my life, I really don’t know.”

Something clicked as I watched him. I’d never seen Jack unnerved before. He was the epitome of calm, cool, and collected. It took a lot to ruffle his feathers and even in the worst situations, he was always rational and calm. If the airline lost our luggage he would fill out the paperwork and tell me it would all work out. When Hunter had gotten sick our first month in Germany, he’d arranged a vet visit and found a taxi service that would help us without breaking a sweat. Nothing fazed him.

But looking at him across the kitchen island, I saw it. The first sign of a crack in his bulletproof armor. Right under the surface, he was freaking the fuck out.

And I didn’t know why.

3

Jack

How could Holly think I didn’t want to marry her? I’d heard the question and seen the words fall from her pretty lips, but I still couldn’t believe she’d asked them. Sure, I’d been a little slow on the trigger when it came to picking a venue and plunking down a non-refundable deposit check, but that didn’t mean I was ready to call the whole damned thing off. She was wearing my ring, wasn’t she? Didn’t that count for anything?

She had to know I was crazy about her. From the second we’d met, I was hooked. How could she not see that? Hell, in Germany, I got heckled by the guys on a weekly basis. They called me pussy-whipped every Friday as I rushed off base to go pick her up. I didn’t care. I wanted to be with her. Had things changed that much?

“If you don’t want to work for Aaron, then what do you want to do? You don’t want to go back on active duty, do you?”