A Lot Like Home

One

The pig guarding the Dorito aisle stood between Caleb and the last red bag of chips on the shelf. The fact that there was an honest-to-God pig, rump down in the only grocery store within thirty miles was less important than the fact that Caleb had been on the road for two days and he was starving.

Caleb Hardy did not back down. Not from al-Qaeda insurgents, not from being kicked out of the Navy, not from porky sentinels on aisle two in an establishment implausibly named Voodoo Grocery. A decade of special warfare kicked in, priming Caleb for a fight as his vision sharpened, his spine straightened, and tension curled through his muscles.

The glossy bag taunted him from behind the fat head of the pig. Funny, Caleb would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that pigs were pink. This one was mostly gray with white spots and clearly had never missed a meal. Fat rolls nearly hid the creature’s four stubby legs as it guarded its cheesy corn chip treasure.

“It’s going down, pig,” he muttered as the porker eyed him thoughtfully. “I dissected a baby pig in eleventh grade with no mercy. If I could just find a scalpel…”

“Wow, Hardy. Threatening the locals already?” Tristan Marchande clapped him on the shoulder with a guffaw and stood side by side with Caleb, both of them staring at the interloper. “What do you think it wants?”

“Why don’t you go find out?” he suggested from the side of his mouth and elbowed Tristan, which of course did nothing to faze his teammate. Former teammate. Well, they were still a team even if they weren’t SEALs any longer. “If you don’t come back, I’ll send Hudson after you. Promise. You’ve seen how creative he can get with a captive and a locked room. That pig doesn’t stand a chance.”

On the other hand, could be the pig had something to do with why the grocery store had “voodoo” in its name. Probably torturing the merchandise on the team’s first day in Superstition Springs wasn’t a good way to fit in. Small towns had long memories.

“What am I doing with captives?” Hudson’s interest had been piqued from all the way over by the lone soft drink case where he’d been scouting around for a root beer.

All Caleb needed now was for Rowe and Isaiah to join the party, and then everyone would have a bird’s-eye view of whatever was about to go down. But he hadn’t seen either of them lately, and since the moment he spied the fatback obstacle between him and food, the pig had taken precedence. The other two guys on his team had probably gone back to the GMC Yukon he’d bought to haul his team from California to Texas where, hopefully, they’d eventually find the lady who had been penning them heartfelt letters for the past few years.

Serenity Force had become a treasured lifeline to the States, to all that was good in the world, to sanity some days while they’d been deployed in the worst pockets of filth in the Middle East. She needed their help. And had no idea they were coming. Minor detail.

“Never mind,” he muttered over his shoulder to Hudson. “I got it.”

This was all beyond ridiculous. It was just a pig. But he hadn’t expected to be negotiating the surrender of his Doritos with an animal. In a grocery store. But okay. No problem. All he had to do was skirt the mound of future bacon and grab the chips.

“I’m going to need that bag,” he advised his adversary as he edged forward, earning a snort from the squat creature as it settled its pork butt more firmly onto the 1970s linoleum.

Pigs didn’t bite, did they? Caleb had gotten a tetanus shot many times over, as well as the typhoid vaccine and one for yellow fever. Some stuff he’d forgotten the name of. Probably he was safe regardless.

“Nice piggy,” he said firmly and rolled his eyes. He sounded like an idiot, but he took a step closer anyway, hand outstretched the same way he would with a stray dog. Hopefully pigs worked the same.

Pig snuffled, and his eyes widened as Caleb waltzed closer. All at once, the pig grabbed the last bag of Doritos in his mouth and took off.

Caleb cursed as the shockingly fast porker rounded a corner, hooves clicking furiously. “Oh, no you don’t.”

He scrambled to follow, combat boots sliding on the slick, worn floor that might be closer to a hundred years old. As he was thinking he should trade his military-issue footwear for cowboy boots, he crashed into something.

Someone. A woman. A redhead. Planting his feet, he kept them both off the ground due to sheer reflex, hours and hours of training his body to execute his slightest command, and a hasty prayer.

His arms encircled her only for a hot second, but that was enough. It was impossible not to notice that her hair smelled like coconut or that she fit up against his body so nicely. Before anything unseemly happened, he made sure she’d regained her balance and stepped back.

“Apologies, ma’am,” he said, and that’s when their eyes locked.

A fierce wave of heavy awareness swept over him. Her gaze snapped, crackled, and popped as she took his measure, boldly drawing out the staring contest they’d fallen into. She was achingly beautiful, like a sunset signaling a humdinger of a storm on the horizon. The simple jeans and T-shirt she wore showcased her slim frame in a way that made you look at the woman, not the clothes.

“No problem,” she returned, and her voice slicked through his insides, lighting up interesting places that had been dark and dormant for a long time. “I think you lost your pig.”

“Oh, the pig’s not mine. He stole my Doritos, and I was working on getting them back.”

“Since I’m the one who got in your way, let me help corral him,” she suggested easily. “A man can’t go without Doritos.”

Caleb had never believed in love at first sight at any point in his life. But he was heavily considering a philosophy change. What were the odds he’d bump into a lady with as deep a sense of checks and balances as he had and who understood the importance of Doritos to boot? “I completely agree. But you didn’t get in my way. I got in yours.”

Her slender eyebrows lifted over her incredible blue eyes. “Do you want the chips or not? Clock’s ticking. He might even now be hunkered down in the corner, ripping that ba

g open to feast on his bounty. Last chance to be a pig-hunting duo.”

He could not pass that up. Four hands were always better than two, despite the lack of human-over-animal dominion thus far. “You take that aisle, and I’ll take the perimeter.”

The redhead spun away to creep in the direction he’d suggested without argument, so there was really nothing left for him to do but head toward the heavy glass front door in hopes of glimpsing the Dorito thief.

Nothing. No gray-and-white fat rolls. Just a couple of smirking ex-SEALs who were lounging by the magazine rack, not even pretending they were doing anything other than watching the show unfolding. As if Caleb had designed all this strictly for Tristan and Hudson’s viewing pleasure. Ingrates.

“Got him!” the woman called, and Caleb dashed toward her voice, angling around a freestanding cardboard display of dragon fruit—which seemed oddly appropriate for a grocery store with live pigs.

But when he rounded the corner, the redhead glanced up from her crouch and the pig took that opportunity to wiggle free from her small hands. Piggy’s momentum knocked her backward to the linoleum, but she sprawled so gracefully it was almost like it had been intentional.

“Dang it,” she spit out, and Caleb had to grin at her ladylike choice of words.

Welcome to Texas.

Before he could take even a tiny step in her direction to help her up, the pig dashed toward the space between Caleb’s feet, and through some miracle, he managed to snag the bag of chips from its mouth before the curly tail cleared the obstacle.

“Victory,” the redhead announced wryly as Caleb held up the bag triumphantly and then immediately stuck out his free hand to help her up.

Which he should have done way before now, but he’d only had a split second to react. A true gentleman would have forgone chips for a lady in distress.

She accepted Caleb’s outstretched hand readily enough though. “I’d give you my card for the next time you need a plus-one for your pig-wrangling party, but once was enough for me.”

He was too busy enjoying the feel of her hand in his to comment, but then she broke the contact far too soon, as if she hadn’t even been affected by the heavy awareness that had dropped over them both. It had so many teeth he was frankly shocked goose bumps hadn’t started popping up all over her pretty skin.

They had sure popped up on his.

He’d never been this caught up in a woman this fast, and not just because she was beautiful. Anyone who willingly jumped into the fray alongside him earned instant respect, though he couldn’t deny she was a lot easier on the eyes than the guys on his team. Red hair had just become his favorite, and hers was deep, rich, and hanging in lush curls to the middle of her back.

The Dorito victory paled in comparison to this chance meeting of… “I didn’t catch your name.”

Before she could respond, their little moment splintered to pieces as a clean-cut guy with an expensive haircut materialized between them. Not really materialized, like poof there he was. But the guy’s back-off vibe sure did.

“Ready to go?” he asked the redhead pleasantly.

She glanced toward the intruder, who needed to vanish faster than a heartbeat. But the redhead nodded with a smile and stepped into the other man’s space with the kind of deliberate move that marked them a couple.

Dang it, indeed.

“Nice to meet you,” she called over her shoulder. “Enjoy your Doritos.”

So she would remain both nameless and unavailable in his thoughts. Just as well. He hadn’t driven cross-country to this tiny dot on the map to fulfill that part of the prediction his pen pal Serenity Force had dropped on him.