A Lot Like Home

secret

craving for exactly that?

Seven

Caleb followed Havana down the stairs to the narrow alleyway between the hotel and the boarded-up clinic, opting to keep his mouth shut for once.

What had possessed him to agree to go anywhere with the Dictator? She might be easy on the eyes, but that was the only body part he could say that about. Sometimes just looking at her was a slug to the gut, and that in turn jackhammered at his conscience.

She was engaged, as she loved to tell him. And a pain in the butt. None of that seemed to be getting through to his Neanderthal brain. So of course, they were en route to someplace that would not fix any of the above and had all the hallmarks of sending him to the loony bin instead.

“Do you mind driving?” she asked.

Without waiting on his answer, she headed for the Yukon that she’d no doubt figured out was his either by the California plates or because that information had made the rounds via the Superstition Springs gossip train earlier today.

“Sure, why not?” he muttered. Probably she’d throw down a few more requests before the sun set, and he had a feeling he’d comply with those too, strictly in the name of honoring the truce they’d somehow fallen into. Caleb prided himself on being a man of his word.

Besides, if he was going to stop her from convincing everyone in town to sell, he had to stick closer to her than a flak jacket, no matter how hard it was to stop imagining his hands tangled up in her hair. He’d promised Serenity. So he couldn’t have exactly refused to go on this field trip anyway.

The moment Havana slid into the passenger seat, Caleb discovered that sin did indeed have a scent and she’d taken a bath in it. The punch took his breath, and his eyes crossed with the effort to keep her effect on him from being broadcast in a very graphic way. Never had he had such a physical reaction to the way a woman smelled. Maybe it was a simple matter of replacing Rowe in that seat, who had called shotgun for the entire drive from the base in Coronado. The lady constituted a class A upgrade over his brother, that was for sure.

“Where to?” he wheezed and cleared his throat as he started the engine.

“Just over the hill. Drive down Potter’s and take a left.” When he cocked a brow at her, she laughed. “You’re going to want to learn your way around if you aim to stay, city boy. All our roads are named after the family who owns the house built on it.”

“Let me know when we get to an actual road then, okay?” he said tongue in cheek as the Yukon bounced over three deep ruts in a row. Improvements to the thoroughfares wouldn’t be out of line before anyone did a thing to the town itself.

Two women stood outside of Voodoo Grocery gabbing, both of whom stopped in the middle of their sentences to stare at the Yukon as they rolled past. Havana waved. The women did not return the gesture, but she took it in stride without comment.

“It’ll smooth out in a minute,” she said instead and rubbed at her temple almost absently.

There was something in the set of her jaw that told him the women’s snub had bothered her, but as she’d mentioned, he hadn’t been here that long and still wasn’t sure how to handle anything except the redhead in the next seat. Havana, he got. The rest of the town? His raging uncertainty after screwing up so badly in Syria gave him more pause than he’d like. He didn’t know how to do this thing where he hesitated half the time.

The last boarded-up building at the end of town slipped by as he drove, and then there was nothing again but scrubby trees and tall grass that looked to have been hacked low by either a machete or one of those industrial-sized mowers with a dull blade. Landscaping was not a concept embraced by Superstition Springs apparently. Was that something that should be changed?

Caleb headed north, opposite how he’d driven into town, so this was new terrain. Though it looked pretty much the same. As he took the curve in the road and the SUV rolled over a hill, the land spread out beneath the road, shimmering in the sun. A ribbon of dark blue water snaked through a bed of earth, and as he got closer, the water got clearer.

Not the same. Not the same at all.

“That’s the Colorado,” Havana murmured. “Not the Grand Canyon one. The Texas one, but it has some pretty cool things about it too. Park over there and I’ll show you.”

The landscape grew greener and denser the closer to the water they got, popping with color against the blue sky that stretched in all directions for a million miles. A rock formation the color of sand jutted out of the ground, and without hesitation, she clambered up onto the smallest one, then the next until she’d almost scaled it. No fear in that one. Not to be outdone, he followed her easily, drawing up next to her where she had perched on the tallest rock.

A large, clear pool had formed where the river had cut away limestone, creating a perfect, well-hidden swimming hole. The water was a gorgeous color, almost the blue of the Caribbean or Thailand, and with sunlight glinting off the surface, it wasn’t hard to imagine you’d been transported to someplace else. As if you’d been cut off from the real world and sent to a… a fairy realm. Or something that sounded less dumb.

The light breeze caught a lock of Havana’s bright red hair and flung it over his arm, binding them together as they surveyed the outcropping from their high vantage point.

Something grabbed him by the throat, and it got hard to swallow.

Beyond the pool, the landscape sloped away to become slightly hilly but also stark in a way that made you think about your place in the world. Some areas in the Middle East were like that too, but Caleb had always felt like an outsider there. Here the land welcomed him, embracing him in a way he couldn’t quite put into words.

There was something… extra. Something he couldn’t deny.

That mystical element he hadn’t wanted to believe existed—this was it. He could feel it seeping from the stone through his soles and up into his bones. From the moment the teams had decided they were done with a few extraneous SEALs who’d become a liability, he’d needed a place to land where he could believe again. Havana had unwittingly given that to him.

“Welcome to Superstition Springs,” she said and spread her hands wide to encompass the entire pool. “This is what gave the town its name. The water is fresh and stays cool even in the summer when it’s a hundred and ten. We don’t know why. It’s part of the lore of this area. Imagine a resort built on the river with a view of this place.”

And along with that, the crowds who would spoil it. But he was still too caught up in the beauty of the springs for his voice to work, and that alone barred him from interrupting the vision she spun.