Wicked Secrets (Men of Discovery Island 3)

“When you mentioned keeping secrets, I didn’t know this was what you had in mind.”

* * *

HOLY. WOW.

Mia brushed past him into the house, even though there was plenty of room for her to avoid the full body contact. She was clearly making a point of her own with that possessive little smack. He grinned. He’d return that particular favor at the soonest, most public opportunity possible. She was full of surprises today. He had no idea why she was jonesing to look at houses, but whatever.

Then, because some things had to be said, he hollered the words after her.

“Taking your nickname to new levels, Sergeant Dominatrix?”

After all, he’d just crawled butt-first in front of the woman wearing leaves on his ass. He’d abandoned all claims to dignity somewhere around the point where he’d kissed her holding a kitten and wearing vegetation.

She paused, her foot on the bottom stair.

This would be good. He shouldn’t tease her, because the name wasn’t nice, and nicknames could be cruel. Still, she was the one who had smacked his ass. She had some responsibility here. The only question was: Did she have a sense of humor hiding under her crusty exterior?

“You didn’t want to play house?”

He heard the words come out of her mouth, but nothing about them computed. He had a bad feeling he blinked at her like a fish out of water.

“Mommy and Daddy? Doctor? No, wait.” She made a face. “We haven’t done that one yet. Later.”

Yeah. Like he had a frame of reference for that. He’d been one of those boys growing up, the kind who was a magnet for trouble. He’d created makeshift swords and lances from whatever he found. Sticks, the cardboard tubes from the Christmas wrapping paper—anything long and remotely straight. Duct tape had been his best friend, and he’d spent hours feinting and parrying. Since the window had closed on being a medieval warrior—unless he hauled his butt out to Vegas and joined the dinner show circuit at Excalibur—and there weren’t any job openings for ninjas, either, he’d decided when he was twelve that he would become a Marine. Or a Navy SEAL. A Green Beret. Israeli Special Forces. His twelve-year-old self had been fuzzy on national identity, but long on fighting for a good cause.

“Is that what we were doing?”

“Hey, you proposed to me. I was just getting into the spirit of things.”

“You smacked my butt,” he growled, because he couldn’t think about actually being married to this woman right now. He should have explained to her that he’d blurted out an excuse, that there was nothing real about their engagement except...it didn’t feel fake. It felt right.

“Baby, just wait until tonight.” Her grin lit up her face. “I expect you to come bearing gifts.” She waggled her ring finger at him. Ah, yes. He’d just called her his fiancée in front of the island’s biggest gossip. There was no chance in hell the Realtor wasn’t tweeting her big scoop from one of the upstairs bedrooms. If he was lucky, she hadn’t snapped a picture of their kiss.

Mia turned and disappeared into what had once been the dining room. The only recognizable part of its former eatery status was a dust-wreathed chandelier dripping those diamond-like crystal thingies. It was certainly sparkly, tossing sunlight around the room. As far as he was concerned, it was just a room, but Mia wandered in with a look of rapture on her face. A look pretty damn close to the one she wore when she came for him. Imagine that. He’d been put in his place by a chandelier.

Time to check on his rescues. He fell back to the front porch and the cat carrier, whose occupants were happily taking a nap. Scooping out a kitten, he lifted the squirming bundle. Definitely a boy and a kindred soul. “We’re in so much trouble here, buddy.”

With typical feline indifference, the kitten mewed and wriggled, wanting down or possibly even teleportation out of his hand and back under the porch. Damned if he knew what it wanted, which also seemed to be his usual state of affairs around Mia. The kitten he could fix. He popped it into the carrier with its companions.

Announcing their engagement had been an impulse. He had no idea where those words had come from, but he’d better do some damage control.

Need to give you a heads up, he texted Cal. He’d be seeing the other man soon, but texting seemed simpler than face-to-face conversation.

Hit me.

He could imagine Cal kicked back on the boat or in his own fixer-upper house he was so in love with. The man relished knocking down walls and rehabbing.