The SEAL's Secret Heirs

Of course, some of that was his fault. Not much. But a little. He didn’t fully trust her, and while he’d sworn in theory to forget about the past, it was proving more difficult to do in practice than he’d thought it would be, so he didn’t press the issue of the yawning chasm between them.

“Hey.” She had a bag slung over her shoulder and a shy smile on her face.

Shy? After the temptress she’d been? It caught him up short. Maybe some of the distance was due to sheer unfamiliarity between them. As comfortable as he felt around Grace, that didn’t mean she was totally in the groove yet. Plus, they didn’t know each other as well as they used to. Ten years didn’t vanish just because two people slept together.

“We never had dinner,” he commented. “Come sit with me and we’ll eat. For real this time.”

She nodded and let him take her bag, following him to the table where he laid out silverware and refilled their wineglasses. They ate the chicken salad and polished off the bottle of wine, chatting long after clearing their plates. Grace told cute stories about the children on her case docket, and Kyle reciprocated with some carefully selected anecdotes about the guys he’d trained with in Coronado during BUD/S. Carefully selected because that period had been among the toughest of his life as his training honed him into an elite warrior—while he was fighting his own internal battle against the hurt this woman had caused. But he’d survived and wasn’t dwelling on that.

Couldn’t dwell on it. Liam wasn’t a factor and he wanted to do things with Grace differently this time. And by the time Kyle was done with her, she’d be asking, “Liam who?”

A wail over the monitor drew their attention away from their conversation and Grace gladly helped him get the girls settled again. It was nearing midnight; hopefully it would be the only time the babies woke up for the night.

Kyle didn’t mind rolling out of bed at any hour to take care of his daughters, but he selfishly wanted to spend the rest of the night with Grace, and Grace alone. He got his wish. They fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms, and Kyle slept like the dead until dawn.

His eyes snapped open and he took a half second to orient. Not a SEAL. Not in Afghanistan. But with Grace. A blessing to count, among many.

Until he tried to snuggle her closer. White-hot pokers of pain shot through his busted leg as he rolled. He bit back the curse and breathed through it.

The pain hadn’t been so bad last night, but of course, he’d been pretty distracted. Plus, he normally soaked his leg before going to bed but hadn’t had a chance last night. Apparently, he was going to pay for it today.

All the commotion woke Grace.

“Good morning,” she murmured sleepily, and slid a leg along his, which was simultaneously arousing and excruciating.

“Wait,” he said hoarsely.

“Don’t wanna.” She stretched provocatively, rubbing her bare breasts against his chest, which distracted him enough that he didn’t realize she’d hooked her knee around his leg. She fairly purred with sexy little sounds that meant she was turned on. And probably about to do something about it.

“Grace.” He grabbed her shoulders and squared them so he could be sure he had her attention. “Stop.”

Her expression went from hot and sleepy to confused and guarded. Her whole body stiffened, pulling away from his. “Okay. Sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry.” Kyle swore. Moron. He was mucking this up and all he wanted to do was pull her back against him. Dive in, distract himself. But he couldn’t. “Listen.”

He took a deep breath, fighting the pain, fighting his instinct to clam up again.

He hadn’t told anyone about what had happened to him in Afghanistan and didn’t want to start with the woman who still had the power to declare him an unfit parent if he admitted to having a busted leg. But as he stared into her troubled brown eyes, his heart lurched and he had to come clean. This was part of closing that distance between them. Part of learning to trust her again.

She’d said she was going to let him keep his girls. He had to believe her. Believe in her, or this was never going to work, not now, not in a hundred years.

“I didn’t tell you to stop because I wanted you to.”

Her gaze softened along with her body. “Then what’s going on, Kyle?”

“I got wounded,” he muttered. Which made him sound as much like a wuss as he felt. “Overseas.”

“Oh, I didn’t know!” She gasped and drew back to glance down the length of his body, her expression darkening gorgeously as she took in his semiaroused state. “You don’t look wounded. Everything I see is quite nice.”