On a mission.

  A distasteful one.

  The best way to handle those were to get them done immediately. No overthinking.

  Just complete the task.

  Keeping her mind on her meeting with Sebastian, trying to find words for the conversation that would result in the least drama, she felt like the ten-minute trip out of town to his place lasted for hours. She found no words.

  Every sentence her mind started sent her into panic mode and she had to abort the effort.

  Abort.

  She wasn’t going to do that.

  She’d told Hannah she wouldn’t even before she’d been pregnant.

  Before she’d known she was.

  I’ve got this paperwork I feel I should show you, Sebastian, out of courtesy, but it doesn’t require any involvement from you at all. Not even a name.

  The sentence appeared as she pulled up Cross Drive.

  No one knew she’d slept with him.

  No one ever had to know.

  Yes. That thought worked better than any other one she’d had since throwing up in her own clinic’s parking lot.

  Drawing up by Sebastian’s back door—because coming from the medical building or the kennels, the back entrance was the one she always used, not because she was afraid to leave her car in view of the road—she pulled open the screen door to administer her customary two short knocks.

  The mission was underway. Would soon be complete.

  “Eeoowooah!” The male holler rent the air, filled with anger. With gut-wrenching pain. Sending shivers up and down her spine. Instinctively pulling the screen to her body, crouching up against the wooden door keeping her from the house, she glanced at the yard around her.

  And toward the kennels.

  The sound came again. Animalistic.

  Clearly coming from the house. Heart pounding, thinking only of the pain inherent in the sound, she turned the doorknob. Felt it give. Hurried inside, already reaching for her phone.

  And saw Sebastian sprawled back in a recliner, eyes closed, with an open laptop on its side on the floor.

  “Yaawwwah!”

  She jumped back as the horrible sound came from his throat, just before he threw a heavy fist at...nothing.

  And it hit her.

  Sebastian. In the Marines, just like Wade.

  Early discharge.

  His head was still, his cheeks and lips skewed right, then left, the muscles scrunching one way, then the other, like he was cringing from one side of his face at a time. All of it hiding beneath the light beard.

  She’d taken a training class on PTSD before Wade came home. Mostly for herself. She’d needed to know what her adored older brother might be going through.

  Sitting at attention, Oscar watched Sebastian. Glanced at her. And back at his owner. The retriever was a search-and-rescue dog, not one trained for the veterans Crosswinds also served.

  She couldn’t get close or risk being hit. But Oscar could. She’d seen the dogs in training. Had helped train some over the past few months.

  Moving behind Sebastian’s chair, she motioned for the dog, pointing for him to sit beside the chair. The big mountain man was striking up, out, with the movements he was making. Oscar’s head was below the arm of the chair. Oscar knew to nudge Sebastian’s hand for a treat. She waited.

  And felt tears fill her eyes as, less than a minute later, the dog, hearing Sebastian cry out, nudged his owner’s hand.

  Sebastian woke up, his eyes glazed at first, and then crystal clear as he focused on Ruby, moving out in front of him.

  She’d never felt less welcome anywhere in her life.

  * * *

  “What in the hell are you doing in here?” Sebastian heard the accusation in his tone, wasn’t sure he had the wherewithal to withhold it.

  Wasn’t sure he wanted to try.

  “You have no business being here,” he said, angry. With her, yes. Because she was there. Because she’d slept with him without telling him she had a boyfriend.

  Because, with everyone working so hard to find out who was behind the attacks at and on Crosswinds, she hadn’t said a word.

  But most of his anger was aimed at himself.

  He’d been gone again—had slipped into the hell that was the part of his life no one ever saw. Or knew about.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said, sounding like some doctor, not the compassionate woman, the friend, who’d been offering so much of her time to Crosswinds. “I heard you holler out...”

  Seeing his computer lying sideways on the floor, he snatched it up. Closed it. Stood. “How long have you been here?”

  “Long enough.”

  And didn’t that just put the plunger on anything good about the day.

  “Yeah, well, I’m fine—you can go now.” Oscar nudged his hand and Sebastian went to get the dog the treat he’d already asked for once.

  Wait. Oscar nudging his hand...had woken him. He looked at Ruby.

  “I made him sit by you,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do...”

  She cared.

  That mattered.

  Not for any reason he could come up with.

  But it did.

  And it hit him why he couldn’t seem to get by what had happened between them two months before. It wasn’t the sex calling to him, although it had been—yeah—but...she knew.

  She’d sat with him, held conversation like any other time, making no mention of the panic attack he’d been suffering. She’d just...brought him down. By being herself.

  She knew.

  And he wasn’t sure he was sorry.

  He had no idea what to do with that.

  “Oscar’s a search-and-rescue dog,” she said then, as if his dog was the issue at hand.

  He nodded.

  “Because you don’t want anyone to know you need one trained for...”

  “I don’t need one,” he said gruffly. Then leaned on the corner of the wall, one ankle crossed over the other, as if entertaining in the near dark, while standing, was a normal thing.

  Ruby turned on the light by his chair.

  Sat down in the one just like it a few feet away.

  “How often do you have them?”

  He sat, too.

  Why not. The day couldn’t get any worse.

  “I hadn’t had one in more than a year.” He’d told her the truth, was glaring at her again. “Until the night Oscar was shot. Or rather, the night after that.”

  He’d had the panic attack first, the night of the shooting.

  And sex. He’d had sex that night, too.

  With a woman who had a boyfriend. Possibly a dangerously jealous one.

  How could she not have told him?

  Not only because his place was being attacked, but also...to protect herself? Why wasn’t she telling anyone? Didn’t make sense to him.

  But then, he wasn’t at his best.

  Not even half best.

  “But you had them when you first came home?” Her softly uttered question hit him in a weak spot.

  He needed to get rid of those.

  All done. No more.

  “I was called home to deal with the deaths of both of my parents, who’d been killed in a car accident, what do you think?” he asked, not kindly.

  He had to get rid of her before he did another thing he’d regret. Like telling her how someone else knowing, having her know, seemed to lighten his load some. Even while it made him feel weak.

  His anger didn’t seem to reach her. She didn’t tense. Didn’t stand to go.

  The woman didn’t even frown at him.

  He deserved some kind of facial disapproval, at least.

  “What memory does the sound of gunfire trigger for you?”

  He nodded. Reminded himself that he was not happy with her. The boyfriend, and all. And said, “Wade and I joined the Marines together, but, as you know, we ultimately served separately.” What the hell. If he had to get it out, might as well get it done with.

  Better that then get into some wimpy-feeling personal conversation about her having sex with him while she was involved with another man.

  Or having sex with him at all.

  “I ended up in Afghanistan, along with a buddy, Thane, I’d met at boot camp. Like me, he was an only child. Had no other family. One night we were drinking. A lot. Too much. We were shipping out the next day and he asks me what’s the single most painful thing I could ever remember dealing with to date. You know, like he was thinking about the pain we might be walking into.”

  Her eyes aglow with warmth Ruby sat up straight. Like her shoulders weren’t going to bow, no matter what he said.

  Like she could take it.

  Maybe even wanted to take it.

  And it struck him... She could be using him to better understand her brother who’d just returned, seemingly broken. He’d like that.

  To help Ruby help Wade.

  “I told Thane about Jerry.”

  “That spaniel you had when we were kids?”

  “I had him until I was seventeen,” he told her. “He was a rescue dog, and sometimes I felt like he’d rescued me, not the other way around. I was home alone a lot growing up. A lot. But when Jerry came, it was different. I had someone to greet me at the door. Someone who was as happy to see me as I was to see him.”

  He stopped. Helping Wade was one thing. Becoming a sap...not.

  “Jerry had been abused. All he wanted was someone to be kind to him. He was the most gentle living being I’ve ever known.” Move on. “So I told Thane about the night Jerry died,” he said, finishing.

  The End.

  “What did Thane say to that?”

  Right. The point he’d been getting at. “He told me about the night his dog, Bear, died. It gave us something in common. An understanding of what we could be walking into,” he explained, completely serious as he met her gaze. “We never mentioned our dogs, or that night again, but it was like we knew. And the knowing, the accepting that life could hurt like hell, gave us strength to get the job done. To do what we had to do to try to prevent, or stop, others suffering so much worse.”

  Her gaze was glued to him. He wasn’t sorry.

  Until he remembered that she had a boyfriend. That Hannah Colton had irrefutable proof of a man in Ruby’s life.

  What was it about the woman that sucked him in? Made him someone he was not? He didn’t want to connect.

  Not with her, definitely. But not with any other human being, either. Not like that.

  “You’re about to tell me that Thane died over there, aren’t you?” Her words fell like cotton balls around him. Over him. Soft. Tender. Until there were so many of them he knew he could suffocate.

  “I was about to not tell you that he died lying right next to me in a dirt-filled cove we’d dug out of the side of a mountain,” he said, standing.

  Time for her to go.

  She didn’t take his hint. Didn’t get to her feet and head to the door. Instead, looking up at him, she said, “You can cross-train Oscar. I’ll help if you’d like. No one has to know...”

  Cross-train... Oscar nudging his hand...

  “He can help stop the nightmare at its onset,” she said, telling him something he knew better than she did. He just hadn’t figured himself for needing the help.

  He lived alone. There was no one to protect from his very private, very personal struggles. It wasn’t like he dozed off on the job.

  Or out to eat.

  She was getting too close, pushing herself way too far in.

  Hands firmly on his hips, Sebastian did what he had to do. Shoved her right back out again with an accusatory tone that left no room for doubt. “Why didn’t you tell me you have a boyfriend?”

  Chapter 5

  “Excuse me?” Ruby stood straight, completely affronted at first, and then just worried about him. Was he still in the clutches of his nightmare? Thinking she was someone else?

  It was the only thing that made sense.

  “That night we had sex, you were seeing someone else.” His words would have been her worst nightmare if she’d ever gone off the rails far enough to have dreamed it.

  Completely shocked, she stood there with her mouth open. Couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  “Wade told me,” he continued.

  Wade? It was like she’d walked into the twilight zone.

  “My brother Wade?” She’d gotten the words out. That was a start.

  “Of course, your brother Wade,” Sebastian said, still standing there, all burly mountain man. His hands, which had been on his hips, had dropped to his side.

  She didn’t know what that meant, either.

  “It’s not like what we did meant something,” he said then. “It was a reaction, I get that. Something that happened in the moment without thought. And I get that you didn’t owe me anything. The anonymous complaints, even the gunshot that caught Oscar... It could have been him, if he’s the jealous type and didn’t like the time you were spending out here. But still, we hadn’t done it yet, so I can even get your silence until that point. But when the shot went directly through your windshield. That night everyone thought it was personal. The way Chase whisked you out of here, insisting you stay at your parents’. And Fletcher was all over the case. Even the police were asking about everyone we knew, or had known. You didn’t think to mention this guy? Just in case?”

  She had to go. Get out.

  He was out of his mind. Slamming her.

  She headed for the door.

  And... Wade?

  Sebastian had to be hallucinating.

  She got herself outside. Door shut behind her. Was peripherally aware that Sebastian wasn’t following her. And slowed her pace long enough to take a full deep breath.

  All of the reading she’d done on PTSD, and she hadn’t seen a thing about waking hallucinations that were set in real time.

  But there was paranoia...

  He had to still be in the throes of the demons that ate at him. Lying next to his best friend as he was shot, watching him die. And immediately following, to be called home to the sudden deaths of his parents—his only living relatives.

  She couldn’t leave. Not until she was sure he’d climbed his way out of the personal hell she’d found him in the night of the first gunshot. She’d thought his panic then had been induced by Oscar’s being shot.

  She should have known it was more than that.

  And Wade.

  Did her brother know that Sebastian was struggling with PTSD-like symptoms?

  Was that why Wade’s name had entered into Sebastian’s rant?

  Her having a boyfriend was just ludicrous. No way anyone in her family would spread around that claim.

  And...the baby.

  For a few minutes there, she’d forgotten.

  She was pregnant.

  From one night that, in Sebastian’s own words, meant nothing.

  She couldn’t even get a one-night stand right, and he thought she had a boyfriend?

  She stumbled on the way to her car.

  She had to tell Sebastian about the baby. But not right now. Not until his mind was clear.

  But she couldn’t just leave him like he was, either.

  Heading to the only place she felt welcome at the moment, she entered the medical building with the key Sebastian had given her long ago. Was greeted by Jasmine, who, instead of wagging her tail, whined from inside her large, round two-foot-high fencing, and stared up at Ruby.

  Her first thought was that the dog knew, too. That Sebastian had told her canine patients that she had some secret jealous man who was shooting up the place. Jasmine had walked over to the blanket-covered matting where her puppies slept.

  Was nudging at a makeshift bed.

  All personal thoughts fleeing, Ruby stepped over the fencing and kneeled next to Jasmine. “What’s the matter, girl? What are you telling me?” she asked. She’d come in to check on the puppies—or just to play with them for a second, to get her equilibrium back.

  And maybe to have a heart-to-heart with the new mama, feeling a bond with Jasmine.

  But as she started to check over the puppies, her heart began to pound. Three of them weren’t well. At first, she thought it was the last three she’d birthed, but looking at the markings, she knew it wasn’t. Which made no sense.

  Phone out of her pocket, she dialed Sebastian immediately.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby. So sorry. I had no right to come at you like that—”

  “Come down to the clinic,” she said, breaking in on him. “Three of the puppies have weak heart rates, raised temperatures and they’re panting hard. We need to get them into town, where I have everything I need...”

  Where she could do blood work. Run urinalysis. Start IVs.

  After dropping the phone, she was already gathering up the babies. Grabbing a box filled with supplies, dumping them onto the floor, to use the box as a carrying bed for them. Had them settled, had picked up her phone, her satchel and was at the door, when Sebastian appeared.

  Taking the box from her, he didn’t speak. Didn’t even look at her.

  She didn’t look at him, either.

  At the moment, their drama didn’t matter.

  There were lives at stake.

  * * *

  Sebastian drove.

  Ruby wanted to be able to watch over the puppies, and he was glad to have her do so. Was thankful that she’d been there.

  That, even after his supreme rudeness, she’d gone down to check on the puppies.

  “You think they’re going to make it?” he asked.

  “It’s too soon to tell. They aren’t convulsing. That’s a good sign.” She hadn’t taken her eyes off the puppies since she’d climbed into the back seat of his truck, right after he’d loaded their box there.