Chapter One
Colton
“Well, how’s the search going?” Mom asks, beaming a smile at me from my computer screen.
She and Dad are still in Malta, the final leg of their journey before returning to the States. Her hair is pinned up and her face is a deep brown from the sun. She might be sixty-five years old, but she looks younger, full of life. She grins playfully as she leans forward.
“I mean the search for a trainer of course, and not a wife.”
I groan and roll my eyes, glancing over at Scrappy in the corner of my office. One of the upsides to owning so much real estate is that this high-rise office is big enough for Scrappy to entertain himself in, and currently he’s gnawing determinedly on a bone. The tan-colored Basset Hound will soon grow bored, however, and then he might get mischievous and wreak some hell.
Hence the need for a trainer, a task I offered to handle since I’m taking care of him anyway with Mom and Dad abroad.
“I’m not looking for a wife,” I tell her with a smirk.
“So you’re just going to die a lonely old man, is that it?”
I chuckle. “If forty-two is old, what does that make you?”
I hold my hands up before she can launch into a tirade. “I’m joking, of course, Mother. You are the picture of youth.”
“You better be,” she grins. “Because I might be ancient – as you seem to insist on calling me – but I still know how to handle myself.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I say.
I’m familiar with Mom’s desire for me to find a wife, mostly because she brings it up every chance she gets. She understood it when I was in the SEALs, spending so much time on operations, but when I left and established myself in the private security sector – and then retail and gyms – her confusion and impatience reached an all-time high.
“You’ve got it all,” she often rants. “The money, a successful career, your health, you’re a handsome man, and yet you seem determined to leave me without grandchildren, or at least a nice daughter-in-law to dote on. Why are you so intent on torturing me, Colton?”
Ending the call and saying goodbye, I stand up and wander to the window, overlooking the city, the behemoth shadow of clouds drifting across the gray buildings. Scrappy tilts his head briefly, tracking my movements.
“What am I supposed to tell her, boy?” I say, as he strolls over and begins pawing at my leg.
I can see the madness hyping up in him, the desire to play, to do something, now, now, and never mind these pesky humans, and never mind the fact I took him on an hour-long run this morning.
I reach down to stroke his head, which of course he takes as an ideal time to gnaw on my knuckles.
I laugh, shaking my head ruefully.
“You really are a wild one, Scrappy,” I say, kneeling down and wrestling with him a little.
He’s small for a Basset Hound, but he more than makes up for that with his determination and his sinewy strength. I hug him close to me, his chocolatey hairs dappling my suit jacket.
“She doesn’t understand that I won’t just marry for the sake of it,” I mutter, as Scrappy leaps back and prepares himself for another attack. “She wants me to find a woman and get married and have babies with her, and the sooner the better, and let’s not worry about the fact that there’s something dead in me, eh? Something died in the war, Scrappy, and the idea of letting a woman in scares the shit out of me. That’s the truth.”
I laugh grimly, walking back to my desk and sitting down, taking the antique letter opener and idly twirling it around my fingers, the same way I’d make my knives dance in the SEALs.
I remember the orange sky, the scent of gun smoke and the desert, and the crack of bullets all around me.
Be cold. Don’t let yourself feel a damn thing.
That was my way of handling things, and it worked pretty damn well, as my successful business empire would suggest.
“You’re easier to talk to than most people,” I tell Scrappy, as he drags a white cushion from one of the cream leather couches and drops it at my feet, looking up at me proudly, tail wagging.
“This is exactly why Mom wants me to get you a trainer, you know,” I tell him.
I pick up the cushion and can’t help but throw it for him to fetch, which is probably the last thing I should be doing. But there’s something infectious about his enthusiasm, the way his tail never stops wagging, the way he’s up for anything, always.
I think Scrappy would’ve made a damn fine SEAL.
I glance up at the knock at my door, quiet from over here at my desk. My secretary would normally use the intercom system but it freaks Scrappy out, sending him into a frantic search for the source of the buzzing sound, a frenzy of sniffing, and digging. The last time she used it, he ended up in the plant pots – now gone – throwing fountains of dirt across the room.