Free Her Last Best Fling by Candace Havens Page A

holiday baking, birthdays and his dad cooking dinner while encouraging Blake and J.T. with their homework. His mom was at the feed store a lot in those early years, so the men in the family had to learn to do for themselves, which wasn’t a bad thing.
    “Shut it, nerd. Did you bring me a chocolate donut this time?”
    The nerd stuck two chocolate donuts on a plate.
    “Why didn’t you tell Mom you had already planned to come over and watch the game?” The first Mavericks’ basketball game of the season started at seven.
    “Brownie points, dude. It made me look good to bring dinner to the poor, broken jarhead.”
    “I’ll show you broken if you don’t stop calling me jarhead. Come on, nerd, I set up the TV trays in the family room. And thank you again for buying Mom that fifty-six-inch flat screen for Christmas last year. It’s the best gift you’ve ever given her.”
    They chuckled at that.
    “You could have come out to my place,” his brother said.
    “Not if I want to drink this,” he raised one of the two beers he was holding in his hands. Earlier that day he’d visited the local doc for a checkup. He was down to half a pain pill a day. His leg continued to hurt like hell, but it only reminded him that there was still work to do on his body. The doc had given him permission to have one beer, maybe two, a day.
    “I have a perfectly fine couch you could sleep on.”
    He shrugged. Time to have a little fun.
    “So Mom says you’re getting engaged to some redheaded chick. Who is she?”
    J.T.’s beer spewed from his mouth onto his burger. “What the—?”
    “Some lady at the bank saw you. Therefore, it must be true.” Damn, he’d missed giving J.T. a hard time. The surprise on his brother’s face was priceless.
    He laughed so hard his gut hurt.
    “Sometimes I hate this town,” his brother growled. “She’s not some chick. Her name is Anne Marie and she’s a colleague. We were not on a date. We’d been at a conference in Houston. The rest is none of your business.”
    Blake held up his hands in surrender. “Hmm. I think he doth protest too much.”
    “Just watch the game, jarhead.”
    For the next two hours they did. Screaming at the refs, who called fouls on everything. It was close but the Mavs won.
    They clinked beer bottles.
    Blake was relaxed, truly so. He almost felt like a normal human being. He’d been on for so long, he forgot what it was like to let go. Even in the hospital it had been one operation after another and then intense physical therapy.
    He took a long breath.
    The psychiatrist said he needed time. He understood now. Bit by bit it was coming back to him, how to live a life where he wasn’t constantly looking over his shoulder or listening for changes in the wind. He’d never stop being a marine, but he could learn to be calm and enjoy things again. Maybe even sleep more than three hours at a time.
    His mind wandered through his conversation with Macy. Could he do what she asked? It might dredge up a lot of issues he didn’t want to think about. Then again, sometimes it helped to talk about what happened.
    He sipped his second beer.
    Then there was his other problem. The one that had kept him awake and unsettled ever since he’d seen her beautiful face in the pouring rain. Never in his life had he felt such a pull toward another person.
    It was as if she had an invisible rope tied directly to his heart. He’d met her a couple of days ago, and he—what?
    He’d almost lost his temper earlier, and she hadn’t backed away one bit. She’d glanced at him, noticed his clenched hands and then looked him straight in the eye.
    And she was right. They did have a great deal in common. What would it hurt to date? See her a few times, and get her out of his system. If he wrote the story she asked for, she couldn’t use work as an excuse. He wouldn’t take any payment for the accounting he’d do, or for writing the article.
    So technically she wouldn’t be his boss. She’d have