Stirred Up By a SEAL

Chapter 2-1

2

Jonah shook a little as he slid out of his truck. The wake of Rory’s birth wasn’t unlike the peculiar mix of exhaustion and adrenaline that hit him after a mission. A healthy dose of anticipation pumped up the buzz as he let himself into the house. Relieved of the worry over his sister and the baby, his mind had been full of Rachel on the near hour’s drive home. He needed to see her. To set her at ease. Because in all his ruminating, he remembered the distress in her eyes when she’d pulled back. She’d probably imagined all kinds of horrible reasons he hadn’t responded, and none of them would be the truth.

More than anything else, he just wanted another chance to kiss her back. To satisfy this craving. Because now that he’d had even the smallest taste of her, he couldn’t turn it off as he’d been doing for all these months.

The under-counter lights were on in the kitchen, along with several lamps in the living room.

“Rachel?”

He moved through the house, automatically angling his head to listen with his good ear. But he heard no reply. She wasn’t curled up with a book or watching TV. Neither was she napping on the sofa. And why should she be? It was after ten. She’d probably gone to bed a while ago in anticipation of the early hour she’d be up for work in the morning.

Jonah found confirmation in the form of a note on the kitchen counter.

Headed to bed. Audrey told me the baby was here. Congrats, Uncle Jonah! You’ve been up forever and a day, so sleep in tomorrow. Holt and I have the bakery covered.

She’d signed her name in the familiar looping scrawl he’d memorized in the commercial kitchen where she’d trained him.

Before he could think better of it, Jonah found himself standing outside the door of her room, his hand inches from the panel. But he stopped himself before knocking. No matter what had happened last night, she was here to do them a favor. Waking her for this conversation wasn’t smart or kind. Laying a hand against the door, he sighed with a mix of regret and resignation. It would keep. He just needed to wake up when she did to go in tomorrow morning. He’d set an alarm.

Too wired to sleep himself, and suddenly ravenous, Jonah retreated to the kitchen to scrounge up some food. The vending machine fare and hospital cafeteria options hadn’t done much to hold him over. He found a container of leftover chicken noodle casserole Rachel must’ve made. Not wanting to risk waking her with the microwave, he shoveled in bites cold as he leaned against the counter.

The talons of a headache dug into his skull, squeezing just hard enough to remind him he’d pushed himself too far, too hard, and if he didn’t get some proper rest, he’d be leveled with another of the debilitating migraines that were the bane of his existence. He’d had a lot fewer since he’d come home, but there were still regular enough aftereffects from the post-concussion syndrome he’d wrestled with for months after the accident that he couldn’t feel fully normal. By rote, he lifted his hand and rubbed two fingers over the ridge of tissue on the back of his skull. His hair had grown back, covering the scar, but he’d never forget it was there, even if he couldn’t clearly remember how he’d gotten it. Having read the mission report, that was probably a blessing.

Dropping his hand, his gaze fell on the clunky old radio shoved back into a corner beneath the upper cabinets. He didn’t know why he kept the damned thing. A relic from the seventies, the sound quality was barely adequate, and it took up more than a reasonable amount of counter space. Maybe he hadn’t tossed it because it was one of the few good memories he had of his dad. They’d taken the thing apart just to see how it worked. But it had been Jonah who’d put it back together. Because Lonnie Barker had not been a man who repaired things. He only broke them. It was what he’d done to their family, walking away when Jonah was eight years old, leaving him to take care of his mom and sister. It was a job he’d never shirked. Family was everything, and Jonah had spent his life trying to make up for the deficiencies of his deadbeat father. Living his life with honor.

Lonnie had died more than a year ago now and surprised the hell out of all of them when he’d left everything to Jonah and Sam, the kids he’d had nothing to do with in years. Not that everything had been much. The contents of his house and the decrepit bar he’d devoted his life to for the past twenty-odd years. They’d done the bare minimum. Jonah had boxed up the contents of the house, donating most of the furniture and putting the rest in storage until they felt like dealing with it. Sam would’ve been content burning it all, including the bar itself. But Jonah had looked at the building and seen possibilities. So much so that he’d dragged Holt and Brax down to Tennessee to start their own bakery once they’d graduated from Dr. Graham’s program.

It hadn’t been all smooth sailing. The project had been plagued with problems from the beginning. Vandalism. Theft. An attack on Mia, who’d been their contractor for the renovation. Multiple crimes that they’d attributed to other things. But at this point, Jonah was pretty sure they’d been wrong about all of it. At the end of the day, he suspected that all the trouble that had come to their door could be laid at Lonnie’s feet because of something he’d been involved with before he’d died. Jonah had always suspected his dad of something shady.

And before anyone else got hurt, he was determined to get to the bottom of what it was.