Page 119 of Rescued by the Single Dad

The crack of what initially sounded like gunfire echoed beyond the party out in the dark field, and everyone under the hanging lights paused.

The four marines did more than that.

Clint, Bennett, Wyatt, and Dom all dropped to their bellies.

“What the fuck is that?” Wyatt asked, panic in his eyes.

More cracks.

Then it dawned on them. Someone was lighting off firecrackers.

Well, that wasn’t fucking safe. Not in a popcorn-dry field. They were going to torch the entire place.

“Jesus Christ, people are idiots,” Dom said, jumping back to his feet.

Jagger offered Clint a hand and helped him up. More than a few of the guests had eyes on them and heat crawled up Clint’s neck and into his cheeks. Dom had a heavy red stain on his cheeks, too. Bennett cleared his throat and tried to shake it off, while Wyatt abruptly reached for a stray skewer off Jagger’s plate and ripped off a piece of chicken like a caveman.

Clint’s nerves were officially fucking shot.

He hated crowds, and now that there were morons in the field with flames, he was done.

And his brothers knew it.

They all had their triggers and various PTSD. Being in Iraq, having kids, and losing their wives certainly made them look at the world differently. It made them see everything as a potential threat.

And right now, there were threats everywhere. Most of them they couldn’t see.

He also didn’t like that if something happened to them there, six kids would be orphaned. Because they stupidly had each other as next of kin and default guardians for the children if something should happen. What were the chances of all of them dying together the way their wives did?

Pretty fucking slim.

But then again, the chances of all their wives dying together had been pretty fucking slim, too.

And now there were some fuckwads in the field lighting firecrackers so ...

“I’m out,” Clint said.

Jagger opened his mouth to protest, but Clint gave him another stern look and his youngest brother shut his trap. The other three got it. Jagger didn’t have kids, and he hadn’t been to war. He also hadn’t lost a spouse. He understood, but he didn’t really get it. And that wasn’t his fault. However, he also knew better than to challenge Clint on this shit.

“We’ll find our own way back. You’ve been seen by enough people. They know you came to show your respects. But nobody will blame you for heading home to the kids,” Dom said, resting a big hand on Clint’s shoulder and giving it an affectionate squeeze.

Clint nodded at his brothers and took his leave, traversing his way through the crowd beneath the strings of lights and back toward the road. He waved and said hello to more than a dozen islanders, but he didn’t stop to chat. He made sure his face said “on a mission” and kept that expression until he reached his truck.

Only once he was behind the steering wheel and on his way back home did he finally exhale enough that his chest no longer hurt.

He needed to get home to Talia. To Brooke. He needed to get home to his family.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The kids were all on board with Brooke’s idea for Mother’s Day. Which meant they spent their evening doing crafts to display pictures of their mothers, baking cookies and cupcakes, and mixing a special lemonade for the next day. A Toy Story movie played on the television in the background, but nobody was really paying attention to it. They were all having too much fun cutting out fun shapes with the cookie dough and icing the cookies.

It was the longest time since washing up on the beach that she’d forgotten there was someone out there who wanted her dead. Being with the kids, and in Clint’s home, just brought her so much peace it was hard to let worries take over such joy. So she didn’t let them.

She shoved all those niggling and unanswerable questions to the back of her mind, threw a sheet over them and pretended they weren’t there. Then eventually, they really did disappear. At least for a while.

And the kids just loved Rocco.

But really, what wasn’t there to love?

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