Page 8 of The Marine

Her best friend shot her, and her family betrayed her.

“Media. Stalkers. Her crazy mother and sister,” Ryder replies, shaking his head.

“I heard that, Ryder St. James,” Savannah says as she walks through the door. I don’t hear his response because my eyes slam into the beautiful, dark-haired woman walking in behind her.

Briar.

She looks everywhere but at me, and my heart thunders inside my chest like I’m in enemy territory.

As far as that organ is concerned, I am.

I drop my feet and stand suddenly.

Fuck.

What the hell am I doing? Everyone glances at me waiting for me to say something.

Goddamn it.

“Bathroom break,” I mutter and walk out of the room. I head down the corridor and unzip my Black Hawke Security jacket.

It’s suddenly hot as fuck in this office. Someone needs to fix the air conditioning.

“Aidan­­—” Penny, our office manager, begins, but I interrupt her.

“Call the air-con guys. This place is like a goddamn sauna.” I snap and push open the restroom door.

“Is it?” I hear her ask as it closes behind me.

I hang my jacket on the back of the door, walk to the basin, and splash water on my face. Then yank out some paper towels and scrub my skin before tossing them in the trash can.

“Good one, tough guy,” I mutter as I lean on the counter and stare at myself in the mirror.

That was hardly the action of a six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound US Marine.

Thing is, I just don’t trust myself around her.

I want to kiss her.

I want to scream at her.

I want her to look at me and tell me what she goddamn thinks. Even if it’s painful to hear. Even if I have to face her anguish all over again.

I’ve suppressed all my feelings for her over the past decade and apparently none of them have changed.

Something did change back then, though.

Her feelings for me.

I’m the man who killed her father.

There’s no going back from that.

She was going to be the woman I married. The mother of my children. The girl I grew old with and laughed with about our gray hair and wrinkles. My best friend to share life’s ups and downs.

That all changed the moment I walked through her front door and found her father holding her up against the wall with his hand around her throat.

Well, technically, it was the next day.

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