Page 47 of Second Chance Wedding
Her words drew a laugh from those at their table, and Cole shifted his hand and gave her leg a gentle squeeze, then lingered when he felt her soft skin due to the slit in her dress.
“It’s hard to be a kid these days,” Jonesie said. “I am glad I’m too old to have always had a phone camera pointed at me.”
That topic sent the table off on another round of discussion. Dessert was served and more and more couples left their various tables to go to the dance floor.
Cole leaned forward, listening, banked anger rising to a slow simmer when his thoughts returned to the incident with Ben at work. “Let’s dance.”
Ana seemed surprised, but Cole guessed it was more in how he stood and grasped her elbow to tug her to her feet and the abruptness of his request.
Cole felt Jonesie eyeing him but ignored the other man. When you spent so much time together in the heat of battle and just hanging out, you learned to read each other. Jonesie undoubtedly read the tension.
With a hand at her waist, Cole guided Ana between the tables to the front of the room and took her into his arms.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said, not wanting to get into it here.
“I’m…sorry you lost one of your team.”
Ana blinked up at him, looking way too alluring and sexy in that dress and nothing like the mom of a teenager. A frown pulled her eyebrows together over her nose in a crunch he tried not to find adorable.
“Cole, it’s obvious that, whatever happened, no one holds you responsible.”
He welcomed her words and the soothing slide of her hand on his shoulder as they danced. Mannix would always be missed, but like Jonesie said, they’d each signed up for something bigger than themselves. He carried a bullet fragment to this day because of it, and Mannix’s family had a folded flag instead of a husband and father. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Knowing he wasn’t responsible didn’t make it easier, though. He’d gone through the scenario thousands of times in his head, even reenacted it multiple times. No one would have ever expected a seven-year-old to shoot them.
Just like no one would expect a fifteen-year-old to hit his mom?
“What do you want to talk about?”
His fingers tightened over her waist and hand. He could forgive himself for Mannix’s death for the most part because he couldn’t have prevented it given the war zone they’d been in at the time. But he’d never forgive himself if something happened to Ana.
Cole moved closer, much too close for etiquette’s sake. He lifted the hand holding hers and placed it on his chest. That done, he moved his hand to the three inches of material draped over her shoulder and slipped his fingers beneath to brush against her delicate collar bone. “I want to talk about this.”
To anyone observing them, it probably looked as though he straightened the material but since he held Ana’s gaze with a pointed stare, he knew the moment she realized why he did what he did. “You lied to me.”
ChapterEleven
Ana sucked in a breath and stumbled a bit when Cole continued dancing. He steadied her against his body, but his gaze never faltered.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Cole made a tsking sound.
“You’re a horrible liar, sweetheart. Ben told me.”
“He told…you what?”
“Let’s just say he said some things he shouldn’t have, I called him on it, and in the process, I asked about the bruise.”
Analise swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to pin a smile to her lips when she noticed Sergeant Major Jones eyeing them from a few feet away where he danced with one of the young ladies from their table. “It was an accident. He didn’t mean to.”
“He hit you.”
“I demanded his phone, and he threw it but??—”
“Hehityou,” Cole growled again. “And you lied to protect him.”
