Page 76 of Honk if You Love Real Men (Tempting SEALs 1)

“Thursday after bingo,” he wrote in his notebook.

The next afternoon, Mac tackled a job he’d been putting off to the last minute—emptying the old rolltop desk in his father’s bedroom. It was crammed full of cancelled checks from as far back as 1970, along with receipts for repairs done at the cabin, deliveries of gravel for the drive, and even a birthday cake ordered from the bakery in town. Based on the 1981 date, Mac figured that particular cake was for his seventeenth birthday, the first without his mother. As he recalled, the cake had been yellow with white frosting, and got thrown in the trash untouched.

Mac stared at the receipt, remembering in vivid detail how he and his dad had come to blows that

day. They’d beat on each other standing up inside the cabin, with hits to the face and gut, then tumbled out the front door, down the porch steps, and crashed to the grass, where the pummeling continued. At the time, Mac was still growing into his strength while his dad was still hanging on to his, and it was a fairly even match. It ended when his father sat on his chest and pinned his arms.

Mac gazed out his father’s bedroom window now, the view unchanged from his earliest childhood. The funny thing was, he didn’t even remember the injustice that had set him off that day. It could have been anything. But he had been pissed as hell—that much he remembered—and certain his dad couldn’t possibly understand. Mac sighed, seeing his seventeen-year-old self from his forty-year-old point of view, and knowing he’d been nothing but an angry child that day, raging at a world that allowed his mother to die. Who can a teenage boy blame when disease takes his mother? It was easy to blame his father. So that’s what Mac had done—for a lot of years.

Without thinking, Mac folded the bakery receipt and stuck it in his wallet. He continued on with the desk, eventually stumbling on an old black-and-white photo of the cabin, its paper edges yellowed and dog-eared. The two men standing in front of the cabin were his grandfather and his father, who was no more than seventeen himself. Mac let go with a surprised laugh. His grandfather had to be about forty in the picture—Mac’s age now. They looked like each other—eerily so. A date carefully written on the back read August 1946. His grandfather must have just built the place, home from the war. He’d been a navy man, too.

Mac collapsed into the desk chair and let the photo dangle from his fingers. He had to be insane to sell this place! So what if the proceeds would pay for anything his dad might ever need? Selling a fraction of the property would accomplish the same thing.

Mac stood up and paced, eventually putting the photo in his wallet next to the bakery receipt. No, he probably would never have a son to give this place to, but his dad had given it to him two weeks ago. It was his place now, and his decision to make.

He couldn’t wait to tell Win.

Vincent was unusually quiet driving back from the assisted-living place Thursday, and Win occasionally glanced at him behind the wheel of his big black, shiny truck. His shoulder had healed well, and he sat straighter than he had three weeks ago. She studied his strong, dark profile, and smiled to herself. It was astounding that in such a short amount of time she’d become accustomed to this man. She could read him. She knew him.

And it was obvious that bringing her to meet his father had been difficult for him.

“You okay, Vincent?” She reached over and touched his hard right thigh, stroking him through his jeans. “Your dad is sweet. He seems to be doing well.”

“Yeah.”

“You know, if you’re hacked off at me for something, the least you could do is tell me. That way I can be pissed at you too, and we could have our first real fight. It might be a cleansing experience.”

He turned her way and gave her a half-smile. “Do we need cleansing?”

“Apparently so.”

He put his big rough hand over hers and squeezed. “I’m not angry. What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

Win looked out the window, realizing that he must be feeling the same sense of dread she was. How could these three weeks have gone by so damn fast?

“Artie said he’d send the car after lunch.”

“All right.”

Vincent raised her hand to his lips and Win blinked away tears, keeping her gaze directed out the window. She didn’t want him to see her cry.

“How about we take Fifi for a walk when we get back?”

Win turned to see him grinning at her. She smiled back. “I’m sure the Fif-ster would love that.”

She packed a lunch of cheese, crackers and fruit, tucked it into Mac’s backpack, and they set off through the woods. It was a warm and bright day, the light subdued by the towering stands of trees, and Win suddenly wondered just how beautiful this place might be in the fall. With a twinge of sadness, she realized she might never have an opportunity to find out.

“I’m not going to sell the cabin, Win.”

Vincent had been quiet for several minutes and his words surprised her, both in their content and the fact that he spoke at all.

“What? When did you decide that?”

He shrugged, and Win wondered if the backpack was digging into his shoulder. “Want me to take that for a while?”

He smiled down at her and brushed a hand through her hair, which she imagined was wild and woolly in its freed state. “I can handle it, cutie.”

She laughed. “Cutie, huh?” She rubbed into his touch, hating the idea that today was the end of all this. “So what’re you going to do with the cabin? Rent it out?”

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