a pissed off Tatum? She scared the shit out of him. Always had. She didn’t hesitate to fight dirty. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her. And hated, since life had taught her the need and skills to do it.
Her gaze darted from him to Willow and back again. Her mouth thinned and her eyes snapped. Finally, she growled, “Dammit!” She poked a finger into his chest. “Stay here.” She wrapped a hand around Willow’s arm and dragged the other woman behind her.
Willow didn’t turn, not right away, but let her gaze trail down his entire body as she walked backward. In heels several inches high. Over ice-covered pavement. He might have been impressed, if he hadn’t been so conscious of the fact she was weighing and measuring him while she was doing it.
And her dark, calm eyes gave no indication just how he’d scored.
Evan watched Tatum and Willow disappear inside, heavy doors slamming shut behind them.
It was entirely possible she was screwing with him and had every intention of letting him freeze his ass off waiting on her while she whooped it up at the party.
But he didn’t think so. Tatum was the kind of woman who faced problems head on, always had been. She didn’t hide her head in the sand or pretend something wasn’t happening in the hope the problem would disappear. She made a decision and took action.
It was a trait they shared, something he’d always admired about her.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Evan leaned back against the seat of his bike. His gaze wandered up and down the street. It was quiet, just like the rest of the small southern town.
He had to admit, Sweetheart, South Carolina, was the last place he’d expected to find Tatum. She was a big-city girl. Growing up in Detroit, her family had lived paycheck to paycheck, close enough to the edge of disaster to make life a little unpredictable.
Her senior year of high school, her dad had lost his manufacturing job, sending her family into turmoil. Her dreams of college were crushed, at least for a little while.
Evan had watched her struggle that last year to hold everyone together. She’d been the glue keeping her mother and father moving forward.
He’d joined the Army right out of high school. They’d married a few weeks later, mostly to give Tatum his benefits, although he’d known for years he had wanted to marry her. The timeline had just been bumped up by circumstances.
He’d gone off to basic training and she’d stayed behind, working and trying to keep things going back home with her parents. Her mother being diagnosed with ovarian cancer was just one more blow. Without insurance, they couldn’t afford treatment. She did get some, but it wasn’t enough, and she died a year later. Her father, snowed under beneath the weight of grief and debt, had committed suicide.
Tatum was the one who’d found him, walking into a bloody mess.
Evan would never forget that phone call. By then, he’d been stationed in Iraq, living apart from the wife he loved, unable to comfort or help her the way he had wanted.
She hadn’t been hysterical, not his Tatum. Although, no matter how strong she’d tried to be, she had been unable to hide the pain locked deep inside. Or the relief, guilt and anger. Not from him.
She’d been carrying such a heavy burden at so young an age. And Evan had wanted more than anything to be there for her, to hold her and shoulder some of that weight.
He’d taken leave, come home and helped her deal with the financial mess her father had left behind. And he’d immediately moved her to North Carolina where he was stationed at Fort Bragg.
They had been happy. Sometimes she’d fought the guilt of that, but he could always shake her out of the melancholy.
She had been the perfect military wife, independent, strong, with plans and goals of her own. Unlike some of the wives, she hadn’t struggled when he was gone for long stretches of time. She had missed him, a lot, but they had plenty of experience dealing with separation. She had taken it all in stride, relishing the time they were able to spend together.
She had started college, eventually earning a business degree and going to work for a tech company. Special Ops had recruited him. Things had stabilized. They had been happy, had even started talking about kids.
Then, in the middle of an undercover drug op, their informant screwed his team and any hope of a future had crumbled. Their cover had been blown. Well, everyone’s but his. The resulting shitstorm had descended so quickly there had been no way to prepare.
One minute they had all been fine and the next, several of his buddies lay in pools of blood, with him the only one left standing. He’d thought he was dead, too.
He shivered. This little trip down memory lane wasn’t helping his mental state. He needed to be clearheaded for the conversation that was coming.
Purposely turning his focus back to his surroundings, he surveyed the town Tatum had chosen to call home. He could see the appeal of Sweetheart, even if it wasn’t what either of them had grown up with. The place was like the background for a Norman Rockwell painting—everywhere he looked there were Christmas lights, fragrant garlands of evergreen and shiny red, green and gold hanging balls. With the light layer of snow blanketing everything and the huge flakes drifting slowly from the sky, the town looked perfectly ideal.
What had surprised him almost as much as the fact that Tatum had chosen Sweetheart was the reason she’d moved here—to buy the only florist shop in town, Petals.
Try as he might, he couldn’t picture Tatum patiently arranging brightly colored flowers. She’d never been the overly romantic type.
But according to the info the Army had given him, she’d been doing it for about two years, using his insurance money to make the purchase.
One of the first things he’d done when he’d finally made contact was ensure no one would be able to come after her for that money. The company had paid out and the Army, who’d eventually known he was alive even if it had been several months later, had let them.
He’d been assured Tatum was protected. Surprisingly, he wasn’t the first soldier to rise from the dead.
The front door squealed, old wood against old wood, and Tatum slipped through the opening. The dress was gone, replaced by a dark pair of jeans, boots with tufts of fuzz shooting from the top and a heavy coat that enveloped her body, hiding everything else from him beneath a wall of shiny, quilted blue.
A plastic bag that most likely held her dress was draped over her arm. Another bag was slung over her shoulder, smacking against her thigh with every second step.
Her steps were deliberate and silent. She stopped several feet away from him. Evan felt the space between them like the gulf of a river, the swirl of their history, her anger and his hope threatening to pull them under if either of them tried to bridge the gap.
Snowflakes clung to her dark lashes, sparkling in the scattered light from the lamppost close by. She stared at him for several seconds before shaking her head. “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t stop long enough to figure that out, Tatum. The first chance I could, I hopped my bike and rode here.”
She sucked
