An Officer And A Millionaire

“Can take the man out of the Navy, huh?” Kane Hackett said with a grin. “Figured I’d find you out here running. You always did like this road for training.”

Hunter kept going, sparing his old friend a derisive glance. “And it figures that you’re driving the road, not running it. Out of shape, are we?”

One dark eyebrow winged up. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Have to go see Simon,” Kane said, his smile fading into a worried frown. “Figured it’d be best if you were with me when I did.”

That got Hunter’s attention. He stopped running, bent in half and took a few deep breaths before asking, “What’s going on?”

“There was a fire at the Cabot building in town last night,” Kane said.

“Fire?” Hunter grabbed the edge of the car window. “Anyone hurt?”

“No.” Kane shook his head. “The night cleaning crew went in; apparently one of ’em turned on a stove in the break room to make some tea. Left a towel too close to the burner.”

“Damn it.”

“That about covers it.” Kane waved him over to the passenger side door. “There’s damage to the first two floors, though, and I thought, well, Simon had the heart attack last year-”

Hunter was already moving. He climbed into the black-and-white SUV, buckled his seat belt and told his friend to drive.

“Well, how bad is it?” Simon wanted to know an hour later. The old man wore a faded blue robe, and his white hair was standing out around his head like cotton swabs on end.

“Kane took me by to see it for myself before he brought me back here to tell you,” Hunter said, remembering that Kane had left right after delivering the news, leaving it up to Hunter and Margie to watch out for Simon’s blood pressure.

Now as Margie poured Simon’s coffee, Hunter watched his grandfather warily for any sign the old man was going to clutch his chest and drop like a rock.

“And…?” Not dropping. Instead, the old man wanted answers, not coddling.

Hunter gave him a wry grin. Apparently, Simon was a lot tougher than any of them knew. “And, it’s a mess. The fire chief says no structural damage, but there’s plenty of smoke and water damage to make up for it. Most of the files are on the upper floors, so that’s good. We didn’t lose much.”

One corner of Simon’s mouth tilted upward. “No,” he said slowly, “I guess we didn’t.”

“Simon…” Hunter sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Freudian slip, huh?” Simon looked pretty pleased for a man who’d just been told his company headquarters had nearly burned down.

Hunter hadn’t meant “we” the way Simon had taken it. After all, the company wasn’t his baby. He was a SEAL. But touring through the damaged building with Kane at his side, Hunter had actually caught himself thinking about the reconstruction. And what changes might be made. After all, if they were going to have to do some remodeling, there was no reason they couldn’t do some updating as well.

Such as, for instance, making the break room larger. The area was so small now that it would comfortably hold only two or three people. The day care center Margie had instituted also had been ruined, since the room set aside for it was on the ground floor. Now that they were redoing it, he thought they should make it more kid friendly than the old room had been.

And the workers’ cubicles that were now twisted and melted should simply be tossed. Why lock people away into separate little stalls? It’s not as if cubicles gave people the sense of having their own little offices. All they really did was separate them from their coworkers, and what was the point in that?

“Hunter?” Simon prodded, “What’re you thinking?”

What was he thinking? Scraping one hand across the top of his head, Hunter muttered, “Nothing. No thanks, Margie. No coffee.” He put out one hand to stop the cup she held out to him. “All I want now is a shower.”

Then he left the room fast before his own thoughts could start marching in time with Simon’s.

“Well, well, well. Did you hear him?” Simon chuckled and took a sip of coffee that was mostly 2 percent milk.

“He doesn’t want to stay, Simon,” Margie told him. “Nothing you can say will change his mind. You know that.”

The old man’s white eyebrows lifted high on his forehead and wiggled around like two worms on hooks. “It’s not what I can say that’ll keep him here, Margie, honey-it’s you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re looking back.”

“Simon, don’t play Cupid,” she warned, not wanting the man she loved like a grandfather to be as heartbroken as she was going to be when this all ended.

He only chuckled again. “You’ll see…”

She sighed, took a sip of her own coffee and slumped back into the chair closest to Simon’s. Margie had seen the hunted expression in Hunter’s eyes before he left the room and knew that he was already regretting getting as involved as he had in the fire investigation. He didn’t want the life that was waiting for him here in Springville.

He didn’t want her.

Not beyond the tumbled hours they spent together in his bed, anyway. There at least, she knew he wanted her. Felt it in his every touch, his kiss. In the way he held her during the night and the way he turned to her when nightmares plagued him. But she also knew that at the end of the month, he would leave and let her walk out of his life.

Just acknowledging that sent a spear of pain darting through her heart, and Margie didn’t know how she would survive when that pain was her constant companion.

Eight

Hunter didn’t mind helping out, he told himself a few days later. After all, he was here, wasn’t he? And there was just so damn much to do. There was the construction at the company headquarters to look after, and there was Simon’s birthday party. Since Margie couldn’t really be expected to do it all, and since he didn’t have a clue about how to arrange a blowout party, Hunter had taken over the work on the building in town.

He met with the contractor, talked to the employees to get their ideas and helped to draw up plans for the remodeling. Now, sitting in Simon’s study, with blueprints spread out in front of him on the desk, he asked himself how he’d managed to get sucked so far into the life of the town.

His grandfather was upstairs, taking a nap, Margie was off in the kitchen talking to Simon’s cook about the caterer’s party menus and Hunter was sitting behind the very desk he’d spent most of his life avoiding.

“So, how’d you get here?” he muttered and poured himself a glass of scotch.

“We turned left into that freeway out front you call a driveway,” a familiar voice said, answering the rhetorical question Hunter had posed.

“As long as you’re pourin’, brudda,” another voice told him, “get two more glasses out.”

Only one man Hunter knew used island slang in every conversation just to make sure people knew he was a proud, full-blooded Hawaiian. Hunter was grinning as he stood up to face two members of his SEAL team. Jack Thorne, “JT,” his team leader, and Danny “Hula” Akiona were standing in the open doorway of the study.

“Where’d you guys come from?” Hunter asked as he came around the desk, hand out to welcome his friends.

JT was tall and blond with sharp blue eyes that never missed anything. Hula was just as tall, with black hair, black eyes and a smart-ass outlook on life. Damn, Hunter’d missed them both.

“We were on our way up to Frisco for a little R and R,” Hula was saying. “Thought we’d stop and see how you