ASantiniinLoveMelissa Schroeder (2 page)

Since he’d returned from deployment a month earlier, Dante had been invited over twice. The one thing he missed about his assignment to California was spending time in the kitchen watching his mother cook. A guy could only eat out so many times or eat sandwiches before he started to get sick of it.

He was halfway to the door when it opened and Jack stepped out. The Marine’s face was stamped with what Dante could only call regret.

“Hey, Dante,” he said. “I have some bad news.”

Crap. Hannah had promised fried catfish tonight. He’d been dying to taste it all day. The woman knew how to fry a fish better than his mother, although he kept that information to himself.

“Oh?”

“Hannah invited our new tenant next door to eat with us. I’m worried Hannah sees it as a set up.”

Hannah had a way of trying to fix him up with lots of her friends. It never worked, although he enjoyed spending time with interesting women. Most of them had been and all of them had been pleasant.

“But I still get catfish?”

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, but that means Hannah will be tossing hints all night.”

Dante smiled. “Dude, I’m a Marine. I can handle anything.”

Jack studied him then laughed again. “This might be fun to watch.”

They walked into the house together. The first thing that hit him was the splendid, salty smell of catfish frying. Damn, he loved a home-cooked meal, and he had loved fried catfish since he’d been in the third grade. That’s when his Dad had been stationed in North Carolina and he had his first taste of it.

Hannah’s massive dog Hercules, along with a retriever came running towards them. It wasn’t strange to see an extra pet. Hannah was a veterinarian and often had one or two extra pets around.

“Get a new dog?” he asked as he leaned down to give both dogs a few pats.

“No. That’s our neighbor’s.”

Then, Dante heard
that
voice. She was laughing as she said, “I don’t know about you, but I better get at least two good filets out of that bunch.”

It was the voice he hated, the one that had haunted his time at Annapolis. She had always been a pain in the ass, besting him in everything except the physical challenges. And she had not been that far behind him.

“It can’t be.”

“Is there something wrong?” Jack asked.

Dante didn’t answer. He followed the sound of female voices with Jack hard on his heels. As he stepped into the kitchen, he found her there. Leaning against the counter talking to Hannah as she fried up the catfish.

Madison Baker
.

“You,” he said, his voice filled with accusation.

She looked at him, then gave him that same smile. The one that didn’t reach her eyes and told her opponent they were about to die. Dante had always been convinced it was a smile she reserved for him.

“Yes, it’s me, Santini.”

Hannah turned around and looked at Baker, then at Dante. “Hey, Dante, I take it you two know each other?”

He nodded slowly, not taking his gaze from hers. “You could say that.”

“I beat Santini here for eighth spot on the top ten of our class.”

Jack clapped his hands together. “Well, if that doesn’t beat all. Wait until I talk to MJ about this.”

They were still locked in a stare down, when she broke first to smile at Jack. This time, it reached her eyes. She’d always had the most amazing blue-green eyes. He had seen them sparkle a time or two and always felt that weird shift in his blood—from irritation to blazing heat. All for a woman who pissed him off.

“Why would she care?” she asked.

“Oh, because she’s married to Dante’s cousin, Leo.”

“Small world,” she murmured.

“In the mood for a beer?” Jack asked as he made his way to the fridge.

“Sure,” he said, knowing it would calm his nerves. There was something else there, beneath the surface that he couldn’t put his mental finger on. It had always been like that with Baker. And she hadn’t changed, not really. Her hair was longer than she had kept it in college.

She was a bit shapelier, but that might have to do with age. It wasn’t like it looked bad. In fact, the loose fitting t-shirt and hip hugging jeans were perfect.

“What happened to all that golden blond hair, Santini? Did you quit bleaching it?”

“Naw, you know us Santinis. Our hair turns darker as we age. Like Elena’s.”

At the mention of his twin sister, she smiled. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of years.”

“All brunette now. She just got to Miramar.”

“Well, good for her. I’ll have to see if she wants to get together sometime,” she said, then looked at Hannah. “While Golden Boy here and I didn’t get along, Elena and I were best of friends. We roomed together.”

“So, are you stationed here at Pendleton?” he asked. “Last I heard you were headed to Afghanistan.”

And like that, the temperature in the kitchen dropped twenty degrees. The retriever slowly walked over to Baker’s side.

She ran her hand over his back. “No. I’m not in the Marines anymore.”

The answer wasn’t what he was expecting. He opened his mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but he was saved by Jack’s wife, Hannah.

“Dinner’s ready.”

CHAPTER TWO

A couple hours later and too much food in his stomach, Dante settled back in the overstuffed chair next to the couch. Dinner had been…interesting. After his initial misstep, things had picked up. Hannah had covered it easily, but it still bothered him. He might not like Madison that much, but he couldn’t forget the haunted look in her eyes.

It was a look he was getting damned sick of seeing from his friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, over a decade of being at war left military folks with too many memories and pain.

He shook those morbid thoughts away.

“So, what did I say wrong earlier?” Dante asked.

Hannah shifted in her seat and didn’t make eye contact with him. Jack looked at her, then at Dante.

“I would have thought you knew because Elena probably knows,” Jack said.

“Elena keeps her own secrets from me now and then.” And, she had been one of Baker’s best friends and her college roommate. Those two were always keeping each other’s secrets. Still, he thought for sure if something bad had happened, his twin would have told him.

“She was hit by a roadside bomb. In country for only three months,” Jack said.

For a second, he didn’t comprehend what Jack was saying. Then, the agitated state, the way she seemed to keep her eye on everyone as if waiting for an attack…that all spoke of hyper-vigilance. Dante had seen it enough with his friends and family. Hell, he had dealt with it himself. It all added up to PTSD, but a pretty extreme case of it.

“She didn’t look physically hurt,” he said, thinking out loud.

Hannah sighed and apparently decided to give up on keeping secrets. “She had injuries, but she deals with it.”

So, super cadet suffered from PTSD. It was always the anal types that seemed to take something like that the worst. Not that he thought he could probably do any better. A hit like that would be hard to take, and he had seen more than one friend struggle with that and worse memories when he or she returned.

As he had thought before, too damned often.

“And since there is a family connection, I thought you would have heard by now,” Hannah remarked, breaking into his thoughts.

“Because of Elena?”

Hannah shook her head.

“What do you mean?”

“Gee’s the one who dug her out. Kind of odd, all the connections,” Hannah murmured.

“He never said anything.” Of course, Dante had been avoiding that side of the family. All four of his cousins were happily married. That left Aunt Joey with nothing to do but focus on her nieces and nephews. His mother and Joey had been spending too much time on the phone talking about grandbabies. That spelled trouble for all of them in his opinion.

Then, something Hannah said caught his attention. “Wait. Did you say, dug her out?”

She nodded. “I don’t know the entire story, just bits and pieces. She doesn’t talk about it much, and I know better than to push too much.”

He knew Hannah was unfortunately accustomed to dealing with PTSD. Jack had issues with it he knew. Hell, he knew more of his active duty buddies who had it than those who didn’t.

“It must have been pretty rough,” he said.

Jack nodded. “I do know she was the only one who survived out of the unit.”

“Charlie is her companion dog, if you were wondering,” Hannah said.

He wasn’t but it made sense. From the moment he asked about her work, the retriever had been by her side. More than once, he had noticed that she would bend down to run her hand over the dog’s fur.

“So, she beat you out of the class standings?” Jack asked.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and man, that woman would never let me forget it.”

Elena ended up twenty places behind both of us, but damned if Baker had cared about that.

“She moved here not too long ago, and I met her through Charlie. He needed a vet. She teaches yoga now.”

Well, that explained the long, lean muscles. She had always been in good shape, but there was a glow about her now that attracted him more. She wasn’t so damned skinny now. While she was still slim, she had filled out in all the right places. It was hard to miss just how she filled out those jeans that had hugged her hips.

“Wonder how her father dealt with it?”

“Her father?”

“Yeah, her family went further back in the Marines than the Santinis. Only child turned out to be a girl, and he pushed her into the Marines from what Elena said. I met him a time or two.”

And he hadn’t been impressed. The man had been a cold fish. For a Santini, there was always a hug, even if they were getting yelled at or if they had been smacked upside the head. Her father—she barely had gotten a hello.

Hannah was apparently done talking about it. “So, have you talked to your Aunt Joey lately? I heard she and your mother have been busy chatting.”

“Aw, damn, not you too, Hannah. Can’t a guy get a break?” he asked, giving her his best smile.

Hannah was apparently immune to his charms. She shook her head. “Nope. Plus, I’m still kind of scared of her. I will be on the phone with her tomorrow because she’ll call. Can you throw the woman a bone? She wants to make sure you’re happy.”

“At least come up with some kind of story of a woman,” Jack suggested.

“I have prospects…one or two,” he said. And for some reason the image of a mouthy, long-legged brunette came to mind. “One in particular.”

Hannah looked like she wanted to ask who the woman was, but thankfully, Jack stepped in with work talk. Even as he tried to participate, his mind kept drifting back to Madison. He’d always found her attractive when she wasn’t talking.

Tonight, though, he had actually enjoyed watching her. In fact, once or twice that same laugh that had irritated him earlier had sent a dose of heat dancing through his blood.

With a mental sigh, Dante knew he would have to figure out just how he would deal with those odd feelings later.

* * * *

Madison took one large breath in before releasing it to stretch and relax into child’s pose. She listened to the soft music playing, and allowed everything she had been feeling since seeing Dante Santini to dissolve. The stress, the annoyance…the strange jump in heat that seemed to linger in her blood.

It had been a long and frightful night of strange dreams and night sweats. When she opened her eyes, she saw Charlie lying beside her, his head resting on his paws.

“Well, that helped.”

But she still felt a little buzzed. She didn’t understand it. Okay, she knew part of it was the attraction. Whenever it popped up in his presence, she always felt for the idiot. He would have never noticed her if she hadn’t been his sister’s bunkmate, and if she hadn’t kicked his ass on the rankings. But, just like all those years ago at Annapolis, she felt her pulse scramble each time he smiled in her direction. It had even been worse now. And, damn him, he looked better now. The jeans he had worn rode low on his trim hips. His hair was darker, and it brought out his eyes even more. Years ago, she had seen him in a bathing suit but he had been a young man. Madison was pretty sure the warrior she had met tonight would be a whole new level of sexy man meat.

She rolled her eyes. Great, now she was calling him
man meat
. Sadly, it was the first time in three years she’d had an inkling of a libido, and it had to be for the man who hated her.

She chugged some water when she noticed Charlie come to his feet. She felt relatively safe in this area of town, but his alertness sent some of her alarms up. Her heart pounded against her chest as she slowly surveyed the perimeter of her yard. She sensed something in Jack and Hannah’s yard.

Jack stepped out of the shadows, and she released the breath she had been holding.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

She drew in a deep breath and counted back from ten. It was one of the methods she had developed in the last few months that had seemed to help. It was simple, but it worked and that is all she cared about these days. Surviving.

“No worries. I usually don’t have to worry about an audience this time of night.”

They both walked over to the fence.

“I had no idea you knew Dante.”

She smiled. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he’d like to forget about knowing me, but it was hard since Elena and I roomed together. Plus, there weren’t that many women I could get along with, so we kind of clicked. Being both Marine brats—and everyone at the academy knew of the Santinis—we sort of knew how to roll with the punches there.”

He nodded.

“Thank you again for checking on me.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

She laughed. “Oh, Jack, Hannah is a very lucky woman. Not only are you a sweet, sexy man, you also can’t lie. I know you keep an eye on me.”

It was dark out, but she was pretty sure he blushed. Hannah definitely was lucky. Since she’d moved in, Jack came up with all kinds of reasons to pop over. Each time, she knew he was making sure she was okay. If it wasn’t so sweet, she would be irritated. But how could she get a mad a man who was looking out for her at the request of his wife? It was, well, sweet in a way.