Dear Soldier: BBW Contemporary Romance

A BBW Billionaire Holiday Contemporary Romance

By Karina Ashe

***

To her I wasn’t billionaire Ian Keller, prodigal son and heir to one of the South’s largest real estate empires. No, to her I was just a soldier. And she thinks that to me she was just a woman, but she couldn’t be more wrong.

Now I’m back home and ready to face the sins of my past and reclaim my future, but none of my sacrifices will be worth it if she isn’t by my side.

There’s just one obstacle standing in my way. She thinks I’ve shared everything about myself in my letters, but I’ve been keeping a secret from her. A very big, very important secret.

And when this secret comes to light, both of our lives will change forever.

***

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July 3rd

Ian

Four years and not a thing has changed. It’s still the grandiose colonial on the hill with evergreen trim and a bright red door, surrounded by twenty acres of orchards, three ponds, and an ivy-covered stone wall that would seem more at home in the English countryside than the middle of Tennessee.

I don’t know why a part of me expected it to be different. The manor was the one thing in my childhood that was constant. Manicured lawns and groomed trees. Gardens overflowing with roses in summer and choked by barren, prickly stalks in winter. Rooms filled with family heirlooms and modern art, but no photographs.

Back then, I didn’t understand the true meaning of work. Still, I’d known pain, and the deep, all-consuming loneliness that this untouchable landscape seemed built to mock. I’d hoped that my father might change something when I left—that he’d be able to bury some of his guilt in his son’s absence, or at least would allow himself to grieve—but I knew even before I entered his office that he hadn’t.

My father’s eyes are glassy as he rises from the leather chair behind his ornate desk. It is strange seeing him again after so much time. He seems frailer. The lines in his face are deeper. And yet, despite the obvious difference in our ages, I see more of myself in him than I ever have before.

He hesitates when he reaches me. There is an awkward silence. Even when I was a child, we never hugged and rarely touched. “Ian,” he whispers, hand shaking as he pats my back. He wets his lips and opens his mouth, but says nothing. A moment later, he looks down.

It’s alright. I know what he wanted to tell me. I hadn’t expected to ever see him again, either.

He gestures to a familiar red-cushioned chair. “Sit.”

Briefly, I wonder if anyone else has sat in this chair in the past six years. I guess a few must’ve. He sometimes meets with business partners in this room, and I doubt he’d banished it only to bring it out of storage once I’d finally accepted his summons.

He paces in the narrow space between his chair and the marble fireplace as I take my seat. I regret holding onto my hatred for so long. Now, he’ll never believe it was my choice to come back because I wanted to see him.

Maybe I should try to make light of the situation. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”

I regret asking immediately. It’s too close to things I said in the past. Like after I crashed the Benz, or took a piss in the pool while he was meeting with a client, or when he caught me fucking his mistress on that very desk that once symbolized everything I hated about him so much.

My father winces. “No.”

A familiar silence settles between us. I don’t know how to break it, or how to mend all the wounds that were allowed to fester because of it.
I’m sorry
feels so trite after all this time, especially when it will be accompanied with
goodbye
.

Well, I suppose I should get on with it. “I met someone.”

My father stops mid-stride. “What do you mean?”

“A woman. While I was in the military.”

My father grits his jaw. “Alright. My original question still stands, what do you mean?”

Here we go
. “I mean that I love her. I’m going to marry her if she says yes.”

He frowns. It looks like the converging deep lines between his eyebrows will swallow his face. “How did you meet her?”

“She wrote me letters. I wrote back.”

“
You
wrote letters?”

“Yeah.” And I decide to tell him the whole story because a few minutes after I leave the room he’ll start running the background check. “It was part of some disciplinary thing. She tore down a few ROTC posters, and her punishment was me. Or maybe my punishment was her. Either way, it turned out for the best.”

“The best?” my father whispers. “I don’t understand—”

“Look, I know you’ve had me followed since I landed in New York, and I wanted you to hear this from me, not someone else. And also, I want to tell you that I’m not avoiding you. I’m done running.”

Briefly, his eyes soften. “Ian—”

“But I have to go. I’ve gotta catch a flight to Colorado.”

“What? No, you can’t leave. You just got here.”

I stand, sighing. “I know you don’t believe me. I mean, shit, what reason have I ever given you to trust my word? But I’ll be back in a few days, a week at most. And I’ll be bringing Lily with me.”

“Lily? That—that girl? That criminal?”

“A minor case of vandalism doesn’t make her a criminal. Pretty sure it’s common on college campuses. She just had the misfortune of getting caught”

“And now you’re making excuses for her? This woman you’ve communicated with primarily through letters. How many times have you—” his eyes go wide.

Oh shit. I was hoping he wouldn’t figure out this next part for another couple days at least.

“You haven’t been back in the states for four years. When did you meet her? Have you even—?” He glares at me until he finds the answer in my face. “Oh God. Ian, no.”

I start walking to the door. It’s easy. Only twelve steps.

“Ian, don’t you dare leave like this. Get back in here and explain yourself!”

I clench my hands into fists and take a deep breath.
He’s only worried about you. You dropped a lot of shit on him at once. You’re better than this, now. Calm down
. Slowly, I look over my shoulder back at him. “I love her.”

“This is insanity. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“No, I am. This is what I want.”

My father’s face crumbles. I feel something snap in my chest. My stoic father always seemed so untouchable.
Cruel
, I used to call it.
He’s an unforgiving bastard
. But that was just my naivety talking. My father wasn’t unfeeling. In fact, he felt a lot. Too much, some would say. I was a lot like him in that way. It was why we never got along.

“You’re doing this to hurt me,” he whispers.

My throat tightens. “No. I’m not.”

“You still…You still can’t forgive me…I’m so sorry.”

There was a time when a comment like that from him would have driven me into a rage. When I would have shouted back,
Why do you care what I think? When have you ever cared about what happens to me? Get out of my life!
Now, it just made me sad.

“I’m not mad at you anymore,” I tell him.

He gulps.

“I shouldn’t have been mad at you in the first place. You know what she said to me the day she died?”

My father’s face goes white.

“Forgive him. He loves you. We both do.”

My father shuts his eyes and covers his mouth with his left hand.

“That was her last request, and I was too full of anger to honor it.” I let out a long breath. “But better late than never, right? I’m sorry, dad. I shouldn’t have done any of those stupid things to hurt you, and I have no one to blame for what happened but myself.”

July 4th

Lily

I don’t usually dress up this much. I’m more of a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal. Sure, I own dresses and a few pairs of adorable shoes I can’t walk in. I’ve got hair gel in the back of my bathroom cabinet my sister’s stylist talked me into buying it about a year ago, and I’ve even tried using it once. Let’s just say that the product of my efforts wasn’t exactly professional and leave it at that.

Normally, I was okay with this. While I wasn’t raised in a barn, I liked barns. And I liked to think I rocked that girl-next-door look…if said girl owned a motorcycle and had a mane perpetually composed of one part wind-blown tresses and one part helmet hair. That was sexy, right? Usually I could convince myself it was. However, today was not a normal day, and when one of my oldest friends said she wanted to come over and make me look like a fairy tale princess, I’d said yes. Because, more than anything, I wanted to look special.

Just…not
this
special.

I look away from the mirror. “Kate, we gotta talk.”

“What?” she says, careful not to disturb the bobby pins sandwiched between her clenched teeth.

I sigh. How do you say
it looks like I’m trying to be every single 90’s Disney Princess simultaneously
nicely? “I feel like I’m trying too hard to impress him.”

Kate spits out the bobby pins and frowns. “What?”

Alright, time for a more direct approach. “You see this thing I’m in? It’s a ball gown. We’re meeting at a coffee shop that smells like patchouli.”

“So what?”

“
So
I’m going to be surrounded by chicks who have dreads, don’t wear bras, and don’t shave their pits.”

She winks. “Yeah, you’re gonna stand out.”

I point at the purple, frilly, wing-like…oh hell, I don’t even
know
what to call it…trailing from my shins. “No shit!”

“You’re like a mermaid.”

“I’m on land, Kate. Mermaids live in the water.”

She waves this observation off. “Then you’re a beached mermaid, and he’s the sexy soldier who will carry you back to sea!”

What reality was she living in?!?
I rub my temples. “Alright, I think I’ve identified the problem. Casual first dates do not require themes, especially when only one of the parties is aware that there is a theme. In fact, this is actually a really good way of ensuring there will be no future dates.”

She shakes her head wistfully. “I think I get it.”

“I really don’t. I don’t want him to take one look at me and think to himself,
beached mermaid
. Wait, scratch that. I don’t want him
ever
look at me and think—”

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Take a deep breath.”

“I’m breathing just fine.”

She rubs my shoulder and breathes into my ear with such exaggerated slowness that I start to feel lightheaded. “You’re just nervous.”

“Look, I’m
not
nervous! I just don’t want him to compare me to a fish!”

Kate kneels next to me and pulls me into a hug. “Yes, you are nervous.”

I scowl and continue, “A fish that’s flopping around on the ground and needs to be picked up and carried back to the ocean…Jesus, how do you even come up with these scenarios, Kate?”

Kate squeezes me harder. “It’s okay, Lily. On days as big as today, you’re supposed to be nervous.”

As she rocks me back and forth, I suddenly remember the
other
reason I let Kate come over. She’s the only one who thinks my correspondence with Ian is romantic. Everyone else thinks it’s a little fucked-up.

“I can’t believe you finally get to see him!” Kate continues. “And after all this time, he’s finally going to see you, too!”

So, yeah.
This
is why people think this thing I’ve got going on with Ian is messed-up. We’ve spent two years exchanging letters, chatting, and talking. We know pretty much everything there is to know about the other person…except what the other one looks like.