Only You (11 page)
Barrett hummed low in his chest and shifted to rest his head on Nick’s shoulder. “Think he’ll find what he’s looking for?”
“He’ll find something,” Nick said after thinking it over. “Whether it’s what he wants or not…no way to tell.”
“If there’s any justice in this world, he’ll find what he’s been hoping for,” Barrett said, firmly decided. “And I think I might believe in justice a bit more than I used to.” He set his teeth over Nick’s mark for a half-second. Long enough to make
his
point, too.
Nick took Barrett’s hand and laced their fingers together. “I’m considering that a promise and an IOU. Just so you know.”
“Good. Because that’s what I meant for it to be,” Barrett said. “We’ve got guests to take care of, but as soon as they’re gone? You’re mine.”
And always will be
, Nick thought, winding his arm through Barrett’s. Now, and forever after made for and matched to one another. No more worries.
Only me. Only you.
Coming Soon from Totally Bound Publishing:
Soulmarked: Handle With Care
Willa Okati
Released 25
th
July 2014
Excerpt
Chapter One
“Jesse? Someone’s here to see you.”
Jesse eased a heavy keg of Guinness onto the stone cobbles next to the old brewery wall before he glanced up. Cade stood at the far end, wiping wet hands on his sturdy green waist apron as he unwound its drawstrings. He wasn’t the regular bartender, but had come to fill in for a week while the Hart and Hound’s owner, Helena, took her vacation time. She’d promised Jesse he could trust Cade, but Jesse hadn’t made up his mind about that yet. “Say again?”
Cade motioned backward. “Someone in the bar said he wants to see you.”
Jesse didn’t move. Yet. He’d dropped into a crouch to settle the keg where it needed to go, and his arms ached from the strain of lifting it, wood and steel hoops and all. They didn’t do pretenders or knockoffs at the Hart and Hound in Folly’s Bow. Good plain beer, plain folks, and a plain town where they looked out for their own.
He wasn’t one of their own, but they’d let him in anyway. “Did you recognize him?”
“Nobody I’ve ever met. Says he’s a friend of yours.” Cade dropped the damp apron into a wheeled bin and fetched a clean replacement from the shelf by the door that led around to the pub proper. He was the kind of guy who crackled with life and energy even when standing still, and it made Jesse miss Helena. She got the job done with no muss and no fuss. Tired eyes, tired smile, kind heart. No questions asked of a man who’d gone to war and come back with more scars than skin, jumping at shadows. She’d given Jesse a job in the back of the tavern when her brother, his old buddy, had asked it of her.
Jesse didn’t have sisters. Helena made him wish that’d been different.
Thoughtful, he reached out to rumple one of Dog’s silky-soft red ears. The big wolfhound-setter mix didn’t wake up, but his long fringed tail swept the cobblestones with a happy
thump-thump-thump
. A headache that’d been building for the past few hours, gathering weight and strength behind Jesse’s eyes, made thinking harder than it should be. Than he remembered it used to be.
Petting Dog helped, usually. God, but he’d grown. Seemed like yesterday he’d fished a puppy out of the dumpster where he’d heard it crying. Good thing, too. He and Dog had saved each other’s lives. Helena called him a service dog to get around the rules for having animals in the tavern.
Jesse stroked the gentle slope of Dog’s back now, grounding himself. Strangers didn’t come looking for Jesse. Everyone who mattered—for now—already knew him. Maybe. He forgot, sometimes. Both things and people. “Should I look and see if I recognize him?”
“If you want,” Cade said with a casual shrug. He kept one eye on Jesse while he tied a knot in his new apron and stepped to one side, nodding at the door. “If you go just far enough to peek through the galley window, you’ll see him. He’s with that big group from the road crew.”
Jesse knew most of the road crew by sight. Decent guys, most of them. Rough around the edges but they wouldn’t hurt a fly, and they liked Dog. He patted Dog’s neck and murmured, “Stay.”
Dog yawned.
Cade laughed. Too loudly, but he meant well. “Somebody’s got to teach that hound how to relax,” he said as he crossed paths with Jesse and knelt by the big dog’s head, rumpling his ears. “Go on. I’ve got him.”
Jesse thought Helena must have given Cade the rundown on how to treat him.
Handle with care
. He’d be humiliated if he wasn’t grateful. He nodded a clumsy thanks to Cade as he slipped past him.
It wasn’t often that Jesse ventured even so far as the Hart and Hound’s kitchen. He wasn’t good with crowds, either, but as long as he stayed as far back from the noise and lights of the colonial-era tavern, he managed. It wasn’t far. No one saw him except the short order cook who did the burgers to go with the beers, a small man who shot Jesse one incurious glance, shrugged and visibly dismissed him.
The stranger amongst the road crew had settled himself at a good angle to be seen through the galley window. Smallish for a guy, but wiry. Dark hair, so dark it nearly shined blue under the low lights. Tanned from hard work.
He should be pale, Jesse thought.
Clear as moonlight
.
Why did I think that? I—
A throb of not-quite-pain, more than discomfort, pounded its fists behind Jesse’s left eye. He hissed and pressed the heel of his hand over that eye to block the light. It’d kept him awake the night before, and surfaced at the worst times during the day. Though given how mixed-up his body signals were after taking that lot of shrapnel, it might not have been pain at all. Might have been some sensation he no longer understood. “I don’t recognize him,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Cade said, approaching from the right side. “If you were hurting, you should have said.”
Jesse massaged his forehead, raised one shoulder, and said nothing. His wrist gave a twinge. Must have pulled it manhandling that keg. He chafed at the joint and shook his head.
Words wouldn’t come, but Cade understood him all the same.
“Don’t be a noble idiot, huh?” Cade scolded, kindly enough. As if Jesse were his brother. “There’s no need to suffer when you don’t have to, you know. Take some aspirin, take Dog, and get on home. Ah-ah-ah. Not a word.” He pointed firmly at the door. “I’ll tell whoever he is that you’re not selling what he’s buying, but don’t you worry about it. Understand?”
* * * *
“Whose round is it?”
“Not mine,” Daniel said, pushing the crew foreman’s shoulder as he leaned back in his chair. He’d worked two weeks for the man, and though he wouldn’t have said they were friends, they got along well enough. Good thing, too, in case he needed a full-time job out here in the future. “I’ll get the next one.”
The foreman rolled his eyes. “You’ve got balls, kid, I’ll give you that.” He dug for his wallet, and forgot all about Daniel between one breath and the next.
Good. Daniel had other things on his mind. He tilted his head, fixing the galley window in his line of vision, hoping for just one more look.
Jesse. It had been him, after all. Daniel would have staked his life on it.
He’d changed, though. More so than the picture showed, the one he’d gotten from Jesse’s old war buddy. Well, he would have. They were teenagers the last time—the only time—they’d met face-to-face. Jesse was taller, for one thing. Thinner, too, and he’d been a gawky eighteen-year-old back then. He’d grown his hair out to nearly shoulder-length, but it was still all the colors of autumn, brown and red and gold, and no one could mistake that nose.
Jesse. Mine. My soulmate. My Jesse.
Scarred. Daniel hadn’t gotten much detail from the picture or from the passing glance, but he’d seen the pale lightning-bolt lines on the side of Jesse’s face. Shrapnel, the letter had said. That, and a warning not to let it put him off. It didn’t.
Could have been worse. Though how so, Daniel would be hard put to say.
One look at him, and Jesse had ducked out of the galley window as if he were on fire. Daniel hadn’t come to the Hart and Hound expecting a bear hug and a kiss hello. Still, it stung. More than stung, and the worst part was Daniel didn’t understand it. In his pocket, the letter from Jesse’s war buddy crinkled when he shifted his weight. Daniel had read it more times than he could count. Worn the paper almost tissue-soft, thin. He’d put it in a new envelope, one with corners still sharp and neat.
Were the scars why Jesse didn’t want Daniel to see him? Daniel frowned as he looked at his hands. He had scars, himself. Years and years’ worth of nicks and scrapes from working road crews and construction. His skin had grown weathered from his constant, careless exposure to the sun and wind, thinking it didn’t matter. Back then, he’d believed that the single letter his teenaged self had gotten from overseas wasn’t a mistake. That Jesse had been killed in action, and wouldn’t go to college after all. Daniel had decided he wouldn’t, either.
Had that first letter truly been a mistake? Daniel didn’t know that either. He hadn’t been able to find out. He and Jesse weren’t legally bonded. Weren’t really even soulmates. Not without a mark.
I should have kissed him like I wanted to, back in that diner. I think he might have wanted me to. Maybe then…
The guys he’d come with, all of them road crew—some still in their vests and dust-choked canvas trousers—raised a ragged cheer at the sight of beer approaching. Daniel chuckled, amused by their enthusiasm, and absently rubbed at his wrist. They’d had him on a Bobcat earlier, proving his worth, and the levers had stuck, but he didn’t mind. Come what may, he wouldn’t be sorry he’d picked this part of the path for his life. Good men. Plain men. All mouth, all heart.
“Keep those hands to yourself,” their waiter scolded, flicking one man’s ear. “If you’re interested, you ask like a gentleman.”
“What’d happen if I did?” the crewman asked, his grin wide and playful. Just pulling pigtails, both of them.
“Then I’d shut you down like a locked box,” the waiter shot back. He winked, to take the sting out of it, and the road crew whistled and catcalled in appreciation.
He’d been the one Daniel had chosen to ask to pass word to Jesse. He hadn’t been sure the guy would do it. Not even a little, until he’d seen Jesse peeking out at him.
Had Jesse sent any message in return? That was the question. Daniel waited as patiently as he could, watching the waiter pass pint glasses around until he got to the last. To him. Then he couldn’t help it. He looked up at the man as he took the glass, knowing hope betrayed itself in his eyes.
At least the waiter didn’t pull his punches. “Says he doesn’t know you, friend,” he said, tucking his tray under one arm. “Nice try, though.”
“But—” Daniel sat up straighter, frowning. He’d seen Jesse looking at him. And the way he’d reacted, surely…
The waiter patted his shoulder amid the razzing from the road crew, who were decent men but liked a good joke as much as anyone else. “Better luck next time. Anybody want anything else?”
About the Author
Willa Okati can most often be found muttering to herself over a keyboard, plugged into her iPod and breaking between paragraphs to play air drums. In her spare time (the odd ten minutes or so per day she’s not writing) she’s teaching herself to play the penny whistle.
Willa has forty-plus separate tattoos and yearns for a full body suit of ink. She walks around in a haze of story ideas, dreaming of tales yet to be told. She drinks an alarming amount of coffee for someone generally perceived to be mellow.
Email:
[email protected]
Willa loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at
http://www.totallybound.com
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