about pursuing the ranks into a true leadership role, but I bit the question back. “Tell me about your parents. You said your mom didn’t think you’d last this long?”
“She told me she’d be surprised if I lasted a year.” A fond smile touched his lips. “To be fair, though, the first year was fucking tough. After that, I think I just got used to being the misfit until they really needed someone to clean the fuck up.”
“How about your father?” I asked cautiously,
Lincoln sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t go off on me again. “I don’t know him. Mom raised me by herself.”
“She must have been one hell of a woman,” I said after pausing for a moment. “Want to tell me more about her?”
He nodded and continued to tell me about his mother and her secret passion for reading small-town romance novels. Strangely, I felt like I would have gotten along with her. I was sorry I hadn’t met her before she’d gotten sick.
Later on, after the fireworks display was over and the band had stopped playing, Lincoln and I headed back to his truck. Before we climbed in, he came to stand in front of me and brought his enormous hands to my face.
“Thank you for a really memorable fourth of July,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget this one.”
“I won’t either.” It had been too memorable in too many ways to forget anything about it. Not least of which was the moment we were in right then.
Lincoln’s eyes darted from mine to my lips, his pupils dilating as he leaned forward. His thumbs stroked my cheekbones, his gaze lingering on my mouth before he dragged it back up to mine.
Time slowed. It was as if we were about to have our first kiss. That same anticipation and exhilaration rushed through my veins, but it was more than just that.
He lowered his head until there was only a fraction of an inch separating his lips from mine. His breath fanned my face, smelling sweet from the ice-cream cone he’d just devoured on our way back to the parking lot.
My heart pounded. Every nerve ending came to life and hummed with the anticipation of feeling his lips pressed against mine once again.
My eyes closed. My breathing sped up. Linc’s breaths mingled with mine. When he leaned in to close the last bit of space between us, I realized what was different about the kiss.
In the past when I’d kissed him, I knew I liked him and was having fun with him. But this time when his soft lips touched mine and he kissed me like the music had started to play, I knew I more than just liked him.
I wasn’t just falling for him, either.
I fell.
Right there in the glow of the old streetlamp in the parking lot at the boardwalk I’d visited a million times before, I stopped falling.
It was no longer in progress.
Right then and there, I fell for Lincoln Dobbs.
A soldier.
A SEAL.
A man whose fate was in my father’s hands.
Dear Lord, please let this not have been the dumbest darn thing I’ve done.
Chapter 29
Lincoln
“Dobbs?” an unfamiliar voice asked when I answered my phone.
I sat up in bed, blinking against the harsh rays of sun streaming in through the bedroom window. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I glanced down at the clock on the nightstand, then nearly passed right the fuck out again when I saw it was nearing noon. No wonder it’s so damn bright out.
I hadn’t slept this late in years, but I couldn’t deny that I also felt properly rested for the first time in years. Sofia wasn’t with me, but we’d talked on the phone late into the night.
After I’d dropped her off at her house, she’d asked me to call her when I got back to the house. I did, but instead of it just being a quick call to let her know I’d made it back, it had turned into a three-hour-long conversation.
It had started because I’d pointed out how ridiculous it was that she insisted I call her to let her know I was safe but had then evolved into a continuing of the conversation we’d had on the beach. We’d talked about her studies, why I loved my job, my mom and hers, and a thousand little uninteresting things that, for some reason, I couldn’t get enough of when it came to her.
A stupid, goofy smile that I was relieved as fuck no one