Her Firefighter SEAL by Anne Marsh

a dictionary of Girl, he’d bet it translated into “God, he’s such a man .” Reaching over, he tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear, then removed his fingers quickly before she could bite him or otherwise extract vengeance. Abbie was definitely more get even than cry over it. Will must have had his hands full.
    “Why?” Her feet tapped an impatient rhythm on the floorboard.
    He patted the steering wheel. “Because you stole my truck, and I needed to get it back?”
    She glared at him from her side of the truck. “It was a joke. You used to be able to take a joke.”
    “You’re mean.” And he didn’t mind. He definitely needed his head examined, although the military’s doctors had crawled all over him after Khost before clearing him to return to normal life.
    “You’d be an expert in that.” She laughed though, even as she reached out and swapped her coffee cup for his. He’d filled them both with decaf, so he settled for raising a brow and enjoying her laugh.
    For a while, they rode in silence, the dark forest flashing past outside the windows. Sunrise was still a good half hour away, and they’d be out on the lake before the sun got all the way up in the sky.
    “Was it bad?” She set his now-empty cup back in the cup holder while he wondered where she’d put all that coffee and if she knew that bathroom at the lake meant bush with a water view .
    “Was what bad?” He guided the truck off the highway and onto a dirt access road.
    “Khost,” she said simply.
    “It wasn’t a tropical vacation.” That usually shut people up.
    Of course, Abbie had to be difficult. Different. Dangerous , his head supplied. Because, yeah, she was definitely that. She curled up on his front seat and watched him from eyes that held plenty of her own pain. “I know that,” she said, a snap in her voice.
    “You want details?” He could hear the buzz of anger in his own voice. He wasn’t some kind of roadside accident to looky-loo at. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t think that was why Abbie had asked. He also didn’t want to burden her with those kinds of details.
    Three months as the insurgents’ house guest had beaten that shit out of him. Literally. The blast had caused the injury to his leg. Everything else... he wasn’t thinking about. What didn’t kill him, made him stronger, right? He ought to be made of Teflon or some kind of Ironman super-suit stuff, because his captors had done their best to kill him. The only reason why they hadn’t finished him with a knife to the throat, he suspected, had been because they were saving him. Either to trade for one of their own in US custody or for one of those gruesome beheading videos that rocked YouTube and the world.
    “I want to know you’re okay,” she said quietly. “The same way you want to hear I’m okay. That everything’s safe and fixed and that nothing bad is going to happen again.”
    “Are you okay?”
    She looked at him. “I will be.”
    “Me too,” he said, and for the first time, he meant it.
    She nodded and returned to staring out the window. The sky was turning a paler shade of charcoal somewhere over the mountains, the lake a flat, dark sheet of water. The sun would come up fast now, and there was no better place to watch the sunrise than from a boat.
    Throwing the truck into park, he gestured toward the rocky strip of sand. “ Voilà. ”
    “What is it with you and French stuff?”
    He could hear the smile in her voice, though, as she shrugged off her blanket and fumbled for the door. He didn’t bother answering, even though the answer was probably Because it makes you smile . She was already out and walking toward the boat pulled up on the shore. Her interest was a great start, but her bare feet were a problem. He needed to work on that.
    “Is this our ride?” She looked over at him and tapped on the aluminum hull of the boat. “She looks even more beat to hell than she did in high school.”
    Everybody was a