Honourable Intentions

“And I don’t remember you being this defensive.”

Toe to toe, she stood him down. “I may not have the Renshaw portfolio and political connections, but I work hard to provide for my son, and I happen to think I’m doing a damn fine job.”

Her anger and frustration pumped adrenaline through her, her nerves tingling with a hyper-awareness of Hank until she realized… He still had his hand on top of hers. Skin to skin, his warmth seeped into the icy fear that had chilled her for so long she worried nothing would chase it away. Her exhausted body crackled with memories and heated with something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Desire.

An answering flame heated in Hank’s eyes a second before his expression went neutral. “Did you mean what you said about being hungry? Let me order us some dinner to make up for being rude.”

“Dinner? With you?” She hadn’t shared a meal with him since two days before he’d left for his deployment.

Since the night she’d kissed Hank Renshaw.

Two

Hank saw the memory of that one kiss reflected in Gabrielle’s eyes. One moment of weakness that dogged him with guilt to this day.

She’d driven up to his base in Bossier City to say goodbye to Kevin before their deployment. The three of them had planned to go out to lunch together. But at the last minute, she had an argument with Kevin and he stood her up. Hank had bought her burgers and listened while she poured her heart out. He’d held strong until she started crying, then he’d hugged her and…

Damn it. He still didn’t know who’d kissed whom first, but he blamed himself. Honor dictated he owed Kevin better this time.

Furrows trenched deeper into Gabrielle’s forehead. “You plan to order dinner, in the middle of Mardi Gras?”

“Or we can leave and eat somewhere else. There’s got to be a back entrance to this building.” He kept talking to keep her from booting him out on his butt. “We can pack up the kid and go someplace quiet. It’s not like he’ll be able to sleep with all that Mardi Gras racket.”

“This area’s rarely quiet. He’s used to it.”

“Then, I’ll order something in.” He tossed his jacket back over the chair.

“Which brings us back to my original question. Who’s going to deliver here? Now?”

He didn’t bother answering the obvious.

She sighed. “Renshaw influence.”

Influence? An understatement. But making use of it now was a rare perk in the weight of being a Renshaw.

“I guess even I would deliver a meal in this mayhem if someone paid me enough.” She held up both hands fast. “But you’re leaving.”

He pulled out his iPhone as if she hadn’t spoken. “What do you want to eat? Come on. I’ve been overseas eating crappy mess hall food and M.R.E.s for a year. Pick something fast and don’t bother saying no. You’re hungry. I’m hungry. Why argue?”

Hugging herself, she stared back at him, indecision shifting through her eyes. She was stubborn and determined, but then so was he. So he stood and waited her out.

Finally, she nodded, seeming to relax that steely spine at least a little. “Something simple, not spicy.”

“No spices? In New Orleans.”

She laughed and the sweet sound of it sliced right through him as it had before. He’d deluded himself into thinking his memory had exaggerated his reaction to her. And yet here he stood, totally hooked in by the sound of her laughter. Whatever she wanted, he would make it happen. He thumbed the number for a local French restaurant his stepmother frequented and rattled off his order from the five-star establishment. His dad’s new wife brought hefty political weight to the family. And politicians needed privacy.

Order complete, he thumbed the phone off. “Done. They’ll be downstairs in a half hour.”

She placed her hands over his jacket on the chair, her fingers curling into the leather. “Thank you, this really is thoughtful.”

“So I’m forgiven for my question about Max’s father?” The answer was important. Too much so. Jazz music, cheers and air horns blared from below, filling the heavy silence.

“Forgiven.” She nodded tightly, her fingers digging deeper into the coat. “You’re a good man. I know that. You’re just stubborn and a little pushy.”

“I’m a lot pushy.” The only way to forge his own path in a strong-willed family full of overachievers. “But you’re hungry and tired, so let me take charge for a while.”

“Look that good do I?” She rolled her eyes as she walked past him and dropped into an overstuffed chair.

Curled up with her long legs tucked under her, she looked… beautiful, vulnerable. He wanted to kiss her and wrap her in silk all at the same time, which she’d already made clear she didn’t want from him.

So he would settle for getting her fed, and hopefully along the way, figure out why she had dark circles under her eyes that seemed deeper than from a lack of sleep. He crouched in front of her. “You look like a new mom who hasn’t been getting much rest.”

And she looked like a woman still in mourning.

Her eyes stayed on the nursery nook, the crib a shadowy outline behind the mosquito net privacy curtain. “He has to eat more often, smaller meals to keep down any food at all.”

There was no missing the pain and fear in her voice. Right now it wasn’t about him. Or even Kevin. It was about her kid. “When was the problem diagnosed?”

“At his six-week checkup we suspected something wasn’t right.” She adjusted a framed photo, the newborn kind of scrunch-faced kid with a blue stocking cap. “He wasn’t gaining weight the way he should. By two months, the doctors knew for sure. Since then, it’s been a balancing act, trying to get him stronger for surgery, but knowing he can only thrive so much without the operation.”

With every word she said, he became more convinced driving here had been the right thing to do. She needed him.

“That has to be scary to face alone. Is your family flying out?”

“They came over when he was born. There’s only so much time they can take off from work, especially since I live so far away.” She set the photo down and crossed her arms again, closed up tight. “They offered to let me live at home, but I need to finish school. We’re settled in a routine here with our doctors and my job.”

“How do you hold down a job, go to school and take care of a baby?”

“I do web design for corporations—something I can do from home.” She waved at the hutch in the corner. “Half my classes are online. Max spends very little time with a sitter, an older lady who works part-time at the antique store downstairs. She comes here to watch him when I’m away. I’m lucky.”

Lucky? A single mom running herself into the ground to care for a sick child considered herself lucky? Or just so damn independent she refused to admit she was in over her head?

“What about Kevin’s family? Are they helping?”

Her chin thrust out. “They don’t want anything to do with Max. They say he’s too painful a reminder of their son.”

Hank should have figured as much. The one time he’d met Kevin’s family, they’d come across as self-absorbed, more into their vacation than their son. More likely they were ignoring Max because he interfered with their retirement plans. “At least Max has his father’s life insurance money.”

She stayed silent. Her fist unfurled to flick the gold fringe on a throw pillow.

Damn. He sat up straighter. “They did give him the money, right? Or at least some of it?”

“Kevin didn’t know Max existed.” She folded her hands carefully on her knees. “Kevin’s parents were listed as his beneficiaries.”

“I’ll speak to them. And if they don’t come through it shouldn’t take much to contest—”

“My son and I are getting along fine,” she interrupted. “We don’t need their money.”

Prideful? Needing to forge your own path? He understood that. Which made him the perfect person to help her. “You’re doing an admirable job by yourself. I didn’t mean to insinuate otherwise. I only meant that it can’t be easy.”

“That’s an understatement.” She smiled wryly.

“What about your parents?”

“Hello? I thought we already settled this. I’m fine.”

“No one should have to carry a load like this by themselves. I recall from Kevin that your parents are good people.” Although they lived an ocean away, in Germany.

“They are, and I did consider going home right after I found out I was pregnant. But I was already knee-deep in my graduate studies when I found out about Max. Sure, things are tight now, but I need to finish my degree, my best hope for providing a good future for my son.”

“About those dark circles… ?”

“I’ll sleep after Max has his surgery because he won’t be hungry all the time. He will feel happy, content… .” Unshed tears glinted in her eyes. “I have to believe he’ll be okay.”

Her tears undid him now just as much as they had a year ago. He shifted from the sofa to crouch in front of her. He took her hands in his, her soft hands that had once tunneled into his hair, then down to score his back. Except now those nails were chewed with worry.

And he had to fix that. He couldn’t let her go on this way alone with no one to help her. Staring at her bitten-off fingernails, he knew exactly what he had to do.

“That’s the reason you’re staying here rather than going to your parents, isn’t it? Once you found out he was sick, moving to another country… ”

“I couldn’t start the medical process over again and waste precious weeks, days even. We’re here, and we’ll get through it.”

He squeezed her hands. “But you don’t have to go through it alone. I’m on leave for the next two weeks. I’ll stay in New Orleans. I owe it to Kevin to be a stand-in father for Max.”

A stand-in father?

Gabrielle froze inside. Outside. She couldn’t move or speak. She’d barely gotten over the shock of Hank showing up here unannounced and now he’d said this? That he wanted to be some kind of replacement for Kevin with Max?

There had to be something else going on here. She’d heard of survivor’s guilt. That wasn’t healthy for him—or for her. “Hank, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here. But Max already has a father, and he’s dead.”

His grip tightened around hers, almost painful. “Believe me, I know that better than anyone else.” His throat moved in a slow swallow. “I was there.”

Oh, my God. “When he died?”

“Yeah… .” His grip loosened, his thumbs twitching along her palms.

His head dropped, and he looked down at their clasped hands, the strong column of his neck exposed. Her eyes held on the fade of his military cut. And strangely, she ached to touch him there, to stroke and comfort him. To hold on to him and let him hold on to her, too. They’d both suffered the loss of Kevin, and right now that pain linked them so tightly it brought the crippling ache rushing back full force.

Please, don’t let her reach for him, which would have her crying all over his chest. The hint of tears a minute ago had brought him here in front of her… and when she’d cried before, they’d betrayed a man they both cared so much about.

So she gathered her emotions in tight and focused on him, and what he was saying.

“I tried to call you afterward from overseas, a couple of times, but calls out were few and far between.”

“I got the messages,” she whispered.

He looked up fast. “And you didn’t write back? Email?”

His voice on those recordings had poured alcohol on her open grief. “It was too painful then.” And his presence now? She didn’t know what she was feeling. “I figured hearing my voice would hurt you as much as it hurt me to hear yours.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

His deep blue eyes held hers, waiting, asking. She didn’t have the answers and her life was scary enough just dealing with Max’s surgery. She looked down at their joined hands and, holy crap, how long had they been holding each other like that?

She snatched her arms back, crossing them over her chest. “What are we doing here, Hank? Are you here to pick up where we left off after that kiss, now that Kevin’s gone? Because you have to realize that was a mistake.”

A dark eyebrow slashed upward. “If you have to ask that, you don’t know me at all. I mean what I say. I just want to be here for Kevin’s kid.”

“But you didn’t know about Max when you arrived.” And why hadn’t she thought of that until now? “What are you doing here?”

He shoved to his feet and paced in the space she’d decorated with such hope and plans, a blend of her dual roots. Then she’d met Kevin and thought, finally, she had found roots of her own, a sense of belonging.

Hank’s powerful long legs ate up the one-room apartment quickly, back and forth in front of the nursery nook before pivoting hard to face her. “Kevin wanted me to deliver a message.”

“A message?” A burn prickled along her skin until the roots of her hair tingled.

“I meant it when I said I was with him when he died.” His body went taut, his shoulders bracing, broadening. “I was right beside him until the end.”

She eased to her feet, steeling herself for whatever he had to share, for words that could haul her back into the agony she’d felt when Kevin died, when she’d given birth to their child alone. “What did he say?”

“He said he forgave us.”

Three

Gabrielle looked every bit as stunned as he’d felt when Kevin said the words to him, that he forgave them. The memory blasted through him of that hellish night at the checkpoint when they’d been ambushed, the smell of gunfire and death. Then Kevin spoke and said the unthinkable.

That he knew Hank and Gabrielle had feelings for each other.

Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but no words came out. She pressed her palm to her lips, turning away.

He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her. Do something—since he couldn’t seem to scrounge up the right words. He wasn’t much of a warm and fuzzy guy. He was a man of action.

A squawk from behind him stopped him short.

“Max,” Gabrielle gasped, rushing past him.

She swept aside the gauzy curtain and lifted her son out. Damn, the boy was so tiny. Scary small. The enormity of that little being going under the knife stole his breath and raised every protective instinct all at once.

Cradling Max to her shoulder, she patted his back. “I need to feed and change him.”

“Yeah, okay. What do you need me to do to help? With all those nieces and nephews, I’m not totally inept.”

“Unless you’re lactating, I don’t think you can help with this.”

Lactating? Breast-feeding?

Ohhhh-kay. He grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. “I’ll wait downstairs for the delivery guy to bring supper.”

She bounced the baby gently on her shoulder, his whimpers growing louder, more insistent. “The back entrance is just at the other end of the garden alleyway. Take the keys off the tea cart on your way out.”

“Roger that. Wilco—” Will comply. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes or so.”

Pulling the door closed behind him, he stepped back into the waning Mardi Gras mayhem. The tail end of the parade blinked in the distance, the crowd following and dispersing. He scooped up a couple of strands of beads and a feathered mask that must have strayed over the gate. He wanted her out of here, somewhere safer. She had enough on her plate taking care of the little guy without worrying about someone scaling that fence one night.

He sidestepped the round iron table and chairs, decorated with a few potted plants and hanging ferns. Chick-pretty but not safe. He eyed the shadowy alleyway, not impressed with security. And he would damn well do something about it.

Reaching the back gate, he leaned against the brick wall to wait and fished out his phone. He thumbed through the directory until he landed on the name he needed. He hit Call. The youngest of his four stepbrothers worked renovations of historical landmark homes. Even a couple of foreign castles.

For right now, he would settle for something more local.

The ringing stopped.

“Hey there, stranger,” his stepbrother Jonah Landis answered from on location at heaven only knew where. Jonah’s projects spanned the globe. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks, good to be back.” Or rather it would be once he got some things straightened out. He needed to put to rest the feelings he had for Gabrielle and figure out a way out from under the guilt.

“How much longer until the base cuts you free for some vacation time?”

“Actually—” he crossed one loafer-clad foot over the other “—that’s what I’m calling you about. I’m visiting a friend in New Orleans, and I’m hoping you can hook me up with a place to stay.”

“What exactly are the parameters?”

Parameters? Privacy topped the list. His father was a retired general who’d been on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now served as a freelance military correspondent for a major cable network. His stepmom—Ginger Landis Renshaw—was a former secretary of state, now an ambassador.

He hadn’t grown up with that kind of influence. And even once his family stepped into the limelight, he’d lived a Spartan life, socking away most of his paychecks and investing well, very well. He could retire now, except that military calling to serve couldn’t be denied. Even his family didn’t know his full net worth. Only that his investments left him “comfortably” well off, enough to explain if he spent beyond a military paycheck.

Which he rarely did. But he needed something private. A place for Max to recover from his surgery, a place where Gabrielle would have help before she collapsed from trying to tackle everything on her own.

“Jonah, I seem to recall you were starting a renovation down here in New Orleans right before I deployed.”

“Right, a historic mansion in the garden district that got whacked by a hurricane. It’s an Italianate cast-iron galleried-style—”

“Right. I just need to know if it’s finished and if it has a security system.”

“Finished, security system installed last week, up for sale with bare bones furniture to help prospective buyers envision themselves living there.”

Sounded perfect. “Think you can pull it off the market for a couple of weeks?”

“Any reason you’re looking for a house rather than a hotel?”

“Hotels are noisy and nosey.”

“Fair enough. What’s mine is yours.”

“I mean this as a business transaction. I insist on paying.”

“Really, bro, we’re good.” Jonah paused for a second, the sound of sheets rustling and him speaking with his wife about going to the other room. “Seriously, though, why call me? Any of mom’s or the general’s people could have taken care of a low-profile place to stay.”

Truth was easy this time. “Ginger would have heard about it, whether from her people or the general. She would have questions… .”

“There’s a woman involved.” Jonah laughed softly.

No need denying that. And heaven forbid, he mention the baby and Grandma Ginger—his stepmom—would come running straight to New Orleans. “I want this to stay quiet for a while. The last thing I need is the press or our family breathing down my neck, not now.”

“Understood.” Of course he did. Jonah Landis’s wife had royal ties as the illegitimate daughter of a deposed king. Privacy was a valuable commodity in short supply for them. “I can have the Realtor bring you the keys now.”

“No need to disrupt anyone’s Mardi Gras. I’ll swing by tomorrow and get them myself.”

“Party on, then.”

“Thank you. I appreciate this.”

“We’re family, even if you hide out from the rest of us. Good to hear from you, bro.”

And they were. Even if by marriage. His dad and his second wife, Ginger, had built something together after both of their spouses died. Hank looked up the iron stairs at the closed door leading to Gabrielle’s apartment. She needed his help, just the way Ginger and Hank, Sr., had needed help with their kids. They’d turned to each other rather than go it alone. That’s what friends did for each other.

Whether Gabrielle wanted his help or not, he was all in.

Gabrielle yanked her clothes off fast and tossed them all in the bathroom laundry hamper. Her knee bumped the sink. She bit back a curse, hopping around on one foot and trying not to fall into the tub in the closet-size bathroom. Any minute now, Hank could walk back up with supper and she needed to clean up after feeding Max. No bachelor was going to want to hear about—or smell—baby puke.

She didn’t have time for a shower but at least she could splash some water on her face and change clothes. Not that she cared what she looked like around him. She was just excited over her first real meal with another adult since Max was born. Silly, selfish and she had to remember this wasn’t a real dinner date.

Just supper with an old, uh, friend?

Oh, God, she was a mess. She sagged back against the sink. No amount of face washing or hair brushing was going to change the fact that she was a single mom, who wore nursing bras and eau de baby. Nothing was going to change that. She didn’t want to change that, damn it.

Even if Kevin had somehow given her permission to fall for his best friend. The realization that he’d somehow known clawed at her already guilty conscience and made her feel like a huge fraud.

Frustrated and running out of time, she yanked on a pair of black stretch pants and tugged a long tank tee over her head. She grabbed a bottle of lavender spray she’d bought because it was supposed to be calming, soothing and she’d been searching for any help to relax her son.

Tonight, she needed some of that peace for herself. She spritzed her body fast, spraying an extra pump over her head and spinning to capture the drift. She scrubbed her hair back into a high ponytail just as she heard the front door open.

Time’s up.

Her stomach knotted.

There was no more dodging Hank, that long-ago kiss and the fact that somehow Kevin had found out. She’d hurt the man she’d promised to love for the rest of her life. She rammed the lavender bottle into the medicine cabinet and padded back out into the living room barefoot.

And the breath left her body. Hank stood in the doorway, shadows across his face. In his flight jacket and khakis, he could have been any military guy coming home with supper for his family. Yet even with the anonymity of the shadowy light, she would never for a moment mistake him for anyone but himself.

The light clink of silverware across the room broke the spell, and she looked over to find a private waiter setting up things for them. Hank held out a chair for her at her little table that had been transformed with silver, china and a single rose. This was a world away from the sandwich and milk she’d planned for herself.

Their waiter popped a wine bottle—the label touting a Bordeaux from St. Emilion.

She covered her glass, even though her mouth watered. “No, thank you. I’m a nursing mom.”

The waiter nodded and promptly switched to an exclusive bottled water as Hank took his seat across from her.

“Whatever that is smells amazing.” She plastered on a smile as the waiter served their meal, then quietly left. “I concede you’re the king of late-night takeout food. If that tastes even half as good as it smells, it’ll be heavenly.”

“So the little guy’s down for the count?” His eyes heated over her, briefly but unmistakably lingering on her legs.

Was his head tipping to catch her scent? She had to be mistaken, sleep deprived and hallucinating. And if she wasn’t, she needed to get her priorities in order. Max came first, and for him, she needed to eat and keep her strength up.

“Sorry about the wine but Max is nursing as well as bottle feeding.” With his digestive problems, he fed more often than she could keep up with, even expressing. But that was far more detail than she wanted to share with him. “He will sleep for another hour and a half.”