‘Excellent news,’ Angus said, his hand covering her breast and his thumb swiping her nipple. ‘I like being alone with you, sweetheart.’
Thadie saw the desire in his eyes and slowly kissed his mouth, falling into that space where nothing else existed, just him and her and a spectacular barrage of colours in the sky. Scared of the feelings rolling and rollicking inside her, she pulled away and pulled her hand across the surface of the flat sea.Take it down a notch, Le Roux.
‘You’ve met everyone important in my life—tell me about your family.’
Angus looked down at Thadie, caught off guard by the change of subject. He rarely spoke about his parents, and since he’d left the army few people made the connection between him and his father. He liked it that way, liked not being compared. ButThadie wasn’t just another acquaintance, and she had the right to know more than most.
‘My father is a general in the British Military, some would call him a legend. Colm Docherty?’
Thadie shrugged. ‘Sorry, my knowledge of military generals is lacking.’
Angus walked her into the shallows and then onto the sand. ‘Let’s sit,’ he suggested.
Thadie sat, the waves lapping their toes, her shoulder pressing into his.
‘My dad is an army guy, through and through. So were my grandfather, and great-grandfather. Each generation has climbed further up the chain of command than the one before,’ Angus explained.
‘You were in the army, right?’
He hesitated and he hoped it was too dark for her to notice. ‘I served,’ he said. ‘It was expected of me. I found out that I liked it, and I went on to join the SAS.’
‘They are the badasses, right?’
He smiled. Yeah, they were. ‘I loved being part of the unit. I reached the rank of lieutenant but over the next few years, I refused further offers of promotion. I didn’t want to sit behind a desk. I wanted to be with my guys, at the coalface. My father was not happy.’
He couldn’t believe that he was opening up, that the words were rolling out of him, a strange and unusual occurrence.
‘And by not happy I take it you mean that he was furious?’ Thadie asked.
‘Incandescently. He wanted me to shoot up the chain of command—being constantly promoted was what Dochertys did but I wanted to stay where I was, with my team,’ Angus stared out over the endless blue ocean, barely taking in the now darkisland in the distance. In daylight, it shimmered with various shades of verdant green.
This was so far from everything he knew and was familiar with. His office in London, his cold flat, the missions he undertook. And without warning, instead of the perfumed island air, he could smell the dust of the village, instead of the heat of the sun, he felt the heat of a rocket exploding in a building behind him.
He hadn’t had a flashback in years.
Thadie’s hand on his thigh, small but strong, pulled him back to the present. ‘Are you okay? You lost all colour in your face and your breathing started to hitch.’
Freaking marvellous.
‘Sorry, a memory steamrolled over me,’ he admitted.
Thadie’s eyebrows raised. ‘Of?’
He sighed and pulled up the hem of his shorts to show her the ugly scar. ‘My unit was in a firefight. I caught a bullet in my thigh, and I was evacuated out.’
She stared down at his leg. ‘I’ve always wondered how that happened. Can I touch it?’
He wanted to tell her that there wasn’t a place on his body off-limits to her, but nodded instead.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Thadie whispered, her long finger tracing the scar. Most women recoiled from the puckered skin, white and red in places, the ridges and dents, but Thadie touched it as if she were trying to absorb any residual pain. He watched her finger, fascinated and turned on. She lifted her eyes to meet his and he saw the warmth and empathy in hers. Thank God, because he couldn’t stand sympathy or, worse, pity. He’d never told anyone what came next...
‘My father came to visit me in hospital, the day after my last operation,’ Angus said, capturing her hand and holding it against his thigh. ‘He didn’t ask me how I was, whether I’dwalk again, anything to do with my injury or about the incident. He had clearance, he could’ve asked me anything about that skirmish, but he didn’t.’
He couldn’t look at her but concentrated on a crab scuttling across the sand and into the foam at the water’s edge. ‘All my father said was that I was up for promotion again and that if it took me nearly losing my leg to finally get me moving up the chain of command, he’d take it. Two of my best friends died in that ambush and he would’ve known that!’
Thadie’s eyes shimmered with emotion. ‘That’s so awful, Angus.’
‘At that moment I realised that I wasn’t a son to him, but a pawn to move about as he saw fit. I told him that if I couldn’t stay with my unit, and I couldn’t, I was leaving the army. He told me I was staying where I was. How he thought he’d keep me there against his will, goodness only knows. We had a shouting match in the hospital ward. I resigned the next day and within a year Docherty Security was up and running. And making money.’