She sounded shocked and not happy about it in the least. What in the world was Richard doing here? But would she finally break it off with him?
Chapter 7
Sierra couldn’t believe her boyfriend, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Wentworth, or the ex—because that was just what he was about to be—had shown up unexpectedly on her front porch all the way from Fort Hood, Texas, without letting her know. Was he crazy? What if she’d been out of town or not home? And she wouldn’t have been here if she hadn’t gotten bored being by herself on South Padre Island.
Or—she glanced back at a very underdressed Adam—had been entertaining a bachelor male wolf, no matter how innocent the situation was.
“The boyfriend,” she whispered to Adam, not having opened the door yet to let Richard in. “Uh, ex, as soon as I tell him the news.”
“Good.” Adam continued to eat his steak as if the news that her boyfriend was standing on her front porch didn’t alarm him. Wolves could be territorial and confrontational over something like that. And she suspected if she had any trouble with Richard, Adam would take him to task, if she didn’t.
Sierra sighed. She wasn’t sure how Richard was going to take this, not that she should care how he felt after what he’d put her through. She was calling it quits with him. No backing down on it.
She opened the door and gave Richard an annoyed look. She couldn’t muster a smile for him for anything. His blond hair was cut military short, his blue eyes all-assessing as he smelled the air and she knew he smelled Adam’s scent in the house. Richard was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, a rain jacket, and loafers. He looked relaxed as if he had nothing to worry about as far as their relationship went.
“Why in the world are you here? You never even answered my texts or called back after all the phone messages I left.” She just couldn’t believe it. Unless he thought the only way he could salvage their relationship was to come here. He sure didn’t look like he was glad to see her or even itching to kiss her or do anything with her that would show he really, really wanted to prove she shouldn’t want to dump his butt.
Richard looked over her shoulder and saw Adam raise a glass of wine to him, his chest and lower legs and feet bare, candles lighting the bar, setting the stage for a perfectly intimate evening.
“It looks like I’m a little late to the party.” Richard didn’t sound like he had anything to be concerned about.
Maybe he figured she wouldn’t do that to him unless she’d called it quits first, and she hadn’t, not in any emails or texts or phone messages.
He came inside and dropped his black bag on the floor like he planned on staying a while, despite it looking like she already had a new boyfriend and Richard was on the outs. Richard took off his rain jacket and handed it to her, then closed the door behind him.
Okay, so they needed to talk before she sent him packing anyway. No matter what, he wasn’t staying the night with her, and he would have to get his own transportation to a hotel and then to the airport whenever he could get a flight out. She wasn’t going to do anything for him, just like he hadn’t taken the time to pick her up from the airport when she’d visited either.
She’d told herself his actions had been a passive-aggressive reaction on his part, annoyed that she’d retired from the military and had moved out of state and wasn’t still available to date just any old time he wanted to get together with her.
She hung his wet jacket on a coatrack. “Richard, this is Police Detective Adam Holmes with the Portland Police Bureau. Adam, this is Lieutenant Colonel Richard Wentworth, infantry officer at Fort Hood, Texas.”
“Her boyfriend,” Richard added, in case Adam needed to know that.
So her ex-boyfriend was annoyed at seeing Adam sitting there with barely any clothes on, eating a steak dinner and having wine with her after all, not to mention the candles all lit on the counter, making it look like more than just a dinner together. Richard didn’t even kiss her like he normally would have when they met up with each other. Of course she would have kissed and hugged him, if she wasn’t planning to call it quits with him.
“We had storm trouble, if you didn’t notice as you were on your way here to Sierra’s home. We had a tornado touch down in Portland, if you didn’t hear,” Adam said. “And the electricity was out.”
“Yeah, I heard about the tornado on the airplane. I noticed the lights suddenly came on in the houses and the streetlamps as I was riding in the taxi through the dark residential areas.”
“I’m going to check on the wash for you, Adam,” Sierra said, then walked quickly down the hall, trying not to appear to be in a rush. How long did the darn wash have to go? Not that she wanted Adam to leave right away. Richard was the one she planned to get rid of quickly.
She didn’t want to leave the two men alone together for too long. She should have just told Richard it was over between them and goodbye, but she was more tenderhearted than he was. She was feeling guilty that he had flown all the way out here to see her, maybe thinking he needed to resurrect their relationship, but as far as she was concerned, it was too late for that. And why should she feel guilty about it?
She reached the laundry room and saw that the timer on the washer said it had just a minute to go. Yes! She folded her arms and tapped her foot on the floor, waiting for it to be done. And then it buzzed, indicating it was finished. She started pulling damp clothes out of the wash and throwing them in the dryer as quickly as she could.
“So you say you’re here because of the trouble with the storm?” Richard asked Adam. He sounded like he was trying to keep his cool, but she could hear the undercurrent of annoyance in his tone of voice.
“Yeah. We had to give a pregnant woman and her toddler assistance, and both Sierra and I were soaked to the skin in the pouring rain.”
Sierra started the dryer and hurried back down the hall to the kitchen, where she turned on the light.
“You couldn’t go to your own place to take care of your own laundry?” Richard raised a brow at Adam, as if he knew there was more going on between Adam and her.
She was glad Adam didn’t tear into Richard about how he’d acted toward her. She needed to deal with it. Not her friend.
“Did you lose your phone?” she asked Richard.
Richard gave her a conceited smile. “I was in the field.”
“You’re not today. Did you not get my text messages? Phone messages? Emails?” She had figured something would have gotten his attention.
“Why do you think I’m here?”
A phone call would have sufficed!
“You couldn’t give me a call or text before you came?” That was one of the things that annoyed her the most about all this. The silent treatment. As if she didn’t matter enough for him to bother talking to her before he came. To even say he was sorry. Oh, yeah, not once had he even said that! At least that would have been a beginning. Thinking back on it, he always thought he was right. Maybe that was due to being in charge of men and women in the military and believing he would look like less of a commander if he had to say he was sorry for making a mistake. She kept feeling like it was her fault! Lack of communication between partners could really kill a relationship. “Did it slip your mind that I was flying out there to see you?”