Playing Dirty Read Online Free Page A

in Trenton’s direction. “We can talk about it later.”
    “No.” She her glass on the bar with enough force she thought it might shatter. “We’ll talk about it now.”
    “Mattie—”  
    “Don’t you dare feed me that ‘it’s classified’ crap,” she snapped. She took a step in his direction. “Not this time. I think I’ve earned the right to the truth.”
    His jaw hardened. For the space of a heartbeat, she thought he’d feed her the tired old line about national security. Until he said, “I was captured.”
    Tears immediately blurred her vision. “Oh, God,” she whispered. Her knees went weak, then gave out on her so she sank into the other club chair. When Paul Ravelli and the chaplain, Father Stevens, had come to see her, she’d known before they’d stepped from the government-issue sedan what they’d come to tell her—that Ford had been killed in action. If he’d been wounded or captured, she’d have received a phone call, or maybe a visit from some low-level Navy official. Still, she’d prayed like crazy that Ford’s commanding officer had personally come to tell her that her husband had been injured. She’d begged, pleaded with a God who’d ignored her.
    Until now.
    “That’s bullshit,” Trenton said. “No Navy SEAL has ever been captured. It’s common knowledge.”
    “You’re right,” Ford answered. “But the official record will reflect otherwise. The story will be that I was behind enemy lines and had infiltrated a band of Taliban rebels. My mission will be labeled a success.”
    “Okay, so then what’s the truth?” Trenton asked, his tone belligerent.  
    This was a side of Trenton she hadn’t seen until now. She really shouldn’t be surprised. He was a lawyer, after all. And a damned good one, on the fast track to making partner at his Dallas law firm. She’d seen him in action in the courtroom on a couple of occasions. He was a relentless interrogator on cross-examination, but he was never like this. Challenging. Dark.
    How was it she had married a man without knowing the full extent of his personality? In the time she’d known him, she’d witnessed Trenton’s frustration, she’d even been given a brief glimpse of his temper once when they’d argued and she’d pushed a few of his buttons, but he was nothing like the man before her now who was practically a stranger.  
    But was it Trenton’s character she was questioning, or her own? How was it that she and Ford had been together for ten years prior to his “death” and yet she knew next to nothing about the places he’d been, the things he’d done, or what he’d seen during his career as a SEAL? And why on earth had she always accepted his silence on the subject as the norm?
    Ford’s jaw tightened. “It’s classified,” he said.  
    The tension in the room thickened several more degrees, if that were even possible. She needed air. She didn’t care that they might pound each other into intensive care without her to referee, she needed a minute alone to absorb the insanity that had become her reality—that Ford was alive.
    “Excuse me for a minute,” she said as she headed for the newly installed French doors leading out to the back deck.  
    “Babe, wait.”
    Ford reached for her, but she side-stepped him. “Don’t.” If he touched her right now, she’d fall apart.  
    “Mattie?” Trenton called out to her.
    She shook her head. “Not now. Please.” The stunned expressions of both men as she unlatched the door would’ve been comical if the situation weren’t so incredibly insane. “I just need a minute.”  
    She walked outside, into the stifling humidity. She closed the door behind her, shutting out the raised voices of her husbands .  
    Husbands? How crazy was that?
    Leaving Ford and Trenton alone probably wasn’t a great idea, but she needed time to absorb the magnitude of the situation. Somehow she had to figure out how to deal.
    She braced her hands on the wooden deck railing