“Why not?”

Reasonable question. She could be sensitive to anything he might say and react differently than either of them wanted to. But Sarah had also been upfront about her needs, and from the admittedly small pieces he knew of traumatic stress recovery, she deserved to hear how he saw the truth, even if it was handled with kid gloves.

He needed a solid minute to recover from their back-seat escape. “Give me a second.”

He jumped out of the Hummer, found the driver, then returned. No telling how this talk would go, they might as well have it on the road where she wouldn’t leap out and run.

The Caribbean air cleared his head, centered his goals. Rebuild our trust, reconnect our marriage. Moments later, she was nestled back onto his lap, their luggage safely stowed, and the Hummer was looping S-turns on a pocked road.

Where to begin? “The only reason you might be crazy is for putting up with me all these years. Imposing restrictions on our family. I’ve been a dick—”

“Not a dick. I easily could’ve questioned why and how we lived.”

“But you’re not crazy. Not for lashing out at me. Blaming me.” He brushed a lock of her hair off her cheek. “Hurt like hell though.”

The passing landscape caught her attention again, her discomfort evident. “I feel stupid. Everyone knows that I walked out. Just took the kids and left.”

“Everyone being Titan?”

“And their wives.”

“Trust me when I tell you, no one’s calling you names. I walked away from Titan. I was disloyal. If they have something nasty to say, it’ll be about me.”

“I’ve stayed in touch with Nicola and Sugar. I think they like me.”

“You’re easy to like.” His lips pressed a kiss to her shoulder while his heart squeezed. Of course they’d like her, and she never should’ve been so isolated to begin with.

She rocked a laid-back personality, always made him smile, and Sarah could run with the likes of Sugar and the Titan ladies. Not easy to do, but his wife could. No problem.

“We were so sheltered. Why didn’t you ever introduce me?”

Sheltered. The word stung. Before, it’d seemed like a practical defense strategy. Now, it seemed overbearing. “Everything got complicated. Recently and quickly. All of us were single. Married to the job.” He frowned, analyzing his poor rationale. “God, it’s been years since Jared started Titan. When we first hit the road, mission after mission, we accomplished a lot of good, taking out a lot of bad.”

She nodded as he summarized the last decade on the job.

“I met you, angel. Fell fast. Hard. You’re my world, my best friend, the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever set eyes on. I didn’t want to put a bull’s-eye on your pretty little forehead. I saw bad things happen to decent people; I’d made a lot of enemies. I never wanted that for you. Sure as fuck not for our girls. It seemed safer to bubble-wrap our life. I’d be home, things would be normal. I’d be gone, you did your thing. A protected existence.”