She grabbed a taco and two hot sauce packets and saw his mouth twitch. For that she took a third sauce. “Thirty years ago my mom and dad were having a bunch of problems. So she boinked the mail carrier and got knocked up. With me, in case that wasn’t clear. Mr. Mail Carrier moved across the country without a forwarding address.”

“What the hell.”

She shrugged it off, or at least pretended to. “It is what it is.”

“What it is, is fucked up.”

“Yeah, well, my mom had that sort of effect on men,” she said dryly. “And somehow she convinced my dad—the one she was married to, not the biological one—to stay. I think her inheritance from her grandma helped a lot. But there wasn’t enough money to make them forget how I came to be.”

She felt the weight of his stare but didn’t look at him, instead carefully adding that third sauce to one of her tacos like she was Picasso.

“How young were you when you learned all this?” he asked.

“Five.”

“Jesus, Lanie.”

She’d wanted to hear him use that gentle voice on her, but not because he felt sorry for her.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “But your parents sound like dicks.”

She laughed, surprised to find it was genuine. “It wasn’t just them, it was me too. I don’t really trust love, and so people don’t tend to go all in with me.”

He opened his mouth, his expression a fierce intent that made her throat tighten uncomfortably. Not ready to hear whatever it was he had to say, she pushed the bag of food toward him. “If you don’t think I can eat all of these Cinnabons myself, you’re mistaken.”

Getting the message, he humored her and let the subject drop. He was on his last Cinnabon when he eyed hers. She hugged them to her chest and he laughed. And his laugh caused her to laugh as well, which reminded her she still had no idea what was going on. “What are we doing here, Mark?”

He swallowed his last bite and looked off into the water. “When I was young, I’d ride my bike out here whenever my family pissed me off. Which was just about all the time.”

“Your family is . . .” She stopped, searching for the right word.

His mouth curved sardonically. “Interfering? Nosy? Obstinate?”

“Wonderful,” she said quietly.

He let out a long exhale and removed his sunglasses, tossing them aside before turning to her. “I know. And after what I went through in my marriage, I’ve never been so grateful for them as I am these days.”

“Your wife ran off.”

He nodded. “I made a stupid choice. She was young and spoiled, which didn’t matter to me because she was beautiful and fun and a good time. Then I was sent overseas and she was alone and pregnant with twins. And then she was still alone and dealing with two babies. I was no help at all—”

“You were overseas,” she said, unable to stop from defending him. “Working for our country.”

“I was.”

“So what did she expect you to do? Quit? You don’t just quit.”

“I reupped when I was with her,” he said. “That was a choice I made, thinking she preferred it when I was gone, but as it turns out it was a bad choice. She bailed and I ended up having to come back.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said. “You chose to. And it sounds like she’s the one who chose to quit and leave you and her own children. Who does that?”

He laughed roughly and shook his head. “Who doesn’t see it coming?”

She stared at him. “You think you’re at fault.”

“I am,” he said. “At least for part of it. I thought I knew her.”

“Yeah, well, people can hide in plain sight,” she said grimly. “You think you know someone, you think it’s safe to love them, and . . .” She clamped her mouth shut.

He met her gaze, his own dark one warm and curious. “Personal experience?”

“Maybe. Just a little.” She shook her head and turned to look out over the water. “So this is your happy place?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you happy?”

He didn’t answer for a long time. Instead, he searched the bag, found one last chalupa, and took his time eating it, so she thought maybe the conversation was over.

“That would’ve been better with another sauce on it,” he said. “But someone bogarted them all.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Be quick or be hungry.”

He laughed again and she realized she could get addicted to that sound very fast.

“I wasn’t happy here,” he said after a minute, surprising her. “Not for a long time after I came back. I was career military. I was good at what I did and I craved the adrenaline rush and the sense of accomplishment. I was angry and bitter and pissed off.”

“What changed?” she asked.

“Not much on the inside.” He gave her a wry grimace. “But Samantha and Sierra . . . they’re the opposite of angry and bitter.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said with a low laugh.

“They lost their mom. The last thing they needed was an angry asshole for a dad.”

“You fake it pretty good.”

He toasted her with his soda in thanks. “You were married too,” he said.

She nodded.

“You’re divorced?”

“No. I’m a widow.”

Mark didn’t show a lot of emotion; he was good at hiding himself. Real good. But there was a flash of shock. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“But you did know I take three sugars.”

He didn’t smile or let her joke this away. “How long ago?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. If he hadn’t died when he did, I’d have killed him myself.” There. She said it out loud. And it only hurt a little. A dull pain really, sort of like a boulder barreling into her. “Probably shouldn’t admit that to a cop, right?” she teased at his silence.

“I’m not a cop right now. And I wouldn’t judge a murderous urge.”

“Because you’ve had one or two?”

“Or a hundred trillion million,” he said.

She choked out a laugh. He challenged her like no one else, and he was also fairly effortlessly dragging her past out of her. At least part of it. But there was no way she’d tell him what Kyle had done to her. That humiliation was all her own, thank you very much. “I’m not actually kidding, you know, about the murderous urge.”

“Neither am I.”

She nodded. Anger, she understood. Anger was a wall she’d built to protect herself. She knew that because she could feel the weight of the bricks she’d built around her heart. What she didn’t know was how to tear it down.

When the food was gone, Mark gathered the trash, stood up, and tossed it into his truck. Then he moved to the back of the truck and pulled out two . . .

“Boogie boards?” she asked in surprise. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was in high school.”

“Found them in the storage unit at the winery,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of shit my mom’s saved over the years.”