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angry and ready to pounce. If she let him, he would tear her throat out.
    “What did you expect me to do? Call you up from time to time and ask how you were?”
    She swallowed. “No, of course not.”
    But maybe it would have been nice to hear from him every once in a while. When he’d walked out of her life, she’d waited for him to walk back into it. Waited for him to cool down and come home.  
    He hadn’t, and she hadn’t gone after him. They’d both been too proud to give an inch of ground. It had seemed like such a small thing, in a way, at first—and then it just kept getting bigger and bigger until they reached the point of no return.
    He stopped and put his hands on his hips, staring down at her angrily. “And no way in hell were you calling me either, right?”
    She looked down at her hands lying in her lap. “What would have been the point, Dane? You made it clear how you felt. Talking only ended up in arguing. Neither one of us enjoyed that.”
    “You know, when I went on my first mission as a SEAL, I kept hoping I’d come back and find a message from you. I think I must have still thought there was a chance. But when I got back, there was nothing. That’s when I knew it was really over for good.”
    Ivy swallowed the hard knot in her throat. “I didn’t even know you were gone.”
    “Yeah, but what does that matter? You could have left a message on my phone because you missed me. You didn’t.”
    Oh, but she had missed him. Terribly. Every minute of every day since he’d walked out on her. But she didn’t know how to breach the divide. Didn’t know how to give them what they both wanted and make it all work.
    So she’d thrown herself into work and tried to ignore the fact that her heart had shattered into a million pieces. She’d needed to be strong, needed to take care of herself. She knew what happened when a woman let herself believe a man would be there for her.
    She hadn’t thought Dane was anything like her father, but then he’d gotten angry and walked out, and she’d known right then that every man was only a heartbeat away from abandoning you. Even if she hadn’t had her parents as proof, Granny had told her so more than once—Grandpa had left her with three sons to feed. Just up and walked out one day. The end.
    When a man got tired of dealing, they left. She knew it to her core, and she wasn’t ever letting herself be that vulnerable again.
    Ivy got to her feet. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. You know where I am now, and you can comfort yourself with the knowledge I’m not leaving this room again until morning if it makes you feel better.”
    Dane stared at her for a long minute. And then he shook his head and laughed. The sound wasn’t humorous though.  
    “Jesus, Ivy. You’re the best in the world at avoiding the shit you don’t want to talk about. I don’t know why I thought anything had changed in the past few years.” He stalked past her and then stopped at the door with his hand on the chain. “I’m in 224, two rooms down on the left. Call if you need anything. I will have your back. Even if you’d prefer I didn’t.”
    * * *
    Ivy didn’t sleep too well, but she was up early and back at HOT before seven a.m. She didn’t see Dane at the hotel again, but the minute she walked inside HOT HQ, he was there, looking much too appealing in his cammies. He held a go-cup of coffee in one hand and stood with two other guys. His gaze slid over to her.
    She gritted her teeth and kept her chin up. These guys all knew that she and Dane had been married. In a way, it was kind of a relief. That thought made her pause for a second—huh, maybe he’d been right after all. Now that everyone knew, there was nothing to hide, nothing to feel guilty for. It was all about the work now. Even if being in the same room with Dane again made her heart pound a little bit harder and her brain insist on conjuring up images of him without his clothes.
    Colonel Mendez