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  Can’t Hold Back is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept eBook Original

  Copyright © 2015 by Serena Bell

  Excerpt from To Have and to Hold by Serena Bell copyright © 2015 by Serena Bell

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book To Have and to Hold by Serena Bell. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eBook ISBN 9781101886755

  Cover design: Diane Luger

  Cover photograph: Fotolia/Igor Mojzes

  readloveswept.com

  v4.1

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Serena Bell

  About the Author

  The Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from To Have and to Hold

  Prologue

  “Is this seat taken?”

  From her perspective in the grass, he was a giant, with broad shoulders and a luminous smile. She’d always thought it was an exaggeration when women said they lost their breath in a man’s presence, but she just had.

  She got a grip and shook her head. “Pull up some turf.” She patted the lawn beside her, and he sat.

  He was vivid, like a soldier in a movie: ripped, swaggering, grinning, golden-haired. He’d smiled in her direction earlier, and for a split second she’d thought, Who me? before she remembered that she was standing next to Becca. Her sister was a man magnet. All the two of them had to do was idle in a patch of sunlight admiring the garden, and sexy six-foot-plus men in butt-hugging jeans and black T-shirts materialized from nowhere—

  Abracadabra! Hot guy for Becca.

  In the car on the way over here, she’d told Becca that Jake’s picnics boasted not just amazing food, but other earthly delights. “We’ll get you back on your feet,” Alia had promised, sneaking a glance at her sister, slumped in the passenger seat. Ever since Becca’s boyfriend had left her three months ago she rarely smiled.

  Becca had been hoping for a proposal, and Alia was almost as disappointed as Becca was. She wanted her sister to be happy. Settled. Cared for.

  Hot Guy for Becca set his plate on the grass. He sat cross-legged, and his thighs and calves, which looked like they’d been hewn from wood, were generously decked with curly golden hair.

  “My sister just went to get some food,” she told him, pointing.

  He cast a glance at Becca, standing by the salad table, loading her plate with potato chips. Tall, beautiful, blond, and glowing with vitality.

  “You guys don’t look anything alike.”

  “We don’t.” She forced a smile. It wasn’t only blindingly obvious differences, like Becca’s blond and Alia’s dark hair, but everything else, too—Becca was slim, with hourglass curves, while Alia was “athletic”; Becca had porcelain skin and Alia was generously freckled; Becca’s features were classic and even, and Alia was—well, she’d be kind to herself and say “cute.”

  She sighed.

  “Nate Riordan.” The man beside her reached out his hand for a shake.

  “Alia Drake.”

  Big hands. Warm. A moment ago, the world had smelled like summer. Like grass gone somewhere to seed, roses in bloom, and the mingled marvels of mesquite smoke and grilling meat.

  Now her head was filled with a different scent entirely—soap, shampoo, the faintest whiff of some spicy male deodorant or cologne.

  He was going to have no difficulty making Becca forget her romantic troubles. He could probably make any woman blank on her own name.

  She retrieved her hand before she could reflect any more on that. He was Becca’s hot guy.

  Alia worried about Becca a lot. Probably too much, considering they were now both adults and capable of standing on their own. But it was an old, old habit, born after their father’s death and during their mother’s long depressions, when Becca had struggled to keep her head—and her self-esteem—above water.

  They were both adults now, but Alia totally got what parents meant when they said your worry didn’t vanish just because your kid had taken off for college.

  “You friends with Mira?” Nate asked, hoisting his burger for a bite.

  “Jake. We went to PT school together.”

  “You’re a physical therapist, too, huh? I’ve always thought that was a cool job.”

  “I love it. Love the work, love the people.”

  “Yeah? You’re lucky. Not too many people get to say that about their jobs.”

  “You don’t love yours?”

  He laughed. “Caught that, did you? I don’t have a story like Jake’s, all that post-Nine/Eleven conviction. Going to college for me meant a staggering amount of debt, and the only way I could hope to get myself out from under it was to join up. So that’s what I did. And it’s not that I hate it. I just…I guess…you find meaning where you can, you know?”

  She did, or thought she did, and it made her want to glide straight past small talk and delve in, but instead she asked, “Are you a Ranger, too? Is that how you know Jake?”

  “No, actually—Army grunt, between deployments. And I met Jake when he gave a talk. ‘A Life of Purpose’ or something like that. I was a senior in college, it was career week, and I almost didn’t go because I knew I was enlisting, so I figured I knew my purpose, or at least my purpose for a little bit.” He gave a wry shake of his gold-streaked head. “But some of my friends were planning to go, and I thought I should at least check it out. And I was, like, okay, here’s a guy, a Ranger, out of the Army, missing a leg, doing all this great stuff—competing in triathlons, going back to school, helping other soldiers—”

  “Jake’s amazing.”

  “He is,” Nate agreed, suddenly serious, and that was almost more dazzling than the smiling version. She found herself sucked into his blue-eyed gaze, a little dazed, nodding. “So fu— freaking inspiring. I mean, not some saint, but a guy who suffered and figured out how to come back stronger, to be a dad and a husband, and how to help tons of people, but also not bragging about it.”

  She smiled, because, yeah, that was what she loved about Jake, too. Not just the bravery, but: “He won’t take any credit for doing what needs to be done.”

  “Right. Damn, couldn’t have said it better. Exactly.” He grinned.

  Oh, my God, that grin. Confident but not arrogant, his eyes bright, corners crinkled, a crease that stopped short of being a dimple
in one cheek.

  She was staring at him, and the moment had stretched too long. Right. She looked away and took a hasty bite of potato salad. Wow. Really good. Mira’s work.

  “Now he’s building the retreat—have you seen it?” she said.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. But he was telling me about it, and it all makes sense. That he’d end up doing that, helping other guys with the transition. He had a tough homecoming.”

  Jake had come back from Afghanistan with an above-the-knee amputation, having lost both his leg and his teammate to an IED explosion—and promptly discovered he was the father of a seven-year-old he’d had no idea existed.

  They exchanged knowing glances, then both turned to watch Jake, who was tossing a football with Sam.

  “But he turned it into something. And he’s made this great life for himself, you know?”

  Yeah, again, she knew, but suddenly she couldn’t quite get the words to come out around the feeling in her chest. The tightness was caused by thinking about Jake and what he’d lost and found, yes, but it also had something to do with the sympathy, admiration, and longing on Nate’s face when he watched father and son together.

  “Anyway—” Nate’s lopsided smile and half-shrug said, Back to lighter topics. “I went up after the talk and said how much I admired what he’d done, and we ended up getting drunk together. So now I’m on the picnic invitation list.”

  “And once you’re on the list, you’re on forever. And Jake and Mira know how to throw a party.”

  They smiled at each other, and he raised his red plastic party cup to hers in a toast. “To the picnic list.”

  “Hey, guys.”

  She’d almost forgotten about Becca, who was now standing over them with her plate, looking faintly uncomfortable. As if she were waiting for an invitation she wasn’t sure would be extended.

  She’d seen that look on her sister’s face far too many times. The expression Becca wore after years of being unsure of herself.

  Becca, who hadn’t learned to read till she was ten, who called herself dumb way too often, who still found writing almost impossible. Becca, whose boyfriend had told her he needed to be with someone who was his intellectual equal.

  Becca, who was Alia’s family. Because their dad was gone and their mom was—well, she was who she was—and the two of them had still somehow made a childhood out of the muddle.

  Becca needed a guy like Nate Riordan way more than Alia did.

  Plus, Nate really wasn’t Alia’s type. Alia’s life, for better or for worse, had made her into someone who thrived on taking care of people. It didn’t tend to work out well for her with guys who were more the fiercely independent alpha types.

  And if there was something she knew about Nate Riordan after five minutes in his company, it was that he knew what he wanted and how to get it.

  So Alia said, “Nate, Becca. Becca, Nate,” and caught Becca’s eye and grinned at her sister. Look what I found for you!

  Nate stood to shake Becca’s hand.

  See? That right there. The kind of guy for whom chivalry wasn’t dead. He could take care of Becca the way she deserved.

  Alia stood, too. Becca was—she was actually smiling at Nate. Or at least most-of-the-way smiling.

  God, she’d missed her sister’s smile.

  Nate smiled back at Becca. Her hand was still in his.

  Perfect. The handshake would do its magic, and Becca could handle the rest.

  Alia watched the two of them, golden in the sun, and felt—

  She wasn’t sure. The pleasure of a match well made, maybe.

  “I’m gonna grab some lemonade. Either of you—”

  “No, thanks,” Becca said.

  “I’m good,” Nate said.

  Alia walked away.

  Half an hour later, Becca caught her arm beside the dessert table.

  “Are you sure? He talked to you first. You guys looked like you were enjoying yourselves.”

  What Alia wanted, she reminded herself firmly, was to make her sister happy.

  When she answered, she made herself do it casually, with so much confidence there could be no doubt.

  “A hundred percent positive.”

  She was. A hundred percent positive about wanting to make Becca smile. All the way. All the time.

  Chapter 1

  TWO YEARS LATER

  “Come off the foam roller and take a moment to lie on your back,” Alia told her class.

  Four soldiers slid to their yoga mats in the dim studio.

  “How does it feel?”

  She held her breath, because she wanted so badly for this class to be a success, and now all she could do was cross her fingers and hope that her best had been good enough.

  A few sighs and a moan answered her. The tall redheaded former comm officer said, “Like I’m lying in a trench.”

  “That’s right,” she teased. “While you were on the roller, I went around and dug trenches for all of you.”

  The sensation was an illusion, created because they’d been resting for so long on their backs on the foam roller, letting their shoulder blades sink toward the floor, opening the muscles along their spines. Now that they were on the floor, their brains were sending them the message that the ground was indented.

  They’d all started class today with chips on their shoulders. Three of the four had shown up as a favor to Jake, who ran the R&R veterans’ retreat and was Alia’s new, temporary boss. The fourth had come willingly but tried to leave once he discovered that they weren’t going to be using the Reformer machines, which resembled medieval torture devices more than exercise equipment. All of them had grumbled and sulked, and she’d indulged in a moment of worry that maybe this whole thing had been a bad idea.

  Then she’d taken a deep breath, cracked her mental knuckles, and bulled through it. She’d jollied and teased them, leading them through stretching and strengthening and breathing exercises, until the starch had gone out of their attitudes, one by one. Big, tough, ripped men; men who’d shot and killed, fought for their survival, their countries, their buddies; men who were scarred, in chronic pain, struggling to learn to move with prostheses—limp as rags on their mats.

  Now, finally, she let herself relax and savor her success—and their comfort. None of them showed the slightest sign of wanting to move, ever.

  “Rest as long as you want,” she told them. “No one’s coming in for another hour. Raise your hand if you want me to bring a blanket to cover you.”

  They all raised their hands, and her smile broadened. She brought them blankets and covered them. And they let her, like they’d accepted her as Mama Bear.

  These were not men who frequently let down their guards, not men who slept well at night—or ever. She’d given them something they needed desperately, and, God, she loved that.

  She heard a tap on the studio’s window and looked up to see Jake.

  “I’ll be right outside, guys.”

  She went to the door and slipped out. “Hey.”

  “You won them over.”

  She grinned, pleased with herself. “And you said movement therapy would be a tough sell for guys who got a little light exercise by running up mountains with a hundred pounds on their backs.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  The admiration was plain in his voice. Excellent. Because if she did a good job here during her two-week temporary gig, there was a chance he’d hire her on permanently. And that meant—

  That meant not having to go back there.

  At the thought of her old job, the tension crept back into her neck and shoulders. Sigh.

  “So, hey,” Jake said, more serious. “I screwed up. And I need you to not hate me for it.”

  Uh-oh.

  “I could never hate you,” she hazarded.

  The hesitation in her voice made them both laugh, but he quickly got serious. “I’m taking off in an hour, but something’s…come up.”

  Jake was headed to the airport to take a fi
ve-year-anniversary trip to Hawaii with his wife, Mira, which was why he’d asked Alia to come to R&R for two weeks, to fill in for him during his absence.

  “I totally forgot you knew him.”

  “Knew who?”

  “Mira reminded me. That you guys knew each other.”

  “Jake, what are you talking about?”

  She wouldn’t yap that way at just any boss, but Jake was a good friend. They’d been at PT school together, not only study and drinking buddies but also deep admirers of each other’s work and perspective, which was why Jake had called her when he’d needed someone to fill in.

  “Nate Riordan’s here.”

  All the air went out of her lungs.

  “I know it might be weird, since he was with Becca—”

  Oh, if only that had been all of it. Nate had indeed dated Becca, and that alone—given that the relationship had ended badly—might have been awkward enough, but Jake didn’t know the half of it. Or she hoped he didn’t.

  Jake sighed. Her wariness must have been all over her face.

  “He was discharged—medical—a couple months ago and I tried to get him to come then, but he wasn’t having it. He’s been living in an apartment in Portland with his cousin, but his cousin met a woman he’s serious about, so that’s not happening anymore. Basically, all I know is that he had low-level blast injuries, moderate traumatic brain injury, some memory loss and cognitive impairment at first, but big improvements on that front. But it sounds like he also has some mystery pain. He’s been back a couple months and he’s been taking a lot of painkillers, but he quit a few days ago—”

  “Cold turkey?”

  “Just un-cold-turkey enough not to kill himself, I think,” Jake said. “He’s in pretty bad shape now. Out of the worst of it, but you know what that’s like.”

  She did. There was no worse pain than the pain unmasked when an opiate haze lifted.