She smiled at the happy memory.
“So, he was a good kisser?” Rachel asked.
God save her, yes. “Stop,” she said in exasperation, then swatted her sister with the towel anyway.
AFTER A CHECKING ON the Ensign and a quick debrief, Nate Peterson headed to the weight room. He worked to mask the usually slight limp to his leg, more pronounced after the arduous training swim and carrying the injured man’s weight up onto the beach.
He willed the pain away.
He’d dealt with worse. Fought with worse. Soon, the wicked scar wrapping around his thigh would be the only evidence he’d ever been hurt. His leg injury might prevent him from running, but it couldn’t stop him from strength training. Nothing would stop him from returning to SEAL condition and taking his rightful place in The Teams when he was called.
Nate may have been looking for an escape from his old man, but fate had looked out for him that day when he was in the Navy recruiter’s office at the age of eighteen.
He wasn’t half way through basic when Nate realized he’d found a home. The Navy provided rules and discipline, something he’d never experienced growing up. His father may have laughed, but Nate actually excelled when there was a level of expectation. He wasn’t a benchmark kind of guy. If there was a challenge, Nate didn’t just want to meet it, he wanted to surpass it.
With the SEALs being the most highly regarded and trained of all the Special Forces, Nate knew that Trident would one day be his. He wouldn’t let something like an injury prevent him from doing what he was supposed to do.
He adjusted the weight for the reps to work his upper body. Almost every base he’d been assigned housed a weight room. Different locales, different climates, different languages…this room with its benches, mirrors and weights, was like coming home. Working out was as much a part of his normal routine as shaving or eating. Only the physical therapy exercises were new. The movements, which would return the tone and flexibility to his muscles, he kept to himself and performed away from the eyes of others.
Nate controlled his breathing as he lifted and lowered his arms. Muscle memory took over, and his mind began to wander. To telling eyes, and soft warm lips.
What the hell had that been on the beach? With familiar discipline, he’d kept his thoughts squarely on his tasks and his men. But now…now he allowed himself to remember. And think of her. Of the flowery scent of her mixed with the ocean breeze. Or the way she felt, soft and warm against him.
His thoughts quickly turned to another kind of workout all together. Finding the zipper on the back of her dress, and drawing it down. Sliding those slender, tantalizing straps off the smooth skin of her shoulders, and letting her clothes fall to the sand at their feet.
Why had she kissed him?
Who the hell cared?
Nate heard footsteps in the hallway. His few moments alone were almost over.
“It looked to me like she just pulled him over and kissed him.”
Yeah, that’s exactly how it happened.
“He didn’t handle the attack so well,” another trainee said as they entered the weight room.
The hell he hadn’t.
“If she’d had a knife stuffed in her purse, he’d have been a goner.”
She didn’t have a purse. Just a thin, thin dress.
“Maybe it’s new Navy protocol.” The three men laughed. At his expense. He knew they were only blowing off steam. SQT was just as mentally demanding as Hell Week was physically demanding. But he’d lose their respect if he didn’t call them on it. He realized now he’d made a mistake out there in the water.
Nate lowered the weight and it clanged. Three gazes whipped his way. Followed quickly by three alarmed faces. He met each man eye to eye. His message was clear.
“We didn’t know you were here, Instructor.”
“Obviously,” he replied.
The three stood together, uneasy, but not letting one man take the heat. Whatever Nate had to dish out at them they’d take together. The Teams would do well with soldiers such as these. Like him, they’d had a tough afternoon in the water, and he was impressed by their drive to hit the weight room instead of their bunks.
One day he might be fighting alongside them. They’d learned what he needed them to know.
“It’s always preferable to make nice with the locals,” he told them honestly, then turned, letting these guys off the hook. Yeah, he was a SEAL, “instructor” didn’t sit well with him.
Relieved releases of breath made him smile as he left the room. He liked the men he was teaching; he just didn’t want to be teaching them. Nate knew he could better serve the Navy and do what he was meant to do out of the classroom. He rubbed at the muscles above his knee. Soon. He’d be out of here soon.
Besides, none of them had the sexiest woman in San Diego wrap her warm body against them and plant the kind of hot kisses a man usually thought about on long, arduous hikes out in the dessert. In fact, with their training, the men hadn’t talked to the fairer sex in awhile. However, he wasn’t in training. Nothing was holding him back.
Being laid up in Southern California hadn’t been his idea, but like any tactical move, he planned to take advantage of it. He had the whole night ahead of him, and it was no secret SEALs worked best when the sun went down. And he knew just where to find her. Hailey of the Sutherland Hotel.
She was a woman worth missing a party for.
Hoo ya.
HAILEY COULDN’T NAP LONG. Luckily, her sister’s work on their Web site had yielded a booking for the evening, and she needed to be up and ready to help them check in. Like most B&Bs, the Sutherland served a delicious breakfast, but it had become a tradition to serve a light spinach and basil quiche in the afternoon for guests weary from travel and reluctant to fend for food in a strange city. Just one of the small touches that built a hotel’s reputation. Something the management company hadn’t understood.
The guest doorbell rang. The poor thing still sounded rusty. Wiping her hands on the apron protecting her clothes from the food prep, she quickly made her way to the door. Opening it wide, she almost wanted to slam it shut as quickly as she could.
It was him. The SEAL she’d kissed on the beach a few hours ago. Well, of course it was him. She’d just stood there in the kitchen dissing fate and fate obviously didn’t like it. Her payback was a gorgeous man at her doorstep while she looked horrible. Then the nerves kicked in and her heart turned all fluttery.
“I don’t normally walk around wearing this,” she managed, thinking it might work to draw his attention away from the blue and white checked bib-style apron monstrosity. The baby doll blue dyed bias tape was even fraying around the edges.
Yet if someone were keeping track of the absolute stupidest things to tell a man, that would probably make the Top Ten. Why hadn’t he said anything?
His eyes crinkled in the corners, he almost smiled, and it was almost a little too much. Whatever. He hadn’t been invited; anyway, it was his own fault he saw her with her hair lazily knotted on the top of her head with a pencil she’d found in the kitchen. It’s just, why did he have to look so good?
Fate.
His hair, thick with water the last time she saw him, hadn’t revealed its true color brown, with a few strands turned copper, probably from his days under the California sun. But those gray eyes of his, the color of steel were the same, and they burned into her right now.
Yeah…it was still there. That heat, that unyielding attraction that lay between them even before she kissed him, only grew now.