manner that she should have planned ahead, should have given herself enough time, should have factored in the possibility of Mr. Murphy throwing a jackknifed truck into her path.
She’d even expected him to imply that a man wouldn’t have been late.
But he hadn’t.
What was up with him?
In the few days since the poker game, P.J. had enjoyed the slightly off-color, teasing friendship of the men she’d played cards with. Crash had been there, although she suspected he was as much a stranger to the other men as she was. And the quiet blond lieutenant called Blue. The team’s version of Laurel and Hardy had anted up, as well—Bobby and Wes. And the captain himself, with his angelic-looking baby son asleep in a room down the hall, had filled the seventh seat at the table.
P.J. had scored big. As the dealer, she’d chosen to play a game called Tennessee. The high-risk, high-penalty, high-reward nature of the game appealed to the SEALs, and they’d played it several times that evening.
P.J. had won each time.
Now she tossed her bag on the ground and followed as Joe Cat hung back to wait for her. The other men were already out of sight.
“I’m really sorry I was late,” she said again.
“I pulled in about forty-five seconds before you.” The captain pulled his thick, dark hair into a ponytail as they headed down the trail. “I guess H. figured he couldn’t shout at you after he didn’t shout at me, huh?”
They were moving at a decent clip. Fast but not too fast—just enough so that P.J. had to pay attention to her breathing. She didn’t want to be gasping for air and unable to talk when they reached their destination. “Does the Senior Chief shout at you?” she asked.
“Sometimes.” Joe smiled. “But never in public, of course.”
They ran in silence for a while. The gravel crunching under their feet was the only sound.
“Is his father all right?” P.J. finally asked. “I didn’t see Harvard at all yesterday, and today he seems so preoccupied. Is anything wrong?” She tried to sound casual, as if she were just making conversation, as if she hadn’t spent a good hour in bed last night thinking about the man, wondering why he hadn’t been at dinner.
They’d only gone about a mile, but she was already soaked with perspiration. It was ridiculously humid today. The air clung to her, pressing against her skin like a damp blanket.
“His father’s doing well,” Joe told her. He gave her a long, appraising look. “H. has got some other personal stuff going on, though.”
P.J. quickly backpedaled. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, your question was valid. He was uncharacteristically monosyllabic this morning,” he said. “Probably because it’s moving day.”
She tried not to ask, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Moving day?”
“H.’s parents are moving. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think he feels bad that he’s not up there helping out. Not to mention that he’s pretty thrown by the fact that they’re leaving Massachusetts. For years his family lived in this really great old house overlooking the ocean near Boston. I went home with him a few times before his sisters started getting married and moving out. He has a really nice family—really warm, friendly people. He grew up in that house—it’s gotta hold a lot of memories for him.”
“He lived in one house almost his entire life? God, I moved five times in one year. And that was just the year I turned twelve.”
“I know what you mean. My mother and I were pros at filling out post office change of address cards, too. But H. lived in one place from the time he was a little kid until he left for college. Wild, huh?”
“And on top of that his parents are both still alive and together.” P.J. shook her head. “Doesn’t he know how lucky he is? Unless he’s got some deep, dark, dysfunctional secret that I don’t know about.”
“I don’t think so, but I’m not exactly qualified to answer that one. I think it’s probably best if Harvard got into those specifics with you himself, you know?”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t looking to put you on the spot.”
“Yeah, I know that,” he said easily. “And I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was telling you to mind your own business. Because I wasn’t.”
P.J. had to laugh. “Whew—I’m glad we got that settled.”
“It’s just… I’m speculating here. I don’t want to mislead you in any way.”
“I know—and you’re not.” As he glanced at her again, P.J. felt compelled to add, “The Senior Chief and I are just friends.”
Joe Catalanotto just smiled.
“I’ve known H. almost as long as I’ve known Blue,” he told her after they’d run another mile or so in silence.
“Yeah, you told me you and Blue—Lieutenant McCoy—went through BUD/S together, right?” P.J. asked.
“Yeah, we were swim buddies.”
Swim buddies. That meant Joe Cat and Blue had been assigned to work together as they’d trained to become SEALs. From what P.J. knew of the rigorous special operations training, they’d had to become closer than blood brothers, relying on one man’s strengths to counter the other’s weaknesses, and vice versa. It was no wonder that after all those years of working side by side, the two men could communicate extensively with a single look.
“H. was in our graduating class,” Joe told her. “In fact, he was part of our boat team during Hell Week. A vital part.”
Funny, they were talking about Harvard again. Not that P.J. particularly minded.
“Who was his swim buddy?”
“Harvard’s swim buddy rang out—he quit—right before it was our turn to land our IBS on the rocks outside the Hotel Del Coronado.”
“IBS?”
“Inflatable Boat, Small.” Joe smiled. “And the word small is relative. It weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds and carries seven men. The boat team carries it everywhere throughout Hell Week. By the time we did the rock portage, we were down to only four men—all enlisted—and that thing was damn heavy. But we all made it through to the end.”
Enlisted? “You and Blue didn’t start out as officers?”
Joe picked up the pace. “Nope. We were both enlisted. Worked our way up from the mail room, so to speak.”
“Any idea why Harvard didn’t take that route?” she asked. She quickly added, “I’m just curious.”
The captain nodded but couldn’t hide his smile. “I guess he didn’t want to be an officer. I mean, he really didn’t want to. He was approached by OCS—the Officer’s Candidate School—so often, it got to be kind of a joke. In fact, during BUD/S, he was paired with a lieutenant, I think in an attempt to make him realize he was prime officer material.”
“But the lieutenant quit.”
“Yeah. Harvard took that pretty hard. He thought he should’ve been able to keep his swim buddy—Matt, I think his name was—from quitting. But it was more than clear to all of us that H. had been carrying this guy right from the start. Matt would’ve been out weeks earlier if he hadn’t been teamed up with H.”
“I guess even back then, Harvard was a team player,” P.J. mused. The entire front of her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her legs and lungs were starting to burn, but the captain showed no sign of slowing down.
“Exactly.” Joe wasn’t even slightly winded. “He hated feeling like he was letting Matt down. Except the truth was, Matt had been